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Total 100 articles, created at 2016-03-13 12:01 1 Rain, Snow Pelt Northern California After Morning Dry Spell A California Highway Patrol officer sustained major injuries after being struck Saturday by (2.00/3) an out-of-control vehicle as he provided traffic control in snowy conditions on a Northern California mountain pass. The accident led authorities to temporarily close a portion of Interstate 80 near... 2016-03-13 12:01 4KB abcnews.go.com 2 Battle of the Lawyers on RCBC probe WHILE authorities piece together clues on the $81 million dirty money that slipped through the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) Jupiter branch in Makati, the legal counsels for the bank’s chief 2016-03-13 12:01 8KB business.inquirer.net 3 Man shot dead while having dinner with family in Cebu CEBU CITY, Philippines — A 42-year-old man was killed on Saturday night when two unidentified men repeatedly shot him inside his home at Sitio Tinago, Barangay South Poblacion, Naga City in 2016-03-13 12:01 1KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 4 Pune: Lucky fingers help rescue missing boy from water tank The story of how the quick-wittedness of a nine-year-old boy, who was reported missing helped him get spotted inside a 10-feet deep empty water tank 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.mid-day.com 5 Granlund scores twice, Wild beat Canadiens 4-1 MONTREAL (AP) — The Minnesota Wild are back in line for a postseason spot. Mikael Granlund scored twice, Devan Dubnyk made 30 saves and the Wild beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-1 on Saturday night to… 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB wtop.com 6 Predators-Canucks Sum Nashville 0 2 0—2 Vancouver 2 1 1—4 First Period_1, Vancouver, Baertschi 14 (B. Hutton, Vrbata), 17:44. 2, Vancouver, Dorsett 4 (Horvat, Burrows), 19:01. Second Period_3, Nashville, Fisher 11 (Josi, S. Weber), 9:17. 4, Vancouver, Horvat 11… 2016-03-13 12:01 1KB wtop.com 7 Demanding pay, Chinese miners protest over governor’s claim BEIJING (AP) — Thousands of Chinese miners who say they have not been paid for months staged a rare protest in a northeastern city, days after the provincial governor made the apparently false claim that… 2016-03-13 12:01 4KB wtop.com 8 Middle Tennessee women beat Old Dominion in C-USA title game BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Rick Insell was enjoying the game so much he almost forgot to coach. It didn’t matter. Brea Edwards scored 16 points and grabbed 11 rebounds as Middle Tennessee rolled into the… 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB wtop.com 9 Blazers’ Davis ejected for flagrant foul on Magic’s Smith PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Portland Trail Blazers reserve Ed Davis was ejected with 2:42 remaining in the third quarter of their game against the Orlando Magic for a flagrant foul on Jason Smith. Davis used… 2016-03-13 12:01 1KB wtop.com 10 Bruce triples, Reed solid in Reds’ loss to Mariners GOODYEAR, Ariz. (AP) — Jay Bruce hit a two-run triple and Cody Reed struck out four in three scoreless innings, but the Cincinnati Reds lost to a Seattle Mariners split-squad 5-2 on Saturday night. Jose… 2016-03-13 12:01 4KB wtop.com

11 Weber State wins Big Sky, advances to NCAA Tournament RENO, Nev. (AP) — Weber State knew it would be far from easy. Montana made sure of it. Jeremy Senglin scored 20 points and top-seeded Weber State beat second-seeded Montana 62-59 in the Big Sky… 2016-03-13 12:01 2KB wtop.com 12 WT20: India lose to South Africa by 4 runs in warm-up game at Wankhede Shikhar Dhawan's 73 (retired not out) went in vain as India fell short by just 4 runs while chasing South Africa's 196-9 in 20 overs in the second warm-up match of the ICC World T20 at Wankhede 2016-03-13 12:01 2KB www.mid-day.com 13 Nurkic’s 17 points rally Nuggets over Wizards, 116-100 DENVER (AP) — Jusuf Nurkic scored all of his season-high 17 points in the second half and the Denver Nuggets rallied in the fourth quarter to beat the Washington Wizards 116-100 on Saturday night. Gary… 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB wtop.com 14 Brogdon goes cold as Virginia loses to UNC in ACC title game WASHINGTON (AP) — Malcolm Brogdon didn’t waver even as he missed shot after shot. Virginia’s leading scorer and the ACC player of the year kept driving and throwing up shots. “You have to believe the… 2016-03-13 12:01 4KB wtop.com 15 Top 25 Capsules Isaiah Whitehead scored 26 points, including the deciding three-point play with 18 seconds left, and Seton Hall won the Big East Tournament for the first time in 23 years, beating No. 3 Villanova 69-67 on Saturday at Madison Square Garden. Whitehead drove on the right side, flipped the... 2016-03-13 12:01 7KB abcnews.go.com 16 SULLY BUTTES 33, ETHAN 25 SULLY BUTTES 33, ETHAN 25 2016-03-13 12:01 1KB www.washingtontimes.com

17 Thanks to its defense, UNC tops Virginia 61-57 for ACC title WASHINGTON (AP) — Thanks to the sort of defensive dominance coach Roy Williams has been seeking, North Carolina’s longer-than-usual wait for its latest ACC Tournament championship is over. Now the Tar Heels can turn their… 2016-03-13 12:01 5KB wtop.com 18 Railways to wash blankets after every use Smelly blankets may soon become a thing of past on trains, with the railways deciding to wash them after every use 2016-03-13 12:01 2KB www.mid-day.com 19 Breweries picking smaller towns in western North Carolina From the start of the craft beer scene in western North Carolina in 1994, Asheville was the place where many breweries set up shop, as evidenced by the 24 breweries operating in Buncombe County today. 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 20 Snyder proposes $500,000 for campus sexual assault programs Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget proposal includes $500,000 for campus sexual assault prevention programs to be split among Michigan universities competing for a sliver of that money. 2016-03-13 12:01 4KB www.washingtontimes.com 21 Mumbai: 89 Arthur Road Jail inmates appear for Gandhi Peace exam Eighty-nine inmates of Arthur Road Jail appeared for Gandhi Peace exam organised by the Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal 2016-03-13 12:00 2KB www.mid-day.com 22 Duterte camp: Binay lying, insulting Filipinos’ intelligence The camp of presidential aspirant Mayor Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday urged Vice President Jejomar Binay to face the Filipino people once and for all and explain his side on the corruption 2016-03-13 11:53 3KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 23 Egyptian man jailed for 'insulting' women on Facebook An Egyptian man has been sentenced to three years in jail for 2016-03-13 11:52 1KB www.mid-day.com 24 23 Indian fishermen arrested in Sri Lanka At least 23 Indian fishermen were arrested in Sri Lanka for poaching in the country's waters, the media reported on Sunday 2016-03-13 11:50 1KB www.mid-day.com 25 Number coding, LRT service advisories for the Holy Week The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) has announced that the numbering coding scheme will be lifted for provincial buses on Holy Wednesday, March 23. In an advisory, the MMDA said 2016-03-13 11:32 1KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 26 Michigan girl power fuels high school robotics growth As the state’s wildly popular robotics season kicks off this month, organizers are noticing a welcome trend: More girls are joining teams and more are taking on leadership roles. 2016-03-13 11:28 4KB www.washingtontimes.com 27 Sex harassment cases prompt new review process at UC University of California President Janet Napolitano has ordered a new sexual harassment review process for administrative leaders amid outrage over UC Berkeley’s handling of misconduct claims against its law school dean. 2016-03-13 11:25 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 28 Cruz crushes Trump in Wyoming Republican caucus WASHINGTON, United States — Republican White House hopeful Ted Cruz easily defeated frontrunner Donald Trump in the race to be the party nominee for the 2016 presidential election in the 2016-03-13 11:19 1KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 29 EPL: Norwich hold Man City to a goalless draw Stubborn Norwich City dent Manchester City’s title hopes in hard-fought goalless tie 2016-03-13 11:16 2KB www.mid-day.com 30 Mumbai: Miraculous escape for three jockeys at Mahalaxmi Racecourse In what looked like an extremely scary accident, three jockeys and their horses came tumbling down one after another in quick succession during the running of the Audi Multi- Million, the feature event of Saturday's Mahalaxmi Racecourse card 2016-03-13 11:04 2KB www.mid-day.com 31 Nebraska Legislature exempts itself from open records law Nebraska’s one-house Legislature was created with the promise of greater transparency in state government, but that promise falls short when it comes to some of the records lawmakers keep. 2016-03-13 09:57 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 32 Ex-Mississippi State QB Dak Prescott arrested on DUI charge Former Mississippi State quarterback and NFL draft prospect Dak Prescott was arrested and charged with driving under the influence early Saturday. 2016-03-13 11:00 2KB www.washingtontimes.com 33 Ban on Meldonium due to vested interests, says inventor Drug Meldonium has been enlisted as a banned substance due to lobbyism by vested interests, the medical formula's inventor Ivars Kalvins said 2016-03-13 10:57 1KB www.mid- day.com

34 Alan Shearer hails Newcastle United's Rafa Benitez coup Newcastle great Alan Shearer said the Magpies had pulled off a 2016-03-13 10:54 1KB www.mid-day.com 35 It will be difficult to beat Aston Villa, says Tottenham Hotspur's Toby Alderweireld Mauricio Pochettino's decision to rest several key players for Tottenham's Europa League loss at Borussia Dortmund will be tested when his side visit Aston Villa today 2016-03-13 10:53 1KB www.mid-day.com 36 Borussia Dortmund officials goofed up during stadium crush: Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust The co-chairman of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust has described a crush that developed outside Borussia Dortmund's ground as one of the worst experiences he has had since the 1970s 2016-03-13 10:51 1KB www.mid-day.com 37 FA Cup: Arsene Wenger: Arsenal need to show more consistency Arsene Wenger has told his Arsenal stars to show more consistency as the FA Cup holders try to get their spluttering season back on track in today's quarter-final against Watford 2016-03-13 10:49 2KB www.mid-day.com 38 Mumbai: And the pipeline leak continues at Jogeshwari- Vikhroli Link Road Civic workers repair leak in pipeline near Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road within days of mid-day report; anti-social elements strike pipeline again within hours 2016-03-13 10:48 2KB www.mid-day.com 39 Mumbai tutorial class strips kids as punishment Police register case against a Malwani-based tutorial class as WhatsApp video of children standing outside the institute goes viral; strangely, parents okay with it 2016-03-13 10:47 2KB www.mid-day.com 40 Senate bets oppose same-sex unions, LGBT discrimination https://www.youtube.com/embed/tEumG0nP9xs Four senatorial bets running in the upcoming May polls were united in their opposition to same-sex marriage, but noted that members of the lesbian, 2016-03-13 10:45 3KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 41 Mumbai: Arthur Road under trial dead; family refuses to accept body An under trial prisoner from the Arthur Road jail in Byculla died on Friday evening while undergoing treatment at the jail hospital. Family alleges negligence on part of authorities, refuse to accept body 2016-03-13 10:44 1KB www.mid-day.com 42 Rahul Dravid: Next challenge for India is to win overseas Cricketing great Rahul Dravid feels that though India have been doing well lately in the shorter formats of the game, the next challenge is to start getting results overseas 2016-03-13 10:43 1KB www.mid-day.com 43 Aditya Tare laments lack of quality spinners in T20 age The advent of the revolutionary Twenty20 cricket has brought in some negatives along with a lot of positives into the game, said Mumbai's Ranji Trophy winning captain Aditya Tare 2016-03-13 10:41 2KB www.mid-day.com 44 Mumbai crime: Staff robs Rs 12.3 lakh from online payment firm Commission and profits transferred into relatives’ accounts instead of firm’s 2016-03-13 10:40 3KB www.mid-day.com

45 ED continues to grill former UB Group CFOs for 2nd day CFOs questioned for 9 hours; we want to know where money has gone, said an ED official 2016-03-13 10:40 2KB www.mid-day.com 46 WT20: Tough to stop Kohli, Rohit and Dhoni: Australian pacer John Hastings Australia's new-ball bowler John Wayne Hastings, named after the legendary Hollywood actor by his Western-watching dad, is bracing for the challenges posed by Indian batsmen and the sub-continental conditions during the World Twenty20 2016-03-13 10:40 3KB www.mid-day.com 47 Irani gang's sleight of hand in South Mumbai Police on the lookout for slick thieves who make a killing by distracting cashiers and shopkeepers 2016-03-13 10:39 1KB www.mid-day.com 48 BJP wants apology over Azad ISIS-RSS remark Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Saturday kicked a row after he sought to draw a parallel between RSS and terrorist outfit ISIS, evoking sharp responses from the Hindutva outfit and BJP, which demanded an apology from him 2016-03-13 10:38 2KB www.mid- day.com 49 Mumbai: Govandi constable's got his eyes on you A Govandi constable juggles a high-stress job with a mission to inspire Indians — including fellow policemen — to turn eye donors 2016-03-13 10:38 2KB www.mid-day.com 50 Kutch man gets a hand at life from Mumbai team Mumbai-based surgeon Dr Mukesh Doshi and Mulund 3D printing firm create an experimental prosthetic for partial amputee Rajesh Ojha who lost fingers in an industrial accident 2016-03-13 10:37 5KB www.mid-day.com 51 Is Australia serious about Twenty20 cricket? Aussie skipper Steve Smith and pacer Josh Hazlewood express dissimilar views; Smith's excuse is packed schedules while key bowler wants more T20 games 2016-03-13 10:37 3KB www.mid-day.com 52 Pakistan team arrives in Kolkata for World T20 With the issue of Pakistan's participation in the World T20 having been pushed into a political premise, and the uncertainty that it thus signalled, the sigh of relief on the team's arrival in Kolkata on Saturday was palpable 2016-03-13 10:34 2KB www.mid-day.com 53 BEST's rush to save soggy Electric House Not just dwindling commuters, BEST is also troubled by the monsoon; its HQ needs a makeover that will cost lakhs 2016-03-13 10:33 2KB www.mid-day.com 54 Bohol drug peddler camped out in pension homes TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol — Police arrested on Sunday dawn a drug suspect who sold P500 worth of shabu to a police poseur-buyer from a pension house room. Ronald “Butchoy” Capuno Taer, 2016-03-13 10:32 1KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 55 Bombay High Court's stay order on new constructions leaves BMC in limbo With stay on new constructions but no official order, the Building Proposal Department was clueless 2016-03-13 10:31 3KB www.mid-day.com 56 WT20: Mumbaikars robbed of AB de Villiers' show Mumbai's cricket-loving fans were robbed of a chance to see 'super human' batting from South African superstar AB de Villiers during Saturday's warm-up tie 2016-03-13 10:29 2KB www.mid-day.com

57 Records request denial highlights Iowa lawmakers’ authority Iowa lawmakers are exempt from releasing their work emails or daily schedules to the public because they determine their own rules on such matters, and the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld that authority. 2016-03-13 10:28 4KB www.washingtontimes.com 58 Singer Ciara and NFL player Russell Wilson are engaged American performer announces her engagement with NFL player Russell Wilson 2016-03-13 10:21 1KB www.mid-day.com 59 Right-to-work, budget deadlock shape West Virginia session West Virginia has finished a lawmaking session defined by a Republican agenda that sometimes shrugged off the state’s Democratic governor, but lawmakers still could be months away from unlocking a budget stalemate fueled by downturns in coal and natural gas. 2016-03-13 09:05 2KB www.washingtontimes.com 60 North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un orders to further nuclear tests Kim Jong-Un threatens to turn Seoul and Washington into ‘flames and ashes’ 2016-03-13 10:04 2KB www.mid-day.com 61 Donald Trump draws flak from rivals for rally violence Ted Cruz blames Trump for creating nasty discord while John Kasich calls it ‘ugly’ 2016-03-13 10:03 1KB www.mid-day.com 62 Jihadi John biographer withdraws from event A British journalist who wrote a biography on the life of Jihadi John, has withdrawn from speaking at an event at the dead ISIS executioner’s former university. 2016-03-13 10:02 1KB www.mid-day.com 63 Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre: What's the good word? A look into how terms from the Marathi lexicon have been adopted into popular culture, heavy with political meaning 2016-03-13 10:01 6KB www.mid-day.com 64 PM Narendra Modi slams Congress, lauds Bihar CM Nitish Kumar Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday trained his guns on Congress accusing it of “neglecting” Bihar’s development since independence and recalled Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s past association with NDA as he inaugurated a number of railway projects here 2016-03-13 09:59 1KB www.mid-day.com 65 Alps avalanche kills 6 in Italy MILAN, Italy — An avalanche struck high in the Italian Alps on Saturday, killing six backcountry skiers and injuring another as a swath of snow hundreds of meters (yards) wide cascaded 2016-03-13 09:59 2KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 66 Guatemala investigates Lake Amatitlan clean-up plan Former Guatemalan Vice-President Roxana Baldetti is detained over an allegedly fraudulent plan to clean up pollution at Lake Amatitlan. 2016-03-13 08:40 2KB www.bbc.co.uk 67 Photographing children caught in conflict British photojournalist, Giles Duley, talks about his new book, One Second of Light and about his youngest subjects - the children caught up in conflict. 2016-03-13 06:44 970Bytes www.bbc.co.uk

68 What happened when Vietnam's national broadcaster was caught pinching YouTube videos A television station has been suspended from YouTube after it broadcast videos from an amateur photographer without his permission. 2016-03-13 06:44 3KB www.bbc.co.uk 69 Libya conflict: Tunis-based unity government claims power Libya's UN-backed Presidential Council, in Tunis, calls on the international community to stop dealing with any rival powers within Libya. 2016-03-13 06:44 2KB www.bbc.co.uk 70 3 Paris attackers feature in ISIS recruitment files Names of three of the Paris attackers figure in a massive documents leak from the Islamic State militant group, media reports said on Saturday 2016-03-13 09:53 1KB www.mid- day.com 71 NBA: Grizzlies’ Conley out at least three weeks WASHINGTON, United States — Memphis Grizzlies starting point guard Mike Conley will miss at least three to four weeks with an Achilles tendon injury, the NBA team announced 2016-03-13 09:52 2KB sports.inquirer.net 72 Livonia - News Livonia - News 2016-03-13 03:51 1KB rssfeeds.hometownlife.com

73 Booker Jones for C N Wadia Gold Cup The Grade 2, C N Wadia Gold Cup is slated as the feature event of Sunday's evening racing card at Mahalaxmi 2016-03-13 09:48 2KB www.mid-day.com 74 Save Aarey: Shiv Sena to fight BJP over green cause CM Devendra Fadnavis’ latest statement, that the car shed for Metro III is likely to be constructed in Aarey Milk Colony, has not only irked Mumbai's residents but BJP’s ally, the Shiv Sena 2016-03-13 09:30 3KB www.mid-day.com 75 Is fermented food a recipe for good gut health? Could fermented food be the key to improving the health of our gut? 2016-03-13 08:27 6KB www.bbc.co.uk 76 Two men 'seriously injured' at Belvoir Hunt, says charity The League Against Cruel Sports says two of its staff were seriously injured while monitoring Leicestershire's Belvoir Hunt. 2016-03-13 08:27 1KB www.bbc.co.uk 77 Crazy for Cortinas: The 80s cars targeted by thieves Cars built in the 80s, such as Ford Cortinas and Vauxhall Novas, are being targeted by criminal gangs. Why? 2016-03-13 08:27 5KB www.bbc.co.uk 78 Newspaper headlines: Obama backing, Queen's independence and Maro Itoje The EU referendum dominates Sunday's front pages, with one saying Barack Obama is backing the Remain campaign while another reflects fears about maintaining the Queen's independence. 2016-03-13 08:27 6KB www.bbc.co.uk 79 Weekend Edition: The week's best reads Features to enjoy, including your comments. 2016-03-13 08:27 3KB www.bbc.co.uk 80 10 things we didn't know last week Guns with silencers are as noisy as drills, plus other news nuggets. 2016-03-12 23:33 1KB www.bbc.co.uk 81 US election 2016: What Trump says about protesters at his rallies After scuffles at a Donald Trump rally in Chicago, BBC News looks back at what the Republican presidential front-runner has said about violence at his campaign events. 2016-03-12 23:33 3KB www.bbc.co.uk

82 MLive swim finals coverage: Brother Rice, Dexter, Cranbrook-Kingswood are team champs The biggest day of the 2016 boys swimming season is here. The state championships start at noon at three pools around Michigan, and MLive reporters and photographers will be on hand to provide stor... 2016-03-12 23:33 1KB highschoolsports.mlive.com 83 'Rare' light pillars spotted in sky over Rhigos mountain An experienced astronomer says he has caught on camera the "very rare" sight of light pillars in the night sky above Wales. 2016-03-13 05:35 1KB www.bbc.co.uk 84 Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier The city — sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce 2016-03-13 09:21 5KB www.mid- day.com 85 Commons Confidential: Bipartisan tandoori George Osborne has failed. Now it's up to Labour to set out the alternative Menu faces, press gallery places and why you should never get on the wrong side of Michael Dugher. 2016-03-13 07:49 10KB www.newstatesman.com 86 Budget 2016: Osborne 'planning' rise in insurance tax Millions of households could face an increase in insurance costs, following a warning that the chancellor may target premiums in next week's Budget. 2016-03-12 23:33 2KB www.bbc.co.uk 87 UK Eurovision hopefuls Joe And Jake sign record deal Joe And Jake, who will represent the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest in May, have signed a record deal with Sony Music. 2016-03-12 23:33 1KB www.bbc.co.uk 88 Can mindfulness improve pupils' concentration? Mindfulness is a psychological technique which is said to help combat stress. Should it be widely introduced in schools? 2016-03-12 23:33 5KB www.bbc.co.uk 89 The Returning Officer: Hemel Hempstead II This seat was the first to have had a woman candidate from all three major parties. 2016-03-13 07:59 1KB www.newstatesman.com 90 Ranch rage: the welcome return of Thomas Savage’s The Power of the Dog Joanna Walsh’s Vertigo is artful and intelligent – but not wholly successful The Power of the Dog was first published in 1967 and is now being re-released by Vintage as a “rediscovered classic”, as John Williams’s Stoner was published a few years ago. 2016-03-13 07:49 10KB www.newstatesman.com 91 Why the struggles of white working-class children matter – and what can be done I know what you're thinking - but this graphic novel of Proust is a triumph White working-class failure in schools is a microcosm of a deeper problem: the struggles of the white working class in a post-industrial world. 2016-03-13 07:49 8KB www.newstatesman.com 92 Yahoo - Lexus Revs Up Basketball Fans with New Campaign on Yahoo Sports and Launches Bracket Challenge New campaign promotes the all-new 2016 Lexus GS F timed with the 2016 Men's College Basketball Tournament --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- (NASDAQ:YHOO) announced today that Lexus is a presenting sponsor of Tourney Pick'em and will also launch "GS F The Bracket," a custom Lexus branded game around the 2016 Men's College Basketball... 2016-03-13 08:05 3KB investor.yahoo.net

Total 100 articles, created at 2016-03-13 12:01

1 Rain, Snow Pelt Northern California After Morning Dry Spell (2.00/3) A California Highway Patrol officer sustained major injuries after being struck Saturday by an out-of-control vehicle as he provided traffic control in snowy conditions on a Northern California mountain pass. The accident led authorities to temporarily close a portion of Interstate 80 near Donner Summit, a treacherous road in the Sierra Nevada . The weather was bad enough that the officer had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance instead of by helicopter, CHP Lt. Sven Miller told the Sacramento Bee. He said the officer had major injuries, but was awake and talking. Rain and wind returned with a vengeance Saturday afternoon, sending people scurrying through downtown San Francisco just hours after a dry spell that spared the city's annual St. Patrick's Day parade. Up to 3 feet of snow was expected to fall in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada through Monday. That snowpack normally stores about 30 percent of the water supply to drought-stricken California. "We're looking forward to it," said Leslie Byrd, front-desk supervisor of Aston Lakeland Village Resort in South Lake Tahoe. "We're almost full tonight because lots of people have come up to ski. " This is the latest storm to hit the state after a soaking late in the week that gave a brief blast to Southern California while closing schools and tying up traffic in Northern California on Friday. In counties north of San Francisco, rivers swelled and the flood risk was high. More than 3 inches of rain had fallen in Marin County's Kentfield in a 72-hour period while the unincorporated town of Venado in Sonoma County recorded nearly 8.5 inches of rain, the National Weather Service reported. However, the rain that pelted California for days was held at bay Saturday morning for revelers at a noontime St. Patrick's Day parade. Spectators braved grey skies for the festive parade, some wearing ponchos and hats to ward against cooler temperatures and possible rain. But the weather cooperated, allowing dancers and baton twirlers decked in green to march rain-free. Stormy rains that started Thursday prompted road closures, including a portion of California Highway 1 in Mendocino County where slides nearly toppled a California Department of Transportation dump truck with an employee inside. The truck hit a guardrail — stopping its fall — and landed at a 45-degree angle. No one was injured. In the East Bay, a landslide near the Moraga Country Club prompted at least two homeowners to evacuate from their hillside homes. Tim Alford told the Contra Costa Times he noticed cracks at the foot of his home on Tuesday, and two days later his decks had collapsed. He and another neighbor, Darlene Martel, hired a geologist. "He came and told me: 'I would not sleep here,'" Martel said. Powerful rains also slammed the central part of the state, flooding streets in Fresno and briefly shutting down the airport there. In Southern California, torrential rains snapped power poles and firefighters rescued two hikers who had climbed a tree, afraid to risk a rain-soaked trail on Mulholland Drive. Another round of showers is forecast for Northern California on Sunday. Then it's back to sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s and 80s throughout the state, said National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Bell. washingtontimes.com 2016-03-13 12:01 By abcnews.go.com

2 Battle of the Lawyers on RCBC probe WHILE authorities piece together clues on the $81 million dirty money that slipped through the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) Jupiter branch in Makati, the legal counsels for the bank’s chief executive officer (CEO) and the branch manager traded barbs on the integrity of the bank’s internal investigation. Ferdinand Topacio – legal counsel for Maia Santos-Deguito, the RCBC Jupiter branch manager who was the gatekeeper of the suspicious bank accounts involved in the money laundering scheme – questioned RCBC’s ability to come up with a fair investigation if RCBC president Lorenzo Tan remained active on day-today operations. Francis Lim, the legal counsel for RCBC president, said the bank was handling this issue “professionally and employing best practices.” Lim also underscored an apparent change in stance by Deguito, who said in a radio interview on Friday that she was “not accusing” Tan but had only “assumed” that he knew about the transactions – contradicting earlier allegations that the bank CEO himself had given instructions to accommodate the transactions. “Our client, Ms. Maia Santos-Deguito views with alarm and suspicion the failure of RCBC to impose appropriate measures against RCBC president Lorenzo Tan pending the investigation of the alleged $81 million money laundering incident,” Topacio said in a press statement. Topacio said if RCBC were serious in uncovering the truth regarding the alleged money laundering – and not preparing for a widespread cover-up and setting up Deguito as the “fall guy” – the bank should immediately suspend Tan and reassign the investigation to another bank officer with no links to Tan’s lawyers.” On Friday, Lim said the RCBC president had offered to go on leave to give the bank a “free hand” in investigating the alleged money laundering issue involving its Jupiter branch in Makati and its branch manager. “The bank’s board thanked him for his gentlemanly and decent gesture but said their trust in him is intact and unshaken,” Lim said. “In light of the recent pronouncements of Mr. William Go in media and the apparently orchestrated media blitz of RCBC management which is conditioning the mind of the public against Ms. Santos-Deguito, it is most unfair for Mr. Tan to continue serving as bank president, where he is in a position to delete and/or tamper with bank records, emails and other documents and forms of communication, as well as influence and intimidate possible witnesses, considering that he is under a cloud of suspicion. It is also strange that RCBC has vouched for Mr. Tan’s supposed ‘integrity’ even while the internal investigation is still pending,” Topacio said. Go is the businessman who accused Deguito of faking his signatures to open the US dollar deposit account with RCBC that was used to consolidate proceeds from four other bank accounts to which the $81 million money stolen by hackers from the US account of Bank of Bangladesh was wired by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was among the six individuals that the Anti-Money Laundering Council has identified as among the potential conspirators to the $81-million money laundering scheme. His accounts as well as those of his company Centurytex Trading were ordered frozen by the Court of Appeals on March 1. Through a lawyer, he has vehemently denied involvement and instead pointed to Deguito as the culprit. “We also view with great suspicion the fact that Mr. Tan is represented in the investigation by the ACCRA (Angara Abello Concepcion Regala & Cruz Law Offices Law Office) when the one conducting the investigation on behalf of RCBC, Atty. Macel Fernandez, used to be connected with ACCRA,” Topacio said. Topacio was referring to Lim and former ACCRA lawyer Maria Cecilia Fernandez-Estavillo, now head of legal and regulatory affairs at RCBC. “His allegations regarding Accra and Atty. Macel Fernandez are way off,” Lim said in a rejoinder. Lim said the board committee investigating the matter was composed of members representing the major stockholders, adding that Fernandez was not part of it. The committee is being assisted by SGV auditors and external lawyers from another law firm, the Poblador Bautista Reyes – not ACCRA, Lim said. “So instead of asking RCBC to sanction Mr. Tan, Atty Topacio should instead assist his client to explain the accusation of Mr. William Go that she opened an account in her branch without his knowledge, used this account for deposit and withdrawal without his knowledge, and identify who forged Mr. Go’s signature to withdraw money,” Lim said. “He should also busy himself explaining why she attempted to fly to Japan last Friday which has been perceived as flight and therefore an implied admission of guilt,” Lim said. Condemning flight off-loading “We condemn in the strongest terms possible the blatant violation of the Constitutional and Human Rights of our client, Ms. Maia Santos-Deguito, perpetrated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Immigration (BID), in forcibly offloading her, her husband and 10-year old son from a plane at the last minute that it was about to leave for Japan. The family was on its way to Tokyo Disneyland as a birthday and Lenten gift for Mrs. Santos-Deguito’s child,” Topacio said in another statement. “The heavy-handed manner by which the offloading was done, which would not be out of place in a police state such as North Korea, has traumatized not only Ms. Santos-Deguito and her husband, but worse, her child of tender years, who kept crying throughout the ordeal and even all the way back home, as he could not, in his young mind, understand why his plane going to Disneyland left without him,” he said. Topacio said he was able to talk to the immigration officers who were executing what he called as a “monstrosity” against Deguito, alleging these people were not aware of any bases for preventing his client from leaving. The are no cases filed against Deguito and no hold-departure orders, the lawyer said. Deguito is among those summoned to the hearing to be conducted by the Senate blue ribbon committee. “I also talked to acting Commissioner Roni Geron, who admitted to me that he hastily issued a last-minute ‘lookout order’ and I apprised him of the fact that in the case of Arroyo versus Secretary of Justice, where I am also a legal counsel, the Supreme Court no less has issued a restraining order preventing the DOJ (Department of Justice) and BID (Bureau of Immigration and Deportation) from implementing such ‘lookout order.’ Geron admitted to me that there are no cases and no hold-departure order against my client. Although he is also a lawyer, I discussed with him the legal ramifications of the BID’s actions,” Topacio said. Topacio threatened to sue Acting Justice Secretary Emmanuel Caparas, Acting Immigration Commissioner Roni Geron and the immigration officers who offloaded Deguito before the Ombudsman (for graft), the Civil Service Commission, the Commission on Human Rights, the Supreme Court (for contempt and disbarment) and the ordinary courts (for damages and child abuse). “Such brazen disregard of the fundamental rights of my client has no place in a civilized and democratic society. What is scary is that there seems to be a pattern of such transgressions of Constitutional rights being continuously done by the BID in other cases. Therefore, we shall be constrained to file the necessary charges against these officials who show no hesitation of running roughshod over people’s rights should be taught a lesson: while they think that under the present administration their evil actions may be tolerated and even abetted, the cases taking them to task for their misdeeds will long outlive the present government and justice will be attained under a new dispensation.

2016-03-13 12:01 Doris business.inquirer.net

3 Man shot dead while having dinner with family in Cebu CEBU CITY, Philippines — A 42-year-old man was killed on Saturday night when two unidentified men repeatedly shot him inside his home at Sitio Tinago, Barangay South Poblacion, Naga City in southern Cebu. Ruel Relavo was eating dinner with his common- law wife, Fe Maitom, and their seven-year-old daughter when the two men barged in, according to a police report. One of the perpetrators shot Relavo thrice in the chest while his companion served as lookout. Despite his wounds, the victim managed to run to an adjacent house where he eventually collapsed. Police said investigators were looking into personal grudge as motive in the killing.

2016-03-13 12:01 Apple Mae newsinfo.inquirer.net

4 Pune: Lucky fingers help rescue missing boy from water tank “We are really thankful to The Almighty to have given us our son back. It’s a second life,” say the parents of nine-year-old Faiyaaz Imitiyaaz Muthani, who was rescued on the morning of March 10 from an empty water tank in Bhawani Peth. Three days after he was reported missing by his parents, the credit for the timely rescue went to his nimble fingers, which he stuck out through the tank’s tap. A senior student from a nearby school, Rakib Miraj Sayeed (14), spotted the fingers and raised a cry. What got the trapped boy out of the tank was Sayeed’s alertness and the resourcefulness of the school staff. Rakib Miraj Sayeed (right) and Vittobha Padir rescued Muthani from the tank Muthani alleges that he was pushed into the tank, owned by a gym called Shree Veer Gogadeo Pratisthan Fitness Centre. Faiyaaz Imitiyaaz Muthani with his parents; the tank on top of a public toilet belongs to a neighbouring gym. His parents had registered a missing complaint A resident of Bhawani Peth, Muthani left home to play with his friends on the evening of March 7. His mother Sultana, who works as a cook, lodged a case of kidnapping early next morning, when her son failed to return home. That Muthani was trapped in a 10,000-litre water tank just 30 feet away from their residence was something she had not imagined. As it turned out, Muthani, a Std IV student of BT Shahani Navin Hind High School, fell into the tank after a foiled attempt to catch a bird. He had clambered onto the roof of a public toilet to access a neighbouring tree, but, he claimed, he was pushed into the tank placed on the roof of the toilet, by an unidentified man. “I tried to climb out but the tank was more than 10 feet deep. I was afraid. I started sucking my thumb and went to sleep. At around 5.30 am [on March 8], I woke up when I heard the azan,” recounted Muthani. His attempts to scream for help failed. At one point, Muthani said, he even tried shifting all his weight to one side of the tank, to make it topple. “I could hear the school bell ringing and I screamed but it was useless. I started poking my fingers out from the pipe so that someone would see me,” he said. Luckily, the public toilet shares its wall with Maharshi Harkadash Vidya Mandir. Sayeed, a Std VII student of the school, was cleaning the classroom duster in the school’s corridor after the morning assembly at 8 am on March 10. This is when he noticed fingers popping out of the tap of the adjacent tank. Sayeed brought this to the attention of his teacher Vittobha Padir. Padir said, “We prepared a human pyramid to reach him.” As a first rescue measure, he threw in a bottle of water for the thirsty boy. By this time, Muthani had indicated where his family stayed and word was sent to them. Finally, Padir managed to yank him out. Inspector Raghunath Jadhav of Khadak police station, said, “We have summoned the gym owners and asked them to remove the tank. We are also probing who pushed the boy inside the tank.”

2016-03-13 12:01 By Chaitraly www.mid-day.com

5 Granlund scores twice, Wild beat Canadiens 4-1 MONTREAL (AP) — The Minnesota Wild are back in line for a postseason spot. Mikael Granlund scored twice, Devan Dubnyk made 30 saves and the Wild beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-1 on Saturday night to move into the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference standings. The Wild moved past Colorado for the final playoff spot when the Avalanche lost 3-2 to the Winnipeg Jets. Nino Niederreiter opened the scoring for Minnesota and Erik Haula added an empty-netter. “They’re quality players,” Canadiens coach Michel Therrien said about the Wild. “Their defensemen are really good, they skate well and they’re good 1-on-1.” Mark Barberio scored for Montreal in the first period. Mike Condon stopped 18 of 21 shots. “A couple of pucks went just in front of the goal line,” Condon said. “It was a game of inches tonight and we just didn’t have them.” Granlund scored his first goal with 6:40 left in the first period for a 2-1 lead, and then got his second goal on a power play 11:49 into the second period. Minnesota opened the scoring midway through the first period when Niederreiter capitalized on a weak passing attempt by Condon, who found himself far from his net. The Canadiens evened the score less than 2 minutes later when Barberio scored his second of the season on a quick rebound from Sven Andrighetto. Barberio, like Therrien, chalked up his team’s loss to a lack execution on the part of his team and a strong effort Minnesota. “Sometimes passes didn’t quite make it on the tape or they were cut out by their sticks, but at the same time you have to give them credit,” said Barberio, who has four points in his last four games. “They’re a pretty veteran team who are battling for a playoff spot and I think they were just a little more desperate than us.” The Canadiens were coming off a two-game winning streak as well as a run of success at home, having gone 7-1-1 at the Bell Centre since the beginning of February. “The guys competed,” Therrien said following the loss. “We had a lot of chances around the net but lacked finishing. Their goaltender was very solid, and I liked the level of competition from our team tonight.” They had to play without star defenseman P. K. Subban, who had to be stretchered off the ice with what was later described as a “non-serious neck injury” during a 3-2 win Thursday night against Buffalo. Therrien said he had no timeline for Subban’s return, listing his condition as day-to-day. The Canadiens fielded a young squad, calling up rookies Charles Hudon and Darren Dietz from the American Hockey League’s St. John’s IceCaps to fill their depleted lineup. The team added Lars Eller (flu) and Stefan Matteau (lower body) to a long list of missing players that already includes Subban, Brendan Gallagher and goaltender Carey Price. NOTES: Barberio took Subban’s usual place next to Andrei Markov. … Alex Galchenyuk, who was key to Montreal’s last two wins, could not extend his scoring streak to four games. … The Wild won the last matchup between these two teams, besting Montreal by a score of 2-1 on Dec. 22, 2015. The Wild next travel to play at Ottawa on Tuesday night. … Montreal hosts Florida on Tuesday night. A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 The Associated wtop.com

6 Predators-Canucks Sum First Period_1, Vancouver, Baertschi 14 (B. Hutton, Vrbata), 17:44. 2, Vancouver, Dorsett 4 (Horvat, Burrows), 19:01. Second Period_3, Nashville, Fisher 11 (Josi, S. Weber), 9:17. 4, Vancouver, Horvat 11 (Y. Weber, Burrows), 10:35. 5, Nashville, Sissons 3 (Josi, Watson), 16:20. Third Period_6, Vancouver, D. Sedin 26 (H. Sedin, Vrbata), 19:11 (en). Shots on Goal_Nashville 4-17-16_37. Vancouver 13-8- 7_28. Goalies_Nashville, Rinne. Vancouver, Miller. A_18,570 (18,910). T_2:24. A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around. wtop.com 2016-03-13 12:01 The Associated wtop.com

7 Demanding pay, Chinese miners protest over governor’s claim BEIJING (AP) — Thousands of Chinese miners who say they have not been paid for months staged a rare protest in a northeastern city, days after the provincial governor made the apparently false claim that no miner working for the province’s largest publicly-owned mining company was owed any back wages. Angry miners from the Longmay Mining Holding Group Co., Ltd. and their family members marched through the city of Shuangyashan on Saturday and gathered in front of the company’s local offices. In response, the government of Heilongjiang province issued a statement Saturday night acknowledging that many Longmay employees are owed wages and benefits, backtracking from Governor Lu Hao’s assertions earlier this month. The protest and the change in the government’s stance underline the sensitivity of the employment issue, as Chinese miners and others in state industries are losing their jobs or seeing their pay drastically cut. China’s massive state-owned mining companies are struggling to boost efficiency and reduce their payrolls amid a severe a slump in coal demand brought on by sharply slowing economic growth. The pain is particularly acute in China’s northeastern rustbelt, where Heilongjiang is located. Its biggest state-owned mining company, Longmay, is tasked with reducing its workforce by 22,500 people in the immediate future, according to state media reports. Longmay reportedly owed 800 million yuan ($123 million) in back pay for 2014. A lengthy investigative report by China’s leading financial news group Caijing reported in January that pay for Longmay workers has been continually cut, and even those reduced wages had not been paid for three to four months. Then on March 6 Lu, considered a rising political star, said at the national legislature’s annual session that Longmay’s 80,000 miners hadn’t received a single cut in wages and all were paid on time. The remarks seemed aimed at showing that Longmay and the province were meeting the leadership’s expectations for competently handling economic challenges. Calls to local police, government offices and Longmay rang unanswered on Sunday, but witnesses told The Associated Press that thousands of workers took part in the demonstration. A local resident who gave just his last name, Li, said the protesters were holding banners demanding back pay. Li said he knew of Longmay workers who had not been paid for six months. Another eyewitness, who gave her last name as Wang said she has family members working for the mines. She said their wages were cut to less than 1,000 yuan ($154) per month, and the workers either did not receive their full wages or were not paid at all for months. She said the protesters displayed a banner reading: “We need to eat. We need to live.” Both Li and Wang said the protest was peaceful and that a large number of riot police had been dispatched to the scene. They said the demonstrations ended around 4 p.m. The provincial statement came out after 9 p.m. Saturday, saying Lu had held a special meeting on Longmay in Beijing that afternoon. The statement made no mention of the protest in Shuangyashan but said Longmay had failed to pay wages, taxes and insurance contributions. It said the provincial government would work with Longmay to raise money and to make every effort to pay the workers in time. The statement did not mention Lu’s earlier remarks, but hinted he had been fed false information. “Should important information be reported inaccurately again, it will be dealt with seriously,” the statement said. A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 The Associated wtop.com

8 Middle Tennessee women beat Old Dominion in C-USA title game BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Rick Insell was enjoying the game so much he almost forgot to coach. It didn’t matter. Brea Edwards scored 16 points and grabbed 11 rebounds as Middle Tennessee rolled into the NCAA Tournament with a 70-54 victory over Old Dominion on Saturday night in the Conference USA Tournament championship. “Sometimes I get caught up in watching them play, instead of coaching them,” Insell said. “They are such a joy to watch, and a lot of people didn’t give us the credit we deserved.” The second-seeded Blue Raiders (24-8) have won six straight and 15 of their last 16 games, and the conference championship in two of the last three seasons. Ty Petty, the tournament MVP, led Middle Tennessee with 19 points and seven assists. Gabby Lyon had 13 rebounds and chipped in six points. Abbey Sissom made three 3-pointers and finished with 11 points. “No matter who we play, we aren’t going to change” Insell said. “We are a little bit banged up … but they played through it tonight.” Jennie Simms had 21 points, eight rebounds and five assists for No. 5 seed Old Dominion (17- 17), which played in its first C-USA conference championship. Ije Ajemba added nine points and 10 rebounds. The Blue Raiders pulled away in the second quarter, with Petty scoring seven points during a 12-0 run to stretch the lead to 32-15, and Middle Tennessee had a double-digit lead the rest of the way. Middle Tennessee shot 48 percent from the floor on 14-of-29 shooting, while the Lady Monarchs were held to just 28 percent shooting (8 of 29) in the first half. Old Dominion pulled to 37-28 midway through the third quarter. The Blue Raiders answered with a 17-9 run to stretch their lead to 54-37 with 7:26 remaining. ___ TIP-INS Old Dominion: Simms was 6 of 24 from the field, including 0 of 7 from long range. Gianna Smith scored eight points on 2-of-12 shooting. … The Monarchs missed all 11 3-point attempts in the second half. Middle Tennessee: Brea Edwards earned a spot on the all-tournament team. … It was the ninth tournament championship appearance in 11 years under coach Rick Insell. … Held the Lady Monarchs scoreless for 3:29 in the first quarter. … Caroline Warden scored three points and played just seven minutes. UP NEXT Old Dominion season is over. Middle Tennessee leads opponent and destination for NCAA Tournament on Monday. A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 The Associated wtop.com

9 Blazers’ Davis ejected for flagrant foul on Magic’s Smith PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Portland Trail Blazers reserve Ed Davis was ejected with 2:42 remaining in the third quarter of their game against the Orlando Magic for a flagrant foul on Jason Smith. Davis used both arms to come down hard on Smith as he drove to the basket. Initially called a common foul, officials reviewed the play and upgraded it to a Flagrant 2, which is an automatic ejection. Replays showed Davis’ forearm catching Smith across the nose without much of an attempt to play the ball. Smith got into a verbal exchange earlier in the period with Portland star Damian Lillard. The two were quickly separated by officials. Portland led 82-60 at the time of the ejection. A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 The Associated wtop.com

10 Bruce triples, Reed solid in Reds’ loss to Mariners GOODYEAR, Ariz. (AP) — Jay Bruce hit a two-run triple and Cody Reed struck out four in three scoreless innings, but the Cincinnati Reds lost to a Seattle Mariners split-squad 5-2 on Saturday night. Jose Peraza had three hits and Joey Votto singled and walked in three trips to the plate. Both scored on Bruce’s triple high off the right field wall off Vidal Nuno, who made 10 starts for the Mariners last season after a trade with the Diamondbacks. It was the second three-hit day in a row for Peraza, who came to the Reds from the Dodgers in a three-team trade involving Todd Frazier. “Peraza was impressive,” Reds manager Bryan Price said. “I wasn’t there yesterday when he hit the home run, but it was good to see him go first to third on Votto’s hit. That was a rocket.” Votto has reached base in 12 of his 22 plate appearances. The Mariners’ Shawn O’Malley tripled and scored on a single by Luis Sardinas to break a scoreless tie off Ryan Mattheus in the sixth. O’Malley had two hits. Tyler O’Neill hit a three-run homer and Dae-Ho Lee had an RBI single for Seattle during a four- run eighth-inning rally. Mike Montgomery matched Reed with three scoreless innings. Montgomery allowed two hits and Reed just “Montgomery’s fastball had good life to it. His offspeed stuff was sharp. It was really good for his first time out,” Mariner’s bench coach Tim Bogar said. “I thought Nuno’s stuff was good. He pounded the strike zone. Nuno got a little tired in his third inning. We stretched him out a little.” Price was pleased with his starter. “Cody was phenomenal,” Price said. “He pounded the zone with his fastball and slider.” COMEBACKERS Both pitchers survived line drives through the box. Reed deflected a line drive by O’Malley with his glove. “I was mad. I should have caught it,” Reed said. Montgomery took a line drive by Votto off his right side but recovered in time to record the out. “I haven’t been out there so long, I forgot to catch it,” Montgomery said. “Then I had to look for the ball. It hit my soft spot.” STARTING TIME Mariners: Montgomery, who has fallen behind Nathan Karns and James Paxton for the Mariners’ fifth spot in the starting rotation, made his first start. Montgomery had a cyst removed from his neck that cost him a couple days. The left-hander allowed two hits and a walk in three scoreless innings. “It went really well for not having pitched in a game for six months,” Montgomery said. “I just tried to throw strikes. I’m not that far behind. I wanted to take care of the cyst after the season but they told me it was better to take care of it now to avoid complications.” Reds: Reed, the Reds’ key acquisition in the trade for Johnny Cueto, pitched three scoreless innings for the second outing in a row. “I was supposed to throw four innings but my pitch count was a little high,” said Reed, who has allowed one earned run in eight innings over three appearances. “I was off a little in the bullpen. I was throwing across my body, but I got on the mound and was OK. I concentrated on using my changeup more.” TRAINER’S ROOM Mariners: RHP Ryan Cook was placed on the 60-day disabled list with a strained right lat. The move made room on the 40-man roster for C Rob Brantly, who was claimed off waivers from the White Sox. Reds: Homer Bailey threw a 45-pitch bullpen on Friday. Bailey had his second elbow surgery on May 8. C Devin Mesoraco is progressing after a sore quad caused a setback from his recovery from hip surgery. Mesoraco is expected to play in games around March 18 or 19. RHP Raisel Iglesias has thrown live batting practice and is scheduled to make his first start on Monday. UP NEXT These two teams will meet again on Sunday with the Mariners hosting. RHP Anthony DeSclafani will pitch for the Reds. Karns will pitch with the Mariners. A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 GARY SCHATZ wtop.com

11 Weber State wins Big Sky, advances to NCAA Tournament RENO, Nev. (AP) — Weber State knew it would be far from easy. Montana made sure of it. Jeremy Senglin scored 20 points and top- seeded Weber State beat second-seeded Montana 62-59 in the Big Sky Conference Tournament championship game Saturday night and earned an NCAA Tournament berth. Montana’s Walter Wright missed a 3-point attempt in the final second that would have sent the game to overtime. “It settled into a slugfest, which is what we expected all along,” Weber State coach Ryan Rahe said. “It was a great back-and-forth game.” Senglin, who scored 31 points in an 83-78 overtime semifinals win Friday against North Dakota, shot 8 of 16 from the floor for Weber State (26-8). Joel Bolomboy, the Big Sky Conference MVP and finalist for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year award, was held to four points. “We were prepared,” said Senglin, a junior guard. “Coach Rahe got us prepared in shootaround. Considering it was Montana in the championship game, if you can’t get up for that game, then something is wrong with you.” Weber State last made it to the NCAA Tournament in 2014. It’s the Wildcats’ 10th Big Sky championship. Martin Breunig led the Grizzlies (21-11) with 20 points, while Wright had 18. “It’s a tough one,” Montana coach Travis DeCuire said. “We knew it would be a bloodbath going in. We knew it would be a physical game.” Montana held Weber State to four offensive rebounds and outscored Weber State 38-20 in the paint and 14-4 on second-chance points. The Grizzlies only got to the line for three free-throw attempts in the game. They converted on one. With the win, Weber State ended its three-game Big Sky Conference Tournament losing streak against Montana (2012, 2013 and 2015). “It’s about time (we beat Montana),” Rahe said. “To be honest, they’ve been a little bit of a thorn in our side. But it’s also because they’re very good.” Sophomore guard Ryan Richardson added 15 points on 4 of 6 shooting for Weber State. UP NEXT Montana: The Grizzlies have to wait to see if they’re selected for the NCAA Tournament. Weber St.: Headed to the NCAA tourney. A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 The Associated wtop.com

12 WT20: India lose to South Africa by 4 runs in warm-up game at Wankhede Shikhar Dhawan's 73 (retired not out) went in vain as India fell short by just four runs while chasing South Africa's 196-9 in 20 overs in the second warm-up match of the ICC World T20 at the Wankhede Stadium on Saturday. Shikhar Dhawan on his way to a 53-ball 73 against SA at Wankhede Stadium on Saturday. Pic/Atul Kamble India were slow off the blocks, managing only 47- 2 in the Powerplay overs. However, Dhawan and Suresh Raina (41 retired not out) stitched together a 94-run fourth wicket partnership which not just upped India's scoring rate but also steadied the ship after losing Rohit Sharma (10), Virat Kohli (1) and Ajinkya Rahane (11) inside 50 runs. India keen to test its finishers, skipper MS Dhoni (31 not out) and Yuvraj Singh (16 not out) walked in when the Men in Blue needed 55 runs in the last four overs amidst 'Dhoni Dhoni' chants. Dhoni took 12 and 15 runs off Chris Morris and Dale Steyn's overs, needing 28 to win off two overs. Yuvraj too joined the party as he hit some lofty shots, bringing the margin down to 14 off the final over. Morris, bowling the final over, conceded only four runs in the first four balls. Dhoni hit the penultimate ball for a four that was followed with a wide. Needing five to win off the last ball, Dhoni hit it straight to the midwicket fielder. Earlier, India missed the experience of Ashish Nehra and R Ashwin as the relatively inexperienced bowling line-up failed to stop the flow of runs. Early wickets of Hashim Amla (5) and skipper Faf du Plessis (12) did not deter South African opener Quinton de Kock from playing his natural game. The southpaw hardly put a foot wrong in his 33-ball knock that included seven boundaries and two sixes. He eventually retired so that other batters could be tested. De Kock and Duminy posted 77 runs for the third wicket as the game started drifting away from India's hands. While De Kock hit some big blows to off-spinner Harbhajan Singh, Duminy targeted Jasprit Bumrah and Pawan Negi. Brief scores South Africa 196-9 in 20 overs (J Duminy 67, Q de Kock 56; H Pandya 3-36, M Shami 2-37) beat India 192-5 in 20 overs (S Dhawan 73, S Raina 41, M Dhoni 31*; D Steyn 1-36, K Abbott 1-32) by 4 runs mid-day.com 2016-03-13 12:01 By Harit www.mid-day.com

13 Nurkic’s 17 points rally Nuggets over Wizards, 116-100 DENVER (AP) — Jusuf Nurkic scored all of his season-high 17 points in the second half and the Denver Nuggets rallied in the fourth quarter to beat the Washington Wizards 116-100 on Saturday night. Gary Harris, D. J. Augustin and Darrell Arthur also scored 17 points and Will Barton finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds for Denver. The Nuggets outscored Washington 41-17 in the final 12 minutes to win their fourth straight for the first time this season. John Wall had 19 points and 11 assists, and Otto Porter scored 21 points for the Wizards, who have lost five straight. Nurkic missed the first 33 games after having offseason surgery on his left knee. He played in 19 games starting Jan. 2 but scored in double figures in just three. After sitting for eight games, he played sparingly Thursday before breaking out in the second half against Washington. Washington played its third game without Bradley Beal, who is out with a sprained pelvis. The Wizards built an 11-point lead late in the third quarter without their leading scorer, as Porter had 10 points and Wall eight in the period. Wall’s 14-foot jumper at the buzzer made it 83-75 heading into the fourth. Marcus Thornton’s 3-pointer with 9:19 left gave the Wizards an 89-82 lead, but Denver rallied. Two dunks by Nurkic tied it and two 3-pointers by Arthur sparked an 18-2 Nuggets run that gave them a 100-91 lead. Denver kept up the pressure, going ahead 110-95 on Nurkic’s driving layup with 2:31 left. TIP-INS Wizards: Coach Randy Whitman said there was no setback for Beal and the team planned to keep him out Saturday. Beal joined the team Friday in Utah but didn’t play in the loss. … F Alan Anderson was out of the lineup with a left ankle injury. Anderson has played just seven games this season after undergoing offseason surgery on the ankle. Nuggets: C Joffrey Lauvergne left the game in the third quarter after getting inadvertently hit in the face by Porter. He received stitches and didn’t return. … F Axel Toupane played out his 10- day contract Saturday. Denver coach Michael Malone has been happy with five games he has played. “He’s been everything, if not more, that we could have asked for,” Malone said. “Whether or not that translates into a second 10-day, we’ll see.” UP NEXT Wizards: Host Detroit on Monday. Nuggets: At Miami on Monday A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 The Associated wtop.com

14 Brogdon goes cold as Virginia loses to UNC in ACC title game WASHINGTON (AP) — Malcolm Brogdon didn’t waver even as he missed shot after shot. Virginia’s leading scorer and the ACC player of the year kept driving and throwing up shots. “You have to believe the next shot is going in,” Brogdon said. “That’s all that’s really going through your mind.” More often than not, it didn’t for Brogdon, who was 6 of 22 from the floor as the fourth-ranked Cavaliers fell to seventh-ranked North Carolina 61-57 on Saturday night in the ACC Tournament championship game. When Brogdon went ice cold and missed three shots during Virginia’s 8-minute field-goal drought, the Tar Heels went on a 15-2 run to pull away. Brogdon defended his shot selection after one of his worst shooting performances of the season. “I drive a lot, I get a lot of baskets inside, but they have bigs that challenge shots,” said Brogdon, who finished with 15 points. “You’ve got to pick your shots differently. But today I had a lot of open shots. I just missed. I just missed a lot of shots.” Brogdon took more than a third of Virginia’s shots. Coach Tony Bennett’s team got to this point with the ball in Brogdon’s hands, but this was different with UNC’s Marcus Paige blanketing him. “I just tried to make everything tough on him and tried to pressure him,” Paige said. “I know I’m not very big, so I tried to use my quickness to bother him.” Brogdon didn’t look noticeably bothered, but it showed. At one point Virginia (26-7) missed 11 consecutive shots, and guard London Perrantes kept missing, too, going 3 of 14. Offensively-potent North Carolina put together one of its best defensive showings, but Virginia players were eager to put them blame on themselves. “It’s just one of those games,” Perrantes said. “We got a lot of shots that we usually take and make. I don’t know if maybe our legs weren’t underneath all of us or anything like that.” Sophomore forward Isaiah Wilkins said UNC “amped up the pressure since the teams’ last meeting Feb. 27, which Virginia won 79-74. The Cavaliers’ locker room was quiet with dejected players sitting hunched over at their stalls as the Tar Heels (28-6) celebrated their first ACC Tournament title since 2008. But knowing the quality of their season made players upbeat about what’s to come. “We are moving forward with momentum,” Brogdon said. “We didn’t win this tournament championship, but we have momentum regardless.” ONE MORE UNC coach Roy Williams said he believes Virginia deserves to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. It’s to say Brogdon agrees. “Absolutely I think we’re deserving of it, but I’m not saying that we’re going to get it,” Brogdon said. “Regardless of the seeding, we’re going to go in and we’re going to try to impose our will on whoever we play with whatever seeding we have.” TIP-INS Virginia: Take out Brogdon and Perrantes and the rest of the team shot 14 of 27 from the floor. … Forward Anthony Gill joined Brogdon in double figures with 13 points on 5 of 8 shooting. North Carolina: Joel Berry II led the Tar Heels with 19 points. He was 3 of 3 from 3-point range. … Scored its fewest points of the season. … Ended a four-year run of teams from outside the state of North Carolina winning the ACC Tournament. UP NEXT Virginia: NCAA Tournament North Carolina: NCAA Tournament. A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 STEPHEN WHYNO wtop.com

15 Top 25 Capsules Isaiah Whitehead scored 26 points, including the deciding three-point play with 18 seconds left, and Seton Hall won the Big East Tournament for the first time in 23 years, beating No. 3 Villanova 69-67 on Saturday at Madison Square Garden. Whitehead drove on the right side, flipped the ball in and was fouled. His free throw gave the Pirates a 68-67 lead. Villanova had two more chances sandwiched around a free throw by Angel Delgado, but the Pirates held on and beat the top-seeded defending champions. It was Seton Hall's third tournament title, the others coming in 1991 and 1993. The third-seeded Pirates (25-8) led for almost the entire game, leading by 14 points in the first half and 11 at halftime. The Wildcats (30-4) finally started hitting from 3-point range in the second half. They tied the game four times before finally taking their first lead since 3 minutes into the game when Kris Jenkins' 3-pointer gave them a 67-64 lead with 50 seconds to play. NO. 1 KANSAS 81, NO. 9 WEST VIRGINIA 71 KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Devonte Graham matched a career-high with 27 points, Wayne Selden Jr. added 21 and Kansas overcame a remarkable performance by West Virginia's Devin Williams for a victory over the Mountaineers in the Big 12 Tournament title game. Perry Ellis added 17 points for the Jayhawks (30-4), who almost certainly locked up the No. 1 overall seed for the NCAA Tournament by winning their 10th Big 12 Tournament championship. Kansas trailed the Mountaineers (26-8) at the break before taking control behind Graham, their sophomore guard. He hit five 3-pointers, was 10 of 10 from the foul line and had a career-high four steals, effortlessly dealing with West Virginia's trademark pressure all night. Williams finished with a career-best 31 points and 10 rebounds, but the junior forward was forced to carry the load by himself. NO. 7 NORTH CAROLINA 61, NO. 4 VIRGINIA 57 WASHINGTON (AP) — North Carolina held Virginia without a field goal for more than 8 minutes in the second half, and Joel Berry II scored 19 points, giving the Tar Heels a victory for their first ACC Tournament title since 2008. Since then, coach Roy Williams had led UNC to four finals and lost each one. Marcus Paige added 13 points for North Carolina (28-6), which won its 18th league championship. Marcus Brogdon led Virginia (26-7) with 15 points, but the conference player of the year was limited to 6 of 22 on field-goal attempts, 2 of 9 on 3s. In all, Carolina held the Cavs to 37 percent shooting. Now comes the NCAA Tournament and an all-but-certain No. 1 seeding. NO. 8 OREGON 88, NO. 12 UTAH 57 LAS VEGAS (AP) — Tyler Dorsey scored 23 points, Dillon Brooks added 18 and Oregon turned the Pac-12 championship game into an early rout, rolling over Utah. Oregon and Utah (26-8) were the Pac-12's top two teams during the regular season and held up through the conference tournament, setting up a matchup worthy of a neon marquee on the Strip. Oregon (28-6) turned it into a Duck dynasty, putting on a defensive show to sweep conference regular-season and tournament titles for the first time. The Ducks had 13 steals and scored 28 points off the Utes' 20 turnovers to win their fourth Pac-12 tournament title. The dominating performance gave Oregon its best record after 34 games since 1938-39 and put it in position for a potential No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Jakob Poeltl had 13 points to lead the Utes. NO. 2 MICHIGAN STATE 64, NO. 18 MARYLAND 61 INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Denzel Valentine had 18 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds to lead Michigan State past Maryland in the Big Ten Tournament semifinal. The league's player of the year sealed it with two free throws with 0.8 seconds to go, and Melo Trimble's desperation heave from 55 feet away didn't get past midcourt. Michigan State (28-5) has won 12 of 13 and will face No. 13 Purdue in Sunday's title game. Robert Carter Jr. had 18 points and eight rebounds to lead Maryland. Trimble finished with 11 points. Despite making only two baskets over the final 10½ minutes, the Terrapins still could have taken the lead after Valentine missed the front end of a one-and-one. Trimble drove in for a layup, but the shot appeared to be deflected and Valentine grabbed the rebound and was immediately fouled. NO. 13 PURDUE 76, MICHIGAN 59 INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A. J. Hammons had 27 points and 11 rebounds, and Purdue beat Michigan to advance to the Big Ten Tournament championship. Hammons made 11 of 17 shots, mostly from inside. Vince Edwards added 13 points, and Isaac Haas finished with 11. Purdue (26-7) is seeking its first Big Ten Tournament title since 2009. Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman led Michigan with 15 points. Eighth-seeded Michigan (22-12) was playing its third game in three days. NO. 17 TEXAS A&M 71, LSU 38 NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tonny Trocha-Morales scored 13 points and No. 17 Texas A&M trounced LSU and freshman star Ben Simmons to reach the Aggies' first conference tournament championship game since 1994. The Aggies (26-7) will play for the Southeastern Conference Tournament title on Sunday after sharing the regular-season crown with No. 16 Kentucky. They will face the Wildcats in the title game. Texas A&M hadn't reached a conference tourney championship since losing to Texas 22 years ago in the Southwest Conference. Now, after its eighth straight victory, it is one win away from adding its first tournament title since 1987. Simmons finished with 10 points and 12 rebounds for fourth-seeded LSU (19-14). NO. 16 KENTUCKY 93, GEORGIA 80 NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Jamal Murray scored 26 points, Tyler Ulis added 25 and both keyed a late 11-3 run that helped Kentucky put away Georgia in a semifinal of the Southeastern Conference Tournament. Isaiah Briscoe's putback with 8:16 left put the Wildcats up 68-67 and Murray followed with two free throws. After Houston Kessler's jumper got Georgia within one, Ulis scored five points while Murray made a layup during the critical run that pushed second-seeded Kentucky ahead to stay and into Sunday's championship. Briscoe (12 points) was also important down the stretch with a jumper and feed to Marcus Lee for a dunk as Kentucky (25-8) had to work hard to make its third straight SEC final. Yante Maten had 20 points, J. J. Frazier 19 and Kenny Gaines 16 for sixth-seeded Georgia (19- 13), which led most of the game before faltering down the stretch.

2016-03-13 12:01 By abcnews.go.com

16 SULLY BUTTES 33, ETHAN 25 SULLY BUTTES 33, ETHAN 25 ETHAN (21-5): Rachel Hawkins 2-4 2-2 7, J. Gustafason 0-0 1-2 1, K. Gustafson 3-6 2-2 8, Hohn 4-6 1-2 9, Bartscher 0-6 0-0 0, Miller 0-1 0-0 0. Totals: 9-23 5-6 25. SULLY BUTTES (26-0): Guthmiller 1-6 1-1 3, Wientjes 1-6 1-2 3, Rausch 1-3 0-0 3, D. Lamb 3-8 3-4 11, Wittler 1-2 0-0 2, C. Lamb 1-11 8-10 11. Totals: 8- 36 13-178 33. Ethan 9 15 19 25 Sully Buttes 15 19 23 33 3-pointers: Ethan 2-12 (Hawkins 1, Hohn 1), SB 4-14 (D. Lamb 2, C. Lamb 1, Rausch 1). Rebounds: Ethan 25 (K. Gustafson 7), SB 17 (Wientjes 4). Assists: Ethan 6 (Hawkins 2, Bartscher 2), SB 6 (C. Lamb 5). Total fouls: Ethan 17, SB 11. Fouled out: None

2016-03-13 12:01 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

17 Thanks to its defense, UNC tops Virginia 61-57 for ACC title WASHINGTON (AP) — Thanks to the sort of defensive dominance coach Roy Williams has been seeking, North Carolina’s longer-than-usual wait for its latest ACC Tournament championship is over. Now the Tar Heels can turn their focus to returning to their customary results in the NCAAs, too. No. 7 North Carolina held No. 4 Virginia without a field goal for more than 8 minutes in the second half to break open a back-and-forth Atlantic Coast Conference final, and tournament MVP Joel Berry II scored 19 points Saturday night, giving the Tar Heels a 61-57 victory for their first league title since 2008. In the interim, Williams led the Tar Heels to four ACC finals — in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015 — and lost each one. Even Virginia owned a more recent ACC trophy, from 2014. “After having the confetti fall a couple different times in a couple different years and you’re not the one celebrating, at some point you’ve got to draw a line in the sand,” said senior Marcus Paige, who scored 13 points. “And this team has done that.” North Carolina (28-6) won its 18th league championship, one shy of Duke’s ACC record. And they did it not with fast-of-foot offense, but with hard-nosed defense. “I’ve been harping on, pushing them, cursing them, kicking them, pleading with them, begging with them, all year long,” Williams said, “to understand how important the defensive end of the floor is.” Malcolm Brogdon led Virginia (26-7) with 15 points, but the conference player of the year was limited to 6 of 22 on field-goal attempts, 2 of 9 on 3s, with Paige doing a lot to slow him. “We were able to force them into some tough shots,” Berry said. “Brogdon was shooting off one leg.” In all, Carolina held the Cavs to 37 percent shooting. “Absolutely,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said, “their defense was ratcheted up.” Now comes the NCAA Tournament and an all-but-certain No. 1 seeding that often feels like a birthright for the kids who wear Carolina blue. UNC hasn’t been to the Final Four since winning its second national title under Williams in 2009 — which would not seem all that long ago for most schools but feels like a lifetime to the folks from Chapel Hill. “Our toughness has been questioned on several occasions, but I think we answered that call,” Paige said. “We’ve really turned the corner to become a complete basketball team.” It was 28-all at halftime Saturday, an entertaining game between a pair of evenly matched teams. But Paige took over at the beginning of the second half for UNC, scoring nine of 10 points for his team in one stretch, continuing the resurgence he began in Friday’s semifinal. So much for the lithe guard’s supposed slump. Then Berry got going on offense, too. The key, though, was that the entire Tar Heels squad displayed the sort of defensive toughness and will that Williams has been begging to see consistently. “We picked up the intensity,” Berry said. Now there’s an understatement. After Anthony Gill put Virginia ahead 44-40 with a little under 10 minutes left in regulation, the Cavaliers missed their next 12 shots, part of a larger 2-for-20 rut. That allowed UNC to go on a 15-2 run capped by Brice Johnson’s putback layup for a 55-46 lead with under 2 minutes to go — the largest margin for either team. Virginia would cut it to two in the closing moments, but UNC stayed in front and held the Cavs to their lowest point total all season. Afterward, Paige stood on court, holding a piece of a cut-down net in his hand, with red, white and blue streamers strewn about at his feet. He had been imagining what both those sensations might be like, after all the so-close-yet-so-far finishes in ACC action during his college career. “It felt just as good as I thought it was,” Paige said. “And hopefully we can cut down another one.” HE SAID IT “You have to keep shooting, even on tough shooting nights,” Brogdon said. “You have to believe the next shot is going in.” TIP-INS North Carolina: This was the Tar Heels’ 34th appearance in an ACC final, most in conference history. … Over the past 13 years, UNC has appeared in seven ACC finals — against seven different schools. Virginia: This was the Cavaliers’ eighth ACC final; they beat UNC in 1976 and Duke in 2014. … Beat North Carolina 79-74 on Feb. 27. UP NEXT North Carolina: NCAA Tournament. Virginia: NCAA Tournament. ___ Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich A look at winter weather news from around the D. C. area. As the weather gets warmer in the D. C. area, signs of spring are popping up all around.

2016-03-13 12:01 HOWARD FENDRICH wtop.com

18 Railways to wash blankets after every use New Delhi: Smelly blankets may soon become a thing of past on trains, with the railways deciding to wash them after every use. As per the plan, newly designed lightweight blankets made of soft fabric will replace the existing ones and these will be washed after every use, a first in railways. Currently blankets are washed only periodically-- once or twice a month. "We are procuring blankets designed by NIFT which can be washed after every use and still last longer," said a senior Railway Ministry official. National Institute of Fashion Technology has designed the fabric of the blanket, a mix of wool and cotton, which can withstand daily wash. "Since there were complaints about blankets, we have tried to address the issue. We have approved the NIFT-designed washable blanket. The washable blankets will be used in a few selected premier trains to begin with and later more trains will be covered," said the official. Railways has also undertaken steps to set up state-of-the-art mechanised laundries at many stations to cater to the increased requirement of daily washing of bedrolls, including blankets. It is not only blanket but the entire bedroll has been redesigned with new colour combination by the NIFT. So the bed sheet and pillow cover are all going to sport a new look. Passengers prefer coloured bedroll to the all-white, according to a survey on passenger preferences, he said. Besides, the interiors of the coaches are also being modified to match the colour of curtains and bedsheets. Railways recently introduced e-bedroll facility to enable passengers opt for bedroll while booking tickets online. Passengers in sleeper class coaches can buy takeaway bedroll kits at stations or order online at the time of buying tickets. The transport behemoth will charge Rs 140 for two bedsheets and a pillow and Rs 110 for a blanket. Together, these can be purchased for Rs 250. Currently only passengers travelling in AC coaches have free bedroll facility.

2016-03-13 12:01 By PTI www.mid-day.com

19 Breweries picking smaller towns in western North Carolina ASHEVILLE, N. C. (AP) - From the start of the craft beer scene in western North Carolina in 1994, Asheville was the place where many breweries set up shop, as evidenced by the 24 breweries operating in Buncombe County today. But a new wave of breweries has gone in a different direction, choosing instead to open in surrounding smaller towns and cities. “I could have easily moved to Asheville, but I have a family and we love small towns,” said Josh Chambers, who is opening his Ecusta Brewing in two Transylvania County locations - one on Main Street in downtown Brevard, the other on Pisgah Highway. “Brevard has so much to offer,” Chambers said. “For the most part, the town has been supportive.” Chambers will start the locations as taprooms offering guest beers while he awaits his federal brewing permit. Hendersonville, Waynesville, Brevard and Sylva have seen clusters of breweries open as owners and brewers look for locations that are affordable and offer a different vibe. That breweries are setting up operations outside of Asheville isn’t so much an economic success story for other places. The smallest breweries employ two or three workers, though the biggest like Sierra Nevada can have hundreds of people on their payrolls. And it’s not about Asheville losing its luster as one of the nation’s top beer cities. Rather, for brewers it shows the industry’s expanding strength. And for small towns, adding breweries is a way of adding a little extra flavor to the area. “When younger people find out there are breweries within walking distance, that is exciting,” said Jeff Miller, a Hendersonville city councilman who notes that the city has a reputation for being a place for retirees. “The way to have consistent growth is making it inviting to everyone and mixing it up a little bit,” Miller said. Henderson County has emerged as a brewery hot spot. There are four breweries in the county, including Blue Ghost, which just opened in Fletcher, and Sierra Nevada in Mills River, the region’s largest beer maker. Southern Appalachian Brewery was the first in Hendersonville, followed by Sanctuary Brewing. Two more breweries are set to open in Hendersonville this year. Business at Sanctuary Brewing has been booming, said Lisa McDonald, who opened the brewery with Joe Dinan last year. The taproom has a dozen house beers, she said. “Hendersonville had one brewery (Southern Appalachian) for five years, and once we opened and (city) regulations (on downtown breweries) changed, that popped the lid off things. “There is so much growth in Hendersonville. We have great restaurants and beer bars are putting us on the map. It is becoming a (craft beer) destination itself. It’s bringing jobs and more tourism, and it is becoming a dynamic place to live.” Story Continues →

2016-03-13 12:01 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

20 Snyder proposes $500,000 for campus sexual assault programs LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget proposal includes $500,000 for campus sexual assault prevention programs to be split among Michigan universities competing for a sliver of that money. But as lawmakers wrestle with the details of Snyder’s total $54.9 billion budget, some advocates say the governor didn’t include enough to curtail sexual assault, and they’re critical of certain policies at Michigan State University as the school tries to repair its image following a federal department’s conclusion that the university took too long to handle sexual assault reports. The Michigan State Police helped administer $500,000 split between 22 schools for sexual assault prevention last year. But MSP grant coordinator Matt Opsommer said the 33 applications sent to his office totaled $1.6 million, a demand far higher than the funding. “$500,000 is just not a lot of money to do a statewide program,” Opsommer said. Mariah Hall, an MSU senior who’s on the campus Sexual Assault Crisis Intervention team, said the school could use more funding. The team is part of the university’s Sexual Assault Program, which runs a 24-hour crisis hotline and other resources for sexual assault survivors. Hall said the sexual assault therapists who work in the MSU Counseling Center are overworked, and that the Sexual Assault Program, which received a $201,038 grant in 2015 from the Federal Crime Victim Fund, could use more money. Between October 2013 and September 2014, 415 sexual assault survivors sought help from the program. MSU spokesman Jason Cody said the university doesn’t have concrete plans for Snyder’s proposed grant money, but will apply if the Legislature approves the measure. Officials with Wayne State University and the University of Michigan said the same. In 2015, the MSU Police Department and a campus sexual assault prevention program received $12,000 to train local restaurant wait staff, bartenders and taxi drivers to intervene when they suspect sexual assault, said MSU Detective Sgt. Andrea Beasinger. Beasinger said the police department helped train workers to recognize signs - like people encouraging their date to guzzle alcohol as they merely sip - and intervention tactics. She said they could use more money for training. The proposed grant money comes as MSU struggles to repair student trust after the U. S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights said in September that the university didn’t act quickly enough in handling sexual assault complaints. The federal department also said the university didn’t have the right policies to handle such reports. The university has made changes during and after the investigation. But some frustrated students criticize a school policy requiring employees to report sexual assault to administrators, and slam school officials for being too concerned about image and lawsuits. “I think that feeling is, I would say, almost universal,” said Apryl Pooley, a neuroscience doctoral candidate who studies the effects of trauma on the human brain. Pooley said she’s heard many survivors don’t tell university officials or employees about their assaults because they know it could entail a mandatory investigation, and they’ve heard “horror stories” about investigations taking too long. “And so students feel really betrayed when that happens, when they ask not to be reported and it happens anyway,” Pooley said. “That takes more control away from the victim, and there’s a lot of evidence that shows those people end up having more severe post-traumatic stress (symptoms).” Cody said students do not have to participate in investigations. But university policy requires its employees who hear of sexual assault or misconduct to report it to the Office of Institutional Equity, which was also part of the resolution with the Office of Civil Rights in the U. S. Department of Education. Cody said the policy ensures perpetrators “can be held accountable.” Story Continues →

2016-03-13 12:01 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

21 Mumbai: 89 Arthur Road Jail inmates appear for Gandhi Peace exam Eighty-nine inmates of Arthur Road Jail appeared for Gandhi Peace exam organised by the Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal. Anda cell (egg shaped high-security cell) inmates also appeared for the exam, out of which two topped the test with 79 out of 80 marks, T R K Somaiya of the Mandal said. A jail official also appeared for the exam held yesterday, results of which were out the same day. "I came to know true value of truth and 'ahimsa'. I realised the mistakes made by me and took a vow not to go astray in life," one of the Anda cell prisoners expressed his view in feedback after the exam. The inmate had also written a letter to Sarvodaya Mandal last year, expressing his interest in reading Mahatma Gandhi-related books and appear for the exam. The Mandal had also sent him Gandhi's autobiography, Somaiya said. Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal is organising the Gandhi Peace examination since the last ten years in various jails of Maharashtra. The result has been inspiring for the organisation as well as inmates and officials of various jails. Its aim is to revoke the sense of regret among jail inmates and to inculcate qualities of Satya and Ahimsa (truth and non-violence) among them to become better citizens after their release. The examination was conducted under the supervision of Jail Superintendent Bharat Bhosale with active support of Senior Jailer Y B Baviskar and Jail Teacher Ankush Dhengale. To introduce jail inmates with Gandhian principles, a lecture by once hardcore criminal Laxman Gole, who confessed his crime before a judge after reading Gandhi's autobiography, was organised before the exam. He had also worked with Sarvodaya Mandal after being released from Nasik Central jail.

2016-03-13 12:00 By PTI www.mid-day.com

22 Duterte camp: Binay lying, insulting Filipinos’ intelligence The camp of presidential aspirant Mayor Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday urged Vice President Jejomar Binay to face the Filipino people once and for all and explain his side on the corruption allegations being hurled against him. Citing the Commission on Audit’s (COA) report that recommended sanctions against the Vice President over the allegedly anomalous construction of the P2.8-billion Makati City Hall Building II, Duterte’s spokesperson Peter Laviña said it appeared like Binay was “lying between his teeth” and “insulting the intelligence” of Filipinos. READ: Poe weighs in on Binay graft case, says evidence is strong | FULL TEXT: COA report recommending charges against Binay “Based on the COA report and recommendation, we can say that the Vice President is lying between his teeth, insulting the intelligence of the Filipino people. Now is the perfect time for him to bare all and tell the Filipinos how he and his family were able to accumulate such a scandalous wealth,” Laviña said in a statement. “By all means, he should do it now,” he added. The COA’s 148-page special audit report on the allegedly overpriced parking building said Binay was administratively liable for gross misconduct, dishonesty and gross inexcusable negligence, graft and corrupt practices in connection with crimes that he allegedly committed while he was still Makati mayor. The report said Binay should be meted out administrative disciplinary action for violation of COA circulars and memoranda as head of procuring entity from 2007 to 2010. Laviña said Binay, who has been “dodging” official investigations by saying that he would just explain to the people, still had less than two months before the national elections to finally clear his name and explain his side on alleged “corruption spree.” Duterte’s spokesperson added that corrupt leaders were the ones making the lives of Filipinos miserable. “With the COA report saying Binay is liable for graft and corruption, the vice president is morally bound to bare all,” he said. “As a people tired of lies and corruption, we should not allow ourselves to be taken into this kind of ride that will in the end, bring us to a tragic end. We have had enough of corruption that has brought poverty into the people — the time is calling for us to change,” Laviña added. 2016-03-13 11:53 Yuji Vincent newsinfo.inquirer.net

23 Egyptian man jailed for 'insulting' women on Facebook Cairo: An Egyptian man has been sentenced to three years in jail for "insulting the women of Upper Egypt" and spreading false news on Facebook that threatened public peace. According to Egyptian news sources, El-Sobky runs a satirical Facebook page called "Diary of a Crushed Husband". Pic for representation During a recent interview with TV show host Khairy Ramadan on CBC channel, he said that most Egyptian women cheat on their husbands -- singling out women in Upper Egypt by claiming almost a third of them are unfaithful to their husbands. Once the video clip went viral, people began to criticise El-Sobky on social media which also led to suspension of Ramadan's programme on CBC. According to El-Sobky's lawyer, the verdict was expected because it was a case of public opinion but he is planning to file an appeal. According to the report, the court was placed under high security prior to the arrival of El-Sobky after he received death threats on Facebook. El-Sobky however backtracked on his claims following the uproar. "He said he has only respect for the women of Upper Egypt because his mother is from Qena and he did not mean to insult them, claiming that his statement was taken out of context," the report quoted him as saying.

2016-03-13 11:52 By IANS www.mid-day.com

24 23 Indian fishermen arrested in Sri Lanka Colombo: At least 23 Indian fishermen were arrested in Sri Lanka for poaching in the country's waters, the media reported on Sunday. The fishermen were arrested by Sri Lankan navy in the seas off the town of Mannar and were handed over to the police, Xinhua news agency reported. The police said that the navy handed over the fishermen and three boats to them in Mannar. The fishermen are between the age of 15 and 56, the police said. They will be produced before a court on Sunday. Sri Lankan navy frequently arrests Indian fishermen for poaching as there is a better catch in the island nation's waters. Both the countries are looking at ways to address the issue of fishermen.

2016-03-13 11:50 By IANS www.mid-day.com

25 Number coding, LRT service advisories for the Holy Week The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) has announced that the numbering coding scheme will be lifted for provincial buses on Holy Wednesday, March 23. In an advisory, the MMDA said the move was due to the expected increase in the number of people travelling to and from the provinces for the observance of the Holy Week. “To ensure that there would be enough Public Utility Buses (PUB) to serve passengers intending to observe the Holy Week in the provinces, it is necessary to temporarily lift the Unified Vehicle Volume Reduction Program for ALL PROVINCIAL BUSES on March 23, 2016,” said MMDA Chair Emerson Carlos. The Light Rail Transit Authority, meanwhile, announced that both Lines 1 and 2 would not operate from Maundy Thursday, March 24, until Easter Sunday, March 27. LRT operations will resume on March 28, Monday, the management said. The Metro Rail Transit has yet to announce its schedule for the Holy Week. YG

2016-03-13 11:32 newsinfo.inquirer.net

26 Michigan girl power fuels high school robotics growth DETROIT (AP) - As the state’s wildly popular robotics season kicks off this month, organizers are noticing a welcome trend: More girls are joining teams and more are taking on leadership roles. That’s key in a state that has invested heavily in boosting education in STEM - science, technology, engineering and math - and where there are many efforts under way to get girls into those fields. Michigan has excelled in robotics, the so-called sport of the mind. The state has 411 teams, far more than the second-highest state of California, which has 258 teams. And Michigan teams have a track record of excelling at the world finals, the Detroit Free Press (http://on.freep.com/1QFwZRY ) reported. In robotics, the growth in female participation is happening at all levels - on coed teams and all- girls teams. “I’m seeing an uptick,” said Gail Alpert, president of the state’s robotics association. “They’re taking on critical roles. They’re drivers. They’re coaches. They’re mentors.” The growth is happening amid widespread efforts to get more girls to consider science careers. In January, the Michigan Science Center launched the STEMinista Project to encourage more interest in STEM careers among middle-school girls. “Research tells us that middle school can be a make or break time in building interest in STEM and STEM careers,” said Tonya Matthews, president and CEO of the center. Girls who sign up to be STEMinistas will have access to special programming at the science center in Detroit and an opportunity to meet and learn from women in STEM careers. The project is aimed at combating numbers that show that while half the workforce is made up of women, less than 25% of the STEM workforce includes women. Also, statistics compiled for the project show that half the women in STEM careers leave those jobs in the first 10 years. Numbers compiled by the Michigan Department of Education for STEM programs that are part of career-tech education centers show that a larger percentage of girls are participating, though there is still a wide disparity. Of the 3,851 students enrolled in such programs during the 2012- 13 school year, for instance, 528 were girls. In the 2014-15 school year, there were 812 girls out of 5,361 total students. The push to get more girls into STEM fields is important, said Ashley Jones, 16, a junior at Voyageur College Preparatory in Detroit. Ashley is the captain of the all-girls Mercy Midnight Storm robotics team from Detroit. “Females can do just as much as males can do. And I think by doing robotics, it’s a learning thing - you realize, ‘Hey, I can cut metal’ or ‘Hey, I can do this.’ It’s a very rewarding experience,” she said. The Mercy Midnight team is helping fuel the robotics growth this year. Team members stood out in their first competition over the weekend in Southfield, decked out in silver capes, black shirts and green and silver hair ribbons. The rookie team went into the competition knowing it would be an important learning experience. And while their robot had some technical problems early on, they still walked away with a coveted award: the all-star rookie award, given during each competition to new, promising teams. Teams from Royal Oak High School and Woodhaven High School won the competition. “They were beyond excited,” Autumn Horton, one of two adult lead mentors for the team, said of the rookie award. “Now they want to work even harder.” Members said they hope they can set an example for other girls. “You can do whatever you put your mind to,” said Denasia Robinson, 15, a homeschooled student from Detroit. “I think having an all-girls team is powerful for a lot of people.” Story Continues →

2016-03-13 11:28 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

27 Sex harassment cases prompt new review process at UC LOS ANGELES (AP) - University of California President Janet Napolitano has ordered a new sexual harassment review process for administrative leaders amid outrage over UC Berkeley’s handling of misconduct claims against its law school dean. On Thursday, Sujit Choudhry resigned after his former executive assistant filed a lawsuit alleging her boss received only a temporary pay cut as punishment following a campus investigation that substantiated her claims that he repeatedly kissed and touched her. In a letter to 10 UC chancellors on Friday, Napolitano said university leaders must make sure that substantiated cases of sexual misconduct be dealt with “firmly, fairly and expeditiously and that appropriate sanctions are imposed that recognize the serious nature of these claims.” “This issue is critically important to the University of California, and to me personally,” she wrote in the letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times. “At a minimum, our employees are entitled to come to work without fear of sexual harassment or sexual violence.” Napolitano announced that a new system-wide committee would review and approve all proposed sanctions against senior leaders who violated UC sexual assault and harassment policies. She also ordered that all leaders - chancellors, provosts, vice chancellors, vice provosts and deans - complete sexual assault and harassment training by March 25. In a separate action, Napolitano directed Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks to bar Choudhry from campus for the rest of the term and institute disciplinary proceedings against him through the Academic Senate, which could result in suspension or dismissal. Napolitano also told Dirks that UC does not intend to defend Choudhry against his former assistant’s claims in court. In a statement provided by Berkeley, Choudhry said he disagreed with the allegations but could not comment further. Meanwhile, a former UC Berkeley vice chancellor for research who resigned last April following allegations that he sexually harassed a former campus employee - but kept on as an international ambassador for the school’s planned Global Campus in Richmond - was ordered removed from his job this week by Napolitano. The revelations involving Choudhry came nearly five months after a prominent astronomer at Berkeley, Geoffrey Marcy, resigned amid a national outcry over revelations that the school had substantiated sexual harassment complaints from former female students without demoting or suspending him from his job.

2016-03-13 11:25 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

28 Cruz crushes Trump in Wyoming Republican caucus WASHINGTON, United States — Republican White House hopeful Ted Cruz easily defeated frontrunner Donald Trump in the race to be the party nominee for the 2016 presidential election in the Saturday caucus in Wyoming. With all votes counted, Texas Senator Cruz won 66.3 percent of the ballots in the western state, far ahead of his nearest rival, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who earned 19.5 percent of the vote, US media reported. READ: Obama rebukes Trump for campaign rhetoric | Foes step up attacks on Trump at US debate Trump, the bombastic real estate magnate leading in polls and in delegates to the Republican national convention, came in third with a measly 7.2 percent of the vote. With these results, Cruz wins nine delegates, while Rubio and Trump scored one delegate, with another delegate uncommitted. A Republican primary was also held in the US capital Washington, but results were not expected until later. Nineteen delegates are at stake. The biggest prizes will be on Tuesday, when primaries are held in five delegate-rich states — Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. newsinfo.inquirer.net 2016-03-13 11:19 Agence newsinfo.inquirer.net

29 EPL: Norwich hold Man City to a goalless draw Norwich (UK): A resolute Norwich City placed a dent in Manchester City's Premier League title aspirations with a hard-fought 0-0 draw at Carrow Road on Saturday. Norwich City's Gary O'Neil (left) vies for the ball with Manchester City's Sergio Aguero during their English Premier League match at Carrow Road in Norwich, England on Saturday. Pic/AFP Manchester City enjoyed plenty of possession, but aside from a Sergio Aguero effort that was superbly saved by John Ruddy in the first half, they created precious little. It could have been so much worse for Manuel Pellegrini's side had Patrick Bamford's 25-yard half-volley had sneaked into the goal. City fall behind Norwich remain in the bottom three, below Sunderland on goal difference, while Manchester City are now nine points behind leaders Leicester City, who host Rafael Benitez's Newcastle United tomorrow (Monday). The result also jeopardised the visitors' hopes of Champions League qualification, which would be an embarrassing scenario ahead of Pep Guardiola's arrival as manager. Manchester City began with a 4-4-2 formation, the muscular presence of Wilfried Bony providing support for 21- goal striker Aguero in attack. Immediately the visitors took charge of possession, with David Silva drifting in from the left flank to link the attack, while Jesus Navas provided width on the right. Norwich had claimed just one point from their previous nine league matches — their worst run since 1946 — and they looked edgy in the opening exchanges against a team who had won 3-0 at Carrow Road in the FA Cup earlier in the season.

2016-03-13 11:16 By AFP www.mid-day.com

30 Mumbai: Miraculous escape for three jockeys at Mahalaxmi Racecourse In what looked like an extremely scary accident, three jockeys — including leading rider A Sandesh who is hot favourite to win the championship this season — and their horses came tumbling down one after another in quick succession during the running of the Audi Multi- Million, the feature event of Saturday's Mahalaxmi Racecourse card. Both Good Thing and Sparkling Eyes help themselves to their feet even as jockey S John is seen airborne and about to fall, while One Aim can be seen falling with head down and tail up. One Aim had serious injuries However, all three of them had a miraculous escape as they were unhurt. The three horses involved in the pile up were One Aim (A Sandesh up), Good Thing (S John up) and Sparkling Eyes (CS Jodha up). Two of them — Good Thing and Sparkling Eyes — got up and finished the race riderless, but One Aim wasn't so lucky. He broke down, and had to be put to sleep on compassionate grounds. One Aim was trained by Karthik G and carried the silks of late Dr MAM Ramaswamy. The starter sent off the five runners to a fair and level start for the richest race on the Saturday card, with favourite Serenity (Dashrath Singh up) quickly dashing ahead from the outside draw to take up the lead. She was stalked by One Aim, who was followed by Good Thing, Sparkling Eyes and Whomakestherules almost in a line. Soon after crossing the 900-meter marker, One Aim driven by Sandesh clipped the left hind leg of Serenity with his right fore leg, stumbling in the process. Luckily, Sandesh was thrown off the saddle, but away from the rails, and Suraj Narredu astride the eventual winner, Whomakestherules, was alert enough to steer safely without causing him any injury. Racegoers were in a state of shock, but race club official soon announced about the escape of all three jockeys.

2016-03-13 11:04 By Prakash www.mid-day.com

31 Nebraska Legislature exempts itself from open records law LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska’s one-house Legislature was created with the promise of greater transparency in state government, but that promise falls short when it comes to some of the records lawmakers keep. Legislators have exempted themselves from the state’s public records law, allowing them to withhold “correspondence, memoranda and records of telephone calls” that other state agencies and local governments must disclose. Such documents give the public insight into who is trying to influence elected officials on important policy decisions. To test Nebraska’s public-records law, The Associated Press asked for emails and daily schedules from three leading state senators and Gov. Pete Ricketts during the week of Feb. 1- 7. The request was made for Sunshine Week, a national initiative beginning Sunday to promote government transparency and freedom of information. Similar inquiries to legislative leaders in all 50 states were met with more denials than approvals. In Nebraska, legislative leaders rejected requests for emails from their state accounts but agreed to release detailed daily schedules. For Ricketts, the answer was the opposite: The governor turned over nearly 600 pages of emails and his “public schedule” - a list of appearances the media are invited to attend - but his staff declined to make public a more detailed daily calendar that lists closed-door meetings. Most of the governor’s emails consisted of correspondence from constituents and Twitter notifications. Lawmakers cited several reasons for withholding their emails. Sen. Mike Gloor, chairman of the Revenue Committee, said he had already deleted many of the messages and his staff was too busy to retrieve them. Gloor said he might be able to release some emails if the request was more specific, but he also wanted to protect personal and sensitive information sent by constituents. “Breaking their confidence is a serious problem,” said Gloor, of Grand Island. Speaker of the Legislature Galen Hadley, who leaves office in January, said he didn’t want to set a new precedent for future legislators. Withholding the emails is “consistent with normal practice of other legislative members who have received similar requests,” Hadley, of Kearney, wrote in his denial letter. Sen. Heath Mello of Omaha, chairman of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, said he wouldn’t release his emails because constituents who contact him may not want their names and emails used publicly. A government watchdog group said the public should have access to the records so voters know who is trying to influence elected officials. “If you’re working on a public computer, in a public office, then your records should be public,” said Jack Gould, issues chairman of the group Common Cause Nebraska. Gould said he understands that some citizens may want to keep conversations private, but he argued that such cases are rare and easily avoided. The governor’s website, for instance, includes a warning that all emails to the office are considered public records. Ricketts spokesman Taylor Gage said the governor’s staff “is careful to redact personal, sensitive information from public records” when state law allows. Story Continues →

2016-03-13 09:57 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

32 Ex-Mississippi State QB Dak Prescott arrested on DUI charge JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Former Mississippi State quarterback and NFL draft prospect Dak Prescott was arrested and charged with driving under the influence early Saturday. The Starkville Police Department confirmed Prescott’s arrest on Twitter late Saturday night. The post said he was arrested around 12:45 a.m. and that there is “no further information from SPD in this incident.” The 6-foot-2, 226-pound Prescott is arguably the best player in Mississippi State history, rewriting the school’s passing records and helping the program win a combined 19 games in his junior and senior seasons. Prescott - who was popular with teammates and often praised for his character during his time at Mississippi State - is projected to be drafted anywhere between the second and fourth rounds of April’s NFL Draft. The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger first reported Prescott’s arrest. Prescott went through Mississippi State’s pro day Thursday, throwing for scouts from 30 NFL teams. He said he’s been pleased with his performance during workouts, including the NFL combine, but Saturday’s arrest undeniably clouds Prescott’s reputation as a squeaky-clean leader. “The quarterback is the face of the organization in the NFL,” Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said on Thursday. “And now they’re looking at a young guy who was the face of our organization here. He knows how to handle that pressure and knows how to carry himself.” Prescott threw for 3,793 yards, 29 touchdowns and five interceptions last season while also running for 588 yards and 10 touchdowns. ___ Follow David Brandt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidbrandtAP

2016-03-13 11:00 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

33 Ban on Meldonium due to vested interests, says inventor Moscow: Drug Meldonium has been enlisted as a banned substance due to lobbyism by vested interests, the medical formula's inventor Ivars Kalvins said. "We can accept only one thing that the underlining here is lobbyism of something — either purely political or sportive political, or pharmaceutical business," Kalvins said. He also noted that a formula "which could have the same mechanism of action as Mildronate" had not been invented yet. Kalvins said putting Meldonium on a black list had not been justified with any research. "If WADA claims that Mildronate is a doping substance, the should provide just one article or carry out research. I have not seen a single article on the topic. "

2016-03-13 10:57 By IANS www.mid-day.com

34 Alan Shearer hails Newcastle United's Rafa Benitez coup London: Newcastle great Alan Shearer said the Magpies had pulled off a "good coup" in appointing Rafael Benitez as their new manager. Rafa Benitez and Alan Shearer (inset) The Spaniard has been given the task of keeping the north-east side, currently second bottom, in the lucrative Premier League with just 10 games of the season remaining. Benitez was installed at St James' Park on Friday just hours after the Magpies sacked Steve McClaren. Newcastle are just one point shy of safety and Shearer said Benitez could keep them in the top flight. "I think it's a good coup for Newcastle," said Shearer. "I'm surprised, when you consider how much success he's had at other clubs. "What's different about this appointment is that all the other managers that have been appointed under (owner) Mike Ashley have been in a position of weakness. (They have) not being able to name their terms, they've had to put up with a transfer system that hasn't benefited the club or themselves, and other things," the former England striker added. "Whereas Rafa can come in, he can put down exactly what he wants, he's not a head coach, he's a manager, he can have the transfer system — both incomings and outgoings — and he can name all that before coming in. "

2016-03-13 10:54 By AFP www.mid-day.com

35 It will be difficult to beat Aston Villa, says Tottenham Hotspur's Toby Alderweireld Birmingham: Mauricio Pochettino's decision to rest several key players for Tottenham's Europa League loss at Borussia Dortmund will be tested when his side visit Aston Villa today. Spurs' Toby Alderweireld Pochettino opted to name a weakened team for the the tie in Germany. The resulting 3-0 defeat prompted criticism of the Tottenham manager, who clearly prioritised Villa clash this weekend when his side could move to within two points of Leicester. Tottenham defender Toby Alderweireld admits they must respond to the Dortmund loss. "Everyone is disappointed after Dortmund, but then the focus is on Sunday. It's good to have a game quickly. Everyone will expect us to win but it will be a difficult game and it will be tough to beat them. We will need to concentrate and play at a high level otherwise it will be difficult. We have to be focused and be at the top of our game. If we lack a little, it will end up being a very difficult game for us. "

2016-03-13 10:53 By AFP www.mid-day.com

36 Borussia Dortmund officials goofed up during stadium crush: Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust London: The co-chairman of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust has described a crush that developed outside Borussia Dortmund's ground as one of the worst experiences he has had since the 1970s. Seventeen Spurs fans were treated for injuries caused by police pepper spray prior to Thursday evening's Europa League tie. "I've been going to football since the late 70s and it's one of the worst experiences I've had to get into a ground. "I was very surprised because you expect it to be well organised. It's one of the largest stadiums in Europe," said Cloake.

2016-03-13 10:51 By PA www.mid-day.com

37 FA Cup: Arsene Wenger: Arsenal need to show more consistency London: Arsene Wenger has told his Arsenal stars to show more consistency as the FA Cup holders try to get their spluttering season back on track in today's quarter-final against Watford. Arsene Wenger Wenger's side host the Hornets at a time when they are languishing eight points behind leaders Leicester in the Premier League and teetering on the brink of another tame Champions League exit. On Wednesday, Arsenal must overturn a two-goal first-leg deficit in the Champions League against Barcelona to avoid crashing out of Europe's elite club competition. Wenger refuses to rule out a dramatic turn of fortunes both at home and abroad. "I haven't given up on the Premier League and I've said that many times, nor the Champions League. We have to take care of the next minute and the next minute is a FA Cup game. Is it the best chance to win a trophy? We must win the next game and prove that we can show consistency again. " Losing Aaron Ramsey to injury for the rest of the campaign would be a major blow to any renewed challenge in the league for Arsenal, but Wenger remains adamant that his season is not at an end for the midfielder. "I don't believe that. At the moment his clinical signs are quite positive. I would say four weeks. It was a bit worse than I thought because I didn't see it. Usually when a player gets injured with a muscle, he stops and I did not have that feeling of precaution so I thought he would be available for Sunday. "

2016-03-13 10:49 By AFP www.mid-day.com

38 Mumbai: And the pipeline leak continues at Jogeshwari- Vikhroli Link Road Two days after mid-day published a report on thousands of litres of water wasted over 45 days thanks to a burst pipeline near the Jogeshwari- Vikhroli Link Road, and authorities fixed the leak, civic authorities allege that within hours the pipe was punctured again by anti social elements. Also read: Water cut in Mumbai, drought in Maharashtra, but this burst pipe hasn't been fixed for 45 days Water gushes out of the burst pipeline on Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road. Pic/Nimesh Dave “We have complained to the CEO of Aarey and have urged him to file an FIR, so that those responsible for the act are booked and such acts are not repeated. Past records reveal that the same spot was vandalised before on 10 different occasions. We fix the pipe, and within hours, it’s back to square one. It’s frustrating,” said Jivhav Sonone, Deputy Engineer —PWD Aarey. Gaganand Raut, CEO of Aarey, who rushed his staff to the spot on Friday, said, “The concrete pipeline cannot be shut because it has been sourced from the Powai lake to the buffalo sheds inside the Aarey complex. It is a serious and reoccurring problem which must be tackled.” Local resident Sudhakar Shenoy, an ex-employee of Air India, who had first spotted the jet one- and-a-half months ago, was surprised to find the pipeline spewing water again. “On Friday, I was happy to see that the pipe had been repaired. But at around 3.30 pm, the jet was back and with greater force,” said Shenoy. By noon, the leak was once again plugged.

2016-03-13 10:48 By Shailesh www.mid-day.com

39 Mumbai tutorial class strips kids as punishment An FIR has been registered against two teachers of a Malwani-based tutorial class, who punished two students by making them stand naked outside class. Little did they realise that a passerby would film the two and share it on WhatsApp. A video grab of kids made to stand without their clothes outside Shree Tutorial Classes for not doing their homework The two kids study in class 2 and 3 respectively. According to the police, the incident came to light after the video was seen by Mumbai police commissioner Datta Phadsalgikar on WhatssApp. He ordered action against the class. However, on the instructions of senior police officers, the Malwani police registered the FIR against the teachers. No arrests have been made. According to the police, the incident occurred on Friday at Shree Tutorial Classes located at Malwani Gate no 5. The teacher punished both the children for not completing their home work. They were made to stand naked outside. The tutorial is run by a family of three — Ganesh Nair, mother Sridevi and sister-in-law Saroj. Ganesh told sunday mid-day that the parents of the two kids were present at class and it was on their insistence that they were stripped. Senior police inspector Milind Khetle, said, “We have registered a case against two teachers under the Juvenile Justice Act 82 and 75.”

2016-03-13 10:47 By Samiullah www.mid-day.com

40 Senate bets oppose same-sex unions, LGBT discrimination Four senatorial bets running in the upcoming May polls were united in their opposition to same-sex marriage, but noted that members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community should be protected from discrimination. In a forum in Adamson University on Saturday, senatorial aspirants Sherwin Gatchalian, Francis Tolentino, Lorna Kapunan, and Greco Belgica said they were not in favor of gays being wed in church, but expressed support for the passage of an anti-discrimination law. READ: SolGen: We’ll ask SC to junk bid on same-sex marriage in PH | ON TARGET: Scared to speak one’s mind Despite his opposition to same-sex marriage, Gatchalian, who is running under the ticket of Sen. Grace Poe, said Filipinos should respect the opinion and beliefs of each other on the controversial issue. “I don’t agree with same-sex marriage but I also don’t agree with discrimination. In fact we really have to put a lot of mechanism and laws to eliminate discrimination in this country. Tayong lahat ay galing sa iba’t ibang pananaw, iba’t ibang paniniwala. Dapat igalang natin ang isa’t isa, bigyan natin ng respeto kahit na iba ‘yung ating paniniwala sa kasarian,” Gatchalian said. Tolentino, former chair of the Metro Manila Development Authority, echoed Gatchalian’s call for respect but also maintained his opposition against same-sex unions. “Igalang natin ‘yung karapatan ng mga nagsasama. Igalang po natin kung ano ‘yung kanilang paniniwalaan. Pero to institutionalize same-sex marriage, hindi po ako pabor doon. Irespeto, bigyang galang, at huwag po nating bigyan ng diskriminasyon, ‘yun po ‘yung essence ng sinasabi ko,” Tolentino said. Belgica, meanwhile, emphasized that same-sex marriage is a sin against the teachings of God on family and procreation. “Ang kasal po isang banal na pagsasama ng babae’t lalaki. Banal. Nanggaling sa banal na kasulatan, itinuro ng Diyos. ‘Yung gustong mag-asawa, lalaki’t babae, dahil gusto ng Diyos lumawak ang pamilya, tumibay ang pamilya, dumami ang tao,” Belgica said. “‘Yung mga gustong magsama na LGBT, bahala sila sa buhay nila. Pero para irequire pa kami na ikasal sila, eh sobra na pong kasalanan nun. Ang sabi sa banal na kasulatan, mahal sila ng Diyos, at ‘pag nagsisi sila patatawarin sila ng Diyos,” he added. Kapunan, a high-profile lawyer, said she was not in favor of a church wedding for same-sex couples, but said she was for the passage of a law that would give them civil rights such as the right to adopt children. “We must recognize the legal consequences of a domestic partnership, the legal consequences of same-gender relationships. Immediately, I am for the passage of a non-discrimination law which will recognize the right of same-sex partners to adopt, to have co-owned properties, to have joint bank accounts. But ‘yung marriage before the church ibang usapan ‘yan kasi separation of church and state ‘yan,” she said.

2016-03-13 10:45 Yuji Vincent newsinfo.inquirer.net

41 Mumbai: Arthur Road under trial dead; family refuses to accept body An under trial prisoner from the Arthur Road jail in Byculla died on Friday evening while undergoing treatment at the jail hospital. The deceased was a pavement dweller from Churchgate. While the reason for death is yet to be ascertained, his family has alleged negligence on part of jail authorities, and have refused to accept the body. Arthur Road jail in Byculla The under trial developed complications on Friday night even while his treatment was on. He was declared dead on Saturday morning by doctors. According to officials from the prison, his body was taken to the government-run JJ hospital on Saturday morning. The NM Joshi Marg police station has registered a case under section 174 of CRPC. Senior police inspector Ahmad Usman Pathan, said, “Accused Arvind Ramesh Shimpi (24), who was an under trail in a theft case was brought to Arthur Road jail on March 8. He was declared dead on Friday at JJ Hospital when he was brought in by authorities.” Police officials said they will await the post mortem before cause of death is ascertained.

2016-03-13 10:44 By A www.mid-day.com

42 Rahul Dravid: Next challenge for India is to win overseas Cricketing great Rahul Dravid feels that though India have been doing well lately in the shorter formats of the game, the next challenge is to start getting results overseas. Rahul Dravid "Even in Test cricket, India finds itself up there in the rankings largely because they have had great results in home conditions. The next challenge, really for this team, is to start performing and get results overseas," said the 43-year-old. "But things are beginning to turn with the win in Sri Lanka and hopefully they can go beyond the subcontinent and produce those results. " India are ranked second in the Test rankings. They defeated Sri Lanka 2-1 in their backyard last year.

2016-03-13 10:43 By IANS www.mid-day.com

43 Aditya Tare laments lack of quality spinners in T20 age The advent of the revolutionary Twenty20 cricket has brought in some negatives along with a lot of positives into the game, said Mumbai's Ranji Trophy winning captain Aditya Tare. Aditya Tare Delivering the Legends Club's keynote address on the occasion of former India captain Vijay Hazare's birth anniversary on Friday at the Cricket Club of India, the wicketkeeper batsman said while T20 cricket has brought in a lot of money into the sport, it has also affected spin bowling. "I feel there are a lot of positives. Me being the cricketer from the T20 generation, what comes to my mind is it brought in a lot of spectators. I am fortunate to play this game today, I can earn a living, can lead a good life because of the cash. Lots of crowd and a lot of sponsors coming in has changed the entire mindset," he said on some of the positives of the shortest format. "There are also a lot of negatives in T20. (Former Test opener) Madhav (Apte) sir spoke about quality of spinners (during the programme). That is one of the major reasons why spinners do not have that quality (bowling) with red ball. In T20, the moment you flight the ball, the batsman hoists it beyond the boundary. It's not possible to flight the ball in T20, (as) the captain stops you from bowling. With invention of T20, we are struggling in spin. In yesteryear, we'd have 2-3 quality spinners in the squad. Now it has completely changed in the Indian team, you cannot play two spinners except in India," he pointed out.

2016-03-13 10:41 By PTI www.mid-day.com

44 Mumbai crime: Staff robs Rs 12.3 lakh from online payment firm The BKC Cyber police station has booked the Mumbai unit vice-president of a Gurgaon- based online bill payment and business correspondent service company, and arrested two of its employees and agents, for allegedly duping the company of Rs 12.3 lakh by fraudulently transferring the company’s funds into their relatives’ bank accounts. Those arrested have been identified as Brijkishor Mishra and Dharmendra Maurya. Deputy commissioner of police (cyber crime) M Rajkumar confirmed the development. The complainant firm, Fia Technology Services Private Limited, through their authorized agents across the country (mostly in rural pockets), provide services including money transfers, mobile recharge, top-up, utility bill payment, Pan Card services and airline and luxury bus travel booking. According to the police, the firm has authorized distributors, who bring in new agents to run the company’s franchisee across the country. The agents get a commission on every transaction or payment while the company receives a commission profit on every business transaction. To become an agent of the firm, you need to deposit a registration fee. After credentials are verified, a login ID and password is shared. An e-wallet is also created for the new agent. “Bachulal Kanojiya had almost completed the process to become an agent but later backed out,” an officer said. The accused then decided to take advantage of this development. The company’s wealth manager, Brijkishore Mishra, on instructions from Mumbai vice-president Amitkumar Singh, created a login ID in the name of Kanojiya and even got an e-wallet created, the officer said. “From April 2014 to December 2015, the accused gradually transferred money from Kanojiya’s e-wallet instead of depositing it into the company’s account. The accused also fraudulently transferred part of the company's commission profit on every service into accounts that were registered in his relatives’ names. They used 15 bank accounts, which are in the names of their relatives,” said assistant inspector Nitin Londhe of BKC Cyber police station. Inspector Ravi Sardesai said, “The two accused have been arrested under Sections 408 (Criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant), 419 (cheating by impersonation), 420 (cheating) and 34 (common intention) of Indian Penal Code and 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by impersonation by using computer resource) of Information Technology Act.” The two have been remanded in police custody by a local court till March 14, he added.

2016-03-13 10:40 By Vijay www.mid-day.com

45 ED continues to grill former UB Group CFOs for 2nd day The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday for the second day questioned officers of the UB group. Former Chief Financial Officers of the UB group, Ravi Nedungadi and A Raghunath, were questioned for nine hours at the Ballard Estate office of the ED. Vijay Mallya The ED’s investigations revolve around the bank loans that the grounded airlines and the group took from a consortium of nationalised banks, and an alleged default of over R900 crore loan from IDBI bank. “We want to know where the money has gone,” said an ED official. The ED has also summoned Vijay Mallya to appear in court on March 18, which they haven’t got an answer to. The ED had issued summons to over half a dozen officials of the IDBI bank and Vijay Mallya- owned KFA under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). In an communication sent to all field officers, the Income Tax department has asked its officials to not “send or pursue” any tax demands or harass former Kingfisher Airlines employees. The employees have alleged that they were under tax scanner as Kingfisher had failed to deposit the tax deducted at source (TDS) with the income tax department. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal demanded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “explanation” over how business tycoon Vijay Mallya could leave the country which he claimed was not possible without “approval” from the top. Meanwhile, Janta Dal Secular minister Deve Gowda supported Mallya and called him the “son of the soil”, and former J&K chief minister Farook Abdullah said Mallya was a “gentleman” and would return to India on his own. — With agency inputs

2016-03-13 10:40 By Vinay www.mid-day.com

46 WT20: Tough to stop Kohli, Rohit and Dhoni: Australian pacer John Hastings Kolkata: John Wayne is not about to shoot from the hips; surely not in India, he tells you. Australia's new-ball bowler John Wayne Hastings, named after the legendary Hollywood actor by his Western-watching dad, is bracing for the challenges posed by Indian batsmen and the sub- continental conditions during the World Twenty20. Oz pacer John Hastings "They are such fantastic players and can hit the ball to any part of the ground they want. As a bowler, the hardest thing is to eliminate some of those shots," the 30-year-old said of the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and MS Dhoni. "It's very hard to predict what's coming next, so I try to keep it simple — hit a similar sort of area on the pitch and make subtle variations. Try and not be predictable. " Adaptability is mantra Hastings reminded that he made his ODI debut in India in 2010. He is finally coming into his own to take up a role as the spearhead in the attack. "My body had been letting me down, and I was always down with some injury or the other — my ankle, or my shoulder or the back... " he explained. "Now my body is holding, and I am experienced too. That's probably why I have been doing well in the last couple of years," added Hastings, who says his IPL experience with Chennai Super Kings will hold him in good stead in Indian conditions, as will watching Brett Lee during the 2011 World Cup. "It will be a lot different from bowling in Australia where there is a lot more 'carry'. The length will have to be different and we'll have to bowl a lot more at the stumps," he pointed out and joined Josh Hazelwood and Mitchell Marsh in spelling out the mantra. Adaptability. Hazelwood actually sees a role reversal. Spinners role is vital "In these conditions, we pacers will probably have to play a defensive role while the spinners attack," he preferred, and was happy that leg-spinner Adam Zampa made an impressive debut a week ago in South Africa. "He's been unbelievable there," Hazelwood gushed. Why do tempers often fly when India and Australia meet? Hastings had an explanation. "There's a lot of belief in the Indian side now, and that just comes out as natural flair. It's same with our side; we too have a lot of belief and that clashes. There's not much anger as there is passion. These guys are friends (off the field)," he reasoned, and credited Sourav Ganguly as having been "probably the first to take on the Aussies".

2016-03-13 10:40 By Arup www.mid-day.com

47 Irani gang's sleight of hand in South Mumbai Police Officers in South Mumbai have a new challenge to crack — a gang of slick Iranian nationals who have been duping unassuming suspects across banks and stores using good old haath ki safai. In the most recent incident, the gang targeted a foreign exchange company in Fort. The MRA Marg police station has registered an FIR under Section 420 (Cheating) and 34 (Common Intentions) against two unidentified persons in the matter. A police officer said, “A few of the gang’s members are already in jail. Once they are released, they are sure to dupe people again.” The officer added, “They use sleight of hand and are known to pocket money from the possession of victims without them realising something is amiss.” In an incident dated February 16, the gang worked their magic at UAE Exchange And Finance Ltd. Company, which has a branch at Old Custom house. The complainant in the case is identified as Pushpendra Bihari, 26, cashier at the company. Bihari said, “It was 3.20 pm when the incident took place. Business was dull. Just then, two men entered. One was about 25 years old and the other must have been 45. They came in posing as father and son.” According to the police, the accused wanted two 50 dollar notes in exchange of a 100 dollar note. While the cashier got busy tending to them, the accused continued to chat with him. In the meanwhile, they slid away 26 notes of 100 dollars without the cashier noticing. He realised funds were short only when winding up at the end of the day.

2016-03-13 10:39 By Saurabh www.mid-day.com

48 BJP wants apology over Azad ISIS-RSS remark New Delhi: Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Saturday kicked a row after he sought to draw a parallel between RSS and terrorist outfit ISIS, evoking sharp responses from the Hindutva outfit and BJP, which demanded an apology from him. “So, we oppose organisations like ISIS, the way we oppose RSS. If those among us in Islam too do wrong things, they are no way less than RSS,” the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha said at a event organised by Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad speaks at the National Integration Conference in New Delhi on Saturday. Pic/PTI Hitting back, a RSS spokesperson in Nagaur, where a crucial meeting of the organisation's functionaries is on, said such a comparison showed “intellectual bankruptcy” of Congress and its “unwillingness to deal with fundamentalist and cruel forces like ISIS”. RSS will consider legal action against Azad, he said. BJP too jumped to the defence of its ideological mentor, calling it a nationalist organisation and demanding an apology from Azad. The party said it was “unfortunate” that Azad had made such comments and asked Congress chief Sonia Gandhi to disassociate from his remarks and take action against him if he does not withdraw them. “RSS is a nationalist organisation. It is very unfortunate that he has said so. It shows his mental bankruptcy. He must apologise or Gandhi should take action against him,” party National Secretary Shrikant Sharma said. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad speaks at the National Integration Conference in New Delhi on Saturday. PIC/PTI

2016-03-13 10:38 By Agencies www.mid-day.com

49 Mumbai: Govandi constable's got his eyes on you On April 10, 2008, when constable Ravindra Patil, 42, held his first eye donation camp in Panvel, he didn’t imagine that he would go on to motivate 17,000 people to pledge their eyes. This number covers several members of the police force including then Shrikant Pathak DCP (Crime) in Pune, Prashant More [Assistant Police Inspector, CP office, Crawford Market], Shakru Rathod [Head Constable, Mahim Police Station] and 610 women constables from Khandala. “In 2008, I accompanied my father to Rajawadi Hospital in Ghatkopar. While there, I met a child who was waiting for a cornea transplant,” recalls Patil, who is attached to Govandi police station. He learnt that the girl was one among 30 lakh patients awaiting the procedure in India. Of these, 60 per cent are children. The cornea is a clear tissue that covers the front of the eye. Disease or injury can cloud it, leading to vision impairment, and sometimes, complete loss of eyesight. “On an average, 20 bodies are brought at the city’s government hospitals, like KEM and Rajawadi, every day. Imagine the potential,” says the Panvel resident. Patil now juggles his day job with this campaign. He holds at least one camp every month, which starts with an 80-minute lecture. This Valentine’s Day, 78 families from a residential complex in Kamothe, Panvel, signed the pledge. “I hold camps on days when I am off from work. Else, I apply for leave,” he says. “Initially, my parents were hesitant when I told them I was going to be a donor. Indians are superstitious. We worry that if we give away our eyes, we will be born blind in our next birth,” he says. It’s trashing myths then, that forms a chunk of his lecture. “I am often asked if donation is imperative while the person is still alive. How are they to be sure that their eyes will be used for a noble cause.” Patil realised it would help if he collated the FAQs into a pamphlet, with corresponding answers. This flier is now his weapon at camps. He pitches in from his pocket to print them. “Laxmi Eye Bank in Navi Mumbai provides me with a doctor at the camps. They also help with expert guidance in preparing brochures and certificates,” he says. Patil’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed. Additional DGP (Training), K Venkateshan, recently sent him a congratulatory note. “I hope to one day, convince the entire police force in Maharashtra to become donors,” he smiles.

2016-03-13 10:38 By Anju www.mid-day.com

50 Kutch man gets a hand at life from Mumbai team When 36-year-old Rajesh Ojha, a mechanic, working in industrial plants of Kutchh, lost four fingers of his left hand in August 2015, it was a loss of more than just a means of livelihood. Though prosthetic science has advanced, advancement for partial amputees like Ojha have been few. Rajesh Ojha with Dr Mukesh Joshi at Kutchh’s Jaya Rehabilitation Centre and Research Institute where he was fitted with the prosthetic On Saturday, however, Ojha was fitted with a prosthetic, which is an experimental venture between a Mumbai-based orthopaedic and a 3D printing firm. The prosthetic, in many ways, is a first for all concerned. The prosthetic was made by Mulund-based Anatomiz 3D Healthcare which pegs the cost at Rs 18,000 Created out of a biocompatible material, this cost-friendly prosthetic — its creators, the Mulund- based Anatomiz3D Healthcare, peg its cost at Rs 18,000 - took four months to perfect. Dr Doshi says that the prosthetic comes with strings that are attached to the wrist After the fitting on Saturday, Dr Mukesh Doshi, a prosthetics and orthotics surgeon, and a consultant at Saifee and Nanavati Hospital, said, “With practice he will be able to hold, throw, write and do all kinds of light work using the hand. The design is actually so simple that it works on strings which are attached to the wrist, as he moves the wrists; he will even be able to close his fingers into a fist,” said Doshi. An accident and a loss Ojha said the accident happened while he was at work at an industrial plant in Kutchh. “We were working on anchoring a ship and were then conducting further repair. However, there was a heavy pin which came with an iron base. As soon as I disconnected the pin, my fingers got stuck in the middle of the latchlike structure and I lost all four fingers of my hand as well as half of my thumb,” said Ojha. Though he was rushed to the hospital, his fingers couldn’t be saved. Though he could get a cosmetic silicon prosthesis, it wouldn’t provide movement. Meanwhile, in Mumbai Dr Doshi was looking for alternatives for patients like Ojha. “Patients who lose an entire palm or a hand were still able to get silicon based prosthesis. However, for those with partial amputation of fingers or amputations ahead of the joint, there were no options available. I was looking for a patient who would be ready to work with us in an experiment to create such a prosthesis,” he said. Doshi, honorary director of the Kutchh-based Jaya Rehabilitation Centre and Research Institute — where the procedure took place — was informed of Ojha’s case in October. “I had read about Anatomiz3D Healthcare which had previously worked with 3D printing in healthcare and asked them it they’d be able to help. They asked me to send a Plaster of Paris cast of the patient’s hand,” Doshi added. Firoza Kothari, from Anatomiz3D Healthcare, said that while they had previously attempted pre-operative surgical and educational models this was the first time they were venturing into making prosthesis. “The process worked in four parts: scanning the POP cast, modifying the prosthesis based on the scan of the patient using exact measurements, 3D printing of the parts and then assembling of the same. While the entire process was supposed to be feasible, it actually didn’t work out well the first time,” said Kothari. This was in November. “The hand was returned to us by the doctor saying the fitting wasn’t right. Twenty days ago, however, Doshi asked for revised designs and we started work,” said Kothari. She added that while the hand, created out of a Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) material, can be made within five days, it took her team longer as the mold came in from Bhuj. When asked how the technology works, she said that they work using a 3D printer and hand held scanner. “First we scan the project which is to be printed to get the exact shape of the project and measurement correction. The scanner emits rays which give us a computerised 3D image of the object with cloud points. We make necessary changes and print the objects in parts to be assembled later,” explained Kothari. The material being created from things like cornstarch and sugar have no side effects on the skin and also fits better. Ojha, who said he was able to pick up a pen on Saturday, said, “I am happy with the hand. I had started working on March 1 and was doing light work. Now, I will be able to do more. This has been a wonderful experiment.”

2016-03-13 10:37 By Sadaguru www.mid-day.com

51 Is Australia serious about Twenty20 cricket? Kolkata: Australia are set to warm up for their World T20 campaign with a 'friendly' against the West Indies on Sunday, but not many are convinced if they have actually warmed to cricket's shortest format. And the apparent low priority shows in more ways than one. Oz captain Steve Smith at a hotel in Kolkata on Saturday. Pic/PTI The most dominating team in world cricket, currently ranked No 1 in both Tests and One-Day Internationals, Team Australia languish at a lowly fifth rung in T20 Internationals — that too after a climb from eighth place following the series win in South Africa this month. The reigning champions and five-time winners of the World Cup in the 50 overs-a-side format are yet to strike gold in World T20. "I wouldn't say that," skipper Steve Smith responded when asked if Australia weren't as serious about Twenty20 format as they should be. "We have pretty packed schedules but we do play a lot of T20 cricket. We know how to play this format and if we play to our ability, we'll be a tough side to beat in this tournament. " Smith's defense on the question of commitment to the format ran counter to what Josh Hazlewood feels about Australian preparations for World T20. "I think we could definitely play more T20 matches leading up to big tournaments like these if we really want to win them. That's something that has to be looked into," said the 25-year-old pacer from New South Wales. "We haven't played as much T20 as the other teams, and those three games in South Africa were very important. " He could well have added that a T20 International or two during their tour to New Zealand last month would have helped too. Hazlewood: Played T20 after two-and-half years Hazlewood, a key bowler in the Australian Test and ODI team, has come here a trifle underdone in the shortest format. "Before the other night I hadn't played any T20 for two-and-half years," he said, hoping to "learn a few things from guys like (fellow pacer John) Hastings and add to my game". Hazlewood had pulled out of the IPL last year to preserve himself for the Ashes series. He missed the Big Bash, Australia's answer to the IPL, earlier this year as Cricket Australia chose to give him rest before the tour across the Tasman Sea. If the Aussies manage to lift a T20 World Cup on their sixth try, it will probably come riding on those that chose to play IPL in the hot and humid Indian summers over the years. Many of them are key cogs in their teams. Ironically, the top player on ICC's T20 rankings is an Aussie. Aaron Finch sits atop the heap as a beacon for their collective hope.

2016-03-13 10:37 By Arup www.mid-day.com

52 Pakistan team arrives in Kolkata for World T20 Kolkata: With the issue of Pakistan's participation in the World T20 having been pushed into a political premise, and the uncertainty that it thus signalled, the sigh of relief on the team's arrival here on Saturday was palpable. Pak cricket captain Shahid Afridi waves upon his team's arrival at NSCBI Airport in Kolkata on Saturday. Pic/PTI Officials of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), which earned the right to host the marquee match between India and Pakistan after it had to be shifted from Dharamsala following a frown from the Himachal Pradesh chief minister, were in celebratory mood as the Pakistanis landed after a the long-haul from Abu Dhabi. The team was whisked away to their hotel in south Kolkata amidst heightened security cover that saw the arrival area of the airport cordoned off and movement of media persons restricted. The team bus left in a siren-blaring convoy. Some fans waiting patiently beyond the cordoned off area, chanted 'Afridi! Afridi!' before the star all-rounder boarded the team bus. Practice at Eden Gardens today "The members of the squad were received in the traditional manner with flower bouquets. The team will practice at the Eden Gardens on Sunday morning and the police have requested us to restrict access to the Club House gallery. As on previous occasions, we are confident that the team's stay in Kolkata will be a pleasant one," Joint-secretary Subir Ganguly told Sunday mid- day. Pakistan, who were scheduled to play a CAB XI comprising Bengal's T20 squad, will now warm up with a match against Sri Lanka on Monday. They open their World T20 campaign on Wednesday with a match against a qualifier.

2016-03-13 10:34 By Arup www.mid-day.com

53 BEST's rush to save soggy Electric House The city's iconic red buses parade out of an imposing yet elegant headquarter of The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) in Colaba every day. The Grade 1 heritage structure is now set to get a makeover that will cost Rs 37.68 lakh. Known as BEST Bhavan or Electric House, the building was built in 1873, and is in need of urgent repairs before the monsoon lashes the city, say BEST officials. At a time when the undertaking is under severe financial strain, it will have to set aside a hefty kitty for repairs and maintenance. The 143-year-old Electric House in Colaba is a heritage structure that has borne the brunt of several monsoons. Pic/Bipin Kokate Sources said no major repairs have been carried out in the building in the last few years. In July 2014, a contract for waterproofing the terrace expired. Last year, the roof was leaking at several spots throughout the rains. While the façade is made of steel frames, cement concrete and stone, the interiors, which include some classy teakwood battens, went soggy and eventually decayed due to the seepage. As a result, the offices inside the five-storeyed building look poorly maintained. “There is a need to replace the deteriorated wooden sections of the interiors and the damaged Mangalore tiles,” said Jagdish Patil, General Manager, BEST Undertaking. The BEST will provide water-proofing treatment, aluminum sheets above the roof, laying of bituminous membrane on the terrace floor, and replace damaged and deteriorated teakwood battens, Mangalore tiles and water passages. Work is expected to begin this month.

2016-03-13 10:33 By Shashank www.mid-day.com

54 Bohol drug peddler camped out in pension homes TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol — Police arrested on Sunday dawn a drug suspect who sold P500 worth of shabu to a police poseur-buyer from a pension house room. Ronald “Butchoy” Capuno Taer, 34, was arrested for possession of P25, 000 worth of shabu and drug paraphernalia, said PO3 Richard Timbal of the Provincial Public Safety Company of the Bohol Provincial Police Office. Timbal said Taer was on the police watchlist. READ: Couple nabbed in Davao for carrying illegal drugs worth P500,000 | Senate eyes wiretapping vs illegal drugs He said Taer was among the drug peddlers in the city who rented rooms in pension houses, hotels and resorts to sell drugs. Timbal said police raided Taer’s pension house room about 3 a.m. on Sunday after they received information on his illegal drugs activity. He occupied a room in a pension house along Miguel Parras Street in Tagbilaran City located about a kilometer away from his residence in Barangay Poblacion 1, during his arrest. Police confiscated a big pack of shabu estimated to cost P25,000, the P500 marked money, and drug paraphernalia from Taer’s pension house room. Timbal said they were preparing a complaint for the possession and distribution of illegal drugs and the possession of drug paraphernalia against the suspect.

2016-03-13 10:32 Leo Udtohan newsinfo.inquirer.net

55 Bombay High Court's stay order on new constructions leaves BMC in limbo For 11 days in March, the Building Proposal Department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) wasn’t sure if it was meant to do its job. Firefighters douse the massive fire at the Deonar dumping ground on February 1 On February 29, the Bombay High Court stayed new construction in the city because the state government and the BMC had failed to comply with the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) rules at the Deonar and Mulund dumping grounds. However, till Friday March 11, the BMC hadn’t received a letter or order of the copy, leaving it in a state of confusion. The Building Proposal Department issues an Intent Of Disapproval (IOD) [a letter which says that the proposal has acquired all the requisite permissions] and Commence-ment Certificate (CC) [the letter issued after the IOD] for buildings. Department officials say they read about the HC order in newspapers. However, in the absence of any official communication, it decided to not issue any letters or certificates. In this time, they issued IOD/CCs for redevelopment projects but with an undertaking that said that the ‘IOD/CC would stand cancelled, once it’s clear whether the court has stayed new constructions and if it affected the particular project.’ A letter to this effect was issued to the department [copy is available with sunday mid-day]. The letter, signed by all the three executive engineers at the department, reads: “The matter is discussed with higher authorities, when it is opined that in absence of official judgment/orders from High Court, no orders can be given whether to stop issuing IOD/CC or to continue with the existing procedures till receipt of orders. In view of persistent pressure from the developers, that the grant of IOD/CC cannot be stopped, till the order/judgment of the High Court is received, the undersigned have started issuing the IOD/CC of the redevelopment, MHADA, hospital buildings and schools, by obtaining an undertaking. This is also discussed with higher authorities, which would continue till receipt of any orders/judgment in this regard.” An architect, working closely with the Building Proposal Department, said, “For the last 11 days, we have been in limbo. The officers kept saying that the order hasn’t reached them and hence they cannot take a decision.” Deputy Chief Engineer, RS Potdar of the department, said, “Yes, the letter was written, but we received the court order on March 11.” VP Chittore, Chief Engineer, of Building Proposal, said, “As per court orders, new proposals accepted on or after March 1, 2016, cannot get IOD. Redevelopment is permissible.” He didn’t elaborate.

2016-03-13 10:31 By Varun www.mid-day.com

56 WT20: Mumbaikars robbed of AB de Villiers' show Mumbai's cricket-loving fans were robbed of a chance to see 'super human' batting from South African superstar AB de Villiers during Saturday's warm-up tie. The huge crowd turned up to see Team India in action, but they also hoped to see De Villiers bat. However, he was rested for the match. De Villiers set the Wankhede on fire he batted here last, scoring 119 against India in the final game of the 2015 ODI series as South Africa posted a mammoth 438-4 in 50 overs. Earlier, during the 2015 Indian Premier League, he smashed a 59-ball 133 not out for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Mumbai Indians on May 10. AB de Villiers Poor response from schools The Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) did not receive the response it would have liked from school kids for whom they provided free tickets for Saturday's New Zealand vs England and India vs South Africa World T20 warm-up matches. Out of the 32 schools which play in the Harris and Giles Shield, only 15 schools and colleges applied for the tickets. "One of the reasons could be annual exams clashing with the ICC World T20," an MCA official told SUNDAY mid-day. The MCA provided 200 tickets to the Salaam Bombay Foundation. Practice for Super Over too The warm-up matches are not just restricted to 20-over games, but once the tie is done, the teams also come out to play a Super Over. It was an added bonus to the fans who like to see towering sixes. The International Cricket Council is ensuring that the teams are well-prepared for any situation when the main round kicks off in a few days. Wankhede Stadium witnessed a full house for the warm-up match between India and South Africa on Saturday. Pic/Atul Kamble Packed Wankhede for warm-up tie ICC World T20 fever finally gripped Mumbai on Saturday as thousands thronged to the Wankhede Stadium to witness the India versus South Africa warm-up tie. The fans started queuing up outside the Mahindra Hockey Stadium, one of the two venues to buy tickets for Saturday's double header, from as early as seven in the morning for an evening match. The stadium was almost packed as this was the only occasion where Mumbaikars would be able to witness Team India live in action in the World T20 before the semis. Knowing that the semis tickets would come with a hefty price, the fans thought of cashing on the opportunity to watch the warm-up tie for Rs 200.

2016-03-13 10:29 By Harit www.mid-day.com

57 Records request denial highlights Iowa lawmakers’ authority DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Iowa lawmakers are exempt from releasing their work emails or daily schedules to the public because they determine their own rules on such matters, and the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld that authority. Legislative staffers cited the Iowa Constitution in their records request denial to The Associated Press, which sought a week’s worth of emails and calendar information from leaders in the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-majority House. The AP requested information for legislative leaders in all 50 states as part of Sunshine Week, a national initiative to promote government transparency and freedom of information. The request turned up as many denials as approvals. In Iowa, the state constitution says the General Assembly shall “determine its rules of proceedings.” In 1996, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that both chambers had authority over policies regarding confidentiality and legislative proceedings, giving lawmakers the right to keep secret their emails and schedules. Carmine Boal, chief clerk for the House, said the system ensures constituents can reach out to their elected officials without fear it’s “going to be plastered all over the newspaper or somewhere.” Michael Marshall, secretary of the Senate, made a similar point. He wrote in a letter that the release of records requested by the AP “would almost certainly have a detrimental chilling effect on citizens’ constitutional rights and willingness to petition their elected officials.” He later said that protection extends to lobbying groups, whose presence has grown at the Capitol over the years. “A lot of these are grassroots groups that represent a lot of grassroots constituents who have grassroots concerns,” he said. Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls and chairman of the Senate State Government Committee, said the public is able to participate in subcommittee meetings and forums at the Capitol involving bills. He also noted people can watch floor debates in person and reporters sit in the chambers to track activity. “Those are all public processes,” he said. “So I appreciate that people think this is all done somewhere else, but it’s not. It’s done right here.” Rep. Guy Vander Linden, R-Oskaloosa and chairman of the House State Government Committee, said the public has a right to know what lawmakers do, but elected officials should have the right to internal communications like brief emails that help legislation move forward. “If you take that away from them, if you make it so that anything I say is going to be in the newspaper tomorrow, it’s going to have a chilling effect on being frank with each other,” he said. “I’m not sure the public is served by that.” Kathleen Richardson, dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Drake University, noted that state agencies are subject to Iowa’s public records law. “The rest of government at all levels, from city councils to schools boards to state government, works perfectly fine with that mandated transparency,” she said. “I don’t think that’s a good argument for carving out the legislature from the standard of openness to which the rest of Iowa government must comply.” Richardson also pointed out the Iowa Legislature is exempt from the state’s open meetings law, which requires a higher level of transparency for when and how government bodies can meet. This exemption allows lawmakers to meet in private beyond the public gatherings that Danielson noted. Gov. Terry Branstad’s office is required to comply with the public records law. A records request to Chief of Staff Michael Bousselot yielded more than 400 emails and his calendar. The documents ranged from internal staff communications to scheduling that involved meeting with agency officials. Story Continues →

2016-03-13 10:28 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

58 Singer Ciara and NFL player Russell Wilson are engaged London: Singer Ciara and boyfriend Russell Wilson have got engaged. The 30-year-old "Like a Boy" hitmaker is set to walk down the aisle with the 27-year-old National Football League star, after he proposed to her on their vacation, reported Female First. Singer Ciara with Russell Wilson. Pic/AFP Sharing a picture of Wilson down on one knee, she wrote, "God Is Good! Grateful For You @DangeRussWilson. You Are Heaven Sent. I'm Looking Forward To Spending Forever With You... I Feel Complete. (sic)" The Seattle Seahawks player also posted a video taken just after the proposal, where Ciara can be seen flashing her stunning diamond ring. He tells the camera: "She said yes! Yeah! Making this thing happen. My baby. " To which she adds, "Yay! I'm so excited. God is so good. " 'Ciara is the one' Sharing the video on his social media page, the sportsman wrote: "She said Yes!!! Since Day 1 I knew you were the one. No Greater feeling... #TrueLove @Ciara (sic)" The singer has a son Future (21 months), from a previous relationship.

2016-03-13 10:21 By PTI www.mid-day.com

59 Right-to-work, budget deadlock shape West Virginia session CHARLESTON, W. Va. (AP) - West Virginia has finished a lawmaking session defined by a Republican agenda that sometimes shrugged off the state’s Democratic governor, but lawmakers still could be months away from unlocking a budget stalemate fueled by downturns in coal and natural gas. Lawmakers wrapped their 60-day election year session late Saturday. Senate President Bill Cole, R-Mercer, led the chamber as the GOP’s presumptive nominee for governor, while his counterpart, Minority Leader Jeff Kessler, is in a three-way contest for the Democratic gubernatorial nod in May. He’s running against Jim Justice and Booth Goodwin. The most pressing task of the year still remains unresolved: the state has a $466 million budget gap, and the standoff continues over whether to raise taxes, make more painful cuts or tap reserves to bridge about $130 million worth of disagreement between the House and Senate. Here is a look at some highlights from the session. ___ VETO NO MORE Republicans have already made four laws without Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s blessing. The GOP overrode Tomblin’s veto on four policy bills, which only took only simple majority votes. Running for governor on a pro-business platform, Cole prioritized a right-to-work measure and the repeal of the state’s prevailing wage for public construction projects. Unions despised the proposals, and both bills passed on party lines with some House Republicans even opposing them. Republicans then moved quickly to overturn Tomblin’s vetoes. Lawmakers also overrode Tomblin’s veto of a push to let people 21 and older carry hidden guns without permits or training. Law enforcement opposed the change for safety reasons, and Tomblin vetoed a similar bill last year as well. The Legislature wrapped up its run of overrides on a bill that largely bans the safest second- trimester abortion method, called dilation and evacuation. Tomblin vetoed it due to concerns by doctors over patient safety, and worries that it could be deemed unconstitutional. Some Democrats supported the abortion ban and concealed gun push. ___ A TAX DIVIDE Story Continues →

2016-03-13 09:05 The Washington www.washingtontimes.com

60 North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un orders to further nuclear tests Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered further nuclear tests, as military tensions surge on the Korean peninsula with South Korean and US forces engaged in large-scale joint exercisescondemned by Pyongyang. Kim Jong-Un meets scientists to discuss boosting nuclear arsenal. Pic/AFP Since the joint drills began on Monday, the North has issued daily warnings and statements, talking up its nuclear strike capabilities and threatening to turn Seoul and Washington into “flames and ashes.” Just days after he was photographed posing in front of what state media described as a miniaturised nuclear warhead, Kim said the weapon required further testing. Overseeing a ballistic missile launch on Thursday, Kim ordered “more nuclear explosion tests to estimate the destructive power of the newly produced nuclear warheads," the North’s official KCNA news agency said. Nuclear strike drill According to KCNA, Thursday’s launch of two short-range ballistic missiles, which traversed the eastern part of the country before falling into the East Sea (Sea of Japan), was part of a nuclear strike exercise. The aim was to simulate conditions for “exploding nuclear warheads from the preset altitude above targets in the ports under enemy control,” the agency said. Watching the exercise, Kim reiterated an earlier threat to launch an immediate nuclear attack if the “sabre-rattling” South Korea-US drills should harm “even a single tree or a blade of grass” on North Korean territory. “I will issue a prompt order to launch attack with all military strike means,” he said. South Korea and the United States responded by scaling up their annual joint drills, which Pyongyang has always condemned as provocative rehearsals for invasion. The UN Security Council responded to the North's latest nuclear test and rocket launch by adopting tough, new sanctions, which Pyongyang condemned as a “gangster-like” provocation orchestrated by the United States. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday voiced grave concern over the growing tensions, and urged North Korea to avoid any further “destabilising acts.”

2016-03-13 10:04 By Agencies www.mid-day.com

61 Donald Trump draws flak from rivals for rally violence Chicago: Donald Trump is under fire from rivals who blamed his incendiary rhetoric for a violent outbreak on Friday between protesters and supporters at the Republican frontrunner’s rally in Chicago. A Trump protester being whisked away by security during a rally in Chicago. Pic/AFP Trump cancelled the event after demonstrators scuffled with his supporters and police struggled to maintain order, with hundreds of protesters showing up. “When you have a campaign that affirmatively encourages violence, you create an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discord,” Trump’s main rival, Ted Cruz, told reporters. When a protester disrupted Trump's speech in Las Vegas, the brash billionaire said he would like to “punch him in the face.” Candidate John Kasich, also a Republican, said that “the seeds of division that Donald Trump has been sowing this whole campaign finally bore fruit, and it was ugly.”

2016-03-13 10:03 By Agencies www.mid-day.com

62 Jihadi John biographer withdraws from event A British journalist who wrote a biography on the life of Jihadi John, has withdrawn from speaking at an event at the dead ISIS executioner’s former university. Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John. AFP PHOTO / HO / SITE INTELLIGENCE GROUP Robert Verkaik was supposed to speak about his new book, which explores the life of Mohammed Emwazi as well as examining questions of MI5 harassment and radicalisation. He was told he could not talk unless he signed the University of Westminster’s “code of practice” for external speakers. The code is inspired by the Government’s controversial counter- radicalisation policy Prevent — the very subject he was meant to be critically debating. Verkaik refused to sign the document, for fear that it would leave him unable to raise difficult issues like harassment.

2016-03-13 10:02 By Agencies www.mid-day.com

63 Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre: What's the good word? The Bombay High Court termed the Marathi word ghati as an offensive term, one that can be “interpreted as an insult by many across the state.” The famed British lexicographer J T Molesworth deconstructed it otherwise. His compendium of Marathi words, published in 1863 and now available in its tenth corrected edition (2013), characterises ghati or ghatval as “relating to the Desh or country above the Sayhádri hill range.” This word was used by the Konkanis (in Mumbai and Konkan) to rebuke the gauche ways and country accent of those from the ghats. As late as 2006, Navi Mumbai witnessed riots over ghati outsiders taking away jobs from the Agri and Koli settlers. Illustrations /Uday Mohite Ghati’s dual identity is rooted in the Konkani-versus-Ghati friction and also in the migrants-vis-a- vis-Maharashtrian debate. It is a homogenised reference for all locals as seen in books like Breathless In Bombay and Such A Long Journey. The potential of ghati, which the court has underlined, has inspired us to craft a glossary of Marathi expressions that have gained colourful connotations in the mainstream public discourse — colloquialisms co-opted in a Bollywood lexicon or simple words turned into loaded carriers of political agenda. Amcha Bollywood Among the terms which took the Bollywood route, Ata Mazhi Satakli (Now I have lost my temper) from Singham tops the chart. It was middle-class anger against smugglers and assassins, of the Ajay Devgan scale. Similar in stature stands Dushman ki Vaat Lavli (Vanquished the enemy) from the Hindi film, Bajirao Mastani. Bajirao also underwent a cultural makeover. What once signified a bit of bombast and a philanderer, now is a chiselled Maratha warrior in the league of Ranveer Singh. Bajirao’s prestige upgrade co-relates with Dajiba’s downfall over a decade ago after the lavani, Aika Dajiba projected the winking male lead — no longer a father figure. Marathi street lingo gained a permanent gate pass in Hindi film-land at the beginning of the 21st century when Sanjay Dutt films embraced endearing cusswords — tapori, bhidu, yeda and shana. Aayla formed vibrant semi-phallic parlance in realistic screenplays featuring chawl or slum life. Bai politics Aiyyaa and agabai came into national consciousness when actresses Rani Mukerji and Priyanka Chopra used these sweet-nothings to capture feminine wonderment. Before Mukerji’s Hindi film Aiyyaa, the effiminite guy in the vicinity or on celluloid was teased with, Aiyyaa! Bai lies at the core of many social exchanges owing to its textured history. In the pre- Independence era, Bai denoted respect; like in the case of Ahilyabai Holkar or Mogubai Kurdikar. As Mumbai started shaping into a metropolis, Bai metamorphosed into a workforce term; either the bespectacled grammar teacher or the sari-clad top servant. Bai progressed in stature after the eighties when thespian Vijaya Mehta elevated her Bai status in experimental theatre and parallel cinema circles; the Bai school of thought was advocated in her autobiography and numerous media interviews. Bai got another boost in October 2015, when a Marathi-Hindi remix number on Youtube presented Shantabai as a sex siren. As the audio track was superimposed onto steamy videos, the Shantabai construct underwent an interesting cultural passage. As this columnist asked nondescript lyricist Sunil Londhe to look back at Shantabai’s stardom, he said he was embarrassed that Shantabai was seen as a “hot woman”, but happy that she wasn’t a maid. Cuisine Wise As the misal pav served at a Dadar restaurant was named the world’s tastiest vegetarian dish at London’s Foodie Hub Awards, the misal became the face of Marathi cookery and entrepreneurship. The vada pav crossed over as the Mumbai burger. Both were marketed as iconic traditional dishes close to the Marathi self-image. But for Maharashtrians, the vada and the misal operated in a different pedestrian context. The vada (a low-wage earner’s quick dry meal) was sought to be replaced by the more nourishing zunka- bhakari. The Shiv Sena-led government in 1995 floated the (R1 per plate) zunka bhakar scheme to popularise the native delicacy. The scheme was abandoned (2007) as the bhakari stalls started vending fast-food. Years later, the Sena launched the Shiv Wada scheme. As they embraced the deep-fried vada, others joined the bandwagon and Nitesh Rane (whose father Narayan Rane had defected to the Congress from the Sena) launched the Swambhiman (Self- respect) Wada. Foodies could not understand whose respect was at stake and how the vada mitigated a political wrongdoing. They concentrated on the insides of whichever vada they ate. I-card please Jai Maharashtra is the state-specific slogan owing allegiance to the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement. After the creation of the linguistic state in 1960, it became a rallying point for the Shiv Sena to raise issues of provincial concern around. But the Sena’s intellectual property hold over the catchphrase was short-lived since rivals and allies (on all sides of the political spectrum) cashed in on its potency during the season called elections. Just as Jai Maharashtra seeped deeper as a legitimate refrain, Marathi Manoos and Amchi Mumbai gained currency. Marathi Asmita became a must-mentionable in any written or verbal piece of communication on identity politics, indigenous culture and linguistic pride. Television channels (Maayboli), social musters (Amhi Marathi), Twitter groups (Marathi Dhammal, Marathi Mandali) and Mi Marathi-inscribed merchandise echoed the same sentiment. Amchi Mumbai became a headline for English newspaper copy on urban governance. Gheun Tak It translates simply into “take it”, depending on what is up for grabs; particularly prospects in a sports contest like the Usha Mumbai Gheun Tak Frisbee tournament or Gheun Tak Youth Carnival and Gheun Tak Selfie contest. A funny offshoot is the Gheun Tak Shotglass sold under the tagline: “When your vodka is poured — don’t wait — Gheun Tak.” It’s an offer worth considering! Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre is a culture columnist in search of the sub-text

2016-03-13 10:01 By Sumedha www.mid-day.com

64 PM Narendra Modi slams Congress, lauds Bihar CM Nitish Kumar Hajipur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday trained his guns on Congress accusing it of “neglecting” Bihar’s development since independence and recalled Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s past association with NDA as he inaugurated a number of railway projects here. (From left) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with PM Narendra Modi, Chief Justice of India Justice TS Thakur and Law Minister Sadanand Gowda in Patna on Saturday. Pic/PTI “This project was initiated when Nitish Kumar was Railway Minister and Atal ji was Prime Minister. The dream of that time is being realised now. Had this not been neglected in last 10 years and work been taken up for it even under routine budget, even then it would have been completed in six-seven years,” Modi said, dedicating to the nation the Digha-Sonepur rail-cum-road bridge here, which is stated to be the longest in the country. He rued that the cost of the project escalated from its earlier estimate of Rs 600 crore to Rs 3,000 crore due to the “delay”. “This money belongs to people,” he said. Leaving aside political rivalry, Modi who has shared a contentious relationship with Kumar in the past, also chose the occasion to laud the Bihar Chief Minister’s efforts in taking forward the Centre's rural electrification scheme in Bihar.

2016-03-13 09:59 By Agencies www.mid-day.com

65 Alps avalanche kills 6 in Italy MILAN, Italy — An avalanche struck high in the Italian Alps on Saturday, killing six backcountry skiers and injuring another as a swath of snow hundreds of meters (yards) wide cascaded down. Helicopters ferried both survivors and the bodies back to the valley floor from the avalanche site, located not far below Monte Nevoso’s 3,358- meter (11,017-foot) peak. The mountain is close to the Austrian border in Italy’s Alto Adige region. READ: Avalanche kills 5 French Foreign Legion soldiers | ‘Game of Thrones’ trailer appears to show dead Jon Snow The dead were among a group of backcountry skiers climbing above tree line to the mountain crest and then skiing down but the dynamics of the midday avalanche were still not yet clear. Italian financial police, among the helicopter responders, and the Carabinieri national police confirmed the six deaths, one Austrian and five Italians from the area. In addition, one person was injured, while another eight escaped unharmed, they said. “Some were partly covered or under the snow and able to free themselves, and some clearly just saw it happen,” said financial police Brig. Albert Castlunger. The survivors summoned rescuers, who responded with three helicopters and dozens of search- and-rescue workers who used poles and sniffer dogs to probe the snow for more possible victims, he said. The operation ended by late afternoon. The high altitude and the number of people involved complicated the rescue, Rafael Kostner, the head of the rescue operation, told ANSA. “The helicopters are having difficulty safely reaching altitudes above 3,000 meters,” Kostner said. “They fly with very little fuel and all unnecessary gear is left on the ground.” According to Bolzano province’s avalanche report, the avalanche risk forecast for Saturday was moderate, a two on 1-to-5 scale.

2016-03-13 09:59 Associated Press newsinfo.inquirer.net

66 Guatemala investigates Lake Amatitlan clean-up plan A judge in Guatemala has ordered that a former vice-president be held in prison over an allegedly fraudulent plan to clean up pollution at Lake Amatitlan. Roxana Baldetti is accused of leading a scheme in which millions were spent on a product to decontaminate the lake. Testing revealed the product, which was never used, was mainly sea water. Ms Baldetti also faces charges, along with ex-President Otto Perez Molina, over alleged corruption in a customs duties scheme. The judge also ordered that her brother, Mario Baldetti, be detained over the plan, and some 15 more people are implicated in the alleged fraud. Lake Amatitlan, about 30km (20 miles) south of the capital, Guatemala City, was once a popular weekend getaway for the wealthy. But the lake became polluted with untreated sewage from the populated outskirts of the capital. In March last year, the Roxana Baldetti told the media she had a "magic solution" and that she would restore the lake to its past glory. Prosecutors allege Ms Baldetti received bribes, after she urged the government to award a contract to a company which would provide a chemical to clean up the lake. Ms Baldetti denied this and said she received no money for the contract. She is also accused of setting up her brother Mario Baldetti as head of the authority responsible for managing the lake. Pressure from environmentalists and civic groups forced the suspension of the project and the "magic solution" was never used. The government was persuaded to order the tests that revealed that it was in fact mostly sea water. Ms Baldetti is already in jail for involvement in a corruption scheme in the customs department alongside her former boss, ex-President Otto Perez Molina.

2016-03-13 08:40 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

67 Photographing children caught in conflict In 2011, British photojournalist Giles Duley lost both legs and an arm when he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan. He was given a dire prognosis and was hospitalised for a year. But Mr Duley went straight back into the field just 18 months after that horrific accident, determined to carry on reporting from some of the world's most violent war zones. He told the BBC about his new book, One Second of Light, and about his youngest subjects - the children caught up in conflict. More from World Update in Pictures

2016-03-13 06:44 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

68 What happened when Vietnam's national broadcaster was caught pinching YouTube videos Vietnam's national broadcaster has been suspended from YouTube after it beamed out videos from an amateur photographer without his permission. Bui Minh Tuan runs a motorbike business, and he also has a keen interest in drones and aerial photography. His shots of stunning Vietnamese scenery - such as the the one above - have been watched hundreds of thousands of times on his YouTube channel. They also caught the attention of producers at Vietnam Television (VTV) - who apparently used Tuan's videos without his permission on at least five different occasions, both on air and on their own YouTube page. Tuan says he was not consulted or properly credited and that VTV producers only called him to apologise after each segment had aired on television. VTV sometimes even blurred out the logo of Tuan's channel before broadcast. Tuan told BBC Vietnamese that he tried several times to contact VTV to complain and that he eventually went to YouTube to report the alleged copyright violation. At the end of February, YouTube responded and shut down VTV's YouTube channel. But far from being chastened, some VTV employees lashed out at Tuan. One VTV senior producer wrote on Facebook that his actions were far worse than what the broadcaster did. "Even if a man steals a dog, killing the man is a far more condemnable act than stealing the dog," wrote Pham Dieo Anh. (If you're lost, apparently the dog is the drone footage and the dog thief is VTV. In this analogy, Tuan is presumably being compared to a murderer). Join the conversation on this and other stories here . Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tuan has received lots of support online. "It's clear that VTV has violated copyright," one user commented. "VTV has taken advantage of its media power and the government's protection to disregard the law and not apologise. Because of this we should shame VTV so that they learn their lesson. " The broadcaster has since admitted wrongdoing. In a statement, VTV said producers had violated "production procedures" and that they were trying to get their YouTube channel back up again. Before it was suspended the channel had about 100,000 subscribers - Tuan's channel was actually more popular. The case is being reviewed by Vietnam's official copyright authority. However, Tuan says, VTV's television channel is still continuing to use his footage without his consent. Blog by Megha Mohan Reporting by Hung Nguyen, BBC Vietnamese Next story: How a cricket match led to a hacker war Fierce cricket rivalry is a tradition in South Asia. But a match between Bangladesh and India saw fan-fanaticism taken to the extreme - and ended with hackers taking down Bangladeshi government websites. READ MORE You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending , and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending .

2016-03-13 06:44 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

69 Libya conflict: Tunis-based unity government claims power Libya's UN-backed Presidential Council, based in Tunis, has called on the international community to stop dealing with any rival powers within Libya. The council nominated a unity government last month, but recognition of the cabinet has been delayed. Libya has had two competing governments since 2014, following the downfall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The eastern House of Representatives (HOR), based in Tobruk, has failed to vote to approve the unity government. The council said in a statement on Saturday that a document signed by a majority of the HOR's members backing the new government, as well as the endorsement by the Political Dialogue Team, represented a "green light to start work". However, on Thursday, a statement by Libya's Political Dialogue Team - composed of members of political figures in Libya and some MPs representing the country's two rival parliaments - did not appear to pave the way for this move. It called for a speedy parliamentary vote on the proposed government, the BBC's Rana Jawad in Tunis notes. The Presidential Council is tasked with organising a transition of power to end the political chaos and armed conflict that has plagued Libya since Gaddafi's downfall. But the Tunis-based council has faced stiff opposition from hardliners in both the HOR, which has received international recognition, and in a rival parliament in the capital, Tripoli. The political and security vacuum in the country has helped the so-called Islamic State group to establish a foothold in the north African country, carrying out attacks on cities and against oil installations. The council was formed with the signing of a UN-brokered political agreement in December. Its first proposal in January was marred by divisions over who would occupy senior security posts and was rejected. Its members are still working outside Libya because rival factions in the capital, Tripoli, and their militia backers, remain opposed to the political agreement.

2016-03-13 06:44 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

70 3 Paris attackers feature in ISIS recruitment files Names of three of the Paris attackers figure in a massive documents leak from the Islamic State militant group, media reports said on Saturday. A survivor of the Paris attacks last November. Pic/AFP Samy Amimour, Foued Mohamed-Aggad and Omar Ismail Mostefai — believed to have carried out the worst attack in Paris at the Bataclan theatre during a concert by a rock band last November — are among 22,000 ISIS recruits worldwide whose identities have been revealed in the recent leak. As many as 90 people were killed using guns and suicide vests in the Bataclan attack during a concert by Eagles of Death Metal, whose singer and guitarist Jesse Hughes yesterday apologised for alleging that the club’s security guards were involved, saying he was struggling with trauma. The ISIS files, obtained by German, UK and Syrian opposition media, are said to identify thousands of recruits from at least 40 countries. The files indicate that the three men who attacked the Bataclan entered ISIS territory in 2013 and 2014. The identity of 29-year-old French national Mostefai from a poor Paris suburb, was confirmed using a severed fingertip found at the Bataclan. Amimour, a 28-year-old former bus driver from the Paris suburb of Drancy, and 23-year-old Mohamed-Aggad from Strasbourg were the other two.

2016-03-13 09:53 By Agencies www.mid-day.com

71 NBA: Grizzlies’ Conley out at least three weeks WASHINGTON, United States — Memphis Grizzlies starting point guard Mike Conley will miss at least three to four weeks with an Achilles tendon injury, the NBA team announced Saturday. Conley missed the last two games with left foot soreness and received an additional examination Friday that showed Achilles tendonitis. In 56 games, all starts, Conley averaged 15.3 points, 2.9 rebounds, a team-high 6.1 assists and 1.20 steals for the Grizzlies this season. Memphis also announced that center Chris Andersen is out indefinitely with a shoulder injury suffered a week ago agaginst Phoenix. An additional examination and MRI confirmed the injury. Anderson has averaged 4.0 points and 4.7 rebounds in nine games for the Grizzlies since being obtained from Miami in a three-team trade last month. The Grizzlies already are without Spanish center Marc Gasol, who will miss the rest of the season with a broken foot, and reserve guard Mario Chalmers was waived Thursday after suffering a season-ending Achilles tendon injury. In addititon, Grizzlies forward Zach Randolph was expected to miss his fourth game in a row Saturday with a knee injury. At 39-26, the Grizzlies rank fifth in the Western Conference. RELATED STORIES NBA: Rockets snap Boston’s 14-game home win streak NBA: Spurs extend unbeaten home record as Bulls gored

2016-03-13 09:52 Agence sports.inquirer.net

72 Livonia - News This feed's current articles are shown below. Subscribe for updates to all the content available in this feed, or click through here to see the original article. Redford’s Williams to stand trial in murder, mutilation of Gorup in June P-CCS teacher named semifinalist for Michigan teacher of the year. Red Wings alumni to take on Wild Wings for charity March 18 Woman found at a hotel using a phony name Charges against Jeffrey Mote, owner of Green Grow MI, have been dismissed. Freeway reopened this morning after the 8 Mile bridge was demolished. Police trying to track down owner This is the third and final month of the summer with a Supermoon. It's when a full or new moon coincides with the moon's closest point to Earth in its orbit. Basically, the moon appears bigger and brighter than usual in the night sky. Many Thurston High School students are unplugging and taking up coloring. COLUMN: Red Wings’ legend treated hockey fans like part of his family. Ms. Wheelchair Michigan is coming to the Canton Public Library After finding a change of pace from NYC, world-class dancers bring talents to Plymouth. Fund-raising underway to buy Wayne Fire Department jaws of life, other equipment Forever After Productions presents “James and the Giant Peach Jr.” South Redford schools will hold a series of community focus groups to gain feedback on board. The city council voted unanimously Wednesday to send both renewals to voters this summer.

2016-03-13 03:51 rssfeeds.hometownlife.com

73 Booker Jones for C N Wadia Gold Cup The Grade 2, C N Wadia Gold Cup is slated as the feature event of Sunday's evening racing card at Mahalaxmi. There are five runners in the fray for the mile-and-a-half trip, and Colombiana, being the sole 4y old and the youngest of the lot, is likely to attract favouritism, along with Azzuro has been ambitiously placed in the contest by the Bangalore-based trainer Suleiman Attaollahi. However, the race may prove much more tricky with Booker Jones, always placing one-two in the last half a dozen starts, and The Unicorn, the one-paced wonder who keeps going over any trip with boundless energy, also in the fray. I expect Booker Jones to run a vastly improved race, and therefore nominate him as the first choice. First race at 3.45 pm. Selections: Nadia Mary Homi Wadia Trophy (For 3y, maidens; 1000m) Negara 1, Kingston Heath 2, Riot Of Colours 3. R J Kolah Trophy (For 3y, maidens; 1400m) Artificial 1, Temerity 2, Imperial Heritage 3. Indian Navy Trophy - Div II (Class III; 1200m) Abigail 1, Via Amoris 2, Magnum Opus 3. Indian Navy Trophy - Div I (Class III; 1200m) Final Encounter 1, Few Dollars More 2, Phoenix Cat 3. Jayramdas Patel Gold Trophy (Class IV; 2000m) Severus 1, Sans Peur 2, Uncle Scrooge 3. C N Wadia Gold Cup - Gr 2 (For 4y&o; 2400m) Booker Jones 1, Colombiana 2, Azzuro 3. Mulraj Goculdas Trophy (Class I; 1200m) Maleficent 1, Ageless 2, Rule Downunder 3. Prithvi Fest Trophy - Div I (Class IV; 1000m) Phoenix Knight 1, Evidence 2, Alilboxer 3. Prithvi Fest Trophy - Div II (Class IV; 1000m) Speed Of Sound 1, Way Ahead 2, Merabella 3. Recommendations Best bet: None Good bet: Severus (5-2) Chance bet: Final Encounter (4-4) Upset: Excelonce (3-6) Today's pools Super jackpot pool: 4,5,6,7,8,9 Jackpot pool: I - 3,4,5,6,7; II - 5,6,7,8,9 Treble pool: I - 2,3,4; II - 6,7,8; III - 7,8,9. Tanala pool: All races.

2016-03-13 09:48 By Prakash www.mid-day.com

74 Save Aarey: Shiv Sena to fight BJP over green cause CM Devendra Fadnavis’ latest statement, that the car shed for Metro III is likely to be constructed in Aarey Milk Colony, has not only irked Mumbai's residents — many of whom took to the streets last year to object to the plan — but BJP’s ally, the Shiv Sena. A resident at a protest against the proposed Metro III car shed in March 2015 On Friday, Fadnavis said the car shed was likely to come up at Aarey and the government was mulling whether to allow felling of 350 trees or to spend R1,500 crore more to save the trees. On Saturday, Union Forest and Environment Minister Prakash Javdekar also indicated that his ministry supported the state government. Immediately after Javdekar’s statement at the 11th National Convention on Sustainable Development Goals in Mumbai, another guest at the function, Sena leader and state industry minister Subhash Desai told the media that the state government must lend an ear to the public which had expressed an outcry against the felling of trees at Aarey. He added that the Sena had been in discussions with the state and was looking at alternative plots for the project. Speaking at the convention, Javdekar said, “There are sustainable solutions available to address the Metro car shed issue. Technology is now available to replant grown-up trees through mechanised uprooting and replanting them at an alternative site. Delhi Metro is a standing example in this regard, where for every one tree cut, five more were planted.” Desai, however, insisted that his party would not let the carshed come up. “We are in a dialogue with the government and confident that the shed will be shifted to an alternate site.” Last year, when Mumbai’s citizens expressed their outrage against the plans to fell Aarey’s trees, Sena’s youth wing chief Aditya Thackeray extended his support to their cause and promised to take up the issue with the government. Environmental organisations have even identified a plot in litigation-free plot near Jai Ambe Nagar in Kanjurmarg East, hoping that the government will shift its focus away from Aarey. Stalin D from NGO Vanasahakti said, “It’s not about 350 trees. We are against cutting even a single tree because it is avoidable. The CM has let the people down by not meeting them for over one year despite repeated attempts. The government has taken people for a ride. They are reigniting the conflict. People will oppose this backhand method of entering Aarey in order to destroy it under the guise of public good.” Bittu Sahgal, editor of Sanctuary Asia magazine, said, “Mumbai’s forested areas are vital infrastructure against financial losses from floods and water shortages. Aarey is also a buffer for SGNP’s leopards. The worry is that if all new land for urban infrastructure comes from open spaces, the impact of climate change will negate all projected gains from metros, flyovers, sea- links or freeways.” Members of various environmental and citizen’s groups are expected to meet on Sunday to decide on future strategy.

2016-03-13 09:30 By Dharmendra www.mid-day.com

75 Is fermented food a recipe for good gut health? Fermentation as a way of preserving food dates back thousands of years, but it is now being held up as a potentially important source of friendly, health-giving bacteria. So should we all be eating sauerkraut and kimchi? Allowing bacteria to form in a sealed jar of vegetables over a few months might not seem like the most appealing way to create an appetising dish, but fermentation has a lot going for it. Just ask the Koreans and Japanese, who have been fermenting vegetables, fish and beans for generations. When the Korean cabbage dish kimchi is made using traditional methods, cabbage is soaked in salt water to kill off any harmful bacteria. In the next stage, the remaining bacteria, called Lactobacillus, convert sugars and carbohydrate into lactic acid, which preserves the vegetables and gives them a tangy flavour that many people love. This type of bacteria is not the enemy - it is actually good for our digestion and for our health. We need it in our guts to fight off the harmful bacteria, restore the balance of our immune system and help the body to work at its best. These "good bacteria" are called probiotics, which literally means "for life", because of the job they do. But are there enough of them in fermented food to make a difference? Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London and author of The Diet Myth - The Real Science Behind What We Eat, says it is a complicated picture. "There are many fermented foods out there and not many have had formal testing so it's difficult to know what they do," he says. "But there's nothing harmful about them if they are produced naturally, rather than using vinegar. " Fermented food comes in many forms, for example, yoghurt, sour cream, sour dough bread, vegetables, chutneys and pickles. Often probiotics are added, in the form of live bacteria or yeast, if the foods are not made using lactic acid bacteria as in kimchi. Even wine and beer can be included on the fermented list, but they are not all beneficial to the same degree - and so they cannot all be classed as healthy. The most important consideration is whether the good bacteria can survive all the way through the gut to the bowel and the colon where they have a chance to be of benefit. Studies suggest this is not guaranteed and that probiotics would have to be eaten regularly and in quite large numbers to survive the journey. If and when they manage to breed in the gut, scientists have a theory about the role they perform. "We think they can allow production of chemicals called short-chain fatty acids, which improve the immune system, by keeping it balanced and stopping it over-reacting," says Prof Spector. A great deal of research is being carried out to find out if taking probiotics can improve the health of people with specific disorders. So far it has been suggested there could be benefits for those with irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory diseases of the intestines. They may also improve allergies in babies and the health of people with weak immune systems. But Prof Spector says that while studies on the effect of probiotics on animals in the lab are convincing, research on humans is still lacking. The very sick, the very young and the very old are mostly likely to benefit from probiotics if their guts are weakened, but as yet there is little evidence they do much for a healthy person. Instead, the key may be to focus on prebiotics, which feed the beneficial bacteria in our guts, nurturing them and helping them to grow. This is an area Dr Gemma Walton, a gut microbiologist from Reading University, has been investigating and she has found encouraging evidence that a prebiotic diet can increase the numbers of good bacteria in the gut. She said mothers' breast milk was a good example of a prebiotic because it supported the growth of health-promoting bacteria. Bananas are another prebiotic, but Dr Walton says: "You would need to eat 10 bananas a day to get enough of the compound. " Onions, asparagus, chicory and garlic act as prebiotics too. Sauerkraut (cabbage), yoghurt, kimchi and miso soup are just some of the fermented food products which contain the live microbes needed to keep the good bacteria alive for longer. However, Dr Walton says it is difficult to know which fermented foods will hit the spot. "All foods have a different mix of bacteria which means some will be more beneficial than others," she says, before adding that bacterial ingredients in food products were often unclear. There are trillions of bacteria living in our guts and on our bodies - more than 10 times the number of body cells in one individual. "If we can help to get more fibres down there in the gut then it's a good thing," she adds. The answer to all this may be found in British Gut Project , which is analysing the gut bacteria of 2,000 people. The aim is to find out which species of bacteria exist in the gut and which groups in the population have the most species in their bodies. Ultimately, researchers will be able to answer the question of whether there is such a thing as a perfectly healthy gut - and what feeds it. The plan is then to compare national gut bacteria to find out which country has the healthiest diet. Asian diets, which have a tradition of fermented foods, appear to lead to better gut health in countries such as China, Japan and Korea, where bowel diseases are less common. So it would be no surprise if Western diets, which are dominated by sugar and processed food, are in need of more probiotics to top up the gut's bacterial swamp. In the meantime, Prof Spector suggests eating a variety of things you like. "A bit of fruit and natural yoghurt for breakfast perhaps, try kefir, sauerkraut, miso soup, kimchi... " he says. "Diversity is the key. "

2016-03-13 08:27 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

76 Two men 'seriously injured' at Belvoir Hunt, says charity An animal welfare charity says two of its staff were seriously injured while monitoring Leicestershire's Belvoir Hunt. Police said they were called to land off Toft's Lane, Stathern, at about 15:50 GMT and two men had been arrested on suspicion of assault. The League Against Cruel Sports said two staff members were attacked by a group of men, some of whom had been on quad bikes and wearing masks. The injured men are in hospital. Darryl Cunnington, a former policeman with the Leicestershire force, sustained neck and leg injuries and his colleague Roger Swaine suffered from severe bleeding. Their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening. Eduardo Goncalves, chief executive for the League Against Cruel Sports, said its staff monitor the activities of hunts and record evidence if the law is broken. A Leicestershire Police spokesman said inquiries were ongoing to work out the exact circumstances surrounding the incident.

2016-03-13 08:27 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

77 Crazy for Cortinas: The 80s cars targeted by thieves They were the cars in every driveway, as symbolic of the 1980s as big hair, yuppies and Duran Duran. But now the once ubiquitous Cortinas, Escorts and Novas are sought after. So much so that they are increasingly being targeted by organised criminals. It is big business - a couple of vinyl seat covers for a Cortina can sell for £300, while an Escort door can go for £500. Other than retro-fitting alarms and immobilisers, demand is such that there is little owners can do to protect their vehicles. Classic car collector and motorway police officer Alan Colman goes as far as to compare the spare parts industry to the drugs trade. "You need parts for a restoration and get them from an internet auction site," he says. "You pick them up from an 'Aladdin's cave' of rare parts at good prices. "You think it's downright dodgy and the seller is cagey about the origins of those parts. What do you do? After all, it could be your parts they are selling one day. "Just like the drugs market, if the supply of buyers dries up then the thefts diminish. " Dave Bailey, a spare parts dealer from Gloucestershire, said he buys cars at auction whole and breaks them himself to sell on, "easily tripling" his profit. But he admitted there are some people in the trade who turn a blind eye to where their parts come from, and it is that willingness to "sort of wink at jacked goods" which fuels the black market. Is there a solution to the problem? Mr Bailey thinks not. "It's second-hand car parts. There's no registry or anything like that. It's up to the buyer - if you think it's dodgy, it probably is. But you don't have to buy it. "And of course there's a risk to the seller - I've known lads fined or even jailed for selling parts they've got by unconventional means, if you know what I'm saying. " The victims of the black market are people like Martin Isitt. His pride and joy, a red Mk5 Cortina Crusader was taken from the driveway outside his home in Chatham, Kent, on New Year's Eve. "It's like I lost a part of me," said Mr Isitt, who had spent the past three years working on it. The car, which had no battery and was missing bumpers and a Ford badge, was reportedly seen on the back of a pick-up truck. Bob and Tracy Tobin were similarly distraught when their Cortina disappeared from outside their home in Kent. Mr Tobin rescued the car 30 years ago after hearing a friend was planning to send it to a scrapyard. Mrs Tobin said her husband was "absolutely devastated" at the theft. If going to the effort of arranging a truck to steal a car sounds extreme, it is nothing out of the ordinary, according to Neil Armstrong who runs Oldskool Fords - a group dedicated to publicising the theft of, and finding, stolen Fords from the 1970s and 80s. The models only fetched a few hundred pounds as recently as a decade ago but are increasingly popular with thieves. When Mr Armstrong set up the group in 2008, just 15 thefts were reported to him. Last year there were 34. Thieves are going to increasingly extreme lengths to steal the cars. A Mk1 Ford Escort Mexico was taken from a garage in south London in 2008 after thieves removed tiles from a garage roof, cut the roofing felt, dropped someone inside who removed the steering lock from the car and opened the garage door. A recent government report found that, although newer cars make up a far higher proportion of stolen vehicles than older cars, vehicles made in the 1980s were still proportionally more likely to be stolen. "I've heard theories they might be being stolen for banger racing or parts, but I suspect it's all about the resale value," says Dr Ken German, a former police officer and rally driver. "Enthusiasts and collectors will pay thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of pounds, for a nice example. " One attraction of targeting 1970s and 80s cars is their lack of sophisticated security. "No cars had alarms or immobilisers back then, unless they were fitted after-market. So they are easy to steal by anyone with a coat-hanger and a screwdriver," says Tom Bell, owner of a Mk2 Golf. Perhaps most importantly, however, these cars evoke a nostalgia for the earliest "hot hatches", which allowed speed freaks to go from 0 to 60 in 12 seconds without the expense of buying a sports car. Now, the children of the 1980s have grown up and can recreate their - or their dad's - youth with their own Cortina or early Golf. The cars are fast and fun to drive, relatively economical and easy for amateur mechanics to tinker with. But with a roaring black market spare parts trade, the cars of the 1980s are becoming increasingly rare on the streets, and increasingly popular on the car thief's to-do list.

2016-03-13 08:27 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

78 Newspaper headlines: Obama backing, Queen's independence and Maro Itoje The EU referendum debate is back on the front pages, with Barack Obama and the Queen featuring prominently. The Independent on Sunday reports that the US president will fly to London next month and seek to persuade British voters to remain members of the European Union. The Independent says the timing of Mr Obama's intervention is a major coup for the Remain campaign - but those in the Leave camp are furious at the prospect of him swaying those undecided. The paper continues: "A Number 10 source confirmed that Mr Obama will make his intervention and visit the UK as an extra leg of a trip to Germany next month. "Rumours have circulated for months that Mr Obama, who is considered the greatest electoral campaigner of his generation after becoming the first black person to win the White House in 2008, would intervene on the EU vote. " The Independent says a visit would also help patch up relations with David Cameron after perceived criticism of UK policy following the 2011 intervention in Libya. The Independent states: "In an interview last week, the US president accused the prime minister of having been 'distracted', appearing to suggest that Mr Cameron had not done enough to help oversee Libya's transition to a stable government. "The president's advisers have since insisted he did not mean to be critical. " The Sunday Times reports that courtiers have stepped in to prevent the Queen being used as a "political football" during the EU referendum campaign. It comes after the Sun claimed the monarch supported the UK leaving the European Union - Buckingham Palace insists the Queen is politically neutral. The Sunday Times says Buckingham Palace officials conceded that the Queen had been damaged by being "sucked into the partisan squabbling" over Britain's future, amid growing fears in royal circles that she has become politicised. Courtiers have acknowledged that not enough has been done to ensure the Queen is above politics during the "increasingly toxic battles" between David Cameron and anti-European Tories, the paper continues. "In a shot across the bows of ministers - who have used the Queen to promote the government's position on Scottish independence and the EU - a senior figure close to the Palace signalled last night that the royal household would resist any further efforts to drag her into politics," it says. "The Palace will continue to fight a claim by the Sun newspaper that the Queen 'backs Brexit'. But officials have conceded that publicity about her private views on Europe is the consequence of the politicisation of the royals. " The paper says the intervention came as Justice Secretary Michael Gove apparently outed himself as one of the Sun's sources. As political editor Tim Shipman puts it: "From the moment the Sun dropped on doormats on Wednesday morning, Buckingham Palace and Downing Street have been in damage limitation mode. " The Sunday Telegraph says the Leave campaign "suffered a blow" when Mr Gove fuelled speculation that he was responsible for reports in the Sun that the Queen wanted to leave the EU. The Mail on Sunday goes even further , saying Mr Gove was fighting for his political life after he appeared to confess leaking the Queen's comments about the EU. Sunday Telegraph senior political correspondent Tim Ross interviews John Longworth, who quit as head of the British Chambers of Commerce after backing the Out campaign. The paper says : "The business leader John Longworth warned that voters 'cannot trust the government' to tell them the truth about Europe. "David Cameron's aides are conspiring with other EU countries to persuade the public to stay in the Brussels club, he said. "Mr Longworth warned that Downing Street's determination to close down debate over Europe 'carried a whiff of the dark side'. " The Sunday Telegraph says he spoke out as International Development Secretary Justine Greening in an interview with the paper attacked claims that the government was trying to scare voters into staying in the EU with misleading and exaggerated warnings of the consequences of Brexit. The paper says she demanded that Leave campaigners detail the trade deals the UK will have if the country votes to leave the EU. Away from the EU referendum - or maybe not in some commentators' eyes - Wednesday's Budget gets plenty of attention. In an editorial, the Sunday Times urges George Osborne to deliver a Budget for Britain, not just himself . "Mr Osborne will be treading on eggshells this week for fear of doing anything that would upset the chances of a Remain vote in the 23 June European Union referendum," it says. "Staying in the EU is key to his own political ambitions - always near the top of the list of considerations for this most political of chancellors. " Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer writes that the chancellor has no room to make any mistakes - because of the politics of both the EU referendum and the Tory succession. The Independent says Mr Osborne's agenda is to present himself in the most prime ministerial light, do down his rival Boris Johnson, and win the EU referendum. Finally, the Sunday Times profiles England rugby star Maro Itoje after his man-of-the-match performance in the win over Wales at Twickenham in the Six Nations. "Born in Camden, north London, to parents Efe and Florence, he is not the typical cauliflower- eared player," it says. "With film-star looks and a strong Christian upbringing, he reads politics as well as opposition moves while studying for a degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. "His 6ft 5in and 18-stone physique is offset by a fondness for writing poetry as well as listening to gangster rap. " The paper says the former Harrow schoolboy is already being called Super Maro.

2016-03-13 08:27 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

79 Weekend Edition: The week's best reads A collection of some of the best features from the BBC News website this week, with an injection of your comments. "A must read for anyone who has kids," posted Ian Probert. "I heard my name being called - and the next thing I knew I was in a car with this man, and immediately I feared for my life," writes Alicia Kozakiewicz, who was kidnapped a the age of 13 by someone she had been chatting to online. "He was grabbing my hand so tightly that I thought it was broken and he was barking commands at me... I started to accept my own death. I drifted into a dazed sort of state. " Kidnapped by a paedophile I met online "Lovely piece on the death of Pacer trains. I will miss them rattling into Newcastle station," tweeted Sebastian Payne. In the 1980s, they were intended as a temporary stopgap to make up for a shortage of rolling stock, with a maximum lifespan of 20 years. Yet three decades later more than 200 diesel-powered Pacer carriages are still in use. To the uninitiated, they are effectively vehicles made from the body of a bus on the wheels of a train. The train that the UK has struggled to get rid of "Almost everything you need to know! " tweeted Belfast Child. Five years after the Syrian civil war began, the BBC's Jim Muir charts in forensic detail the rise of so-called Islamic State and how it become a byword for terror. "At the beginning, they behaved well," says Abu Anis , who only realised something unusual was happening when he heard the sound of explosions coming from the old city on the western bank of the Tigris as it runs through Mosul. Islamic State group: The full story "They just seem wrong and very dated don't they? " commented Arthur Watkiss. In 2014, just 1% of new builds in the UK were bungalows. In 1996, it was 7%. The declining number of bungalows has been brought about by a number of pressures, namely financial. "You get far more value from a two or three-storey building than you could get from a bungalow," says one property expert. Why has Britain stopped building bungalows? "Both heart breaking and inspirational," commented Anon about one of our videos in the #SaudisOnSocial series. Three quarters of the Saudi population is under the age of 30. It's perhaps not surprising that people there adore social media and keen "early adopters" of new platforms. Saudis on Social: Faith, Freedom and Fun What I wish I'd told my father about diabetes - The Times 12 Things About Being A Woman That Women Won't Tell You - Esquire The Man Behind the Salacious @CourtNewsUK Twitter Account - Vice An influential theory in psychology may have just been debunked - Slate Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

2016-03-13 08:27 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

80 10 things we didn't know last week 1. People played with a fifth suit of cards in the 1930s. Find out more (Shortlist) 2. Silencers only quieten gunshots to the level of a pneumatic drill and are rarely used in murders. Find out more (Reuters) 3. A new species of spider that eats toads and fish has been discovered - and named Brian. Find out more (Mashable) 4. Four in five US army recruits have a close relative in uniform. Find out more (Time) 5. Homeless residents lived in army tents after the Great Fire of London. Find out more (The Guardian) 6. The Northern Lights cause a headache for people drilling for oil in the Arctic. Find out more (Gizmodo) 7. Children as young as 12 can get married in the US state of Virginia. Find out more (wtop) 8. The perfect time to break wind in front of a partner is between two and six months into the relationship. Find out more (The Debrief) 9. Your phone's wi-fi may be giving away where you walk. Find out more (Daily Mail) 10. Perfect invisibility cloaks may actually be physically impossible. Find out more (Gizmodo) Seen a thing? Tell the Magazine on Twitter using the hashtag #thingididntknowlastweek Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

81 US election 2016: What Trump says about protesters at his rallies The US Republican presidential front-runner, Donald Trump, has cancelled a rally in Chicago because of angry protests at the venue. It is not the first time that things have turned nasty at a Trump campaign event. When asked about it at a debate on Thursday, Mr Trump blamed unruly protesters for the violence. Speaking after Friday night's scuffles, his rival for the nomination, Ted Cruz, said Mr Trump was responsible. "When you have a campaign that affirmatively encourages violence... you create an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discourse," the Texas senator said. Here are some of the most recent incidents - and how Mr Trump has responded. What happened: Fighting broke out between Trump supporters and protesters at the venue before Mr Trump was due to speak. The campaign decided to postpone the event, and there were more scuffles. What Mr Trump said: Mr Trump told MSNBC that he cancelled the rally because he "didn't want to see anybody get hurt". He later told CNN that he had no regrets about his rallies, describing the protesters as "bad dudes". "They were rough, tough guys," he added. What happened: Protesters repeatedly interrupted Mr Trump's speech at a rally in Missouri. More than 30 people were arrested. What Mr Trump said: "They're allowed to get up and interrupt us horribly and we have to be very, very gentle. They can swing, they can hit people but if we hit them back it's a terrible, terrible thing. " What happened: Video footage from a rally showed a Trump supporter punching a black protester in the face as he was led away. A 78-year-old man has been charged with assault. What Mr Trump said: "Uh oh, so early. So early. Alright, get him out, thank you. We're gonna have such fun, such fun tonight," Mr Trump said from the podium, though he is unlikely to have seen the punch thrown. Later in the same speech he said of protesters: "They put their hand up and they put the wrong finger in the air... and they get away with murder. Because we've become weak. " What happened: Mr Trump reportedly encouraged people at the rally in Warren to get rid of a protester who had interrupted him. What Mr Trump said: "Get him out. Try not to hurt him. If you do I'll defend you in court," the contender said, according to CBS. What happened: A protester was escorted out of a Trump rally on the eve of the Nevada caucuses while the billionaire was addressing the crowds. What Mr Trump said: "I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you," Mr Trump said. "You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in in a place like this? " Mr Trump asked. "They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. " What happened: Mr Trump had apparently been warned by his security staff that there could be someone in the audience with tomatoes. What Mr Trump said: ""If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? " Mr Trump told his supporters at the rally. "I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. " What happened: A Black Lives Matter protester who disrupted a Trump speech at a rally was assaulted by a group of white Trump supporters. The protester also claimed that the assailants used the N-word. What Mr Trump said: While his campaign was quick to condemn the violence, Mr Trump told Fox News that the protester was obnoxious and loud, adding: "Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. "

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

82 MLive swim finals coverage: Brother Rice, Dexter, Cranbrook-Kingswood are team champs Dexter and two Bloomfield Hills teams - Brother Rice and Cranbrook-Kingswood - are the 2016 boys swimming state champions. The state finals action is over in three pools around Michigan, and there are dozens of new 2016 individual champions, too. Here are pictures and information on every individual champion: Here is a complete guide to MLive's championship coverage: DIVISION 1 Holland Aquatics Center Champ: Brother Rice | Box Score | Recap | Photo Gallery | Champs Slideshow DIVISION 2 Saginaw Valley State University Champ: Dexter | Box Score | Recap | Photo Gallery | Champs Slideshow DIVISION 3 Eastern Michigan University Champ: Cranbrook-Kingswood | Box Score | Recap | Photo Gallery | Champs Slideshow Division 1 Scoreboard Division 2 Scoreboard Division 3 Scoreboard See More Sports News »

2016-03-12 23:33 Alexander Sinn highschoolsports.mlive.com

83 'Rare' light pillars spotted in sky over Rhigos mountain An experienced astronomer says he has caught on camera the "very rare" sight of light pillars in the night sky above south Wales. The phenomenon, caused by atmospheric ice crystals reflecting light, was captured by Allan Trow above Rhigos mountain, Rhondda Cynon Taff. He said light pillars were more common in polar regions. Mr Trow, who has been stargazing for 20 years, said the sighting on Friday night was "spectacular". The director of astronomy education company Dark Sky Wales was on the mountain near Treherbert with two other experienced astronomers and a group of amateur stargazers when the bright lights appeared at about 21:50 GMT. He said they lasted at least 90 seconds, long enough for the astronomers to take a number of photographs . "Between the three astronomers there, we have 80 years experience but it was the first time we had seen anything like it," said Mr Trow. "We immediately went onto Facebook and Twitter and consulted with our astronomy friends to see what they could be. We discounted ideas such as as aurora and a meteor. But the conditions were right for light pillars. "We were astonished. I've seen pictures of them from Scandinavia and Alaska but nothing from the UK. " He said his fellow astronomers believed the light reflected in the light pillars - which were visible to the naked eye - could have come from the Port Talbot steelworks which are just over the other side of the mountain. The phenomenon comes in the same week stargazers across Wales saw the Aurora Borealis - better known as the Northern Lights.

2016-03-13 05:35 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

84 Mumbai Diary: Sunday Dossier A bar with a view We felt we’d walked into a science lab when we entered Zorawar Kalra’s soon to open MasalaBar, sitting pretty at Carter Road, offering a stunning view of the Arabian Sea. From test tubes, cylindrical flasks and glass pipes bubbling with a variety of foam-ey liquids, the bar takes a leaf out of the brand’s progressive cuisine concept. MasalaBar’s Zorawar Kalra excited about the opening of his progressive lab-like restaurant. Pic/Sayed Sameer Abedi On offer are cool and quirky concoctions like Bollywood Bhaang (lipsmacking vodka-infused thandai) and An Evening In Chowpatty (coconut fizz and vodka) along with small plates featuring everything from Calamari rings to paneer tikka, and even mushroom bruschetta, a fungi mash served on wafer thin phyllo pastry. “It’s the only bar in the country that’s lit solely with candles. There’s not a single bulb here,” says Kalra, and that’s when we look up at the ceiling to verify his statement because until then, we were too busy staring at the sunset through windows fitted with magnifying glasses (the magic of the Basrai brothers). Sip, swirl and swallow It seems wine can bring people together. And what better way to showcase this than a new programme that gets 11 leading wineries under one roof. The aim of Wines of India is to promote a wine as a culture rather than a brand. “The quality of Indian wines has grown tremendously over the years. In fact, Maharashtra and Karnataka are the leading producers of world class high-quality grapes,” says sommelier Nikhil Agarwal who has been appointed as director of the programme. The challenge right now, he says, is to change consumer perception that all imported wine is better than Indian wine and to get a predominantly spirit and beer drinking population to try wine. Keeping this in mind, several tasting events, promotions at restaurants and festivals are being chalked out to expose customers to the varieties of wines available to us. Cheers to that. Of a love that is unconditional Pakistani troupe Siege The Band’s new single, Ki Kariye is all about propagating love that is not based on how a person looks. The band recently released their single, produced by Culture Machine, on their “Being Indian” channel. It’s about a boy who loves and supports his girlfriend even after she is a survivor of an acid attack. “I used to have a crush on this girl in school and always wanted to write a song for her,” says lead vocalist Junaid Younus, “But I have also been working with an NGO in Pakistan that works with acid victims. It’s such a rampant practice in India and Pakistan and we wanted to address it.” He also feels that the song could work as a tool to unite the two countries. “I live in Lahore, and I am barely 15 minutes away from the border. We are the same people. And music could be a way to connect.” Well said. Creatives meet governments While Only Much Louder (OML) had its share of fallouts last year (the Mumbai police revoked permissions for its Seinfeld show; AIB’s roast got pulled up), there is no stopping founder Vijay Nair. As secretary of licensing and policies of Event and Entertainment Management Association (EEMA), Nair has found a kindred spirit in Delhi’s CM Arvind Kejriwal. The duo, and other associates, are working closely to put up the Delhi Arts Festival, and will also initiate the Delhi Creative Industry Corporation in a month. Nair is working with the Maharashtra Government too to bring about a “one-window system” for licensing of events, hoping it will be ready in three months. Hopefully, creatives, not restricted to Bollywood, will have an easier time after this. And perhaps, OML as well? Gayle and his six machine We wonder whether Jamaican blaster Chris Gayle is a James Brown fan. Or more precisely, whether he has a copy of the Godfather of Soul’s 1970 album, Sex Machine. Nevertheless, Gayle has decided to call his new book Six Machine. The subtitle is ‘I Don’t Like Cricket... I Love It’. Penguin Random House, the publisher of Gayle’s memoirs, says he is well followed on Twitter and Instagram, but, “do we really know him? Do we know what took a shy, skinny kid from a tin- roofed shack in the back streets of Kingston, stealing empty bottles to buy food, to the top of the cricket world? This is a story not just of sporting genius but of battling prejudice; of coming from nothing to everything and yet not losing yourself along the way.” But we also want to know what made him flirt with television reporter Mel McLaughlin during the Big Bash last January. We’ll wait and see if that gets touched on in detail. Hopefully, the book will also be insightful like the last one by a Jamaican cricket great — Michael Holding’s No Holding Back in 2010. Come June and we’ll know. Meanwhile, you’ll see more of Mr Cool during next month’s Indian Premier League.

2016-03-13 09:21 By Team www.mid-day.com

85 Commons Confidential: Bipartisan tandoori George Osborne has failed. Now it's up to Labour to set out the alternative Tribune , the best-known group in Labour history, is to be revived by MPs. The party isn’t short of talking shops – off the top of my I head, I can name the Socialist Campaign Group, Progress, Red Shift, Renewal, Compass, Blue Labour, Common Good, Labour First, Labour Together, plus Momentum. Tribune faded away in the 1990s and comrades intend its resuscitation to be a bridge across a fissiparous left. The former London cabbie Clive Efford, the MP for Eltham, is hoping that this resurrection will be more successful than his attempt 11 years ago, crushed by the party whips. At least that’s an act beyond the current leader. Labour’s band of former miners and pit village MPs was surprised to see Nick Boles speak at a reception for the Coalfields Regeneration Trust. The first Conservative minister to attend in six years, Boles explained that it was wiser to accept than decline an invitation from the gathering’s host. “Unlike the leader of the opposition,” said Boles, “I know not to get on the wrong side of Michael Dugher. That’s why when he wants something, it’s best to do it.” Blushing Corbynistas stared at their pit boots. The Sun didn’t hold back in describing the oleaginous Matthew Hancock as “George Osborne’s lickspittle”, before declaring: “How ironic that a man who named his cat after the Chancellor is himself merely Osborne’s dim but obedient pet.” This vituperative blast was payback from Tony Gallagher, the Sun ’s editor, who blames him for rumours, revealed in this column, that the Tories went over his head to dampen last year’s coverage criticising tax credits cuts. Jeremy Corbyn (thrice), Emily Thornberry, Eric Pickles, Ann Widdecombe, Mary Creagh and Frank Dobson are among the smiling faces on the menu of the Red Rose Tandoori on Holloway Road in north London. The camera-brash Keith Vaz, who would turn up at the opening of a milk carton for a photo opportunity, will be furious. He isn’t included. David Munro is a fast operator. The Tory councillor in Jeremy Hunt’s backyard hopes to be Surrey’s next police and crime commissioner. Caught speeding in a 30mph zone, Munro said after completing a speed awareness programme: “I found the course to be exceptionally informative and useful.” Surely the cruellest punishment would be for him to get hired for the post. The Parliamentary Press Gallery could be reduced during the refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster. A Tory involved in discussions complained that it’s full for Prime Minister’s Questions only and that tickets for this “waste of space” should be sold to tourists to finance the renovation. What price democracy? The papers today are full of stories of George Osborne, after six years at the helm, having to deal with the consequences of his own failures on the economy. The FT reports show he faces an £18bn black hole in his public finances plans. The official size of the UK economy last year was one per cent smaller than predicted by the OBR in November. Debt as a percentage of GDP has gone up from 62 per cent to 80 per cent under his watch. The shortfall in tax receipts is now set to deal another blow to the Chancellor’s plans to see a surplus by the end of this Parliament. Yet again there are rumours of cuts for the most vulnerable. Support for over 600,000 with disabilities is set to be cut by over £1bn – threatening the very independence of living that the Chancellor might suggest he stands for. Osborne’s failure on the economy – on his own growth and deficit targets, on weaknesses in our productivity, the fall in our ranking by the World Economic Forum on the quality of our infrastructure – set the context for the new fiscal credibility rule that John McDonnell has announced this week. A huge question for Labour to address is our economic credibility. Political parties need to continue to earn the trust of the public on our taxes and with the management of the economy. Excessive government borrowing hurts us all. We cannot pretend that there is a magic money tree or that someone else will always foot the bill. And every penny misspent by government is a penny wasted. Fiscal responsibility is in the best traditions of Labour. It is in the tradition of the friendly societies and the early co-operatives. Our focus on entrepreneurship and support for business – just look at Chuka Umunna’s success in bringing Small Business Saturday to the UK – is clear. Labour has always been the party of the real wealth creators – the clue is in the name. We need to get back to being a party that is seen to focus on how we earn, not just how we spend. Nor has George Osborne learned the lessons of the global financial crisis. Yes, it happened on our watch, but it was a global financial crisis, not just a British one. The primary cause was reckless lending by banks particularly in America. The Conservatives had wanted less financial regulation than Labour before the crisis, but appeared to share the post-crisis cross-party consensus that lack of regulation needed a strong and coordinated policy response. We led moves to tighten up the rules. Yet light-touch regulation is exactly what Osborne is going back to, unwinding controls put in place since the crisis. This week we saw that business investment is slowing. But Osborne’s poorly-designed “fiscal charter” ties the government’s hands from investing in the vital infrastructure, like rail and high- speed broadband, that we need to secure our future prosperity. International research shows that fewer trains are running on time, more trains in rush hour are overcrowded and the number of local buses has fallen by 2.5 per cent since 2010. Osborne’s charter was rightly criticised in October for four key reasons. It was seen as a politically motivated target that will join his list of fiscal targets that have come and gone. It left the government inflexible to changing economic circumstances. It was set to see households, consumers and business borrowing more to bring balance to the economy – with official data showing this to now be true. And it reduced the room to allow for capital investment. Labour’s proposed new fiscal credibility rule addresses those concerns head on. It’s part of showing there is an alternative to George Osborne and his short term politics which are bringing a long term cost to us all. When a growing coalition of the IMF, the OECD, the G20, the CBI, the TUC and business leaders from all sectors are insisting governments must invest, for Osborne to be planning to reduce government investment as a share of GDP is irresponsible. Our challenge, however, is to ensure we have a better rule that will allow government to invest wisely and effectively, but maintain the iron discipline needed to bring down the debt and eliminate the deficit. The new fiscal credibility rule has been developed in consultation with world-leading economists, both from Labour’s Economic Advisory Council, and outside. It has four key points. First, Labour in government will eliminate the deficit on current spending over a five year target period. Current spending is day-to-day spending by government on things like wages and heating costs. There is no economic case for maintaining a persistent and large deficit on current spending. You wouldn’t pay your rent on your credit card, and neither should the government. Second, we are reinforcing this strict rule with an absolute commitment to seeing the government’s debt burden fall by the end of each Parliament. Third, we are proposing to put the OBR entirely outside of any possible ministerial influence, and change its mandate to report directly to parliament, with a duty to blow the whistle on any government breaching the rules. We have to make sure that our decisions are transparent and accountable, and always will be. Finally, we have recognised how the economic landscape has shifted since 2008. Economists and central bankers across the world now recognise that the kind of monetary policy framework we had before the global financial crisis is not meeting the demands from the unprecedented macroeconomic circumstances we are in. The last part of the fiscal credibility rule recognises that when conventional monetary policy is no longer able to provide effective levers for necessary stimulus, that we need the option of fiscal policy working alongside it. We are proposing that Bank of England’s monetary policy committee would have decision-making powers on when the limits of conventional monetary policy have been reached, just as they now independently decide on interest rates. Our fiscal credibility rule is the first, important, step back to earning the public’s trust with the nation’s finances. It is backed by experts including Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, who said it is “a credible and sensible one for managing the nation’s finances responsibly, whilst supporting sustainable economic growth.” We have many more steps to take. But with Osborne’s failed plans leaving us more exposed to a slowing and uncertain world economy we have a responsibility now to take them. newstatesman.com newstatesman.com 2016-03-13 07:49 Simon Heffer www.newstatesman.com

86 Budget 2016: Osborne 'planning' rise in insurance tax Millions of households could face an increase in insurance costs, following a warning that the chancellor may target premiums in next week's Budget. The insurance industry has claimed that George Osborne is planning another increase in Insurance Premium Tax (IPT). The tax was raised from 6% to 9.5% in November 2015. The Treasury said it would not comment on speculation about the Budget, which takes place on Wednesday. The AA said that a further increase, to 12.5%, would mean that the tax could be doubled in less than six months. Such a rise would add £37 a year to the average car insurance premium, it said. IPT is charged on motor, home, pet and medical insurance, as well as car breakdown cover. Travel insurance, and insurance on some electrical products, attracts the higher rate of 20%. Edmund King, the president of the AA, said it was ridiculous that the insurance industry might be singled out. "Treasury minister Harriett Baldwin MP told us in a letter, 'IPT is not a tax on consumers but on insurance companies,' which is like saying fuel duty is not a tax on drivers but on petrol stations," he said. The British Insurance Brokers' Association (Biba) said a rise in IPT would discourage customers from taking out policies. The cost of motor policies rose more than 20% last year, according to the AA - partly as a result of November's rise in IPT. However, many premiums have fallen over the longer term, making the tax a relatively easy target for the chancellor. An increase in IPT could raise as much as £1.3bn for the Treasury in the first year. George Osborne has already rejected plans to scale back tax relief on pension contributions - a change that could have netted the government up to £7bn a year. Another alternative - raising fuel duty - has proved unpopular with some Tory MPs.

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

87 UK Eurovision hopefuls Joe And Jake sign record deal Joe And Jake, the duo representing the UK at this year's Eurovision Song Contest, have signed a record deal. Sony Music Entertainment UK will now put out future releases from the pair - whose full names are Joe Woolford and Jake Shakeshaft. The duo's single You're Not Alone won the public vote on the BBC's Eurovision: You Decide show last month. They will now perform the single at the grand final of the contest in Sweden in May. Sony Music Commercial Group managing director Phil Savill said: "Joe and Jake are a fantastically talented pair of artists and You're Not Alone is an outstanding song. "We are delighted to be working with the guys on making this year's UK Eurovision entry a huge international hit and launching the careers of this amazing act" Joe And Jake said: "We are so excited to be signed by Sony. This whole experience has been a dream come true and we cannot wait to hit the stage at Eurovision. The singers met after auditioning separately for BBC One's The Voice UK, both passing the blind auditions stage and being mentored by Rita Ora and Will.i.am. Shakeshaft reached the battle rounds while Woolford made it to the live shows, the final stage of the contest. "We were good friends on The Voice but once it was over we spent more time together and started working together a lot more," Shakeshaft told BBC Newsbeat last month. The pair started recording music as a duo and recorded You're Not Alone, which went on to beat five other songs in a public vote to become the UK's entry at the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 .

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

88 Can mindfulness improve pupils' concentration? Mindfulness is a psychological technique which is said to help combat stress. But should it be widely introduced in schools? The practice of mindfulness - which draws on Buddhist thinking - has become increasingly popular in recent years. There have been calls for brain-training techniques, using breathing to achieve mental clarity, to be introduced in schools. In October, the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group said the practice should be made more widely available and recommended the Department for Education designate three schools to "pioneer mindfulness teaching and disseminate best practice". Political author and former head of Wellington College Anthony Seldon has called for daily "stillness sessions" in schools, saying a decline in traditional religious assemblies has left pupils with little space for reflection in the school day. So can mindfulness meditation really help pupils concentrate amid the distractions of 21st Century living? A group of BBC School Reporters from Connaught School for Girls in Leytonstone, east London, decided to investigate for the project's 10th annual News Day. Hannah, 14, says students wanted to establish whether mindfulness meditation could help. "We wanted to find out how it could be beneficial for our GCSEs and help us in situations where we might be very stressed. " According to the Mindfulness in School Project , which has developed curriculums for use in schools, the technique can aid concentration by helping children direct their attention to the present moment - rather than becoming overwhelmed with worry about what has happened, or might happen. "Passing these skills on to children helps them cope positively and calmly with what life throws at them," says project director Claire Kelly. Determined to test it for themselves, the children signed up 22 volunteers. Ten practised five minutes of mindfulness meditation every day for a fortnight, while another 10 formed a control group with no meditation (the other two dropped out during the experiment). The children found an online concentration test to use as part of the experiment, which involved memorising sequences of flashing lights. Each participant took the test at the beginning and end of the two-week experiment. Having completed the concentration test, the pupils invited yoga and mindfulness teacher Julie Berentsen to the school to help students in the meditation group practice a form of mindfulness. Berentsen showed the students how to concentrate on their breath as they counted from one to 10, then one to 10 again, and so on for five minutes. At the end of the two week experiment, the results were positive. Those who had taken part in mindfulness meditation successfully completed the concentration task an average of 2.15 times more than before, while the results of the control group improved by just 0.69 times. But while the girls' survey produced seemingly positive results, the use of mindfulness in schools is not without its critics. Andre Tomlin, who assesses health research for his blog the Mental Elf , says there is very little evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness in schools. So what does he make of the children's conclusion that mindfulness did improve their concentration? Tomlin says: "If this investigation is done outside of the trustworthy boundaries of a well conducted randomised controlled trial, then we cannot rely on what they find and report. "There are all kinds of factors that could be in play for concentration to improve. It could be the placebo effect, ie children improving because they have been told they are going to be given something that will improve their concentration. " While the students generally felt their concentration was better, the meditation did seem to make pupils tired, as noted by 14-year-old Iza, who says it made her "a bit too relaxed". "When you meditate, you don't have any thoughts in your head and when you finish there's this burst of thought coming in and I felt really tired throughout the day. " It is the possibility of negative effects like this that are a further cause of concern for critics like Tomlin. "It's also important to highlight the issue of safety," he says. "How can we be sure that mindfulness is not causing harm to children? "Any intervention that is powerful enough to have a positive impact is also powerful enough to cause harm. This is an issue that is too often overlooked with psychosocial interventions, with only half of research studies measuring and reporting on adverse effects compared with 100% of drug trials. " But whatever doubts there may be, the teachers who helped the girls with their project are keen to start up a school meditation club. The group also plans to ask their head teacher if mindfulness meditation can be incorporated into the wider school day. Meanwhile the Department for Education, while noting the recommendations of the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group, says it has no plans to make mindfulness compulsory in schools in England, saying it trusts head teachers to implement their own policy around these issues. To read more reports from School Reporters and to follow News Day live, visit the School Report website. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

89 The Returning Officer: Hemel Hempstead II Margaret Irene Corbett Ashby was the Liberal candidate in 1935 and the 1937 by-election, making this seat the first to have had a woman candidate from all three major parties. Ashby stood in Birmingham Ladywood in 1918. She fought Richmond, Surrey, in 1922 and 1923, Watford in 1924 and Hendon in 1929. In 1944, she stood as an Independent Liberal at Bury St Edmunds, breaking the electoral truce. She resigned from the Women’s Liberal Federation in 1907, in protest at the party’s attitude to women’s suffrage, and became secretary of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. In 1909, she ran a competition to find a tune for a new suffrage hymn, an Elgar melody and “Onward, Christian Soldiers” having “proved unsuitable”.

2016-03-13 07:59 Simon Heffer www.newstatesman.com

90 Ranch rage: the welcome return of Thomas Savage’s The Power of the Dog Joanna Walsh’s Vertigo is artful and intelligent – but not wholly successful Let’s just say that the opening paragraph of this novel grabs you by the balls. And no, that is not a lazy metaphor. “Phil always did the castrating,” the book begins. “First he sliced off the cup of the scrotum and tossed it aside; next he forced down first one and then the other testicle, slit the rainbow membrane that enclosed it, tore it out, and tossed it into the fire where the branding irons glowed.” Paying attention, now, are you? But this is not violence for its own sake and it is an image that resonates through the novel. Phil Burbank and his brother, George, run the biggest, most successful ranch in their part of Montana, out in the American West. The story is set in the 20th century but the frontier doesn’t feel very far away. Phil and George’s parents – the Old Gent and the Old Lady, as they are called throughout the book – did very well out of ranching. They are still living but have retired to Salt Lake City (“Brigham Young’s paradise”, as Phil calls the place). Into this wholly masculine setting comes Rose Gordon, the widow of a local doctor who arrived to do good in a place that had not much use for that; his suicide is her shame and the shadow that hangs over her and their quiet, clever son, Peter. The dynamic that arises between Phil, George, Rose and Peter is the engine that drives this ruthless book. A reader might find its style reminiscent of that of Cormac McCarthy, or Annie Proulx – but Savage’s career pre-dates them both. The Power of the Dog was first published in 1967 and is now being re-released by Vintage as a “rediscovered classic”, in much the same manner as John Williams’s Stoner was published a few years ago. However, while Williams’s novel did, for the most part, slip through the net when it first appeared in 1965, The Power of the Dog was a great success in its day. As Annie Proulx writes in an excellent afterword, it was very well reviewed and was optioned for a film no fewer than five times (though none was ever made). Yet no matter: this is the perfect example of a book that never quite made it to the rank of classic in its author’s lifetime but is more than worthy of resurrection now. Suspense pulls the book forward – nearly all of it arising from the hair-raising horror engendered by Phil Burbank. Describing his attributes makes him sound like a fine sort of person, an all- American hero, able to sit a horse or shoot a rifle with the best of them. He is a talented leather worker and a dab hand on the banjo, to boot. Yet Phil is a snake of coiled hatred and bitterness, a character who is so dark that the reader cannot look away from him. Every scene in which he appears has violence, revealed or suppressed, at its core. Idle for a moment in the shade of a willow, he might take out his pocketknife, open the big blade and the small blade, and holding it between thumb and index finger he would toss it to turn over once, twice or three times before it pricked the earth at an angle of exactly forty-five degrees. The point of the knife is in the ground, that’s all, but we recall from the book’s opening where that knife has been and just what it can do. Phil’s dismay at George’s growing affection for Rose comes from more than a desire to keep the family structure that he has known all his life intact. His world is encroached upon from all directions – and, like a threatened snake, he will strike. Savage creates a world in which the new intrudes on the old; bitterness and sorrow do their best to crush any chance of happiness. When the novel was first published, much of the discussion around it centred on “good” and “evil”. In the 21st century, the nature of Phil’s desire and his struggle against it as he feels drawn to Rose’s son can be spoken of openly. But, for Phil, there can be no openness, only violence and rage. All this is set in a landscape that is made visible in plain, clear language. The wind “was never idle in Beech summer or winter”, moving the fin of a broken windmill round and round, “attached to nothing, squeaking, squeaking so painfully that sleep was difficult for the infrequent transients trapped in the town”. Thunderheads roll away across the broad vistas. There is the sight of an abandoned nest of a bird, a few shells left on the ground. Destruction is everywhere, or just held at bay: the shocking turn of the book’s final pages keeps the story bright as a blade to the end. The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage is published by Vintage Classics (282pp, £8.99) “Elegance is a function of failure,” says the narrator of Joanna Walsh’s Vertigo , a collection of short stories all told from the point of view of one character. “There is no need for elegance in success: success itself is enough. But elegance in failure is essential.” Walsh is a sublimely elegant writer. Her interests revolve insistently around failure: failed marriage, unsatisfactory affairs, disappointing parties, travel that ends nowhere. It’s thematically consistent at least that the collection itself is not wholly a success. Much of the problem stems from that solitary narrator. It’s a choice that pays tribute to Katherine Mansfield’s first published story collection, In a German Pension (1911), which Walsh wrote about last year in her non-fiction book Hotel – an odd, intriguing work, part analysis of the cultural import and symbolism of the hotel, part memoir of Walsh’s dissolving marriage and fugue into hotel living. But where in Mansfield’s book a single, semi-autobiographical narrator observes multiple guests during her stay at a boarding house, Walsh’s narrator in Vertigo (who sounds strikingly similar to the autobiographical voice of Hotel ) travels to multiple locations, yet only fully observes what happens inside her own skin. Maybe there is something political in this solipsism. In Hotel , Walsh writes that: “Permeability is a feature of abjection. It is the human made serviceable.” It is a commentary on the way hotel staff discreetly tidy the unseemly mess of their guests’ lives into their pockets, but also on gender and women’s bodies: to be able to accommodate the other inside you, via womb and vagina, is to be marked as a member of the inferior sex class, one of the conscripts to the unrewarding seams of domestic work and emotional drudgery. Walsh is acutely observant of the uneven burdens of household economy. In “Drowning”, the narrator calculates the tax that default caring responsibilities exert on her leisure, mentally addressing her husband: “For you to read your book is not to neglect the children because you know that if you do not pay attention to the children I will [. . .] My choice to read my book necessarily involves the worry of the possibility of neglecting the children.” (She escapes this problem by swimming away from her family, where she can no longer see whether her husband is neglecting or not neglecting their children.) By refusing to care, Walsh’s narrator refuses the feminine obligation to sympathise. She will not give herself over to other people’s feelings, though she might be covetous of what they have experienced that makes them unlike her. Standing in a Paris department store in the first story, “Fin de Collection”, the narrator stares at her fellow shoppers and thinks: “I want to project these women’s looks on to mine and with them all the history that has made these women look like themselves and not like me.” But in the end she buys nothing and leaves, still implacably herself. Other people are inaccessible regions that can be mapped out using careful reasoning, but never totally comprehended. In “Vagues”, the narrator sits at a beach oyster bar with an anxious man whose main attraction to her is that he could facilitate some retaliatory adultery. She tries to deduce her husband’s moves like a chess player: As I know my husband is unlikely to tell the truth about whether he sleeps with the woman or not – though he may choose either to tell me that he has, when he has not, or that he has not, when he has – I have taken the precaution of being here in the oyster restaurant with this man who may wish to sleep with me. The book maintains that flat, precise, repetitious tone throughout. The affectlessness is attractively disarming to start with, then predictable and, by the end, in danger of feeling as tired as the narrator seems to be. At 123 pages, Vertigo does not exceed its welcome, but it does run out of ways to surprise. Where Mansfield’s narrator can extract a library of registers – comic, ironic, tragic – from her fellow guests, Walsh’s has only herself as a resource. The predominant experience of this collection is not vertigo, but claustrophobia (which is also the title of the most domestic of all the stories here). For a woman to turn away from sympathy is a bold way to refuse the inferiority imposed on her, but the closed-off life is an impoverished one for anybody. Vertigo is artful, intelligent – and elegant above all else. Vertigo by Joanna Walsh is published by And Other Stories (123pp, £8.99)

2016-03-13 07:49 Simon Heffer www.newstatesman.com

91 Why the struggles of white working-class children matter – and what can be done I know what you're thinking - but this graphic novel of Proust is a triumph Last Wednesday, the Sutton Trust published its annual report on the educational backgrounds of those who occupy the leading professions in British life. It painted a familiar picture: most lawyers, journalists, military personnel and doctors attended private schools. Social mobility in the UK seems to have come to a halt. A generation ago, we assumed that it was harder for children from the ethnic-minority groups to overcome their socio-economic disadvantages. Now, it is becoming apparent that the group that requires special attention is the white working class. White children on free school meals (FSMs) perform far worse than disadvantaged children from other ethnic groups. Just 28 per cent of white children on FSMs get five good GCSEs, including English and maths, compared with 38 per cent of mixed-race children, 41 per cent of black children and 48 per cent of Asian children. The struggles of white working-class children are not new but their position relative to other poor children is. While the performance of disadvantaged white children has risen modestly in recent years, other ethnic groups have soared. The gap in attainment between black and white students on FSMs has doubled since 2005. The difficulties begin early in life. The attainment gap between five-year-old white children on FSMs and those who are not is higher than for any other ethnic group. The gap only widens as the years go by: there is a bigger difference between how white children who are disadvantaged and those who are better off perform in their GCSEs than children of any other ethnic group. One reason white working-class pupils fare so badly is that they are less likely to grow up in London. Only 10 per cent of poor white Britons go to school in the capital, compared to 45 per cent of poor ethnic-minority children. The capital has benefited from a string of innovations: new academies; Teach First, which sends talented graduates into difficult schools; the London Challenge, which aspired to raise the standard of leadership. As a result, the quality of London’s schools has improved. Tower Hamlets had the worst GCSE results of any local authority in England in 1997. Today, pupils there are almost 10 percentage points more likely to get five good GCSEs than the national average. And yet, too often, those beyond the capital have been ignored. According to the head of Ofsted, Michael Wilshaw, white working-class students are often “invisible” in disadvantaged rural and coastal areas. Some 40 per cent of Teach First recruits are in London. Children in rural areas also suffer because the length of their commute to school can make it harder for them to attend after-school or homework clubs. The lack of drive in white working-class communities compared to that of ethnic minorities might be another problem. “The children of immigrants tend to be more ambitious, more aspirational, and to see a role for education in ‘getting on’,” says Simon Burgess of the University of Bristol. “By contrast, those things are relatively lacking in white British students.” White working-class failure in schools is a microcosm of a deeper problem: the struggles of the white working class in a post-industrial world. “It’s a shithole – run-down and with crap jobs,” a jewellery seller in Stoke-on-Trent, where educational attainment is among the lowest in the country, told me last year. For white, working-class parents and their children, the insecure labour market has “eroded the old optimism that doing well at school was a passport to a decent job and a better life”, says Alan Milburn, the chair of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. Where a child grows up has become a good predictor of their achievement in school, the Social Market Foundation recently found. So, what can be done? Noting how disadvantaged white children perform better in London than elsewhere, Milburn tells me: “Demography need not be destiny.” He advocates a greater emphasis on putting the best teachers in the worst schools and believes that improving employment prospects in struggling areas will benefit school standards. Yet if the educational performance of disadvantaged white children is not rapidly improved, it bodes ill for the future. “The consequences for young people of low educational achievement are now more dramatic than they may have been in the past,” warned an education select committee report in 2014. In a globalised world, the white working class is floundering at school and risks being left behind thereafter. The first response to À la recherche du temps perdu as a graphic novel is an involuntary memory of Monty Python and “the All-England Summarise Proust Competition”. The second memory, summoned mysteriously into life by this extraordinary book, is of the academic attending a musical version of Ulysses in Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers who says: “I have to explain why it can’t be done.” But it can. Here is the narrator, visibly begging for a goodnight kiss from his mother, and here he is in visible ecstasies over the visible hawthorns of Combray – and at this point, the images break out of the standard grid formation of the comic book in the manner of Marvel’s Dr Strange series. These set pieces are the best things in the book. When Swann listens to the little phrase in the Sonate de Vinteuil that moves him, we see a few notes transform the entire world. Here, in such moments scattered throughout the book, is that impossible thing: Proust (almost) without words, Proust reduced to his essence and celebrated in spirals and flourishes of thought made visible. The book is so faithful to the original novel that it sometimes seems to compete with the author in the sphere of neurotic love. Yet it is at its best when it dares to strike out on its own and revel in images unsupported by text. Proust loved complex visual imagery. In the opening section, the narrator’s magic lantern (the sequence is beautifully done here) sets the tone for the lenses and prisms that crop up later and in the text of the complete work. In this graphic version, it is as if the magic lantern is turned the other way, to show us the narrator standing before us without compromise or evasion. This enforced and necessary clarity can feel a little uneasy. There seems to be no escape from the claustrophobic ghastliness of the Verdurins’ salon. My imagined Odette was beguiling; seeing her pictured in frame after frame, I felt with Swann that she wasn’t my type. I am not sure if that has added or subtracted from my understanding of the book. The words sometimes crowd in on the pictures in Stéphane Heuet’s urgent desire to keep faith with the author. The last section, in which the narrator pursues Gilberte in the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, is much more roomy – and much more successful. Show, don’t tell. . . But this adaptation is a triumph. If you have felt intimidated by Proust, seize him now in this accessible form. If you love Proust and have read every word a hundred times, get hold of this book and you will experience the memory of reading him for the first time. It is an equal joy for the emptiest of bluffers and for the truest of lovers: now there’s a thought to start a thousand- word, Proustian, single-sentence paragraph. And this book will take both, by a gloriously circuitous route, back to the original text. Simon Barnes’s most recent book is “The Sacred Combe” (Bloomsbury) In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way – a Graphic Novel by Marcel Proust. Adapted and drawn by Stéphane Heuet. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Published by Gallic Books (224pp, £19.99)

2016-03-13 07:49 Simon Heffer www.newstatesman.com

92 Yahoo - Lexus Revs Up Basketball Fans with New Campaign on Yahoo Sports and Launches Bracket Challenge New campaign promotes the all-new 2016 Lexus GS F timed with the 2016 Men's College Basketball Tournament --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- (NASDAQ:YHOO) announced today that Lexus is a presenting sponsor of Tourney Pick'em and will also launch "GS F The Bracket," a custom Lexus branded game around the 2016 Men's College Basketball Tournament. In addition to Lexus connecting with fans through display, native and video advertising, "GS F The Bracket" asks fans to pick which games will reach a combined 60 points the fastest for an opportunity to win a GS F-inspired luxury vacation. "Working with , we have the opportunity to engage millions of college basketball fans and highlight the Lexus GS F," said , Lexus general manager of consumer and product marketing. "A car that goes 0-60 in 4.5 seconds deserves the spotlight while we give fans a fun and fast way to get into the games this month. " Every year, is the ultimate destination for millions of sports fans during the Men's College Basketball Tournament. As a sponsor of Sports' Tourney Pick'em, Lexus's digital campaign includes display ads driving to "GS F The Bracket" game, pre-roll video ads and branded integrations, and native ad placements targeted to the GS F audience. As part of this, Lexus will be integrated within the "Tourney Bracket Live" show on. "We're helping brands like Lexus connect with the millions of fans that visit every year to create brackets tied to one of their favorite basketball events," said , Chief Revenue Officer,. "Sports fans are incredibly passionate on and we're committed to bringing them new experiences that make their favorite games even better. " To sign up for "GS F The Bracket," fans can visit GSFtheBracket.com beginning. Each round, players can select which matchup will reach a combined 60 points the fastest. Fans are encouraged to make their picks for each round but can join the game at any point before. "The phenomenon of college basketball fans and their brackets create an unparalleled level of engagement each March," said , Chief Creative Officer, , agency of record for Lexus. "With ‘GS F The Bracket,' there's a logical connection between the speed of offense that sports fans find with college hoops and a high-performance car like the Lexus GS F. " is a guide focused on informing, connecting, and entertaining our users. By creating highly personalized experiences for our users, we keep people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the world. In turn, we create value for advertisers by connecting them with the audiences that build their businesses. is headquartered in , and has offices located throughout the , (APAC) and the , and (EMEA) regions. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.net) or the Company's blog (yahoo.tumblr.com). Lexus launched in 1989 with two luxury sedans and a commitment to pursue perfection. Since that time, Lexus has expanded its line-up to meet the needs of global luxury customers. Lexus is now going beyond its reputation for high quality vehicles with the integration of innovative technology, emotional exterior and interior designs, and engaging driving dynamics and performance. With six models incorporating , Lexus is the luxury hybrid leader. Lexus also offers seven F SPORT models and two F performance models. In , Lexus vehicles are sold through 236 dealers who are committed to exemplary customer service.

2016-03-13 08:05 investor.yahoo.net

93 Yahoo - National Association of Realtors® Sponsors "Now I Get It" Video Series on Yahoo Finance New Campaign Helps Demystify the Home Buying Process and Highlight the Value Realtors® Bring to the Consumer Journey --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- (NASDAQ:YHOO) today announced that the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) will sponsor new episodes of "Now I Get It", a popular video series on Yahoo Finance. NAR's campaign will connect with future home buyers and renters, especially millennials, through targeted ads and brand integrations within episodes that feature , President of NAR. "Yahoo Finance is known for its unrivaled access to financial insights and news, and we're always looking for new ways to work with great brands like the to help them share a compelling story with this audience," said , Chief Revenue Officer,. "Working with NAR, we're delivering video content that's not only relevant and informative for our users, but something they can enjoy watching across devices. " As the exclusive sponsor, NAR will engage viewers around six new episodes of "Now I Get It" on Yahoo Finance. This special real estate focused miniseries will answer commonly asked questions about the home buying process to help consumers make educated decisions, while reinforcing the value of an experienced broker. During branded segments at the end of each episode, NAR President will share perspectives on topics including when to sell, remodeling, buying vs. renting and more. The first episode of the NAR sponsored series debuts today and will focus on the best time to sell a house based on region, time of year, and type of property. NAR will also run targeted pre-roll video, native and display ads on to amplify the sponsorship. Gemini native ads will enhance the campaign by driving consumers to a custom Mobile Content Module, featuring articles that highlight each episode theme. NAR's campaign on was developed in partnership with the real estate organization's agency of record,. "Whether you are a current or aspiring homeowner, we're excited to partner with for this new campaign to share advice and tips on navigating the real estate market with a wide audience of all ages through video, native and display advertising," said , NAR President. "With Yahoo's extensive video advertising solutions and editorial capabilities, we are creating and sharing content that helps break the barriers between Realtors® and consumers. " "Now I Get It" is a popular video series on Yahoo Finance that explains the business concepts and jargon from the biggest financial stories of the day. New episodes of "Now I Get It" will air every other week. Episodes, additional clips and articles are available at https://finance.yahoo.com. is a guide focused on informing, connecting, and entertaining our users. By creating highly personalized experiences for our users, we keep people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the world. In turn, we create value for advertisers by connecting them with the audiences that build their businesses. is headquartered in , and has offices located throughout the , (APAC) and the , and (EMEA) regions. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.net) or the Company's blog (yahoo.tumblr.com). About the National Association of Realtors® of Realtors®, "The Voice for ," is America's largest trade association, representing more than 1.1 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

2016-03-13 08:05 investor.yahoo.net

94 Jeremy Corbyn's path may be harder than we thought - but it is the right one George Osborne has failed. Now it's up to Labour to set out the alternative It’s beginning to sink in. Six months after Jeremy Corbyn was elected, and two months before the first big electoral test of his leadership, that initial moment of total hope and seeming invincibility that initiated the Corbyn project is nearing its end. If the polls are right, Labour will win in London – but it faces armageddon in Scotland and uncertain results in the local elections and Wales. Across the pond, a Bernie Sanders win in the Democratic primary would have given Corbyn’s a massive boost; after Super Tuesday that looks much less likely. The end of the era of jubilation and disbelief is less a crisis for the new Labour left than a necessary stage in a process – and every indication is that Corbyn’s grip on the leadership is growing stronger. But it must be stared in the face, and it should be cause for reflection among Corbyn’s supporters. On the face of it, and from a rational perspective of policy appeal, poor poll ratings make no sense. Labour’s new social and economic programme is popular: cracking down on the excesses of the City, public ownership of the railways, an alternative to austerity, backing junior doctors and defending the NHS – all are vote winners. The problem is that popular policies are barely visible in the public eye, amidst a maelstrom of relentless press hostility, calculated backbench (and frontbench) indiscipline, and –worse than any tabloid red baiting – the manufacturing of a perception of shambles in the leadership. In the coming years, the string of attacks that the Conservatives will impose on public services and ordinary people will be endless. To unions and social movements, these must form a point of mobilisation for a series of defensive struggles to defend the welfare state, and the Labour leadership’s support will be an invaluable asset in these campaigns. But at a higher political level, unless Labour’s response is woven into a broader, easily comprehensibly vision for society, the limitless stream of cuts, sell-offs and attacks on rights and freedoms could become a distraction rather than an asset to the left’s narrative. Failing to focus on the bigger picture is a problem for the commentariat as well, much of which is used to pronouncing on the viability of political projects in terms of superficial data. In the run up to major elections, we look at events and issues, and attempt to relate these to poll ratings – thereby producing coverage that resembles analysis. But what has characterised the politics of recent years is its unpredictability, and, outside of a short time frame, the inadequacy of the old models of punditry. Without acknowledging that a deeper, long-wave process is at work, it is impossible to understand anything about the new and powerful insurgent politics that is ploughing into the political mainstream. It is in this deep process that the new Labour left must place its hope: the same process that took the banking crash, the anti-austerity movement and growing societal inequality, and crystalised it into a widespread disdain for the financial elite and a yearning, felt well beyond the base of the radical left, for an alternative to neo-liberalism and establishment politics more broadly. That sentiment may not show up in some polls, and without a well-honed political expression it may not yet show up at the ballot box. And yet, often intangible and unarticulated though it may be, it is perhaps the most powerful sentiment in modern British politics. The process by which the ideas that fuelled the Corbyn leadership catch light across the wide electorate is not a passive one. Like the anti-austerity movement that provided the backdrop for Corbyn’s rise, this next challenge will have to be another gear-shift in the pace and level of activity on the left: it will require a large new activist base to grow still further, and to push the narratives and ideas of the new left into communities and spaces where radical ideas are seldom heard. Those who cut their teeth on the unstoppable wave of optimism of the summer of 2015 must begin the gruelling low-level ground war for 2020, and a myriad of defensive social struggles in between. Frenetic activism needs to be matched by intellectual legwork. The answer to bad poll ratings and electoral setbacks is not to soften Corbyn’s political approach, but neither is it to assume that radical ideas will bring themselves victory – as if all that the British public has been waiting for is for someone to rhetorically oppose austerity, or to boldly state a series of principles. What is needed an encompassing and positive vision for society – unashamedly socialist and radical, but which is geared towards a new world, and which, above all, exudes clarity and competence. Much of this effort is already underway. John McDonnell is building up an arsenal of radical economic alternatives and heavyweight advice. Momentum has, after a period of focussing on its internal structures, begun to gear up to the enormous task ahead. Like left wing movements all over Europe, Labour has now embarked on a march down the path of most resistance. There can be no victory by triangulation or ideological retreat, and there will now probably be no reassurance in a Sanders victory. What lies ahead is a gruelling ground war, but it is one which, with a little intellectual clarity, Corbyn can win. The papers today are full of stories of George Osborne, after six years at the helm, having to deal with the consequences of his own failures on the economy. The FT reports show he faces an £18bn black hole in his public finances plans. The official size of the UK economy last year was one per cent smaller than predicted by the OBR in November. Debt as a percentage of GDP has gone up from 62 per cent to 80 per cent under his watch. The shortfall in tax receipts is now set to deal another blow to the Chancellor’s plans to see a surplus by the end of this Parliament. Yet again there are rumours of cuts for the most vulnerable. Support for over 600,000 with disabilities is set to be cut by over £1bn – threatening the very independence of living that the Chancellor might suggest he stands for. Osborne’s failure on the economy – on his own growth and deficit targets, on weaknesses in our productivity, the fall in our ranking by the World Economic Forum on the quality of our infrastructure – set the context for the new fiscal credibility rule that John McDonnell has announced this week. A huge question for Labour to address is our economic credibility. Political parties need to continue to earn the trust of the public on our taxes and with the management of the economy. Excessive government borrowing hurts us all. We cannot pretend that there is a magic money tree or that someone else will always foot the bill. And every penny misspent by government is a penny wasted. Fiscal responsibility is in the best traditions of Labour. It is in the tradition of the friendly societies and the early co-operatives. Our focus on entrepreneurship and support for business – just look at Chuka Umunna’s success in bringing Small Business Saturday to the UK – is clear. Labour has always been the party of the real wealth creators – the clue is in the name. We need to get back to being a party that is seen to focus on how we earn, not just how we spend. Nor has George Osborne learned the lessons of the global financial crisis. Yes, it happened on our watch, but it was a global financial crisis, not just a British one. The primary cause was reckless lending by banks particularly in America. The Conservatives had wanted less financial regulation than Labour before the crisis, but appeared to share the post-crisis cross-party consensus that lack of regulation needed a strong and coordinated policy response. We led moves to tighten up the rules. Yet light-touch regulation is exactly what Osborne is going back to, unwinding controls put in place since the crisis. This week we saw that business investment is slowing. But Osborne’s poorly-designed “fiscal charter” ties the government’s hands from investing in the vital infrastructure, like rail and high- speed broadband, that we need to secure our future prosperity. International research shows that fewer trains are running on time, more trains in rush hour are overcrowded and the number of local buses has fallen by 2.5 per cent since 2010. Osborne’s charter was rightly criticised in October for four key reasons. It was seen as a politically motivated target that will join his list of fiscal targets that have come and gone. It left the government inflexible to changing economic circumstances. It was set to see households, consumers and business borrowing more to bring balance to the economy – with official data showing this to now be true. And it reduced the room to allow for capital investment. Labour’s proposed new fiscal credibility rule addresses those concerns head on. It’s part of showing there is an alternative to George Osborne and his short term politics which are bringing a long term cost to us all. When a growing coalition of the IMF, the OECD, the G20, the CBI, the TUC and business leaders from all sectors are insisting governments must invest, for Osborne to be planning to reduce government investment as a share of GDP is irresponsible. Our challenge, however, is to ensure we have a better rule that will allow government to invest wisely and effectively, but maintain the iron discipline needed to bring down the debt and eliminate the deficit. The new fiscal credibility rule has been developed in consultation with world-leading economists, both from Labour’s Economic Advisory Council, and outside. It has four key points. First, Labour in government will eliminate the deficit on current spending over a five year target period. Current spending is day-to-day spending by government on things like wages and heating costs. There is no economic case for maintaining a persistent and large deficit on current spending. You wouldn’t pay your rent on your credit card, and neither should the government. Second, we are reinforcing this strict rule with an absolute commitment to seeing the government’s debt burden fall by the end of each Parliament. Third, we are proposing to put the OBR entirely outside of any possible ministerial influence, and change its mandate to report directly to parliament, with a duty to blow the whistle on any government breaching the rules. We have to make sure that our decisions are transparent and accountable, and always will be. Finally, we have recognised how the economic landscape has shifted since 2008. Economists and central bankers across the world now recognise that the kind of monetary policy framework we had before the global financial crisis is not meeting the demands from the unprecedented macroeconomic circumstances we are in. The last part of the fiscal credibility rule recognises that when conventional monetary policy is no longer able to provide effective levers for necessary stimulus, that we need the option of fiscal policy working alongside it. We are proposing that Bank of England’s monetary policy committee would have decision-making powers on when the limits of conventional monetary policy have been reached, just as they now independently decide on interest rates. Our fiscal credibility rule is the first, important, step back to earning the public’s trust with the nation’s finances. It is backed by experts including Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, who said it is “a credible and sensible one for managing the nation’s finances responsibly, whilst supporting sustainable economic growth.” We have many more steps to take. But with Osborne’s failed plans leaving us more exposed to a slowing and uncertain world economy we have a responsibility now to take them.

2016-03-13 07:49 Simon Heffer www.newstatesman.com

95 My mother elbowed Tony Benn out of the way to get to her Vietnamese comrades George Osborne has failed. Now it's up to Labour to set out the alternative In my second year of college, to celebrate me getting my own place, I decided to throw a dinner party, except I didn’t know how to cook anything. So my mother, Molly, using the free rail pass she was entitled to as the wife of a railwayman, travelled down to London with a chicken, cooked it and some vegetables in the hideous, greasy old oven I had in the flat, and then, before my guests arrived, she went back to Liverpool. Unfortunately, allowing her to do that meant from that point Molly would just turn up at my flat, unannounced and without a chicken. One lunchtime, she appeared in north Kensington. To keep her occupied, I took her for a walk around the neighbourhood. My mother and I wandered through the market on the Portobello Road then turned towards Bayswater, with me showing her points of interest like my bus stop. As we walked along a street called Chepstow Villas, Molly suddenly said, “I know some people who live here.” And before I could stop her she ran over the road to hammer on one of the front doors. After a few seconds it was answered by a sleepy-looking oriental man. The brass plaque by the entrance read “Legation of the People’s Republic of North Vietnam”. “Oh, hello, Molly,” the man said, giving me the feeling that this might not be the first time she had appeared unannounced at the legation. Because of her work for Medical Aid for Vietnam my mother was well known to many of the diplomats from the North. We were shown in to the front room and after a little while the military attaché, a man who had been one of the heroes of the great Battle of Dien Bien Phu, when the Vietnamese had decimated the French colonial forces, entered wearing his full dress uniform with row after row of shiny medals at his breast, and made painful small talk with us for half an hour. I imagined he’d rather be back in the jungle getting napalmed than doing this, but he undertook his task with great dignity. A little while later, in April 1975, Saigon, the capital of the South, was captured by the North Vietnamese army and the long war finally ended. Our old friends from Chepstow Villas took over the former South Vietnamese legation, a huge mansion in Wimbledon. To celebrate reunification they held a big party to which the Sayle family was invited. Everybody from the left in Britain was there and as you entered the massive ballroom there was a man in a frock coat who announced your name. He called, “Mr and Mrs Sayle and Mrs Sayle,” which was me, Linda (my wife) and Molly. Molly descended the stairs and, going straight over to the ambassador, elbowing Tony Benn out of the way, she pulled out a canvas bag from her pocket. “There’s £12 worth of 20-pence pieces there,” she said as she tried to press it into his hands “. . . that we collected for Medical Aid on Merseyside.” “No, no, Molly,” the ambassador said. “Not now.” The papers today are full of stories of George Osborne, after six years at the helm, having to deal with the consequences of his own failures on the economy. The FT reports show he faces an £18bn black hole in his public finances plans. The official size of the UK economy last year was one per cent smaller than predicted by the OBR in November. Debt as a percentage of GDP has gone up from 62 per cent to 80 per cent under his watch. The shortfall in tax receipts is now set to deal another blow to the Chancellor’s plans to see a surplus by the end of this Parliament. Yet again there are rumours of cuts for the most vulnerable. Support for over 600,000 with disabilities is set to be cut by over £1bn – threatening the very independence of living that the Chancellor might suggest he stands for. Osborne’s failure on the economy – on his own growth and deficit targets, on weaknesses in our productivity, the fall in our ranking by the World Economic Forum on the quality of our infrastructure – set the context for the new fiscal credibility rule that John McDonnell has announced this week. A huge question for Labour to address is our economic credibility. Political parties need to continue to earn the trust of the public on our taxes and with the management of the economy. Excessive government borrowing hurts us all. We cannot pretend that there is a magic money tree or that someone else will always foot the bill. And every penny misspent by government is a penny wasted. Fiscal responsibility is in the best traditions of Labour. It is in the tradition of the friendly societies and the early co-operatives. Our focus on entrepreneurship and support for business – just look at Chuka Umunna’s success in bringing Small Business Saturday to the UK – is clear. Labour has always been the party of the real wealth creators – the clue is in the name. We need to get back to being a party that is seen to focus on how we earn, not just how we spend. Nor has George Osborne learned the lessons of the global financial crisis. Yes, it happened on our watch, but it was a global financial crisis, not just a British one. The primary cause was reckless lending by banks particularly in America. The Conservatives had wanted less financial regulation than Labour before the crisis, but appeared to share the post-crisis cross-party consensus that lack of regulation needed a strong and coordinated policy response. We led moves to tighten up the rules. Yet light-touch regulation is exactly what Osborne is going back to, unwinding controls put in place since the crisis. This week we saw that business investment is slowing. But Osborne’s poorly-designed “fiscal charter” ties the government’s hands from investing in the vital infrastructure, like rail and high- speed broadband, that we need to secure our future prosperity. International research shows that fewer trains are running on time, more trains in rush hour are overcrowded and the number of local buses has fallen by 2.5 per cent since 2010. Osborne’s charter was rightly criticised in October for four key reasons. It was seen as a politically motivated target that will join his list of fiscal targets that have come and gone. It left the government inflexible to changing economic circumstances. It was set to see households, consumers and business borrowing more to bring balance to the economy – with official data showing this to now be true. And it reduced the room to allow for capital investment. Labour’s proposed new fiscal credibility rule addresses those concerns head on. It’s part of showing there is an alternative to George Osborne and his short term politics which are bringing a long term cost to us all. When a growing coalition of the IMF, the OECD, the G20, the CBI, the TUC and business leaders from all sectors are insisting governments must invest, for Osborne to be planning to reduce government investment as a share of GDP is irresponsible. Our challenge, however, is to ensure we have a better rule that will allow government to invest wisely and effectively, but maintain the iron discipline needed to bring down the debt and eliminate the deficit. The new fiscal credibility rule has been developed in consultation with world-leading economists, both from Labour’s Economic Advisory Council, and outside. It has four key points. First, Labour in government will eliminate the deficit on current spending over a five year target period. Current spending is day-to-day spending by government on things like wages and heating costs. There is no economic case for maintaining a persistent and large deficit on current spending. You wouldn’t pay your rent on your credit card, and neither should the government. Second, we are reinforcing this strict rule with an absolute commitment to seeing the government’s debt burden fall by the end of each Parliament. Third, we are proposing to put the OBR entirely outside of any possible ministerial influence, and change its mandate to report directly to parliament, with a duty to blow the whistle on any government breaching the rules. We have to make sure that our decisions are transparent and accountable, and always will be. Finally, we have recognised how the economic landscape has shifted since 2008. Economists and central bankers across the world now recognise that the kind of monetary policy framework we had before the global financial crisis is not meeting the demands from the unprecedented macroeconomic circumstances we are in. The last part of the fiscal credibility rule recognises that when conventional monetary policy is no longer able to provide effective levers for necessary stimulus, that we need the option of fiscal policy working alongside it. We are proposing that Bank of England’s monetary policy committee would have decision-making powers on when the limits of conventional monetary policy have been reached, just as they now independently decide on interest rates. Our fiscal credibility rule is the first, important, step back to earning the public’s trust with the nation’s finances. It is backed by experts including Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, who said it is “a credible and sensible one for managing the nation’s finances responsibly, whilst supporting sustainable economic growth.” We have many more steps to take. But with Osborne’s failed plans leaving us more exposed to a slowing and uncertain world economy we have a responsibility now to take them. 2016-03-13 07:49 Simon Heffer www.newstatesman.com

96 Mars mission targets Monday launch All looks good for an on-time launch of Europe's mission to Mars. A joint venture with Russia, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is set to launch atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on Monday. The satellite will try to detect and characterise the marginal constituents of the planet's atmosphere. A key quest is to understand methane, a gas that has an unexpected persistence and which some have speculated could hint at the presence of microbial life. Lift-off of the Proton is scheduled for 15:31 local time (09:31 GMT). "We've had a good launch campaign to date - no real issues," said Walter Cugno from the lead European contractor, Thales Alenia Space. "All the preparation milestones have been achieved as per the nominal schedule," he told BBC News. It will take 12 hours for the Proton's Breeze-M upper-stage to boost the ExoMars TGO into just the right trajectory to go to the Red Planet. Controllers at European Space Agency's Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, expect to pick up a signal from the satellite shortly after it has been released on to this cruise path, at 21:28 GMT. The journey time to Mars is seven months. Three days out from arrival, on 16 October, the satellite will release a small landing module known as Schiaparelli. Once on the surface, on 19 October, its aim is to operate a few science instruments, but engineers are primarily interested to see how the module performs during the entry, descent and touchdown. "This technology development is very important," said Esa's director of science, Prof Alvaro Gimenez. "If you want to be a partner in the future on more missions to Mars, you have to demonstrate your ability to land. If you can't, you are not at the right level. We have to show we can do it ourselves. " Schiaparelli's demonstration landing on 19 October In particular, Schiaparelli will showcase a suite of technologies - radar, computers and their algorithms - that will be needed to put a British-assembled rover safely on the planet. This second-step ExoMars mission is supposed to leave Earth in 2018, although this looks increasingly in doubt. No final price with industry to build the rover venture has yet been agreed, and there is currently insufficient money within the programme to fund it to completion. But even if the budget was not a problem, there is now so little leeway in the development schedule that few people express optimism that the rover and its associated landing equipment can be made ready in time for what is a very narrow launch window in 2018. "It's now marginal," said Mr Cugno. "We have some possibility [of being ready] on the European side, but on the Russian side it is even more marginal. " A formal announcement of a delay to 2020 - when the planets next align - could come within a few weeks. But the difficulties with the rover part of the ExoMars project should not affect the orbiter. Once it has dropped off Schiaparelli, the TGO will spend the better part of a year manoeuvring itself into a 400km-high circular orbit above the planet. From this vantage point, the TGO's state-of-the-art instruments will then make a detailed inventory of Mars' atmospheric gases. The mission is concerned with the components that constitute less than 1% of the planet's air - chemical species such as methane, water vapour, nitrogen dioxide, and sulphur dioxide. Methane is the main focus. From previous measurements, its concentration is seen to be low and sporadic in nature. But the mere fact that it is detected at all is really fascinating. The simple organic molecule should be destroyed easily in the harsh Martian environment, so its persistence - and the occasional spikes in its signal - indicate a replenishing source of the gas. The explanation could be geological. One idea is that it is the simple by-product from water interactions with particular rock minerals at depth. Another explanation is that the gas is ancient in origin and has been trapped in sub-surface ice. Periodic melting events then release the methane into the atmosphere. But there remains the tantalising prospect that the source could be biological. Most of the methane in Earth's atmosphere comes from living organisms, and it is not a ludicrous suggestion that microbes might also be driving emissions on Mars. "Whatever the explanation, it all points to the existence of liquid water in the sub-surface, and that changes slightly our vision of Mars, because it means it is a planet that is a little more active than we've recognised," said Esa's ExoMars project scientist, Dr Jorge Vago. The TGO instruments will try to describe the methane's distribution in time and space. Two of its sensors - NOMAD and ACS - will determine the gas molecules' concentration across the seasons, at different altitudes and locations. A third instrument, the CaSSIS camera , will then look for possible geological forms on the surface of the planet that might tie into methane sources. A fourth instrument, FREND , will sense hydrogen in the near-surface. This data can be used as a proxy for the presence of water or hydrated minerals. All of this is information that could yield answers to the methane question. Jonathan. [email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

97 Quiz of the week's news It's the Magazine's weekly news quiz - have you been paying attention to what's been going on in the world over the past seven days? If you missed last week's quiz, try it here Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

98 98 WR Bryant faces yearlong ban; will enter rehab

Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Martavis Bryant is facing a yearlong suspension from the NFL, his agent confirmed to ESPN on Saturday. The suspension is related to NFL drug testing, a source told ESPN. Bryant's agent, Tom Santanello, confirmed Saturday that the talented receiver plans to appeal the suspension. Another of his agents, Brian Fettner, told USA Today Sports that Bryant, who served a four- game suspension last season for violating the league's substance abuse policy, is fighting depression and plans to enter rehab Sunday for evaluation. Editor's Picks Martavis Bryant wasting colossal talent, leaves Steelers scrambling Martavis Bryant fell in the draft because of "character concerns," and now what should have been a bright future with the Steelers is now in question. Projecting the fantasy fallout from Martavis Bryant's suspension Mike Clay projects how the one-year suspension of Martavis Bryant will affect a number of his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates in 2016. 1 Related Martavis Bryant fell in the draft because of "character concerns," and now what should have been a bright future with the Steelers is now in question. Mike Clay projects how the one-year suspension of Martavis Bryant will affect a number of his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates in 2016. "We're all stunned, me included," Fettner told USA Today Sports. "We clearly miscalculated the issue. His isn't a party issue. It's a coping issue and a depression issue, and he's got to take care of it. "This is the biggest cry for help I've ever seen. And that hurts. It hurts us to see. He's 24 years old and he's got to get right, whatever it is. If you talk to anybody's family that has depression, they will be talking about these same things -- the [despondence], the withdrawal, the head-in-the- sand despair -- just trying to cope. " DKPittsburghSports.com was first to report the potential suspension Saturday morning. "Until there's something official from the NFL, we won't be commenting," Steelers spokesman Burt Lauten said. After returning from his four-game suspension, Bryant had a productive 2015 season for the Steelers, hauling in 50 receptions for 765 yards and six touchdowns in 11 games. Pittsburgh's decision to sign receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey to a three-year extension was a direct result of Bryant's potential absence in 2016, a source told ESPN. The Steelers likely would have re-signed Heyward-Bey but probably not for three years. Pittsburgh also signed tight end Ladarius Green to a four-year, $20 million deal. Steelers wide receiver Martavis Bryant scored 14 receiving touchdowns in his first two NFL seasons, fourth most in a player's first two seasons in Steelers franchise history. Most Receiving TDs In First 2 Seasons Of Career Steelers Franchise History The Steelers knew Bryant had character concerns coming out of Clemson in the 2014 draft, so they took a calculated risk on him with a fourth-round pick. On the field, Bryant has rewarded the Steelers for that faith by averaging nearly one touchdown per game. But the team needs him to stay on the field, which has been a recurring problem. Bryant, who was spending part of his offseason in Los Angeles, is due $600,000 in 2016 salary, the third year of a four-year rookie contract. If the suspension holds, the Steelers would get salary-cap relief by washing that money off their books. The low salary could give the Steelers incentive to keep him on the team and give him another chance to turn his life around. Upon returning from his suspension in October, Bryant thanked the Steelers for their support and said he "learned" from his mistake and wanted to "move on from it and put it in the past. " Bryant also said he had spent time with former NBA player and coach John Lucas, who operates a substance abuse recovery facility in Texas.

2016-03-13 09:05 Jeremy Fowler espn.go.com

99 'Pretty Cripples' and the people turned on by disability After posting a photo of herself online, disabled BBC Three presenter Emily Yates was shocked to receive a message saying "pretty cripple". It led her to investigate the secret world of "devotees" - those who are sexually aroused by disabled people and their struggles. It was 2011 and I was living in Melbourne, Australia, when I posted a photo of myself in my wheelchair on Facebook ahead of the university's annual ball. Later I saw a few friendly comments had been added from people wishing me a great evening but below that I was shocked to see the words "pretty cripple" posted by a friend in New York. I was hurt that compliments and negative terms could go hand-in-hand in this way, but was even more offended when I later discovered that, to some, it was the biggest gesture of admiration he could have given me. After an angry Facebook rant, I found myself being introduced to a community of people who are sexually aroused, and attracted to, disability as friends pointed me towards some websites about people known as devotees. The websites would become the doorway to discovering some pretty dark stuff but, surprisingly, I found it strangely refreshing at times. I'm ashamed to say that I often find myself almost apologising for my disability. I have cerebral palsy and, when talking to guys online, I make sure they know I'm a wheelchair user so they have a get-out clause before choosing to meet me. In a world that constantly tells us anything out of the realms of "normal" is undesirable, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't impressed by the idea that there are people out there who would happily love and accept every little bit of me, especially the bits that I've always considered flawed. But, as I started to come face to face with people in the devotee community, I felt wary. One of the first I met was Gray, a husband and father in the USA, who wanted to remain anonymous as even his wife doesn't know of his interest. He seemed both confident and lonely - accepting of his "devness" as he calls it, but equally trapped by it. He told me he thought my legs were "very nice and sexy" and sees leg-braces or wheelchairs in the same way others see party dresses. For him, relationships with disabled women can offer more intimacy than those with able-bodied women. Gray's interest in disabled women first emerged at school when a girl with a very short leg and one arm entered his classroom, he says he fell immediately in love: "To me she was obviously the most gorgeous woman in the whole school district. " As I spoke to him, though, I wondered if his attraction was more about vulnerability and power - things which I didn't want others to consider when they look at me. It was through meeting Gray that I discovered some devs are solely attracted to the disabled body, and cannot find sexual gratification with able-bodied partners. Ruth Madison, an American author who writes fiction about a teenage devotee and her love for a paraplegic man, is open about her devoteeism, which is perhaps why I liked her so much. You can watch Emily Yates's documentary, Meet The Devotees on the BBC Three website and BBC iPlayer Listen: Tune into the BBC Ouch talk-show where Emily joins in on the debate about devotees She says she was a toddler when she first realised her desire for disabled people but knew she "couldn't let anyone know". This led to years of intense secrecy. When I met Madison she proudly showed me her desk chair - it's a second-hand wheelchair - and said her feelings are now so intense it impacts her sex life. People she gets involved with have to be noticeably disabled. One boyfriend she had was paralysed but only had a damaged spinal cord rather than a completely severed one and so had a certain degree of mobility. "He didn't always use equipment," she says, "and when we were in bed together I couldn't really see his disability. "That would sometimes hamper things for me," she says, and admits she would have to look at his stick or wheelchair to become aroused. Meeting Madison and seeing her open and honest attitude empowered me. Devoteeism finally had a face and a name which invited me into a home, was transparent and much more than an online presence with a disability fetish. It helped make me realise devotees are people too. But I also came into contact with a section of the devotee community called the "bad devs" - those who enjoy watching someone struggle. Simply put, this particular fetish focuses on the difficulties someone with a disability might face in their everyday life, such as using stairs. To find out more about this for myself I decided to make my own "devotee porn" for bad devs. Strangely, it's not like the porn you might be thinking of. Imagine the most mundane everyday task acted out by a disabled person. Not worth watching, right? Some devotees couldn't disagree more. Putting a call out on social media I asked what my audience wanted to see from me. Their requests came thick and fast. Some said they would love to see me transfer from my bed to my wheelchair with a clear view of my feet and legs and someone else added they hoped I would have a few muscle spasms too. They were very upfront about what they like. I made a short film of me transferring from my wheelchair to my beloved car, but I almost cried beforehand because I felt so objectified. If it was a performance and I could look really sexy that could be really fun, but actually what they're asking me to do is something I do every day and have difficulty with. While wandering through this world of devoteeism I have come across examples of troubling empowerment and exploitation but, at the same time, I've learnt something important and positive. I met many devotees along the way and some were really genuine, I understood them and liked them. Essentially what they were saying was, "Why should we exclude anybody when disabled people can be just as beautiful? " But I think there's also a problem when you fetishise something, that it can hamper you from having feelings for the full person. Am I here to judge devoteeism? Of course not. In fact, I believe that putting this otherwise hidden subject out in the open will help both devotees and disabled people to find what they are looking for, or what doesn't interest them. Do I want to ensure that we all have the knowledge and confidence to make our own sexual decisions, weighing up pros and cons, regardless of ability? Absolutely, and I hope my investigation is just the start of encouraging that conversation to flourish. Follow BBC Ouch on Twitter and Facebook , and subscribe to the weekly podcast .

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

100 Top Gear's Matt LeBlanc gatecrashes London wedding Top Gear host Matt LeBlanc gatecrashed a wedding at St Paul's Cathedral while touring round the capital during filming. He was joined by professional rally driver Ken Block as he spun around the city in a Ford Mustang. The wedding party got a wave and a quick look in as they drove through the City of London. The duo in Block's 845bhp 4WD Hoonicorn Mustang took a selfie on Tower Bridge. Matt LeBlanc also tweeted a picture of himself from Canary Wharf saying : "Canary wharf is nice. " Paul Bradbury, head of retail at West Bromwich Albion Football Club, was in the capital with his wife for the weekend for a football match and caught the action at St Paul's Cathedral. Mr Bradbury, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, said: "It was very very loud and entertaining but everyone seemed to enjoy it. "Matt LeBlanc walked down and had a quick look of the route before he jumped in the car. "The car seemed to stall for a couple of minutes but they got going again and made a couple of takes with the wedding party on the steps. " The new series of BBC Two show is due to start in May.

2016-03-12 23:33 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

Total 100 articles. Created at 2016-03-13 12:01