Announcement

Total 100 articles, created at 2016-04-23 18:04 1 North Korea appears to fire submarine-launched missile North Korea on Saturday fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine off its northeast coast, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said. 2016-04-23 17:08 2KB (3.01/4) www.washingtontimes.com 2 Prince death: 'No sign' it was suicide, sheriff says There is "no reason to believe" that Prince's death was suicide, a sheriff in Minnesota (2.00/4) says after a post-mortem examination which suggests he died alone. 2016-04-23 15:34 4KB www.bbc.co.uk 3 Feds say they’ve accessed phone at center of Apple data case NEW YORK—The US justice department said it has withdrawn a request to force Apple to reveal data from a cellphone linked to a New York drug case after someone provided federal investigators with the 2016-04-23 18:03 3KB technology.inquirer.net 4 Exciting, informative last presidential debate vowed DAGUPAN CITY, Pangasinan—Lead organizers are all set for the last PiliPinas presidential debate to be held at University of Pangasinan here on Sunday. In a press conference at Metro Plaza event 2016-04-23 18:03 2KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 5 UAAP Finals: La Salle blanks Ateneo in Game 1 La Salle needed only three sets to take down defending champion and fierce rival Ateneo, 25-22, 25-22, 25-21, to take Game 1 of their best-of-three Finals duel in the UAAP Season 78 women's 2016-04-23 18:03 2KB sports.inquirer.net 6 Family land stays with family The late Eva Rova Barnes was strong-willed and lived life on her own terms. Everyone who knew her agrees on this fact, if nothing else. 2016-04-23 16:18 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 7 Things to know about Shakespeare, 400 years after his death Theater-lovers in Britain and around the world are marking the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. A few things to know about the famous playwright: 2016-04-23 16:55 2KB www.washingtontimes.com 8 Osmeña: VP race down to Marcos, Robredo The race for the vice presidency might be down to just two, according to Sen. Sergio Osmeña III. Osmeña on Saturday weighed in on the chances of the country’s vice presidential aspirants, 2016-04-23 17:53 1KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 9 Painters import Henderson-Niles calls Greg Slaughter ‘soft’ Before he takes on San Miguel Beer's June Mar Fajardo, Pierre Henderson-Niles got his first test against Barangay Ginebra San Miguel and its 7-foot center Greg Slaughter in the 2016-04-23 17:22 2KB sports.inquirer.net 10 EXCHANGE: Community invited to learn about lab technology A new lab at Joliet Junior College houses technology that can create almost anything people can imagine. 2016-04-23 17:21 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 11 SuperSport United beat Aces 2-1 to secure semi-final berth SuperSport United came from behind to beat Mpumalanga Black Aces 2-1 at the Lucas Moripe Stadium in Atteridgeville‚ Pretoria‚ and reach the Nedbank Cup semis on Friday night. 2016-04-23 16:14 2KB www.timeslive.co.za

12 Construction means new ramp from I-85 to I-385 in Greenville Construction crews are starting to shift traffic as part of a $230 million project to improve the Interstate 85-Interstate 385 interchange in Greenville. 2016-04-23 17:16 1KB www.washingtontimes.com 13 NY giving free park passes to 4th graders and their families New York state is making free state park passes available to fourth graders and their families as part of an effort to encourage kids to enjoy the state’s outdoors. 2016-04-23 17:16 1KB www.washingtontimes.com 14 EXCHANGE: Battle underway against Rockford’s education gap A pilot program launched in October is showing signs of success as educators look to arm thousands of adults in Boone and Winnebago counties with a high school equivalency certificate and skills that will land them a sustainable job. 2016-04-23 17:15 5KB www.washingtontimes.com 15 Sunwolves rebound with 1st win in Super Rugby A week after suffering one of the worst defeats in the history of Super Rugby, Japan’s Sunwolves rebounded with its first-ever win in the tournament, beating Argentina’s Jaguares 36-28. 2016-04-23 17:14 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 16 Annual youth turkey hunt this weekend Young hunters in New York can get a jump on turkey season this weekend. 2016-04-23 17:13 969Bytes www.washingtontimes.com 17 Party like it was 1564! Make merry on Shakespeare’s birthday A party marking William Shakespeare’s 1564 birthday is being held with swordplay, sonnets and theater scenes. 2016-04-23 17:05 1KB www.washingtontimes.com 18 Vermont Fish and Wildlife reminds drivers: Beware of moose The Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife is reminding drivers across the state to be on the lookout for moose in the road. 2016-04-23 17:05 1KB www.washingtontimes.com 19 Marshall professor’s passion led him across country Every April, hundreds of people flock to First Presbyterian Church to enjoy some soup, help the Facing Hunger Food Bank and take on the ever-challenging task of picking out the perfect bowl from more than a thousand unique options. 2016-04-23 16:55 4KB www.washingtontimes.com 20 Ranson thrift store provides ‘New Hope’ for cancer patients For Marlene Myers Plumer, owner of New Hope Thrift Store, saving customers money on clothing, books and household items is secondary to bringing smiles to the faces of members of the community and providing hope for families of children with cancer. 2016-04-23 16:53 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 21 Lynchburg firm excavates Oak Hill Plantation What may have been an act of defiance by slaves would become an archaeological saving grace years later. 2016-04-23 16:53 4KB www.washingtontimes.com 22 Knowing your ABC: A primer to understand the different areas of Judea and Samaria Even avid followers of Israel’s political scene might be confused over what areas A, B and C mean more than 20 years after they came into existence. 2016-04-23 16:44 16KB www.jpost.com

23 In Damascus, an uneasy stability boosts Syria’s Assad Looking out from the Syrian capital these days, one can understand why President Bashar Assad would be in no hurry to make concessions at peace talks in Geneva, let alone consider stepping down as the opposition demands. 2016-04-23 16:43 5KB www.washingtontimes.com 24 Student passionate about helping others, improving himself Seventeen-year-old Kevin Davila an International Baccalaureate senior at Annapolis High, shakes his head when asked about the tall wall Donald Trump claims will be erected between the United States and Mexico to keep out immigrants if he’s elected president. 2016-04-23 16:40 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 25 Challenge Aspen’s ski retreats help military vets adapt Aaron Causey flew through the air with the greatest of ease while on his monoski at Aspen Mountain. 2016-04-23 14:59 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 26 Bohol ‘drug queen’ yields P25.9-M ‘shabu’ TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol—At least 2.2 kilograms of “shabu” worth P25.9 million have been seized in a raid conducted on the rented house of the province's alleged “drug 2016-04-23 16:00 2KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 27 ROS import guarantees he’ll stop SMB’s Fajardo in semis Beau Belga was standing side-by-side with Pierre Henderson Niles and the wide-bodied center never looked so small. One of the reasons why Rain or Shine brought in the hulking import is 2016-04-23 15:54 3KB sports.inquirer.net 28 Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan's homes to be part of Mumbai sightseeing route MTDC tourism body to tweak the old sightseeing route across Mumbai to include Mukesh Ambani's Antilla, Salman Khan's Galaxy, Shah Rukh Khan's Mannat amongst the new sights 2016-04-23 15:30 3KB www.mid-day.com 29 SpiceJet sacks pilot for sexual harassment Budget passenger carrier SpiceJet on Saturday said that it has sacked a commander- level pilot on charges of sexual harassment 2016-04-23 15:09 2KB www.mid-day.com 30 Boxing class helps students beat back Parkinson’s disease Boxing instructor Mark Royce paced the mat in red sneakers and barked instructions like a drill sergeant. His students were all over 60 and have Parkinson’s disease, but he wasn’t cutting them any slack. 2016-04-23 13:47 5KB www.washingtontimes.com 31 US Sen. John McCain calls for criminal probe into mine spill U. S. Sen. John McCain called for a criminal investigation into actions by the Environmental Protection Agency that led to a mine spill polluting rivers in three Western states last summer. 2016-04-23 13:47 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 32 Livonia - News Livonia - News 2016-04-23 07:54 1KB rssfeeds.hometownlife.com

33 Asia Times News & Features – Asia Times The deal may be worth only $8.6 million but it involves the purchase of 32 tons of heavy water from the Atomic Energy... 2016-04-23 05:32 7KB atimes.com 34 Author calls Begin 'terrorist' with 'political courage' on Bill Maher show Lawrence Wright had previously written a book about the Camp David negotiations in 2014 titled Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David. 2016-04-23 14:57 2KB www.jpost.com

35 Bad week for German automakers: Huge costs, new probe It’s been a bad week for German automakers. 2016-04-23 14:55 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 36 Binay says Santiago’s return to campaign trail ‘good news’ DAGUPAN CITY, Pangasinan – Vice President Jejomar Binay on Saturday said he was glad his friend Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago is now back in the game for her last-ditch effort in the national 2016-04-23 14:55 4KB newsinfo.inquirer.net 37 Delegate: Trump aide said 'We're moving forward' A Republican National Convention delegate from Colorado said Friday that Donald Trump's senior adviser told him the campaign was dropping its challenge to rival Ted Cruz's sweep of the state's delegates -- an account the campaign is disputing. 2016-04-23 14:45 969Bytes www.cnn.com 38 Sen. Cornyn honored as 'Texan of the Year' The 3rd-term Republican vowed to continue challenging Obama administration policies, and without declaring his preference between GOP frontrunners Donald Trump and Texas' junior Sen. Ted Cruz, Cornyn said he'll support the eventual nominee. Addressing about 500 conferees including elected officials, legislative staff... 2016-04-23 15:38 3KB www.chron.com 39 Texas Congressman Pete Sessions wants magic recognized as a 'national treasure' In these trying times, a Texas lawmaker wants the U. S. Congress to recognize the power of magic. 2016-04-23 15:38 1KB www.chron.com 40 Brussels economy still suffering one month after attacks Exactly one month on from the Brussels attacks, the city's economy has been hit hard with many tourists choosing to stay away. 2016-04-23 14:43 820Bytes www.bbc.co.uk 41 Money making: A brief history of currency from the British Museum The new £20 note - to feature artist JMW Turner - will be made of polymer, so how has the production of money changed over centuries? 2016-04-23 15:44 6KB www.bbc.co.uk 42 DiCaprio tells leaders at UN climate signing: ‘The world is now watching’ UNITED NATIONS—Hollywood actor and environmental campaigner Leonardo DiCaprio urged world leaders signing the Paris climate deal on Friday to deliver on their commitments to cut greenhouse 2016-04-23 14:39 2KB entertainment.inquirer.net 43 Yazidi girl, 12, uses sleeping pills to escape ISIS Contact WND (RT) A 12-year-old Yazidi girl secretly slipped sleeping pills into her Islamic State captor’s tea to escape. The girl and her aunt were being held as slaves by the jihadist group west of Mosul, before they were able to escape to Kurdish-controlled areas. The escape was confirmed by Vian Dakhil, a Kurdish Yazidi member of […]... 2016-04-23 14:38 1KB www.wnd.com 44 Mini brains help scientists understand Zika Contact WND (Sky News) Tiny brains – no larger than a pinhead – were created using 3D printers and infected with the disease by scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US. The study – published in the journal Cell – showed that Zika caused the brains of unborn babies to shrink by attacking cells responsible for […]... 2016-04-23 14:38 1KB www.wnd.com 45 San Bernardino phone hack 'cost FBI more than $1m' The figure paid by the FBI to unnamed experts to unlock the phone of the San Bernardino killer has been estimated at $1.3m or more. 2016-04-23 03:12 2KB www.bbc.co.uk 46 Chinese property investors bet on the Northern Powerhouse Chinese investors are not just buying property in the UK's "Northern Powerhouse" they are helping to build it, too. 2016-04-23 03:12 5KB www.bbc.co.uk 47 Spies invaded privacy to send birthday cards, new documents show Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis Intelligence services also admit they collect personal data on people "unlikely to be of interest" to national security. 2016-04-23 13:16 7KB www.newstatesman.com 48 Explaining the Leicester City story to Americans If Leicester City win the Premier League, it will be one of the most astonishing sport stories in the UK for decades. But how to explain its importance to Americans? 2016-04-23 16:36 8KB www.bbc.co.uk 49 Obama questioned on LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter London's diversity was on full display Saturday during a town hall discussion hosted by President Barack Obama, who faced questions on gay and transgender rights and offered advice to the Black Lives Matter movement during his second day in the British capital. 2016-04-23 14:25 973Bytes www.cnn.com 50 Prince: No-one in the universe will ever compare BBC Music reporter Mark Savage gives a personal appreciation of Prince and his music. 2016-04-23 15:34 5KB www.bbc.co.uk 51 Bodies of two men found in Hull back garden The bodies of two men are discovered in the back garden of a property in Hull. 2016-04-23 16:36 1KB www.bbc.co.uk 52 Jurors hear police interview of Chester murder suspect Christopher Moore, charged with killing Chester City Councilman Odell Williams in November 2014, said during a police interview that he had nothing to do with Williams' death. Moore later took the stand and admitted to shooting Williams. 2016-04-23 13:10 3KB www.heraldonline.com 53 The Latest: Obama hits the links with Cameron LONDON (AP) — The Latest on President Barack Obama's visit to the United Kingdom (all times local): 3 p.m. President Barack Obama is playing his first overse... 2016-04-23 14:20 7KB www.dailymail.co.uk 54 Investigation: America's broken system for backgrounding teachers USA TODAY investigation finds flaws in the state by state system of backgrounding teachers 2016-04-23 13:08 3KB rssfeeds.usatoday.com 55 Why Heidi Cruz and Melania Trump might make better presidents than their husbands The race for the Republican nomination found a new way to turn nasty last night. Both candidates' wives became the subject of attacks and threats. An anti-Trump Super PAC put out an attack ad showing a nude Melania Trump. In response, Donald Trump ominously... 2016-04-23 15:38 4KB www.chron.com 56 House Republicans side with Texas in Obama immigration suit The move authorizes House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.,to file a "friend of the court" brief opposing Obama in the case of U. S. v. Texas, which the Supreme Court could decide by June. 2016-04-23 14:27 2KB www.chron.com 57 NC Education Watch: Buncombe School Board’s Insatiable Appetite for Spending KMorgan 1212 posts 2016-04-23 16:46 5KB www.thetribunepapers.com 58 What lies beneath: the hidden politics of underwear “Schrödinger’s Cab”: a poem by Steve Kronen The "Undressed" exhibition at the V&A reveals a social dimension to bras, pants and corsets. 2016-04-23 14:19 7KB www.newstatesman.com 59 Organisadong grupo, hinihinalang sangkot sa pag-hack sa Comelec website Hinala ng cybersecurity experts, may iba pang sangkot sa pag-hack ng Comelec website maliban sa naarestong 20-anyos na suspek. 2016-04-23 14:10 918Bytes news.abs-cbn.com 60 Jasenovac: Croatia remembers Nazi death camp victims Croatia holds a memorial service for people murdered by Nazi Germany's allies at the Jasenovac death camp. 2016-04-23 12:58 1KB www.bbc.co.uk 61 Bangladeshi university professor hacked to death in Rajshahi A professor in western Bangladesh is hacked to death on his way to work, in an attack police say is similar to the killings of a number of secular bloggers. 2016-04-23 12:58 3KB www.bbc.co.uk 62 Is golf’s popularity declining in Pittsburgh? The headlines have been nothing short of funereal. 2016-04-23 14:06 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 63 EU to draw up tax haven blacklist EU nations agree to draw up a blacklist of tax havens in the wake of the Panama Papers leaks. 2016-04-23 15:44 1KB www.bbc.co.uk 64 US suicide rate surges, particularly among white people The suicide rate in the US has surged to its highest level almost three decades, according to a new report. 2016-04-23 04:24 2KB www.bbc.co.uk 65 Prisons work to limit use of solitary confinement Cary Sanders vividly remembers his time in solitary confinement. 2016-04-23 14:02 4KB www.washingtontimes.com 66 Yahoo - Yahoo Reports First Quarter 2016 Results "I'm pleased that we delivered Q1 results in line with our expectations. Our 2016 plan is off to a solid start as we continue to focus on driving efficiency, lowering costs, and improving long-term growth," said , CEO of... 2016-04-23 12:52 23KB investor.yahoo.net 67 Recovery houses can face resistance from neighbors Charlie Mastriana stood behind the screen door of his home in the Goldenridge section of Bristol Township on a recent Saturday afternoon, motioning to one of the neighborhood’s recovery houses. 2016-04-23 13:57 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 68 Reality Check: How many EU nationals have been refused entry to the UK? How many EU nationals have been refused entry to the UK? The Reality Check team investigates. 2016-04-23 12:52 3KB www.bbc.co.uk 69 Who are Islamic 'morality police'? Police forces devoted to enforcing strict Islam-based codes of practice are a fact of life in several mainly Muslim countries, but opinion about them is divided. 2016-04-23 12:54 5KB www.bbc.co.uk 70 'Don't buy death' - Somalis urged to stay and rebuild their country Can a hashtag stop Somali migrants attempting the perilous sea journey to Europe? 2016-04-23 12:53 3KB www.bbc.co.uk 71 Sentinels in constant watch on mighty polar glaciers The EU’s Sentinel satellite system has begun monitoring six of the biggest glaciers on Earth in near real-time, to check for any changes in behaviour. 2016-04-23 12:52 5KB www.bbc.co.uk 72 How do you present shop for the Queen? There has been speculation over what Barack Obama might come up with as a 90th birthday present for the Queen. What do you buy for the woman who has everything? 2016-04-23 08:21 5KB www.bbc.co.uk 73 President Obama tells young to 'reject cynicism' US President Barack Obama tells an audience of young people in London to "reject pessimism and cynicism", embrace compromise and keep fighting for change. 2016-04-23 12:54 4KB www.bbc.co.uk 74 Maine Sunday Telegram News But after his death at age 57 – following a series of canceled shows and a reported emergency plane landing for medical treatment – questions... 2016-04-23 06:35 7KB www.pressherald.com 75 Eye Opener: Mass murder in Ohio Police in Ohio track possible suspects who murdered eight people in four different locations. Also, new information on the death of Prince -- find out which cause of death has been ruled out. All that and all that matters in today’s Eye Opener. Your world in 90 seconds. 2016-04-23 15:29 1KB www.cbsnews.com 76 Obese patients denied surgery in a third of areas in England Surgeons say they are worried overweight patients and smokers in England and Wales are having surgery delayed or denied to save money. 2016-04-23 16:36 5KB www.bbc.co.uk 77 Oldest inmate in center spends years in Nebraska prison Age arrives with a variety of potential challenges, from mental and physical to financial difficulties and more. 2016-04-23 13:33 2KB www.washingtontimes.com 78 Ground broken on Selfridge jet fuel delivery, storage system Ground has been broken on a project for a new jet fuel storage and delivery system at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in suburban Detroit. 2016-04-23 13:33 1KB www.washingtontimes.com 79 Ex-Kansas prison worker sentenced in meth smuggling case A former Kansas prison worker accused of smuggling methamphetamine into the Lansing Correctional Center has been sentenced to 13 months in prison. 2016-04-23 13:32 1KB www.washingtontimes.com

80 Nemacolin welcomes lion cub Kiwi is settling in to her new home in the Laurel Highlands. 2016-04-23 13:30 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 81 Window-blind maps, a cemetery and a race against time For almost half a century, Charlie Wentz has been the caretaker for thousands of men and women buried in Newport Cemetery. He has buried hundreds of people, men and women from all walks of life who share in one common thread - their final resting places... 2016-04-23 13:29 4KB www.washingtontimes.com 82 WWU adopts ‘real food’ goal for dining halls The idea sounds simple as pie. 2016-04-23 13:29 3KB www.washingtontimes.com

83 Historic peacocks for sale _ you buy them, you catch them Put anyone in charge of 30 peacocks and he might find himself making the kind of for- sale ad Brian Davis posted on Petersen Rock Garden’s Facebook page in mid-April: 2016-04-23 13:29 4KB www.washingtontimes.com 84 Man charged in girlfriend’s death at Conway motel A man has been charged in the death of a woman whose body was found in a Conway motel room. 2016-04-23 13:29 1KB www.washingtontimes.com 85 Mamadou Sakho: Liverpool defender investigated over failed drugs test Liverpool defender Mamadou Sakho is being investigated by Uefa after failing a drugs test. 2016-04-23 13:18 2KB www.bbc.co.uk 86 Mahalaxmi Races: Philadelphia set to win Jockeys Trophy The nine-race card on offer at the Mahalaxmi racetrack for the Saturday evening appears to be quite competitive. 2016-04-23 13:15 2KB www.mid-day.com 87 Multiple casualties reported in powerful gas blast in northern France A strong explosion has shaken a residential building in the town of Nonacourt, northern France, with multiple casualties reported. 2016-04-23 13:15 959Bytes www.rt.com 88 Nepal quake: One girl's remarkable recovery The April 25, 2015, quake in Nepal changed the life of 10-year-old Maya Gurung. A few days later, a second quake altered her life's trajectory again. This time, in a way no one could have imagined. 2016-04-23 13:13 834Bytes www.cnn.com 89 Drunken driver pleads guilty to killing popular chef A drunk driver who hit and killed a popular St. Petersburg chef walking home from work has pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide. 2016-04-23 13:10 1KB www.washingtontimes.com 90 Church closings, mergers mourned by worshippers, communities Andrea Evans is in mourning. 2016-04-23 13:10 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 91 Michelle Obama set to speak at commencement in Mississippi Michelle Obama is scheduled to speak to more than 1,000 graduates during commencement at historically black Jackson State University. 2016-04-23 13:10 1KB www.washingtontimes.com

92 New Hispanic public affairs show debuts in Florida A new Spanish-language public affairs show directed at Hispanics in Florida debuts Sunday. 2016-04-23 13:10 1KB www.washingtontimes.com 93 Hindenburg - In Photos: 6 Business Deal Disasters Here is a collection of bad ideas, botched negotiations and missed opportunities that laid waste to established business, hundreds of jobs and countless reputations. (image: history in an hour on flickr) 2016-04-23 14:21 785Bytes www.forbes.com 94 Sam Dares, Mt. Carmel bounced from 5A playoffs with loss to Pineville The senior has played her final game for the Cubs 2016-04-23 09:25 4KB highschoolsports.nola.com 95 Vietnamese refugee locates crew that rescued family at sea The summer of 1980, Lauren Vuong survived a hurricane-like storm at sea aboard a rickety fishing boat carrying her family and dozens of other Vietnamese desperate to escape the brutality of ongoing war and harsh, communist rule. 2016-04-23 13:09 3KB www.washingtontimes.com 96 Yahoo - Yahoo Sports Partners With NHL to Bring Fans Free, Live Out-of-Market Games & On-Demand Premium Content No Cable or Authentication Required, Alliance Offers New Opportunities for Advertisers to Connect with Fans --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- ... 2016-04-23 15:29 4KB investor.yahoo.net 97 Yahoo - Yahoo to Participate at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- (NASDAQ:YHOO) CFO will participate in a question-and-answer session at the Morgan Stanley in. The session is scheduled to begin on , at /... 2016-04-23 15:29 1KB investor.yahoo.net 98 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)-... 2016-04-23 15:29 3KB investor.yahoo.net 99 Backlash after Barack Obama EU referendum intervention Leave campaigners accuse Barack Obama of doing Downing Street's bidding - after he says the UK would be at "the back of the queue" for US trade deals if it left the EU. 2016-04-23 11:50 3KB www.bbc.co.uk 100 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)... 2016-04-23 15:29 3KB investor.yahoo.net Articles

Total 100 articles, created at 2016-04-23 18:04

1 North Korea appears to fire submarine-launched missile (3.01/4) SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea on Saturday fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine off its northeast coast, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said. The ministry could not immediately confirm how far the projectile flew or where it landed. The launch took place near the North Korean coastal town of Sinpo, where analysts have previously detected efforts by the North to develop submarine-launched ballistic missile systems. North Korea in recent weeks has fired a slew of missiles and artillery shells into the sea in an apparent protest against ongoing annual military drills between the U. S. and South Korea and toughened international sanctions against Pyongyang over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. Some analysts also think North Korea ’s belligerent stance is linked to a major ruling party congress next month meant to further cement leader Kim Jong Un’s grip on power. They say the North could be making efforts to promote military accomplishments to its people to make up for a lack of tangible economic achievements ahead of the Workers’ Party congress, the first since 1980. North Korea has been seen in recent years as developing technologies for launching ballistic missiles from underwater. Security experts say that acquiring the ability to fire missiles from submarines would be an alarming development for the North because missiles fired from submerged vessels are harder to detect before launch than land-based ones. While South Korean experts say it’s unlikely that North Korea currently possesses a submarine large enough to carry and fire multiple missiles, they acknowledge that the North is making progress on a dangerous weapons technology.

North Korea launches missile from submarine cnn.com N Korea launches ballistic missile from submarine – Seoul rt.com 2016-04-23 17:08 Kim Jong www.washingtontimes.com

2 Prince death: 'No sign' it was suicide, sheriff says (2.00/4) There is "no reason to believe" that Prince's death was suicide, the sheriff of the Minnesota county where the singer had his home has said after a post-mortem examination. There was no sign of trauma on the body, Sheriff Jim Olson said, suggesting the singer had died alone. Prince, 57, was found dead in a lift on his Paisley Park estate on Thursday. Fans have been wearing purple, the colour associated with the musician who sold more than 100m records. His innovative music spanned rock, funk and jazz. He was at his peak in the 1980s with albums like Dirty Mind, 1999 and Sign O' The Times. The sheriff warned that full results from the post-mortem could take several weeks, and the incident was still under investigation. Mr Olson said it was not unusual for there to be no one in the residence except Prince. The singer was last seen at about 20:00 on Wednesday night (01:00 GMT on Thursday) and was found unconscious by some of his staff at about 09:30 the next morning. Prince had been rushed to hospital in Illinois six days earlier, while flying home from a concert in Georgia, but was treated and released a few hours later. Quoting unnamed sources, US entertainment news site TMZ reports that Prince was treated in Illinois for an overdose of the painkiller drug Percocet . Declining to give details of the preliminary findings, medical examiner spokesperson Martha Weaver said a full set of tests would be done on the body, involving tissue and blood samples. Earlier, she announced that the body would be released to the family on Friday. Sheriff Olson confirmed police were in contact with Prince's family. "We have no reason to believe at this point that this was a suicide," he said, then added, "but again, this is early on in the investigation and we're continuing to investigate. " He spoke of Prince as a good member of the community and said he had been a "friend to [his staff] as well as being an employer". Fans have set up impromptu memorials in his home town Minneapolis and in New York. In London, US President Barack Obama said he and the US ambassador began the day by listening to Prince's hit Purple Rain and Delirious before attending bilateral meetings. Prince had spoken about struggling with childhood epilepsy, the Associated Press reports, and friends say he had hip trouble. His former percussionist, Sheila E, told the news agency Prince had suffered the effects of years of jumping off risers and speakers on stage while wearing high heels. "There was always something kind of bothering him, as it does all of us," she said. "I hurt every single day. You know we're like athletes, we train, and we get hurt all the time. We have so many injuries. " Born Prince Rogers Nelson in 1958, he was a prolific writer and performer from a young age - reportedly writing his first song when he was seven. He was also an arranger and multi-instrumentalist, and recorded more than 30 albums. Hits included Let's Go Crazy and When Doves Cry. In 1984, he won an Oscar for the score to Purple Rain, a film in which he also starred. Throughout his career he had a reputation for secrecy and eccentricity, once changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol. Prince's latest album, HITnRUN Phase Two, was released last year and he had been touring as recently as last week. Share your tributes to Prince. Did you meet him? Did you see him live? What impact did he have on your life? Email your comments: [email protected] . Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways: Or use the form below

Questions swirl about Prince’s health with unexplained death washingtontimes.com 2016-04-23 15:34 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

3 Feds say they’ve accessed phone at center of Apple data case NEW YORK—The US justice department said it has withdrawn a request to force Apple to reveal data from a cellphone linked to a New York drug case after someone provided federal investigators with the phone’s passcode. Federal prosecutors said in a letter to US District Judge Margo Brodie that investigators were able to access the iPhone late Thursday night after using the passcode. The government said it no longer needs Apple’s assistance to unlock the iPhone and is withdrawing its request for an order requiring Apple’s cooperation in the drug case. “As we have said previously, these cases have never been about setting a court precedent; they are about law enforcement’s ability and need to access evidence on devices pursuant to lawful court orders and search warrants,” justice department spokesperson Emily Pierce said in a statement on Friday. The justice department had sought to compel the Cupertino, California-based Apple to cooperate in the drug case, even though it had recently dropped a fight to compel Apple to help break into an iPhone used by a gunman in a December attack in San Bernardino that killed 14 people. In that case, a still-unidentified third-party came forward with a technique that managed to open the phone. That entity has not been named, and the justice department has not revealed the method used. Representatives for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday night. The tech giant had been fighting the justice department’s attempts and said in court papers last week the government’s request was extraordinary because there is likely minimal evidentiary value of any data on the phone and that Congress never authorized it to pursue such requests through the 1789 All Writs Act. It also said there is no proof Apple’s assistance was necessary and that the same technique the FBI was using to get information from the phone in California might work with the drug case phone. But prosecutors had argued that the government needed Apple’s assistance to access the data, which they contended was “authorized to search by warrant.” On Thursday, several law enforcement groups filed arguments in Brooklyn federal court saying they feared the public will stop aiding police if Apple is allowed to refuse to give up information from the phone in the drug case. The groups said they supported the government’s efforts to try to reverse a magistrate judge’s ruling earlier this year for Apple.

2016-04-23 18:03 Associated Press technology.inquirer.net

4 Exciting, informative last presidential debate vowed DAGUPAN CITY, Pangasinan—Lead organizers are all set for the last PiliPinas presidential debate to be held at University of Pangasinan here on Sunday. In a press conference at Metro Plaza event center on Saturday, ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs head Ging Reyes promised that the debate would be more exciting and informative. She said the last debate would be unique from the previous two because it would be in a town hall format where representatives from different sectors, featured in case studies from all island groups, would be able to ask questions to the presidential candidates. “Lahat ng mga kandidato, sasagutin ang mga katanungan ng bawat isang case study. Makikita natin ang pagkakaiba-iba ng mga posisyon sa bawat isyu, ng kanilang policy proposal, at ng paano nila sasagutin ang mga problema at concern na kinakaharap ng mga taong ito,” Reyes said. She added that there would be a faceoff among the candidates, who had already chosen who they would be sparring with in the debate. “Isang segment na maaaring makapukaw ng inyong interest ay ang face-off segment. Bukod sa makukumpara ang mga bawat sagot ng mga kandidato sa bawat isyu, makakapagtanong at makakapagbatbatan (sila) sa bawat isa.” Reyes said the 180-minute debate program would have a total of 40 minutes of commercial break and an additional of two minutes for a Commission on Elections infomercial. Kapisanan ng Brodkaster ng Pilipinas chair Herman Basbaño said he was proud that the debates organized by the Commission on Elections in partnership with KBP and media outfits had been at par with those done abroad. RC

2016-04-23 18:03 Marc Jayson newsinfo.inquirer.net

5 UAAP Finals: La Salle blanks Ateneo in Game 1 La Salle needed only three sets to take down defending champion and fierce rival Ateneo, 25- 22, 25-22, 25-21, to take Game 1 of their best-of-three Finals duel in the UAAP Season 78 women’s volleyball tournament Saturday at Smart Araneta Coliseum. Ara Galang sealed Game 1 for La Salle with a smooth off-the-block tap against Bea De Leon. Lady Spikers head coach Ramil De Jesus said it was his team’s calm demeanor that helped them in the win despite Ateneo building up a solid foundation in the start of the match. “Mas relaxed mga bata kanina, although down kami sa start ng mga sets, nag early timeout ako nung 4-0, pero alam kong babalik ang composure ng mga bata (The girls were relaxed. Though, we were down at the start of every set, I called an early timeout when we were trailing 4-0 but I know their composure will be there),” said De Jesus, who is the only coach to lead La Salle to a title. Another factor that aided La Salle and this ended up in the stat sheet, was the Lady Spikers’ terrific blocking as they recorded 13 compared to Ateneo’s two. “Blocking, nag practice talaga kami nang matagal para doon, so at least nag work (We really worked hard on our blocking and at least, it worked).” Kim Dy led four Lady Spikers in double-figure scoring with 15 while Mika Reyes added 13 points. Galang, who missed last year’s Finals due to an injury, registered 10 points while Mary Joy Baron also had 10. La Salle goes for title No. 9 on Wednesday in Game 2 at Mall of Asia Arena. Alyssa Valdez was the lone Lady Eagle to finish in double digits with 17 points.

UAAP: Blue Eagles take Game 1, overwhelm Bulldogs sports.inquirer.net 2016-04-23 18:03 Bong Lozada sports.inquirer.net

6 Family land stays with family POULSBO, Wash. (AP) - The late Eva Rova Barnes was strong-willed and lived life on her own terms. Everyone who knew her agrees on this fact, if nothing else. Whether she knew what she was doing when she cut her family out of her will, and instead bequeathed her stake in her family’s 46-acre Poulsbo homestead to her mail carrier, is a question that ultimately had to be decided in January by the state Supreme Court, the Kitsap Sun reported (http://bit.ly/1WezujQ). Rova Road, off Bond Road outside Poulsbo, is named after Barnes’ family. Near the bend in the road lies her parents’ original 21 acres, bought in 1918 when Barnes was 3, along with the 25 acres bought by Barnes and her husband, Ray. It was there that the Barneses raised their daughter, Karolyn. Both Ray and Karolyn died before Barnes, leaving her with no direct descendants. When Barnes died in 2011, weeks shy of her 95th birthday, her will gave her sizable stake in the 46 acres, along with other nearby real estate and the rest of Barnes’ property, to her friend and caretaker, Michelle Velarde, whom she got to know years before as her mail carrier. Barnes’ closest blood relatives, her nieces and nephews, contested the will, starting a legal battle over whether Barnes was freely making her own decisions at the end of her life. In January the state’s high court upheld the trial judge’s ruling that Velarde had exercised undue influence over Barnes, voiding the last will that gave the property to Velarde and her ex-husband, and turned the estate to Barnes’ family. The 8-0 ruling reversed an appellate court decision that incorrectly “reweighed” the evidence from the trial in Kitsap County Superior Court, justices found. The trial court had ruled that Barnes’ last will coincided with her increasing dependence on Velarde and her widening rift from her family. The court also found that Velarde had “fanned the flames” of the anger and mistrust between Barnes and her family. A FORCEFUL PERSONALITY The “undue influence” case drew attention of attorneys inside and outside of the state and highlights what Barnes’ family says are the risks facing vulnerable adults. The family nearly lost land that had been in their pioneer family for a century. They plan to turn it over to a nonprofit or land conservancy. The land holds special memories for the Rovas. Just being back on the property, among the trees he climbed as a boy, is enough to send nephew John Rova, 67, into a reverie. “I’m 13 while I’m standing here,” he said. “She had everything she ever had,” said Vicki Rova Mueller, Barnes’ niece, who described her late aunt as “feisty” and a person who had a tendency to hoard. “She just didn’t get rid of stuff. For her to give anything away is a big deal, but to then realize somehow she gave everything away, that was another piece, it helped us realize something had gone awry.” Velarde said she didn’t ask for the fight and was honoring her friend’s final wish. “They say I exerted undue influence over Eva. Eva exerted undue influence over me,” Velarde said. “Eva did exactly what she wanted to do. She was the boss.” Kevin Cure, the attorney for the Rovas, said that because of Barnes’ mental and physical difficulties, she was susceptible to being manipulated. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 16:18 ADVANCE FOR www.washingtontimes.com

7 Things to know about Shakespeare, 400 years after his death LONDON (AP) - Theater-lovers in Britain and around the world are marking the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. A few things to know about the famous playwright: MANY HAPPY RETURNS He may have died on his birthday. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616 in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. He’s believed to have been born exactly 52 years earlier, though the date is an educated guess - the earliest record is of his baptism on April 26, 1564. April 23 is also St. George’s Day, England’s national day. ___ A SHAPER OF LANGUAGE Shakespeare wrote 37 plays that have been firmly attributed to him, and gave the English language hundreds of common phrases, including “break the ice,” ”brave new world,” ”heart of gold,” ”the be-all and the end-all” and “with bated breath.” ___ A WORLD TRAVELLER… His plays have been performed in almost every country on Earth. Since 2014, Shakespeare’s Globe theater has taken a production of “Hamlet” to 197 countries including Afghanistan, Somalia and Saudi Arabia - where they were one of the first troupes allowed to let men and women perform together. ___ … IN HIS IMAGINATION Settings for Shakespeare’s plays range from Italy and Greece to the desert island Troy, but he probably never left England. ___ A QUESTION OF IDENTITY Some people don’t believe that William Shakespeare, a small-town boy who never went to university, wrote the plays and poems that bear his name. Dissenters - known as “anti- Stratfordians” - have argued that the true author may be Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford; philosopher-scientist Francis Bacon; playwright Christopher Marlowe; or even Queen Elizabeth I. Most scholars dismiss these as conspiracy theories and believe William Shakespeare of Stratford did write the plays. Story Continues →

Museum to host round-the-clock reading of The Bard’s plays washingtontimes.com 2016-04-23 16:55 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

8 Osmeña: VP race down to Marcos, Robredo The race for the vice presidency might be down to just two, according to Sen. Sergio Osmeña III. Osmeña on Saturday weighed in on the chances of the country’s vice presidential aspirants, saying the competition among the five candidates was tight. “Very close,” Osmeña said at a forum in Quezon City. “It seems the surveys accurately reflect what the people are feeling in this time.” Osmeña, however, thinks Sen. Ferdinand “BongBong” Marcos Jr. and Camarines Sur Rep. Ma. Leonor “Leni” Robredo will eventually be battling it out for the top spot. “I think the race might just be between those two,” he said. In the recent pre-election surveys, Marcos enjoys a solo lead while Robredo’s numbers continue to surge. Still, Osmeña said the chances of erstwhile front-runner Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero should not be discounted. “You cannot discount Chiz, kasi Chiz is only two points behind Leni. So talagang tie din sila for number two,” he said. He also mentioned the rise in survey ratings of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano. “Alan Peter is catching up. Nakikita ko yung number niya na mabilis umakyat,” he said. RC

2016-04-23 17:53 Nestor Corrales newsinfo.inquirer.net

9 Painters import Henderson-Niles calls Greg Slaughter ‘soft’ Before he takes on San Miguel Beer’s June Mar Fajardo, Pierre Henderson- Niles got his first test against Barangay Ginebra San Miguel and its 7-foot center Greg Slaughter in the quarterfinals. Slaughter has been playing his best basketball under head coach Tim Cone, leading the statistical race for the Best Player of the Conference award through the elimination round. The Gin Kings, too, were on a roll heading into the playoffs until they ran into the Elasto Painters and their menacing import. Henderson-Niles recalled his matchup with Slaughter and the former Memphis Tiger wasn’t impressed. “Everybody was talking about that big guy Greg, he was soft,” said the hulking 6-foot-8 center on Saturday shortly after the Painters wrapped up their practice session. Slaughter averaged 18.5 points, 9.7 rebounds, and only 1.5 turnovers per game in the elimination round. His numbers, however, dipped to just 12 points and 7 rebounds while his turnovers doubled in the two games he played against Rain or Shine in the quarterfinals. The Painters swept the Gin Kings in the best-of-three series. Less than a week removed from facing Slaughter, Henderson-Niles gets his crack against the most dominant player in the league today in Fajardo in a best-of-five duel starting on Sunday. “I know I can guard any player in the league,” he said. “Hell yeah [I’m going to cancel out Fajardo].” “Let’s see what’s going to happen tomorrow (Sunday) at 5 ‘o clock,” he added. “We’re going to see what this battle is all about.”

2016-04-23 17:22 Mark Giongco sports.inquirer.net

10 EXCHANGE: Community invited to learn about lab technology JOLIET, Ill. (AP) - A new lab at Joliet Junior College houses technology that can create almost anything people can imagine. Student Eric Wilhelmi was in the new JJC MakerLab on April 13 and held up a small house in his hand that was designed and created with the digital fabrication equipment in the lab. “It literally jumps from your mind to your hand,” said Wilhelmi, who uses the lab to work on architecture projects. Sitting on one the tables in the lab were other objects that have been created, such as a finely detailed dinosaur skull and the Eiffel Tower. Those objects and more can be made at the JJC MakerLab, which has been at the college since January. The lab has 3-D printers, scanners, a carving machine, a laser cutter and other equipment that students studying architecture, engineering or orthotics and prosthetics technology can use to hone their skills. There also are plans to have the community visit the lab and learn how to use the technology as well. “Getting people involved and taking away that ‘I can’t do it’ attitude is kind of something I want to push with the lab,” said Steven Mark, MakerLab technician and JJC graduate. Mark said the MakerLab is a space where JJC students and the community can create anything. He said it is exciting to see JJC move in a direction where everyone can use technology that is becoming more common. “It’s really exciting that everybody is starting to use the technology, and it’s kind of widespread now,” he said. JJC held an open house for the MakerLab in March to demonstrate its capabilities. U. S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, attended the event. He previously brought a portable lab known as the Fab Lab to JJC in 2013, according to the school. Children and adults use the lab to invent, design and manufacture prototypes. The equipment in the MakerLab was used throughout campus in the past several years, but the new facility brings it together, Mark said. Students can make their models a reality or make a mechanical piece, he said. Wilhelmi said the lab allows him to extend his own skills and create increasingly complex projects, especially when he is designing stairs. “It enables me do a lot of bigger things,” he said. He said the 3-D printer technology is a big deal because it is technology that NASA was using so astronauts would be able to create their own tools. Now, it is something a community college student can use, he said. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 17:21 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

11 SuperSport United beat Aces 2-1 to secure semi-final berth Aces controlled the first half‚ but that all changed in the second half after Jeremy Brockie was introduced for the home side. The visitors started on a bright note with Judas Moseamedi putting them in front with a header in the fifth minute from a corner by Aubrey Ngoma. A minute earlier‚ Ngoma had initiated an attack and made a terrific run and crossed for Sibusiso Masina‚ whose attempt was saved for a corner by Ronwen Williams. From the resultant set piece by Ngoma‚ Moseamedi rose highest to head home to put AmaZayoni in the lead. Dove Wome then wasted a glorious opportunity for the home side in the 10th minute when‚ in a one-on-one situation‚ he failed to beat Shu-Aib Walters. In the 21st minute‚ Clayton Daniels directed his header wide from a corner by Thuso Phala. Two minutes later‚ Aces defender Lehlohonolo Nonyane pushed forward and put in a dangerous across the goalmouth‚ but Moseamedi failed to connect with the ball. Things appeared to go from bad to worse for Matsatsantsa when Sibusiso Khumalo was forced off the field with injury with 33 minutes on the clock and was replaced by Thato Mokeke. Phala delivered a good ball for Bradley Grobler in the 34th minute‚ but the latter's header was well saved by Walters. Aces were pretty much in a commanding position at the break or so they thought. For the second half‚ SuperSport United coach Stuart Baxter sent in Brockie in Kingston Nkhatha's place. The New Zealand-born striker‚ who now has 16 goals in all competitions‚ didn't disappoint. Aces could have gone two up early in the second stanza. Thabo Nodada played in a good ball for Mbesuma‚ whose attempt was saved by Ronwen Williams in the 52nd minute. The Mpumalanga side was left to rue their missed chances when Brockie levelled matters in the 68th minute with a header after a pass from Wome. And right at the death‚ Phala stepped up to score the winner after his shot deflected off teammate Grobler and into the net.

2016-04-23 16:14 Tiyani Wa www.timeslive.co.za

12 Construction means new ramp from I-85 to I-385 in Greenville GREENVILLE, S. C. (AP) - Construction crews are starting to shift traffic as part of a $230 million project to improve the Interstate 85-Interstate 385 interchange in Greenville. The South Carolina Department of Transportation says that this weekend, if the weather allows, crews will finish a temporary ramp to take drivers from I-85 north to I-385 north. Crews also have shifted driving lanes for the project, which will add lanes to both highways and build bridges to eliminate tight curves and short merging lanes. Most of the construction work should be finished in late 2018, with completion of the project set for several months later.

2016-04-23 17:16 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

13 NY giving free park passes to 4th graders and their families ALBANY, N. Y. (AP) - New York state is making free state park passes available to fourth graders and their families as part of an effort to encourage kids to enjoy the state’s outdoors. The passes are available on the New York State Parks website, nysparks.com. The passes are good for the students and those in their families’ vehicles. They can also be used at state historic sites for free tours for a student and up to three adults. Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the passes should encourage young New Yorkers to explore the state’s natural beauty and become good stewards of the environment. The state is also setting aside $500,000 this year to help schools arrange field trips to state parks, nature centers and historic sites. ___ Online: www.nysparks.com

2016-04-23 17:16 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

14 EXCHANGE: Battle underway against Rockford’s education gap ROCKFORD, Ill. (AP) - A pilot program launched in October is showing signs of success as educators look to arm thousands of adults in Boone and Winnebago counties with a high school equivalency certificate and skills that will land them a sustainable job. Mary Kinney retired after a 33-year career as a public school teacher and is now on the front lines of this battle. There are 45,000 adults in the two-county area who have no high school diploma or General Educational Development certificate. The long odds don’t deter Kinney. She teaches about a dozen adults for a few hours a day, four days a week, in the pilot program run by Rock Valley College and Goodwill Industries of Northern Illinois. The program is a precursor of sorts to a larger, more sophisticated plan envisioned by RVC and Goodwill to provide basic and vocational education to the multitude of undereducated adults in the region. While the larger vision develops, Rock Valley has married its adult education instruction with the kind of intense, personalized case management that Goodwill has found successful in its GoodGrads program, which is a prelude to a GED class. Student retention in most adult education of that sort hovers around 30 percent. The RVC-Goodwill pilot program boasts retention rates of 79 percent and higher. Administrators say effective case managers are the reason for that success; they help students overcome life and work obstacles that often derail their educational aspirations. Last week, Kinney was quizzing three adult women on the finer points of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the federal government. In Illinois, students must pass a U. S. Constitution test before they can earn a GED. Kinney finds that, for many students, the Constitution test is the easiest part of the GED battle. “Math is the hardest part of the GED test,” Kinney said. “Reading comprehension and writing skills - we focus on that a lot, too. The Constitution test tends to be the easiest part. So you try to build on that, get some easy wins. When you see the look on their faces when they get the answers right, or pass when they pass a test - I wish we could bottle up their enthusiasm.” If earning a GED is the goal, Kinney said, the key to success is not giving up. In that respect, results of the RVC-Goodwill pilot program are encouraging, even though the program is only 6 months old. Rock Valley delivers reading and math instruction - below the ninth-grade level - to students and Goodwill provides case management services. Every student’s needs are different, and the case manager’s role is equal parts therapist, student advocate and confidence booster. Most students in pilot program are in their 20s, 30s or are even older, said Cira Bennett, a case manager who oversees Goodwill’s GoodGrads program. Students routinely need help to navigate obstacles such as child care, transportation, rent payments and any number of other hurdles that might prevent them from attending class. “The biggest takeaway that we see with this program so far is the case management,” Bennett said. “We’re learning how to use the case managers more frequently, more strategically.” For the first session of the pilot program, which ran from October through December, student retention was 79 percent in classes offered at Rock Valley’s downtown Learning Opportunity Center. Retention was 87 percent at the second site, Blackhawk Courts Apartments on 15th Avenue. Students collectively passed 17 individual tests needed to earn a GED. One individual earned a GED. “To have those kind of retention numbers and that kind of progress with this population of students is extraordinary,” said Pat Young, Rock Valley’s Adult Education coordinator. “So many students have trouble with child care or transportation. Just getting to class can be a struggle. That’s why the case management is so important.” If a student doesn’t show up to class, a case manager may call and offer to pick him or her up or arrange for the student to get bus tokens or some other way to get to class. If the obstacle is child care, the case manager finds a solution. More often than not, Bennett said, the most important thing a case manager does is listen. “When you’re raising kids, trying to hold down a job and support a family and you’re going to class every day to earn a GED, it’s a huge, huge challenge,” Bennett said. “You need an advocate. You need someone to encourage you, to listen to what’s going on in your life and to try to get that person whatever help they need to stay on track to get that GED.” Mostly, though, the case manager just listens. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 17:15 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

15 Sunwolves rebound with 1st win in Super Rugby TOKYO (AP) - A week after suffering one of the worst defeats in the history of Super Rugby, Japan’s Sunwolves rebounded with its first-ever win in the tournament, beating Argentina’s Jaguares 36-28. The Sunwolves were routed 92-17 by South Africa’s Cheetahs in last weekend’s eighth round, conceding 14 tries in a match that supported fears they would be uncompetitive in world rugby’s toughest professional competition. But they showed character by bouncing back at their home stadium in Tokyo to top the Jaguares, who were playing their fourth-straight match away from home. Former Samoa flyhalf Tusi Pisi kicked 18 points as the Sunwolves rallied from 18-13 down at halftime to win despite being outscored four tries to three. Yasutaka Sasakura, Derek Carpenter and Harumichi Tatekawa scored the Sunwolves’ tries. Later, the Chiefs held on with 14 men in a match of repeated lead changes to beat the Hurricanes 28-27 in the best match of the season so far. The Hamilton-based Chiefs achieved their sixth-straight win to cement their place atop the championship table after nine rounds. Fullback Jason Woodward had the chance to win the match for the Hurricanes in the final minute but wasn’t able to hold a pass from flyhalf Beauden Barrett, who had broken the defensive line and left the goalline open. Barrett was Man of the Match, winning the much-anticipated contest with his rival for the All Blacks No. 10 jersey this season, the Chiefs’ Aaron Cruden. Barrett scored a try and made another and was outstanding in general play, kicking only the fifth dropped goal in the Hurricanes’ history. But he had a poor night from the kicking tee, landing only one of six attempts in a lapse that proved costly in a close match. The lead changed hands four times in the first half, once more in the second and the Chiefs held onto a one-point lead for 11 minutes to gain a rare win in Wellington. They played the last five minutes of the match with 14 men when they effectively ran out of replacements after a series of injuries to front rowers. The Chiefs’ scrum was under strain throughout the match and they won a strange reprieve in the 75th minute when their lack of a front row replacement led to uncontested scrums. “Jeez mate, I thought we were a bit lucky to be honest,” Chiefs captain Sam Cane said. “I didn’t think we played overly well tonight but luckily we managed to come away with the win. “The Hurricanes put a lot of pressure on and I think they will probably be kicking themselves. They were probably the better team tonight but sometimes rugby’s funny like that.” The pace of the match never flagged from the fourth minute when Barrett created the opening try for winger Cory Jane. Five minutes later the Chiefs claimed the lead for the first time with a contentious try to Seta Tamanivalu, who appeared to drop the ball over the goalline. Barrett’s rare dropped goal gave the Hurricanes an 8-7 lead but the Chiefs went ahead again with Tamanivalu’s second try, which seemed to come from a forward pass. Hurricanes captain Dane Coles barged over to give his team a 15-14 lead at halftime after the last of the first-half lead changes. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 17:14 Players of www.washingtontimes.com

16 Annual youth turkey hunt this weekend ALBANY, N. Y. (AP) - Young hunters in New York can get a jump on turkey season this weekend. Spring turkey season does not open until May 1 in upstate New York. But the annual youth turkey hunting weekend is April 23-24. Junior hunters aged 12 through 15 will be allowed to hunt turkey in upstate New York and Suffolk County. The young hunters must hold a license and a turkey permit. They are required to hunt with an older guardian and may take one bearded bird.

2016-04-23 17:13 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

17 Party like it was 1564! Make merry on Shakespeare’s birthday COLUMBIA, S. C. (AP) - A party marking William Shakespeare’s 1564 birthday is being held with swordplay, sonnets and theater scenes. Saturday’s festivities begin at noon at the Thomas Cooper Library on the University of South Carolina campus in Columbia. The events, which are free and open to the public, include performances by Theatre South Carolina’s Juke Box Shakespeare with speeches, sonnets and scenes from the Bard’s works. The South Carolina Shakespeare Company is using period costumes for swordplay and dancing demonstrations, and children’s performances are included. At 4 p.m., there will be cake. The party comes as the library exhibits of a copy of a rare First Folio, a compendium of Shakespeare works on loan from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C. 2016-04-23 17:05 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

18 Vermont Fish and Wildlife reminds drivers: Beware of moose MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - The Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife is reminding drivers across the state to be on the lookout for moose in the road. Moose are more likely to be crossing roadways in the spring, especially after dark or early in the morning, as they move from wintering areas to spring feeding locations. Vermont’s top game warden Col. Jason Batchelder says that last year drivers hit 56 moose on the state’s highways. He says moose can be unpredictable and dangerous if people get too close and they feel cornered or get irritated. The department says motorists should always be aware of the danger of moose, which cross the road randomly, as well as at their regular crossings.

2016-04-23 17:05 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

19 Marshall professor’s passion led him across country HUNTINGTON, W. Va. (AP) - Every April, hundreds of people flock to First Presbyterian Church to enjoy some soup, help the Facing Hunger Food Bank and take on the ever-challenging task of picking out the perfect bowl from more than a thousand unique options. There are some bowls that are bright and some rustic, some are patterned and some plain, some are perfect in shape, some with charming imperfections. Many Huntington groups sacrifice their time and contribute in different ways to make the Empty Bowls event a success each year, and at Marshall University, there’s one man who guides the art students who put thousands of hours into this community project - Frederick Bartolovic, an assistant professor of ceramics who has been at Marshall since 2011. The 41-year-old gives all credit to his students, who every year go through the labor-intensive process of making bowl after bowl after bowl. The process includes making a clay wedge, throwing the pieces on the wheel, drawing, doing an initial firing and then decorating and glazing them and firing them again and sometimes more. Marshall students always contribute at least 1,000 bowls for Empty Bowls event, often more, Bartolovic said. “It’s a very intense process and takes a unique student who is drawn to ceramics,” he said. “Ceramics are a 3-D medium and attract a person who is very tactile and a maker of some sort.” He likes that the Empty Bowls project not only helps the food bank but also fosters a sense of community among the students themselves, because different students help with different aspects of the project. After creating a bowl, a student might pass it off to another to load it into the kiln, for example. For him, teaching ceramics at Marshall has been a perfect way to combine his love of art and working with others, though it took him some time to find his way there. A Wheeling native who spent some of his childhood in Florida but mostly in New Hampshire, Bartolovic attended the University of Arizona with initial plans to major in photography. “As soon as I touched clay, it was like the romantic tale you always hear,” he said. He fell in love with it. It was process-oriented, like photography, but felt more earthbound. He earned an undergraduate degree and then took a job with a handmade ceramic tile factory in New Hampshire, Trikeenan Tileworks, and eventually became its vice president. “As vice president, the part I liked the most was training new people about the process of ceramics,” he said. Still, it was hard work, and he grew a little restless and decided to go back to school, this time attending the Rhode Island School of Design and earning a master’s degree. After that, he became a working studio artist, living in downtown Toronto and selling sculptures professionally for a couple of years. “I found that experience to be kind of lonely, so I decided to teach,” he said. He got hired by the State University of New York at Oswego, SUNY Oswego, located near Lake Ontario, and had a great experience as a visiting professor for more than two years. There, he realized how great it was to be able to both create art and help students learn and solve problems. From there, he came to Marshall. He’s enjoying life here in Appalachia, teaching at Marshall as well as sharing a ceramics business and a farm with Michelle Strader. Their business is Silver Run Ceramics, found online at www.silverrunceramics.com, and their farm is in Boyd County, Kentucky. “We have a horse, a goat, chickens, a dog and two cats,” Bartolovic said. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 16:55 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

20 Ranson thrift store provides ‘New Hope’ for cancer patients RANSON, W. Va. (AP) - For Marlene Myers Plumer, owner of New Hope Thrift Store, saving customers money on clothing, books and household items is secondary to bringing smiles to the faces of members of the community and providing hope for families of children with cancer. Plumer opened New Hope in July with her husband, Eddie, and their daughter, Tina. Plumer currently lives in Martinsburg but said she grew up in Jefferson County and graduated from Jefferson High School in 1980. Plumer said her ties to the area are what made her choose to open her store in Ranson. “I wanted to give back to the area I grew up in. Really, what my store is, more than anything is a ministry. I wanted to do outreach to the community as well,” she said. Part of that community outreach is assisting local families who have lost their homes and belongings in a fire, or giving items in the store to people who may not be able to afford them. Plumer said she sees many customers who come from Jefferson Medical Center seeking items like walkers and wheelchairs. Plumer said an elderly woman recently offered her $3 for a walker because that was all the money she had, and Plumer gave the walker to her for free because she was in need. Plumer also makes monthly contributions from the store to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. While the proceeds from her sales do not go directly into her monthly donations, Plumer said if the store has had a good sales month, she will add more money to the amount she donates. Plumer said her donations to St. Jude are part of why she chose the name “New Hope” for her store. “There’s always hope, and in this world, we need all the hope we can get. My father died of cancer in 1992. Seeing what he went through and what so many members of my family went through, I would hate to think of a small child right at the dawn of life getting hit with this. St. Jude is always talking about hope,” she said. In addition to her generosity, Plumer said her strong Christian beliefs have influenced her interaction with customers. “I’m more of a face-to-face type of person. I think the way society is today, we’re getting away from that face-to-face communication. When somebody comes in here, I want them to feel special. I learn their names,” she said. Plumer said some customers come in because they just need to talk to someone, and she said it’s not uncommon for her to pray with and for people who come into the store. New Hope Thrift Store, located at 406 N. Mildred St., is open from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Tuesday - Friday and 10 a.m.- 4p.m. Saturday. Plumer said she accepts donated items for the store during regular business hours. If customers are looking for a particular item Plumer doesn’t have in the store, she said she puts their names and telephone numbers in a notebook and calls when or if the item they’re looking for comes in. “Going above and byeond and doing that little extra to help people is what sets this store apart,” Plumer said. “I’ve had customers say that to me. They say ‘people, not profits’ and if you treat people well, the money will come.” ___ Story Continues →

2016-04-23 16:53 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

21 Lynchburg firm excavates Oak Hill Plantation DANVILLE, Va. (AP) - What may have been an act of defiance by slaves would become an archaeological saving grace years later. Several items from an archaeological dig at Oak Hill Plantation in Danville now sit in a laboratory at Historic Sandusky. Lynchburg engineering and land surveying firm Hurt & Proffitt was awarded a contract last year by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to perform archaeological work at the plantation, deemed a “threatened site” following a treasure hunt conducted as part of the Discovery Channel’s Rebel Gold series. The Rebel Gold program, featuring Oak Hill Plantation, aired last year. In it, a group of treasure hunters was seeking in various spots around the plantation a cache of Mexican silver dollars - a part of the treasury of the Confederacy whose fate has been a subject of speculation through the ensuing years. Some believe the coins are buried in Danville, the last Confederate capital. Oak Hill Plantation belonged to Samuel Hairston, who may have been the wealthiest person in Virginia around the time of the Civil War and whose holdings included land and thousands of slaves across multiple states. According to the Danville Register & Bee, the treasure hunters were given permission to be on the property by members of the Hairston family. State archeologists, however, were appalled by methods used during the program, such as the use of a backhoe around the site of an icehouse. “There was a very slim thread or connection between this plantation and that whole story,” said Randy Lichtenberger, Hurt & Proffitt director of cultural resources. Nate Starck, listed as a supervising producer for the Rebel Gold series on the Internet Movie Database at imdb.com, declined to comment when reached by the Danville Register & Bee. Alyssa Sales, senior publicist for Discovery Communications, also declined to comment. According to Lichtenberger, a major difference between treasure hunters and work performed by archeologists is artifacts recovered by archeologists carefully are recorded with information such as the type of object found and the object’s placement within a three-dimensional grid, which allows analysis of the artifacts in relation to others at the site. The Danville Register & Bee reported the treasure hunters donated some items found at Oak Hill to a Danville museum and a historical society. Items sent to the Pittsylvania Historical Society last spring include buttons, coins, thimbles and beads, which, for the most part, cannot be attributed to any room or feature at the site, according to Hurt & Proffitt’s proposal to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “If it’s all just mixed together, it becomes meaningless in terms of archaeology,” said Keith Adams, Hurt & Proffitt director of archaeological materials laboratory. “They become curios, essentially, or treasures rather than artifacts.” A four-member team from Hurt & Proffitt, with assistance from a small group of volunteers, performed excavations within two rooms of slave dwellings last fall. The brick structure was comprised of four attached one-room dwellings that were built sometime in the mid-1820s. Now in various states of deterioration, each room of the structure possibly held a single family, likely household slaves owing to its proximity to the big house. Hurt & Proffitt has performed archaeological work at other threatened sites in Central Virginia, including Cabellsville, an early Amherst County seat that now lies within Nelson County. At Oak Hill Plantation, the firm was tasked with excavating and documenting the findings within two subfloor pits inside the slave dwellings. Subfloor pits were common features in dwellings of the enslaved, as well as poor whites, and were places where people stored items such as root crops or personal valuables, Lichtenberger said. According to Lichtenberger, one of the two subfloor pits was rather unusual, containing a second compartment deep enough to extend below the present-day water table such that it was filling with water as the archeologists were working. The treasure hunters only disturbed about a foot in depth of that particular pit before losing interest, fortunately leaving as much as two or two-and-a-half feet of the pit undisturbed. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 16:53 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

22 Knowing your ABC: A primer to understand the different areas of Judea and Samaria Knowing one’s ABCs, everyone would agree, is indispensable to attaining literacy and a gateway to Western literature and culture. Similarly, knowing the difference between areas A, B and C in Judea and Samaria and the ramifications thereof is indispensable to understanding the politics and violence that affects many of us on an almost daily basis. Take any social or political activity of consequence for either Israelis or Palestinians, from agriculture to construction to employment, settlement and of course security and taxation, and the importance of these designations is bound to come up. Why even avid followers of Israel’s political scene might be confused over what areas A, B and C mean more than 20 years after they came into existence probably has to do with the fact that they emerged in legal documents related to the Oslo negotiations – especially the interim agreement between Israel and the PLO signed in September 1995 known as the Oslo II Accord, which extended the jurisdiction of the newly formed Palestinian Authority to the major towns in Judea and Samaria. The PA had secured jurisdiction over most of Gaza and Jericho a year- and-a-half earlier. Legal documents are typically only read by the professionals, in this case, officials, diplomats and senior military officers. Yet one hardly has to be either to understand the basic differences between these three types of jurisdiction or the very important fact that they were intended to have meaning for only five or six years until a final settlement to the Palestinian issue was supposed to be achieved. The date for that auspicious occasion, then-US president Bill Clinton, then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat agreed, was to take place no later than five years from the establishment of the PA in May 1994, that is to say, in 1999. Seventeen years later, a final agreement seems as distant as ever. This also means that the differences between the legal distinctions of areas A, B and C and realities on the ground have grown over the years. Yet, though they have grown, Israel, the PA, the United States and most if not all of the international community still regard these legal distinctions and the documents in which they were inscribed as binding, only to be supplanted by the signing of a final agreement. The following primer tries to make sense of these differences and their ramifications on issues such as settlements, security and the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian issue. What areas A, B and C basically mean The differences between areas A, B and C, all pertaining to Judea and Samaria, are relatively simple. Area A is the space in which the PA has political and military jurisdiction over its residents – all of whom are Arab. This includes all of the major towns and their immediate environs – with the partial exception of Jewish Hebron, which came under exclusive Israeli control in the 1997 Hebron protocol between Israel and the PLO. This area comprises approximately 18 percent of Judea and Samaria’s land mass. According to the Oslo Accords, the PA was never given jurisdiction over Israeli citizens and foreign nationals. Israeli citizens have the right to enter and pass through Area A unmolested, provided that they are not involved in illicit activity, in which case the PA can only temporarily apprehend them until they are transferred to the Israeli authorities. Joint Israeli-PA patrols were intended to handle these cases. THE NEXT letter in the alphabet signified less built-up areas, many of which shared their space with settlements created in the massive settlement drive in the 1980s launched by the Likud government. Area B comprises approximately 22% of Judea and Samaria. In Area B, Israel and the PA share jurisdiction. Israel enjoys exclusive jurisdiction over the Jewish inhabitants and exclusive authority over security for both its Arab and Jewish inhabitants. The PA has political, administrative and police jurisdiction over the Arab inhabitants. They are subject to its laws, pay the necessary taxes and benefit from the same public services the PA provides in Area A. Strictly speaking, only the IDF and the Israel Police can make arrests in these areas. MOST OF geographic Judea and Samaria (60% of the area) is designated Area C, over which Israel has exclusive jurisdiction both administratively and in security matters. Area C’s distinguishing characteristic is that it is sparsely populated – by Arab or Jewish inhabitants. Most of this area lies east of the populated mountain spine from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south. The eastern slopes descending and including the Jordan Valley are characterized by harsh climate and low to no rainfall. The Jordan Valley, the South Hebron Hills and the area in the vicinity of Ma’aleh Adumim – from east of Mount Scopus to Jericho – are by far the most politically contested spaces in Area C, due to both Jewish settlement and Israeli security concerns. IT IS clear that the alphabetic division of the area reflected Israeli geostrategic logic more than Palestinian interests and that Israel had the upper hand in the negotiation process. The division was supposed to facilitate Israeli security control, while relieving Israel of the burden of caring for the area’s Arab inhabitants. Before signing off on the formal division into areas A, B and C, it is important to note what was left out of the alphabet – the letter “J” for Jerusalem. The issue of Jerusalem in the relevant legal documents was mentioned only as one of five crucial issues that were to be resolved in the final talks. This meant that Jerusalem remained formally under exclusive Israeli jurisdiction. Between theory and reality Israel’s upper hand in the negotiation process was undermined by its policy on the ground in the six years between the emergence of the PA and the outbreak of the second intifada. This policy is highlighted by the policy of the Defense Ministry, the IDF and the government to buy quiet by turning a blind eye to PA encroachment with the encouragement of many Western governments. The activities of Orient House, the shadow east Jerusalem municipality headed by Faisal Husseini, were probably the most striking deviation from the strategic logic of the Oslo agreements. HUSSEINI, ALTHOUGH dubbed a “peace advocate,” was, in fact, one of the major and more extreme Fatah leaders with clout behind him up until his death in 2000. Palestinian security agents soon penetrated east Jerusalem and often kidnapped Arabs who were suspected of being informers, or for expressing opposition to Arafat, or even for penal matters. Just as these infringements occurred in Jerusalem, they also occurred in Areas B and C. The fear they created must have made it more difficult to gather intelligence, the bloody ramifications for which the Israeli public paid dearly in the first two years of the second intifada, when highly sophisticated squads of up to 12 terrorists belonging to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah expertly planned – undetected – large suicide bombings over an extended period of time. MEANWHILE, THE PA achieved effective sovereignty over Area A, over which the Israeli authorities had the right to “hot pursuit,” and Israeli citizens the right to do business and pass through. Soon after the signing of the 1993 accord, settlers and most Israelis were barred from entering Area A after a few Beit El and Ofra inhabitants endangered their lives in attempting to exercise their right. Area A also became off limits to the IDF. As a result sanctuaries of terrorism appeared in Arab towns such as Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm and Bethlehem. So ingrained did the idea of PA sovereignty become, that when the IDF entered Gaza in April 2001, for the first time since the signing of Oslo II, the US secretary of state assailed Israel for the operation as “excessive and disproportionate,” demanding that Israel withdraw its forces – a demand with which Israel quickly complied. Tragically, for the 1,050 victims of Palestinian terrorism and their families, while Israeli sovereignty was being violated in Jerusalem, Israel effectively lost its right to prevent terrorism in Area A between 1996 and 2002. Operation Defensive Shield It was only after 9/11 and Iranian complicity in the massive shipment of arms to the PA, exposed through the interception and takeover of the boat Karin-A in February 2002, that the US gave the green light for Israeli penetration of Area A. The suicide attack at a 2002 Passover Seder held in the Park Hotel that killed 33 Israelis – including many Holocaust survivors – provided the resolve to switch gears from a policy of essentially absorbing casualties to a major frontal assault. At the end of March 2002, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, reconquered all the major Arab towns in Judea and Samaria, and essentially changed areas designated A to the status of B, where the IDF became responsible for security. Nothing characterized that change more than the preventive arrests carried out by the IDF almost on a daily basis ever since. The numbers of those arrested is mind-boggling by Western standards. In 2007, IDF forces, typically at night, arrested 7,000 Arabs. The arrests declined to half that number in 2012, but have increased since with the reemergence of terrorism on a large scale. In 2015, the numbers of those arrested rose once again to 6,000, especially during the months that coincided with the present wave of violence. To give a sense of proportion, a senior security official in the British Home Office announced alarmingly that the authorities arrested 281 terrorist suspects in Great Britain in 2014. IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) forays into PA territory to make preventive arrests have been the most effective means by far in reducing terrorism (at least until the present wave of “own-initative” terrorism). Thus, terrorism declined by a greater percentage before the erection of the security barrier than after it. The PA and the EU in Area C Israel has not been alone in changing the actual status quo in the alphabetic division of Judea and Samaria. Whereas Israel reduced PA control in Area A in its fight against terrorism, the PA and the EU, with financial support from Arab states such as Qatar and Kuwait, have in the past decade sought to actively encroach on Israeli rule in Area C, where according to the accords, Israel has exclusive administrative and security control. The major arena in this intense yet quiet war extends from Anata (bordering the light rail depot on the northern side of the Jerusalem-Jericho highway) to Abu Dis and Eizariya – 3 km. to the south – and land on both sides of the highway parallel to Ma’aleh Adumim all the way down to Jericho. THE PA and EU’s major objective and its weapon are not only clear but one and the same: to create continuous Arab settlement from the south to the north of the West Bank. Israel would like to prevent that contiguity by building on E-1, the area that would create continuous settlement from Ma’aleh Adumim to Jerusalem. But, as Israeli building dwindles into insignificance under the stern gaze of Uncle Sam and a frightened Israeli prime minister, the PA, with the help of the EU, has succeeded in housing 120,000 Palestinians in a space no larger than 9 sq.km. This number is more than double the number of inhabitants of Ma’aleh Adumim and the other Israeli localities in the area extending to Jericho. One hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants? Where do they all live? The answer can be found in Waze, but you probably don’t need it. Reach the French Hill junction, continue on Route 60 to Jericho, and just 1 km. from the junction look north, literally meters away from the security barrier. Lo and behold, you’ll find an urban jungle so dense it makes Bat Yam look like New York’s Central Park. Welcome to Ras Khamis and Ras Shahada, which block from view the village of Anata, home to the prophet Jeremiah from Anatot. According to Palestinian media, Nasrin Alian, an attorney with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 120,000 inhabitants live in this urban monstrosity alone, all of which was created since 2007. Umm Ishak al-Kaluti, in the same media site, confirms that 10 years ago she owned one of the few homes on this once barren hill. Most of the area is within the official municipal line and is thus formally under Israeli sovereignty; the remainder is Area C, which Israel presumably controls. Yet, hundreds of six-to-10-story apartment buildings were built there, all of which are illegal, as a senior officer in the Border Police in charge of security in the area confirmed. THIS OFFICER and Jamil Sanduqa, head of the makeshift local council of Ras Khamis, supported by the PA and the EU, would both agree, despite the quiet war, that these neighborhoods are a human disaster. Sanduqa characterizes living there as “life imprisonment.” The only road that traverses this urban nightmare is two lanes wide. It is continuously clogged all the way to the 24-hour outpost manned by the Border Police which allows passage into Jerusalem. Fire trucks would find it impossible to reach the scene in the event of even a small emergency such as fire from an electric short circuit or an explosion of gas balloons, most of which are illegally placed – let alone an earthquake. Garbage burns in the open with devastating health effects on the inhabitants and probably on the inhabitants of French Hill as well. This is also true of A-Zaim, a smaller version of Ras al-Khamis just two kilometers south, which is designated as being in Area B. In A-Zaim, illegal building is taking place toward the highway in violation of international conventions that stipulate mandatory distances between the building line and major arteries of traffic. One must assume that the Israeli officials in Beit El responsible for seeing that the PA operates within legal confines have very rosy glasses. Otherwise, how can one explain that these illegal buildings, which can easily become ideal shooting sites for terrorist snipers, have not been dismantled? FROM MA’ALEH Adumim onward, the EU has identified Beduin makeshift encampments as the chief weapon for transforming Area C into the would-be Palestinian state. Were EU officials to allow such encampments in their home states, they would find themselves behind bars for abetting housing that is in contravention of civic ordinances in third-world states, let alone states that comprise the EU. These fast-growing encampments are also too close to a major highway, bereft of sewage systems and organized garbage disposal. The Israeli authorities have leveled an area just south of Abu Dis that would provide all these amenities, yet the EU continues to abet this inhuman settlement. Obviously, the EU believes that any illegal means justify the end of creating a Palestinian state. The story is being repeated in the Southern Hebron Hills. Conclusion It turns out then, that a document written and signed in 1995 that created areas A, B and C, if hardly dramatic in its own right, sets the stage for dramatic, often painful events. It directly relates to current affairs such as the recent proposal made by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.- Gen. Gadi Eisenkot to give back to the PA sole security control over Area A. Will Israel repeat the mistake of providing Hamas and Islamic Jihad with sanctuaries from which to launch not only attacks with makeshift weapons, as in the current wave of violence, but also massive suicide bombings, as in the second intifada? The same can be said of the lenience Israel is showing in the face of massive illegal building abetted by the EU and some other Arab states. Israel then, might be repeating the same mistake it made between 1996 and 2002 when it allowed the PA to encroach on areas B and C, for which it paid dearly in the second intifada. The writer is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He can be reached at [email protected]

2016-04-23 16:44 Hillel Frisch www.jpost.com

23 In Damascus, an uneasy stability boosts Syria’s Assad DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Looking out from the Syrian capital these days, one can understand why President Bashar Assad would be in no hurry to make concessions at peace talks in Geneva, let alone consider stepping down as the opposition demands. In Damascus, it is easy to forget the war. The airstrikes, the ruins and starvation, sometimes only few miles away, seem distant and unseen. Since a partial cease-fire went into effect at the end of February, the mortar shells from opposition-held suburbs have all but stopped. With the road to the loyalist coast and most of central Syria completely cleared of insurgents, Assad has guaranteed the survival of a rump state that he could rule over should the war continue for a long time. Even if Assad’s forces have little chance of regaining large parts of the country in the near term, Russia’s military intervention changed the conflict’s course in their favor and has boosted their confidence. “People are much more relaxed than before, we feel safer and more secure,” said Maha Arnouz, a student walking with a friend through the capital’s bustling Hamadiyah souk, located inside the old walled city. The bazaar, like the rest of Damascus, has changed in the past few years. Soldiers sit at the entrance underneath a large portrait of Assad, screening passers-by. Male pedestrians are patted down by armed men at checkpoints in its narrow side streets, a jarring sight next to centuries-old shops selling spices, sweets and soaps. Outside, people shout over the din of power generators spouting toxic fumes whenever the power is off - at least 10 hours a day. In Bab Touma, a mainly Christian quarter of Damascus’ Old City popular with tourists before the war, a Hezbollah fighter searches vehicles at a checkpoint. Posters of “martyrs” from pro-government popular defense militias line the walls. Diners are unfazed. On a recent day, women in long-sleeved clothes and headscarves and others in short dresses sat around dinner tables with friends and family as the voice of Lebanese singer Fairouz reverberated in the background. Diners chain-smoked or puffed at water pipes, at one point breaking out in a happy birthday rendition for a celebrating group at a nearby table. New restaurants and cafes have opened where people drink wine, eat or play cards. Only a 20- minute drive away, clashes break out between extremist groups in the Yarmouk Camp neighborhood. The last round, which lasted more than a week, left approximately 6,000 civilian families with severe shortages of food and water, according to the U. N. The Yarmouk neighborhood has been ravaged by fighting between the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, while government forces regularly shell it from outside. Daraya, a rebel-held area about 10 kilometers (6 miles) to the southwest, has been besieged by government forces for more than three years. The U. N.’s humanitarian chief said people have been reduced to eating grass because Syria’s government hasn’t approved aid to besieged areas which are “mere minutes’ drive away from U. N. warehouses in Damascus.” Assad controls about a third of the country, but that territory comprises most of Syria’s major cities. Rebels and other armed groups, including IS and the Nusra Front, control the rest. Those areas have continued to see various degrees of fighting, and in the northern province of Aleppo, the cease-fire has all but collapsed. But within Assad’s third, the connections have grown more stable as military gains widen the breathing room. People move easily between the capital and the Mediterranean coastal provinces of Tartous and Latakia, and roads to Homs and Palmyra to the east have become safer. Damascus is among the few cities that have been largely spared the violence that has ravaged Homs, Aleppo and other cities. Visitors arriving from Beirut are greeted by posters of Assad and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah militia fighting alongside the Syrian army. “Eagles do not kneel,” reads the sign on a poster with the faces of Assad, his brother Maher, who leads the army’s elite 4th Armored Division, and Nasrallah. The government takes pains to maintain the semblance of normalcy. Police direct traffic, streets are kept clean and parks are impeccably maintained. Last week, authorities organized parliamentary elections in government-held parts of the country. Turnout, according to officials, was about 57 percent. “They thought the Syrian army will get tired, but five years on, the Syrian army is fighting everywhere and is achieving victories with support from its friends and allies,” the deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, told The Associated P ress. He insisted the government will once again control “every inch” of Syria. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 16:43 In this www.washingtontimes.com

24 Student passionate about helping others, improving himself ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - Seventeen-year-old Kevin Davila an International Baccalaureate senior at Annapolis High, shakes his head when asked about the tall wall Donald Trump claims will be erected between the United States and Mexico to keep out immigrants if he’s elected president. The teen was born in Acapulco, Mexico. His father immigrated to Maryland when Kevin was six months old. The teen remembers living in a one-room house with a dirt floor and sagging, bare brick walls. Everything - kitchen, bedroom, bathroom - was in that one small room. “He came here to build a better life for us,” said Kevin. “I came with my mother and brother when I was 2 years old.” Of the proposed barrier between the two countries, Kevin said, “The Trump Wall is an absurd idea. Most people will find other ways to go around.” Kevin and family members became naturalized citizens last year. At Annapolis High, this athlete-scholar is one of the top sprinters on the Spring Track Team. He runs in the men’s 200 and 400 meter, and 100, 200 and 400 relay races. On the cross country team, he ran 5K races, and participated in the 400 and 200 relay races, and the 500 meter and 300 meter races as a member of the indoor track team. This year, he managed the varsity and junior varsity volleyball teams. The first hour after the final school bell rings, Kevin usually sits down with one or more younger Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) students to tutor them in several subjects or he helps them with their homework. Then, for the next 2 1/2 hours, he practices with the Panthers track team. Afterward, Kevin often treks to a Chipotle restaurant where he works part time about 25 hours a week. When the weather is good, he teams up with his older brother to provide landscaping or house painting services. His track coach, Brian Brown, said Kevin is a hard working young man. “He is liked by everyone for his kind spirit,” Brown said. Shanita Spencer, an AVID teacher, appreciates Kevin’s wry humor and quiet demeanor in the classroom. “He is the type of student who when he speaks, others listen and take note,” Spencer said. “There are always those students we come to rely on to represent our organization, and Kevin almost from the moment he joined AVID has been one of those students. If we need to visit the middle schools for recruiting purposes, we just need to mention it to him and he organizes the upperclassmen and takes charge when we get there.” She noted he has a way of “engaging the younger students and really explaining the benefits of AVID.” Story Continues →

2016-04-23 16:40 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

25 Challenge Aspen’s ski retreats help military vets adapt ASPEN, Colo. (AP) - Aaron Causey flew through the air with the greatest of ease while on his monoski at Aspen Mountain. It was clear the lips and ledges on Pump House Hill and other ski trails didn’t intimidate him. He sought them out then carved down the corduroy for another ride up the Ajax Express, the Aspen Times reported (http://bit.ly/1Nxo0AZ). “I’m an adrenaline junkie, a thrill-seeker,” Causey said while taking a break for lunch at the Sundeck. The retired U. S. Army veteran lost both legs above his knees while working on a bomb squad southwest of Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Sept. 7, 2011. “This was the eighth time for me. I’ve been blown up eight times,” said the affable man from Birmingham, Alabama. While rehabilitating at Walter Reed Hospital, one of his therapists urged him to try a ski trip. Causey, 37, had learned to snowboard in the Alps, but that was a decade earlier. But he loves the outdoors, he said, and decided there was no reason for his disability to keep him off the slopes. He was heavily medicated on his first trip, but as he healed, he took to the slopes. “I got hooked. I loved it,” Causey said. And he’s good. He’s skied as often as possible since that first time on the slopes, though he took the winter of 2013-14 off when his daughter was born. He was on Aspen Mountain recently thanks to the Challenge Aspen Military Operations program, also known as CAMO. GETTING INJURED VETS ON THE SLOPES Challenge Aspen started a program in 2005 to serve the increasing number of newly injured soldiers returning from battle in the Middle East. It holds adaptive recreational programs in the winter and summer, and it’s been steadily growing. In the 2014-15 season, CAMO was able to host 162 injured military personnel, their caregivers and/or spouses. That grew to 185 this winter, according to program director John Klonowski. Causey and four colleagues participated in the 13th winter retreat for veterans this winter. CAMO also holds retreats for female veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as the direct result of sexual assault while serving. Klonowski said every veteran invited is facing some type of challenge, though it’s not always obvious. Many Vietnam War veterans weren’t diagnosed with PTSD until years after they served, he noted. CAMO also offers couples’ retreats for injured veterans and their spouses. The divorce rate among injured veterans runs in excess of 80 percent, according to Klonowski. He’s witnessed the benefit of getting the veterans out on the slopes and heard their testimonials. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 14:59 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

26 Bohol ‘drug queen’ yields P25.9-M ‘shabu’ TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol—At least 2.2 kilograms of “shabu” worth P25.9 million have been seized in a raid conducted on the rented house of the province’s alleged “drug queen.” Insp. Jojiet Mananquil of the BPPO’s Provincial Intelligence Branch (PIB) said the amount of shabu seized in the house of Maida Quimson Jabines was the province’s largest drug haul. Jabines, 47, a native of Sierra-Bullones town, and her four alleged runners were detained at the Bohol Provincial Police Office in Tagbilaran City pending filing of charges. These include violations of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 and illegal possession of firearms as well as violation of the election gun ban. The four were identified as Daryl Louie Quimson, Ruel Vitor, Rosulo Pamaong and James Louie Bongalos. Bohol police officials presented the suspects to the media on Saturday but the latter declined to give a statement on the allegations leveled against them. The raid on Friday stemmed from the search warrant issued by Judge Suceso Arcamo of the Regional Trial Court Branch 47 in Tagbilaran City. Senior Insp. Ricardo Tero of PIB said the raid was conducted at 4:40 p.m. on Friday at the rented house of Jabines in Barangay Cogon in this city. The four alleged runners of Jabines were arrested during the raid. “Vitor was at the house to remit his sales. Others were there to either use or buy drugs from Jabines,” said Tero. Seized inside the house were one big pack, nine medium packs and one small pack, which weighed a total of 2.2 kilos and had a market value of least P25.9 million. Tero said they also confiscated firearms and other drug paraphernalia in the house. He said Jabines was dubbed “drug queen” because of the amount of shabu seized from her during Friday’s operation, which was a product of weeks of surveillance. Tero also said Jabines had a network of drug pushers operating in Tagbilaran City and in neighboring towns. RC

2016-04-23 16:00 Leo Udtohan newsinfo.inquirer.net

27 ROS import guarantees he’ll stop SMB’s Fajardo in semis Rain or Shine import Pierre Henderson-Niles drives in between Ginebra’s Japeth Aguilar and Mark Caguioa during the two team’s quarterfinals series. PBA IMAGES Beau Belga was standing side-by-side with Pierre Henderson Niles and the wide-bodied center never looked so small. One of the reasons why Rain or Shine brought in the hulking import is to address the team’s problem with matching up against the league’s giants. The Elasto Painters are convinced they’ve found the solution and on Sunday, when they face a perennial tormentor in San Miguel Beer in Game 1 of their best-of-five semifinals series, they’re about to find out if they’re right. But for Henderson-Niles, there’s no need for any validation. On the eve of his head-to-head with the Beermen’s reigning two-time MVP June Mar Fajardo, Henderson-Niles has guaranteed he’s going to shut down the most dominant Filipino player today. “Hell yeah,” said Henderson-Niles, assuring that he’s going to cancel out Fajardo in their duel. “Yes.” The former Memphis Tiger isn’t afraid of impending matchup with the 6-foot-10 Fajardo. If anything, it’s Fajardo and the rest of the Beermen who should be scared. “Not this year, not this year,” he said when a reporter brought up the two teams’ semifinals history the past two conferences where the Beermen came out victorious. “We got another big man. He gotta guard me too. It’s hard guarding me. I know I can guard any player in the league. So his (Fajardo) thing, he’s got to guard me so let’s see how’s that going to turn out. “That’s all I’ve been hearing. They haven’t won in the past two [conferences] or something like that. This [conference] is a different [conference]. We got a better team, better big man, stronger big man so we just gonna see what’s going to happen tomorrow at 5 ‘o clock.” The arrival of Henderson-Niles gave the Painters reasons not to fear the Beermen and Fajardo. For the past couple of conferences, Rain or Shine had found itself tumbling out of the semifinals after getting bullied by San Miguel. This time could be different. Paul Lee and Raymond Almazan, two key players, who were hobbled by injuries when Painters lost in six games in the semis to the Beermen in this year’s Philippine Cup, feel the result will be different. With a 6-foot-8, 300-pound center in tow, the mood during the team’s practice on a hot and humid Saturday afternoon was light, players were loose and the coaches’ body language exude confidence. “They (San Miguel) are going to have a problem,” Henderson-Niles said. “They gotta worry about me too. I ain’t worrying about them, they gotta worry about me.”

2016-04-23 15:54 Mark Giongco sports.inquirer.net

28 Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan's homes to be part of Mumbai sightseeing route Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) had a reconnaissance (recce) yesterday for their Mumbai darshan tours in the city, set to launch in the first week of May. There are several tweaks to the old route. This time, the tourism body has included Mukesh Ambani's house Antilla, Shah Rukh Khan’s bungalow Mannat and Salman Khan’s house Galaxy Apartments amongst the new sights. Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan The new darshan will be in BEST’s purple air- conditioned buses. Yesterday, during the recce, which started from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), guide Maria Lobo Dumasia sparked an interesting commentary which spoke about "Dhobi Ghat as the largest public laundry. " She added, "Mahalakshmi race course was earlier a garbage dumping ground. The idols from Mahalakshmi temple were buried during a raid and later found and reinstated. " Mukesh Ambani’s house Antilla and Bandra-Worli Sealink are on the new Mumbai darshan list. Pics/Ajinkya Sawant As the bus passed Peddar Road, Antilla, located on Millionaire's Row (as Altamount Road is called), came into view. The guide said, "This is the house of India’s richest man and is one of the most expensive houses ever built. There are 600 servants to take care of the building, and they have 27 storeys for a family of five. " Bandra-Worli Sealink The bus had several stops on the way, and then there was a drive through Bandra, where Mannat, SRK's home came into view. One could clearly see fans hanging outside. Then came Galaxy Apartments, Salman's building, and one could hear a few murmurs, "Where is Malaika? Nahi hai? " referring to Arbaaz's wife. They may have read reports about the trial separation. The MTDC claimed they included new features to keep up with other private tours which already include these buildings. Dumasia added, "There are many fake guides who dupe people in some private tours. Wrong information is given. " Jagdish Patil, general manager, BEST stated, "We are looking to have at least 15 buses with a 40-seater capacity for Mumbai darshans in both North and South areas of the city. We will charge competitive rates, and they will be the same for Indians and foreigners. But in monuments, where the entrance fees for foreign tourists is already higher, will apply. " "We want to start the South and North Mumbai tours in May for the summer vacation. The South tour will be from CST to Bandra and back to CST passing by Bandra-Worli Sealink, Mahalaxmi race course, Nehru Planetarium and Science Centre. The North tour will start from Prabhadevi and include Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Film City, the airports and end at Prabhadevi," said Parag Jain Nainuttia, Managing Director of MTDC.

2016-04-23 15:30 By Maleeva www.mid-day.com

29 SpiceJet sacks pilot for sexual harassment New Delhi: Budget passenger carrier SpiceJet on Saturday said that it has sacked a commander-level pilot on charges of sexual harassment. SpiceJet The pilot was sacked after an internal complaint committee found him to be guilty of misconduct and sexually harassing an air hostess. The incident occurred during the airline's February 28 Kolkata-Bangkok flight when the commander allegedly asked the air hostess to sit with him in the cockpit. According to sources, the pilot allegedly asked his co-pilot to leave the cockpit for a substantial period of time, leaving the commander and the air hostess alone. The commander repeated the act on the return leg of the journey. The pilot also used 'unparliamentary language' with the Cabin Crew In Charge (CCI). Further, on complaint of the air hostess an internal committee was set up to look into the matter and found the commander guilty. "The incident would not have come to light if the pilot had not used abusive language with the cabin crew in charge. The very next day a complaint was received and the committee was setup to look into the matter," sources said. "The committee after recording the statement of all the parties found the pilot guilty. The airline's Chairman Ajay Singh was keen to take the strictest action possible against the pilot. " After the inquiry the airline sacked the commander and informed the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) about the incident. In a statement the airline said that it is an equal opportunity employer. "With respect to the present case, we wish to inform that we have internal complaint committee in place which is mandated by The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (prevention, prohibition and redressal) Act, 2013," the statement said. "We initiated inquiry process as per the guidelines laid in the said Act. " As per the airline, the services of the alleged pilot has been terminated and the case has been informed to DGCA by flight safety department. Apart from the sexual harassment charges, the DGCA is said to have taken note of the flight safety breach caused by the incident. The absence of the co-pilot from the cockpit for a substantial period of time is considered to be a major safety breach and violation of operational procedures. If found guilty of safety breach the flying license of the pilot may be suspended.

2016-04-23 15:09 By PTI www.mid-day.com

30 Boxing class helps students beat back Parkinson’s disease ARDEN HILLS, Minn. (AP) - Boxing instructor Mark Royce paced the mat in red sneakers and barked instructions like a drill sergeant. His students were all over 60 and have Parkinson’s disease, but he wasn’t cutting them any slack. “Let’s see you step up your game,” he yelled, his voice carrying though the Arden Hills boxing gym. “Jab! Upper cut! A little harder with those punches!” Mike Fingerson, 83, made an unsteady pivot and threw a right upper cut at a 100-pound boxing bag. Tap. The bag’s metal chain creaked a bit. It wasn’t a knock-out blow, but with each jab, Fingerson hopes to beat back his disease, the St. Paul Pioneer Press (http://bit.ly/1SJ9eZx ) reported. “People with Parkinson’s tend to have small, slow movements,” said Maria Walde-Douglas, a physical therapist at Struthers Parkinson’s Center in Golden Valley and proponent of boxing fitness training. “Boxing is the opposite of that. It requires eye-hand coordination, balance and moving fast with a lot of power. It’s a lot of things rolled into one. Plus it’s fun.” After getting established in other parts of the country, boxing-fitness classes for people with Parkinson’s have come to the Twin Cities. By next month, four local clubs will offer sessions, including the Title Boxing Club in Arden Hills. Parkinson’s affects about 1 million people in the United States. The progressive disease kills dopamine-producing cells in the region of the brain that affects movement, which can cause tremors, stiffness, slowness, muscle freezes and a loss of balance, along with mental fogginess and depression. Medication can control symptoms, but there is no cure. So why has boxing become a popular treatment for people with Parkinson’s? “Exercise is the closest thing we have to a cure,” said Okeanis Vaou, a neurologist and Parkinson’s specialist at Noran Neurological Clinic in Lake Elmo and Minneapolis. “It would be misleading to say exercise arrests the progression of the disease, but it can slow it significantly. I have patients who exercise two to three hours per day, every single day, and they are doing phenomenally well. I also have patients who were exercising and then they stopped abruptly for whatever reason, and within six months I see this fast decline.” Exercise is now considered so important in managing the disease that Minnesota chapters of the National Parkinson Foundation and the American Parkinson Disease Association recently began offering $500 annual stipends for exercise classes, including boxing. Research suggests the harder and the more often you work out, the larger the benefit. There are promising studies on bicycling, Pilates, Nordic walking with poles, and dancing, including Irish set dancing and tango. The University of Minnesota just launched a study on Parkinson’s and yoga, which, like tai chi, may help maintain flexibility and balance and reduce stress. One of the only studies to look at boxing fitness training found it improves balance and gait and makes some daily tasks easier. “There haven’t been any head-to-head studies comparing boxing to other types of exercise,” said Vaou. “But I think boxing is a great idea.” “The whole culture of boxing is pushing people beyond their limits, and it can be incredibly empowering, even for a little old 90-year-old lady,” said Walde-Douglas, who was certified two years ago by Rock Steady, a boxing program founded by a county prosecutor in Indianapolis a decade ago after boxing training slowed his disease. “I’ve seen people box who you’d think would be the least likely and least able to do it. The disease takes away a lot, and for some people boxing feels like they’re fighting back. I think it taps into your inner warrior. It’s not for everybody, but it’s for some people.” Royce worked with Walde-Douglas to create a boxing fitness program modeled on Rock Steady to offer through Title Boxing Clubs in the Twin Cities. Knock out Parkinson’s classes started last month at the franchises Royce manages in Arden Hills and Coon Rapids. Title Boxing Club in Lakeville also offers the program. Meanwhile, Uppercut Boxing Gym in Northeast Minneapolis is signing people up for the first Rock Steady program in the Twin Cities. “If it takes off, I think other club owners are interested and will say let’s do it,” said Royce. About six people are taking the class in Arden Hills, which meets for an hour, twice a week. On a recent Tuesday, people arrived early to change shoes and wrap their hands. One man slowly entered leaning on a cane. Dozens of six-foot long black bags hung in rows over the padded floor and a corner was roped off in a tiny ring. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:47 ADVANCE FOR www.washingtontimes.com

31 US Sen. John McCain calls for criminal probe into mine spill PHOENIX (AP) - U. S. Sen. John McCain called for a criminal investigation into actions by the Environmental Protection Agency that led to a mine spill polluting rivers in three Western states last summer. During a congressional hearing on the issue in Phoenix, McCain said EPA officials knew about the potential for catastrophe and failed to do proper testing before inadvertently triggering the 3 million-gallon spill at the inactive Gold King Mine last August. “What is clear now is that not enough has been done,” McCain said Friday. “I’ve come to the conclusion that a DOJ criminal investigation is merited and must now occur.” EPA officials said it’s not clear that additional testing could have prevented the accident, but they acknowledged they notified tribal officials too late. McCain and U. S. Sen. John Barrasso, head of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, subpoenaed EPA officials to turn up at the field hearing where they invited Navajo and Hopi tribal leaders, and U. S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick to assess the EPA’s response to the spill. Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye testified before the panel about the EPA’s failures to communicate and the hardships facing those affected by the spill. Begaye said it took two days for the EPA to notify Navajo Nation officials about the spill, which affected the San Juan River that flows through the nation. They also never told officials that an estimated 5.5 million gallons of polluted water was already pouring into the river daily, Begaye said. The farmers that live off that land need revenue as soon as possible, Begaye said, adding that there also needs to be a plan to prevent future contamination. “They need to compensate our farmers because they are suffering,” he said. “We will be living with this for the next 20-plus years.” EPA officials recommitted to cooperating with states and tribes to monitor for the estimated 880,000 pounds of heavy metals including arsenic, copper, lead, mercury and aluminum that spilled into rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. Mathy Stanislaus, one of the subpoenaed EPA officials, said the EPA has already reimbursed the Navajo Nation $156,000 and allocated nearly $450,000 to the tribe for water monitoring. “One of the initial lessons learned is that the EPA could do a better job communicating and working with our tribal partners,” he said. The EPA has said it plans to return to the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado this spring or early summer to resume preliminary cleanup work. It is also considering Superfund status for the Gold King and 47 other mining sites in the area, which would free up millions of dollars in federal funds for an extensive cleanup. The EPA also plans to continue its work with tribes, states and cities to monitor rivers impacted by the spill, especially as runoff from melting snow threatens to stir up potentially toxic metals that settled in the river bottom after the spill, though it isn’t clear yet what effect the spring and summer runoff will have.

2016-04-23 13:47 Navajo Nation www.washingtontimes.com

32 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. “At first, I felt disbelief,” Alan Zhang said of his test results. The freeway is expected to close sometime in early May. As prom, graduation nears, drug use rises, and tech abounds, police advise parents Jonathan Darlington, who faces attempted murder charges, will go before a jury again. Board members ask administrators for comprehensive plan to address financial woes 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. Firefighters responding to a fire in Farmington Hills rescued the family’s pet dog. No one was injured in the blaze on Farmer, across from the Plymouth Cultural Center. Weapon apparently was taken from unlocked truck Marino Soave came to pursue the American Dream, and he caught it. Steve Matthews was one of four finalists for the job Report: Suspect became angry after being cut off by staff ‘The sugar maples will grow quite large and the fall color is spectacular’ ‘When we started school this year, I told you that you had the best teachers anywhere’ Redford honored its police officers and firefighers Thursday night with its annual awards banquet. Joseph Carlton will return to court this summer after the exam is undertaken. Several local candidates are seeking election in a variety of state and local races. The F/FH MCMR handed out its Rainbow Awards at the 20th annual ceremony Wednesday.

2016-04-23 07:54 rssfeeds.hometownlife.com

33 Asia Times News & Features – Asia Times The deal may be worth only $8.6 million but it involves the purchase of 32 tons of heavy water from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. At present, Canada and India meet most of global demands of heavy water for non-nuclear use (estimated to be around 100 tons, US accounting for three fourths of it). The fact that US is choosing the newest kid on the block as its main supplier can only mean that it intentionally put on display a landmark decision that the world community will duly take note. The Savannah River National Laboratory in Georgia, which used to produce heavy water until 1981 when the US shuttered down its production capacity, has tested the Iranian heavy water and found it is top-shelf. Hundreds of research teams in the US will be the beneficiaries of Iranian supplies, once the shipment arrives in the coming weeks. Conceivably, US could be tiptoeing toward deeper collaboration with Iran’s Arak heavy water plant, which, under the nuclear agreement of last July, is being converted into an international science and technology center. The US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has urged his department “to begin thinking about other areas of collaboration”. Iran is now working with the United States and China to reconfigure the Arak reactor to largely eliminate plutonium production. Interestingly, on a parallel track on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Foreign Minister Mohammed Zarif also worked out an amicable method to prod foreign business deals with non-sanctioned Iranian firms, whereby Washington would approve the new rules under which Iran will be able to get the full benefit of the nuclear deal, including access to the frozen funds held by foreign banks. Kerry said in New York at a joint media interaction with Zarif: We (US) have no objection and we do not stand in the way of foreign banks engaging with Iranian banks and companies… State and the Treasury Department have been actively engaged with partner governments and the private sector in order to clarify those sanctions that have been lifted. And if banks or any company has any question about this, we’re happy to answer those questions. They shouldn’t just assume that activities that were not permitted before… are not permitted at this point in time. And so they shouldn’t also assume that activities still prohibited by the primary (US) embargo are also prohibited for foreign actors… So when in doubt – my message: when in doubt, ask. United States is committed to doing our part as we believe it is in our interest to ensure that… the nuclear agreement… is in fact working for all participants… It is mutuality that was created in this, and it’s important that we make sure there is mutuality in its implementation. Zarif in turn pointedly appreciated not only Kerry’s remarks but also “other steps that were taken by the United States” to respond to Tehran’s grievance that it is yet to garner the promised economic dividends of the nuclear deal. The above developments on Friday underscore that the Obama administration is taking Iran relations forward. This meets a pressing demand from the US’ European allies, who have been seeking an unequivocal commitment by Washington to Iran’s reintegration with the West. Meanwhile, in regional terms, the optics in the Middle East will also be important, since these developments were announced shortly after President Barack Obama’s summit with the GCC leaders in Riyadh on Wednesday. What lies ahead? After expressing his satisfaction over Kerry’s remarks, Zarif added: We will continue to have differences with the United States. Our differences are very serious in a good number of areas… I hope that by – through serious action so that the Iranian people can see the benefits of implementation (of the nuclear agreement)… which should create the foundations and not the ceilings for resolution of international issues. Kerry promptly responded: The foreign minister is correct; there are differences and some of them are obviously serious differences. Those have to be the subject of future discussion. But it’s important for people to understand that an agreement is an agreement, and we need to separate, even as we are working to resolve those other differences. And nothing that I said diminishes the United States commitment to helping to resolve those differences and certainly to continue to work for the peace and stability of the region. Decoding the language of US-Iran diplomacy is never easy, but Zarif may have signalled Tehran’s willingness to broaden the engagement with Washington and Kerry welcomed it. Of course, it is too much to say that footfalls of an earlier era of US-Iranian alliance are echoing. But, indeed, the negotiations in New York this week testify to a willingness on both sides to move toward that door that they slammed shut and never opened through the past four decades almost. Whether that door still would lead into a rose-garden is the big question. To be sure, alarm bells must be ringing – not only in Riyadh but also in Moscow. The Russian news agency Sputnik raised dust in the air by propagating that Obama’s mission to Riyadh last Wednesday was actually aimed at consolidating a “new anti-Tehran alliance” comprising the Gulf monarchies, Egypt, Turkey and Israel. The influential Russian daily Kommersant wrote Friday admitting that despite official posturing, “Moscow and Tehran have discovered several areas of mutual dissatisfaction”. It saw Syria as the issue where contradictions are most acute – “and will only grow”. The article also cited the divergence with regard to world oil market. It gave expression to the Manichean fear that Moscow may lose ground to the West as Iran’s principal business interlocutor: Russian business (has) lost its monopoly in the Iranian market, which is now flooded by European and American companies. Tehran is not giving any privileges to its Russian allies. Past achievements do not count and market competition seems to have started anew from a clean slate. The Obama administration’s decision to enter into nuclear commerce with Iran and encourage Europe’s business dealings with Iran would hit Russia’s vital interests. Unsurprisingly, Moscow will see also these moves as the foreplay of a broader US-Iranian strategic engagement. Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India’s ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001). He writes the “Indian Punchline” blog and has written regularly for Asia Times since 2001. (Copyright 2016 Asia Times Holdings Limited, a duly registered Hong Kong company. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

2016-04-23 05:32 atimes.com

34 Author calls Begin 'terrorist' with 'political courage' on Bill Maher show Pulitzer award winning author and screenwriter Lawrence Wright said Friday that former prime minister of Israel Menachem Begin was a "terrorist" who nevertheless had the "political courage to make peace" with Egypt in 1979. While speaking during the final segment of the hit HBO television show Real Time with Bill Maher, Wright was asked if he saw "any hope for further progress for peace" between the Palestinians and Israel. Lawerence, who was on Maher's show promoting a play he authored about the 1978 Camp David negotiations between Israel and Egypt that led to a peace accord the following year, said that given the players involved in those negotiations at that time there was always a chance for a negotiated settlement today. "If you look at Camp David, you had a failing [United States] president [in Jimmy Carter]," Lawrence began. "And then former [Egyptian president] Anwar Sedat, we think of him of being such a noble [figure]... he was an assassin. He'd been in prison twice. He managed to kill one of the government's ministers. He was a Nazi sympathizer," Wright said, adding "Menachem Begin was a terrorist. " At which point Maher interjects and says "he blew up the King David Hotel. " Wright then continues: "So you had an assassin, a terrorist and a failing president and they made peace. So don't tell me you need the right people, you just need people to have the political courage. " On July 22, 1946, The Irgun Zva’I Leumi (Irgun), led at the time by Menachem Begin, planted a bomb that ripped through the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, then-headquarters of the British Mandate for Palestine’s civilian and military authorities, killing 91 people and injuring nearly 50. Wright had previously written a book about the Camp David negotiations in 2014 titled Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David . To watch the exchange in its entirety, the discussion takes place at the 9 minute 45 second mark.

2016-04-23 14:57 Jpost Com www.jpost.com

35 Bad week for German automakers: Huge costs, new probe WOLFSBURG, Germany (AP) - It’s been a bad week for German automakers. Volkswagen said Friday that a diesel emissions-cheating scandal would cost it an astounding $18.2 billion just for 2015, while Daimler revealed that U. S. authorities are sniffing around its tailpipes. Both companies saw a niche with U. S. buyers who wanted performance, gas mileage and clean air. So they marketed their diesels as alternatives to boring hybrids. But there is growing evidence that neither was able to back up the claims without violating pollution standards. Some management experts put the blame partly on ambitious, top-down corporate structures. VW already has admitted to programming diesel cars so they pass U. S. emissions tests in labs but spew illegal amounts of pollution on real roads. On Thursday, Daimler said the U. S. Justice Department asked the company to investigate irregularities in diesel emissions in its Mercedes brand vehicles. Steve Berman, a Seattle attorney who has sued Daimler over Mercedes diesel pollution, said both German automakers saw a niche in the U. S. for high-performing green cars. “They saw the opportunity,” he said. “They weren’t able to live up to their words but they went ahead anyway.” There also could be some complicity on the part of European governments. Karl Brauer, senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, said governments, as well as Mercedes, VW and other automakers, have known for years that diesels could meet emissions standards in the lab, but not on real roads. “This was the understood, if not documented, agreement between the automakers and the European governments,” Brauer said. “So it was not that egregious to approach U. S. emissions with the same philosophy.” With that attitude, it’s no surprise that both automakers are getting U. S. scrutiny, or that the emissions-cheating scandal could be growing. On Friday, Germany’s transport minister said five automakers agreed to recall 630,000 diesel vehicles in Europe following an investigation into emissions levels. The recalls include Mercedes, Opel and Volkswagen and its subsidiaries Audi and Porsche. The top-down management structure at VW and Mercedes likely played a role in the emissions problems, said Sebastiaan Van Doorn, an associate professor at the Warwick Business School in England who has studied VW’s corporate culture. At VW, lower-level engineers are told what to do and not given much autonomy. As a result, in order to get things done, they don’t tell their superiors what they’re up to, he said. “You get kind of a parent-child relationship where the child is not telling the parent specific things anymore if he is never allowed to make autonomous decisions,” Van Doorn said. Berman’s law firm hired a company to test Daimler’s Mercedes-brand diesels on real roads, finding that they spewed out too much nitrogen oxide almost all the time. Plus, the cars polluted even more when the temperature was below 50 degrees, he said. That led him to accuse Mercedes of having software called a “defeat device” that’s similar to VWs. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 14:55 Attorney and www.washingtontimes.com

36 Binay says Santiago’s return to campaign trail ‘good news’ DAGUPAN CITY, Pangasinan – Vice President Jejomar Binay on Saturday said he was glad his friend Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago is now back in the game for her last-ditch effort in the national elections campaign. In an interview after his ocular visit in the debate venue at the University of Pangasinan, Binay expressed relief that Santiago is now out of danger after going through a trial treatment for cancer. “Thank God. That’s good news,” Binay said. Binay and Santiago’s ties go a long way back to their student council days at the University of the Philippines Diliman. They are now presidential contenders for the upcoming May 9 polls. Santiago took a one-month leave from campaigning last March when she tried a trial anti-cancer treatment. READ: Santiago to skip Comelec debate to try new anticancer pill In a video posted on her Facebook page, Santiago said she was feeling a lot better after taking the trial drug and said she is ready to join the last presidential debates in Pangasinan. Santiago missed the second presidential debate in Cebu last March 20. “I’m perfectly normal now as you can tell just from my voice and from the way I speak,” she said in a video posted on her Facebook page on Friday night. READ: Santiago: I’m perfectly normal now Santiago said she was glad several voters were switching sides to her favor, an indirect reference to the shifting voters’ alliances after a social media backlash on survey frontrunner Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for his tasteless joke about the rape-slay of Australian missionary Jacqueline Hamill. Santiago has been topping the campus surveys while trailing behind national voters’ preference polls. READ: Miriam ‘disheartened’ by surveys She has limited her campaign to touring colleges and universities in a bid to woo the youth vote. READ: Santiago to youth: Help end culture of corruption This is her second attempt in seeking the presidency, after her 1992 presidential bid which she lost to Fidel Ramos. “Sa lahat ng taga suporta ko nasa Facebook, nagpapasalamat ako ngayon pa lang sa malasakit at sakripisyo na pinakita nyo para sakin. Di ko kayo nakilala isa isa dahil busy rin tayo pero gusto ko rin malaman nyo na gusto ko rin malaman ng taong bayan ay, na bumalik na ang kalusugan ko dahil meron akong bagong gamot na wala pa ngang pangalan kundi code lang, na nagpapalit ng personalidad ng may cancer at ibinabalik dati sa personalidad ng normal na tao,” she said in the video. (To all my supporters on Facebook, I thank you as early as now for your concern and sacrifices. I didn’t get the chance to know each of you because we had been busy, but I want you to know and I also want our countrymen to know that my health has returned because I now have medication that doesn’t even have a name yet except for a code, that alters the personality of the cancer patient, bringing it back to the person’s normal personality.) “I’m happy to notice your reports that you are switching sides so we all know itong panahon na ito ay magdesisyon ang undecided voters. Crucial, napakaimportante ang mga naiwan na araw na pwede natin bilangin (this is the time when the undecided voters will make up their mind. Crucial, these last remaining days are very important as we count down [to election day]),” she said. Santiago said she hoped to gain more supporters after coming out healthy from her anti-cancer treatment on her way to become the next president. “Kaya sana magpatuloy lang kayo sa inyong malasakit para sabay-sabay tayong pumunta ng Malacañang (I hope you continue with your concern so that we can go to Malacañang together),” she said. CDG

2016-04-23 14:55 Marc Jayson newsinfo.inquirer.net

37 Delegate: Trump aide said 'We're moving forward' (CNN) A Republican National Convention delegate from Colorado said Friday that Donald Trump's senior adviser told him the campaign was dropping its challenge to rival Ted Cruz's sweep of the state's delegates -- an account the campaign is disputing.

2016-04-23 14:45 Chris Frates www.cnn.com

38 Sen. Cornyn honored as 'Texan of the Year' Joining an elite circle that includes presidents and other political titans, U. S. Sen. John Cornyn accepted the 2016 "Texan of the Year" award on Friday from the 50th Texas Legislative Conference. The 3rd-term Republican vowed to continue challenging Obama administration policies, and without declaring his preference between GOP frontrunners Donald Trump and Texas' junior Sen. Ted Cruz , Cornyn said he'll support the eventual nominee. Addressing about 500 conferees including elected officials, legislative staff and lobbyists, Cornyn didn't dwell on presidential politics but described legislative battles that "the media might have missed since it didn't involve Donald Trump. " He recapped attempts to shape policies in transportation, energy, education, criminal justice and environmental regulation. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus , R-San Antonio, described Cornyn as "an unshakeable advocate for Texas values - individual liberty, fiscal discipline, free markets and a strong national defense … But what makes John Cornyn such an effective senator is he didn't go to Washington to fight battles and to climb the ladder. He's there to get things done for Texas. " Accepting the honor, Cornyn said, "I consider this award to be not actually for anything I've done, but perhaps as a little friendly encouragement to keep on fighting the good fight in Washington, D. C. " Speaking to reporters, Cornyn poured on the criticism of the Obama administration. "The current president has shown himself to be somewhat allergic to working with Congress and so he's decided to try to go it alone through executive orders and regulations, which frequently are struck down by the courts," Cornyn said. "I've been at this long enough to realize that if you want to be effective you're going to have to work with those across the aisle who share a desire to make progress - and it's more than just about giving speeches and voting 'no,' " Cornyn said. Cornyn, 64, a San Antonio native and graduate of Trinity University and St. Mary's University School of Law, served as a Bexar County district judge, Texas Supreme Court justice and Texas attorney general before election to the Senate in 2002. Voted to a third six-year term in 2014, Cornyn, now of Austin, benefits from his growing capital tenure, a congressional colleague said. "John Cornyn is an effective, thoughtful, responsible and respected senator, not just in Texas but throughout the United States," said Rep. Lamar Smith , R-San Antonio, a House member since 1987. "We are fortunate to have him in a leadership position - he's No. 2 in the Republican leadership in the Senate. I expect him someday to be the Senate majority leader," Smith said.

2016-04-23 15:38 By John www.chron.com

39 39 Texas Congressman Pete Sessions wants magic recognized as a 'national treasure' In these trying times, a Texas lawmaker wants the U. S. Congress to recognize the power of magic. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Dallas) introduced a House resolution to recognize magic “as a rare and valuable art form and national treasure.” The legislation name drops Arthur C. Clarke, Leonardo da Vinci and David Copperfield (several times) to try to prove a point that magic “enables people to experience the impossible” and brings “happiness to others.” READ THIS: The weirdest news to come out of Texas in 2015 The resolution also mentions a Texas mayor, Eric Hogue of Wylie, who promotes magic with “the first festival dedicated to the art of magic in the State of Texas.” Hogue was taught the “art of magic as a child, continues to use those skills to teach elementary school students about the different roles and responsibilities of local government.” It’s worth nothing that Sessions does not share a similar belief in climate change. He has repeatedly blocked legislation designed to combat environmental destruction. The bill, which was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has seven other co-sponsors (six Republicans; one Democrat) from across the U. S.

2016-04-23 15:38 Matt Levin www.chron.com

40 Brussels economy still suffering one month after attacks It's exactly one month since 32 people were killed in the Brussels terror attacks. Others are still being being treated in hospital for serious injuries. The city's economy has also been hit hard, with many tourists choosing to stay away. Brussels airport is only open for a limited number of flights, and much of the transport network is still closed. Gavin Lee reports.

2016-04-23 14:43 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

41 Money making: A brief history of currency from the British Museum Debate has begun over the choice of JMW Turner to be commemorated on a Bank of England banknote. The public was included in the choice of nominations for the honour of appearing on the next £20 note, to enter circulation in 2020. As with the new £5 and £10 notes from the Bank of England, being introduced this year and next, the £20 note will be made of plastic. This extends a rich history of changing currency in the UK and worldwide. The plastic notes - starting with the new £5 note featuring Sir Winston Churchill due to be issued in September - will eventually replace cotton paper notes, which have been used for more than 100 years. In many ways, this is a significant change in the way money is produced, not least because a Bank of England banknote will survive a spin in the washing machine for the first time. However, there are many other revolutionary developments in the way money has been made over many centuries. Ben Alsop, curator of the Citi Money Gallery at the British Museum, and Mieka Harris, education manager for the gallery, offer a snapshot of this rich history - with the help of five objects from the gallery's collection. This coin made from electrum - a natural alloy of gold and silver found in riverbeds - is one of the earliest examples of coins, and the beginnings of the Western tradition of coinage that is still going strong. It was minted in Lydia, in modern day western Turkey, in the 7th Century BC, making it more than 2,500 years old. These coins, featuring a lion's head, were of a consistent weight and purity. As a result, they held a value that allowed them to be used in cross-border trade - replacing the idea of two commodities effectively being swapped between traders. The tiny coin was of significant value, so was used in high-level trade, as gifts between rulers, and as payment to mercenary soldiers. The vast majority of the population would never see one, and continued to trade without coins - as had been the case for cities and empires for more than 2,000 years. Bartering, for example, still ran in parallel with trading using coins. Throughout history, coins have looked very different to the money we recognise today. This hollow-handled spade money was used in China in the early 6th Century BC, when the country was made up of a number of separate states In order to inspire confidence among the merchant classes to use this abstract concept of bronze money, it was shaped as an agricultural tool - an item recognised by these people, rather than an alien, round coin. Coins shaped as knives were also produced in China around 200 years later, as this was a shape recognised by those involved in warfare. Weight was much more important that shape in terms of value. Although its use was more widespread than the Lydian coins, the use of coins as currency did not filter down to the population at large until Roman times. The earliest banknote in the British Museum's collection is this grandly named Great Ming circulating treasure note from the 14th Century. It is an early example of "paper" money carrying a value. In this case, the one guan note is worth 1,000 coins, as can be seen from the illustration on the 34cm by 22cm note. It is actually made of mulberry bark. "People started to call it 'flying cash', partly because of its convenience across high-level trade, but also because it no longer had the weight to it that coins would have had," says Ms Harris. "So if you were not holding it properly, it could potentially fly away. " Backed by the central authority, it also features a border of dragons, and an inscription that warns against counterfeiting. The warning seems to have been ignored. Owing to counterfeits and inflation - which rose as printing money became easier - China stopped issuing paper notes in the early 15th Century and did not start again until the 19th Century. When the British Isles were gripped by civil war in the 17th Century, there was huge instability and a lack of small denomination currency. Small traders and other establishments stepped in when the central authority was unable to provide this coinage, by issuing their own tokens. This 17th Century token was issued, according to the inscription, by John Ewing, who traded near St George's Church in Southwark. He was a tobacconist, hence the image of a monkey smoking a pipe. Customers could use this token in his store, but other local traders may have accepted it, too. This private production of money was in many ways a forerunner to local currencies seen today such as the Brixton Pound and the Bristol Pound, as well as cryptocurrencies or digital currency such as Bitcoin. However, these tokens were not used for long. A Royal proclamation, following the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, clamped down on their production. Although money is inherently conservative in nature in order to be accepted by the general population, there have been some revolutionary developments. One was the birth of the credit card, even though credit and debt have existed for as long as money itself. This particular card is an early example from the US, from the 1960s. Credit accounts were already common in individual stores, but credit cards allowed people to use one card to shop on credit across the numerous stores and not have to carry notes and coins. "To get people using them, they were mailed out to people who had not asked for them, just to try to encourage people to use this new form of payment," says Mr Alsop. This was not particularly scientific, so there were examples of credit cards being sent to toddlers. There was no automation in the credit card, as is the case today, so shoppers would hand over the card to a shopkeeper who would make a telephone call to a bank. That bank would then check with the shopper's bank by phone and eventually the transaction would be authorised.

2016-04-23 15:44 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

42 DiCaprio tells leaders at UN climate signing: ‘The world is now watching’ UNITED NATIONS—Hollywood actor and environmental campaigner Leonardo DiCaprio urged world leaders signing the Paris climate deal on Friday to deliver on their commitments to cut greenhouse gases, telling them: “The world is now watching.” “You will either be lauded by future generations or vilified by them,” said DiCaprio at the UN ceremony where 171 nations lined up to sign the landmark accord. READ: 170 states sign Paris agreement “We can congratulate each other today, but it will mean absolutely nothing if you return to your countries and fail to push beyond the promises of this historic agreement.” “Now is the time for bold, unprecedented action.” The actor, who this year won his first Oscar for his portrayal of a frontiersman in “The Revenant,” spoke in his role as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s “messenger of peace with a special focus on climate change.” READ: Leonardo DiCaprio named UN Messenger of Peace The 41-year-old celebrity returned to the United Nations after delivering a much-watched address to world leaders during a UN climate summit in September that set the tone for the Paris accord. DiCaprio said the record turnout at the signing ceremony was a sign of hope, but he argued that sticking to the Paris agreement would not be enough to confront climate change. “An upheaval, a massive change is required right now, one that leads to a new collective conscience,” he said. “Our planet cannot be saved unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground, where they belong,” he said, drawing applause from the chamber. “Look at the delegates around you,” he added. “It is time to ask each other what side of history will you be on.” “After 21 years of debates and conferences, it is time to declare no more talk, no more excuses, no more ten-year studies, no more allowing the fossil fuel companies to manipulate and dictate the science and policies that affect our future.”

2016-04-23 14:39 Agence France entertainment.inquirer.net

43 Yazidi girl, 12, uses sleeping pills to escape ISIS Contact WND (RT) A 12-year-old Yazidi girl secretly slipped sleeping pills into her Islamic State captor’s tea to escape. The girl and her aunt were being held as slaves by the jihadist group west of Mosul, before they were able to escape to Kurdish- controlled areas. The escape was confirmed by Vian Dakhil, a Kurdish Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, who told the Kurdish BasNews agency that a 12- year-old girl and her 17-year-old aunt had managed to escape from their Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) captives by spiking their captors tea with sleeping pills.

2016-04-23 14:38 www.wnd.com

44 Mini brains help scientists understand Zika Contact WND (Sky News) Tiny brains – no larger than a pinhead – were created using 3D printers and infected with the disease by scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US. The study – published in the journal Cell – showed that Zika caused the brains of unborn babies to shrink by attacking cells responsible for brain growth and turning them into “virus factories”. The disease restricted the growth of the cortex, the outer layer of the brain which helps a person’s perception, attention, memory and consciousness.

2016-04-23 14:38 www.wnd.com

45 San Bernardino phone hack 'cost FBI more than $1m' The FBI paid at least $1.3m (£900,000) to hack into the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers, it has been estimated. The figure was calculated based on comments by FBI director James Comey, who said that the agency had paid more to get into the phone than he "will make in the remaining seven years" in his post. That would make it the largest publicised fee for a hacking job. Mr Comey added that it was "worth it". The calculation was based on a projection of Mr Comey's annual salary which, in January 2015, was $183,300. This has been multiplied over the next seven years and four months that he remains in his job. The figure does not factor in pay rises or bonuses. The FBI has never named the security firm or group of hackers that helped unlock the phone, but whoever it was provided either software or hardware that helped crack the four-digit identification number without triggering a security feature that would have erased all data after 10 incorrect guesses. Mr Comey said that the same method could be used on other 5C iPhones running IOS 9 software. According to research firm IHS Technology, there are about 16 million such phones in use in the US and more than 80% of them run iOS 9 software, according to Apple. The case has been hugely controversial, largely because of the spat with Apple, which had been resisting a court order requiring it to write new software to allow officials to access Syed Rizwan Farook's phone. Farook and his wife killed 14 in San Bernardino, California, in December. Both were shot dead by police. The FBI argued that it needed access to the phone's data to determine if the attackers worked with or were supported by other people and were planning other targets. It is unclear how much information has been gleaned since the phone was opened. Some US news outlets have reported that, so far, the FBI has not found anything of interest on the device. The case has raised the debate over whether technology firms' use of encryption is a good thing for consumer privacy or damaging to public safety. There is big money to be made from helping the authorities to find bugs in software. Last year, Zerodium - a firm that negotiates bug bounties - offered $1m for a web-based exploit against iOS 9 and that bounty was subsequently claimed.

2016-04-23 03:12 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

46 Chinese property investors bet on the Northern Powerhouse Listening to details of when the M62 motorway is likely to be upgraded - or how the high-speed railway HS2 is progressing - may not be your idea of a scintillating weekend. But this Saturday and Sunday 500 Chinese investors will be lapping up such details in two of Hong Kong's swankiest hotels, along with their dim sum. No longer will they be staring at artist impressions of Canary Wharf or Battersea. Instead, lured by George Osborne's promotion of the "Northern Powerhouse", Chinese investors are packing their bags and heading up the M6. They are not just buying homes. They are building them, too. In the process the Chinese are helping to fuel the beginnings of a property boom and push up prices, particularly in Liverpool and Manchester. Little wonder that earlier this month the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) reported that prices in London are expected to fall significantly over the next three months, while prices in the North West are expected to soar. So far this year Hong Kong Homes, the property company organising the seminars, has already sold more than 400 flats in Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield to Chinese clients. "There are a lot of people switching from London," explains Charis Chan, the senior manager of its international property division. One reason is the announcement that HS2 will be extended to both Leeds and Manchester. "First of all it's the Northern Powerhouse - because they've heard that much new infrastructure is coming to the North. And another thing is the railway," she tells the BBC. Some of those investing will never come to the UK in person, she says. Others are buying for children who come to university here. Another factor, also down to the chancellor, is this month's increase in stamp duty. Now that the top-rate of duty on a property worth more than £250,000 is 8% for investors, London looks less attractive. "If they go for the North, they can find something in the city centre below this budget," says Ms Chan. In one recent development at Salford Quays, called the Dock Office, just half the apartments were sold to local people. A quarter went to Chinese nationals, and a further quarter went to Brits living abroad. Julie Twist, an estate agent who specialises in Manchester city centre apartments, was surprised at how much money the Chinese were prepared to spend. "The prices were hefty on those. But £300 a square foot is nothing to them," she says. "It's definitely pushing up prices, because they're bringing a lot of cash over here. " As prices have risen in London, the rental yields - the percentage returns every year - are beginning to look more generous in the big northern cities. There's a greater chance of capital appreciation, too. Meanwhile the new infrastructure - and the extension to Manchester's tram system - is proving a particular draw to investors from Hong Kong. "If you've got a development next to a tram, that's very attractive to the Chinese, because that's the way they're used to travelling around," says Ms Twist. The Chinese are not just buying Manchester. They are building it as well. The Beijing Engineering Construction Group is investing £800m in Manchester's Airport City, which will include a hub for other Chinese firms to set up. President Xi Jinping saw the site in person when he visited last year. The street names will be in Mandarin as well as English. "For Chinese people to see their head of state in Manchester, it helped bring confidence to the market," says Vincent Cheng, a Chinese-British property consultant. "In Chinese culture we look for that confidence, and you cannot have a better boost than that. " The fact that Manchester now has direct flights to both Beijing and Hong Kong also makes travel much easier. Apartment blocks all over Manchester are now being built with Chinese money. The Alto development in the Spinningfields area was part-funded by Chinese investors, and Chinese people are buying the apartments. Even a slice of Manchester City Football Club has been sold to the Chinese. "Their attitude to the Northern Powerhouse is stunning. It's insatiable," says Richard Wills- Woodward, an entrepreneur who helps wealthy Chinese individuals invest in the UK. He points to the 300 million middle-class Chinese, a figure equal to the whole population of the USA - who have money to spend. "These people are coming. They're investing in the Northern Powerhouse because they're looking at long-term opportunities. These guys are looking at 20 or 30 years ahead. " But a potential property boom is not good news for everyone in Manchester. The housing charity Shelter - which is campaigning for a national register of off-plan sales - believes that the influx of Hong Kong dollars will cost local people dearly. "As the London property market plateaus, investors are turning their attention to other cities," says Toby Lloyd, Shelter's head of policy. "Ordinary families are already struggling to keep up with rising house prices in those regions, and investors flocking in to speculate on homes that haven't even been built yet will only push prices further out of reach. " But property booms, like the gold rush, are unstoppable. Mr Wills-Woodward knows of one Chinese family who sold up in London, and drove up the M6 in search of new opportunities. "Manchester is going to become the London of the North," he predicts. 2016-04-23 03:12 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

47 Spies invaded privacy to send birthday cards, new documents show Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis A tranche of internal documents obtained from UK intelligence services sheds light on their bulk collection of our data - and also reveals that spies have accessed databases of this private information in order to tend to personal business. The documents from GCHQ, MI5, and MI6 cover the past 15 years and were obtained by privacy campaign group Privacy International as part of a legal challenge against the government's surveillance tactics. They show that security services regularly requisition information on individuals from banks, doctors, and other public and private institutions. This includes information on hair colour, blood type, medical history, petitions they had signed, and correspondence with lawyers. These "Bulk Personal Datasets" are used to monitor individuals who may be a threat to the country's national security, but, according to the agencies themselves, "the majority of [these people] are unlikely to be of intelligence or security interest”. One memo in particular, sent by the Secret Intelligence Agency in 2011, also reveals spies' lax attitudes to the handling of personal data. It notes that employees have "look[ed] up addresses in order to send birthday cards" in intelligence databases, checked passport details, and "check[ed] details of family members for personal convenience". The memo goes on to note that each search "has the potential to invade the privacy of individuals, including individuals who are not the main subject of your search". Millie Graham Wood, the Legal Officer at Privacy International, called the data profiles built up around individuals "staggering": This data is integrated into databases that could be used to build detailed profiles about all of us. The agencies themselves admit that the majority of data collected relates to individuals who are not a threat to national security or suspected of a crime. This highly sensitive information about us is vulnerable to attack from hackers, foreign governments, and criminals. She added that agencies have been carrying out this type of surveillance for 15 years, and are now seeking to back-legitimise it through the Investigatory Powers Bill, or " Snooper's Charter ". The bill is currently at committee stage in the Commons. You can see the full set of documents here. You can sign Privacy International's petition against new police snooping powers here. The Syrian conflict moves at a frightening pace. The families caught up in the maelstrom that follows it endure a life few of us can imagine. In this storm Britain must do its part. On Thursday the immigration minister announced his response to calls to UK to do more to protect children caught up by the Syrian refugee crisis. There will be a new resettlement scheme and a £10m fund. We have seen other countries do their part with differing results. We have seen some of the brutality of eastern European partners as they seal their borders in the face of a million people on the move. We have seen how Germany has opened its doors without controls. While commendable and deeply human, the longer term effects of such a policy are only just beginning to be realised. So we must be careful. Let's take Germany. The truth is that modern German society has permanently changed as a result of the country's policy towards refugees. Their efforts, whilst providing a home for millions of people, have seen an exponential growth in the people- trafficking markets, and over a million refugees enter the country. And yet the horrific stories only get worse: of families sending unaccompanied children first; of the deeply hazardous journeys undertaken by refugees, and of the almost unbelievable brutality of the individuals making a profit from this crisis. Other countries have sealed their borders. The scenes from Eastern Europe are deeply moving. Fathers holding their children out to get tear-gassed; families rioting with children in tow - these scenes tear at any parent’s protective heartstrings. In some it engenders a sense of anger. Because these people are not fleeing the guns; they are in Europe already. They are desperate. But desperate for what? So we face an almost impossible policy area. We must do everything in our power to stop the United Kingdom becoming a pull factor in this conflict; critically we must also ensure that we do our duty by the most vulnerable families affected by this conflict. It is an immensely difficult balance. I therefore welcome this government’s efforts to tackle this debate with their hearts and their heads. In the final analysis, there can be no doubt to the UK’s commitment to this crisis. While refugee numbers are easy political soundbites, we must be led by the nose of what actually works; what the experts recommend with long term, sustainable outcomes in the best interests of these people. The detail in the minister’s statement is significant. He specifically addressed the concerns about children already in Europe by creating an £10m Refugee Children Fund specifically targeted at those children and refugees in Europe; this complements the £2.3bn already committed to the region. 75 UK personnel will deploy to Greece to assist teams there already. A new resettlement scheme will relocate 3,000 individuals in addition to the 20,000 Syrians being resettled under the Syrian resettlement scheme. This is an extremely emotive policy area. I do think that last summer we were slow to start our response to the refugee crisis, and I spoke out at the time. Britain is a resilient yet compassionate nation, and we must do our part. But the truth is we are now doing our part - more than that, we are actually enacting a tangible plan that is saving lives, relocating the most vulnerable people from the region, yet doing everything we can to tackle the cowardly people traffickers throughout Europe. It is only fair that if one asks the government to do more, we should acknowledge when it does so. Our government is working hard to keep pace with a messy, violent and awful conflict. With this latest announcement we are proving to be agile enough to face emerging challenges and second order effects; while still remaining in the single biggest bilateral donor to the region. But ‘caution’ is the word and "flexible" is the approach. We are a very fortunate country; Compassion must be the key factor in all of our policies. I welcome this announcement. Dear George Osborne, it's time to tackle tax dodging Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis newstatesman.com

Labour big beasts make the environmental case for the EU Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis newstatesman.com

Following the unemployment figures, has George Osborne's recovery run out of steam? Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis newstatesman.com It's easy to pretend the public are stupid — but ordinary people know plenty about politics Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis newstatesman.com

Bribes, brothers and books on the road: how I learnt to love reading Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis newstatesman.com

By winning the economic argument, the Remain campaign believes it will win the EU referendum Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis newstatesman.com An inspector calls and the practice is festooned with green “I Am Clean” stickers Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis newstatesman.com

A hundred and fifty feet above Hyde Park is a scene of glory and bloodlust Compassion and caution must both be at the heart of our response to the refugee crisis newstatesman.com 2016-04-23 13:16 Tracy King www.newstatesman.com

48 Explaining the Leicester City story to Americans If Leicester City win the Premier League, it will be one of the most captivating British sport stories in years. But how does a football-mad Englishman living in the US explain its importance to Americans? "Lie-kester. " "No, Leicester. " "Less-ester? " "No, Leicester. As in Lester. " "Oh. Why is it pronounced like that? " Trying, and failing, to explain the mystery of English phonetics can be a daily task for Brits living in the US. But when it comes to the Leicester City story, the how-to-say is not the only part that's lost in translation. For those not yet aware, a small, unfashionable team based in England's East Midlands has somehow stormed the Premier League. With four games left, Leicester City are five points ahead of anyone and barring a collapse, on course for their first top-flight league title in their 132-year history. This team was in the third tier of English football in 2009, and after climbing to the top division, they spent months last season in bottom place. They weren't just out of fashion, they were a byword for failure. In 2008, when they were relegated to the equivalent of the third division, the Guardian newspaper wrote: The crowds still filed in, greeting each new season with optimism, but all too soon the realisation dawned that the cheers from the stands were for nothing - everything the club once embodied had been hollowed out from the inside, leaving only a desiccated blue and white husk. As recently as 18 months ago, the chairman of Marseille said he would be a "sucker" to take an interest in signing any Leicester City player. And their Algerian star player Riyad Mahrez says he thought they were a rugby club when they first expressed an interest in him. Should they win English football's most prestigious prize, some say the feat would be the most unlikely event in the history of team sports. Globally. Bookmakers' odds on them winning the Premier League were 5,000 to one last summer. So it was five times more likely that Hugh Hefner would declare himself a virgin. For a British sports fan living in the US, there's a natural inclination to share this footballing fairytale with friends. This, after all, is a story as much about the human spirit as it is about scoring goals. Writing in The Players' Tribune , their manager Claudio Ranieri said: "This is a small club that is showing the world what can be achieved through spirit and determination. Twenty-six players. Twenty-six different brains. But one heart. " But mention Leicester City to American friends who don't closely follow English football and a blank look is the stock response. Or worse, a nod and a smile. Even from sports fans. It's understandable. My eyes would probably glaze over if someone tried to enthuse me about, say, the San Diego Padres being on a winning streak. So how to put it in terms that my American friends would understand? Has there ever been an American Leicester? For help, I turned to team mates of mine on the football pitches of Shaw, a neighbourhood of Washington where every Friday night, the replica shirts of Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal worn by locals give the scene a semi-English flavour. "Oakland As in baseball? " suggests Drew, a tough-tackling Wisconsinite, referring to the famous Oakland Athletics team under Billy Beane who used analytics to overcome more glamorous opponents, winning 20 games in a row in 2002. Nice story but they didn't win the World Series at the end of that run, which is the equivalent of what Leicester could achieve in the weeks ahead. Next? "OK, how about Minnesota Twins? " says Joe, who supports West Ham. "In 1991, they went from bottom of the American League West to winning 95 games on their way to a World Series title. "And in gridiron in 1999, the St Louis Rams accomplished a similar feat, following a last-place finish in '98 with a championship of their own the very next year. " Both good examples of an amazing one-season turnaround, but for teams with pedigree that's admirable, not historic. There are structural reasons why the Premier League / US sport comparisons are imperfect. There is no promotion or relegation in NFL or baseball, so a smaller team can't rise up through the ranks like Leicester has, in a way that pitches David against Goliath. And the NFL operates a more level playing field than the Premier League, through a salary cap and by giving the weaker teams first pick of the best college players. In English football, the reverse happens - the rich clubs tighten their grip on success because a higher placed finish gets a bigger cash reward and therefore they buy the better players. It's a virtuous circle of success feeding money feeding success. As a consequence, only five teams have won the Premier League since it was set up in 1992. In that period, 14 teams have won the Super Bowl. That's what makes Leicester's potential feat on a comparative shoestring so remarkable, breaking into a rich elite. When they beat Manchester City recently, they overcame a squad that cost 15 times their own. So if it hasn't happened in the US, what WOULD be the nearest thing to a Leicester triumph? "The idea of Leicester winning the Premiership would be like the Cleveland Browns winning the Super Bowl - unthinkable, and seemingly impossible," says Jeff Maysh, a British writer (and Spurs fan) who is based in Los Angeles. "In history there have been a couple of comparable performances in college basketball, which is more akin to a team winning the FA Cup on a lucky run, rather than Leicester's dominance in the league. " Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated thinks there's no direct comparison but the nearest would be if an AA (third division) baseball team managed to find its way - magically - to the major leagues and then won the World Series. He puts Leicester's success down to the implosion of several of the big English clubs like Chelsea, some astute Leicester signings and new manager Ranieri. After a troubled summer when the last manager resigned after a Thai brothel scandal involving his son, the club turned to a man whose Greece side had just lost to the Faroe Islands. Suffice to say, hopes were not high. Is Thailand in love with Leicester? Now or never for the title - Ranieri Now Ranieri is a folk hero in the East Midlands and there's even talk of a knighthood from the Queen. There is also an English king's hand in their success, if you believe in superstition. Ever since Richard III's body was dug up from a car park in Leicester and restored to the city's cathedral a year ago, their fortunes have turned around. The Very Reverend David Monteith of Leicester Cathedral has said that the re-interment added to the sense of civic pride. "History has been buried and now it's revealed in all kinds of different ways, not least in the [football] match. " The Leicester story is so rich that sex scandals in the Far East and royal influence from beyond the grave are mere footnotes. But back in Shaw, my footballing team mates have drawn a blank in trying to give it a US context. "There really isn't an American sports analogy to Leicester," says Andrew, a Liverpool fan from Baltimore. "It has to be the most stunning underdog story in sports history. " Perhaps the best comparison lies not in sport but in politics, he says. "Everyone said Donald Trump would falter in December but here we are in April wondering how he's defied the odds. " If England and America truly are two nations divided by a common language then sporting talk is where the chasm is at its widest. The different vocabulary used by fans in the US and UK - not just England - when discussing the same sports seems as entrenched as ever. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

2016-04-23 16:36 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

49 Obama questioned on LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter London (CNN) London's diversity was on full display Saturday during a town hall discussion hosted by President Barack Obama, who faced questions on gay and transgender rights and offered advice to the Black Lives Matter movement during his second day in the British capital.

2016-04-23 14:25 Kevin Liptak www.cnn.com

50 Prince: No-one in the universe will ever compare " I am something that you'll never comprehend. " (I Would Die 4 U, 1984) Prince is dead. I can't believe I'm writing that. I couldn't believe it when I got the phone call on Thursday on the train home from work. I couldn't believe it for the next 48 hours of writing, broadcasting and eulogising. I can't believe it now. I can't bring myself to listen to his music. Prince was woven into the fabric of my life. My wife and I got engaged after one of his concerts in 2002. We had the lyrics to Joy In Repetition stencilled on our wedding invitations. We went to see him at the O2 on our fourth anniversary. He played Joy In Repetition. Imagine that. At first, though, I was unsure of this moustachioed weirdo singing Purple Rain on Top of the Pops. He seemed untamed. Dangerous, even. I decided to keep my distance. A year later, I conceded that Raspberry Beret was "ok" but it was Alphabet Street that really snared me. I begged Diana Hobson from school, older and cooler than me, to lend me her cassette collection, and an obsession was born. Prince appealed to the drummer in me, first and foremost. I spent hours trying to replicate Sheila E's impossibly intricate percussion on Dance On (Lovesexy, 1988). Never managed it. Later, I came to realise how ground-breaking Prince had been rhythmically. He owned and mastered one of the first Linn M-1 drum machines - that's the sound you hear on 1999, When Doves Cry, Little Red Corvette; the sound that made those records seem like nothing else on radio. Michael B's drum solo on Shhh... (The Gold Experience, 1995) is so good, Prince uses it twice. The trippy, cascading hi-hats on The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker (Sign O' The Times, 1987) still mesmerise me, 30 years on. Rhythm is the backbone of funk, so of course Prince understood it instinctively. Funk was where he operated at his peak. Erotic City, Controversy, Let's Work - his dance tracks are amongst his best. But he could also bring your knees with a moment of tender vulnerability. Purple Rain is all bluster and bombast - and there's nothing wrong with that - but I prefer the tortured, conflicted Prince of The Beautiful Ones ("Do you want him? Or do you want me? 'Cause I want you. ") If I Was Your Girlfriend is even more outstanding - Prince, the unstoppable lust machine, literally embracing androgyny in an attempt to get as close to his girlfriend as her sister is. "If I was your girlfriend," he pleads, "would you come to me if someone hurt you, even if that somebody was me? " What else? He was underrated as a guitarist. Everyone has been sharing that video of him soloing on While My Guitar Gently Weeps at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - partly because it's one of the only Prince videos available online - but I saw him play like that dozens of times. He could dazzle you with his virtuosity, sure. But listen to the last half of the solo on Purple Rain. It's just three notes and he wrings every last teardrop out of that fretboard. He just knew what to do for maximum effect. Music was his language and he was the greatest speechwriter of all time. The other thing the obituaries all seem to have missed was his sense of humour. Man, some of those songs are FUNNY. Adore (Sign O' The Times, 1987) is a classic R&B ballad, which builds and builds to the point where Prince declares: "U could burn up my clothes, smash up my ride... " [Dramatic pause] "Well, maybe not the ride. " On Bob George (The Black Album, 1986) he refers to himself as "that skinny mother with the high voice", while later songs Prettyman (Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic, 2000) and Stare (Hit N' Run Phase II, 2015) satirise his status as a sex symbol. "First things first, we'd like you to stare," he chants on the latter. "We used to go on stage in our underwear. " I've spent years listening to his music and collecting bootlegs of material from the fabled "vault" (a lot of it is rubbish, by the way) but it's the concerts that will remain with me. He was incomparable on stage. His mastery of music, of movement, of the musicians, of the audience was instinctive. I never heard him sing a bum note. I never saw a bad show. I saw a man in his element. He loved to play. One of the best was at Dublin's Point Theatre in 1995, right in the middle of his contract fight with Warner Bros. "Did you miss me? " he asked, before launching into a three-hour set. The show focused almost exclusively on the soon-to-be-released Gold Experience album, and you could tell Prince was glad to be playing something that wasn't Purple Rain or Let's Go Crazy for the first time in a decade. He was chatty, relaxed and back in love with his guitar. At the end of the show, Prince ordered his band to ditch the sampled loops they were using and play a 20-minute jam based around the NPG single Get Wild. My dad came to that gig with me and, as the tempo ratcheted upwards, we pushed through to the moshpit and jumped up and down for half-an-hour. A few years later, he had to have surgery on his knees. I saw him 11 times in total - for the last time at The Roundhouse in 2014. Now I'll never get to take my kids to see Prince. And that makes me saddest of all. In his own words, "no-one in the whole universe will ever compare".

2016-04-23 15:34 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

51 Bodies of two men found in Hull back garden The bodies of two men have been found in the back garden of a property in Hull. Officers were called to the property on May Street just after 18:00 BST on Friday. Humberside Police said the deaths "are still being treated as suspicious, but unexplained". The men have not been formally identified and a post-mortem examination will take place later to establish the cause of death. Det Supt Matt Hutchinson from the force's Major Crime Unit said: "Unsurprisingly this incident will be of great concern to the local community and as a result extra officers will be in the May Street area carrying out enquiries and reassuring the public. "Significant enquiries are under way to establish how and when the men died. "A large number of police resources are working on the investigation carrying out house to house, CCTV and forensic enquiries. "

2016-04-23 16:36 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

52 Jurors hear police interview of Chester murder suspect Jeff Sochko of Fort Mill recalls the superstar's 'no drugs' clause and what Prince wanted from 'big black women and kids' at every show. Civil jury rules in favor of Chester County Sheriff Alex Underwood, ruling allegations of sex brought by former deputy were unproven. Opponents of a proposed 180-foot cell phone tower off Walnut Street in Clover assembled early Thursday after noticing equipment used to bury fiber optic cable at the site. After a confrontation with the residents that live close to the proposed tower site, subcontractors hired to bury the cable left with the equipment. Terrance Buchanan took the stand Wednesday during the murder trial for Christopher Moore, who is accused of fatally shooting Odell Williams in November 2014. Buchanan was charged with accessory to a felony. Attorneys for the state and defense on Tuesday laid out what jurors can expect in the murder trial for Christopher Moore, who is charged with fatally shooting Chester City Councilman Odell Williams in November 2014. Williams' wife and daughter and the first officer on the scene that night were among the first witnesses to testify. Small children gathered at Winthrop University Tuesday for the Come-See-Me Teddy Bear Tea Party in Rock Hill. Kids dressed in fancy hats and sunglasses sipped on juice boxes and munched on chocolate chip cookies while others poured imaginary tea. Five homes, including the contemporary statement Huntley-Ward home on Lake Wylie will be part of the April 30 Clover-Lake Wylie Republican Women’s Club’s Home and Garden Tour. The event raises scholarship money for students in the Clover School District, South Carolina, area. Catherine Muccigrosso/Lake Wylie Pilot Tiffany Beckler (in purple top), a Rock Hill High graduate who will compete on the third season of "Skin Wars," is one of a dozen contestants on the show. "Skin Wars," a body painting competition reality show, begins its season at 10 p.m. Wednesday on GSN. Chester County Sheriff Alex Underwood is in court this week facing allegations from former deputy Mary Anne Tolbert that he coerced sex. Underwood calls the claims false. Here are excerpts from opening statements. Christopher Moore, who is charged with murder in the 2014 death of Chester City Councilman Odell Williams, recalls the events leading up to the moment he is accused of shooting Williams with a rifle. Moore's testimony came on the first day of his trial during a pre-trial hearing in which his attorneys sought immunity under South Carolina's 'stand your ground' law.

2016-04-23 13:10 www.heraldonline.com

53 The Latest: Obama hits the links with Cameron LONDON (AP) — The Latest on President Barack Obama's visit to the United Kingdom (all times local): 3 p.m. President Barack Obama is playing his first overseas golf round as president, and Prime Minister David Cameron is his playing partner. The two leaders are playing at The Grove, which is hosting The British Masters later this year. The course's website says The Grove is one of England's finest luxury golf courses. Obama is an avid golfer who takes his clubs with him on many domestic trips. He has surely relished the prospect of playing the sport in a country where it has flourished for centuries. ___ 2:30 p.m. President Barack Obama has met privately in London with Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran far-left lawmaker elected to lead the Labour Party last year. The White House says Obama congratulated Corbyn on his election and that the two discussed the impact of globalization on labor unions and working people. They also discussed the need to take steps to reduce inequality around the world. The White House says the two also agreed the UK should remain a member of the European Union. Obama's advocacy on that issue has angered some proponents of a "leave" vote in the June 23 referendum. Corbyn is known for speaking his mind and reaching voters whom other politicians can't. ___ 2:00 p.m. A student who came out as "non-binary" during a televised town hall-style meeting with President Barack Obama in London has spoken of gaining the confidence to "change the world. " Maria Munir, a student at the University of York in northern England, told Obama: "I'm coming out to you as a non-binary person" — identifying as neither exclusively male nor female. The student urged the British and American governments to "take us seriously as transgender people. " The president said he was "incredibly proud" of Munir for speaking out, and encouraged the questioner to "keep pushing. " Munir said afterward that "to be sat in front of the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, and to be able to pitch to him social action that I believe he can have a real influence on is something I will never be able to describe. "Being here, I just know that I can change the world now and this has given me that confidence. " ___ 12:05 p.m. President Barack Obama is telling a young person who self- identified as "non-binary" that change is coming quickly in the fight to improve rights for LGBT people. At a town hall meeting in London, Obama encouraged the questioner to "keep pushing" for rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and he says "the trend lines are good" on that front. However, the president says he can't do much about a North Carolina law that requires transgender people to use public bathrooms conforming to the sex on their birth certificates and restricts protections for LGBT people. Obama says he can't overturn state laws, and the current Congress is unlikely to prohibit states from taking such action. But he says his administration is doing what it can administratively and social attitudes are changing quickly. ___ 11:15 a.m. President Barack Obama is offering some advice to young activists: Be realistic, and be ready to compromise. Obama says marriage equality advocates were effective in persuading him to shift his stance on gay marriage. He credits the movement, as well as his two daughters, with convincing him and others that the issue wasn't just a legal matter, but about a "sense of stigma. " He says that's something he should have understood earlier. Obama didn't shower the same praise on the Black Lives Matter campaign. He says the criminal justice and racial equality activists have been "really effective in bringing attention to a problem. " But he warned that when politicians are ready to address a problem, activists have to be ready to present a realistic agenda. He says, "You can't just keep on yelling at them. You can't refuse to meet because that might compromise the purity of your position. " Obama says advocates must be prepared to negotiate and "occasionally take half a loaf. " ___ 11:10 a.m. President Barack Obama says he doesn't believe he'll have a full sense of his legacy for another decade. Obama says he'll "look at the scorecard at the end" — but there's no doubt he's keeping score even now. The president listed a number of accomplishments he's proud of, including his health insurance overhaul. He also is taking credit for saving the world economy from a depression, adding "that was pretty good. " On the international stage, he says the agreement to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon without going to war is something he's proud of, as well as the response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Obama says there was panic about Ebola, but people quickly forgot about it as a result of what he describes as one of the great public health responses in the history of the world. ___ 10:40 a.m. President Barack Obama is asking young Britons to reject xenophobia and efforts to restrict people's rights. Obama says he wants young people to take a "longer and more optimistic view of history and the part that you can play in it. " The president is speaking at a town hall in London. His remarks were a pointed reference to the debate in Europe over immigration and taking in refugees who are fleeing violence in the Middle East. The president says he want young people to view integration and globalization "not as threats, but as opportunities. " ___ 10:30 a.m. President Barack Obama is telling young people in Britain that there have been some historical bumps in the road in the history between the U. K. and U. S. — most notably, he says the British "burned my house down" early in the country's history. But Obama notes that the two countries "made up" and have stood side-by- side, both on the battlefield against fascism and in creating institutions that help spread peace and prosperity around the world. The president says his main message is for young people to reject cynicism and to recognize that progress is inevitable but requires struggle and faith. The president's comment Saturday about institutions that promote peace appeared to be a indirect reference to supporting Britain's membership in the European Union. Obama is holding a town hall-style event in London with young people. ___ 9:40 a.m. President Barack Obama is opening his final day in London by touring a theater dedicated to the work of playwright William Shakespeare. Saturday is the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death, which was being observed throughout the United Kingdom. Obama's first stop Saturday morning was the Globe theater. The theater is a replica of the circular, open-air playhouse that Shakespeare designed in 1599. As Obama toured the theater, he spent several minutes gazing up at the structure and asking questions about the seating and performances. He also watched a brief performance of a portion of Shakespeare's Hamlet, including the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy. Obama described the performance as "wonderful. "

2016-04-23 14:20 Associated Press www.dailymail.co.uk

54 Investigation: America's broken system for backgrounding teachers Nation's disciplined teacher data to be audited state by state NC lacks standard for screening all private school teachers Teacher who won back license faced sex abuse claims 20 years ago Teacher with troubled past resigns amid USA TODAY NETWORK probe Dis-honor roll States look to mend gaps in teacher screening systems How troubled teachers cheat the system Exclusive: Flaws found in Iowa teacher background checks How we graded the states on teacher background checks Teachers can lose license elsewhere, work in Tennessee The teaching journey of Alexander Stormer Teachers lose certificates, but not classroom access Tracking disciplined teachers across states is difficult 4 things we know about Arizona teacher database errors Teacher misconduct tracked, but not shared with public How to look up the background of teachers in every state How USA TODAY audited the country's broken systems for tracking teacher discipline Despite background checks, troubled teachers slip past system NC fails in screening for problem teachers Tennessee gets an F in teacher background checks Teachers with sordid pasts slip into Southwest Florida schools Iowa lawmakers: Tighten school background checks Va.'s teacher background checks get D grade State backlog lets educators keep licenses Schools use contracts to cut teachers loose Area teachers in discipline database Pa.: Increased efforts to track teacher backgrounds Mississippi gets 'D' for teacher licensure Nevada at both ends of systemic teacher-vetting problems When bad teachers cross state lines New Mexico among worst on teacher background checks N. Y. gets ‘B’ in vetting teachers 11Alive investigation leads to improved teacher vetting system New York among best states for teacher checks Florida receives C for teacher discipline VT leads in teacher misconduct checks Alabama earns high marks on teacher background check system Keeping kids safe Teacher won back license after sex-abuse claims Improve tools to track teacher misconduct: #tellusatoday Tennessee Board of Education to formalize teacher discipline policy Troubled teachers jumping borders to stay in classrooms Wisconsin gets 'C' for teacher licensure Educators do little time for sex crimes © 2016 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC.

2016-04-23 13:08 Steve Reilly rssfeeds.usatoday.com

55 Why Heidi Cruz and Melania Trump might make better presidents than their husbands The race for the Republican nomination found a new way to turn nasty Tuesday night. Two candidates’ wives became the subject of attacks and threats. An anti-Trump Super PAC put out an attack ad showing a nude Melania Trump. In response, Donald Trump ominously threatened to “spill the beans” about Ted Cruz’s wife, Heidi. Cruz’s campaign didn’t create the Trump ad. And he has since denounced the ad as "completely inappropriate. " Trump’s targeting of Heidi Cruz is another low-blow for his campaign that sees nothing as off-limits.*** On Wednesday night, Trump's misogynistic nature struck again as he tweeted a photo comparing his Melania Trump's looks to Cruz's spouse. Ted Cruz called Trump a "sniveling coward" for going after his wife again. Heidi Cruz responded once on Wednesday saying, “many of the things others say are not based in reality.”*** READ MORE: 13 facts to know about Melania Trump She took the high road. But, here, we’ll #SpillTheBeans: Heidi and Melania could both make better candidates than their husbands during this bitter election season. The model formerly known as Melania Knauss, 45, at least seems more friendly and less narcissistic than her husband. While Trump wealth from his father, Knauss had more humble roots. She grew up in a small town in communist Yugoslavia as the daughter of a car dealer. She also speaks five languages (English, Slovenian, German, Serbian and French). It's a far cry from her mono-language husband, who, according to a Boston Globe analysis speaks English at a fourth- grade level. Heidi Cruz, 43, was a rising star in politics before she left the game to support her husband’s career. Like him, she’s an Ivy Leaguer with a Harvard MBA. She has succeeded in both the public and private sectors. She’s also credited with softening her husband’s edges (to the extent possible given the nature of the 2016 election), and is considered less ideologically strict than Ted Cruz. FIGHT!: Ted Cruz, Donald Trump get into Twitter beef over their wives Buzzfeed, in a profile called “The Trials and Triumphs of Heidi Cruz,” showed that Heidi Cruz seems every bit as politically savvy as Ted. She triumphed in the political realm before her husband got his footing. They met while working on the George W. Bush election campaign before the 2000 election. His personality rubbed others the wrong way. Heidi Cruz, on the other hand, saw her fortunes rise. In 2003, she reported directly to Condoleezza Rice as a member of the National Security Council. When her husband wanted to move from Washington, D. C., to Houston, Cruz left the administration to take a position in 2005 as vice president at a local Goldman Sachs office. She was the only woman working there. The same month Ted Cruz won his Senate race in 2012, Heidi became a managing director at the financial firm. She has admitted to missing the public sector (and the Buzzfeed feature notes her “professional transition” led to a breakdown she had in Austin in 2005.). Still, despite her own accomplishments, she’s chosen to back her husband’s own political ambitions. Last year, she took a leave of absence from Goldman Sachs to support his campaign and help advise him. AT HOME: Life with Donald and Melania Trump Heidi Cruz seems to enjoy her role on the campaign trail with Cruz and their two daughters. Nevertheless, her mentors and former colleagues always expected she wanted something more. “It’s sort of interesting to think of her now as a potential first lady sort of person because that’s not how I saw her back then,” Brock Blomberg, who worked with Cruz at the Treasury, told Buzzfeed. “I just didn’t see her as making her career about her husband … I see her as being a lot deeper than that.” Learn more about Heidi Cruz and Melania Trump in the gallery above. *** This story has been updated with a link to Ted Cruz disavowing the Melania Trump ad, and the latest misogynistic attacks by Trump on Heidi Cruz.

2016-04-23 15:38 Matt Levin www.chron.com

56 House Republicans side with Texas in Obama immigration suit WASHINGTON – The U. S. House passed a Republican-led resolution Thursday backing the state of Texas' challenge to President Barack Obama's unilateral action deferring the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants. The resolution, volubly opposed by Democrats, passed along party lines, with 234 GOP lawmakers backing the measure. Five Republicans were opposed. Democrats, who have filed a separate brief to the Supreme Court, voted uniformly against the GOP measure. The resolution, strongly backed by Republicans in the Texas delegation, fuels an election-year legal battle, with the House of Representatives formally weighing in against Obama's 2014 executive orders on immigration, which critics say exceed his constitutional authority. The move authorizes House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.,to file a "friend of the court" brief opposing Obama in the case of U. S. v. Texas, which the Supreme Court could decide by June. "This is about the integrity of our constitution," Ryan said. "[The] separation of powers could not be clearer. " Texas has taken the lead among 26 states challenging Obama's actions. The Supreme Court – minus the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia – is scheduled to hear arguments in the case next month. The Obama initiative would extend deportation deferrals and work permits for undocumented workers with deep roots in the U. S. The program was temporarily blocked last year by a federal judge in Brownsville, Texas. After being upheld on appeal, the decision is now under high court review. Immigration activists denounced the House action as a political stunt inspired by GOP front- runner Donald Trump, who has taken a hard line against illegal immigration. "Today's vote has nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with the Republican Party's Trump-like strategy to build political power by fomenting anger, division, and xenophobia," said Jessica Karp Bansal, litigation director at the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. Texas Republicans, who rallied around Ryan, said it is about enforcing the law. "I see this as an issue of constitutional importance," said Republican U. S. Rep. Ted Poe, a former Harris County judge. "The issue is not immigration. The issue is whether or not the executive may issue a memo overriding Congressional law. I do not believe he has the authority to do so. "

2016-04-23 14:27 By Kevin www.chron.com

57 NC Education Watch: Buncombe School Board’s Insatiable Appetite for Spending By Lisa Baldwin- If you had been at last Thursday’s school board meeting you would have seen a lot of money change hands. But not a dime of it for teaching and learning. Buncombe County Schools (BCS) has slipped from the 11th largest of 115 NC school districts to the 13th largest after losing more than 1,000 students in the last two years. BCS still ranks as the second largest employer in Buncombe, next to Mission Hospital. With nearly 4,000 employees (Less than half of those are teachers), plus multiple contractors, the school board manages a behemoth budget close to $300 million per year. Where are your hard-earned tax dollars going? It was noted at the April meeting that BCS has been overpaying for audits. Alternating between two local accounting firms has not yielded enough competition. The new 2016 contract went to the lowest bidder for $60,000. The bids from two Asheville firms, Dixon Hughes and Johnson Price & Sprinkle (JPS), were nearly double this price. From 2009-2015 Johnson Price & Sprinkle (JPS) held the contract, paying their auditors excessive hourly wages. Note: When serving on the school board in 2014, I tried to postpone the vote on renewing the expensive contract with JPS until we could look into bidding it out but no one would second my motion. It was recorded in the Board minutes, “The vote passed 6/1 with Ms. Baldwin voting against the motion to renew the contract with JPS.” Astroturf football/soccer field replacements at Owen High and Erwin High Schools will cost $854,200. These two projects were bid out separately instead of as one project even though it is cheaper if like projects are bundled together. No comparison for the cost of grass football fields was conducted. Parents have expressed concerns with the chemicals and carcinogens used in the synthetic turf. The Board approved the astroturf contracts unanimously. The low bid for the North Buncombe High School Food Lab renovation totaled $857,000 and the Enka High School Food Lab renovation was priced at $295,000. North Buncombe’s Home Economics kitchen renovations will include some professional appliances while the Enka kitchen will have residential appliances. All of this is to train students to be entry-level food service workers for our hospitality industry. Those businesses who stand to benefit from a trained work force – the Grove Park Inn, Biltmore Estate, McDonalds – should chip in. And this is just the beginning of the expensive renovations slated for all 6 high schools. Common Core standards dictate preparing students for workforce jobs, not educating young minds. This is why the N. C. Chamber of Commerce backs Common Core, plus the fact that data management and instructional supply companies stand to make money off of the standards. The school board asked no questions as they rubber stamped the removal of $1.4 million from the classroom. Monies were removed from the Textbook Fund ($146,196), the Classroom Materials Fund ($250,000) the Academically Gifted Fund ($400,000), Disadvantaged Students ($300,000), and the Limited English Learners ($300,000). This money was then used to pay for “Certified Personnel.” Was this money taken from the classroom to pay for certified central office staff or the dozens of “math and language arts coaches” who “help” teachers with their lesson plans? Is Buncombe continuing to pay for extra teachers who are not really needed as enrollment has declined sharply? The state pays for teachers based on student enrollment numbers. The school board also approved $860,000 of Lottery Funds for the Discovery Academy “phase III project”. The STEM high school renovations have gone over the original $5.5 million renovation budget, so the board creatively adds “phases.” Since the school is situated right in the middle of the Central Office, one has to wonder what else is being renovated. It has been documented that $88,000 was spent on new furniture for the Child Nutrition Department (school lunch program administrators) when they were re-located due to the STEM high school construction. Now even the Central Office administration hallways have new carpet and paint… what will be next? It gets worse. The only “Republican” on the school board, Amy Churchill, moved to approve a resolution copied from Organize 2020, a group that endorses Black Lives Matters. The motion was seconded by Cindy McMahon, self-professed “Mama for Obama” and Moral Monday protester. The resolution demanded that the N. C. Legislature “increase per pupil funding and fully fund public schools in North Carolina.” (Organize 2020 is a radical arm of the North Carolina Association of Educators.) There was no discussion and the resolution was approved. Never mind the facts, this was about emotions. The state of North Carolina ranks 11th in the nation and 2nd in the Southeast for state education funding. North Carolina taxpayers spend $8,757 on each student per year. Yet this is not enough for Buncombe. A parent at the meeting pointed out that Buncombe is unique in that it brings in an extra $12 million per year for school construction due to special legislation. Some of this could easily be converted to dollars for teaching and learning; it is a matter of priorities. But the school board’s insatiable appetite for spending on pet projects will never be satisfied. And this was just one month’s spending…

2016-04-23 16:46 www.thetribunepapers.com

58 What lies beneath: the hidden politics of underwear “Schrödinger’s Cab”: a poem by Steve Kronen Underwear rarely makes it into the history books – and more’s the pity, because you can tell a huge amount about a society by its pants. In Nancy Mitford’s biography of Madame de Pompadour, she recounts what happened to an aristocratic woman who had been encouraged to seek Louis XV’s favour. She was smuggled into the royal bedchamber by Lebel, premier valet de chambre , who acted as the king’s procurer. Unfortunately, when the monarch arrived he mistook her for a lower-class prostitute and told her to take off her clothes while he went for his official coucher. “Now it so happened she had never in her life undressed herself without the help of a maid,” Mitford writes. “Her clothes were, of course, all done up down the back, with hundreds of hooks, very difficult to manipulate alone.” Even worse was to come when Louis returned, said he wasn’t as young as he once was, and decided it would be better if she went back to Paris. The poor woman had to struggle back into her cumbersome petticoats, panniers and corset alone and be smuggled back out of the palace. That vignette has always stayed with me, because of the unexpectedness of the situation (what adult can’t dress herself?) and the intersection of class, status and gender bound up in those hundreds of fiddly hooks and eyes. Underwear, being essentially functional, cannot help spilling the intimate secrets of its owner’s body and life. Take the difference between the Japanese geiko , or geisha, and her more affordable (and more explicitly sex-selling) cousin the oiran. A geisha’s obi (sash) was tied at the back, indicating that she needed help to get undressed; a prostitute wore an obi that closed at the front. The “Undressed” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum attempts to tease out a little of the complicated contextual history of underwear, ranging from the heavy stays of the 18th century to the sports bras and shapewear of today. Menswear gets a look-in, too, in the form of a woollen jockstrap, allegedly perfect for sporting activities, and some natty dressing gowns that cry out to be worn by Jim Broadbent in a BBC period drama. The V&A recently held an exhibition of shoes, subtitled “Pleasure and Pain”, and that phrase would apply equally well here. Shoes can either make walking easier (heavens be praised for orthotic insoles!) or much harder, with vicious, nail-thin heels and flimsy strapping. Similarly, throughout history, underwear has frequently seemed to fight rather than support the female body, attempting to wrestle it into submission, whether through a wasp waist or a flat chest. Class plays its part next to gender: both high heels and tight corsets advertise the wearer’s glorious uselessness at mundane tasks such as sweeping the floor or herding pigs. A family shows its wealth by keeping half its members for display purposes only. For this reason, it’s important to remember that what survives of ephemera such as underwear is often extremely unrepresentative of what the general population used, as if our great-great- grandchildren assumed we all dressed like the finale of a Jean Paul Gaultier winter collection. Early in this show, the curators present two sets of 18th-century stays side by side: the rich woman’s fashionable kind (weighing 630 grams) and a lower-middle-class woman’s workday set in wool (a more hefty 1.06 kilograms). The sturdier ones might well have been easier to wear: truly disempowering fashion is usually the prerogative of the rich. Perhaps some of the lessons here are overly obvious. Women in particular have had a raw deal from underwear designers, who have bullied and charmed them into everything from latex slips (not very breathable, the notes add unnecessarily) to tight-laced Victorian corsets. The most eye-watering one here has a waist of just 48 centimetres (19 inches), when a standard UK 12 is now 71 centimetres (28 inches). It’s a radical feminist dictum that “femininity is eroticised submission”, and that is never clearer than when looking at garments which veered from displaying the approximate shape of a female body (out-in-out) to exaggerating it to such extremes. This being the V&A, there is ample consideration of the technical advances – nylon, proprietary “wicking” fabrics used for sportswear, thermal fibres – which gave underwear designers new ways to make their products more comfortable, useful and washable. The bigger mystery is why so many pants-makers haven’t bothered, and yet still prosper. Lingerie is a huge market, and this exhibition is sponsored by Agent Provocateur, one of our premier purveyors of £180 dry- clean-only bras, alongside erotic exotica such as “waspies” (mini-corsets) and “playsuits” (strappy affairs that look like you’ve got tangled in a rotary washing line). We might get a thrill of superiority by contemplating the stiff stays of our ancestors, or cluck with concern over all those dainty ribs crushed by whalebone, but we still can’t seem to give up useless, painful underwear. Don’t despair, though: there’s a photo of George Bernard Shaw in a woollen onesie that will cheer you right up. “Undressed” runs until 12 March 2017. Details: vam.ac.uk They did not dare take a taxi to the station for fear their departure might be reported to the authorities. Schrödinger: Life and Thought by Walter J Moore You won’t be sure of its arrival until it rolls up to your curb. Wave, the cabbie’ll say, farewell. All you own’s inside your satchel. The cabbie says you’ll beat the curfew – you won’t be sure if he’s a rival, or if the road leads to the terminal where, huddled in their roundhouse, cars point to or from the far walls of your city. You’ll pat your pockets for the schedule. The cab backfires and hugs its curve and you won’t be sure that it’s a rifle or why the heart, beating out the spatial, is agitated at its core, something at the center feral: these posted signs, the engine’s purr, your travel- ing light along this course. You won’t be sure just how your eye falls where you’re bound, and why that feels, in passing, like free will. Steve Kronen lives in Miami. His collections include Splendor (BOA Editions) and Empirical Evidence (University of Georgia Press). Spoilt for choice, like a kid in a candy store “Schrödinger’s Cab”: a poem by Steve Kronen newstatesman.com

The new Jungle Book film is not quite a remake - but not quite original “Schrödinger’s Cab”: a poem by Steve Kronen newstatesman.com

Chernobyl and the ghosts of a nuclear past “Schrödinger’s Cab”: a poem by Steve Kronen newstatesman.com 2016-04-23 14:19 Tracy King www.newstatesman.com

59 Organisadong grupo, hinihinalang sangkot sa pag-hack sa Comelec website Organisadong grupo ang hinihinalang nasa likod ng pag-hack sa Comelec at pagkuha ng sensitibong inmpormasyon ng mga botante. Exclusive, nagpa-Patrol, Jasmin Romero. TV Patrol, Sabado, Abril 23, 2016

2016-04-23 14:10 ABS-CBN news.abs-cbn.com

60 Jasenovac: Croatia remembers Nazi death camp victims

Croatia has held a memorial service for tens of thousands of people murdered by Nazi Germany's allies at the Jasenovac death camp. Officials laid wreaths at a memorial to victims of the Ustashe puppet regime, which incarcerated Jews, Serbs and others in brutal conditions. However, the service at Jasenovac was boycotted by Jewish and Serb groups. They say the new Croat government has not acted against renewed use of Ustashe salutes by nationalists. In January, ultra-nationalists shouted pro-Nazi slogans at a rally attended by thousands of people, including Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Ivan Tepes. Similar slogans were also chanted during a football match between Israel and Croatia in March, attended by Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic. Croatia's Jewish community held a separate Holocaust commemoration a week ago. Mr Oreskovic and President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic both voiced regret over the boycott. Earlier this month they explicitly condemned the Ustashe regime's crimes for the first time during a visit by Nicholas Dean, the US State Department's special envoy for Holocaust issues. Three-quarters of about 40,000 Croatian Jews were killed by the Ustashe and Jews now make up less than 1% of the population.

2016-04-23 12:58 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

61 Bangladeshi university professor hacked to death in Rajshahi A university professor has been hacked to death in Bangladesh, in an attack police say is similar to killings of secular bloggers and atheists by suspected Islamist extremists. AFM Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was a professor of English at Rajshahi University in the country's north-west. He was attacked with machetes by unidentified assailants while on his way to the university from his home. Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes. However, Siddique's colleagues say that he had not written anything controversial and was not an atheist, unlike previous victims. Police believe that he may have been targeted by suspected Islamist extremists because he was involved in cultural activities. The BBC's Dhaka correspondent Akbar Hossain says hardline Islamist groups dislike anyone involved in the cultural field. Who is behind the Bangladesh killings? Attacks send shockwaves through Bangladesh The threat of small-scale terror attacks Siddique had founded a music school and edited a literary magazine, his family told the BBC. Deputy police commissioner Nahidul Islam told AFP news agency that the music school was in Bagmara, a former bastion of outlawed Islamist group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Members of JMB were arrested over an assault on an Italian Catholic priest late last year. Siddique's wife, Hosne Ara, said she had no idea why anyone would want to kill her husband. "As far as I know, my husband didn't have any personal enmity with anyone. I can't believe that he has been murdered," she told the BBC. Hundreds of students at Rajshahi University are reported to have protested on campus against their teacher's death and demanded the immediate arrest of the perpetrators. Siddique is the fourth professor at the university to be have been killed in the past 12 years. It is not clear why they have been targeted and no culprits have been punished. Earlier this month, a Bangladeshi law student who had expressed secular views online died when he was hacked with machetes and then shot in Dhaka. The four bloggers killed last year had all appeared on a list of 84 "atheist bloggers" drawn up by Islamic groups in 2013 and widely circulated. There have also been attacks on members of religious minorities including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. Several men are under arrest for last year's killings, including some attached to a hardline group called the Ansarullah Bangla Team. Muslim-majority Bangladesh is officially secular but critics say the government has failed to properly address the attacks. Last week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina issued a stern warning to anyone who criticised religion: "I don't consider such writings as freethinking but filthy words. Why would anyone write such words? It's not at all acceptable if anyone writes against our prophet or other religions. "

2016-04-23 12:58 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

62 Is golf’s popularity declining in Pittsburgh? PITTSBURGH (AP) - The headlines have been nothing short of funereal. Golf is dead, they say. Or at least it’s in decline. You can thank the Great Recession for that. Generational change. Or blame Tiger Woods, whose spectacular rise was outdone only by his disastrous fall, mirroring the decline of golf’s popularity. Maybe, some say, the fault lies with the sport, which is too slow, too expensive, too elitist and too hard to learn. Travis Lindsay doesn’t pay attention to those headlines, the statistics and trend lines that predict golf’s demise. “I don’t even think about the national figures,” said Lindsay, the general manager of Birdsfoot Golf Club in South Buffalo, Armstrong County. “Last year, we’ve actually had more rounds than we’ve ever had.” Birdsfoot, which opened as a nine-hole course in 2002, is the newest 18-hole facility in the Pittsburgh area. So perhaps the young course is accustomed to scouring for golfers. And where the recession hurt some private clubs, Birdsfoot was able to absorb players who wanted to pay per round, Lindsay said. In recent years, it also developed the St. Patrick’s Day-themed Shamrock Shootout, tournaments featuring oversized eight-inch golf holes and a beer-themed event. Birdsfoot, Lindsay said, also prides itself on being unpretentious. Back in the day, it was a privilege for golfers to play at a golf club. Not so much anymore. “The script’s been flipped,” he said. “The golf courses have to look at their customers and feel privileged to have them on the golf course.” In most aspects of golf, a low number is good, but declining participation isn’t one of them. From 2003 to 2014, golf participation dropped by 19 percent, according to National Golf Foundation figures reported in Men’s Journal, and the number of courses is shrinking. In 2014, Findlay-based retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods laid off its entire staff of nearly 500 PGA professionals. Depending on whom you ask, the outlook in the Pittsburgh region - which plays host to the U. S. Open at Oakmont Country Club in June - may be sunnier than it is elsewhere. Some local clubs, such as Highland Country Club, Churchill Valley Country Club and Rolling Hills Country Club, have shuttered, while other private facilities have become open to the public. The Western Pennsylvania Golf Association has a record number of member clubs, but those clubs have fewer members, said executive director Terry Teasdale. In 2000, the association represented about 33,000 members, a figure that sits now at about 28,000, he said. “There has been an overall decline,” Teasdale said. “But it hasn’t been as bad in Western Pennsylvania as it has been nationwide.” Last year, the Tri-State Section PGA saw a 2 percent rise in participation among adult players and a 3 percent increase among juniors. The level of play has been fairly level for the last five years, said David Wright, assistant executive director and tournament director. “All in all, with the forecast of golf being in the tank, I see a rebound and an upswing in our area, along with our association,” Wright said. “We’re probably getting back to 2005, 2006 numbers.” Still, he acknowledged, “The numbers don’t lie. We’ve lost contact with a generation of golfers, and you saw that decline when Tiger went through his problems on the tour.” Story Continues →

2016-04-23 14:06 ADVANCE FOR www.washingtontimes.com

63 EU to draw up tax haven blacklist EU nations have agreed to draw up a blacklist of tax havens in the wake of the Panama Papers leaks. Finance ministers have endorsed the move, which is to be completed by the end of the summer. The European Commission says nations on the tax blacklist should be sanctioned if appeals for change go unheeded. The leak of millions of files from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth. Full coverage: Panama Papers Plans for a single EU list of "non-cooperative jurisdictions" have been blocked in the past by conflicting national interests. Currently the 28 EU states have different national lists of tax havens and can decide individually whether to impose restrictive measures. Negotiations on the new common list are expected to be complex and the number of jurisdictions to be included remains unclear. Ministers have also agreed to exchange information on the beneficial owners of companies and the EU is planning a crackdown on banks and tax advisers who help clients hide money offshore.

2016-04-23 15:44 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

64 US suicide rate surges, particularly among white people The suicide rate in the US has surged to its highest level in almost three decades, according to a new report. The increase is particularly pronounced among middle-age white people who now account for a third of all US suicides. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report did not offer an explanation for the steep rise. However, other experts have pointed to increased abuse of prescription opiates and the financial downturn that began in 2008 as likely factors. The report did not break down the suicides by education level or income, but previous studies found rising suicide rates among white people without university degrees. "This is part of the larger emerging pattern of evidence of the links between poverty, hopelessness and health," Robert D Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, told the New York Times . CDC reported on Friday that suicides have increased in the US to a rate of 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. Meanwhile, homicides and deaths from ailments like cancer and heart disease have declined. In the past, suicides have been most common among white people, but the recent increases have been sharp. The overall suicide rate rose by 24% from 1999 to 2014, according to the CDC. However, the rate increased 43% among white men ages 45 to 64 and 63% for women in the same age- range. In 2014, more than 14,000 middle-aged white people killed themselves. That figure is double the combined suicides total for all blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaska Natives. The suicide rate declined for only two groups: black men and all people over 75.

2016-04-23 04:24 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

65 Prisons work to limit use of solitary confinement SPARTANBURG, S. C. (AP) - Cary Sanders vividly remembers his time in solitary confinement. The 29-year-old was sent to prison at 17 after being convicted of trying to kill someone during an armed robbery. Sanders was put into isolation at the Department of Juvenile Justice before transferring to the South Carolina Department of Corrections to serve out nine years. His experience is a snapshot of what state convicts go through daily when they are placed in restrictive housing units, more commonly known as lock-up. Twenty-three hours a day, the inmates are locked in their cells. They have just an hour of outside time - on a clear day - and even then they stay in a single recreation yard. Interaction with others is sparse. “It gave you an opportunity to reflect on life. Were you really an animal that needed to be in a cage?” said Sanders, who is now the inside program director for Jump Start, a faith-based rehabilitation program in Spartanburg that helps inmates reintegrate back into society. “It’s a mental attack.. You doubt yourself as a human being when you’re treated in that manner.” About 715 prisoners statewide are now in lock-up, compared with 1,615 in 2014. The trend is the result of efforts by the state Corrections Department to limit the use of solitary confinement. President Barack Obama issued an executive action in January calling on federal penitentiaries to avoid using solitary confinement on juveniles and those convicted of low-level offenses. He urged state facilities to follow suit. But the prison system in South Carolina had already taken action, said state Corrections Department Director Bryan Stirling. State prisons are beginning to see the effects of the Step Down program, which allows inmates to gradually reintegrate back into the prison’s general population. It’s a way to better prepare inmates for when they’re eventually released back into society. Working harder to move inmates out of solitary helps reduce the number of convicts in isolation. “When they’re incarcerated we like to get them in services, get their high school diploma or GED and get them (job skills), so when they get out they can make proper choices and not come back,” Stirling said. “When they’re in a lock-up facility, that just can’t happen.” Step Down began at McCormick Correctional Institution in McCormick in June 2015 as a way to allow offenders in lock-up to interact with others again. By March, the program was expanded to 17 out of the state prison system’s 26 facilities. There’s no average length of time spent in lock-up since it varies by offender. Inmates in solitary are evaluated monthly. Some are put in lock-up for a 60-day disciplinary period, but Step Down focuses more on those who are there for longer periods and have been considered threats to safety previously, said Stephanie Givens, a corrections department spokeswoman. Before Step Down, inmates in lock-up would either stay there or go directly back into the prison’s general population. “People need to get out of lock-up. When they’re in solitary, you can’t just let them into the yard after having been in lock-up for so long. They don’t know how to socialize. It could be a very dangerous thing,” Stirling said. Reductions have been reported systemwide, according to data obtained from the Corrections Department. Tyger River Correctional Institution, a medium security prison in Spartanburg County, had just 62 inmates in solitary confinement as of March 4, down from 105 inmates in 2014. Tyger River houses about 1,200 inmates, part of the 21,000 total inmates in state prison facilities. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 14:02 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

66 Yahoo - Yahoo Reports First Quarter 2016 Results "I'm pleased that we delivered Q1 results in line with our expectations. Our 2016 plan is off to a solid start as we continue to focus on driving efficiency, lowering costs, and improving long-term growth," said , CEO of. "In tandem, we made substantial progress towards potential strategic alternatives for. Our board, our management team, and I are completely aligned on this top priority for shareholders. " Mavens revenue represented 33 percent of traffic-driven revenue in the first quarter of 2015, and increased to 38 percent in the first quarter of 2016. Mobile revenue represented 21 percent of traffic-driven revenue in the first quarter of 2015, and increased to 25 percent in the first quarter of 2016. Gross mobile revenue for the first quarter of 2015 and 2016 was and , respectively. "We delivered financial results at the high end or above our guidance ranges. We also achieved free cash flow of through improved working capital efficiencies, excellent cost controls, reduced capital expenditures and a large tax refund," said , CFO of. "While we remain focused on the strategic alternatives process as a top priority, our employees showed their determination and commitment to by executing on our operating plan. " will live stream a video broadcast of the Company's first quarter 2016 financial results at / today. The live stream will be broadcast from Yahoo's studio and will be available exclusively on Yahoo Finance at finance.yahoo.com. The Company will provide its business outlook for the second quarter and full year of 2016 during the presentation. Supplemental financial information can be accessed through the Company's Investor Relations website at investor.yahoo.net. The video will be archived after the event at investor.yahoo.net and will be available for 90 days following the broadcast. This press release and its attachments include the following financial measures defined as non- GAAP financial measures by the ("SEC"): gross mobile revenue; gross search revenue; revenue ex-TAC; adjusted EBITDA; non-GAAP income from operations; non-GAAP net earnings; non-GAAP net earnings per share - diluted; and free cash flow. Gross mobile revenue is GAAP mobile revenue plus the related revenue share with third parties. Gross search revenue is GAAP search revenue plus the related revenue share with third parties. Revenue ex-TAC is GAAP revenue less cost of revenue - TAC. Adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP income from operations, non-GAAP net earnings and non-GAAP net earnings per share - diluted, exclude from the most comparable GAAP financial measures certain gains, losses, and expenses that we do not believe are indicative of ongoing results, and exclude stock-based compensation expense. Adjusted EBITDA also excludes taxes, depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, other expense, net (which includes interest), earnings in equity interests, and net income attributable to noncontrolling interests. Free cash flow is GAAP net cash provided by operating activities (adjusted to include excess tax benefits from stock-based awards), less acquisition of property and equipment, net (i.e., acquisition of property and equipment less proceeds received from disposition of property and equipment) and dividends received from equity investees. These measures may be different than non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. The presentation of this financial information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP"). Explanations of the Company's non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations of these financial measures to the GAAP financial measures the Company considers most comparable are included in the accompanying "Note to Supplemental Financial Data and GAAP to Non-GAAP Reconciliations," "Supplemental Financial Data and GAAP to Non-GAAP Reconciliations," and "GAAP to Non-GAAP Reconciliations. " is a guide to digital information discovery, focused on informing, connecting, and entertaining users through its search, communications, and digital content products. By creating highly personalized experiences, helps users discover the information that matters most to them around the world -- on mobile or desktop. creates value for advertisers with a streamlined, simple advertising technology stack that leverages Yahoo's data, content, and technology to connect advertisers with their target audiences. 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). "Ads Sold" consist of display ad impressions for paying advertisers on and Affiliate sites. "Affiliates" refers to the third-party entities that have integrated Yahoo's advertising offerings into their websites or other offerings (those websites and other offerings, "Affiliate sites"). "Alibaba Group" means Alibaba Group Holding Limited. In , Alibaba Group completed its initial public offering of American Depositary Shares ("ADS"), in which was a selling shareholder. "Desktop computer" means a desktop or laptop computer, and "desktop revenue" is revenue generated from search and display ads served on desktop computers and also includes leads, listings and fees revenue and ecommerce revenue allocated to user activity on desktop computers. "Gross mobile revenue," a non-GAAP measure, is GAAP mobile revenue plus the related revenue share with third parties. "Gross search revenue," a non-GAAP measure, is GAAP search revenue plus the related revenue share with third parties. "Mavens revenue" is revenue generated from, without duplication: (i) mobile (as defined below), (ii) video ads and video ad packages, (iii) native ads, and (iv) and Polyvore ads and fees. "Mobile revenue" is revenue generated in connection with user activity on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, regardless of whether the device is accessing a mobile- optimized service. Mobile revenue is generated primarily from search and display ads. Mobile revenue also includes leads, listings and fees revenue and ecommerce revenue allocated to user activity on mobile devices. "Native revenue" is revenue generated from native ads (search and display) on as well as third- party partner publisher sites and mobile apps. Native ads are visually rich, are positioned as a seamless part of the users' experience, and come in a variety of formats, like text, image, and video. offers native ads through Yahoo Gemini and the BrightRoll Demand-Side Platform (DSP). "Net earnings" means net income (loss) attributable to , and "net earnings per diluted share" means net income (loss) attributable to common stockholders per share - diluted. "Non-Mavens revenue" is revenue generated from search ads and traditional (i.e., non-native, non-video, non- , non-Polyvore) display ads served on desktop computers and also includes leads, listings and fees revenue and ecommerce revenue allocated to user activity on desktop computers. "Non-traffic-driven revenue" is revenue not arising from user activity on or Affiliate sites, and includes royalty revenue, license fee revenue, amortization under the technology and intellectual property license agreement with Alibaba Group through the third quarter of 2015, and all other revenue that is not traffic-driven. "Paid Clicks" are clicks by end-users on sponsored search listings (excluding native ads) on and Affiliate sites. "Price-per-Ad" is defined as display revenue divided by our total number of Ads Sold. "Price-per-Click" is defined as Search click-driven revenue divided by our total number of Paid Clicks. "Search Agreement" refers to the Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement between and Microsoft Corporation, as amended. "Search click-driven revenue" is gross search revenue excluding the Microsoft RPS guarantee and search revenue from Yahoo Japan. "TAC" refers to traffic acquisition costs. TAC consists of payments to Affiliates and payments made to companies that direct consumer and business traffic to. "Yahoo," "Company," and "we" refer to and its consolidated subsidiaries. "Yahoo Properties" refers to the online properties and services that provides to users. We periodically review, refine and update our methodologies for monitoring, gathering, and counting number of Ads Sold and Paid Clicks, and for calculating Search click-driven revenue, Price-per-Ad, and Price-per-Click. Additional information about how "Ads Sold," "Paid Clicks," "Price-per-Ad," "Price-per-Click," and "Search click-driven revenue" are defined and calculated is included under the caption "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended , which is on file with the and available on the website at www.sec.gov. This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning expected financial performance and strategic and operational plans (including, without limitation, the quotations from management). Risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from the results predicted, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks related to Yahoo's ability to continue to attract and maintain mobile users and grow its mobile revenue; risks related to Yahoo's ability to continue to grow the Mavens revenue; risks related to Yahoo's ability to grow users, user engagement and pageviews; risks related to growing advertiser engagement; risk of potential reduction in spending by, or loss of, advertising customers; risks associated with the Search Agreement with Microsoft Corporation and the Services Agreement with ; risks related to Yahoo's ability to provide innovative search experiences and other products and services that differentiate its services and generate significant traffic; risks associated with Yahoo's ability to manage its operating expenses effectively and improve profitability; risks related to acceptance by users of new products and services; risks related to Yahoo's ability to compete with new or existing competitors; dependence on third parties for technology, services, content, and distribution; risks related to acquiring or developing compelling content; security breaches; interruptions or delays in the provision of Yahoo's services; adverse results in litigation; risks related to Yahoo's ability to recruit and retain key personnel; risks related to possible impairment of goodwill or other assets; risks related to Yahoo's ability to protect its intellectual property and the value of its brands; risks related to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; risks related to joint ventures and the integration of acquisitions; risks related to Yahoo's regulatory environment; risks related to international operations; risks related to the calculation of our key operational metrics; and general economic conditions. With respect to Yahoo's exploration of strategic alternatives, there is no assurance any transaction will be consummated, and the process of exploring strategic alternatives will involve the dedication of significant resources and the incurrence of significant costs and expenses. All information set forth in this press release and its attachments is as of. does not intend, and undertakes no duty, to update this information to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. More information about potential factors that could affect the Company's business and financial results is included under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended , which is on file with the and available on the website at www.sec.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in those sections in Yahoo's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended , which will be filed with the in the second quarter of 2016. !, the family of marks, Flurry and Flurry Analytics, and the associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of is a registered trademark of Other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Note to Supplemental Financial Data and GAAP to Non-GAAP Reconciliations This press release and its attachments include the non-GAAP financial measures of revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs ("revenue ex-TAC"); gross mobile revenue; gross search revenue; adjusted EBITDA; non-GAAP income from operations; non-GAAP net earnings; non- GAAP net earnings per diluted share; and free cash flow, which are reconciled to revenue (in the case of revenue ex-TAC, gross mobile revenue, and gross search revenue); net income (loss) attributable to (in the case of adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP net earnings); income (loss) from operations; net income (loss) attributable to common stockholders per share - diluted; and net cash provided by (used in) operating activities, which we believe are the most comparable GAAP measures. (together with its consolidated subsidiaries, "Yahoo," the "Company," or "we") uses these non-GAAP financial measures for internal managerial purposes and to facilitate period-to-period comparisons. We describe limitations specific to each non-GAAP financial measure below. Management generally compensates for limitations in the use of non-GAAP financial measures by relying on comparable GAAP financial measures and providing investors with a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure or measures. Further, management uses non-GAAP financial measures only in addition to and in conjunction with results presented in accordance with GAAP. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures reflect additional ways of viewing aspects of our operations that, when viewed with our GAAP results, provide a more complete understanding of factors and trends affecting our business. These non-GAAP measures should be considered as a supplement to, and not as a substitute for, or superior to, revenue, net income (loss) attributable to , income (loss) from operations, net income (loss) attributable to common stockholders per share - diluted, and net cash provided by (used in) operating activities calculated in accordance with GAAP. Revenue ex-TAC is a non-GAAP financial measure defined as GAAP revenue less TAC that has been recorded as a cost of revenue. TAC consists of payments made to Affiliates, and payments made to companies that direct consumer and business traffic to. TAC is recorded either as a reduction of revenue or as cost of revenue. We present revenue ex-TAC to provide investors a metric used by the Company for evaluation and decision-making purposes and to provide investors with comparable revenue numbers when comparing to our historical reported financial information. A limitation of revenue ex-TAC is that it is a measure we defined for internal and investor purposes that may be unique to the Company, and therefore it may not enhance the comparability of our results to those of other companies in our industry who have similar business arrangements but address the impact of TAC differently. Management compensates for these limitations by also relying on the comparable GAAP financial measures of revenue and cost of revenue—TAC. Each of gross mobile revenue and gross search revenue is a non-GAAP financial measure. Gross mobile revenue is defined as GAAP mobile revenue plus the related revenue share with third parties. Gross search revenue is defined as GAAP search revenue plus the related revenue share with third parties. We present these amounts to provide investors with additional metrics used by the Company for evaluation and decision-making purposes and as an indicator of the size of our presence in the relevant business. To this end, gross mobile revenue and gross search revenue report the total receipts generated on and Affiliate sites by the specified relevant business (i.e., mobile or search), before any TAC or other revenue share is paid to the Affiliates and before any revenue share is allocated to Microsoft or other parties. A limitation of these non-GAAP measures is that they include revenue that is recognized by one or more third parties and not by Yahoo; furthermore, they are measures we defined for internal and investor purposes that may be unique to us, and therefore may not enhance the comparability of our results to those of other companies in our industry who have similar business arrangements but address the impact of TAC and revenue sharing differently. Management compensates for these limitations by also relying on the comparable financial measure GAAP revenue. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net income (loss) attributable to before taxes, depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, stock-based compensation expense, other expense, net (which includes interest), earnings in equity interests, net income attributable to noncontrolling interests and other gains, losses, and expenses that we do not believe are indicative of our ongoing results. We present adjusted EBITDA because the exclusion of certain gains, losses, and expenses facilitates comparisons of the operating performance of the Company on a period to period basis. Adjusted EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results reported under GAAP. These limitations include: adjusted EBITDA does not reflect tax payments and such payments reflect a reduction in cash available to us; adjusted EBITDA does not reflect the periodic costs of certain capitalized tangible and intangible assets used in generating revenues in our businesses; adjusted EBITDA does not include stock-based compensation expense related to the Company's workforce; adjusted EBITDA also excludes other expense, net (which includes interest), earnings in equity interests, net income attributable to noncontrolling interests and other gains, losses, and expenses that we do not believe are indicative of our ongoing results, and these items may represent a reduction or increase in cash available to us; and adjusted EBITDA is a measure that may be unique to the Company, and therefore it may not enhance the comparability of our results to other companies in our industry. Management compensates for these limitations by also relying on the comparable GAAP financial measure of net income (loss) attributable to , which includes taxes, depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation expense, other expense, net (which includes interest), earnings in equity interests, net income attributable to noncontrolling interests and the other gains, losses and expenses that are excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Non-GAAP income from operations is defined as income (loss) from operations excluding certain gains, losses, and expenses that we do not believe are indicative of our ongoing operating results and further adjusted to exclude stock-based compensation expense. Because of the variety of equity awards used by companies, the varying methodologies for determining stock-based compensation expense, and the subjective assumptions involved in those determinations, we believe excluding stock-based compensation expense enhances the ability of management and investors to understand the impact of stock-based compensation expense on income (loss) from operations. We consider non-GAAP income from operations to be a profitability measure which facilitates the forecasting of our operating results for future periods and allows for the comparison of our results to historical periods. A limitation of non-GAAP income from operations is that it does not include all items that impact our income from operations for the period. Management compensates for this limitation by also relying on the comparable GAAP financial measure of income (loss) from operations which includes the gains, losses, and expenses that are excluded from non-GAAP income from operations. Non-GAAP net earnings is defined as net income (loss) attributable to (which we sometimes refer to as net earnings) excluding certain gains, losses, expenses, and their related tax effects that we do not believe are indicative of our ongoing results and further adjusted to exclude stock- based compensation expense and its related tax effects. Because of the variety of equity awards used by companies, the varying methodologies for determining stock-based compensation expense, and the subjective assumptions involved in those determinations, we believe excluding stock-based compensation expense enhances the ability of management and investors to understand the impact of stock-based compensation expense on net income and net income per share. We consider non-GAAP net earnings and non-GAAP net earnings per diluted share to be profitability measures which facilitate the forecasting of our results for future periods and allow for the comparison of our results to historical periods. A limitation of non- GAAP net earnings and non-GAAP net earnings per diluted share is that they do not include all items that impact our net income and net income per diluted share for the period. Management compensates for this limitation by also relying on the comparable GAAP financial measures of net income (loss) attributable to and net income (loss) attributable to common stockholders per share - diluted, both of which include the gains, losses, expenses and related tax effects that are excluded from non-GAAP net earnings and non-GAAP net earnings per diluted share. Free cash flow is a non-GAAP financial measure defined as net cash provided by (used in) operating activities (adjusted to include excess tax benefits from stock-based awards), less acquisition of property and equipment, net (i.e., acquisition of property and equipment less proceeds received from disposition of property and equipment) and dividends received from equity investees. We consider free cash flow to be a liquidity measure which provides useful information to management and investors about the amount of cash generated by business operations, after deducting our net payments for acquisitions and dispositions of property and equipment, which cash can then be used for strategic opportunities or other business purposes including, among others, investing in the Company's business, making strategic acquisitions, strengthening the balance sheet, and repurchasing stock. A limitation of free cash flow is that it does not represent the total increase or decrease in the cash balance for the period. Management compensates for this limitation by also relying on the net change in cash and cash equivalents as presented in the Company's unaudited condensed consolidated statements of cash flows prepared in accordance with GAAP which incorporates all cash movements during the period.

2016-04-23 12:52 investor.yahoo.net

67 Recovery houses can face resistance from neighbors BRISTOL, Pa. (AP) - Charlie Mastriana stood behind the screen door of his home in the Goldenridge section of Bristol Township on a recent Saturday afternoon, motioning to one of the neighborhood’s recovery houses. The recovering drug and alcohol addicts who live there haven’t caused him any problems, he said. “Only once I heard some guy mouthing off,” Mastriana said, “but then later, he came around and apologized.” His main gripe about the houses isn’t his safety. It’s economics. “I guess they deserve some protection because they’re recovering, but Bristol Township has enough of them (recovery homes),” Mastriana said. “I know that everyone needs a chance, but we need a chance as far as our property values go.” Longtime Goldenridge resident Rosemary Tarity hasn’t had any problems either with the recovery house that opened about six years ago a few doors down the street from her home. But she does believe the houses should be farther apart. “There shouldn’t be so many in one neighborhood,” she said. Property values, along with public safety, over-saturation and overall quality of life are among the main concerns of some residents of Bristol Township, which has the highest concentration of these houses in Bucks County. The number of recovery houses has quadrupled there since 2005. Today, at least 93 recovery homes are known to be operating within the 16 square miles that make up the township, which has about 22,000 residences. More than half of the recovery houses are within adjacent sections of Levittown bounded by the Levittown Parkway, Route 13, New Falls Road and Route 413. Why are there so many and why are they so concentrated? The Great Recession, which ran roughly from late 2007 through mid-2009, and the escalating heroin epidemic are two reasons officials and others cite. The recession brought layoffs. And that, coupled with high school taxes, led to home foreclosures, said Tom McDermott, administrator for the Bristol Township Office of Community Development. “We had a really high vacancy rate. We had more foreclosures than anyone,” McDermott said. “So, who bought some of them up?” Absentee landlords, said state Rep. Tina Davis, D-141, Bristol Township — and they purchased many of these vacant homes to turn into recovery houses. She has been vocal locally and in the state Legislature about the need to regulate these businesses, which are drawing concerned residents to municipal meetings in Falls and Middletown as well as Bristol Township. Fear or fact But are residents’ worries accurate? Is the presence of recovery houses driving up crime and driving down home values? Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:57 ADVANCE FOR www.washingtontimes.com

68 Reality Check: How many EU nationals have been refused entry to the UK? The claim: The home secretary has stopped lots of European Union nationals from visiting the UK. Reality Check verdict: The UK refuses a tiny fraction of EU nationals who want to come here. It has to have very good grounds to do so. In the case of criminality, for example, a conviction even for a serious crime in not good enough - the individual must pose a current risk. "If you ask the Home Secretary she'll tell you that she's excluded a very large number of EU nationals. If she has a need to do it she can," former attorney general Dominic Grieve told Radio 4's Today Programme. As Mr Grieve was good enough to suggest it, BBC Reality Check did indeed ask the home secretary how many EU nationals she had excluded. A Home Office spokesman got back to us and said: "Since 2010, we have denied entry to over 100,000 people, including over 6,500 EU nationals. " The reason it came up is that Justice Secretary Michael Gove, a Vote Leave campaigner, said: "Inside the EU we have to accept that anyone with an EU passport, even if they have a criminal record, can breeze into Britain. " People who are nationals of EU member states have the right to work or live across the EU, including in the UK. The issue of border controls is separate; the UK has always maintained its own approach. It is not part of the border-free Schengen Area and EU travellers coming through the UK's ports and airports have their passports checked. Admission to the UK can be blocked "on grounds of public policy, public security or public health", according to EU rules. Under no circumstances can it be on economic grounds. Refusal of entry on public policy or public security grounds must be done on a case-by-case basis rather than with a blanket ban. A person must represent a "genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fundamental interests of society". The rules state that "criminal convictions shall not in themselves constitute grounds for taking such measures". Last month, the immigration minister said the UK had prevented EEA/EU nationals entering the UK on public protection grounds in each of the last five years. We do not have figures for the reasons behind refusals, but government statistics show that since 2010 the total number of EU passengers initially refused entry to the UK has been rising; in 2015 a total of 2,165 EU passengers were not allowed in. To put that into context, in 2014 (the most recent figures available) around 35 million EEA and Swiss passengers, excluding Brits, arrived at UK border control points and 1,755 EU passengers were rejected. That's around 1 in 20,000 passengers (bear in mind one person could be a passenger many times in a year). Read more: The facts behind claims in the EU debate

2016-04-23 12:52 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

69 Who are Islamic 'morality police'? News that Iran has deployed thousands of undercover agents to enforce rules on dress has cast the spotlight on an institution that is a major feature of daily life in several Muslim-majority countries. Police forces tasked with implementing strict state interpretations of Islamic morality exist in several other states, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Malaysia. Many - especially those with an affinity with Western lifestyles - chafe against such restrictions on daily life, but others support the idea, and growing religious conservatism has led to pressure for similar forces to be created in countries that do not have them. Here are some places where "morality police" forces patrol: Name : Gasht-e Ershad (Persian for Guidance Patrols), supported by Basij militia Who they are : Iran has had various forms of "morality police" since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but the Gasht-e Ershad are currently the main agency tasked enforcing Iran's Islamic code of conduct in public. Their focus is on ensuring observance of hijab - mandatory rules requiring women to cover their hair and bodies and discouraging cosmetics. They are empowered to admonish suspects, impose fines or arrest members of the public, but under reforms that come into force this year, will soon no longer be able to do any of these things. Instead, 7,000 undercover Gasht-e Ershad agents will be deployed to report suspected transgressions to the police, who will decide whether to take action. The Gasht-e Ershad is thought to draw a lot of its personnel from the Basij, a hard-line paramilitary unit; it also includes many women. What people think : They are mainly seen as a scourge for urban women - usually from wealthier social groups - who try to push the boundaries of the dress code. This includes wearing the headscarf as far back on the head as possible, or by wearing looser clothing, especially in the heat of summer, although men sporting "Western" hairstyles are also at risk. Fear of encountering them has even prompted the creation of Android app that helps people avoid Gasht-e Ershad mobile checkpoints. President Hassan Rouhani has expressed opposition to the Gasht-e Ershad, but Iran's constitution gives him little sway over the security forces. Name : Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or Mutawa (Arabic for Particularly obedient to God) Who they are : Formed in 1940, the Mutawa is tasked with enforcing Islamic religious law - Sharia - in public places. This includes rules forbidding unrelated males and females to socialise in public, as well as a dress code that encourages women to wear a veil covering all but their eyes. Instead of a police-style uniform, they wear a traditional Saudi robe and keffiyeh. What people think : Although the Mutawa is widely disliked among liberals and the youth, general opinion in the conservative Sunni-majority kingdom supports it. But even conservatives have been irritated by recent high-profile cases deemed excessive or internationally embarrassing, such as an actor being charged for letting fans take selfies with him, or a female mannequin being seized because of its clothing. Perhaps in response to this criticism, the authorities have curbed the force's powers , as a result of which it can no longer arrest or pursue people but can only report them to the regular police. Name : Public Order Police Who they are : The Public Order Police was set up in 1993 to enforce Sharia enshrined in law for Muslims in the then-northern Sudan by President Omar al-Bashir. They have the power to arrest, and suspects are tried - often at speed - in special Public Order Courts; punishments can include flogging or prison. What people think : Many Sudanese resent their activity as an oppressive and often arbitrary interference in private lives, although some - mostly Salafists and other religious conservatives - support their activities. The force is known for shutting down private mixed-sex events, upbraiding women for immodest dress and raiding businesses seen as being in breach of Sharia. It drew international condemnation when female journalist Lubna al-Hussein was arrested and jailed after being caught wearing loose-fitting slacks in public in 2008. Name : Various, usually collectively known as "religious officers" Who they are : These are bodies run by Malaysia's federal states - or the federal government for federal territories - to enforce Sharia, which applies to the two thirds of the population who are Muslim. They have the power of arrest, and possible offences range from day-time eating during Ramadan to women and men being "in close proximity". Cases are tried by Sharia courts separate from the ordinary court system. What people think : Religious officers have often been accused of overstepping their remit - a situation often muddied by ambiguity about which takes precedence in certain cases - normal legislation or Sharia. In April, religious officers arrested several people during a raid on a transgender group's fundraising event, accusing participants of hosting a beauty pageant, which Muslims were banned from attending by a 1996 fatwa, or Islamic religious decree. The group denies the accusation.

2016-04-23 12:54 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

70 'Don't buy death' - Somalis urged to stay and rebuild their country It's part of a journalist's job to keep track of awful events. But stories about rickety boats crammed with migrants capsizing in the Mediterranean occur with horrible frequency. For one Somali journalist reading the news that hundreds of people drowned in one such disaster on Monday, it was one story too many. Abdinur Mohamed Ahmed decided to do something. He decided to create a campaign to persuade his fellow Somalis not to give their money to people traffickers and instead to stay and help rebuild their war torn country. So Abdinur, who is based in the Somali capital Mogadishu, started tweeting using the hashtag #DhimashoHaGadan, which literally translated means "don't buy death. " Abdinur told BBC Trending "The whole notion of this hashtag was to discourage people from emigrating to Europe through these perilous journeys. " The hashtag rapidly became popular in Somalia. Some used it to highlight reasons why young Somali people might want to leave. According to the United Nations around 15% of Somali citizens were living abroad last year. There are many reasons why people would want to go. A horrific drought means that an estimated 40% of the population are thought to be in need of humanitarian assistance. The UN-backed Somali government remains fragile despite the support of African Union troops. Al-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, has been waging an armed insurgency in Somalia for years. It frequently stages attacks in Mogadishu and other cities, and still controls many rural areas in southern Somalia. Despite the security situation Abdinur has never considered leaving. "In the last 12 months I have survived two suicide attacks and I have never decided to leave for security reasons. Death is everywhere, suicide attacks happen in Paris, everywhere… There's no reason to leave this country because of insecurity," he told Trending. Abdinur is worried about the impact large scale emigration could have on the future of Somalia: "If we leave this country because of insecurity or unemployment, who will change this country? Who will make this country a peaceful place to live? " He also told Trending that he believes reality of life in Europe does not match expectations. One of his relatives left for Europe last year and calls him to tell him how unhappy he is. I got in touch with Abdinur's relative on Whatsapp and he told me, "Life in Europe is not as easy as you might think right now. Language barriers, low paid jobs and lack of documents are the main hurdles to integration. We feel we've entered an open air prison. I am a professional nurse and I could have done so much for my country and my people. But Sweden does not need my skills. I need to start from scratch. " Abdinur also told BBC Trending he feels there's a false impression created on social media about how good life is in Europe. "He posted several pictures which can persuade friends to go there too," he told BBC Trending. "I told him to take him down, he understands how dangerous it is. " Blog by Emma Wilson Join the conversation on this and other stories here. Next story: Russians respond to 'disabled should die straight away' row Russians petition for sacking of author of controversial newspaper article about disabled people. READ MORE You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending , and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending .

2016-04-23 12:53 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

71 Sentinels in constant watch on mighty polar glaciers The EU's Sentinel satellite system has begun monitoring six mighty polar glaciers in near real- time. The sextet - Pine Island and Thwaites in Antarctica; and Jakobshavn, Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, Zacharae Isstrom and Petermann in Greenland - are major contributors to ongoing sea-level rise. They are thinning and flowing faster, and scientists believe some of them have become unstable. Routine observation should pick up any sudden changes in behaviour. The data is currently being gathered by the Sentinel-1a spacecraft, but it will be assisted soon by a sister platform, Sentinel-1b, which the European Space Agency will launch on Friday. Both have radar instruments that are able to see the glaciers' surfaces day or night, and in all weathers. They can track activity by keeping a watch on the velocities of crevasses as they move towards the ocean. The UK's NERC Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) has just sent live a new web portal that all researchers can access. Using only Sentinel-1a data for the time being, the service will provide a snapshot of behaviour at least every 12 days. When Sentinel-1b comes online in a few months, the image cycle should improve to once every six days. "The widespread coverage and short repeat period of Sentinel-1a has revolutionised the way we can observe glaciers around the world," said Dr Anna Hogg from Leeds University. "This first satellite in Europe's Copernicus programme is a fantastic new resource, and is proving to be a critical tool for monitoring changes in Antarctic and Greenland ice flow. Things will only get better when Sentinel-1b joins the fray. " The intention is to bring more glaciers into the programme over time. This will be easier when 1b is up and working following a period of commissioning. "The first step is to focus on areas of known dynamical imbalance - and, certainly, these six glaciers are key contributors to sea-level rise," explained CPOM colleague Prof Andrew Shepherd. "The next step is to expand the service. Future sea-level projections really only allow for imbalance in places we know about today. There are ice streams that may not have activated yet, and that's why we'd like to routinely monitor perhaps 20 to 30 other sectors of Antarctica and Greenland. "That's our intention, together with Esa as part of their climate change initiative. " An Austrian team is developing a similar service, and here at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly this group, known as ENVEO , showcased some of its own ice velocity maps. It has some very impressive static (averaged over time) renderings of Antarctica and Greenland. One important difference with ENVEO's near-real-time service when it goes live will be the tools provided to users. "The amount of data from Sentinel even now is overwhelming, and it makes it quite hard to get the information out that you want," explained Dr Jan Wuite. "It never used to be a problem but with these maps being produced every 12 days, and soon every six days - it is. That makes it very necessary to get hold of this data with special tools and that's what we're developing. " Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden and Zacharae Isstrom are two big glaciers that enter the ocean next to each other in the northeast of Greenland. Together they make up 12% of the Greenland ice sheet. Zacharae Isstrom hit the headlines in November last year. A report said it had broken loose from a stable position held in 2012 and was now in an accelerated retreat. The northeast of Greenland has only recently attracted attention because the most vulnerable regions of the ice sheet were always considered to be much further south. Jakobshavn is sited in southwest Greenland. Not only does it move very fast (at times over 17km a year), but it is also retreating rapidly inland, at a rate of many hundreds of metres per year. Periodically, it displays spectacular calving behaviour. Billions of tonnes of icebergs are shed from its front every year and move out of the fjord towards the Atlantic. Jakobshavn is thought to have spawned the big block of ice that sank the Titanic. Petermann is in the northwest of Greenland. It is another producer of spectacular icebergs. Some are so big they are referred to as "ice islands". In 2010 it produced a block 260 sq km in area. In 2012, a 130-sq-km piece came away. Calving is part of the natural life cycle of ocean- terminating glacier. But ongoing monitoring and in-situ research will establish if any of the drivers are changing, and how. Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica is contributing more to sea-level rise than any other ice stream on the planet. It drains an area of 160,000 sq km, which is roughly two-thirds the size of the United Kingdom. The geometry of the rock bed under Pine Island makes it unstable, and scientists believe it is now in a self-sustaining retreat that could contribute on the order of perhaps 3.5-10mm to global ocean rise in the next 20 years. Thwaites Glacier is in the same part of West Antarctica as Pine Island and of similar size. It too has experienced significant retreat since the early 1990s. Its grounding line - the point where its leading front lifts off the bed and floats - has gone backwards some 15km. Continuing retreat will eventually take this line over a sill, which would then expose the deep-seated interior mass of the glacier to a potential runaway collapse. Jonathan. [email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

2016-04-23 12:52 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

72 How do you present shop for the Queen? President Barack Obama has had lunch with the Queen - and presented her with a photo album of the monarch's many meetings with US presidents and first ladies. What else can you give to the woman who has everything? The royals get all kinds of bizarre gifts, says royal historian Kate Williams. "They get everything. People just send stuff to the Queen. They get milk bottles, they get bits of old cake, they get biscuits. They think she looks a bit hungry, so they send her some cake. "I think the Queen would be quite partial to a box of chocolates and to put her feet up. "Historically, the Queen prefers cheap presents. At Christmas, whoopee cushions, novelty bath hats, that kind of thing. No expensive presents at Christmas, that's where Princess Diana fell foul. "She bought cashmere jumpers, and it was a big mistake. " Perhaps aware of Princess Diana's difficulty, the Duchess of Cambridge admitted she was stuck for ideas for her grandmother-in-law before her first Christmas at Sandringham. In the end, she opted for a jar of homemade chutney . "I was worried what to give the Queen as her Christmas present. I was thinking, 'Gosh, what should I give her?'" she said in her first solo television interview. "And I thought back to what would I give my own grandparents. And I thought, 'I'll make her something'. Which could have gone horribly wrong. But I decided to make my granny's recipe of chutney. "I was slightly worried about it, but I noticed the next day that it was on the table. I've noticed since she's done that on lots of occasions and I think it just shows her thoughtfulness, really, and her care in looking after everybody. " Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping chose to show off his family's talents by giving Her Majesty two CD sets of music starring his wife, Madame Peng Liyuan. There was some criticism in the British press in 2009 when it emerged that Barack Obama had given the Queen a gift of an iPod loaded with some of his speeches and pictures of his inauguration. There were also raised eyebrows when the president gave the former UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, a DVD box set of classic American films - reportedly coded for viewing only in the US. First Lady Michelle Obama has done better than her husband. On her last visit to London, she gave the Queen silver - a Tiffany sterling silver honeycomb and bee bud vase. She also brought a gift box containing lemon verbena tea, a candle, two small pots of honey and a jar of honey butter from the White House kitchen garden. According to official rules, the Royal Family does not actually own the presents it receives. Officially they belong to the whole country and are looked after by the Royal Collection. Live animals are donated to London Zoo, and perishable items worth under £150, such as food and flowers, can be given to charities or staff. Although, the royals can eat any food they receive. Perhaps that was what German President Joachim Gauck was thinking when he gave the Queen a marzipan model of a Berlin monument, the Brandenburg Gate. It is not known whether the Queen in fact demolished the marzipan monument. Last year, the Queen was given a bag of salt by the governor of the British Virgin Islands. The 1lb bag was traditionally given to the British monarch as rent - rather than a present - for Salt Island, one of the islands in the Caribbean archipelago. The custom dates back to the days of Queen Victoria when salt was harvested on the island, but had fallen away until it was resurrected by the governor John Duncan in 2015. This year, the islands held a special "salt-breaking ceremony" in honour of the Queen's 90th birthday. The official list of gifts given to members of the Royal Family, which is released every year, could be used as inspiration for anyone needing to come up with a present. Last year's list revealed some bizarre offerings from world leaders, sports stars, and general well-wishers. Prince Charles got a packet of fairy dust when he visited New Zealand in November, and a lot of dates - 32 packets and two buckets - and a pot of churned butter from Saudi Arabia. Prince George got a huge haul of presents in 2014, which included a possum-skin cloak from his trip to Australia and New Zealand. That year, Princess Anne got a box of 100 mangoes from President Mamnoon Hussain of Pakistan. Prince Andrew got a model of a surface-to-air missile from MBDA Systems. The Duke of Kent received gifts including a picture of a washing machine. Of course it's not all fairy dust and whoopee cushions. The official gift lists show the Queen receives plenty of precious items too. Amongst gifts to the Queen last year, for example, was a sapphire and diamond brooch in the shape of a fern from the president of Sri Lanka. Jewellery was also what Prince Philip gave his bride on their wedding day. He designed her engagement ring, made of 11 diamonds, and her wedding gift bracelet, himself.

2016-04-23 08:21 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

73 President Obama tells young to 'reject cynicism' US President Barack Obama has urged young people to "reject pessimism and cynicism" and "know that progress is possible and problems can be solved". Speaking in London, he said: "Take a longer, more optimistic view of history. " Earlier, the US president visited the Globe theatre and watched actors perform scenes from Hamlet. It came a day after he said Britain would be at "the back of the queue" for US trade deals if it left the EU. His comments angered Leave campaigners. UKIP leader Nigel Farage accused him of doing Downing Street's "bidding" and "talking down Britain" and Tory Liam Fox said his views were "irrelevant". Following his appearance at Lindley Hall in London, Mr Obama met Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Mr Corbyn said he had had an "excellent" discussion with the president on issues including the challenges facing post-industrial societies, the power of global corporations, technology, inequality, poverty, and "very briefly" the subject of Europe. Taking questions from young people at the earlier town-hall event, Mr Obama said: "If any of you begin to work on an issue that you care deeply about, don't be disappointed if a year out things haven't been completely solved. "Don't give up and succumb to cynicism if after five years poverty has not been eradicated and we haven't resolved all of the steps we need to take to reverse climate change. " Progress is "not inevitable" but must be fought for over the long term. Mr Obama said it was "inspiring" meeting young people, which "gives [him] new ideas". Asked about security and attitudes to Muslims, he said keeping people safe and preventing terrorist attacks in the US and UK was "one of our biggest challenges". The US president said there was "a tiny subset of groups that have perverted Islam" and our "greatest allies" in tackling extremism in the US were those "Muslim Americans who are historically fully integrated in our society". He said Islamophobia was not only wrong but "as a practical matter... self-defeating behaviour if we are serious about terrorism". Being careful with language used in relation to Muslims and respecting people's faiths were "security matters, not just feel-good, liberal political correctness", he said. Mr Obama also praised Prime Minister David Cameron for being "ahead of the curve" on LGBT rights issues. He said the campaign for marriage equality in the US and elsewhere had "probably been the fastest set of changes in terms of a social movement that [he'd] seen". Asked about his legacy as president, Mr Obama said he would not have a sense until 10 years from now. But he added: "I'll look at a scorecard at the end... I think that I have been true to myself. " He mentioned changes he had made to the US healthcare system: "That's something I'm proud of," he said. "And saving the world economy from a great depression, that was pretty good. " Asked about skills in dealing with political opponents and finding middle ground, Mr Obama said: "If you spend time with people who just agree with you, you become even more extreme in your convictions. "Seek out people who don't agree with you. That will teach you to compromise. "Compromise does not mean surrendering what you believe. " Mr Obama's comments came on the second full day of his three-day visit to the UK, and weeks ahead of the 23 June in-out referendum. Speaking at a joint news conference with Mr Cameron on Friday, Mr Obama said the US "wants Britain's influence to grow - including within Europe". "The UK is at its best when it's helping to lead a strong European Union. It leverages UK power to be part of the EU. "I don't think the EU moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it. "

2016-04-23 12:54 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

74 Maine Sunday Telegram News But after his death at age 57 – following a series of canceled shows and a reported emergency plane landing for medical treatment – questions swirled over whether the music superstar had been hiding serious health problems from his fans. An autopsy was conducted Friday and the body released to his family. Authorities said it could be weeks before the cause of death is released. But Carver County Sheriff Jim Olson said Prince’s body had no signs of violence when he was found unresponsive Thursday morning in an elevator at Paisley Park, his estate in suburban Minneapolis, and there was nothing to suggest it was suicide. Olson said it appeared Prince had been at the compound alone. “This is certainly a big event internationally and nationally, and I can tell you that we are going to leave no stone unturned with this and make sure the public knows what happened,” the sheriff said at a news conference. Olson and a spokeswoman for the medical examiner refused to say whether any prescription drugs were taken from Prince’s home after his death, and they would not comment on a report by the celebrity website TMZ that the “Purple Rain” star had suffered an overdose of a powerful painkiller less than a week before he died. The sheriff said Prince was last seen alive by an acquaintance who dropped him off at Paisley Park at 8 p.m. Wednesday. He was found by staff members who went to the compound the next morning when they couldn’t reach him by phone. Emergency crews who answered the 911 call in Chanhassen, about 20 miles outside Minneapolis, could not revive Prince, the sheriff said. He said emergency workers did not administer Narcan, a drug they carry to counteract overdoses. Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson, had spoken about struggling with childhood epilepsy, and friends said he had hip trouble. His former percussionist Sheila E. told The Associated Press that Prince suffered the effects from years of jumping off risers and speakers on stage while wearing high heels. “There was always something kind of bothering him, as it does all of us,” she said. “I hurt every single day. You know we’re like athletes, we train, and we get hurt all the time. We have so many injuries.” Prince’s cousin Chazz Smith said he could not comment on reports about Prince’s health and would not say when he last saw his cousin. “I can tell you this: What I know is that he was perfectly healthy,” said Smith, who formed a band with Prince when they were kids. Smith said Prince swore off drugs and alcohol as a kid, and the group they played with saw a lot of music greats fall, so “we decided to never get into that stuff, and no one did.” TMZ, citing unidentified sources, reported that Prince was treated for an overdose of Percocet while traveling home from concerts in Atlanta last week. The site said his plane made an emergency landing April 15 in Moline, Illinois, where he was briefly hospitalized. Asked whether Prince’s flight made such a landing at the Quad City Airport in Moline, public safety manager Jeff Patterson said Friday that a private Falcon 900 plane made a “medical diversion landing” at 1:17 a.m. that day. He said the plane requested an ambulance at the airport and a patient was taken to the hospital. Patterson would not identify the patient or the plane’s owner, or provide the aircraft’s tail number. Representatives for Prince did not respond to requests from the AP for comment on the reports. The singer’s death came two weeks after he canceled concerts in Atlanta, saying he wasn’t feeling well. He then played a pair of makeup shows April 14 in that city, apologizing to the crowd shortly after coming on stage. At one point early in his first show, he briefly disappeared from the stage without explanation. After about a minute he returned and apologized, saying he didn’t realize how emotional the songs could be. He played the rest of the show without incident, repeatedly jumping up from the piano and pacing around the stage between songs, and performed three encores. In the later show, Prince coughed a few times, though the show was again energetic. Then came the reported emergency landing en route to Minnesota. The night after that, Prince hosted a dance party at Paisley Park, where some fans said he looked fine and seemed irked by reports of an illness. “Wait a few days before you waste any prayers,” he said. By his high-energy standards, it was a subdued appearance. Prince didn’t play except to tap out a few notes on a new purple Yamaha piano, and lingered only for a few minutes before disappearing. Prince was slated to perform two surprise “pop-up” shows earlier this week at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis but canceled last week because of health concerns, promoter Steve Litman said. Prince disclosed in a 2009 interview with Tavis Smiley that he was born an epileptic and had seizures when he was young. It was unclear if his epilepsy carried into adulthood. In 2009, Prince, a Jehovah’s Witness, told an interviewer with the Los Angeles Times that he didn’t do drugs “or I’d give you a joint” to share while they listened to music. Heather McElhatton, who worked on and off as a set decorator for Prince’s video shoots at Paisley Park from 1988 to 1998, said she never saw him take drugs or drink during her time there. “But he did have a lot of energy. He could shoot for two days straight,” McElhatton said. “Was it natural energy? Was it augmented energy? I don’t know. I never saw him eat.” Sheila E. said: “It’s just like being a football player and a basketball player. You know he really took care of himself. He ate well. He ate better than me.” She said she hadn’t talked to him for at least six months but tried to reach him after reading reports that he needed emergency medical attention. She said the man who answered told her Prince was sleeping and would let him know she called. “He said he was good,” she said. At Friday afternoon’s news conference, the sheriff and Martha Weaver, spokeswoman for the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office, portrayed Prince as a good citizen in the community, and expressed both their affection for him and their determination to do a thorough investigation. “For our generation, he was the songbook and the narrative for some of the greatest moments in our individual lives, much like Elvis Presley and Ira Gershwin before him,” Weaver said. “And this is something that we remember and we take very, very seriously.” Associated Press writers Robin McDowell and Kevin Burbach in Minneapolis, Jim Salter in St. Louis, Jocelyn Noveck in New York, and Ravi Nessman and Jacob Jordan in Atlanta contributed to this report.

2016-04-23 06:35 www.pressherald.com

75 Eye Opener: Mass murder in Ohio |Police in Ohio track possible suspects who murdered eight people in four different locations. Also, new information on the death of Prince -- find out which cause of death has been ruled out. All that and all that matters in today’s Eye Opener. Your world in 90 seconds.

2016-04-23 15:29 Eye Opener www.cbsnews.com

76 Obese patients denied surgery in a third of areas in England Surgeons are worried overweight patients and smokers in England and Wales are being denied surgery to save money. A report by the Royal College of Surgeons found a third of local NHS health bosses in England put restrictions on access to surgery. But it says this goes against official guidance and can prolong patient pain. However, some local NHS groups criticised in the report say their polices are based on good evidence. The Royal College of Surgeons has been increasingly alarmed about the rationing of surgery in the NHS in the tough financial climate. Its report is based on freedom of information returns from nearly all of the 209 clinical commissioning groups in England and all seven health boards in Wales. While some CCGs have voluntary policies in place, where patients are encouraged to stop smoking or lose weight, others have introduced mandatory policies, which means patients have to meet fixed criteria before surgery. The college says mandatory policies are "a cause for concern" and it fears patients with a high body mass index (BMI) or who smoke are becoming "soft targets" for NHS savings. The report reveals 31% of CCGs and one health board in Wales have at least one policy requiring people to lose weight or stop smoking before they can be referred for routine surgery. Local NHS groups which compel patients to meet fixed criteria before surgery include: Dr Hari Pathmanathan, who chairs East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, said there were good reasons why they asked some patients to lose weight and stop smoking before being given an anaesthetic. "These patients are much more likely to suffer serious breathing problems, get infections and have heart, kidney and lung complications," he said. "It also takes them longer to recover, and they have a higher risk of dying under anaesthetic. "It is for these health reasons that patients who have a higher risk because of their weight are not be booked for routine surgery until they have lost enough weight to improve the outcomes of their surgery, although no-one would be asked to wait for more than nine months. " Dr Pathmanathan added that every patient's case was considered individually, based on their health needs, and the restrictions were for planned surgery only. The report suggests one in five CCGs has mandatory policies on BMI levels before hip and knee replacement surgery, while 4% have mandatory policies on getting patients to stop smoking before hip and knee replacement surgery. Of the CCGs that responded, 22% reported having at least one "voluntary" policy in place. The Royal College of Surgeons said any blanket ban on surgery based on a patient's weight or whether they smoked was wrong and not supported by national guidance. Instead, president Clare Marx said, patients should be encouraged to sign up to programmes to help them stop smoking and manage their weight while awaiting surgery. "NHS surgical treatment should be based on clinical guidance and patients should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis," she said. "In some instances, a patient might need surgery in order to help them to do exercise and lose weight. "While it is difficult to categorically prove such policies are aimed at saving money, it is unlikely to be a coincidence that many financially challenged CCGs are restricting access to surgery. " She added National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance did not support these mandatory bans for routine surgery. British Orthopaedic Association president Tim Wilton said there was no clinical or financial justification for refusing to fund hip or knee replacements. "Good outcomes can be achieved for patients regardless of whether they smoke or are obese, even at BMIs of over 50, and these surgeries are highly cost effective, typically delivering sustained pain relief for a cost that equates to just £7.50 a week," he said. "Hard-and-fast rules also undermine the NHS's ability to involve patients in decisions about their own care, and are a distraction from the task at hand: making sure patients receive the best possible advice and care, to enable them to make the best possible decisions for their health - including losing weight and stopping smoking where appropriate. " However, Dr Anita Ray-Chowdhury, clinical director of system change at Luton CCG, defended their approach. "We do everything we can to ensure that patients who need urgent or life saving surgery get the help they need quickly, irrespective of their weight or if they smoke. "For less urgent surgery there is strong clinical evidence showing that being overweight and smoking can have an adverse effect to the outcome, so we advise that clinicians work with the patients to take a holistic approach by addressing lifestyle factors that may improve the outcome of surgery. "

2016-04-23 16:36 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

77 Oldest inmate in center spends years in Nebraska prison YORK, Neb. (AP) - Age arrives with a variety of potential challenges, from mental and physical to financial difficulties and more. Wilma Castor’s senior citizen years have been - and will continue to be - spent behind razor wire at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, the York News-Times (http://bit.ly/26gI4TN ) reports. Castor, 67, and the most elderly woman in the 348-inmate population, has spent the last 20 years locked away following her 1997 conviction for first-degree murder as well as six other felonies and a misdemeanor in Buffalo County. Her son, Eddy, was convicted of being an accessory to murder in the shooting death of Castor’s ex-husband in Kearney. Castor agreed to sit down and chat about the realities of being a most unlikely and non- traditional grandmother and great grandmother. Referring to herself as “a mother bear,” Castor said she has a son, grandson, granddaughter and great grandson living in Oregon. The son, she said, is severely diabetic to the point of needing transfusions. For that reason he and his family cannot come to York to visit, which is why Castor has applied for transfer from York to a prison in Oregon. Castor has the $4,000 she is required to pay for her share of the cost and Nebraska has given its blessing. Oregon has yet to give the green light. Keeping track of her Oregon family has obvious challenges from prison; however Castor said she does have access to email and the telephone. “My son sends me plenty of photos, too,” she said. Castor has learned “not to get too close to people” at NCCW because they come and go so much. “I have had maybe three friends” over the years “that I still keep in touch with.” She gets frustrated with fellow inmates who are given multiple chances to stay out of prison, only to repeatedly throw them away and return in what becomes a revolving door. Several women she can think of “have been in and out of here every year or every other on the same number. Why not give someone else a chance?” Audra Jensen of the NCCW staff explained that if an inmate violates parole and is returned to prison she will retain the same inmate identification number because it’s still the same conviction and sentence. If, however, she completes her sentence and is released, but then re- offends, she will be given a new number. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:33 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

78 Ground broken on Selfridge jet fuel delivery, storage system HARRISON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) - Ground has been broken on a project for a new jet fuel storage and delivery system at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in suburban Detroit. The groundbreaking on the $32.6 million project took place Friday. The National Guard’s 127th Wing has said the project will support rapid refueling of KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling aircraft and other aircraft based at Selfridge, training at the facility or deploying from the base. The project at the base in Macomb County’s Harrison Township is expected to be done in roughly two years. The 127th Wing says the project’s lead contractor is Garco Construction of Spokane, Washington. According to the 127th Wing, the new storage and delivery system will replace an existing storage area at the base that was built in 1958.

2016-04-23 13:33 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

79 Ex-Kansas prison worker sentenced in meth smuggling case LANSING, Kan. (AP) - A former Kansas prison worker accused of smuggling methamphetamine into the Lansing Correctional Center has been sentenced to 13 months in prison. The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/1qHmvv7 ) reports that 60-year-old Jacqueline Doty of Fort Scott was sentenced Friday. She had pleaded no contest to possession with the intent to distribute methamphetamine. Court documents say Doty was arrested in June 2014 after she was searched at the prison and found to be carrying about 14 bags containing meth. Prosecutors said the bags were hidden in a “girdle-type undergarment” Doty was wearing, with large bandages wrapped around her midsection to hide them. One of the bags held about 14 grams of meth. ___ Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com

2016-04-23 13:32 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

80 Nemacolin welcomes lion cub FARMINGTON, Pa. (AP) - Kiwi is settling in to her new home in the Laurel Highlands. The 6-month-old African lion cub was acquired two months ago from a privately-owned zoo in Florida and soon will help replenish what now will be a pride of five lions at Nemacolin Woodlands. “She has the run of the place when there are no guests here,” Nemacolin director of activities Mandy Burnsworth said as Kiwi entertained a crew from the Herald-Standard. “The place” is the animal nursery at Nemacolin’s Wildlife Adventure, just off Route 40, where visitors can interact with 150 animals, from a dog sledding team and horses to a host of exotic creatures. It is part of a long list of adventures found at the resort, and in turn includes a Wildlife Academy dedicated to providing interactive entertainment and live animal programs with an emphasis on education. “Our main goal here is to educate guests on conservation of all these exotic animals, preserving these animals for years to come,” Burnsworth said of a lineup that includes Kiwi, as well as a white tiger, a sacred white buffalo and an Asian fishing cat. “There are not too many of them,” Burnsworth said of the latter, a breed of cat that numbers 256 worldwide, 68 in the United States, according to the Big Cat Rescue charity, with a weight between 13 and 26 pounds. In all, Nemacolin has members of five feline species, including two tigers, a mountain lion and a bobcat. Kiwi weighs 50 pounds already, and eventually will tip the scales at 350 to 400 pounds. Burnsworth said she eats five pounds of beef and chicken each day and eventually will consume 15 pounds daily. “By the time she’s 2 years old, she’ll be out with the other lions,” the Nemacolin director of activities said. That now includes two males and two females. Kiwi started out with a bottle phase and gradually will be worked into the lion population. She’ll be used to humans, but not domesticated. “This is just to give them a good start in life,” Burnsworth said. “We don’t want them to be stressed when we do anything to them.” Kiwi is the newest addition to an entity started a decade ago by Nemacolin founder Joe Hardy. “My father began the Wildlife Academy 10 years ago with the inspiration to share his love for animals with others,” says resort owner Maggie Hardy Magerko. “With many of the animals on our property being rescued from failing zoos, my father believed making them part of our family would leave lasting impressions on our guests, provide an educational experience and foster the belief in conservation.” Burnsworth said Magerko’s son P. J. named the cub. Nemacolin operates its Wildlife Adventure with a permit from the United States Department of Agriculture, and in accord with standards set by the USDA. It gets assistance from New Jersey veterinarian Dr. Jonathan Bergmann, who has experience with exotic animals, as well as trained associates. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:30 ADVANCE FOR www.washingtontimes.com

81 Window-blind maps, a cemetery and a race against time NEWPORT, Pa. (AP) - For almost half a century, Charlie Wentz has been the caretaker for thousands of men and women buried in Newport Cemetery. He has buried hundreds of people, men and women from all walks of life who share in one common thread - their final resting places on this quiet hillside that overlooks the Perry County town. Each time Charlie buries someone, his wife Fran writes their name and location - section and plot number - on a 3-by-5 index card, which is then filed in a cabinet located in their home next to the grounds. Charlie and Fran know where most of the recent burials are - he can still find their first - but the cemetery here stretches back to the late 1800s. To find those graves, Charlie (or Fran) looks up the name in their index card catalog, then cross references that location with maps of the cemetery that often were hand-drawn on the backs of window blinds. As sections were added, new maps were drawn. Some were proper surveyor maps, others were of the hand-drawn window-blind variety. “It’s what they had,” John Amsler, president of the Newport Cemetery Association, said last week. For years the maps were stored in the Wentz’s attic. When Fran needed to locate a grave - maybe a curious genealogist trying to trace family records - she would go upstairs and find the right section, then unroll it to find the plot. It was, to say the least, an imperfect system. Caretakers essentially acted as the cemetery’s librarians, but without a Dewey Decimal system to guide them. Numbers were not necessarily sequential, or the system shifted over the years, making the maps essential to finding the older graves. And as time rolled on, the maps began to deteriorate, fraying at the edges or cracking apart. “You have to be very careful, as they would just fall to ashes (when handled),” Fran said. In time, many of the maps became almost illegible. Amsler knew that when they were gone they could not be replaced. Indeed, the records of a second and even older cemetery in Newport already have been lost. Located at the edge of town, the community’s first cemetery sits at the end of Fifth Street, overlooking Little Buffalo Creek. The graves here date to the early 1800s - some of the people were born in the late 1700s. The only record of the cemetery are notes taken by a historian and kept by the Perry County Historical Society. The cemetery association is unaware of any other documentation, a fate similar to the one they fear for their deteriorating maps. (As an aside, the cemetery association itself has a fairly fascinating history, having started as a for-profit operation in 1863. It became a non-profit after the Panic of 1907, a recession that forced many banks and businesses into bankruptcy). “We were going to lose the records,” Amsler said. And those records represented not just the final resting places of the dead but in many ways the history of the town itself. “We did have the card file, but we need to preserve these records, and if we didn’t do it quickly, we could have a real problem,” he said. The weft and warp of history Practically every town in Pennsylvania boasts an historical building or two, artifacts preserved because of their connection to an event, person, or time. But rarely do those physical places embody the full history of a community. The stories they tell can be fascinating and thought- provoking - yet they are but markers or sign posts along a longer road. Like an iceberg, they represent a small piece of a larger story. That larger story is literally buried - usually on the outskirts of town. It is here, amid the marble stones, that the weft of history can be found - the threads that weave between the warp of our historic buildings. Tug on a thread - pull it gently enough, and you might find a story. In the summer of 1862, Josephus W. Smith, the son of hotelier Jacob Smith, left Newport with a number of young men from the surrounding countryside. They traveled to Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, where they were formed into Company I of the 133rd infantry regiment, Union Army, commanded by Col. Franklin Speakman, of New Bloomfield. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:29 ADVANCE FOR www.washingtontimes.com

82 WWU adopts ‘real food’ goal for dining halls BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP) - The idea sounds simple as pie. Administrators and student food activists at Western Washington University recently agreed to the goal of having the university spend at least 25 percent of its dining hall food budget on locally sourced, sustainable farm products by 2020. “It’s certainly doable, and it’s going to be a lot of work,” said Rosa Rice-Pelepko, an environmental studies sophomore from Shoreline who is vice president of Students for Sustainable Foods at Western. She was one of several students who signed the agreement April 1 with Bruce Shepard, Western’s president, and Leonard Jones, director of University Residences, reported the Bellingham Herald (http://bit.ly/1SbKahP). The commitment is part of a nationwide Real Food Challenge to shift $1 billion of university food budgets by 2020 to local farms that raise food in environmentally sound ways, treat workers fairly, and are humane to animals. More than three dozen schools across the country have signed up, with commitments to shift from 20 percent to 40 percent of their food budgets. Other Washington schools on the list are The Evergreen State College (28 percent) and Gonzaga University (25 percent). At Western, Aramark, the university’s food-service contractor, spent $5.4 million for dining hall food in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2015, so each 1 percent shift equals $54,000. Counting what’s ‘real’ To be counted in the “real food” percentage, food suppliers must satisfy criteria established by the Real Food Challenge about farm size and location, ownership, farming and labor practices, and treatment of animals. According to the university, 18.3 percent of its dining hall food budget was spent on eligible “real food” as of September 2015. But recent questions about animal-handling practices by a dairy that sells milk to Western could drop the rate to about 11 percent, Rice-Pelepko said. Kurt Willis, associate director of University Residences, said Real Food representatives were aware of Western’s food purchases for the past few years and raised no concerns, but campus administrators were recently told about the dairy. Aramark is pursuing discussions with Real Food about criteria for dairy farms, said Stephen Wadsworth, Aramark’s resident district manager for dining services at Western. Willis said that because of periodic “moving of the bar” by Real Food, Western’s agreement specifically refers to Real Food’s criteria used in 2015. The agreements also says Western will work to promote “community based, and regionally sourced food purchases.” Wadsworth said food grown or raised in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia qualifies as regional food. Counting the dairy supplier, nearly 33 percent of dining service purchases at Western are already covered by Real Food criteria on community or regional sourcing, he said. To help Western reach its food goals, an oversight committee of students, faculty and staff will be created, with half of the members to be students. Rice-Pelepko and Willis agree that as the committee does its work, spending for local sustainable food needs to take into account students’ ability to pay for their dining hall meals, along with their other college costs. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:29 Student Joana www.washingtontimes.com

83 Historic peacocks for sale _ you buy them, you catch them BEND, Ore. (AP) - Put anyone in charge of 30 peacocks and he might find himself making the kind of for-sale ad Brian Davis posted on Petersen Rock Garden’s Facebook page in mid-April: “Need to sell a few of these Female Peahens for $20 each Today call me” Davis helps manage Petersen Rock Garden, likely central Oregon’s quirkiest roadside rock attraction, the Bulletin reported (http://bit.ly/1qEiW8Z). Located about halfway between Redmond and Bend, the 82-year-old garden is an open grassy area where visitors can relax and wander around an off-brand fantasy land of miniature castles, bridges and statues made of obsidian and geodes. Think springtime family reunion venue with psychedelic fishbowl decorations and you’re almost there, except for the squawking peacocks. About 30 male and female peacocks roam the 4-acre garden and hang out in the shade under the picnic tables. And while the Rock Garden has seen its ups and downs - in 2013 it was named to the National Register of Historic Places after years of deterioration and neglect landed it on an endangered places list - its peacock population has remained fairly consistent. Davis said he sometimes considers the park’s stained rock castles and wonders whether this is a good thing. “The peacocks are part of the ambiance; everyone loves them,” he said April 15. “But how many do we need? Ten? Fifteen? Five? Eight? I don’t know. The mess they make - they crap all over all the monuments. It’s good for the lawns, but we’re just trying to figure out the right amount to have.” So while Petersen Rock Garden receives upgrades this spring, like freshly landscaped paths, the revival of the classic Swan Boat ride (pending Swan Boat completion on Memorial Day weekend) and eight picnic tables recently donated by friends of the garden who are regulars on the grounds and in its Facebook group, Davis is using a simple strategy to figure out the answer to the peacock question. “We’re downsizing,” he said. At least five of the birds were put up for sale, Davis said, a directive straight from Sue Caward, who has owned the rock garden for about 15 years. “Susan said 20 bucks, sell them for 20 dollars a hen,” Davis said. “We just have way too many.” Caward is the granddaughter of Rasmus Petersen, who moved from his native Denmark to central Oregon in the early 1900s and set up a 256-acre farm between Bend and Redmond. He developed a fascination with the region’s natural resources and in the mid-1930s started gathering whatever rocks and minerals he could find within an 85-mile radius of his adopted home, according to the Deschutes County Historical Society. He began creating the rock structures, and eventually more than 100,000 visitors from all parts of the world stopped at the rock garden during its first 15 years. Caward said Petersen, who died in 1952, was the one who brought the peacocks to the rock garden, even though she said she doesn’t know how or why he got them. Also unknown is exactly how to persuade anyone to take a peacock home with them. Davis said he’s already gotten a few nibbles on his Facebook post, but no one’s taken him up yet on the park’s unwritten “you buy it, you catch it” peacock purchasing rule (the rock garden supplies a cage). “We’ve gotten a few people that still have to come over and catch them,” he said, offering peacock-catching tips to any interested buyers before admitting he’d probably cave in and help out if it meant he could sell the birds more easily. “You gotta bait them into a cage and shut the door on the cage, and that’s how you catch them. It’s not an easy deal. I’ve got a friend who’s done it all the time.” Meanwhile, the 30 or so birds can create issues for picnicking park visitors, even though the new tables help. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:29 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

84 Man charged in girlfriend’s death at Conway motel CONWAY, Ark. (AP) - A man has been charged in the death of a woman whose body was found in a Conway motel room. An employee at the Days Inn found the body of 41-year-old Susan Stubbs lying face down on the floor of the room just before 6:30 p.m. March 6. Police said in a court affidavit filed Friday that Stubbs died of strangulation after a cord was wrapped around her neck by her boyfriend, 53-year-old Scotty Gardner. Gardner has been charged with capital murder. He had been initially been held on a charge of second-degree murder in Stubbs’ killing. It was not immediately clear if Stubbs has an attorney.

2016-04-23 13:29 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

85 Mamadou Sakho: Liverpool defender investigated over failed drugs test Liverpool defender Mamadou Sakho is being investigated by Uefa after failing a drugs test. Although the France international, 26, is not officially suspended, he will "not be available" for selection during the investigation, Liverpool said. BBC Radio 5 live senior football reporter Ian Dennis said Sakho failed a test after the Europa League victory over Manchester United on 17 March. It is thought Sakho tested positive for a type of fat burner, said Dennis. The player has until Tuesday to respond with a B sample. Sakho, an £18m signing from Paris St-Germain in 2013, has played 34 games this season, including 10 in the Europa League. He scored in Liverpool's 4-3 victory over Borussia Dortmund on 14 April which secured their place in the semi-finals. Liverpool, who are seventh in the Premier League, host Newcastle at Anfield on Saturday. Sakho's Liverpool team-mate Kolo Toure was banned for six months in 2011 while at Manchester City after testing positive for a weight-loss drug contained within "water tablets" recommended to him by his wife. A similar ban for Sakho would rule him out of Euro 2016 in France, which starts on 10 June. BBC Radio 5 live senior football reporter Ian Dennis "This is a player charge rather than a charge to the club. "It doesn't mean Sakho is suspended - he would be eligible today and for Thursday's Europa League semi-final first leg against Villarreal. "However, the owners, manager Jurgen Klopp, chief executive Ian Ayre and the player himself all felt it was in the best interests for him not to be available while the process was ongoing. " Royal Tunbridge Wells parkrun Chichester parkrun

2016-04-23 13:18 www.bbc.co.uk

86 Mahalaxmi Races: Philadelphia set to win Jockeys Trophy The nine-race card on offer at the Mahalaxmi racetrack for the Saturday evening appears to be quite competitive. The Jockeys Trophy, one of the prime races of the last weekend of the current campaign, will generate most interest as all the top three jockeys at this center--A Sandesh, Trevor Patel and S Zervan--are in the fray. There are nine three-year-old maiden horses in the fray for the prestigious vevent. Thanks to her top position on the scale of Dynamic Ratings, Philadelphia, trained by Dallas Todywalla and to be ridden by A Sandesh, looks set to give her jockey a most meaningful victory as, after trailing behind Trevor Patel in the early part of the season, Sandesh rallied on very well to overtake his arch rival, and is presently sitting pretty at the top of the Jockeys Championship Tally. First race at 4 pm. Selections: T M Goculdas Plate (Class II; 1000m) Merchantofvenice 1, Golden Belle 2. Bangalore Turf Club Trophy (Class I; 1400m) Airco 1, Staristocrat 2. H R Shantidas Trophy (Class II; 1800m) Shadowfax 1, Midnight Dancer 2, M D Petit Plate (Class V; 1600m) Royal Eclair 1, Admission 2, Rocking 3. Trainers' Trophy - Div II (Class III; 1200m) Undisputed 1, Squash 2, Magnum Opus 3. Kailashpat Singhania Trophy (For 3y, maidens; 1600m) Tchibouela 1, Poet 2, Scheld Of Achilles 3. Jockeys Trophy (For 3y, unplaced maidens; 1000m) Philadelphia 1, Alpine Express 2, Synchronicity 3. Style Cracker Triple Stakes (Class IV; 1400m) Star One 1, Rain Dance 2, Hunting Pleasure 3. Trainers' Trophy - Div I (Class III; 1200m) Final Encounter 1, Vision Of Romance 2, Zana 3. Recommendations Best bet: None Good bet: Philadelphia (7-9) Chance bet: Shadowfax (3-2) Upset: Tennessee (4-3), Zanzibaar (6-10) & Sensex (8-16) 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.

2016-04-23 13:15 By Prakash www.mid-day.com

87 Multiple casualties reported in powerful gas blast in northern France Three people have been injured, another person is buried under the rubble, and three others are missing, BFM TV has reported, citing firefighters. It is thought that the cause of the blast may have been a gas explosion. Ambulance crews and some 140 firefighters are at the scene, working to recover more victims. Four emergency helicopters have been deployed to the location. About 30 residents have been evacuated from the building following the blast, local media report.

2016-04-23 13:15 www.rt.com

88 88 Nepal quake: One girl's remarkable recovery Story by Moni Basu , CNN Video by Nick Scott, CNN Photographs by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images Reportage for CNN Updated 1313 GMT (2013 HKT) April 23, 2016

2016-04-23 13:13 Story by www.cnn.com

89 Drunken driver pleads guilty to killing popular chef CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) - A drunk driver who hit and killed a popular St. Petersburg chef walking home from work has pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide. The Tampa Tribune (http://tinyurl.com/jugac5y) reports that 26-year-old Jason Mitchell pleaded guilty Friday to several charges including fleeing and eluding. He faces up to 46 years in prison at his Monday sentencing. St. Petersburg police say Mitchell was speeding through the city’s downtown just after 2 a.m. one morning last April when he ran a red light and struck 31-year-old Aaron Davis and 28-year- old Brian Lee LaFrance. Davis, a chef at Kitchen St. Pete, died at the scene. LaFrance was critically injured but survived. Police say Mitchell had a blood alcohol content of .092 percent and tried unsuccessfully to escape from police headquarters. Davis’ wife gave birth to the couple’s second child days after his death. ___ Information from: The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, http://www.tampatrib.com

2016-04-23 13:10 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

90 Church closings, mergers mourned by worshippers, communities PITTSBURGH (AP) - Andrea Evans is in mourning. The sacred space she valued as her place of refuge for six decades suddenly is off limits, its holy relics stripped away, doors bolted shut and almost 400 weekly worshippers told to go elsewhere. St. John Vianney church in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood closed this month, the latest in more than 150 Diocese of Pittsburgh church closures in three decades. The Catholic church built by German immigrants, known as St. George Church for most of its 105 years, is where Evans, 64, made her First Communion, married her husband of 41 years and had her three children - now ages 30, 32 and 40 - baptized. She and her neighbors refer to the twin-steepled structure at the heart of their community as “the beacon on the hill.” “It’s almost like a death in the family,” Evans said. “We’re all hurting and lost.” Judy Hackel was not a member - she’s not even Catholic - but she, too, is lamenting the closure as a major setback to a neighborhood on the rebound. Hackel, vice president of Allentown Community Development Corp., contrasted the demise of St. John Vianney to a string of encouraging activity. She points to new tenants such as Breakfast at Shelly’s, Spool Fabric Shop and Industry on Industry, a small-business incubator, breathing renewed life into Allentown’s main drag of Warrington Avenue. “When you lose something that large and that much involved with the community for so many years, it’s very disheartening to everyone,” said Hackel, “not just the parishioners.” Broad ramifications The closure of a church can have far-reaching effects on the residents and vitality of the area in which it goes dark. Catholics and non-Catholics cite concerns over the potential ripple effects of church closures on their surrounding area’s economic development, participation in religious activity and availability of safety nets for the needy and vulnerable. “It’s impossible to explain to people the devastation when your home church is closed,” said Laura Magone, 55, who lost her home church, St. Anthony in Monongahela, in 2014. She and a devoted group of a few dozen former parishioners continue to meet regularly at the local American Legion and in homes, using an email list and phone tree to coordinate prayer services, social events and community support during hardships. Closures can affect a community’s historical ties and sense of identity. “The church defines the skyline in the Allentown community,” said Bob Kress, spokesman for the St. George Preservation Society, a group formed in August in opposition to the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s plan to close St. John Vianney. “It’s a landmark and a centerpiece of the neighborhood.” Critics of large-scale diocesan closure plans, including Catholic Church reform advocacy groups from around the world, say that too many bishops are turning off the lights and merging parishes as a quicker fix - and potential revenue-generator through property sales - than coming up with innovative ways to preserve faith communities. Backlash to closures Bishops are “merging active and vibrant parishes into anonymous and unmanageable superstructures,” said a May letter to Pope Francis signed by the leaders of 24 international reform groups who met last summer in Ireland. They decried the increasingly common approach of responding to the priest shortage by clustering Catholic congregations into so-called “mega- parishes.” Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:10 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

91 Michelle Obama set to speak at commencement in Mississippi JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Michelle Obama is scheduled to speak to more than 1,000 graduates during commencement at historically black Jackson State University. The White House says she has spoken at a historically black college or university each year since her husband became president. The first lady’s appearance at Jackson State is set for Saturday afternoon. It is one of three commencement addresses Mrs. Obama will make this year. The others are May 26 at the Santa Fe Indian School and June 3 at the City College of New York campus in Harlem. She and President Barack Obama socialized with members of the British royal family Friday in London.

2016-04-23 13:10 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

92 New Hispanic public affairs show debuts in Florida MIAMI (AP) - A new Spanish-language public affairs show directed at Hispanics in Florida debuts Sunday. WLTV-23, the Univision affiliate in Miami, announced Friday that “Al Punto Florida” will be hosted by Univision 23 anchor Ambrosio Hernandez and Mariana Atencio, of Miami-based cable network FUSION. The one-hour show will be broadcast, beginning at 11 a.m., on five Univision affiliates: Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and Miami. Hernandez says the show will analyze issues through interviews and journalistic reports on newsworthy topics in Florida and in Latin America. He added in a statement that politics will play a key role in the program, noting Sen. Marco Rubio will be its first guest. The show is modeled after Univision’s “Al Punto,” a national public affairs show hosted by Univision anchor Jorge Ramos.

2016-04-23 13:10 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

93 Hindenburg - In Photos: 6 Business Deal Disasters Here is a collection of bad ideas, botched negotiations and missed opportunities that laid waste to established business, hundreds of jobs and countless reputations. (image: history in an hour on flickr)

2016-04-23 14:21 Jay Somaney www.forbes.com

94 Sam Dares, Mt. Carmel bounced from 5A playoffs with loss to Pineville Throughout her storied prep career at Mt. Carmel , Sam Dares has started more than 100 games, has three trips to Sulphur, including a state championship appearance, and she’ll soon be honored on the All-Metro team for the third consecutive year. However, she’d likely give all that up if the softball gods could grant her one do-over. Everything that could go wrong did for Dares and the fourth-seeded Cubs on Friday at the JPRD Softball Complex in Metairie, as they were eliminated from the Class 5A playoffs with a 12-2 second-round loss to 13th-seeded Pineville in a game shortened by six innings due to the mercy rule. It was the end of the line for both Dares and last season’s All-Metro Coach of the Year, Jake Pierron, who is moving to Nashville with his wife in June. And it was heartbreaking for all involved, as the girls could barely catch their breath from crying to talk. “This is so hard, because these guys have been my family for the past four years,” said Dares, who will play at Nicholls State next year. “This is the worst feeling in the world; we wanted it so bad. But things just didn’t fall our way.” Or bloop their way or roll their way. Pineville (20-8) collected 15 hits, with six of them not getting past the infield dirt. The Rebels also had just one extra-base hit, a double to leadoff the top of the sixth by nine-hole hitter Ty Robinson, who was 2-for-4 with two RBIs and two runs scored. It was the worst performance of the season for pitcher Shelby Wickersham, who couldn’t get out of the fourth. She induced two groundouts to start the game, but then gave up two walks and two infield singles to trail 1-0. In the game-changing fourth, she allowed five hits before being replaced by Jordyn Perkins. By then, the damage had been done, as Pineville scored five to expand its lead to 6-0, and the Cubs (21-4) could see the writing on the wall. “It was a helpless feeling out there. It sucks when things like that happen, but we didn’t give up,” said Perkins, who drove in the only two runs for Mt. Carmel on a sixth-inning double. “They were just hitting them in perfect spots and dropping them over our heads. There was nothing we could do. “Towards the end when you look at the scoreboard, it’s a terrible feeling. We haven’t felt that very often.” What little chance remained for the Cubs withered away in the sixth when Pineville batted around. Seven of the first eight batters in the inning collected hits, as the lead was expanded to 12-0. All nine Rebels had at least one hit, and six of them had two. All but eight-hole hitter Adelle Chapman had at least one RBI. Abby Robertson was 2-for-3 with an RBI at the plate, and in the circle she pitched a complete game, allowing six hits and two sixth-inning runs. She struck out two and didn’t walk a batter. Caleigh Foto was the only Cub to collect two hits. Dares finished 1-for-3 in her final game. “Even when it was 6-0, I was saying, ‘Y’all, six runs is nothing. We can get two in an inning, two in an inning, two in an inning,’ and we’re right back in this game,” Dares said. “Then they scored all those runs (in the sixth), and I kind of knew it was going to be the end. “I was just trying to get through the game without showing any emotion and enjoy the last few minutes with my family. I don’t know what I would do without them.” She was successful in that respect, but began to sob almost uncontrollably when shaking hands with her opposition after the game was over, and then with her teammates during the post-game speech. For Pierron, in his five seasons, he was 104-36 (.743 winning percentage) and the Cubs made the playoffs each year. Each of the past three seasons, they made it to Sulphur, and in 2013, Mt. Carmel lost in the state title game to Sam Houston. His wife has accepted a fellowship to Vanderbilt, and his family will be moving to Nashville over the summer. He said he’ll cherish the time he was able to spend with the Cubs. “Coming in five years ago as a Cajun kid from Chauvin, I didn’t even know where Mt. Carmel was or what it was about,” Pierron said. “We’ve had quite a bit of success and a great program. It’s just a wonderful school.” Pierron said Katie Bailey, who began working at the school in March, will take over as head coach next season. ***************** Jim Derry can be reached at [email protected] or 504.232.9944. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/JimDerryJr . See More Sports News »

2016-04-23 09:25 Jim Derry highschoolsports.nola.com

95 Vietnamese refugee locates crew that rescued family at sea LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) - The summer of 1980, Lauren Vuong survived a hurricane-like storm at sea aboard a rickety fishing boat carrying her family and dozens of other Vietnamese desperate to escape the brutality of ongoing war and harsh, communist rule. They came to be known as the boat people, those who survived the exodus triggered by the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. Vuong, then 7, was one of 62 refugees hiding in the fish-laden cargo hold of a vessel some 30 feet in length. Vuong’s journey has parallels with the ongoing crisis in Syria and other war-torn locales. Now 43 and married with children and working as a workers compensation litigator in California, she harbors a message of hope to all foreigners seeking refuge. Her own rescue after 10 days at sea served as inspiration to seek out those responsible. Research led her to 86-year-old George Overstreet of Lakeland, a retired captain of the LNG Virgo, a merchant marine tanker that ferried liquefied natural gas throughout the South China Sea. Overstreet was on leave when his shipmates discovered the boat carrying Vuong, her parents and siblings. It didn’t matter. She felt she had to meet him face to face, despite 36 years of distance. She flew to Lakeland from San Francisco in March, her parents, children and husband in tow. It was, she said, more quest than reunion. “It felt like the journey was incomplete without being able to look at our saviors’ eyes, meet their family and tell them in person what it means to have a second chance at life,” she said through tears. The dream of a second chance remains alive for hundreds of families from far-flung locales who are assimilated throughout Central Florida each year with help from a network of agencies that includes Catholic Charities. An average of 180 families, mostly from African nations, along with Iraq and Myanmar, are resettled annually in the greater Orlando area, with Lakeland taking in a handful of Cubans. Many have the support of relatives or friends who already are settled here, said Richard Logue, program director of Immigration and Refugee Services of Catholic Charities of Central Florida. Despite a rigorous vetting process, Syrians still face a roadblock to entering the United States because of concerns about terrorism, Logue said. Iraqi refugees who make it through the vetting process are primarily people who worked with the U. S. military, he said. It was the exodus of Vietnamese in 1975 that initiated Catholic Charities’ involvement in refugee resettlement. Logue said Lauren Vuong and her family were among the lucky ones to overcome great obstacles in their journey to America. In her memoir that she hopes to turn into a documentary on the Vietnamese boat people, Vuong writes of the excitement she felt upon finding Overstreet with the help of Google. Story Continues →

2016-04-23 13:09 - Associated Press - Saturday, April 23, 2016 www.washingtontimes.com

96 Yahoo - Yahoo Sports Partners With NHL to Bring Fans Free, Live Out-of-Market Games & On-Demand Premium Content No Cable or Authentication Required, Alliance Offers New Opportunities for Advertisers to Connect with Fans --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- (NASDAQ:YHOO) and the (NHL®) today announced a strategic alliance to deliver premium sports content to Yahoo Sports' millions of users. Now fans can access live, out-of-market games for free on , throughout the week, no cable subscription or authentication required. will offer unique advertising opportunities for brands to connect with their audiences, alongside and within this live and on-demand sports contents. Beginning , , in collaboration with the , will live stream an "Game of the Day" to hockey fans in the , up to four days a week, along with delivering in-game highlights for each game. This is in addition to the Wednesday and Sunday national games currently promoted by to its fans in partnership with. will also provide condensed games, "Best of the Day" and "Best of the Week" top plays and postgame highlights. also will continue to bring fantasy hockey highlights and our season-long game to fans around the world. "This alliance brings us one step closer to providing fans a live professional sporting event every day, on , completely frictionless and for free - no cable subscription or authentication required," said , VP, Media Partnerships at. "We remain committed to delivering the best digital content to our users and advertisers, and the NHL's premium content nicely complements our offering of live and on-demand partner content, including Yahoo/MLB's Game of the Day, content and our recently announced deal with the TOUR. " Building on the success of the NFL live stream on which drew more than 15 million viewers, is introducing new video advertising opportunities that will run within commercial breaks during the live streams of live sporting events, which includes and MLB games. Brands will have new ways to connect directly with an engaged audience of sports fans around this live video programming on , while using Yahoo's audience insights and retargeting capabilities to engage with viewers after a game concludes. The (NHL®), founded in 1917, consists of 30 , with players from more than 20 countries represented across team rosters, competing for the most revered trophy in professional sports - the Stanley Cup®. Each year, the entertains hundreds of millions of fans around the world. The League broadcasts games in more than 160 countries and territories through its rightsholders including /NBCSN in the , Sportsnet and in , and Viasat in the. The reaches fans worldwide with games available online in every country including via its live and on-demand streaming service NHL. TV™. Fans are engaged across the League's digital assets on mobile devices via the free app; across nine social media platforms; on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio™, and on NHL.com, available in eight languages and featuring an enhanced statistics platform powered by SAP, providing the definitive destination for hockey analytics. A historic media rights partnership between the and MLBAM has transformed the fan experience across the League's digital and broadcast assets, with an emphasis on deeper access into the game and enhanced storytelling. To celebrate the NHL's international diversity, the World Cup of Hockey will return in September, 2016, a best-on-best international tournament featuring eight teams comprised of the world's best hockey players. On Founder's Day in , the League will celebrate its Centennial anniversary, commemorating 100 years of hockey. The is committed to giving back to the community through programs including: Hockey is for Everyone™ which supports nonprofit youth hockey organizations across ; Hockey Fights Cancer™ which raises money and awareness for hockey's most important fight; NHL Green™ which is committed to the pursuit of sustainable business practices; and a partnership with the , which is committed to supporting the LGBT community and fighting homophobia in sports. For more information, visit NHL.com. and the NHL Shield are registered trademarks of the. All Rights Reserved. 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).

2016-04-23 15:29 investor.yahoo.net

97 Yahoo - Yahoo to Participate at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- (NASDAQ:YHOO) CFO will participate in a question- and-answer session at the Morgan Stanley in . The session is scheduled to begin on , at / . A live webcast of the session will be available on the Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/events.cfm? CalendarID=5. 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). is the trademark and/or registered trademark of All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

2016-04-23 15:29 investor.yahoo.net

98 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.

2016-04-23 15:29 investor.yahoo.net

99 Backlash after Barack Obama EU referendum intervention US President Barack Obama has been accused of doing Downing Street's bidding - after he said the UK would be at "the back of the queue" for American trade deals if it left the EU. Mr Obama was criticised by pro-Brexit campaigners after he warned of the consequences of the UK leaving the EU. UKIP's Nigel Farage said Mr Obama was "talking down Britain", while Tory Liam Fox said his views were "irrelevant". Mr Obama, on a three-day UK visit, will meet Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn later. In a speech in London, the US president urged young people to "reject pessimism and cynicism" and to "know that progress is possible and our problems can be solved". "Progress is not inevitable," he said and must be fought for. "Take a longer, more optimistic view of history. " Mr Obama's intervention on the EU issue came on his first full day in the UK and comes just weeks ahead of the 23 June in-out referendum. Speaking at a joint news conference with Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday, Mr Obama said the US "wants Britain's influence to grow - including within Europe". "The UK is at its best when it's helping to lead a strong European Union. It leverages UK power to be part of the EU. "I don't think the EU moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it. " BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said Mr Obama's message on trade was "very blunt" and "really upped the ante" in the referendum debate. Leave campaigner Mr Farage drew attention to the US president's terminology, saying his use of the phrase "back of the queue" rather than the more common American vernacular "back of the line" suggested Mr Obama was doing the prime minister's "bidding". "I think that's shameful," he added. Mr Fox said Mr Obama would be leaving the White House soon, and therefore his comments were "largely irrelevant". Conservative MP Dominic Raab labelled Mr Obama a "lame-duck American president doing an old British friend a political favour". Downing Street rejected suggestions that any lines had been fed to Mr Obama, saying the US president spoke for himself. Sir Andrew Cahn, a former chief executive of UK Trade & Investment, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Britain would "miss out on something very important and valuable" if it left the EU and was not part of a proposed trade deal between the bloc and the US. Former foreign secretary Lord Owen said "Britain needs to create new markets away from the EU". Meanwhile, another prominent Leave campaigner - former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith - has tried to move the referendum debate on to immigration. In an article in the Daily Mail, he says the introduction of a national living wage - a move he supported while in government - will "surely lead to another stampede to our borders". He adds: "To make the Living Wage work for British people, we need to be able to control the number of people coming in. " Earlier on Saturday, Mr Obama visited the Globe Theatre, where celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death are taking place. He watched actors perform several scenes from Hamlet, later joining them on stage. "That was wonderful. I didn't want it to stop," he said. Later, he will hold talks with Labour leader Mr Corbyn. The UK's EU vote: All you need to know EU for beginners: A guide Is Britain safer in or out of the EU? A-Z guide to EU-speak Who's who: The Vote Leave team Who's who: The Remain campaign

2016-04-23 11:50 BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

100 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.

2016-04-23 15:29 investor.yahoo.net

Total 100 articles. Created at 2016-04-23 18:04