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I don't think it's too much to ask when you are working nights to be able to park at your place of work.
In April last year, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board and Indigo agreed a new set of measures to improve car parking on the University Hospital of Wales site.
As a gesture of goodwill towards car park users, parking charge notices issued up to the end of March 2016 were cancelled.
In addition, the cost of a Parking Charge Notice was reduced to £10, if paid within 14 days.
Despite this, a number of people refused to pay for parking at the site.
They also ignored the resulting PCNs and declined to use the formal appeals process.
The spokesman said the court action was taken against "persistent offenders" who flout parking rules.
"As the company responsible for managing parking and ensuring the free flow of traffic at Cardiff UHW, we have an obligation to ensure enforcement of parking restrictions," the spokeswoman said.
"For this reason, and with the full support of the health board, we took the strongest possible action against this small group of persistent offenders."
"The court's ruling has justified our decision to take this action and we hope this sends a clear message to users of the car parks at Cardiff UHW that they follow the terms and conditions for parking."
The vast majority of over 98 per cent of staff comply with the parking regulations.
It is disappointing that a few people have chosen to refuse to co-operate with the contractors Indigo Parking Services UK and have chosen to pursue this through the courts.
All staff and others visiting University Hospital Wales are encouraged to comply with the parking regulations in order for us to keep the site, safe, free- flowing and allow access to emergency vehicles and vital health services.
We are aware there are significant financial costs and the financial hardship the staff have placed themselves in.
We encourage all staff to engage with Indigo Car Parking Service UK at the earliest opportunity to avoid mounting legal and court costs.
A high proportion our staff are involved in front line clinical duties.
We have arrangements in place for vital services that require easy access quickly such as on call surgeons and midwives and those whose skills are required urgently for patient care.
The vast majority of posts are covered by shift patterns and rotas that do not require the level of urgency claimed.
New documents expose breadth of controversial New York surveillance programme targeting Muslims across state lines.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has targeted Muslim places of worship using tactics normally reserved for criminal organisations, according to newly obtained police documents.
The files, obtained by the Associated Press news agency, show police collecting license plates of worshippers, monitoring them on surveillance cameras and cataloguing sermons via an informant network.
New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, using the 1993 bombings of the World Trade Center as a precedent, called the secret operation monitoring Muslims was ``legal,'' ``appropriate'' and ``constitutional'' on Friday.
"We cannot let our guard down again. We cannot slack in our vigilance. The threat was real. The threat is real. The threat is not going away'', said Bloomberg.
NYPD spokesman, Paul Browne, also defended the tactics, telling reporters a day earlier, that the New York Police Departments' officers may go wherever the public goes and collect intelligence, even outside city limits.
The records, prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, offer the first glimpse of what those informants, known informally as "mosque crawlers," gleaned from inside the houses of worship.
As part of the monitoring scheme, the NYPD used plainclothes officers from the squad known as the Demographics Unit, to sweep Muslim neighbourhoods and catalogue the location of mosques.
The ethnic makeup of each congregation was also logged as police fanned out across the city and outside their jurisdiction, into suburban Long Island and areas of neighbouring New Jersey.
"It seems horrible to me that the NYPD is treating an entire religious community as potential terrorists,'' said civil rights lawyer Jethro Eisenstein, who reviewed some of the documents and is involved in a decades-old class-action lawsuit against the police department for spying on protesters and political dissidents.
Al Jazeera's Cath Turner, reporting live from Patterson, New Jersey, where a local mosque has been targeted by the NYPD, said the Muslim community of New Jersey, "feel betrayed by the NYPD because they say they are citizens in this country and go about living their lives and feel they have been vilified based soley because of their religion".
David Cohen, the NYPD's top intelligence officer, wanted a source inside every mosque within a 250-mile radius of New York, current and former officials said.
Though the officials said they never managed to reach that goal, documents show the NYPD successfully placed informants or undercovers, sometimes both, into mosques from Westchester County, New York, to New Jersey.
The NYPD used these sources to get a sense of the sentiment of worshippers whenever an event generated headlines.
The goal, former officials said, was to alert police to potential problems before they bubbled up.
Even when it was clear there were no links to terrorism, the mosque informants gave the NYPD the ability to "take the pulse'' of the community, as Cohen and other managers put it.
When New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor were killed on October 11, 2006, after their small plane crashed into a Manhattan bulding, the NYPD's mosque crawlers reported to police about what they heard at sermons and among worshippers though terrorism was ruled out as a cause hours after the crash.
At the Brooklyn Islamic Centre, a confidential informant "noted chatter among the regulars expressing relief and thanks to God that the crash was only an accident and not an act of terrorism", one report reads.
"The worshippers made remarks to the effect that 'it better be an accident; we don't need any more heat,'" an undercover officer reported from the Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre in Jersey City, New Jersey.
In some instances, the NYPD put cameras on light poles and trained them on mosques, documents show. Because the cameras were in public space, police didn't need a warrant to conduct the surveillance.
Police also wrote down the license plates of cars in mosque parking lots, documents show.
In some instances, police in unmarked cars outfitted with electronic license plate readers would drive down the street and record the plates of everyone parked near the mosque, former officials recalled.
"They're viewing Muslims like they're crazy. They're terrorists. They all must be fanatics", said Abdul Akbar Mohammed, the imam for the past eight years at the Masjid Imam Ali K. Muslim in Newark. "That's not right."
WASHINGTON—In a stinging report, the Justice Department watchdog said Thursday that former FBI Director James Comey was “insubordinate” in his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation during the 2016 presidential election. But it also concluded there was no evidence that Comey was motivated by political bias.
U.S. President Donald Trump has looked to the hotly anticipated report to provide a fresh line of attack against Comey and the FBI as he claims that a politically tainted bureau tried to undermine his campaign and — through the later Russia investigation — his presidency.
Clinton and her supporters, on the other hand, have complained that Comey’s later announcement, shortly before the election, that the investigation was being reopened badly hurt her chances to defeat her Republican rival.
But the nuanced findings provide no conclusions to support either Republicans or Democrats who want to claim total vindication.
The inspector general’s report concluded that Comey, who announced in the summer of 2016 that Clinton would not be charged with any crime in the email probe, departed from normal Justice Department protocol numerous times.
Trump is certain to try to use the report to validate his firing of Comey last year, an act that is central to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the president sought to obstruct justice.
But the report will likely deny the president a favoured talking point that the FBI favoured Clinton over him and that its leaders were driven by politics. It does not second-guess the FBI’s conclusion that Clinton should not have been prosecuted, despite repeated assertions by Trump and his supporters that anyone less politically connected than she would have been charged.
The conclusions were contained in a 500-page report that document in painstaking detail one of the most consequential investigations in modern FBI history and reveal how the bureau, which for decades has endeavoured to stand apart from politics, came to be entangled in the 2016 presidential election.
The report alleges a long series of misjudgments that Democrats will likely use to support their belief that Clinton was wronged by the FBI.
The watchdog faults Comey for his unusual July 5, 2016, news conference at which he disclosed his recommendation against bringing charges. Charging announcements are normally made by the Justice Department, not the FBI. Cases that end without charges are rarely discussed publicly.
In this instance, Comey said that the FBI found Clinton and her aides to be “extremely careless” in handling classified material but “no reasonable prosecutor” could have brought a case against her. At a congressional hearing last May, he said he was concerned that the Justice Department itself could not “credibly” announce the conclusion of its investigation, in part because then-attorney general, Loretta Lynch, had met aboard her plane with former president Bill Clinton.
The FBI obtained a warrant nine days before the presidential election to review those emails, found on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, and ultimately determined that there was nothing in them that changed its original conclusion.
The inspector general also faulted the FBI for failing to act with more urgency in reviewing emails from Weiner’s laptop.
FORT KNOX, Ky. -- Command Sgt. Maj. Lynice Thorpe-Noel assumed responsibility of the Army's Human Resources Command (HRC) Thursday, as its first female senior enlisted advisor.
During a ceremony hosted by Maj. Gen. Jason T. Evans, HRC commanding general, held on Fort Knox, Jan. 17, Command Sgt. Maj. Wardell Jefferson officially relinquished his duties to Thorpe-Noel.
"It is an honor to lead and continue the legacy of the 15 Command Sergeants Major before me who represented and cared so well for our Soldiers and civilians," Thorpe-Noel said. "My focus is on motivating, inspiring, and leading from the front while supporting my Commander to advance HRC's priorities. Through modernization, reform, talent management initiatives, and most importantly, taking care of Soldiers we will realize the future of Army readiness."
Thorpe-Noel, who spent the last few years as the HRC Enlisted Personnel Management Directorate sergeant major, now takes on the leading enlisted role for HRC. The command conducts distribution, strategic talent management, and information technology for a full spectrum of human resources programs and services, Army wide. Those programs and services enable the Army to deploy, fight and win our nation's wars.
"The main focus from my foxhole is setting the right environment for ambitious strategic thinkers to optimize the Army's lethality; getting the right Soldiers, with the right capabilities, in the right position at the right time. What we do at HRC is critical to the overall mission of America's Army," she said.
"This may sound simple, but there is an art and science to getting human resources right and our team does just that on a daily basis."
In terms of the direction she sees HRC and the Army going, Thorpe-Noel said readiness is key.
"We are the execution arm of Army G-1. Our collective efforts will result in the implementation of IPPS-A, providing more tools in our manager's tool kit to support the officer and enlisted talent management market places," she said. "As talent managers we need to be ambitious in our strategic thinking. Let's envision a future for Army human resources which optimizes talent management and make adjustments now to realize success. Preparation is essential to readiness."
Jefferson, who assumed responsibility of HRC in August of 2015, now heads to the Pentagon where he will serve as the Sergeant Major for the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, G-1.
Under his watch, HRC was instrumental in the formation and manning of Security Force Assistance Brigades. He spearheaded the Enlisted Talent Management system which optimized readiness and leader development through force alignment and career management. Jefferson continues to work in unison with Army G-1 in the development, fielding and roll-out of the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army.
"One of the biggest initiatives that we accomplished as a team during my tour as the HRC CSM is improving the way we manage the enlisted population. Although Talent management (TM) doesn't fall completely on the shoulders of HRC, we do play an important role in that," Jefferson said.
Jefferson also said he feels his transition to G-1 will be seamless.
"Our missions go hand in hand," he said. "G-1 writes policy and HRC executes it. This requires a considerable amount of communication, and day-to-day interaction between senior leaders. We have improved and maintained that over the past 3 plus years."
With Jefferson's tenure coming to a close and Thorpe-Noel's just beginning, Thorpe-Noel sees a bright future for the Soldiers in her care and for the next generation of Army leaders.
"Our nation's strength stems from its diversity and that diversity should be reflected in the ranks of our Army. That's what the American people expect - Soldiers and leaders who look like themselves and their loved ones - and that's what they will get from HRC," Thorpe-Noel said.
"In America's Army, the only barriers that exist are the ones that Soldiers choose to see. I think if you choose to ignore those barriers, you can realize endless possibilities."
The Indiana Statehouse as seen from Monument Circle in Indianapolis.
A bill that would allow Gary’s Majestic Star casino to move from its port on Lake Michigan’s shoreline passed the Indiana House Monday despite objections from Region lawmakers that it would harm Hammond and East Chicago.
The Indiana House of Representatives passed a gaming bill that would allow the Majestic Star to move to a land-based location if Spectacle Entertainment, the owner of the casinos, pays the state $50 million. The House voted 78-15 to pass the bill.
“I don’t think it’s fair to change the rules in the middle of the game,” said Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon, D-Munster.
“That hasn’t happened in Gary,” Candelaria Reardon said.
Should the Majestic Star move to a land-based location, Spectacle would have to surrender one of its two gaming licenses. A second license could move to Vigo County and operators would bid for it.
As the bill moved through the committee process, legislators stripped out hold harmless provisions that would have provided a level of financial support to Hammond and East Chicago, should those casinos see a loss because of a relocated Majestic Star.
Rep. Earl Harris, D-East Chicago, had tried to put hold harmless provision back in the bill, but did manage to amend the bill with a program that could give casino workers in East Chicago or Hammond a route to work at a new facility should they lose their jobs at the neighboring boats.
Rep. Carolyn Jackson, D-Hammond, said she wants Gary to prosper but not at the cost to Hammond and East Chicago. Jackson said an intermodal facility would bring longer trains to the area and it could block in parts of Hammond and East Chicago.
“I urge you not to support this bill,” Jackson said.
The proposed gaming bill is part of Gary’s plan to redevelop Buffington Harbor, where Majestic’s two boats are now docked. If the casinos are allowed to move, Gary is looking at an intermodal facility at Buffington Harbor.
“The city of Gary and the people of Gary are asking us to move these boats,” said Rep. Robert Morris, R-Fort Wayne.
Rep. Vanessa Summers, D-Indianapolis, said she for years watched former Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, and Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, try anything to get new development in their city.
The Indiana Senate in February passed the bill by a 38-11 vote.
The Indiana Gaming Commission in March approved the sale of the Majestic Star to Spectacle. The company has not disclosed the sale price.
Majestic Star LLC has held one of the Gary gaming licenses since the state first allowed the boats to open in 1990s. The Majestic Star company later bought the second license from Trump, which first opened a neighboring Gary casino operation.
The question of whether Indiana will allow sports betting by mobile devices — another part of the gaming bill -- is still up for debate in the state Legislature.
The bill includes limiting the legalization of sports wagering to casino sites. The state Senate previously supported permitting online sports betting , so lawmakers face a deadline later this month for reaching agreement on what to allow.
Rock duo The White Stripes have cancelled their fall tour due to illness. A statement on the band’s website cites drummer Meg White’s ‘acute anxiety’ as a cause for the cancellation."Meg White is suffering from acute anxiety and is unable to travel at this time," the duo said in a posting on their Web site. "We hate to let people down and are very sorry."She and Jack White were supposed to hit the road to support their latest album ‘Icky Thump.’ The US tour was slated to start tomorrow in New Mexico, making at a stop at this weekend’s Austin City Limits festival, and run through October ending in Hawaii.No word on if or when the band will reschedule the show, but ticket holders can get refunds.
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A newly restored facility in Stowmarket is set to more than double the amount of council-funded homeless accommodation in Mid Suffolk.
The Foyer on Hill Rise, previously owned by Flagship Housing, has been purchased and repaired by Mid Suffolk District Council (MSDC) in an effort to transform the site into a place of security for vulnerable people.
The facility, which has been unused for over a year, will now provide accommodation for 17 struggling families and individuals while the council investigates their housing requirements.
The Foyer will provide a mix of single, double and twin rooms and enables the council to avoid overcrowding by placing larger families in more than one room.
The council claims that the location and capacity of the building will allow more families to remain in the area and gives children the option to be in close proximity to their school.
MSDC hopes that this, in turn, will help to reduce the amount of stress placed on families without a stable home.
The scheme will provide accommodation for local people in need who meet certain criteria from September.
“Being homeless or under the threat of homelessness is distressing for any family and to remain in the area you know helps.
John Matthissen, opposition Green group councillor and representative for the Onehouse ward at MSDC, said he was pleased to hear the news.
“It’s very welcome and long overdue,” he said.

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