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INEOS Group News Group News Solvay and INEOS submit application to European Commission for clearance of proposed joint venture
Solvay and INEOS submit application to European Commission for clearance of proposed joint venture
Further to the signing of a letter of intent to form a 50/50 Joint Venture, INEOS and Solvay have submitted their application for competition clearance to the European Commission.
The Commission will now consider the application and determine whether the Joint Venture can proceed as proposed.
In addition to competition clearance from the European Commission and other relevant authorities, the proposed transaction is subject to the applicable information/ consultation procedures with employee representatives in the countries involved. These processes are currently under way.
After completion of such procedures, the parties intend to enter into legally-binding agreements to form the Joint Venture subject to customary closing conditions.
INEOS and Solvay will continue to run their PVC businesses separately until completion of the transaction, which is dependent on the above approvals and procedures.
Contacts at INEOS:
Richard Longden
Craig Welsh
+ 44 19 28 511 528
Louise Calviou
Contacts at Solvay:
Lamia Narcisse
Caroline Jacobs
Maria Alcon-Hidalgo
Edward Mackay
As an international chemical group, SOLVAY assists industries in finding and implementing ever more responsible and value-creating solutions. The Group is firmly committed to sustainable development and focused on innovation and operational excellence. Solvay serves diversified markets, generating 90% of its turnover in activities where it is one of the top three worldwide. The group is headquartered in Brussels, employs about 29,000 people in 55 countries and generated 12.4 billion euros in net sales in 2012. Solvay SA SOLB.BE) is listed on Nyse Euronext in Brussels and Paris (Bloomberg: SOLB.BB - Reuters: SOLBt.BR).
INEOS is a global manufacturer of petrochemicals, speciality chemicals and oil products. It comprises 15 businesses each with a major chemical company heritage. Its production network spans 51 manufacturing facilities in 11 countries throughout the world. INEOS products make a significant contribution to saving life, improving health and enhancing standards of living for people around the world. Its businesses produce the raw materials that are essential in the manufacture of a wide variety of goods: from paints to plastics, textiles to technology, medicines to mobile phones - chemicals manufactured by INEOS enhance almost every aspect of modern life.
Headquarters: 38 Hans Crescent. Knightsbridge. London SW1X 0LZ. UK. INEOS is a Registered Trademark, the property of INEOS Capital Limited.
INEOS is a global manufacturer of petrochemicals, speciality chemicals and oil products. It comprises 36 businesses each with a major chemical company heritage. Its production network spans 194 sites in 29 countries throughout the world.
INEOS at a glance
INEOS TV
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Technical Guidance Note (Level 2, No. 22): Workmanship and quality inspections by the structural eng
Author: Chris O'Regan
Technical Guidance Note (Level 2, No. 22): Workmanship and quality inspections by the structural engineer during construction
Chris O'Regan
Inspection of works on site during construction is a high-risk activity which requires skill and experience. Inspections are of the utmost importance as they help to reduce the risk of defects being present within the structure of the building – although they can never guarantee it. They should only be performed by those who are familiar with the design of the works and the limitations of construction methods.
The construction phase of a project is the stage where its design is implemented. Unforeseen variables have an impact on the assumptions made and changes may occur to the original design. Workmanship is also important, as the structural model used in design assumes good practice will be followed on site. For materials for which the partial factors used in design vary depending on the level of workmanship/supervision, it is essential to confirm that design assumptions have not been jeopardised.
It is typically the responsibility of the main contractor, supported by the specialist contractors’ designers, to ensure that the works are delivered in accordance with the design documentation.
The principal way workmanship is assured is through supervision and oversight by the main contractor. Any inspection carried out by the client’s design team, including by the structural engineer, will be in addition to the contractor’s monitoring of progress of the works. Nonetheless, it is good practice for such supplemental inspections to occur.
Before attending site, it is important that the inspecting engineer understands the scope of the site inspection and its purpose; any review can only be based on a sampling of the works that are available at the time. Where intrusive works are required to achieve the objective of the inspection, the inspecting engineer must provide a detailed specification of what is to be done. Before attending site, they should confirm that the necessary opening-up works have been completed.
This Technical Guidance Note concerns the inspection of structural elements that are typically present within buildings during their construction and/or alteration. It describes the elements, aspects of the elements which consistently prove to be problematic and, to some extent, how to detect defects. The note assumes that the inspecting engineer has suitable levels of competency.
It should also be borne in mind that, no matter who is employing the engineer, they have a duty of care to the public to ensure a building is safe.
This note contains an error in Figure 2. The figure describes the indentation pattern on the surface of the concrete as ‘plastic settlement’, when in fact it is the far more common and benign effect of ‘reinforcement ripple’.
Further information on reinforcement ripple can be found in Concrete Advice Sheet No. 6 Reinforcement ripple, and further information on plastic settlement can be found in Technical Report 22 Non-structural cracks in concrete. Both texts are published by the Concrete Society.
Technical Guidance Note (Level 2, No. 17): Simple connections in steel frames
This Technical Guidance Note aims to clarify the term 'simple connection' by explaining its use when designing connections within steel frames. Additionally, guidance is offered on different types of simple connection and the design checks that need to be carried out.
Author - C. O'Regan (AECOM)
Technical Guidance Note (Level 2, No. 18): Design of unreinforced masonry retaining walls
This Technical Guidance Note is intended to act as an aide to those seeking to design an unreinforced masonry retaining wall. Following this guidance will prevent cracking and ensure that the wall performs as originally intended. The note will not cover the design of reinforced masonry retaining walls and variants of that form. Such reinforcement typically strengthens the wall itself against induced bending stresses and the wall’s geometry will therefore be somewhat different to that of an unreinforced retaining wall. The note will also not discuss the applied actions that a retaining wall will be subjected to, nor the construction of retaining walls. These subjects have previously been covered in the following Technical Guidance Notes: Level 1, No. 8: Derivation of loading to retaining structures and Level 1, No. 33: Retaining wall construction. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the content of both these notes.
Technical Guidance Note (Level 2, No. 16): Design of reinforced concrete bored piles
Piled foundations are one of the first aspects of scheme design a structural engineer needs to consider during a project's development. It is at this crucial stage that, without any specialist input, the structural engineer must make recommendations based on the typically limited knowledge they have on the subject. This Technical Guidance Note describes the method by which bored piles are designed using the current UK codes of practice, i.e. BS EN 1997 (Eurocode 7). It explains how to interpret soil conditions and design piles to match what has been discovered following a site investigation. The note does not address the types of piling systems that are available, nor the technical issues concerning their installation; these questions are covered in Technical Guidance Note Level 1, No. 23 Introduction to piling . The note explains how to design what is essentially a buried column of concrete to resist forces from the superstructure that are applied to it. It concerns the design of a single pile and not one that is part of a group. For information on how grouped piles differ in their design approach, the reader is directed to Cl. 6.3.3 of BS 8004:2015. (This article was update on 9 March 2018 to correct an error in Table 6.)
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Chams Plc has assured its channel partners of better business deals ahead, according to the Group Managing Director, Mr. Demola Aladekomo.
He gave this assurance at the one-day forum for the company’s channel partners at the just concluded CardExpo in Lagos.
While singling out DataCard, one of the partners, Mr. Aladekomo noted that their partnership has been in existence for decades, saying that with collaboration current growing between the two companies, the firm has become the largest electronic card centre in the country.
Regional Manager for Africa at DataCard, Mr. Ian Brown, said that it was exciting to note that their partnership exceeds decades and called for continuous upholding of the modalities that made the partnership a success in the past.
Meanwhile, Chams Nigeria Plc, weekend, finalized plans to deploy additional thousands of Paymaster brand of Point-of-Transaction (PoT) terminals across the country, worth millions of Naira.
This follows conclusion of discussions with its international partners: Daewoo Corporation and Bitel, both from South Korea.
Upon this completion, Paymaster Limited, a subsidiary of Chams dedicated to providing electronic payment solutions, is expected to commence immediate deployment of the terminals to different merchants for use in their outlets.
Currently, Paymaster has deployed over a 1,000 PoT terminals at various merchant sites including supermarkets, eateries, restaurants, bars and other sites.
The Acting Managing Director, Paymaster Limited, Mr. Charles Uwagbale, said the development, affords the firm to embark on more new projects.
Uwagbale noted that the firm believes that the next area of growth in the Nigerian electronic payment sector was that of PoT terminals, which have been slow to catch on partly due to challenges with telecommunications network as well as the limited education on the benefits of the system.
He also said that Nigerians would experience greater convenience in business transaction once they embraced the use of PoT terminals, especially as this would result of increased cashless transaction.
“Nigerians have embraced ATM cards use in a very impressive manner in the last five years. However, we believe that the revolution cannot be complete without an effective cashless system based on the use of PoT terminals. This is what Chams through Paymaster intends to deliver in the country over the next few months,” he said.
Uwagbale equally disclosed that the choice of Bitel and Daewoo as its international project partners was based on their years of experience as well as the proven reliability of the solutions they provide.
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9 January Events
January 9 is the ninth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
475 – Byzantine Emperor Zeno is forced to flee his capital at Constantinople, and his general, Basiliscus gains control of the empire.
681 – Twelfth Council of Toledo: King Erwig of the Visigoths initiates a council in which he implements diverse measures against the Jews in Spain.
1127 – Jin–Song Wars: Invading Jurchen soldiers from the Jin dynasty besiege and sack Bianjing (Kaifeng), the capital of the Song dynasty of China, and abduct Emperor Qinzong of Song and others, ending the Northern Song dynasty.
1150 – Wanyan Liang and other court officials murder Emperor Xizong of Jin. Wanyan Liang succeeds him as emperor.
1349 – The Jewish population of Basel, believed by the residents to be the cause of the ongoing Black Death, is rounded up and incinerated.
1431 – Judges' investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc begin in Rouen.
1760 – Ahmad Shah Durrani defeats the Marathas in the Battle of Barari Ghat.
1788 – Connecticut becomes the fifth state to ratify the Constitution.
1792 – Treaty of Jassy between Russian and Ottoman Empire is signed.
1793 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.
1799 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain's war effort in the Napoleonic Wars.
1806 – Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul's Cathedral.
1816 – Sir Humphry Davy tests his safety lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery.
1822 – The Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese King João VI, beginning the Brazilian independence process.
1839 – The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.
1857 – The 7.9 Mw Fort Tejon earthquake shakes Central and Southern California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent).
1858 – Anson Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas, commits suicide.
1861 – American Civil War: "Star of the West" incident occurs near Charleston, South Carolina.
1861 – Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War.
1878 – Umberto I becomes King of Italy.
1894 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.
1903 – Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, becomes the second Governor-General of Australia.
1909 – Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km; 112 mi) from the South Pole, the farthest anyone had ever reached at that time.
1914 – Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., the first historically black intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity to be officially recognized at Howard University, is founded.
1916 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli concludes with an Ottoman Empire victory when the last Allied forces are evacuated from the peninsula.
1917 – World War I: The Battle of Rafa is fought near the Egyptian border with Palestine.
1918 – Battle of Bear Valley: The last battle of the American Indian Wars.
1921 – Greco-Turkish War: The First Battle of İnönü, the first battle of the war, begins near Eskişehir in Anatolia.
1923 – Juan de la Cierva makes the first autogyro flight.
1923 – Lithuanian residents of the Memel Territory rebel against the League of Nations' decision to leave the area as a mandated region under French control.
1927 – A fire at the Laurier Palace movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, kills 78 children.
1941 – World War II: First flight of the Avro Lancaster.
1945 – World War II: The Sixth United States Army begins the invasion of Lingayen Gulf.
1957 – British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden resigns from office following his failure to retake the Suez Canal from Egyptian sovereignty.
1960 – President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opens construction on the Aswan Dam by detonating ten tons of dynamite to demolish twenty tons of granite on the east bank of the Nile.
1961 – British authorities announce they have uncovered the Soviet Portland Spy Ring in London.
1964 – Martyrs' Day: Several Panamanian youths try to raise the Panamanian flag in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone, leading to fighting between U.S. military and Panamanian civilians.
1965 – The Mirzapur Cadet College formally opens for academic activities in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
1991 – Representatives from the United States and Iraq meet at the Geneva Peace Conference to try to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
1992 – The Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaims the creation of Republika Srpska, a new state within Yugoslavia.
1992 – The first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail. They discovered two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12.[1]
1996 – First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launch a raid against the helicopter airfield and later a civilian hospital in the city of Kizlyar in the neighboring Dagestan, which turns into a massive hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.
2004 – An inflatable boat carrying illegal Albanian emigrants stalls near the Karaburun Peninsula en route to Brindisi, Italy; exposure to the elements kills 28. This is the second deadliest marine disaster in Albanian history.
2005 – Mahmoud Abbas wins the election to succeed Yasser Arafat as President of the Palestinian National Authority, replacing interim president Rawhi Fattouh.
2005 – The Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the Government of Sudan sign the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end the Second Sudanese Civil War.
2007 – Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.
2011 – Iran Air Flight 277 crashes near Orumiyeh in the northwest of the country, killing 77 people.
2014 – An explosion at a Mitsubishi Materials chemical plant in Yokkaichi, Japan, kills at least five people and injures 17 others.
2015 – The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are both killed after a hostage situation; a second hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurs at a Jewish market in Vincennes.
2015 – A mass poisoning at a funeral in Mozambique involving beer that was contaminated with Burkholderia gladioli leaves 75 dead and over 230 people ill.[2]
9 January Births
9 January Deaths
29 January Deaths
29 January Births
History & Traditions | More News
19 June Births
19 June Events
14 September Events
14 September Births
14 September Deaths
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Nuns say critical scene in ‘Philomena’ was made up
Pathé says substance of Irish mother’s quest for lost son is ‘materially true’
Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 01:00
Sr Hildegarde McNulty with Michael Hess at Seán Ross Abbey, Roscrea, in 1993.
In the growing panoply of Irish religious villains on screen, none is more chillingly depicted than Sr Hildegarde McNulty in the movie Philomena.
Portrayed as a vindictive younger nun who forces Philomena Lee to give up her three-year-old son for adoption in 1955, she is shown in the film’s climactic scene as mellowing nothing with age.
Accused by the journalist Martin Sixsmith – played by Steve Coogan – of thwarting attempts to reunite mother and son, she responds: “Let me tell you something. I have kept my vow of chastity my whole life. Self-denial and mortification of the flesh is what brings us closer to God. Those girls have nobody to blame except themselves.”
Even in a film that brings the viewer through an emotional wringer, the scene has the power to shock. Except the meeting couldn’t have happened. Sr Hildegarde died in 1995. Mr Sixsmith did not start helping Philomena Lee find her son until 2004. Tragically Anthony Lee, who became Michael Hess, died from Aids before mother and son could be reunited.
The Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who ran the mother and baby home at Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea have accused the filmmakers of being misleading and say the real Sr Hildegarde helped many mothers to become reunited with their children.
The filmmakers Pathé responded by stating that Philomena is “not a documentary. The factual scenarios have been changed but we believe the substance of the story to be materially true.”
The real Sr Hildegarde provokes strong emotions in those who knew her, as judged by contributors to the RTÉ Liveline radio programme recently.
Manus O’Riordan, whose late wife was born in the abbey, said Sr Hildegarde lied to his wife about where her mother was from and he said there was a “sense of evil” about her. Another caller who was born in the abbey said she found Sr Hildegarde to be co-operative.
Audio clips of a RTÉ interview recorded in 1986 with Sr Hildegarde portray a woman weeping over many of the mothers who were in her care.
The controversy has, if anything, enhanced the draw of the filmwhich has taken £7.1 million (€8.5 million) at the UK box office and more than €1 million in Ireland to date.
Mr Sixsmith’s book says both Lee and her son, who become chief counsel to the Reagan and Bush administrations, visited the abbey looking for each other in 1977, yet Sr Hildegarde never passed the information on. However, the congregation’s spokeswoman, Sr Julie Rose, says there is no record of any meeting between Lee and the nuns in 1977. Neither is there any record of meetings between the nuns and Hess and his adoptive sister, Mary, who was also born in the abbey. “We do hold a view as regards the veracity of a number of statements in the book,” she said.
Mr Sixsmith said Philomena Lee was meticulous in keeping in touch with the abbey over the years. His book contains a photograph of Hess with Sr Hildegarde at the abbey in 1993 when he was dying from Aids. He died in 1995.
Another point of controversy is the claim that the nuns were selling babies, through the cover of donations, to rich Catholic couples in the United States.
The allegation is denied by Sr Julie. “No children were sold by any mother or the congregation, to any party, nor did the congregation receive any monies in relation to adoptions while we were running the mother and baby home.”
The investigative journalist Mike Milotte, who wrote the book Banished Babies, says Sr Hildegarde had admitted that adoptive donations constituted the largest source of income to the abbey. She is described in the book as one of the “three most important people in the Irish adoption picture” and the nuns at Roscrea sent 450 children to America.
Mr Sixsmith estimated that the Hess family in St Louis paid about $2,000 for Michael and Mary at the time, an enormous sum in 1955. Furthermore, when a dying Hess requested to be buried in the grounds of the abbey, the nuns solicited a substantial donation from him.
Sr Julie has pointed out that the congregation ran the home on behalf of the State at a time when single mothers were often shunned by their families.
When asked what she would have to say to women such as Lee now, she responded: “We understand that it was a distressing and traumatic experience for them to give up their children for adoption and we feel great sympathy for them.”
Absent from the statement is any expression of sorrow or remorse, according to Mr Sixsmith. “They could just say ‘sorry’. These things were done in a different time, but you would have thought that an apology surely would be the first step in healing all these wounds. Sympathy is not the same as saying sorry.”
Bryan Walsh
Hildegarde Mcnulty
Hildegarde Sr
Julie Rose Sr
Manus O Riordan
Mike Milotte
Philomena Lee
Sean Ross Abbey
Hess Oil
New labour rights on remote-working to be in place by year-end, says Varadkar
Church Notes
Week beginning Saturday December 26th, 2020
Week beginning Saturday, December 5th, 2020
Week beginning Saturday, September 5th, 2020
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Game of Thrones is probably the most popular and critically acclaimed American fantasy drama television series. The series premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17, 2011, and concludes with its eighth season premiering in 2019. Adapted and created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, Game of Thrones is based on A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin’s fantasy novel series. [wikipedia]
Tyrion Lannister and one of the dragons
Awe and Brutality
I must confess it’s slow-paced action and unclear story development puzzled and annoyed me at first. I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. Characters just talked and talked and talked and then, once I got used to them, once I felt something for them – they were killed off. One by one. Or in groups. Or on a battlefield…
I don’t mind killings – that is one of the best things about Game of Thrones. It’s realistic – once the mistake is made – the character pays a price for it. And it doesn’t matter if the viewers loved or hated them, all that matters – circumstances and how smart the characters were. It also follows the books very closely and depicts the fantasy world the way it’s described in the novels.
The problem with the show (at least with the first 3-4 seasons) is the lack of visual adaptation and editing. Dialogs were very long and elaborate, story progression was too slow and the scenes relied solely on actors abilities, filming locations and sets. At first Game of Thrones had that feel of a historical costume drama that was filmed at least 10 years ago and for the longest time, it didn’t employ enough fantasy elements to legitimately call itself a fantasy series.
Game of Thrones. Jon Snow’s death. Season 6.
With time the series grew to be something truly majestic and the first seasons now seem as a well-planned build-up and the story progression is clear. With fewer characters, there’s more focus on each of them and the fictional lands of Westeros developed into the proper fantasy world.
However, fans of the series are noticing new problems with the show. It’s running ahead of the books now and many creative choices are thrown into the story without the usual backbone that the novels used to give. Plot holes and time-related issues appear and something that Game of Thrones used to be proud of – coherent and well-thought-out storyline isn’t as good and impeccable as it used to be.
In the mythical continent of Westeros throughout its Seven Kingdoms, there is just one thing that everybody wants. The Throne. The key players are nine noble families battling for the ultimate power. Bloodline, legitimacy, fortune, people’s support, military power – they all have their own claims and strengths. Throughout the seasons Westeros becomes a bloodbath with very little survivers. The series is best known for it’s slow paced but intriguingly twisted plot, political intrigues, shocking outcomes, incest and deaths of the main characters, impressive and realistic battle sequences and historical symbolism.
Game of Thrones. Seasons 1-6 DVD set
[Total_Soft_Poll id=”13″]
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Soft drinks companies home in on Hispanics
Soft Drinks International12 July 2005
The Hispanic community is a large and growing ethnic group within the US population and a consumer segment that soft drinks marketers are looking to tap. Hinde Liep of US market research company, Business Trend Analysts, examines how soft drinks brands are addressing this expanding market.
Among the more intriguing factors impacting consumer demand for fruit beverages in the US is the shifting of the ethnic makeup. A study by Business Trend Analysts showed the influence of the Hispanic population on product development in the US is enormous.
The ethnic group has truly emerged as a strong force in determining the growth potential for beverages. At over 35m today, the Hispanic population is projected to nearly double in size by 2012, reaching close to 20% of the total US population.
Nationally, 38% of the Hispanic population is aged under 20 and spends an average of US$375 a month - 4% more than the average for non-Hispanic teens. The beverage industry has found a niche that has yet to be fully exposed; its size and the number of countries and cultural differences that make up the group should provide manufacturer and marketers willing to listen, a world of opportunities.
The soft drinks industry is already capitalising on the tastes and preferences of the Latinos; the fruit beverage manufacturers are introducing new flavours targeted to their tastes, energy drinks and sodas are getting a 'Spanish zest', while both plain and flavoured water are growing in popularity among Hispanics.
Per capita consumption of fruit juices changed little between 1992 and 2002. Consumption, which peaked at 9.0 gallons per person in 1997, was somewhat erratic throughout the period. In 2002, consumption totalled 8.7 gallons per person. Wherever the greatest potential for growth lies, the leading suppliers jump on the bandwagon and the Hispanic group has the potential to revive the industry.
According to ACNielsen, Hispanics consume more fruit juices and drinks than African-Americans and have become a prime target for marketers. For example, Minute Maid Mifruta Flavored Fruit Drink drinks were developed with Hispanic consumers in mind. The chilled beverages will be offered in Agua de Jamaica (Hibiscus), Agua de Mango Naranja (Mango Orange), Agua de Pina (Pineapple), and Fresa (Strawberry) flavours. Lemon and lime juices are commonly used in the Hispanic community and some companies are using the lime flavour to target this particular consumer group.
Lime has also made its way into soft drinks and is becoming a favourite ingredient for both consumers and soda makers. While white America is slowly becoming wary about soda, the Hispanic population is making it a favourite in their homes. According to Beverage Digest magazine, Diet Coke with Lime has taken 0.7% of the US soft drink market in 2004, outselling both Diet Coke with Lemon and Vanilla Coke. PepsiCo has joined the lime-flavoured soft drink trend with Pepsi Lime and Diet Pepsi Lime. Also, the beverage giant will be specifically targeting the Hispanic population with Manzanita Sol, an apple-flavoured Mexican soft drink.
Demographic trends also play a major role in the New Age beverage market. Many of the products have traditionally been geared toward consumers with more active lifestyles, but manufacturers of these products are now finding buyers in the youth population as well as sports participants in older age groups. In addition, various ethnic groups, including Hispanic and black consumers, have been a major factor in the surge of energy drink introductions and sales in recent years. The US$3.6 billion sports drink market is growing 10 times faster than carbonated soft drinks.
A study on New Age beverages published by Business Trend Analysts demonstrated that lime was the No. 3 ingredient used in sports drinks, behind strawberry and orange. This research revealed that Hispanics are more inclined than any other ethnic groups to consume energy and sports drinks. Mott's Inc launched Clamato Energia, a blend of tomatoes, onions, celery, spices, and clam juice, geared toward Hispanic consumers, who consider clams to be an energizer and an aphrodisiac. South Beach Beverage Company is also targeting this specific ethnic group with its SoBe Bodacious Brew Tropical Fruit Flavored Beverage.
Gatorade, the market leader, has launched Xtremo, which has already taken 2.5% share of sports drinks. The drink was developed with flavours popular in Latin America such as citrus and mango, and will be pushed to areas heavily populated with Hispanics. Gatorade has been targeting the Spanish population with Spanish-language advertising since the 1980s. On the other hand, Powerade will start its first advertising campaign targeted to Latinos this year.
A statewide study published last year by the Public Policy Institute of California revealed that 55% of Latinos drink bottled water, compared to about 40% of whites. More specifically, it seems that English-dominant Hispanics are more likely than bilingual and Spanish-dominant Hispanics to drink bottled water: 85.1% compared to 81.2% and 62.6% respectively. In fact, it seems Latinos are overall more likely to drink bottled water because they perceive tap water as unsafe.
Sparkletts, the leader in the western US, targeted Hispanics because most Mexican immigrants to the US have experience with water problems and are accustomed to using alternative sources. The vending machines that dispense up to a gallon at a time also simplify the transaction for non-English speakers.
The consumption of bottled water in the southwest has doubled since the 1990s which might be a result of the influx of Spanish immigrants in this particular area.
Flavoured water companies are taking advantage of such factors and adding tropical flavours.
American Water Star has announced the expansion of its Hispanic beverage line-up of products. Agua Fresca Sport contains no sugar, no calories, only one carbohydrate, and is fortified with calcium and vitamins. American Water Star is also the maker of the popular Hawaiian Tropic. Geyser Fruit Beverages, a line of eight different fruit-flavoured waters which have proven to be popular with consumers includes Geyser Fruta, a Latino-orientated range of seven different fruit-flavored beverages. Geyser Fruta is made without sugar in response to the growing concern of the Hispanic population with diabetes, the leading cause of death in this ethnic group. It can be expected that as companies introduce flavours and drinks targeted to the Hispanics, they will also increasingly respond to their health concerns.
Source: Soft Drinks International
For further information on Soft Drinks International, go to www.softdrinksjournal.com
Sectors: Soft drinks
Companies: PepsiCo
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What is "exile" and who feels it?
"Exile" is a state where the AHP (Awzen, Hotem, Peh) controls the
Galgalta ve Eyanaim (GE), or that the vessels of reception control the vessels of bestowal. It is when a person has no tendency to bestow or the vessels of bestowal are not found in the feeling of exile. A person who has a point in the heart which pushes him to exit from the control of the AHP, from the control of the vessels of reception, has the feeling of exile and begins to feel the need to reach the land of Israel. Thus, if the point in the heart has not yet been revealed in a person, the person then has no requests.
What is "heaven" in spirituality and how do we imagine it?
"Heaven" is the vessel of the higher level where we are united and connected together. It is a connected group, that I describe it as being in Arvut (mutual guarantee), in perfection, which is really that way, and I am outside of it. Or it also could be that I imagine myself as being within it. But this is heaven since there is no spirituality that is ready but we draw it, we build it.
Within us there are only awakening Reshimot (reminiscences), and then a person enters Egypt and builds them with his intentions according to what he wants to have built. We build the worlds, the levels. There is only knowledge, informative data from which we build them and actually there are no worlds in front of us.
Invest, bestow
How should we prepare ourselves during the remaining days before the convention?
We always need to invest exertion, also at the convention. If I arrive at the convention and just listen and wait for others to bestow to and for me, it won't help. I must have a yearning to connect, and a readiness to act. We don't come to have fun at the convention. To the extent of the deficiency we come with, thus will be the fulfillment.
We need to prepare ourselves in the remaining time, to become familiar with the convention programs, the songs, the daily schedule, and the topics. This is so that we can be as available as possible for the inner work, i.e. to increase the desire and become included with the desire of everyone. In order to become stronger from an internal standpoint, and to be able to constantly hold the correct intention, it is suggested to go into the kitchen, since the best way to advance is to serve the many and to be at their disposal.
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Lesson 59: A Good Deal? Get It in Writing
From the Business of Business section of How You Can Avoid Legal Land Mines by Joseph S. Lyles (2003).
Dave, who was an immigrant with limited formal education, bought a taco stand from a woman who made oral representations that the business was very profitable. She used an attorney to draw up a purchase contract that detailed the series of payments Dave would have to make, but failed to include any representations about either the profitability of the business or other essential terms such as access to parking. And, unfortunately, Dave failed to have an attorney review the contract. He also failed to have an accountant look at the books for the business.
As it turned out, the business had no rights to parking. Without parking, Dave had few customers and could not attract more. In addition to the money Dave paid up front for the business, he spent a great deal of money on operating the business for several months. The business was not making any profits and he soon had to close it. Dave lost everything he paid for the business, plus the initial startup money he invested.
To add insult to injury, Dave was sued by the business seller for the remainder of the payments under the contract.
The Lesson: Be sure to include all important aspects of the deal in any written contract. If it is such a good deal, then both sides should be willing to put all the important promises and representations about it in writing. Also, keep a hard copy of the contract because electronic copies may be corrupted or destroyed.
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Lekkas, McKay, Nappier Named Mike Richter Award Semi-Finalists
by Zachary Defreitas
Springfield, Illinois – The Springfield Jr. Blues, proud members of the North American Hockey League (NAHL), are pleased to announce that three alumni have been named Semi-Finalists for the Mike Richter Award. The award is given out annually to the best goaltender in NCAA Division 1 hockey.
Stefanos Lekkas, a junior at the University of Vermont, put in a stellar campaign for the Catamounts in an otherwise disappointing season. In 34 games played, Lekkas posted a 12-19-3 record with a 2.27 goals-against average and a .930 save percentage. The Elburn, IL native ranks in the top 20 for GAA and is 5th in the nation in SV%.
Dryden McKay has been lights out this season for the Minnesota State-Mankato Mavericks. In 30 appearances he has a 21-6-2 record with a miniscule 1.72 GAA and a .928 SV%. Additionally, McKay has posted 3 shutouts in his freshmen campaign. McKay leads all freshmen netminders in wins, GAA, SV%, and shutouts. Among all division 1 goaltenders he ranks 2nd in GAA and 7th in SV%.
For all that McKay and Lekkas have accomplished this season, Tommy Nappier has been at the front of the pack all year long. In his 18 games played this season, Nappier has an 12-2-3 record with a 1.78 GAA and a .937 SV%. He ranks 2nd in SV% and 4th in GAA among all Division 1 goaltenders. But that’s not where the story ends. The St. Louis, MO native had a conference best 1.82 goals-against average and .936 save percentage in Big Ten games, while also leading the league in winning percentage (.750; 8-2-2). His goals-against average is the second-lowest in Big Ten history, with his save percentage ranking fourth all-time.
Congratulations to Stefanos Lekkas, Dryden McKay, and Tommy Nappier for their outstanding play this season!
Tagged: Dryden McKay, Stefanos Lekkas, Tommy Nappier
Jr. Blues Alumni Report – March 13th, 2019
Jr. Blues Split with Steel, Clinch Playoff Berth
Jr. Blues Alumni Report: Sep. 25th, 2019
Jr. Blues Represented at Seven NHL Development Camps
McKay Earns CHN’s 2018-19 Rookie of the Year
Jr. Blues Alumni Recap – March 27, 2019
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The All-night Sun
by: Zinna, Diane
Publisher: Random House Inc
A lonely young woman gets too close to her charismatic female student in this propulsive debut, culminating in a dangerously debauched Midsommar’s Eve.
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • “Memorable and meaningful.”—Claire Messud, New York Times bestselling author of The Burning Girl
Lauren Cress teaches writing at a small college outside of Washington, DC. In the classroom, she is poised, smart, and kind, well liked by her students and colleagues. But in her personal life, Lauren is troubled and isolated, still grappling with the sudden death of her parents ten years earlier. She seems to exist at a remove from everyone around her until a new student joins her class: charming, magnetic Siri, who appears to be everything Lauren wishes she could be. They fall headlong into an all-consuming friendship that makes Lauren feel as though she is reclaiming her lost adolescence.
When Siri invites her on a trip home to Sweden for the summer, Lauren impulsively accepts, intrigued by how Siri describes it: green, fresh, and new, everything just thawing out. But once there, Lauren finds herself drawn to Siri’s enigmatic, brooding brother, Magnus. Siri is resentful, and Lauren starts to see a new side of her friend: selfish, reckless, self-destructive, even cruel. On their last night together, Lauren accompanies Siri and her friends on a seaside camping trip to celebrate Midsommar’s Eve, a night when no one sleeps, boundaries blur, and under the light of the unsetting sun, things take a dark turn.
Ultimately, Lauren must acknowledge the truth of what happened with Siri and come to terms with her own tragic past in this gorgeously written, deeply felt debut about the transformative relationships that often come to us when things feel darkest.
Praise for The All-Night Sun
“Inventive and luminous . . . Zinna’s intimate debut dazzles with original language, emotional sentience, and Swedish folklore as it plumbs the depths of grief, loss, and friendship . . . Zinna reaches an inspired emotional depth that, as the title signifies, never stops blazing.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Diane Zinna is originally from Long Island, New York. She received her MFA from the University of Florida and went on to teach creative writing for ten years. She formerly worked at AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, which hosts the largest literary conference in North America each year. In 2014, Diane created their Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, helping to match more than six hundred writers over twelve seasons. Diane lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with her husband and daughter. The All-Night Sun is her first novel.
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Source: Tennessee assistant Ogden could be joining UNLV coaching staff
Grant Ramey
Assistant coach Chris Ogden could be leaving the Tennessee men's basketball program and joining newly hired head coach Chris Beard at UNLV, a source indicated to the News Sentinel.
The source requested anonymity because no official announcement has been made.
The Runnin' Rebels hired Beard away from Arkansas-Little Rock, where he went 30-5 in one season and made the second round of the NCAA tournament, upsetting No. 5 seed Purdue in the first round.
Tennessee finished 15-19 this season, the first under coach Rick Barnes. Ogden has been on staff with Barnes as an assistant coach the last eight seasons.
Beard is scheduled to go in front of the University of Nevada Board of Regents on Friday to get his contract approved.
Ogden's name had been previously been linked to openings at Texas-San Antonio and Stephen F. Austin.
Ogden was a student-assistant coach at Texas in 2003-04 and was an administrative assistant from 2004-08, before being promoted to assistant coach.
During a four-year playing career (2000-03) under Barnes, Ogden helped Texas to four NCAA tournaments and was a senior captain on the 2003 Final Four team.
Beard is 96-30 as a head coach. He spent two seasons at Division II Angelo State before taking over at Arkansas-Little Rock.
Beard started his coaching career as an assistant at Texas from 1991-95. He was an associate head coach at Texas Tech from 2001-11 and coached be ABA's South Carolina Warriors for one season, in 2012-13.
As a full-time assistant at Texas, Ogden helped Barnes and the Longhorns to a 155-87 record and six NCAA tournament berths.
According to Tennessee sports information, Ogden was a key component in signing six McDonald's All-Americans over his final seven seasons at Texas and was part of five recruiting classes that were ranked in the top 10 nationally by ESPN.
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Going solo: EXO's Kai 'opens' with self-titled album
Kai of K-pop boy band EXO is slated to release his first solo album "KAI" on Monday afternoon (KST). Courtesy of SM Entertainment
Kai of K-pop titan EXO is brimming with confidence on stage ― he knows how to express himself to the fullest in front of people and thanks to this ability, has enthralled a worldwide audience.
Dubbed one of the most gifted performers on the K-pop scene, Kai, whose real name is Kim Jong-in, is poised to unleash his first solo album Monday afternoon. But even for him, going solo is a nerve-racking challenge, which is why he could not hide a nervous smile during an online press conference on Monday. EXO member Baekhyun was MC.
EXO's Baekhyun, left, was MC at the online press conference. Courtesy of SM Entertainment
"I have had a lot of press events so far (since my debut in 2012), but today I am the most nervous," said Kai, 26. "I decided on a self-titled album this time because my name means 'to open' in Chinese. I thought it would be meaningful to have it as the title for my first solo effort."
He elaborated, "I want to open people's minds with the new release and show off different charms I have. Many think I am hard to approach because of EXO's 'strong' image, but I am actually not."
The singer participated in the making of "KAI" from A to Z. He selected all the tracks, took part in crafting the choreography and worked on the visual aspects.
"All songs from the album have different stories," he said. "'Hello Stranger,' for instance, is about my well of inspiration."
"Hello Stranger" is a track included on the R&B-influenced album that consists of six groovy tracks. It is fronted by the single "Mmmh," an addictive track that conveys the tale of a man who boldly approaches his crush.
Watch the MV:
"The track may sound relaxing, but there are powerful and sexy performances on the way," Kai explained.
The album ― which Kai described as a compilation of his favorite sonic and dance styles ― also contains "Nothing On Me," "Amnesia," "Reason" and "Ride Or Die."
Kai said he strived to prepare performances that match the mood of each song. In fact, the SM Entertainment star already generated buzz online earlier by unveiling "FILM: KAI," which features riveting performances for all six tracks.
Wrapping up the session, Kai revealed his high hope for EXO's activities and thanked his followers.
"EXO members have been forging their solo careers these days," he said. "So I am eager to see the synergy we will create as a group after upgrading ourselves through solo activities. I prepared the album for our fans, who have given me so much love and support. I hope it will delight them."
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Cassini's Legacy and the Atmospheric Chemistry of Titan (Video)
The mission has told us a great deal about the unique and unexpected chemistry of Saturn's moon Titan, and it has changed the way we think about our own planet and the entire solar system
Video credit: CEN Online
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15, 2017 — The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, is set to end on Sept. 15. The mission has told us a great deal about the unique and unexpected chemistry of Saturn's moon Titan, and it has changed the way we think about our own planet and the entire solar system. Learn how in this video from Speaking of Chemistry: https://youtu.be/Dee0V7axuPI.
Tags: astronomyastrophysicsatmospherechemistry Industry Newsmoonspace space research
Team Unravels Origin, Chemical Makeup of Titan's Dunes
A Study of Saturn’s Largest Moon May Offer Insights for Earth
Researchers Build Alien Ocean to Test NASA Outer Space Submarine
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Grim news on animal extinction threat greeting Japan biodiversity summit
By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times
Politicians gathering in Nagoya, Japan, for the United Nations’ 10th Convention on Biological Diversity — a summit to set conservation goals for 2020 — face grim news: Scientists have reported that one-fifth of Earth’s vertebrate species are at risk of extinction.
But the outlook for biodiversity would have been even bleaker without conservation efforts, according to the researchers, whose work was published online Tuesday in the journal Science.
“We’ve had some successes,” said study coauthor Neil A. Cox of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Conservation International. “Without conservation in place, extinctions would be much worse than they currently are.”
The International Union for Conservation of Nature periodically surveys biodiversity worldwide and categorizes species on its so-called Red List based on their extinction risk. The new update compiled data for 25,780 vertebrate species: all mammals, birds, amphibians and cartilaginous fishes — such as sharks — and about 1,500 species each of reptiles and bony fish.
Amphibians are the most endangered, with 30% of species threatened. Of mammals, reptiles and fish, 21% are threatened, as are 12% of birds. On average, 52 species of mammals, birds and amphibians move one category closer to extinction each year, the paper said.
The Red List, which draws on the expertise of about 8,000 scientists, is unusually comprehensive, scientists said. “This is really thorough coverage,” said Paul W. Leadley, a professor of ecology at the Universite Paris-Sud 11 in France.
The update includes the Red List’s first survey of conservation successes, Cox said. Sixty-eight species — mostly mammals and birds — improved in status, all but four because of conservation efforts such as hunting restrictions and controlling invasive species. Among these: the humpback whale, whose numbers have increased since the introduction of restrictions on whaling, and the California condor, which has rebounded somewhat through a captive breeding and reintroduction program.
But Leadley, who coauthored another biodiversity paper in the same issue of Science, cautioned against placing too much emphasis on efforts to save celebrity species, one by one. “The number of species facing extinction may get to the point that you can’t [address] the species individually,” he said.
He said broader efforts, including reducing climate change, deforestation and pollution, would be key in the future.
Participants in the Nagoya talks hope to establish conservation goals for 2020. The previous target, for 2010, focused on achieving “a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss.” Though that goal was not met, Cox said, his team’s research showed that it still made sense to establish new targets.
“We’ve missed the target on 2010, but if you invest in conservation, there’s gain to be made,” he said.
eryn.brown@latimes.com
Eryn Brown
Eryn Brown previously covered healthcare for the Metro desk. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in history and literature in 1993, and was a writer at Fortune magazine in New York for seven years before moving to Los Angeles. She left The Times in 2015.
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Video game sales might not be as bad as they appeared in May
By Alex Pham
May was another crushing month for video game sales. Or was it?
At first glance, the numbers look dismal. Game sales declined 16% in May to $335.2 million compared with a year earlier. Sales of game consoles and hardware peripherals dropped 23% to $261.2 million, according to the NPD Group Inc., a market research firm.
Overall sales of both hardware and games fell 19.7% to $596.4 million last month, down from $743.1 million a year earlier. Only game accessories saw an increase, fueled by gift cards for online games and brisk sales of physical toys for Activision Blizzard Inc.'s “Skylanders” game.
But those figures don’t take into account other rapidly growing segments of the game industry.
“To look at these figures in isolation and say, ‘Games are in trouble’ would be like passing judgment on the music industry based on how well CD sales are doing without considering iTunes or Spotify,” said Anita Frazier, NPD’s game analyst. “You’d be missing a large chunk of the game industry.”
Sales of games for mobile devices and social networks have exploded in recent years. And consumers are spending more on digitally downloaded games to their consoles and computers. Money spent on used games and game rentals has also increased in recent years.
Because those segments are relatively new, however, the industry has not had sufficient time to capture trend data beyond a year or two.
NPD estimated that the amount spent in May on game rentals via services such as Redbox and Gamefly was $155 million. Sales of digitally distributed games and add-on content downloads, as well as subscriptions, mobile games and social network games, totaled an additional $420 million. Because NPD has only recently begun collecting digital, social and mobile sales figures, it doesn’t have comparable year-earlier data.
Still, much of this revenue didn’t exist before 2007. That was the year Apple Inc. released its first iPhone, which now accounts for a large portion of mobile game sales. It was also the year Zynga Inc. was founded. Zynga later grew its annual revenue from social games on Facebook and elsewhere to more than $1.1 billion.
alex.pham@latimes.com
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Bestselling video games
Top 10 video games in the U.S. during May
1. “Diablo III” (Activision Blizzard)
2. “Max Payne 3" (Take-Two Interactive Software)
3. “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier” (Ubisoft Entertainment)
4. “Prototype 2" (Activision Blizzard)
5. “NBA 2K12" (Take-Two)
6. “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" (Activision Blizzard)
7. “Sniper Elite V2" (505 Games)
8. “Battlefield 3" (Electronic Arts)
9. “Dragon’s Dogma” (Capcom)
10. “Just Dance 3" (Ubisoft)
Source: NPD Group
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81 Huge cactus growing on side of house amazes residents in Tokyo, Japan
A huge cactus amazed residents in Japan after growing up the side of an apartment block and onto the roof.
The owner, Watanabe San, 89, received the columnar cactus 40 years as a gift from a friend and he planted it at his home in Tokyo.
Watanabe has used metal brackets to fix the plant to the side of the building and it has survived floods, storms and an earthquake in 2011.
While neighbours are used to the sight, pictures emerged on Twitter earlier this month and drew amazement from people in the country. They were viewed millions of times by astonished locals who were impressed with the care taken in rearing the cactus.
The stunning plant was even featured on several Japanese TV shows.
Watanabe San, who lives on the first floor of the building with his wife, said: ''My cactus has never been folded. I wanted it to keep growing tall. Even when the earthquake happened, it was not harmed.
''I check on the cactus every day and go up to the roof to tend to the blooms. I cut off the top stem because it was getting too long. Now there is a complex shape.''
Japanese TV star Dave Spector, originally from Chicago, United States, described the cactus as ''very cool'' and ''weirdly out of place''.
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Home > Our Team > Virginia Tehrani
Email: tehrani@gandvlaw.com
U.S. District Court of Maryland
George Washington University School of Law, District of Columbia; L.L.M. in Litigation and Dispute Resolution
College of William & Mary School of Law, Williamsburg, Virginia; J.D.
Middle Tennessee State University; Majors: Political Science and French
A top litigator, Virginia Vile Tehrani has received the preeminent honors of being selected as a Super Lawyer Rising Star in personal injury law in Maryland and D.C. for 2021 and in D.C. for 2020. The Super Lawyer Rising Star honor is given to outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. This award is only given to 2.5% or less of attorneys in each state. Ms. Tehrani was also selected as one of the Top 40 under 40 attorneys in Maryland for 2021 for personal injury law and for 2020 in criminal defense.
Virginia was further selected to the Leadership Montgomery Emerging Leaders program for the class of 2021 to represent her firm and her community.
These honors and awards compliment her graduation awards from the College of William & Mary School of Law, where she received the Lawrence I’Anson Award as the graduating class member who showed great promise in the legal field through scholarship, character and leadership. She was also awarded the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association Trial Advocacy Award for her great promise in the field of trial advocacy.
Virginia Vile Tehrani is a skilled and passionate trial attorney who has tried hundreds of cases and represented thousands of clients over 14 years. She started her legal practice in Virginia, both as a prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney. She has tried civil plaintiff’s injury cases, and criminal cases including murder, drug, rape, assault, DUI/DWI, and traffic cases.
Virginia is licensed to practice law in Maryland, Virginia, D.C., and the United States District Court in Maryland. She is a member of the Virginia State Bar Association, the Maryland State Bar Association, the D.C. Bar, and the Maryland Federal Bar.
Virginia excelled in her legal education, graduating summa cum laude from Middle Tennessee State University with a B.A. in political science. She attended the College of William & Mary School of Law, graduating in 2005. She also obtained an L.L.M. (Masters of Law) in Litigation and Dispute Resolution from the George Washington University School of Law. She graduated with this specialized degree with Highest Honors, achieving a 4.2 GPA.
Virginia is married with two sons. Virginia’s hobbies include baking, reading, and creating art.
Read Virginia’s Articles
Lawyers for capital murder defendant want more details
Woman denied bond in death
Hearing in overdose death case set
Man gets 18 months for knife incident, making bomb threat
Man sentenced to 30 years in prison on child porn charges
Alleged would-be bank robber deemed mentally competent for trial
Super Lawyers Rising Star, MD, Personal Injury General – Plaintiff, 2021
Super Lawyers Rising Star, D.C., Personal Injury General – Plaintiff, 2021
Top 40 under 40, Selected in Maryland Criminal Defense, 2020
Top 40 under 40, Maryland Personal Injury Litigation, 2021
Leadership Montgomery Emerging Leaders Class of 2021
Top 40 under 40, Maryland Criminal Defense, 2019
Super Lawyers Rising Star, D.C. Personal Injury, 2019
The Virginia Trial Lawyers’ Association Award, 2005, through the William & Mary College of Law for the graduating student best exemplifying the attributes of an effective trial lawyer
The Lawrence W. I’Anson Award, 2005, from the William & Mary College of Law, for a law school graduate who has shown evidence of great promise through scholarship, character, and leadership
Maryland State Bar
United States Federal Bar of Maryland
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Lopetegui: Sevilla were in the game until the end
Sevilla Discussed the loss to his former club
R. Guevara
Ramón NavarroMARCA
Real Madrid get serious with victory at Sevilla
Julen Lopetegui has insisted that his Sevilla side ran Real Madrid close during their meeting at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan on Sunday.
Karim Benzema scored the only goal of the game in the 64th minute during a fairly uneventful encounter in Seville.
"The team fought until the end and we were in the game until the end," Lopetegui told the press afterwards.
"The final ball and the final cross evaded us, it's a shame that we didn't get at least a point.
"It was an even game.
"In the first half, we lost possession more and lost it less in the second half.
"We had the idea of finishing moves, finishing with shots, stopping the transitions of Real Madrid, and it wasn't like this.
"We have to choose the final pass and the final cross better, but the team has put in a great shift.
"I really think the game was very even."
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MARGOA’s Special History
The Israelitische Alters- und Pflegeheim in Lengnau has been in existence for over 110 years, and the present direction continues to carry on this tradition successfully and with pride. It is well known that the Israelitische Alters- und Pflegeheim in the Surb Valley was established in 1903, thanks to a generous donation by the Copper-Guggenheims in the US. In 1848, the Meyer-Guggenheim family, living in poverty at the time, emigrated from Lengnau to the US. The Guggenheims still spoke their own mix of Swiss German and “Surbtaler” Yiddish well into the 20th century, and continued to send their offspring to Switzerland. By the late 19th century the Lengnau Guggenheims were one of the wealthiest families in the United States. Their donation in 1903 was not the only one; support to Lengnau in Aargau from the US came frequently during and after the Second World War — often in adventurous ways. Relations with the internationally active Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York still exist to this day. The Israelitische Alters- und Pflegeheim in Lengnau is also an important part of the “Jüdischer Kulturweg Lengnau-Endingen”, established in 2009 by former Federal Councillor Ruth Dreifuss.
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Children’s exposure to alcohol TV ads falls to 12-year low
New data shows children’s exposure to alcohol broadcast ads in 2019 fell faster than their exposure to all television advertising, but the ASA remains mindful of the shift to online.
By Charlotte Rogers 22 May 2020 12:01 am
The average amount of alcohol advertising seen by children on TV has fallen to a 12-year low, according to the latest figures published by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
In 2019, 0.8% of all TV ads seen by children were alcohol ads, a level that has remained under 1% since 2015. Children’s exposure to alcohol advertising on TV has decreased by two thirds since 2008, from an average of 2.8 to 0.9 ads seen per week.
Relative to adults, children’s exposure to alcohol ads on TV continues to fall from the peak of 41.1% in 2008 to 19.6% in 2019. This means that last year, under 18s saw, on average, one alcohol ad for every five seen by adults.
While children are watching less TV in general, their exposure to broadcast ads for alcohol is falling at a faster rate than their exposure to all television ads, according to the ASA.
“Overall children’s exposure to alcohol advertising is falling faster than their consumption of TV, so they’re seeing even fewer alcohol ads than you might expect given the amount less of TV that they’re watching,” explains ASA regulatory policy manager, Malcolm Phillips.
The number of TV ads seen by children aged four to 15 years has continued to decline since the peak in 2013, halving to an average of 115.9 ads per week in 2019. Over the same period, children’s exposure to alcohol ads on TV decreased by two thirds, while TV gambling ads decreased by just under half.
ASA: The volume of gambling ads is driving distrust of advertising
The ASA data shows that children’s exposure to gambling advertising on TV has returned to similar levels seen at the beginning of the analysis period in 2008.
In 2019 children saw, on average, 2.5 gambling ads on TV per week, compared to 2.2 gambling ads per week in 2008 and 2.7 in 2009. Children’s exposure to gambling ads peaked in 2013, at an average of 4.4 ads per week.
Gambling advertising made up less than 2% of all the TV ads seen by children during an average week every year between 2008 and 2017. However, the frequency rose to 2.2% in 2018, before dropping slightly to 2.1% in 2019.
“The per week figure has returned to levels seen at the earliest point in 2008 – 2009 and that’s despite the decline in TV viewing overall, so it’s possible to say relative to children’s viewing of television overall that they’re seeing more gambling ads proportionally. It’s still somewhere between two and three a week,” Philips explains.
Avatar technology
The ASA is clear that despite the fact TV ad rules are helping to limit children’s exposure to age-restricted advertising, it must be mindful of the shift among under 18s to online viewing habits, such as on-demand video and social media.
“We’re happy that exposure remains at stable, low levels and we know that this also tells us the importance of looking more at online. There is a clear shift in children’s media consumption that shows we should focus efforts on the online space and making sure that children are protected there too,” says Phillips.
The regulator is keen to use new technology to take a proactive approach to monitoring children’s exposure to age-restricted ads, including ramping up its use of avatar technology.
Last year the ASA banned adverts from five gambling operators using data collected by avatars simulating children’s online browsing behaviour. It was the first time the regulator had used monitoring technology to create online profiles, which tracked the adverts being served to children as young as six over a two-week monitoring period.
Philips explains that generally gambling and alcohol advertisers are complying with the rules and there are “no real alarm signs”, but that does not mean the industry can think the job is done.
“I don’t think anyone should be resting on their laurels, we know that trends can go up as well as down,” Philips adds. “There’s certainly no reason to be complacent.”
News Advertising Food & Drink
Ad watchdog uses avatars to catch gambling brands targeting children online
The ASA is using evidence gathered by new avatar technology to ban ads from five gambling brands found to be targeting children as part of a broader strategy to take a more proactive approach to policing online ads.
Have the ASA’s new gender stereotyping rulings gone too far?
Philadelphia and Volkswagen became the first brands to have ads banned under the ad regulator’s new gender rules this week but the decisions have raised questions over whether the guidelines go too far.
The ad regulator says there are concerns among the British public about the advertising of some products and services, including gambling, to vulnerable people and says the industry needs to do more to ensure that is not the case.
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Stabenow, Collins, Markey, Capito, Menendez Announce Senate Passage of Bipartisan Improving HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act
Bipartisan Improving HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act passes Senate
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Ed Markey (D-MA), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) today announced Senate passage of the bipartisan Improving HOPE (Health, Outcomes, Planning, and Education) for Alzheimer’s Act. Thanks to their successful bipartisan push in 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced in November 2016 that Medicare would begin covering new care plans in 2017, effectively implementing the HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act. The Improving HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct outreach to make more health care providers aware of this important benefit and to report back on rates of utilization and barriers to access.
“Care plans are an important tool to ensure that those living with Alzheimer’s disease and their loved ones who help care for them every day have the support they need to cope with this devastating disease,” said Senator Stabenow. “The Improving HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act will help make sure patients, their families, and their health care providers know about and can take advantage of the available resources.”
"It is imperative that those living with Alzheimer’s disease and their families receive the resources they need, including information about treatment options and what medical and community services are available,” said Senator Collins. “Fortunately, following our advocacy, CMS implemented a new rule in 2018 that allows Medicare beneficiaries to receive a care planning session. Our legislation will expand access to this service by increasing awareness of this policy change among physicians. As the Co-Chair of the Senate Alzheimer’s Task Force, I will continue to support those living with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers.”
“While we work towards the goal of finding a cure for Alzheimer’s by 2025, we must also ensure seniors with Alzheimer’s get the best care possible. Developing care plans that assist families, caregivers, and seniors understand diagnosis and available treatments helps make that happen. Enacting the Improving HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act will mean more seniors will benefit for these plans. This is an important step forward for those suffering from Alzheimer’s,” said Senator Markey.
“Delivering accessible care to those struggling with Alzheimer’s is crucial to the foundation of our families and gives hope to our loved ones. Now that certain care plans are offered, we must make sure this information is properly relayed to eligible families. The HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act successfully strengthens our outreach strategy and makes resources available to those who need it most. I’m proud to have been part of this movement since 2015 and that our legislation was included in the year-end package,” said Senator Capito.
“I know how devastating it can be, not only for our loved ones struggling with Alzheimer’s – like my mother did -- but for families trying to understand how to provide the best care possible. Although we fought to provide patients and their caregivers important services – like help in understanding a diagnosis, available treatments, and ways to manage the challenges ahead -- far too many seniors and their doctors have no idea the benefit is available. I’m thrilled to see our bill enacted so we can change that and ensure patients get the resources they need,” said Senator Menendez.
Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and more than 16 million Americans provide unpaid care for people with Alzheimer’s. The HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act requires Medicare to pay for an individual care plan for newly diagnosed Alzheimer’s patients. This benefit encourages doctors to give a clear diagnosis to patients with Alzheimer’s disease, including information about treatment options and what medical and community services are available.
In 2017, less than one percent of seniors living with Alzheimer’s disease received the care planning benefit created by the HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act. The Improving HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act requires HHS to conduct outreach to health care practitioners about comprehensive Alzheimer’s disease care planning services, including education initiatives, and materials on appropriate diagnostic evaluations and explanations of the requirements for eligibility.
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The Chinese Communist Party 1927-37 – The development of Maoism
Daniel Morley
China Chinese Revolution Chinese Revolution
As the Chinese Communist Party gathers for its 18th Congress, we look back at the 1925-27 revolution, which was a heroic attempt of the Chinese workers to follow in the footsteps of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. However, due to its unprepared and irresolute leadership, it went down to a tragic defeat. Failed revolutions are always the greatest of tragedies. However, the only way of really honouring the many victims of the counter-revolution that ensued is to study the revolution and learn from its mistakes.
The Development of Chinese Trotskyism and the Heavy Price of the Failed Revolution
It was in fact the heroic defeats of the Paris Commune and the 1905 Russian revolution that created the Bolshevik leadership capable of leading the working class to power in 1917. Marxists therefore could not allow themselves to be lost in despair over the defeat of 1927.
The task for the temporarily defeated Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was to “know how to cling to every ledge, to hold tenaciously to every point of support so as not to tumble down and be smashed” (Leon Trotsky, The Chinese Question after the 6th Congress, 1928). In other words, to hold on to its best cadres and to absorb the harsh lessons of the defeat in order to emerged strengthened once the proletariat had recovered.
The Development of Trotskyism in China
MaoBut what was unprecedented about the failure of the Chinese revolution was the new factor of the Stalinised Communist International, whose heavy hand strangled the internal life of its affiliates throughout the world. Because of this the necessary process of free internal debate, self-criticism and reorientation was artificially restricted from without, leading to an enormously distorted development for the Chinese Communist Party. But the need to change course and to understand the tragic mistakes of the party had to take place in some form.
It did so with a dual character; the bulk of the party, remaining under Moscow’s dictatorship, was destined to suffer from the demoralising experience of constant changes in and purges of the CCP’s leadership. Moscow always blamed the local leadership for each and every defeat to prevent the party from understanding the real causes of failure - the opportunism of the Moscow bureaucracy. This confusing process was destined to lead to the development of Maoism, that is the transfer of the party’s base from the working class to the peasantry, since the inability to learn the real lessons of 1927 made it impossible to ‘cling to every ledge, to hold tenaciously to every point of support’ in the cities.
However, a minority of the party, despite its immense numerical and financial weaknesses, and with all of the Comintern bureaucracy aimed against it, took onboard the need for the party to bravely and honestly tell the truth to the Chinese Communists. They understood and explained that Stalin was to blame for the fundamentally false strategy of subordination to Chiang Kai-shek; that the defeat this engendered was so severe that it would take many years for the proletariat and the labour movement to recover; and that consequently it was necessary for the CCP to soberly adapt its slogans and strategy to the new, counterrevolutionary epoch. The ultimate truth was that the Marxists of China and the world had to wage a struggle in the Communist movement against the disease of Stalinism.
These were the Chinese Trotskyists.
Students in Russia
As counterrevolution began to engulf the CCP in the course of 1926 and 1927, many of the most promising young Chinese cadres were ‘exported’ into safety in Russia. There they were enrolled in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV), which had been set up in 1921 to quickly train up cadres from the emerging Communist movement in Asia. During this period the university was headed by Karl Radek, who was an open Trotskyist and leading member of the Russian Left Opposition. He used his position amongst the Chinese students there to enrich Trotsky’s analysis of the situation in China and the errors of Stalin’s policy. He convinced wider and wider layers of these students of the correctness of the Left Opposition and the need to form a Chinese Left Opposition to combat the fatally erroneous line imposed by Moscow. The fact that he was able to do so for two years (he was expelled from his position in mid 1927) indicates that at this point the Stalinist bureaucracy had not yet conquered total control of the Russian party.
Nevertheless the weight of this bureaucracy was already suffocating, and the likes of Radek and Trotsky were swimming against a very strong stream. Thus the main reason for the success of Radek in recruiting a large layer of these students to Trotsky’s ideas was the students’ own experience, both of the falsity of Stalin’s line for China and of life in Russia itself.
Wang Fanxi, who would later go on to become a leading Chinese Trotskyist, saw the reality of Stalin’s Russia with his own eyes. Up until this point, as was the case with almost all Chinese Communists, he was blissfully unaware of the struggle being waged between revolution and counterrevolution inside the Russian Communist Party, and quite naturally assumed that Stalin was the rightful leader of Russian and world Leninism in whose hands the Chinese revolution was guaranteed.
But as he describes, immediately upon setting foot in Siberia, on his way to Moscow for the first time, Wang was forced to realise that something was unsettlingly wrong about the real Russia,
“We Chinese students occupied two sleeping compartments on the train [to Moscow]. Each compartment had an orderly to look after and keep an eye on the passengers...Ours was a middle-aged ex-Red Army man. He was agreeable and open towards us, and he looked after us very well. We became friends immediately, and he volunteered to teach us the Russian alphabet. We got on fine with him until one morning when we were sitting round in a circle, pencils in hand, practising the Russian alphabet. One of us traced out the word ‘Stalin’ in Russian. Our teacher took one look and turned away without saying anything. One of us gave him the thumbs-up sign and said: ‘Stalin! Stalin! Korosho! (good!)’. We were all grinning at our Russian friend, expecting him to react as enthusiastically as we did. To our astonishment, he stubbed out his cigarette, spat contemptuously and held up his little finger, saying ‘Eto, eto! (this one!),’ red in the face with anger. Then he raised his thumb and said ‘Trotsky! Trotsky! Khorosho!’ After that he stormed out into the corridor, where we could hear him muttering away angrily in Russian.” (Wang Fanxi, Chinese Revolutionary)
Throughout these memoirs Wang recounts the series of unexpected and shocking experiences he and many other Chinese students went through in Russia. Speeches were attended in which Trotsky and Trotskyism were denounced in the usual reassuring manner, only to be interrupted by sizeable sections of the audience screaming ‘liar!’ and ‘shame!’ and storming out. He recounts witnessing with giddy anticipation the momentous celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1927, whose enthusiastic welcoming of the Chinese revolutionaries such as himself moved him to tears, only to later discover that a Left Oppositionist counter-demonstration had been broken up, demonstrators arrested and Trotsky’s car shot at. He describes a film screening of Eisenstein’s October, in which “every time Trotsky or Stalin appeared on the screen the audience erupted. Some clapped their hands and cheered, while others whistled and stamped their feet...In this battle of decibels, the support for Trotsky was at least as loud as, if not louder than, the support for Stalin...My own admiration for Trotsky dated from the showing of that film” (Ibid).
The intense experience of these heady days, thrown as they were from a failing revolution in one country into the tumult of a climaxing struggle between revolution and counterrevolution in another country, the ‘home of revolution’ in their eyes, must have challenged every preconception these young revolutionaries had. But on its own the correctness of the arguments of the Russian opposition were not enough to convince Wang and others. It was that in combination with witnessing the process in China, where all of Stalin’s arguments and his ‘revolutionary strategy’ were thoroughly, mercilessly exposed by the unforgiving realities of history. The events in China forced Wang and the other Chinese students in Russia to let go of their attachment to Stalin. Whereas “hundreds of the Chinese among [various foreign students at KUTV] became Trotskyists; of the thousands of non-Chinese, only a handful did.” (Gregor Benton, China’s Urban Revolutionaries, 1996, p22).
Thus when news filtered through that Chiang Kai-shek had staged a counterrevolutionary coup in Shanghai in April 1927, the embryonic interest in Trotskyism as an alternative to Stalinism amongst these Chinese students rapidly crystallised into a well organised, disciplined underground organisation of Chinese Left Oppositionists in Moscow. (Ibid, p21)
“By the Summer of 1928, most of the Chinese students in Moscow - including nine out of ten of those who had studied at KUTV - reportedly sympathised with the Trotskyists...In the early Autumn of 1928, a dozen or so Trotskyists held a secret meeting and elected three (or five) of their number to form a committee to support the Opposition.” (Ibid, p24).
These students took advantage of their close proximity to one another and to far more experienced Russian Left Oppositionists to quickly raise their understanding of Marxism and to try to gasp the fundamental problems of the Chinese revolution. However, by 1929 much of the group had been exposed to the authorities, and most Chinese students, oppositionist or not, were being sent back to Chiang Kai-shek’s China anyway. Before leaving, this group of relatively consolidated Trotskyists agreed to what was a broadly correct and non-sectarian strategy for work in the extremely difficult conditions in China, which were as follows:
1. When we returned to China we should stay in the CCP and thereby prove ourselves to be good Communists. We reasoned that it was only by establishing ourselves as brave fighters, and by winning the respect and confidence of our fellow Party members through our part in the actual revolutionary struggle, that we could earn the right to put forward our views and win support for them...We therefore decided that in our actions we would abide by party discipline and obey the decisions of the majority, while in ideological or political discussions we would criticise the wrong tactical and strategic decisions adopted by the Sixth Congress of the CCP [...]
2. Since we still considered ourselves to be a faction of the CCP, and saw our task as rectifying the mistakes in the Party caused by the dominant influence of Stalinism, we did not intend to form a new political party.” (Wang Fanxi, op cit., pp95-6)
Chen Duxiu and the Development of Trotskyism Within China
Those green, promising young Chinese communists won to the cause of Trotskyism in Russia owed a great deal of their political and ideological development to their Russian experience, and thanks to this many of them would go on to play leading roles in the Chinese Left Opposition later on. However, as this was taking place a parallel development took place amongst many of the leading, more experienced cadres within China, including the founder of the party, Chen Duxiu. These comrades lacked the time and space for the development of their grasp of Marxist theory which those like Wang Fanxi were lucky enough to have. They also lacked Wang Fanxi’s and others experience of regular discussions with experienced Russian Bolsheviks. But Chen Duxiu more than made up for this with direct experience in leading the Communist Party of China and the immense political and moral authority he held amongst Chinese communists and youth.
The history of Chinese Trotskyism is sadly neglected and even repressed, thanks to the extraordinarily unfavourable circumstances they found themselves in. It is clear that the Chinese Left Opposition and latterly the Chinese section of the Fourth International were not well integrated into the world Trotskyist movement, and the assumption many have is that Trotskyism in China barely ever existed, the movement there being dominated by Maoism. These people will be shocked to learn that not only did this Left Opposition win significant numbers from the CCP - “most of the workers’ branches of Shanghai were won over to the Left Opposition” (Peng Shuzi, The Causes of the Victory of the Chinese Communist Party over Chiang Kai-Shek, and the CCP’s Perspectives, 1951) - but they even won the founder of the CCP, China’s most famous and respected revolutionary, Chen Duxiu.
Chen had originally always classified the Guomindang as the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie, and along with many others, was consistently opposed to working in it. In 1929 Chen referred to five occasions in which he moved resolutions opposing work inside the Guomindang; every single time Moscow overruled the leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
But documented history never got in the way of Stalin before, so why should it in China? Since Chiang Kai-shek’s April coup forced Moscow to recognise the very fact that they had been denying for the past 4 years, that is the bourgeois and counterrevolutionary character of the Guomindang, a way had to be found to ‘discover’ that a gross error had been made in supporting the Guomindang all this time. This had to be ‘discovered’ in such a way that showed that Stalin was the victim of this crazy policy, rather than its chief advocate. So in the time-honoured methods of Stalinism, Chen Duxiu, despite the fact that he had led the calls to leave the Guomindang from day one but had been overruled by none other than Stalin, was found to have been recklessly pursuing an opportunist policy toward Chiang Kai-shek in open defiance of Moscow. That is to say that the very opposite of the truth was declared.
Thus an emergency conference to remove Chen was called for August 7th 1927, but not by the Central Committee or any other body of the Chinese Communist Party, but by the Comintern in Moscow (Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz & John K. Fairbank, A Documentary History of Chinese Communism, 1959, p98). Ambitious young leaders of the party such as Qu Qiubai (who was to be the new leader following Chen’s removal), Zhou Enlai and Li Lisan worked with Moscow to support these endeavours and to help in the campaign within the party to slander Chen as solely responsible for the previous opportunism. The Moscow bureaucracy needed to recruit a new layer to lead the party, and of course this presented problems for them, since this latest manoeuvre was such a blatant act of falsification. It needed leaders prepared not only to follow orders from Moscow, but also willing to accept and repeat blatant lies. Those stepping up to the task had to be prepared to do this since those sticking the knife into Chen were guiltier than he of the sin of opportunism:
“What remains to be noted here is the implementation of this policy [of opportunism towards the Guomindang] by some of the very men who now posed as its opponents. On the Party level, the orders to restrain the peasant rebellion in 1927 had been issued by Qu Qiubai, then head of the Peasant Bureau of the CCP Central Committee. Similarly, the ‘cowardly and irresolute leading organ’ which cancelled an impending attack on Changsha in late May turns out to have been Li Weihan (Lo Man), a member of the CCP Politbureau and chairman of the Hunan Provincial Council, a close ally of Qu at the August 7 Conference.” (Ibid)
The method of slander and falsification proved successful, although at untold cost to the integrity of the party, and on August 7th 1927 the founder of Chinese Marxism was removed from the leadership of the party he founded.
For two more years Chen remained in the party in open opposition to the leadership, and in particular their policies of continued deference to the Comintern leadership and their refusal to honestly assess the causes for the CCP’s failures and their true source - Moscow. Since Moscow could not shut up the outstanding leader of the Chinese communist movement, they disgracefully had him expelled on November 15 1929, just as they had done to Trotsky two years previously, and only eight years after Chen had founded the party. A more rapid and spectacular rise and fall is hard to find, but such are the bizarre zig-zags that have always characterised Stalinism.
A month later Chen wrote an extremely impassioned, bravely honest and humble open letter to all comrades of the party, exposing the sham of democratic rights for the CCP in the Comintern. This letter, written as it was by the leading participant of the events themselves, is all the proof any Communist would ever need of Stalin’s responsibility for all the errors of the CCP since its inception. Chen also correctly criticised the contemporaneous ultra-left line of the party, which he said would lead to the destruction of any workers’ struggles having the misfortune to be led by the CCP, as indeed it did. And instead of writing an article denouncing the Left Opposition, as the new leadership insisted he do (knowing that he wouldn’t, thus manufacturing an excuse to expel him), he now “recognised fundamentally that Comrade Trotsky’s views are identical with Marxism and Leninism” (Chen Duxiu, Appeal to all the Comrades of the Chinese Communist Party, 1929).
Chen’s expulsion from the CCP marks the real beginning of Chinese Trotskyism, and this letter is its founding document. One has to bear in mind that the CCP at this stage was still a very young party at nine years old, and as such much was heterogeneous and unclear in its political-ideological composition. The Moscow bureaucracy had played a shameful role and the most respected leader of the party had just exposed this fact.
The need for Moscow to undemocratically force false positions onto the CCP and to persecute all who dissented in no way flowed from the needs of the Chinese revolution or even of the bureaucracy of the Chinese party (except to the extent that this bureaucracy needed Moscow to survive). Indeed there barely even was a degenerate bureaucracy in the CCP at this time. Stalin’s desire to find a strong, respectable ally for the USSR in the person of Chiang Kai-shek, the butcher of the Chinese working class, as well as the need to doggedly contradict whatever position Trotsky took, had nothing to do with the CCP and everything to do with Moscow.
For these reasons the vast bulk of the membership of the CCP would not have understood this struggle for control of the CCP and if anything would have been more sympathetic to Chen Duxiu, both because of his political authority and the evident correctness of his criticisms of the leadership in his open letter.
“Many Communists who did not become Trotskyists wanted to see the rift between the Opposition and the official party healed and felt that it had been wrong to expel Chen Duxiu. One example of a call for reconciliation is that by the three CCP martyrs Peng Pai, Yang Yin, and Yan Changyi, who from their death cells in late 1929 sent out a last testament imploring the Central Committee to solve its dispute with the Chen Duxiu-ites by peaceful means.” (Gregor Benton, op cit., pp57-8)
It was therefore not impossible that with a sustained and well organised campaign directed at the rank-and-file of the party, the Trotskyists under Chen Duxiu’s leadership could have won a huge chunk of the party membership to their position and fatally wounded Stalin’s leadership of the Comintern,
“At the time of [the Trotskyists’] Unification Congress in 1931, the prospects of an even more massive conversion to the Opposition looked extremely bright. The official party, to which the Trotskyists still vowed allegiance, was in terrible disarray. It had changed its leader four times in as many years and was racked by factionalism, largely a direct result of Russian interference. In late 1929, many branches of the CCP had not yet discussed the new political line decided on at the Sixth Congress in Moscow, and others were inactive; moreover the new ultra-left Li Lisan line did much harm to the party’s security and standing...
“The Trotskyists, in contrast, were freshly united under the party’s founding father. They had an explanation for the long row of defeats and claimed to have discovered a new way forward for the revolution.” (Ibid, pp.58-9)
The essence of a Marxist organisation lies not in its quantity of members nor in its organisational make-up, but in its ideological clarity, its scientific analysis of the class struggle and its adherence to revolutionary principles above prestige politics. For that reason the new Trotskyist organisation in China, with Chen Duxiu at its head, represented the genuine heritage and tradition of Chinese Marxism, for these comrades were prepared to forego important positions in the official Chinese Communist Party to preserve their commitment to the truth. That does not discount the thousands of sincere and heroic revolutionaries who remained supporters of the official leadership in China and in Moscow, whom it was the duty of the Trotskyists to win and to fight alongside. Indeed it is those committed revolutionaries not won to Trotskyism whose story makes up the bulk of this work. Indeed the fact that the story of the Chinese revolution is predominantly not about the Trotskyists proves that they represented genuine Chinese Marxism only in potential.
The Price Paid by the Chinese Working Class
With the loss of the revolution and the victory of the counterrevolution there always comes a brutal wave of oppression. This is intended to leave deep ideological scars on the working class and to smash its organisations. It is always the layer of activists that suffer the most, but all the working class pays a heavy price.
However, because of the newness and relatively small size of the Chinese working class, the establishment of Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship in 1927 meant not only severe repression but the actual near destruction of this working class. Whereas those working in factories went from virtually nothing in the first decade of the 20th Century, to 660,000 in 1913 and over one million in 1919, by 1933, six years after Chiang Kai-shek came to power, it had failed to grow beyond the level of 14 years previously (James Pinckney Harrison, The Long March to Power, 1972, p9). Many workers retained their ties to the countryside and so with the combination of brutal repression, the resulting inability to fight for better wages and conditions and the effects of the Great Depression, thousands returned to their rural ancestral homes. This objectively regressive process is the underlying basis for the CCP’s shift from the cities to the hinterland.
In the mid ‘20s the comrades in the CCP had founded and led China’s trade unions and its first council of all trade unions, the National General Labour Union. Roughly 2.8m industrial, transport, utilities, mining and service sector workers were organised under its banner (Leon Trotsky, Stalin and the Chinese Revolution, 1930). It was the real centre of the proletarian led revolution of 1925-7. By 1929, its membership had gone down to 60-70,000, and of this 60% were actually rural based, that is not bona-fide proletarians (James Pinckney Harrison, op cit., p161). In the heat of counterrevolution in 1927, 37,986 trade unionists were killed, roughly 25,000 of which in fighting Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, and another 13,000 were executed (Jacques Guillermaz, A History of the Chinese Communist Party 1921-1949, 1972, p.226).
CCP worker-activists were of course drowned in this bloodbath, with a far greater proportion of their members executed than within the working class as a whole. Between 1927 and 1937, the Guomindang “claimed to have arrested as many as 24,000 Communists and 155,525 ‘red masses’ or radicals, while the Communists charged the Nationalists with ‘butchering’ more than 300,000 ‘progressive youths’” (James Pinckney Harrison, op cit., p220).
Tragically for Chen Duxiu, he shared with Trotsky not only his analysis of the Guomindang as a counterrevolutionary party, but also having both his sons murdered by the counterrevolution. Li Dazhao, the co-founder of the CCP with Chen, was executed in 1927 on the orders of the warlord Zhang Zuolin after the Soviet embassy was raided.
Therefore thanks to the false line pursued by the CCP in the revolution, which unnecessarily gifted Chiang Kai-shek absolute power, a near extinction of the CCP’s proletarian and urban base was inevitable. According to Zhou Enlai’s Report to the Third Plenum of the Party in September 1930, “though there are 120,000 Party members, the industrial worker members only number a little more than 2,000.” In this report, Zhou is extremely frank about the numerical weaknesses of the party. However, by failing to point out and explain why the party went from having hundreds of thousands of worker members leading trade unions with millions of members, to having only 2,000 workers out of 120,000 members three years later, he refused to address the problem honestly. But of course to do so he would have to go into opposition to Stalin himself.
The impressive sounding figure of 120,000 members was also misleading as the vast majority were recruited in the rural areas, not so much due to the party’s correct intervention in the class struggle but more due to leading a petty-bourgeois adventure in the wastelands. Hence Guillermaz’s contention that at this point the party was “virtually lacking in all popular support” (op cit.). Because this adventurism carried enormous risks for the party, as we shall soon see, by 1936 membership was down to 30,000 (Pinckney Harrison, op cit., p5).
In the aftermath of 1927 Trotsky presciently wrote that “Engels said that a party that misses a favourable situation and suffers a defeat as a result, turns into a non-entity” (Leon Trotsky, Three Letters to Preobrazhensky, 1928). The CCP did not become a political non-entity. But the missing of its ‘favourable opportunity’ and Stalin’s refusal to allow them the necessary democratic space to absorb the lessons of this certainly did reduce the CCP to a non-entity in the urban working class. The scale of this defeat meant that the CCP would be incapable of leading a proletarian, socialist revolution.
‘Third Period’ Ultra-leftism and the Liquidation of the Cadres
It cannot be stressed often enough that the most precious commodity in a revolutionary, Marxist party is its theoretical clarity and correct perspective on the class struggle. With that comes its base of cadres, that is those who have absorbed this perspective, can explain it in the movement and develop the party’s analysis as conditions change. The mass organisations of the working class can and will be rebuilt, moreover the task of building them can only belong to the working class itself, not to the relatively small numbers of Marxist activists.
But it takes years of reading and discussion to produce a layer of Marxist cadres, which is the unique contribution of a Marxist organisation to the labour movement. Such a layer cannot be improvised at the moment of revolution and so it is the duty of the leadership of such an organisation to carefully preserve and develop its cadres over time. To do this it is necessary for the party to maintain a sober head with a clear understanding of the development of the class struggle - where events are going, what the consciousness of the working class is, what the balance of class forces is, etc. - so that it does not miseducate its members. It must train them on how to intervene in the class struggle in a way that can connect with and advance class consciousness. A correct analysis, internal democratic discussion and a sense of proportion minimise the risk of this party frittering away its cadres in fruitless struggles completely out of proportion with the real balance of forces.
The reorganisation conference of August 7th in 1927 would be vital in setting the party on the correct path, but under Moscow’s directives the comrades set off on the wrong foot. Rather than begin an internal and open discussion on what had gone so terribly wrong between 1925 and 1927, instead the same basic policy of continuing to work in the Guomindang was maintained. Chen Duxiu was removed and blamed for everything, as if the failure of an entire revolution can be the fault of one man and yet not the policies he pursued. This was the exact opposite of what the CCP needed. Chen Duxiu was the outstanding leader and had also shown he was prepared to critically assess the party’s failures; therefore he would be vital to the correct reorientation of the party. Instead he was removed and the policies which were to blame were maintained. Thus Moscow served to educate the CCP in the methods of Stalinism.
However, a small concession to reality was made, and with the removal of Chen Duxiu came the admission that the party had failed due to its opportunism in seeking an alliance with the Guomindang, although bizarrely this alliance was maintained as the aim of the party. But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the realisation that the party had been too conservative at the peak of the revolution, led to the false conclusion that now, as the revolutionary mood in the working class was subsiding, the party must go on an all out offensive. This mentality already displays the subjectivist tendencies of Stalinism, that is in imagining that the working class and the revolution can be made to obey orders and the interests of the Communist Party’s bureaucracy.
Therefore the new Qu Qiubai led CCP carried out several insurrections throughout the latter half of 1927, as described in previous articles, all of which were disastrous failures. Consequently Qu was removed at the following 6th Congress of the CCP. This took place in Moscow from July to September 1928, since it was too dangerous for the CCP to hold a large meeting under the Guomindang’s dictatorship. Incredibly such were the difficulties the party would now face, that this was the last full congress the CCP would hold until 1945! The new politbureau ‘elected’ was apparently chosen beforehand by Bukharin and Stalin (Pinckney Harrison, op cit., p.156).
This second post-revolution congress did mark a genuine attempt by the CCP to honestly assess the failure of the revolution and what the character of the Chinese revolution must be. The ‘national bourgeoisie’ was now counterrevolutionary (previously it was an ally of the revolution, only the ‘compradore bourgeoisie’ was counterrevolutionary), as was all of a sudden the Guomindang, whom the CCP took upon itself to overthrow rather than to work in. And it was admitted (one year late) that the revolution had been defeated.
But the Comintern’s chief interest lay not in the healthy development of the CCP and the success of the Chinese revolution, but in its increasingly sharp struggle against Trotsky. It was a categorical imperative that anything resembling Trotsky’s position must be negated. Unfortunately for the CCP leaders having to tow the Moscow line, reality in China had an annoying resemblance to Trotsky’s position, which was that the revolution had been decisively defeated due to the CCP’s opportunist capitulation to the Guomindang, and that the party must now adapt its slogans to this reality to recover its base. This unfortunate accuracy therefore restricted in advance the CCP’s ability to take a correct position.
So the new leadership emerging in mid 1928 was forced to take a completely abstract, vague and contradictory position. Whilst the Guomindang and national bourgeoisie were counterrevolutionary, they were still in a ‘subordinate’ position to the feudal classes, and thus the door was left open to their supposed ‘revolutionary’ character. Whilst the revolution had been defeated, it remained only in a ‘trough between two waves’ and so the CCP must start preparing for armed insurrections (Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz & John K. Fairbank, op cit., p125).
Indeed the documents that were produced by this congress in Moscow betray the despotism of the Moscow bureaucracy over the CCP at every step. The first statement of the Political Resolution (the most important resolution) is to assert that the Sixth Congress “agrees entirely with the evaluation of the Chinese revolution by the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Plenums of the Executive Committee of the Communist International [that is, every Comintern position from 1926 to 1928, thus absolving Moscow from any responsibility or association with the failure of 1925-7]” (Political Resolution of the Sixth National Congress if the CCP, 1928). The failure of 1925-7 was entirely due to the fact that “the leadership of the CCP failed to carry out the directives of the Communist International” (Ibid), which were presumably infallible. Thus again the epic drama of revolution was trivialised and subjectivised.
Whilst it is very careful to isolate the causes of failure from Moscow, this crucial resolution developed no strategic or tactical elucidations whatsoever other than that the CCP must somehow, somewhere, organise armed insurrections, which are apparently to be the sole method of the revolution. How these are to be organised or carried out was not explained, nor do we find any analysis of the class struggle as it actually is - the methods to be used are always argued for on the basis of what would be best for the party, which tactic is too mechanical, which one too hasty etc., and never explained on the basis of which one flows from the real situation in the working class.
Chen Duxiu - considered to be the founder of Chinese TrotskyismOpposition within the CCP and the Failure of Chinese Trotskyism
Disaster in Changsha and Wuhan
The need to push for a revolutionary insurrectionist policy to cover up for the embarrassment of Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship led inevitably to a gross underestimation of the task of winning deep roots in the working class first - hence the vague talk of insurrections with no reference to the objective situation. Moscow culpability for this is once again proven by an open letter to the CCP sent from Moscow in October 1929, “which appears to have urged the Party to undertake direct action on a vast scale as soon as possible” (Guillermaz, op cit., p196).
Understandably, acting on such strong orders from the Comintern, in 1930 the CCP under Li Lisan’s leadership embarked on a series of disastrous insurrections which served to finish off whatever base in the cities they had left. Isaacs describes the impatient mentality of Li Lisan’s ultra-leftism in 1930, with its fantasies of conjuring mass working class support out of thin air, very well:
“[Li] was sure that a single puncture in the Guomindang dam would be enough to precipitate a revolutionary flood. “When the revolutionary high wave arrives,” he was later quoted as saying, “90,000,000 can be organised in three days.” In the June resolution he wrote: “Long ago the masses said: ‘When there is an uprising let us know and we shall surely come.’ Now is the time when the Party must bravely call upon the masses: ‘The time for insurrection has come! Organise yourselves!”...In Shanghai he formed a ‘Red Guard’ composed of exactly one hundred and seventy-six workers to prepare for the ‘fourth uprising.’ He plotted an insurrection in Nanjing [Chiang Kai-shek’s government’s headquarters] with a handful of soldiers.” (Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, 1951, p.331)
If ultra-leftism is the tendency for relatively small groups of revolutionaries to grow impatient with the working class and pose as their revolutionary leaders without patiently winning their support, then this was the distilled essence of ultra-leftism. Zhang Guotai wrote at the time that “it is worthwhile to [launch a CCP attack on a city] even if we could only hold a city against the enemy for but a few days. Though it is ideal to plan simultaneous uprisings in both rural and urban areas, there is no need to have those in one area wait for those in the other.” (quoted in Pinckney Harrison, op cit., p.143).
The masses are not born revolutionaries and are not always simply waiting for the opportunity to take power. The masses move towards revolution when the objective conditions have matured, when the crisis of the existing regime pushed them to seek a revolutionary way out. Any move to insurrection must take this elementary idea into account. Conditions for revolution inevitably mature at some point but they must also be preceded by a lengthy period of winning the confidence and involvement of the masses in such a plan. Failure to do so will always mean that the masses are little more than ‘curious observers’ as happened in these insurrections (ibid, p.177).
In July and August 1930 Changsha and Wuhan were taken by the CCP in armed insurrections by handfuls of party members. The few occupying Changsha fled when it was bombarded by British, American, Italian and Japanese gunboats, leaving the local population defenceless. It was the latter, not so much the CCP activists, who paid the price for this, and roughly 5,000 were slaughtered. When they fled, the CCP actually took $400,000 from the city and 3,000 of the city’s most advanced worker-activists - thus decapitating the local labour movement (Isaacs, op cit., pp332-3). The failure in Wuhan, which was immediately surrounded by 6,000 Guomindang troops, led to 40 beheadings per day for a period, with the headless bodies deliberately left on display as a warning.
When, in preparation for these adventures, Li Lisan said in June 1930 that we must “awaken the will of the broad masses to struggle to the death” (Li Lisan, The New Revolutionary Rising Tide and Preliminary Successes in one or more Provinces, 1930) he was more prescient than he knew.
Internal Opposition Develops
This reckless adventurism, which must have sacrificed countless more of the few remaining Communist cadres, and went hand in hand with the abandonment of the urban base and the development of what would be known as Maoism, a mainly peasant based phenomenon, did not go unopposed in the party. But the inability of Stalin to allow any internal democratic life in the Chinese section which could lead to the loosening of his grip on the International meant that such healthy disagreement had to be snuffed out. This had the effect of further weakening the party, especially in its traditional working class base, since it was from these quarters that the dissent came.
Just as Stalin had to blame those below him in China, such as Chen Duxiu and then Qu Qiubai, for all the errors flowing from his policy, so the leadership of the CCP after 1927 were compelled to mimic his bureaucratic methods since they were barred from opening a genuinely democratic discussion. They began to always blame those below themselves, in whose personal failings were to be found all the sources of failure, rather than in a wrong political line.
In opposition to this dictatorial method, the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the CCP, based in Shanghai, wrote a letter which describes the situation thus
“In spite of the defeat...the Central Committee persists in clinging to the tactic of immediate uprisings and takes as its point of departure an estimation leading to the direct ascent of the revolution...These measures flowed from a subjective estimation of the situation and did not correspond to the objective circumstances. Obviously, under such conditions, defeats will be inevitable
“no attention is paid to the fact that our organisations have lost contact with the masses...if anybody was not in agreement with the new line, without further ceremony he was not permitted to renew his party card and even comrades who had already carried out this operation were expelled...without paying attention to the mistakes of its own leadership, the Central Committee nevertheless demands the most severe party discipline from the rank-and-file militants...It pounces down with accusations and says that the Provincial Committee is no good; the latter in its turn accuses the rank-and-file organisations and asserts that the district committee is bad. The latter also begins to accuse and asserts that it is the comrades working on the spot who are no good. And the comrades declare that the masses are not revolutionary.” (Quoted in Leon Trotsky, The Chinese Question after the 6th Congress)
In response to this outbreak of Marxist criticism, Li Lisan “tried to enlarge the provincial committee with his supporters”. After this was effectively opposed, Party Central under Li’s command sent a delegation to completely take over the Jiangsu Provincial Committee. The same was done to other dissenting committees, which caused those in the Shunzhi Committee to demand “the right to discuss all questions with superior organs and...that the leading cadres be elected by the masses.” For doing this, all these Provincial Committees were now to be under the jurisdiction of the North China Bureau. (Pinckney Harrison, op cit., p160).
He Mengxiong and the ‘Real Work Faction’
Out of this struggle, which took place in 1928-9, stepped forward a very experienced and respected trade union leader, He Mengxiong. As not only a member of the important, Shanghai based above-mentioned Jiangsu committee but also an experienced trade union militant, He’s opposition to Li Lisan’s ultra-leftism and the drift into the countryside represented the party’s true proletarian and Marxist heritage. They named themselves the ‘Real Work Faction’; the implication that they were the only group with a real connection to the working class is obvious.
By all accounts the oppositional position he took was a healthy one, and apparently by 1931 had “many, if not most, lower ranking party members” (Ibid, p.186) in support. He argued for the need of the CCP to have an “accurate evaluation of the movement’s weaknesses” and emphasised the need for the Party to be “enlarged systematically through the trade unions in the towns” (Guillermaz, op cit., p.220). In other words, to patiently work on explaining the defeat suffered and winning new comrades in the cities.
His group became more vocal the more the disaster of the Changsha and Wuhan insurrections became clear, and as Moscow began to try to impose a new leadership on the CCP to replace the disgraced Li Lisan, an act which incensed many comrades. Such was the support in the CCP for Real Work’s opposition that by the end of 1930 it had become an “independent organisation with an executive committee of twenty-seven that continued to lobby for an emergency conference [to oppose any new leadership imposed from Moscow].” (Pinckney Harrison, op cit.).
Pavel Mif, the Comintern representative in China, overruled their campaign and organised a meeting that was to elect a new leadership, initially without even informing these comrades of the nature of the meeting. The meeting was composed mainly of Comintern loyalists, and while many of the Li Lisan-ers kept their positions (by confessing that all the errors of the insurrections were purely down to them and had nothing to do with the Comintern leadership), most were now the ‘Russian returned students’, stooges trained in Moscow and led by the hated Wang Ming.
Mysteriously, when He continued to organise his opposition, and called for Mif to be recalled and a new Party conference to be announced, he was arrested “the very next day” by British police, who handed He and others over to the Guomindang, who executed them one month later (Ibid, p.187). Thus another layer of honest cadres was destroyed.
Lo Zhanglung took over from He and now, following his expulsion, organised a rival CCP with branches in 6 Provinces. Clearly, the basis existed for the Chinese Left Opposition to make contact with dissidents inside the party, and through an intelligent campaign win over sections of the party. However, Lo, like He, was betrayed to the Guomindang two years later. This fact, and He’s execution before that, give a clue as to the causes of the Trotskyists’ failure to really build influence in the CCP despite the latter’s internal crises. Apart from the Trotskyists’ subjective failings, of which there were many, in particular of the sectarian variety, there was the objective problem that any Communist in opposition to the CCP leadership faced a double oppression. They not only had to avoid detection by Chiang Kai-shek’s regime, but also to avoid being expelled from the CCP and handed over to the authorities by it.
The same happened to one of the remaining layers of comrades in a big city when Xiang Zhongfa and 4,700 others were arrested and executed in Shanghai in June 1931. For one reason or another, a CCP comrade defected to the Guomindang, betrayed another comrade, Gu Shunzhang, who then capitulated and betrayed an entire layer, including a leading party member, Xiang Zhongfa. In this way the bulk of the remaining Shanghai membership was wiped out.
Then the new Wang Ming leadership immediately took the initiative and attacked anyone associated with criticism of Moscow and the CCP leadership. He had 1/4 of all comrades expelled. Thus Stalin and his local stooges had in Chiang Kai-shek’s despotic regime (which resembled his own in many respects, if not in its economic base), a powerful tool with which to discipline their membership. That is the real, objective reason why Stalin was able to infect the Chinese party with his own bureaucratic methods, and why the Trotskyists were unable to build an effective opposition.
The Dissolution of Trotskyism in China
Whereas the CCP, despite its dire situation after the routing of 1927, was still able to draw upon $40,000 a month in financial support from the USSR, as well as from the resources in their new rural bases, the Trotskyists shared all the same difficulties, but also lacked any bases or financial support at all. One can barely imagine the material and psychological difficulties a band of around 350 Oppositionists, with no finances at all and coming out of the defeat of a revolution and mass expulsion from their party, must have faced. This not only made it difficult for the Opposition to operate effectively, but also represented an enormous barrier to recruiting the numerous CCP comrades unhappy with the line imposed from Moscow. As Benton points out, “it was therefore a big step for a CCP official on $25 a month - equivalent to the salary of a teacher - to give up this secure income for the uncertain life of a Trotskyist militant” (Gregor Benton, op cit., p60).
Wang Fanxi explains the objective difficulties very clearly,
“No one had joined the Party to make money, so how was it that financial considerations prevented some comrades from joining the Opposition? One reason was that although no revolutionary would put money before his revolutionary beliefs, the situation changed somewhat when it was a question of choosing between two different factions within the same party, as Stalinism and Trotskyism were at that stage. Although many in the Soviet Union sacrificed high state or Party rank to follow Trotsky, even more renounced the Opposition in order to cling to their privileged positions...We had no funds of our own and no external source of finance. As if earning a living was not hard enough, we had to put money aside regularly to finance the work of our organisation...[CCP] comrades could be heard lamenting the fact that they were professional revolutionaries rather than revolutionary professionals, so that they had no job to fall back on should they disagree with the official line and want to distance themselves from the party apparatus. The scarcity of employment under the old regime in China thus helped Stalin to defeat the Trotskyists.” (Wang Fanxi, op cit., p125)
Added to this was the isolation of these Trotskyists from the rest of the Trotskyist movement worldwide, thanks to China’s backwardness and the Japanese invasion. Many Trotskyists were killed by the Japanese and were even, when attempting to fight them, sometimes caught between Maoist and Japanese armies, both of which were hostile to them. Indeed in the 1930s the CCP, following Moscow’s demands that it wipe out Chinese Trotskyism, consciously used the Guomindang dictatorship by tipping it off regarding the Opposition comrades. In this way huge layers of the leading Trotskyists were put into gaol or even executed - Chen Duxiu, along with Wang Fanxi, Peng Shuzi and many others, was put into gaol in 1932 for five years.
These objective difficulties were compounded by, and to some extent caused, the theoretical weaknesses of the Opposition and its tendency towards sectarianism. Of course for a principled Marxist organisation questions of theoretical clarity are extremely important, and so we do not make a fetish out of organisational unity - sometimes it is necessary to maintain the ideological clarity of an organisation at the expense of having less members, since in the long run short cuts to a larger organisation will undermine its ability to understand the working class and the revolution as it really develops.
But splits of a sectarian nature are characterised not by a pursuit for a clear understanding of the revolution but by rigid formalism, becoming fixated with secondary questions, all of which boils down to petty intriguing and egotism masked by pretensions of theoretical greatness. Sectarianism is a kind of failed opportunism or careerism, where one group jealously defends its existence as against the others, however minute it may be. Unfortunately the Trotskyists in China did degenerate in this direction, probably as a result of the habit of being in opposition to the majority of the CCP, coupled with a lack of time and space for discussion to come to a deeper understanding of why the revolution had failed.
For example, many of the Oppositionists were opposed to Chen Duxiu joining them when he was won to Trotskyism in 1929. Instead of understanding that the revolution had failed because of Stalin’s short-sighted opportunism, they blamed the defeat on Chen (who of course, under orders, carried out this opportunist policy) and, probably unconsciously, did not want him involved precisely because he would help them to build - the authority of his name in Chinese Communism would undermine their own importance in the local Trotskyist movement. As a condition for his joining them, they demanded that he disband his group (Benton, op cit., p.30). By 1930 there were already four different Trotskyist organisations competing against one another, and in 1981 “Zhao Ji frankly admitted that the Militant Group had been formed not for ideological reasons but to get a better position for its members in the future unified organisation” (Ibid, p.33).
Chen Duxiu, who towered above this kind of petty intriguing, summed up these errors in a letter addressed to Trotsky in 1939,
“If ultra-leftists who stay aloof from the masses and the real struggle...continue to brag and pretend to be big leaders, to organise leadership bodies that lack all substance, and to found petty kingdoms for themselves behind closed doors and relying on the name of the Fourth International, they will achieve nothing beyond the tarnishing of the Fourth International’s prestige in China.” (Chen Duxiu, quoted in Zheng Chaolin, Chen Duxiu and the Trotskyists)
Trotsky had quickly seen through this sectarianism and defended Chen against the criticisms made against him, which were of a very formalistic nature. He urged that, since there was no principled reason for division, the Trotskyists in China must hold a reunification congress and quickly get on with the task of winning influence within the by now very weakened CCP. Thanks to Trotsky’s intervention, this congress was held in May 1931 and resulted in around 500 Trotskyists joining together. At this point, things looked bright, as the Communist Party leadership had just been replaced with the unpopular Wang Ming, and the Comintern’s authority could not but have been weakened.
But just as the subjective weaknesses of the Trotskyists appeared surmountable, the objective obstacles came back with a vengeance - within three weeks of the congress the whole Central Committee of the unified organisation, known as ‘The Spark’, were arrested by the Guomindang, and just over a year later, the remaining leading Trotskyists, Chen Duxiu and Peng Shuzhi and seven others, were arrested by the French and British police in Shanghai (Benton, op cit., p35).
This effectively spelt the end for Chinese Trotskyism. Without the leading lights of Chen Duxiu and Trotsky (who was increasingly suffering from international isolation by the GPU), the organisation was decapitated, and once again the sectarian squabbling broke out as inexperienced members failed to grasp the meaning of the changing situation. In particular, the war with Japan, which changed everything, threw the group into a confusion which made effective intervention in the situation impossible. The national question has always been one of the trickiest and subtlest of questions for Marxists, and it has tripped up not a few experienced comrades in the past. We should not be surprised that this group, having had such a hard time and without its learned cadres, would make classic mistakes of ultra-leftism on this issue.
Trotsky explained the correct position on the war with Japan thus,
“We do not and never have put all wars on the same plane. Marx and Engels supported the revolutionary struggle of the Irish against Great Britain, of the Poles against the tsar, even though in these two nationalist wars the leaders were, for the most part, members of the bourgeoisie and even at times of the feudal aristocracy...In the Far East we have a classic example. China is a semicolonial country which Japan is transforming, under our very eyes, into a colonial country. Japan's struggle is imperialist and reactionary. China's struggle is emancipatory and progressive...
“But Chiang Kai-shek? We need have no illusions about Chiang Kai-shek, his party, or the whole ruling class of China, just as Marx and Engels had no illusions about the ruling classes of Ireland and Poland. Chiang Kai-shek is the executioner of the Chinese workers and peasants. But today he is forced, despite himself, to struggle against Japan for the remainder of the independence of China. Tomorrow he may again betray. It is possible. It is probable. It is even inevitable. But today he is struggling...
“But can Chiang Kai-shek assure the victory? I do not believe so. It is he, however, who began the war and who today directs it. To be able to replace him it is necessary to gain decisive influence among the proletariat and in the army, and to do this it is necessary not to remain suspended in the air but to place oneself in the midst of the struggle. We must win influence and prestige in the military struggle against the foreign invasion and in the political struggle against the weaknesses, the deficiencies, and the internal betrayal.” (Leon Trotsky, On the Sino-Japanese War, 1937)
And yet sections of the Chinese Trotskyists took a criminal position of neutrality in the war against Japan. Why? They argued that since the US backed China, supporting the fight against Japanese imperialism meant supporting US imperialism. In this way these ‘Trotskyists’ allowed the struggle for the emancipation of China to be, in their heads at least, cancelled out in advance because the US gave it support. But the US’ support was not for the emancipation of China, only for the defeat of Japan so that the US may dominate China. The character of China’s war for emancipation from brutal oppression was not defined simply by the US’ role, but first and foremost by the internal dynamics of Chinese and Japanese society. Thus a victory for Japan would mean the strengthening of the regime of Japanese fascism both in China and Japan. A victory for China would mean the weakening of the Japanese regime even in Japan, a strengthening of the Japanese revolutionary movement and of course of the Chinese masses, who would have successfully fought off an external oppressor and in all likelihood their own ruling class as well, who as we shall see, were incapable of effectively opposing Japan.
Arguing that Marxists should not support the war as it may help US imperialism was, Trotsky explained, like opposing a strike in one factory because its victory might mean the strengthening of a different capitalist in competition with this one. Again, to take this position would mean voluntarily cancelling the class struggle for fear of temporarily aiding one capitalist as against another. But Marxists are indifferent as to which capitalist is stronger; we are interested in the weakening of the capitalists as a class, which means the strengthening of the workers as a class. A strike victory in one factory may temporarily strengthen one capitalist, but what is far more important is the raising of workers to their feet and the example to other workers that this one victory represents. Similarly, as Trotsky pointed out, if the Chinese people, through an almighty effort, managed to throw off the chains of one imperialism, they would be all the more able to do so against another imperialism thanks to this victory. As it turned out, this is exactly what happened when in 1949 the Chinese people finally broke free of the yoke of imperialism in general.
This dispute not only weakened the Trotskyists’ capacity for action but also diminished their prestige in the eyes of the masses and members of the CCP. Thanks to a combination of brutal state repression and theoretical weakness, the Trotskyists’ reunification failed to materialise into any real growth and they more or less disintegrated as the war dragged on. With the victory of Mao in 1949, the final few were gaoled, executed or forced to flee, mainly to Hong Kong.
The Nature of the Chiang Kai-shek Regime
According to this subjective approach, power becomes concentrated in a corrupt clique merely because the people at the top happen to be greedy, mistrustful and jealous of their power. But this seductively simple explanation is so simple it explains nothing, it is a tautology, like when a child, in response to the question ‘why did you break this?’ answers ‘because I did.’
In defending the record of Bolshevism Trotsky explained that it is foolish to try to explain the growth of bureaucratic tendencies and the rise of Stalin purely on the basis of policy errors. Yes, seizing power magnifies a political party’s power over society greatly, but doing so also imposes all the objective tendencies of society, all its social contradictions, onto that party with a force of far greater magnitude.
Chiang Kai-shek ‘betrayed’ Sun Yat Sen
In this way there was an objective necessity to the Guomindang’s degeneration upon taking up its role as the force of counter-revolution. The fallacy of the idealist thesis that a governing political party rules purely in accordance with its own wishes is disproven by the transformation in the Guomindang upon leading the counter-revolution. In order to play this role, a painful process of internal purgation and ‘betrayal’ of its principles, as it adopted those of the ancien regime and even of fascism, had to take place. Rather than being the party of the liberation of China, of its modernisation and democratisation, as many of its founders sincerely wanted, instead it internalised and reproduced in ever more grotesque forms all the barbarism and backwardness of feudal China, distorted and exaggerated as this was by imperialism.
Today the Chinese Communist Party, in its adoption of capitalism and courting of Taiwanese capitalists, has tried to resuscitate the role of the Guomindang (which still rules in Taiwan) and its founding figure of Sun Yat Sen, with the anti-Marxist position that Sun Yat Sen was an honest revolutionary whose principles were unfortunately betrayed by Chiang Kai-shek. But betrayal of ‘principles’ is inherent in bourgeois politics, especially when based on a particularly backward, semi-feudal bourgeoisie as China’s was.
Whereas a Bolshevik organisation is based upon adherence to a clear revolutionary programme, and is composed of a membership committed to that, a bourgeois organisation such as the Guomindang is necessarily loose. Thus Sun Yat Sen’s opportunistic policy for gaining power was to encourage everyone and his uncle to join, with no attention paid to their sincerity and no political education given. Yes, such a policy can lead to a rapid taking of power, but at what cost? That the party is internally extremely weak and thus far more open to tendencies of corruption.
Nevertheless in its quest for power the Guomindang relied upon the hard work and dedication of honest revolutionaries, both CCP members who had joined under orders and honest rank-and-file Guomindang members. But both these groups were generally on the far left of the party, which at the rank-and-file level may have been in the majority (Eastman, The Nationalist Era in China 1927-1949). When the party took power in 1927-8, they earnestly believed it was carrying out a revolution. Local Guomindang party organisations under the control of the rank and file would organise militant anti-imperialist, anti-warlord campaigns and even carried out programmes of rent-reduction for poor peasants (Ibid)
Therefore the first act of the Guomindang’s conversion into a lackey of imperialism and warlordism was to reveal its true face by purging all these nuisance elements. Like the fascists in Italy and Germany, Chiang Kai-shek personally and the Guomindang as a party had been paid handsomely by Shanghainese capitalists to sort out the labour unrest. He was charged with setting the record straight that warlord/landlord land would not be touched and that their extreme exploitation of the peasants would not be questioned.
As a result in early 1928, the Guomindang Central Executive Committee moved to dissolve all provincial party organisations ‘not creditable to the party.’ All members had to ‘re-register’ and members were ordered to conduct themselves ‘in the spirit of the leadership’. “Mass movements were also, for all intents and purposes, suspended. Henceforth, the mass organisations would serve as Nanjing’s instruments of control, not as organs for the expression of popular opinions or initiatives.” (Ibid)
The Guomindang ceased to be a real party. Its genuine supporters were expelled for, being cannon fodder, they had now served their purpose. Only those yes men who clung to the coat tails of the warlords and imperialists remained. And they were joined by the armed feudal warlords, who backed the various factions of the party now that they could see its ‘revolution’ was an established fact and one they could do quite well out of. These warlords joined the Guomindang to “indulge in political manoeuvres which, they hoped, would result in the preservation, if not the enhancement, of their personal and regional power” (Ibid)
To get a job in the government it was necessary to be a Guomindang member. The party was quickly inundated with the rotten bureaucracy of the old regime, whom Chiang Kai-shek welcomed with open arms as an ally in his struggle against the left-leaning party rank-and-file. Of course, if one intends on faithfully administering the needs of the old ruling class and enriching oneself in the process, it is necessary to have a staff of corrupt bureaucrats who aren’t necessarily any good at their jobs but are faithful defenders of the system of privilege. These mandarins “shuffled papers, but paid minimal heed to the actual implementation of policy. Thus the values, attitudes, and practices of the old warlord regimes had been injected into the new government.” (Ibid)
Fascist Tendencies
In this respect Chiang Kai-shek’s regime took on a characteristic of fascism - the conversion from a mass petty bourgeois movement with populist, pseudo-socialist imagery, into a direct instrument of the most brutal state oppression.
Under this new regime everything backward and outdated in China was brought forward in a cruder form than ever before. The Chinese revolution had begun with a process of intellectual ferment as restless students finally tore down the edifice of Confucianism (China’s conservative 2,000 year old ideology of caste and filial servitude) in their search for revolutionary ideas. But as the revolution’s executioner Chiang Kai-shek brought it back “to provide the moral and national basis for anti-Bolshevik action. In the context of society, the role of the gentry, who were the examples and guides[!] for the rural population...was enlarged and rendered more powerful.” (Guillermaz, op cit., my emphasis)
Chiang Kai-shek’s adoption of the most hated and antiquated ideological system as the moral justification for the rule of the gentry is proof that the counter-revolutionary party does not operate in a historical vacuum or pursue ‘new’ policies of their own choosing. It is forced by its social role to adopt and enhance all the ready-to-hand rubbish of human history. It is the Guomindang’s eventual role as leader of counter-revolution and defender of privilege that determined the ideas it espoused and its brutal methods of rule.
The secret to understanding why the regime was so unprecedentedly corrupt and based itself on economic plunder rather than growth is that it not only defended and maintained capitalism, but that it based itself on a ruling class and economic system whose time was up, was no longer viable. The revolution of 1925-7 proves that. And so from the very beginning the regime abandoned itself to the most short-sighted plunder. Having defeated the progressive forces in China, it went on an unconstrained reactionary binge. “Its generals and bankers, its landlords and bureaucrats, its jailers and executioners, inextricably interlaced, mercilessly drained the country. The land, the people, even the most limited kind of economic enterprise, became sources not merely of profit but of plunder. All the existing means of exploitation that had been vainly challenged by the revolution were not merely preserved but sharpened to an unprecedented degree.” (Isaacs, op cit.).
It is thought that by 1930 140,000 had been executed, and in 1931 “a collection of reports from only 6 provinces produced a total of 39,778 executions that year.” (Ibid). To discipline the rural population the Guomindang once again fell back on the most barbarous methods from Chinese history. They used the Baojia medieval system of collective punishment and incorporated into it the harsher Japanese Lianzuo punishment system, whereby if the local chief failed to report any dissidents in his family/clan, the entire clan would be punished.
In addition to the political executions meted out there were the deaths from the civil war with the CCP in the 1930s. Upon capturing Red territory, the Guomindang army would “make of such districts a desolate, uninhabited wasteland...thousands of children were taken prisoner and driven to Hankou and other cities, where they were sold in ‘apprenticeships’. Thousands of young girls and women were transported and sold into the factories as slave girls and as prostitutes.” (Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China) Having recaptured an area from the CCP, they went to extraordinary lengths to give the land back to the landlords, it having been given to the peasants by the CCP. This was done even when it had become practically impossible to do so.
Snow quotes Red Army General Xu Haidong on witnessing the atrocities committed by the Guomindang, “in Ma Cheng, we came to one of our former athletics fields. There in a shallow grave we found the bodies of twelve comrades who had been killed. Their skin had been stripped from them, their eyes gouged out, and their ears and noses cut off.” (Ibid).
To fill the vacuum left by the expulsions of rank-and-file activists and to bolster his own position, Chiang Kai-shek created a hardcore fanatical organisation known as the ‘Blue Shirts’. A counter-revolutionary regime does not merely maintain the status-quo as it was, but is forced to heighten the oppression and exploitation in order to grind the masses down. The ideological expression of this was not just the maintenance of Confucianism but the adoption of the new and fanatical methods of fascism. With the Blue Shirts Chiang Kai-shek consciously attempted to develop his own regime into a fascist one, saying in 1935 that,
“fascism...is a stimulant for a declining society.” “Can fascism save China? We answer: yes. Fascism is what China now most needs. In fascism, the organisation, the spirit, and the activities must all be militarised...In the home, the factory and the government office, everyone’s activities must be the same as in the army...In other words, there must be obedience, sacrifice, strictness, cleanliness, accuracy, diligence, secrecy...And everyone together must firmly and bravely sacrifice for the group and for the nation...What is the New Life Movement that I now propose? Stated simply, it is to militarise thoroughly the lives of the citizens of the entire nation so that they can cultivate courage and swiftness, the endurance of suffering and a tolerance for hard work, and especially the habit and ability of unified action, so that they will at any time sacrifice for the nation.” (Quoted in Eastman, op cit).
This is not to say that the regime was fully fascist. Although he created the Blue Shirts, they remained a very weak force and were created after the fact, whereas in Germany the Brown Shirts were a genuine mass movement that helped bring Hitler to power. Chiang Kai-shek’s regime also lacked a base in society outside the militarist clique, and it was too weak to establish anything genuinely totalitarian. But the regime had clear fascist tendencies. It was a bourgeois Bonapartist regime with aspirations towards fascism. But fascism in Germany also proved itself in the last analysis not to be a strong regime, a viable new form of capitalism, but a final agonising cry of capitalism, a kind of senile insanity which could easily have been replaced with socialism had the Soviet Union been a healthy workers’ state. In this way Chiang Kai-shek’s regime spelt out its own doom and the necessity of the victory of the CCP in 1949.
National Dis-unification
Despite high hopes that Chiang Kai-shek’s victory would at long last lead to national unification, he proved incapable of overcoming warlordism. In absorbing into itself, rather than struggling against, the warlords, the Guomindang capitulated to their regional power, legalising their role by creating local branch ‘councils’ as part of the state apparatus in 1928, which were autonomous administrative organs. What started out with the Northern Expedition as a war to unify and modernise the country ended up in the institutionalisation of these regional parasites.
The system whereby China was effectively divided up into local fiefdoms of feudalistic warlords was extremely beneficial for imperialism, for a country divided is all the more easily dominated. Probably a chief factor in the weakness of the labour movement after 1927 was the division of the country into separate authorities, which must have undermined working class unity, so in that respect it benefited the exploitation of labour.
However, the inability to unify the country and overcome medieval-style military cliques was the most explicit expression of the chronic weakness of Chinese capitalism. These cliques were constantly at war with one another and with Chiang Kai-shek. There were endless intrigues against his power which forced his resignation at the end of 1931. Actually these brutal mini-civil-wars must have been a big factor in the CCP’s ability to fend off all but the last of the Guomindang’s 5 extermination campaigns on their base in Jiangxi, as Chiang’s troops and resources were diverted to fighting this or that warlord-Guomindang clique.
According to some reactionaries, dictatorships such as that of Chiang Kai-shek have a saving grace in the stability they bring and the economic growth that comes with that. What this perspective fails to understand is that capitalism’s need for dictatorships flows from its inability to take society forwards. Such regimes do not remove the obstacles of capitalism’s inner flaws, in fact they raise them to new heights. Chiang’s regime was an economic failure of the first order and one of the most unstable regimes imaginable.
Between 1929 and 1931 there were four different factional wars between various militarists and Chiang Kai-shek. The mid 1930 conflict between Chiang’s regime and the warlords Feng Yuxiang, Yen Xishan and their Guomindang allies Wang Jingwei and the Western Hills faction led to approximately 250,000 deaths (Eastman, op cit.). Each time the bloodshed was ended not through resolving the underlying problems, but merely by Chiang personally bribing the respective warlord with millions of dollars and the promise of an important and lucrative official position.
Economic Decay
The militarism that accompanied this represented a grotesque indulgence on behalf of the ruling class. Between 1927 and 1937 two thirds of state expenditure was devoted to the military and to servicing debt - but most of the latter was military related anyway. This is not to mention the vast military expense of all the competing landlords.
Thanks to the regime’s chronic weakness, its regional dislocation and utter inability to carry out any land reform or in any way touch the privileges of the landlord class, it was unable to guide the economy and protect it from more competitive imperialist capitalisms. It could not even collect tax properly.
Prior to contact with Western capitalism, the Chinese peasantry had always been relatively self-subsistent and well-off compared to European peasants in the past. Arable land was of a high quality which freed up labour, meaning that half of the household would produce the tools, clothing etc. that peasants would need. Most peasants were not hired labourers or serfs, and the landholdings of the landlord class were rarely much larger than what relatively well-off peasants would have. Social differentiation in the countryside was much lower than in Europe.
But the forcible entry of the world market into China destroyed all that. The cottage industries were wrecked by cheap British cotton. The landlords got rich from trade and they used this money to buy up the land of the now impoverished peasants. More peasants slipped into feudal servitude. Rents became obscenely extortionate and were sometimes collected decades in advance.
The Guomindang based itself upon this and strengthened the gentry at the expense of the peasants. They had no intention of carrying out the kind of land reform France had experienced 130 years previously. During the 1930s “Unequal income distribution [in the countryside] perpetuated a group of high income recipients who employed their earnings to finance high standards of consumption as well as to maintain their position through land purchase and speculative marketing and credit operations.” (Douglas Paauw, The Guomindang and Economic Stagnation).
For these reasons they were unable to raise tax from the countryside. Considering it made up 65% of GDP and involved four fifths of the population, taxing agricultural production would be a cornerstone of any programme of industrialisation. Instead, in the 1930s 85% of tax revenues were derived from trade and industry, despite the fact that they only comprised about 3.4% of GDP (Ibid).
However, ruinous local taxes were collected by unscrupulous warlords to finance their own private armies and lavish lifestyles. The defeat of the revolution and peasant uprisings in 1927 gave the warlords the green light for an unprecedented expansion of exploitation beyond their wildest dreams. Peasants were fleeced in everything they did, and the utterly unproductive warlords blocked every pore of productive activity in the countryside with taxes on sales, domestic animals, camels, salt carrying, salt consumption, opium lamps, sheep, merchants, porters, pigeons, land, middlemen, food, special food, additional land, wool, coal, skins, slaughter, boats, irrigation, millstones, houses, wood, milling, scales, ceremonies, tobacco, wine, marriage and vegetables. There was a 30% tax on the sale of sheep, cows and mules, 25% on the ownership of a sheep, a tax on slaughtering pigs and 40% on the sale of a bushel of wheat.
The indebtedness that resulted “forced many farmers to sell all their cattle and abandon their lands. Great areas had been bought up by officials, tax collectors, and lenders at very cheap rates, but much of it remained wasteland because no tenants could be found to work under the tax burden and rents imposed.” (Snow, op cit.)
In addition to being grossly inefficient the tax system clearly expressed the regime’s subservience to imperialism and backward feudal localism. Regarding the former, the tax system was devised so that it failed to develop the Chinese economy and to protect it from more advanced ones. Customs duties “failed to provide incentives to investment in China’s leading modern industry, cotton textiles, for example, since imported raw materials and other producers’ goods were taxed at rates almost as high as the duty on imported textiles.” Taxes were also devised that lowered demand for Chinese goods. Low quality goods were taxed higher than high quality goods, when it was precisely in low quality, cheap goods that the weak Chinese economy excelled.
Like Germany at the time of the industrial revolution, the Chinese economy was also hampered by its lack of centralisation, with a tax system known as Likin, a tariff between provinces. This obviously tended to depress trade and prevented the formation of the national market, a key part of the development of strong capitalism. It was abolished by the Guomindang in 1931, but since the Guomindang failed to abolish warlordism, the basis of local particularism such as this tax, the warlords reintroduced it under another name and the central government was powerless to prevent them.
Because of the pitiful tax revenues the government was constantly forced to go into debt to the Shanghai bankers. 25% of expenditure was financed by borrowing, and thanks to this dependence on debt the bankers took yields of 20-40% on these bonds. This guaranteed source of high returns, combined with the unprofitable nature of Chinese business (as we have seen, it was taxed in such a manner to promote foreign competitors, and it was taxed highly since it was the only source of government revenue) caused an explosion in unproductive speculation on government debt,
“One Chinese writer estimated that 50% of Shanghai’s total liquid assets were invested in government bonds, and that much of the remainder was diverted to speculation in these same credit instruments. Nanjing government finance, therefore, promoted the diversion of the economy’s stocks of savings from investment to speculative uses. In addition, it raised the cost of bank credit to the point where private entrepreneurs could not make use of bank credit for productive purposes.” (Paauw, op cit.)
According to Paauw, during this period consumption fell, foreign investment fell from 1931 to 1936 and domestic investment was so low it was not even sufficient to maintain existing capital. According to Eastman less than 4% of government expenditure from 1934-6 was devoted to economic development, much of which was embezzled anyway. Total agricultural output increased by less than 1% in the 5 year period 1932-36. GDP in 1936 was approximately the same as in 1932, and average output for the 1932-36 period was somewhat lower than the 1932 figure. The growth of GDP failed to keep pace with the increase in China’s population, and an index of production for seven leading industries, constructed by the Central Bank of China, showed no increase in output over a 3 1/2 year period (1932-5) (Ibid). But what did the Guomindang care - they were able to exploit their prize possession - state power - and a layer of top bureaucrats became rich.
A direct consequence of the descent into feudalistic dependence was the great North West famine of 1928-30, in which up to 6 million impoverished peasants perished. Natural disasters bring the contradictions and injustices of class society into sharp relief, firstly because their disastrous consequences are usually unnecessary. Secondly because of the disgusting way in which the ruling class takes advantage of the ruined state of the masses to extend their wealth and power. This famine was no exception to this rule.
Despite the drought there was plenty of rice and wheat around, and money with which to purchase more from abroad. The trouble is that this rice and wheat was deliberately kept from peasants’ bellies by those who also held the money, so that it would make them even more money as it rose in price. Money and food collected from abroad also failed to make it to the starving due to factional struggles between the regional warlords.
Because they were so desperate for food, starving farmers were effectively forced to sell all their productive land to landlords and financiers for as little as three days’ worth of food, so that the latter may get richer. Of course with their sums of money and superior knowledge they could wait until the best land became available, and so in this way the concentration of wealth advanced thanks to the famine. It’s no surprise then that according to Eastman, China’s death rate in 1930 was virtually the highest in the world, two and a half times that of the US and significantly more than India’s. These are the economic conditions that the CCP were struggling against, the kind of political regime they were up against, and that made Chinese capitalism so ripe for overthrowing.
We have seen how Stalin’s power in the late 1920s in Moscow veered from one extreme to another. The reality that the Communist movement could not be built through an opportunist policy of accommodation with the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie had to be admitted.
The Origins of Maoism
The reason for this was that not to have done so in China by 1928 would have meant the total extinction of the CCP with the real danger that the remaining members could be won to Trotskyism. So to eliminate that possibility it was now stressed that the Guomindang was the enemy of the CCP and the revolution, and that therefore the party’s chief task was to win back the working class to an open socialist programme.
But on the other hand it was an imperative for Moscow that such a policy be clearly distinguished from that of the Trotskyists. Stalin could never admit that Trotsky had been right in his perspectives for China. Therefore whilst declaring the Guomindang to be an enemy, the CCP was forced to adopt the self-contradictory position that its sudden transfer from ally to enemy only signified the raising of the revolution to a new, higher plane. So to combat Trotsky’s influence, a task far more important for Stalin than the wellbeing of the CCP, the CCP was forced to seek evidence of the rising revolutionary tide and find, somewhere, an avenue to pursue an immediate revolutionary policy.
This development displays the idealist tendencies of Stalinism, by which I mean its tendency to think it can manipulate reality purely in accordance with its own narrow wishes. If the revolution failed, the real task for Marxists is to understand and explain this failure, however personally difficult this may be. Stalinism, being based on the careerist interests of the bureaucracy, rather than on sacrificing one’s own interests for the real needs of the revolution, attempts to hide reality in the hope it will go away.
A Product of Moscow
So in pushing the CCP to find ‘evidence’ of the healthy state of the revolution and the good prospects for the Comintern in China, Moscow began to create within the CCP a strong tendency towards substituting itself for the real action of the working class, towards adventurism and voluntarism. If evidence of the revolution wasn’t there, there was enormous pressure on the party to make it up, to artificially create a ‘revolutionary rising tide’. In a resolution written by Li Lisan in June 1930, it is argued that any lack of faith in the imminence of the revolution must be cut out, which will aid in “speeding the arrival of the rising tide in the workers’ struggles.”
It is always an illusion to imagine that a revolutionary organisation’s task is to ‘speed up’ the arrival of the revolution. Workers will move in that direction when they feel the need to, based on their own experience of economic and political crises. Considering that the party had systematically lost all influence in the proletariat by 1930, such a claim can only be seen as evidence of Stalinist wishful thinking.
The same resolution then makes a wild departure from reality in justifying the policy of campaigning for armed insurrections on the basis that the revolution is merely a product of the party itself,
“...one great workers’ struggle in an industrial or political centre may immediately lead to the formation of a revolutionary upsurge – (that is), to a directly revolutionary situation... [this would] mean that the ruling class is not only unable to hold the rural areas, but also incapable of suppressing or controlling the revolutionary struggle in the cities. This would mean that objective conditions are ripe for armed insurrection. Therefore we may say that the upsurge of the revolutionary rising tide will inevitably be followed by armed insurrection.” (Li Lisan, The New Revolutionary Rising Tide and Preliminary Successes in one or more Provinces, June 11, 1930, my emphasis)
Perhaps the worst casualty of this policy was the core of Marxism – its unswerving materialist philosophy, its emphasis on the fact that the objective laws of society are decisive, not the will of the party. Above we find no mention whatsoever of the actual consciousness of workers, their level of organisation, the state of their leadership. Mass actions of the workers are dreamed up out of nothing, one imagined scenario is built on top of another, and hey-presto, we arrive at armed insurrection!
A Mistake of History
This characteristic of Stalinism in the late 1920s is the root of what would become Maoism, although it was by no means certain that things would develop in this way. Since Moscow’s pressure on the CCP to ‘find the revolution’ at this time was not a product of a scientific understanding of the situation, but was a knee-jerk, empirical response to an unforeseen development (the failure of 1925-7), so too its outcome (Maoism) was not foreseen and has the character of a historical accident.
The reason Maoism, or the strategy of armed insurrection from the countryside, became the dominant political line of the CCP from the early 30s onwards, was because a rural struggle uniquely fitted Moscow’s opportunist need to deny the failure of the revolution and to continue the fight at the will of the party leadership. It was not a genuine theoretical development of Mao that expressed the Chinese revolution’s uniqueness. In fact, although Mao became the policy’s chief leader, it did not originate with him.
The Political Resolution of the 1928 CCP Congress (which Mao did not attend and which took place before Mao had risen to prominence), meeting in Moscow and under decisive influence of the Comintern leadership, declares that it is necessary for the party “to organise revolutionary armies of workers and peasants in the present guerrilla areas... this task is now the central issue in the peasant movement, deserving special attention by the party. The success with which this task is carried out may give an impetus to the growth of a new revolutionary rising tide” (Political Resolution of the 6th National Congress of the CCP, 1928, emphasis in original).
Here it is explicitly stated that the rural movement deserves special attention because it can fulfil Moscow’s desire to artificially kick-start a revolution. On this basis the resolution outlines the concrete tasks of the party as expansion of the Soviet areas; to create a revolutionary army of peasants; and to induce the ‘broad masses’ to participate in the Soviet areas’ organisation once the latter have been established (by the party, not by the ‘broad masses’).
This is the recipe for the Maoist strategy of the party creating a rural insurrection as a substitute for the masses creating an urban based revolution in which the party would participate and aim to lead. It must be pointed out that all of this happened by mistake. The failed Autumn Harvest and Nanchang Uprisings that disastrously ended the revolution in 1927 obliged what remained of its military force to flee into the nearby countryside, which included Mao Zedong and Zhu De.
It was here that this ragtag force built the first ‘rural soviet’. And for the very same reason that they fled the cities to hide in the nearby no-man’s-land of the Jinggangshan mountain range, (because this region was safe from government persecution), the CCP began to see the Soviet in the Jinggangshan as the panacea for their urban failure. If you want to create a ‘revolution’ artificially, it is far easier to do so in an obscure rural backwater with a loose and scattered peasantry than in an urban centre. After all, with the Canton Commune the CCP had tried to manufacture the revolution in a city, but without genuine mass support this lasted only 3 days. Contrariwise, the rural soviets lasted, in one form or another, right up until 1949.
Therefore considering Stalinism’s need to ‘find the revolution’, and given the party’s systematic loss of its best urban activists and its alienation from the working class, it was inevitable that it would stumble into the policy of rural armed struggle as its main strategy. Maoism was improvised independently of Mao himself and with little thought given to its long term consequences.
For the first few years of the 1930s the rural struggle was still officially subordinate to the urban one, with Party Central clandestinely based in Shanghai. But the fundamental point about the socialist revolution is that it can only happen thanks to the interdependence and unity of the working class. That whole sections of the party were forced to now base themselves on an extremely un-unified class (the peasantry) represented a massive defeat for the revolutionary forces, not an innovative step forwards. The Jinggangshan’s remoteness was not an advantage but a massive disadvantage, and it inevitably led to an objective dislocation and conflict between the rural and urban sections of the party. From now on unity of action, the best weapon in a Bolshevik party’s armoury, would be constantly undermined.
Mao’s Base in the Jinggangshan
Mao was born and raised in Hunan Province, a rural setting in South Central China and in close proximity to the Jinggangshan mountains, which straddled Jiangxi and Hunan Provinces. No doubt due to his peasant origins (most of the prominent youth in the party were from a student background) Mao took a great deal of interest in the party’s work amongst the peasantry, organising Peasant Associations in Hunan from 1925.
So when the Autumn Harvest Uprising was organised in Changsha (the capital of Hunan) in 1927, Mao was the comrade to lead it. When it was summarily crushed, he knew the surrounding countryside. As a man particularly steeped in China’s traditions of rural uprisings, he was most likely familiar with the local tendency for bandits and other outlaws to hide in the remoteness of the Luoxiao Mountains, of which the Jinggangshan range forms a part.
Because of the economic, social and political weakness of the peasantry as a class, any peasant based uprising must have the tendency to subordinate the politics of the movement to the narrow technical and military aspects of it. In the cities Marxists can work amongst the existing organisations of the working class, and therefore concentrate their efforts on giving those organisations a socialist programme. Organising peasant uprisings and revolutionary governments in the countryside, however, necessarily drags communists into the extremely difficult work of holding the movement together economically and militarily.
The scanty resources, low level of productivity and economic isolation found in Jinggangshan and other rural areas made running the Soviets a constant burden. As we shall see, the political needs (agrarian reform, raising of agricultural productivity etc.) of the movement had to be subordinated to the task of bare survival, let alone the fact that it was impossible to carry a revolutionary programme out on the basis of one or two Xiens (rural districts). If socialism in one country is impossible, socialism in one Xien was certainly a pipe dream!
If the desire to use the isolation of certain rural districts to keep the ‘revolution’ going flowed from Stalinism’s inherent bureaucratic, commandist methods, then the organisational weakness of the peasantry was its perfect social basis. One could hardly get away with invading the homes of workers in a city and declaring yourself their revolutionary government! But in a sparsely populated rural area, that is another question entirely.
The need to place organisational tasks ahead of winning the political struggle in this context is exemplified by the fact that the political organs of the supposed self-rule of the peasants in the Jinggangshan Soviet were established “artificially and directed from outside” (Guillermaz, op cit.) by what was in effect an invading and occupying force, albeit a benevolent one. These organs of power were not created by the peasant masses; they did not flow from their own struggle and experience. They could only be sprung up once the Red Army had done its military work. Thus there was no political experience of the masses as the prerequisite, there could be no political work conducted in convincing the peasant masses of the need for socialism as they went through their own struggle.
This explains Mao’s 1928 admission that “wherever the Red Army goes, the masses are cold and aloof, and only after our propaganda do they slowly move into action... We have an acute sense of our isolation which we keep hoping will end.” (Mao, quoted in Pinckney Harrison, op cit.). Again a party report in 1929 stated that “the masses completely failed to understand what the Red Army was. In many places, it was even attacked, like a bandit gang.” (quoted in Pinckney Harrison, op cit.).
Formally speaking the soviet was democratic, but in order to ensure mass participation “everybody over the age of 16 had to take part.” (Guillermaz, op cit.). “The establishment and functioning of the new administration was constantly hindered by such difficulties as finding qualified office-bearers... lack of understanding of the respective roles of assemblies and committees” (Ibid). But democracy is not a set of formal arrangements, a certain number of committees legally responsible to the people as the liberals imagine. Democracy is only real democracy when the mass of people actively and voluntarily participate and feel the process to be theirs.
Genuine democracy therefore has an economic basis – the masses must have the time, education and resources to exercise real control. But the economic conditions in places such as the Jinggangshan were to preclude this. The low level of productivity in these areas meant that peasants were already performing back-breaking work. For them to participate in the political organisation of their region was simply not possible. Furthermore, the population would undoubtedly have been illiterate and unaware of national politics. All these problems apply not only to Jinggangshan but also to the following Soviet established in Jiangxi as well as all the others established by the CCP in provinces such as Shaanxi.
In addition to this, the Jinggangshan was made up of particularly barren and infertile land. At the best of times it would barely have been able to feed its own peasant population, and yet the (in effect) occupying force of the Red Army now had to be fed too. Although when they first arrived they had only 1,000 troops, by the time Zhu De’s forces arrived, following their failure in the Nanchang Uprising, the number went up to approximately 5,000, and then reached a height of 10,000. That is a lot of people for 2,000 impoverished peasants to feed!
A harmonious and democratic socialist society therefore must be built on the highest of economic foundations; and yet here the CCP appeared to be trying to build it on the very lowest of foundations. True, at this time they had no illusions that socialism would be created here; they continually emphasised that these ‘Soviets’ were merely stepping stones to the proletarian revolution.
In reality, they represented a haven from the already failed proletarian revolution, an escape from reality, and so it was inevitable the party would be mired in these conditions for some time – in the end, this period lasted 22 years. They underestimated the essential role of the consciousness of the working class in the fight for socialism and therefore could not grasp what had been thrown away in 1927 thanks to Stalin’s policies. The workers could not be stimulated into action by a strange army in the countryside. It would take years of hard, patient work in the cities to win back the confidence and participation of the workers. For this reason they were unconscious that this ‘temporary’ concession to peasant politics would become the long-term foundation of the party.
The deleterious effect on the unity of the party that this barbaric struggle for survival had was already visible less than one year after arrival. By Summer 1928, the Red Army’s “operations had exhausted the region economically, while the food situation in the army, which was scarcely ever paid, had grown still worse. Yuan Zhongzuan, in command of the 2nd Battalion of the 28th Regiment, rebelled and killed his colonel and part of his unit followed him in his revolt for some time.” (Ibid). According to Mao himself “discipline was poor, political training was at a low level, and many wavering elements were among the men and officers. There were many desertions.” (Mao, quoted in Snow, op cit.).
It has already been mentioned that this remote area, and countless others like it, had traditionally harboured bandits and outlaws who, like the Red Army, could operate here in safety from the state. Indeed in order to settle in the area Mao not only had to placate two local bandit chiefs but was actually obliged to assimilate them into his army! It appears from his own account that Mao naively believed these roving de-classed elements were immediately transformed, by means of some verbal commitments, into “faithful Communists” “carrying out the orders of the party.” And yet he also admits that “later on, when they were left alone at Jinggangshan, they returned to their bandit habits. Subsequently they were killed by the peasants.” (Ibid). The desperateness of the efforts to build the Communist movement in these conditions clearly compelled the party to downplay the material and class basis for the movement in an idealist manner.
It’s no surprise to learn that if this environment was the ‘natural habitat’ for bandits, to the extent that the Red Army actually absorbed outlaws into its ranks, the Red Army itself began to lose its proletarian revolutionary character, and took on more of the lumpen-proletarian characteristics of a bandit gang. Again, Mao honestly lists these tendencies in the CCP and Red Army at the time,
“‘Partisanism’, for example, was a weakness reflected in lack of discipline, exaggerated ideas of democracy, and looseness of organisation. Another tendency that had to be fought was ‘vagabondage’ – a disinclination to settle down to the serious tasks of government, a love of movement, change, new experience and incident. There were also remnants of militarism, with some of the commanders maltreating or even beating the men, and discriminating against those they disliked personally, while showing favouritism to others.” (Ibid).
Under incessant military pressure from the Guomindang and facing a ruinous economic situation, the exodus from the Jinggangshan into Jiangxi took place in dribs and drabs from mid 1928 through to 1930. The first rural Soviet experiment, which was cobbled together ad hoc without the CCP really understanding what was in their hands, and under Mao’s leadership by an accident of history, had failed.
But guerrilla armies are stubborn things. They grow accustomed to their arms and heroic lifestyle; they lose touch with the city and the urban masses. They begin to see the only path to power, or at least the only way to sustain their own existence, as being in the continuation and enlargement of the guerrilla struggle.
The weakening of party structures, discipline and centralism that is inherent in leading an obscure rural armed struggle are evident here. Because although at this time Mao was repudiated by and expelled from the Central Committee for the loss of comrades this movement led to, with sections of the party beginning to decry this adventure, he nevertheless maintained his army in spite of their criticism. So rather than pack-in this peculiar experiment in petty-bourgeois adventurism and return to the cities, Mao and his troops found it far easier to simply set up another camp in the neighbouring province.
Much time has been spent criticising the rural experiment beginning in the Jinggangshan. But it cannot be denied that the establishment and maintenance of a rural government in the most adverse of conditions and after years of party failures represented a huge technical achievement. The success in establishing a government in the Jinggangshan meant that a Communist haven from persecution had been created.
For that reason when Mao and Zhu De’s band were forced to abandon their first base here, they found in the neighbouring province of Jiangxi (and in a few other border areas) rudimentary Soviet bases already established. Communist refugees from cities such as Changsha established copy-cat bases, so this was the natural place to take the forces from the Jinggangshan. It is unclear to what extent the moves to create these various bases were led or coordinated by the CCP leadership (still in Shanghai), but it would seem that to a large extent these activities were simply the unplanned outcome of the failed uprisings of 1930 detailed above.
By 1931 Mao was now leading what was known as the Jiangxi Central Soviet, with headquarters in Ruijin (then called Juichin). This was by far the biggest of the 7 soviet bases in and around Jiangxi. At the beginning of the Jiangxi period in 1930, there were about 60-70,000 Red Army troops defending these bases.
The new base was undoubtedly more successful than the previous one, for several reasons. Of course by now Mao and the Red Army had gained valuable experience in establishing a rural government, and the cadres in the party must have been toughened up after three years in the countryside. The land in Jiangxi was, like the Jinggangshan, suitable from a defensive point of view, being both mountainous and remote. But it also had the advantage of being more hospitable and therefore the Red Army was better fed and, crucially, less of a burden for the local peasantry who had to feed them. Finally, the Guomindang regime was weakened by splits, civil wars, regional dislocation and general unpopularity.
In these more fertile conditions the movement flourished. The total population governed by the Chinese Soviet Republic, as it was now called, grew to a size of up to five million from 1932-4. 17,375 new comrades were recruited to the CCP in 1931-3. 4.2% of the local population were party members and in 1932 there were 678 rural branches. This compares with only 10 branches in factories, 1 in a school, 123 in public sector workplaces and 160 in the military. Whereas in “all non-Communist territory” there were only around 6,000 members (bear in mind the number of urban and working class members will have been still lower than that, since this figure includes all non-Communist territory), there were as many as 97,000 members in Jiangxi alone (Pinckney Harrison, op cit.). This shows how rapidly the party had lost its working class, urban base.
James Pinckney Harrison gives some useful statistics on Red Army numbers and the CCP class composition in the rural areas,
“The various Red Armies, of which there were about a half-dozen principal groups and more than a dozen in all, supposedly grew from less than 10,000 in 1928 to 22,000 in 1929 to 66,000 in the spring of 1930 to something more than 100,000 by early 1931. Estimates of total strength in 1932 ranged from 92,900 to 200,800, to possibly as many as 300,000 men in all groups by late 1933. Much of the time, about half or more of these forces were associated with Mao Zedong and Zhu De, who had more than 100,000 men by mid-1933.
“early in 1934, 28% of Red Army men were Party members, and another 16.6% were members of the Communist Youth League. Thus, about 45% of all Red Army men and a higher proportion of its officers (about 55%) were in the CCP or its youth affiliate. Only 4% of army men were over 39, 44% were from 23 to 39, 51% were 15 to 22, and 1 % were under 15. Their class backgrounds were supposedly 30% worker (apparently including 20% ‘agricultural labourers’) and 68% peasant; about 1% were former government employees and 1% ‘other’. Another survey, of 1932, reported proportions of 57.5% of the Red Armies peasant, 28% (former Nationalist or warlord) soldier, 8.75% ‘vagabond and bandit’, and 5.75% worker...The source of recruitment of the Red Armies was 77% from ‘revolutionary bases,’ 12% from Guomindang areas, 4% defected from Guomindang armies, and 7% converted prisoners of war.” (Ibid).
Economic and Social Relations in the Soviets
But let us be absolutely clear, the rural Soviets express the most herculean struggle, the noblest sacrifice of the downtrodden Chinese masses. In them we find an extraordinary determination to overcome all obstacles. Against the odds, the comrades managed to achieve many progressive tasks, and it is in large part thanks to the objectively progressive role of the rural soviets that the CCP was swept to power in 1949.
The Progressive Role of the Soviets
The absolute cornerstone of this was the progressive agrarian reform carried out, in various forms, by the CCP in this period. The November 1931 Land Law of the Soviet Republic states that,
“...all the lands of the feudal landlords, tuhao, gentry, militarists and other big private landowners, shall be subject to confiscation without any compensation whatever, irrespective of whether they themselves work their lands or rent them out on lease. The Soviets will distribute the confiscated lands among the poor and middle peasants... Hired farm hands, coolies, and toiling labourers shall enjoy equal rights to land allotments, irrespective of sex... Aged persons, orphans, and widows, who are not in a position to work and who have no relatives on whom to depend, shall be given social relief by the Soviet government.” (Land Law of the Soviet Republic, November 1931)
The Constitution of the Soviet Republic from November 1931 “guarantees to the workers, peasants, and toilers freedom of speech and the press as well as the right to assembly... the workers, peasants, and toiling masses shall enjoy the use of printing shops, meeting halls, and similar establishments by the power of a people’s regime, as a material basis for the realisation of these rights and liberties.”
With regards to the ethnic minorities encountered on the Long March (which was like the Chinese Soviet Republic in transit), the Red Army broke down their hatred of the dominant Han Chinese on a class basis, explaining that there were actually ‘Red’ and ‘White’ Chinese. They freed tribes from their oppression by the warlords, and as a result these nationally oppressed peoples spread the good word about this poor man’s army. The current CCP regime could learn a lot from such an intelligent and class based approach to the national question in places such as Tibet and Xinjiang.
The Marriage Law of the Chinese Soviet Republic prohibited arranged marriages and the buying and selling of women. Marriage had to have the consent of both parties and any couple could be given a marriage certificate free of charge. All children were considered legitimate, and either party could get a divorce for free. The property was then divided equally, both parents had to care for the children, and the male was obliged to supply two-thirds of the child’s living expenses (Snow, op cit.).
Of course, progressive laws are just words on paper before they become a social reality, and as we shall see, in the backward, destitute and militarily insecure conditions of the rural soviets, reality rarely matched up to the legal ideal. Nevertheless, these laws combined with the radical land programme represent an extremely bold step forward.
The bold entry of this party onto the scene was like the sweep of an invigorating hurricane of fresh air through a stale cellar. These were areas where destitute peasants were crushed by a millennia old class system. On the basis of an outdated and extreme form of class exploitation, ancient and cruel Chinese practices such as child slavery, concubinage and foot-binding were carried on well into the 20th Century. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an extraordinarily well organised and determined party establishes itself. It not only preaches a few progressive ideas, such as an end to despotism, but actually carries out a programme of wealth equalisation and with the most modern of social programmes for women, ethnic minorities, children, etc. Indeed their marriage laws were significantly more progressive than those of many Western countries even today.
According to Edgar Snow, who lived for some time in the Soviet areas of China, the Soviets managed to completely eliminate opium cultivation and use, official corruption, beggary and unemployment, child slavery and prostitution, and foot-binding and infanticide were finally made illegal. Land deeds were destroyed, taxes on poor peasants abolished and the poor peasantry was armed. All of this was achieved by what appeared to be a ragtag band of defeated and isolated Communists. Whereas under the Guomindang regime, whose key task was supposed to be ending landlordism and the obscene rents that crushed the peasantry and agriculture as a whole, the landlord system was strengthened and rural inequality deepened, as we have seen above.
It is no surprise then that “as many as 80% of the eligible youth joined Communist sponsored organisations” (Guillermaz, op cit.). The enthused and sympathetic peasants spread the word, so that during the Long March the Red Army essentially had a vast and impossible to infiltrate network of informal peasant spies and scouts.
According to Mao’s Report to the Second All-China Soviet Congress in January 1934, the proportion of the Soviet administered population voting in the Soviet elections in late 1933 was more than 80%. He also claimed that “in the majority of city and xiang [village] Soviets, women delegates constitute more than 25%”, and in some districts women delegates were actually the majority.
Of course Mao had an interest in prettifying the regime and made a serious error in presenting this as the building of rural socialism. For the reasons outlined above, socialism cannot be built from the peasantry upwards, and collective peasant self rule will always be a fiction, due to their being scattered and illiterate, their lack of time and their varying levels of wealth and interests. But the evidence is that the Soviet government did grant the peasantry genuine social and economic freedoms and did engender a certain amount of enthusiasm.
Why in the 1930s did the CCP manage to grant genuine freedom of expression and democracy if upon seizing national power in 1949, the very same people established a totalitarian regime (albeit one that did still carry through land reform and nationalisations)? Because this rural regime’s existence was daily threatened from outside in the form of the Guomindang and the warlords, and from the inside in the form of economic weakness. To combat the constant external military threat, Mao needed to mobilise the maximum number of peasants to fight for the Soviet, and he had no recourse to a large and established state apparatus to coerce the masses into doing so. To combat the incessant danger of economic catastrophe, he needed to give the peasantry control over their land so that they did not feel that in feeding the CCP forces, they were labouring under the same old exploitation in another name.
It was their objectively progressive role that the CCP depended on for their survival. Socialist revolution represented to hundreds of millions of toiling Chinese masses the only real way out. They had seen what the bourgeois nationalists in the form of the Guomindang could do. The USA is thought to have spent, in various forms, around $50m on propping up the Chiang Kai-shek regime. The still weak USSR spent no more than $15,000 per month on maintaining the CCP. And yet the influence of Russia and Communist ideas on the Chinese masses was infinitely greater, because only they had the boldness to finish thousands of years of class rule. As Mao himself put it,
“The peasant millions, awakening from their long dark age, have confiscated land and other properties from all the landlords and fertile land from the rich peasants, abolishing usury and onerous taxation. They have eliminated everything which stands in the way of the revolution and built up their own regime. For the first time, the Chinese peasant masses have broken their way out of the hell [they live in] and made themselves their own masters. This is the fundamental situation that differentiates the rural districts under the Soviet from those under the KMT.” (Mao, op cit.)
Material Realities
The secret of history, its hidden thread, is the ability of society to develop the means of production. The viability of any social system, however big or small, rests upon its ability to do so. If the relations of production are such that the forces of production from which society lives stagnate or decline, then those relations of production are doomed to extinction.
Therefore the litmus test for the Chinese Soviet Republic was not the earnestness with which the comrades pursued their project, nor the tolerance for hard work in the peasantry. It was whether or not an isolated rural district under military siege and with no industrial base could improve the living standards of the peasantry, as well as sustain its own military force, purely on the basis of land re-division. The evidence is that in the long run, no, they could not.
In fact, Marx explained not only that any social system depends on its ability to develop the productive forces, but also that a new, higher social system can only come about on the basis of the full development and exhaustion of the old social system. Although it is true that the old system of landlordism found in China’s rural districts was beyond exhaustion, it was by no means the case that the valid successor growing out of this system was the rural Soviet system.
For the landlord system did not stand in splendid isolation, but was crowned by industrial, capitalist relations in the cities. What the CCP was doing then, was to try to impose a utopian rural communism onto the occupied areas. In doing so they cut these areas off from the industrial relations they previously depended on. As a result the agricultural production in these areas had to be sustained with extremely limited access to the products of industry in China, let alone the rest of the world. For all its communistic ideals, this did not represent a higher social system than the semi-feudal production which it replaced.
In the final analysis politics does not trump economic relations; one cannot mould social relations from outside without oneself being fundamentally conditioned by economic relations. It was therefore inevitable that in one way or another the CCP would succumb to the enormous social pressures of the environment.
To the extent that they were able to trade with the rest of the Chinese economy, the administration of the Soviet areas always tended towards bankruptcy, since its illegal and extremely precarious existence determined very unfair terms of trade (Snow, op cit.).
This was partially overcome by heavy taxation on the rich and ‘voluntary contributions of the people’. Illegal trade with the outside world necessarily had an extremely limited or depressed character, and so both these ‘solutions’, which are not based on production and merely redistribute existing wealth, were not solutions by any means. 40-50% of total Soviet expenditure was derived from confiscations, and 15-20% from voluntary contributions. A minority of revenue was from productive activity. It is clear that if the CCP failed to overthrow the Guomindang in the cities it would perish.
In order to sustain their existence in these desperate conditions, there must have been strong incentives to embark on dangerous military adventures to seize new territory containing productive industry or other resources. Strategy would be more and more determined by economic necessity rather than the class struggle, and the Party was forced to conquer areas to survive, like a benevolent imperialism. Once again we can see how holing oneself up in economic isolation from the rest of society and placing oneself outside of the class struggle, has unavoidable tendencies towards degeneration for a Marxist party.
Social Relations in the Rural Soviet
It is easy to imagine that rural areas of China at this time had a simple class composition similar to that of the cities – rich landlords and the poverty stricken peasants whose labour power the former exploited. Actually the simplicity of social relations in the cities is unique to capitalism. The peasantry is not a mass of equally poor labourers, but has as many social distinctions within itself as there are geographical differences.
The 1928 Resolution of the Sixth National Congress on the Peasant Movement points out that whereas in Southern and Central China “landless peasants constitute the majority of the rural population, and the major aspect of the struggle centres on opposing landlords”, in Northern China “the majority of peasants are small landowners.” It follows from this that it is impossible for this class, to the extent that something as heterogeneous as this can be considered one class, to lead a unified national struggle to transform society around common interests, since this group lacks common interests.
Actually the above statement in itself is an oversimplification of the peasantry, since it gives the impression that within one very large area (Southern and Central China) there is a more or less homogenous composition of the peasantry, who like the working class ‘have nothing to lose but their chains.’ This is not accurate as the CCP would learn in the coming years.
The complexity of social relations in the Soviets of Southern China is indicated in the strategy and tactics that the CCP was obliged to pursue, which resembles a circus performer juggling knives whilst walking the tightrope,
“Our class line in the agrarian revolution is to depend upon the hired farm hands and poor peasants, to ally with the middle peasants, to check the rich peasants, and to annihilate the landlords... Hence, the Soviet government should deal severely with all erroneous tendencies to infringe upon the middle peasants (mainly the well-to-do middle peasants) or to annihilate the rich peasants.” (Mao, Report to the Second All-China Soviet Congress, 1934)
Some peasants had no property whatsoever, and constantly sold their labour power to others, just like a worker. However, unlike workers they did not constitute a majority of the rural population and did not work socially, i.e. in large numbers with a division of labour, and consequently lacked social weight that the CCP could base itself upon.
Also, unlike workers they did not sell their labour power to one kind of possessing class from whom their interests were clearly, sharply differentiated. Some sold their labour power to middle peasants, who as the above quoted passage from Mao indicates, did not have diametrically opposed interests to the poor peasants whose labour they may have enlisted – they too were exploited by landlords, who often owned some of their land and to whom they paid rent.
Both groups were also exploited by merchants (some of whom were also landlords) who took advantage of their capital and access to industrial goods to squeeze the atomised and weak peasantry. But their ability to unite in a common struggle and do away with the class divisions in the countryside was barred by the fact that middle peasants had an interest in maintaining the system of landownership which they partially benefitted from, and by the simple fact that their work focused around atomised economic units tenuously connected by a market they were the victims of. Lacking the social distillation of the modern city, the countryside can never of its own accord sweep away all the ancient injustices by implementing and carrying to completion the agrarian revolution. The political unity and swiftness of action necessary for ending the power of the ruling class can only be found in the working class in the cities.
These factors made it impossible for the CCP to pursue a militant revolutionary policy in the rural Soviets, and as time went on their agrarian policy generally moved from the more revolutionary to one of open class collaboration. Middle peasants, let alone the rich ones, would rebel if the re-division of the land were too thoroughgoing, and so the CCP had to back down to stay in power. Hence the fact that by June 1933, the party openly admitted that three quarters of the Central Soviet area had witnessed no land reform under their watch. (Guillermaz, op cit.)
And since their power was restricted to small and economically dependent areas, they depended on the local bourgeoisie through whom they accessed the wider market. They therefore could not pursue a policy too antagonistic to bourgeois interests. Class collaboration therefore became a necessary policy of the rural struggle.
Trapped in a position of governing a class divided region within which no single class had the power to transform the situation, the CCP was essentially playing the role of managing the class struggle, attempting to find a formula with which to balance between the class forces, with no hope of eliminating the ruling class. Unconsciously, the party became a Bonapartist regime.
It is a law of history that any state apparatus which is not the instrument of a new, rising class, will inevitably become transformed into an instrument in the hands of the old ruling class. At least to an extent, in the brief amount of time that the CCP ruled any one area, it would appear that the party was infiltrated and used by the landlords and rich peasants.
“‘Two-thirds of the government is in the hands of the rich peasants,’ wrote a correspondent from one of the Soviet districts in 1931. ‘Rich peasants are in all the party posts,’ wrote another in August that same year. In 1933, at Juichin, the Soviet capital, a leading spokesman wrote:
“‘The land was divided, but the landlords and rich peasants also received land and better land at that. A number of landlord and rich peasant elements still retain their authority and position in the villages... Not a few of them are in control of party and government institutions and use them to carry out their own class interests...’” (Isaacs, op cit.)
This attempt to bureaucratically ‘manage’ or constrict the class struggle, to make it fit into their schemas, is also expressed in the constitution of the Chinese Soviet Republic. Here farm labourers, handicraft workers and other amorphous and ephemeral semi-classes which in some way resembled the urban proletariat (on which the party still officially based itself) were declared to be the rural proletariat and as such were arbitrarily granted greater representation in Soviet elections, like a consolation prize for their lack of real power. But democracy and the class struggle are not simply outwardly balanced arithmetical combinations, but the real movement and power of the masses.
All these factors played a key role in the decision to abandon the Jiangxi bases and begin the famous Long March to Shaanxi. Of course the Soviets were continually facing extermination from wave after wave of Guomindang attacks (more on these later). One of the worst effects of these extermination campaigns, combined as they were with the trade embargo applied to the region, was the fact that as the productive class it was the peasantry who bore the burden. As in the Jinggangshan before, the CCP was an occupying force living off the surplus produced by the local peasantry’s back-breaking work, but was incapable of leading the liberation of the peasantry. This could be masked for a time if there were a good harvest, but when things inevitably turned for the worst, it was the same peasants who suffered.
It has already been explained that the shifting of the base of the Chinese Communist Party in the late 1920s from the proletariat to the scattered peasantry inevitably meant the increasing dislocation of the party leadership, with as many factional struggles as the party had local bases. By 1928 five major factions in the party existed in the aftermath of the failed 1925-27 revolution; submerging the party in this rural, petty-bourgeois environment would do nothing to resolve these factional disputes. It is within this environment that Mao was to eventually emerge as leader.
The Emergence of Mao
The story of Mao’s emergence is inseparable from his pivotal role in the rural Soviet movement. If we can allow ourselves to make a simplification, we can say that Mao’s path to power was the story of the struggle between the Party Central leadership, based in Shanghai and closely tied to Moscow, and that of the new rural tendency led by Mao.
The earliest flashpoint in this power struggle took place in September 1928. Mao used his leading position in the Jinggangshan Soviet to remove his pro-Party Central opponents in the CCP’s Hunan Committee from the Jinggangshan area, giving him total control of the 4th Red Army (Pinckney Harrison, op cit.).
If we can trace a general political difference between these two tendencies, it is that Party Central still viewed the rural struggle as merely a tool with which to kick-start the more important proletarian revolution. In that respect their strategy was an ultra-left one; it was one of impatience and ignorance of the real conditions in the countryside and the consciousness of urban workers.
The tendency actually rooted in the countryside and led by Mao, on the other hand, was that which began to view the rural struggle as fundamental to the revolution. From a tactical and technical point of view, Mao was correct in objecting to Party Central’s impatience and adventurism. They wanted the rural bases to be constantly used as launch pads from which to attack the cities. As the best exponent of the more cautious guerrilla tactics in battling the Guomindang’s four ‘Encirclement’ or ‘Extermination’ campaigns on the Jiangxi bases, Mao was the natural leader of the Party as the rural struggle became its struggle.
However, it was not only Mao’s more intelligent guerrilla tactics that made him so suited to the rural struggle, it was also his Bonapartist tendencies. In conditions where the working class is going forward it is very hard to establish oneself as the leader of a proletarian, Bolshevik organisation in a bureaucratic, strong-arm manner. The working class is capable of taking a leading role in politics, and is therefore less want to tolerate such leadership. The peasantry is much more adapted to being moulded as a tool in the hands of Bonapartist elements. Also, such leaders would of course (unless the party were in power) not have recourse to armies and police, so their ‘strong-arm’ character would be an illusion easily exposed. In the rural Soviets however, Mao did have access to a state apparatus and a more pliable peasantry.
His actions in removing opponents, such as that described above, are an example of his method of leadership – rather than winning authority through political debate, he used his position to shift his opponents around. Local Communists “resented his strong-arm methods of taking over local Party organisations” (Ibid), and consequently these opponents had to be removed too.
The Futian Incident
In late 1930 in their new base in Jiangxi, Mao and his closest ally in the Red Army, Zhu De, had 4,400 members of the XX Corps of the Red Army arrested as ‘anti-Bolsheviks’. In response, a leader of this Corps “led several hundred followers” in open rebellion against Mao, killing several and freeing those imprisoned and establishing a “rival Soviet government” in Yungyang (Ibid). This is how the infamous Futian incident began.
Mao’s counterattack is thought to have led to the execution of as many as 700 Red Army officers and 70,000 deaths in total in all the resulting purges over the years. A massacre on this scale can only have served to further weaken the party, destroy many good cadres, and generally to have strengthened the Stalinist transformation of the Party.
A belated Party Central Bureau report from 1932 concluded that Mao’s brutality, including his use of “physical torture”, led to “many revolutionary organisations and offices [being] destroyed.” It also stated that “no effort has been made to mobilise, educate, and win over the masses. On the contrary, a reign of terror has been created among the masses.”
Mao’s opponents in this affair attempted to defeat him by driving a wedge between himself and the leader of the Red Army and Mao’s closest ally, Zhu De. But Zhu strongly backed Mao and the wider Jiangxi leadership erred on the side of caution and backed Mao too.
To defeat his enemies within the Party Mao found it necessary to create a secret police for the Soviet areas. As Marxists we do not condemn the use of secret police against genuine enemies of the revolution, against those trying to undermine workers’ power. However, where there is no workers’ democracy, no genuine workers’ power such organisations are fraught with danger for the revolution. Only a healthy workers’ state, one directly, democratically controlled by the workers, has the revolutionary strength necessary to wield such an instrument without inflicting mortal blows onto itself.
Mao’s fledgling Soviet state was nothing of the sort however. There could be no mass democratic control of this state apparatus since it was never created by the disorganised rural masses. By pushing a weak and divided party into a fruitless armed struggle, the Comintern determined that the Chinese Party would turn on itself in this way. Denied by Moscow the liberty to digest the bitter fruits of their defeat and learn the lessons – which would have involved a thorough criticism of the Comintern leadership – the Party turned in on itself and resorted to the methods of the secret police and purges that were directed not at the class enemy but at critical party members.
It should not be Mao that is blamed for adopting such methods, for he was merely applying the practices Stalin himself had mastered. But having now dabbled in these ‘dark arts’, neither Mao nor any other CCP leadership would be able to do without them.
The unpleasant history of these factional struggles, with their attendant executions, does not owe its existence to the personality traits of Mao et al, but rather to the conditions. This is proven by the experience of Xu Zhishen, a military leader in the E Yu Wan Soviet. This base was completely geographically separate from Mao’s base, and yet his experience was so similar to that of the Futian incident. After an apparent dispute with local Party leaders over guerrilla tactics and land reform, Xu and the men under his command prepared a rebellion. When they were discovered in September 1931, at least 600 of them were arrested and about 30 executed (Ibid).
The tendency for political differences to degenerate from open, honest debate into direct armed struggle is an obvious result of the predicament the CCP was in. The extreme difficulties of survival would naturally lead to continual political differences. The primacy of the Red Army in all CCP matters in the rural struggle meant that political differences would tend to be solved, not on the basis of what line was correct for the revolution, but on the basis of what best served the most immediate military needs.
Mao’s strength in the Party was inversely proportional to the strength of Party Central in Shanghai and the degree of influence from Moscow. On the surface, the manoeuvres in the party in the early 1930s would indicate a succession of defeats for Mao. But paradoxically it was precisely these defeats that laid the basis for his eventual total control of the Party in 1935.
The weakness of the party in the major cities and the lack of funds from Moscow forced the Party Central leadership to move into the Jiangxi Soviet from April 1931 through to 1933. This fact in itself proves the capitulation to rural tendencies and the jettisoning of the ‘proletarian’ line of the party.
However, the immediate effect of this was to weaken Mao as the rural leader, since he no longer had the rural base to himself but was joined by the official and Moscow backed party leadership. However, Mao’s superior understanding of the rural and military struggle ensured that over time he would win a total victory over Party Central, since they were now fish out of water in the countryside. The coincidence of this period with Chiang Kai-shek’s most determined campaign to destroy the Red Army meant that Party Central’s more ‘revolutionary’, ‘proletarian’ line would be put to the test and found wanting. That explains why Mao was able to take power in 1935.
The first ‘Encirclement Campaign’ against the Jiangxi Soviet took place from late 1930 to early 1931, to be followed by the second one in April and May 1931, and the third from July to September 1931. The CCP defence of the base was led by Zhu De and Lo Ming according to Mao’s intelligent guerrilla tactics, which were adapted to the fact that in each campaign the Guomindang commanded between three and ten times as many forces. Mao’s famous slogans “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue” and “our strategy is to pit 1 against 10, but our tactic is to pit 10 against 1” eloquently sum up how their technically inferior forces were able to repel each of these assaults with evasion and the clever use of geography.
But the fourth and fifth encirclement campaigns coincided with the entry of Party Central into Jiangxi. Although Mao dominated the election to the First National Congress of the Chinese Soviet Republic in late 1931, he was second fiddle to Party Central upon its arrival. Before these two campaigns took place, Party Central leaders such as Zhou Enlai (later to be Mao’s Premier for 26 years after the revolution) severely criticised Mao’s ‘conservative’ guerrilla tactics of ‘luring the enemy in deep’. He stated that the Red Army’s strategy must not allow the enemy to occupy ‘one inch of territory’. To showcase their new strategy, they ordered several attacks on nearby Guomindang held towns, but these were largely unsuccessful.
Mao was then excluded from the Politburo elected in January 1934. His opponents were strengthened by the relative success of their tactics in the Fourth Encirclement Campaign of early 1933, in which, by using aggressive positional warfare, their 70,000 odd troops managed to defeat the 500,000 or so Guomindang troops.
Despite this, Mao was re-elected chairman of the Soviet Republic in February 1934 (only one month after failing to get onto the Politburo) which demonstrated his real base of support in the Soviet movement. The final encirclement campaign put Party Central’s tactics to their first real test, since Chiang Kai-shek now had amassed roughly one million troops and had converted to a more intelligent strategy of attrition. This campaign lasted much longer, from September 1933 to October 1934.
The effect was devastating on the CCP. When Party Central continued to maintain the need to doggedly hold onto all territory with the slogan ‘victory or death’, Mao proposed an alternative plan of breaking up the Red Armies to lead a complex escape plan. Initially ignored, his proposal was suddenly taken up in a panic after their own plans spectacularly failed, leaving no other option but to flee the base.
In this way Mao’s eventual control of the party takes place within the context of the nationalist degeneration of the Comintern. The failure of the Comintern’s policies had put the CCP under such strains that it is no surprise that a home-grown leader would eventually come to power against the wishes of Moscow. Moscow also dug its own grave by encouraging the rural experiment, for this isolation detached the Party from Moscow, as Guillermaz summed up,
“[In the Jiangxi base] the Chinese communists had a territorial base and its population to organise and administer... After the Li Lisan adventure, fewer and fewer attempts were made to apply policies inspired by Moscow and formulated in secret meetings of the Central Committee in Shanghai. The Party’s planning now began to recognise the limitations imposed by time and place. The whole Party hierarchy was concerned with practical considerations, particularly Mao Zedong and Zhu De, whose only hope was to make their troops last as long as possible against the Guomindang, and to safeguard their development against the Central Committee”. (Guillermaz, op cit.)
For those who want to understand the reasons for the later Sino-Soviet Split, it is necessary to study its origins in Moscow’s monstrous bureaucratic mishandling of the CCP and Mao’s independent power base deep in the Jiangxi mountains.
The Price of Jiangxi
Mao’s emergence as the outstanding leader of the CCP as a guerrilla movement is in a sense well deserved. But it is important to note that the power struggle was based around technical, tactical and organisational questions, not political ones. Both contending factions accepted Moscow’s insistence that the revolution be continued by the CCP in the absence of any participation from the masses. And both factions fought out the battle in a bureaucratic, rather than political and democratic manner.
Despite Mao’s genius for guerrilla warfare, from a Marxist perspective the Jiangxi Soviet experiment can only be summed up as a gigantic failure which the party was lucky to survive. The relentless assault from the Guomindang army, which was inevitable in the establishment of a rural Soviet, led to unbearable sufferings for the local population (Guillermaz, op cit), who as we explained were never consulted about this adventure. Such a situation was entirely predictable. This allowed the Guomindang to successfully organise the local population against the CCP in the final encirclement, essentially bribing them with food (Ibid).
The local population were also alienated by the CCP who relied upon them for their intensive recruitment campaigns. These campaigns became ever more intense towards the end of the Jiangxi base as the CCP had by now lost half the membership it had in 1930, thanks to defections and war casualties. The Party had overstayed its welcome and, even with Mao’s superior tactics, sooner or later the Party would have been driven out of Jiangxi. Clearly it was a mistake in the first place to submerge the party in this work.
In one siege of the Fifth Encirclement Campaign the Red Army lost 60,000 troops, and in total one million people were killed in the retaking of Jiangxi from 1930-34 (Snow, op cit.). We must salute the incredible heroism, self-sacrifice and suffering that these hardy Communists endured, but must also recognise what a tragically unnecessary waste of political talent this was. The toll on the political strength of the Party is impossible to measure, but by now, with the combination of the massacres in the 1927 defeat and the endless military losses in the Soviet period, it can only have been devastating.
What is remarkable is that the Party survived all this in any form at all.
The flight to the countryside forced upon the leadership the need for flexibility and self-sacrifice at the expense of political foresight and influence in the working class. Similarly, the desperate way in which the Long March was begun as a daring escape from certain destruction really brought out all the tactical genius of the party and in particular of Mao Zedong.
Facing annihilation there could be no democratically agreed plan on how to conduct this march. There could be no vote on whether it was the correct course of action and where it was to end up. The rural conditions meant that the CCP leadership had to devote all its thinking to the tasks of bare survival, never mind the political costs. In this way the organisational genius that brought the CCP to power is in inverse proportion to the strength of its level of political foresight.
Prior to the true beginning of the Long March several similar expeditions from some of the other Soviet bases had taken place, which demonstrates the necessity to leavethe wider Jiangxi area following years of Guomindang harassment. One of these, starting out with a very small force, was more or less destroyed; however the forces of the legendary general Xu Haidong were trailblazers for this epic expedition. They left their E Yu Wan base (a separate, more northerly base to Mao’s Jiangxi one) about one month earlier than the main force and successfully reached the end point in Shaanxi before anyone else, after spending just over a year at a base in Sichuan.
Between 16th and 19th October 1934 the main force of 90,000 began the Long March with a fearsome drive through the Guomindang blockade. The Red Army concentrated its forces at one point, staying true to Mao’s maxim of ‘pitting 10 against 1’ and succeeded with a combination of daring, surprise, luck and willingness to make harsh sacrifices. They gained the crucial element of surprise precisely due to their daring and willingness to sacrifice – the Guomindang never expected the CCP to leave its beloved commune and march tens of thousands into the unknown, but they did it.
They brilliantly tricked Chiang’s forces by leaving behind several thousand fighters to confuse the Guomindang and delay their realisation of what was going on. Although almost everyone in the 14 (small) bases left behind in Jiangxi was eventually killed, the tactic was an undoubted success as the Guomindang took almost a full month to really understand what the main army was doing. Without that time the Long March would likely have been intercepted in its earliest stages and abruptly ended, along with the CCP as a party. The success of the march always depended on the CCP’s ability to stay one step ahead. The tactics of surprise, audacity and sacrifice with which the CCP broke out of the stranglehold would remain their key tactics and advantages against the Guomindang throughout the march.
The CCP’s main military force in the Long March was the First Red Army, which departed from Jiangxi in mid October as described above. It was led by Mao Zedong and Zhu De and as described started the march with around 90,000 (the majority, but not all, were soldiers). The route they took and the legendary escapades they performed represent the Long March as it is commonly understood.
However, there were two other core armies leading similar marches for the same reasons, and at various points coalescing with the other armies, despite starting from different places. The Second Red Army was led by He Long and left from a smaller Soviet located to the West of Mao’s main Central Soviet in Jiangxi. And the Fourth Red Army was led by Zhang Guotao, composed of elements that had been based in the more northerly E Yu Wan Soviet. He commanded a force of just under 20,000 when leaving their base in 1932, and reached a meeting point with the First Red Amy in Sichuan Province before Mao’s forces. Xu Haidong’s smaller force, the XXV Corps, also led their own Long March from E Yu Wan as mentioned above, leaving one month prior to Mao’s First Red Army and also arriving in Shaanxi one month before.
The first real event of note in the Long March is the crossing of the Xiang River as the First Red Army moved westwards from Jiangxi into Hunan. This was part of the vague plan to move westwards through Hunan and Guizhou into Yunnan, a relatively remote and densely forested province in the South Western extreme of China, far from the clutches of Nanjing. The general idea was to then turn north into Sichuan, where there was already a base established by Zhang Guotao’s Fourth Red Army.
Moltke, the great German strategist, made a very profound statement when he said that “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” The crossing of the Xiang River sums up the precariousness of the CCP’s existence in the Long March and the imperative to switch tactics at a moment’s notice. Having correctly read their line of movement by mid-November, the Guomindang moved troops into Hunan to meet them. They struck at the weakest point in the First Red Army’s line of march, that is at the Xiang River crossing bottleneck. The crossing must have been extremely inefficient since it took four days to cross. According to Pinckney Harrison, by the time the crossing was completed at the end of November, the First Red Army had lost one third of their comrades as casualties and desertions. By now, the First Red Army had been whittled down to 30,000 soldiers and 5,000 political cadres – down from 90,000 only one month earlier. This dire situation forced Mao’s army to change course.
The Zunyi Conference
Just over one month later, on 5th January 1935, the First Red Army captured the town of Zunyi, in the northern extreme of Guizhou Province, then close to the border with Sichuan, but now near the municipality of Chongqing.
The very next day an ‘enlarged conference of the Political Bureau’, better known as the Zunyi Conference, took place. All the contradictions between the official Party Central leadership (responsible for the disastrous aggressive line in the Fifth Encirclement Campaign) and reality, as represented by Mao, were brought into the open.
Grievances were suddenly and sharply expressed as the immense burdens of the Long March showed their toll. “Peng Dehuai first criticised the leadership of the Long March”, “Mao Zedong then broadened the attack to include Communist tactics against the fifth Encirclement Campaign, and during the Long March.” Then “Liu Shaoqi extended the criticisms to ‘white’ area policies, which had been so ‘leftist’ as to make urban work impossible, and demanded a general policy review.” As a result of this tirade, “Chief of Staff Liu Bocheng reversed his earlier stand to support criticisms made by Peng Dehuai, Mao, and Liu Shaoqi, and when Zhou Enlai admitted his participation in many errors of judgement, it became possible for Zhang Wentian and others to promote a compromise solution” (Pinckney Harrison, op cit.).
The nature of this compromise was the passing of a resolution incorporating many of these criticisms. Although the resolution pulled its punches and declared the current leadership to be generally correct, it is clear that the incorporation of these criticisms represents a mortal blow to the Moscow favoured leadership. After this conference they never regained their authority and Mao, despite not being officially made chairman, was now the ‘dominant personality’ in the leadership, and was listed first in the Politburo when its membership was read out to the Comintern leadership later that year.
The political capital the ‘Party Central’ leadership derived from Moscow’s support had now exhausted itself; Mao’s momentum, built up from his superior tactics and rural foundation, had propelled him to pre-eminence. The period of turmoil in the Party leadership in the wake of the catastrophic failure of 1927, with all its repercussions, had come to an end, and the Party had finally found a leader in harmony with its new rural, guerrilla self. Mao would not relinquish rule in the Party until his death 41 years later.
Luding Bridge
The First Red Army departed their temporary base in Zunyi in early February 1935. In the manoeuvres the army carried out in the next few months we find the daring, ingenuity and heroism of the Long March at its peak.
The rest period of roughly one month in Zunyi lost the CCP the head-start it had relied upon, and so the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan were by now infested with hundreds of thousands of Guomindang troops waiting for them at every turn. Chiang Kai-shek had time to draw up plans and ensure that all strategic points, such as river crossings, were heavily fortified. The CCP could therefore rely only on their greater capacity for self-sacrifice and hardship, based as they were on politically committed troops rather than poorly paid and poorly treated conscripts.
To escape Guizhou, “a series of distracting manoeuvres” with “two columns, and sometimes as many as four columns, engaged in a series of baffling manoeuvres”, were used “so that it became more and more difficult for Nanjing planes to identify the day-by-day objective” (Snow, op cit.). The lengthy tracks traced by the Red Army to escape the clutches of the Guomindang in Guizhou took four months to complete, during which they destroyed five enemy divisions, recruited 20,000 and called numerous mass meetings amongst the people (Ibid).
Following this an even more dazzling dummy manoeuvre was employed to allow the main army to escape to a dangerous Yangtze river crossing unnoticed, when a few troops visibly broke off and marched towards the capital of Yunnan. This cunning plan worked, with Guomindang troops pulled out of Guizhou in pursuit of the dummy whilst the bulk of the Red Army slipped away!
But that was not all. Once spotted, it was obvious that the main army, not marching to the capital, could only be marching to one of the key crossing points for the Yangtze River in Yunnan. Therefore the initial diversion was not enough, as Chiang would (and did) ensure that the crossing to which they were clearly marching was well covered – according to Snow’s account, all the boats at the crossing were taken to the far side of the river (from the point of view of the Red Army) and burnt.
Once certain that they had fully convinced Chiang Kai-shek (by pretending to build a bridge with which to cross the river), a battalion suddenly upped-sticks and inconspicuously marched at a pace of 85 miles in 24 hours, reaching an alternative crossing of the Yangtze which was too far for Chiang to have considered worthwhile defending. Once again, the Guomindang was outdone by the Red Army’s superior determination, cunning and morale. No conscripted army could possibly be expected to suddenly reverse direction, after spending days carrying out what was merely a dummy manoeuvre, and cover 85 miles in a day.
Crossing was now easy, with only a handful of government troops to defend the actual crossing. Knowing the route to the real crossing was safe, within a day or two the remaining troops left the original crossing to reach the safe one. According to Snow, this unorthodox move, probably too circuitous to be considered by most generals, resulted in the successful crossing of the Yangtze without a single life lost. Ironically mimicking Chiang’s tactics, the Red Army forces now burnt the boats they had used to cross the river, leaving the confused Guomindang troops with both nearby crossings destroyed.
If we are to take the legends at face value, then all this was merely a warm up for the far more spectacularly heroic crossing of Luding Bridge on the Dadu River in Sichuan. At the end of May, after days of hard marching along the treacherous banks of the Dadu River, the Red Army once again successfully pulled away from their pursuers thanks to taking shorter and less frequent rests, and finally reached Luding Bridge.
According to the legends this rickety chain bridge, swinging precariously over the rapids below and spanning 100 yards, was like something from a Hollywood adventure movie after the Guomindang removed most of the wooden planks. On the other side lay a Guomindang position with machine-gunners in place to shoot down any communists fool-hardy enough to try to cross. Once again, the Red Army challenged certain death and 30 soldiers were chosen for the suicide mission. They overcame the lack of planks by crawling under the bridge, hanging from its chains, which had the additional benefit of providing some cover from the volleys of machine-gun fire. Nevertheless most of these dare-devils were killed in the crossing, and we can only admire the astonishing bravery of these nameless heroes,
“Probably never before had the Sichuanese seen fighters like these – men for whom soldiering was not just a rice bowl, and youths ready to commit suicide to win. Were they human beings or madmen or gods? Was their own morale affected? Did they perhaps not shoot to kill? Did some of them secretly pray that these men would succeed in their attempt? At last one Red crawled up over the bridge flooring, uncapped a grenade, and tossed it with perfect aim into the enemy redoubt.” (Ibid)
Once one was across, the game was up, and the machine-gun nest surrendered, with some of the forces joining the Red Army. This is the remarkable story of how the Red Army crossed the river Dadu. For millions of Chinese it encapsulates the decades-long sacrifice of the Chinese people as they struggled against Japanese and Guomindang oppression.
Unfortunately, the truth is probably somewhat more mediocre. Deng Xiaoping, the Chairman of the CCP and President of China who led the capitalist restoration from 1978 onwards, was a participant in these events. According to the US Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Deng confirmed suspicions that this unverifiable account was greatly exaggerated for propaganda purposes when he told him,
“Well, that’s the way it’s presented in our propaganda. We needed that to express the fighting spirit of our forces. In fact, it was a very easy military operation. There wasn’t really much to it. The other side were just some troops of the warlord who were armed with old muskets and it really wasn’t that much of a feat, but we felt we had to dramatize it.”
Of course, this anecdote should be taken with just as large a pinch of salt as the official story, for they are both equally unverifiable and equally useful as propaganda. Whether or not it was fabricated, the daring involved in the story does encapsulate the incredible hardship, suffering, bravery and self-sacrifice that the Red Army really did depend on throughout the Long March. The figures for the number of casualties alone prove this, as do the routes taken through mountain passes, river crossings and swamps, which cannot be exaggerated and did take place.
After crossing the Luding, the First Red Army was obliged to ascend over 5,000m to continue, as they were now on the borders of Tibet. No human being can live permanently above roughly 5,000m, for the air is too thin. Far more of those who died on the Long March perished due to the severe conditions, such as the thin air, cold, lack of food and waterlogging.
Unhappy Reunion in Sichuan
If rural conditions tend to dissolve the political unity of a party, then the Long March through half of China pushed this to its absolute extreme. This was exhibited in the general uncertainty as to where the Long March would end up, which was decided on as they went along, but particularly in the fact that the Long March essentially comprised three separate marches, each with tens of thousands of CCP comrades, and each equally uncertain as to where and when they would meet up.
The First Red Army lost contact with the rest of the Communist International for the entire 12 month duration of the march, and so had no idea of its decisions and political perspectives. The all-important conference in Zunyi, which had determined the fate of the leadership after the testing first few months of the Long March, was not and could not have been representative or constitutional. Note how the conference had to take place at a moment of military convenience, not one of political necessity.
Because the rural work and the Long March had broken up the Party into militarily sealed off areas, such political meetings claiming to determine the party line could only involve one or another section of the Party. Thus the Zunyi conference involved only those in the First Red Army, and it is therefore unsurprising that Mao, who led that division, should come out on top. Mao’s emergence owed a great deal to luck.
The Fourth Red Army, under Zhang Guotao’s and Xu Haidong’s leadership, was equal in size to the First Red Army but could not participate in the Zunyi conference due to geographical separation. What would their opinion have been on the proceedings at Zunyi? How would that conference have turned out had they been there? The comrades of the First Red Army would now find out, as following the crossing of Luding Bridge and their arrival in Sichuan, they were reunited with the comrades of the Fourth Red Army (who had been in Sichuan since 1933) at Fupien.
Both armies had felt the toll of the Long March, which was coming towards its end. When they arrived in their Sichuan base in 1933, the Fourth Red Army was reduced to around 3-4,000 from the 20,000 they had left with (Pinckney Harrison, op cit.). When they joined the Fourth Red Army in mid-June 1935, the First Red Army was down to about 10,000 members; down from the roughly 90,000 when they left Jiangxi only eight months previously.
Nevertheless, Zhang’s forces were significantly militarily stronger when the two armies met, as they had had two years of recovery time, with plenty of time to recruit in their Sichuan base. Estimates of their size vary between 40 and 80,000 in mid-1935. Therefore, when the two armies met, Zhang Guotao’s forces were between four and eight times as large as Mao’s, and much better rested. And yet thanks to the Zunyi conference, from which Zhang Guotao’s forces were excluded by an accident of geography, Mao and his comrades were now the leaders of the party. Zhang and his comrades had had no say in this decision and would now take the opportunity of this reunion to impress their numerical and military superiority on this ‘upstart’ leadership, as it appeared to Zhang.
According to Pinckney Harrison, a key component in the clash between Mao and Zhang that would take place over the course of their meeting in Sichuan was the fact that Zhang and his associates from the much stronger Fourth Front Army were completely under-represented in the party leadership. Although the decision was not taken to give Zhang’s faction a majority in the leadership in proportion to their military superiority, one can see in this tension once again the dangerous tendency towards the subordination of Marxist political leadership to military strength and technical considerations. It would be tempting to capitulate to military strength and name the leader of the strongest army as the leader of the party, irrespective of their political quality. That sets of leaders of the party rarely met in this period (and when they did, their meetings had a fortuitous character) and each commanded massive, independent armies, obviously gave a huge impetus to damaging factionalism.
Moreover, Zhang was correct in arguing that the outcomes of the Zunyi conference, so favourable to Mao, were invalid. He pointed out that “only a plenary session of the Central Committee was supposed to have that authority [to reorganise the leadership]” and that anyway “only about half the Political Bureau (but all members of the Standing Committee except Xiang Ying) had been present at Zunyi” (Ibid). The outcome of this new clash was another victory for Mao, but it must be added that once again, this meeting lacked any formal democratic basis, was called ad-hoc and without any participation from the Second Red Army. It is unclear on what political basis Mao defeated Zhang’s leadership challenge.
The Home Straight
The conflict between the two factions continued for the remainder of their mutual stay in Sichuan, and the nature of the conflict is worthy of note, again because of its exclusively organisational/technical character. Rather than debating the perspectives for the development of the class struggle in China, the two factions were utterly absorbed, as one would expect, in the question of which route to pursue. Ultimately, such a debate was based on guesswork, turning around matters of whether this or that area had enough food, whether the local tribes would be hostile or not. Party debates focusing on such issues to the detriment of analysing the class struggle in China can only have had a detrimental effect on the political level of its membership, and reflect a fugitive party in a state of desperation.
Given the lack of any objective basis with which to determine the safest route, the decision finally taken in acrimony was that the two factions should once again geographically separate. This was either to hedge the Party’s bets or to keep the feud at a safe distance. Zhang’s Fourth Red Army, with a few of the more exhausted Corps from the First Red Army, would march Westwards towards Tibet, and Mao’s forces, bolstered with many of Zhang’s troops, would march North-Easterly into Shaanxi.
Unfortunately for Zhang, his favoured route turned out to be a fatal dead end. Starting out with roughly 60,000 troops, a brutal Guomindang assault reduced the army to 40,000 at the end of 1935. They attempted to sustain themselves by recruiting from the local nomadic Tibetan population, but failed. It is likely that this was down to the nomadic and extremely backward character of Tibetan society – whereas the Red Army could recruit successfully from the Lolo tribes by appealing to them on class lines as common fighters against the rich and powerful, such efforts would have fallen on deaf ears when given to independent nomads, who were removed from the Chinese class system. Zhang’s soldiers were reduced to having to steal food to survive.
Half his troops then split off after the rest failed to cross the Yellow River. Those who succeeded in crossing were utterly destroyed, and the remaining 15,000 or so who failed to cross were by now reunited with the almost destroyed Second Red Army. They were forced to abandon their plans to establish a more Westerly base. Instead they chased after Mao’s by-now-established Shaanxi base with their tails between their legs in November 1936.
The First Red Army, hero of the long march, left Sichuan on 1st August 1935. They arrived triumphantly at what would become the base of the Red Army for the next twelve years on October 20th 1935, almost one year to the day after departing Jiangxi, with 20,000 survivors, having started with 90,000. Of those 20,000, some were taken from the Fourth Red Army in Sichuan, others were recruited along the way, so it is reasonable to assume that more than 70,000 perished in this most testing of adventures. Of course, many more died in the other armies.
Geographically similar to the Jinggangshan base in its mountain remoteness and poverty, the Red Army managed to stay here partly thanks to the area’s irrelevance in the eyes of Chiang Kai-shek, and partly due to his being distracted by the war with Japan, which as we shall see was beginning to put Chiang under enormous strains.
A Lucky Escape
There is no doubt that the accomplishment of the Long March is like a monument to the awe-inspiring self-sacrifice of millions of Chinese communists who perished in the course of the Chinese revolution. Its staggering statistics sum up the heroism of the toiling masses in their heroic struggle against oppression,
“There was an average of almost a skirmish a day, somewhere on the line, while altogether fifteen whole days were devoted to major pitched battles. Out of a total of 368 days en-route, 235 were consumed in marches by day, and 18 in marches by night. Of the 100 days of halts – many of which were devoted to skirmishes – 56 days were spent in north-western Sichuan, leaving only 44 days of rest over a distance of about 5,000 miles, or an average of one halt for every 114 miles of marching.
“The Reds crossed eighteen mountain ranges, five of which were perennially snow-capped, and they crossed twenty-four rivers. They passed through twelve difference provinces, occupied sixty-two cities and towns, and broke through enveloping armies of ten different provincial warlords, besides defeating, eluding, or out-manoeuvring the various forces of Central Government troops sent against them.” (Snow, op cit.)
Although it is true that the Long March was not planned in advance as part of a political strategy, but was embarked upon at the last minute out of military necessity, the CCP did correctly use it for political purposes. It was “the largest propaganda tour in history”, which “passed through provinces populated by more than 200,000,000 people” and “called mass meetings, gave theatrical performances, heavily ‘taxed’ the rich” (Ibid). This was all carried out by thousands of comrades, many of whom lost their lives in doing so, with a degree of determination that would ensure their final victory fourteen years later.
But the political legacy of the Long March was that it cemented the Bonapartist, Stalinist and petty-bourgeois character of the CCP. Nine-tenths of those who engaged in the Long March died. The mass meetings and education given out to the peasants, whilst well meaning, could be no substitute for the sustained mass participation of millions of urban workers and a stable cadre base in the party. Those fleeting visits to illiterate districts could only scratch the surface of the immense social and cultural problems in China’s vast countryside. And how could an army of CCP comrades constantly on the move, with no time to educate itself and of whom 90% died within a year, possibly hope to exercise any meaningful democratic control over the party? Trotsky brilliant anticipated at this time what the political consequences for absorption in the rural environment would ultimately be,
“The commanding stratum of the Chinese “Red Army” has no doubt succeeded in inculcating itself with the habit of issuing commands. The absence of a strong revolutionary party and of mass organizations of the proletariat renders control over the commanding stratum virtually impossible. The commanders and commissars appear in the guise of absolute masters of the situation and upon occupying cities will be rather apt to look down from above upon the workers. The demands of the workers might often appear to them either inopportune or ill-advised.” (Trotsky, Peasant War in China and the Proletariat, September 22nd 1932)
The CCP and Japanese Imperialism
The latter phase of the revolution, leading up to CCP victory in 1949, is inseparable from the Japanese invasion of China, which rather than uniting all China against Japan, actually served to bring into sharp relief all the class antagonisms of Chinese society. In the first half of the twentieth century, imperialism did not confront China as an utterly alien force, but rather was an integral part of Chinese society. It was impossible to tell where the Chinese ruling class ended and the imperialists began. This was no more the case than when it came to their attitude to the Chinese masses and the communist movement, to which both were equally opposed. Therefore the CCP’s attitude toward the Japanese invasion of China is fundamental to understanding both the course of the revolution and the CCP’s fortunes in it, as well as the alternative ways the revolution could have developed.
Japan’s emergence as a force on the world market was announced with the First Sino-Japanese War 1894-5, which was fought over control of Korea. China had dominated Korea (as well as East Asia in general) for centuries, so the Japanese victory in this war marked a qualitative change in East Asian politics, brought about by the more successful introduction of capitalism into Japan. Ten years later there followed the Russo-Japan war, a nakedly imperialist war fought as it was over control of the Chinese Eastern Railroad. This railroad was central to trade routes in the wider region and as such was also the scene of the main Sino-Japanese war in the 1930s and 40s. Japan’s victory over Russia represented the first ever Asian victory over a European power in the modern era, and should be seen as the beginning of Asia’s long march to global capitalist pre-eminence.
The Mukden Incident
The Mukden Incident marks the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese war and spelt the doom of the Guomindang in mainland China. On September 18th 1931 Japan carried out a classic diplomatic manoeuvre of imperialism by staging an ‘attack’ on the Chinese Eastern Railroad (which it owned, as an imperialist power) in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, North-eastern China (then known as Mukden, Inner Manchuria). Some Japanese officers planted (pathetically weak, so as not to actually damage their railroad!) explosives on the line, declared it to be an attack from Chinese nationalists, and then invaded the city and subsequently the whole province, which they secured control of in five months.
From the point of view of the CCP, Japanese aggression was a huge opportunity and a lifeline for the Party. To some extent Japanese aggression diverted military resources from attacking the Soviet bases, however as we shall see, Chiang Kai-shek minimised this outcome with his policy of non-resistance to Japan. But that policy was sharply in contradiction with the objective needs of Chinese society, which was brutally oppressed and whose development was violently held back by Japanese fascism. Therefore the more Chiang refused to resist Japan to focus on attacking the CCP, the more he provoked mass opposition in China and sympathy for the CCP. This was therefore a ‘win win’ situation for the CCP – if Chiang attacked Japan, it took all the pressure off its shoulders. If he attacked the CCP, he undermined his power.
The corruptness of the Chiang Kai-shek regime pushed it in the direction of making a deal with Japan to crush the CCP. That certainly was Chiang’s perspective. But the extreme reactionary character of the regime and of Japanese imperialism constantly increased the potential support for the CCP (seen as the only force opposing Japan) and therefore pushed sections of the ruling class into opposing Chiang Kai-shek, massively weakening the political leadership of Chinese capitalism. Fascism is an expression of the acute crisis and dead-end of capitalism, hence its viciously reactionary character. The combination of the semi-fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the imposition of Japanese fascism in China did not signify the strength of the ruling class in China and Japan, but rather their dead-end.
It is indubitable that the crisis provoked by Japan was the most direct contributing factor to the CCP’s victory. The question is to what extent the CCP capitalised on this, and how? One can kick down a rotten door very quickly and effectively, or one can spend days chipping away at its frame so that when the door is opened, it is kept intact. This is not a pedantic point. The way in which the CCP opposed Japanese aggression and the Guomindang’s capitulation to it was at times designed to bring the CCP to power without smashing the Guomindang and its rotten state apparatus. Moscow did not want a huge revolution led by the Chinese masses on its doorstep; it wanted to bureaucratically arrange a friendly Chinese state.
However the initial response of the CCP to Japanese aggression was along the right lines. If they had followed this policy through, the CCP could have been brought to power far earlier and on the basis not of military victories but a mass uprising.
The CCP immediately responded to the Mukden incident with a resolution stating that “the Chinese Communist Party considers the Japanese attack in Manchuria as an imperialist attack”. From this moment onwards the Party never wavered in condemning the hated Japanese imperialism, and won a great deal of support for doing so. The task was to rebuild the Party in the cities on the basis of such a militant opposition to Japanese imperialism and the Guomindang’s sell-out, and to look for points of support in the army.
Thanks to the popular revulsion Chiang’s stance invited and the CCP’s correct statement against it, the CCP made an immediate and very significant gain when 20,000 Guomindang soldiers defected to the Red Army in the Ningdu Uprising of December 1931.
At this time the Comintern was pursuing its ultra-left ‘Third Period’ policy, which was a bureaucratic overreaction to cover up for its previous opportunist sins, as Trotsky said. However a positive by-product of this policy was that it actually encouraged the CCP to take a revolutionary line in relation to the Japanese invasion. In September 1932 the Comintern leadership passed a resolution insisting that the CCP pursue,
“the tactic of the united front from below in the anti-imperialist struggle...organising the masses under the slogan of a revolutionary national liberation war for the independence, unity and territorial integrity of China against all imperialists, for the overthrow of the agent of imperialism – the Guomindang.” (quoted in Pinckney Harrison, op cit.)
This was followed up in January 1933 with the correct call for military groups to join the CCP in a fighting alliance on condition that they “halt any participation in the Fourth Nationalist Offensive then in progress against the Soviet areas; that there be an immediate guarantee of democratic rights and freedoms; and immediate arming of the masses for war against Japan” (Pinckney Harrison, op cit.).
Although many of the military groups breaking away from the Guomindang over the question of resistance to Japan would have been bourgeois/feudal in their origins and leadership, this policy from the CCP correctly anticipates the fact that all such movements would have represented a split away from Chiang Kai-shek along class lines. The demand for arming the people against Japan in this call for an alliance brings this class character to the fore and would put the bourgeois leadership of such groups under pressure. If combined with skilful tactics on the CCP’s part, they could have then broken these groups away not just from Chiang but also from their own bourgeois leaders, or converted those leaders to the communist cause, as happened with the Ningdu Uprising.
The Rural Burden
How could the CCP use the war with Japan to build an effective revolutionary opposition the Guomindang as well as Japan? How could it shore up and develop its base of support in this new and dangerous situation?
These questions could only be answered with a sober and materialist analysis of the war situation and its effect on the class struggle in China. All the questions boiled down to one – would the invasion push the proletariat into the arms of the ruling class in a fit of anti-Japanese patriotism, or would it exacerbate the class divisions? If it were the latter, it would be vital for the CCP to re-establish a strong urban basis as soon as possible.
Trotsky considered (correctly) that “there are grounds to think that the war will produce a feverish revival of industry...especially if the war will be financed by Great Britain, the U.S., or the Soviet Union.” A more mechanical Marxist might conclude that this would thereby blunt the class antagonism; however Trotsky again correctly drew the opposite conclusion:
“The dependence of the army and the government on internal production will immeasurably raise the role and importance of the Chinese industrial workers...this circumstance opens wide opportunities for economic struggle of the workers. The government will have to be more careful in its repressions in order not to break down the tempo of war industry. Of course, the scoundrels of the Guomindang and the no lesser scoundrels of the Stalinist party will cry that an economic struggle in time of war is ‘antipatriotic’. However, the working masses will hardly sympathise with this advice, especially if the real revolutionaries will be able to expose the tremendous profits of the capitalists and the rapaciousness of the bureaucrats.” (Trotsky, A Discussion on China)
It therefore followed from this understanding that the Chinese Communists (he was writing to his supporters in China, but all his recommendations would apply equally to the CCP itself) must begin with the classic work of a Marxist organisation – building in the factories and trade unions,
“It appears to me that it would be much more correct to try to create ‘war’ organisations on a class basis, for the carrying out of the work which, in a corresponding situation, the trade unions would carry out. For example, if in a given plant, several workers went off to war, it would then be necessary to organise a group for keeping connections with them and for rendering them and their families material and moral aid...demands for workers’ control over industry, especially over war industry, have such a tremendous significance – not only to ‘control’ profits but to make it hard for the capitalists to furnish the army with bad products of poor quality...It is necessary that [workers’] organisations have before them, though, a narrow but fully concrete programme, tied to the interests of the army and the workers.
“The most important preparation for war is to create trade union committees and a party organisation: a systematic propaganda for the liberation from all imperialisms, in the first place Japanese imperialism, not by diplomatic manoeuvres, capitulations, but by a revolutionary military struggle, by a war of the Chinese people against the imperialists. What is important is to create a point of support which in time can become the basis for the mobilisation of the people
“The task of the vanguard consists in that, basing itself on the experience of the war, it is to weld the workers around the revolutionary vanguard, to rally the peasants around the workers”. (Ibid)
But it would remain impossible for the CCP to carry this out on the basis of rural isolation and absorption in a daily battle for bare survival. They could not establish effective contact with the urban movement, which would at moments explode in various forms throughout the 1930s. The CCP was too far away to participate in these movements, too politically distanced to understand the build-up of frustration and to raise concrete demands to connect with them.
The first example of this phenomenon is the student movement against Japan beginning in 1931 in response to the Mukden incident. Despite the CCP’s bold anti-imperialist stance on this matter, they failed to connect to this movement of tens of thousands due to their physical and political isolation from it, and therefore the movement fizzled out.
In early 1932 a five week war over control of Shanghai took place. This was the first major test of the CCP’s ability to influence the struggle against Japan in the all-important urban centres, especially since the crisis it engendered led to a mass mutiny in Chiang’s army with revolutionary implications.
Basing itself on its ‘extraterritorial concession’ in Shanghai – the existence of which was already an act of Japanese imperialism – the Japanese once again staged various ‘anti-Japanese’ attacks in the city. This they used as an excuse for a rapid build-up of Japanese military hardware in and around the city, to ‘protect Japanese citizens and property’. Then suddenly the city was bombed and invaded on foot.
However in contradistinction to Chiang Kai-shek’s pathetic stance of non-resistance in Manchuria, Cai Tingkai led the Guomindang’s 19th Army into a heroic battle with the Japanese invaders. Although unsuccessful, this bold act of defiance inspired millions of Chinese suffering from decades of imperialist insults and colonial indignity to begin the resistance. Correctly “the communists encouraged anti-Japanese demonstrations wherever they could, trying at the same time to direct them towards condemnation of governmental ‘weakness’” (Guillermaz, op cit.)
Certainly there was a basis to break away such movements from any ‘patriotic’ support for the government, since everyone understood that the government was the chief obstacle in defending China. Cai Tingkai was essentially defying orders by defending Shanghai. Chiang’s subservience to imperialism was so humiliating that Cai Tingkai (and many after him) was compelled to openly defy him even up to the point of launching a revolutionary government.
This was the Fujian rebellion, one of the most interesting developments in this period. It seems to encapsulate all that the period of war with Japan involved. In particular the class character of this movement could not help being brought to the surface. As with all the breakdowns in Guomindang authority in the 1930s, we see the question of the revolution and the CCP casting its long shadow.
Following their heroic and massively popular resistance to the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, the 19th Army and Cai Tingkai enjoyed enormous prestige and effectively had a local base of support, giving the army political independence from Chiang Kai-shek. When he ordered them to attack the CCP in their Jiangxi Soviet in November 1933, the army rebelled, disgusted at being ordered to attack the only group openly resisting Japan (other than themselves). Instead they turned on Chiang.
On November 22nd they called an ‘Extraordinary People’s Assembly’, in which they announced the establishment of a ‘People’s Revolutionary Government’ in Fujian Province, and named their army the People’s Revolutionary Army. Amongst their vague plans for social justice in Fujian, they publicly declared the intention to begin the militant fight against Japan and for the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek. They also declared their desire to establish close political relations with the CCP’s Jiangxi Soviet and the Soviet Union in an effort to collaborate in the struggle against Japan. In other words, this huge rebellion met every single one of the CCP’s 1932 criteria for forming a united front against Japan and the Guomindang.
Indeed Cai’s army had begun negotiations with the CCP for a united front in the spring of 1933, before the Fujian Rebellion took place. By October they had agreed to cease warfare against one another and to establish economic relations. When the Fujian government was established, they agreed to release all political prisoners (i.e. CCP members in gaol) and to support the CCP’s revolutionary actions against the Guomindang and Japan.
Inevitably Chiang’s forces led an immediate counter-attack, with three groups as well as the navy attacking within days under direct orders from Chiang Kai-shek (Guillermaz, op cit.). This was the decisive test for the CCP’s revolutionary anti-imperialist strategy. There was no time to waste. Politically speaking, the situation was a gift for the CCP, an open goal. The only popular army in the Guomindang had just launched an open rebellion to Chiang’s authority, and declared itself in favour of establishing relations with the CCP. What’s more, the situation immediately exposed the government and eroded whatever slim credibility it retained, since it now attacked its own forces with far more vigour than it defended China against the Japanese.
But the CCP did the worst of all things – it vacillated. It revealed itself as indecisive at the very moment when a clear revolutionary opportunity emerged. Why?
Zhou Enlai and other leaders were in favour of sending immediate military assistance to Fujian, but they were overruled by the Moscow controlled party leadership (this was still before Mao’s ascent to power) as well as Mao, who feared the uncertain military repercussions and did not trust a movement over which they had had no control. Instead they argued that the 19th Army should march out of Fujian (thus betraying their own call for a ‘People’s Revolutionary Government’), through unknown countryside and into the Jiangxi Soviet, where they would merge with the Red Army. It was felt that the Red Army could thereby absorb and control this movement the more easily (Ibid).
As a result, Red Army troops were sent from Jiangxi, but stopped halfway. The rebels were besieged by the Guomindang. None of the other Guomindang anti-Chiang factions came to the rescue (as had been hoped), in some cases citing the revolutionary character of the movement as an obstacle. Thus the Fujian Rebellion, at first glance a question of nationalism, quickly revealed itself to be a class question. The CCP could be the only force to offer support and to help in extending the struggle around the country. But thanks to the Party’s preoccupation with rural survival their political horizons had been narrowed. Rather than seeing the movement as a confirmation of their class struggle perspectives, they looked upon it as a difficulty and an upsetting of their plans. By mid-January 1934 this brave rebellion was defeated.
This further underlines the fact that rural isolation had placed the Party outside of the crux of China’s class struggle. As soon as the movement developed in the cities, as it surely always would, they had no basis with which to intervene. Had the Party concentrated on building a solid base in the trade unions they could have launched a nationwide Fujian solidarity campaign, with strikes and appeals to the rank-and-file of the Guomindang military. Even had the government in Fujian still been crushed, this would have left a lasting effect on class relations in China and served to massively increase the CCP’s standing in the working class.
The Creeping Invasion
The Japanese had been testing China since 1931, gauging the new regime’s powers of resistance. By now it was obvious that the regime had none, and from the point of view of Japanese imperialism they would have been foolish not to rapidly take advantage of this fact.
Just before the five weeks war in Shanghai had ended in March 1932, the then province of Jehol (which straddled what is now Hebei, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia) was invaded and annexed to Manchukuo, the name for Japanese controlled Manchuria. The Japanese then used this base to force the evacuation of Chinese troops from East Hebei. In 1934 Japan affirmed special rights and interests in all of China in the ‘Amau Declaration’, just like the US declared all of Latin America to be its permanent sphere of influence with the infamous Monroe Doctrine.
Finding its powers of resistance lacking due to its crippling fear of mobilising the Chinese masses (with their communist sympathies), the Chinese government admitted its ‘nationalist’ name was a fraud when it agreed to Japanese demands for their troops to leave all Hebei and Chahar in mid to late 1935.
This allowed Japan to declare the laughingly titled ‘Autonomous Government of Inner Mongolia’ as well as the ‘East Hebei Autonomous Anti-Communist Zone’. The choice of name for the latter and the Guomindang’s complicity in approving it reveal the real division in this war – the Chinese masses and communists versus the Chinese and Japanese ruling classes. The clearest proof of this came when “strikes in the Japanese mills of Shanghai, partly in patriotic protest against the Japanese invasion of Suiyuan [in Inner Mongolia], were also broken up with considerable violence by the Japanese, in cooperation with the Guomindang” (Snow, op cit.).
This was followed up with a cringe-worthy Japanese attempt at ‘defence’ when it declared the ‘Anti-Comintern Pact’ in November 1936 and claimed the whole of North China as a buffer zone against the USSR. But this stance of ‘defence’ could not cover up the blatant, naked imperialist looting of China which the war really was,
“China had lost to Japanese invaders about a fifth of her national territory, over 40% of her railway mileage, 85% of her unsettled lands, a large part of her coal, 80% of her iron deposits, 37% of her finest forest lands, and about 40% of her national export trade. Japan now controlled over 75% of the total pig iron and iron-mining enterprises of what remained of China, and over half of the textile industry of China.” (Ibid)
Moscow’s Return to Class Collaboration
A good example of this is Zhang Xueliang and his army. Zhang was the warlord of Manchuria after his father was assassinated by the Japanese in 1928. Although a member of China’s ruling class, the enormous headwinds in favour of revolution and the CCP pushed him to break with Chiang Kai-shek and seek an alliance with the CCP. After thousands of his Dongbei troops defected to the CCP (whom they had been sent to destroy) and were inspired by their commitment to fighting Japan, they returned to Zhang to convince him to break with Chiang Kai-shek and ally with the Red Army. He entered into negotiations with the Soviet base, ceased all hostilities, and opened his army up to political agitation and education by the CCP.
This example demonstrates the mood in China at the time and how fruitful a campaign amongst the masses to fight Japan was for the CCP. A united-front with the rank-and-file of the Guomindang armies and with any generals prepared to break with Chiang and solidarize with the CCP was the way forward.
But the reader will appreciate by now that the Comintern would never let things be that easy. The harsh reality of the victory of fascism in Germany shook the Comintern out of its ultra-left ‘Third Period’ binge, and as always the Russian bureaucracy’s empirical response was to swing to the opposite extreme. It “began to seek allies against Hitler, turning to Western Europe with offers of pacts. The Communist parties were ordered to parallel the pacts between states by new pacts between classes, the so-called People’s Fronts, whose prime purpose and policy was the support of alliances between their respective countries and the Soviet Union” (Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution).
In China this meant the resumption of the one-sided ‘alliance’ with Chiang Kai-shek (clearly a bastion of anti-fascism). In 1933 Moscow had resumed diplomatic relations with the Guomindang, the CCP’s arch enemy, over the heads of the CCP. The opportunist policy of the ‘People’s Front’, in which the various Communist Parties were to subordinate their politics to this or that bourgeois party, was formalised as Comintern policy at the July 1935 meeting of its Executive Committee. The order for the CCP to then include none-other than Chiang Kai-shek in its ‘United Front’ was now given, and the CCP formally adopted this policy around Christmas 1935.
For Moscow, Chiang Kai-shek seemed to be “the only leader capable of uniting China in the immediate future” (Pinckney Harrison, op cit.). This despite his role in continually disuniting China! Tellingly, the CCP called this the ‘United Front from above’ strategy, as opposed to their earlier ‘United Front from below’ position. Understandably this policy provoked persistent opposition from within the ranks of the CCP (Guillermaz, op cit.)
The first casualty of this grossly mistaken policy was the CCP’s class analysis of China and the war with Japan, which the ultra-left madness of ‘Third Period’ Communism had at least encouraged the Party to adopt. At the meeting in which the CCP agreed to the new ‘United Front from above’, Mao (now the de-facto leader of the CCP) was obliged to give theoretical justification for this about-face. Thus he declared in December 1935 that the “Japanese invasion has altered the class relations in China and it is now possible not only for the petty bourgeoisie but also for the national bourgeoisie to join the anti-Japanese struggle” (quoted in Pinckney Harrison, op cit.).
One might argue that all Mao meant by this was the possibility of forming military alliances with bourgeois generals in order to win over their soldiers on a class basis; however his emphasis on the fact that the bourgeoisie is equally anti-Japanese would imply a policy of obscuring the class issues. This is proven by the practical outcomes of this new position. The class-based (but relatively moderate) agrarian policies of the rural soviets were to be abandoned in the hope this would facilitate military cooperation with the warlords and the Guomindang, who were fearful of the revolutionary land programme. And yet despite making overtures and concessions to the government, it remained staunchly anti-CCP and committed to the latter’s destruction.
In tandem with this, Mao changed the name of the rural Soviet government from ‘the workers’ and peasants’ republic’ to the ‘people’s republic’ (this is where China’s present name comes from) to remove it of class content. “The ‘people’s republic’ will respect property, and regulate the relations between capital and labour” (Guillermaz, op cit.). The CCP’s ‘Ten Great Policies for Anti-Japanese Resistance and National Salvation’ (note the emphasis on the whole ‘nation’) of 1937 called for the whole of China’s military forces as they were to begin the fight against Japan, without making any distinction between the rank-and-file and the warlord tops of these armies. Indeed, they begged these warlords to join with them, using the ‘carrot’ of ending the CCP’s agrarian reform. At this time the CCP constantly offered to suspend its independent existence, to dissolve its Red Army and Soviet bases and place itself under the unified command of Chiang Kai-shek.
Mao covered his back from those critics within the Party by arguing against ‘closed-door sectarianism’, accusing them of wanting the revolution to be ‘pure’ and a ‘straight line’. Of course sectarianism and revolutionary purism are errors, but only in relation to the various tendencies within the workers’ mass organisations. Revolutionaries must be ‘closed-door’ to the bourgeoisie, who in China had proven that they were thoroughly counter-revolutionary, but not to the masses, since being ‘open-door’ to the bourgeois means being ‘closed-door’ to the workers and the revolution.
There is a great deal more evidence that the door was opened to the Guomindang in Moscow rather than Shaanxi, forcing the CCP to follow suit. For example, in a repeat of Cai Tingkai’s revolt against the non-resistance policy, the south-western Guomindang generals Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi and Chen Jitang decided to start fighting the Japanese in June 1936, again underlining the tendency for the Japanese invasion to split the ruling class. Mao correctly praised this development, but Moscow outrageously undermined his position by condemning the uprising “from the outset as an intolerable attempt to split the nationalist movement” (Pinckney Harrison, op cit.). But the entire point was precisely to split the nationalists along class lines!
Such utopian talk of national unity was an error because the chief purpose of a Marxist organisation is to raise the class consciousness of the working class and to free them from their imagined dependence on the ruling class. Appealing, pleading even, with the ruling class to join in the movement only does the opposite.
Subordination to Imperialism
This error was compounded with the CCP’s new proposal of a ‘mutual assistance pact’ with all ‘peaceful countries’, a position straight out of the Comintern copybook, as Moscow was now constantly on the search for bourgeois allies against Hitler. According to Mao “Japanese imperialism is not only the enemy of China...especially it is the enemy of those peoples with interests on the Pacific Ocean, namely, the American, British, French...we hope that they will actively help China” (Snow, op cit., our emphasis).
Rather than telling the truth to the Chinese and world working class, i.e. that those countries such as the USA, Britain and France were only opposed to Japanese imperialism insofar as it stepped on the toes of their exploitation of China, under pressure from Moscow (who wanted to secure its alliance with these countries) Mao painted them in bright colours. They were now referred to not as imperialist powers, but as ‘anti-war’ nations.
These new categories, invented in Moscow, were utterly unscientific and un-Marxist. The vague term of ‘anti-war’ only obscured the internal class dynamics of these nations. While the British and American workers of course were genuinely anti-fascist; their ruling classes were thoroughly pro-fascist when it meant crushing the German workers. The notion that Britain was an ‘anti-war’ nation is laughable, for Britain had been making war with and ruthlessly exploiting half the world (including China!) for the past century.
The logic of this appeal to Britain, America etc. is very revealing. How did they attempt to convince them to help? By appealing to the British ruling class’ hatred of war and fascism? No, the Comintern was too realist to believe in their own propaganda! Instead Mao argued that “those powers that help or do not oppose China...should be invited to enjoy close friendly relations with China...with friendly powers, China will peacefully negotiate treaties of mutual advantage...when China really wins her independence, then legitimate foreign trading interests will enjoy more opportunities than ever before” (Ibid, my emphasis).
Mao was arguing on the basis of a bourgeois regime, as all of these points about ‘trading interests’ assumed a hypothetical CCP-Guomindang ‘democratic republic’ which he proposed, with no mention of socialism. Thus not only was the CCP, under pressure from Moscow, subordinating its position to the Guomindang in the hope of thereby making a deal with it, it was also subordinating China to the trading interests of imperialist powers. This was not a case of playing one power off another for the benefit of the Chinese people, but of offering up terms of trade favourable not to China but to American and British capitalism, which as far stronger economies would always benefit to the disadvantage of China in any such deal.
There were many more urban based revolts against the Guomindang throughout the 1930s. Although in some cases it did manage to make gains from these, taking a leading position in the ‘National Salvation’ movement that sprung up in 1935-6 for example, the CCP could not take full advantage of them. Its isolation from the urban centres combined with the now opportunist policy towards the Guomindang hindered the Party from developing concrete demands to advance the consciousness of the workers and students. How could the party advance the slogan of a national worker and student strike to bring down the Guomindang and defeat Japan when their position was to seek a military alliance with the former?
A few separate incidents illustrate this problem very clearly. The student movement developed in 1936 in opposition to Song Zheyuan’s economic concessions to Japan, Song being the leader of the Guomindang in North China. Instead of intervening in and encouraging this movement by giving it adequate slogans and organisation, the CCP declared “that the students were disrupting ‘national unity’ by demonstrating against Song Zheyuan. They told the students that Song was obliged to make concessions to Japan because the people did not give him sufficient support. This killed the movement. Students were heard to declare: ‘If the communists will not lead us, who will?’” (Li Fujen, A Discussion on China).
General Ho, under the command of Song Zheyuan, was so incensed at the concessions to Japan that he became another in the long line of generals to rebel and seek communist assistance – except that in this instance he sought the help and advice of Chen Duxiu. His honest searching for a solution to this crisis led him to read a great deal about social science and resistance, as a result of which he “decided to invite a number of young revolutionaries to carry out political education among his troops. It was during his search for suitable candidates for such a mission that he came into contact with Chen Duxiu.” (Wang Fanxi, Chinese Revolutionary). Had the CCP been in favour of such activity they could have easily won Ho and his army to their ranks.
Again misunderstanding the class dynamics of the war against Japan, a CCP representative addressing striking workers apparently “declared that the foremost task of the Chinese proletariat was to ‘save the country’ from Japanese imperialism [with the implication that the strike did the opposite, and must therefore be stopped. They used the slogan ‘Don’t strike in Chinese-owned factories’]. A worker replied: ‘It seems to me that our first task is to save ourselves – we are starving’” (Li Fujen, op cit.).
The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that the Moscow imposed ‘People’s Front’ strategy delayed, hindered and distorted the Chinese revolution and the war against Japanese fascism.
The Xian Incident
One instance in this period exemplifies the crisis of Chiang’s regime and the opportunities spurned by the CCP under Moscow’s orders more than any other. The Xian Incident of December 1936 is a turning point in the history of the war with Japan and of the CCP’s rise to power. In particular, it expresses the irresistible objective impulse behind the CCP as the representative of the long needed revolution. Despite, as I hope to show, grossly mishandling this marvellous opportunity, the crisis of Chiang’s regime this represented was so severe that its outcome was still beneficial for the CCP.
Yang HuchengAs mentioned above, the Manchurian warlord Zhang Xueliang had established very close ties with the CCP now that it was nearby in Shaanxi. It is true that his intentions for doing so were most likely not principled; instead he probably saw the CCP as a very useful and stubborn ally against Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang’s orders for him to concentrate on attacking the CCP and not the Japanese were in extreme contradiction with the fact that Japan had invaded his and his soldiers’ homeland and undoubtedly killed many soldiers and family members.
Zhang may not have been particularly bothered about this fact in itself, but as a warlord he naturally cared about maintaining his own power, and Chiang’s policies were so humiliating that they would seriously undermine Zhang’s authority amongst his own soldiers and citizens were he to carry them out. In this way the objective needs of the struggle against Japan and Chiang forced him to ‘join the revolution’.
The existence of this powerful impetus is proven both by Zhang’s persistent public requests for Chiang to start fighting Japan, and by the outbreak of massive student demonstrations on the anniversary of the anti-Japan student movement. As he arrived in Zhang’s headquarters in Xian on 9th December 1936, Chiang Kai-shek was met by thousands of protesting students demanding a ‘united resistance to Japan’. At the same time some of Zhang’s ‘Dongbei’ soldiers were openly disobeying orders, so desperate were they to fight Japan. The Xian Incident unfolded not due to intrigues among generals but due to mass popular pressure in the cities (such as Xian) and the army, a mood which was there for the CCP’s taking.
Fixated on his ‘old enemy’ and blind to the real situation, Chiang decided to ignore all this and press on with the war against the CCP. This in fact was why he had arrived to meet Zhang in Xian. Sparing no thought for Zhang’s credibility before his own troops, Chiang now told Zhang that it would be his 170,000 strong army whose entire focus would be to wipe out the apparently invulnerable Red Army. He had no idea that the Dongbei and Red Armies had been fraternising for some months.
This was the breaking point. With the probable encouragement of Mao, on the night of 11th/12th December Zhang organised the kidnapping of Chiang Kai-shek as he slept. The kidnapping itself was pretty simple, other than the rather amusing brief escape of Chiang into the nearby mountain, where he was found “clad only in a loose robe thrown over his nightshirt, his bare feet and hands cut in his nimble flight up the mountain, shaking in the bitter cold, and minus his false teeth” (Snow, op cit.).
Rather than shooting him there and then, as apparently Chiang himself requested, Zhang’s forces merely demanded that he carry out a policy of ‘national salvation’ and divert all anti-CCP troops to fight the Japanese.
Literally overnight, the joint Dongbei-Red Army forces found themselves in a position of almost terrifying strength. According to Snow, “a joint meeting was called between the Dongbei, Xibei [another rebellious warlord] and Red Army delegates, and the three groups became open allies. On the 14th an announcement was issued of the formation of a United Anti-Japanese Army, consisting of around 130,000 Dongbei troops, 40,000 Xibei troops, and approximately 90,000 troops of the Red Army.”
In addition to this “Donbei troops under General Yu Xuezhong had on the 12th carried out a coup of their own against the Central Government officials and troops in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province [immediately to the West of Xian], and had disarmed the Nanjing garrison there. In the rest of Gansu the Reds and the Manchurian troops together held control of all main communications, surrounding about 50,000 Nanjing troops in that province, so that the rebels had effective power in all Shaanxi and Gansu” (Ibid, my emphasis).
Had the CCP understood the immediate necessity to re-establish a city base in order to connect with the proletariat, they would have taken this opportunity to establish Xian as the centre of their power and connect with the workers and students there. Instead, they moved into Yenan, an obscure rural town, thereby proving the conversion of the party into a rural guerrilla force.
What should the CCP have made of this embarrassingly strong position they now found themselves in? The obvious thing to do would be to execute this war criminal and vicious despot there and then, to base the party in the urban centre of Xian and issue a call for the working class and peasantry to support them in forming a revolutionary government dedicated to the expulsion of Japan. The Guomindang would have attempted to regroup and form a new government, seeking military aid from its real ally Japan in this hour of dire need.
The boldly revolutionary CCP could have unmasked these attempts, further exposing the Guomindang as an agent of Japanese imperialism and strengthening its struggle for a revolutionary government. To an extent it is true that the CCP may have been too weak to do so, being isolated from cities beyond Shaanxi province and recovering from the Long March. But that only proves that the flight into the countryside was holding the Party back from its real potential.
Guillermaz argues that the execution of Chiang Kai-shek would have been a mistake, as it would have led to political instability and the likelihood of an even more pro-Japan Guomindang government. But that is the whole point. As if China were not already wracked by severe instability thanks to Japan’s invasion and Chiang’s fractious government. The instability created would only be the realisation of the Guomindang’s inevitable doom, and any new rightwing regime would be much weakened and more susceptible to CCP overthrow.
Of course to do so would require political independence from the Guomindang and the bourgeois, which under Moscow’s ‘Popular Front’ orders the CCP no longer had. Another objection to the execution of Chiang would be that Zhang Xueliang and other rebellious Guomindang generals would also be opposed. The evidence suggests that Zhang wanted to use this escapade to get Moscow to make a deal with him to be the new leader of China. So had Moscow been in favour of his execution Zhang may also have supported it, but this is beside the point.
It is beside the point because the aim of the CCP in this situation should have been to openly declare itself against Chiang Kai-shek, who was a national traitor. It should therefore have linked his removal to the need for a war against Japan and a new Chinese revolution to overthrow the Chinese ruling class, who had demonstrated that all they could achieve was national disintegration, corruption and subservience to Japan. If they had done this and Zhang then came out against such a plan, he would effectively be placing himself in Chiang Kai-shek’s camp, defending him and his non-resistance against the CCP.
His troops were practically begging the CCP to win them to the Red Army by breaking entirely with the Guomindang. Edgar Snow, who’s account of the Red Army was if anything too biased in their favour, painting a rosy picture of the rural soviets, could not help but admit that in the Xian Incident the CCP played the role of Chiang’s shield against the masses,
“Was Chiang Kai-shek’s life ever really in danger? It appears that it was. Not from the Young Marshal [Zhang], and not from the Reds...most certainly from the radical young officers of the North-Eastern and North-West armies, from the discontented and mutinous soldiery, and from the organised and arming masses, all of whom demanded a voice in the disposal of the Premier. Resolutions passed by the young officers called for a mass trial of ‘Traitor’ Chiang and all his staff. The mood of the army decidedly favoured the Generalissimo’s immolation. Curiously enough, it fell to the lot of the Communists to persuade them that his life should be saved.” (Ibid, my emphasis)
This proves that the task of the CCP in these circumstances was to place itself at the head of this popular mood. If it had seized this opportunity, it could have united under its command a huge chunk of Zhang’s massive army, one of the key military components of the Guomindang regime. Indeed Chiang had been relying on it to wipe the communists out – winning a chunk of this force would have put paid to any ability of the regime to attack the Red Army, without the CCP having to make any deal with Chiang Kai-shek. The outcome would have been a hugely strengthened Red Army, and not just numerically – they would have strengthened themselves by taking a powerful political stand, sending out a clear message to the masses that they were prepared to take decisive action to fight imperialism. The tens of thousands of troops won to their banner would not just have been any old soldiers but politically radicalised masses. And the CCP could then have taken control of all the key cities in Shaanxi and Gansu.
But rather than understanding that the key task is winning the political confidence of the masses for revolution, the CCP laboured under Moscow’s narrow and short-sighted goal of winning a bourgeois ally in China. Thus instead of winning these enraged soldiers to a revolutionary banner, the CCP alienated them by making deals at the top, which can only weaken a revolutionary party, whose strength never lies in deceitful bourgeois diplomacy but in arousing the masses. Apparently Zhou Enlai, the chief CCP negotiator, was denounced by Zhang’s Dongbei soldiers as a traitor for not having Chiang killed. So intense was the desire to finish Chiang and his regime, that following Chiang’s release Zhang had to fly back with him to Nanjing in order to prevent the plane being shot down by Dongbei soldiers taking matters into their own hands!
Chiang was saved by Moscow
Chiang Kai-shek in 1940Although it is of course very difficult to determine with any certainty, most sources agree that Mao and the leading CCP comrades were delighted at Chiang’s capture and sought to have him executed. This certainly was the logical decision to take considering not only that he represented the class enemy in a time of civil war, but also the support for this move by Guomindang troops.
And yet after a few days Chiang was released without a scratch, and with only verbal assurances that he would cease to wage war on the Red Army and would fight the Japanese. Absolutely no economic policies were wrung from him. In fact in securing his own release Chiang managed to exchange his ending of hostilities with the CCP for an agreement that the CCP would dissolve the Red Army into the Guomindang’s army, place itself under the latter’s command and agree to suspend all attempts to overthrow the government. The CCP was also to suspend all land-redistribution in the areas they controlled, thus betraying the peasants under their administration. All to secure the alliance of a man universally hated, dedicated to their destruction, representing the class enemy and utterly at their mercy!
Although organisationally strengthened by the Xian Incident, which did give the CCP more room for manoeuvre (it is solely on these grounds that the CCP and Comintern justified their actions), the CCP undoubtedly emerged politically weakened, that is to say it served to undermine their political programme and independence. Thanks to this new cross-class alliance, Guomindang leaders were now invited into the Soviet bases to give speeches to mass rallies, which the CCP organised for them. Pictures of Marx were paraded in the bases next to the image of Chiang Kai-shek. Talk about discrediting Marxism!
Not only did the CCP cease to confiscate landlords’ land, they also ceased to make anti-Guomindang propaganda. CCP comrades were allowed to stand for political office, but only if they were not publicly known as communists, in other words they were to be prisoners of the Guomindang dictatorship. “Communist slogans became these: to support the Central Government, to hasten peaceful unification and Nanjing, to realise bourgeois democracy, and to organise the whole nation to oppose Japan” (Ibid).
Defenders of these actions will say that in truth, the CCP never surrendered independence from the Guomindang, and that this is proven by their subsequent military victory in 1949. Again, this is true from a purely organisational point of view – they kept their own secret structures and never really put themselves fully under Guomindang command. But the point is that they publicly declared they were doing so. They publicly supported and propped up the Guomindang bourgeois dictatorship. They deflected popular anger away from Nanjing, and thus made themselves incapable of mobilising the masses for a political overthrow of the regime.
Why did all his occur? Purely and simply because the Moscow bureaucracy was terrified that it might find itself on the receiving end of Japanese imperialism. In their eyes, if Chiang was killed and the Guomindang fell apart, this would weaken China and allow Japan to cut through it and reach the USSR more quickly. This was false, for the deposition of Chiang would have massively strengthened the Chinese resistance, inspiring the whole country to rise up and make the Japanese occupation an impossibility. It also displays the way in which Moscow constantly used the CCP as little more than a bargaining chip in their diplomatic intrigues. Their strategy did not proceed from the needs of the Chinese and world revolution, but the maintenance of their own position.
Moscow culpability is proven by the fact that, before Zhou Enlai could even begin negotiations, without consulting the CCP the Comintern outrageously printed in Pravda and Izvestia a denunciation of the capture of Chiang, painting Chiang as somehow China’s chief protector against Japan. Mao was furious at this undermining of the CCP, which amounted to betrayal, and wanted to ignore it. But Zhang of course learnt of this development and no longer had the confidence to finish off Chiang. Lacking the backing of Moscow and any perspective of mobilising a mass campaign amongst the Dongbei troops (and the Chinese working class in general) for Chiang’s removal, Mao and Zhou inevitably folded and did as Moscow pleased.
It is true that the immediate outcome of this incident was a lessening of hostilities between the CCP and Nanjing. The Soviet base and Red Army were able to grow in size. But the class struggle cannot be cancelled. If the leadership of the oppressed class surrenders, that does not secure the appeasement of the ruling class. And so it was after Xian.
Chiang’s subsequent ‘resignation’ was nothing but a ruse: upon leaving, he “requested the highest organ of the Guomindang to do four important things: to hand over to the Military Affairs Commission (of which he was still chairman) the punishment of Zhang Xueliang”. All his recommendations were obeyed in exactly the same manner as if he were still in change. Zhang Xueliang was placed under house arrest for 50 years and all his generals were executed!
In the first meeting of the Nanjing government following Xian, the meeting refused to even formally acknowledge a telegram from the CCP. Chiang Kai-shek gloated about how he had refused to sign any pledge to do what the CCP wanted whilst captive, and claimed to have managed to convert them to his point of view. Following this, “in a very offhand and contemptuous manner” he submitted “the rebels’ eight demands to the session. Reiterating its complete confidence in the Generalissimo, the Session rejected his resignation, condemned Zhang Xueliang, and just as casually and contemptuously rejected the impertinent [CCP] demands” (Ibid). Rather than releasing the masses of political prisoners as he had promised, Chiang now insisted that only those ‘who repented’ would be released. Then, on 21st February 1937, Chiang had the arrogance to unveil a manifesto denouncing the CCP.
Chiang was now able to take the initiative, and took the opportunity to transfer the rebellious Dongbei army away from the CCP into Anhui and Henan Provinces, breaking up the ‘bloc’ between the CCP and Zhang, who was now under house arrest.
The only reason the Red Army was now afforded more breathing space is thanks to those rebellious troops who pushed Zhang into kidnapping Chiang. The hatred of the masses for this arch-capitulator meant that he lacked the political strength to send in troops to crush the Red Army. In truth Chiang emerged massively strengthened from the whole affair thanks to the laughable blunders of the Comintern, when he should have been dead.
In every way, the Moscow inspired policies of class collaboration, from the tragedy 1925-7, through to the Xian Incident, are a litany of errors. The young CCP was tossed around by short-sighted Soviet foreign policy as though it were so much loose change in one’s pocket. That it still survived is testament to the heroic self-sacrifice and determination of the Chinese masses, who time and again defended, fought for and joined the CCP, if only because they needed a revolutionary instrument with which to transform society and their own lives. Unfortunately, gross errors of leadership (or lack of) in Moscow would condemn these soldiers of revolution to another twelve years of life-and-death struggle before their party would take power.
A word of warning to our Chinese language readers 7 Jan 2021
China: SOE bond defaults show turbulent days ahead 9 Dec 2020
The spectre haunting China’s internet: socialism’s comeback among the youth 22 Oct 2020
Uyghurs in Xinjiang: national oppression and imperialist hypocrisy 20 Oct 2020
China: the marginalized narrative of the June Fourth Movement – what occurred during the spring and summer of 1989 was in fact “two movements” 24 Sep 2020
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The Japanese First lady may have pretended not to speak English to avoid talking to Donald Trump
The Donald claims he had an awkward dinner with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie - who sat in silence for nearly two hours
The First Lady of Japan might have pretended she didn't speak English to avoid talking to Donald Trump.
President Trump, who is under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, was seated next to Akie Abe, wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo, at a dinner to mark the end of the G20 summit in Hamburg on July 8.
But in an interview with the New York Times, published last night, he said conversation at the dinner was not forthcoming with Mrs Abe.
Here's what Trump told the Times
He told reporters: "So, I was seated next to the wife of Prime Minister Abe [Shinzo Abe of Japan], who I think is a terrific guy, and she’s a terrific woman, but doesn’t speak English."
Asked if it was "nothing, like zero", he replied: "Like, not “hello.”
He went on to say the evening had been "hard" because the meal went on for "probably an hour and 45 minutes."
He added: "So I’m sitting there. There was one interpreter for Japanese, ’cause otherwise it would have been even tougher. But I enjoyed the evening with her, and she’s really a lovely woman, and I enjoyed — the whole thing was good."
Later during the same dinner, Trump switched seats to sit next to Vladimir Putin, with whom he had a previously undisclosed 15-minute private chat.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held 'second secret meeting' at G20 summit, White House reveals
The thing is though, Akie Abe does speak English.
US Journalist Sam Thielman first spotted the discrepancy - pointing followers to this video of Mrs Abe apparently speaking very good English in a speech to the Ford Foundation.
And while it's possible Trump just assumed she didn't speak English and didn't bother to talk to her, the other explanation has made people very happy indeed.
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You are here: Home / Education / Longtime Missouri lawmaker Mike “Coach” Lair’s funeral is Tuesday in Jefferson City (AUDIO)
Longtime Missouri lawmaker Mike “Coach” Lair’s funeral is Tuesday in Jefferson City (AUDIO)
A longtime Missouri lawmaker who championed education will be laid to rest Tuesday in Jefferson City.
Former State Representatives Genise Montecillo (left) and Mike Lair in 2016 (photo courtesy of Tim Bommel at Missouri House Communications)
Former State Rep. Mike Lair, R-Chillicothe, served in the Missouri House from 2008 to 2016. The 71-year-old Lair died last week.
Lair is being praised by former State Rep. Genise Montecillo, D-St. Louis, who served with Lair for six years.
“He was my (committee) chair in education appropriations, we served on several education committees and full Budget (committee) together and there were no political parties as far as we were concerned when it came to children and serving the children of the state of Missouri,” Montecillo says.
Montecillo describes Lair as a “true public servant” and an “amazing human being.”
“My time in Jefferson City was better because Representative Lair was there too,” says Montecillo. “Mike never lost sight of why he was there.”
Montecillo tells Missourinet Lair “had her back”, adding that he wanted what was best for children and worked across party lines on early literacy issues.
Lair chaired the Joint Committee on Education, and chaired the House Select Committee on Education during his final term. Montecillo says Lair’s “heart was education.”
State Representatives Lair (left) and Montecillo on the 2016 session’s final day (photo courtesy of Tim Bommel at Missouri House Communications)
“He was a teacher, he was a coach and those of us that teach we have that passion, that is how we define ourselves, you know, teachers and coaches and parents,” Montecillo says.
Former House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka, describes Lair as an “elder statesman”, saying Lair brought passion to every issue.
Lair was born in Omaha, graduating from Creighton Preparatory Jesuit High School in 1964. He played football at Colorado State.
Lair taught history at Chillicothe High School (CHS) from 1987 until he retired in 2008. He also was the CHS boys track coach from 1988 until 1996, and was an assistant football coach at Chillicothe for several years.
He taught and coached in Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota for more than 38 years, including time teaching on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.
Lair’s funeral service is Tuesday at noon at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Jefferson City. Monsignor Robert Kurwicki will officiate.
Numerous current and former state lawmakers are expected to attend. Many others, including Montecillo, attended Monday’s visitation at the Cathedral.
Veteran Livingston County Sheriff Steve Cox and former State Sen. David Pearce, R-Warrensburg, will be among the pallbearers.
Missouri Governor Eric Greitens has ordered flags at all government buildings statewide to be flown at half-staff again on Tuesday, because of Lair’s passing.
Click here to listen to the full interview between Missourinet news director Brian Hauswirth and former State Rep. Genise Montecillo, D-St. Louis, which was recorded on September 8, 2017:
http://cdn.missourinet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/bh-montecillointerviewSeptember2017.mp3
Filed Under: Education, High School Sports, Legislature, News, Sports
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You are here: Home / Archives for Missouri Bicentennial
Monday’s inauguration in Jefferson City kicks off celebration of 200 years of Missouri history
January 10, 2021 By Brian Hauswirth
About 2,000 people are expected to attend Monday’s inauguration ceremonies at the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City. The festivities will help kick off the historic celebration of 200 years of Missouri history.
Missouri Governor Mike Parson and First Lady Teresa Parson attend a legislative prayer service in Jefferson City on January 6, 2021 (photo courtesy of the governor’s Flickr page)
State Rep. Ron Hicks, R-Defiance, plans to bring his children to the 2021 Bicentennial inauguration ceremony.
“That’s one of the exciting things about being a part of this, not just for myself but my family. I have two young boys and for them to be parts of history and things and then learn about it, this is just an amazing experience,” Hicks says.
James Harris of Jefferson City, who co-chairs the inaugural committee, tells Missourinet that he expects about 2,000 people to attend. The ceremony on the Capitol lawn will start Monday morning at 11:07, with Bicentennial remarks from Gary Kremer of the State Historical Society of Missouri.
August will be the 200th anniversary of Missouri’s statehood.
After a performance from the Missouri State University Chorale, Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, will convene a rare joint session of the Legislature, on the Capitol lawn.
The oaths of office will be administered at 11:40 a.m. to Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R), State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick (R), Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) and Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe (R).
Missouri Supreme Court Justice Mary R. Russell will swear Lt. Governor Kehoe in, and Governor Parson will be sworn-in by Jackson County Circuit Judge Sarah Castle, who is disabled.
Governor Parson appointed Judge Castle to her position in October.
Secretary Ashcroft will be sworn-in by Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem, and Treasurer Fitzpatrick will be sworn-in by Judge Johnnie Cox from Missouri’s 39th Circuit in Monett.
Attorney General Schmitt will be sworn-in by Judge Thomas Albers.
Governor Parson will be sworn-in at high noon, after the bells ring at the nearby St. Peter Catholic Church. He will deliver his inaugural address at 12:04, and it’s expected to be a 16-minute speech.
Parson defeated Democratic Auditor Nicole Galloway by about 500,000 votes in November’s gubernatorial election.
Representative Hicks expects hope and safety to be two of the themes in the governor’s inaugural address. Hicks says COVID remains a major issue.
“I think the people (Missourians) are wanting to hear him (Governor Parson) say that we’re secure, we’re going to be safe. We’ve got viruses, we’re implementing them. He does have a great (vaccine) plan for it. I’ve read it, I’ve seen it,” says Hicks.
In addition to the joint session of the Legislature, several members of Missouri’s congressional delegation are expected to attend. Former Missouri Governors Jay Nixon (D) and John Ashcroft (R) are also expected to attend.
Our live Missourinet inauguration coverage begins Monday morning at 10:30, with Brian Hauswirth, Alisa Nelson and Bob Priddy at the Capitol.
Click here to listen to Brian Hauswirth’s two-minute interview with State Rep. Ron Hicks, R-Defiance, which was recorded at the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City on January 8, 2021:
https://cdn.missourinet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/bh-rephicksinterview.mp3
.Copyright © 2021 · Missourinet
Filed Under: Crime / Courts, Elections, Health / Medicine, History, News, Politics / Govt Tagged With: Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem, Defiance, former Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, former Missouri Governor John Ashcroft, Gary Kremer, Jackson County Circuit Judge Sarah Castle, James Harris, Judge Johnnie Cox, Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe, Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway, Missouri Bicentennial, Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Mary Russell, Missouri's inauguration ceremonies, Monett, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, St. Peter Catholic Church in Jefferson City, State Historical Society of Missouri, State Rep. Ron Hicks, State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick
Missouri Bicentennial leaders say every county and town has a story to tell (AUDIO)
December 1, 2020 By Brian Hauswirth
August will be the 200th anniversary of Missouri’s statehood, and Missouri 2021 is rolling out a series of virtual programs called “First Tuesdays” that begin on December 1 at 11 a.m.
The Missouri Star Quilt Company, based in northwest Missouri’s Hamilton, has put together the Bicentennial quilt (photo courtesy of Missouri Bicentennial website)
Missouri Bicentennial spokeswoman Beth Pike says each Missouri county and community has a story to tell.
“This is Missouri’s Bicentennial, it’s for everybody,” Pike says. “We really want to engage people from all 114 counties in the state, to really feel a part of it.”
The first program begins Tuesday morning, when Missouri 2021 coordinator Michael Sweeney will provide an overview of the projects and events across the state to commemorate the Bicentennial.
You can find more information about the monthly virtual programs at Missouri2021.org. August 10, 2021 will mark Missouri’s 200th anniversary as the 24th state in the United States.
Meantime, a quilt company based in northwest Missouri’s Hamilton has volunteered to stich a large quilt together that celebrates Missouri’s upcoming Bicentennial. The company is Missouri Star Quilt Company, and Ms. Pike says the quilt showcases the unique characteristics of Missouri culture and style.
“It is large, it’s a huge quilt. We have it where you can see every county, including the independent city of St. Louis, because they’re not a county. They’re an independent city,” says Pike.
Missouri Bicentennial leaders say the mission of Missouri 2021 is to provide a better understanding of Missouri and its regions, both past and present.
Pike notes there is also a traveling photo exhibit and a poster contest. She also says Missouri’s PBS stations are currently working on a documentary, that will be finished in time for the Bicentennial.
Click here to listen to Brian Hauswirth’s interview with Missouri Bicentennial spokeswoman Beth Pike, which was recorded on November 27, 2020:
https://cdn.missourinet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/bh-bicentennial.mp3
Filed Under: Agriculture, Business, History, News, Politics / Govt Tagged With: Hamilton, Missouri 2021, Missouri Bicentennial, Missouri Bicentennial Quilt, Missouri Star Quilt Company, PBS documentary on Missouri Bicentennial, St. Louis, traveling photo exhibit
August 10th groundbreaking set for major Bicentennial bridge project in Jefferson City
A well-known Jefferson City family is donating $75,000 to a bridge project that will link the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City to the riverfront. It’s a project that’s been discussed in Jefferson City for more than 25 years.
This is an artist’s rendering of part of the planned $3.75 million Bicentennial bridge project in Jefferson City (photo courtesy of bicentennialbridge.org
The Naught family from Naught-Naught Insurance Agency made the contribution.
Jefferson City Mayor Carrie Tergin tells Missourinet that a groundbreaking ceremony for the $3.75 million project is set for Monday August 10 at 8:30 a.m. It will take place at the State Capitol.
Mayor Tergin describes the project as a “game changer,” as well as an amazing legacy gift for Missouri’s Bicentennial in 2021. She has said it’s the most exciting news that that’s ever announced as mayor.
The project will provide a pedestrian and bike linkage from the Capitol to the Missouri River, an area known as Adrian’s Island. Tom Naught says the Bicentennial bridge will enhance the Capitol grounds, and will bring more tourists to Jefferson City. The 12-foot wide pedestrian and bicycle bridge will connect the Capitol complex to a 30-acre parkland located north of the Union Pacific Railroad.
The island will have trails that allow visitors to hike through the wooded area. Click here to view artist renderings of the project, and also a video.
“The entrance to the bridge will honor our veterans and when the Naught family learned of this, they knew they wanted to be a part of it. Thank you to the Naught’s for having a place in your heart for the Bicentennial Bridge and for veterans, and we deeply appreciate your support of this project,” Mayor Tergin says, in a statement.
Mayor Tergin tells Missourinet that she expects construction to begin in late summer or this fall, and for clearing work to begin in September. The project is expected to be done in August 2021. The mayor says the 830-feet bridge will span over railroad tracks.
Bridge supporters note more than 400,000 people visit the Missouri Capitol Complex annually, and that there’s no current way to access the riverfront without crossing Union Pacific’s railroad tracks.
Filed Under: Business, History, News, Outdoors, Politics / Govt, Transportation Tagged With: Adrian's Island, Jefferson City Mayor Carrie Tergin, Jefferson City riverfront, Missouri Bicentennial, Missouri Capitol, Missouri Capitol complex, Naught-Naught Insurance Agency, Tom Naught, Union Pacific Railroad, Veterans
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Pollock on IL, undergoing exploratory procedure
SAN FRANCISCO -- Doctors Tuesday night were performing an exploratory procedure to determine the cause and severity of A.J. Pollock’s right elbow infection, said manager Dave Roberts, who earlier talked about options for replacing Pollock in the lineup. After Tuesday night's 10-3 win over the Giants, Roberts said he did
SAN FRANCISCO -- Doctors Tuesday night were performing an exploratory procedure to determine the cause and severity of A.J. Pollock’s right elbow infection, said manager Dave Roberts, who earlier talked about options for replacing Pollock in the lineup.
After Tuesday night's 10-3 win over the Giants, Roberts said he did not have results of the procedure or whether a more extensive surgery was necessary. There is no timetable for the return of Pollock, who broke the elbow in 2010 and had a plate inserted, then rebroke it in 2016 when the hardware was compromised.
“We’re just hoping things go well,” said Roberts. “It’s concerning any time you’re talking about an infection and past surgery. Advising our guys to remain positive until we know more information. I’m trying to choose my words wisely. We’ll know more after the game.”
Roberts said Pollock’s elbow swelled and discolored, which signaled the infection. He reiterated that the elbow condition surfaced in the last few days and, in his opinion, was not responsible for the slow start of Pollock, who was signed to a four-year, $55 million contract in the offseason.
With Pollock placed on the injured list, perhaps for a lengthy stay, the Dodgers initially recalled utility man Matt Beaty from Triple-A Oklahoma City, which Roberts conceded “isn’t the most ideal” because the Dodgers are about to face left-handed starters. Pollock bats right-handed, Beaty bats left-handed. Beaty can play the corners in the infield and outfield. He got his first MLB hit in his first at-bat Tuesday.
Roberts started Enrique Hernández in Pollock’s center-field spot on Tuesday night and Max Muncy at second base, but insisted Hernandez will remain his primary second baseman. Roberts said rookie Alex Verdugo will receive more playing time in center field, even against left-handed pitchers, even though he was not in Tuesday night’s lineup against left-hander Drew Pomeranz.
This is Pollock’s fifth stint on the injured list. He also has had a broken thumb, broken wrist and groin strain.
Beaty, 26, was the 12th-round selection by the Dodgers in the 2015 Draft out of Belmont University. This is his first Major League promotion after being added to the 40-man roster on Nov. 20, 2018. Prior to the promotion, Beaty was batting .277 (23-for-83) with two homers and 10 RBIs in 22 games for OKC.
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World Wide Web (WWW): Where it all started
Ramon | April 13 2015
Sit closer kids, adults, and others, and let me tell you a little story of a man named Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web.
Firstly, don’t get the World Wide Web confused with the Internet. The World Wide Web is the visual representation of all the interlinked hypertext documents living on the Internet, i.e. web pages. The Internet is an interconnected computer network that uses the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link several billion devices across the globe.
But I digress - let me take you a few years back in history, specifically to 8 June 1955, when Mary Lee Woods gave birth to a little boy named Timothy John Berners-Lee. Mary and her husband, Conway Berners-Lee, didn’t know that they have conceived someone that would revolutionize the way we share information with one another.
Tim grew up in London, England, and was one of four children. He was a railway enthusiast as a child and always loved to observe trains and play with his own railway sets. It was this passion of his that led to his love of electronics. As all children do with their toys, Tim took apart his model railway to explore and study how the mechanism of this object worked, and thus feeding his curiosity that led to his vast knowledge of electronics.
In his later years, Tim graduated from The Queen’s College of the University of Oxford with a first-class degree in physics. He then went on to work for CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) as a software engineer. There were many scientists working at CERN in various locations, and the biggest problem they had was the need to exchange and share their findings with one another in an easier and faster way as mail pigeons were just not gutting it. Tim saw and understood this need.
In 1989 Tim, while still working at CERN, made the first communication between a web browser and server via the Internet. In other words, for you non-nerds out there, Tim created the World Wide Web. This was a revelation, as he basically made the largest documentation system ever created and ever will exist.
"I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web ... Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very difficult when I was working at CERN later. Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the Internet, multi-font text objects, had all been designed already. I just had to put them together. It was a step of generalizing, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary documentation system." – Sir Tim Berners-Lee
The first ever website was built at CERN on 6 August 1991 and was running on a web server using a NeXT computer. For those out there that are not familiar with NeXT, it was a company founded by a legend in his own rights, the late Mr. Steve Jobs. The address of the first website is info.cern.ch. Go forth and visit this simple, yet extraordinary website. May you reminisce and appreciate how far we’ve come in web technologies!
Mr. Berners-Lee is the director and founder of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a group set up to oversee the ongoing developments of standards for the World Wide Web. This man is a visionary, and realized the need people had and will have for an online documentation system. So next time you are clicking and scrolling away on the World Wide Web while procrastinating at work, just take a few moments to appreciate the digital remarkableness that is in front of you.
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Fom the CEO
I was fascinated in a piece written by an early Menzies Scholar recently in which he observed that Sir Robert was such a strong leader because of his ability to balance ‘continuity and change’ through his time as our longest serving prime minister.
This is certainly where we find ourselves at the moment as we go through the invigorating journey of moving the Menzies Foundation into a new phase of its life.
Over the last few months my focus and that of the Board has been on wide-ranging national consultation with experts in the science, research, entrepreneurship and education fields to gather intelligence to inform our decision making. This part of the process of change has been enormously interesting and informative as I gained more insight into critical and emerging issues for Australia today.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank those people who have so freely given of their time and expertise to help us take some meaningful and clear next steps to ensure the Menzies Foundation continues to promote the leaders of tomorrow, particularly where they are needed most.
Our Menzies Alumni have also contributed their considerable expertise and I note particularly members of our law alumni, who have provided some outstanding feedback in starting to review our international law scholarship to make sure it will meet the future needs of the law profession in Australia as we deal with complex global issues.
Exciting times ahead. Thank you for your continued interest as we move forward.
If you would like to talk to me about the Menzies Foundation’s new focus, please feel free to email me or call on +61 3 9419 5699.
The Hon Justice Andrew Beech SC (1986 Menzies Law Scholar) has been appointed as a judge of the West Australian Court of Appeal by West Australian Attorney General, the Hon John Quigley, LLB JP MLA.
A grant from Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer Foundation, will enable 2008 NHMRC/Menzies Fellow, Dr Misty Jenkins, to study how retraining the body’s own immune system could be the key to new treatment for children with brain cancer.
At a very interesting time in the organisation’s history, 2004 Harvard Menzies Scholar, banker and former Olympic diver, Michael Murphy, has been elected to the Executive Board of the Australian Olympic Committee.
Menzies Indigenous Mentoring Fellow , Michelle Kerrin, has been taking her messages on pride in culture and heritage from private girls’ schools in Melbourne to the National American and Indigenous Studies Association conference 2017 in Canada.
2016 Menzies Engineering Scholar, Liz Killen, worked on an Aussie-themed Pint of Science event at a secret underground pub at the Australian High Commission in London, sharing the best of Australian science over a beer and a party pie.
2011 Menzies Allied Health Research Scholar, Dr Matthew Pase, is leading research at Swinburne University of Technology showing that sleeping disorders appear to be associated with an increased risk of dementia.
2014 NHMRC/Menzies Fellow in Medicine, Dr Si Ming Man, has been presented the Jim Pittard Early Career Award from the Australian Society for Microbiology (ASM) for his growing body of research work.
Young leaders addressing mental health
The Satellite Foundation's Menzies Young Leader program is in full swing!
Eight amazing young people from various parts of Victoria are participating in a series of workshops, sharing experiences of living in a family where a parent or sibling has mental health issues, and how to capture and transform their experiences and wisdom into leadership and advocacy roles.
In 2016 the Menzies Foundation awarded a small Menzies Alumni Community Leadership grant to the Satellite Foundation to run the Young Leader program after Satellite was nominated by 2004 Menzies Research Scholar in the Allied Health Sciences, Dr Kerry Proctor. Read more.
Congratulations to Menzies School of Health Research, which was part of a team taking out the 2017 Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre Eureka Prize for Infectious Diseases Research last week. The award was for the Scabies Research Team (including the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; the Kirby Institute; St Vincent's Hospital Sydney and Menzies), which conducted trials to show the effectiveness of ivermectin in controlling scabies.
Menzies Health Institute Queensland researchers have been studying the effectiveness of targeted programs for people suffering with dementia, delivered in their own homes, which may help with understanding the needs and attitudes of those in the early stages of the disease. The aim is to improve the uptake of community services leading to greater wellbeing.
The only nationally funded paired fellowship in multiple sclerosis (MS) research has just been awarded to the Menzies Institute of Medical Research in Tasmania, bringing laboratory and clinical researchers together to speed up the translation of MS research into clinical practice. This is great recognition of the 20 years of MS research at Menzies; a key focus area for the Institute.
The Menzies Scholars are frequently cited, called for their expert opinions, or asked to write for the media. Here is just a sample of recent highlights:
2012 Menzies Engineering Scholar, Dev Tayal, wrote a piece on how the total solar eclipse in the US provided a lesson in how to manage electricity grids when a crucial generation source is offline.
According to The Mandarin, 1990 Harvard Menzies Scholar, Michael Hiscox, has returned to Harvard after having set up the Prime Minister’s ‘nudge unit’. Michael is the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government at Harvard and also the Co-Director of the Sustainability, Transparency, Accountability Research (STAR) Lab.
2008 Harvard Menzies Scholar and recent recipient of a Westpac Scholarship, Dr Maja Cassidy, is part of a research team figuring out how to use the hashtag at nanoscale to help manipulate a particular type of quasiparticle into quantum bits.
The Sunday Times in Sydney quoted 2015 Menzies Allied Health Research Scholar, Dr Sally Gainsbury saying the prevalence of slot machines, along with the ability to bet fast and continuously, made them more likely to lead to gambling problems.
Renowned medical ethicist, Professor Julian Savulescu, has been inspiring the next generation, as a 16 year old Dunedin girl has become the first high school student to have a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Her interest in gene modification was sparked by a chat with the 1994 Menzies Scholar in Medicine.
The media also sought the views of Professor Savulescu in the controversial case of 11 month old baby, Charlie Gard in London.
And possibly the busiest Menzies Scholar in Australia right now, the Solicitor General, Dr Stephen Donoghue QC, has found himself featuring in the media on a range of topics from ministerial comments on the judiciary to the ministerial citizenship issues currently before the High Court.
Vale Robert White AO
One of the founding Directors of the original Sir Robert Menzies Memorial Trust, Robert White AO, has passed away peacefully aged 93.
Bob White, as he was better known, was also the Deputy Chair of the Menzies Foundation when Sir Ninian Stephen was Chair in the late 90s.
Mr White was the honorary Treasurer for the Trust and the National Appeal Committee, which ran the initial public fundraising campaign to fund and establish the Menzies Foundation.
Bob was known to many of our early scholars and will be greatly missed. He is pictured with Peter Henderson, Heather Henderson and his wife, Jan, at the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Foundation.
If you would like to be an early supporter of the Menzies Foundation’s new focus areas, please consider a donation which can be organised on or offline. Donations can be made via our website, or please contact us on +61 3 9419 5699.
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NEWS: Mercedes to Sponsor International Women in Engineering Day 2018.
The Team have been announced as the latest sponsor of International Women in Engineering Day 2018.
International Women in Engineering Day, which takes place annually on 23 June, is an international awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering and celebrates the outstanding achievements of women engineers throughout the world.
"Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport is committed to supporting initiatives that drive female talent by inspiring girls and young women to seek careers in engineering," said Mercedes-AMG Motorsport boss Toto Wolff.
"We share the same mission within our Formula One Team, whether we are male or female, which is to build a legacy of championship-winning Silver Arrows race cars.
"In the same way, we strive to create a culture where female engineers can thrive and succeed.
"I'm pleased to see a growing number of women in engineering roles across all the technical functions of our Team but there is still more to do if we are to also encourage the next generation.
"Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport is proud to recognise the achievements of women in engineering as a supporter of International Women in Engineering Day 2018."
The theme of this year's International Women in Engineering Day is 'Raising the Bar', which invites individuals or organisations to show how they are making positive change.
We encourage everyone to join in to help celebrate women in engineering and encourage more girls and young women to consider engineering as a career.
You can stay up to date with news on International Women in Engineering Day via the @INWED1919 Twitter channel, and get involved using #INWED18 and #RaisingTheBar.
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Sign of hope? Bay Area high school officials…
If no adjustments are made, only cross country would be allowed to start when stay-at-home orders are lifted
(Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League cross-country meet between Scotts Valley, San Lorenzo Valley and Aptos high schools hosted by Scotts Valley at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park on Thursday September 12, 2019.
By Shayna Rubin | srubin@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
Commissioners from the Bay Area’s two largest high school sports sections for the first time told the Bay Area News Group last late week that the revised calendar announced last summer — and paused in December — could be adjusted in an effort to provide as much hope as possible for kids to return to the playing field this school year.
“It’s a conversation we’re having,” North Coast Section commissioner Pat Cruickshank, who presides over an area that stretches from Alameda County to the coastal side of the Oregon border, said. “No decision has been made. As fluid as this situation has been, we need to see what’s best for our schools, leagues, section, and the state. There are a lot of people having these conversations.”
Added Dave Grissom, commissioner of the Central Coast Section, which extends from King City to San Francisco, “The main goal is to get kids back into competition. That’s goal No. 1 at this point. Allow kids to have some semblance of normalcy is the goal.”
In theory, the schedule change would push all sports allowed under the California Department of Public Health guideline’s most restrictive tier — outdoor non-contact — into the first of two seasons high school officials implemented this school year because there were no sports in the fall. Traditionally, the high school calendar has fall, winter and spring seasons.
If California’s stay-at-home order is lifted this month, here are the sports that be played in specific tiers:
Purple tier: Cross country, golf, tennis, swimming and diving, track & field.
Red tier: Baseball, girls lacrosse, softball.
Orange tier: Badminton, football, boys lacrosse, soccer, volleyball, water polo.
Yellow tier: Basketball, competitive cheer, wrestling, dance.
And here is the sports calendars that were announced by the CCS and NCS in July when the California Interscholastic Federation elected not to have fall sports:
Season 1: Cross country, field hockey, football, gymnastics (NCS), water polo, volleyball, traditional competitive cheer (NCS)
Season 2: Badminton, soccer, tennis, swimming and diving, wrestling, basketball, baseball, boys golf, girls golf, lacrosse, softball, track and field, traditional competitive cheer (CCS), gymnastics (CCS), competitive cheer.
Note: Boys volleyball was moved to the spring in December.
All Bay Area counties are currently in the purple tier, putting high school officials in a difficult spot given that only cross country would get the green light to start under such restrictions if the calendars are not adjusted.
Administrators are now asking themselves if it would be beneficial to move Season 2, purple-tiered sports — golf, tennis, track & field and swimming and diving — into Season 1 in order to get more kids involved.
But there are drawbacks to switching up the schedule.
“There are a lot of things to weigh when you’re looking at this,” Grissom said. “It’s an oddly difficult thing to do.”
If sports move, the complex web of scheduling — aligning opponents, field time, locations and dates — gets even more tangled.
“There’s quite a bit that goes into any season in any sport,” Grissom said.
Section commissioners also have to consider the disparate shifts between the various counties they oversee. Monterey, with schools in the CCS, has yet to leave the purple tier. San Francisco is one of the only counties to reach yellow.
Can too much meddling leave schools in more restrictive counties with fewer opportunities to play than schools in counties that may switch tiers? What if specific counties or schools don’t want to comply?
“There’s that opportunity to get some sports going soon, but what if one league decides to do it and the other doesn’t?” Cruickshank said.
Also on the table: Sections are debating whether to keep playoffs for Season 1. If they eliminate the playoffs, it would allow some teams to start later. That could be an issue for some athletes who want high-level, state competition on their resume.
Former student sues private San Jose school, alleging coach’s unimpeded sexual abuse
Alternatives will be bandied about in executive meetings this month. Without more guidance from state health officials, section leaders might just wait for conditions to improve.
“I’m not a scientist, but I have to believe that as we move between now and June, things will have to get better,” Grissom said. “With vaccinations, I have to think things will get better.”
Shayna Rubin | Oakland Athletics reporter
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Star-powered NCIS
Chris O’Donnell and LL Cool J have something very heavy weighing on their minds.
As the stars of the new CBS drama NCIS: Los Angeles, neither is really concerned about leading a television series for the first time in their careers.
Critical reception of their NCIS spin-off about the Office of Special Projects, a team of covert operatives tasked with apprehending elusive criminals who pose a threat to national security, is probably the least of their worries. What’s gnawing at the veteran film actor and seminal rapper is whether or not fans of the original series will enjoy the show.
How appropriate, then, for the pair to confess their unease in an old Spanish mission.
“My biggest concern, and I think for most of us, is to please the current NCIS fans first and foremost because there are very loyal fans and a huge following,” says O’Donnell, who is sitting on the set of OSP headquarters, a converted mission, and plays Special Agent “G” Callen in the series.
“If new people tune into the show, that’s great, but I feel more pressure to live up to their expectations than I do maybe to the network or the studio expectations, to be honest with you.”
LL Cool J, who plays Callen’s partner, Special Agent and ex-Navy Seal Sam Hanna, hopes fans of NCIS will tune in — particularly because the original regularly makes the Top 10 in ratings — but isn’t making predictions on the success of his show.
“I think the main thing for us is approaching (the show) with humility and being clear that nothing is guaranteed, that our job is to do the best work that we can,” he says. “Obviously, we want to maintain the current NCIS fan base. We don’t want to, you know, make them have an allergic reaction to what we are doing on screen.”
Last time on NCIS: Los Angeles …
• NCIS: Los Angeles was launched as a spin-off during a two-part episode of NCIS last season. It concluded with L.A. lead Chris O’Donnell, who plays Special Agent “G” Callen, lying bloody on the sidewalk after being shot. The official series premiere picks up four months later, executive producer Shane Brennan explains.
“It’s Callen’s first day back on the job, and we see his scars,” Brennan says. “We literally see his scars. And he rolls into this new venue (the Office of Special Projects headquarters seen in the NCIS episodes was compromised after Callen’s shooting), and away we go from there.
• NCIS: Los Angeles begins airing Tuesday night on Global
Italy’s Conte seeking stray senators to save struggling coalition
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Teacher Talk: Articulating the Freedom for Movement
As Montessori teachers, we define our service to the children as encompassing roles farther than just those in the classroom. If we are truly serving children, we need also to advocate for them outside of our prepared environments, as parent educators, community educators, and political activists. And if we truly believe Montessori practices reflect the developmental needs of all children, we can't limit that advocacy only to those children whose parents have enrolled them in Montessori schools.
Think, then, of all the times when you may see, by cultural norms or other influences, children's intrinsic need for movement squelched by the expectations of adults. Infants buckled tightly into buckets instead of being held in an adult's arms, or toddlers being told to sit still when they're surrounded by environments filled with enchanting sounds and sights, preschool children waiting seemingly endlessly in "time out," as punishments for impulsive actions or older children forced to remain seated, with "scholar eyes" tracking teachers from behind their desks for hours at a time. More often than not, children are in environments in which their need to move is not only restricted, but they are actually punished for it.
Punishing a child who needs to move for moving is like punishing them for breathing. And yet...
But here's the good news: in your community, right now, there is at least one educated, engaged and thoughtful world changer who knows that children need to move and who are able to design environments to make their movements purposeful and satisfying: You. Notice a mom struggling with her child at the grocery, trying to hold them close while the shopping gets done? Offer to walk alongside for a few minutes to engage the child and help model the kind of language you might use in the classroom. Can't stand walking past the childcare center at church because you so often see kids sitting in "time out?" Offer to volunteer in the center for a few weeks and offer professional development to the other church volunteers.
Just like in the classroom, there are always ways to share what you know about how the world can work in a way that's not off-putting to people who have yet to encounter another way of doing things. There are always ways to be supportive and compassionate to how very hard it is, even with the best intentions, to love and serve children while you're also trying to get stuff done. There are always ways to make other adults feel less alone, less frustrated, and less less-than, by walking with them for a little while. And when you do so in a spirit of loving-kindness, when you offer the same compassion to the struggling adult as you do every day to the children in your classroom, you not only help that person in that moment: you give them a model to slow down and think differently about their own children that may last beyond your interaction.
Here's the trick: we're all doing the best we can, most of the time, where we are with what we have. And most adults, particularly strangers in a supermarket, aren't going to appreciate your well-intended feedback to their parenting if it feels like they're being ambushed by a nosy teacher. But likewise, most of us don't want to feel like we're doing this whole parenting thing on our own, and a smile, a slower pace and a kind word can go quite far. I'm not suggesting that, in addition to working with children in your own classrooms all day, you must also put on the cape of SuperTeacher and go seeking parents to train. Instead, I am suggesting that you remain alert, eyes open, even when you're not officially at work, to remember that our obligations as Montessori teachers are not just to the children we serve between 9 and 3, but to the conditions of childhood wherever children are. We often think that we should look away from parents or other caregivers when they're reprimanding their children. There's no need to gawk, but there's equally no need to isolate further a parent who may already feel like they're in over their head. If you're in a situation with a natural opportunity to model and support, take it. But even if the best you can do is eye contact, a smile and a, "Hang in there, Mom," with a stranger who's trying to figure out this children thing, you'll have made it a little bit better.
#Movement #ForTeachers #teachertalk #Theory
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Home / June 2019 / Free experiments and workshops at Science Festival
Free experiments and workshops at Science Festival
The Eureka! festival at the Old Port will teach kids about a gamut of science-related topics and discoveries
by Brianna Ballard
Do-it-yourself slime? Check. Hoverboards? Check. Chemical explosions, solar-powered race cars, and a soccer ball smarter than you? Triple check.
Eureka!, the province’s largest science festival, will have all this and much more at the 13th annual edition from June 7 to 9 at the Old Port. There will be more than 100 activities, street performers, workshops and shows for kids of all ages and their parents. And best of all, it’s free.
Kids will be able to take part in over 60 creative workshops and interactive experiments. For example, participants can become chemical engineers by creating their own slime or build bridges out of popsicle sticks that can withstand the load of a hydraulic press.
Alexandru Duru, a Montreal software engineer who set a Guinness World Record for longest flight by a hoverboard, will be showing off his skills every day over the St. Lawrence River. And experts will be on hand to explain the technology behind Segways. Curious kids will be free to explore human-powered submarines from Polytechnique Montreal and a solar race car from the University of Toronto, learn how to use liquid nitrogen to make ice cream, and play techno-soccer with a ball that’s so smart, it can instantly tell you the speed, rotation, power and trajectory of your kick.
There will be explosive demonstrations with The Magic of Chemistry, an interactive musical Bugs on Stage and Science or Magic, which will reveal phenoma that lead to amazing discoveries.
For the adults, there will be presentations and conferences on topics like transportation of the future, green initiatives, sustainable mobility and much more.
On Saturday, June 8, young women scientists will show off their inventions; they will have only four minutes to convince a jury that they are the next innovators of tomorrow.
Also on Saturday, the French quiz show Genial! will be filming a show to be broadcast in the fall. Trivia lovers can see hosts Stéphane Bellavance and Martin Carli in this exclusive presentation of the show for free, but be sure to reserve your spot online in advance.
Since its inception in 2007, the Eureka! festival has attracted more than 900,000 visitors. It will be held in front of the Montreal Science Centre. Some shows, demonstrations and activities will be bilingual, but others will only be offered in French and others only in English. The hours are Friday, June 7 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Saturday, June 8 from 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 9 from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
For more information, visit festivaleureka.ca.
Check out the video from last year's festival below:
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Minn. hawalas prepare to shut down this week
Laura Yuen
December 7, 2011 11:35 p.m.
ListenDebrief: Hawalas prepare to shut down
Somali money-transfer companies in Minnesota are preparing to close as early as Friday, unless a solution can be reached with one of the last remaining U.S. banks to do business with them.
Shutting down the so-called "hawalas" could have devastating effects in Somalia, which is experiencing its worst famine in decades. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali-American population in the United States, and members of the community rely on the money-wiring shops to send cash to family and loved ones in their homeland.
Last week, Franklin Bank announced it would close all of its hawala accounts Dec. 15, citing security concerns. The news sent the money transmitters scrambling. Hawala owners met with bank officials, and asked for a three-month extension.
On Tuesday, bank officials denied their request.
Aden Hassan, a representative of 14 Somali-owned money-wiring services in Minnesota, said many of the shops will likely close Friday to allow time for the transactions to clear before everything is completely shut off next week.
"This is going to have a massive negative effect on Somali, Kenyan, and Ethiopian populations who are facing one of the worst recorded famines and droughts in recent history," said Hassan, a compliance officer for Kaah Express of Minneapolis.
Franklin Bank officials say they did not take the decision lightly, given the huge humanitarian crisis that is broiling in the Horn of Africa.
But the bank is concerned about the risks involved, said David Reiling, CEO of Sunrise Community Banks, the parent company of Franklin Bank.
The recent case of two Rochester women convicted of funneling money to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab exposed the bank's vulnerabilities, he said. And last Thursday, a young San Diego woman pleaded guilty to using the services to sending money to al-Shabab fighters.
Even though bank officials don't believe Franklin was involved in either case, Reiling said the incidents prompted bank officials to look at its own security procedures. They concluded that they could not prevent someone from routing money to terrorists, especially if that person was not already under scrutiny by federal authorities.
"We don't want to be involved in money getting into the hands of the wrong people in any way, shape or form," Reiling said. "So the only way we know at the moment to mitigate that risk is to close these accounts, until we can find another solution or work with government to re-establish those lines."
Reiling said he remained optimistic that a solution could be reached soon. He said one option is a government waiver that could afford banks some protection. Reiling points out the State Department has handed out similar waivers to humanitarian organizations working in Somalia.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Al Franken wrote a letter Wednesday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner urging them to explain how Somali Americans can continue to remit cash to their homeland. The Treasury Department has indicated there will remain legitimate channels to send money to Somalia, Franken noted in the letter.
Franken also told Clinton and Geithner that Somalis rely on the remittances to survive.
"I am concerned that the inability to transmit money back to Somalia would intensify the human suffering," he wrote.
Removing legitimate channels for Somalis to send money may drive people to "difficult-to-track" means, heightening the risk for money ending in the wrong hands.
Franken also said ending remittances from the United States would be a victory for al-Shabab, which could claim "America was preventing needed funds from getting to suffering Somalis."
There has been a long precedent for banks getting out of the hawala business.
Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and TCF have all stopped providing services to Somali hawalas in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hassan said. Sunrise, a family-owned Twin Cities community banking group, started working with the remittance companies about three years ago.
Hassan said the banks have overreacted to the fear of being held liable for involvement in possible terror financing.
"What's happening is the banks are reacting to that fear, and responding to it by blacklisting us and avoiding us completely," Hassan said. "I can't say it's unfounded or baseless, but we're not aware of any bank that has been penalized for our behavior or for the behavior of our clients."
Word about the likely closure of the hawalas has gone viral in the local Somali community, Hassan said. Customers are coming into his shops worried about how their families will be able to feed themselves.
Somalia lacks a formal banking system. When the country's government collapsed in 1991, so did its financial institutions. Remittances from the diaspora keep the Somali economy functioning. A Somali American in Minnesota can go to a local hawala and write a check to his mom in Mogadishu for $200. Within 24 hours, she'll have received it. The CIA estimates that Somalia receives about $1.6 billion a year in remittances from Somalis around the world.
International aid organizations also use hawalas to deliver aid to Somalia. Mohamed Idris, executive director of the Minneapolis-based American Relief Agency for the Horn of Africa, said his organization is lucky because it has staff and partners in Ethiopia and Kenya who can wire money into Somalia from those locations.
He said closing the Minnesota money transmitters may increase his group's administrative costs. But much worse, he said, it could be a big blow to the Somali people.
"This system has worked for decades. It has more advantages than a traditional banking system," he said. "It's fast. It's open 24 hours, seven days a week. It requires minimal paperwork and reaches every town and village in Somalia."
EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the estimated amount of remittances Somalia receives from Somalis around the world. The current version is correct.
Bank to end wire transfers to hawalas; Somali community scrambles
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Trump slowly starts to realize his North Korea gambit is failing
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (L) shakes hands with US President Donald Trump (R) at the start of their historic US-North Korea summit, at the Capella...
Publicly, Donald Trump pretends his policy toward North Korea is a historic success. The Republican president has assured the American public that he's "solved" the problem posed by the rogue nuclear state, to the point that North Korea is no longer a threat.
"President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem," Trump declared last month. "No longer -- sleep well tonight!”
Privately, however, it's a different story. The Washington Post reported over the weekend:
The lack of immediate progress, though predicted by many analysts, has frustrated the president, who has fumed at his aides in private even as he publicly hails the success of the negotiations. [...][L]ate last week in meetings with his aides, Trump bristled about the lack of positive developments in the negotiations.
In a bizarre way, I find this is oddly reassuring. The reality is that the president's gambit is failing, just as experts predicted. Confronted with these facts, Trump can either accept reality and launch a public-deception campaign in the hopes of convincing voters he's succeeding, or he can pretend reality is what he wants it to be and genuinely believe the nonsense he's peddling.
If the Post's reporting is accurate, the president has chosen the former over the latter. And while the lying is obviously a problem, I take some comfort in the fact that Trump realizes his policy isn't working.
Because it really isn't. From the Post's article:
Diplomats say the North Koreans have canceled follow-up meetings, demanded more money and failed to maintain basic communications, even as the once-isolated regime’s engagements with China and South Korea flourish.Meanwhile, a missile-engine testing facility that Trump said would be destroyed remains intact, and U.S. intelligence officials say Pyongyang is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear program.
Wait, what was that about "demanding more money"? Apparently, North Korea has requested that the United States pay for "the transportation and storage costs" associated with delivering the remains of fallen American soldiers who were killed during the Korean War.
It's just one more aspect of the process that's not going well.
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Centerline Capital Group Closes LIHTC Fund
NEW YORK, NY - Centerline Capital Group, a provider of real estate financial and asset management services with a focus on affordable and conventional multifamily investing and lending, announced today that it closed Centerline Corporate Partners XXXVIII LP ("CCP 38"), a $119.25-million multi-investor Low-income Housing Tax Credit ("LIHTC") fund. With the closing of CCP 38, Centerline-sponsored LIHTC funds have raised aggregate equity capital in excess of $10 billion since the inception of the LIHTC program in 1986.
CCP 38 is the first Centerline-managed multi-investor LIHTC fund raised since the company completed its March 2010 restructuring and recapitalization. "On behalf of the entire Company, I am pleased to announce the closing of this new fund. We have an excellent line up of developer and investor partners. And the fund was oversubscribed by nearly 20 percent, showing strong demand for our product and institutional support for Centerline's platform," said Robert L. Levy, President, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Financial Officer of Centerline. Limited partnership interests in CCP 38 were sold to eight institutional investors; six are repeat Centerline fund investors and two are first-time Centerline fund investors. The fund's $119.25 million in equity proceeds will be used, along with other project-level financing sources, to produce and/or preserve more than 1,300 units of affordable rental housing spread across 16 projects located in 10 states.
"We are very pleased to have closed CCP 38, and we sincerely thank our investor and developer clients for participating in this high-quality investment fund," said Andrew J. Weil, Executive Managing Director of Centerline and head of the Affordable Housing Group. "The closing of CCP 38 demonstrates investor demand exists for quality affordable housing investments offered by strong fund sponsors such as Centerline."
With the closing of CCP 38, Centerline has raised $10,089,308,010 in aggregate tax credit equity across its 136 investment funds since 1986. The company has financed affordable housing in 47 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico.
Centerline Capital Group, a subsidiary of Centerline Holding Company (OTC: CLNH), provides real estate financial and asset management services, with a focus on affordable and conventional multifamily housing. Centerline is headquartered in New York, New York. Source: Centerline Capital Group
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RWJBarnabas Health hospitals outline visitation rules
Hospitals in the RWJBarnabas Health system will immediately be resuming patient visitation with defined safety parameters now that there has been a steady decline in the number of people with COVID-19 in New Jersey.
Among the hospitals in the RWJBarnabas Health system are Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Rahway, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset, and Children's Specialized Hospital in New Brunswick.
Visitation for patients with COVID-19 will still be restricted to extenuating circumstances only such as hospice or end of life, according to the health system.
“RWJBarnabas Health has developed policies and procedures to prioritize and ensure the health and safety of all patients, visitors and staff in preventing the spread of COVID-19,” said John F. Bonamo, executive vice president, chief medical and quality officer of RWJBarnabas Health. “One of the most important safeguards established to achieve this goal has been restricting visitation in our facilities. However, we recognize the vital role that family members and loved ones have in the healing and well-being of our patients and with declining numbers in the state we are happy to announce that visitors will be permitted again.”
Under the guidance by the New Jersey Department of Health announced Tuesday, the hospitals have put the following procedures in place: all visitors must be 18 years of age or older, except in rare exceptions as determined by the facility.
At adult inpatient acute care units, one person per patient at a time is permitted between the hours of noon and 8 p.m.
At pediatric units, two parents or guardians are permitted at any time where the patient is a minor. At neonatal intensive care units two parents/support persons are permitted at any time.
In the maternity and labor and delivery units, one significant other/support person is permitted. Once in the labor and delivery unit, the designated support person must have extremely limited access to the other areas of the hospital and will not be permitted to leave and reenter the unit.
In the emergency department, one visitor per patient is permitted at any time for adult patients. Two parents or guardians are permitted at any time where the patient is a minor.
In the behavioral health adult units, no visitors are permitted until further notice. And in the pediatric psychiatric patients, only one parent/guardian is permitted if/when a mutual agreement between the care team and the parents/guardian has been reached.
Visitors may not be present during procedures or in the recovery room, except for pediatrics, childbirth, and patients with an intellectual, developmental or other cognitive disability.
Same-day surgery or procedure patients, except for pediatrics, and patients with an intellectual, developmental, or other cognitive disability, may have one support person prior to and after the procedure. The support person may remain with the patient through the initial intake process and may rejoin the patient for the discharge process.
Outpatients may be accompanied by one adult. Visitors may wait for the patient in the hospital or facility’s designated waiting area (subject to physical space availability), while the patient is having his/her procedure.
All visitors must undergo symptom and temperature checks upon entering any of the facilities. If they present with fever or symptoms, they will not be allowed entry into the facility as recommended by the CDC.
All visitors must perform hand hygiene before visiting a patient and once in the hospital or facility, visitors shall remain in the patient’s room (or emergency department bay) as much as possible throughout the visit, except when directed by hospital or facility staff to leave during aerosol-generating procedure or other procedures in which visitors are usually asked to leave.
Additionally, upon arrival all visitors will be provided with and must wear appropriate persona protective equipment as recommended by the CDC. Visitors will need a procedure mask only unless an individual is permitted to visit a COVID-19 positive patient because of extenuating circumstances. In this situation, staff will direct the visitor on the appropriate PPE. At the time of entrance, all visitors will be provided instruction on how to wear face masks. If a visitor refuses to wear a mask or other PPE as indicated, that individual will be asked to leave the facility.
More details and additional information on the RWJBarnabas Health visitation guidelines can be found at https://www.rwjbh.org/patients-visitors/what-you-need-to-know-about-covid-19/general-visitation-guidelines/.
The system also is resuming specialty care services including treatments, diagnoses, screenings and elective surgery procedures.
To provide appropriate care and reduce risk of infection for caregivers, patients and staff, all patients admitted to any RWJBarnabas hospital will have a COVID-19 test as part of the pre-admission testing process including scheduled elective surgeries and Emergency Department patients. Elective surgery patients will be required to self-quarantine following testing and up until the day of surgery.
Additionally, all those entering an RWJBH facility, including patients, visitors, vendors, staff and physicians will have their temperature checked with an infrared thermometer upon arrival, will be asked screening questions about COVID-19 symptoms, per CDC guidelines and will receive a COVID-19 test. Those who present with a fever over 100 degrees or who answer ‘yes’ to any symptoms will be directed to a specifically designated area for counseling. All patients who are COVID-19 positive or presumptive positive will continue to be separated from the general patient population.
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Diagnostic Imaging Consultation CT Scan (Computed Tomography) PET Scan (Positron Emission Tomography) Mammography Electromyogram (EMG) MRI Scan (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) Chest X-Ray Pelvic Ultrasound Testicular Ultrasound Abdominal Ultrasound Thyroid Ultrasound Bone Mineral Densitometry (BMD)
CT Scan (Computed Tomography) in South Africa
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Ahmed Kathrada Private Hospital
Nompumelelo Madliwa, 19 April 2020
I had such a wonderful experience there with Dr Thomas, I had a skin drafting done it was such a smooth process I am healing very well and had a great stay there, Thank you so much
Price on request CT Scan (Computed Tomography) View details & Read reviews CALL NOW
UCT Private Academic Hospital
Juliettash Stadler, 05 May 2020
My Son was admitted with a very rare autoimmune illness in April this year. The care he was given was superb Prof Dheda, Prof Louw and their team of specialists covered every possibility , diagnosed efficiently and treated effectively. There was time taken to explain everything. The Hospital Matron made allowances for me to spend as much as possible time with my son and also allowed for frequent visits from close family. Mr Daniel Mathew the Hospital General manager is very approachable and interested . The staff was friendly and helpful. Basically every one from reception through admin to ICU was friendly and helpful. I Highly recommend this hospital
Price on request CT Scan (Computed Tomography) View details & Read reviews
Netcare Linksfield Hospital
Charlotte Sorour, 13 March 2020
Parking is a huge problem.On a positive note it is a great hospital with great specialists and doctor's hence why it is so busy. Well worth driving around a bit looking for parking knowing your loved one's are in good hands. My mind at ease. My husband is well looked after. Thank you Linksfield staff :)
Netcare N1 City Hospital
Kim Adams, 30 March 2020
Overall I had a good experience.
What you need to know about CT Scan (Computed Tomography) in South Africa
CT Scan (Computed Tomography) is a non-invasive medical procedure that does not require surgery. This type of Diagnostic Imaging procedure / treatment is relatively affordable, especially in South Africa. Mainly because the skill set and experience required by the specialist doesn't need to be as extensive as it may be for other procedures. For CT Scan (Computed Tomography), medical records, reports or any supporting documents may be required for the specialist to assess prior to the treatment.
Given the non-invasive nature of CT Scan (Computed Tomography), there is no downtime, so you won't need to consider your recovery and aftercare much. However, if a consultation leads on to surgery, then you should expect to follow that with an extended period of rest.
Depending on how many sessions or follow ups you require, you can expect to leave South Africa immediately after. In most cases, the success of the outcome can be judged by yourself.
Popular Procedures in South Africa
Renal Angiogram
Diagnostic Imaging Consultation
Recommended Medical Centers in South Africa for CT Scan (Computed Tomography)
CT Scan (Computed Tomography) in and around South Africa
South Africa is home to some of the world's most luxurious private game reserves and lodges. Wildlife lovers come here from all corners of the globe in search of the "Big Five": lion, buffalo, leopard, rhino, and elephants. Coral reefs, shark dives, dragon-backed mountain ranges, white-water rafting, and golden beaches lapped by legendary surf breaks are some of South Africa's many other attractions. Traveling around this vast land and touring the vibrant cities, visitors can learn about the nation's turbulent history. Travelers coming to South Africa for medical treatments do so for cost savings, advanced medical technology, and the internationally qualified and skilled doctors. The country welcomes an ever-increasing number of medical tourists each year, many of which travel for CT Scan (Computed Tomography) procedures. Medical Tourists travel from all across the globe, particularly from African countries with an inferior healthcare system. Popular destinations include the capital city, Pretoria, neighboring Johannesburg, and the stunning Cape Town.
Popular Parts of South Africa
With more than 57 million inhabitants, South Africa is the world’s 24th most populous nation. It is a multiethnic society with a large variety of cultures, languages, and religions. Known for its exhilarating outdoor adventure, fascinating wildlife, magnificent landscapes, and opulent history makes South Africa a truly magical destination
Cape Town is the oldest city and the legislative capital of South Africa. This pleasant city has a lot to offer as you can Hike the Table Mountain, take a wine tour, cruise to Robben Island, relax on beautiful beaches, visit District Six Museum, discover Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and watch the Boulders Penguin Colony or shop in trendy markets.
Johannesburg is the largest and the most populous city. It is changing rapidly into an ultra-modern metropolis. Other than being an urban city, it also boasts a rich history. Tourists can visit the Apartheid Museum to learn more about the country’s difficult past through exhibitions. Other museums such as MOAD and MuseuMAfriCA are also worth a visit to view the city’s art and history.
Durban is a cosmopolitan city with sunny beaches and charming Afro-Indian culture. There are more Indian nationals residing in this city than any other country outside of India. It is the place to go if you want to see marine life. Visit uShaka Marine World where you can snorkel, dive, and interact with animals.
Pretoria is a scenic city and you will find various historic buildings with astounding architecture such as the Voortrekker Monument, Union Buildings, and Church Square with its statue of Paul Kruger. Those who are looking for some outdoor activities can explore Pretoria National Botanical Garden and Rietvlei Nature Reserve for some wildlife viewing.
Kruger National Park is one of the largest national parks and one of the most exciting safari destinations in the world. Here you can view all of Africa’s safari species such as Lion, Elephant, Rhino, Leopard, Buffalo, Hippo, and Giraffe along with more than 100 mammal species and 500 varieties of bird.
Weather and Climate in South Africa
South Africa’s climate is determined by its situation in the Southern Hemisphere’s subtropical zone and between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The country is a year-round destination thanks to its varying regional climates. May to September is the Dry Season with little to no rain. The days are mostly sunny, but it gets cold in the evenings and mornings. The average temperature during this season is around 14 °C with June to August as the coldest months. The wet season starts in October and ends in April. There will be occasional short rain showers in the afternoon. The average temperature during the wet season is around 20 °C, but it can also be as high as 35 °C, especially in December, January, and February.
The main and the busiest airport in South Africa is the O.R. Tambo International Airport. The airport is located in Kempton Park, near Johannesburg and Pretoria. It serves as the primary domestic and international gateway to and from South Africa. The airport operates flights to other cities in South Africa as well as numerous major cities in the world including London, Singapore, Sydney, Abu Dhabi, and Atlanta. There are also two other major international airports: Cape Town International and King Shaka International. The inexpensive way to travel around the country is by flying with budget airlines such as FlySadair, Kalula.com, and Mango.
South Africa has an excellent infrastructure and is easy to navigate. However, if you wish to visit several cities, expect to have at least one long-distance trip. You can travel around by bus, train, or rental car. There are several long-distance bus companies you can choose, such as Intercape, Translux, and Greyhound. The buses are relatively affordable and safe. They are generally equipped with air-conditioning and an onboard toilet. For short-distance travel, Baz Bus is the best choice. A one-way ticket fare starts at around 500 ZAR.
Although trains are slow, they are less expensive than flights and more comfortable than buses. Shosholoza Meyl long-distance trains serve Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Bloemfontein, and several other major cities. This train is very affordable with tickets costing as low as 400 ZAR for a sleeper train. If you’re looking for a more luxurious train, try the Blue Train which offers comfortable compartments, good food, and wine for around 18,300 ZAR.
Taxis are available to get around major cities. Tourists can hail one directly from the streets. However, since the taxi ranks are not common, it is best to call for one. The base fare can be different in every city, ranging between 11 ZAR to 20 ZAR.
Tourist Visas in South Africa
A valid visa is required if you wish to visit South Africa. Citizens of more than 60 countries can enter and stay for up to 90 days. Other countries not listed in the visa exemption agreement must apply and obtain a visa to the nearest South Africa embassy or consulate. All visitors must hold a passport valid for at least 30 days after the expiration of their intended visit, and the passport must have at least two unused pages.
Local Currency: South African Rand (ZAR) is the official currency. 1 USD converts to 14 ZAR.
Money & Payments: Tourists can find ATMs all around the country. Credit Cards are widely accepted. However, since South Africa has a reputation for scams, you should inform your bank about your travel plans to avoid declined transactions. It is also advisable to always bring some cash with you. Tipping is expected here and you can tip around 10% to 15% of the bill in restaurants and cafes and the standard tip in hotels is 10 to 20 ZAR.
Local Language: There are 11 official languages in the country, including Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Northern Sotho, Tswana, Southern Sotho, Tsonga, Swazi, Venda, Southern Ndebele, and English. Zulu is the most widely spoken language.
Local Culture and Religion: As a secular state, South Africa has a diverse religious population. Most of the population follows Christianity. Other religions such as the traditional African religion, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism are also freely practiced.
Public Holidays: The country has 12 public holidays such as New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Freedom Day, and Christmas Day.
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https://www.myplainview.com/news/article/9-new-coronavirus-cases-confirmed-in-Petersburg-15338418.php
9 new coronavirus cases confirmed in Petersburg and Plainview
Published 5:24 pm CDT, Saturday, June 13, 2020
Petersburg has four and Plainview has five new cases of COVID-19, according to the Plainview/Hale County Health Department’s latest daily report.
The newly diagnosed individuals include: three women and one man between the ages of 41 and 60 years old; three women and one man between the ages of 21 and 40 years old; and a man who is 61 years or older.
The man who is 61 years or older and the man who is between 21 and 40 years old are both in a medical facility. It’s unclear if the man and a woman who are both between 41 and 60 years old are at home or in a medical facility.
The case of the oldest individual among the newly diagnosed is a result of local transmission. The rest are undetermined.
The newest cases bring the total for Hale County up to 85 since the first was diagnosed on March 24. Plainview’s case count is up to 64 total with 43 recoveries and one death. Petersburg has had eight total cases, two recoveries and two deaths. There have been 10 reported cases in Hale Center with
seven recoveries and two deaths. Abernathy has had two recoveries and Edmonson has had one.
There are currently 25 active cases across the county – 21 in Plainview, one in Hale Center and the four new cases in Petersburg.
A total of 1,276 COVID-19 tests have been administered in health facilities across the county and 1,207 have returned negative results. There were 16 tests pending as of 5 p.m. Friday.
The latest report also shows there are 49 people under monitoring. Those individuals include people who have traveled to a virus hot spot – there are none in Hale County – and who have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.
Nineteen of the individuals with active cases are currently in isolation at home and four are in a medical facility. The location of two remains undetermined.
Forty-three of the total confirmed cases for Hale County have been results of local transmissions while 28 were transmitted from outside the county. The transmission location of 14 are undetermined.
Further breakdown of the cases shows 43 have been diagnosed among females and 42 have been diagnosed among males. Thirty-two of the confirmed cases have been among those who are between 21 and 40 years old; 26 are among those who are 41 and 60 years old; 16 have been diagnosed among the age group of people 61 or older; and 11 have been diagnosed among people who are 20 years old or younger.
With the recent uptick in cases, the city continues to encourage people to practice good hand hygiene.
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John Allen McCreight
August 27, 1939 – July 4, 2020
Al left us in Royal Jubilee Hospital on July 4, 2020, after a long battle with several ongoing conditions.
He was born in Port Alberni on August 27, 1939, and lived there until he was ten, when the family moved to Black Creek, north of Courtenay, where his father, Jack had bought the Midway Garage.
Al helped to run the garage until he left to attend Technical School in Nanaimo. He attended Tsolum School with students who became lifelong friends, and stayed in touch with many of them right into his senior years
After Al left the garage to attend Technical School in Nanaimo, he lived in Vancouver, where he worked for General Contracting at job sites in various locales. In 1962, he started work as a mechanic in MacMillan Bloedel’s Kelsey Bay Division.
He spent his working career with MB, transferring to Squamish and then to Port Alberni, where he worked Shop Foreman and later, Maintenance Supervisor until his retirement in 1998.
In 1965, Al married Edna Rainbow and spent 55 years raising a family and taking long road trips in various trailers and motor homes. His favourite activity while camping was having and tending a campfire while the rest of the family did all the leg-work of hiking and swimming. He was very disappointed when campfire bans arrived.
In 2016, he and Edna moved from Port Alberni to Nanaimo to be closer to medical specialists, who became a part of his life as his conditions became more severe.
He leaves behind his wife, Edna, daughter Christine, and sons Matthew and Douglas, who will miss his support, steadiness, and dry sense of humour. He will be interred in Courtenay’s Mission Hill Cemetery at a later date.
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Project Baby Loss Retreat
Julie helps parents cope with the loss of a baby
Julie was 37 weeks pregnant when she was told that her baby, Erin, had no heartbeat. The loss was devastating and Julie struggled to get the support she needed.
After Erin died in 2003 Julie and her husband Bryan sought support from other parents who had suffered similar bereavement. "Talking is crucial," Julie said. “Parents want to talk straight away. If you get help at the start it won’t take the pain away but it will help. It took me 10 years to recover from the trauma.”
Getting to talk to a professional can be difficult and parents can wait between 6 and 18 months for counselling after losing a baby. This has a big impact on mental health. Julie said, “Parents are much worse after 6 months with no counselling.”
Julie’s experiences led her to set-up the Baby Loss Retreat. This National Lottery-funded project offers a range of support for grieving parents. Julie said, “We start by asking if they’re ready to talk and if they are we offer both therapy and retreats for groups of parents.”
Coronavirus has meant parents have struggled to get the support they need, especially when it comes to navigating some of the problems that arise after the loss of a baby. Julie said, “During lockdown a mum called and told me she’d lost her baby. I asked if she was having a funeral, but parents are often upset, and they don’t know what they need to do.”
Julie explained that parents only have six weeks to conduct a funeral after a stillbirth, so she knew it would need to happen quickly. She said, “We managed to arrange a funeral, and I went with her to dress the baby beforehand. It brought a lot of comfort to both the mum and me.” These sacrifices Julie makes come at a cost though, she said “I had to seek counselling after.”
In normal times the project arranges 3 weekend retreats a year in 3 different peaceful Scottish locations. With coronavirus their strategy had to change slightly, so new phone services were launched to help parents. Julie said, “We’re trying to make the best of things in lockdown. Before, we just offered retreats and now we’ve expanded to do more on the phone.” The Baby Loss Retreat now offers phone support, counselling and giving people tools to help overcome anxiety, sleep issues and depression.
As well as directly supporting parents who have suffered a loss, the project has also campaigned for better public health support during lockdown. During covid women sometimes attend prenatal appointments on their own, which can be devastating if they’re given bad news. Thanks to Julie’s campaigning, partners are able to attend the appointments by video call, giving them the chance to offer support to their loved ones, even if they can’t be physically present.
For her incredible work with grieving parents Julie has been named winner of the Community and Charity category at the 2020 National Lottery Awards. This year’s winners – selected from 5000 nominated projects from across the UK – recognise the ‘Lockdown Legends’ who have worked tirelessly to help others during this extraordinary year.
Speaking about her award, Julie said, "We as a charity are absolutely delighted to be given the recognition and award by The National Lottery. This has been an incredibly tough year for us all and the hard work the charity has put in over the lockdown and the past few months makes it all worthwhile when organisations recognise and reward. The National Lottery has fully supported us for the past 2 years and we are forever grateful in helping us achieve our aims and objectives."
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A Broad-Based IRS Assault on the Tea Party?
In the last 24 hours, my colleagues at the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) have been in contact with literally dozens of tea-party organizations that have received intrusive information demands from the IRS, demands that seriously implicate their First Amendment rights. These information demands follow tea-party requests for 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status and include questions like the following:
Do you directly or indirectly communicate with members of legislative bodies? If so, provide copies of the written communications and contents of other forms of communications.
Please describe the associate group members and their role with your organization in further detail. (a) How does your organization solicit members? (b) What are the questions asked of potential members? (c) What are the selection criteria for approval? (d) Do you limit membership to other organizations exempt under 501(c)(4) of the Code? (e) Provide the name, employer identification number, and address of the organizations.
Do you have a close relationship with any candidate for public office or political party? If so describe fully the nature of that relationship.
The quoted requests are merely the tip of the iceberg. We’re still reviewing the IRS letters and will have more information as we complete our review. Each of these questions — in their content, breadth, and vagueness — implicate the free-speech rights of the affected tea-party groups. Moreover, such intrusive membership requests also run afoul of NAACP v. Alabama and implicate their rights to freedom of association.
Critically, the demands we’ve seen are made not in response to complaints of wrongdoing but instead in response to applications for exemption. In other words, the IRS appears to be conditioning the grant of exemptions on the extensive violation of the tea-party groups’ fundamental First Amendment freedoms.
As I said, our review is ongoing, but the early indications are the IRS is using the routine process of seeking and granting tax exemptions to undertake a sweeping, top-down review of the internal workings of the tea-party movement in the United States. Such a review is far beyond its mission and directly implicates the First Amendment rights of all citizens.
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More Bad Reporting on Ryan and Abortion
This time from Stephanie Condon of CBS. She writes: “As the Daily Beast notes, Ryan won his 1998 congressional campaign in part by emphasizing his opposition to abortion and did not support exceptions for a woman’s life or health in the partial-birth abortion ban.” It is just terrific that CBS is treating Michelle Goldberg as a neutral source on this topic.
Here’s the relevant part of what Goldberg wrote in that Daily Beast article (my focus on this part does not, by the way, mean that I concede the accuracy of anything else in that article):
Both candidates backed a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion, but [Democrat Lydia] Spottswood believed there should be exceptions in cases where a woman’s life or health is endangered. “Ryan said he opposes abortion, period,” reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He said any exceptions to a ‘partial-birth’ abortion ban would make that ban meaningless.”
This is the journalistic equivalent of a game of telephone. In reality, the partial-birth abortion bill always included an exception for life, and Ryan never said anything to suggest he disagreed with it. Here’s the relevant section of the bill that was under debate in Congress at the time Ryan ran:
Any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. This paragraph shall not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury (emphasis added).
Democrats generally insisted on a broader exception. Tom Daschle, for example, pushed an exemption for cases where “the continuation of the pregnancy would threaten the mother’s life or risk grievous injury to her physical health.” Dr. Warren Hern, a major practitioner of partial-birth abortion, said at the time, “I will certify that any pregnancy is a threat to a woman’s life and could cause grievous injury to her physical health.”
Hence the Republican position at the time was that adding the type of exception Democrats favored would nullify the bill. Ryan may have expressed that view in shorthand, or the Journal-Sentinel may have garbled his comments. But Condon’s version of the story is just false.
Naturally, Condon’s story also repeats the false idea that the Sanctity of Life Act would “potentially” ban IVF.
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Centro de Estudios en Diabetes A.C.
The table to the right includes counts of all research outputs for Centro de Estudios en Diabetes A.C. published between 1 October 2019 - 30 September 2020 which are tracked by the Nature Index.
Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol
1.1% Domestic
98.9% International
Top 10 domestic collaborators by Share (7 total)
Centro de Estudios en Diabetes A.C., Mexico
National Institute of Public Health of Mexico (INSP), Mexico (0.01)
Mexico Secretariat of Health, Mexico (0.01)
Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), Mexico (0)
Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), Mexico (0)
National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN), Mexico (0)
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico (0)
Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico (0)
The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (UK) (0.05)
Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Netherlands (0.04)
Imperial College London (ICL), United Kingdom (UK) (0.04)
Utrecht University (UU), Netherlands (0.03)
Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Iran (0.03)
Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Healthcare (IRCCS), Italy (0.03)
Amgen Inc., United States of America (USA) (0.03)
National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore (0.03)
University of Groningen (RUG), Netherlands (0.03)
Bronze battery goes for gold
How to improve cancer immunotherapy
Autism drug shows promise
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Can Pope Francis succeed in reforming the Curia?
Many Catholics who are eager to see Pope Francis reform the Roman Curia have grown noticeably impatient with how long the project is taking. Recently, some have even begun to wonder whether the 78-year-old pope has the time, energy and necessary support to radically overhaul the church's central bureaucracy.
Fr. Ladislas Orsy, one of Catholicism's most important and respected canon lawyers these past several decades, has a clear mind on the issue.
He says there can be no real reform of the Roman Curia without decentralization of the church's governing structures and its decision-making apparatus.
The Hungarian-born Jesuit was a peritus, or theological adviser, to several bishops attending the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and, even as he prepares to celebrate his 94th birthday later this summer, he continues to teach at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.
During a recent visit to the U.S. capital, I spent several hours in conversation with this amazingly young nonagenarian. With his refreshingly youthful intellect, he shared some of his views and concerns about how Francis, his Jesuit confrere, has been striving to renew the church during his two years in office.
"If there is no decentralization, there will be no lasting reform of the Roman Curia," Orsy said flatly. He pointed out that in the last 800 years, every attempt to truly reform the church's centralized bureaucracy has failed because power has remained too highly concentrated in Rome.
"In a global church that continues to expand way beyond Europe, this is not a sustainable governing model," he said. He emphasized that it was also out of sync with the ecclesiology of Vatican II, which pointed to a shift away from Roman centralization and sought to retrieve and develop the ancient doctrine of episcopal collegiality based on synodality and subsidiarity.
In his many writings and public lectures, which he continues to undertake at a steady pace, Orsy has always maintained that one of the great, unfulfilled tasks following the council has been the creation or reform of structures aimed specifically at implementing its vision.
This is the task that lies before Pope Francis. And, thankfully, he is fully aware of that.
The Roman Curia is principally at the service of the bishop of Rome in his specific duties as chief pastor and primate of the universal church. It has no authority except that which the pope gives it.
But, as he says in his 2013 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Francis does not "believe that the papal magisterium should be expected to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world." He says it is "not advisable" that he "take the place of local bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory." If the pope does not take the bishops' places, the offices of the Roman Curia -- which are directly dependent on his authority and his alone -- certainly cannot. And yet, in many ways, that is exactly what they have done for a very long time.
In Evangelii Gaudium, which he has called a sort of blueprint for his pontificate, Francis says clearly, "I am conscious of the need to promote a sound 'decentralization'." In this sense, he indicates that the doctrinal role of local and regional bishops' conferences should be developed, as should collegiality and synodality.
The best chance for carrying out a sound or healthy decentralization, it would seem, is by giving greater authority to the conferences and the Synod of Bishops. A third institution that could also be reformed with the aim of decentralizing decision-making away from Rome is the office of metropolitan archbishops. Since the Council of Trent (1545-1563), juridical authority that once was constituent of the metropolitans has all but disappeared, leaving them with the strange woolen band draped over their shoulders and precedence in liturgical processions as the only things that differentiate them from other bishops.
Enhancing the role of these three institutions, as well as utilizing the Council of Cardinals that Pope Francis established, are the best ways for reforming the Curia through the necessary decentralization that Orsy is strongly advocating.
The pope has already shown his seriousness about bolstering the synod, of which he -- like patriarchs in the Eastern churches -- is the head or president. This week, he again presided at the two-day meeting of the synod's guiding council. Since Paul VI resurrected this ancient body (or at least a form of it) in 1965, no pope has ever been so directly involved in its governance.
It is indicative of how impoverished and highly centralized our ecclesiology has remained, even after Vatican II, that no one ever seriously asked why. The popes from Paul VI onward have consigned their authority over the synod to delegated presidents. Francis has continued the practice when the synod holds its general assemblies, but perhaps he should rethink that and begin exercising his presidency -- without such delegates -- during these gatherings, too. This would strengthen the sense of collegiality by immersing the bishop of Rome more fully into the sessions as an active participant rather than a type of hallowed figure that hovers over them. Such a shift would also lead, of necessity, to conferring decision-making authority to the synod and promoting the collegiality of all bishops acting cum et sub (with and under) the authority of the successor of Peter.
Whether Pope Francis is contemplating such a change to the Synod of Bishops is still not clear. But it is evident that he wants to change the role and methods of this collegial body. Following this week's meetings with the synod's council, he held private talks with the synod's secretary general, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, and his deputy, Bishop Fabio Fabene, to further discuss this and other matters. Some of the changes in methodology are expected to be announced before October, when the synod holds its second general assembly in two years on issues pertaining to the church's teaching and pastoral practice concerning marriage, the family, and human sexuality.
The original plan was that this second gathering would produce updated (or reinforced) guidelines in this multifaceted area. But it seems there is far too much meat on the fire and several controversial and hotly debated issues that would make it nearly impossible for the bishops to come to a consensus (as the pope is pushing for) in just three weeks of meetings.
If, as expected, no consensus is reached, Pope Francis could make another unprecedented step and extend the synod's discussion, perhaps by convening it in general assembly again in just a few months. Or he could instruct conferences of bishops to continue the deliberations at the regional or national level. This offers him the perfect opportunity to upgrade the synod by convening it more frequently (perhaps numerous times each year), thus making it a more constitutive part of the church's universal governing structure. It also gives him the chance to restore some of the authority that regional synods and councils once possessed, but by extending that to the episcopal conferences.
All this would not only decentralize authority in the church, it would also radically reform the Roman Curia through the erection and enhancement of structures that implement the ecclesiological vision of Vatican II. In such a scenario, the bishop of Rome would exercise his primacy in union with local bishops from around the world rather than through the powerful bureaucracy that has long been nestled in Vatican City.
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Cardinal Baum, longest serving US cardinal, witnessed and made history
Priests' social justice concerns shape assembly, resolutions
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Despite U.S. Pressure, Europeans Remain 'United' With Russia and China to 'Preserve' Iran Nuclear Deal, Diplomats Say
By Jason Lemon On 9/1/20 at 4:22 PM EDT
U.S. Iran Nuclear deal JCPOA European Union
The European Union, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, China and Russia remain "united" in their effort to uphold the Iran nuclear deal and plan to coordinate to counter further U.S. sanctions, despite significant pressure and criticism from the administration of President Donald Trump.
The signatories of the international treaty—known formally as the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—met Tuesday in Vienna to discuss the path forward as the U.S. aims to reimplement snapback sanctions against Iran. European and Chinese diplomats spoke favorably of the meeting and appeared aligned in their effort to preserve the pact with Iran, dismissing efforts from the U.S. to undermine the deal.
"Just finished chairing #JCPOA Joint Commission. Important to see that participants are united in resolve to preserve the #IranDeal and find a way to ensure full implementation of the agreement despite current challenges," Helga Maria Schmid, secretary general of the European External Action Service, tweeted Tuesday, sharing a photo from the joint-meeting.
Just finished chairing #JCPOA Joint Commission. Important to see that participants are united in resolve to preserve the #IranDeal and find a way to ensure full implementation of the agreement despite current challenges. pic.twitter.com/uO5bDdTlCA
— Helga Maria Schmid (@HelgaSchmid_EU) September 1, 2020
Fu Cong, the director general of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of Arms control, said during a press brief that all the nation's representatives had "expressed their commitment to the JCPOA." The Chinese diplomat said the delegation had "coordinated" how they planned to respond to U.S. efforts to issue snapback sanctions.
"The U.S., even though it is a superpower, is just one country," Fu said. "So other countries are moving on."
Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov, who serves as his country's permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, tweeted that the commission had "reaffirmed today common conviction of its participants that #US, who withdrew from this agreement on 8 May 2018, can not be considered a nuclear deal participant."
The meeting of the Joint Commission on #JCPOA today in Vienna demonstrated that its participants are fully committed to the nuclear deal and are determined to do their best to preserve it.
— Mikhail Ulyanov (@Amb_Ulyanov) September 1, 2020
Morgan Ortagus, a spokesperson for the State Department told Newsweek in an email that the U.S. would continue to take action against Iran.
"The United States will not hesitate to do the right thing for regional and international security, even when other parties to the JCPOA are cowed by Iran's nuclear extortion. It is due to their failure to act that we must take the responsible action and restore U.N. sanctions on the Iranian regime," Ortagus said.
Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA in May 2018, after long criticizing the deal signed under the administration of his predecessor President Barack Obama. The international pact offered Iran international sanctions relief and investment in exchange for curbing its nuclear program. The U.S. withdrawal came despite consistent reports from the United Nations nuclear watchdog confirming that the Persian Gulf nation remained in compliance with the agreement.
Despite historically close ties to the U.S., the European signatories have been staunchly opposed to the unilateral efforts by the Trump administration to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. They have repeatedly reiterated their support for the international treaty, disregarding Trump's and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's criticism and efforts to destabilize the JCPOA.
Although the U.S. walked away from the deal and reimplemented sanctions against Iran, the country continued to abide by its commitments under the pact until one year later in May 2019. It then announced that it would begin walking back its compliance, as it suffered under the weight of U.S. sanctions. Following Trump's decision to assassinate Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in January, Iran announced that it would no longer comply with the deal's limitations. But the European signatories alongside China and Russia have scrambled to preserve the treaty, as they view it as an effective way to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed power.
U.S. Accuses Allies of Helping Terrorists, Iran Lauds American 'Isolation'
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Iran's Zarif Says U.S. Trying to 'Flood' Region With Weapons After UAE Deal
On August 14, Pompeo attempted to get the United Nations Security Council to extend indefinitely an arms embargo on Iran, which is set to expire in October. But the extension failed, when only one of the nations—the Dominican Republic—on the 15-member council joined the U.S. in supporting the measure.
Less than a week later, Pompeo returned to the U.N. in an effort to not only extend the arms embargo but to reimplement full sanctions that had been placed on Iran prior to the 2015 agreement. The remaining signatories have, however, dismissed Pompeo's urging to bring back the punitive measures, noting that the U.S. withdrew from the treaty in 2018 making it ineligible to formally call for such action.
Abbas Araghchi (C-R), political deputy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, and Helga Schmid (C-L), secretary general of the European Union External Action Service attend a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission on Iran's nuclear program at the EU Delegation to the International Organizations office in Vienna, Austria on February 26 JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty
Iranian government spokesperson Ali Rabiee reiterated this point on Tuesday, saying that U.S. efforts against his country would soon fail.
"The sanctions and the maximum pressure policy against the Iranian nation will soon face an unforgettable fiasco," Rabiee said during a Tuesday press conference, according to Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency.
"The U.S. claim has no legal basis. It is not a party to the JCPOA anymore and is not allowed to use its frameworks," he said.
The State Department argues precisely the opposite, despite the consensus of the remaining JCPOA signatories.
"U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 makes it clear that, as the previous administration repeatedly stated in 2015, a single nation can initiate restoration of sanctions and consensus is not required. On August 20, the United States informed the United Nations that the process commenced that day," Ortagus told Newsweek.
Updated September 2, 2020 at 6:46 a.m.: Comments from a State Department spokesperson have been added.
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Record Hit for Most Ice to Melt in Antarctica in One Day, Data Suggests: "We Are in a Climate Emergency"
Tech & Science Climate Change Global warming Antarctica
The record in recent decades for the highest level of ice to melt in Antarctica in one day was reached on Christmas Eve, data suggests.
Around 15 percent of the continent's surface melted on Monday, according to the Global Forecast System (GFS) by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The data comes from the Modèle Atmosphérique Régional (MAR), a model used for meteorological and climatic research.
Xavier Fettweis, a climatologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, who tweeted the data on Friday, said this is the highest melt extent in Antarctica in the modern era, since 1979. He added the production of melt water is a record 230 percent higher than average since November this year. That's despite the melting season not yet being over.
MAR forced by GFS suggests that the highest melt extent over Antarctica in the modern area (>1979) has been reached on 24-Dec-2019 with ~15%. From Nov 2019 until today, the production of melt water is also a record with 230% higher than average but the melting season is not ended pic.twitter.com/MT0QKCJ47e
— Xavier Fettweis (@xavierfettweis) December 27, 2019
For the first time, Fettweis said, the melting seemed to explain a negative anomaly in data on Antarctica's surface mass balance (SMB). This is the net balance between what causes a glacier's surface to grow or deplete, for instance because it evaporates or melts away.
"It should be noted that this process is currently missing in most of SMB estimations over Antarctica as melt has been negligible until now. But the climate is changing..." Fettweis said.
Fettweis told Newsweek Antarctica has been "significantly warmer than average" this melting season. But he stressed the data is from a model, and not an in situ observation. The melting could be driven by a number of factors, and experts will need to wait two to three melting seasons to confirm what is going on.
"We have observed a crash of the Antarctica polar vortex just before this melting season," explained Fettweis, referring to low pressure near the pole. "A weaker polar vortex allows warm air masses to reach easier the ice sheet (which is usually protected by its polar vortex as it was the case the previous summer). The fact that the sea ice extent is very low also enhances the possibility of warm air masses to reach the ice sheet."
Asked whether climate change is to blame, he said: "As for most of the anomalies observed on these last months over the Earth (e.g. in Australia), the signal coming from global warming can not be ignored here."
Fettweis said Antarctica had been "protected" by global warming, due in part to a stronger polar vortex over this last decade than usual. But he said this no longer seems to be the case, and climate anomalies observed at the continent can no longer be used by climate skeptics to deny global warming is occurring.
Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist and fellow at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, shared the data on Twitter.
New data indicates that on Christmas Eve, unusually warm weather melted the most ice across the continent of Antarctica in a single day out of any day in recorded history.
15% of the continent's surface melted, temporarily.
We are in a climate emergency. https://t.co/BooH7saMkU
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) December 27, 2019
He wrote: "New data indicates that on Christmas Eve, unusually warm weather melted the most ice across the continent of Antarctica in a single day out of any day in recorded history. 15% of the continent's surface melted, temporarily.
"We are in a climate emergency," said Holthaus.
The figures come as climate change has gained renewed public attention, and is widely considered one of the most pressing issues of our time.
Last month, scientists urged world leaders to take urgent action to tackle climate change, as "abrupt" and "irreversible" climate tipping points that threaten human civilization may have already started.
Tipping points are thresholds that, once passed, can trigger rapid changes to climate systems. These were first described by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) two decades ago. At that time it was thought they would likely happen if global warming exceeded pre-industrial levels by 5 C. But since then, new research has indicated the events could happen even with 1 C to 2 C of warming, the scientists said.
In an article published in the journal Nature, scientists highlighted if the likely interconnected tipping points are met, a domino-effect of "long-term irreversible changes" to the planet could be triggered.
"Evidence that tipping points are underway has mounted in the past decade," the experts wrote.
Antarctica was among the regions included in the study. Evidence suggests the Amundsen Sea embayment of West Antarctica may have already hit a tipping point, as the point where the ice, ocean and bedrock meet is "retreating irreversibly," experts wrote.
If this area collapses, the remaining West Antarctic ice sheets could be destabilized, "leading to about 3 meters [9.8 feet] of sea-level rise on a timescale of centuries to millennia," according to a prediction cited by the authors. The Wilkes Basin on the East Antarctic could face a similar fate, and the Greenland ice sheet could be "doomed" at 1.5 C of warming as soon as 2030.
This article has been updated with comment from Xavier Fettweis.
A stock image shows floating ice floes and drift ice in Cierva Cove in Hughes Bay, Graham Land, Antarctica. Getty
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The Assassin Next Door
My family’s immigrant journey and James Earl Ray’s path to targeting Martin Luther King, Jr., intersected at an unglamorous corner of East Hollywood.
By Héctor Tobar
The author in 1967, in front of his family’s home in East Hollywood.Photograph courtesy the Tobar family
In the late nineteen-sixties, I lived in a duplex in an unglamorous corner of East Hollywood, California, sleeping in a room alongside my Guatemalan parents. I was conscious that I was growing up in the warmth of the Los Angeles light that streamed through the windows, and this knowledge filled me with a sense of destiny and hope. At Grant Elementary School, I played four square with the children of immigrants from the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, and Lebanon. Our families had found shelter in our adopted country from wars, dictatorships, and poverty at a time when the United States was sending men to the moon. My parents hovered over me, their only child, telling me stories about our heritage and their courtship in Guatemala City. I did not know that my father was having an affair with the woman he called on the phone in the afternoons, or that my mother would soon bring her new boyfriend home to meet me. I did not see that the brick and stucco apartment blocks around me were a magnet for American drifters, like those Jack Kerouac describes in “On the Road,” recently arrived in what he called “the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.” I had no idea that one of them, a hard man named James Earl Ray, lived on the other side of our back-yard fence.
Our duplex, at 5424½ Harold Way, was demolished long ago. Ray’s apartment building, at 1535 North Serrano Avenue, is still standing. Two very different journeys brought us to that place: me, the son of Guatemalan immigrants, and Ray, a man with Midwestern roots and an abiding hatred of black people.
On April 23, 1967, Ray had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary by hiding under the loaves in a large bread-delivery box. He had been serving a twenty-year sentence for robbing a St. Louis grocery store, his fourth criminal conviction. On February 22, 1968, the day I celebrated my fifth birthday, Ray brought his cream-colored 1966 Ford Mustang to a car-repair shop about a mile from my parents’ home to have it serviced. A month later, he drove the car across the country as he began stalking Martin Luther King, Jr.—first to Selma, then to Atlanta, and, finally, to Memphis.
Ray had grown up in downstate Illinois and in rural towns in northeastern Missouri, in communities that were home to some of the poorest white people in the Midwest. His story of want and need feels familiar to me. Ray was an impoverished, neglected child; so was my father, who had grown up in the banana-farming region of eastern Guatemala, along the Motagua River. My father stopped his schooling at the sixth grade. He was twenty-one when he left for the United States with my mother, who was pregnant with me. He thought that California had better prospects for his new family, and that he might complete his education there, too. In Los Angeles, while working as a busboy and a parking attendant, he earned his high-school diploma by taking night courses at Hollywood High. When he moved on to classes at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, he brought home a thick, crimson hardcover textbook on American history. I began to peruse its pages when I was still in grade school.
Reading about the country’s past brought me, a few decades later, to “Killing the Dream” (1998), Gerald Posner’s excellent reconstruction of Ray’s life and King’s murder, and to the realization that I had lived alongside King’s assassin. Although Ray was my neighbor, he was invisible to me: I have no memory of seeing him. Now I know that he had lived less than a hundred and fifty feet away, as he was plotting the act that would launch his entry into history in the name of white supremacy. In the months when Ray was our neighbor, he took classes in dance and bartending, and saw a hypnotist, apparently trying to conquer his shyness. Photographs from this period show Ray, then forty, as a dark-haired man with penetrating, steely-blue eyes and a taste for sharp-looking clothes. Ray paid for his self-improvement efforts with money from a robbery he committed while he was a fugitive. In December, 1967, Ray visited the North Hollywood Presidential-campaign office of George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama, who had become a folk hero among segregationists for attempting to prevent two African-American students from attending the University of Alabama. Ray had gathered signatures to help get Wallace on the California ballot. Wallace ran on the American Independent Party ticket in the 1968 election, against Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, and carried five Southern states.
When I was a boy, “race” was not part of my vocabulary. I did not know that one day people would attach the term “anchor baby” to my existence. (I was born three months after my parents’ arrival in the U.S.) Immigration agents did visit us when I was a toddler, because of an issue with my mother’s tourist visa, but Latin-American immigrants back then were rarely detained, and usually they obtained their permanent-resident status without much delay. I did not know that people were subjected to racial classifications, official and unofficial, epithets that were mumbled and shouted, or categories that were checked off on birth certificates and census forms, tallied in school-district and city-planning offices, and inscribed on property deeds. Caucasian. Negro. Mexican. Ethiopian. White. Jew. Gentile.
My father told me about the pyramids that the Maya had built at Tikal; about Miguel Ángel Asturias, the winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose novels he was reading; and about the C.I.A.-sponsored coup against Guatemala’s democratic government, in 1954, which he remembered because he had heard the screaming of the American fighter planes that patrolled over Guatemala City. Some nights, he, my mother, and I listened to the shortwave signal of a Guatemalan radio station that broadcast marimba orchestras. When my father wasn’t at home, I tuned the radio to Dodgers games and Southern California news reports, which had a percussive wire-service ticker running in the background. I became aware of the swirling cultural storm of the late sixties, with its mod styles and transistor technologies, and its rock and soul anthems.
At birth, my life was linked to black history and to Memphis, Tennessee. My godfather, Booker Wade, was an African-American native of that city who, as a teen-ager, in 1961, had joined a silent sit-in at the segregated central branch of the public library. He and the other protesters were arrested, and the police officers who hauled them off taunted them with “Boys, your name Emmett Till?” Not long afterward, Wade took a bus to Los Angeles, and enrolled in Spanish classes at City College. In December, 1962, he heard Martin Luther King, Jr., speak at the college and joined him at a lunch with student leaders, who peppered him with questions about his rivalry with Malcolm X. That winter, Wade found himself living in the same building as my parents, and, upon learning that they did not own a car, offered to drive my mother to the hospital when the time came to deliver her baby. On a chilly February morning, in a convertible with a top that wouldn’t go up, while my father was at work, Booker Wade took her to Los Angeles County General Hospital. He wore a blue suit to my baptism.
On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray parked his Mustang, with its “Heart of Dixie” Alabama license plate, outside a Memphis rooming house within sight of the Lorraine Motel. He had bought a pair of Bushnell binoculars and a Remington Model 760 rifle with a seven-power scope. The previous night, King had given a speech in which he mentioned the threats against his life since arriving in Memphis, and recalled the assassination attempt that he had survived in 1958. The prospect of his own death did not concern him, King said, as he reflected on all that the civil-rights movement had achieved in the decade since, because he’d “been to the mountaintop.” He had looked out and “seen the promised land.” Ray made a sniper’s nest in the bathroom of the rooming house, and fired a single shot that mortally wounded King, while also inflicting a deep and enduring trauma on the people of the United States.
King became a martyr in my home, a pobre hombre who died for the idea of social equality. In the years that followed, my family’s success in this country became associated in my mind with the blood and the sacrifice of black people. Today, my physical closeness to two characters in the story of civil rights—an activist and an assassin—feels like an odd and unlikely coincidence. But I think every Latino kid grows up this way, in proximity to the drama of American history and its assorted players, trying to figure out where he fits in. Oscar Hijuelos, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and the son of Cuban immigrants, describes, in his 2011 memoir, “Thoughts Without Cigarettes,” a childhood milieu in West Harlem in the fifties that included black jazz musicians and the rocket scientist and former Nazi S.S. officer Wernher von Braun. These days, Central American boys and girls live in the neighborhoods Hijuelos frequented.
Ever since the first colonies of Anglo-Saxon migrants were founded on the North American continent, white people have written stories filled with ambition and conquest. Amid all the suffering and violence, you’ll often find the rest of us in the footnotes, the appendices, and the epilogues. More than a century before my family arrived in California, a Mexican teamster, known only as Antonio, was among those whose bodies were cannibalized by the Donner Party, the ill-fated emigrants to California who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846. His story has never been told. I’ve long read American history with an eye to the presence of people who resemble me, much as African-Americans, women, and others do. Eventually, I found James Earl Ray’s apartment next to mine.
My Los Angeles County birth certificate lists my parents as “Caucasian,” a reflection of the black-white notion of “race” at that time. My fair-skinned mother could pass for white, until her heavy accent betrayed her. My father, with his Mayan nose and copper coloring, never could. For James Earl Ray, his whiteness meant that he deserved better than what he had. His perception of African-Americans as impoverished, diminished people made the color of his skin a source of power in a dismal life. He was born a few doors down from the biggest brothel in Alton, Illinois, a racially mixed city, in 1928. (The jazz legend Miles Davis was born in Alton two years earlier.) The 1930 census for Ray’s neighborhood shows, among a preponderance of white people, African-Americans born in Tennessee, Texas, and other Southern states. Ray’s great-grandfather is believed to have been an outlaw who was hanged for robbery. Ray’s father, George, nicknamed Speedy for his slow speech, had a criminal record: he served his first prison sentence at twenty-one, for breaking and entering. Ray’s long-suffering mother, Lucille, turned to drink after giving birth to nine children. The family bounced around a region of the Midwest thick with African-American history, home to settlements that had been stops on the Underground Railroad. It was also, though, an area with its share of “sundown towns,” where signs announced that blacks were not welcome after dark. During Ray’s childhood, membership in the Ku Klux Klan grew rapidly across the region; as many as two hundred thousand residents of Illinois joined the Klan in the nineteen-twenties.
When Ray’s father was arrested on a forgery charge, he went on the lam with his family and moved them to Ewing, Missouri. Posner writes that many residents of Ewing were the descendants of Southern migrants whose families supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. The elder Ray spent most days at the local pool hall. The Rays’ shacklike house had a leaky tin roof and no electricity or plumbing; one winter, the family tore apart the walls and the floorboards to burn as firewood. But, like other white people in town, Ray could boast that no free black man had ever spent the night there. Across the cities and towns of the Midwest, a powerful, de-facto segregation took hold.
My mother and father grew up in a society with its own rigid class divisions and restricted social mobility. They met and began courting at the site of a car crash in Guatemala City. I was the result of an assignation in the back of a delivery van during an autumn downpour. (There are two kinds of mothers: those who tell you the dirty details of your conception and those who don’t; mine believed she was revealing the romantic underpinning of my existence.) My father married her after they discovered she was pregnant; she told me this when I was seven or eight years old, at about the time she and my father split because of his repeated infidelities. After they separated, they started new relationships, and I began to feel that I was an accident—the product of an impetuous act in the lives of two very young and headstrong people of limited means.
At school, I sensed that outsiders regarded me with benevolent concern. To my teachers, who were mostly from the Midwest and Texas, I was a lost soul fortunate enough to find a home in California, where, through hard work and faith in American democracy, I could become an equal member of my community. As I grew older, I gradually came to understand that my Guatemalan heritage granted me a different kind of membership. In the seventies, when my family moved to one of L.A.’s working-class suburbs, my new neighbors flung ethnically charged names and insults at one another: white trash, wetback, surfer, cholo, spic, cracker. I came to identify with strangers who had skin tones like mine, or surnames that ended in “z” or “s,” or those whose homes were full of Spanish sounds and Latin-American accents. I was eventually absorbed into this larger group of people who did not have a light shining on them, and who were angry and proud as a result.
The teachers who met James Earl Ray as a boy saw a proud, angry young man suffering from neglect. His fifth-grade teacher noted that sometimes he was barefoot and smelled of urine. On his report card, she wrote of Ray, “Attitude toward regulations: Violates all of them. Appearance: Repulsive.” In Ewing, he was an outcast in a community of poor whites who were themselves outcasts of a sort, living on unfertile farmland. He suffered from nightmares and sleeplessness and bed-wetting. His baby sister died after being burned in a domestic accident. Ray grew up idolizing an uncle who spent much of his life in jail, and Ray himself was arrested for the first time at the age of fourteen, for stealing newspapers.
My father’s stories of his home town describe childhood deprivations that are not unlike Ray’s. His stepmother beat him, and when he wet his bed she forced him to kneel on a concrete floor covered with corn kernels. His mother, Valeria Cruz, rescued him from such torments by kidnapping him and taking him to Guatemala City, where she worked as a cook in an orphanage. My grandmother was an orphan herself—her parents died in an epidemic in the early twentieth century. I met her many times but never realized that she could not read or write. Her illiteracy was a source of shame for my father, who kept the secret from me for four decades.
The multigenerational traumas caused by poverty, ethnic hatred, and emigration have long been a feature of American life, from the Irish famine of the eighteen-forties and the Great Migration of Southern blacks after the First World War all the way up to the present day, with the targeting of Mexican “rapists” and Muslims. As a university professor in Southern California, I see my students grapple with their families’ journeys from Latin America to the United States, writing essays and reported stories with beautiful scenes and strange twists: a starry night in a Guatemalan rain forest, a winning poker hand in a Los Angeles park. One student began a portrait of her mother with the sentence “At the age of five, she sold tamales from her porch.” Like me, my students are waiting for time to unlock the mysteries at the core of their existence: an illiterate grandmother, parents who retain their ability to love in the face of need, violence, and separation.
“We met when I yelled at him for running clockwise around the Reservoir.”
When Ray arrived in Los Angeles, all people of Latin-American descent were called “Mexicans.” If he had seen me on the streets of East Hollywood, he would have thought I was from Mexico, a member of a nonwhite caste, marginally higher in his racial pyramid than black people. His racism was also a world view. As a young man in the U.S. Army, just after the Second World War, he asked to be stationed in occupied Germany; his brother believes that he did so because he was a devotee of Adolf Hitler and hoped to meet Nazis. He espoused his admiration for Hitler publicly, and his mother feared that someone might kill him for his views. He read about the segregationist policies in Rhodesia and South Africa, and hoped one day to visit, or even migrate to, one of those countries.
If Ray’s path crossed mine, it was likely on a stretch of Western Avenue a block from our apartments, beneath the marquee of the Pussycat Theatre. Perhaps it was on one of those crisp, sunny Southern California winter days, as my mother and I entered Fazzy’s Fancy Food, an Italian deli with sawdust on the floors, the site of some of my earliest memories. He might have allowed his eyes to linger on her. Despite his pejorative views of other ethnic groups, Ray apparently considered “Mexican” women objects of lust. Just before he came to Los Angeles, he’d frequented a brothel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. There, he’d hired a prostitute who went by the name Irma La Douce. In interviews with the F.B.I. following King’s assassination, she noted that Ray never laughed, and that he took nude Polaroids of her. After he escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary, he bought sex manuals and film equipment, with which, Posner concludes, he intended to make pornographic movies. When he was lonely and desired women, he almost certainly found onscreen substitutes in the Pussycat Theatre, on the block where my parents took me to buy paper-wrapped submarine sandwiches at Fazzy’s.
After Martin Luther King, Jr., died, my middle name, Martin, became the symbol of a fate tied to him. When my mother was pregnant, she had prayed to the Peruvian saint Martin de Porres, the son of a freed slave, who, she believed, had somehow sent his African-American “brother” Booker Wade to take her to the hospital for my birth. Martin de Porres was canonized by Pope John XXIII in 1962, and he became known as the patron saint of harmony between the races. My parents suggested that I lead my life emulating King, and that I try to see the world as he saw it. I set off on a mission to conquer the English language, and to embrace an ambitious altruism that would bring glory to my humble family. (Later, my failure to live up to my own expectations plunged me into depression.) When I delivered an address at my college graduation, my father declared, in a moment of parental hyperbole, “I knew one day you’d give a speech like Martin Luther King!”
Ray was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. He languished there as waves of immigration from Latin America and Asia changed the look and the feel of Southern California. Spanish filled the airwaves; the ideograms and characters of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other Asian languages covered the store signs, sparking an angry nativist movement. A decade after I was born, doctors at Los Angeles County General Hospital began to pressure pregnant Mexican women into sterilization, until Chicano activists forced them to stop. Booker Wade moved to Orange County and started an African-American newspaper, but he gave up in the face of threats. Once, a vandal left a clear message on his front door: “KKK.”
By the start of the new century, a million people lived in the L.A. County neighborhoods that were at least ninety per cent Latino. As a young reporter for the Los Angeles Times, I wrote about police abuse in the inner coastal plain of the city, the grid of streets between the airport and South-Central L.A. I saw this place transformed into a vast township where black and brown people lived amid stately palm trees and graffitied brick and asphalt. After the beating of Rodney King, in 1991, I watched these neighborhoods burn in a race riot, or “uprising,” that was also an attack on Asian merchants. I saw an innocent man being beaten, and children joining the looters. When it was over, I walked through the aromatic ruins of an incinerated liquor store, its floor a syrupy mess of broken glass, green and amber.
Ray died in 1998. The country has since moved from an era of straw-brimmed hats and polyester suits to one of non-stop news and Instagram. The 2016 election campaign and the events that have followed have thrown American history into sharper focus. I used to think the term “white supremacy” referred to a mass movement from the previous centuries, and to a marginal group of people in the present—men in white hoods, essentially. Now I see it as a lingering strand in the American psyche, shaping how strangers see people like me.
In accounts of the period that Ray spent in East Hollywood, the neighborhood is often described as “seedy.” When he arrived on South Main Street in Memphis on his mission to kill King, he found himself in yet another community that was liminal, transient, and mixed-race. I think he felt at home in such neighborhoods, and that he also hated himself for living in them, transferring his self-loathing onto the people around him.
When you live next to someone, you share with him a set of circumstances. My family’s immigrant journey and Ray’s path to murder are part of the history of a neighborhood and a country. Whereas Ray denied any commonality with the black people around him, I believe I have no choice but to study the white people around me, and to understand them as part of my American story—even the men and women who hate and slander my people. Like many other Latino residents of this country, I derive a sense of power from observing the lives of people who cannot see the full measure of my humanity.
Recently, I went back to East Hollywood, to see what had become of my old neighborhood, now called Little Armenia and Thai Town. The All-American Burger at the end of my block on Harold Way has become a Oaxacan restaurant. A homeless man was passed out on the sidewalk nearby, and Priuses and Mercedes-Benzes were parked on Serrano Avenue. I heard Spanish being spoken in front of Ray’s building, an eerie artifact of the “dingbat” era of Sun Belt architecture, an aging stucco box perched over the garage where he parked his Mustang. I felt Ray’s presence on the building’s front steps, beneath a stunted palm tree. I imagined his ghost lurking about, disgusted at the polyglot city around him, and raging at the futility of his act of murder. ♦
Published in the print edition of the July 29, 2019, issue, with the headline “Roots.”
Héctor Tobar is a professor of English and Latino studies at the University of California, Irvine. He has published four books, including “Deep Down Dark” and the novel “The Barbarian Nurseries.”
More:AssassinsMartin Luther King, Jr.NeighborsAssassinationsLatinosHispanicsCalifornia
When I Met Martin Luther King, Jr.
I will always remember that moment and what it taught me about Dr. King and one of his core values.
By Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Too Close to Ted Bundy
By Victoria Beale
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My Books...
The Unforgettable Series was inspired by some of my favorite vacations spent by a lake in Maine with my family. Each book in the series follows a different character with their story about love, but the characters are all intertwined in some way. This gives my readers a chance to "check-in" with characters in previous books as well as fall in love with the new ones. Although each book in this series can be read as a stand-alone.
The first book in the Home Duet will be released on November 13th, 2018. This book is very close to my heart with the main character Samantha being adopted, like me. Although Samantha's path is nothing like my own, her story still feels personal. I can't wait to share this story with you!
The Unforgettable Series Book 1
Bree spends the summer of her dreams on a lake in Maine when she meets gorgeous, active and playful Christian. But what will happen at the end of the summer when Christian leaves for College and Bree has to return home for one more year of high school to find her world has turned completely upside down? Will unforeseen circumstances keep them apart or will they find their way back to each other?
21 year old Blake struggles to move on from being in love with his best friend now that she's in love with someone else. Not wanting to be set up with one of her friends, or for anyone to feel sorry for him, he goes along with Liz's spontaneous plan when they meet. He finally thinks he's found the girl he believes has changed everything for him in Liz. But issues from their families, their pasts and trust stand in their way. Will they be able to overcome it all and trust in each other to be together?
Outgoing and happy on the outside, Sara attempts to find her own way. When she started college she thought she finally freed herself from the nightmares of her family and her past, only to be constantly pulled back. She believes she's plain and undeserving of her own happily ever after. Until she meets gorgeous Jason Emory who makes her laugh and smile, giving her a glimpse of hope. Jason always felt obligated to follow in his father's footsteps and live up to his expectations, but trying to be someone he's not pushed him to make mistakes in his past. He moves closer to family to help and start fresh. When he sees Sara for the first time he knows he'll do everything he can to protect her. Will he be able to help find her happy ending with him or will their pasts hold them back and become reality?
Theresa Emory moves closer to her family after a life-changing accident. Although she remains confident most of the time, she can't seem to get sexy bad boy Jax Stevens to give her a chance. Jax insists Theresa and him are only friends, but staying away from her is so much harder than he ever imagined. With a haunting past that altered his whole future, he doesn't believe he can be with someone as wonderful as Theresa. Will Theresa's unrelenting need to get to know Jax bring them closer together, or will the truth of his past tear them apart?
Sadie admits that life hasn't turned out the way she wanted and definitely not the way her parents planned for her, but even after so much loss and so many things she would do differently, she could never regret her miracle, her reason for moving forward every day. Will that always be enough?
Matt Emory finally makes the decision to move close to his family to a place he's been avoiding for years, not because of them, but because of her. What will happen when their paths cross again? Will this be their second chance at love or heartbreak? Or maybe just their chance for redemption?
Dreams Lost and Found
Home Duet Book 1
Samantha Voss loses herself after the death of her adoptive parents. She leaves college and moves home craving something familiar, but soon finds change is what she really wants. She searches for her birth parents in hopes of finding out more about where she came from, with faith it might help her decide who she wants to be. She finds unexpected answers with unending questions and makes a spontaneous decision to move a small town in Wisconsin in search of more answers.
When Samantha pulls up to her new apartment, she finds support from a sexy stranger, Brady Williams, completely takes her breath away. When Samantha is unable to keep him in the friend zone, she decides he might be a good distraction from what she's really there to do. But when everything finally seems to be falling into place for her, will reality be too much for Samantha and Brady to handle together? Will their new reality tear them apart?
Will Samantha and Brady's Choices for the future bring them closer together or tear them apart?
Samantha and Brady fell in love hard and fast when Brady helped Sam navigate the emotional ups and downs of discovering where she came from. Now that she has some of her questions answered, she's ready to figure out where she fits in and what she wants to do with her life. She continues to learn about her history and adapt to her new life, searching for a place she can call home. She explores new experiences, hoping to find her passion in life beyond her love for Brady. Past insecurities resurface, causing Sam to become determined to prove her inner-strength and independence to everyone around her; although she may be the only one who doesn't see it's already there. She keeps pushing towards her unknown future and questions if her relationship with Brady might be holding either of them back. Will she push him away or fight for them to be together?
Brady always thought running his family restaurant was the last thing he wanted, but with college graduation approaching, it's time to make a decision. New projects, new ideas and a new outlook help him see things differently, but is his new vision what he really wants? Or is it time for him to move on, leaving Samantha behind?
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Marijuana stock investors must’ve felt hard done by the U.S. election results a couple of months ago. Although, the Democrats won, investors would’ve loved to see a larger blue wave. However, marijuana legalization measures are in full swing, and those on the ballet have all been passed. The states where these laws were passed include Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota. This significantly increases the outreach of cannabis producers. Overall, 2020 was a significant year for marijuana stocks. It was a year where the industry has made significant strides in gaining wider acceptance.
But where might the industry be headed in 2021? And which pot stocks should stand out the most in the new year?
While 2020 was a solid year for the industry, not all marijuana stocks had an easy ride. Many of the industry’s bigwigs are focusing on investing in equipment and have therefore posted sizeable losses. The economic slowdown caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic has also affected the industry. However, 2021 will likely lead to a reversal of fortune for many companies within this space.
With that in mind, let’s look at seven of the best marijuana stocks to buy in January:
Aphria (NASDAQ:APHA)
Green Thumb Industries (OTCMKTS:GTBIF)
GW Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:GWPH)
Trulieve Cannabis (OTCMKTS:TCNNF)
Altria (NYSE:MO)
Cresco Labs (OTCMKTS:CRLBF)
Curaleaf Holdings (OTCMKTS:CURLF)
Marijuana Stocks to Buy: Aphria (APHA)
Aphria is Canada’s top cannabis producer which provides cannabis for medical, adult-use, derivatives and extracts to its customers. It has the largest cultivation capacity among the licensed producers of marijuana in Canada. Additionally, APHA stock has been one of the more resilient stocks in the industry, growing 74.4% in the past year.
From an earnings standpoint, 2020 was nothing short of stellar for the company. It witnessed double-digit growth in revenues in the past three quarters, despite a slowdown due to the pandemic. One of the great things about the company is that it has a positive EBITDA and a robust balance sheet which provides it immense financial flexibility. It will be merging with one of its peers — Tilray (NASDAQ:TLRY) — to form the largest marijuana company globally in terms of revenues. Moreover, based on forward sales estimates, it’s one of the cheaper stocks in the sector, further adding to its attractiveness.
Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries produces and distributes a wide range of cannabis products for adult and medical use in the U.S. It operates 49 retail stores and has licenses for 96 locations across 12 different U.S. markets. Green Thumb is another success story in the cannabis world. In fact, GTBIF stock has grown 194.6% in the past year.
Last year was remarkable for the company. Specifically, Green Thumb experienced triple-digit growth in revenues in 2020. In the third quarter, its revenues rose 31% sequentially, driven by organic growth from its Pennsylvania and Illinois customers. It also boasts a sizeable EBITDA, a lot of which is down to its robust revenue growth. It has built a sizeable portfolio of licenses and it has acquired some of its competition at the best prices. The company plans to expand its capacity in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania to drive growth in the coming quarters. Hence, it is one of the marijuana stocks with the most potential heading into 2021.
GW Pharmaceuticals (GWPH)
Source: GW Pharmaceuticals
GW Pharmaceuticals is a U.K.-based biopharmaceutical company that leverages its cannabinoid product platform to develop and commercialize novel therapeutics. It is currently the leading cannabinoid-based medicines provider in the world. GWPH stock has been resilient in the face of the pandemic, having generated 24% returns in the past year.
GWPH is a pioneer in the production of medicinal use CBD drugs. Its flagship CBD-based drug called Epidiolex treats rare forms of childhood epilepsy and tuberous sclerosis. Additionally, it has a diverse product pipeline that should drive growth later this year. Its earnings performance was solid in 2020, with a massive increase in revenues every quarter.
Things have slowed down since the second quarter, but it has done relatively well despite the pandemic-induced slowdown. Revenues in its most recent quarter grew 51% year over year. With a 5-year average growth rate of 149%, it is currently one of the hottest marijuana stocks on the market.
Trulieve Cannabis (TCNNF)
Trulieve is a U.S.-based vertically integrated medical cannabis company. It produces its cannabis products and distributes them in its 73 operational dispensaries. TCNNF stock is the best performing marijuana stock in the market, with a 251% increase in its share price.
The company has been one of the most consistent performers in the sector, with a 20% average revenue growth and 50% EBITDA margin in the last two years. It has had an incredible 2020 with triple-digit growth in revenues on average in the past three quarters. Its third-quarter posted revenues of $136.3 million, which represents growth of 92.7% year over year. It is benefitting from its substantial presence in Florida, one of the largest markets for medical cannabis in the country. Moreover, based on forward estimates, it is relatively undervalued based on its growth rates.
Altria (MO)
Tobacco-giant Altria Group is known for its world-famous Marlboro cigarette brand and produces other related products under its subsidiaries. It entered the cannabis market, with a $1.8 billion investment in the Canadian cannabinoid company, Cronos Group (NASDAQ:CRON) in 2019. Since then it has filed for two patent applications for vaporizers designed for cannabis. With a wealth of big tobacco experience, MO stock could become an excellent marijuana play in the future.
Last year was tough on the company. Pandemic conditions lead to a substantial slowdown in revenue growth. However, it seems that Altria is clawing back with a 4.9% increase in revenues. Its earnings per share have been a bright spot, as the figure consistently beat estimates in the previous three quarters. Another differentiator for the company is its stellar dividend yield of 8.3%. With a more positive business environment in 2021, I expect Altria to make significant movements in the marijuana industry.
Chicago-based Cresco Labs is a medical marijuana company that sells various cannabis products under its subsidiaries. It operates 22 dispensaries in the U.S., selling fruit chews, soft gels, live concentrates, pre-rolls and others. Its operating model focuses on retail and wholesale segments, a combination that has been fruitful for the company so far. Furthermore, CRLBF stock did extremely last year, generating 74% returns.
The explosive growth in Cresco comes from its strong performance in key markets like California, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Its focus on wholesale and branding has helped it scale its business and produce strong margins. In its most recent quarter, revenues increased 323% year over year, comfortably beating analyst estimates. It is also narrowing down its losses with its spectacular revenue growth.
With a forward growth rate of 165%, it is among the market’s top marijuana stocks.
Curaleaf Holdings (CULRF)
Curaleaf Holdings is a medical and wellness company operating in the U.S. It has a unique business model that offers business-to-business services in the marijuana space. It also provides several marijuana-based products. It is currently the largest marijuana company in the world based on its revenues. CULRF stock also outperformed the broader market, having grown 137% in the past year.
Revenue expansion for the company has been stellar in the past three quarters. Sales grew by triple-digits, and beat analyst estimates by comfortable margins. Similarly, EPS grew by a fair margin last year.
The company has been capitalizing on medical cannabis states where markets are maturing at a healthy pace. The company is also increasing its capacity by entering new markets such as New Jersey to cement its positioning. It will also expected to generate the largest profits out of all marijuana companies by 2022. All of these elements make it one of the more solid investments in the sector.
On the date of publication, Muslim Farooque did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
Muslim Farooque is a keen investor and an optimist at heart. A life-long gamer and tech enthusiast, he has a particular affinity for analyzing technology stocks. Muslim holds a bachelor’s of science degree in applied accounting from Oxford Brookes University. He does not directly own the securities mentioned above.
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Federal Budget dedicates $7.8 million for child sex offender list
Australians will soon be able to search child sex offenders in their local area and see their photo and details about their crimes.
news.com.auApril 3, 20199:05am
What does Josh Frydenberg's 2019 federal budget mean for you?...
What does Josh Frydenberg's 2019 federal budget mean for you?
Detailed information about convicted paedophiles, such as Cardinal George Pell, will soon be made available in a national child sex offender register. Picture: APSource:AP
Australians will soon have access to a wealth of information about convicted paedophiles across the country after the Federal Budget allocated $7.8 million for a “name and shame” list.
The Budget 2019-2020 provides $7.8 million to establish a National Public Register of Child Sex Offenders, an initiative the government hopes will provide a “nationally consistent approach to the public release of information about child sex offenders”.
RELATED: This is what an Australian sex offender registry would look like
The register will allow Australians to see names, aliases and photographs of thousands of paedophiles, as well as their date of birth, physical description and the “general location and nature” of their crimes.
The Federal Budget handed down on Tuesday includes $7.8 million for a National Public Register of Child Sex Offenders.Source:Getty Images
The public database will be managed by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, with police agencies from each state contributing information.
“Protection of our most vulnerable — our children — remains one of the highest priorities of the Morrison government,” Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said in a statement.
Mr Dutton announced a proposal for the National Public Register of Child Sex Offenders in January, saying it would be based on the model introduced in the United State in the 1990s, although unlike in the US, the Australian version won’t include the address of offenders, just the suburb they live in.
Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis is escorted from his holding cell to a police car. Picture: Nashyo HanselSource:Supplied
Denise and Bruce Morcombe have been ardent supporters of a child sex offender register. Picture: Peter WallisSource:News Corp Australia
Following Mr Dutton’s January announcement, the Law Council of Australia president Arthur Moses said in a statement a mandatory child sex offender registry posed issues, including the possibility of citizens using the data to carry out vigilante justice.
“Inclusion brings onerous reporting obligations like ongoing police monitoring of and involvement in a person’s activities, the risk of adverse community attention and vigilantism,” he said.
“Sentencing courts should be granted a discretion to take into account the individual circumstances of the offence and offender in determining whether an eligible person should be required to register and report.”
RELATED: What the 2019 federal Budget means for you
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Ardent supporters of a national child sex offender register include Bruce and Denise Morcombe, the parents of Sunshine Coast teenager Daniel Morcombe who was abducted and murdered in 2003 by convicted paedophile Brett Peter Cowan.
Previous attempts to create a child sex offender registry have been unsuccessful. The Northern Territory government announced similar plans in 2014, but was unable to push them through.
At the time, then-prime minister Tony Abbott was opposed to the idea.
Asked at a Melbourne press conference in October whether he supported the state’s plan, Mr Abbott said: “What other governments do is a matter for them. I am disinclined to pursue such a thing nationally.
“We don’t have a national murderers register, we don’t have a national thieves register, we don’t have a national white collar criminals register. I am disinclined to single out particular crimes for particular public registers.”
The following year, the NT Law Society concluded there was not enough evidence to support the measure.
“There is no evidence that public registers of this nature are successful in increasing community safety or reducing the rates of offending or re-offending,” the organisation said in a statement.
It also said “victims of crime may well feel shamed by the publication, especially if the offender is a family member”.
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Trump faced issues with Asian Americans even before virus
by: SALLY HO, Associated Press
Sonny Vinuya poses for a portrait Tuesday, July 7, 2020, in Las Vegas. Vinuya, a Filipino-American businessman in Las Vegas, hasn’t decided if he’ll vote again for Donald Trump in the battleground state of Nevada. (AP Photo/John Locher)
SEATTLE (AP) — Sonny Vinuya hasn’t decided if he’ll vote again for Donald Trump in the battleground state of Nevada.
The Filipino American businessman in Las Vegas is personally offended by the president’s use of a racist slur at recent re-election rallies, where he mocked China and the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins in Asia. But most important to Vinuya is the economy, which has also been sinking into a pandemic-triggered recession despite a robust stimulus package.
Though it’s tough for the registered Republican to swallow the racism against his own community, Vinuya said he doesn’t think Trump is trying to alienate Asian American voters when the president uses derogatory terms at campaign events or continues to call COVID-19 the “Chinese virus.”
The Pew Research Center recently declared Asian Americans to be the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the U.S. electorate, but they are also arguably the least competitive voter block for Trump when considering where they live and how they relate to the Republican party.
In Nevada, where Vinuya lives, Asians make up more than 10% of voters in a state both Democrats and Republicans will fight for in the fall.
With his anti-Asian rhetoric, Trump is making the calculation that he has more to gain with his loyal base of older white voters thrilled by his inflammatory statements, than to lose among the Asian American community, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a public policy professor at the University of California, Riverside and founder of AAPI Data, which tracks Asian Americans.
That’s because Asian Americans largely vote in very blue districts and otherwise non-competitive states, Ramakrishnan said. A third of all such voters live in California alone.
“Part of the reason we don’t see very much outreach is because Asian Americans tend to live in non-competitive states in presidential elections,” Ramakrishnan said.
Trump’s words have angered many Asian Americans and drawn condemnation from Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama. Republicans have also denounced the racist slur, notably Kellyanne Conway, a White House counselor who is married to an Asian American, George Conway, whose mother was from the Philippines.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended the president’s rhetoric, saying he’s not being racist but merely linking the virus to its place of origin. Trump in March also insisted that Asian Americans were “amazing people” and not at fault for spreading the virus.
The coronavirus, as of Thursday, has killed more than 132,000 people in the United States, and 550,000 people total worldwide.
Since the virus took hold of the U.S. in March, advocates have also reported a rise in anti-Asian aggression and violence from people blaming them for the pandemic. A group called Stop AAPI Hate on July 1 said that it has tracked 832 incidents of discrimination and harassment in California over the past 12 weeks.
Biden at a June 27 town hall for Asian American voters slammed Trump’s “dangerous theories” as xenophobic.
“Words matter and the president’s words matter even more,” Biden said.
The number of Asian Americans aligning themselves with the Democratic party has increased over the past 20 years while support for the GOP has trended down. A different Pew analysis in 2018 showed Democrats held a 2-to-1 advantage among Asian American registered voters. The 27% who identified as or leaned Republican represented a 6% drop since 1998.
For Trump, AAPI Data found nearly all major Asian American ethnic groups held an unfavorable view of the president. The only exception was the 62% of Vietnamese surveyed in 2018 who said they held a favorable impression of him. On the other end of the spectrum, just 14% of Japanese voters felt the same way.
In the top 10 states with the largest Asian American voting populations, Trump in 2016 won only Texas and Florida. But the ultimate swing state in this year’s election, Ramakrishnan said, is unlikely to be determined by the 3.6% of Florida voters who are Asian American given how large the state is.
That means in smaller states like Nevada, the deeper concentration of eligible Asian American voters — the fourth highest behind Hawaii, California and Washington state — could potentially move the needle. About 11% of Nevada’s voters are Asian.
Trump lost the Silver State in 2016 to rival Democrat Hillary Clinton by just 2.4 percentage points, though Nevada now leans more blue.
For Vinuya, who has been courted by the Trump campaign as the president of the Las Vegas Asian Chamber of Commerce, he knows he could be one of the few Asian American voters nationally who can make a difference for the president’s re-election prospects.
Vinuya said he’s expressed his concerns about the anti-Asian slur to Trump’s team, especially as he’s trying to help his 600-plus members overcome the virus-related stigma and discrimination evident against Asian American and Asian immigrant small business owners in Las Vegas.
“I gave them my two cents. That’s pretty much it,” Vinuya said. “I don’t want to waste my time on something I cannot control.”
Associated Press writer Lynn Berry contributed from Washington.
Follow Sally Ho on Twitter at http://twitter.com/_sallyho
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Train crushes man to death in Abuja
A grieving father, Francis Idoko, a staff of the National Universities Commission (NUC), on Saturday relived his last moments with his son, Paul, who was killed by a train around Arab area in Kubwa, Abuja on Friday morning.
Speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) at his residence located at Arab road, few kilometers to the scene of the accident, Mr. Idoko said the 27-year-old Paul had gotten ready to go to work about the same time he (Francis) was ready.
“Àt about 7 .15 a.m., as I prepare(d) to go to work and Paul came to into my bedroom to greet me because he was ready to go to work too.
“When Paul came in, his mother was lying on the bed. And I asked the mother if she had N50 change because my neighbour usually gives me a ride to Maitama Junction from where I take a cab to complete my journey to my office.
“’His mother said he had no smaller naira denomination note as well but Paul said he had change.
“He brought out N200 and told me, Daddy, I hope the taxi driver can get a change with this. I said yes, thank you and left.
“’When I got to the office at about 10.30 a.m., my friend called me and asked me to call him back that there was an emergency.
“’I called him back, he said your son is dead and I replied ‘it is not possible!’ This was the boy that gave me transport this morning.
“Later my neighbour, Hassan, also called me to tell me. I called my wife, who was in the living room watching TV with my daughter,” he recounted.
Mr. Idoko said the mangled body of his first son was later gathered from the rail tracks.
He said he went to the police post for support to take his son’s remains to the morgue.
“The police said they don’t have that authority.
“So, we went to Phase IV Police Station before taking him to the morgue at Kubwa General Hospital and they accepted the remains.
“By the grace of God, people rallied around me and I was able to bury my son at the new cemetery by Arab road.”
He said an officer from the police also came to his house and requested for a permission to speak with him.
“The officer said the DPO and the area commander were interested in the case,” he stated.
Idoko, who hails from Adim Community, Otukpo Local Government Area of Benue. said: “ordinarily, I expected the management of the railway station to come and commiserate with me.
“This is not about money, we are talking about a succeeding generation that has just died and nobody is saying anything,” he sobbed.
The bereaved father, who said his son was into photography and satellite dish installation, described the late Paul as a hardworking and humble child.
A witness, Sunday Garba, who is a friend to the deceased, also told NAN that they were on their way to work when the tragedy happened.
“I called Paul this morning because he got a job to install satellite dish about two days ago and was yet to finish. I asked him where he was and he told me he was by the rail line.
“I told him I would join him later. He called me later and asked if he should be going to the house to complete the outstanding work.
“Before I reached the rail track, I saw the train advancing so I stopped. This was around 8 a.m. or 9 a.m.. But by the time the train passed, I called his phone line but it was switched off!
“I started looking for him after the train passed but all I saw was a shirt on the ground and his mangled body. I didn’t know what to do. I burst into tears.
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Home > For Media > Press Releases > Dr. Wooldridge Selected for Nephrology Leadership Award
Dr. Wooldridge Selected for Nephrology Leadership Award
TUPELO, Miss.—The Mississippi Kidney Foundation recently presented Tom Wooldridge, M.D., with the Marcelo J. Ruvinsky, M.D. Nephrology Leadership Award.
The award was presented on the 51st anniversary of the Mississippi Kidney Foundation during the organization’s Board of Trustees Annual Meeting at Jackson Country Club on Aug. 16. Established by the Mississippi Kidney Foundation and Fresenius Kidney Care, the award is named for Dr. Ruvinsky, a nephrologist who retired in 2015 after 40 years of service in Jackson.
A Grenada native, Dr. Wooldridge earned bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and biology from Millsaps College in Jackson. He earned his medical degree from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in 1972. He completed an internship in internal medicine at University Hospital of Jacksonville, Fla., and residency training in internal medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the Veterans Administration Hospital, both in Jackson. He completed nephrology and clinical research fellowships at UMMC. He is board certified in internal medicine and nephrology.
Dr. Wooldridge became the first nephrologist to practice in Tupelo in 1977. His practice, Nephrology and Hypertension Associates, now has six nephrologists in Tupelo and two in Oxford. The practice started with 21 dialysis patients and now treats over 1,000, He has served as chief of NMMC’s nephrology section since 2011.
Dr. Wooldridge is a member of many professional organizations, including the Mississippi Nephrologic Society, which he served as president 1994-95. He also serves on the Fresenius Regional Medical Advisory Board, Fresenius Corporate Advisory Board and Mississippi Task Force for Nephrology.
He also volunteers for and financially supports the Renal Evaluation and Assessment Program, which provides free screenings for kidney disease statewide.
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On June 27, 2016, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas enjoined the Department of Labor (DOL) from enforcing its new persuader rule (Rule) which was scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2016. National Federation of Independent Business, et al v Perez, et al, Civil Action No. 5:16-cv-00066-C. The injunction enjoined the DOL enforcement of the Rule nationwide.
By August 10, 2016, employers must amend their injury and illness policies to (a) expressly state that employees have a right to report work-related injuries and illnesses, (b) provide a reasonable procedure for employees to report such workplace injuries and illnesses, (c) not deter or discourage employees from reporting such injuries and illnesses, and (d) assure employees that the employer will not discriminate against nor retaliate against them for making such reports.
Under the Occupation Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) new rule to Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses, many employers risk citation by OSHA for post-injury drug testing policies that were once encouraged by courts and federal agencies, but might now be prohibited.
OFCCP has published the 2016 Annual Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) Benchmark on its Web site based on data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on March 4, 2016. The benchmark – 6.9 percent – is effective as of that BLS release date.
OSHA has launched a pilot enforcement program focused on employers who repeatedly and willfully disregard the rights of whistleblowers. OSHA's Whistleblower-Severe Violator Enforcement Program became effective on May 27, covering employers in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, and those companies under federal enforcement in Iowa.
Today, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) announced a Final Rule that sets forth the requirements that covered contractors must meet under the provisions of Executive Order 11246 that prohibit sex discrimination in employment.
Click here to download a PDF of our June 2016 Newsletter and stay up-to-date with NOARK.
Q: Patti as 2016 NOARK President we would like to know what keeps you up at night?
Employment agreements containing arbitration clauses that restrict the rights of employees to initiate class arbitration, and instead confine them to seeking individual relief, have become more popular in the last decade, and with good reason. Using them has benefits for employers and, because arbitration is generally favored in the eyes of the law as a way of resolving disputes, these clauses tend to be upheld more often than not.
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Kenny-Dowall warms to wing task
Veteran Roosters back Shaun Kenny-Dowall has been one of the best wingers in the competition over the opening month of the 2016 season and says he is warming to the job after spending five years in closer to the action at centre.
The 200-game one-club-man spent his first three seasons, from 2007-09, as a Roosters winger before a full five years almost exclusively at centre.
He was moved wider last year, in large part to accommodate the recruitment of Blake Ferguson, and while he shone – scoring 17 tries – it pales in comparison to his dominance over the start of 2016.
In a team battered by high-profile departures and long term absences through injury and suspension to key players, Kenny-Dowall has shouldered the load, rolled up his sleeves and churned through 130 metres per week and a massive 28 tackle breaks (one behind competition leader, Tigers fullback James Tedesco), with four line breaks – and a try-scoring double last week in his 200th game.
"It has been a good start to the year for myself personally but it's pretty bittersweet, being 0-4, it's a tough position to be in and I'm just trying to do my best to help influence the team and get the team going forward," Kenny-Dowall told NRL.com.
"I've really developed as a winger and feel comfortable out there and that's where Trent [Robinson] wants me at the moment so I'm trying to do the best I can for the team on the wing at the moment."
Kenny-Dowall said the magnitude of last week's 200-game milestone wasn't lost on him – even if he'd preferred to have brought it up with a win.
"To play 200 games for this great club, only seven players have done it before me in the past so it was a very big achievement and it was a pretty emotional day for me," he said.
"I was very disappointed not to get the win but to put on the jersey for the 200th time in front of the home fans and my family was a special moment and one that I'll remember forever."
The 28-year-old is also a relatively rare senior face in the backline and said he was doing his best to help young tearaways like teenage fullback Latrell Mitchell adapt to first grade.
"I think we're doing our best in everything we can to try and make that transition for those guys into first grade as easy as we can and we're trying to help them learn their lessons early on. It's been a tough start for them but I think they're doing a great job," he said.
While not wanting to delve deeply into the past, Kenny-Dowall did pay thanks to the support shown to him by club, coach and teammates through a challenging few months as he fought and beat charges brought against him in court.
"I was very fortunate that the club supported me through that tough time and allowed me to have a very solid pre-season and that was my mindset – I was preparing to play and have a really good 2016 and it's all in the past now so to be able to move forward with a clear conscience and a clear mind and just really be able to concentrate on my football has done me wonders," he said.
"I was very grateful for the support and the environment the boys created for me through that tough time and it enabled me to get away from everything that was going on off the field and really concentrate on my football so there's a great bunch of boys here who always had my back."
As he prepares for his 201st NRL game, Kenny-Dowall said the mood among the squad was still excellent despite the shock 0-4 start to the year.
"We're remaining positive, it's only been four games, we're one month into a six-month season so there's still plenty of football to be had. Next week is another week and we're preparing to win this week and hopefully we can come away with a result," he said.
"We've had really great defence over the past three years. We're trying to put a real steely focus on our mentality towards our defence. Leaking 40 points is definitely not Roosters style and we're trying to get back to the way we defended and hopefully we can get back to that this week against the Warriors."
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NAMA Portfolio
240. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Finance the details of empty properties and land banks that have not yet been sold with regard to the assets of NAMA; the negotiations that have taken place to acquire these homes for social and or affordable housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33534/19]
Written answers (Question to Finance)
The Deputy will be aware that NAMA does not generally own properties, rather NAMA owns loans for which the properties act as security.
I am advised that NAMA debtors and receivers own an estimated 1,150 hectares of land suitable for residential development in Ireland. NAMA regularly assesses the feasibility of these sites and, where development is deemed commercially viable, NAMA provides funding for the delivery of new residential units on the sites. I am advised that, to date, in excess of 10,000 units have been completed on residential sites secured to NAMA. Sites with a delivery capacity of 10,000 units are at the pre-planning or feasibility stages; these sites are either not commercially viable currently and/or have specific infrastructural requirements such as roads, water or sewerage that will need to be addressed by local authorities and other State bodies before a planning application can be lodged. I refer the Deputy to NAMA’s 2018 Annual Report which contains further information regarding NAMA’s residential delivery programme.
I wish to highlight that all NAMA-funded residential developments are subject to Part V planning requirements whereby 10% of the development must be provided to local authorities for social housing. Supplementary to this, NAMA continues to review its secured portfolio in order to deliver properties for social housing purposes (albeit at a lesser level than in previous years given the reduced portfolio size). The main method of social housing delivery is by way of direct sale (by a NAMA debtor or receiver) to a local authority or an approved housing body (AHB), or alternatively, by sale to NARPS (a NAMA Group entity) for onward long-term lease to an AHB. To date, the majority of properties delivered by NAMA for social housing purposes have been provided via NARPS. In total 2,544 properties have been delivered by NAMA for social housing purposes. This is supplementary to properties provided by way of Part V compliance by debtors and receivers.
In addition, I am advised that sites with planning permission for a total of 159 properties have been sold to local authorities or AHBs. A number of other land sales, with potential to deliver approximately 200 residential units, are at varying stages of negotiation with local authorities or AHBs.
I am advised that close to 100% of all secured housing units are occupied as there are currently less than 40 habitable vacant residential units within NAMA’s secured portfolio, excluding properties which are on the market or sale agreed. NAMA is currently working with its debtors and receivers regarding appropriate strategies for these 40 units, which includes assessing the suitability of the units for social housing.
It is important to note that NAMA’s debtors have the right to maximise the sales value of properties securing their loans so as to enable them to maximise their debt repayments. NAMA cannot require a debtor to take action which would reduce his/her repayment capacity, such as the sale of property at less than its market value.
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Strategies for career development program planning, organization, implementation, administration, and evaluation.
For this assignment you will select a marginalized group (veterans, minorities, individuals with disabilities, etc.) and write a paper of 1,750 words that can be used as a resource when working with an individual from the selected group. Use peer-reviewed resources to support your use of a specific career theory as well as interventions with this population. The paper should include the following:
An explanation of who the population is and why it is important for this group to receive career counseling
Statistics on the group (e.g., how large, how many have employment problems, how many utilize career counseling)
Discussion of career counseling theory to be used with the group (e.g., Minnesota theory of work adjustment). Include evidence supporting the use of this theory in the general population as well as within the group. Please note: If none are available, it is important to indicate that as well.
Basic plan for counseling utilizing chosen theory (e.g., interview, use of assessment tools, explanation of theory)
Environmental/personal barriers that may prevent the client from finding work (e.g., disability, substance use history, felony, transportation, limited computer access)
Local resources available to help the client obtain work (e.g., job center, training programs, support groups)
Your conclusion on whether or not this plan is tenable and will work, based on the information listed above.
A minimum of four scholarly references.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.
You are required to submit this assignment to Turnitin. Refer to the directions in the Student Success Center.
2.F.4.a: Theories and models of career development, counseling, and decision making.
2.F.4.b. Approaches for conceptualizing the interrelationships among and between work, mental well-being, relationships, and other life roles and factors.
2.F.4.c. Processes for identifying and using career, avocational, educational, occupational and labor market information resources, technology, and information systems.
2.F.4.e. Strategies for assessing abilities, interests, values, personality and other factors that contribute to career development.
2.F.4.f. Strategies for career development program planning, organization, implementation, administration, and evaluation.
2.F.4.g. Strategies for advocating for diverse clients’ career and educational development and employment opportunities in a global economy.
2.F.4.h. Strategies for facilitating client skill development for career, educational, and life-work planning and management.
2.F.4.i. Methods of identifying and using assessment tools and techniques relevant to career planning and decision making.
2.F.4.j. Ethical and culturally relevant strategies for addressing career development.
https://www.nursingresearchers.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/logo-300x60.png 0 0 Admin https://www.nursingresearchers.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/logo-300x60.png Admin2020-08-24 11:33:482020-08-24 11:33:48Strategies for career development program planning, organization, implementation, administration, and evaluation.
review the ergonomic guidelines for nursing homes Unique Roles of the Family Nurse Practitioner that are different from other...
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Black detectives who sued NYPD for discrimination score $700K settlement
By Graham Rayman and Stephen Rex Brown
NYPD Intelligence Detectives Jon McCollum (left) and Roland Stephens are pictured in their lawyer's office in Manhattan on Sept. 25, 2017. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News)
Three black detectives who said they were discriminated against in the NYPD’s elite Intel Division have received a $700,000 settlement.
The detectives — Jon McCollum, Theodore Coleman and Roland Stephens — had blamed the division’s commanding officer, Chief Thomas Galati, for systematically discriminating against them while promoting less qualified white colleagues. Galati’s predecessor, now-retired Deputy Commissioner David Cohen, was also named in the suit. Galati and Cohen are white.
“In spite of their proven track records of achievement and strong recommendations from their direct supervisors, they were repeatedly passed up for promotion due to their race. More than one supervisor who recommended them said that if they had been white then they would have been promoted,” read the suit, which was filed in 2017 and settled last week.
Their claims were backed up by a Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finding. The 2016 report, which came after a five-year probe, described a ”wholly subjective and secret process (that) operates without any structured guidelines.” The Department of Justice declined to sue the NYPD over the finding that black Intel detectives weren’t treated equally, but it was a critical piece of evidence in the lawsuit.
Coleman, who has died, was represented by his wife, Sara Coleman. McCollum and Stephens are retired.
“The NYPD, as well as DOJ, over the course of years, carefully reviewed statistical and other evidence on promotions and diversity within the Intelligence Bureau. Race discrimination is not a factor in the promotional process," an NYPD spokeswoman said. “Discretionary promotions are based on a number of considerations which may include time, grade and performance. The city made a practical decision to settle this case with no admission of wrongdoing on the part of the NYPD, and with claims against all NYPD officials dismissed.”
A source within the Intel Division said the settlement was the result of an ongoing unfair system overseen by Galati.
“They all worked for Galati, who promoted everyone else except them because they weren’t ‘friends of Galati,'" the source said, using a phrase commonly referred to by its acronym, FOG.
“If you’re not a ‘friend of Galati’s,’ he doesn’t take care of you.”
Disgruntled members of the division say almost all “FOGs” are white.
“The detectives are happy with the result which finally recognized their years of exemplary service at the NYPD,” attorney Elizabeth Saylor said. “They are disappointed that the NYPD still refuses to reform its secret, standard-less promotions process.”
There are around 600 employees in the Intel Division, including around 280 detectives, according to the lawsuit.
The settlement includes back pay and damages to cover loss of reputation. The agreement could factor in lawsuits brought by six disgruntled members of Mayor de Blasio’s Executive Protection Unit.
The EPU officers, most of whom are detectives, alleged they were passed over for promotions due to race, age and ethnicity.
All the cops have been transferred off of the mayor’s detail since filing suit. Some were promoted after they sued. The EPU is part of the Intel Division.
“(Promotions) are hard to understand in terms of what the criteria are," said Marshall Bellovin, an attorney for the EPU officers. “The criteria aren’t published.”
McCollum, Coleman and Stephens alleged in their Manhattan Federal Court suit that black detectives in the Intel Division were often posted in the “rap unit,” which was dedicated to working undercover at concerts and monitoring hip-hop beefs, among other operations. It was a dead-end gig within a division focused primarily on preventing terrorist attacks, the suit said.
The complaint noted that in 2011 blacks made up 18% of all police officers and 16% of detectives. However, in the Intel division, just 6% were black. The figures were more skewed in the upper ranks of the division, where there were no black officers above the rank of sergeant. More recent statistics were not available.
“I did everything I could to get promoted,” McCollum previously told the Daily News. “I watched countless white detectives from my class move up in rank, but not me. Multiple supervisors told me if I were white I would have been promoted.”
Jon McCollum
Theodore Coleman
Roland Stephens
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Photo by Rick Kern / Getty imags
Kendrick Lamar Goes Pop On Maroon 5’s “Don’t Wanna Know”
Despite the enormous street cred he's cultivated since exploding onto the scene with 2012's Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, Kendrick Lamar has shown that he isn't afraid to go pop. After spitting fire on Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" remix last year, Lamar has once again made a play for Top 40 ubiquity, this time on Maroon 5's new track, "Don't Wanna Know."
The band shared the single late Tuesday, and it has all the makings of a chart-topper. Say what you will about Adam Levine and his merry band of dad rockers, but there's no denying that they know how to write the hits. As for Lamar, is there a major release this year that he hasn't made an appearance on? Albums from Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Sia, and Beyoncé were all enhanced thanks to guest verses from the Compton Kid (yes, we just coined that).
The video for "Don't Wanna Know," will premiere Friday on the Today show, while Maroon 5 and Lamar are scheduled to perform it live for the very first time on the November 3 episode of Ellen. Keep bridging that gap between middle America and urban America, Lamar.
Listen to “Don’t Wanna Know” below.
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Negron: Aroldis Chapman- Will He or Won’t He?
Written By: Ray Negron
I got to spend some time with Aroldis Chapman on the phone this weekend. He just got back from the Latin Grammy’s this weekend in California and said, he had a blast. He says he is living the American Dream. He became an American citizen this year, and with winning the World Series and everything that has followed, he didn’t get a chance to vote, however he looks forward to voting next year.
He says, that he is proud of being a world champion and was very happy to be able to contribute to the success of the Chicago Cubs. He said that 2016 turned out to be a the fantasy for him and getting traded to the Yankees was great because as most Cubans know, the Yankees have always been Cuba’s team.
“The organization treated me first class,” he said, “And the fans were like no other.” He also said, Chicago fans are great but there is something about a Yankee fan that is hard to explain. I asked him straight out, if the Yankees were his preference in the free agent market and he said, “I would love to be a Yankee again.”
I said, then why can’t we just make it happen? He responded by saying, “This is business and the Yankees know that.” He does say that he knows that the Yankees were there when he was going through his difficult legal difficult problems last Winter.
“They took a chance on me,” he said, “and I will always be grateful.” I got to spend a lot of time with this young man and I must say that he was always respectful and descent.
Major League Baseball is entertainment. We are in the entertainment capital of the world. Like Elvis, Sinatra or in the Steinbrenner era of Reggie, New York deserves to have Chapman and his 105-mile fastball.
I know that the Yankees would love to have him back for the fans and will do all they can, however as I told Chapman it takes two to tango.
Ray Negron can be heard every Sunday on his show “Impact” 0n 1050 am ESPN Deportes from 11 am to 1 pm and read on Newsmax.
Ray Negron
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Welcome to the Old Oakhamian (OO) Club.
All past pupils of Oakham School, along with former staff, are automatically members of the OO Club. They are known as Old Oakhamians (OOs) and Honorary OOs respectively.
The OO Office works together with the Old Oakhamian Committee to develop and improve lifelong relationships between the School, former pupils and staff.
Founded in 1888, the OO Club is at the heart of that extended family and aims to help OOs maintain contact with their friends, teachers and the School, as well as making the most of Oakham connections for their work and career development. These pages include details of OO events, OO news, and how OOs can help, and be helped, in terms of career development
OO Office
Based in College House (next to the School Chapel), Jon Wills is Chairman of the Old Oakhamian Club. He was a pupil here from 1968–1973 and has worked at Oakham since 1980 in various guises (as Housemaster, sports coach, and Geography teacher). Becca Maddocks is the Alumni Manager and can help with any queries you may have or reunions you might like to plan. Together they work with the Old Oakhamian Committee to support the OO community.
If you would like any further information regarding the OO Committee, please email Becca Maddocks.
We would like to be able to contact all OOs by email so if your details have changed recently, or you haven’t heard from us in a while, please email the OO Office or call 01572 758599.
Jon Wills
Old Oakhamian Club Chairman
My association with Oakham stretches back to 1934 when my father started here in School House. I attended Oakham as a pupil from 1968 to 1973 and returned to teach here in 1980. My role involves daily contact with Old Oakhamians and hosting OO reunions. I was Housemaster in Lincoln, Haywoods and School House for a total of 17 years. I used to teach Geography and coach rugby, hockey and cricket.
Becca Maddocks
Alumni Manager
My time at Oakham School began in May 2018, when I joined the Development Office as the Graduate Internship role of Development Assistant. Although this was my first encounter with the Oakham Community, I was not a stranger to the history of Oakham School - my Father, David Maddocks (84), my Uncle, Nigel Maddocks (79) and my Auntie, Susan Maddocks (78) are all OOs.I feel delighted to be continuing on my journey at Oakham School as the Alumni Manager. I am thoroughly looking forward to further enhancing the incredible awareness that has already been implemented within the Old Oakhamian Club and the Oakham School community. I hope that our engagement with Old Oakhamians and Honorary Old Oakhamians will only continue to grow, as we encourage more to maintain their lifelong relationships with each other, and with the School.
Oakham School Shop
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CARL Fletcher called it ‘a good day’ but his post-derby interviews suggested he felt it was close to being a great one.
The Pilgrims came away from St James Park with a point after Joe Lennox’s first goal in senior football midway through the second half cancelled out Liam Sercombe’s 34th-minute opener.
Joe’s curled shot came during a period of Argyle dominance which lasted most of the second half, sandwiched in between a jittery re-start and a nervy end following defender Maxime Blanchard’s sending-off.
Fletch said: “In the grand scheme of things, an away point in a derby game on the back of a home win last week is a good day.
“[Exeter] are in the play-off [positions] and they are there on merit – they are a good side, so we knew it would be tough.
“I was disappointed to go a goal down in the first half. We were in control of the game, and I think the goal was a little bit against the run of play.
“In the second half, we came out on the front foot and we did well. We put them under a lot of pressure and got the goal we deserved.”
The game was nearly up before that when, in a rare breakaway, Exeter striker Jamie Cureton was played in on goal by Argyle half-time substitute Robbie Williams’ indecisive header.
“We rode our luck a little bit,” said Fletch. “Jamie Cureton didn’t have his finishing-boots on today, which we’re delighted about.”
After that let-off, Argyle gradually upped the tempo to take charge of the game, and increased the pace with the introduction of forwards Nick Chadwick and Warren Feeney.
Fletch said: “You don’t want to go too gung-ho too early on. If you try to get an equaliser straight away, it could be 2-0 before you know it and game over.
“We had to still be professional and keep our shape, but once we got the ball down, we were on top.
“We made a couple of substitutions when we needed the goal. You want your subs to give you a little bit of impetus and it did.”
Despite the dominance, the Pilgrims could not find another goal and all but settled for a draw after Max was sent off for a second yellow card, bringing down John O’Flynn.
Fletch shad no arguments about referee Andy Woolmer’s decision. He said: “We didn’t mark properly at the throw-in; [O’Flynn]got through too easily; and Max has taken one for the team.”
The French defender will miss Saturday’s trip to Accrington, with Durrell Berry among those in contention for a recall.
Durrell could not win his place back following a suspension which saw him sit out the previous weekend’s 2-0 victory over York as Fletcher decided to go with the same defensive unit.
“It was a really tough decision and I wasn’t sure all week,” said Fletch, “but the back four did so well last week.
“It was our first clean sheet in a while and we won the game, so it was case of sticking with it.
“I spoke to Durrell and he understands. He’ll be looking for his opportunity to get back in, which he’ll probably get now Max is suspended. That’s the way football works.
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The tax justice movement needs policy proposals: A response to Stuart Weir
How do we reconcile the idealistic aspirations of the tax justice movement with the pragmatic need for reform? Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research LLP, sets out proposals.
Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research LLP and co-author of Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works, suggests policy proposals for the tax justice movement.
How do we reconcile the idealistic aspirations of the tax justice movement with the pragmatic need for reform?
Stuart Weir offered two potentially contradictory comments on Nick Shaxson’s new book ‘Treasure Islands and the men who stole the world’ in his review for OurKingdom. First, he said “For me it is possibly the most important political book that I have read since The Spirit Level” but he later concluded, “Shaxson advances a set of reforms that could begin to curb the excesses of the offshore world, but they seem to me to be as remote as they are admirable.” He then noted that UK Uncut – the somewhat ad hoc tax protest movement which seems to have taken inspiration from the Tax Justice Network for which Shaxson has worked and to which I am an adviser – are “really up against it – not only against the British establishment but international finance and the major powers that sustain a system that was one of the factors that made the financial crisis not only possible, but inevitable.”
How can we reconcile the seemingly idealistic aspiration Shaxson has to offer, reflected in the hopes of a nascent protest movement, with the pragmatic need for radical reform within the world financial system?
To some extent, it has always been my role within the tax justice movement to resolve this apparent dilemma. As a chartered accountant trained by a Big 4 firm, who went on to be senior partner of the firm of accountants and to run a number of entrepreneurial businesses before becoming a tax and poverty campaigner (as well as, somewhat behind the scenes, continuing to practise in my profession), it has been my job to offer pragmatic solutions and reconcile the ideals of tax justice with the realities of deliverable regulation. It helps that I believe that reconciliation is possible. I make no claim that it is easy: I just say that if the political will exists then reconciliation is possible and I offer, in what follows, a number of examples on how that might be done.
The question is not whether big corporations are avoiding tax (they are) but whether they are being socially responsible.
First, and given recent protests about corporate tax behaviour perhaps most relevantly, the key issue that is being addressed is not, in my opinion, whether large corporations are avoiding tax, or not. Most, in their more candid moments, will admit that they are. The issue is about their accountability for tax paid in a world where tax revenue has become one of the most sought-after commodities by governments around the world. The demand for information on tax paid is exacerbated by the fact that it is corporations, and large ones alone, that are seeing tax cuts in the current economic environment, with their UK headline rate falling from 28% to 24% over the next few years, but with their effective tax rates, currently around 21% based upon my research, likely to fall as a consequence to something in the order of 17%, which is way below the rate of income tax for most ordinary taxpayers in the UK, the new rate of VAT, and the rate of tax paid by small companies. In this environment, people are asking whether these operations are fulfilling their social responsibility to pay tax to the states that provide them with a licence to operate, and if so, in what amount?
How can we know what multinational corporations are doing with their money?
Some of the answers can be found through a new form of accounting called country-by-country reporting. It is, very simply, a demand that every multinational corporation of significant size should file, as part of its annual financial statements, a profit and loss account and limited balance sheet and cash flow information for each and every jurisdiction in which it trades, without exception. No jurisdiction would be exempt from disclosure, and disclosure would be based, most importantly, upon the value of transactions undertaken both on an intragroup and third-party basis. This would mean that activity artificially relocated through tax havens would be revealed for the first time in multinational corporation accounts, and the abuse that can flow from transfer pricing between related party companies, one in a high tax jurisdiction and one in a low tax jurisdiction, might be highlighted by the artificial reallocation of profits to low tax locations being readily apparent.
This is not fanciful or wishful thinking: this idea, which has come out of the tax justice movement, is now on the international agenda. I created the concept of country-be-country reporting in 2003 but despite its relative youth it has been endorsed by the EU Parliament on more than one occasion. It is currently subject to a European Commission consultation and an OECD review and is on the agenda of the International Accounting Standards Board with regard to the extractive industries. The idea also won backing from the last Labour government and Vince Cable whilst in opposition.
Simply disclosing data on these issues will impact on the behaviour of multinational corporations, would reduce the impact of tax havens on their behaviour, and will force them to allocate profits to the place where it is likely to have really been earned because the glare of publicity will prevent them doing otherwise. As physicists noted a long time ago, if you observe something you change it. We, at Tax Research LLP, want to look at multinational corporations' use of tax havens because we believe that in the process we will change their behaviour, and the amount of tax they pay in the right place in the right time.
Simple automatic information exchange can discourage people from using tax havens.
The issue of automatic information exchange has also become one of priority over the last few years, not least because of pressure from civil society organisations such as the Tax Justice Network. The OECD has promoted the idea of tax information exchange on request, but for that to work the tax authority making the request for information must have a ‘smoking gun’ which proves that the taxpayer they are investigating is associated with an offshore bank account. Given the secrecy in most tax haven jurisdictions this is almost impossible to secure in many cases. We have put forward practical alternatives to this problem, including the simple obligation to automatically exchange information annually on ‘ financial structures’ in one jurisdiction from which a person from another jurisdiction benefits. As a matter of fact, under Financial Action Task Force rules on money-laundering, which apply almost universally around the world, financial institutions of all sorts must know the beneficial owners of the accounts that they operate. As a consequence, at least in theory, every single tax haven bank account in the world must have its beneficial ownership known to the bank that maintains it, however convoluted its ownership structure, and however deviously it may be constructed to avoid discovery. As a result, all the information to automatically exchange on this basis is already required to exist by law in all the tax haven jurisdictions worldwide.
We are simply suggesting very simple automatic information exchange that will not require long, technical complications in defining such things as income, gains, interest, profits, and so on – all of which will create nightmarish obstacles to agreement. All we want to know is whether or not a person from a place such as the United Kingdom has an interest in a financial structure (whether it be a bank account, company, trust, partnership, foundation or other arrangement) in a place such as the British Virgin Islands. And then it is up to the UK tax authorities to use that information to make further enquiries if they can see no trace of that interest being disclosed on a tax return in this country. This is low-cost, high impact data that will have a profound effect on behaviour. And discourage tax evasion, worldwide.
The accounts of all financial structures should be put on public record.
Finally, and for sound commercial reasons as well as for the purpose of stopping illicit behaviour, we argue that every company registry throughout the world (including that of the United Kingdom) should be duty-bound to determine who beneficially owns the companies that it registers using the same money-laundering identification rules that are required of private-sector financial operators. In addition, we believe that this information should be put on public record, and we believe that the accounts of every single company incorporated around the world, and of every other financial structure created under statute law – whether it be a trust, foundation or limited liability partnership – should also have its accounts on public record. We do not, of course, require this of individuals. We think that there is a right to privacy, but that right is forgone when structures created by law are used to change property rights in a way that might prejudice the interests of other people. Companies, trusts, foundations and limited liability partnerships all have this potential inherent within them and those who use them are, therefore, accountable in our opinion to the society that granted them the privilege of using these mechanisms for the benefit that is secured as a result – particularly in the case of limited liability corporations, when the cost can fall upon others if that privilege is abused.
As with the other proposals, this is targeted at changes in behaviour. It is too easy to use a company to avoid identification when undertaking nefarious transactions. Too many companies in the United Kingdom, the United States, and many other locations, are unaccountable to anyone for their actions, even though they impact on others. And around the world, tax is lost to corporations that simply disappear from view to all authorities for all purposes from the moment after incorporation onwards. This is an abuse that we do not believe society can tolerate and that is why we suggest reform of company law to reflect the ethics, obligations and commercial risks corporations bring to bear upon others in the 21st century.
These proposals are not only moral: they will improve the efficiency of markets, so benefiting society as a whole.
This is not just about curtailing abuse; this is about creating the information needed for the effective operation of markets, for the mitigation of risk, and therefore the reduction of the cost of capital that results from that process, which will enhance investment in small business, and increase the rate of return to it, so increasing the well-being of society at large.
Let me put this way: we have ideals, and are proud of them. We think that people should seek to pay the right amount of tax in the right place at the right time, knowing always this can sometimes be difficult; the law is not a certain beast. But we also believe that the transparency and accountability that we demand will enhance the smooth operation of markets, improve the allocation of resources within society, reduce risk, encourage enterprise, increase the overall tax base, and therefore potentially decrease the tax rate on those that are tax compliant, and as a result contribute to well-being for all.
This is not just about living and trading ethically: this is about meeting the information requirements for effective markets that economists have long known to be necessary. We know that that information is deliverable at modest cost, but at potential significant yield for all but those who abuse tax and corporate law and, in turn, society. In that case, the real question we ask is: why isn’t there the political will to tackle those who exploit the rules at a cost to the rest of us? That is the question that needs answering. And that’s the question politicians who prevaricate on these issues need to address, because an acceptable answer is hard to find.
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Home Audience CIOs We have a fairly mature open source strategy, though its not perfect
We have a fairly mature open source strategy, though its not perfect
Manvi Saxena
José Miguel Parella, open source CTO at Microsoft, and Balaji Kesavraj, director – platform strategy & marketing, Microsoft, were both at Open Source India (OSI) held at Bengaluru in November last year. In a freewheeling chat with Rahul Chopra and Manvi Saxena of OSFY, they gave insights on containers, Azure, Microsofts open source strategy, and a lot more.
RC: How was the whole OSI experience for you? How did you find the levels of engagement here
José: It’s a strong community — very active and very engaged. I have been sitting at the booth and getting a lot of pointed questions. People really want answers on important topics, like Microsoft and open source. I think questions about the strategies, motivation, investments and role models are important; these are questions that I want to answer. I came across a very inquisitive and curious community, which is really good. People have a strong focus on the cloud, though. I think there are two to three big areas of open source development now, like application containers, etc, but in the end, everything comes under the cloud and IoT, as well.
This event is a great intersection in terms of topics and the community. The most important thing to have at an event like this is the vendors. We have kind of nurtured our open source ecosystem with the help of vendors. Ours was a company that released one product in three years, and now we are able to release a product every week.
RC: Did you sense scepticism in their questions, or was there genuine interest?
Balaji: I have been coming here for the past two years, and now, I can see the change. There is a change towards Microsoft’s association with the open source community, but have we reached where we really want to be? Not yet! They are informed about what we are doing but they want to know what’s next! About 10-15 people visiting our booth asked me what we meant by ‘Microsoft plus Linux’. They are wondering what we do with Linux. There is a large part of that whole open source ecosystem, which doesn’t still understand that we have moved as a company, and that Microsoft has changed as an organisation. That’s the message we are trying to spread since the past few years, and that message still needs to reach the right audience. I think in the past couple of years, we have moved up with the cloud and with our Azure platform. It’s not by chance but by design, as we have consciously built Azure as a platform on which you can pretty much build whatever you want. We just want people to know that Microsoft loves Linux. So scepticism, yes, we do get that! And we would like to remove it. It’s a journey, and we are still on the way!
José: Scepticism is not what we want, and what we can do working in this company is to inform, teach and learn. So awareness plays a big role and we are going to let facts speak, for example, by telling people that you can build anything with open source, etc. Here, it is important to say that our journey of open source is incomplete. It is an ongoing journey; we aren’t perfect and we still have many things to work out. I also want to say that this is the first time we are being loud about there being CEO level attention on this topic, and that we feel comfortable about this decision (of adopting open source). This journey isn’t new though. I have been in this company for five years now and the strategies were already there. So it is probably seven to eight years that Microsoft has been doing this. We did not have the cloud back then but we were talking about open source. We still talk about it, but now we have introduced our own cloud and we’ll add more things, as they come about. I think that’s important as well. The other thing is that there are many teams looking after this open source strategy from many different aspects. We have engineers, a dedicated sales and marketing team, business technologists and evangelists. We have all of that, so it’s not an isolated silent strategy of Microsoft’s, but is something we are embedding in our day to day activities.
RC: What does it mean to be a CTO of a tech centre in Microsoft? Typically, a CTO defines all the technologies being adopted or being worked upon within an organisation, but this is a particular group, here. Can you share something more about your role?
José: Well, my role here is to help the traditional Microsoft business to understand the technological ecosystem.
RC: Is it more of an ‘inward’ role?
José: Right! I do a lot of internal evangelism, with the traditional, conventional, sales and marketing groups at Microsoft, etc, to help them understand the open source philosophy, the emotions that drive the community, how it works and also to understand the emerging technologies well. So it’s just not about the technology for business, but integrating an open source ecosystem with the traditional Microsoft business, which has been very successful in serving technology for many, many years. We needed this traditional business to be very successful in selling open source too. That’s what my role is about — I have to work very closely with the engineers. I am an open source developer myself, but I don’t get hands-on with the products. I also have to be active with what we call a ‘field’, where my colleagues attend conferences in many countries, like Open Source India. We go there, talk to the community, and build a relationship with them. I am also connected externally, with the media or the companies that want to do business with us.
RC: Your profile mentions that you also created a national distro for Venezuela. So how do you now see it? Do you think that countries need to have their own distributions?
MS: Do you think that there is a need for a national distribution of Linux in India as well?
José: My work was with Canaima, which is the national distribution of Venezuela, before I joined Microsoft. It is what I am passionate about, because it uses many open source technologies. I have been working on Linux for many years and, obviously, on some other models as well. It’s a beautiful project in terms of the reach, and I think any technology that democratises access and reach is important. Giving you my personal perspective on this is tricky since I am sitting here as a Microsoft head. But, generally speaking, from Microsoft’s perspective, governments have always been very open to the policy of technology including the policy for open source. In the last two weeks, if you look at the conversation we are having in places like the US, we are actually looking into how we can help drive the open source policy. And I think it has to be a win-win scenario where we can help in successfully developing this interest in open source. At the same time, we also believe strongly that our products have immense potential, so whether they are proprietary or not, they are often the best fit in many cases. So we have that balance. The open source ecosystem is very vague and diverse, which is something that you cannot control. It has always offered thousands of different ways in which people can fix a problem.
Balaji Kesavraj, director-platform strategy & marketing, Microsoft
Balaji: I have been fairly involved in working with a number of people in India, in C-DAC, NICA, etc. There are some primary questions that I think we need to think about before taking a call on that. It’s good to have open source, but we need to maintain some records. For instance, let’s assume you build an open source platform and there is no company supporting that code. And we build an operating system on it called X, version 3.1. Twenty years later, the OS has gone to X.x and moved to version 21. At that stage, is the community aware that the code was built on version 3.1? I am just saying that the government or certain bodies need to think about a few more things, because proprietary firms like Microsoft commit to their end users that they will support any version, immaterial of how many versions there are. Today, you can still open your file on Microsoft Office 2001, for example. So there are a few key things that need to be really thought about, and then systems must be formalised to make sure that the support is going to be there. We want the government to be more proactive on this front.
MS: Talking about Microsoft supporting Linux, people are still surprised with this news. Any message for them?
Balaji: Absolutely. We are not saying we have adopted Linux, but we support open source completely. You can run Linux as a first class guest, if you are committed as a first class citizen on our cloud platform. If we go back to KY Srinivasan, ex partner architect at Microsoft, he is probably the single largest provider of code to the Linux kernel today. He has contributed 20,000 lines of code and he is a Microsoft employee; so that’s our commitment with Linux. The things that we are doing are more open in other ways too, not regarding just the source code, but also with regard to the community.
RC: So is there a major change in the environment at Redmond with the change in leadership? Steve Ballmer was never seen as someone who was in love with open source. With Satya Nadella taking over, is there a change or, rather, what is the change?
José: We have seen acceleration in the internal awareness, like in the engagements (with customers, technologists, etc) and conversations, which Microsoft now feels much more empowered to have. Investments in open source have always been there, and have been there for many years. So that’s what I think has accelerated. We have a fairly mature open source strategy, though it’s not perfect, as I mentioned. But we really want to strive towards leadership in many areas (like containers) — that still requires a lot of maturity and many years of discussion, simulation, gathering customers’ insights, decision making, etc. I think people are now getting to know what open source is. It’s a journey of discovery.
RC: Is there a strategic road map for coming out with an open source project of the scale of Android, which Google rolled out?
José: Something that is already out there is the .NET framework, which is strategic and has the whole ecosystem around it. When you think of .NET, you also think about the new research technology coming out like the F Sharp programming language — completely new products but you can still connect to your .NET libraries and USBs. This is the magnitude of Microsoft’s open source commitment. Our developers are incredible. There are troops of people who have done really amazing things with .NET.
RC: With respect to the Azure Marketplace, are there any specifics that might impact developers and vendors that you would like to share?
José: There are traditional partners who are highly successful, and then there are disruptive IT companies or the cloud service vendors and many others from markets like India, etc. We really want to connect the latter with the financially big partners to help them grow — in India, China, various other parts of Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Europe. So how do we help them? The answer is the Azure Marketplace. You now have a solution — you have a portal that can control the Linux machines running on Azure, etc. Vendors and service providers just need to put their products on Azure Marketplace and sell them to the big companies — one never knows who it’s going to be. It could be Hitachi, 3M, etc, so Azure Marketplace is a lot about connecting with the enterprise customers across the globe. To do that, we need to really make the marketplace global, which is what we’ve done with Azure.
RC: Are there multiple marketplaces that Microsoft has built? Are these integrated or does one have to go to each one separately?
Balaji: Currently, we have three independent marketplaces. One for the cloud, one for the phone, and one for the desktop. But our roadmap for Windows 10, which is what we now have, is that the Windows Phone and Windows Operating System will merge. So basically, it’s one store for the phone and desktop (devices), and one for the cloud.
RC: Is there a revenue sharing model in Azure Marketplace?
José: In the cloud, the economics is slightly different because we are not selling an application on our competitor’s platform — we are selling it in ours. Vendors and service providers pay us for the storage and the network.
RC: Containers are thought to be hot in the development environment. Can you enlighten our readers about what containers are?
José: Think of containers as application-specific silos; so we currently have a silo called VM, an operating system with one or many applications. It also contains some overhead, as an OS has to run along with supporting services. Those running an application do not really care about all these things. Also, when you’re trying to deliver a business, the customers shouldn’t be paying for or worrying about that overhead. So a container removes that overhead and focuses on the application, which has pros and cons and the limitations of that model. The container uses the host operating system by creating an operating system within itself. The application is not penalised because there is an operating system involved. Customers are really interested in splitting their applications into micro applications, and you can move those containers around, etc.
If you really don’t care about the overhead, Azure is the perfect fit. We can provision that fabric for you. It’s really simple, you don’t have maintain it, and it integrates Docker with Azure.
RC: Do you think that the need for an IT pro or an IT manager would reduce because that level of skill has actually been taken over by the containers and the VMs?
José: For the first time, the IT pro can go back and focus on the business. The presence of Cloud does not affect IT at all but it just means that you don’t have to guard your operating system any more.
MS: Coming back to the event, you have come here especially to attend it. How was your experience?
José: It’s been personally gratifying to come here. I have learnt a lot while talking to the people, and it is such a strong community. I am particularly honoured to be a part of the conference and we’ll continue doing this with you as we really feel welcomed. Having people join us for the hands-on labs that we had at our booth has been really rewarding. I am enchanted with the IT ecosystem in India and how passionate people are about technology. I think India is ahead of the curve in open source and I am glad to be here. What I like the most is the focus on the cloud, as a community. Five years ago the open source community was still trying to figure out what the cloud was about, and then it was open source that charted the path forward. I like the focus and I like the fact that we are not talking about only Linux here, or Android, or only Eclipse — it’s not product-centric, it’s open source. I think that’s what drives so many people here. And like I said before we started this conversation, this is the right place to be!
Open Source India
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Rahul Chopra - November 2, 2018 0
Frederick Noronha (54) is a journalist and alternative book publisher. He has also been an early supporter of FOSS in India, since the late...
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Dance swept along by the current
Interview with the choreographer Sasha Waltz
By Dorian Astor 04 April 2018
© Laurent Philippe / OnP
Ballet Roméo et Juliette
“Romeo and Juliet”, the Shakespearean myth of love and death that inspired Hector Berlioz to write his highly romantic “dramatic symphony” for soloists, chorus and orchestra, has been revisited by Sasha Waltz, one of the essential figures in contemporary dance. Created in 2007 for the Paris Opera Ballet, this production combines music, both vocal and orchestral, with dance to produce a total work of art. In 2012, during a revival of this ballet, Sasha Waltz was interviewed by the philosopher Dorian Astor in Berlin in the Radialsystem V building, a “space dedicated to the arts and to ideas”, on the banks of the River Spree. Now that Romeo and Juliet is once again on the bill at Opera Bastille, Octave transcribes the choreographer's insights.
Do you feel more of a stage director or a choreographer for this production of Romeo and Juliet?
Sasha Waltz: Choreographer, without hesitation. My perspective is fundamentally choreographic and involves another form of interaction and dialogue with the work than that of a director. Generally speaking, I am less attached to the narrative and to the characters, I don’t allow the libretto to call the tune. I seek to tell the story directly with the body and with the space that conditions it. When I say “body”, I’m not only thinking of the individual body of the dancer-character, but perhaps more than anything of the need to gradually create a common, collective body, a large-scale living organism.
Has the hierarchical structure of a ballet corps like that of the Paris Opera been an obstacle to this organic approach?
It’s true that hierarchies in general can be a problem. I always aim to eliminate them so as to allow a community to emerge and make this collective body possible. However, the Paris Opera, albeit an august institution, has the extraordinary capacity to carry the artist along and allow her/him freedom of expression. I have felt really good here and I’ve been able to work with some outstanding professionals in all the domains which go together to make a production. By the way, I also really admire the way in which the Opera Ballet has opened up to contemporary dance.
© Ann Ray / OnP
Roméo et Juliette de Sasha Waltz en répétition, Opéra de Paris, 2018 3 images
As a contemporary artist, how do you feel about working with this operatic repertoire?
I love this music. My first experience of opera choreography was Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in 2005. Baroque music is intimately linked to dance, its forms are inspired by dance forms, which, by the way, offers another kind of challenge to a choreographer. With Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet, I found material of a very different kind, yet charged with potential for dance. This is a work unlike any other: neither an opera nor a ballet but a “dramatic symphony” with a very abstract, refined narrative. In it, Berlioz developed a way of thinking that was more suggestive than narratorial, an approach that can simply be extended by dance. If only because of this suggestive quality, the music is profoundly romantic.
Are you a “romantic”?
Nobody is ever one single thing, but rather a multitude of different facets! Each work, each project draws on a different facet. I am also a great realist! Whatever the case, Berlioz’s romanticism is a powerful, intoxicating current that is particularly conducive to that collective organism I was talking about. One is literally swept along. But from an emotional point of view, Romeo and Juliet is also harrowing; you have to go with the flow whilst being careful not to get carried away, which is dangerous. I haven’t, strictly speaking, fought against this vulnerability or repressed the emotion. Berlioz’s music really stimulates our emotional side, obliging us to open up, to welcome this emotional flood and find an appropriate corporeal language. But at the same time, I’ve had to maintain a certain distance, so as not to lose my hold over the artistic aspect.
Roméo et Juliette de Sasha Waltz, Opéra de Paris, 2012 © Laurent Philippe / OnP
Do you need music?
To be honest, “need” is too strong a word. And I’ve always dreamed of creating a production without music, of experimenting with the silence of dance. To tell you the truth, that’s an experiment I also wanted to try with Romeo and Juliet. At the beginning, I always start rehearsing without music, to capture the spontaneous propositions of the dancers’ bodies. Above all though, I’ve tried to delve into the heart of Berlioz’s work, and open a breach of silence in that floodtide of music. It was a big decision for the conductor too (Valery Gergiev conducted the premier production) to agree to suspend the music and integrate a long moment of silence into the score; it was a real choice in terms of his own musical dramaturgy, and he played the game. It was an intense partnership, at every level, scenography, costumes, lighting. Only the immense institution that is the Paris Opera, by its very proportions, could have permitted this “organic monster” to find its space.
Ballet Podcast Romeo and Juliet
"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera"
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AAO’s 125th president starts one-year term
Tamara R. Fountain, MD, will serve as president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology after being elected by the organization’s community of ophthalmologists during its recent virtual annual meeting.
After accepting the gavel from outgoing American Academy of Ophthalmology President Anne L. Coleman at the AAO’s virtual annual meeting, Tamara R. Fountain this week begins her one-year term as the 125th president of the Academy.
Dr. Fountain, a professor of ophthalmology at Rush University Medical Center and an oculoplastic surgeon who runs her own practice in Deerfield, IL, was elected to leadership by the Academy’s community of 32,000 ophthalmologists. She will prioritize recovery and diversity: Recovery for a specialty hard hit by the pandemic and diversity in medicine that charts a path toward closing health disparities based on race and socioeconomic status.
“2021 will be the year to ‘right the ship’ as we recover from a most devastating year, for ophthalmologists and patients alike,” Dr. Fountain said. “This involves rebooting the practice of ophthalmology, the education of our trainees, and the clinical care of our patients. I’m honored to support colleagues across the globe in putting our patients’ health first and protecting their sight.”
According to the Academy, during 2020 ophthalmology lost more patient volume due to the COVID-19 pandemic than any other medical specialty. As 2021 begins, ophthalmologists are facing the possibility of deep Medicare cuts. Advocating for fair physician reimbursement is a top priority this year to ensure quality care for patients, Dr. Fountain said.
Dr. Fountain has served the ophthalmic community in several ways over the last 25 years, including as Academy secretary for Member Services and at-large member of the Board of Trustees. She also is a past president of the American Society of Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the Illinois Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons. She was awarded the Academy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Orkan Stasior Leadership Award.
Dr. Fountain earned her medical degree from Harvard and completed her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Wilmer Eye Institute. She then completed specialty training in plastic and reconstructive surgery at University of Southern California’s Doheny Eye Institute.
Peter J. McDonnell, chief medical editor of Ophthalmology Times®, and director of the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, lauded Dr. Coleman and Dr. Fountain.
“We at Wilmer are proud of both of these individuals, who first met while training at our institute (Anne was a fellow in glaucoma while Tamara was a resident), and delighted that for the first time in the history of the AAO a woman outgoing president is being succeeded by another woman president and that both are former Wilmer trainees,” he said.
Dr. McDonnell noted that as a resident, Dr. Fountain’s faculty quickly recognized not only her clinical excellence but also her emotional intelligence as demonstrated by her caring for her patients and her positive relationships with her physician colleagues.
“Throughout her career, when Tamara said she would do something she always delivered; she does what she says she will do and she does it well,” he noted. “Following her training Tamara proved herself a person who was inquisitive and eager to take on new challenges, who was always looking to make things better, and was always willing to volunteer for assignments such as Academy committees and board duties for the benefit of her profession.”
In addition to her outstanding interpersonal skills. Dr. McDonnell said Dr. Fountain is clearly a “paragon of effective time management,” as she has been remarkably adept at juggling the demands of a busy oculoplastics practice, her family and her daunting commitments to professional organizations.
“We are fortunate that during this time of remarkable challenges our profession benefits from the wise leadership of colleagues like Tamara Fountain,” he said. “I am also grateful that at a time when half of the residents training in our ophthalmology departments are women that we have such remarkable role models leading our Academy.”
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In addition to the Data Controller, the internal staff of Orobica (administrative, commercial, legal staff and system administrators) authorised to process the data pursuant to Art. 29 of the Regulation, in accordance with their respective profiles of competence and for the purposes indicated above (par. 3) may also have access to the data.
The collected data may also be communicated to external parties (e.g. third-party technical service providers, hosting providers, IT companies) appointed as data processors pursuant to Art. 28 of the Regulation, who work on behalf of Orobica and in accordance with its instructions, but exclusively for activities strictly connected to the purposes indicated above (e.g. to ensure the operation of the Internet service, the management of the computer and telematics system).
Dissemination of data
Personal data collected for the indicated purposes will not be disseminated.
The navigation data (par. 2, lit. a) will be stored, in accordance with the provisions of current legislation on the subject, for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which such data are processed. The Data Controller will process the data provided voluntarily by the user (par. 2, lit. b) for the time strictly necessary to provide the service requested and in any case for no longer than one year.
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The navigation data collected as part of this processing (par. 2, lit. a) are mandatory because they are strictly functional to the management of the website.
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Place of data storage
The personal data will be stored at the headquarters of the Data Controller and in any case within the European Union.
The user subject to whom the personal data refer has the right to request and obtain, at any time, from the Data Controller, access (Art. 15 of the Regulation), rectification (Art. 16 of the Regulation) and erasure (right to be forgotten) (Art. 17 of the Regulation) of his/her personal data. The visitor also has the right to obtain the restriction of personal data processing (Art. 18 of the Regulation) as well as the right to data portability (Art. 20 of the Regulation), and the right to object, on legitimate grounds, to their processing (Art. 21 of the Regulation). In any case, the user has the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority, as provided for in Art. 77 of the Regulation, or to take legal action under Art. 79 of the Regulation if he/she considers that his or her rights have been infringed as a result of the processing of his or her personal data in non-compliance with the provisions of the Regulation.
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The user may at any time exercise his/her rights as identified above by sending an email to privacy@orobicaplastgom.it, a fax to 035/4260938 or a registered letter with notification of receipt to Orobica PLAST-GOM S.r.l. a socio unico, Via P. Mascagni, no. 5, Credaro (BG) – 24060.
Orobica reserves the right to amend this Privacy Policy. The date indicated at the beginning of this Privacy Policy indicates that of the last update. In the event of material changes, notice will be given through the Website or otherwise in order to give the user the chance to review the amendments before they become effective.
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Stop playing the same old licks.
In this comprehensive college-level Master Class, you'll learn how to map out your fretboard and express yourself on the guitar in any key using the CAGED system.
for intermediate players
Gain fretboard freedom
Get to know your fretboard on a deeper level
Learn practical music theory that won't put you to sleep
Fluidly navigate your fretboard and express yourself on the guitar using a triadic approach to the CAGED system.
Say goodbye to boring scale shapes
Join Dr. Molly Miller as she walks you through her proven method to break out of the box. If you find yourself always playing the same licks or feel uncomfortable soloing outside of familiar pentatonic boxes, this class is definitely for you.
Part I. How to See the Fretboard in Numbers
First, Molly will walk you through how to map out your fretboard using a combination of the CAGED and numbers systems.
Part II. Triads: The Building Blocks of Everything
Buiding on Part I, these next six lessons will teach you how to play major and minor triads across all string sets.
Part III. Making Music With Triads
Here, you’ll start to put things into a musical context by learning how to combine triads to play common chord progressions.
Part IV. Making Music and Melodies
Next, you’ll learn how to play guitar parts for five chord progressions using triadic shapes across multiple string sets.
Finally, you'll wrap up the class by learning three original tunes by Molly that incorporate everything you've learned.
Learn what makes Molly Miller's Master Class so popular
This class helped in providing a structured framework for understanding the fretboard with an easy process for fretboard memorization. Since I had previously spent time understanding the energy of the numbers system, it was of a lot more help than if it were explained using note names.
This class does 2 things. One, it makes you more aware of all the notes on the fretboard up and down the neck, and, two, you can use those chord shapes to play lead or melody against the chords. I have found I am playing more to the chord now maybe as much or more than to any scale pattern.
Tal H.
This class is unique because it doesn't have the classroom feel – much like the whole site, it feels more approachable. There are countless sites teaching Beatles and Metallica, but here, I'm learning about the teacher's personal songs, and that's cool.
This class is best suited for intermediate guitarists. The curriculum was crafted by our team of PhD-level and pro touring musicians to give you the best possible pathway for becoming a better guitarist.
To kick off the class, you'll start by breaking up the fretboard into zones with the CAGED system. Then, you'll learn how to use the numbers system in combination with CAGED shapes.
The CAGED system is a method of mapping out your fretboard. Molly will introduce you to the system and cover why it's important to learn it, how to think about it, and how to learn it.
Then, say hi to your new best pal, the Circle of 5ths! It might sound complex, but the Circle of 5ths is a simple and useful concept. It primarily shows the relationship between the 12 notes of the chromatic scale and their corresponding key signatures.
Next, Molly expands the lessons with thinking in numbers rather than note names - another key to unlocking your fretboard. After applying the numbers system to CAGED shapes, she treats you to a short interlude that shares insight on developing effective practice habits.
This section builds on the CAGED and numbers systems from Part I. It consists of six lessons that will teach you how to play major and minor triads across all string sets. Triads are applicable to every genre of music and learning them is a great pathway to breaking out of the box. Molly breaks down string sets, basic triads, inversions, and more.
Guitarists tend to play in block chords that don’t always connect. Therefore, this section is all about voice leading - your musical glue. It's an essential skill for guitarists to master that's widely used by pianists and orchestrators.
To help you out, Molly covers four string set applications that explain how to play a common chord progression using major triads, minor triads, and voice leading.
With more "real world" examples, this section builds on everything we've covered so far by adding melodies to chord progressions. You'll learn how to play guitar parts for five chord progressions using triadic shapes across multiple string sets.
For each progression, Molly plays simple and complex versions, then explains key concepts that you can use to write guitar parts. Even for simple progressions, Molly demonstrates how there are diverse ways to play the same chords.
There are endless opportunities as to how you can use triads and your newfound knowledge of the fretboard. The great thing about this approach is that it works for both chordal and lead playing in any genre.
Finally, Molly wraps up with some ideas to explore now that you've learned her proven methods.
Wrap up everything you've learned in the class with three original songs (called SongSquads) by Molly.
For each song, there's interactive TAB and a breakdown lesson video.
Dr. Molly Miller graduated with a Doctorate in Guitar Performance from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and currently leads the guitar department at Los Angeles College of Music.
As a professional guitarist, Molly's resume is staggering. She has performed, toured, and recorded with the likes of Jason Mraz, Black Eyed Peas, Donna Missal, Morgxn, and Kenton Chen. She has also performed at legendary venues like the Hollywood Bowl, Royal Albert Hall, Coachella, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and Walt Disney Concert Hall.
She also plays in the house band on The Bachelor’s newest ABC primetime show, Listen To Your Heart. When she isn’t on tour, running a collegiate guitar department, or creating in the studio, she fronts her own band, Molly Miller Trio, which has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air.
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Holt has knack of scoring on debut
Published: 10:31 AM August 7, 2009 Updated: 10:54 PM October 10, 2020
David Cuffley Striker Grant Holt will be out to demonstrate his happy knack of scoring debut goals when Norwich City kick off their League One campaign tomorrow. The 28-year-old Holt looks certain to start his new club's sell-out first match of the season against Colchester United at Carrow Road (3pm).
Striker Grant Holt will be out to demonstrate his happy knack of scoring debut goals when Norwich City kick off their League One campaign tomorrow.
The 28-year-old Holt looks certain to start his new club's sell-out first match of the season against Colchester United at Carrow Road (3pm).
And after finding the net on his first appearance for former clubs Barrow, Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest and Shrewsbury, the Canaries' summer capture will make manager Bryan Gunn's day if he repeats the feat in front of an expectant full house.
“I'll be delighted if he does that,” said Gunn, who believes Holt is capable of scoring at least 20 goals this season. “Grant has been brought into the club to bring the goals back. Over the years, Norwich have usually had a main striker who would deliver 20 goals and we've not had that for a couple of seasons now. I feel that we've got someone who's capable of doing that.
“If that statistic carries on it will give us a good chance of getting something from the game and it would be the first step towards the number of goals we expect him to get during the season.”
Holt said today: “I'm here to score goals but it's not all about me, it's about the team. If the team win and I'm performing well, as long as someone else goes and scores goals, I don't really mind.
“I hope I can keep it going. It seems to be that way and it's always nice to break your duck early on, and people don't talk about it. It gets longer and longer if you haven't scored. But if the team win tomorrow there will be no one happier than me.”
Gunn has made no fewer than 12 close season signings, six of whom appear likely to be in tomorrow's starting eleven, but he admitted that Holt was one of the prize recruits.
“We're building the squad up in different ways, but we were always conscious that we needed a goalscorer in. But alongside Grant, with Chris Martin, Jamie Cureton, Goran Maric and Cody McDonald, we have a very competitive striking department.
“The men in form will keep the jerseys and I'm sure the other three will be as keen to impress in training, in reserve matches or in Cup matches when given an opportunity.”
Gunn has already decided his line-up for tomorrow, City's first match outside the top two divisions since 1960.
He said: “We've been working away in the last few days and everyone's played in the positions they'll be taking on the field of play on Saturday.
“Everyone has put in excellent performances throughout the pre-season games and the team is picked on merit for all the performances so far. I think there are a couple who are very unlucky who are not in the starting line-up and that proves we have good competition for places.
“I hope the people in the starting line-up will realise that and that will keep them on their toes and keep their level of play at the standard we expect. That will keep them in the team.”
Key decisions will include who partners Gary Doherty in central defence, with vice-captain Michael Nelson, Danish signing Jens Berthel Askou and Michael Spillane all getting an opportunity during the pre-season programme - when City's senior side recorded six wins and a draw in seven matches - and who plays in central midfield, where new recruits Matthew Gill, Owain Tudur Jones and Stephen Hughes may be competing for two places.
City confirmed today that international clearance had come through for both Askou and Maric to play, if selected.
Gunn's senior players have steered clear of injury, but 19-year-old midfielder Damon Lathrope is out for several weeks with his right arm in plaster after breaking it in last week's friendly at Thetford.
Colchester have two absentees in striker Steven Gillespie (hamstring injury) and defender Paul Reid (knee).
Former City loan striker Kevin Lisbie, on a season-long loan from Ipswich, will start in attack alongside Clive Platt, who was linked with the Canaries during the summer.
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City in holding pattern thanks to the queue for treatment
Robin Sainty
Michael McGovern and Grant Hanley chatting on the bench - McGovern will face Aston Villa, but will Hanley? Picture: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd - Credit: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd
Short of an outbreak of bubonic plague at Colney it’s difficult to see how much worse things could get for Daniel Farke and his injury-ravaged squad.
With both the first and second choice goalkeepers sidelined within a week and Jamal Lewis injuring his elbow, it would seem that sympathy rather than criticism should be the order of the day.
Farke has constantly been forced to make changes to his defensive unit, and the fact that Ralf Fährmann limped off early at Crystal Palace on meant that City were severely limited in terms of playing out from the back because Michael McGovern is clearly uncomfortable with the ball at his feet - yet whenever the ball is launched long it is likely to come straight back given the relative lack of height in the side.
Whether Fährmann should have started is a moot point given how long he lasted, but it is easy to see why the City management team would have wanted to take the chance.
Nonetheless, it is impossible to ignore the fact that some problems were self-inflicted. The decision to once again keep Ibrahim Amadou at centre back when a specialist was available had two negative impacts, the first of them being his rash challenge on James McArthur to gift a penalty to the home side.
However, the second and more important one was the fact that his presence in the back four denied City his physical presence in midfield where once again the Canaries were outpowered for long periods, with Todd Cantwell looking a pale shadow of his early-season self and Moritz Leitner racking up the pass completions whilst rarely troubling the Palace defence.
Perhaps if City had scored during their 20-minute period of relative dominance before half-time it could have been a different story, but another slow start in the second half allowed Palace to regain control.
At the moment, City are falling between two stools away from home. They seem unable to replicate the slick passing moves that we have come to expect at Carrow Road, but are also ill-equipped to cope with the higher quality of counter-attacking that they are experiencing in the Premier League, particularly when the opponents are physically powerful.
What is really worrying is that in four away games their only goal is the one in the season opener at Liverpool. If City don't function as an attacking, goal scoring side they don't function at all.
On the surface that's a damning statement, but it has to seen in the context of an injury list as bad as I've ever seen in five decades of supporting City, and also set against the fact that the team's home form has been extremely good.
Whilst I don't think that it's realistic to expect enough points to be won at home to ensure survival, I strongly believe that City's away form will improve as more players return from injury, but realistically we are currently in something of a holding pattern at a time when we all dreamt of taking the top division by storm.
It's frustrating, without a doubt, but it certainly isn't terminal, despite some of the doom-mongering after the defeat at Palace. The league table is yet to become particularly stretched and to be worrying about relegation with 93 points left to play for is premature to say the least.
However, the injury crisis is severely restricting Farke's options, with the reintroduction of Grant Hanley and a first start for Patrick Roberts the only apparent choices available for this weekend.
I suspect that we could well be in for a high-scoring game as both teams are at their best when going on the attack. Once again the crowd will be a huge factor and it's absolutely vital that we see and hear the same sort of raucous support that was such a feature of the Manchester City game.
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Mary Ann Hood
Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Director, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and Law Enforcement
Mary Ann Hood oversees the Bank’s Human Resources function and Law Enforcement and is a member of the Bank’s Management and Policy Committee. In 2011, she was named director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion for the Philadelphia Reserve Bank, with the primary responsibility for workforce and supplier diversity for the Bank. She has been with the Federal Reserve System since 1982 when she started working in bank operations for the New Orleans Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. She has also worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Memphis Branch. She joined the Philadelphia Fed in Retail Payments in 1990 and assumed responsibility for Human Resources and EEO in 2004.
She is a member of the Federal Reserve System’s Diversity Council. She cochairs the Philadelphia Fed’s volunteerism initiative, PhillyFedCARES, and was appointed to the Commonwealth’s Early Learning Investment Commission in 2010.
Hood has a master’s degree in human resource development from Villanova University and a bachelor's degree from Hood College. She is certified as a senior professional in human resources.
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America Needs to Reassert its Moral Leadership in the World
In “Restoring America’s Leadership of the Free World”, an opinion piece published months before the 2017 US presidential elections, political consultant Ari Harow emphasizes the importance of America’s role in leading the Western world in the war against radical Islam and terrorism. Harow urges the next president to put words into action, rather than allowing
A massive shift in demographics is shaping the future of the American electorate, but the Republican candidates seem to be unaware of the implications. This is the case put forward by Stanley Greenberg in his article, “I’ve Seen America’s Future and it’s not Republican.” Greenberg notes how disconnected the candidates seem to be from the core of voter attitudes. He observes that the America of today is not like it was, especially with the cultural influence of millennials and an enormous influx of foreign-born residents. Greenberg says that the core electorate has become secular and more racially and culturally blended, forming a new political identity, the beginnings of which could already be seen as early as 2004. Greenberg suggests that Republicans may be able to hold on to a few conservative sectors in the country, but it will not be enough to elect a Republican president.
“I’ve Seen America’s Future and it’s not Republican” ran in the Guardian – Read the full article
Stanley Greenberg is a well-known political strategist, pollster and researcher. He is the author of America Ascendant: A Revolutionary Nation’s Path to Addressing Its Deepest Problems and Leading the 21st Century.
In “Trump’s Unpopular Budget,” Mark Mellman poses an important question—for whom is Trump’s budget proposal? Mellman notes that usually budget policies are supposed to be a reflection of the interests of the people, or at least close to it.
Ari Harow – In “The Right Choice for a Safer Future”, published in the Jerusalem Post, November 2012, Ari Harow provides a compelling analysis of the complex elements involved in Operation Pillar of Defense, which had taken place a few weeks earlier. Acknowledging the many points of view, criticisms and second-guessing by members of the political and
Stanley B. Greenberg –
In the New York Times article, “Was Barack Obama Bad for Democrats” political strategist Stanley Greenberg brings proof that the old adage—it’s the economy stupid—really does trump all. Greenberg suggests that in spite of rescuing a failing economy, downsizing the country’s military presence abroad, passing the Affordable Care Act and committing the
In “First Things First?” Mark Mellman observes that thus far, all of President Trump’s initiatives to fulfill campaign promises have been low-level priorities for the majority of the American people. For instance, Mellman says that according to Gallup polling, only 34 percent of Americans feel that a hiring freeze on federal employees is important,
Ari Harow –
In an article published recently in the Algemeiner, Ari Harow and Richard Kemp lay out a complex map of global challenges waiting for the new American President.
Continue reading → Restoring America’s Leadership in the World
Personality vs. Circumstances
Political strategist Mark Mellman helps us understand two competing ways to predict election outcomes, and the peril of favoring one over the other. In his article, “The candidate or the circumstances,” Mellman notes that based on polls and personality, Hillary Clinton was predicted to win the presidential race. But, according to Mellman there is more at play than character. He suggests that circumstances are a critical factor that has the power to sway an outcome.
Continue reading → Personality vs. Circumstances
Why Did Pollsters Like Me Fail to Predict Trump’s Victory?
How Did We Not See It Coming?
Political strategist and pollster Stanley Greenberg sets out to answer the big question: how did the pollsters get it wrong? According to the polls, Hillary Clinton was supposed to win. In his article “Why did pollsters like me fail to predict Trump’s victory?” which originally appeared in the Guardian, Greenberg lays out all the hard evidence that rightly pointed to a Clinton victory. She was ahead in the polls, especially after the convention in which she joined voices with Sanders and Warren to declare a mission to make the economy work for
Continue reading → Why Did Pollsters Like Me Fail to Predict Trump’s Victory?
Opening Western Borders to Refugees – Humanitarian Act or Global Risk?
The population shift across most of Europe is staggering – Germany alone is preparing to absorb 800,000 refugees, and other European countries are following in its footsteps, but not all of Europe has been so quick to roll out the welcome mat. Slovakia and Hungary, for example, have refused to accept the EU quota for migrant absorption based on security threats that may arise from accepting thousands of unvetted Muslim refugees.
Continue reading → Are Islamic Terrorists Taking Advantage of the Refugee Crisis?
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SHARING A HOUSE WITH NEVER ENDING MAN 15 YEARS STUDIO GHIBLI
(W) Steve Alpert
Steve Alpert, a Japanese-speaking American, was the "resident foreigner" in the offices of Studio Ghibli and its parent Tokuma Shoten and played a central role when Miyazaki's films were starting to take off in international markets. His one-of-a-kind portraits of Miyazaki and long-time producer Toshio Suzuki, and of sly, gruff, and brilliant businessman Yasuyoshi Tokuma, capture the hard work and artistry that have made Ghibli films synonymous with cinematic excellence. And as the lone gaijin in a demanding company run by some of the most famous and influential people in modern Japan, Steve Alpert tackles his own challenges of language and culture. No one else could have written this book.
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Entrepreneur wins Cardiff Business Club approval
Young entrepreneur Sarah McHarg has received a special award and bursary from Cardiff Business Club for her business, Massages for Pirates. Sarah established the business with support from our Enterprise programme in 2017.
After losing her job and suffering a series of illnesses, Sarah, 28, wanted to explore self-employment but didn’t know where to start. The Enterprise programme gave her the confidence, guidance and support she needed to make it on her own. She says,
I came to The Prince's Trust in search of some hope and inspiration. I’d had a few bad years and was unsure where my life was going. The Trust helped me to realise my dream, and I’m loving it.
Sarah’s business, Massages for Pirates, provides a holistic therapy service inspired by buccaneers and the seven seas. Alongside traditional benefits of physical therapy, Sarah promises ‘banterous conversation’ and treatment at a reasonable cost, hoping to dispel the myth that therapy is unaffordable for the majority.
To be nominated for the award, the business was required to demonstrate sustainability and have an element of community or social benefit. Sarah adds,
Massages for Pirates is designed to make therapy accessible to people on a low budget. I’ve also volunteered at a homeless centre, providing treatment for those who have no budget at all. It’s so important to support other people these days, and I hope my enterprise can play its part.
We are increasing our support for young people in Wales and encouraging collaboration across different sectors to ensure young people are at the heart of economic growth. Phil Jones, Director, Prince's Trust Cymru, says,
It’s crucial we nurture the aspirations of young people and give them the backing they need to achieve success. Congratulations to Sarah who has demonstrated what can be achieved with the right support.
Keep up to date with our work in Wales on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
#GrowingWales
*photograph by Richard Bosworth
Tomorrow's Store
Start shopping online!
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NYU Launches the World's First Alternative Data Course Following the Publication of a Seminal White Paper by Two of Its Professors
NEW YORK, Oct. 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The M.S. in Mathematics in Finance program at the Courant Institute, New York University, directed by Professor Petter Kolm, is launching a new masters-level course on finance alternative data. It will prepare students for technical roles in the growing alternative data industry across the asset management ecosystem. The new class represents the first time an accredited institution offers a full university course on alternative data. The course will be available to students in the Courant Master of Science Program in Mathematics in Finance enrolled in the Fall 2020 semester and is to be taught by Gene Ekster throughout the second half of the Fall 2020 semester.
In conjunction with the new class, Professors Petter Kolm and Gene Ekster have published a new white paper (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3715828) on alternative data. Novel findings in the paper describe the relationship between the alternative data ecosystem, investment alpha potential, and the degree to which data is structured. The authors argue that the very fabric of alternative data, which is often unstructured, creates the many varieties of alpha opportunities unique to the alternative data ecosystem. Specifically, the paper associates a lack of structure with high data dimensionality, which in turn creates dynamic insights into the investment decision-making process. Their article identifies and addresses technical challenges, including entity recognition and data missingness, details two dataset valuation strategies, and demonstrates several useful analytical techniques on a real-world dataset.
Dr. Petter Kolm is a Professor and the Director of the M.S. in Mathematics in Finance program at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. Prior to NYU, Dr. Kolm worked in the Quantitative Strategies Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He co-authored the books Financial Modeling of the Equity Market: From CAPM to Cointegration (Wiley, 2006), Trends in Quantitative Finance (CFA Research Institute, 2006), Robust Portfolio Management and Optimization (Wiley, 2007), and Quantitative Equity Investing: Techniques and Strategies (Wiley, 2010). He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University, an M.Phil. in applied mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology, and an M.S. in mathematics from ETH Zurich. Dr. Kolm is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Portfolio Analysis and Management (IJPAM), Journal of Investment Strategies (JoIS), Journal of Portfolio Management (JPM), and Journal of Financial Data Science (JFDS).
Gene Ekster is an adjunct professor at NYU, where he teaches a course on alternative-data in finance. He is also the CEO of AltDG, an alternative data software company. Previously, he managed the alternative data team at Point72 Asset Management and worked in alternative-data roles at Balyasny Asset Management, Lone Pine, 1010 Data, and Majestic Research. Gene is a board member of IDSO (a compliance organization), Eagle Alpha, Ottoquant, and Super Signal Capital. He holds a degree in Artificial Intelligence from U.C. Berkeley, an MBA from Cornell University, and is a CFA charter holder.
Gene Ekster
SOURCE New York University
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Södra announces further expansion of Värö
Photo: Södra
Södra is planning a new investment for its state-of-the-art pulp mill in Värö which will allow the mill to increase capacity yet further, in steps toward 850,000 tpy.
“The investment is part of Södra’s new Group strategy and means that we can continue to follow our chosen path and grow together with our customers. Increasing production will strengthen our competitiveness and our position in the global market as a long-term and secure partner,” said Peter Karlsson, Interim President and CEO at Södra.
In 2016, Värö was completely rebuilt to become one of the world’s most modern and largest softwood pulp mills with a capacity of 700,000 tpy but it has the potential for 850,000 tpy.
“It was soon apparent that the new line had even greater potential than we had anticipated. We now see a possibility to further increase production in a cost-efficient way by the end of 2022. This is a major first step toward the 850,000 tpy that is within the framework of the existing environmental permit,” said Marcus Åsgärde, Mill Manager for Södra Cell Värö.
A secure fibre base for the additional capacity is guaranteed as Södra will source the wood needed from the forest estates of its 53,000 members. The project is scheduled to start up in April 2022 and will ramp up until the end of the same year.
“Our control of the value chain, from seedling to value-added products and services, makes Södra a unique business partner. We invest in growing our industrial operations, but only in parallel with ambitious sustainability targets to increase the growth of our members’ forest estates. This investment also facilitates future investments in optimizing pulp quality – that’s important because we know our customers’ expectations will only increase in the future,” said Magnus Björkman, Business Area President for Södra Cell.
“We are a leading player in a global market and Värö is ideally placed to supply nearby European markets as well as the rest of the world”, added Henrik Wettergren, Vice President Södra Cell International.
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Home » Headlines » World » Main suspects for Brussels and Paris attacks now in custody
Main suspects for Brussels and Paris attacks now in custody
By Daniel Contreras / Saturday, 09 Apr 2016 09:09PM
Brussels – As the recently arrested men, Mohamed Abrini and Osama Krayem were charged for their role in the terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris, the main suspects in the events are dead or officially in custody.
However, Prime Minister Charles Michel assured that even though they are positive about the recent developments in the investigation, he warned that further threats to Europe are still alive. Authorities know they have to stay alert, he said in a news conference.
Composite image of Mohamed Abrini in a file photo taken on November 24, 2015, by Belgian federal police shows the Paris attacks suspect, left. Mohamed Abrini, one of the Paris attacks suspects, who was arrested on April 8, has been charged with “terrorist murders”, prosecutors announced on April 9, 2016. At right a screen grab provided by Belgian Federal Police shows a CCTV grab of a suspect in the Zaventem airport attack in Brussels, Belgium, 22 March 2016.
With Abrini’s confession, where he confirmed that he was in fact “the man in the hat” shown in the Brussels airport’s security camera footage with two suicide bombers, the two latest terrorist events in Europe were officially linked.
Abrini allegedly had a role in the November attacks. His car, a Renault Clio, was used in the Paris events to drive some of the suspects to the Stade de France, which later detonated bombs near the area, as reported by Enfast.
Family members assured the 31-year-old was in Brussels the night of the Paris attacks, even though he was later spotted wandering into the subway an allegedly contacted one person in the city.
The Belgian-Moroccan man was arrested with Osama Krayen, who is also under investigations for his role on both of the terrorist events, but has not been so publicly well-known as Abrini.
Prosecutors added that they had confirmed that the second fugitive in Brussels seized separately on Friday was indeed the man seen with a third suicide bomber on March 22, who struck shortly afterward on the city’s metro, as reported by Reuters
Both of the recently arrested suspects had a connection with the prime surviving Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam, also held in custody. Krayem is thought to have come to Europe through the Greek island of Leros, among hundreds of refugees from the war zones nations.
Authorities under pressure
Belgian authorities have been under a lot of pressure, both local and international after it was determined that Paris attacks were planned in the country by local men, known by the police and possible the recipients of orders and funds from Syria.
The arrests came a few days after the police released new images and details about the man in the hat. The information revealed that the man, who was confirmed to be Abrini, was caught on camera leaving the airport in Zaventem and then heading west into the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, about two hours after the bombings.
A promising insight on Planet Nine
This year’s influenza vaccine is the most effective yet
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Seattle Police seek public's help in solving murder of father of three with a baby on the way
By David Rose
Father of three with one on the way killed in Seattle
Police are trying to find the person who shot and killed Chris Dailey near Woodland Park.
SEATTLE - Who shot and killed Chris Dailey near Woodland Park? That's what his friends, family and Seattle Police homicide detectives want to know.
A large group of loved ones gathered in the rain on Saturday along Aurora Avenue N. for a candlelight vigil.
"Everybody that knew Chris loved him. He was very generous and had the biggest heart," said Maria Stevenson, who has a young child with him. "My daughter is going to grow up wanting to know who her dad is and she’s never going to get that opportunity to know her dad or to call him or tell him she loves him or she needs him."
The 38-year-old father of three with a baby on the way was found shot to death early Wednesday morning, Dec. 30th, in the 5000 block of Aurora Avenue North.
A passing motorist called 911 around 2:30 a.m. after seeing his body in the roadway. His friends say he had been shot multiple times in the back and believe he was the victim of a robbery.
"I'm stuck. I can’t get out of my head about it. He’s been my best friend for like, 18 years," said Summer McGeorge, who organized the vigil. "If you didn’t have shoes, then Chris was taking his off. He was a very, very special guy."
She says that whoever killed Chris didn't know him.
"He just was such a bright light. He was so special that even if you didn’t like him, you still would never want bad on him. The person that killed him didn’t know him at all because they would have never killed him," said Summer.
Chris had been living in a tent for the last 6 months near where he was found murdered. He loved the freedom and the woods.
"We need justice for his kids. We need justice for his family, for his friends," said Summer.
"I just hope that whoever did this gets caught and has to face everybody that Chris loves in trial and is held accountable for what he did to him and his whole family who loved him," added Maria.
If you have any information that can help Seattle Police identify the suspect, please submit an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound for a $1,000 cash reward. You will remain anonymous. Call 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or text the information through the P3 Tips app that you can download to your cell phone for free.
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Visitor Experience at City Halls, the American Way
Hey everyone, it’s the 4th of July, so you know what that means!
It’s time to stand up and cheer for the good ol’ red-white-and-blue and all things American: fireworks, silly baseball or cowboy hats (your choice), roundhouse kicks, and BBQ.
But even if we add corn dogs, football and cut-off tees, the list still feels incomplete. So let’s talk about another very American activity — complaining about how Uncle Sam governs the institutions.
In today’s special Independence Day feature, we dive deep into American city halls and how they can stop people from losing their hair over bad service.
Independence is the Name of the Game
Since it’s the Independence Day, that means we get a great excuse to talk about — you guessed it — independence.
Customers, visitors, clients, guests — whatever you call them, people nowadays value the ability to not be dependent, even when it’s something as small as sign-in. Even troubleshooting is something visitors would gladly do on their own — 50% of customers consider it important to solve product or service issues themselves.
That’s what we call self-service, and it has both offline and online components. If you’ve got a website, 70% of customers expect you to have an online self-service solution.
City hall visitors are not immune to the self-service craze. The faster they adopt it, the better.
The permit center at the City of Manhattan Beach, California banks on exactly that — self-service.
With 4 million visitors annually, plus the number of local residents, streamlining the paperwork and queuing process is a must for the City of MB.
That’s why the visitors at the permit center have the ability to sign themselves in using an iPad. This is how it’d work if you were a constituent of the City of Manhattan beach: you go in, enter all the relevant details via the iPad, and then kick back and enjoy your time.
In a surprising move for city halls, which aren’t exactly known for being accommodating, the permit center at the City of MB also provides a bluetooth keyboard for visitors not accustomed to Apple products.
Speaking of Apple products, another one is Apple TV, used to display real-time queue information. Instead of following the usual “shout-so-that-they-come” routine, visitors can look up their name on the large screen and head to whichever desk is shown there.
Less bureaucracy, less paperwork — that’s the American way.
Stars and Stripes, and Long Lines
If there’s a word that describes government service to a tee, it’s BOOOOREDOM. Unenthusiastic citizen going through overly bureaucratic processes set up by employees who don’t care.
And lines. Oh boy, don’t think we’ve forgotten to mention the lines.
The biggest offenders, DMVs, can have wait times as long as 3 hours. We’re talking 3 hours spent in a suffocating, bored-out-of-your-skull cosy environments full of people feeling the same burning, pointless hatred as you do.
Exhausting queues is something that all government agencies suffer from, but only a handful of government agencies have managed to resolve.
The lines don’t have to be synonymous with city halls. And with government queue management software, they won’t.
Let’s not mince our words here: queue management at government offices is a tough business. Most agencies stick to what they know, to tried-and-true methods of management.
But “tried” doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with “true”.
One thing that’s been sorely lacking is the reliance on newer technologies. Yes, innovation can show itself even in the smallest and seemingly unimportant things — like queues. But are queues at government facilities that unimportant?
Sure, government doesn’t exactly care about experiences. But what about the results? The smoother the process, the more people can go through it — and fewer people complaining.
The population needs a race car, but the most agencies can offer them is a lice-ridden, lame mule. Just think about it: how many agencies have you seen still use the old pen-and-paper registration method.
Paper was the answer, but only way back when. What do you do with paper now? You recycle it — and recycle it into something better.
So, why go digital over printed-out sign-in sheets? Because, as the name implies, there’s less paperwork involved, and less confusion.
The digital method of registration doesn’t want for additional space, so if there is need to add more options to select from or write down a lengthy comment, there are no issues. Paper sheets, on the other hand, provide limited room.
People will find something to complain about — after all, that’s the United States of A for you — but they won’t be complaining about waiting.
Peace, Liberty and Great Experience for All
Look, there’s no way around it — if government agencies want people to get off their back, they need to show care not only for their visitors but employees as well. After all, “We the People” includes, among others, the men behind the curtain — the staff.
If government offices want to improve, there’s a lot to learn — particularly, from their retail counterparts.
Here’s the thing: employee engagement in the private sector is more than 17 points higher than engagement of federal employees. While the long-term trend is positive, the gap is still a big one.
And the best federal places to work are NASA, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the National Endowment for the Arts — not exactly your run-of-the-mill DMV or city hall.
(Not to mention Secret Service and Social Security Administration, where job satisfaction keeps falling.)
Now, if you’re in charge of one of these government agencies with unengaged employees, it may be prudent to look up for strategies to raise employee satisfaction. Or, you could do what the City of Alameda did.
Just like Manhattan Beach, the City of Alameda uses a queue management tool to manage the crowds: a customer walks in, enters their name into the iPad sign-in station, and selects a service.
A large TV screen is there for visitors to follow their queue status and where to go — again, same as with the City of Manhattan Beach.
But that’s obviously not why we’re focusing on Alameda now, as otherwise that’d be pointlessly padding our content through repeating the talking points.
(And we don’t pad anything, ever. Hand to heart.)
The reason the City of Alameda is such a great example to use is that don’t shy away from using stats, metrics and data to make experience great for everyone involved, including their employees. We’re talking about using performance reports for justifying staffing budgets, planning schedules and planning vacations.
What’s the performance data? It’s everything from the average wait time, total number of customers served, peak daily wait times, and individual statistics of each clerk.
The better you understand how a man works, the better you can help him work. While productivity isn’t a word that’s been historically associated with governments, there’s no reason it can’t be.
If there’s a takeaway in all of that, it’s that governments shouldn’t pretend to be know-it-alls, especially not when it comes to visitor experience.
If anything, they can take a few lessons from retail — and from existing city halls that have already achieved great service experience.
Visitor Experience, the American Way
City of Manhattan Beach Visitor Management
What Customer Journey Mapping Is and How to Create it
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Hooters is Ready to Disrupt the Fast-Casual Segment
The offshoot Hoots Wings expects to reach 100 units by 2023.
Web Exclusives | December 23, 2020 | Ben Coley
Hoots Wings
Hoots Wings opened three units during the pandemic.
As the restaurant industry lifted itself out of the recession in the early part of the 2010s, Hooters recognized a changing of the guard.
Fast casuals were emerging and on the brink of explosion. In the back of the house, the smaller footprint and limited overhead appealed to operators hoping to improve efficiency. In the front, consumers were drawn to the increased convenience through takeout and delivery—a trend Hooters noticed at its hundreds of stores.
In recent years, full-service concepts have implemented off-premises—some even before the pandemic—to compete with an industry movement that couldn’t be ignored any longer. But Hooters was always listening. And what better way is there to compete with fast casuals than to create one? Hooters answered that question with Hoots Wings, established in Chicago four years ago.
“Why not do a fast-casual version of ourselves and just take our best-selling, most popular items, and make that the menu,” says Sal Melilli, CEO of Hooters of America. “And really that became the foundation of what was the early thinking behind what became Hoots Wings.”
The concept has since grown to seven locations across Illinois, Georgia, and Florida. Melilli says when everything was locked down in the early weeks of the pandemic, sales were tight. But Hoots Wings responded quickly because of its fast-casual model that emphasized off-premises. Currently, about 80 percent of sales come outside the four walls.
The young brand performed so well that it opened three units during the pandemic. The growth isn’t done either. Hoots Wings recently announced its first franchise opportunity, with plans to open 17 stores in 2021, 35 in 2022, and 50 in 2023. The emerging chain is targeting markets in the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast.
“We're highly confident that we will come out of this,” Melilli says. “We're also highly confident that good operators are making bets and investments today that are going to be successful in the future. And a lot of multi-unit operators that are already very successful that have great experience, that are well-capitalized, this becomes a natural add-on to put into their portfolio. Maybe they're a pizza operator. Maybe they’re a burger operator. Maybe they’re a Mexican operator. Putting a chicken wing concept in there is a nice complement to their portfolio.”
Hoots Wings spent the past few years preparing for this stage by perfecting its business model. Stores use a small amount of high-quality ingredients to manage inventory, and kitchens use just two pieces of primary cooking equipment to ease production. Hoots Wings is also partnered with third-party delivery platforms like Uber Eats and Grubhub, and units include a designated area for takeout orders to reduce friction.
The simplicity of operations becomes even more impressive considering the menu diversity.
Hoots Wings features chicken chips, boneless wings, breaded wings, naked wings, smoked wings, roasted wings, sandwiches, and fried shrimp. The restaurant boasts more than a dozen sauces and rubs, allowing for more than 10,000 different combinations.
The relationship between Hoots Wings and Hooters is very much like a younger brother/older brother dynamic.
“I relate back to our experience. Because we've been in this sector and specifically wings for so long, we’re able to bring all that experience forward,” Melilli says. “We have two simple platforms. A fryer or a combi oven. And yet they can generate and make all those different products and all those different combinations. So again, it's a very compelling differential between what everybody else is doing and what we've managed to do by relying on that experience.”
To Melilli’s point, Hooters has been in the wings game since 1983 and has grown to more than 400 stores across the country. In that time, the brand has carved a space for itself in the national consciousness, which has become key as of late given the rise of wing concepts, both brick and mortar and virtually.
In 2019, Americans ate nearly one billion servings of wings, according to the NPD Group. The growth is especially present in the sit-down segment because of its portability. Chili’s, Lazy Dog, Smokey Bones, and Chuck E. Cheese have each launched their own spin on wings in the past year. Black Box Intelligence reported that for full-service restaurants, wings received the largest number of positive guest mentions, behind only steak.
Despite a growing number of players, Melilli isn’t worried about the message of Hoots Wings—or Hooters, for that matter—getting drowned out by the noise.
“I think a good piece of it is the wing category, but the much larger piece of it is the credibility in our experience in the space,” says Melilli, pointing to what’s made Hoots Wings successful during COVID. “There's a lot of people that are cooking chicken wings or dropping chicken in a fryer, but no one has the variety that we have. So most people have just plain wings or naked wings. We have breaded, we have smoked, we have roasted, with all the different combinations of sauces and rubs that we've been doing for decades. It's sort of infinite options. On top of that, we have a phenomenal chicken sandwich that you can also customize and have any way you want with any of the sauces, and then a really unique, spectacular buffalo shrimp product.”
The relationship between Hoots Wings and Hooters is very much like a younger brother/older brother dynamic, the CEO explains. Melilli says that in order for Hoots Wings to become a 100-unit chain in the next three years, the restaurant not only has to rely on experienced franchisees, but also the strength of the Hooters brand. He laments the way COVID has decimated the industry, but the nature of the crisis has led to a boosted profile for Hoots Wings.
Another way to put it is, the little brother is about to have a major growth spurt.
“We've been able to gain a lot of trial, and then having the brand recognition and the credibility with our experience for the wings, helps drive that,” Melilli says. “We’re optimistic that once consumers try the product, the hardest problem that a consumer is going to have is deciding what they want with all the infinite choices that we have in terms of the ability to mix and match. So many wing combinations with so many sauces—that will give them multiple opportunities to keep coming back until they can find their favorite.”
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"I've done yoga, and it's fun, but I'm not the kind of person that can wake up and do it every morning. It's like, I have to be in the mood."
Lily-Rose Melody Depp (born May 27, 1999) is a French-American actress and model, born to parents Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis. Depp began her acting...
Name Lily-Rose Depp
"Art is such a personal experience, I really try to make my own thing."
"When I was a baby, I wore my mom's Chanel pumps - to be able to say that I work with Karl Lagerfeld is a dream come true."
"I wanted to be a singer, but once I started acting, I felt so comfortable. Now, all I want to do is act."
"The only movies I want to do are the ones I'm passionate about. I care about school, and I'm still a kid. I want to live like that while I can."
"It is delicate being my age and trying to do all the regular teenager stuff, and then having that in the spotlight."
"I can act every single day because I love it; it's just so liberating. It might be rare, but there are certain moments when you really don't feel like yourself. When you are in the character so fully, it's the best feeling ever. I so love it. Even if those moments come just once a day or every other day, they are just worth it."
"I first started using social media when I was 12 or something - not publicly; I had private accounts."
"I'm very specific about what I put out on social media about myself. But that's also why I like social media: because it feels like the only thing that I have to control my own image."
"I would be much less stressed out without social media. I am constantly afraid of getting hacked. It's like being afraid of stepping on glass."
"I grew up with the media circus. My whole life. My parents were very calm about the photographers, the fans, and all that. But I understood right away that I hadn't done anything to deserve that attention. No matter what happens, it will be there. I didn't choose it. You just can't take that too seriously. You need to live your life. And stay calm."
"I'm a Gemini, very spontaneous."
"I have a good time when I'm acting, and bottom line, I just want to enjoy myself and be a happy person, and acting makes me happy. I enjoy it, and it's a good way to escape yourself. You just become somebody else for a little bit, and it's a lot of fun."
"Chanel has always been this big thing for me - there are baby pictures of me wearing my mom's Chanel pumps."
"My mom gave me a Chanel dress when I was younger. I felt special. I think anybody feels special in Chanel."
"For as long as I can remember, I've just loved Chanel."
"If you're shooting a really serious, dramatic scene, personally I wouldn't want to look at the camera."
"I just shot my first dramatic movie in France, and for those dramatic scenes that I shot, I would not want to look at those. There's a certain mindset you have to put yourself into for those scenes, and looking at the monitor would just take you out of it."
"It might be rare, but there are certain moments when you really don't feel like yourself. When you are in the character so fully, it's the best feeling ever. I so love it. Even if those moments come just once a day or every other day, they are just worth it."
"My parents were very calm about the photographers, the fans, and all that. But I understood right away that I hadn't done anything to deserve that attention. No matter what happens, it will be there. I didn't choose it. You just can't take that too seriously. You need to live your life. And stay calm."
"I am a little into yoga."
"Being able to feel free and comfortable in your character's skin is so important."
"My parents weren't very strict. They've always trusted me to be independent and make my own decisions. There wasn't really anything to rebel against."
"I never like revealing too much about myself. Once you start giving people that look into your life, then they just want more and more."
"Just like food, you could think peanut butter is your favorite food for 5,000 years and then be like, 'I actually like burgers better', you know? I was just trying to say that kids and people in general don't have to label themselves and say, 'I'm straight' or 'I'm gay' or 'I'm whatever.'"
Daniela Bobadilla QuotesTiffani Thiessen QuotesJune Lockhart QuotesSusanna Thompson QuotesCarole Lombard QuotesDeidre Hall QuotesEmma Roberts QuotesKelly McGillis QuotesJessica Raine QuotesCandace Kita QuotesBipasha Basu QuotesLinda Lavin QuotesEartha Kitt QuotesAimee Teegarden Quotes
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Monochorionic Twin Pregnancy, Management (Green-top Guideline No. 51)
This guideline provides clinicians with up-to-date evidence-based information regarding the management of monochorionic twin pregnancy.
You can also access this guideline in PDF.
This is the second edition of this guideline, previously published under the same title in December 2008.
A monochorionic pregnancy is a multiple pregnancy, most commonly a twin pregnancy, in which babies are dependent on a single, shared placenta. Approximately 30% of twin pregnancies in the UK are monochorionic. Monochorionic placentation can also occur in higher-order multiples.
With the increasing use of assisted reproductive technology and sociodemographic changes in our population, there has been an increase in all types of multiple pregnancies. Monochorionic and dichorionic twin pregnancies share increased risks of preterm birth, fetal growth restriction, pre-eclampsia, maternal pregnancy symptoms and postpartum haemorrhage.
The particular challenges of monochorionic pregnancies arise from the vascular placental anastomoses that are almost universal and connect the umbilical circulations of both twins. Specific complications associated with inter-twin vascular anastomoses include: twin–twin transfusion syndrome, selective growth restriction, twin anaemia-polycythaemia sequence, twin reversed arterial perfusion sequence and although not exclusive to monochorionic twin pregnancy, single intrauterine death is more common. In addition, monochorionic, monoamniotic pregnancies (1% of twin pregnancies) carry a very high risk of cord entanglement.
The purpose of this guideline is to describe and, if possible, quantify the problems associated with monochorionic placentation and to identify the best evidence to guide clinical care, including routine fetal surveillance and treatment of complications at secondary and tertiary levels.
Declaration of interests (guideline developers)
Professor MD Kilby FRCOG, Birmingham: Professor Kilby is president of the British Maternal and Fetal Medicine Society. He has received editorial fees for the commissioned book “Twins” published by Dorling Kindersley in 2013. Professor Kilby receives financial support from Siemen’s Ultrasound for training meetings held within his department.
Dr L Bricker FRCOG, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: None declared.
Information for women about having more than one baby
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now reading: Biden’s Assault on Fossil Fuels Jeopardizes America’s Military Strength
Biden’s Assault on Fossil Fuels Jeopardizes America’s Military Strength
By James Marks
The calendar guiding the first 100 days of the Biden administration will have no white space. It will be full of existential and immediate challenges…beat Coronavirus, evaluate and bolster our preparedness against future biothreats, get millions of Americans back to work, counter the fast-growing and asymmetric national security threats from China, Russia and other nations with whom we have less in common, engage and expand with global partners, exert America’s influence —the incoming administration will need to leverage every policy tool and diplomatic advantage to be successful.
One of the key arrows President-elect Biden will have in his quiver is America’s growing domestic energy security. Over the past decade, the U.S. oil and gas industry transformed our country’s energy outlook—from dependence on foreign suppliers to becoming a supplier ourselves. In fact, last year the U.S. became a net-energy exporter for the first time in nearly 70 years.
That independence is not only good for American consumers, who benefit from access to affordable and reliable fuels – it is also critical to our national security interests. U.S. warplanes and battleships run on petroleum. Supply chains at home and abroad are carbon-powered. Modern defense technologies, like carbon-fiber vehicles, Kevlar body armor, even sophisticated computer chips, are made with products derived from fossil fuels. Carbon neutrality is aspirational but unattainable.
The U.S. military is one of the world’s largest consumers of petroleum products. If it were a country, it would be the 47th largest consumer of fossil fuels. No one would disagree that we should work toward reducing that footprint, and our Armed Forces are making great strides to transition to alternative fuel sources. However, we cannot magically throw a switch to run our tanks and jets on solar and wind, at least not while maintaining strategic flexibility and ensuring military dominance which remains an unimpeachable imperative.
Likewise, we cannot cut off our wells at home without compromising our allies abroad. Energy exports have helped stabilize global markets and provided the room to refocus military capabilities away from oil fields in the Middle East to the growing omnipresence of China’s influence. The title of world’s largest oil and natural gas producer has weakened the grip of oil-rich tormentors like Russia and diminished OPEC’s, the global oil cartel, control of energy prices.
Those realities should be hard for the new administration to overlook. As Vice President, Biden oversaw the largest growth of American shale energy development. From 2008 to 2016, U.S. natural gas production increased 35% and crude oil production jumped 80%.
“We are actually drilling on more public lands than the previous administration,” President Obama said in a 2012 presidential debate. “And natural gas isn't just appearing magically. We're encouraging it and working with the industry.” In his 2014 State of the Union Address, President Obama touted natural gas as a “bridge fuel” that is producing cleaner power.
The Biden team would tie the hands of his administration by seeking to rollback domestic shale production—as he pledged to do on the campaign trail. Cracking down on development would not only risk military readiness but also would impede Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda.
The oil and gas industry supports nearly 10 million American jobs. As millions of hard-working men and women remain out of work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden White House should work with oil and gas producers—one of our country’s strongest growth sectors—to support economy-wide recovery, not punish them. Biden’s advisors must see the logic of fixing the near challenge, unemployment, while simultaneously enabling our economy to realize the existential requirement to maximize alternative sources of energy. We must do both.
Rightfully, the incoming Biden administration has made climate change a top priority. Sadly, he seems to have adopted the false premise that assigns blame squarely to fossil fuels. It should not be an either-or decision between traditional and alternative energy sources.
Domestic shale production is helping bridge the gap to renewable fuels. From 2008 to 2018, solar and wind-powered electricity generation doubled. Over the past 15 years the share of non-hydro renewable energies has increased six-fold. Over the past ten years carbon emissions have been cut by 800 million tons—the largest reduction “in the history of energy.”
President Biden will face immense challenges on January 20, 2021. To achieve his policy objectives, he will need to lean on every advantage the U.S. has. Rather than penalizing American shale producers, his administration should work with them to advance our interests. To walk back the hard-won progress of the past decade would undermine our interests, at home and abroad, and leave our nation vulnerable.
James “Spider” Marks is a retired U.S. Army major general and strategic advisor to the GAIN Coalition — Grow America’s Infrastructure Now.
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"It's going to happen again," says former NZ PM Clark
New Zealand's former prime minister Helen Clark warned on Friday (July 10) if the world remained "flat-footed" in its response to pandemics it faces future economic, social and political crisis, after she was appointed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to lead a review of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Rexroth Expands Non-Contact Transfer Units to Include High-Grade Polymer Version
Addition to standard aluminum version; Ideal for food and beverage industry applications
The Non-Contact Transfer (NCT) unit from Rexroth is a unique picking device that operates on the Bernoulli principle, which applies airflow under the device to create a vacuum and lift force between the center and circumference. The line is now expanded to include a high-grade polymer version.
In the last few years, the NCT transfer system has solved many customer problems associated with how to effectively handle materials that are porous, delicate, or have rough or soft surfaces. Now, in addition to the standard aluminum version, the NCT is available in PEEK (Polyetheretherketone), a high-grade polymer. The material expands the potential applications of the NCT to areas where aluminum components are not suitable. Resistance to chemicals, conventional solvents, acids, salts and oil are properties that make this new version of the NCT an ideal handling component for both the packaging and food/beverage industries. FDA- and EG-approved materials guarantee the safe use of these components, even in direct contact with food products. A low friction coefficient and high resistance to wear ensure a long service life and hygienic handling.
The Rexroth NCT unit provides a solution to many handling challenges where suction cups are not feasible because good contact cannot be made with an object’s surface. Another advantage of the NCT is that a machine with mechanical grippers can be easily converted to the NCT, since it does not require a vacuum generator, unlike other devices that operate using vacuum pressure. The NCT series is available in four sizes accommodating lift capacities up to 2 pounds (0.9 kg) each, and multiple NCTs can be used together for lifting larger weights.
Bosch Rexroth AG is one of the world’s leading specialists in the field of drive and control technologies. Under the Rexroth brand name, the company supplies more than 500,000 customers with tailored solutions for driving, controlling, and moving. Bosch Rexroth is a partner for Mobile Applications, Machinery Applications and Engineering, Factory Automation and Renewable Energies. The company provides customized solutions tailored to the needs and specifications of each individual market. As The Drive & Control Company, Bosch Rexroth develops, produces, and sells components and systems in over 80 countries. As part of the Bosch Group, Bosch Rexroth and its 34,900 associates generated approximately 5.1 billion euros in revenue ($6.8 billion) in 2010.
The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. In the areas of automotive and industrial technology, consumer goods, and building technology, some 285,000 associates generated sales of 47.3 billion euros ($62.7 billion) in fiscal 2010. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its more than 350 subsidiaries and regional companies in over 60 countries. If its sales and service partners are included, then Bosch is represented in roughly 150 countries. This worldwide development, manufacturing, and sales network is the foundation for further growth. Bosch spent 3.8 billion euros (approximately $5 billion) for research and development in 2010, and applied for over 3,800 patents worldwide. With all its products and services, Bosch enhances the quality of life by providing solutions which are both innovative and beneficial.
Keep in touch with Rexroth by "liking" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BoschRexrothUS and following us on Twitter at twitter.com/BoschRexrothUS.
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Stefan Wallgren's range of photographs stretch across all planes, he was seldom at home, working and traveling to various concerts, fashion shows, and film festivals. This means that his work stems over several decades where he has captured the most famous and iconic people in all walks of life.
Like many people Stefan's awakening to music came when he first saw The Beatles on television in 1962 being adored by thousands of girls and causing a musical revolution. After this initial entry into the world of music at the age of 10 he began delving deeper, discovering the now legendary, Radio Luxembourg. He then started a band with some friends, dreaming of everything he had witnessed on television with The Beatles. Only having a snare, a cymbal, a Shure mic, and no real idea how to play, the band never really got off the ground, but the passion for music never left. Two radio shows in particular cemented Stefan's seriousness for music, without fail him and a friend would meet each day to discuss everything that had happened on the show and the music that was played.
After sneaking into a few local gigs at a young age, his interest in photography began to grow alongside his passion for music. At live gigs he was in awe of the bands who's stage presence commanded attention and wanted to capture the unique feeling they gave the crowd and the perfect way to do this was to take a photo.
The people he has photographed over his 35 year career read like a list of the greatest and most iconic bands and artists to have ever lived. These include, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Blondie, The Ramones, Queen, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and many more... His work has graced many musical publications and national newspapers but the majority of his work has been kept private and personal for the last 30 years. His archive includes rare concerts and impromptu performances from days that really do not exist anymore.
This was a really special performance in October 1973 as it was Bowie's first since announcing his retirement a couple of months before.
With Ikea and a motel on the other side, this was not a glamorous shoot but they were not a glamorous band. The location was perfect.
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Dear Esther studio The Chinese Room bought by Sumo
14th August 2018 / 1:31PM
Things are looking up for The Chinese Room, the studio behind Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, as they’ve been bought by a group who also own Snake Pass devs Sumo Digital. It seems like a big reversal of fortune, letting The Chinese Room get stuck into work again. Around this time last year, the English studio laid off their development team and went quiet after financial and personal pressures became too much. They did say they might return, and here they are as part as Sumo Group.
Sumo Group have bought The Chinese Room and got co-founder Dan Pinchbeck on-board as its creative director. Sumo say that fellow co-founder Jessica Curry, who was behind their wonderful music and also company director, “will continue her career independently as a composer.”
It sounds like The Chinese Room are getting back to work, expanding their team, continuing their current projects (plural), “and collaborating with other Sumo Digital studios.” Y’know, making stuff.
“Sumo will provide the support and experience I’m looking for to take The Chinese Room to the next level,” Pinchbeck said in today’s announcement. “Our aim is to build on the reputation I’m proud to have earned, to create a truly world-class studio delivering bold, imaginative new games. We’re already working on some really fantastic new concepts, alongside discussions with partners about some of the games we already have in the pipeline. The future for the studio is incredibly exciting and being part of the Sumo family is absolutely central to that.”
When the studio called a time-out last year, they said they were done with walking simulators, that they “wanted to do something more complex, more involved and bigger scale.” Of course I’d argue that they have never made walking simulators and saying they have misrepresents a wonderful genre, but I’m contrary like that.
Pinchbeck spoke a little on The Chinese Room’s blog about what they might be up to next:
“Firstly, those existing concepts that didn’t get made. They are still very much on the table. Before leaving us to pursue his own games, the uber-talented Andrew Crawshaw and I worked up a new prototype of The 13th Interior, with the fantastic support of the UK Games Fund. The game still needs a little bit of work to nail down some core mechanics, but then it’s finding the right opportunity to roll out the rest of development. It’s very much still in the plan to finish it up at some point. There were also two other concepts we were playing around with – very different types of games for us – and they will remain gently percolating in the background.”
He also talks about the possibility of a new-new game that becomes possible with Sumo’s backing and which “takes a more traditional game genre – no, you don’t get to know what just yet – and lets us spin our worlds and stories on top of that.”
Sumo own a number of studios, including the former CCP one in Newcastle which made EVE: Valkyrie. They’re becoming quite prominent, between making their own games, making games for others like the Sonic race ’em ups for Sega, and collaborating on games including Crackdown 3. A busy lot.
Tagged with Sumo Digital, Sumo Group, The Chinese Room.
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Radio Waves Assess Asphalt Integrity
By Roger roberts gssi
Real-time information on asphalt density and uniformity is a boon to construction quality efforts
Properly compacted asphalt is a major factor in the lifespan of roads, since inadequately compacted asphalt deteriorates at a more rapid rate than properly compacted material. With the billions spent on road construction and repairs each year, it has become a matter of urgency to find new technologies that can ensure the integrity of asphalt on newly paved roads. New radio wave technology is now available to non-destructively determine asphalt density during application.
Asphalt installation and compaction basics
The air void content within asphalt varies based on the amount of compaction during asphalt emplacement and variations in the asphalt mix composition. Asphalt with too many air voids (often considered to be more than 8 per cent) deteriorates at a more rapid rate. Too few air voids (less than 3 per cent) results from over-compacted asphalt, which is also undesirable. In either case, the asphalt is subject to early failure and the road’s lifetime is less than asphalt that contains the optimal air void content.
Construction engineers are looking for that “sweet spot” where the compaction of the asphalt when it is laid down is optimal. They typically assess asphalt by measuring density variations, which can be used to calculate the air void content.
To ensure optimal compaction, asphalt should be kept at a specific temperature range as it is being laid down. If the paving machine and transfer vehicles do not do a good job keeping the material uniformly hot, there can be “cold patch” areas. When the roller rolls over areas not within the optimal temperature range, it cannot properly compact the material. For example, such cold patches may occur if the asphalt paver is refilled from end-dump trucks, which cool the asphalt more near the metal sides and end of the truck than in the middle. Some poorly-paved roads have regularly spaced defects associated with end-dump truck refills.
One may not be able to notice these areas at first, but they may become obvious later. In fact, there are many roads where one can observe a cold patch every several hundred feet that is starting to deteriorate – turning into a ravelled section in the road. If the work crew does not catch the problem during paving, the road may need to be repaved far sooner than if the material was properly applied.
Another compaction issue occurs when the established “rolling pattern” is not properly followed. The rolling pattern refers to the number of times, speed, and lap pattern rollers should employ when rolling new asphalt to achieve the optimum compaction. If the paving crew misses a section and does not compact the material with the proper number of rolls, they can create areas where compaction is faulty.
Discovering and correcting any rolling pattern issues during the first few days of a paving job benefits both the owner and contractor, since contract specifications may include requirements on how asphalt is laid down in terms of acceptable void content. Contracts may also include a bonus for getting to the specific asphalt void content range – or a penalty if the crew goes outside the specified void content range.
Options for measuring asphalt density and void content
There are several available methods that can be used to measure asphalt density variations, which are then used to calculate void content variation. One non-destructive testing (NDT) method is the nuclear density gauge, which consists of a radiation source that emits a cloud of particles and a sensor that counts the received particles that are scattered back by the test material. By calculating the percentage of particles that return to the sensor, the gauge can be calibrated to measure the density and inner structure of the test material.
While quite accurate, the nuclear gauge has several disadvantages. The gauge is placed on asphalt and measurements are taken over a specific period of time, usually a few minutes or less. The method requires contact, with the device required to remain stationary at the measurement point. Due to the length of time required for the measurement, nuclear gauge measurements are taken sparsely, on the order of a few measurements per 100 lane feet. Collection of only these “spot” measurements does not adequately capture all the asphalt’s variability. Also, because it uses radioactive material, the nuclear gauge requires user training and secure storage. There are also special transportation requirements. Re-licensing, maintenance, and recalibration fees run about $2,000 per year.
Similar to a nuclear gauge, the non-nuclear density gauge measures electrical impedance; a calibration procedure is then performed to correlate it to density. Like the nuclear density gauge, the method is quite limited, because it samples only very small portions of the asphalt.
Because the nuclear and non-nuclear density gauges may collect only one value over a large area, they are unable to catch all the variations in void content that may be important to ensuring a quality paving job.
Another NDT option is the use of radio waves, which can be used to obtain real time measurements over a large swath of pavement in short periods of time. Radio wave reflections from the asphalt can be used to directly calculate the asphalt dielectric values, which are then correlated with the new pavement’s void content, a relative indication of density.
One other method that should be mentioned is “coring,” a destructive method in which one physically extracts a core from the asphalt and measures its properties. Coring is used as a primary asphalt compaction evaluation method and is always used to “ground truth” measurements from other methods. Coring is done on a very limited basis, so it often under-represents the true variability in asphalt void content.
New radio wave technology used to help improve asphalt mixture quality
The initial relationship between void content and road condition has been known for a long time. In the late 1990s, researchers at the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) discovered the relationship between the dielectric calculated by ground penetrating radar (GPR), an application-specific use of radio waves, and void content.
Researchers later developed a working methodology for use of infrared and radio wave technologies for improving the assessment of asphalt mixture and compaction quality. They then looked for a way to commercialize it so it could be easily used by state departments of transportation.
Previously, use of the GPR technique required specialized equipment, a great deal of data interpretation, and a number of manual steps. In 2013, TTI began working with GSSI to package the device components into a streamlined and operator-friendly device that would provide real time profiling of asphalt mixture uniformity. The work was done as part of the Federal Highway Administration’s Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2).
Over the next few years, GSSI developed the technology into the PaveScan RDM, which TTI used in several pilot studies. The non-contact PaveScan technology uses a sensor that typically outputs a measurement each half-foot along the lane traveled, so a mile’s worth of data includes roughly 10,000 measurements for each sensor used.
TTI found that the new PaveScan system overcomes hardware, data processing, and staff expertise hurdles that existed in the past. According to TTI, “The utility of GPR was realized on all pilot projects, where the radar results provided quantitative assessment of density and uniformity.”
GSSI later developed a three-channel system that can be vehicle-mounted to obtain moving void content measurements in one pass, covering both wheel paths and between the wheel paths. One sensor is located in one wheel path, one in the middle and one in the other wheel path – so three measurements are output for each half-foot along the lane traveled. In this way, a mile’s worth of data includes roughly 30,000 measurements – all collected in a mere 20 minutes.
The PaveScan RDM system has a number of benefits. First of all, it is a way of ensuring asphalt integrity of newly paved roads. Now, when a contractor lays down a new road, the asphalt void content over the entire area paved is accurately calculated, so both contractors and the owner of the road are satisfied. Secondly, the system is easy to use, bringing down the level of expertise needed to a manageable level. Thirdly, it is a very rapid method, adaptable to being put on a vehicle. The safety benefits of not having someone standing in a lane next to moving traffic are huge.
Previously, the prototype PaveScan unit developed by GSSI was used in the evaluations done as part of the SHRP 2 project. This year, GSSI delivered a production 3-channel unit to TTI, which is being used to further its research. Additional production units have been purchased with SHRP 2 funding by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the Maine Department of Transportation, and the Nebraska Department of Transportation. By June 2016, there were four units in the field, working to ensure that tax dollars allocated for road construction are being used wisely.
GSSI releases the PaveScan RDM
Road crew must stop using nuclear density gauge
Returning to roots: Walker Aggregates talks land rehabilitation
Concrete crossroads
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“Drown” by Marco Berton Scapinello
19 Ott “Drown” by Marco Berton Scapinello
It is very hard to evaluate a working copy of a movie, with no mix or color. That said, it is still very clear what this movie has to offer and what its merits are, even if there is still some major work to do on image and audio.
“Drown”, an italian drama that is currently in its last phase of post production, it’s a beatifully acted film that delves deep into the protagonist’s loneliness and desperation.
What lies behind the untamed rage of its violent behavior is a history of frustration, isolation and disconnection from the mechanisms of the world that try to violate and deny his identity, the outside world that resembles an ocean in which the only way not to drown is to keep swimming against the tide, trying to float and stay up. But each of the actions the protagonist tries to do to reach a state of so called “balance” produce the opposite effect, increasing his state of alienation.
In this kind of stasis in which he seems imprisoned, it becomes almost impossible to show that sincere, fearless kind of love that would be his only way out.
We, as spectators, can just watch as everything drowns down into the abyss.
(At last, an honorable mention goes to the best poster we have seen so far in this competition. )
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ISIS dividend: Defense stocks soar after Paris attacks
A Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter jet © Gary Cameron © Reuters
While travel and tourism-related stocks have suffered since last Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, investors keep pouring their money into weapons. Defense industry stocks have seen all-time highs since the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Weapons manufacturers had a good opening at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, with Lockheed Martin trading 3.5 percent higher, Northrop Grumman up 4.4 percent, and Raytheon up 4 percent. Stocks of French defense giant Thales were up 3 percent, even as French markets were down overall, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Defense industry stocks this morning following Friday night's attacks in Paris: pic.twitter.com/8a35RcpPJ6
— Aaron Cantú (@aaronmiguel_) November 16, 2015
Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), a terror group controlling large portions of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for Friday’s string of attacks in Paris that left at least 129 dead and over 350 injured. In response, the French government has escalated its military efforts against IS, bombing the group’s stronghold in Raqqa and proceeding with the plans to send the navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to the Middle East.
Global markets shaky but resilient after Paris attacks
Typical investor response to terrorist attacks has been largely absent in this instance, however, with European and Asian markets slipping only slightly. Meanwhile, the generally anemic state of stock markets at the moment has made weapons manufacturers stand out.
Terrorism and war have been good for defense contractors, who are credited with driving the Dow Jones to a speedy recovery within six months of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, DC. A decade into the “War on Terror,” however, market and defense analysts were predicting a downturn.
“We’re about to go into the downhill side of the roller coaster here,” David Berteau, a defense industry analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told USA Today in 2011, as US forces began withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet the rise of IS has given weapons-makers a shot in the arm. Northrop Grumman is trading at $263 a share, up 160 percent from 2013, and Lockheed Martin is up 150 percent, at $221 a share. Thales stocks were also up 160 percent, at $102 (€67.70), according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Intercept has also noted the market gains made by weapons manufacturers in the wake of the carnage in Paris.
“The private-sector industrial prong of the Military and Surveillance State always wins, but especially when the media’s war juices start flowing,” wrote Glenn Greenwald, one of the publication’s founding editors.
Monstrous wave of Paris attacks underlines France’s year of terror
‘Blood on his hands’: CIA officials, others implicate Snowden disclosures in Paris attack
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Home > News > News Releases > 2020 > May > Tender awarded for Meadow Lake long-term care home construction
Tender awarded for Meadow Lake long-term care home construction
Friday, May 8, 2020 in News Release
Construction is moving ahead on a new long-term care facility for residents of Meadow Lake and area.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) has awarded the tender for the new $36.6 million, 72-bed facility to Binder Construction of Edmonton. It will be significantly larger than the current 55-bed Northland Pioneers Lodge. The project includes $29.3 million from the province and $7.3 million from the local community.
“People all over northwest Saskatchewan will benefit from having this new long-term care home in Meadow Lake. It will offer more space, privacy, and a safer, modern environment for residents and staff,” said local MLA Jeremy Harrison, on behalf of Rural and Remote Health Minister Warren Kaeding. “This project will complete our government’s commitment to build 13 new long-term care facilities across the province.”
Construction began in April with completion expected by fall 2021. The new and larger facility will improve access and better meet the needs of Meadow Lake and area residents who require a high level of continuing care.
“The SHA is excited that construction of this much-needed replacement for Northland Pioneers Lodge has begun. We know that residents of the current long-term care home, their families and the facility’s staff are eagerly anticipating this long-awaited project,” SHA Executive Director of Infrastructure Management Derek Miller said.
The Government of Saskatchewan will fund 80 per cent of the capital cost of construction, with the remaining 20 per cent funded locally. Agreements are in place with the City of Meadow Lake and the Rural Municipality of Meadow Lake to cover the local share. The Northwest Community Lodge Association is fundraising for furnishings and equipment, which are not included in the capital construction cost.
The new facility will be built on 10 acres of land donated to the former Prairie North Health Region by Jake and Eve Danilkewich. The site is located in the RM of Meadow Lake across from the industrial area along Highway 4 north.
The project is led by the SHA and Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the City and RM of Meadow Lake, Flying Dust First Nation, Meadow Lake Tribal Council and other community partners.
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relating to state government; providing certain general criminal and sentencing provisions; regulating controlled substances, DWI, and driving provisions; modifying or establishing various provisions relating to public safety; regulating corrections, the courts, and emergency communications; regulating coroners and medical examiners; providing for electronic notarizations; regulating fraudulent or improper financing statements; regulating computer crimes; providing penalties;
amending Minnesota Statutes 2004, sections 13.82, by adding a subdivision; 13.84, subdivisions 1, 2; 13.87, by adding a subdivision; 16D.04, subdivision 2; 43A.08, subdivision 1; 48A.10, subdivision 3; 144.445, subdivision 1; 144.7401, by adding a subdivision; 155A.07, by adding a subdivision; 169.13; 169A.20, subdivision 1; 169A.24, subdivision 1; 169A.28, subdivision 1; 169A.45, subdivision 1; 169A.51, subdivisions 1, 2, 4, 7; 169A.52, subdivision 2; 169A.60, subdivisions 2, 4; 181.973; 219.97, subdivision 13; 237.49; 241.016, subdivision 1; 253B.02, subdivision 2; 299E.01, subdivision 2; 299F.011, subdivision 5; 346.09, subdivision 1; 346.155, subdivisions 1, 4, 5, 10, by adding a subdivision; 347.04; 358.41; 358.42; 358.47; 358.50; 359.01, by adding a subdivision; 359.03, subdivision 3, by adding a subdivision; 359.04; 359.05; 359.085; 375A.13, subdivision 1; 383B.65, subdivision 2; 390.005; 390.01; 390.04; 390.11; 390.111; 390.15; 390.20; 390.21; 390.221; 390.23; 390.25; 390.33, subdivision 2; 403.02, by adding a subdivision; 403.08, subdivision 7; 403.11, subdivisions 3b, 3c; 403.113, subdivision 3; 403.21, subdivisions 2, 7, 9; 403.33; 403.34; 403.36, subdivision 1f; 480.181, subdivisions 1, 2; 480.182; 484.01, subdivision 1; 484.011; 484.012; 484.45; 484.54, subdivision 3; 484.545, subdivision 1; 484.64, subdivision 3; 484.65, subdivision 3; 484.68, subdivision 1; 484.702, subdivision 5; 485.018, subdivision 5; 485.021; 485.11; 517.041; 518.157, subdivision 2; 518B.01, subdivision 14, by adding a subdivision; 525.9214; 546.27, subdivision 2; 609.101, subdivision 4; 609.102, subdivision 2; 609.11, subdivision 7; 609.153, subdivision 1; 609.2231, subdivision 6; 609.224, subdivisions 2, 4; 609.2242, subdivisions 2, 4; 609.495, by adding a subdivision; 609.748, subdivision 6; 609.749, subdivision 4; 609.87, subdivisions 1, 11, by adding subdivisions; 609.891, subdivisions 1, 3; 611A.0315; 617.246, by adding a subdivision; 617.247, by adding a subdivision; 624.22, subdivision 8; 626.77, subdivision 3; 629.74; 631.425, subdivision 3; 641.25; Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, sections 169A.52, subdivision 4; 169A.53, subdivision 3; 171.05, subdivision 2b; 171.055, subdivision 2; 171.18, subdivision 1; 241.06, by adding a subdivision; 243.166, subdivisions 1b, 4, 4b, 6; 244.052, subdivision 4; 244.055, subdivisions 10, 11; 244.10, subdivisions 5, 6, 7; 270C.545; 299C.40, subdivision 1; 299C.405; 299C.65, subdivision 2; 390.05; 403.025, subdivision 7; 403.05, subdivision 3; 403.11, subdivisions 1, 3, 3a; 403.113, subdivision 1; 403.21, subdivision 8; 403.36, subdivision 1; 485.01; 485.03; 485.05; 518B.01, subdivision 22; 609.02, subdivision 16; 609.282; 609.283; 609.3455, subdivisions 4, 8, by adding a subdivision; 609.485, subdivisions 2, 4; Laws 2002, chapter 266, section 1, as amended; Laws 2005, chapter 136, article 1, section 13, subdivision 3; article 16, sections 3; 4; 5; 6; proposing coding for new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapters 4; 241; 299A; 299C; 299F; 340A; 390; 484; 545; 604; 609; repealing Minnesota Statutes 2004, sections 169A.41, subdivision 4; 383A.36; 383B.225, subdivisions 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; 390.006; 390.06; 390.07; 390.16; 390.17; 390.19; 390.20; 390.24; 390.36; 403.08, subdivision 8; 403.22; 403.23; 403.24; 403.25; 403.26; 403.28; 403.29, subdivisions 1, 2, 3; 403.30, subdivisions 2, 4; 403.35; 484.013, subdivision 8; 484.545, subdivisions 2, 3; 484.55; 484.68, subdivision 7; 484.75; 485.018, subdivisions 2, 6, 8; 485.12; 487.01; 487.02; 487.03; 487.04; 487.07; 487.10; 487.11; 487.13; 487.14; 487.15; 487.16; 487.17; 487.18; 487.19; 487.191; 487.20; 487.21; 487.23; 487.24; 487.25; 487.26; 487.27; 487.28; 487.29; 487.31; 487.32; 487.33; 487.34; 487.36; 487.37; 487.38; 487.40; 488A.01; 488A.021; 488A.025; 488A.03; 488A.035; 488A.04; 488A.08; 488A.09; 488A.10; 488A.101; 488A.11; 488A.112; 488A.113; 488A.115; 488A.116; 488A.119; 488A.18; 488A.19; 488A.20; 488A.21; 488A.23; 488A.24; 488A.26; 488A.27; 488A.28; 488A.282; 488A.285; 488A.286; 488A.287; 525.011; 525.012; 525.013; 525.014; 525.015; 525.02; 525.03; 525.051; 525.052; 525.053; 525.06; 525.07; 525.08; 525.081; 525.082; 525.09; 609.108, subdivision 5; 609.109, subdivisions 1, 3; 625.09; Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, sections 353.027; 383B.225, subdivision 5; 485.03; 609.108, subdivisions 1, 3, 4, 6, 7; 609.109, subdivisions 2, 4, 5, 6.
GENERAL CRIMINAL AND SENTENCING PROVISIONS
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 244.10, subdivision 5, is amended to read:
Procedures in cases where state intends to seek an aggravated departure.
(a) When the prosecutor provides reasonable notice under subdivision 4, the district court shall allow the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of 12 members the factors in support of the state's request for an aggravated departure from the Sentencing Guidelines or the state's request for an aggravated sentence under any sentencing enhancement statute or the state's request for a mandatory minimum under section 609.11 as provided in paragraph (b) or (c).
(b) The district court shall allow a unitary trial and final argument to a jury regarding both evidence in support of the elements of the offense and evidence in support of aggravating factors when the evidence in support of the aggravating factors:
(1) would be admissible as part of the trial on the elements of the offense; or
(2) would not result in unfair prejudice to the defendant.
The existence of each aggravating factor shall be determined by use of a special verdict form.
Upon the request of the prosecutor, the court shall allow bifurcated argument and jury deliberations.
(c) The district court shall bifurcate the proceedings, or impanel a resentencing jury, to allow for the production of evidence, argument, and deliberations on the existence of factors in support of an aggravated departure after the return of a guilty verdict when the evidence in support of an aggravated departure:
(1) includes evidence that is otherwise inadmissible at a trial on the elements of the offense; and
(2) would result in unfair prejudice to the defendant.
This section is effective the day following final enactment and applies to sentencing hearings, resentencing hearings, and sentencing departures sought on or after that date.
Defendants to present evidence and argument.
In either a unitary or bifurcated trial under subdivision 5, a defendant shall be allowed to present evidence and argument to the jury or factfinder regarding whether facts exist that would justify an aggravated durational departure or an aggravated sentence under any sentencing enhancement statute or a mandatory minimum sentence under section 609.11. A defendant is not allowed to present evidence or argument to the jury or factfinder regarding facts in support of a mitigated departure during the trial, but may present evidence and argument in support of a mitigated departure to the judge as factfinder during a sentencing hearing.
Waiver of jury determination.
The defendant may waive the right to a jury determination of whether facts exist that would justify an aggravated sentence. Upon receipt of a waiver of a jury trial on this issue, the district court shall determine beyond a reasonable doubt whether the factors in support of the state's motion for aggravated departure or an aggravated sentence under any sentencing enhancement statute or a mandatory minimum sentence under section 609.11 exist.
[340A.706] ALCOHOL WITHOUT LIQUID DEVICES PROHIBITED.
For purposes of this section, an "alcohol without liquid device" is a device, machine, apparatus, or appliance that mixes an alcoholic beverage with pure or diluted oxygen to produce an alcohol vapor that may be inhaled by an individual. An "alcohol without liquid device" does not include an inhaler, nebulizer, atomizer, or other device that is designed and intended specifically for medical purposes to dispense prescribed or over-the-counter medications.
Except as provided in subdivision 3, it is unlawful for any person or business establishment to possess, purchase, sell, offer to sell, or use an alcohol without liquid device.
Research exemption.
This section does not apply to a hospital that operates primarily for the purpose of conducting scientific research, a state institution conducting bona fide research, a private college or university conducting bona fide research, or a pharmaceutical company or biotechnology company conducting bona fide research.
Except as provided in subdivision 3, it is unlawful for any person or business establishment to utilize a nebulizer, inhaler, or atomizer or other device as described in subdivision 1, for the purposes of inhaling alcoholic beverages.
This section is effective August 1, 2006, and applies to violations committed on or after that date.
(b) "Person" means any natural person, firm, partnership, corporation, or association, however organized.
(c) "Wildlife sanctuary" means a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that:
(1) operates a place of refuge where abused, neglected, unwanted, impounded, abandoned, orphaned, or displaced wildlife are provided care for their lifetime;
(2) does not conduct any commercial activity with respect to any animal of which the organization is an owner; and
(3) does not buy, sell, trade, auction, lease, loan, or breed any animal of which the organization is an owner, except as an integral part of the species survival plan of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.
(d) "Possess" means to own, care for, have custody of, or control.
(e) "Regulated animal" means:
(1) all members of the Felidae family including, but not limited to, lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, cheetahs, ocelots, and servals, but not including domestic cats or cats recognized as a domestic breed, registered as a domestic breed, and shown as a domestic breed by a national or international multibreed cat registry association;
(2) bears; and
(3) all nonhuman primates, including, but not limited to, lemurs, monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, marmosets, lorises, and tamarins.
Regulated animal includes any hybrid or cross between an animal listed in clause (1), (2), or (3) and a domestic animal and offspring from all subsequent generations of those crosses or hybrids.
(f) "Local animal control authority" means an agency of the state, county, municipality, or other governmental subdivision of the state that is responsible for animal control operations in its jurisdiction.
(g) "Bodily harm," "substantial bodily harm," and "great bodily harm" have the meanings given them in section 609.02.
(a) A person who possesses a regulated animal must maintain health and ownership records on each animal and must maintain the records for the life of the animal. If possession of the regulated animal is transferred to another person, a copy of the health and ownership records must accompany the animal.
(b) A person who possesses a regulated animal must maintain an ongoing program of veterinary care which includes a veterinary visit to the premises at least annually.
(c) A person who possesses a regulated animal must notify the local animal control authority in writing within ten days of a change in address or location where the regulated animal is kept. The notification of change in address or location form must be prepared by the Minnesota Animal Control Association and approved by the Board of Animal Health.
(d) A person with a United States Department of Agriculture license for regulated animals shall forward a copy of the United States Department of Agriculture inspection report to the local animal control authority within 30 days of receipt of the inspection report.
(e) A person who possesses a regulated animal shall prominently display a sign on the structure where the animal is housed indicating that a dangerous regulated animal is on the premises.
(f) A person who possesses a regulated animal must notify, as soon as practicable, local law enforcement officials of any escape of a regulated animal. The person who possesses the regulated animal is liable for any costs incurred by any person, city, county, or state agency resulting from the escape of a regulated animal unless the escape is due to a criminal act by another person or a natural event.
(g) A person who possesses a regulated animal must maintain a written recovery plan in the event of the escape of a regulated animal. The person must maintain live traps, or other equipment necessary to assist in the recovery of the regulated animal.
(h) If requested by the local animal control authority, A person may not move a regulated animal from its location unless the person notifies the local animal control authority prior to moving the animal. The notification must include the date and the location where the animal is to be moved. This paragraph does not apply to a regulated animal transported to a licensed veterinarian.
(i) If a person who possesses a regulated animal can no longer care for the animal, the person shall take steps to find long-term placement for the regulated animal.
Seizure.
(a) The local animal control authority, upon issuance of a notice of inspection, must be granted access at reasonable times to sites where the local animal control authority has reason to believe a violation of this chapter is occurring or has occurred.
(b) If a person who possesses a regulated animal is not in compliance with the requirements of this section, the local animal control authority shall take possession of the animal for custody and care, provided that the procedures in this subdivision are followed.
(c) Upon request of a person possessing a regulated animal, the local animal control authority may allow the animal to remain in the physical custody of the owner for 30 days, during which time the owner shall take all necessary actions to come in compliance with this section. During the 30-day period, the local animal control authority may inspect, at any reasonable time, the premises where the animal is kept.
(d) If a person who possesses a regulated animal is not in compliance with this section following the 30-day period described in paragraph (c), the local animal control authority shall seize the animal and place it in a holding facility that is appropriate for the species for up to ten days.
(e) The authority taking custody of an animal under this section shall provide a notice of the seizure by delivering or mailing it to the owner, by posting a copy of it at the place where the animal is taken into custody, or by delivering it to a person residing on the property. The notice must include:
(1) a description of the animal seized; the authority for and purpose of the seizure; the time, place, and circumstances under which the animal was seized; and a contact person and telephone number;
(2) a statement that a person from whom a regulated animal was seized may post security to prevent disposition of the animal and may request a hearing concerning the seizure and that failure to do so within five business days of the date of the notice will result in disposition of the animal;
(3) a statement that actual costs of the care, keeping, and disposal of the regulated animal are the responsibility of the person from whom the animal was seized, except to the extent that a court or hearing officer finds that the seizure or impoundment was not substantially justified by law; and
(4) a form that can be used by a person from whom a regulated animal was seized for requesting a hearing under this subdivision.
(e) (f) If a person from whom the regulated animal was seized makes a request within five business days of the seizure, a hearing must be held within five business days of the request to determine the validity of the seizure and disposition of the animal. The judge or hearing officer may authorize the return of the animal to the person from whom the animal was seized if the judge or hearing officer finds:
(1) that the person can and will provide the care required by law for the regulated animal; and
(2) the regulated animal is physically fit.
(f) (g) If a judge or hearing officer orders a permanent disposition of the regulated animal, the local animal control authority may take steps to find long-term placement for the animal with a wildlife sanctuary, persons authorized by the Department of Natural Resources, or an appropriate United States Department of Agriculture licensed facility.
(g) (h) A person from whom a regulated animal is seized is liable for all actual costs of care, keeping, and disposal of the animal, except to the extent that a court or hearing officer finds that the seizure was not substantially justified by law. The costs must be paid in full or a mutually satisfactory arrangement for payment must be made between the local animal control authority and the person claiming an interest in the animal before return of the animal to the person.
(h) (i) A person from whom a regulated animal has been seized under this subdivision may prevent disposition of the animal by posting security in the amount sufficient to provide for the actual costs of care and keeping of the animal. The security must be posted within five business days of the seizure, inclusive of the day of the seizure.
(i) (j) If circumstances exist threatening the life of a person or the life of any animal, local law enforcement or the local animal control authority shall may seize a regulated animal without an opportunity for hearing or court order, or destroy the animal.
Confinement and control.
A person violates this subdivision who possesses a regulated animal and negligently fails to control the animal or keep it properly confined and as a result the animal causes bodily harm, substantial bodily harm, or great bodily harm to another person.
(a) A person who knowingly violates subdivision 2, 3, paragraph (b) or (c), or 4 is guilty of a misdemeanor.
(b) A person who knowingly violates subdivision 3, paragraph (a), is guilty of a gross misdemeanor.
(c) A person who violates subdivision 9a, resulting in bodily harm is guilty of a misdemeanor and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 90 days or to payment of a fine of not more than $1,000, or both.
(d) A person who violates subdivision 9a, resulting in substantial bodily harm is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.
(e) A person who violates subdivision 9a, resulting in great bodily harm or death is guilty of a felony and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than two years or to payment of a fine of not more than $5,000, or both, unless a greater penalty is provided elsewhere.
Violation of an order for protection.
(a) A person who violates an order for protection issued by a judge or referee is subject to the penalties provided in paragraphs (b) to (d).
(b) Except as otherwise provided in paragraphs (c) and (d), whenever an order for protection is granted by a judge or referee or pursuant to a similar law of another state, the United States, the District of Columbia, tribal lands, or United States territories, and the respondent or person to be restrained knows of the existence of the order, violation of the order for protection is a misdemeanor. Upon a misdemeanor conviction under this paragraph, the defendant must be sentenced to a minimum of three days imprisonment and must be ordered to participate in counseling or other appropriate programs selected by the court. If the court stays imposition or execution of the jail sentence and the defendant refuses or fails to comply with the court's treatment order, the court must impose and execute the stayed jail sentence. A violation of an order for protection shall also constitute contempt of court and be subject to the penalties provided in chapter 588.
(c) A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who knowingly violates this subdivision during the time period between within ten years of a previous qualified domestic violence-related offense conviction and the end of the five years following discharge from sentence for that offense or adjudication of delinquency. Upon a gross misdemeanor conviction under this paragraph, the defendant must be sentenced to a minimum of ten days imprisonment and must be ordered to participate in counseling or other appropriate programs selected by the court. Notwithstanding section 609.135, the court must impose and execute the minimum sentence provided in this paragraph for gross misdemeanor convictions.
(d) A person is guilty of a felony and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both, if the person knowingly violates this subdivision:
(1) during the time period between within ten years of the first of two or more previous qualified domestic violence-related offense convictions and the end of the five years following discharge from sentence for that offense or adjudications of delinquency; or
(2) while possessing a dangerous weapon, as defined in section 609.02, subdivision 6.
Upon a felony conviction under this paragraph in which the court stays imposition or execution of sentence, the court shall impose at least a 30-day period of incarceration as a condition of probation. The court also shall order that the defendant participate in counseling or other appropriate programs selected by the court. Notwithstanding section 609.135, the court must impose and execute the minimum sentence provided in this paragraph for felony convictions.
(e) A peace officer shall arrest without a warrant and take into custody a person whom the peace officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order granted pursuant to this section or a similar law of another state, the United States, the District of Columbia, tribal lands, or United States territories restraining the person or excluding the person from the residence or the petitioner's place of employment, even if the violation of the order did not take place in the presence of the peace officer, if the existence of the order can be verified by the officer. The probable cause required under this paragraph includes probable cause that the person knows of the existence of the order. If the order has not been served, the officer shall immediately serve the order whenever reasonably safe and possible to do so. An order for purposes of this subdivision, includes the short form order described in subdivision 8a. When the order is first served upon the person at a location at which, under the terms of the order, the person's presence constitutes a violation, the person shall not be arrested for violation of the order without first being given a reasonable opportunity to leave the location in the presence of the peace officer. A person arrested under this paragraph shall be held in custody for at least 36 hours, excluding the day of arrest, Sundays, and holidays, unless the person is released earlier by a judge or judicial officer. A peace officer acting in good faith and exercising due care in making an arrest pursuant to this paragraph is immune from civil liability that might result from the officer's actions.
(f) If the court finds that the respondent has violated an order for protection and that there is reason to believe that the respondent will commit a further violation of the provisions of the order restraining the respondent from committing acts of domestic abuse or excluding the respondent from the petitioner's residence, the court may require the respondent to acknowledge an obligation to comply with the order on the record. The court may require a bond sufficient to deter the respondent from committing further violations of the order for protection, considering the financial resources of the respondent, and not to exceed $10,000. If the respondent refuses to comply with an order to acknowledge the obligation or post a bond under this paragraph, the court shall commit the respondent to the county jail during the term of the order for protection or until the respondent complies with the order under this paragraph. The warrant must state the cause of commitment, with the sum and time for which any bond is required. If an order is issued under this paragraph, the court may order the costs of the contempt action, or any part of them, to be paid by the respondent. An order under this paragraph is appealable.
(g) Upon the filing of an affidavit by the petitioner, any peace officer, or an interested party designated by the court, alleging that the respondent has violated any order for protection granted pursuant to this section or a similar law of another state, the United States, the District of Columbia, tribal lands, or United States territories, the court may issue an order to the respondent, requiring the respondent to appear and show cause within 14 days why the respondent should not be found in contempt of court and punished therefor. The hearing may be held by the court in any county in which the petitioner or respondent temporarily or permanently resides at the time of the alleged violation, or in the county in which the alleged violation occurred, if the petitioner and respondent do not reside in this state. The court also shall refer the violation of the order for protection to the appropriate prosecuting authority for possible prosecution under paragraph (b), (c), or (d).
(h) If it is alleged that the respondent has violated an order for protection issued under subdivision 6 or a similar law of another state, the United States, the District of Columbia, tribal lands, or United States territories, and the court finds that the order has expired between the time of the alleged violation and the court's hearing on the violation, the court may grant a new order for protection under subdivision 6 based solely on the respondent's alleged violation of the prior order, to be effective until the hearing on the alleged violation of the prior order. If the court finds that the respondent has violated the prior order, the relief granted in the new order for protection shall be extended for a fixed period, not to exceed one year, except when the court determines a longer fixed period is appropriate.
(i) The admittance into petitioner's dwelling of an abusing party excluded from the dwelling under an order for protection is not a violation by the petitioner of the order for protection.
A peace officer is not liable under section 609.43, clause (1), for a failure to perform a duty required by paragraph (e).
(j) When a person is convicted under paragraph (b) or (c) of violating an order for protection and the court determines that the person used a firearm in any way during commission of the violation, the court may order that the person is prohibited from possessing any type of firearm for any period longer than three years or for the remainder of the person's life. A person who violates this paragraph is guilty of a gross misdemeanor. At the time of the conviction, the court shall inform the defendant whether and for how long the defendant is prohibited from possessing a firearm and that it is a gross misdemeanor to violate this paragraph. The failure of the court to provide this information to a defendant does not affect the applicability of the firearm possession prohibition or the gross misdemeanor penalty to that defendant.
(k) Except as otherwise provided in paragraph (j), when a person is convicted under paragraph (b) or (c) of violating an order for protection, the court shall inform the defendant that the defendant is prohibited from possessing a pistol for three years from the date of conviction and that it is a gross misdemeanor offense to violate this prohibition. The failure of the court to provide this information to a defendant does not affect the applicability of the pistol possession prohibition or the gross misdemeanor penalty to that defendant.
(l) Except as otherwise provided in paragraph (j), a person is not entitled to possess a pistol if the person has been convicted under paragraph (b) or (c) after August 1, 1996, of violating an order for protection, unless three years have elapsed from the date of conviction and, during that time, the person has not been convicted of any other violation of this section. Property rights may not be abated but access may be restricted by the courts. A person who possesses a pistol in violation of this paragraph is guilty of a gross misdemeanor.
(m) If the court determines that a person convicted under paragraph (b) or (c) of violating an order for protection owns or possesses a firearm and used it in any way during the commission of the violation, it shall order that the firearm be summarily forfeited under section 609.5316, subdivision 3.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 518B.01, subdivision 22, is amended to read:
Domestic abuse no contact order.
(a) A domestic abuse no contact order is an order issued by a court against a defendant in a criminal proceeding for:
(1) domestic abuse;
(2) harassment or stalking charged under section 609.749 and committed against a family or household member;
(3) violation of an order for protection charged under subdivision 14; or
(4) violation of a prior domestic abuse no contact order charged under this subdivision.
It includes pretrial orders before final disposition of the case and probationary orders after sentencing.
(b) A person who knows of the existence of a domestic abuse no contact order issued against the person and violates the order is guilty of a misdemeanor.
(c) A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who knowingly violates this subdivision within ten years of a previous qualified domestic violence-related offense conviction or adjudication of delinquency.
(d) A peace officer shall arrest without a warrant and take into custody a person whom the peace officer has probable cause to believe has violated a domestic abuse no contact order, even if the violation of the order did not take place in the presence of the peace officer, if the existence of the order can be verified by the officer. The person shall be held in custody for at least 36 hours, excluding the day of arrest, Sundays, and holidays, unless the person is released earlier by a judge or judicial officer. A peace officer acting in good faith and exercising due care in making an arrest pursuant to this paragraph is immune from civil liability that might result from the officer's actions.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 609.02, subdivision 16, is amended to read:
Qualified domestic violence-related offense.
"Qualified domestic violence-related offense" includes the following offenses: sections 518B.01, subdivision 14 (violation of domestic abuse order for protection); 518B.01, subdivision 22 (violation of domestic abuse no contact order); 609.221 (first-degree assault); 609.222 (second-degree assault); 609.223 (third-degree assault); 609.2231 (fourth-degree assault); 609.224 (fifth-degree assault); 609.2242 (domestic assault); 609.2247 (domestic assault by strangulation); 609.342 (first-degree criminal sexual conduct); 609.343 (second-degree criminal sexual conduct); 609.344 (third-degree criminal sexual conduct); 609.345 (fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct); 609.377 (malicious punishment of a child); 609.713 (terroristic threats); 609.748, subdivision 6 (violation of harassment restraining order); and 609.749 (harassment/stalking); and 609.78, subdivision 2 (interference with an emergency call); and similar laws of other states, the United States, the District of Columbia, tribal lands, and United States territories.
Prosecutor shall establish.
Whenever reasonable grounds exist to believe that the defendant or an accomplice used a firearm or other dangerous weapon or had in possession a firearm, at the time of commission of an offense listed in subdivision 9, the prosecutor shall, at the time of trial or at the plea of guilty, present on the record all evidence tending to establish that fact unless it is otherwise admitted on the record. The question of whether the defendant or an accomplice, at the time of commission of an offense listed in subdivision 9, used a firearm or other dangerous weapon or had in possession a firearm shall be determined by the court on the record factfinder at the time of a verdict or finding of guilt at trial or the entry of a plea of guilty based upon the record of the trial or the plea of guilty. The court factfinder shall also determine on the record at the time of sentencing whether the defendant has been convicted of a second or subsequent offense in which the defendant or an accomplice, at the time of commission of an offense listed in subdivision 9, used a firearm or other dangerous weapon or had in possession a firearm.
This section applies to the following misdemeanor-level crimes: sections 152.093 (manufacture or delivery of drug paraphernalia prohibited); 152.095 (advertisement of drug paraphernalia prohibited); 609.324 (prostitution); 609.3243 (loitering with intent to participate in prostitution); 609.546 (motor vehicle tampering); 609.595 (damage to property); and 609.66 (dangerous weapons); misdemeanor-level violations of section 609.605 (trespass); and violations of local ordinances prohibiting the unlawful sale or possession of controlled substances.
Public employees with mandated duties.
A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who:
(1) assaults an agricultural inspector, occupational safety and health investigator, child protection worker, public health nurse, animal control officer, or probation or parole officer while the employee is engaged in the performance of a duty mandated by law, court order, or ordinance;
(2) knows that the victim is a public employee engaged in the performance of the official public duties of the office; and
(3) inflicts demonstrable bodily harm.
Gross misdemeanor.
(a) Whoever violates the provisions of subdivision 1 against the same victim during the time period between within ten years of a previous qualified domestic violence-related offense conviction or adjudication of delinquency and the end of the five years following discharge from sentence or disposition for that offense, is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.
(b) Whoever violates the provisions of subdivision 1 within two three years of a previous qualified domestic violence-related offense conviction or adjudication of delinquency is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.
(c) A caregiver, as defined in section 609.232, who is an individual and who violates the provisions of subdivision 1 against a vulnerable adult, as defined in section 609.232, is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.
Felony.
(a) Whoever violates the provisions of subdivision 1 against the same victim during the time period between within ten years of the first of any combination of two or more previous qualified domestic violence-related offense convictions or adjudications of delinquency and the end of the five years following discharge from sentence or disposition for that offense is guilty of a felony and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.
(b) Whoever violates the provisions of subdivision 1 within three years of the first of any combination of two or more previous qualified domestic violence-related offense convictions or adjudications of delinquency is guilty of a felony and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.
Whoever violates subdivision 1 during the time period between within ten years of a previous qualified domestic violence-related offense conviction or adjudication of delinquency against a family or household member as defined in section 518B.01, subdivision 2, and the end of the five years following discharge from sentence or disposition for that offense is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.
Whoever violates the provisions of this section or section 609.224, subdivision 1, against the same victim during the time period between within ten years of the first of any combination of two or more previous qualified domestic violence-related offense convictions or adjudications of delinquency and the end of the five years following discharge from sentence or disposition for that offense is guilty of a felony and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.
609.282 LABOR TRAFFICKING.
Individuals under age 18.
Whoever knowingly engages in the labor trafficking of an individual who is under the age of 18 is guilty of a crime and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 20 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $40,000, or both.
Other offenses.
Whoever knowingly engages in the labor trafficking of another is guilty of a crime and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 15 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $30,000, or both.
Consent or age of victim not a defense.
In a prosecution under this section the consent or age of the victim is not a defense.
609.283 UNLAWFUL CONDUCT WITH RESPECT TO DOCUMENTS IN FURTHERANCE OF LABOR OR SEX TRAFFICKING.
Crime defined.
Unless the person's conduct constitutes a violation of section 609.282, a person who knowingly destroys, conceals, removes, confiscates, or possesses any actual or purported passport or other immigration document, or any other actual or purported government identification document, of another person:
(1) in the course of a violation of section 609.282 or 609.322;
(2) with intent to violate section 609.282 or 609.322; or
(3) to prevent or restrict or to attempt to prevent or restrict, without lawful authority, a person's liberty to move or travel, in order to maintain the labor or services of that person, when the person is or has been a victim of a violation of section 609.282 or 609.322;
is guilty of a crime and may be sentenced as provided in subdivision 2.
A person who violates subdivision 1 may be sentenced as follows:
(1) if the crime involves a victim under the age of 18, to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of $20,000, or both; or
(2) in other cases, to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 609.3455, is amended by adding a subdivision to read:
Mandatory sentence for certain engrained offenders.
(a) A court shall commit a person to the commissioner of corrections for a period of time that is not less than double the presumptive sentence under the sentencing guidelines and not more than the statutory maximum, or if the statutory maximum is less than double the presumptive sentence, for a period of time that is equal to the statutory maximum, if:
(1) the court is imposing an executed sentence on a person convicted of committing or attempting to commit a violation of section 609.342, 609.343, 609.344, 609.345, or 609.3453;
(2) the factfinder determines that the offender is a danger to public safety; and
(3) the factfinder determines that the offender's criminal sexual behavior is so engrained that the risk of reoffending is great without intensive psychotherapeutic intervention or other long-term treatment or supervision extending beyond the presumptive term of imprisonment and supervised release.
(b) The factfinder shall base its determination that the offender is a danger to public safety on any of the following factors:
(1) the crime involved an aggravating factor that would justify a durational departure from the presumptive sentence under the sentencing guidelines;
(2) the offender previously committed or attempted to commit a predatory crime or a violation of section 609.224 or 609.2242, including:
(i) an offense committed as a juvenile that would have been a predatory crime or a violation of section 609.224 or 609.2242 if committed by an adult; or
(ii) a violation or attempted violation of a similar law of any other state or the United States; or
(3) the offender planned or prepared for the crime prior to its commission.
(c) As used in this section, "predatory crime" has the meaning given in section 609.341, subdivision 22.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 609.3455, subdivision 4, is amended to read:
Mandatory life sentence; repeat offenders.
(a) Notwithstanding the statutory maximum penalty otherwise applicable to the offense, the court shall sentence a person to imprisonment for life if the person is convicted of violating section 609.342, 609.343, 609.344, 609.345, or 609.3453 and:
(1) the person has two previous sex offense convictions;
(2) the person has a previous sex offense conviction and:
(i) the factfinder determines that the present offense involved an aggravating factor that would provide grounds for an upward durational departure under the sentencing guidelines other than the aggravating factor applicable to repeat criminal sexual conduct convictions;
(ii) the person received an upward durational departure from the sentencing guidelines for the previous sex offense conviction; or
(iii) the person was sentenced under this section or section 609.108 for the previous sex offense conviction; or
(3) the person has two prior sex offense convictions, and the factfinder determines that the prior convictions and present offense involved at least three separate victims, and:
(ii) the person received an upward durational departure from the sentencing guidelines for one of the prior sex offense convictions; or
(iii) the person was sentenced under this section or section 609.108 for one of the prior sex offense convictions.
(b) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), a court may not sentence a person to imprisonment for life for a violation of section 609.345, unless the person's previous or prior sex offense convictions that are being used as the basis for the sentence are for violations of section 609.342, 609.343, 609.344, or 609.3453, or any similar statute of the United States, this state, or any other state.
Acts prohibited.
Whoever does any of the following may be sentenced as provided in subdivision 4:
(1) escapes while held pursuant to a lawful arrest, in lawful custody on a charge or conviction of a crime, or while held in lawful custody on an allegation or adjudication of a delinquent act;
(2) transfers to another, who is in lawful custody on a charge or conviction of a crime, or introduces into an institution in which the latter is confined, anything usable in making such escape, with intent that it shall be so used;
(3) having another in lawful custody on a charge or conviction of a crime, intentionally permits the other to escape;
(4) escapes while in a facility designated under section 253B.18, subdivision 1, pursuant to a court commitment order after a finding of not guilty by reason of mental illness or mental deficiency of a crime against the person, as defined in section 253B.02, subdivision 4a. Notwithstanding section 609.17, no person may be charged with or convicted of an attempt to commit a violation of this clause;
(5) escapes while in or under the supervision of a facility designated under section 253B.18, subdivision 1, pursuant to a court hold or commitment order under section 253B.185 or Minnesota Statutes 1992, section 526.10; or
(6) escapes while on pass status or provisional discharge according to section 253B.18.
For purposes of clause (1), "escapes while held in lawful custody" includes absconding from electronic monitoring or absconding after removing an electronic monitoring device from the person's body.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in subdivision 3a, whoever violates this section may be sentenced as follows:
(1) if the person who escapes is in lawful custody for a felony, to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both;
(2) if the person who escapes is in lawful custody after a finding of not guilty by reason of mental illness or mental deficiency of a crime against the person, as defined in section 253B.02, subdivision 4a, or pursuant to a court commitment order under section 253B.185 or Minnesota Statutes 1992, section 526.10, to imprisonment for not more than one year and one day or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both;
(3) if the person who escapes is in lawful custody for a gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor, or if the person who escapes is in lawful custody on an allegation or adjudication of a delinquent act, to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both; or
(4) if the person who escapes is under civil commitment under sections section 253B.18 and 253B.185, to imprisonment for not more than one year and one day or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.; or
(5) if the person who escapes is under a court hold, civil commitment, or supervision under section 253B.185 or Minnesota Statutes 1992, section 526.10, to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.
(b) If the escape was a violation of subdivision 2, clause (1), (2), or (3), and was effected by violence or threat of violence against a person, the sentence may be increased to not more than twice those permitted in paragraph (a), clauses (1) and (3).
(c) Unless a concurrent term is specified by the court, a sentence under this section shall be consecutive to any sentence previously imposed or which may be imposed for any crime or offense for which the person was in custody when the person escaped.
(d) Notwithstanding paragraph (c), if a person who was committed to the commissioner of corrections under section 260B.198 escapes from the custody of the commissioner while 18 years of age, the person's sentence under this section shall commence on the person's 19th birthday or on the person's date of discharge by the commissioner of corrections, whichever occurs first. However, if the person described in this clause is convicted under this section after becoming 19 years old and after having been discharged by the commissioner, the person's sentence shall commence upon imposition by the sentencing court.
(e) Notwithstanding paragraph (c), if a person who is in lawful custody on an allegation or adjudication of a delinquent act while 18 years of age escapes from a local juvenile correctional facility, the person's sentence under this section begins on the person's 19th birthday or on the person's date of discharge from the jurisdiction of the juvenile court, whichever occurs first. However, if the person described in this paragraph is convicted after becoming 19 years old and after discharge from the jurisdiction of the juvenile court, the person's sentence begins upon imposition by the sentencing court.
(f) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), any person who escapes or absconds from electronic monitoring or removes an electric monitoring device from the person's body is guilty of a crime and shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to a payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both. A person in lawful custody for a violation of section 609.185, 609.19, 609.195, 609.20, 609.205, 609.21, 609.221, 609.222, 609.223, 609.2231, 609.342, 609.343, 609.344, 609.345, or 609.3451 who escapes or absconds from electronic monitoring or removes an electronic monitoring device while under sentence may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to a payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.
An offense committed under subdivision 1 or 3 may be prosecuted in:
(1) the county where the aiding or obstructing behavior occurred; or
(2) the county where the underlying criminal act occurred.
[609.632] COUNTERFEITING OF CURRENCY.
Manufacturing; printing.
Whoever, with the intent to defraud, falsely makes, alters, prints, scans, images, or copies any United States postal money order, United States currency, Federal Reserve note, or other obligation or security of the United States so that it purports to be genuine or has different terms or provisions than that of the United States Postal Service or United States Treasury is guilty of counterfeiting and may be sentenced as provided in subdivision 4.
Means for false reproduction.
Whoever, with intent to defraud, makes, engraves, possesses, or transfers a plate or instrument, computer, printer, camera, software, paper, cloth, fabric, ink, or other material for the false reproduction of any United States postal money order, United States currency, Federal Reserve note, or other obligation or security of the United States is guilty of counterfeiting and may be sentenced as provided in subdivision 4.
Uttering or possessing.
Whoever, with intent to defraud, utters or possesses with intent to utter any counterfeit United States postal money order, United States currency, Federal Reserve note, or other obligation or security of the United States, having reason to know that the money order, currency, note, or obligation or security is forged, counterfeited, falsely made, altered, or printed, is guilty of offering counterfeited currency and may be sentenced as provided in subdivision 4.
(a) A person who is convicted of violating subdivision 1 or 2 may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 20 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $100,000, or both.
(b) A person who is convicted of violating subdivision 3 may be sentenced as follows:
(1) to imprisonment for not more than 20 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $100,000, or both, if the counterfeited item is used to obtain or in an attempt to obtain property or services having a value of more than $35,000, or the aggregate face value of the counterfeited item is more than $35,000;
(2) to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both, if the counterfeited item is used to obtain or in an attempt to obtain property or services having a value of more than $5,000, or the aggregate face value of the counterfeited item is more than $5,000;
(3) to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both, if:
(i) the counterfeited item is used to obtain or in an attempt to obtain property or services having a value of more than $1,000 or the aggregate face value of the counterfeited item is more than $1,000; or
(ii) the counterfeited item is used to obtain or in an attempt to obtain property or services having a value of no more than $1,000, or the aggregate face value of the counterfeited item is no more than $1,000, and the person has been convicted within the preceding five years for an offense under this section, section 609.24; 609.245; 609.52; 609.53; 609.582, subdivision 1, 2, or 3; 609.625; 609.63; or 609.821, or a statute from another state or the United States in conformity with any of those sections, and the person received a felony or gross misdemeanor sentence for the offense, or a sentence that was stayed under section 609.135 if the offense to which a plea was entered would allow the imposition of a felony or gross misdemeanor sentence; or
(4) to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both, if the counterfeited item is used to obtain or in an attempt to obtain property or services having a value of no more than $1,000, or the aggregate face value of the counterfeited item is no more than $1,000.
Aggregation; venue.
In any prosecution under this section, the value of the counterfeited United States postal money orders, United States currency, Federal Reserve notes, or other obligations or securities of the United States, offered by the defendant in violation of this section within any six-month period may be aggregated and the defendant charged accordingly in applying the provisions of this section. When two or more offenses are committed by the same person in two or more counties, the accused may be prosecuted in any county in which one of the counterfeited items was forged, offered, or possessed, for all of the offenses aggregated under this subdivision.
Violation of restraining order.
(a) A person who violates a restraining order issued under this section is subject to the penalties provided in paragraphs (b) to (d).
(b) Except as otherwise provided in paragraphs (c) and (d), when a temporary restraining order or a restraining order is granted under this section and the respondent knows of the order, violation of the order is a misdemeanor.
(c) A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who knowingly violates the order during the time period between within ten years of a previous qualified domestic violence-related offense conviction and the end of the five years following discharge from sentence for that offense or adjudication of delinquency.
(d) A person is guilty of a felony and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both, if the person knowingly violates the order:
(1) during the time period between within ten years of the first of two or more previous qualified domestic violence-related offense convictions and the end of the five years following discharge from sentence for that offense or adjudications of delinquency;
(2) because of the victim's or another's actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability as defined in section 363A.03, age, or national origin;
(3) by falsely impersonating another;
(4) while possessing a dangerous weapon;
(5) with an intent to influence or otherwise tamper with a juror or a judicial proceeding or with intent to retaliate against a judicial officer, as defined in section 609.415, or a prosecutor, defense attorney, or officer of the court, because of that person's performance of official duties in connection with a judicial proceeding; or
(6) against a victim under the age of 18, if the respondent is more than 36 months older than the victim.
(e) A peace officer shall arrest without a warrant and take into custody a person whom the peace officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order issued under subdivision 4 or 5 if the existence of the order can be verified by the officer.
(f) A violation of a temporary restraining order or restraining order shall also constitute contempt of court.
(g) Upon the filing of an affidavit by the petitioner, any peace officer, or an interested party designated by the court, alleging that the respondent has violated an order issued under subdivision 4 or 5, the court may issue an order to the respondent requiring the respondent to appear within 14 days and show cause why the respondent should not be held in contempt of court. The court also shall refer the violation of the order to the appropriate prosecuting authority for possible prosecution under paragraph (b), (c), or (d).
Second or subsequent violations; felony.
(a) A person is guilty of a felony who violates any provision of subdivision 2 during the time period between within ten years of a previous qualified domestic violence-related offense conviction or adjudication of delinquency and the end of the ten years following discharge from sentence or disposition for that offense, and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.
(b) A person is guilty of a felony who violates any provision of subdivision 2 during the time period between within ten years of the first of two or more previous qualified domestic violence-related offense convictions or adjudications of delinquency and the end of ten years following discharge from sentence or disposition for that offense, and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both.
For purposes of sections 609.87 to 609.89, 609.891 and section 609.891 609.8912 to 609.8913, the terms defined in this section have the meanings given them.
Computer security system.
"Computer security system" means a software program or computer device that:
(1) is intended to protect the confidentiality and secrecy of data and information stored in or accessible through the computer system; and
(2) displays a conspicuous warning to a user that the user is entering a secure system or requires a person seeking access to knowingly respond by use of an authorized code to the program or device in order to gain access.
Encryption.
"Encryption" means any protective or disruptive measure, including but not limited to, cryptography, enciphering, or encoding that:
(1) causes or makes any data, information, image, program, signal, or sound unintelligible or unusable; or
(2) prevents, impedes, delays, or disrupts access to any data, information, image, program, signal, or sound.
"Personal data" means any computer property or computer program which contains records of the employment, salary, credit, or other financial or personal information relating to another person.
A person is guilty of unauthorized computer access if the person intentionally and without authority authorization attempts to or does penetrate a computer security system.
(a) A person who violates subdivision 1 in a manner that creates a risk to public health and safety is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.
(b) A person who violates subdivision 1 in a manner that compromises the security of data that are protected under section 609.52, subdivision 2, clause (8), or are not public data as defined in section 13.02, subdivision 8a, is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced under paragraph (a).
(c) A person who violates subdivision 1 and gains access to personal data is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced under paragraph (a).
(d) A person who is convicted of a second or subsequent misdemeanor violation of subdivision 1 within five years is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced under paragraph (a).
[609.8912] CRIMINAL USE OF ENCRYPTION.
Whoever intentionally uses or attempts to use encryption to do any of the following is guilty of criminal use of encryption and may be sentenced as provided in subdivision 2:
(1) to commit, further, or facilitate conduct constituting a crime;
(2) to conceal the commission of any crime;
(3) to conceal or protect the identity of a person who has committed any crime; or
(4) to prevent, impede, delay, or disrupt the normal operation or use of another's computer, computer program, or computer system.
(a) A person who violates subdivision 1 may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both, if:
(1) the crime referenced in subdivision 1, clause (1), (2), or (3), is a felony; or
(2) the person has two or more prior convictions for an offense under this section, section 609.88, 609.89, 609.891, or 609.8913, or similar laws of other states, the United States, the District of Columbia, tribal lands, and United States territories.
(b) A person who violates subdivision 1, under circumstances not described in paragraph (a), is guilty of a gross misdemeanor and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.
[609.8913] FACILITATING ACCESS TO A COMPUTER SECURITY SYSTEM.
A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor if the person knows or has reason to know that by facilitating access to a computer security system the person is aiding another who intends to commit a crime and in fact commits a crime. For purposes of this section, "facilitating access" includes the intentional disclosure of a computer password, identifying code, personal information number, or other confidential information about a computer security system which provides a person with the means or opportunity for the commission of a crime.
Conditional release term.
Notwithstanding the statutory maximum sentence otherwise applicable to the offense or any provision of the sentencing guidelines, when a court commits a person to the custody of the commissioner of corrections for violating this section, the court shall provide that after the person has completed the sentence imposed, the commissioner shall place the person on conditional release for five years, minus the time the offender served on supervised release. If the person has previously been convicted of a violation of this section, section 609.342, 609.343, 609.344, 609.345, 609.3451, 609.3453, or 617.247, or any similar statute of the United States, this state, or any state, the commissioner shall place the person on conditional release for ten years, minus the time the offender served on supervised release. The terms of conditional release are governed by section 609.3455, subdivision 8.
As used in this section, "federal law enforcement officer" means an officer or employee whether employed inside or outside the state of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the United States Marshal Service, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of Homeland Security, or the United States Postal Inspection Service, or their successor agencies, who is responsible for the prevention or detection of crimes or for the enforcement of the United States Code and who is authorized to arrest, with or without a warrant, any individual for a violation of the United States Code.
Laws 2005, chapter 136, article 16, section 3, the effective date, is amended to read:
EFFECTIVE DATE. This section is effective the day following final enactment and applies to sentencing hearings, resentencing hearings, and sentencing departures sought on or after that date. This section expires February 1, 2007.
COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES COMMITTEE.
Establishment; duties.
A collateral consequences committee is established to study collateral consequences of adult convictions and juvenile adjudications. The committee shall identify the uses of collateral consequences of convictions and adjudications and recommend any proposed changes to the legislature on collateral consequences.
The Department of Corrections shall provide technical assistance to the committee on request, with the assistance of the commissioner of public safety and the Sentencing Guidelines Commission.
The committee consists of:
(1) one representative from each of the following groups:
(i) crime victim advocates, appointed by the commissioner of public safety;
(ii) county attorneys, appointed by the Minnesota County Attorneys Association;
(iii) city attorneys, appointed by the League of Minnesota Cities;
(iv) district court judges, appointed by the Judicial Council;
(v) private criminal defense attorneys, appointed by the Minnesota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers;
(vi) probation officers, appointed by the Minnesota Association of County Probation Officers; and
(vii) the state public defender or a designee; and
(2) the commissioner of public safety, or a designee, who shall chair the group.
Report and recommendations.
The committee shall present the legislature with its report and recommendations no later than January 15, 2007. The report must be presented to the chairs of the senate Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee and the house Public Safety and Finance Committee.
SENTENCING GUIDELINES MODIFICATIONS.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b), the modifications related to sex offenses proposed by the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission and described in the January 2006 Report to the Legislature, pages 31 to 45, are adopted and take effect on August 1, 2006.
(b) The proposed rankings of Minnesota Statutes, sections 609.344, subdivision 1, clauses (h), (i), and (l); and 609.345, subdivision 1, clauses (h), (i), and (l), are rejected and do not take effect.
(c) The commission is requested to rank violations of:
(1) Minnesota Statutes, section 609.344, subdivision 1, clauses (h), (i), and (l), at severity level C;
(2) Minnesota Statutes, section 609.344, subdivision 1, clause (a), at severity level D;
(3) Minnesota Statutes, section 609.345, subdivision 1, clauses (h), (i), and (l), at severity level E; and
(4) Minnesota Statutes, section 609.345, subdivision 1, clause (a), at severity level F.
(d) If the commission decides to make the changes requested in paragraph (c), it shall ensure that the changes are effective on August 1, 2006, and publish an updated version of the sentencing guidelines that include the changes by that date.
When appropriate, the revisor of statutes shall replace statutory references to Minnesota Statutes, section 609.108, with references to section 609.3455, subdivision 3a.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, sections 609.108, subdivision 5; and 609.109, subdivisions 1 and 3, and Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, sections 609.108, subdivisions 1, 3, 4, 6, and 7; and 609.109, subdivisions 2, 4, 5, and 6, are repealed.
CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES, DWI, AND TRAFFIC SAFETY PROVISIONS
169.13 RECKLESS OR CARELESS DRIVING.
Reckless driving.
(a) Any person who drives any vehicle in such a manner as to indicate either a willful or a wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property is guilty of reckless driving and such reckless driving is a misdemeanor.
(b) A person shall not race any vehicle upon any street or highway of this state. Any person who willfully compares or contests relative speeds by operating one or more vehicles is guilty of racing, which constitutes reckless driving, whether or not the speed contested or compared is in excess of the maximum speed prescribed by law.
Careless driving.
Any person who operates or halts any vehicle upon any street or highway carelessly or heedlessly in disregard of the rights of others, or in a manner that endangers or is likely to endanger any property or any person, including the driver or passengers of the vehicle, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
(a) The provisions of this section apply, but are not limited in application, to any person who drives any vehicle in the manner prohibited by this section:
(1) upon the ice of any lake, stream, or river, including but not limited to the ice of any boundary water; or
(2) in a parking lot ordinarily used by or available to the public though not as a matter of right, and a driveway connecting such a the parking lot with a street or highway.
(b) This section does not apply to:
(1) an authorized emergency vehicle, when responding to an emergency call or when in pursuit of an actual or suspected violator;
(2) the emergency operation of any vehicle when avoiding imminent danger; or
(3) any raceway, racing facility, or other public event sanctioned by the appropriate governmental authority.
This section is effective August 1, 2006, for violations committed on or after that date.
Driving while impaired crime.
It is a crime for any person to drive, operate, or be in physical control of any motor vehicle within this state or on any boundary water of this state:
(1) when the person is under the influence of alcohol;
(2) when the person is under the influence of a controlled substance;
(3) when the person is knowingly under the influence of a hazardous substance that affects the nervous system, brain, or muscles of the person so as to substantially impair the person's ability to drive or operate the motor vehicle;
(4) when the person is under the influence of a combination of any two or more of the elements named in clauses (1), (2), and (3);
(5) when the person's alcohol concentration at the time, or as measured within two hours of the time, of driving, operating, or being in physical control of the motor vehicle is 0.08 or more;
(6) when the vehicle is a commercial motor vehicle and the person's alcohol concentration at the time, or as measured within two hours of the time, of driving, operating, or being in physical control of the commercial motor vehicle is 0.04 or more; or
(7) when the person's body contains any amount of a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II, or its metabolite, other than marijuana or tetrahydrocannabinols.
This section is effective August 1, 2006, and applies to impaired driving incidents occurring on or after that date.
Degree described.
A person who violates section 169A.20 (driving while impaired) is guilty of first-degree driving while impaired if the person:
(1) commits the violation within ten years of the first of three or more qualified prior impaired driving incidents; or
(2) has previously been convicted of a felony under this section; or
(3) has previously been convicted of a felony under section 609.21, subdivision 1, clause (2), (3), (4), (5), or (6); subdivision 2, clause (2), (3), (4), (5), or (6); subdivision 2a, clause (2), (3), (4), (5), or (6); subdivision 3, clause (2), (3), (4), (5), or (6); or subdivision 4, clause (2), (3), (4), (5), or (6).
Mandatory consecutive sentences.
(a) The court shall impose consecutive sentences when it sentences a person for:
(1) violations of section 169A.20 (driving while impaired) arising out of separate courses of conduct;
(2) a violation of section 169A.20 when the person, at the time of sentencing, is on probation for, or serving, an executed sentence for a violation of section 169A.20 or Minnesota Statutes 1998, section 169.121 (driver under the influence of alcohol or controlled substance) or 169.129 (aggravated DWI-related violations; penalty), and the prior sentence involved a separate course of conduct; or
(3) a violation of section 169A.20 and another offense arising out of a single course of conduct that is listed in subdivision 2, paragraph (e), when the person has five or more qualified prior impaired driving incidents within the past ten years.
(b) The requirement for consecutive sentencing in paragraph (a) does not apply if the person is being sentenced to an executed prison term for a violation of section 169A.20 (driving while impaired) under circumstances described in section 169A.24 (first-degree driving while impaired).
Alcohol concentration evidence.
Upon the trial of any prosecution arising out of acts alleged to have been committed by any person arrested for violating section 169A.20 (driving while impaired) or 169A.31 (alcohol-related school bus or Head Start bus driving), the court may admit evidence of the presence or amount of alcohol in the person's blood, breath, or urine as shown by an analysis of those items. In addition, in a prosecution for a violation of section 169A.20, the court may admit evidence of the presence or amount in the person's blood, breath, or urine, as shown by an analysis of those items, of:
(1) a controlled substances substance or its metabolite; or
(2) a hazardous substances in the person's blood, breath, or urine as shown by an analysis of those items substance.
Implied consent; conditions; election of test.
(a) Any person who drives, operates, or is in physical control of a motor vehicle within this state or on any boundary water of this state consents, subject to the provisions of sections 169A.50 to 169A.53 (implied consent law), and section 169A.20 (driving while impaired), to a chemical test of that person's blood, breath, or urine for the purpose of determining the presence of alcohol, a controlled substances substance or its metabolite, or a hazardous substances substance. The test must be administered at the direction of a peace officer.
(b) The test may be required of a person when an officer has probable cause to believe the person was driving, operating, or in physical control of a motor vehicle in violation of section 169A.20 (driving while impaired), and one of the following conditions exist:
(1) the person has been lawfully placed under arrest for violation of section 169A.20 or an ordinance in conformity with it;
(2) the person has been involved in a motor vehicle accident or collision resulting in property damage, personal injury, or death;
(3) the person has refused to take the screening test provided for by section 169A.41 (preliminary screening test); or
(4) the screening test was administered and indicated an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more.
(c) The test may also be required of a person when an officer has probable cause to believe the person was driving, operating, or in physical control of a commercial motor vehicle with the presence of any alcohol.
Implied consent advisory.
At the time a test is requested, the person must be informed:
(1) that Minnesota law requires the person to take a test:
(i) to determine if the person is under the influence of alcohol, controlled substances, or hazardous substances;
(ii) to determine the presence of a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II or metabolite, other than marijuana or tetrahydrocannabinols; and
(iii) if the motor vehicle was a commercial motor vehicle, to determine the presence of alcohol;
(2) that refusal to take a test is a crime;
(3) if the peace officer has probable cause to believe the person has violated the criminal vehicular homicide and injury laws, that a test will be taken with or without the person's consent; and
(4) that the person has the right to consult with an attorney, but that this right is limited to the extent that it cannot unreasonably delay administration of the test.
Requirement of urine or blood test.
Notwithstanding subdivision 3, a blood or urine test may be required even after a breath test has been administered if there is probable cause to believe that:
(1) there is impairment by a controlled substance or a hazardous substance that is not subject to testing by a breath test; or
(2) a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II or its metabolite, other than marijuana or tetrahydrocannabinols, is present in the person's body.
Action may be taken against a person who refuses to take a blood test under this subdivision only if a urine test was offered and action may be taken against a person who refuses to take a urine test only if a blood test was offered.
Requirements for conducting tests; liability.
(a) Only a physician, medical technician, emergency medical technician-paramedic, registered nurse, medical technologist, medical laboratory technician, or laboratory assistant acting at the request of a peace officer may withdraw blood for the purpose of determining the presence of alcohol, a controlled substances substance or its metabolite, or a hazardous substances substance. This limitation does not apply to the taking of a breath or urine sample.
(b) The person tested has the right to have someone of the person's own choosing administer a chemical test or tests in addition to any administered at the direction of a peace officer; provided, that the additional test sample on behalf of the person is obtained at the place where the person is in custody, after the test administered at the direction of a peace officer, and at no expense to the state. The failure or inability to obtain an additional test or tests by a person does not preclude the admission in evidence of the test taken at the direction of a peace officer unless the additional test was prevented or denied by the peace officer.
(c) The physician, medical technician, emergency medical technician-paramedic, medical technologist, medical laboratory technician, laboratory assistant, or registered nurse drawing blood at the request of a peace officer for the purpose of determining the concentration of alcohol, a controlled substances substance or its metabolite, or a hazardous substances substance is in no manner liable in any civil or criminal action except for negligence in drawing the blood. The person administering a breath test must be fully trained in the administration of breath tests pursuant to training given by the commissioner of public safety.
Reporting test failure.
(a) If a person submits to a test, the results of that test must be reported to the commissioner and to the authority having responsibility for prosecution of impaired driving offenses for the jurisdiction in which the acts occurred, if the test results indicate:
(1) an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more;
(2) an alcohol concentration of 0.04 or more, if the person was driving, operating, or in physical control of a commercial motor vehicle at the time of the violation; or
(3) the presence of a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II or its metabolite, other than marijuana or tetrahydrocannabinols.
(b) If a person submits to a test and the test results indicate the presence of a hazardous substance, the results of that test must be reported to the authority having responsibility for prosecution of impaired driving offenses for the jurisdiction in which the acts occurred.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 169A.52, subdivision 4, is amended to read:
Test failure; license revocation.
(a) Upon certification by the peace officer that there existed probable cause to believe the person had been driving, operating, or in physical control of a motor vehicle in violation of section 169A.20 (driving while impaired) and that the person submitted to a test and the test results indicate an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more or the presence of a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II or its metabolite, other than marijuana or tetrahydrocannabinols, then the commissioner shall revoke the person's license or permit to drive, or nonresident operating privilege:
(1) for a period of 90 days;
(2) if the person is under the age of 21 years, for a period of six months;
(3) for a person with a qualified prior impaired driving incident within the past ten years, for a period of 180 days; or
(4) if the test results indicate an alcohol concentration of 0.20 or more, for twice the applicable period in clauses (1) to (3).
(b) On certification by the peace officer that there existed probable cause to believe the person had been driving, operating, or in physical control of a commercial motor vehicle with any presence of alcohol and that the person submitted to a test and the test results indicated an alcohol concentration of 0.04 or more, the commissioner shall disqualify the person from operating a commercial motor vehicle under section 171.165 (commercial driver's license disqualification).
(c) If the test is of a person's blood or urine by a laboratory operated by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, or authorized by the bureau to conduct the analysis of a blood or urine sample, the laboratory may directly certify to the commissioner the test results, and the peace officer shall certify to the commissioner that there existed probable cause to believe the person had been driving, operating, or in physical control of a motor vehicle in violation of section 169A.20 and that the person submitted to a test. Upon receipt of both certifications, the commissioner shall undertake the license actions described in paragraphs (a) and (b).
Judicial hearing; issues, order, appeal.
(a) A judicial review hearing under this section must be before a district judge in any county in the judicial district where the alleged offense occurred. The hearing is to the court and may be conducted at the same time and in the same manner as hearings upon pretrial motions in the criminal prosecution under section 169A.20 (driving while impaired), if any. The hearing must be recorded. The commissioner shall appear and be represented by the attorney general or through the prosecuting authority for the jurisdiction involved. The hearing must be held at the earliest practicable date, and in any event no later than 60 days following the filing of the petition for review. The judicial district administrator shall establish procedures to ensure efficient compliance with this subdivision. To accomplish this, the administrator may, whenever possible, consolidate and transfer review hearings among the locations within the judicial district where terms of district court are held.
(b) The scope of the hearing is limited to the issues in clauses (1) to (10):
(1) Did the peace officer have probable cause to believe the person was driving, operating, or in physical control of a motor vehicle or commercial motor vehicle in violation of section 169A.20 (driving while impaired)?
(2) Was the person lawfully placed under arrest for violation of section 169A.20?
(3) Was the person involved in a motor vehicle accident or collision resulting in property damage, personal injury, or death?
(4) Did the person refuse to take a screening test provided for by section 169A.41 (preliminary screening test)?
(5) If the screening test was administered, did the test indicate an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more?
(6) At the time of the request for the test, did the peace officer inform the person of the person's rights and the consequences of taking or refusing the test as required by section 169A.51, subdivision 2?
(7) Did the person refuse to permit the test?
(8) If a test was taken by a person driving, operating, or in physical control of a motor vehicle, did the test results indicate at the time of testing:
(i) an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more; or
(ii) the presence of a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II or its metabolite, other than marijuana or tetrahydrocannabinols?
(9) If a test was taken by a person driving, operating, or in physical control of a commercial motor vehicle, did the test results indicate an alcohol concentration of 0.04 or more at the time of testing?
(10) Was the testing method used valid and reliable and were the test results accurately evaluated?
(c) It is an affirmative defense for the petitioner to prove that, at the time of the refusal, the petitioner's refusal to permit the test was based upon reasonable grounds.
(d) Certified or otherwise authenticated copies of laboratory or medical personnel reports, records, documents, licenses, and certificates are admissible as substantive evidence.
(e) The court shall order that the revocation or disqualification be either rescinded or sustained and forward the order to the commissioner. The court shall file its order within 14 days following the hearing. If the revocation or disqualification is sustained, the court shall also forward the person's driver's license or permit to the commissioner for further action by the commissioner if the license or permit is not already in the commissioner's possession.
(f) Any party aggrieved by the decision of the reviewing court may appeal the decision as provided in the Rules of Appellate Procedure.
(g) The civil hearing under this section shall not give rise to an estoppel on any issues arising from the same set of circumstances in any criminal prosecution.
Plate impoundment violation; impoundment order.
(a) The commissioner shall issue a registration plate impoundment order when:
(1) a person's driver's license or driving privileges are revoked for a plate impoundment violation; or
(2) a person is arrested for or charged with a plate impoundment violation described in subdivision 1, paragraph (c) (d), clause (5).
(b) The order must require the impoundment of the registration plates of the motor vehicle involved in the plate impoundment violation and all motor vehicles owned by, registered, or leased in the name of the violator, including motor vehicles registered jointly or leased in the name of the violator and another. The commissioner shall not issue an impoundment order for the registration plates of a rental vehicle, as defined in section 168.041, subdivision 10, or a vehicle registered in another state.
Peace officer as agent for notice of impoundment.
On behalf of the commissioner, a peace officer issuing a notice of intent to revoke and of revocation for a plate impoundment violation shall also serve a notice of intent to impound and an order of impoundment. On behalf of the commissioner, a peace officer who is arresting a person for or charging a person with a plate impoundment violation described in subdivision 1, paragraph (c) (d), clause (5), shall also serve a notice of intent to impound and an order of impoundment. If the vehicle involved in the plate impoundment violation is accessible to the officer at the time the impoundment order is issued, the officer shall seize the registration plates subject to the impoundment order. The officer shall destroy all plates seized or impounded under this section. The officer shall send to the commissioner copies of the notice of intent to impound and the order of impoundment and a notice that registration plates impounded and seized under this section have been destroyed.
Instruction permit use by person under age 18.
(a) This subdivision applies to persons who have applied for and received an instruction permit under subdivision 2.
(b) The permit holder may, with the permit in possession, operate a motor vehicle, but must be accompanied by and be under the supervision of a certified driver education instructor, the permit holder's parent or guardian, or another licensed driver age 21 or older. The supervisor must occupy the seat beside the permit holder.
(c) The permit holder may operate a motor vehicle only when every occupant under the age of 18 has a seat belt or child passenger restraint system properly fastened. A person who violates this paragraph is subject to a fine of $25. A peace officer may not issue a citation for a violation of this paragraph unless the officer lawfully stopped or detained the driver of the motor vehicle for a moving violation as defined in section 171.04, subdivision 1. The commissioner shall not record a violation of this paragraph on a person's driving record.
(d) The permit holder may not operate a vehicle while communicating over, or otherwise operating, a cellular or wireless telephone, whether handheld or hands free, when the vehicle is in motion. The permit holder may assert as an affirmative defense that the violation was made for the sole purpose of obtaining emergency assistance to prevent a crime about to be committed, or in the reasonable belief that a person's life or safety was in danger. Violation of this paragraph is a petty misdemeanor subject to section 169.89, subdivision 2.
(e) The permit holder must maintain a driving record free of convictions for moving violations, as defined in section 171.04, subdivision 1, and free of convictions for violation of section 169A.20, 169A.33, 169A.35, or sections 169A.50 to 169A.53. If the permit holder drives a motor vehicle in violation of the law, the commissioner shall suspend, cancel, or revoke the permit in accordance with the statutory section violated.
This section is effective June 1, 2006, and applies to violations committed on and after that date.
Use of provisional license.
(a) A provisional license holder may operate a motor vehicle only when every occupant under the age of 18 has a seat belt or child passenger restraint system properly fastened. A person who violates this paragraph is subject to a fine of $25. A peace officer may not issue a citation for a violation of this paragraph unless the officer lawfully stopped or detained the driver of the motor vehicle for a moving violation as defined in section 171.04. The commissioner shall not record a violation of this paragraph on a person's driving record.
(b) A provisional license holder may not operate a vehicle while communicating over, or otherwise operating, a cellular or wireless telephone, whether handheld or hands free, when the vehicle is in motion. The provisional license holder may assert as an affirmative defense that the violation was made for the sole purpose of obtaining emergency assistance to prevent a crime about to be committed, or in the reasonable belief that a person's life or safety was in danger. Violation of this paragraph is a petty misdemeanor subject to section 169.89, subdivision 2.
(c) If the holder of a provisional license during the period of provisional licensing incurs (1) a conviction for a violation of section 169A.20, 169A.33, 169A.35, or sections 169A.50 to 169A.53, (2) a conviction for a crash-related moving violation, or (3) more than one conviction for a moving violation that is not crash related, the person may not be issued a driver's license until 12 consecutive months have expired since the date of the conviction or until the person reaches the age of 18 years, whichever occurs first.
Offenses.
(a) The commissioner may suspend the license of a driver without preliminary hearing upon a showing by department records or other sufficient evidence that the licensee:
(1) has committed an offense for which mandatory revocation of license is required upon conviction;
(2) has been convicted by a court for violating a provision of chapter 169 or an ordinance regulating traffic, other than a conviction for a petty misdemeanor, and department records show that the violation contributed in causing an accident resulting in the death or personal injury of another, or serious property damage;
(3) is an habitually reckless or negligent driver of a motor vehicle;
(4) is an habitual violator of the traffic laws;
(5) is incompetent to drive a motor vehicle as determined in a judicial proceeding;
(6) has permitted an unlawful or fraudulent use of the license;
(7) has committed an offense in another state that, if committed in this state, would be grounds for suspension;
(8) has committed a violation of section 169.444, subdivision 2, paragraph (a), within five years of a prior conviction under that section;
(9) has committed a violation of section 171.22, except that the commissioner may not suspend a person's driver's license based solely on the fact that the person possessed a fictitious or fraudulently altered Minnesota identification card;
(10) has failed to appear in court as provided in section 169.92, subdivision 4;
(11) has failed to report a medical condition that, if reported, would have resulted in cancellation of driving privileges;
(12) has been found to have committed an offense under section 169A.33; or
(13) has paid or attempted to pay a fee required under this chapter for a license or permit by means of a dishonored check issued to the state or a driver's license agent, which must be continued until the registrar determines or is informed by the agent that the dishonored check has been paid in full.
However, an action taken by the commissioner under clause (2) or (5) must conform to the recommendation of the court when made in connection with the prosecution of the licensee.
(b) The commissioner may not suspend the driver's license of an individual under paragraph (a) who was convicted of a violation of section 171.24, subdivision 1, whose license was under suspension at the time solely because of the individual's failure to appear in court or failure to pay a fine.
Chemically dependent person.
"Chemically dependent person" means any person (a) determined as being incapable of self-management or management of personal affairs by reason of the habitual and excessive use of alcohol, drugs, or other mind-altering substances; and (b) whose recent conduct as a result of habitual and excessive use of alcohol, drugs, or other mind-altering substances poses a substantial likelihood of physical harm to self or others as demonstrated by (i) a recent attempt or threat to physically harm self or others, (ii) evidence of recent serious physical problems, or (iii) a failure to obtain necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical care. "Chemically dependent person" also means a pregnant woman who has engaged during the pregnancy in habitual or excessive use, for a nonmedical purpose, of any of the following controlled substances or their derivatives: opium, cocaine, heroin, phencyclidine, methamphetamine, or amphetamine.
REMEDIATION OF HARM CAUSED BY MISDEMEANOR CONVICTIONS FOR MINORS DRIVING WITH MOBILE PHONES.
Remediation by commissioner.
For infractions that occurred between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006, the commissioner of public safety shall expunge from a licensee's driving record a misdemeanor conviction for violating Minnesota Statutes, section 171.05, subdivision 2b, paragraph (d), or 171.055, subdivision 2, paragraph (b). The commissioner is not obligated to expunge petty misdemeanor violations of the statutes referenced in this subdivision.
Remediation by courts.
(a) A court in which a person was convicted for a misdemeanor violation of Minnesota Statutes, section 171.05, subdivision 2b, paragraph (d), or 171.055, subdivision 2, paragraph (b), that occurred between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006, must vacate the conviction, on its own motion, without cost to the person convicted, and must immediately notify the person that the conviction has been vacated. A court shall not vacate petty misdemeanor violations of the statutes referenced in this subdivision.
(b) The commissioner of finance, in consultation with the state court administrator, shall develop and implement a procedure to refund defendants for any fine in excess of $300 for a conviction vacated under paragraph (a), without requiring that the defendant request a refund. The procedure may require recovery of portions of the fines that have been allocated by law to local governmental units.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 169A.41, subdivision 4, is repealed.
This section is effective August 1, 2006, and applies to impaired driving violations that occur on or after that date.
PUBLIC SAFETY POLICY
[4.055] GOVERNOR'S RESIDENCE EMPLOYEES AND GOVERNOR APPOINTEE BACKGROUND CHECKS.
The governor's office may request a check of:
(1) systems accessible through the criminal justice data communications network, including, but not limited to, criminal history, predatory offender registration, warrants, and driver license record information from the Department of Public Safety;
(2) the statewide supervision system maintained by the Department of Corrections; and
(3) national criminal history information maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation;
on candidates for positions within the governor's residence or appointment by the governor. The candidate shall provide the governor's office with a written authorization to conduct the check of these systems. For a check of the national criminal history information, the request must also include a set of fingerprints which shall be sent to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The bureau has the authority to exchange the fingerprints with the FBI to facilitate the national background check. The superintendent may recover fees associated with the background checks from the governor's office.
Juvenile offender photographs.
Notwithstanding section 260B.171, chapter 609A, or other law to the contrary, photographs or electronically produced images of children adjudicated delinquent under chapter 260B shall not be expunged from law enforcement records or databases.
Name and index service; data classification.
(a) For purposes of this section, "name and event index service" means the data held by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension that link data about an individual that are stored in one or more databases maintained in criminal justice agencies, as defined in section 299C.46, subdivision 2, and in the judiciary.
(b) Data collected, created, or maintained by the name and event index service are classified as private data, pursuant to section 13.02, subdivision 12, and become confidential data, pursuant to section 13.02, subdivision 3, when the data links private or public data about a specific individual to any confidential data about that individual. The data in the name and event index service revert to the private data classification when no confidential data about a specific individual are maintained in the databases. The classification of data in the name and event index service does not change the classification of the data held in the databases linked by the service.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 144.7401, is amended by adding a subdivision to read:
Peace officer; applicability.
An individual licensed as a peace officer under section 626.84, subdivision 1, is considered an emergency medical services person for purposes of sections 144.7401 to 144.7415 regardless of whether the officer is engaged in performing emergency services.
Subd 2a.
Licensing; felons.
The board shall adopt rules to establish a uniform process and criteria by which an applicant who has been convicted of a felony shall be considered for licensing.
181.973 EMPLOYEE PUBLIC SAFETY PEER COUNSELING AND DEBRIEFING.
A person engaged in a public safety peer counseling or a public safety peer debriefing shall not, without the permission of the person being debriefed or counseled, be allowed to disclose any information or opinion which the peer group member or peer counselor has acquired during the debriefing process. However, this does not prohibit a peer counselor from disclosing information the peer counselor reasonably believes indicates that the person may be a danger to self or others, if the information is used only for the purpose of eliminating the danger to the person or others. Any information or opinion disclosed in violation of this paragraph is not admissible as evidence in any personnel or occupational licensing matter involving the person being debriefed or counseled.
For purposes of this paragraph section, "public safety peer counseling or debriefing" means a group process oriented debriefing session, or one-to-one contact with a peer counselor, held for peace officers, firefighters, medical emergency persons, dispatchers, or other persons involved with public safety emergency services, that is established by any agency providing public safety emergency services and is designed to help a person who has suffered an occupation-related traumatic event trauma, illness, or stress begin the process of healing and effectively dealing with posttraumatic stress the person's problems or the use of the peer counselor for direction with referrals to better service these occupation-related issues. A "peer counselor" means someone so designated by that agency.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 243.166, subdivision 1b, is amended to read:
(i) murder under section 609.185, clause (2);
(2) the person was charged with or petitioned for a violation of, or attempt to violate, or aiding, abetting, or conspiracy to commit false imprisonment in violation of section 609.255, subdivision 2; soliciting a minor to engage in prostitution in violation of section 609.322 or 609.324; soliciting a minor to engage in sexual conduct in violation of section 609.352; using a minor in a sexual performance in violation of section 617.246; or possessing pornographic work involving a minor in violation of section 617.247, and convicted of or adjudicated delinquent for that offense or another offense arising out of the same set of circumstances;
(3) the person was sentenced as a patterned sex offender under section 609.108; or
(4) the person was convicted of or adjudicated delinquent for, including pursuant to a court martial, violating a law of the United States, including the Uniform Code of Military Justice, similar to the offenses described in clause (1), (2), or (3).
(1) the person was convicted of or adjudicated delinquent in another state for an offense that would be a violation of a law described in paragraph (a) if committed in this state;
(3) ten years have not elapsed since the person was released from confinement or, if the person was not confined, since the person was convicted of or adjudicated delinquent for the offense that triggers registration, unless the person is subject to a longer registration period under the laws of another state in which the person has been convicted or adjudicated, or is subject to lifetime registration, in which case.
If a person described in this paragraph is subject to a longer registration period in another state or is subject to lifetime registration, the person shall register for life that time period regardless of when the person was released from confinement, convicted, or adjudicated delinquent.
(c) A person also shall register under this section if the person was committed pursuant to a court commitment order under section 253B.185 or Minnesota Statutes 1992, section 526.10, or a similar law of another state or the United States, regardless of whether the person was convicted of any offense.
This section is effective the day following final enactment and applies to offenders residing in Minnesota on or after that date.
Contents of registration.
(a) The registration provided to the corrections agent or law enforcement authority, must consist of a statement in writing signed by the person, giving information required by the bureau, a fingerprint card, and photograph of the person taken at the time of the person's release from incarceration or, if the person was not incarcerated, at the time the person initially registered under this section. The registration information also must include a written consent form signed by the person allowing a treatment facility or residential housing unit or shelter to release information to a law enforcement officer about the person's admission to, or residence in, a treatment facility or residential housing unit or shelter. Registration information on adults and juveniles may be maintained together notwithstanding section 260B.171, subdivision 3.
(b) For persons required to register under subdivision 1b, paragraph (c), following commitment pursuant to a court commitment under section 253B.185 or a similar law of another state or the United States, in addition to other information required by this section, the registration provided to the corrections agent or law enforcement authority must include the person's offense history and documentation of treatment received during the person's commitment. This documentation is limited to a statement of how far the person progressed in treatment during commitment.
(c) Within three days of receipt, the corrections agent or law enforcement authority shall forward the registration information to the bureau. The bureau shall ascertain whether the person has registered with the law enforcement authority in the area of the person's primary address, if any, or if the person lacks a primary address, where the person is staying, as required by subdivision 3a. If the person has not registered with the law enforcement authority, the bureau shall send one copy to that authority.
(d) The corrections agent or law enforcement authority may require that a person required to register under this section appear before the agent or authority to be photographed. The agent or authority shall forward the photograph to the bureau.
(1) Except as provided in clause (2), the agent or authority shall require a person required to register under this section who is classified as a level III offender under section 244.052 to appear before the agent or authority at least every six months to be photographed.
(2) The requirements of this paragraph shall not apply during any period where the person to be photographed is: (i) committed to the commissioner of corrections and incarcerated, (ii) incarcerated in a regional jail or county jail, or (iii) committed to the commissioner of human services and receiving treatment in a secure treatment facility.
(e) During the period a person is required to register under this section, the following provisions apply:
(1) Except for persons registering under subdivision 3a, the bureau shall mail a verification form to the person's last reported primary address. This verification form must provide notice to the offender that, if the offender does not return the verification form as required, information about the offender may be made available to the public through electronic, computerized, or other accessible means. For persons who are registered under subdivision 3a, the bureau shall mail an annual verification form to the law enforcement authority where the offender most recently reported. The authority shall provide the verification form to the person at the next weekly meeting and ensure that the person completes and signs the form and returns it to the bureau.
(2) The person shall mail the signed verification form back to the bureau within ten days after receipt of the form, stating on the form the current and last address of the person's residence and the other information required under subdivision 4a.
(3) In addition to the requirements listed in this section, a person who is assigned to risk level II or III under section 244.052, and who is no longer under correctional supervision for a registration offense, or a failure to register offense, but who resides, works, or attends school in Minnesota, shall have an annual in-person contact with a law enforcement authority as provided in this section. If the person resides in Minnesota, the annual in-person contact shall be with the law enforcement authority that has jurisdiction over the person's primary address or, if the person has no address, the location where the person is staying. If the person does not reside in Minnesota but works or attends school in this state, the person shall have an annual in-person contact with the law enforcement authority or authorities with jurisdiction over the person's school or workplace. During the month of the person's birth date, the person shall report to the authority to verify the accuracy of the registration information and to be photographed. Within three days of this contact, the authority shall enter information as required by the bureau into the predatory offender registration database and submit an updated photograph of the person to the bureau's predatory offender registration unit.
(4) If the person fails to mail the completed and signed verification form to the bureau within ten days after receipt of the form, or if the person fails to report to the law enforcement authority during the month of the person's birth date, the person is in violation of this section.
(5) For any person who fails to mail the completed and signed verification form to the bureau within ten days after receipt of the form and who has been determined to be a risk level III offender under section 244.052, the bureau shall immediately investigate and notify local law enforcement authorities to investigate the person's location and to ensure compliance with this section. The bureau also shall immediately give notice of the person's violation of this section to the law enforcement authority having jurisdiction over the person's last registered address or addresses.
For persons required to register under subdivision 1b, paragraph (c), following commitment pursuant to a court commitment under section 253B.185 or a similar law of another state or the United States, the bureau shall comply with clause (1) at least four times each year. For persons who, under section 244.052, are assigned to risk level III and who are no longer under correctional supervision for a registration offense or a failure to register offense, the bureau shall comply with clause (1) at least two times each year. For all other persons required to register under this section, the bureau shall comply with clause (1) each year within 30 days of the anniversary date of the person's initial registration.
(f) When sending out a verification form, the bureau shall determine whether the person to whom the verification form is being sent has signed a written consent form as provided for in paragraph (a). If the person has not signed such a consent form, the bureau shall send a written consent form to the person along with the verification form. A person who receives this written consent form shall sign and return it to the bureau at the same time as the verification form.
Health care facility; notice of status.
(a) For the purposes of this subdivision, "health care facility" means a facility licensed by:
(1) the commissioner of health as a hospital, boarding care home or supervised living facility under sections 144.50 to 144.58, or a nursing home under chapter 144A; or
(2) the commissioner of human services as a residential facility under chapter 245A to provide adult foster care, adult mental health treatment, chemical dependency treatment to adults, or residential services to persons with developmental disabilities.
(b) Upon admittance Prior to admission to a health care facility, a person required to register under this section shall disclose to:
(1) the health care facility employee processing the admission the person's status as a registered predatory offender under this section; and
(2) the person's corrections agent, or if the person does not have an assigned corrections agent, the law enforcement authority with whom the person is currently required to register, that inpatient admission has occurred will occur.
(c) A law enforcement authority or corrections agent who receives notice under paragraph (b) or who knows that a person required to register under this section is planning to be admitted and receive, or has been admitted and is receiving health care at a health care facility shall notify the administrator of the facility and deliver a fact sheet to the administrator containing the following information: (1) name and physical description of the offender; (2) the offender's conviction history, including the dates of conviction; (3) the risk level classification assigned to the offender under section 244.052, if any; and (4) the profile of likely victims.
(d) Except for a hospital licensed under sections 144.50 to 144.58, if a health care facility that receives notice under this subdivision that a predatory offender has been admitted to the facility a fact sheet under paragraph (c) that includes a risk level classification for the offender, and if the facility admits the offender, the facility shall notify other distribute the fact sheet to all residents at the facility of this fact. If the facility determines that notice distribution to a resident is not appropriate given the resident's medical, emotional, or mental status, the facility shall notify distribute the fact sheet to the patient's next of kin or emergency contact.
Registration period.
(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 609.165, subdivision 1, and except as provided in paragraphs (b), (c), and (d), a person required to register under this section shall continue to comply with this section until ten years have elapsed since the person initially registered in connection with the offense, or until the probation, supervised release, or conditional release period expires, whichever occurs later. For a person required to register under this section who is committed under section 253B.18 or 253B.185, the ten-year registration period does not include the period of commitment.
(b) If a person required to register under this section fails to provide the person's primary address as required by subdivision 3, paragraph (b), fails to comply with the requirements of subdivision 3a, fails to provide information as required by subdivision 4a, or fails to return the verification form referenced in subdivision 4 within ten days, the commissioner of public safety may require the person to continue to register for an additional period of five years. This five-year period is added to the end of the offender's registration period.
(c) If a person required to register under this section is subsequently incarcerated following a conviction for a new offense or following a revocation of probation, supervised release, or conditional release for any offense, the person shall continue to register until ten years have elapsed since the person was last released from incarceration or until the person's probation, supervised release, or conditional release period expires, whichever occurs later.
(d) A person shall continue to comply with this section for the life of that person:
(1) if the person is convicted of or adjudicated delinquent for any offense for which registration is required under subdivision 1b, or any offense from another state or any federal offense similar to the offenses described in subdivision 1b, and the person has a prior conviction or adjudication for an offense for which registration was or would have been required under subdivision 1b, or an offense from another state or a federal offense similar to an offense described in subdivision 1b;
(2) if the person is required to register based upon a conviction or delinquency adjudication for an offense under section 609.185, clause (2), or a similar statute from another state or the United States;
(3) if the person is required to register based upon a conviction for an offense under section 609.342, subdivision 1, paragraph (a), (c), (d), (e), (f), or (h); 609.343, subdivision 1, paragraph (a), (c), (d), (e), (f), or (h); 609.344, subdivision 1, paragraph (a), (c), or (g); or 609.345, subdivision 1, paragraph (a), (c), or (g); or a statute from another state or the United States similar to the offenses described in this clause; or
(4) if the person is required to register under subdivision 1b, paragraph (c), following commitment pursuant to a court commitment under section 253B.185 or a similar law of another state or the United States.
(e) A person described in subdivision 1b, paragraph (b), who is required to register under the laws of a state in which the person has been previously convicted or adjudicated delinquent, shall register under this section for the time period required by the state of conviction or adjudication unless a longer time period is required elsewhere in this section.
Law enforcement agency; disclosure of information to public.
(a) The law enforcement agency in the area where the predatory offender resides, expects to reside, is employed, or is regularly found, shall disclose to the public any information regarding the offender contained in the report forwarded to the agency under subdivision 3, paragraph (f), that is relevant and necessary to protect the public and to counteract the offender's dangerousness, consistent with the guidelines in paragraph (b). The extent of the information disclosed and the community to whom disclosure is made must relate to the level of danger posed by the offender, to the offender's pattern of offending behavior, and to the need of community members for information to enhance their individual and collective safety.
(b) The law enforcement agency shall employ the following guidelines in determining the scope of disclosure made under this subdivision:
(1) if the offender is assigned to risk level I, the agency may maintain information regarding the offender within the agency and may disclose it to other law enforcement agencies. Additionally, the agency may disclose the information to any victims of or witnesses to the offense committed by the offender. The agency shall disclose the information to victims of the offense committed by the offender who have requested disclosure and to adult members of the offender's immediate household;
(2) if the offender is assigned to risk level II, the agency also may disclose the information to agencies and groups that the offender is likely to encounter for the purpose of securing those institutions and protecting individuals in their care while they are on or near the premises of the institution. These agencies and groups include the staff members of public and private educational institutions, day care establishments, and establishments and organizations that primarily serve individuals likely to be victimized by the offender. The agency also may disclose the information to individuals the agency believes are likely to be victimized by the offender. The agency's belief shall be based on the offender's pattern of offending or victim preference as documented in the information provided by the department of corrections or human services;
(3) if the offender is assigned to risk level III, the agency shall disclose the information to the persons and entities described in clauses (1) and (2) and to other members of the community whom the offender is likely to encounter, unless the law enforcement agency determines that public safety would be compromised by the disclosure or that a more limited disclosure is necessary to protect the identity of the victim.
Notwithstanding the assignment of a predatory offender to risk level II or III, a law enforcement agency may not make the disclosures permitted or required by clause (2) or (3), if: the offender is placed or resides in a residential facility. However, if an offender is placed or resides in a residential facility, the offender and the head of the facility shall designate the offender's likely residence upon release from the facility and the head of the facility shall notify the commissioner of corrections or the commissioner of human services of the offender's likely residence at least 14 days before the offender's scheduled release date. The commissioner shall give this information to the law enforcement agency having jurisdiction over the offender's likely residence. The head of the residential facility also shall notify the commissioner of corrections or human services within 48 hours after finalizing the offender's approved relocation plan to a permanent residence. Within five days after receiving this notification, the appropriate commissioner shall give to the appropriate law enforcement agency all relevant information the commissioner has concerning the offender, including information on the risk factors in the offender's history and the risk level to which the offender was assigned. After receiving this information, the law enforcement agency shall make the disclosures permitted or required by clause (2) or (3), as appropriate.
(c) As used in paragraph (b), clauses (2) and (3), "likely to encounter" means that:
(1) the organizations or community members are in a location or in close proximity to a location where the offender lives or is employed, or which the offender visits or is likely to visit on a regular basis, other than the location of the offender's outpatient treatment program; and
(2) the types of interaction which ordinarily occur at that location and other circumstances indicate that contact with the offender is reasonably certain.
(d) A law enforcement agency or official who discloses information under this subdivision shall make a good faith effort to make the notification within 14 days of receipt of a confirmed address from the Department of Corrections indicating that the offender will be, or has been, released from confinement, or accepted for supervision, or has moved to a new address and will reside at the address indicated. If a change occurs in the release plan, this notification provision does not require an extension of the release date.
(e) A law enforcement agency or official who discloses information under this subdivision shall not disclose the identity or any identifying characteristics of the victims of or witnesses to the offender's offenses.
(f) A law enforcement agency shall continue to disclose information on an offender as required by this subdivision for as long as the offender is required to register under section 243.166. This requirement on a law enforcement agency to continue to disclose information also applies to an offender who lacks a primary address and is registering under section 243.166, subdivision 3a.
(g) A law enforcement agency that is disclosing information on an offender assigned to risk level III to the public under this subdivision shall inform the commissioner of corrections what information is being disclosed and forward this information to the commissioner within two days of the agency's determination. The commissioner shall post this information on the Internet as required in subdivision 4b.
(h) A city council may adopt a policy that addresses when information disclosed under this subdivision must be presented in languages in addition to English. The policy may address when information must be presented orally, in writing, or both in additional languages by the law enforcement agency disclosing the information. The policy may provide for different approaches based on the prevalence of non-English languages in different neighborhoods.
(i) An offender who is the subject of a community notification meeting held pursuant to this section may not attend the meeting.
(j) When a school, day care facility, or other entity or program that primarily educates or serves children receives notice under paragraph (b), clause (3), that a level III predatory offender resides or works in the surrounding community, notice to parents must be made as provided in this paragraph. If the predatory offender identified in the notice is participating in programs offered by the facility that require or allow the person to interact with children other than the person's children, the principal or head of the entity must notify parents with children at the facility of the contents of the notice received pursuant to this section. The immunity provisions of subdivision 7 apply to persons disclosing information under this paragraph.
[299A.81] DEATH SCENE INVESTIGATIONS.
(a) The Department of Public Safety shall provide information to local law enforcement agencies about best practices for handling death scene investigations.
(b) The Department of Public Safety shall identify any publications or training opportunities that may be available to local law enforcement agencies or law enforcement officers concerning the handling of death scene investigations.
[299C.156] FORENSIC LABORATORY ADVISORY BOARD.
(a) The Forensic Laboratory Advisory Board consists of the following:
(1) the superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension or the superintendent's designee;
(2) the commissioner of public safety or the commissioner's designee;
(3) the commissioner of corrections or the commissioner's designee;
(4) an individual with expertise in the field of forensic science, selected by the governor;
(5) an individual with expertise in the field of forensic science, selected by the attorney general;
(6) a faculty member of the University of Minnesota, selected by the president of the university;
(7) the state public defender or a designee;
(8) a prosecutor, selected by the Minnesota County Attorneys Association;
(9) a sheriff, selected by the Minnesota Sheriffs Association;
(10) a police chief, selected by the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association;
(11) a judge or court administrator, selected by the chief justice of the Supreme Court; and
(12) a criminal defense attorney, selected by the Minnesota State Bar Association.
(b) The board shall select a chair from among its members.
(c) Board members serve four-year terms and may be reappointed.
(d) The board may employ staff necessary to carry out its duties.
The board may:
(1) develop and implement a reporting system through which laboratories, facilities, or entities that conduct forensic analyses report professional negligence or misconduct that substantially affects the integrity of the forensic results committed by employees or contractors;
(2) encourage all laboratories, facilities, or entities that conduct forensic analyses to report professional negligence or misconduct that substantially affects the integrity of the forensic results committed by employees or contractors to the board;
(3) investigate, in a timely manner, any allegation of professional negligence or misconduct that would substantially affect the integrity of the results of a forensic analysis conducted by a laboratory, facility, or entity; and
(4) encourage laboratories, facilities, and entities that conduct forensic analyses to become accredited by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ALCLD/LAB) or other appropriate accrediting body and develop and implement a process for those entities to report their accreditation status to the board.
(a) An investigation under subdivision 2, clause (3):
(1) may include the preparation of a written report that identifies and describes the methods and procedures used to identify:
(i) the alleged negligence or misconduct;
(ii) whether negligence or misconduct occurred; and
(iii) any corrective action required of the laboratory, facility, or entity; and
(2) may include one or more:
(i) retrospective reexaminations of other forensic analyses conducted by the laboratory, facility, or entity that may involve the same kind of negligence or misconduct; and
(ii) follow-up evaluations of the laboratory, facility, or entity to review:
(A) the implementation of any corrective action required under clause (1), item (iii); or
(B) the conclusion of any retrospective reexamination under this clause, item (i).
(b) The costs of an investigation under this section must be borne by the laboratory, facility, or entity being investigated.
Delegation of duties.
The board by contract may delegate the duties described in subdivision 2, clauses (1) and (3), to any person or entity that the board determines to be qualified to assume those duties.
Reviews and reports are public.
The board shall make all investigation reports completed under subdivision 3, clause (1), available to the public. A report completed under subdivision 3, clause (1), in a subsequent civil or criminal proceeding is not prima facie evidence of the information or findings contained in the report.
Reports to legislature.
By January 15 of each year, the board shall submit any report prepared under subdivision 3, clause (1), during the preceding calendar year to the governor and the legislature.
Forensic analysis processing time period guidelines.
(a) By July 1, 2007, the board shall recommend forensic analysis processing time period guidelines applicable to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and other laboratories, facilities, and entities that conduct forensic analyses. When adopting and recommending these guidelines and when making other related decisions, the board shall consider the goals and priorities identified by the presidential DNA initiative. The board shall consider the feasibility of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension completing the processing of forensic evidence submitted to it by sheriffs, chiefs of police, or state or local corrections authorities.
(b) The bureau shall provide information to the board in the time, form, and manner determined by the board and keep it informed of the most up-to-date data on the actual forensic analysis processing turn around time periods. By January 15 of each year, the board shall report to the legislature on these issues, including the recommendations made by the board to improve turnaround times.
Forensic evidence processing deadline.
The board may recommend reasonable standards and deadlines for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to test and catalog forensic evidence samples relating to alleged crimes committed, including DNA analysis, in their control and possession.
The commissioner of public safety may provide adequate office space and administrative services to the board.
Section 15.059 applies to the board.
As used in this section, "forensic analysis" means a medical, chemical, toxicologic, ballistic, or other expert examination or test performed on physical evidence, including DNA evidence, for the purpose of determining the connection of the evidence to a criminal action.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 299C.40, subdivision 1, is amended to read:
(b) "CIBRS" means the Comprehensive Incident-Based Reporting System, located in the Department of Public Safety and managed by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Criminal Justice Information Systems Section. A reference in this section to "CIBRS" includes the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
(c) "Law enforcement agency" means a Minnesota municipal police department, the Metropolitan Transit Police, the Metropolitan Airports Police, the University of Minnesota Police Department, the Department of Corrections' Fugitive Apprehension Unit, a Minnesota county sheriff's department, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, or the Minnesota State Patrol.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 299C.405, is amended to read:
299C.405 SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE.
(a) For the purposes of this section "subscription service" means a process by which law enforcement agency personnel may obtain ongoing, automatic electronic notice of any contacts an individual has with any criminal justice agency.
(b) The Department of Public Safety must not establish a subscription service without prior legislative authorization; except that, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension may employ under section 299C.40 a secure subscription service designed to promote and enhance officer safety during tactical operations by and between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies by notifying law enforcement agencies of conflicts where multiple law enforcement operations may be occurring on the same subject or vehicle or on or near the same location. The notification may include warrant executions, surveillance activities, SWAT activities, undercover operations, and other investigative operations.
[299C.565] MISSING PERSON REPORT.
The local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction over the location where a person has been missing or was last seen has the responsibility to take a missing person report from an interested party. If this location cannot be clearly and easily established, the local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction over the last verified location where the missing person last resided has the responsibility to take the report.
The policy group shall appoint a task force to assist them in their duties. The task force shall monitor, review, and report to the policy group on CriMNet-related projects and provide oversight to ongoing operations as directed by the policy group. The task force shall consist of the following members:
(1) two sheriffs recommended by the Minnesota Sheriffs Association;
(2) two police chiefs recommended by the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association;
(3) two county attorneys recommended by the Minnesota County Attorneys Association;
(4) two city attorneys recommended by the Minnesota League of Cities;
(5) two public defenders appointed by the Board of Public Defense;
(6) two district judges appointed by the Conference of Chief Judges Judicial Council, one of whom is currently assigned to the juvenile court;
(7) two community corrections administrators recommended by the Minnesota Association of Counties, one of whom represents a community corrections act county;
(8) two probation officers;
(9) four public members, one of whom has been a victim of crime, and two who are representatives of the private business community who have expertise in integrated information systems and who for the purpose of meetings of the full task force may be compensated pursuant to section 15.059;
(10) two court administrators;
(11) one member of the house of representatives appointed by the speaker of the house;
(12) one member of the senate appointed by the majority leader;
(13) the attorney general or a designee;
(14) two individuals recommended by the Minnesota League of Cities, one of whom works or resides in greater Minnesota and one of whom works or resides in the seven-county metropolitan area;
(15) two individuals recommended by the Minnesota Association of Counties, one of whom works or resides in greater Minnesota and one of whom works or resides in the seven-county metropolitan area;
(16) the director of the Sentencing Guidelines Commission;
(17) one member appointed by the state chief information officer;
(17) (18) one member appointed by the commissioner of public safety;
(18) (19) one member appointed by the commissioner of corrections;
(19) (20) one member appointed by the commissioner of administration; and
(20) (21) one member appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
In making these appointments, the appointing authority shall select members with expertise in integrated data systems or best practices.
The commissioner of public safety may appoint additional, nonvoting members to the task force as necessary from time to time.
The division shall be responsible and shall utilize state employees for security and public information services in the Capitol complex of state-owned buildings and state leased to own buildings in the Capitol area, as described in section 15B.02; it shall provide such personnel as are required by the circumstances to insure the orderly conduct of state business and the convenience of the public.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 299F.011, subdivision 5, is amended to read:
Appeal policy; variance.
Upon application, the state fire marshal may grant variances from the minimum requirements specified in the code if there is substantial compliance with the provisions of the code, the safety of the public and occupants of such building will not be jeopardized, and undue hardship will result to the applicant unless such variance is granted. No appeal to the state fire marshal for a variance from orders issued by a local fire official from the Uniform Fire Code shall be accepted until the applicant has first made application to the local governing body and the local unit has acted on the application. The state fire marshal shall consider the decision any decisions or recommendations of the local governing body. Any person aggrieved by a decision made by the fire marshal under this subdivision may proceed before the fire marshal as with a contested case in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act.
[299F.50] DEFINITIONS.
As used in sections 299F.50 to 299F.52, the terms defined in this section have the meanings given them.
"Installed" means that an approved carbon monoxide alarm is hard-wired into the electrical wiring, directly plugged into an electrical outlet without a switch, or, if the alarm is battery-powered, attached to the wall of the dwelling.
Single and multifamily dwelling.
"Single and multifamily dwelling" means any building or structure which is wholly or partly used or intended to be used for living or sleeping by human occupants.
Dwelling unit.
"Dwelling unit" means an area meant for living or sleeping by human occupants.
Approved carbon monoxide alarm.
"Approved carbon monoxide alarm" means a device meant for the purpose of detecting carbon monoxide that is certified by a nationally recognized testing laboratory to conform to the latest Underwriters Laboratories Standards (known as UL2034 standards).
"Operational" means working and in service.
This section is effective January 1, 2007, for all newly constructed single family and multifamily dwelling units for which building permits were issued on or after January 1, 2007; August 1, 2008, for all existing single family dwelling units; and August 1, 2009, for all multifamily dwelling units.
[299F.51] REQUIREMENTS FOR CARBON MONOXIDE ALARMS.
Every single family dwelling and every dwelling unit in a multifamily dwelling must have an approved and operational carbon monoxide alarm installed within ten feet of each room lawfully used for sleeping purposes.
Owner's duties.
The owner of a multifamily dwelling unit which is required to be equipped with one or more approved carbon monoxide alarms must:
(1) provide and install one approved and operational carbon monoxide alarm within ten feet of each room lawfully used for sleeping; and
(2) replace any required carbon monoxide alarm that has been stolen, removed, found missing, or rendered inoperable during a prior occupancy of the dwelling unit and which has not been replaced by the prior occupant prior to the commencement of a new occupancy of a dwelling unit.
Occupant's duties.
The occupant of each dwelling unit in a multifamily dwelling in which an approved and operational carbon monoxide alarm has been provided and installed by the owner must:
(1) keep and maintain the device in good repair; and
(2) replace any device that is stolen, removed, missing, or rendered inoperable during the occupancy of the dwelling unit.
Battery removal prohibited.
No person shall remove batteries from, or in any way render inoperable, a required carbon monoxide alarm.
Exceptions; certain multifamily dwellings and state-operated facilities.
(a) In lieu of requirements of subdivision 1, multifamily dwellings may have approved and operational carbon monoxide alarms installed between 15 and 25 feet of carbon monoxide producing central fixtures and equipment provided there is a centralized alarm system or other mechanism for responsible parties to hear the alarm at all times.
(b) An owner of a multifamily dwelling that contains minimal or no sources of carbon monoxide may be exempted from the requirements of subdivision 1, provided that such owner certifies to the commissioner of public safety that such multifamily dwelling poses no foreseeable carbon monoxide risk to the health and safety to the dwelling units.
(c) The requirements of this section do not apply to facilities owned or operated by the state of Minnesota.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 525.9214, is amended to read:
525.9214 ROUTINE INQUIRY AND REQUIRED REQUEST; SEARCH AND NOTIFICATION.
(a) If, at or near the time of death of a patient, there is no documentation in the medical record that the patient has made or refused to make an anatomical gift, the hospital administrator or a representative designated by the administrator shall discuss with the patient or a relative of the patient the option to make or refuse to make an anatomical gift and may request the making of an anatomical gift pursuant to section 525.9211 or 525.9212. The request must be made with reasonable discretion and sensitivity to the circumstances of the family. A request is not required if the gift is not suitable, based upon accepted medical standards, for a purpose specified in section 525.9215. An entry must be made in the medical record of the patient, stating the name of the individual making the request, and the name, response, and relationship to the patient of the person to whom the request was made.
(b) The following persons shall make a reasonable search for a document of gift or other information identifying the bearer as a donor or as an individual who has refused to make an anatomical gift:
(1) a law enforcement officer, firefighter, paramedic, or other emergency rescuer finding an individual who the searcher believes is dead or near death;
(2) a hospital or emergency care facility, upon the admission or presentation of an individual at or near the time of death, if there is not immediately available any other source of that information; and
(3) a medical examiner or coroner upon receipt of a body.
(c) If a document of gift or evidence of refusal to make an anatomical gift is located by the search required by paragraph (b), clause (1), and the individual or body to whom it relates is taken to a hospital, the hospital must be notified of the contents and the document or other evidence must be sent to the hospital. If a body is taken to a morgue, the person who discovered the body must notify the person's dispatcher. A dispatcher notified under this section must notify the state's federally designated organ procurement organization and inform the organization of the deceased's name, donor status, and location.
(d) If, at or near the time of death of a patient, a hospital knows that an anatomical gift has been made pursuant to section 525.9212, paragraph (a), or a release and removal of a part has been permitted pursuant to section 525.9213, or that a patient or an individual identified as in transit to the hospital is a donor, the hospital shall notify the donee if one is named and known to the hospital; if not, it shall notify an appropriate procurement organization. The hospital shall cooperate in the implementation of the anatomical gift or release and removal of a part.
(e) A person who fails to discharge the duties imposed by this section is not subject to criminal or civil liability.
611A.0315 VICTIM NOTIFICATION; DOMESTIC ASSAULT; HARASSMENT.
Notice of decision not to prosecute.
(a) A prosecutor shall make every reasonable effort to notify a victim of domestic assault, a criminal sexual conduct offense, or harassment that the prosecutor has decided to decline prosecution of the case or to dismiss the criminal charges filed against the defendant. Efforts to notify the victim should include, in order of priority: (1) contacting the victim or a person designated by the victim by telephone; and (2) contacting the victim by mail. If a suspect is still in custody, the notification attempt shall be made before the suspect is released from custody.
(b) Whenever a prosecutor dismisses criminal charges against a person accused of domestic assault, a criminal sexual conduct offense, or harassment, a record shall be made of the specific reasons for the dismissal. If the dismissal is due to the unavailability of the witness, the prosecutor shall indicate the specific reason that the witness is unavailable.
(c) Whenever a prosecutor notifies a victim of domestic assault or harassment under this section, the prosecutor shall also inform the victim of the method and benefits of seeking an order for protection under section 518B.01 or a restraining order under section 609.748 and that the victim may seek an order without paying a fee.
For the purposes of this section, the following terms have the meanings given them.
(a) "Assault" has the meaning given it in section 609.02, subdivision 10.
(b) "Domestic assault" means an assault committed by the actor against a family or household member.
(c) "Family or household member" has the meaning given it in section 518B.01, subdivision 2.
(d) "Harassment" means a violation of section 609.749.
(e) "Criminal sexual conduct offense" means a violation of sections 609.342 to 609.3453.
Suspension, revocation, or refusal to renew certification.
(a) The state fire marshal may suspend, revoke, or refuse to renew certification of an operator if the operator has:
(1) submitted a fraudulent application;
(2) caused or permitted a fire or safety hazard to exist or occur during the storage, transportation, handling, preparation, or use of fireworks;
(3) conducted a display of fireworks without receipt of a permit required by the state or a political subdivision;
(4) conducted a display of fireworks with assistants who were not at least 18 years of age, properly instructed, and continually supervised; or
(5) otherwise failed to comply with any federal or state law or regulation, or the guidelines, relating to fireworks.
(b) Any person aggrieved by a decision made by the state fire marshal under this subdivision may petition the state fire marshal in writing to reconsider the decision. The state fire marshal shall render a decision in writing within 30 days of receipt of the written request for reconsideration. Following reconsideration, the person may appeal the decision to the district court.
Laws 2005, chapter 136, article 1, section 13, subdivision 3, is amended to read:
Summary by Fund
General Fund 103,456,000 103,269,000
Special Revenue 100,000 100,000
SHORT-TERM OFFENDERS. $1,207,000 each year is for costs associated with the housing and care of short-term offenders. The commissioner may use up to 20 percent of the total amount of the appropriation for inpatient medical care for short-term offenders with less than six months to serve as affected by the changes made to Minnesota Statutes, section 609.105, in 2003. All funds remaining at the end of the fiscal year not expended for inpatient medical care shall be added to and distributed with the housing funds. These funds shall be distributed proportionately based on the total number of days short-term offenders are placed locally, not to exceed $70 per day. Short-term offenders may be housed in a state correctional facility at the discretion of the commissioner.
The Department of Corrections is exempt from the state contracting process for the purposes of Minnesota Statutes, section 609.105, as amended by Laws 2003, First Special Session chapter 2, article 5, sections 7 to 9.
GPS MONITORING OF SEX OFFENDERS. $500,000 the first year and $162,000 the second year are for the acquisition and service of bracelets equipped with tracking devices designed to track and monitor the movement and location of criminal offenders. The commissioner shall use the bracelets to monitor high-risk sex offenders who are on supervised release, conditional release, parole, or probation to help ensure that the offenders do not violate conditions of their release or probation.
END OF CONFINEMENT REVIEWS. $94,000 each year is for end of confinement reviews.
COMMUNITY SURVEILLANCE AND SUPERVISION. $1,370,000 each year is to provide housing options to maximize community surveillance and supervision.
INCREASE IN INTENSIVE SUPERVISED RELEASE SERVICES. $1,800,000 each year is to increase intensive supervised release services.
SEX OFFENDER ASSESSMENT REIMBURSEMENTS. $350,000 each year is to provide grants to reimburse counties or their designees, or courts for reimbursements for sex offender assessments as required under Minnesota Statutes, section 609.3452, subdivision 1, which is being renumbered as section 609.3457.
SEX OFFENDER TREATMENT AND POLYGRAPHS. $1,250,000 each year is to provide treatment for sex offenders on community supervision and to pay for polygraph testing.
INCREASED SUPERVISION OF SEX OFFENDERS, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE OFFENDERS, AND OTHER VIOLENT OFFENDERS. $1,500,000 each year is for the increased supervision of sex offenders and other violent offenders, including those convicted of domestic abuse. These appropriations may not be used to supplant existing state or county probation officer positions.
The commissioner shall distribute $1,050,000 in grants each year to Community Corrections Act counties and $450,000 each year to the Department of Corrections Probation and Supervised Release Unit. The commissioner shall distribute the funds to the Community Corrections Act counties according to the formula contained in Minnesota Statutes, section 401.10.
Prior to the distribution of these funds, each Community Corrections Act jurisdiction and the Department of Corrections Probation and Supervised Release Unit shall submit to the commissioner an analysis of need along with a plan to meet their needs and reduce the number of sex offenders and other violent offenders, including domestic abuse offenders, on probation officer caseloads.
COUNTY PROBATION OFFICERS. $500,000 each year is to increase county probation officer reimbursements.
INTENSIVE SUPERVISION AND AFTERCARE FOR CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES OFFENDERS; REPORT. $600,000 each year is for intensive supervision and aftercare services for controlled substances offenders released from prison under Minnesota Statutes, section 244.055. These appropriations are not added to the department's base budget. By January 15, 2008, the commissioner shall report to the chairs and ranking minority members of the senate and house of representatives committees and divisions having jurisdiction over criminal justice policy and funding on how this appropriation was spent.
REPORT ON ELECTRONIC MONITORING OF SEX OFFENDERS. By March 1, 2006, the commissioner shall report to the chairs and ranking minority members of the senate and house of representatives committees and divisions having jurisdiction over criminal justice policy and funding on implementing an electronic monitoring system for sex offenders who are under community supervision. The report must address the following:
(1) the advantages and disadvantages in implementing this system, including the impact on public safety;
(2) the types of sex offenders who should be subject to the monitoring;
(3) the time period that offenders should be subject to the monitoring;
(4) the financial costs associated with the monitoring and who should be responsible for these costs; and
(5) the technology available for the monitoring.
RICHFIELD DISABLED FIREFIGHTER HEALTH CARE ELIGIBILITY REVIEW.
Authorization.
An eligible individual specified in subdivision 2 is authorized to have a review of health care coverage eligibility as specified in subdivision 3.
An eligible person is an individual who:
(1) was a member of the Public Employees Retirement Association police and fire plan due to employment as a firefighter with the city of Richfield;
(2) became disabled and was granted a duty-related disability benefit from the Public Employees Retirement Association police and fire plan on November 20, 2002; and
(3) is not receiving employer-paid health care coverage under the program established by Minnesota Statutes, section 299A.465, due to a determination by the city of Richfield that the individual does not satisfy all eligibility requirements for inclusion under that program.
Notwithstanding that the disability benefit was granted before the creation of the review panel, and notwithstanding Minnesota Statutes, section 299A.465, subdivision 6, which requires that applications for review by the panel created under that section be submitted to the panel within 90 days of approval of a disability benefit application by the applicable retirement plan, an eligible individual under subdivision 2 may submit an application to the panel within 90 days of the effective date of this section. The panel shall make a determination of whether the firefighter meets the requirements of Minnesota Statutes, section 299A.465, subdivision 1, paragraph (a), clause (2). The panel's final determination is binding on the applicant and the employer, subject to any right of judicial review.
MISSING ADULTS MODEL POLICY.
The superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, in consultation with the Minnesota Sheriffs Association and the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, shall develop a model policy to address law enforcement efforts and duties regarding missing adults and provide training to local law enforcement agencies on this model policy.
By February 1, 2007, the superintendent shall report to the chairs and ranking minority members of the senate and house committees and divisions having jurisdiction over criminal justice policy and funding on the model policy and training.
Unclassified positions.
Unclassified positions are held by employees who are:
(1) chosen by election or appointed to fill an elective office;
(2) heads of agencies required by law to be appointed by the governor or other elective officers, and the executive or administrative heads of departments, bureaus, divisions, and institutions specifically established by law in the unclassified service;
(3) deputy and assistant agency heads and one confidential secretary in the agencies listed in subdivision 1a and in the Office of Strategic and Long-Range Planning;
(4) the confidential secretary to each of the elective officers of this state and, for the secretary of state and state auditor, an additional deputy, clerk, or employee;
(5) intermittent help employed by the commissioner of public safety to assist in the issuance of vehicle licenses;
(6) employees in the offices of the governor and of the lieutenant governor and one confidential employee for the governor in the Office of the Adjutant General;
(7) employees of the Washington, D.C., office of the state of Minnesota;
(8) employees of the legislature and of legislative committees or commissions; provided that employees of the Legislative Audit Commission, except for the legislative auditor, the deputy legislative auditors, and their confidential secretaries, shall be employees in the classified service;
(9) presidents, vice-presidents, deans, other managers and professionals in academic and academic support programs, administrative or service faculty, teachers, research assistants, and student employees eligible under terms of the federal Economic Opportunity Act work study program in the Perpich Center for Arts Education and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, but not the custodial, clerical, or maintenance employees, or any professional or managerial employee performing duties in connection with the business administration of these institutions;
(10) officers and enlisted persons in the National Guard;
(11) attorneys, legal assistants, and three confidential employees appointed by the attorney general or employed with the attorney general's authorization;
(12) judges and all employees of the judicial branch, referees, receivers, jurors, and notaries public, except referees and adjusters employed by the Department of Labor and Industry;
(13) members of the State Patrol; provided that selection and appointment of State Patrol troopers must be made in accordance with applicable laws governing the classified service;
(14) chaplains employed by the state;
(15) examination monitors and intermittent training instructors employed by the Departments of Employee Relations and Commerce and by professional examining boards and intermittent staff employed by the technical colleges for the administration of practical skills tests and for the staging of instructional demonstrations;
(16) (15) student workers;
(17) (16) executive directors or executive secretaries appointed by and reporting to any policy-making board or commission established by statute;
(18) (17) employees unclassified pursuant to other statutory authority;
(19) (18) intermittent help employed by the commissioner of agriculture to perform duties relating to pesticides, fertilizer, and seed regulation;
(20) (19) the administrators and the deputy administrators at the State Academies for the Deaf and the Blind; and
(21) (20) chief executive officers in the Department of Human Services.
Screening of inmates.
(a) All persons detained or confined for 14 consecutive days or more in facilities operated, licensed, or inspected by the Department of Corrections shall be screened for tuberculosis with either a Mantoux test or a chest roentgenogram (x-ray) as consistent with screening and follow-up practices recommended by the United States Public Health Service or the Department of Health, as determined by the commissioner of health. Administration of the Mantoux test or chest roentgenogram (x-ray) must take place on or before the 14th day of detention or confinement.
(b) If an inmate refuses to submit to an annual test as specified in paragraph (a), the commissioner of corrections may order the inmate to be tested.
Biennial report.
(a) The Department of Corrections shall submit a performance report to the chairs and ranking minority members of the senate and house committees and divisions having jurisdiction over criminal justice funding by January 15, 2005, and every other year thereafter. The issuance and content of the report must include the following:
(1) department strategic mission, goals, and objectives;
(2) the department-wide per diem, adult facility-specific per diems, and an average per diem, reported in a standard calculated method as outlined in the departmental policies and procedures; and
(3) department annual statistics as outlined in the departmental policies and procedures; and
(4) information about prison-based mental health programs, including, but not limited to, the availability of these programs, participation rates, and completion rates.
(b) The department shall maintain recidivism rates for adult facilities on an annual basis. In addition, each year the department shall, on an alternating basis, complete a recidivism analysis of adult facilities, juvenile services, and the community services divisions and include a three-year recidivism analysis in the report described in paragraph (a). When appropriate, the recidivism analysis must include education programs, vocational programs, treatment programs, including mental health programs, industry, and employment. In addition, when reporting recidivism for the department's adult and juvenile facilities, the department shall report on the extent to which offenders it has assessed as chemically dependent commit new offenses, with separate recidivism rates reported for persons completing and not completing the department's treatment programs.
[241.0222] CONTRACTS WITH NEWLY CONSTRUCTED JAIL FACILITIES THAT PROVIDE ACCESS TO CHEMICAL DEPENDENCY TREATMENT PROGRAMS.
Notwithstanding section 16C.05, subdivision 2, the commissioner may enter into contracts, up to five years in duration, with a county or group of counties to house inmates committed to the custody of the commissioner in newly constructed county or regional jail facilities that provide inmates access to chemical dependency treatment programs licensed by the Department of Human Services. A contract entered into under this section may contain an option to renew the contract for a term of up to five years.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 241.06, is amended by adding a subdivision to read:
Substance abuse information provided to supervising corrections agency.
When an offender is being released from prison, the commissioner shall provide to the corrections agency that will supervise the offender prison records relating to that offender's prison-based substance abuse assessments, treatment, and any other substance abuse-related services provided to the offender. If the offender did not participate in the prison-based substance abuse program to which the offender was directed, the commissioner shall provide the supervising agency with an explanation of the reasons.
[241.105] SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION INCENTIVE PAYMENTS; INMATE DISCHARGE PLANNING.
Money received by the commissioner of corrections from the Social Security Administration as a result of the incentive payment agreement under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, Public Law 104-193, section 1611(e)(1), and Public Law 106-170, section 202(x)(3), is appropriated to the commissioner of corrections for discharge planning for inmates with mental illness.
[241.40] PERIODIC REVIEWS OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE ASSESSMENT PROCESS.
By January 15, 2007, and at least once every three years thereafter, the commissioner shall ensure that an outside entity conducts an independent review of the department's prison-based substance abuse assessment activities.
[241.415] RELEASE PLANS; SUBSTANCE ABUSE.
The commissioner shall cooperate with community-based corrections agencies to determine how best to address the substance abuse treatment needs of offenders who are being released from prison. The commissioner shall ensure that an offender's prison release plan adequately addresses the offender's needs for substance abuse assessment, treatment, or other services following release, within the limits of available resources.
[241.416] SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROGRAMS; RECORD KEEPING.
The commissioner shall keep adequate records regarding inmate participation in substance abuse treatment programs. For inmates who did not comply with directives to participate in substance abuse treatment programs, these records must include the reasons why the inmate did not do so.
[241.75] INMATE HEALTH CARE DECISIONS.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b), the definitions in chapter 145C apply to this section.
(b) "Health care" means any care, treatment, service, or procedure to maintain, diagnose, or otherwise affect a person's physical or mental condition.
Health care decisions.
The medical director of the Department of Corrections may make a health care decision for an inmate incarcerated in a state correctional facility if the inmate's attending physician determines that the inmate lacks decision-making capacity and:
(1) there is not a documented health care agent designated by the inmate or the health care agent is not reasonably available to make the health care decision;
(2) if there is a documented health care directive, the decision is consistent with that directive;
(3) the decision is consistent with reasonable medical practice and other applicable law; and
(4) the medical director has made a good-faith attempt to consult with the inmate's next of kin or emergency contact person in making the decision, to the extent those persons are reasonably available.
Disagreement regarding health care; guardianship petition.
If the medical director consults with an inmate's next of kin under subdivision 2, clause (4), and the inmate's next of kin and the medical director are not in agreement with respect to a health care decision, the commissioner may bring a petition under section 524.5-303 for appointment of a guardian with authority to make health care decisions for the inmate.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 244.055, subdivision 10, is amended to read:
Upon receiving an offender's petition for release under subdivision 2, the commissioner shall notify the prosecuting authority responsible for the offender's conviction and the sentencing court. The commissioner shall give the authority and court a reasonable opportunity to comment on the offender's potential release. If the authority or court elects to comment, the comments must specify the reasons for the authority or court's position. This subdivision applies only to offenders sentenced before July 1, 2005.
This section expires July 1, 2007 2009.
Imposition of fee.
When a court sentences places a person convicted of a crime, and places the person under the supervision and control of a local correctional agency, that agency may collect a local correctional fee based on the local correctional agency's fee schedule adopted under section 244.18.
Terms of conditional release; applicable to all sex offenders.
(a) The provisions of this subdivision relating to conditional release apply to all sex offenders sentenced to prison for a violation of section 609.342, 609.343, 609.344, 609.345, or 609.3453. Except as provided in this subdivision, conditional release of sex offenders is governed by provisions relating to supervised release. The commissioner of corrections may not dismiss an offender on conditional release from supervision until the offender's conditional release term expires.
(b) The conditions of release may include successful completion of treatment and aftercare in a program approved by the commissioner, satisfaction of the release conditions specified in section 244.05, subdivision 6, and any other conditions the commissioner considers appropriate. The commissioner shall develop a plan to pay the cost of treatment of a person released under this subdivision. The plan may include co-payments from offenders, third-party payers, local agencies, or other funding sources as they are identified. This section does not require the commissioner to accept or retain an offender in a treatment program. Before the offender is placed on conditional release, the commissioner shall notify the sentencing court and the prosecutor in the jurisdiction where the offender was sentenced of the terms of the offender's conditional release. The commissioner also shall make reasonable efforts to notify the victim of the offender's crime of the terms of the offender's conditional release. If the offender fails to meet any condition of release, the commissioner may revoke the offender's conditional release and order that the offender serve all or a part of the remaining portion of the conditional release term in prison.
Continuation of employment.
If the person committed under this section has been regularly employed, the sheriff shall arrange for a continuation of the employment insofar as possible without interruption. If the person is not employed, the court may designate a suitable person or agency to make reasonable efforts to secure some suitable employment for that person. An inmate employed under this section must be paid a fair and reasonable wage for work performed and must work at fair and reasonable hours per day and per week. There must not be a fee or charge for the inmate to participate in any employment under this section if the inmate is paying for the cost of the inmate's maintenance under subdivision 5.
The incumbent of a position that is transferred from the unclassified to the classified service under section 1 is appointed to the newly classified position.
SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT; RECOMMENDATIONS, REPORT.
(a) The commissioner of corrections shall make recommendations to:
(1) improve the availability of prison-based substance abuse treatment programming and related services; and
(2) better ensure that offenders released from prison receive appropriate community-based substance abuse treatment and services.
These recommendations must include an estimate of the financial costs associated with implementing them.
(b) The commissioner shall recommend changes in prison-based programs or release plans to improve the postprison release outcomes of:
(1) inmates who are directed to complete prison-based short-term substance abuse programs; and
(2) inmates who fail the prison-based substance abuse programs they start.
(c) By January 15, 2007, the commissioner shall report to the chairs and ranking minority members of the senate and house committees and divisions having jurisdiction over criminal justice policy and funding on the commissioner's recommendations under paragraphs (a) and (b).
As used in this section "court services data" means data that are created, collected, used or maintained by a court services department, parole or probation authority, correctional agency, or by an agent designated by the court to perform studies or other duties and that are on individuals who are or were defendants, parolees or probationers of a municipal, district or county court, participants in diversion programs, petitioners or respondents to a family court, or juveniles adjudicated delinquent and committed, detained prior to a court hearing or hearings, or found to be dependent or neglected and placed under the supervision of the court.
Unless the data is summary data or a statute, including sections 609.115 and 257.70, specifically provides a different classification, the following court services data are classified as private pursuant to section 13.02, subdivision 12:
(a) Court services data on individuals gathered at the request of a municipal, district or county court to determine the need for any treatment, rehabilitation, counseling, or any other need of a defendant, parolee, probationer, or participant in a diversion program, and used by the court to assist in assigning an appropriate sentence or other disposition in a case;
(b) Court services data on petitioners or respondents to a family court gathered at the request of the court for purposes of, but not limited to, individual, family, marriage, chemical dependency and marriage dissolution adjustment counseling, including recommendations to the court as to the custody of minor children in marriage dissolution cases;
(c) Court services data on individuals gathered by psychologists in the course of providing the court or its staff with psychological evaluations or in the course of counseling individual clients referred by the court for the purpose of assisting them with personal conflicts or difficulties.
Agency participation.
(a) A state referring agency may, at its option, refer debts to the commissioner for collection. The ultimate responsibility for the debt, including the reporting of the debt to the commissioner of finance and the decision with regard to the continuing collection and uncollectibility of the debt, remains with the referring state agency.
(b) When a debt owed to a state agency becomes 121 days past due, the state agency must refer the debt to the commissioner for collection. This requirement does not apply if there is a dispute over the amount or validity of the debt, if the debt is the subject of legal action or administrative proceedings, or the agency determines that the debtor is adhering to acceptable payment arrangements. The commissioner, in consultation with the commissioner of finance, may provide that certain types of debt need not be referred to the commissioner for collection under this paragraph. Methods and procedures for referral must follow internal guidelines prepared by the commissioner of finance.
(c) If the referring agency is a court, the court must furnish a debtor's Social Security number to the commissioner when the court refers the debt.
Upon finding that the applicant is authorized to exercise fiduciary powers, the district court shall enter an order substituting the applicant bank or trust company in every fiduciary capacity held by the affiliated bank or other bank or trust company for which substitution is sought and which joined in the application, except as may be otherwise specified in the application, and except for fiduciary capacities in any account with respect to which a person beneficially interested in the account has filed objection to the substitution and has appeared and been heard in support of the objection. Upon entry of the order, or at a later date as may be specified in the order, the applicant bank or trust company is substituted in every fiduciary capacity to which the order extends. The substitution may be made a matter of record in any county of this state by filing a certified copy of the order of substitution in the office of the court administrator of a district or county court, or by filing a certified copy of the order in the office of the county recorder.
Violation of provision for stopping train at crossing.
Upon the complaint of any person, a company operating a railroad violating section 219.93 shall forfeit not less than $20 nor more than $100 to be recovered in a civil action before a county or municipal judge of the county in which the violation occurs. One-half of the forfeiture must go to the complainant and one-half to the school district where the violation occurs.
270C.545 FEDERAL TAX REFUND OFFSET FEES; TIME LIMIT FOR SUBMITTING CLAIMS FOR OFFSET.
For fees charged by the Department of the Treasury of the United States for the offset of federal tax refunds that are deducted from the refund amounts remitted to the commissioner, the unpaid debts of the taxpayers whose refunds are being offset to satisfy the debts are reduced only by the actual amount of the refund payments received by the commissioner. Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, a claim for the offset of a federal tax refund must be submitted to the Department of the Treasury of the United States within ten years after the date of the assessment of the tax owed by the taxpayer whose refund is to be offset to satisfy the debt. For court debts referred to the commissioner under section 16D.04, subdivision 2, paragraph (a), the federal refund offset fees are deducted as provided in this section, but the ten-year time limit prescribed in this section for tax debts does not apply.
Notice; appraisers.
The person distraining shall give notice to the owner of the beast, if known to the distrainer, within 24 hours if the owner resides in the same town, and within 48 hours if the owner resides in another town in the same county, Sundays excepted. The notice shall specify the time when and the place where distrained, the number of beasts, and the place of their detention, and that at a time and place stated therein, which shall not be less than 12 hours after the service of the notice, nor more than three days after the distress, the distrainer will apply to a designated county or municipal judge of the county for the appointment of appraisers to appraise the damages. If the owner is unknown or does not reside in the county, the distraining person shall apply for the appointment of appraisers within 24 hours after the distress without notice. After the application, the judge shall appoint three disinterested residents of the town to appraise the damages.
347.04 PUBLIC NUISANCE.
Any dog that habitually worries, chases, or molests teams or persons traveling peaceably on the public road is a public nuisance. Upon complaint in writing to a county or municipal district court judge containing a description of the dog, including the name of the dog and its owner, or stating that the name or names are not known, and alleging that the dog is a public nuisance, the judge shall issue a summons, if the owner is known, commanding the owner to appear before the judge at a specified time, not less than six nor more than ten days from the date of the summons, to answer the complaint. The summons shall be served not less than six days before the day of the hearing in the same manner as other district court summonses.
Appointment by county district judge.
A county government study commission hereinafter called "the commission" may be established in any county as provided in this section to study the form and structure of county government in the county and other counties both within and outside this state and, if deemed advisable by the commission, recommend to the voters of the county the adoption of any of the optional forms of county government contained in sections 375A.01 to 375A.13. The commission shall be established upon presentation of a petition requesting such action signed by voters equal in number to five percent of the electors voting at the last previous election for the office of governor or a resolution of the board of county commissioners of the county requesting such action. Appointments to the commission shall be made by order filed with the court administrator of the district court of the county and shall be made by the senior county judge having chambers in the county. If there be no judge having chambers in the county, appointments shall be made by the chief judge of the judicial district. The number on the study commission shall be set by the appointing judge but not to exceed 15. A noncommissioner from each commissioner district shall be appointed to a study commission. In addition three members shall be county commissioners and two shall be elected county officials. An appointee who neglects to file with the court administrator within 15 days a written acceptance shall be deemed to have declined the appointment and the place shall be filled as though the appointee had resigned. Vacancies in the commission shall be filled as in the case of original appointments. The county board, the commission, or the petitioners requesting the appointment of the commission may submit to the appointing judge the names of eligible nominees which the appointing judge may consider in making appointments to the commission.
May relocate Bloomington court.
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 488A.01, subdivision 9, the county of Hennepin may relocate the municipal district court serving the city of Bloomington and thereupon shall provide suitable quarters for the holding of regular terms of court in a southern suburban location within the county as may be designated by a majority of the judges of the court. All functions of the court may be discharged, including both court and jury trials of civil and criminal matters, at the location designated pursuant to this section. Nothing in this section shall be construed to reduce the level of services to the residents of the city of Bloomington.
390.20 PERSON CHARGED ARRESTED.
If any person charged by the inquest with having committed the offense is not in custody, the coroner shall have the same power as a county or municipal district court judge to issue process for the person's apprehension. The warrant shall be returnable before any court having jurisdiction in the case and the court shall proceed as in similar cases.
Subpoena power.
The judge exercising probate jurisdiction may issue subpoenas for witnesses, returnable immediately or at a time and place the judge directs. The persons served with subpoenas shall be allowed the same fees, the sheriff shall enforce their attendance in the same manner, and they shall be subject to the same penalties as if they had been served with a subpoena in behalf of the state in a criminal case before a county or municipal district court judge.
State employees; compensation.
(a) District court referees, judicial officers, court reporters, law clerks, district administration staff, other than district administration staff in the Second and Fourth Judicial Districts, guardian ad litem program coordinators and staff, staff court interpreters in the Second Judicial District, court psychological services staff in the Fourth Judicial District, and other court employees under paragraph (b), are state employees and are governed by the judicial branch personnel rules adopted by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in consultation with the conference of chief judges Judicial Council, shall establish the salary range of these employees under the judicial branch personnel rules. In establishing the salary ranges, the Supreme Court shall consider differences in the cost of living in different areas of the state.
Election to retain insurance and benefits; retirement.
(2) remain a member of the Public Employees Retirement Association or the Minneapolis employees retirement fund instead of joining the Minnesota State Retirement System.
Employees who make an election under clause (1) remain on the county payroll, but the state shall reimburse the county on a quarterly basis for the salary and cost of the benefits provided by the county. The state shall make the employer contribution to the Public Employees Retirement Association or the employer contribution under section 422A.101, subdivision 1a, to the Minneapolis Employees Retirement Fund on behalf of employees who make an election under clause (2).
(c) The Supreme Court, after consultation with the conference of chief judges Judicial Council, the commissioner of employee relations, and the executive directors of the Public Employees Retirement Association and the Minnesota State Retirement Association, shall adopt procedures for making elections under this section.
480.182 STATE ASSUMPTION OF CERTAIN COURT COSTS.
(a) Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, the state courts will pay for the following court-related programs and costs:
(1) court interpreter program costs, including the costs of hiring court interpreters;
(2) guardian ad litem program and personnel costs;
(3) examination costs, not including hospitalization or treatment costs, for mental commitments and related proceedings under chapter 253B;
(4) examination costs under rule 20 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure;
(5) in forma pauperis costs;
(6) costs for transcripts mandated by statute, except in appeal cases and postconviction cases handled by the Board of Public Defense; and
(7) jury program costs, not including personnel.; and
(b) In counties in a judicial district under section 480.181, subdivision 1, paragraph (b), the state courts shall pay the (8) witness fees and mileage fees specified in sections 253B.23, subdivision 1; 260B.152, subdivision 2; 260C.152, subdivision 2; 260B.331, subdivision 3, clause (a); 260C.331, subdivision 3, clause (a); 357.24; 357.32; 525.012, subdivision 5; and 627.02.
The district courts shall have original jurisdiction in the following cases:
(1) all civil actions within their respective districts,;
(2) in all cases of crime committed or triable therein,;
(3) in all special proceedings not exclusively cognizable by some other court or tribunal, and;
(4) in law and equity for the administration of estates of deceased persons and all guardianship and incompetency proceedings;
(5) the jurisdiction of a juvenile court as provided in chapter 260;
(6) proceedings for the management of the property of persons who have disappeared, and actions relating thereto, as provided in chapter 576; and
(7) in all other cases wherein such jurisdiction is especially conferred upon them by law.
They shall also have appellate jurisdiction in every case in which an appeal thereto is allowed by law from any other court, officer, or body.
484.011 JURISDICTION IN SECOND AND FOURTH JUDICIAL DISTRICTS.
In the Second and Fourth Judicial Districts The district court shall also be a probate court.
484.012 COURT ADMINISTRATOR OF PROBATE COURT, SECOND JUDICIAL DISTRICT.
Notwithstanding section 525.09 the judicial district administrator in the Second Judicial District may appoint a court administrator of the Probate Court for the district subject to the approval of the chief judge and assistant chief judge who shall serve at the pleasure of the judges of the district, and who shall be supervised by the judicial district administrator, and whose salary shall be fixed by the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners.
484.45 COURTHOUSE; JAIL; EXPENSES; ST. LOUIS COUNTY.
It is hereby made the duty of the board of county commissioners of the county of St. Louis to furnish and maintain adequate accommodations for the holding of terms of the district court at the city of Hibbing, and the city of Virginia, proper offices for these deputies and a proper place for the confinement and maintenance of the prisoners at the city of Hibbing and the city of Virginia.
The county shall reimburse the court administrator and deputies as herein provided for and the county attorney and assistants and the district judges of the district and the official court reporter for their traveling expenses actually and necessarily incurred in the performance of their respective official duties.
Reimbursement filings.
Each judge claiming reimbursement for allowable expenses may file with the supreme court monthly and shall file not later than 90 days after the expenses are incurred, an itemized statement, verified by the judge, of all allowable expenses actually paid by the judge. All statements shall be audited by the Supreme Court and, if approved by the Supreme Court, shall be paid by the commissioner of finance from appropriations for this purpose.
Law clerk appointments.
The Each district judges regularly assigned to hold court in each judicial district except for the Second, Fourth, and Tenth Judicial Districts may by orders filed with the court administrator and county auditor of each county in the district judge may appoint a competent law clerk for every two district court judges of the judicial district. The district judges regularly assigned to hold court in the First and Tenth Judicial Districts may by orders filed with the court administrator and county auditor of each county in the district appoint a competent law clerk for each district court judge of the district.
Chambers and supplies.
The Board of County Commissioners of Ramsey County shall provide suitable chambers and courtroom space, clerks, and bailiffs, and other personnel to assist said judge, together with necessary library, supplies, stationery and other expenses necessary thereto. The state shall provide referees, court reporters, law clerks, and guardian ad litem program coordinators and staff.
Space; personnel; supplies.
The Board of County Commissioners of Hennepin County shall provide suitable chambers and courtroom space, clerks, and bailiffs, and other personnel to assist said judge, together with necessary library, supplies, stationery and other expenses necessary thereto. The state shall provide referees, court reporters, law clerks, and guardian ad litem program coordinators and staff.
By November 1, 1977, The chief judge of the judicial district in each judicial district shall appoint a single district administrator, subject to the approval of the Supreme Court, with the advice of the judges of the judicial district.
The district administrator shall serve at the pleasure of a majority of the judges of the judicial district.
The Supreme Court, in consultation with the conference of chief judges, shall adopt rules to implement the expedited child support hearing process under this section.
[484.80] LOCATION OF TRIAL RULE.
If a municipality is located in more than one county or district, the county in which the city hall of the municipality is located determines the county or district in which the municipality shall be deemed located for the purposes of this chapter provided, however, that the municipality by ordinance enacted may designate, for those purposes, some other county or district in which a part of the municipality is located.
[484.81] PLEADING; PRACTICE; PROCEDURE.
Pleading, practice, procedure, and forms in civil actions shall be governed by Rules of Civil Procedure which shall be adopted by the Supreme Court.
Court rules.
The court may adopt rules governing pleading, practice, procedure, and forms for civil actions which are not inconsistent with the provisions of governing statutes.
[484.82] MISDEMEANOR OFFENSES.
A person who receives a misdemeanor citation shall proceed as follows: when a fine is not paid, the person charged must appear before the court at the time specified in the citation. If appearance before a misdemeanor bureau is designated in the citation, the person charged must appear within the time specified in the citation and arrange a date for arraignment in the district court.
[484.83] REINSTATEMENT OF FORFEITED SUMS.
A district court judge may order any sums forfeited to be reinstated and the commissioner of finance shall then refund accordingly. The commissioner of finance shall reimburse the court administrator if the court administrator refunds the deposit upon a judge's order and obtains a receipt to be used as a voucher.
[484.84] DISPOSITION OF FINES, FEES, AND OTHER MONEY ACCOUNTS; HENNEPIN COUNTY DISTRICT COURT.
Disposition of fines, fees and other money; accounts.
(a) Except as otherwise provided within this subdivision, and except as otherwise provided by law, the court administrator shall pay to the Hennepin county treasurer all fines and penalties collected by the court administrator, all fees collected by the court administrator for court administrator's services, all sums forfeited to the court as provided in this subdivision, and all other money received by the court administrator.
(b) The court administrator shall provide the county treasurer with the name of the municipality or other subdivision of government where the offense was committed and the name and official position of the officer who prosecuted the offense for each fine or penalty, and the total amount of fines or penalties collected for each municipality or other subdivision of government or for the county.
(c) At the beginning of the first day of any month the amount owing to any municipality or county in the hands of the court administrator shall not exceed $5,000.
(d) On or before the last day of each month the county treasurer shall pay over to the treasurer of each municipality or subdivision of government in Hennepin County all fines or penalties collected during the previous month for offenses committed within such municipality or subdivision of government, except that all such fines and penalties attributable to cases in which the county attorney had charge of the prosecution shall be retained by the county treasurer and credited to the county general revenue fund.
(e) Amounts represented by checks issued by the court administrator or received by the court administrator which have not cleared by the end of the month may be shown on the monthly account as having been paid or received, subject to adjustment on later monthly accounts.
(f) The court administrator may receive negotiable instruments in payment of fines, penalties, fees or other obligations as conditional payments, and is not held accountable for this until collection in cash is made and then only to the extent of the net collection after deduction of the necessary expense of collection.
Fees payable to administrator.
(a) The civil fees payable to the administrator for services are the same in amount as the fees then payable to the District Court of Hennepin County for like services. Library and filing fees are not required of the defendant in an eviction action. The fees payable to the administrator for all other services of the administrator or the court shall be fixed by rules promulgated by a majority of the judges.
(b) Fees are payable to the administrator in advance.
(c) Judgments will be entered only upon written application.
(d) The following fees shall be taxed for all charges filed in court where applicable:
(1) the state of Minnesota and any governmental subdivision within the jurisdictional area of any district court herein established may present cases for hearing before said district court;
(2) in the event the court takes jurisdiction of a prosecution for the violation of a statute or ordinance by the state or a governmental subdivision other than a city or town in Hennepin County, all fines, penalties, and forfeitures collected shall be paid over to the treasurer of the governmental subdivision which submitted charges for prosecution under ordinance violation and to the county treasurer in all other charges except where a different disposition is provided by law, in which case, payment shall be made to the public official entitled thereto.
(e) The following fees shall be taxed to the county or to the state or governmental subdivision which would be entitled to payment of the fines, forfeiture or penalties in any case, and shall be paid to the court administrator for disposing of the matter:
(1) For each charge where the defendant is brought into court and pleads guilty and is sentenced, or the matter is otherwise disposed of without trial, $5.
(2) In arraignments where the defendant waives a preliminary examination, $10.
(3) For all other charges where the defendant stands trial or has a preliminary examination by the court, $15.
(f) This paragraph applies to the distribution of fines paid by defendants without a court appearance in response to a citation. On or before the tenth day after the last day of the month in which the money was collected, the county treasurer shall pay 80 percent of the fines to the treasurer of the municipality or subdivision within the county where the violation was committed. The remainder of the fines shall be credited to the general revenue fund of the county.
EFFECTIVE DATE AND SUNSET.
This section is effective July 1, 2006, and expires June 30, 2007.
[484.841] DISPOSITION OF FINES, FEES, AND OTHER MONEY ACCOUNTS; HENNEPIN COUNTY DISTRICT COURT.
(a) Except as otherwise provided within this subdivision, and except as otherwise provided by law, the court administrator shall pay all fines and penalties collected by the court administrator, all fees collected by the court administrator for court administrator's services, all sums forfeited to the court as provided in this subdivision, and all other money received by the court administrator to the subdivision of government entitled to it as follows on or before the 20th day after the last day of the month in which the money was collected. Eighty percent of all fines and penalties collected during the previous month shall be paid to the treasurer of the municipality or subdivision of government where the crime was committed. The remainder of the fines and penalties shall be credited to the general fund of the state. In all cases in which the county attorney had charge of the prosecution, all fines and penalties shall be credited to the state general fund.
(b) The court administrator shall identify the name of the municipality or other subdivision of government where the offense was committed and the total amount of fines or penalties collected for each municipality or other subdivision of government, for the county, or for the state.
(c) Amounts represented by checks issued by the court administrator or received by the court administrator which have not cleared by the end of the month may be shown on the monthly account as having been paid or received, subject to adjustment on later monthly accounts.
(d) The court administrator may receive negotiable instruments in payment of fines, penalties, fees or other obligations as conditional payments, and is not held accountable for this until collection in cash is made and then only to the extent of the net collection after deduction of the necessary expense of collection.
[484.85] DISPOSITION OF FINES, FEES, AND OTHER MONEY; ACCOUNTS; RAMSEY COUNTY DISTRICT COURT.
(a) In the event the Ramsey County District Court takes jurisdiction of a prosecution for the violation of a statute or ordinance by the state or a governmental subdivision other than a city or town in Ramsey County, all fines, penalties, and forfeitures collected shall be paid over to the county treasurer except where a different disposition is provided by law, and the following fees shall be taxed to the state or governmental subdivision other than a city or town within Ramsey County which would be entitled to payment of the fines, forfeitures, or penalties in any case, and shall be paid to the administrator of the court for disposal of the matter. The administrator shall deduct the fees from any fine collected for the state of Minnesota or a governmental subdivision other than a city or town within Ramsey County and transmit the balance in accordance with the law, and the deduction of the total of the fees each month from the total of all the fines collected is hereby expressly made an appropriation of funds for payment of the fees:
(1) in all cases where the defendant is brought into court and pleads guilty and is sentenced, or the matter is otherwise disposed of without a trial, $5;
(2) in arraignments where the defendant waives a preliminary examination, $10;
(3) in all other cases where the defendant stands trial or has a preliminary examination by the court, $15; and
(4) the court shall have the authority to waive the collection of fees in any particular case.
(b) On or before the last day of each month, the county treasurer shall pay over to the treasurer of the city of St. Paul two-thirds of all fines, penalties, and forfeitures collected and to the treasurer of each other municipality or subdivision of government in Ramsey County one-half of all fines or penalties collected during the previous month from those imposed for offenses committed within the treasurer's municipality or subdivision of government in violation of a statute; an ordinance; or a charter provision, rule, or regulation of a city. All other fines and forfeitures and all fees and costs collected by the district court shall be paid to the treasurer of Ramsey County, who shall dispense the same as provided by law.
[484.86] COURT DIVISIONS.
Subject to the provisions of section 244.19 and rules of the Supreme Court, a court may establish a probate division, a family court division, juvenile division, and a civil and criminal division which shall include a conciliation court, and may establish within the civil and criminal division a traffic and ordinance violations bureau.
The court may establish, consistent with Rule 23 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure, misdemeanor violations bureaus at the places it determines.
[484.87] PLEADING, PRACTICE, PROCEDURE, AND FORMS IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS.
Right to jury trial.
In any prosecution brought in a district court in which conviction of the defendant for the offense charged could result in imprisonment, the defendant has the right to a jury trial.
Prosecuting attorneys in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties.
In the counties of Hennepin and Ramsey, except as otherwise provided in this subdivision and section 388.051, subdivision 2, the attorney of the municipality in which the violation is alleged to have occurred has charge of the prosecution of all violations of the state laws, including violations which are gross misdemeanors, and municipal charter provisions, ordinances, rules, and regulations triable in the district court, and shall prepare complaints for the violations. The county attorney has charge of the prosecution of a violation triable in district court and shall prepare a complaint for the violation:
(1) if the county attorney is specifically designated by law as the prosecutor for the particular violation charged; or
(2) if the alleged violation is of state law and is alleged to have occurred in a municipality or other subdivision of government whose population according to the most recent federal decennial census is less than 2,500 and whose governing body, or the town board in the case of a town, has accepted this clause by majority vote, and if the defendant is cited or arrested by a member of the staff of the sheriff of Hennepin County or by a member of the State Patrol.
Clause (2) shall not apply to a municipality or other subdivision of government whose population according to the most recent federal decennial census is 2,500 or more, regardless of whether or not it has previously accepted clause (2).
Prosecuting attorneys.
Except as provided in subdivision 2 and as otherwise provided by law, violations of state law that are petty misdemeanors or misdemeanors must be prosecuted by the attorney of the statutory or home rule charter city where the violation is alleged to have occurred, if the city has a population greater than 600. If a city has a population of 600 or less, it may, by resolution of the city council, and with the approval of the board of county commissioners, give the duty to the county attorney. In cities of the first, second, and third class, gross misdemeanor violations of sections 609.52, 609.535, 609.595, 609.631, and 609.821 must be prosecuted by the attorney of the city where the violation is alleged to have occurred. The statutory or home rule charter city may enter into an agreement with the county board and the county attorney to provide prosecution services for any criminal offense. All other petty misdemeanors, misdemeanors, and gross misdemeanors must be prosecuted by the county attorney of the county in which the alleged violation occurred. All violations of a municipal ordinance, charter provision, rule, or regulation must be prosecuted by the attorney for the governmental unit that promulgated the municipal ordinance, charter provision, rule, or regulation, regardless of its population, or by the county attorney with whom it has contracted to prosecute these matters.
In the counties of Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Scott, and Washington, violations of state law that are petty misdemeanors, misdemeanors, or gross misdemeanors except as provided in section 388.051, subdivision 2, must be prosecuted by the attorney of the statutory or home rule charter city where the violation is alleged to have occurred. The statutory or home rule charter city may enter into an agreement with the county board and the county attorney to provide prosecution services for any criminal offense. All other petty misdemeanors, misdemeanors, or gross misdemeanors must be prosecuted by the county attorney of the county in which the alleged violation occurred. All violations of a municipal ordinance, charter provision, rule, or regulation must be prosecuted by the attorney for the governmental unit that promulgated the municipal ordinance, charter provision, rule, or regulation or by the county attorney with whom it has contracted to prosecute these matters.
Presumption of innocence; conviction of lowest degree.
In an action or proceeding charging a violation of an ordinance of any subdivision of government in Hennepin County, if such ordinance is the same or substantially the same as a state law, the provisions of section 611.02 shall apply.
Assistance of attorney general.
An attorney for a statutory or home rule charter city in the metropolitan area, as defined in section 473.121, subdivision 2, may request, and the attorney general may provide, assistance in prosecuting nonfelony violations of section 609.66, subdivision 1; 609.666; 624.713, subdivision 2; 624.7131, subdivision 11; 624.7132, subdivision 15; 624.714, subdivision 1 or 10; 624.7162, subdivision 3; or 624.7181, subdivision 2.
[484.88] COUNTY ATTORNEY AS PROSECUTOR; NOTICE TO COUNTY.
A municipality or other subdivision of government seeking to use the county attorney for violations enumerated in section 484.87, subdivision 2, shall notify the county board of its intention to use the services of the county attorney at least 60 days prior to the adoption of the board's annual budget each year. A municipality may enter into an agreement with the county board and the county attorney to provide prosecution services for any criminal offense on a case-by-case basis.
[484.89] ORDER FOR PRISON RELEASE.
When a person is confined to the Hennepin County Adult Correctional Facility and a fine is remitted or a sentence is stayed or suspended, the person released on parole, or the release of the person secured by payment of the fine in default of which the person was committed, the prisoner shall not be released except upon order of the court. A written transcript of such order signed by the court administrator and under the court's seal shall be furnished to the superintendent of the Hennepin County Adult Correctional Facility. All cost of confinement or imprisonment in any jail or correctional facility shall be paid by the municipality or subdivision of government in Hennepin County in which the violation occurred, except that the county shall pay all costs of confinement or imprisonment incurred as a result of a prosecution of a gross misdemeanor.
[484.90] FEES PAYABLE TO COURT ADMINISTRATOR.
The fees payable to the court administrator for the following services in petty misdemeanors or criminal actions are governed by the following provisions:
In the event the court takes jurisdiction of a prosecution for the violation of a statute or ordinance by the state or a governmental subdivision other than a city or town within the county court district; all fines, penalties and forfeitures collected shall be paid over to the treasurer of the governmental subdivision which submitted a case for prosecution except where a different disposition is provided by law, in which case payment shall be made to the public official entitled thereto. The following fees for services in petty misdemeanor or criminal actions shall be taxed to the state or governmental subdivision which would be entitled to payment of the fines, forfeiture or penalties in any case, and shall be retained by the court administrator for disposing of the matter but in no case shall the fee that is taxed exceed the fine that is imposed. The court administrator shall deduct the fees from any fine collected and transmit the balance in accordance with the law, and the deduction of the total of such fees each month from the total of all such fines collected is hereby expressly made an appropriation of funds for payment of such fees:
(1) in all cases where the defendant pleads guilty at or prior to first appearance and sentence is imposed or the matter is otherwise disposed of without a trial, $5;
(2) where the defendant pleads guilty after first appearance or prior to trial, $10;
(3) in all other cases where the defendant is found guilty by the court or jury or pleads guilty during trial, $15; and
The fees set forth in this subdivision shall not apply to parking violations for which complaints and warrants have not been issued.
Miscellaneous fees.
Fees payable to the court administrator for all other services shall be fixed by court rule.
Payment in advance.
Except as provided in subdivision 1, fees are payable to the court administrator in advance.
Fines paid by check.
Amounts represented by checks issued by the court administrator or received by the court administrator which have not cleared by the end of the month may be shown on the monthly account as having been paid or received, subject to adjustment on later monthly accounts.
Checks.
The court administrator may receive checks in payment of fines, penalties, fees or other obligations as conditional payments, and is not held accountable therefor until collection in cash is made and then only to the extent of the net collection after deduction of the necessary expense of collection.
The court administrator shall provide the county treasurer with the name of the municipality or other subdivision of government where the offense was committed which employed or provided by contract the arresting or apprehending officer and the name of the municipality or other subdivision of government which employed the prosecuting attorney or otherwise provided for prosecution of the offense for each fine or penalty and the total amount of fines or penalties collected for each municipality or other subdivision of government. On or before the last day of each month, the county treasurer shall pay over to the treasurer of each municipality or subdivision of government within the county all fines or penalties for parking violations for which complaints and warrants have not been issued and one third of all fines or penalties collected during the previous month for offenses committed within the municipality or subdivision of government from persons arrested or issued citations by officers employed by the municipality or subdivision or provided by the municipality or subdivision by contract. An additional one third of all fines or penalties shall be paid to the municipality or subdivision of government providing prosecution of offenses of the type for which the fine or penalty is collected occurring within the municipality or subdivision, imposed for violations of state statute or of an ordinance, charter provision, rule, or regulation of a city whether or not a guilty plea is entered or bail is forfeited. Except as provided in section 299D.03, subdivision 5, or as otherwise provided by law, all other fines and forfeitures and all fees and statutory court costs collected by the court administrator shall be paid to the county treasurer of the county in which the funds were collected who shall dispense them as provided by law. In a county in a judicial district under section 480.181, subdivision 1, paragraph (b), all other fines, forfeitures, fees, and statutory court costs must be paid to the commissioner of finance for deposit in the state treasury and credited to the general fund.
[484.91] MISDEMEANOR VIOLATIONS BUREAUS.
Misdemeanor violations bureaus shall be established in Minneapolis, a southern suburb location, and at any other northern and western suburban locations dispersed throughout the county as may be designated by a majority of the judges of the court.
The court shall supervise and the court administrator shall operate the misdemeanor violations bureaus in accordance with Rule 23 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure. Subject to approval by a majority of the judges, the court administrator shall assign one or more deputy court administrators to discharge and perform the duties of the bureau.
Uniform traffic ticket.
The Hennepin County Board may alter by deletion or addition the uniform traffic ticket, provided in section 169.99, in such manner as it deems advisable for use in Hennepin County.
Procedure by person receiving misdemeanor citation.
A person who receives a misdemeanor or petty misdemeanor citation shall proceed as follows:
(a) If a fine for the violation may be paid at the bureau without appearance before a judge, the person charged may pay the fine in person or by mail to the bureau within the time specified in the citation. Payment of the fine shall be deemed to be the entry of a plea of guilty to the violation charged and a consent to the imposition of a sentence for the violation in the amount of the fine paid. A receipt shall be issued to evidence the payment and the receipt shall be satisfaction for the violation charged in that citation.
(b) When a fine is not paid, the person charged must appear at a bureau within the time specified in the citation, state whether the person desires to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, arrange for a date for arraignment in court and appear in court for arraignment on the date set by the bureaus.
[484.92] ADDITIONAL EMPLOYEES.
Bailiffs.
The sheriff of a county shall furnish to the district court deputies to serve as bailiffs within the county as the court may request. The county board may, with the approval of the chief judge of the district, contract with any municipality, upon terms agreed upon, for the services of police officers of the municipality to act as bailiffs in the county district court.
Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the authority of the court to employ probation officers with the powers and duties prescribed in section 244.19.
Transcription of court proceedings.
Electronic recording equipment may be used for the purposes of Laws 1971, chapter 951, to record court proceedings in lieu of a court reporter. However, at the request of any party to any proceedings the court may in its discretion require the proceedings to be recorded by a competent court reporter who shall perform such additional duties as the court directs. The salary of a reporter shall be set in accordance with the procedure provided by sections 486.05 and 486.06.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 485.01, is amended to read:
485.01 APPOINTMENT; BOND; DUTIES.
A clerk of the district court for each county within the judicial district, who shall be known as the court administrator, shall be appointed by a majority of the district court judges in the district. The clerk, before entering upon the duties of office, shall give bond to the state, to be approved by the chief judge of the judicial district, conditioned for the faithful discharge of official duties. The bond, with An oath of office, shall be recorded with the county recorder court administrator. The clerk court administrator shall perform all duties assigned by law and by the rules of the court. The clerk court administrator and all deputy clerks deputies must not practice as attorneys in the court in which they are employed.
The duties, functions, and responsibilities which have been and may be required by law or rule to be performed by the clerk of district court shall be performed by the court administrator.
Collection of fees.
The court administrator of district court shall charge and collect all fees as prescribed by law and all such fees collected by the court administrator as court administrator of district court shall be paid to the county treasurer Department of Finance. Except for those portions of forfeited bail paid to victims pursuant to existing law, the county treasurer court administrator shall forward all revenue from fees and forfeited bail collected under chapters 357, 487, and 574 to the commissioner of finance for deposit in the state treasury and credit to the general fund, unless otherwise provided in chapter 611A or other law, in the manner and at the times prescribed by the commissioner of finance, but not less often than once each month. If the defendant or probationer is located after forfeited bail proceeds have been forwarded to the commissioner of finance, the commissioner of finance shall reimburse the county, on request, for actual costs expended for extradition, transportation, or other costs necessary to return the defendant or probationer to the jurisdiction where the bail was posted, in an amount not more than the amount of forfeited bail. The court administrator of district court shall not retain any additional compensation, per diem or other emolument for services as court administrator of district court, but may receive and retain mileage and expense allowances as prescribed by law.
485.021 INVESTMENT OF FUNDS DEPOSITED WITH COURT ADMINISTRATOR.
When money is paid into court pursuant to court order, the court administrator of district court, unless the court order specifies otherwise, may place such moneys with the county treasurer Department of Finance for investment, as provided by law. When such moneys are subsequently released, or otherwise treated, by court order, the same shall be immediately paid over by the county treasurer to the court administrator of district court who shall then fulfill the direction of the court order relative to such moneys.
485.03 DEPUTIES.
(a) The county board shall determine the number of permanent full time deputies, clerks and other employees in the office of the court administrator of district court and shall fix the compensation for each position. The county board shall also budget for temporary deputies and other employees and shall fix their rates of compensation. This paragraph does not apply to a county in a judicial district under section 480.181, subdivision 1, paragraph (b).
(b) The court administrator shall appoint in writing the deputies and other employees, for whose acts the court administrator shall be responsible, and whom the court administrator may remove at pleasure. Before each enters upon official duties, the appointment and oath of each shall be recorded with the county recorder court administrator.
485.05 DEPUTY COURT ADMINISTRATOR IN ST. LOUIS COUNTY.
In all counties in the state now or hereafter having a population of more than 150,000 and wherein regular terms of the district court are held in three or more places, the court administrator of the district court therein, by an instrument in writing, under the court administrator's hand and seal, and with the approval of the district judge of the judicial district in which said county is situated, or, if there be more than one such district judge, with the approval of a majority thereof, may appoint deputies for whose acts the court administrator shall be responsible, such deputies to hold office as such until they shall be removed therefrom, which removal shall not be made except with the approval of the district judge or judges. The appointment and oath of every such deputy shall be recorded with the county recorder court administrator.
485.11 PRINTED CALENDARS.
The court administrator of the district court in each of the several counties of this state shall provide calendars either printed or otherwise duplicated of the cases to be tried at the general terms thereof at the expense of the counties where such court is held. This section shall not apply to a county where only one term of court is held each year.
517.041 POWER TO APPOINT COURT COMMISSIONER; DUTY.
The county court of the combined county court district of Benton and Stearns may appoint as court commissioner a person who was formerly employed by that county court district as a court commissioner.
The county court of the Third or Fifth Judicial Districts District may appoint as court commissioner for Brown, Dodge, Fillmore and Olmsted Counties respectively a person who was formerly employed by those counties as a court commissioner.
The sole duty of an appointed court commissioner is to solemnize marriages.
Minimum standards; plan.
The Minnesota Supreme Court should promulgate minimum standards for the implementation and administration of a parent education program. The chief judge of each judicial district or a designee shall submit a plan to the Minnesota conference of chief judges for their approval that is designed to implement and administer a parent education program in the judicial district. The plan must be consistent with the minimum standards promulgated by the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 518B.01, is amended by adding a subdivision to read:
Entry and enforcement of foreign protective orders.
(a) As used in this subdivision, "foreign protective order" means an order for protection entered by a court of another state; an order by an Indian tribe or United States territory that would be a protective order entered under this chapter; a temporary or permanent order or protective order to exclude a respondent from a dwelling; or an order that establishes conditions of release or is a protective order or sentencing order in a criminal prosecution arising from a domestic abuse assault if it had been entered in Minnesota.
(b) A person for whom a foreign protection order has been issued or the issuing court or tribunal may provide a certified or authenticated copy of a foreign protective order to the court administrator in any county that would have venue if the original action was being commenced in this state or in which the person in whose favor the order was entered may be present, for filing and entering of the same into the state order for protection database.
(c) The court administrator shall file and enter foreign protective orders that are not certified or authenticated, if supported by an affidavit of a person with personal knowledge, subject to the penalties for perjury. The person protected by the order may provide this affidavit.
(d) The court administrator shall provide copies of the order as required by this section.
(e) A valid foreign protective order has the same effect and shall be enforced in the same manner as an order for protection issued in this state whether or not filed with a court administrator or otherwise entered in the state order for protection database.
(f) A foreign protective order is presumed valid if it meets all of the following:
(1) the order states the name of the protected individual and the individual against whom enforcement is sought;
(2) the order has not expired;
(3) the order was issued by a court or tribunal that had jurisdiction over the parties and subject matter under the law of the foreign jurisdiction; and
(4) the order was issued in accordance with the respondent's due process rights, either after the respondent was provided with reasonable notice and an opportunity to be heard before the court or tribunal that issued the order, or in the case of an ex parte order, the respondent was granted notice and an opportunity to be heard within a reasonable time after the order was issued.
(g) Proof that a foreign protective order failed to meet all of the factors listed in paragraph (f) is an affirmative defense in any action seeking enforcement of the order.
(h) A peace officer shall treat a foreign protective order as a valid legal document and shall make an arrest for a violation of the foreign protective order in the same manner that a peace officer would make an arrest for a violation of a protective order issued within this state.
(i) The fact that a foreign protective order has not been filed with the court administrator or otherwise entered into the state order for protection database shall not be grounds to refuse to enforce the terms of the order unless it is apparent to the officer that the order is invalid on its face.
(j) A peace officer acting reasonably and in good faith in connection with the enforcement of a foreign protective order is immune from civil and criminal liability in any action arising in connection with the enforcement.
(k) Filing and service costs in connection with foreign protective orders are waived.
Board of judicial standards review.
At least annually, the board on judicial standards shall review the compliance of each district, county, or municipal judge with the provisions of subdivision 1. To facilitate this review, the director of the state judicial information system shall notify the executive secretary of the state board on judicial standards when a matter exceeds 90 days without a disposition. The board shall notify the commissioner of finance of each judge not in compliance. If the board finds that a judge has compelling reasons for noncompliance, it may decide not to issue the notice. Upon notification that a judge is not in compliance, the commissioner of finance shall not pay the salary of that judge. The board may cancel a notice of noncompliance upon finding that a judge is in compliance, but in no event shall a judge be paid a salary for the period in which the notification of noncompliance was in effect.
Minimum fines; other crimes.
Notwithstanding any other law:
(1) when a court sentences a person convicted of a felony that is not listed in subdivision 2 or 3, it must impose a fine of not less than 30 percent of the maximum fine authorized by law nor more than the maximum fine authorized by law; and
(2) when a court sentences a person convicted of a gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor that is not listed in subdivision 2, it must impose a fine of not less than 30 percent of the maximum fine authorized by law nor more than the maximum fine authorized by law, unless the fine is set at a lower amount on a uniform fine schedule established by the conference of chief judges Judicial Council in consultation with affected state and local agencies. This schedule shall be promulgated not later than September 1 of each year and shall become effective on January 1 of the next year unless the legislature, by law, provides otherwise.
The minimum fine required by this subdivision is in addition to the surcharge or assessment required by section 357.021, subdivision 6, and is in addition to any sentence of imprisonment or restitution imposed or ordered by the court.
The court shall collect the fines mandated in this subdivision and, except for fines for traffic and motor vehicle violations governed by section 169.871 and section 299D.03 and fish and game violations governed by section 97A.065, forward 20 percent of the revenues to the commissioner of finance for deposit in the general fund.
629.74 PRETRIAL BAIL EVALUATION.
The local corrections department or its designee shall conduct a pretrial bail evaluation of each defendant arrested and detained for committing a crime of violence as defined in section 624.712, subdivision 5, a gross misdemeanor violation of section 609.224 or 609.2242, or a nonfelony violation of section 518B.01, 609.2231, 609.3451, 609.748, or 609.749. In cases where the defendant requests appointed counsel, the evaluation shall include completion of the financial statement required by section 611.17. The local corrections department shall be reimbursed $25 by the Department of Corrections for each evaluation performed. The conference of chief judges, Judicial Council in consultation with the Department of Corrections, shall approve the pretrial evaluation form to be used in each county.
641.25 DISTRICT JAILS; HOW DESIGNATED.
The commissioner of corrections, with the consent of the county board, may designate any suitable jail in the state as a district jail, to be used for the detention of prisoners from other counties in addition to those of its own. If the jail or its management becomes unfit for that purpose, the commissioner may rescind its designation. Whenever there is no sufficient jail in any county, the examining county or municipal judge, or upon the judge's own motion, or the judge of the district court, upon application of the sheriff, may order any person charged with a criminal offense committed to a sufficient jail in some other county. If there is a district jail in the judicial district, the charged person shall be sent to it, or to any other nearer district jail designated by the judge. The sheriff of the county containing the district jail, on presentation of the order, shall receive, keep in custody, and deliver the charged person up upon the order of the court or a judge.
Laws 2002, chapter 266, section 1, as amended by Laws 2004, chapter 290, section 38, is amended to read:
Section 1. DOMESTIC FATALITY REVIEW TEAM PILOT PROJECT EXTENSION.
The fourth judicial district may extend the duration of the pilot project authorized by Laws 1999, chapter 216, article 2, section 27, and Laws 2000, chapter 468, sections 29 to 32, until December 31, 2006 2008. If the pilot project is extended, the domestic fatality review team shall submit a report on the project to the legislature by January 15, 2007 2009.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, sections 484.013, subdivision 8; 484.545, subdivisions 2 and 3; 484.55; 484.68, subdivision 7; 484.75; 485.018, subdivisions 2, 6, and 8; 485.12; 487.01; 487.02; 487.03; 487.04; 487.07; 487.10; 487.11; 487.13; 487.14; 487.15; 487.16; 487.17; 487.18; 487.19; 487.191; 487.20; 487.21; 487.23; 487.24; 487.25; 487.26; 487.27; 487.28; 487.29; 487.31; 487.32; 487.33; 487.34; 487.36; 487.37; 487.38; 487.40; 488A.01; 488A.021; 488A.025; 488A.03; 488A.035; 488A.04; 488A.08; 488A.09; 488A.10; 488A.101; 488A.11; 488A.112; 488A.113; 488A.115; 488A.116; 488A.119; 488A.18; 488A.19; 488A.20; 488A.21; 488A.23; 488A.24; 488A.26; 488A.27; 488A.28; 488A.282; 488A.285; 488A.286; 488A.287; 525.011; 525.012; 525.013; 525.014; 525.015; 525.02; 525.03; 525.051; 525.052; 525.053; 525.06; 525.07; 525.08; 525.081; 525.082; 525.09; and 625.09, and Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, sections 353.027; and 485.03, are repealed.
237.49 COMBINED LOCAL ACCESS SURCHARGE.
Each local telephone company shall collect from each subscriber an amount per telephone access line representing the total of the surcharges required under sections 237.52, 237.70, and 403.11. Amounts collected must be remitted to the commissioner of public safety in the manner prescribed in section 403.11. The commissioner of public safety shall divide the amounts received proportional to the individual surcharges and deposit them in the appropriate accounts. The commissioner of public safety may recover from the agencies receiving the surcharges the personnel and administrative costs to collect and distribute the surcharge. A company or the billing agent for a company shall list the surcharges as one amount on a billing statement sent to a subscriber.
Secondary public safety answering point.
"Secondary public safety answering point" means a communications facility that: (1) is operated on a 24-hour basis, in which a minimum of three public safety answering points (PSAP's) route calls for postdispatch or prearrival instructions; (2) receives calls directly from medical facilities to reduce call volume at the PSAP's; and (3) is able to receive 911 calls routed to it from a PSAP when the PSAP is unable to receive or answer 911 calls.
Contractual requirements.
(a) The state, together shall contract with the county or other governmental agencies operating public safety answering points, shall contract and with the appropriate wire-line telecommunications service providers or other entities determined by the commissioner to be capable of providing effective and efficient components of the 911 system for the operation, maintenance, enhancement, and expansion of the 911 system.
(b) The state shall contract with the appropriate wireless telecommunications service providers for maintaining, enhancing, and expanding the 911 system.
(c) The contract language or subsequent amendments to the contract must include a description of the services to be furnished to the county or other governmental agencies operating public safety answering points. The contract language or subsequent amendments must include the terms of compensation based on the effective tariff or price list filed with the Public Utilities Commission or the prices agreed to by the parties.
(d) The contract language or subsequent amendments to contracts between the parties must contain a provision for resolving disputes.
Agreements for service.
Each county and or any other governmental agency shall contract with the state and wire-line telecommunications service providers or other entities determined by the commissioner to be capable of providing effective and efficient components of the 911 system for the recurring and nonrecurring costs associated with operating and maintaining 911 emergency communications systems. If requested by the county or other governmental agency, the county or agency is entitled to be a party to any contract between the state and any wire-line telecommunications service provider or 911 emergency telecommunications service provider providing components of the 911 system within the county.
Each wireless telecommunications service provider shall cooperate in planning and implementing integration with enhanced 911 systems operating in their service territories to meet Federal Communications Commission-enhanced 911 standards. By August 1, 1997, each 911 emergency telecommunications service provider operating enhanced 911 systems, in cooperation with each involved Each wireless telecommunications service provider, shall annually develop and provide to the commissioner good-faith estimates of installation and recurring expenses to integrate wireless 911 service into the enhanced 911 networks to meet Federal Communications Commission phase one wireless enhanced 911 standards. The commissioner shall coordinate with counties and affected public safety agency representatives in developing a statewide design and plan for implementation.
Emergency telecommunications service fee; account.
(a) Each customer of a wireless or wire-line switched or packet-based telecommunications service provider connected to the public switched telephone network that furnishes service capable of originating a 911 emergency telephone call is assessed a fee based upon the number of wired or wireless telephone lines, or their equivalent, to cover the costs of ongoing maintenance and related improvements for trunking and central office switching equipment for 911 emergency telecommunications service, plus to offset administrative and staffing costs of the commissioner related to managing the 911 emergency telecommunications service program. Recurring charges by a wire-line telecommunications service provider for updating the information required by section 403.07, subdivision 3, must be paid by the commissioner if the wire-line telecommunications service provider is included in an approved 911 plan and the charges are made pursuant to contract. The fee assessed under this section must also be used for the purpose of offsetting, to make distributions provided for in section 403.113, and to offset the costs, including administrative and staffing costs, incurred by the State Patrol Division of the Department of Public Safety in handling 911 emergency calls made from wireless phones.
(b) Money remaining in the 911 emergency telecommunications service account after all other obligations are paid must not cancel and is carried forward to subsequent years and may be appropriated from time to time to the commissioner to provide financial assistance to counties for the improvement of local emergency telecommunications services. The improvements may include providing access to 911 service for telecommunications service subscribers currently without access and upgrading existing 911 service to include automatic number identification, local location identification, automatic location identification, and other improvements specified in revised county 911 plans approved by the commissioner.
(c) The fee may not be less than eight cents nor more than 65 cents a month for each customer access line or other basic access service, including trunk equivalents as designated by the Public Utilities Commission for access charge purposes and including wireless telecommunications services. With the approval of the commissioner of finance, the commissioner of public safety shall establish the amount of the fee within the limits specified and inform the companies and carriers of the amount to be collected. When the revenue bonds authorized under section 403.27, subdivision 1, have been fully paid or defeased, the commissioner shall reduce the fee to reflect that debt service on the bonds is no longer needed. The commissioner shall provide companies and carriers a minimum of 45 days' notice of each fee change. The fee must be the same for all customers.
(d) The fee must be collected by each wireless or wire-line telecommunications service provider subject to the fee. Fees are payable to and must be submitted to the commissioner monthly before the 25th of each month following the month of collection, except that fees may be submitted quarterly if less than $250 a month is due, or annually if less than $25 a month is due. Receipts must be deposited in the state treasury and credited to a 911 emergency telecommunications service account in the special revenue fund. The money in the account may only be used for 911 telecommunications services.
(e) This subdivision does not apply to customers of interexchange carriers.
(f) The installation and recurring charges for integrating wireless 911 calls into enhanced 911 systems must be paid are eligible for payment by the commissioner if the 911 service provider is included in the statewide design plan and the charges are made pursuant to contract.
(g) Competitive local exchanges carriers holding certificates of authority from the Public Utilities Commission are eligible to receive payment for recurring 911 services.
(a) Any wireless or wire-line telecommunications service provider incurring reimbursable costs under subdivision 1 shall submit an invoice itemizing rate elements by county or service area to the commissioner for 911 services furnished under contract. Any wireless or wire-line telecommunications service provider is eligible to receive payment for 911 services rendered according to the terms and conditions specified in the contract. Competitive local exchange carriers holding certificates of authority from the Public Utilities Commission are eligible to receive payment for recurring 911 services provided after July 1, 2001. The commissioner shall pay the invoice within 30 days following receipt of the invoice unless the commissioner notifies the service provider that the commissioner disputes the invoice.
(b) The commissioner shall estimate the amount required to reimburse 911 emergency telecommunications service providers and wireless and wire-line telecommunications service providers for the state's obligations under subdivision 1 and the governor shall include the estimated amount in the biennial budget request.
Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 403.11, subdivision 3a, is amended to read:
Timely certification invoices.
A certification An invoice for services provided for in the contract with a wireless or wire-line telecommunications service provider must be submitted to the commissioner no later than one year 90 days after commencing a new or additional eligible 911 service. Each applicable contract must provide that, if certified expenses under the contract deviate from estimates in the contract by more than ten percent, the commissioner may reduce the level of service without incurring any termination fees.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 403.11, subdivision 3b, is amended to read:
Certification Declaration.
All If the commissioner disputes an invoice, the wireless and wire-line telecommunications service providers shall submit a self-certification form declaration under section 16A.41 signed by an officer of the company to the commissioner with the invoices for payment of an initial or changed service described in the service provider's 911 contract. The self-certification shall sworn declaration must specifically describe and affirm that the 911 service contracted for is being provided and the costs invoiced for the service are true and correct. All certifications are subject to verification and audit. When a wireless or wire-line telecommunications service provider fails to provide a sworn declaration within 90 days of notice by the commissioner that the invoice is disputed, the disputed amount of the invoice must be disallowed.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 403.11, subdivision 3c, is amended to read:
If the commissioner determines that an audit is necessary to document the certification described invoice and sworn declaration in subdivision 3b, the wireless or wire-line telecommunications service provider must contract with an independent certified public accountant to conduct the audit. The audit must be conducted according to generally accepted accounting principles. The wireless or wire-line telecommunications service provider is responsible for any costs associated with the audit.
(a) Each customer receiving service from a wireless or wire-line switched or packet-based telecommunications service provider connected to the public telephone network that furnishes service capable of originating a 911 emergency telephone call is assessed a fee A portion of the fee collected under section 403.11 must be used to fund implementation, operation, maintenance, enhancement, and expansion of enhanced 911 service, including acquisition of necessary equipment and the costs of the commissioner to administer the program. The actual fee assessed under section 403.11 and the enhanced 911 service fee must be collected as one amount and may not exceed the amount specified in section 403.11, subdivision 1, paragraph (c).
(b) The enhanced 911 service fee must be collected and deposited in the same manner as the fee in section and used solely for the purposes of paragraph (a) and subdivision 3.
(c) The commissioner, in consultation with counties and 911 system users, shall determine the amount of the enhanced 911 service fee. The commissioner shall inform wireless and wire-line telecommunications service providers that provide service capable of originating a 911 emergency telephone call of the total amount of the 911 service fees in the same manner as provided in section .
Local expenditures.
(a) Money distributed under subdivision 2 for enhanced 911 service may be spent on enhanced 911 system costs for the purposes stated in subdivision 1, paragraph (a). In addition, money may be spent to lease, purchase, lease-purchase, or maintain enhanced 911 equipment, including telephone equipment; recording equipment; computer hardware; computer software for database provisioning, addressing, mapping, and any other software necessary for automatic location identification or local location identification; trunk lines; selective routing equipment; the master street address guide; dispatcher public safety answering point equipment proficiency and operational skills; pay for long-distance charges incurred due to transferring 911 calls to other jurisdictions; and the equipment necessary within the public safety answering point for community alert systems and to notify and communicate with the emergency services requested by the 911 caller.
(b) Money distributed for enhanced 911 service may not be spent on:
(1) purchasing or leasing of real estate or cosmetic additions to or remodeling of communications centers;
(2) mobile communications vehicles, fire engines, ambulances, law enforcement vehicles, or other emergency vehicles;
(3) signs, posts, or other markers related to addressing or any costs associated with the installation or maintenance of signs, posts, or markers.
"Board" or "radio board" or "Metropolitan Radio Board" means the Metropolitan Statewide Radio Board or its successor regional radio board.
"Plan" or "regionwide public safety radio system communication plan" means the a plan adopted by the Metropolitan Radio Board for a regionwide public safety radio communications system. a regional radio board.
"Subsystems" or "public safety radio subsystems" means systems identified in the plan or a plan developed under section 403.36 as subsystems interconnected by the system backbone and operated by the Metropolitan Radio Board, a regional radio board, or local government units for their own internal operations.
System backbone.
"System backbone" or "backbone" means a public safety radio communication system that consists of a shared, trunked, communication, and interoperability infrastructure network, including, but not limited to, radio towers and associated structures and equipment, the elements of which are identified in the regionwide public safety radio communication system plan under section 403.23, subdivision 6, and the statewide radio communication plan under section 403.36.
403.33 LOCAL PLANNING.
County planning process.
(a) No later than two years from May 22, 1995, each metropolitan county shall undertake and complete a planning process for its public safety radio subsystem to ensure participation by representatives of local government units, quasi-public service organizations, and private entities eligible to use the regional public safety radio system and to ensure coordination and planning of the local subsystems. Local governments and other eligible users shall cooperate with the county in its preparation of the subsystem plan to ensure that local needs are met.
(b) The regional radio board for the metropolitan area shall encourage the establishment by each metropolitan county of local public safety radio subsystem committees composed of representatives of local governments and other eligible users for the purposes of:
(1) establishing a plan for coordinated and timely use of the regionwide public safety radio system by the local governments and other eligible users within each metropolitan county; and
(2) assisting and advising the regional radio board for the metropolitan area in its implementation of the regional public safety radio plan by identification of local service needs and objectives.
(c) The regional radio board for the metropolitan area shall also encourage the establishment of joint or multicounty planning for the regionwide public safety radio system and subsystems.
(d) The regional radio board for the metropolitan area may provide local boards with whatever assistance it deems necessary and appropriate.
(e) No metropolitan county or city of the first class shall be required to undertake a technical subsystem design to meet the planning process requirements of this subdivision or subdivision 2.
Cities of first class; planning process.
Each city of the first class in the metropolitan counties shall have the option to participate in the county public safety radio subsystem planning process or develop its own plan.
Submission of plans to board.
Each metropolitan county and each city of the first class in the metropolitan area which has chosen to develop its own plan shall submit the plan to the regional radio board for the metropolitan area for the board's review and approval.
Local government joinder.
Local government units, except for cities of the first class, quasi-public service organizations, and private entities eligible to use the regional public safety radio system cannot join the system until its county plan has been approved by the regional radio board for the metropolitan area.
403.34 OPTIONAL LOCAL USE OF REGIONAL STATEWIDE SYSTEM.
Use of the regional statewide public safety radio system by local governments, quasi-public service organizations, and private entities eligible to use the system shall be optional and no local government or other eligible user of the system shall be required to abandon or modify current public safety radio communication systems or purchase new equipment until the local government or other eligible user elects to join the system. Public safety radio communication service to local governments and other eligible users who do not initially join the system shall not be interrupted. No local government or other eligible users who do not join the system shall be charged a user fee for the use of the system.
Requirements to join.
Local governments and other entities eligible to join the regional statewide public safety radio system which elect to join the system must do so in accordance with and meet the requirements of the provisions of the plan adopted by the radio board as provided in section 403.23, subdivision 2 403.36.
(a) The commissioner of public safety shall convene and chair the Statewide Radio Board to develop a project plan for a statewide, shared, trunked public safety radio communication system. The system may be referred to as "Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response," or "ARMER."
(b) The board consists of the following members or their designees:
(1) the commissioner of public safety;
(2) the commissioner of transportation;
(3) the state chief information officer;
(4) the commissioner of natural resources;
(5) the chief of the Minnesota State Patrol;
(6) the commissioner of health;
(7) (6) the commissioner of finance;
(7) the chair of the Metropolitan Council;
(8) two elected city officials, one from the nine-county metropolitan area and one from Greater Minnesota, appointed by the governing body of the League of Minnesota Cities;
(9) two elected county officials, one from the nine-county metropolitan area and one from Greater Minnesota, appointed by the governing body of the Association of Minnesota Counties;
(10) two sheriffs, one from the nine-county metropolitan area and one from Greater Minnesota, appointed by the governing body of the Minnesota Sheriffs' Association;
(11) two chiefs of police, one from the nine-county metropolitan area and one from Greater Minnesota, appointed by the governor after considering recommendations made by the Minnesota Chiefs' of Police Association;
(12) two fire chiefs, one from the nine-county metropolitan area and one from Greater Minnesota, appointed by the governor after considering recommendations made by the Minnesota Fire Chiefs' Association;
(13) two representatives of emergency medical service providers, one from the nine-county metropolitan area and one from Greater Minnesota, appointed by the governor after considering recommendations made by the Minnesota Ambulance Association;
(14) the chair of the Metropolitan regional radio board for the metropolitan area; and
(15) a representative of Greater Minnesota elected by those units of government in phase three and any subsequent phase of development as defined in the statewide, shared radio and communication plan, who have submitted a plan to the Statewide Radio Board and where development has been initiated.
(c) The Statewide Radio Board shall coordinate the appointment of board members representing Greater Minnesota with the appointing authorities and may designate the geographic region or regions from which an appointed board member is selected where necessary to provide representation from throughout the state.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, section 403.36, subdivision 1f, is amended to read:
Subd. 1f.
Advisory groups.
(a) The Statewide Radio Board shall establish one or more advisory groups for the purpose of advising on the plan, design, implementation, and administration of the statewide, shared trunked radio and communication system.
(b) At least one such group must consist of the following members:
(1) the chair of the Metropolitan Radio Board and the chair of each regional radio board or, if no regional radio board has been formed, a representative of each region of development as defined in the statewide, shared, trunked radio and communication plan, once planning and development have been initiated for the region, or a designee;
(2) the chief of the Minnesota State Patrol or a designee;
(3) a representative of the Minnesota State Sheriffs' Association;
(4) a representative of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association;
(5) a representative of the Minnesota Fire Chiefs' Association; and
(6) a representative of the Emergency Medical Services Board.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, sections 403.08, subdivision 8; 403.22; 403.23; 403.24; 403.25; 403.26; 403.28; 403.29, subdivisions 1, 2, and 3; 403.30, subdivisions 2 and 4; and 403.35 are repealed.
FRAUDULENT OR IMPROPER FINANCING STATEMENTS
358.41 DEFINITIONS.
As used in sections 358.41 to 358.49:
(1) "Notarial act" means any act that a notary public of this state is authorized to perform, and includes taking an acknowledgment, administering an oath or affirmation, taking a verification upon oath or affirmation, witnessing or attesting a signature, certifying or attesting a copy, and noting a protest of a negotiable instrument. A notary public may perform a notarial act by electronic means.
(2) "Acknowledgment" means a declaration by a person that the person has executed an instrument or electronic record for the purposes stated therein and, if the instrument or electronic record is executed in a representative capacity, that the person signed the instrument with proper authority and executed it as the act of the person or entity represented and identified therein.
(3) "Verification upon oath or affirmation" means a declaration that a statement is true made by a person upon oath or affirmation.
(4) "In a representative capacity" means:
(i) for and on behalf of a corporation, partnership, trust, or other entity, as an authorized officer, agent, partner, trustee, or other representative;
(ii) as a public officer, personal representative, guardian, or other representative, in the capacity recited in the instrument;
(iii) as an attorney in fact for a principal; or
(iv) in any other capacity as an authorized representative of another.
(5) "Notarial officer" means a notary public or other officer authorized to perform notarial acts.
(6) "Electronic signature" means an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.
(7) "Electronic record" means a record created, generated, sent, communicated, received, or stored by electronic means.
358.42 NOTARIAL ACTS.
(a) In taking an acknowledgment, the notarial officer must determine, either from personal knowledge or from satisfactory evidence, that the person appearing before the officer and making the acknowledgment is the person whose true signature is on the instrument or electronic record.
(b) In taking a verification upon oath or affirmation, the notarial officer must determine, either from personal knowledge or from satisfactory evidence, that the person appearing before the officer and making the verification is the person whose true signature is on the statement verified.
(c) In witnessing or attesting a signature the notarial officer must determine, either from personal knowledge or from satisfactory evidence, that the signature is that of the person appearing before the officer and named therein.
(d) In certifying or attesting a copy of a document, electronic record, or other item, the notarial officer must determine that the proffered copy is a full, true, and accurate transcription or reproduction of that which was copied.
(e) In making or noting a protest of a negotiable instrument or electronic record the notarial officer must determine the matters set forth in section 336.3-505.
(f) A notarial officer has satisfactory evidence that a person is the person whose true signature is on a document or electronic record if that person (i) is personally known to the notarial officer, (ii) is identified upon the oath or affirmation of a credible witness personally known to the notarial officer, or (iii) is identified on the basis of identification documents.
358.47 CERTIFICATE OF NOTARIAL ACTS.
(a) A notarial act must be evidenced by a certificate physically or electronically signed and dated by a notarial officer in a manner that attributes such signature to the notary public identified on the commission. The certificate must include identification of the jurisdiction in which the notarial act is performed and the title of the office of the notarial officer and may include the official stamp or seal of office, or the notary's electronic seal. If the officer is a notary public, the certificate must also indicate the date of expiration, if any, of the commission of office, but omission of that information may subsequently be corrected. If the officer is a commissioned officer on active duty in the military service of the United States, it must also include the officer's rank.
(b) A certificate of a notarial act is sufficient if it meets the requirements of subsection (a) and it:
(1) is in the short form set forth in section 358.48;
(2) is in a form otherwise prescribed by the law of this state;
(3) is in a form prescribed by the laws or regulations applicable in the place in which the notarial act was performed; or
(4) sets forth the actions of the notarial officer and those are sufficient to meet the requirements of the designated notarial act.
(c) By executing a certificate of a notarial act, the notarial officer certifies that the officer has made the determinations required by section 358.42.
358.50 EFFECT OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
An acknowledgment made in a representative capacity for and on behalf of a corporation, partnership, trust, or other entity and certified substantially in the form prescribed in this chapter is prima facie evidence that the instrument or electronic record was executed and delivered with proper authority.
Registration to perform electronic notarizations.
Before performing electronic notarial acts, a notary public shall register the capability to notarize electronically with the secretary of state. Before performing electronic notarial acts after recommissioning, a notary public shall reregister with the secretary of state.
The seal of every notary public may be affixed by a stamp that will print a seal which legibly reproduces under photographic methods the seal of the state of Minnesota, the name of the notary, the words "Notary Public," and the words "My commission expires ...............," with the expiration date shown thereon or may be an electronic form. The A physical seal used to authenticate a paper document shall be a rectangular form of not more than three-fourths of an inch vertically by 2-1/2 inches horizontally, with a serrated or milled edge border, and shall contain the information required by this subdivision.
Electronic seal.
A notary's electronic seal shall contain the notary's name, jurisdiction, and commission expiration date, and shall be logically and securely affixed to or associated with the electronic record being notarized.
359.04 POWERS.
Every notary public so appointed, commissioned, and qualified shall have power throughout this state to administer all oaths required or authorized to be administered in this state; to take and certify all depositions to be used in any of the courts of this state; to take and certify all acknowledgments of deeds, mortgages, liens, powers of attorney, and other instruments in writing or electronic records; and to receive, make out, and record notarial protests.
359.05 DATE OF EXPIRATION OF COMMISSION AND NAME TO BE ENDORSED.
Every notary public, except in cases provided in section 359.03, subdivision 3, taking an acknowledgment of an instrument, taking a deposition, administering an oath, or making a notarial protest, shall, immediately following the notary's physical or electronic signature to the jurat or certificate of acknowledgment, endorse the date of the expiration of the commission; such endorsement may be legibly written, stamped, or printed upon the instrument, but must be disconnected from the seal, and shall be substantially in the following form: "My commission expires ............, ....." Except in cases provided in section 359.03, subdivision 3, every notary public, in addition to signing the jurat or certificate of acknowledgment, shall, immediately following the signature and immediately preceding the official description, endorse thereon the notary's name with a typewriter or, print the same legibly with a stamp or, with pen and ink, or affix by electronic means; provided that the failure so to endorse or print the name shall not invalidate any jurat or certificate of acknowledgment.
359.085 STANDARDS OF CONDUCT FOR NOTARIAL ACTS.
In taking an acknowledgment, the notarial officer must determine, either from personal knowledge or from satisfactory evidence, that the person appearing before the officer and making the acknowledgment is the person whose true signature is on the instrument or electronic record.
Verifications.
In taking a verification upon oath or affirmation, the notarial officer must determine, either from personal knowledge or from satisfactory evidence, that the person appearing before the officer and making the verification is the person whose true signature is on the statement verified.
Witnessing or attesting signatures.
In witnessing or attesting a signature, the notarial officer must determine, either from personal knowledge or from satisfactory evidence, that the signature is that of the person appearing before the officer and named in the document or electronic record.
Certifying or attesting documents.
In certifying or attesting a copy of a document, electronic record, or other item, the notarial officer must determine that the proffered copy is a full, true, and accurate transcription or reproduction of that which was copied.
Making or noting protests of negotiable instruments.
In making or noting a protest of a negotiable instrument or electronic record, the notarial officer must determine the matters set forth in section 336.3-505.
Satisfactory evidence.
A notarial officer has satisfactory evidence that a person is the person whose true signature is on a document or electronic record if that person (i) is personally known to the notarial officer, (ii) is identified upon the oath or affirmation of a credible witness personally known to the notarial officer, or (iii) is identified on the basis of identification documents.
Prohibited acts.
A notarial officer may not acknowledge, witness or attest to the officer's own signature, or take a verification of the officer's own oath or affirmation.
Failure to appear before notary.
A notarial officer may not notarize the physical or electronic signature of any signer who is not in the presence of the notary at the time of notarization.
[545.05] EXPEDITED PROCESS TO REVIEW AND DETERMINE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FINANCING STATEMENTS.
(a) As used in this section, a financing statement or other record is fraudulent or otherwise improper if it is filed without the authorization of the obligor, person named as debtor, or owner of collateral described or indicated in the financing statement or other record, or by consent of an agent, fiduciary, or other representative of that person or without the consent of the secured party of record in the case of an amendment or termination.
(b) As used in this section, filing office or filing officer refers to the office or officer where a financing statement or other record is appropriately filed or recorded as provided by law, including, but not limited to, the county recorder, the secretary of state, and other related filing officers.
An obligor, person named as a debtor, or owner of collateral described or indicated in a financing statement or other record filed under sections 336.9-101 to 336.9-709 (Uniform Commercial Code - Secured Transactions), who has reason to believe that the financing statement or other record is fraudulent or otherwise improper may complete and file at any time a motion for judicial review of the effectiveness of the financing statement or other record. A secured party of record who believes that an amendment or termination of a financing statement or other record is fraudulent or otherwise improper may also file a motion.
Service and filing.
(a) The motion under subdivision 2 must be mailed by certified United States mail to the person who is indicated as the secured party on the allegedly fraudulent or improper record at the address listed on the record or, in the case of a filing by the secured party of record, to the address of the person who filed the amendment or termination in question, as listed on the record. The motion must be accompanied by a copy of the record in question, an affidavit of mailing, the form for responding to the motion under subdivision 6, and a copy of the text of this section.
(b) On the day the motion is mailed, a copy of the materials must be filed with the district court of the county in which the financing statement or other record has been filed or in the county of residence of the moving party. The motion must be supported by the affidavit of the moving party or the moving party's attorney setting forth a concise statement of the facts upon which the claim for relief is based. There is no filing fee for a motion or a response filed under this section.
Motion form.
The motion must be in substantially the following form:
In Re: A Purported Financing Statement in the district court of ............. County, Minnesota, Against [Name of person who filed the financing statement]
MOTION FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW OF A FINANCING STATEMENT FILED UNDER THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE - SECURED TRANSACTIONS
.................................... (name of moving party) files this motion requesting a judicial determination of the effectiveness of a financing statement or other record filed under the Uniform Commercial Code - Secured Transactions in the office of the ............... (filing office and location) and in support of the motion provides as follows:
................. (name), the moving party, is the [obligor, person named as a debtor, or owner of collateral described or indicated in] [secured party of record listed in] a financing statement or other record filed under the Uniform Commercial Code.
On ............. (date), in the exercise of the filing officer's official duties as .................. (filing officer's position), the filing officer received and filed or recorded the financing statement or other record, a copy which is attached, that purports to [perfect a security interest against the obligor, person named as debtor, or the owner of collateral described or indicated in the financing statement or other record] or [amend or terminate the financing statement in which the moving party is listed as the secured party of record].
The moving party alleges that the financing statement or other record is fraudulent or otherwise improper and that this court should declare the financing statement or other record ineffective.
The moving party attests that the assertions in this motion are true and correct.
The moving party does not request the court to make a finding as to any underlying claim of the parties involved and acknowledges that this motion does not seek review of an effective financing statement. The moving party further acknowledges that the moving party may be subject to sanctions if this motion is determined to be frivolous. The moving party may be contacted by the respondent at:
Mailing Address: (required)
Facsimile Number: (either facsimile or e-mail contact is required)
E-Mail Address: (either facsimile or e-mail contact is required)
REQUEST FOR RELIEF
The moving party requests the court to review the attached documentation and enter an order finding that the financing statement or other record is ineffective together with other findings as the court deems appropriate.
Respectfully submitted, .......................... (Signature and typed name and address).
Motion acknowledgment form.
The form for the certificate of acknowledgment must be substantially as follows:
THE STATE OF MINNESOTA COUNTY OF .......
BEFORE ME, the undersigned authority, personally appeared ........., who, being by me duly sworn, deposed as follows:
"My name is ............... I am over 18 years of age, of sound mind, with personal knowledge of the following facts, and fully competent to testify.
I attest that the assertions contained in the accompanying motion are true and correct."
SUBSCRIBED and SWORN TO before me, this ..... day of ..................
NOTARY PUBLIC, State of [state name]
Notary's printed name: .........................
My commission expires: .........................
The motion must be supported by the affidavit of the moving party or the moving party's attorney setting forth a concise statement of the facts upon which the claim for relief is based.
Motion affidavit of mailing form.
The moving party shall complete an affidavit of mailing the motion to the court and to the respondent in substantially the following form:
County of ..........
............................, the moving party, being duly sworn, on oath, deposes and says that on the ..... day of .........., ......., the moving party mailed the motion to the court and the respondent by placing a true and correct copy of the motion in an envelope addressed to them as shown by certified United States mail at ............................, Minnesota.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this ..... day of ...................., .......
Response form.
The person listed as [the secured party in] [filing] the record for which the moving party has requested review may respond to the motion and accompanying materials to request an actual hearing within 20 days from the mailing by certified United States mail by the moving party. The form for use by the person listed as [the secured party in] [filing] the record in question to respond to the motion for judicial review must be in substantially the following form:
RESPONSE TO MOTION FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW OF A FINANCING STATEMENT FILED UNDER THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE - SECURED TRANSACTIONS
............................ (name) files this response to a motion requesting a judicial determination of the effectiveness of a financing statement or other record filed under the Uniform Commercial Code - Secured Transactions in the office of the ............... (filing office and location) and in support of the motion provides as follows:
................. (name), the respondent, is the person listed as [the secured party in] [filing] the record for which review has been requested by the moving party.
On ............. (date), in the exercise of the filing officer's official duties as .................. (filing officer's position), the filing officer received and filed or recorded the financing statement or other record, a copy which is attached, that purports to [perfect a security interest against] [amend or terminate a record filed by] the moving party.
Respondent states that the financing statement or other record is not fraudulent or otherwise improper and that this court should not declare the financing statement or other record ineffective.
Respondent attests that assertions in this response are true and correct.
Respondent does not request the court to make a finding as to any underlying claim of the parties involved. Respondent further acknowledges that respondent may be subject to sanctions if this response is determined to be frivolous.
Respondent requests the court to review the attached documentation, to set a hearing for no later than five days after the date of this response or as soon after that as the court shall order and to enter an order finding that the financing statement or other record is not ineffective together with other findings as the court deems appropriate. Respondent may be contacted at:
Respectfully submitted, .........................
(Signature and typed name and address).
Response acknowledgment form.
Response affidavit of mailing form.
Respondent shall submit the response by United States mail to both the court and the moving party, and also by either e-mail or facsimile as provided by the moving party. The respondent shall complete an affidavit of mailing the response to the court and to the moving party in substantially the following form:
............................, being the responding party, being duly sworn, on oath, deposes and says that on the ..... day of .........., ......., respondent mailed the response to court and the moving party by placing a true and correct copy of the response in an envelope addressed to them as shown depositing the same with postage prepaid, in the U.S. Mail at ............................, Minnesota.
(a) If a hearing is timely requested, the court shall hold that hearing within five days after the mailing of the response by the respondent or as soon after that as ordered by the court. After the hearing, the court shall enter appropriate findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding the financing statement or other record filed under the Uniform Commercial Code.
(b) If a hearing request under subdivision 7 is not received by the court by the 20th day following the mailing of the original motion, the court's finding may be made solely on a review of the documentation attached to the motion and without hearing any testimonial evidence. After that review, which must be conducted no later than five days after the 20-day period has expired, the court shall enter appropriate findings of fact and conclusions of law as provided in subdivision 11 regarding the financing statement or other record filed under the Uniform Commercial Code.
(c) A copy of the findings of fact and conclusions of law must be sent to the moving party, the respondent, and the person who filed the financing statement or other record at the address listed in the motion or response of each person within seven days of the date that the findings of fact and conclusions of law are issued by the court.
(d) In all cases, the moving party shall file or record an attested copy of the findings of fact and conclusions of law in the filing office in the appropriate class of records in which the original financing statement or other record was filed or recorded. The filing officer shall not collect a filing fee for filing a court's finding of fact and conclusion of law as provided in this section except as specifically directed by the court in its findings and conclusions.
Order form; no hearing.
The findings of fact and conclusion of law for an expedited review where no hearing has been requested must be in substantially the following form:
MISCELLANEOUS DOCKET No. ...........
In Re: A purported Financing Statement in the district court of ........... ................ County, Minnesota, Against [Name of person who filed financing statement]
Judicial Finding of Fact and Conclusion of Law Regarding a Financing Statement or Other Record Filed Under the Uniform Commercial Code - Secured Transactions
On the (number) day of (month), (year), in the above entitled and numbered cause, this court reviewed a motion, verified by affidavit, of (name) and the documentation attached. The respondent did not respond within the required 20-day period. No testimony was taken from any party, nor was there any notice of the court's review, the court having made the determination that a decision could be made solely on review of the documentation as provided in Minnesota Statutes, section 545.05.
The court finds as follows (only an item or subitem checked and initialed is a valid court ruling):
[..] The documentation attached to the motion IS filed or recorded with the authorization of the obligor, person named as debtor, or owner of collateral described or indicated in the financing statement or other record, or by consent of an agent, fiduciary, or other representative of that person, or with the authorization of the secured party of record in the case of an amendment or termination.
[..] The documentation attached to the motion IS NOT filed or recorded with the authorization of the obligor, person named as debtor, or owner of collateral described or indicated in the documentation, or by consent of an agent, fiduciary, or other representative of that person, or with the authorization of the secured party of record in the case of an amendment or termination and, IS NOT an effective financing statement or other record under the Uniform Commercial Code - Secured Transactions law of this state.
[..] This court makes no finding as to any underlying claims of the parties involved and expressly limits its findings of fact and conclusions of law to the review of a ministerial act. The filing officer shall remove the subject financing statement or other record so that the record is not reflected in or obtained as a result of any search, standard or otherwise, conducted of those records, but shall retain them and these findings of fact and conclusions of law in the filing office for the duration of the period for which they would have otherwise been filed.
SIGNED ON THIS THE ...... DAY of .......
............. District Judge
............. District
............. County, Minnesota
Hearing determination.
If a determination is made after a hearing, the court may award the prevailing party all costs related to the entire review, including, but not limited to, filing fees, attorney fees, administrative costs, and other costs.
Subsequent motion.
If the moving party files a subsequent motion under this section against a person filing a financing statement or other record that is reviewed under this section and found to be filed or recorded with the authorization of the obligor, person named as debtor, or owner of collateral described or indicated in the financing statement or other record, or by consent of an agent, fiduciary, or other representative of that person, or with the authorization of the secured party of record in the case of an amendment or termination, the court may, in addition to assessing costs, order other equitable relief against the moving party or enter other sanctions against the moving party.
The chief judge of a district court may order that any or all proceedings under this section be conducted and heard by other judicial officers of that district court.
[604.17] CIVIL LIABILITY FOR FRAUDULENT OR OTHERWISE IMPROPER FINANCING STATEMENTS.
(1) "financing statement" has the meaning given in section 336.9-102(a) of the Uniform Commercial Code; and
(2) "filing officer" is defined as Uniform Commercial Code filing officer in each jurisdiction.
(a) A person shall not knowingly cause to be presented for filing or promote the filing of a financing statement that the person knows:
(1) is forged;
(2) is not:
(i) related to a valid lien or security agreement; or
(ii) filed pursuant to section 336.9-502(d); and
(3) is for an improper purpose or purposes, such as to harass, hinder, defraud, or otherwise interfere with any person.
(b) A person who violates paragraph (a) is liable to each injured person for:
(1) the greater of:
(i) nominal damages up to $10,000; or
(ii) the actual damages caused by the violation;
(2) court costs;
(3) reasonable attorney fees;
(4) related expenses of bringing the action, including investigative expenses; and
(5) exemplary damages in the amount determined by the court.
Cause of action.
(a) The following persons may bring an action to enjoin violation of this section or to recover damages under this section:
(1) the obligor, the person named as the debtor, any person who owns an interest in the collateral described or indicated in the financing statement, or any person harmed by the filing of the financing statement;
(3) a county attorney;
(4) a city attorney; and
(5) a person who has been damaged as a result of an action taken in reliance on the filed financing statement.
(b) A filing officer may refer a matter to the attorney general or other appropriate person for filing the legal actions under this section.
An action under this section may be brought in any district court in the county in which the financing statement is presented for filing or in a county where any of the persons named in subdivision 3, paragraph (a), clause (1), resides.
Filing fee.
(a) The fee for filing an action under this chapter is $....... The plaintiff must pay the fee to the clerk of the court in which the action is filed. Except as provided by paragraph (b), the plaintiff may not be assessed any other fee, cost, charge, or expense by the clerk of the court or other public official in connection with the action.
(b) The fee for service of notice of an action under this section charged to the plaintiff may not exceed:
(1) $....... if the notice is delivered in person; or
(2) the cost of postage if the service is by registered or certified mail.
(c) A plaintiff who is unable to pay the filing fee and fee for service of notice may file with the court an affidavit of inability to pay under the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure.
(d) If the fee imposed under paragraph (a) is less than the filing fee the court imposes for filing other similar actions and the plaintiff prevails in the action, the court may order a defendant to pay to the court the differences between the fee paid under paragraph (a) and the filing fee the court imposes for filing other similar actions.
Other remedies.
(a) An obligor, person named as a debtor, owner of collateral, or any other person harmed by the filing of a financing statement in violation of subdivision 2, paragraph (a), also may request specific relief, including, but not limited to, terminating the financing statement and removing the debtor named in the financing statement from the index under the provisions of section 545.05, paragraph (c), such that it will not appear in a search under that debtor name.
(b) This law is cumulative of other law under which a person may obtain judicial relief with respect to any filed or recorded document.
[609.7475] FRAUDULENT OR OTHERWISE IMPROPER FINANCING STATEMENTS.
As used in this section, "record" has the meaning given in section 336.9-102.
Crime described.
A person who:
(1) knowingly causes to be presented for filing or promotes the filing of a record that:
(i) is not:
(A) related to a valid lien or security agreement; or
(B) filed pursuant to section 336.9-502(d); or
(ii) contains a forged signature or is based upon a document containing a forged signature; or
(2) presents for filing or causes to be presented for filing a record with the intent that it be used to harass or defraud any other person;
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b), a person who violates subdivision 2 is guilty of a gross misdemeanor.
(b) A person who violates subdivision 2 is guilty of a felony and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both, if the person:
(1) commits the offense with intent to influence or otherwise tamper with a juror or a judicial proceeding or with intent to retaliate against a judicial officer, as defined in section 609.415, or a prosecutor, defense attorney, or officer of the court, because of that person's performance of official duties in connection with a judicial proceeding; or
(2) commits the offense after having been previously convicted of a violation of this section.
A violation of this section may be prosecuted in either the county of residence of the individual listed as debtor or the county in which the filing is made.
CORONERS AND MEDICAL EXAMINERS
390.005 ELECTION OR APPOINTMENT, ELIGIBILITY; VACANCIES; REMOVAL.
County election Selection of coroner or medical examiner.
Each county must have a coroner or medical examiner. A coroner shall may be elected in each county, as prescribed by section 382.01, except as provided in this section or appointed in each county. A medical examiner must be appointed by the county board. The term of an appointed coroner or medical examiner must not be longer than four years.
Appointment by resolution.
In a county where the office of coroner has not been abolished, The board of county commissioners may, by resolution, state its intention to fill the office of coroner by appointment. The resolution must be adopted at least six months before the end of the term of the incumbent coroner, if elected. After the resolution is adopted, the board shall fill the office by appointing a person not less than 30 days before the end of the incumbent's term. The appointed coroner shall serve for a term of office determined by the board beginning upon the expiration of the term of the incumbent. The term must not be longer than four years.
If there is a vacancy in the elected office in the county, the board may by resolution, state its intention to fill the office by appointment. When the resolution is adopted, the board shall fill the office by appointment immediately. The coroner shall serve for a term determined by the board. The term must not be longer than four years.
Educational requirements Qualifications.
A coroner must have successfully completed academic courses in pharmacology, surgery, pathology, toxicology, and physiology. However, if a board of county commissioners determines that the office of coroner shall not be elective and it cannot appoint any person meeting the educational qualifications as coroner, the board may:
(1) appoint any qualified person, whether or not a resident of the county; or
(2) if no qualified person can be found, appoint a person who is serving or has served as deputy coroner, whether or not a resident of the county. (a) The medical examiner must be a forensic pathologist who is certified or eligible for certification by the American Board of Pathology. The medical examiner is an appointed public official in a system of death investigation in which the administrative control, the determination of the extent of the examination, need for autopsy, and the filing of the cause and manner of death information with the state registrar pursuant to section 144.221 are all under the control of the medical examiner.
(b) The coroner must be a physician with a valid license in good standing under chapter 147, to practice medicine as defined under section 147.081, subdivision 3. The coroner is a public official, elected or appointed, whose duty is to make inquiry into deaths in certain categories, determine the cause and manner of death, and file the information with the state registrar pursuant to section 144.221. The coroner must obtain additional training in medicolegal death investigation, such as training by the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, within four years of taking office, unless the coroner has already obtained this training.
(c) The coroner or medical examiner need not be a resident of the county.
Certain incumbents.
An incumbent coroner or medical examiner in office on July 1, 1965 meets the effective date of this section is hereby deemed to meet the qualifications prescribed by this section for the purpose of continuance in, reelection to, or appointment to the office of coroner until the end of the current term of office, after which this statute will apply.
Vacancies, removal.
Vacancies in the office of coroner or medical examiner shall be filled according to sections 375.08 and 382.02, or under subdivision 1. A The medical examiner or appointed coroner may be removed from office as provided by law. by the county board during a term of office for cause shown after a hearing upon due notice of written charges. The hearing shall be conducted in accordance with that county's human resources policy.
[390.0065] HENNEPIN COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER; SELECTION AND TERM.
Hennepin County shall use the following procedure to select the Hennepin County medical examiner: the Hennepin County Board shall designate three licensed physicians who shall constitute a Medical Examiner Board. One member shall be a dean or professor of the Department of Pathology of a Class A medical school as designated by the American Medical Association. Another member of the board shall be a member of the Minnesota Society of Pathologists. The third member shall be designated by the Hennepin County Medical Association from its membership. The Medical Examiner Board shall accept applications for the position of Hennepin County medical examiner when a vacancy exists in the office. Applications therefore shall be considered from doctors of medicine who are: (1) graduates of a medical school recognized by the American Medical Association or American Osteopathic Association, (2) members in good standing in the medical profession, (3) eligible for appointment to the staff of the Hennepin County Medical Center, and (4) certified or eligible for certification in forensic pathology by the American Board of Pathology. The Medical Examiner Board shall review the qualifications of the applicants and shall rank the applicants deemed qualified for the position and provide to the county board a report of the seven highest ranked applicants together with their qualifications. The county board shall appoint a county medical examiner from those listed in the report. The term of the examiner shall continue for four years from the date of appointment. Reappointment shall be made at least 90 days prior to the expiration of the term. If a vacancy requires a temporary appointment, the board of commissioners shall appoint a medical doctor on the staff of the county medical examiner's office to assume the duties of the medical examiner until an appointment can be made in compliance with the specified selection procedure. Actual and necessary expenses of the Medical Examiner Board shall be paid in accordance with sections 471.38 to 471.415.
390.01 BOND AND INDEMNIFICATION.
Before taking office, the coroner shall post bond to the state in a penal sum set by the county board, not less than $500 nor more than $10,000. The coroner's bond is subject to the same conditions in substance as in the bond required by law to be given by the sheriff, except as to the description of the office. The coroner or medical examiner shall be included in the bond held by the county for all appointed and elected county officials and shall be defended and indemnified, pursuant to section 466.07. The bond and oath of office shall be recorded and filed with the county recorder.
[390.011] AUTONOMY.
The coroner or medical examiner is an independent official of the county, subject only to appointment, removal, and budgeting by the county board.
[390.012] JURISDICTION.
The coroner or medical examiner of the county in which a person dies or is pronounced dead shall have jurisdiction over the death, regardless of where any injury that resulted in the death occurred. The place where death is pronounced is deemed to be the place where death occurred. If the place of death is unknown but the dead body is found in Minnesota, the place where the body is found is considered the place of death. If the date of death is unknown, the date the body is found is considered the date of death, but only for purposes of this chapter. When a death occurs in a moving conveyance and the body is first removed in Minnesota, documentation of death must be filed in Minnesota and the place of death is considered the place where the body is first removed from the conveyance.
390.04 TO ACT WHEN SHERIFF A PARTY TO AN ACTION PROVISION FOR TRANSFER OF JURISDICTION.
When the sheriff is a party to an action or when a party, or a party's agent or attorney, files with the court administrator of the district court an affidavit stating that the party believes the sheriff, coroner or medical examiner, because of partiality, prejudice, consanguinity, or interest, will is not faithfully able to perform the sheriff's coroner or medical examiner's duties in an action commenced, or about to be commenced, the clerk shall direct process in the action to the coroner. The coroner shall perform the duties of the sheriff relative to the action in the same manner required for a sheriff., the coroner or medical examiner shall have the authority to transfer jurisdiction to another coroner or medical examiner, as arranged by the county board.
390.05 DEPUTIES MEDICAL EXAMINER OR CORONER STAFF.
A The coroner shall or medical examiner may appoint one or more deputies. assistant coroners or assistant medical examiners, as necessary to fulfill the duties of the office, subject to authorization by the county board. Such assistants shall have the same qualifications as a coroner or medical examiner. When the coroner or medical examiner is absent or unable to act, deputies assistants shall have the same powers and duties and are subject to the same liabilities as coroners. A deputy shall be appointed in writing. The oath and appointment shall be recorded with the county recorder. The deputy shall act by name as deputy coroner and hold office at the same time as the coroner. limitations as the coroner or medical examiner. The assistants shall be appointed in writing, shall take an oath that shall be recorded and filed with the county recorder, and shall be included in the county bond. The assistant shall act by name as assistant coroner or medical examiner and hold office at the pleasure of the coroner or medical examiner.
A coroner or medical examiner may appoint one or more investigators, with such qualifications as the coroner or medical examiner deems appropriate. Such investigators shall have the powers and duties that are delegated to them by the coroner or medical examiner. Unless they are public employees of that county, investigators shall be appointed in writing and take an oath, shall be included in the county bond, and the oath and appointment shall be recorded and filed with the county recorder. Subject to authorization of the county board, assistants may be appointed to the unclassified service and investigators to the classified service of the county.
[390.061] MORGUE.
Every county need not have a morgue, but there must be a system or process for receiving, storing, and releasing all dead bodies subject to this statute.
390.11 INVESTIGATIONS AND INQUESTS.
Deaths requiring inquests and investigations Reports of death.
Except as provided in subdivision 1a, the coroner shall investigate and may conduct inquests in all human deaths of the following types: All sudden or unexpected deaths and all deaths that may be due entirely or in part to any factor other than natural disease processes must be promptly reported to the coroner or medical examiner for evaluation. Sufficient information must be provided to the coroner or medical examiner. Reportable deaths include, but are not limited to:
(1) unnatural deaths, including violent deaths, whether apparently homicidal, suicidal, or accidental, including but not limited to deaths due to thermal, chemical, electrical, or radiational injury, and deaths due to criminal abortion, whether apparently self induced or not; arising from homicide, suicide, or accident;
(2) deaths due to a fire or associated with burns or chemical, electrical, or radiation injury;
(3) unexplained or unexpected perinatal and postpartum maternal deaths;
(2) (4) deaths under suspicious, unusual, or mysterious unexpected circumstances;
(3) (5) deaths of persons whose bodies are to be cremated, dissected, buried at sea, or otherwise disposed of so that the bodies will later be unavailable for examination; and
(4) (6) deaths of inmates of public institutions and persons in custody of law enforcement officers who are have not been hospitalized primarily for organic disease and whose deaths are not of any type referred to in clause (1) or (2).;
(7) deaths that occur during, in association with, or as the result of diagnostic, therapeutic, or anesthetic procedures;
(8) deaths due to culpable neglect;
(9) stillbirths of 20 weeks or longer gestation unattended by a physician;
(10) sudden deaths of persons not affected by recognizable disease;
(11) unexpected deaths of persons notwithstanding a history of underlying disease;
(12) deaths in which a fracture of a major bone such as a femur, humerus, or tibia has occurred within the past six months;
(13) deaths unattended by a physician occurring outside of a licensed health care facility or licensed residential hospice program;
(14) deaths of persons not seen by their physician within 120 days of demise;
(15) deaths of persons occurring in an emergency department;
(16) stillbirths or deaths of newborn infants in which there has been maternal use of or exposure to unprescribed controlled substances including street drugs or in which there is history or evidence of maternal trauma;
(17) unexpected deaths of children;
(18) solid organ donors;
(19) unidentified bodies;
(20) skeletonized remains;
(21) deaths occurring within 24 hours of arrival at a health care facility if death is unexpected;
(22) deaths associated with the decedent's employment;
(23) deaths of nonregistered hospice patients or patients in nonlicensed hospice programs; and
(24) deaths attributable to acts of terrorism.
The coroner or medical examiner shall determine the extent of the coroner's or medical examiner's investigation, including whether additional investigation is needed by the coroner or medical examiner, jurisdiction is assumed, or an autopsy will be performed, notwithstanding any other statute.
Commissioner of corrections; investigation of deaths.
The commissioner of corrections may require that all Department of Corrections incarcerated deaths be reviewed by an independent, contracted, board-certified forensic pathologist. For deaths occurring within a facility licensed by the Department of Corrections, the coroner or medical examiner shall ensure that a forensic pathologist who is certified by the American Board of Pathology reviews each death and performs an autopsy on all unnatural, unattended, or unexpected deaths and others as necessary.
Hospice registration.
Each coroner and medical examiner shall establish a registration policy regarding hospice patients. If a hospice patient is determined to be properly preregistered, the coroner or medical examiner may treat the death as attended by a physician.
Violent or mysterious deaths; Autopsies.
The coroner or medical examiner may conduct order an autopsy, at the coroner or medical examiner's sole discretion, in the case of any human death referred to in subdivision 1, clause (1) or (2), when, in the judgment of the coroner judges that or medical examiner the public interest requires would be served by an autopsy, except that an autopsy must be conducted in all unattended inmate deaths that occur in a state correctional facility. The autopsy shall be performed without unnecessary delay. A report of the facts developed by the autopsy and findings of the person performing the autopsy shall be made promptly and filed in the office of the coroner or medical examiner. When further investigation is deemed advisable, a copy of the report shall be delivered to the county attorney. Every autopsy performed pursuant to this subdivision shall, whenever practical, be performed in the county morgue. Nothing herein shall require the coroner or medical examiner to order an autopsy upon the body of a deceased person if the person died of known or ascertainable causes or had been under the care of a licensed physician immediately prior to death or if the coroner or medical examiner determines the autopsy to be unnecessary.
Autopsies performed pursuant to this subdivision may include the removal, retention, testing, or use of organs, parts of organs, fluids or tissues, at the discretion of the coroner or medical examiner, when removal, retention, testing, or use may be useful in determining or confirming the cause of death, mechanism of death, manner of death, identification of the deceased, presence of disease or injury, or preservation of evidence. Such tissue retained by the coroner or medical examiner pursuant to this subdivision shall be disposed of in accordance with standard biohazardous hospital and/or surgical material and does not require specific consent or notification of the legal next of kin. When removal, retention, testing, and use of organs, parts of organs, fluids, or tissues is deemed beneficial, and is done only for research or the advancement of medical knowledge and progress, written consent or documented oral consent shall be obtained from the legal next of kin, if any, of the deceased person prior to the removal, retention, testing, or use.
Deaths caused by fire; autopsies.
The coroner shall conduct an autopsy in the case of any human death reported to the coroner by the state fire marshal or a chief officer under section 299F.04, subdivision 5, and apparently caused by fire. The coroner or medical examiner shall conduct an autopsy or require that one be performed in the case of a death reported to the coroner or medical examiner by the state fire marshal or a chief officer under section 299F.04, subdivision 5, and apparently caused by fire, and in which the decedent is pronounced dead outside of a hospital or in which identification of the decedent has not been confirmed. If the decedent has died in a hospital and identification is not in question, an autopsy may be performed or ordered by the coroner or medical examiner.
Other deaths; autopsies; Exhumation; consent disinterment.
The coroner may conduct an autopsy in the case of any human death referred to in subdivision 1, clause (3) or (4), or medical examiner may exhume any human body and perform an autopsy on it in the case of any human death referred to in subdivision 1 when the coroner or medical examiner judges that the public interest requires an autopsy. No autopsy exhumation shall be conducted unless the surviving spouse, or legal next of kin if there is no surviving spouse, consents to it, or the district court of the county where the body is located or buried, upon notice as the court directs, enters an order authorizing an autopsy or an exhumation and autopsy orders it. Notice of such exhumation shall be given as directed by the district court. Application for an order may be made by the coroner, medical examiner, or by the county attorney of the county where the body is located or buried, and shall be granted upon a showing that the court deems appropriate.
Assistance of medical specialists.
If during an investigation the coroner or medical examiner believes the assistance of pathologists, toxicologists, deputy coroners, laboratory technicians, or other medical, scientific, or forensic experts is necessary to determine or confirm the cause or manner of death, identification, time of death, or to address other issues requiring expert opinion, the coroner shall or medical examiner may obtain their assistance.
Inquest.
An inquest into a death may be held at the request of the medical examiner and the county attorney or the coroner and the county attorney. An inquest is optional and the coroner or medical examiner may investigate and certify a death without one. The coroner or medical examiner and county attorney may decide how to empanel the inquest. Inquest records will be made public, but the record and report of the inquest proceedings may not be used in evidence in any civil action arising out of the death for which an inquest was ordered. Before an inquest is held, the coroner shall notify the county attorney to appear and examine witnesses at the inquest. Whenever the decision is made to hold an inquest, the county attorney may issue subpoenas for witnesses and enforce their attendance. The persons served with subpoenas shall be allowed the same compensation and be subject to the same enforcement and penalties as provided by Rule 22 of the Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure.
Records kept by coroner or medical examiner.
The coroner or medical examiner shall keep full and complete records, properly indexed records, giving the name, if known, of every person whose death is investigated, the place where the body was found, the date, cause, and manner of death, and all other relevant available information concerning the death. that the coroner or medical examiner considers pertinent. These records of the coroner or medical examiner are the property of the county and subject to chapter 13. These records shall be kept at the coroner's or medical examiner's office, unless no storage space is available. They shall then be kept with official county records and only released in accordance with the Data Practices Act. Records shall be kept in accordance with section 15.17.
Reports Duty to report.
(a) Deaths of the types described in this section must be promptly reported for investigation to the coroner or medical examiner and, when appropriate, to the law enforcement agency with jurisdiction, by the law enforcement officer, attending physician, health care professional, mortician or funeral director, person in charge of the public institutions referred to in subdivision 1, or other person with knowledge of the death. anyone who discovers a deceased person. In a case in which a crime may be involved, the coroner or medical examiner shall promptly notify the law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over a criminal investigation of the death.
Records and other material available to coroner or medical examiner.
(b) For the purposes of this section, health-related records or data on a decedent, Except for health data defined in section 13.3805, subdivision 1, paragraph (a), clause (2), health-related records or data on a decedent whose death is being investigated under this section, whether the records or data are recorded or unrecorded, including but not limited to those concerning medical, surgical, psychiatric, psychological, or any other consultation, diagnosis, or treatment, including medical imaging, shall be made promptly available to the coroner or medical examiner, upon the coroner's or medical examiner's written request, by a any person, agency, entity, or organization having custody of, possession of, access to, or knowledge of the records or data. This provision includes records and data, whether recorded or unrecorded, including but not limited to, records and data, including medical imaging, concerning medical, surgical, psychiatric, psychological, chemical dependency, or any other consultation, diagnosis, or treatment. In cases involving a stillborn infant or the death of a fetus or infant less than one year of age, the prenatal records on the decedent's mother may also be subpoenaed by the coroner or medical examiner. The coroner or medical examiner shall pay the reasonable costs of copies of records or data so provided to the coroner under this section. Data collected or created pursuant to this subdivision relating to any psychiatric, psychological, or mental health consultation with, diagnosis of, or treatment of the decedent whose death is being investigated shall remain confidential or protected nonpublic data, except that the coroner's or medical examiner's final summary report may contain a summary of, or references to, such data. Where records of a decedent become part of the medical examiner's or coroner's file, they are not subject to subpoena or a request for production directed to the medical examiner or coroner. Body fluids, slides, tissue, organ specimens, radiographs, monitor records, video or other recordings, and any other material or article of diagnostic value obtained from the decedent prior to death, shall be made available to the coroner or medical examiner upon request. Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 13.384 and 595.02, the coroner or medical examiner shall have the power to subpoena any and all documents, records, including medical records, and papers deemed useful in the investigation of a death.
Records released by coroner or medical examiner.
Records and reports, including those of autopsies performed, generated, and certified by the coroner or medical examiner shall be admissible as evidence in any court or grand jury proceeding. The admissibility of such evidence under this subdivision shall not include statements made by witnesses or other persons unless otherwise admissible.
Investigation procedure; coroner or medical examiner in charge of body.
Upon notification of a the death subject to of any person as defined in this section, the coroner or deputy shall medical examiner staff or their designee may proceed to the body, take charge of it, and, arrange for transfer of it, when appropriate. This provision also applies to bones, body parts, and specimens that may be human remains. Discovery of such bones, body parts, and specimens must be promptly reported to the coroner or medical examiner. When necessary, the coroner or medical examiner staff, in coordination with the applicable law enforcement agency, may order that there be no interference with or compromise of the body or the scene of death. In the event a person is transported to an emergency vehicle or facility and pronounced dead, the scene of death shall include the original location of the decedent when first discovered to be ill, unresponsive, or stricken prior to removal by emergency medical personnel. Any person violating such an order is guilty of a gross misdemeanor. The coroner or medical examiner staff shall make inquiry regarding the cause and manner of death and, in cases that fall under the medical examiner's or coroner's jurisdiction, prepare written findings together with the report of death and its circumstances, which shall be filed in the office of the coroner or medical examiner.
Criminal act report.
On coming to believe that the death may have resulted from a criminal act, The coroner or deputy medical examiner shall deliver a signed copy of the report of investigation or inquest to the county attorney. to the county attorney copies of reports or other information created by the coroner's or medical examiner's office in any cases of a potential criminal nature.
Sudden Infant death.
If a child under the age of two years dies suddenly and unexpectedly under circumstances indicating that the death may have been caused by sudden infant death syndrome, the coroner, medical examiner, or personal physician shall notify the child's parents or guardian that an autopsy is essential to establish the cause of death as sudden infant death syndrome. If an autopsy reveals that sudden infant death syndrome is the cause of death, that fact must be stated in the autopsy report., the parents or guardian of the child shall be promptly notified of the cause of death and of the availability of counseling services.
Autopsy fees.
The coroner may charge a reasonable fee to a person requesting an autopsy if the autopsy would not otherwise be conducted under subdivision 1, 2, or 3.
Authorized removal of the brain.
If the coroner or medical examiner is informed by a physician or pathologist that a dead person decedent is suspected of having had Alzheimer's disease, the coroner shall or medical examiner may authorize the removal of the brain of the dead person for the purposes of sections 145.131 and 145.132.
390.111 EXPENSES AND COMPENSATION.
The county board may allow is responsible for the reasonable and necessary compensation and expenses of the coroner or deputies incurred for telephone tolls, telegrams, postage, the cost of transcribing the testimony taken at an inquest, and other expenses incurred solely for the officers' official business under this chapter. medical examiner, assistants, investigators, and other medical specialists.
390.15 WITNESSES; FEES.
The coroner or medical examiner may issue subpoenas for witnesses, returnable immediately or at a specified time and place. The persons served with the subpoenas shall be allowed the fees, the coroner shall enforce their attendance, and they shall be subject to the penalties provided by statute or the Rules of Criminal Procedure. charge a fee for cremation approval, duplication of reports, and other administrative functions to recover reasonable expenses, subject to county board approval.
[390.151] ORGAN AND TISSUE DONATION.
The coroner or medical examiner may facilitate donation of organs and tissues in compliance with the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, sections 525.921 to 525.9224.
[390.152] CREMATION APPROVAL.
After investigating deaths of persons who are to be cremated, the coroner or medical examiner may give approval for cremation and shall record such approval by either signing a cremation authorization form, or electronically through the centralized electronic system for the processing of death records established by the state registrar. It shall be a misdemeanor to perform a cremation without such approval.
390.21 DISPOSITION; BURIAL.
When a coroner holds an inquest upon view of the dead body of any person unknown, or, being called for that purpose, does not think it necessary, on view of the body, that an inquest be held, the coroner shall have the body decently buried. All expenses of the inquisition and burial shall be paid by the county where the dead body is found. After an investigation has been completed, including an autopsy if one is done, the body shall be released promptly to the person or persons who have the right to control the disposition of the body. Section 149A.80, subdivision 2, shall control. If the identity of the deceased person is unknown, or if the body is unclaimed, the medical examiner or coroner shall provide for dignified burial or storage of the remains. Dignified burial shall not include cremation, donation for anatomic dissection, burial at sea, or other disposition that will make the body later unavailable. The county where the dead body is found shall pay reasonable expenses of the burial. If an estate is opened within six years and claim made for the property or proceeds of the sale of the property of the decedent, the county shall be reimbursed the amount spent on burial, with interest at the statutory rate.
390.221 BODIES; EFFECTS; CUSTODY.
A person may not remove move, interfere with, or handle the body or the effects of any person a decedent subject to an investigation by the county coroner or medical examiner except upon order of the coroner or, medical examiner, assistant, or deputy authorized investigator. The coroner or medical examiner shall take charge of the effects found on or near the body of a deceased person and dispose of them as the district court directs by written order directed under section 390.225. If a crime is suspected in connection with the death of a deceased person is suspected, the coroner or medical examiner may prevent any person, except law enforcement personnel, from entering the premises, rooms, or buildings, and shall have the custody of objects that the coroner or examiner deems material evidence in the case. The coroner or medical examiner shall release any property or articles needed for any criminal investigation to law enforcement officers conducting the investigation, except as noted in section 390.225, subdivision 2. A willful knowing violation of this section is a gross misdemeanor.
[390.225] PROPERTY.
The coroner or medical examiner may take possession of all articles that may be useful in establishing the cause or manner of death, identification, or next of kin of the deceased, and, if taken, mark them for identification, make an inventory, and retain them securely until they are no longer needed for evidence or investigation. Except as noted in subdivision 2, the coroner or medical examiner shall release any property or articles needed for any criminal investigation to law enforcement officers conducting the investigation.
Retention of property.
When a reasonable basis exists for not releasing property or articles to law enforcement officers, the coroner or medical examiner shall consult with the county attorney. If the county attorney determines that a reasonable basis exists for not releasing the property or articles, the coroner or medical examiner may retain them. The coroner or medical examiner shall obtain written confirmation of this opinion and keep a copy in the decedent's file.
Release of property.
With the exception of firearms, when property or articles are no longer needed for the investigation or as evidence, the coroner or medical examiner shall release such property or articles to the person or persons entitled to them. Personal property, including wearing apparel, may be released to the person entitled to control the disposition of the body of the decedent or to the personal representative of the decedent. Personal property not otherwise released pursuant to this subdivision must be disposed of pursuant to section 525.393.
The coroner or medical examiner shall release all firearms, when no longer needed, to the law enforcement agency handling the investigation.
Property of unknown decedents.
If the name of the decedent is not known, the coroner or medical examiner shall release such property to the county for disposal or sale. If the unknown decedent's identity is established and if a representative shall qualify within six years from the time of such sale, the county administrator, or a designee, shall pay the amount of the proceeds of the sale to the representative on behalf of the estate upon order of the court. If no order is made within six years, the proceeds of the sale shall become a part of the general revenue of the county.
390.23 DEATH RECORDS OF VIOLENT OR MYSTERIOUS DEATH.
No person, other than the county coroner, or medical examiner, judge exercising probate jurisdiction, or Department of Corrections' independent, contracted, board-certified forensic pathologist, or, for deaths occurring within a facility licensed by the Department of Corrections, the forensic pathologist who reviewed the death, shall issue a record file or amend the cause or manner of death information with the state registrar in cases of likely or suspected accidental, suicidal, homicidal, violent, or mysterious deaths, including suspected homicides, occurring in the county. The Department of Corrections' independent, contracted, board-certified forensic pathologist must issue the certificate of death in all Department of Corrections-incarcerated deaths. The forensic pathologist who reviewed the death of an incarcerated person within a facility licensed by the Department of Corrections may file or amend the cause or manner of death information with the state registrar. If there is reasonable proof that a death has occurred, but no body has been found, a judge may direct the state registrar to register the death with the fact of death information provided by the court order according to section 144.221, subdivision 3.
390.25 FINGERPRINTING OF UNIDENTIFIED DECEASED PERSON PERSONS.
Attempts to identify.
Each coroner shall have fingerprinted all deceased persons in the county whose identity is not immediately established. Within 24 hours after the body is found, the coroner shall forward to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension the fingerprints, fingerprint records, and other identification data. The superintendent of the bureau shall prescribe the form of these reports. The duties are in addition to those imposed on the coroner by section 525.393. The coroner or medical examiner shall make reasonable attempts to identify the deceased person promptly. These actions may include obtaining: photographs of the body; fingerprints from the body, if possible; formal dental examination by a dentist with forensic training, with charting and radiographs; full body radiographs; specimens such as tissue, blood, bone, teeth, and/or hair, suitable for DNA analysis or other identification techniques; blood type; photographs of items such as clothing and property found on and with the body; and anthropological determination of age, race, sex, and stature, if appropriate. All of these actions shall be taken prior to the disposition of any unidentified deceased person.
Report to BCA.
After 60 days, the coroner or medical examiner shall provide to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension missing persons clearinghouse information to be entered into federal and state databases that can aid in the identification, including the National Crime Information Center database. The coroner or medical examiner shall provide to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension specimens suitable for DNA analysis. DNA profiles and information shall be entered by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension into federal and state DNA databases within five business days after the completion of the DNA analysis and procedures necessary for the entry of the DNA profile.
Other efforts to identify.
Nothing in this section shall be interpreted to preclude any medical examiner or coroner from pursuing other efforts to identify unidentified deceased persons, including publicizing information, descriptions, or photographs that may aid in the identification, allowing family members to identify missing persons, and seeking to protect the dignity of the missing persons.
Preservation of data.
The coroner or medical examiner may preserve and retain photographs, specimens, documents, and other data such as dental records, radiographs, fingerprints, or DNA, for establishing or confirming the identification of bodies or for other forensic purposes deemed appropriate under the jurisdiction of the office. Upon request by an appropriate agency, or upon the coroner or medical examiner's own initiative, the coroner or medical examiner may make the information available to aid in the establishment of the identity of a deceased person.
Notice to state archaeologist.
After the coroner or medical examiner has completed the investigation, the coroner or medical examiner shall notify the state archaeologist, according to section 307.08, of all unidentified human remains found outside of platted, recorded, or identified cemeteries and in contexts which indicate antiquity of greater than 50 years.
[390.251] REQUEST FOR EXAMINATIONS.
The coroner or medical examiner may, when requested, make physical examinations and tests incident to any matter of a criminal nature under consideration by the district court or county attorney, law enforcement agency, or publicly appointed criminal defense counsel, and shall deliver a copy of a report of such tests and examinations to the person making the request. Such an examination does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. The person making the request shall pay the cost of such examinations and tests.
[390.252] CONTRACTS FOR SERVICES.
A county board may contract to perform coroner or medical examiner services with other units of government or their agencies under a schedule of fees approved by that board.
Minnesota Statutes 2004, sections 383A.36; 383B.225, subdivisions 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13; 390.006; 390.06; 390.07; 390.16; 390.17; 390.19; 390.20; 390.24; and 390.36, and Minnesota Statutes 2005 Supplement, section 383B.225, subdivision 5, are repealed.
Presented to the governor May 22, 2006
Signed by the governor June 1, 2006, 9:50 p.m.
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Patients with Inflammatory Arthritis Wait Too Long for Treatment
More than 50 percent of early inflammatory arthritis patients wait too long for physician referrals and specialist appointments, according to the latest figures released from the British Society for Rheumatology’s National Early Inflammatory Arthritis Audit.
More than 50 percent of early inflammatory arthritis patients wait too long for physician referrals and specialist appointments, according to the latest figures released from the British Society for Rheumatology’s National Early Inflammatory Arthritis Audit (NEIAA).
According to the society, the audit, published this month, is the largest and most comprehensive study into the early inflammatory arthritis, and aims to improve patient care and treatment.
The NEIAA recorded data from 20,668 patients with a 98 percent participation rate for trust and health boards in England and Wales. Performance was measured against the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) quality statements, which include time taken for referral from a general practitioner, to see a specialist and to receive appropriate treatment.
The report revealed that 41% of patients met the three-day standard for referral from their general practitioner, while 38% referred to a rheumatology unit were seen within the three-week guidelines. The average wait for the first appointment was 28 days. Additionally, considerable variation in performance was found across England and Wales, with a third of trusts and health boards (51 out of 146) performing less well than the rest in the time they take to see a patient after referral.
“Since the start of the last phase of this audit in 2014, there have been significant reductions in treatment delay, but disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug treatment is still only initiated within six weeks of referral in 54% of patients,” the NEIAA reported.
Of the patients, 92 percent were given access to a rheumatology specialist advice line as a means of support, 37 percent were in remission within three months of being seen by a rheumatology team, and 93 percent received education about their condition, but data collected directly from patients suggested only 81 percent received such education.
“By three months of care there is evidence of clinically meaningful improvement, both in clinician- and patient-reported measures for some patients,” the NEIAA wrote.
However, “patients with axial spondyloarthritis tended to have substantially greater symptom duration prior to assessment, and low levels of referrals from gastroenterology, ophthalmology and dermatology suggest a failure to consider and investigate inflammatory spine disease,” the report found.
NEIAA also found that while patients with inflammatory arthritis have a significant burden of disease, both in terms of physical and mental health, access to psychology services is limited.
Recommendations from the audit include the following: ensure that early arthritis pathways are in place and easily accessible to provide guidance for referrers; ensure that systems and processes are in place to support rapid initiation of conventional disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs; evaluate workforce needs and expand where required, ensuring access to the full multidisciplinary team; ensure that rheumatology patients have access to mental health services; ensure that emergency access (within 24 hours) to advice is available for people with rheumatoid arthritis.
Jo Ledingham, F.R.C.P., the audit’s Clinical Director, said: “The data supports the requirement for more resource and focus on rheumatology services within trusts and health boards.
“This audit clearly shows the positive impact rheumatology services have on people’s lives. Within three months of specialist care, the majority of patients had meaningful improvements in measures of their disease activity, and patients reported improvements in all outcome measures, including reduced impact on ability to work and less depression and anxiety.
“Achievement of timely treatment associates with achieving a good response in clinician measured disease activity,” she said.
British Society for Rheumatology’s press release
National Early Inflammatory Arthritis Audit
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World Vision’s Humanitarian Outreach Goes Further with RingCentral
Written by Chuck Emmette
World Vision, one of the world’s largest Christian humanitarian organizations, brought millions of children and families around the world out of poverty last year to brighter futures. The World Vision team realized early on that the more efficient they can be with resources, the more funds they can deliver directly to needy children and communities. They have consistently been praised for their financial efficiency and transparency, and today, World Vision is recognized as a top 20 U.S. nonprofit. It is also among the most efficient charities in the world with $1.30 going to projects for every $1 donated due to low overhead and matching funds.
I am extremely proud to say RingCentral is now playing a part in World Vision’s mission to get funding where it is needed most by helping move its communications infrastructure to the cloud.
World Vision has a highly mobile and distributed workforce, with more than 1,000 employees dispersed among its office locations nationwide. World Vision needed a flexible and easy to use cloud solution to empower employees to communicate in any way, anywhere, and on any device.
World Vision’s extremely talented IT team knew their legacy PBX systems were taking too much time to manage, were too expensive to maintain and only provided limited communications capabilities. With RingCentral, the World Vision team is already experiencing greater flexibility and call quality, and they anticipate cost savings – money that will go to help many more children and families in need.
The success of this implementation was particularly important to my team because we wanted the staff at World Vision to focus on their core mission as opposed to worrying about migrating their communications to the cloud. World Vision is doing amazing work and improving the lives of people around the globe, so we wanted to do anything we could to ensure a successful implementation, giving the organization one less thing to worry about.
The Professional Services team here at RingCentral is designed to enable customers to reduce infrastructure costs while establishing a framework to drive employee efficiency and accelerate business performance. My team was able to work closely with the World Vision IT staff to formulate a design specific to their needs and plan to ensure that the organization has the latest communications technology while leveraging existing investments to keep costs down. We provided customized technical design, network consulting, integration support, and monitoring services–attributes that are necessary for a smooth roll out.
The next phase of World Vision’s deployment will be to roll out RingCentral’s next generation software-based cloud video conferencing system, RingCentral Rooms™, across its conference rooms. Additionally, the company plans to leverage RingCentral for Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 integrations to boost productivity.
Just as the organization is working diligently works to improve the lives of others, the Professional Services team will continue to do everything we can to support and improve the RingCentral experience for the World Vision team.
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Synopsis: This is the story of a young girl named Elsa who was raised by a single mother (Isabelle) in the city. Isabelle and Elsa begin the film moving in next door to an elderly man who collects butterflies (Julien). Isabelle who "spends a lot of time with her friends" does not pay much attention to her daughter who walks home because her mother forgot to pick her up from school. After meeting her new neighbor, Elsa finds out about the butterflies and in short annoys Julien for a while. Julien receives a mystery package from a fellow entomologist. Julien sets out on his annual attempt to find a rare species of butterfly that he had once promised his son he would find (son dead) in the French country side, specifically a region known as Vercors. Elsa stows away in his car. After being discovered she convinces him to let her come to Vercors with him. They bond while hiking and camping until Julien, who is initially annoyed by Elsa, near the end of the film seems to have a grandfather-granddaught
Director(s): Philippe Muyl
Actors: Michel Serrault, Claire Bouanich, Nade Dieu, Jacques Bouanich
Production: First Run Features
One more floor to go. - Can you please sign here? there? Come. I'm exhausted. - Thank you. Have a nice day. Come on, Elsa. The secrets of the Isabels. Do you know this booth's number? So mommy can call me after school. - Do you have something to write on? I'll remember. I just wanted to ask you something. My aunt can't find anybody to fix this. My hands tremble and my eyes are bad. Look at it anyway, you never know. It's is a good watch. That's a model 6264. But there are no parts available for this anymore. Sorry. - No problem. Can you believe it? She's sitting here for an hour already. Why doesn't she go home? - She doesn't have a key. What would you like to have? Water, juice? - Lemonade. I don't have any. Choose. Water or juice? What are those? - Buck eyes from Madagascar. The female and the male, the smallest one is the male. Here you go. Where are you? Where did you go? Here you go. The yellow one is a lemon yellow, which lives in the countryside. You've probably seen them before. - Never. Look closer. - I've never been there. But you do know how a butterfly is born, right? Now it gets difficult. Look, that is the caterpillar of a moon moth. See? It's is going to weave a cocoon and then gets into the chry... Chrysant? - Chrysalid. What do they teach you? And around that is the cocoon. Look here. This is a cocoon, and in a dozen days this will become a butterfly. That ugly thing is going to be a butterfly? Which brand? - How do you mean? What brand butterfly it will be? - You mean... I don't know. My contact usually writes its name on it, but he must've forgotten or maybe he wasn't sure. Where did you live? Tolbiac. - Didn't you like it there? I was fed up with the home and so was my mom. Does your mother work? What kind of work does she do? She's a nurse. You may not go in there. That's forbidden. Tomorrow I will go the movies with my mom. She will pick me up after school, we're going to the movies and to McDonald's. Both. - I understood that. Without her friends. - That's very well. Stay here, I'll be right back. Marguerite, I have to go but I'm looking after the kid from next door. How do you mean? - I'm stuck with her. Which of the two will it be? - I have my hands full with her. Get out of there. Quick. Out. From Venezuela - From Peru, the summer of '84. It's fantastic. You can have it. Trade a Calligo Dominus against a Graellsia Isabellae? The Isabel is pretty, claimed to be the most beautiful European moon moth, but compared to this beauty. May I ask you why? A promise I made a long time ago. What would you like to know? - Where and when it was found. And its gender. It doesn't matter. Why are you leaving in such a hurry? You have tons of butterflies. Why is this one so important? This one is special. - Why? Could I know why? It takes too long to explain. - That doesn't explain all this. The Isabel flies only ten days each year. If I depart tomorrow, I can still make it in time. Simple, isn't it? You know, sometimes you act like a child. Are there any tins cat food? - In the fridge. How many? - Ten. That will never be enough. - I'll only be away for a week. Are you sure this number is correct? She's not there. You know her cell phone number, right? - She doesn't have one. Where is she? I'm sure you know? With your father? I don't have a father. - With your mother, a friend? A friend. She told me she'd go to a friend. Parents aren't real parents anymore. It's sad. Luckily there are grandparents. - Granddad, I'm hungry. Give her something to eat. Tomorrow morning I'll solve the problem. Do I go to jail now? - Children don't go to jail. They'll take you home. If they notice that mommy isn't there they'll send me to the orphanatorium. The what? - For children without parents. The orphanage not the orphanatorium. I've lived in homes for too long already. In Tolbiac I cried every evening, even though mommy didn't know. That's another of your stories, I'm not falling for them. Take me with you. - Absolutely not Would you like to be put in a home? - That doesn't matter. Don't try to confuse me. Please. - No, no and no. I've always wanted to see a mountain and real birds that fly. and cows that give real milk. And butterflies. Too bad. It isn't allowed anyway. It's illegal. - If I ask, can I go anyway? But that doesn't change a thing. I'm not your father and not your grandfather either. Let's go. This is the only solution. Let's go. Is it clear? The slightest complaint or mistake... and you'll go home, by car, by plane or by mail if I have to. - OK. It won't be a field trip. - Great. We have to climb 1800 meters. It will take at least three days. By foot, not by car. I have to search the right spots. - Where is that then? A sloping field, no wind, near pine trees. That's where the females lure the males with their feromones. Why do they have francophones? - I'll explain later. Finding an Isabel is like finding a needle in a haystack. What is a haystack? That's a haystack. Look. Do butterflies live in haystacks then? - It's an expression. Because it's just hard to find. Could you find a needle in there? Do you have children? - That's none of your business. Don't you have a wife then? I've had seven, I've all burnt them in a coal stove. What is that? - A thing that leaves no traces. Who are you calling now? My landlady. If you call me grandpa one more time, I'll go alone. Then I'll leave you here and tell them to make you sleep in the dog pound. Hello, I'm looking for my daughter. - Your daughter? Then what happened? - I've talked to Mr. Julien. I had to baby-sit her until her mother returned. What time did you get home? - Quarter past eight. In the evening? - No, I slept over at friends. But that was yesterday? - I was working this night. Does your daughter occasionally goes to her father? Your decision or hers? - He left me when I was pregnant. What clothes did she wear? A jeans and a T-shirt with letters. - NBA. And shoes? - Track shoes. You weren't there, were you? - Track shoes is all she ever wears. Would you like to walk a bit? Do they fit well? Would you like something else? A coat, a hat? - No, thank you. We'll pay and leave. Take your backpack. Do you have everything? Then I'll close the trunk. I've had a nightmare. Do you want to hear it? - No, thank you. What is the difference with a dream? - Do you have a lot of those questions? What's the difference? - A nightmare is a bad dream. It's just like with kids. First it's a dream, then they grow up and it becomes a nightmare. No reception Too bad. Can we go now? You walk too fast. - Didn't I warn you? Don't complain then. - I don't, but you walk too fast. I don't like tomatoes. - Then take them out. I don't like potatoes either. - Then take them out too. That only leaves lettuce. - Don't you like lettuce? Just eat up Is that celery and remoulade sauce? I like that. Want to trade? - No thanks. Alright then. Take it. Let me have that. Ouch. - Ouch what? You're hurting me. - You're hurting me. Good God. Put your hands through. And your arms. Alright, sit down. - It's clear you never had any children. Oh really? How can you tell? Tell me. - You're doing it all wrong Don't put the car before the horse - The cart It goes: Don't put the cart before the horse. A car, a cart. All the same to a horse. Change PIN number? Yes. Damn. - Did you enter your PIN number? Of course. - Maybe you made a mistake. Sometimes there are memory problem. - Oh stop it. What is your code? - 4642. That's not correct. - Why not? I know my own PIN number OK. B3294 is the door, and 4642 my PIN number. I'll check if the chip is in place. Oh no. It feel. - Just what we needed. Now I lost my code and my chip. We have to find it. What was it again? A needle in a what? - In a haystack. Right, I must remember that. A needle in a haystack. Exactly. You won't let me search all alone will you? Is he married? - He's a Widower. Children? - A son. They are nice, butterflies, aren't they? Have you seen these two big ones? Collectors are often psychopaths. - Hello fellow stamp collectors. One guy was a sugar bag collector. He'd strangled seven women. He cooked ducks in their blood. Have you tracked his cell phone? No, there's no signal anymore. Maybe something's wrong with the chip. Will there be a road here? - It's for a golf course. What? You know this area well? - To the millimetre. I don't know which way to go, and was wondering... Elsa, 8 years ran away from home or kidnapped? Have a nice trip. Are you coming, Elsa? Elsa, what are you doing? My phone, your Gameboy. We don't have any luck with machines. Why the long face? Its probably just the batteries. Fine. Put on a long face. What do you want me to say? Can I ask you something? Feel free to ask. Go ahead. - You don't want me to call you grandpa. Grandfather equals coal stove, remember? What should I say then? - My name. What's my name? -You haven't told me. Haven't I told you my name? That sounds old. - You think Elsa sounds young? Can I ask you another thing? - My last name? Larrieu. It's a riddle. - I hate riddles. Do you know how Captain Hook died? He scratched his balls. - Where do you learn that? At school. I know another one. From Mamadou, who has everything big. Big arms, big legs and even... - Alright, I know that one already. I'm sure you don't know this one. Mamadou wants to get married. When do you breathe, anyway? You've been following me for two days and my ears are ringing. Now I tell you to be quiet. - Too bad, it was funny. I'm sure you would have laughed. What do you hear? The wind? The birds? And the insects? From now on, I only want to hear the wind, the birds and the insects. But, Julien, I... - Quiet. Be quiet. I never said stop walking, I said stop talking. Else, what are you doing there? - A pee. A nice shower, warm food, a real bed. Would you like that? I prefer a bath. - What else? Sauna? Jacuzzi? I jumped last week. - You're a parachute jumper. I'm afraid of heights. You know that. - We had a deal. Yes or no? - I don't know. Stop it now. Here we go. If you loved me you'd jump. Stop it, Bernard. Stop it now. Let me tell you this. Their love is hanging by a thread. One, two, three, there we go. Here. Say, what does NBA mean? National Basketball Association. It's English. What do you like about basketball? - Being big. Being small isn't nice. When I grow up I will be very big. How big? - As big as Edith Piaf. But Edith Piaf was very small. My mom claims she is the biggest singer in the world. How old are you Elsa? Eight? - Nine. I was born on May the 30th, I'm a Gemini and a dog. You know a lot about it. - We read our horoscopes every week. Do you believe in that stuff? - Mommy does. I like the comics. Why does it hang on a thread? For the couple. The parachute heroes. If you have to proof for someone's love you don't have any confidence in them. And where there's no confidence, there's no love. Who lives here? - It's a cabin for hikers. In high season it's always full but we're all alone here. My feet are so tired Dig in, sir. - It's probably better than ravioli. And your biggest heartache - I'm a heart surgeon. To me the heart is a muscle. - Yeah, and emotions are chemical. It was a joke. You're so sensitive. Hand on, I'm going outside. Where have you been? Do birds like ravioli? - I think Italian birds do. May I feed them a little? - Yes, sure. Go ahead. Your granddaughter is cute. Few kids address their grandfather with his first name. She could call you grandfather. - That's nice. Or pepe. - Yes, that sounds good. Give me Mikey. What's the market on red? Forget it. Give me blue. Sell 5.049... 10.049. Got it? What a long face. Bad news? - I just earned 350.000 dollar. I sold everything. Best move ever. - That's great. Those people yesterday, are they rich now? Apparently. - Why are there rich people and poor people? Because 'Liberte, egalite, fraternite' sounds good, but doesn't work. How can one become rich? - So what you like. But how does one become rich then? - I just told you. She is looking at us. She doesn't look at anyone, she smells something. When the wind turns she will know we are here and she'll will flee. Stand still. Those damn poachers. Go ahead, drink. Don't you want any water? Julien, why did they shoot the deer? For the money. - What does 'damn poachers' mean? Well, damn means that... - No, poacher. Poachers? They're people that kill animals while it's forbidden. That's why the deer died For a few stupid banknotes. Are you sad? You know, death is part of life. But it never knocks first. Many people live like they have an eternity ahead of them. but no one is sure whether they can finish their will. In 2050 people will live to be 150. - But that won't change anything. Life will always be a second, plus a second, plus another one. Tick tock, tick tock. Are you asleep? When I was young, even younger than now, I had a dream. It had a canary in it. You know, those yellow birds. I took it out of its cage, opened the window and my hand. And guess what. It didn't fly away, but stayed with me. I was happy. Do you know why? - No idea. If it wanted to stay with me it was because it loved me. It's lovely here. - Of course. It's like a calendar picture. - A calendar? This is better. What's it doing? - Flowers are like people. There's males and females. The flowers cannot move so... they can't make love. - That's one way of putting it. The butterfly helps. It takes the pollen from flower to flower. Like the mailman? - One who only delivers love letters. Try it. Scoop some air into the net. And when you catch a butterfly quickly take it down to the ground. Try again. I caught one. I got it. It's an Apollo butterfly. It's beautiful. There's cotton and cyanide. It will die a quick death. What is it? Poacher. Are we going? - I want to go back. What? - I want to go home. But there's nobody there. Not for at least four days. I want my mom. - She won't be there. I want to be there when she returns. - Are you coming or not? Come with me. You little... Ouch. Are you hurt? - Help me. Do you really want to go back? How will you find your way? - It's downhill. I'll get somewhere. And then? - Then I'll hitchhike home. I won't stop you. God luck. What are you waiting for? Go. Move it. I'll tell my mother you forced me to come with you. And the police will come after you. - Of course. Why? - For holding me hostage. I will tell them you kidnapped me and that you locked me up for money. And I will tell them the opposite. - They won't believe you. Adults believe what adults say. Not what kids say. And? - And what? Are we lost? - I think I've missed a path. It's all the same. - Now what will we do? What do you think? Go back where we came from. Go. Giddy up. Julien, please. How do I know you won't run away? - I'll give you my word. Alright, there we go. Wait. Over there. -Are you sure? I won't force you to come with me. This is the spot. Come on. There are two sorts of butterflies. - What's the difference? Diurnal butterflies fly during the day, Nocturnal butterflies only at night. When does the Isabel fly? - It's a crepuscular. That means it'll fly when the night falls. If it's not there before midnight it won't come. What does it eat? - It can't collect honey, so it doesn't eat. How long do they live? - Three days and three nights. That's not very long. It's the life of a butterfly. Did you bring sheets? Then why are we sleeping in sleeping bags? It's not for us. it's for the Isabel. Now we must be patient. Isabel is a strange name for a butterfly. The scientist who... The hunter who discovered it in 1839 was a Spaniard. He named it after the Spanish queen. My name is Elsa because my name was misspelled. I was supposed to be called Elisa but they forgot the i. But it's OK, Elsa is a nice name. Elisa, is that short for Elizabeth? - Yeah, I think so. And what's Elsa shot for? - No idea. Nothing I guess. That's better. - Why is it better? Because it's no fun being short. Nosy little creatures. The Isabel is much bigger. How big? - About the size of your hand. What if it doesn't show up? - We'll talk. They don't have ears. It's not coming. It's too late. Go to bed. First tell me a story. - I don't know any stories. Why did you get this old then? - Don't call me old. You could make one up. - Make up a story. Fine. But after that you'll go to sleep. Promised? It takes place on judgement day. - What's that? It's the last day on earth. This planet's career is over. All creatures meet with the Lord to see who's worked hard. The rabbit is up first. What have you done with your life? - I ran in the field and made kindles. Next is the bird. What have you done with your life? - I flew around and made little birds. The deer arrives. What have you done with your life? - I sang in the woods and made fawns. The dromedary. - Travelled and procreated. The wolf's up next. - What did you do with your life? On a winter's day I needed the strength to feed my young... and I ate a rabbit. The dog arrives. - What did you do with your life? I've listened to my master and made puppies. Then, man came. What did you do with your life? I've worked, earned money, defended myself and had children. What has become of your children? They died in the war. Then the Lord announces his verdict. The animals have worked hard, but man made too many mistakes. What does it matter anyway, everyone off to paradise. "Even man?" the animals cry. "Yes, even man", God says. It's my fault. I created earth in only seven days. Had I taken two weeks time, no one would have blamed me and maybe it would've been more of a success. Repeat after me. Cocoon yellow a weird fellow. - Cocoon yellow a weird fellow. Cocoon green isn't mean. - Cocoon green isn't mean. Cocoon red isn't mad. - Cocoon red isn't mad. They're strange creatures. Go head, shake the branch. Harder. Come on. Very good. Now watch. Watch closely. Down in the umbrella. And? It tickles. - Put it in the jar. What will you do with it? - We'll take them to Paris. Show them the Eiffel tower and watch them transform into butterflies. If you like you can take one or two to school. The kids in my class are dumb. The teacher told us about Napoleon. How he defeated the Austrians in Marengo. Do you know what Maxime asked her? No, what did he ask her? - What kind of car he drove. What kind of car? Napoleon? Elsa, come on. Why are we going through the forest? - It's faster. If it was to get a shower, thank you. Did you know it was going to pour down, Mrs know-it-all? It's over. Let's go - Look. Cows. - Is that what they look like? Of course they do. Flocon, foot. Please, come in. My mum. The clock's stopped and she keeps staring at it. It's almost like she's watching TV. Come in, sit down. Their tent on the other side of the valley. They're staying here tonight. You'll find them tomorrow. - Your hair is soaked. Sebastien, could you get me a towel? I'll be right back. Please take off your coat. Holiday homes, they're our future. Mama, come here. - They're always after the average man. Fine. - Next time we'll need a hotel education. Go. - Happy birthday daddy. Happy birthday. - Thanks. Happy birthday. Let me blow out the candles. One, two, three. Well done. Sebastien, take off the candles please. Do you want to cut it? - I'll open up the champagne. Can I have some too? - She loves champagne. How old are you today? - 43. Now go to bed. Good night. - Sweet dreams. Sleep tight, honey. - You too. Lights out in five minutes, OK? He was handsome, athletic. He travelled a lot and loved his work. And suddenly without a warning he fell into a black hole. He became manic depressive. They kept him in St. Anne for two weeks. Instead of his entire life. Half a year at home and in the hospital. One day he called me and said: save me from this hell hole. Daddy, I took everything that was in the medicine box. I want to die. Help me die. They hospitalised him and I've spoken with his psychiatrist. He said it would only deteriorate and he wouldn't come home again. I don't know why, but one other day he asked me: please bring me a butterfly. First I found one, then two. Then ten. That's how it all began. Months passed and he grew more and more sad. He never smiled anymore. I gave him a large picture book. And he showed me a large blue and green butterfly. "Bring this for me." It was an Isabel. I've searched three years but never found a single one. The type was extinct. One day I went into his room and noticed his bed was empty. He had passed away that night. The doctor told me he hadn't suffered much. He was 28, still a child. He would've been your age now. This clock is at least 150 years old, isn't it?. Look at this stamp. That's the monastery's. Mama, it's me. Elsa, where on earth are you? Talk to me, Elsa. - Won't you be mad at me? Do you know where you are? Tell me. - In a house. What house? - I don't know. I'm in the mountains. In the mountains? What mountains, Elsa? - I don't know. Wait. I'll tell you what to do. Are you still there? Hello? - I just wanted to tell you... Do you ever lie? Why do you ask? - No reason. Everyone lies about small or big things. The most important thing is not to lie to yourself. I have to tell you something. I lied to you. - I know. I know you're not nine yet. It's not a big lie. You have no idea? no trace? I don't know. Elsa is friendly, she smiles a lot. She's comfortable talking with adults. Maybe she trusted someone. What time is your appointment? - Would you like to say anything else? Please don't hurt my daughter. Don't hurt her. Here's the phone number once more. Don't hang up. What gourmet meal did you make me? What is this? - Eggs and sardines in oil. Eggs and sardines in oil? You mixed them? You told me that's what we would eat. But separate, not mixed. And? Well it's not that bad. Once, when my mum wasn't home I made eggs with chocolate. Chocolate eggs? That's hard to make. - No, with chocolate. It's fried eggs, but with cocoa on top. How old is your mother? - 25. Then she was a mother very early. It's because it was too late to have an abortion. What will happen with babies after an abortion? Nothing. That's not nice, being nothing. Why is the saying "to fall for someone', not to climb for them? I don't know. Mama fell in love and was pregnant immediately. Look. A shooting star. - What's that? It's God losing his hairs. - And what it is really? It's an Isabel. A female. Come, it's beautiful. Quick. Dear god. Watch where you're going. Where are you? Get away from me. Go away. You ruined it. No, go. Are you deaf? Do what you want. I won't beg you. Are you there? Climb up. I'll help you. I can't. I'm still down below. - Are you hurt? Julien, get me out of here. Get me out. Is your son there? There's been an accident... - I'm almost done. I'm listening. - A girl fell, in the mountains. She slipped and fell down into a cave. She's only bruised. She can hear you. You can talk to her. It's me, mum. Structure? - Instable. Too dangerous, it could collapse. The nearest entry is 7 km away. - 80 meters below. That'll take three days. - Any ideas? Can you hook her up? - Will you be OK? Go on. Slowly. Are you ready? - I'm afraid. Me too. How will you get up again? - They're lowering the line again. I'm ready. Go on, it's OK. Take it easy. Take it easy. It's all over now. I used to wear baggy jeans and sweaters. It was fashionable then. For six months nobody noticed. And your parents? Your mother? My father worked night shifts and my mother... Never cared about me. When I was 8 she left me in a store. Forgotten. I saw my belly and I ran away. - How old were you then? Sixteen. Why does she like basketball that much? Unfortunate children want to grow up fast. Do you think I'm not a very good mother? A good mother feeds her children and worries about their future. A good mother comforts, hugs and kisses her children. She's asked you for help. Try and talk to her. What should I say? Simply that you love her. - She knows I do. Would she have done all this if she knew? Three little words. I could never say those few words either. And, Julien? - Not yet, Elsa. Not just yet. How long then? One day, two days? Two or three days. Is it for today? - You're early. You have to wait a little bit longer. Do you really want to see how a butterfly is born? Come on in then. Watch, Elsa. Watch closely. We've travelled far to find it and now it is waiting for us here. Give me your hands. Fly. Where do you think it'll go? To someone that's been waiting for her a long time. You never told me your mother's name. - I didn't tell you? Then I think we've both found what we were looking for. Why does a chicken lay an egg? - Because they turn into chickens. Why do lovers kiss? - To make the doves coo. Why do lovely flowers die? - It's all part of the game. Why would there be a devil or a god? To make nosy tongues go faster. Why does wood burn in fire? - To keep us warm like a blanket. Why does the sea have low tide? - To make them beg for water. Why is the weeping willow gone? - To make room for another tree. Why does the wolf eat the lamb? - Because he has to eat something. Why the turtle and the hare? - Because little goes a long way. Why do angels have wings? - To make us believe in santa claus. Did you enjoy our trip? - Very much. We saw some lovely things, didn't we? - I would've liked to see crickets. Why crickets? - And dragonflies. Well, maybe next time. Can I ask you something? - Now what? Do you want to sing some more? - Absolutely not. Please. - No, no, no. It's the last verse. - Aren't you overdoing it a bit? Why does our heart go "tick tock"? - Because branches go "crack". Why does time fly by so quickly? - The wind is blowing it away. Why do you want me to hold you hand? - Because I feel great with you.
Philippe Muyl
All Philippe Muyl scripts | Philippe Muyl Scripts
"The Butterfly" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 15 Jan. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/the_butterfly_15558>.
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Home » The Overnight Kidnapper (An Inspector Montalbano Mystery #23) (Paperback)
The Overnight Kidnapper (An Inspector Montalbano Mystery #23) (Paperback)
“[Camilleri’s mysteries] offer quirky characters, crisp dialogue, bright storytelling—and Salvo Montalbano... a delightful creation, an honest man on Sicily's mean streets.” —USA Today
The day gets off to a bad start for Montalbano: while trying to break up a fight on Marinella beach, he hits the wrong man and is stopped by the Carabinieri. When he finally gets to the office, the inspector learns about a strange abduction: a woman was abducted, drugged, and then released unharmed only hours later. Within a few days, the same thing happens again. Both women are thirty years old and work in a bank.
Montalbano also has to deal with an arson case. A shop has burned down, and its owner, Marcello Di Carlo, seems to have vanished into thin air. At first this seems like a trivial case, but a third abduction—yet again of a girl who works in a bank—and the discovery of a body bring up new questions.
Andrea Camilleri, a mega-bestseller in Italy and Germany, is the author of the New York Times bestselling Inspector Montalbano mystery series as well as historical novels that take place in nineteenth-century Sicily. His books have been made into Italian television shows and translated into thirty-two languages. His thirteenth Montalbano novel, The Potter’s Field, won the Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger Award and was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
“The Sicilian dialect . . . as rendered in Sartarelli’s adept translation, provides comic relief. Camilleri fans are in for a treat.” —Publishers Weekly
“[The Overnight Kidnapper is] another wry, amiable procedural from the prolific Camilleri, whose unflappably put-upon hero soldiers on no matter how absurd the crime or aggravating the situation.” —Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Andrea Camilleri and the Montalbano Series:
Library Binding, Large Print (April 1st, 2019): $36.95
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SDU About SDU Faculties The Faculty of Engineering News DKK 100 million for robotics research at the University of Southern Denmark from the A.P. Møller Foundation
DKK 100 million for robotics research at the University of Southern Denmark from the A.P. Møller Foundation
SDU’s successful efforts in robotic systems were further supported by a donation of DKK 100 million, which will be used to construct a new building for students and researchers.
The A.P. Møller Foundation has donated DKK 100 million to robotics research at SDU. The money will be used to expand the current facilities with a state-of-the-art building, which is expected to be ready in 2022.
“We are very grateful for the donation, which will significantly strengthen our research in robotics. The field of robotics is already at the highest international level, and the university will be able to use this major donation to construct a new building for the area, which means we will have an optimal framework for further development of research, innovation and the educational environment in the field of robotics. The building will benefit our students, researchers and ultimately the business community,” says Niels Thorborg, Chair of the Board for SDU.
He also pointed out that the donation goes well with the investment of over DKK 100 million that SDU allocated to building an advanced laboratory environment to support research, education and collaboration with the business community in the spring of 2018.
“The Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute has proved its worth and, after a slow start, has achieved remarkable results, which support an interesting business development on Funen. Interest from students is high and on the rise, and the recruitment of researchers and university teachers is also going well. So there’s a lot to be happy about,” says Henrik Tvarnø, Director of the A.P. Møller Foundation.
Mærsk was on board from the start
The robotics adventure at SDU started back in the 1980s when A.P. Møller-Mærsk, via Lindø Værftet (Lindø Shipyard) and what was then Odense University, started a cooperation to develop modern production technology for the shipyard.
This was the starting point for founding the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute at what was then Odense University for research and education in robotic systems. The institute later played an increasingly important role in the development of robotic systems in Denmark and Danish exports of robotic equipment. With the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute at the centre, the robotics cluster on Funen is recognised as the strongest robotics cluster in Northern Europe and consists of about 120 companies, several of which have been traded for billions.
In addition to being a success for the business community and labour market, the institute has also been a success for research and education at the university. Today, the institute is an international leader in robotic systems, in addition to having developed strong research and educational environments in the fields of drone technology, health informatics and energy informatics.
Robot cluster is growing
The Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute is currently anchored in the Maersk building, which was completed in 1999 following a donation from the A.P. Møller Foundation. The success of the robotics cluster and the institute has meant that the institute’s research and education has grown far beyond the building's existing framework and some students and employees are now located in temporary buildings - the goal of expanding the institute has thus been on the wish list for a long time.
This wish has now come true with the fund’s donation of DKK 100 million for a new building.
Further information about the building can be obtained by calling Tom Møenbo Gregersen, the Area Manager for Plan & Byg at SDU, on mobile: +45 60 45 18 07 or by e-mailing him at tgr@sdu.dk
Read more about SDU’s work on an advanced laboratory environment, Industry 4.0 Digital Autonomous Production
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Community Energy Lab Up For A Community Energy England Award
Selby Trust’s Community Energy Lab has been shortlisted for a Community Energy England Award in the Community Energy Champion. The Community Energy Awards were first established by Energise London, and the inaugural awards made at a ceremony in Oxford in June 2014. The Community Energy Awards 2015 are administered by Community Energy England in association with Energise London and the Community Energy Coalition.
The Community Energy Lab is based at the Selby Centre in Tottenham and is managed by Selby Trust. The aim of the project is to reduce the CO2 emissions from existing buildings in Tottenham by retrofitting them. This is done by training local disadvantages local youth retrofitting techniques using a variety of insulation materials, some of which is waste insulation from construction sites diverted from landfill.
We are very excited to be shortlisted for this award and have the work of the Community Energy Lab and the volunteers recognised in this way. The project is part of our Green Hub which is focused on reducing waste, ensuring we train local people in green industry and reduce our carbon emissions.–Says Sona Mahtani – CEO of Selby Trust.
Cllr Joe Goldberg, Cabinet Member for Economic Development, Social Inclusion and Sustainability, said: “Congratulations to the Selby Trust on being shortlisted for this award. We’ve been proud to support the Community Energy Lab, which offers training opportunities to local young people, cuts carbon emissions from the borough’s buildings and is helping to cement Haringey’s place as a leader in green industry. We need everyone on board if we’re going to build a sustainable future, and I’m delighted that this locally-run, community-led project has been recognised in this way.”
By 2016/17, we hope to raise the resources to share learning about renewables with all ages, including children and young people, and are planning to run short courses such as making solar panels and phone chargers.
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