THE US city where an Aussie bride-to-be was shot dead by a cop has been described as a “police state” run by “out-of-control officers”.
THE mid-western US city where an Australian bride-to-be was mysteriously shot dead by a cop is a “police state” run by “out-of-control officers”, according to a community activist.
Shock has turned to anger in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after Sydney woman Justine Damond, 40, was inexplicably shot “multiple times” by police officer Mohamed Noor.
Ms Damond, a yoga teacher, had heard a noise in the back alley near her home in the Fulton neighbourhood on Saturday night and called the police suspecting someone was being sexually assaulted.
When a police vehicle arrived about 11.30pm, she talked to the officers through the car door. Mr Noor was seated in the passenger’s seat and shot across his colleague multiple times, killing Ms Damond. She was wearing her pyjamas at the time.
Why the woman was shot remains a mystery.
The Minneapolis Police Department has refused requests to explain the incident, which is now being investigated by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).
The bureau confirmed on Monday afternoon that Ms Damond was unarmed, saying in a statement that no weapons were found at the scene. It also said that the two officers involved had yet to be interviewed.
The incident has quickly taken on a political dimension in the state, where a spate of fatal police shootings have sparked mass protests.
Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB), said Minnesota police departments had a history of “secretive” behaviour after these incidents that denied justice to victims and their families.
“The main problem is that police have entirely too much power and almost no accountability,” Ms Gross told news.com.au.
She said Minnesota was a “police state” where officers had the power to “spy on people at will” and were protected absolutely when they shot people without provocation.
Police officers have killed 443 people in Minnesota since 2000, an average of 26 a year, according to CUAPB records.
“People are absolutely frustrated and upset … that somebody could be killed being a good neighbour,” Ms Gross said.
Ms Gross attended a vigil for Ms Damond in Minnesota on Sunday.
“A woman should not call for help then end up murdered,” Bethany Bradley, of Women’s March Minnesota, said at the event.
Ms Damond, known in Sydney as Justine Ruszczyk, was due to marry her fiance Don Damond within weeks, but she had already adopted his last name.
The qualified veterinary surgeon lived with Mr Damond and his son Zach, 22, in a bungalow about 60m from where she was killed. A family friend, Julie Reed, told reporters in Sydney yesterday that she would be remembered for her “energy, intelligence and joy”.
Mr Damond was out of town on business when the shooting occurred, which left Zach to deal with the shock of the incident on his own.
“He is quite distraught, and quite understandably so,” said Ms Gross, whose organisation has offered support to the family in the wake of the shooting.
Zach reacted to the death of his stepmother in a heart-wrenching video posted to Facebook.
“Basically my mum’s dead because a police officer shot her for reasons I don’t know,” he said while in tears.
Minneapolis has allocated $6.4 million to equip its police officers with body cameras after a spate of police shootings, but questions have been raised about why the cameras were not turned on during this incident.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota said the officers had violated police policy by failing to turn the cameras on.
“This violation of policy thwarted the public’s right to know what happened to Ms Damond and why the police killed her. The two officers broke the policy not only when they didn’t activate the body cameras before the incident, but also when they failed to do so after the use of force,” spokeswoman Teresa Nelson said.
Ms Gross offered an apology to the people of Australia and Ms Damond’s family for the shooting.
“I would like to extend to the people of Australia our deepest sympathies for what happened and let them know that we’re sad and determined to make change,” she told news.com.au.
The BCA, which has been tasked with investigating the incident, provided scant new details to explain the shooting in a statement on Monday afternoon.
The bureau said its staffers found no weapons at the scene on Saturday night and confirmed that the two officers involved in the incident, who were placed on “standard administrative leave”, had yet to be interviewed.
“The officers are working with their attorneys to schedule [the interviews],” the BCA said.
An autopsy has been conducted on Ms Damond but the results have not been released.
The Minneapolis Police Department declined to answer questions put by news.com.au, referring all queries to the BCA.
However, the city’s police chief, Janee Harteau, did acknowledge the “pain and frustration” of the family and community following the shooting.
“This is clearly a tragic death,” she said in a statement.
“I also want to assure you that I understand why so many people have so many questions at this point.
The people of Minnesota, particularly its black community, has a strained relationship with police after a spate of fatal shootings at the hands of officers.
One of the most controversial is the case of African-American Jamar Clark, who was fatally shot in the head in Minneapolis’s north on November 15, 2015, sparking an 18-day protest.
The police said Mr Clark was trying to grab an officer’s gun when he was shot, while other witnesses said the 24-year-old was handcuffed when he was shot.
The public prosecutor decided against charging the two officers involved, saying the evidence supported the police’s version of events.
In another shocking incident, the immediate aftermath of a police shooting was live-streamed on Facebook.
Police officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed African-American Philando Castile in front of his girlfriend and four-year-old daughter in Minneapolis’s nearby twin city, St Paul, last July.
The police officer said he believed Mr Castile was going to pull a gun on him, so he shot him first. He shot at Mr Castile seven times.
Mr Yanez was charged with manslaughter, but he was found not guilty by a jury.
Ms Damond’s death is one of more than 500 fatal shootings by police in the US in 2017 alone, according to The Washington Post.


Video footage has shown masked men firing shots during the funeral of a West Belfast republican.
Police have launched an investigation after a video of the incident emerged on social media.
Barry McMullan, who is understood to have been a senior figure in the Irish republican Socialist Party (IRSP) – the political wing of the INLA – was buried in Belfast on Monday.
A video of the funeral appeared on Belfast IRSP Facebook page on Tuesday, showing mourners and a republican band gathered outside his west Belfast home, where the coffin was put on display in the street.
It was draped with a Starry Plough flag and a number of men wearing paramilitary style uniforms could be seen at the funeral.
As the funeral cortege made its way along Whiterock Road towards Milltown Cemetery, the video captures two masked men dressed in black paramilitary garb with dark sunglasses and berets, firing off a volley of handgun shots into the air.
Two young children dressed in their school uniforms were standing next to the masked gunmen when the shots rang out. It is not clear if the bullets were live rounds or blanks.
Cheers rang out from the large crowd after the hail of shots were fired and a chorus of car horns honked in approval.
Belfast IRSP described Mr McMullan, known as Baz, as a ‘much loved comrade’ on social media.
Images on social media show Starry Ploughs, the flag most associated with the Irish socialist republican movement, being flown in the New Barnsley area ahead of the funeral.
The PSNI said an investigation into the matter is now under way.
TUV leader Jim Allister said those responsible should be prosecuted.
He added: “We supposedly have a peace process and the INLA claimed to have decommissioned their weapons seven years ago. Yet here we have a paramilitary show of strength and shots fired over a coffin.
“Decommissioning has once again been shown to be a sham.
Condemning the incident, SDLP Councillor Tim Attwood said gunmen have “no place on the streets of Belfast”.
Alliance Party Justice spokesperson Trevor Lunn said the appearance of masked men firing shots over the coffin was “deeply sinister”.
He added: “This incident demonstrates the need for a robust strategy to tackle paramilitarism, which the last Executive failed to produce.


LEEDS UNITED hope to secure the signing of Tyler Roberts from West Brom.
The Championship outfit are in advanced talks over a deal for the 19-year-old striker, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post.
An initial fee worth £2.5million - which could rise to £4m - is set to be agreed between the two clubs.
Roberts is expected to undergo a medical and put pen to paper before tomorrow’s 11pm deadline.
The Wales Under-21 international’s contract with West Brom expires at the end of the season and a host of European clubs were interested in negotiating a pre-contract deal.
Scottish giants Rangers have also been sniffing around.
Roberts spent the first half of the season on loan in League One with Walsall and scored five goals in 19 appearances.
Leeds have been hunting for a striker but were not expected to succeed in bolstering their attacking options.
However, West Brom’s capture of Daniel Sturridge from Liverpool has resulted in the Baggies allowing Roberts to leave.
Roberts might not be the only player to join Leeds on the final day of the January transfer window.
Elland Road bosses could swoop for a goalkeeper if they give Andy Lonergan the green light to move to Sunderland.


Your theories on why America is getting fatter.
Last month in this space I asked Slate readers to help me understand what’s going on with obesity—specifically, the explosive growth in obesity over the past 10 years. I’m still digging out from under the excessive weight of the e-mail deluge (several thousand), but here’s my preliminary report.
The least helpful contributions are the ones that explain, often in painstaking detail, that obesity is caused by some combination of eating too much and exercising too little. Well, duh. The question is why eating and exercise habits have changed so dramatically at this particular time.
The angriest e-mail comes from readers who believe they’ve been duped into eating too many carbohydrates and not enough fat. The Agriculture Department’s ubiquitous “food pyramid” recommends six to 11 servings a day of bread, cereal, rice, and pasta—a diet certain, in the minds of my irate correspondents, to trigger insulin reactions that prevent you from burning calories and/or cause you to crave between-meal snacks. At the same time, the food pyramid discourages you from eating the fats that would assuage your hunger. (This circle of ideas, which began with Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, is very trendy these days.) So the idea is that the government is handing out exactly the wrong advice, everyone’s following it, and nobody’s noticed how counterproductive it is. Well. Maybe.
The second-angriest letters come from those who are sure we’re getting fatter because of growth hormones in our meat. I won’t pretend to know enough science to analyze this one, but I will note that an unusually high fraction of these e-mails are tinged with unmistakable hysteria.
Many of my correspondents surmise that life is busier and more stressful now than 10 years ago, so that we exercise less and eat more haphazardly. That makes sense if indeed life is busier and more stressful, but I have no idea whether that’s true. Here’s one bit of evidence to the contrary: The average work week is no longer now than in 1990. I’m willing to believe that the average Slate reader’s life has gotten busier and more stressful, because the average Slate reader is more likely than the average American to be raising children and in the midst of a demanding career. But it would be rash to overgeneralize.
Quite a few of you mention suburban sprawl, which means more driving, less walking, and less time for meal preparation. I am skeptical, because obesity is growing rapidly in every part of the country but sprawl is still localized. Still, it would be interesting to know whether obesity is growing fastest in the most sprawling areas.
Joseph Taylor makes the simple economic argument that eating is a form of entertainment, and it’s gotten cheaper relative to (say) water-skiing; ergo people choose more food and less water-skiing. And he points out that his theory is eminently testable: We could investigate whether obesity is correlated with food prices across geographic regions. Pat Reimann points out that food has gotten not just cheaper but also more varied (consider the uncountable number of new flavors of Ben and Jerry’s), which again raises the value of eating relative to other forms of leisure.
Ariel Kaminer starts with my own favorite theory and gives it a novel twist. I argued that medical advances have lowered the health cost of obesity, so people rationally choose to be fatter. Kaminer rejects the rational choice model but points out that the same medical advances have kept a lot of obese people alive, well, and included in the statistics.
Roberta Jupp gives my theory a very different twist by pointing out that just as medical advances make obesity cheaper, so does health insurance. The more heavily you’re insured against heart disease, the more likely you are to have that second scoop of ice cream. I love this observation, but I’m not sure that insurance contracts have changed enough in the past 10 years for us to pin all the blame on them.
Besides medical advances, my other theory was that low-calorie foods encourage people to eat more, so their weights might go either up or down, depending on how much more they eat. (Actually, my column referred to “low-fat” foods; several readers correctly pointed out that I should have said “low-calorie,” because low-fat and low-calorie are not the same thing.) Raphael Laufer points out an interesting test of this theory: It suggests that we could see movement toward both extremes, as some people use low-calorie foods to indulge themselves and others use them to lose weight. I haven’t managed to find numbers that would let me perform this test.
Steven Zara points to Home Shopping Networks, TiVo, cell phones, and cable/satellite TV as new technologies that tend to keep the potato on the couch. Heidi Hirst raises the key follow-up question: How does the obesity explosion correlate with changes in TV viewing hours? And Rusty Bastian asks a great related question: Did obesity increase at a different rate among those who have physically demanding jobs? Sadly, I don’t know the answers.
There are still several thousand e-mails I haven’t gotten to, and I’m sure I’ll never get to all of them. If you had a great idea I overlooked, I apologize.


The National Australia Bank (NAB) has warned customers about an email scam which claims that access to their accounts is restricted.
The email advises them to place a call to the bank in order to have their access restored. However, victims are redirected to speak with a fraudster who will seek access to their personal and financial information.
An NAB spokesperson said that domestic and overseas criminals attempt different methods for defrauding financial institutions and their customers.
"NAB advises all of our customers to be aware of the practical steps they can take for their personal and business security,” he said.
The spokesperson added that a bank will never ask for account details via email.
He advised customers to report scams to spoof@nab.com.au, phone NAB's fraud assist line on 1300 622 372 or visit their local branch.
In August, ANZ Banking Group customers were also targeted with a similar email scam which claimed access to their account had been restricted.
The emails, which were referred to as 'callware' by Kaspersky Lab researchers, asked recipients to call a Sydney-based phone number included in the email to restore account access.
An ANZ Banking Group spokesperson said at the time it was aware of the scam and had notified the Australian Federal Police to have the automated phone message removed.


Season 7 American Idol winner David Roland Cook was a rocker way before making it onto the reality competition show.
Although he has had no formal training, the Texas-born singer/songwriter considers himself “lucky” when it comes to his vocal talents.
In his first band, Red Eye (later renamed to Axium), he was the singer and guitarist, but the group just bounced around a few indie labels and never hit it big. After moving to Tulsa, Okla., Cook joined another band called the Midwest Kings and began working on his solo record Analog Heart.
While competing on Idol, the performer also was looking for love.
He was spotted flirting with So You Think You Can Dance competitor Lacey Schwimmer early in the season, and has previously dated season two Idol contestant Kimberley Caldwell.


Author gives an insight into what it costs US taxpayers to build and support the American global military presence.
"Are you monitoring the construction?" asked the middle-aged man on a bike accompanied by his dog.
"Ah, si," I replied in my barely passable Italian.
In front of us, a backhoe's guttural engine whined into action and empty dump trucks rattled along a dirt track. The shouts of men vied for attention with the metallic whirring of drills and saws ringing in the distance. Nineteen immense cranes spread across the landscape, with the foothills of Italy's Southern Alps in the background. More than 100 pieces of earthmoving equipment, 250 workers and grids of scaffolding wrapped around what soon would be 34 new buildings.
We were standing in front of a massive 145-acre construction site for a "little America" rising in Vicenza, an architecturally renowned Italian city and UNESCO world heritage site near Venice. This was Dal Molin, the new military base the US Army has been readying for the relocation of as many as 2,000 soldiers from Germany in 2013.
Since 1955, Vicenza has also been home to another major US base, Camp Ederle. They're among the more than 1,000 bases the United States uses to ring the globe (with about 4,000 more in the 50 states and Washington, DC). This complex of military installations, unprecedented in history, has been a major, if little noticed, aspect of US power since World War II.
During the Cold War, such bases became the foundation for a "forward strategy" meant to surround the Soviet Union and push US military power as close to its borders as possible. These days, despite the absence of a superpower rival, the Pentagon has been intent on dotting the globe with scores of relatively small "lily pad" bases, while continuing to build and maintain some large bases like Dal Molin.
How much does the US spend each year occupying the planet with its bases and troops? How much does it spend on its global presence? Forced by Congress to account for its spending overseas, the Pentagon has put that figure at $22.1bn a year. It turns out that even a conservative estimate of the true costs of garrisoning the globe comes to an annual total of about $170bn. In fact, it may be considerably higher. Since the onset of "the Global War on Terror" in 2001, the total cost for our garrisoning policies, forour presence abroad, has probably reached $1.8 trillion to $2.1 trillion.
How much do we spend?
By law, the Pentagon must produce an annual "Overseas Cost Summary" (OCS) putting a price on the military's activities abroad, from bases to embassies and beyond. This means calculating all the costs of military construction, regular facility repairs and maintenance, plus the costs of maintaining one million US military and Defence Department personnel and their families abroad - the pay cheques, housing, schools, vehicles, equipment and the transportation of personnel and materials overseas and back, and far, far more.
The latest OCS, for the 2012 fiscal year ending September 30, documented $22.1bn in spending, although, at Congress' direction, this doesn't include any of the more than $118bn spent that year on the wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the globe.
While $22.1bn is a considerable sum, representing about as much as the budgets for the Departments of Justice and Agriculture and about half the State Department's 2012 budget, it contrasts sharply with economist Anita Dancs's estimate of $250bn. She included war spending in her total, but even without it, her figure comes to around $140bn - still $120bn more than the Pentagon suggests.
Ever the fool and armed only with the power of searchable PDFs, I nonetheless plunged into the bizarro world of Pentagon accounting, where ledgers are sometimes still handwritten and $1bn can be a rounding error. I reviewed thousands of pages of budget documents, government and independent reports and hundreds of line items for everything from shopping malls to military intelligence to postal subsidies.
Wanting to err on the conservative side, I decided to follow the methodology Congress mandated for the OCS, while also looking for overseas costs the Pentagon or Congress might have ignored. It hardly made sense to exclude, for example, the healthcare costs the Department of Defence pays for troops on overseas bases, spending for personnel in Kosovo, or the price tag for supporting the 550 bases we have in Afghanistan.
In the spirit of "monitoring the construction", let me lead you on an abbreviated account of my quest to come up with the real costs of occupying planet Earth.
Although the Overseas Cost Summary initially might seem quite thorough, you'll soon notice that countries well known to host US bases have gone missing-in-action. In fact, at least 18 countries and foreign territories on the Pentagon's own list of overseas bases go unnamed.
Particularly surprising is the absence of Kosovo and Bosnia. The military has had large bases and hundreds of troops there for more than a decade, with another Pentagon report showing 2012 costs of $313.8m. According to that report, the OCS also understates costs for bases in Honduras and Guantanamo Bay by about a third or $85m.
$436m for missing countries and costs.
That's not much compared to $22bn and chump change in the context of the whole Pentagon budget, but it's just a beginning.
At Congress' direction, the Pentagon also omits the costs of bases in the oft-forgotten US territories - Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the US Virgin Islands. This is strange because the Pentagon considers them "overseas". More important, as economist Dancs says, "The United States retains territories... primarily for the purposes of the military and projecting military power". Plus, they are, well, literally overseas.
Conservatively, this adds $3bn in total military spending to the OCS.
However, there are more quasi-US territories in the form of truly forgotten Pacific Ocean island nations in "compacts of free association" with the United States - the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau. Ever since it controlled these islands as "strategic trust territories" after World War II, the US has enjoyed the right to establish military facilities on them, including the nuclear test site on the Bikini Atoll and the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defence Test Site elsewhere in the Marshalls.
Inside Story Americas - Future of US military?
$3.6bn for territories and Pacific island nations.
Speaking of the oceans, at Congress' instruction, the Pentagon excludes the cost of maintaining naval vessels overseas. But Navy and Marine Corps vessels are essentially floating (and submersible) bases used to maintain a powerful military presence on (and under) the seas. A very conservative estimate for these costs adds another $3.8bn.
$5.3bn for Navy vessels and personnel plus seaborne and airborne assets.
Also strangely missing from the Cost Summary is that little matter of healthcare costs. Overseas costs for the Defence Health Programme and other benefits for personnel abroad add an estimated $11.7bn yearly. And then there's $538m in military and family housing construction that the Pentagon also appears to overlook in its tally.
So too, we can't forget about shopping on base, because we the taxpayers are subsidising those iconic Walmart-like PX (Post Exchange) shopping malls on bases worldwide. Although the military is fond of saying that the PX system pays for itself because it helps fund on-base recreation programs, Pentagon leaders neglect to mention that the PXs get free buildings and land, free utilities, and free transportation of goods to overseas locations. They also operate tax-free.
$12.6bn for health care, military and family housing, shopping and postalsubsidies.
Another Pentagon exclusion is rent paid to other countries for the land we garrison. Although a few countries like Japan, Kuwait and South Korea actually pay the United States to subsidise our garrisons - to the tune of $1.1bn in 2012 - far more common, according to base expert Kent Calder, "are the cases where the United States pays nations to host bases".
$6.9bn in net "rent" payments and NATO contributions.
$682m for counter-narcotics, humanitarian and environmental programmes.
The Pentagon tally of the price of occupying the planet also ignores the costs of secret bases and classified programmes overseas. Out of a total Pentagon classified budget of $51bn for 2012, I conservatively use only the estimated overseas portion of operations and maintenance spending, which adds $2.4bn. Then there's the $15.7bn Military Intelligence Programme. Given that US law generally bars the military from engaging in domestic spying, I estimate that half this spending, $7.9bn, took place overseas.
$13.6bn for classified programmes, military intelligence and CIA paramilitary activities.
Last but certainly not least comes the real biggie: the costs of the 550 bases the US built in Afghanistan, as well as the last three months of life for our bases in Iraq, which once numbered 505 before the US pullout from that country (that is, the first three months of fiscal year 2012). While the Pentagon and Congress exclude these costs, that's like calculating the New York Yankees' payroll while excluding salaries for each year's huge free agent signings.
$104.9bn for bases and military presence in Afghanistan and other war zones.
$168bn ($169,963,153,283 to be exact).
That's nearly an extra $150bn. Even if you exclude war costs - and I think the Yankees show why that's a bad idea - the total still reaches $65.1bn, or nearly three times the Pentagon's calculation.
But don't for a second think that that's the end of our garrisoning costs. In addition to spending likely hidden in the nooks and crannies of its budget, there are other irregularities in the Pentagon's accounting. Costs for 16 countries hosting US bases but left out of the OCS entirely, including Colombia, El Salvador and Norway, may total more than $350m. The costs of the military presencein Colombia alone could reach into the tens of millions in the context of more than $8.5bn in Plan Colombia funding since 2000. The Pentagon also reports costs of less than $5m each for Yemen, Israel, Uganda and the Seychelles Islands, which seems unlikely and could add millions more.
When it comes to the general US presence abroad, other costs are too difficult to estimate reliably, including the price of Pentagon offices in the United States, embassies and other government agencies that support bases and troops overseas. So, too, US training facilities, depots, hospitals and even cemeteries allow overseas bases to function. Other spending includes currency-exchange costs, attorneys' fees and damages won in lawsuits against military personnel abroad, short-term "temporary duty assignments", US-based troops participating in exercises overseas, and perhaps even some of NASA's military functions, space-based weapons, a percentage of recruiting costs required to staff bases abroad, interest paid on the debt attributable to the past costs of overseas bases, and Veterans Administration costs and other retirement spending for military personnel who served abroad.
Beyond my conservative estimate, the true bill for garrisoning the planet might be closer to $200bn a year.
Those, by the way, are just the costs in the US government's budget. The total economic costs to the US economy are higher still. Consider where the taxpayer-funded salaries of the troops at those bases go when they eat or drink at a local restaurant or bar, shop for clothing, rent a local home, or pay local sales taxes in Germany, Italy or Japan. These are what economists call "spillover" or "multiplier effects". When I visited Okinawa in 2010, for example, Marine Corps representatives bragged about how their presence contributes $1.9bn annually to the local economy through base contracts, jobs, local purchases and other spending. Although the figures may be overstated, it's no wonder members of Congress like Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison have called for a new "Build in America" policy to protect "the fiscal health of our nation".
And the costs are still broader when one considers the trade-offs, or opportunity costs, involved. Military spending creates fewer jobs per million dollars expended than the same million invested in education, health care, or energy efficiency - barely half as many as investing in schools. Even worse, while military spending clearly provides direct benefits to the Lockheed Martins and KBRs of the military-industrial complex, these investments don't, as economist James Heintz says, boost the "long-run productivity of the rest of the private sector" the way infrastructure investments do.
To adapt a famous line from President Dwight Eisenhower: every base that is built signifies in the final sense a theft. Indeed, think about what Dal Molin's half a billion dollars in infrastructure could have done if put to civilian uses. Again echoing Ike, the cost of one modern base is this: 260,000 low-income children getting health care for one year or 65,000 going to a year of Head Start or 65,000 veterans receiving VA care for a year.
Bases also create a different "spillover" in the financial and non-financial costs host countries bear. In 2004, for example, on top of direct "burden sharing" payments, host countries made in-kind contributions of $4.3bn to support US bases. In addition to agreeing to spend billions of dollars to move thousands of US Marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam, the Japanese government has paid nearly $1bn to soundproof civilian homes near US airbases on Okinawa and millions in damages for successful noise pollution lawsuits. Similarly, as base expert Mark Gillem reports, between 1992 and 2003, the Korean and US governments paid $27.3m in damages because of crimes committed by US troops stationed in Korea. In a single three-year period, US personnel "committed 1,246 criminal acts, from misdemeanours to felonies".
As these crimes indicate, costs for local communities extend far beyond the economic. Okinawans have recently been outraged by what appears to be another in a long series of rapes committed by US troops. Which is just one example of how, from Japan to Italy, there are what Anita Dancs calls the "costs of rising hostility" over bases. Environmental damage pushes the financial and non-financial toll even higher. The creation of a base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean sent all of the local Chagossian people into exile.
So, too, US troops and their families bear some of those non-financial costs due to frequent moves and separation during unaccompanied tours abroad, along with attendant high rates of divorce, domestic violence, substance abuse, sexual assault and suicide.
"No one, no one likes it," a stubbly-faced old man told me as I was leaving the construction site. He remembered the Americans arriving in 1955 and now lives within sight of the Dal Molin base. "If it were for the good of the people, okay, but it's not for the good of the people."
"Who pays? Who pays?" he asked. "Noi," he said. We do.
Indeed, from that $170bn to the costs we can't quantify, we all do.
David Vine, a Tom Dispatch regular, is assistant professor of anthropology at American University, in Washington, DC. He is the author of (Princeton University Press, 2009). He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and Mother Jones, among other places. He is currently completing a book about the more than 1,000 US military bases located outside the United States. To read a detailed description of the calculations described in this article and view a chart of the costs of the US military presence abroad, visit here.
David Vine, a Tom Dispatch regular, is assistant professor of anthropology at American University, in Washington, DC. He is the author of 'Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia' (Princeton University Press, 2009).


Crises that seemed contained not long ago have now spiraled out of control—and the prospects for resolving them peacefully look depressingly bleak.
Neoconservatives in Washington are ready to spark America’s next military disaster—one that may well be worse than the Iraq War.
Two private intelligence companies hack political enemies in Africa, Europe, the Mideast, and the United States, for a price.
The Trump-Putin Summit: From Rivals to Confederates?
We may be seeing the centralization of world power in the hands of two nuclear-armed megalomaniacs.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies helped kill the nuke deal, but it’s not satisfied—it wants harsh new sanctions against any country doing business with Iran.
Big funders neglect peace groups while Trump threatens war.
His hopes for a “better deal” are based on the myth—partly encouraged by Obama—that sanctions forced Iran to come to terms in 2015.
Trump has undermined the reliability of multilateral diplomacy, compromised peaceful dispute resolution, and eroded the authority of international law.
At 7 pm EST, Sanders will discuss the aftermath of Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement.
Is Trump’s Abandonment of the Iran Nuke Deal a Prelude to War?
His advisers, as well as Israel and Saudi Arabia, will be pushing for one—which is why we have to act now to stop it.


SUN BROADCASTING/FORT. MYERS has launched Top 40/Rhythmic WLVO (FLY 98.5) this morning (6/15). FLY 98.5 is jockless, playing "Non-Stop Hip Hop".
FLY 98.5 PD SCRAP JACKSON commented to ALL ACCESS, "We have a unique market. Once you get past the tourists and older people, you'll notice tons of true Hip Hop Heads. Finally, they have something to nod their head to!" JACKSON, a market veteran, previously programmed iHEARTMEDIA Top 40/Rhythmic WBTT (105-5 THE BEAT) for 10 years prior to leaving in DECEMBER 2012.
SUN BROADCAST and JACKSON are staffing up FLY 98.5 now. Send packages to JACKSON at HeyScrappy@hotmail.com.


UPDATE Oct. 10: CBS has given “Ransom” a second season. The original post is below.
Neither move is any kind of surprise, as the two series were the lowest-rated shows on the network this season.
“Training Day,” a series-ification of the 2001 movie that won Denzel Washington an Oscar, debuted on Thursdays in February to modest ratings, averaging a 0.75 among adults 18-49 over six episodes there. CBS then shunted it to Saturdays to play out the remainder of the season. Its 18-49 average for the season as a whole is o.6, along with 3.47 million viewers, on the night it airs.
Star Bill Paxton died in late February, midway through the season (although after production had finished).
“Ransom” was a low-risk play for CBS on Saturday nights, as it was financed mostly by international partners. Had it brought in better ratings than the “Crimetime Saturday” reruns the network usually airs on the night, it could have been a win-win.
That didn’t happen. “Ransom” averaged just a 0.4 among adults 18-49 during its run, tying ABC’s “American Crime” for the lowest rating on the Big 4 networks this season. That’s about what drama repeats typically do for CBS on Saturday, so there was no real upside in keeping “Ransom” around for a second season.
CBS ends up with a .500 batting average for new shows this season. “Doubt,” “The Great Indoors” and “Pure Genius” join “Ransom” and “Training Day” in being canceled, while “Bull,” “Kevin Can Wait,” “MacGyver,” “Man with a Plan” and “Superior Donuts” got second seasons.
The complete list of shows canceled this season is here.


Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) may be back in the minority, but that also means he’s back to the role of professional gadfly. He kicked off the 112th Congress on Monday with a request to new Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to investigate whether a well-known climate skeptic lied to Congress on his CV.
The skeptic in question is Pat Michaels, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. Michaels, unlike many of the kooky climate contrarians that Republicans often dig up to, actually has some bona fides. He has a PhD in ecological climatology and is a senior fellow in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. And unlike some of his fellow skeptics, Michaels will acknowledge that the earth is warming—he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal, nor will he agree that human activity is the major contributing factor.
But Michaels is loathe to admit how much of his income over the years has come from fossil fuel interests, despite evidence that he’s taken quite a bit of it. In his letter to Upton on Monday, Waxman raises the question of whether Michaels “may have provided misleading information about the sources of his funding and his ties to industries opposed to regulation of emissions responsible for climate change” when he testified before the committee in February 2009.
In his curriculum vitae (PDF) provided to the committee at that time, under the section “Financial Support (Over $10,000),” Michaels listed $4.2 million in income, attributing just 3 percent of it to industry sources—excluding several major industry sources that have been disclosed in the course of litigation, including New Hope Environmental Services, Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc., and the free-market think-tank the Heartland Institute.
Asked about whether he is funded by the oil industry in an appearance on CNN last August, Michaels first responded, “Not largely.” He was then asked how much of his funding comes from oil interests, to which he replied, “I don’t know, 40 percent.” That, as Waxman writes, certainly doesn’t match up with the CV he provided last year. (The statement was back in the news last week after a mention in Politico.) Waxman proposes that the committee call Michaels in for a meeting.
So I asked again about whether he would respond to the questions that have been raised about his legitimacy based on this funding. “It’s very clear that nobody tells me what to do,” he said, growing increasingly annoyed. “My answer is it’s clear that nobody tells me what to do, so it doesn’t matter. It’s an irrelevancy. Thank you,” he continued, before hurrying off.
I’m guessing that Upton won’t be rushing to call Michaels in to clarify on this issue, but it’s certainly worth keeping in mind as GOP leadership begins its efforts to undermine climate science in the coming months, as Michaels is one of their favorites.


We could be shivering through the night on what will be the coldest of the autumn so far tonight, with health experts warning the weather could be fatal.
The North East awoke to frozen cars and icy conditions this morning, and despite a dry and sunny day ahead, this evening is expected to get very chilly indeed.
Public Health England is urging people to prepare for the cold snap, warning that it can have serious health implications.
Meteorologist Mark Wilson said while it is unlikely overnight temperatures for the entire UK will drop lower than the coldest of the season so far - which was -12C in parts of Scotland last week - Britain could get its coldest night of autumn on tonight with temperatures in some areas forecast to get as low as -8C.
The North East looks to escape the worst of the cold weather, which will mainly hit southern regions. The minimum temperature for the North East predicted by the Met Office for tonight is -1C.
"For the bulk of the country, it's going to be a cold day. Across much of the southern parts of the country we're expecting harsher frost."
He said:" Although it's going to be cold, there aren't going to be too many hazards."
"There isn't too much water, it's going to be dry."


SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (AP)  A prison guard who admitted to pointing a loaded gun at a driver during a road rage incident near Paso Robles will be sentenced next month.
The Fresno Bee reports (http://bit.ly/1Tp77ed ) 53-year-old Anthony James Behrens was found guilty Friday in the July 2014 incident.
Behrens, a sergeant at Kern Valley State Prison, was riding in a Prius with his family when a Ford Expedition carrying a couple and their two children reportedly merged in front of them. The Prius then got in front of the Expedition and “brake checked” the vehicle, and the driver of the Expedition tailgated the Prius.
Behrens pulled out a loaded handgun and pointed its laser at the Expedition.
Behrens told authorities he had been scared for his family’s safety.
Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 2.


The nation’s largest mobile carrier, Verizon Wireless, is siding with Apple in its fight against the FBI over unlocking an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, The Verge reports.
“Verizon is committed to protecting customer privacy and one of the tools for protecting that privacy is encryption,” Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said.
McAdam joined Apple’s Tim Cook in calling for Congress to arrive at a resolution so that the case isn’t decided by a single judge.
“The case with Apple presents unique issues that should be addressed by Congress, not on an ad-hoc basis,” McAdam said.
Verizon’s position has surprised some because the company helped the NSA with mass surveillance and bulk data-collection programs.
Posted: 2/26/16 at 9:44 AM under News Story.


Kaepernick, a former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, began his silent protest in 2016 by remaining seated during the national anthem.
He said: "When I walked into the team room this morning, there were some people who were fuming".
The advert, titled "Dream Crazy", has Kaepernick narrating over images and footage of various athletes with inspirational stories, including National Basketball Association icon LeBron James, tennis star Serena Williams and Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge.
Some NFL players are supporting Nike's ad, saying Kaepernick sacrificed his life's work and football because of his ideology.
(AAP)LeBron James has said that he stands for 'anybody who believes in change'.
Shortly after Nike announced Colin Kaepernick would be featured in their new "Just Do It" campaign, causing a firestorm on social media, we are getting our first look at the 2 minute commercial. He implores the listener: "Don't ask if your dreams are insane, ask if they're insane enough". "Ask if they're insane enough", James replied with the sportswear giants' motto: "#JustDoIt".
"So don't ask if your dreams are insane, ask if they are insane enough", Kaepernick said at the end of the ad.
Jay Rosenstein, a former CBS Sports executive and an adjunct professor at New York University's Tisch Center for Sports Management, said he's not surprised by what Nike is doing. The NFL has struggled to navigate the controversy as Trump has kept the pressure on while more players joined the protest last season. He has since filed a grievance with the league accusing owners of colluding to keep him off the field.
But Kaepernick and his Nike campaign, which marks the 30th anniversary of Nike's "Just Do It", received plenty of support from the fashion world in attendance Tuesday.
US President Donald Trump has criticized the company for the advertisement.


Maria Butina, accused in the United States of spying for Russia, had wider high-level contacts in Washington than previously known, taking part in 2015 meetings between a visiting Russian official and two senior U.S. officials.
The meetings, disclosed by several people familiar with the sessions and a report prepared by a Washington think tank that arranged them, involved Stanley Fischer, then Federal Reserve vice chairman, and Nathan Sheets, then Treasury undersecretary for international affairs.
Butina traveled to the United States in April 2015 with Alexander Torshin, then the Russian Central Bank deputy governor, and they took part in separate meetings with Fischer and Sheets to discuss U.S.-Russian economic relations during Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration.
The two meetings, which have not been previously reported, reveal a wider circle of high-powered connections that Butina sought with American political leaders and special interest groups.
The think tank, Center for the National Interest, had urged Donald Trump to improve US-Russian relations and to retreat from “Eurasian conflicts” in December 2016. In a report on its earlier activities to improve Russia ties in 2013-2015, CNI outlined meetings it had taken with Obama administration officials during a time when Barack Obama himself pursued a similar policy. The meeting took place near the end of that time, in April 2015. The meeting was ostensibly set up to discuss Torshin’s new appointment as deputy central bank governor.
The timing of this meeting seems significant. By this time, Russia had annexed Crimea more than a year earlier, and overtly invaded eastern Ukraine seven months prior to the meeting. Sanctions had already been applied to Russia, but Obama still wanted to pursue friendlier ties. Torshin’s meeting with Fischer could be explained as a way to coordinate banking systems, but sending an undersecretary of state to a meeting with Torshin signals something more significant.
However, the streak of presidential naïveté on Vladimir Putin didn’t start there, and it didn’t end there either. Butina’s presence as a potential spy is certainly interesting, but so is Torshin’s, who also figures into the “it was the NRA’s fault” narrative. If the Obama administration was granting her and Torshin access to the Undersecretary for International Affairs, it’s tough to blame the NRA or the GOP for a lack of due diligence in engaging with either one of them. Torshin didn’t end up on a sanctions list until April of this year, long after the NRA distanced themselves from him.
Lieu, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre in March, expressing his concern with the NRA’s relationship to Torshin and noting that Torshin “acted as a liaison” during a December 2015 visit to Moscow by several NRA attended by board members.
How deeply disturbing is it, then, that the Obama administration had made itself available to Torshin eight months earlier? Or that it allowed a potential honey-trap spy like Butina to be in the same room as a high-ranking State Department official? The NRA is, after all, a private organization, while the State Department holds a vast store of classified information regarding our foreign policy.
This tends to emphasize just how much of a red herring the NRA thread is. The real story of the Russian disruption operation in 2016 was that it succeeded because the Obama administration failed to prevent it, including people like James Clapper and John Brennan who spend a lot of time on TV shows pointing fingers everywhere else. Obama put a higher priority on engagement with Putin than he did on stopping their hostile intelligence operations in the US, as demonstrated by this meeting and the several opportunities Obama turned down to fight fire with fire.
And now it looks as though they didn’t bother to vet Butina before allowing Fischer and Sheets to meet with her. Will these Obama-era officials be asked to explain themselves, or will they just appear on TV shows to opine endlessly on Trump’s naïveté about Putin?


After winning the day's two biggest prizes in the Republican race for president, Donald Trump was in the mood to celebrate.
JUPITER, Fla. (AP) — After winning the day's two biggest prizes in the Republican race for president, Donald Trump was in the mood to celebrate.
No, not his wins in Michigan and Mississippi. The front-runner for the GOP nomination wanted to celebrate his skill selling things to eat and drink, among other things, defending business ventures that have increasingly come under attack in ads and in debates.
Before Trump's arrival at a news conference at his golf course in Jupiter, Florida, club staff set up displays of Trump-branded products on either side of his podium. There were bottles of Trump red, white and rose wine, cases of Trump water and two butcher blocks heaping with stacks of giant, well-marbled "Trump Steaks."
And it wasn't long after Trump started that he moved past Tuesday night's election results and began to focus on the foodstuffs on display.
"I brought some things up because, he said, 'Water company is gone.' I said, 'It is?' I didn't know that," Trump said.
Trump was referring to a scathing speech delivered last week by 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who sought to undermine Trump's success in this year's campaign by outlining what he called the billionaire's business failures.
"Whatever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there's Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage?" said Romney. "A business genius he is not."
Romney didn't make reference to Trump's defunct bottled water company, Trump Ice, in his remarks. But Trump nonetheless gestured to cases of Trump-branded "Natural Spring Water," bottles of which are available at his hotels and golf clubs.
"He talked about the water company. Well, there's the water company. I mean, we sell water. And we have water, and it's a very successful, you know, it's a private little water company, and I supply the water for all my places, and it's good. But it's very good, "Trump said.
Trump also touted a long list of his other assets, including the Trump International Golf Club in Jupiter, where friends and club members had gathered for the event. He stressed that he owns it and several other clubs outright, and they're all debt-free.
Trump then moved onto the steaks.
"Trump steaks, where are the steaks? Do we have the steaks?" he said. "We have Trump steaks. And by the way, you want to take one, we charge you about, what, 50 bucks a steak?"
But you can't buy "Trump Steaks," not anymore. The ones Romney mentioned in his speech were sold exclusively by The Sharper Image stores in 2007, in a venture that quickly fizzled.
A page on the company's website now reads, "Unfortunately, Trump Steaks are no longer available, but their legacy endures. And, whether you think Donald Trump's candidacy is real steak or just sizzle, we hope you'll enjoy this blast from the past."
A spokeswoman for Trump's campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but the labels on the steaks displayed Tuesday night appeared to match those of a company called Bush Brothers. A club staff member said that's the butcher that supplies the club.
Trump also showed off a copy of Trump Magazine, which is distributed at clubs and isn't the same as the glossy magazine that folded in 2009. He also repeatedly defended his Trump University business seminars, which are the subject of several lawsuits.
"So I wanted to put that to rest: So you have the water, you have the steaks, you have the airline that I sold. I mean, what's wrong with selling?" he said. "Every once in a while you can sell something. You have the wines and all of that. And Trump University, we're going to start it up as soon as I win the lawsuit."


Update at 10:25 p.m. — Arlington County government will be closed Monday. As a result, there will be no curbside trash pickup Monday; service will resume when the county government reopens. Arlington snow crews are also reverting back to “Phase 2” of the county’s snow plan, meaning plows will stop treating neighborhood streets and will resume treating primary and secondary arterial streets only.
The extra burst of snow Sunday evening has caused problems at local airports. There are reports of extensive delays, extended waits on the tarmac and frustrated passengers at Reagan National Airport.
Another impact of the extra burst of snow Sunday evening: Arlington Transit Service.
Update at 9:45 p.m. — The federal government — the parts of it that are not furloughed, at least — is closed Monday, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall is also closed. Among other closures, earlier today Arlington Public Schools announced that Monday will be a snow day, with all classes and activities cancelled.
Earlier: This weekend’s snowstorm isn’t done yet.
A prolonged period of steady snow is blanketing local roads after an afternoon lull that saw Arlington snow crews move their focus from arterial roads to neighborhood streets. The burst of snow has caused treacherous conditions in parts of the county and prompted a number of road closures.
Around 7 p.m., all Metrobus service was suspended amid reports of buses getting stuck on hills. An hour and a half later, Arlington Transit announced that it was suspending service for the rest of the night.
Arlington County Police, Arlington’s Dept of Environmental Services and VDOT are all urging residents to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary tonight into Monday morning.
A Winter Storm Warning remains in effect until midnight tonight.
Arlington appears likely to clock in at around 10 inches of snow accumulation by the time the flakes stop falling, though as much as a foot remains possible.
Among other trouble spots in Arlington, photos and video sent to ARLnow show cars and buses getting stuck on the hills around Rosslyn and Courthouse. And even emergency responders are having trouble; ACFD engine 108 reported around 6:45 p.m. that it had gotten stuck on a hill in the area of Rock Spring Road and 32nd Road N. and needed a tow truck.
Power outages have also been reported in Arlington. As of 6:30 p.m. just over 1,000 Dominion customers were in the dark around the county, primarily in the Tara-Leeway Heights, High View Park and Westover neighborhoods.
Another 1-3 inches of snow is possible through midnight, the National Weather Service said in a Special Weather Statement this evening.
From midnight through 5:30 p.m. today, troopers from Virginia State Police’s Fairfax Division responded to 68 crashes and 81 disabled vehicles around Northern Virginia. VSP responded to 324 crashes statewide so far today.


Beginning at noon, a full four-lane reversal on I-26 in Charleston will begin at the interchange of I-26 and I-526. The full reversal continues west until the I-26 crossover to I-77 just outside Columbia in Lexington County.
This is the third year in a row S.C. highways will be reversed because of storm evacuations.
To help the massive migration, the S.C. Department of Public Safety and the S.C. Department of Transportation will “reverse the direction of traffic along certain evacuation routes to ease the flow of traffic away from the coast,” the governor’s office said in a statement.
For drivers heading from Charleston to Columbia, I-26 will have a full four-lane reversal. The SCDOT reported it will begin at the interchange of I-526 and I-26, with other entry points for those leaving Charleston.
“Once motorists get to Columbia area, we’re going to return the reverse traffic back to the normal configuration just before Interstate 77,” said Rob Perry, SCDOT director of traffic engineering.
When drivers reach that point, SCDOT reported that those in the normal westbound lanes will be sent to I-77, allowing reverse traffic in eastbound lanes to cross over and continue on I-26.
The reversal could create issues for drivers in Columbia looking to take their morning commute.
Setup for the reversal will begin at 5 a.m. and South Carolina Highway Patrol troopers will “flush” traffic at 8 a.m., according to Trooper Bob Beres.
I-26 will not be the only highway to have traffic reversed.
Lane reversals will occur on U.S. Route 501 in multiple spots on the highway which goes from Myrtle Beach to Virginia, according to the statement from the governor’s office. Additionally, Highways 278 and 21 in Beaufort will also reverse, if warranted.
S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster announced a mandatory evacuation of the South Carolina coast, set to begin at noon Tuesday, Sept. 10.
SCDOT has some advice for drivers who are being evacuated. Those motorists are urged to check that they have enough gas to make the drive and are being told not to stop unless it is an emergency.
For the drivers in the reversed lanes, it will be difficult to exit before the interchange since many of the ramps were not designed to accommodate traffic coming from the opposite direction, according to Capt. Kelly Hughes of the S.C. Highway Patrol.
This is not the first time McMaster has ordered an evacuation, that has included lane reversals. As Hurricane Irma approached South Carolina in 2017, McMaster made a similar decree The State reported.
His predecessor, Nikki Haley also ordered an evacuation of coastal counties in 2016, before Hurricane Matthew made landfall in South Carolina. That storm was 1,000 miles away when then Gov. Haley ordered reversed lanes on I-26 before Matthew caused destructive flooding.
Haley’s order for Hurricane Matthew was the first time lanes were reversed to carry more traffic since 1999, when then Gov. Jim Hodges made the decree after many traffic jams from those fleeing Hurricane Floyd, postandcourier.com reported.
A Greenville, South Carolina, woman was the passenger on a motorcycle that crashed on the Foothills Parkway in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and died, while the driver is hospitalized, officials say.


Utah’s GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, retiring from Congress on June 30, will become a contributor to Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network on July 1, the network announced today, confirming one of the worst kept secrets in recent TV-news history.
Chaffetz had represented Utah’s Third Congressional District since November of 2008.
During his time as congressman, he served as the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was a member of the House Judiciary Committee. He also served on the Homeland Security Committee.
Additionally, Mr. Chaffetz had an integral role in many government investigations, including the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal, the Benghazi terrorist attack, the IRS targeting scandal and the Secret Service investigation. Prior to running for Congress in 2008, Mr. Chaffetz worked as campaign manager and chief of staff to former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. (R).
Before his political career, Mr. Chaffetz worked in the local business community for 16 years, specializing in corporate communications work and later owning his own communications firm, Maxtera Utah Inc. He attended Brigham Young University, where he was a starting placekicker on the football team and later graduated with a B.A. in communications.


Chiefs of the Central Bureau of InvestigationEnforcement, Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate have been called by the Central Vigilance Commission to give a detailed update on their probe in the 2G case and discuss the way forward for investigations.
The CBI, which has arrested former telecom minister A Raja and 13 others and booked three companies, will make its presentation on Tuesday, official sources said.
The special court had also framed charges against six corporate honchos -- Reliance ADAG Group Managing Director Gautam Doshi, its senior Vice President Hari Nair, Group President Surendra Pipara, Shahid Usman Balwa, Vinod Goenka and Sanjay Chandra.
All the 17 have been charged under various provisions of the IPC for criminal breach of trust, conspiracy, cheating, forgery and the Prevention of Corruption Act. Barring Raja nd Behura, all are out on bail.
The apex court had also asked the government to initiate process to allot fresh licences based on auction of spectrum.


Locally driven businesses do have control over their online reputations. Find out how you can start managing yours today.
More than 80 percent of us have searched online for businesses in our area and researched product information on the Web before buying locally. Twice as many of us use search engines as printed yellow pages when looking for local business information — and yet only 44 percent of local businesses have a website, according to a 2009 research brief from the Center for Media Research.
If you’re a locally driven business of any kind, creating a Web presence can help you connect with more of your customers and get a leg up on the competition. And it’s easier than you think.
- A home page, with text in the title of the page and in the content that includes your business name, your location, and what your business does.
- An “about” page that offers details such as hours, directions, address and phone number.
Make sure you include your city and state as part of your address. When potential customers search for businesses like yours, search engines will display Web pages from businesses that they know are in the same geographic location as the searcher. Also make sure that the content is in text, not images.
- Include your business description, hours of operation, and any other relevant information.
- Add photos, your website address, phone number, and other contact information.
- Be sure to include all of the relevant categories for your business.
You can claim your listings at Google Places, the Bing Local Listing Center and Yahoo, among others.
Create a Twitter account for your business, as well as a Facebook page that links back to your website (even if you don’t yet have time to participate in social media). These profiles may also appear in search results, so they help you gain visibility. Plus, grabbing the profiles ensures that no one else registers them — so they’re yours once you’re ready to start using them.
Still not convinced? For more information, read about why having a social strategy is so important for local businesses.
Review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor are popular, and information from them appears in search results and map listings. Encourage your customers to leave reviews for you. (Just make sure you don’t try to sway their opinion in ways other than providing superior customer service!) Be sure to monitor these sites for feedback about how to improve.
If you see a negative review, don’t react defensively. Thank the reviewer for the feedback, then describe how you’re going to improve things or how you’ve already taken steps to improve them. Don’t worry if you have a few negative reviews. Consumers can be suspicious of purely positive reviews and usually aren’t unduly influenced by a few negative ones.
Review local directory listings and update any out-of-date information. (Most local directories should let you update inaccurate information for free.) Search-engine maps sometimes use information from these directories, and more than once I’ve navigated to a business via Google Maps only to find the business had moved. Some to directories to check include SuperMedia, MerchantCircle, Citysearch and Yellowbook.
Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook all let businesses add pages so users of their services can “check in.” This is the best kind of free advertising. Once a customer checks in at your location, a message is sent to that customer’s entire friend network. You can’t beat your customers telling their friends about your business. Offer coupons or other incentives to those using the services, and you may generate repeat customers, too.


Tom Bonner is leaving Ebbsfleet United to rejoin their local rivals Dartford.
The centre-half captained Fleet last season but will leave the club when his contract expires at the end of June.
Bonner, 28, becomes Dartford's first signing of the summer.
Dartford manager Tony Burman said: "I am delighted to have Tom back on board for next season.
"He will be a excellent addition to the squad and he has now gained a lot more experience from his time at Cambridge, Dover and Ebbsfleet since leaving us three seasons ago.
"Tom is a good defender and has the hunger to succeed, and I have no doubt that Tom will help the club achieve their targets over the next couple of seasons."
Bonner was a fans favourite during his first spell with the Darts but left in May 2013 alongside team-mate Tom Champion to pursue a full-time career with Cambridge United.
He suffered with injuries during his time with the U's and was loaned out to Dover at the start of the 2014/15 season.
Bonner was part of the Whites side which reached the FA Cup third round that season but agreed a permanent move to Ebbsfleet in January 2015 following Jamie Day's appointment as manager.
Fleet finished eighth in Conference South but spent most of last season top of the table, with Bonner starting 36 of their league games.
However, he was dropped for both legs of the play-off semi-final against Whitehawk and although recalled for the final against Maidstone, he had to play at right-back for the first time in his career.
Bonner will now line up against Daryl McMahon's side in a white shirt next season.


1994 - Religious artwork decorates a motorcycle at the Blessing of the Bikes at St Patrick's Church, 12305 Arcola Road.
1997 - A Suger Daddy Petunia is one of the varieties featured in the new show at the Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory.
1998 - Blackhawk Christian junior Mike Zick crosses Maplecrest Road with only a fraction of the trash he and other students removed from a drainage ditch.
1999 - Sole-o: Karen Gerken is the only member of the Fort Wayne Track Club to run in Monday's Boston Marathon.
2001 - Greg Maxwell, of Maxwell Landscape Contractors, smooths out the final petal of a giant 12-foot pink water lily in the new "Donor Garden", near the entrance to the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo. It's one of the new items for this coming season.
2001 - Area residents line-up at the Main post office to drop off mail and tax returns early Monday morning about 7:30.
2004 - University of St. Francis students (from left) Sarah Boling, Melissa Brey and Heather Treadway are participating in a class where the learn to work in a Red Cross disaster shelter. The trio, all members of the school's Red Cross club went through the 24 hour training class along with a group of Explorer Post members from Churubusco.
2005 - Erin McCray, left, and Hillary Evans, right, of the Allen County Libertarian Party, took part in a Tax Protest Friday evening at the Main Post Office,1501 S Clinton. The protesters had signs, and were handing out literature to any willing takers, as people drove up to drop off their income tax.
2008 - The Citizen's Academy at the Allen County Police Department was treated to a display of explosives, including blowing up a car Wednesday evening.
2008 - Bishop Luers' Amy Morrison delivers a pitch in the Knights' 12-2 win over Concordia Lutheran in six innings on Wednesday at Klotz Park. Morrison pitched all six innings, holding the Cadets to four hits and recording 11 strike outs.
2009 - Jake Patton, 4, who's dad, Travis came up with the winning name for the TinCaps threw out a pitch for his Dad during the opening ceremonies at Parkview Field Thursday night.
2009 - Fireworks light the downtown sky after the Fort Wayne TinCaps' home-opening game on Thursday at Parkview Field.
2012 - Erin and Ken Loechner stand in the home they are remodeling extensively on Fort Wayne's southwest side. They collaborate on building and videotaping many of the design projects Erin shares with fans through her website, Design for Mankind, and as a featured blogger on the HGTV website.
2014 - Mark Phenicie, owner of Phenicie Restoration in Huntertown, explains his spaceship artwork that will be on display at the First Presbyterian Church.
2015 - Maliha, the baby Red Panda at the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo is about ready to be weaned from her mother. Friday afternoon her keeper was trying to interest her in some bamboo. She is just over thirteen weeks old.
2015 - An old house in the 2900 block of South Wayne Ave. was brought down Wednesday morning.
1994 – Religious artwork decorates a motorcycle at the Blessing of the Bikes at St Patrick’s Church, 12305 Arcola Road.
1997 – A Suger Daddy Petunia is one of the varieties featured in the new show at the Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory.
1998 – Blackhawk Christian junior Mike Zick crosses Maplecrest Road with only a fraction of the trash he and other students removed from a drainage ditch.
1999 – Sole-o: Karen Gerken is the only member of the Fort Wayne Track Club to run in Monday’s Boston Marathon.
2001 – Greg Maxwell, of Maxwell Landscape Contractors, smooths out the final petal of a giant 12-foot pink water lily in the new “Donor Garden”, near the entrance to the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo. It’s one of the new items for this coming season.
2001 – Area residents line-up at the Main post office to drop off mail and tax returns early Monday morning about 7:30.
2004 – University of St. Francis students (from left) Sarah Boling, Melissa Brey and Heather Treadway are participating in a class where the learn to work in a Red Cross disaster shelter. The trio, all members of the school’s Red Cross club went through the 24 hour training class along with a group of Explorer Post members from Churubusco.
2005 – Erin McCray, left, and Hillary Evans, right, of the Allen County Libertarian Party, took part in a Tax Protest Friday evening at the Main Post Office,1501 S Clinton. The protesters had signs, and were handing out literature to any willing takers, as people drove up to drop off their income tax.
2008 – The Citizen’s Academy at the Allen County Police Department was treated to a display of explosives, including blowing up a car Wednesday evening.
2008 – Bishop Luers’ Amy Morrison delivers a pitch in the Knights’ 12-2 win over Concordia Lutheran in six innings on Wednesday at Klotz Park. Morrison pitched all six innings, holding the Cadets to four hits and recording 11 strike outs.
2009 – Jake Patton, 4, who’s dad, Travis came up with the winning name for the TinCaps threw out a pitch for his Dad during the opening ceremonies at Parkview Field Thursday night.
2009 – Fireworks light the downtown sky after the Fort Wayne TinCaps’ home-opening game on Thursday at Parkview Field.
2012 – Erin and Ken Loechner stand in the home they are remodeling extensively on Fort Wayne’s southwest side. They collaborate on building and videotaping many of the design projects Erin shares with fans through her website, Design for Mankind, and as a featured blogger on the HGTV website.
2014 – Mark Phenicie, owner of Phenicie Restoration in Huntertown, explains his spaceship artwork that will be on display at the First Presbyterian Church.
2015 – Maliha, the baby Red Panda at the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo is about ready to be weaned from her mother. Friday afternoon her keeper was trying to interest her in some bamboo. She is just over thirteen weeks old.
2015 – An old house in the 2900 block of South Wayne Ave. was brought down Wednesday morning.


As court weighs efficacy of antitrust settlement, Microsoft is trumpeting its compliance efforts.
A federal court is still weighing the efficacy of a proposed antitrust settlement signed between Microsoft Corp. and the Department of Justice in November, but the Redmond, Wash., software maker nonetheless must meet several deadlines under the deal this month. As the same court considers whether stricter antitrust penalties are necessary, Microsoft is trumpeting the steps it is already taking to remedy its illegal conduct.
The settlement inked with the Justice Department and nine states is considerably more lenient than an alternative remedy proposal sought by nine other states. Both proposals address the need for Microsoft to disclose more technical information, give developers a way to remove access to the companys middleware and provide greater flexibility to OEMs, but the proposals differ dramatically in the degree to which Microsoft must pursue those goals.
Tomorrow, under the terms of the settlement proposal, Microsoft will launch a program to license 113 communications protocols for other vendors to use to interoperate with Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP and future versions of Windows. The licensing program, which the company described as novel, is based on 12 tasks that reflect how Microsofts server operating systems interoperate with desktop operating systems.
While the alternative remedy proposal sought by the non-settling states requires Microsoft to share technical information more broadly, the Justice Department settlement permits Microsoft to charge royalties and reasonable licensing fees -- which the company is not listing publicly -- for the protocols.
"Theres very substantial IP and valuable technology in these protocols," Brad Smith, senior vice president of law and corporate affairs, said in a conference call with reporters this morning. "The prices for the protocols are very small relative to the price of the products."
Beginning Aug. 28, Microsoft will also make available for free 272 internal application programming interfaces for five middleware features defined in the proposed settlement: Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger, Outlook Express and the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine. The stricter remedy proposal sought by the states more broadly defines the scope of middleware subject to the anti-trust penalties.


"The Town Wall [Pink Lane, NE1 5HX] is such a well designed, welcoming, and relaxation-inducing pub, mixing design of the past with modern art from the likes of Mr Scruff, amongst others. Great beers and great food, a lovely post-gig hang out.
"Best Beer: Guinness, nice and cold and sipped slow."


Lancaster maintained the pressure on leaders Longridge on Saturday in the Moore and Smalley Palace Shield Premier Division.
Brendan Hetherington’s men retained their position in second spot in the table after crushing Thornton Cleveleys at Illawalla.
Lancaster posted a huge 293-8 after winning the toss and electing to bat and that proved to be a daunting target for the home side, who folded to 86-9 off 21 overs.
The visitors did not get off to the best of starts as both openers departed for low scores. Joseph Hills struck 10 before he was snaffled by Sam Robinson off the bowling of Jordan Beech, while the same bowler also accounted for Laurie Atkinson (9) – caught by Jack Northrop.
Ben Simm did not last long before he offered a catch to Joshua Sackfield off the bowling of Greg Tirrell for five.
However, Charlie Swarbrick then took charge as he took the game away from the home side with a superlative knock.
He struck a brilliant 80 off just 56 balls – a knock which included 12 boundaries and two sixes. He eventually perished edging Daniel Howard behind to Joshua Vincent.
Swarbrick enjoyed some excellent support from Thomas Newark, who struck 21 before being trapped in front for 21, while George Marshall hit 28 before being caught by Jordan Beech off the bowling of Cameron Chisholm.
Hetherington and Elliot Mason then gave the innings fresh impetus with a superb partnership down the order.
The skipper struck seven fours and two maximum hits in a 60-ball half-century before being run out by Vincent.
Mason’s unbeaten 40 came at almost a run a ball and also included seven boundaries.
Lee Sparks became the final victim of the innings when he was bowled by Beech for eight going for a big hit.
The writing was on the wall for Cleveleys as soon as Vincent was removed by Swarbrick for a duck at the top of the order. Fellow opener Jon Eade did not last long before he was back in the pavilion, caught by Lee Sparks off Swarbrick for six.
No batsman was able to feel comfortable in the middle as wickets continued to tumble at regular intervals. Joshua Sackfield hit 12 before being caught by Ben Simm off George Marshall and Chisholm was bowled by Swarbrick for nine.
Daniel Howard top scored with 22 before he saw his stumps shattered by Swarbrick, who then claimed his fifth wicket by trapping Northrop in front for a duck.
Richard Jenkinson was left stranded on 13 not out as Simm picked up two scalps and Swarbrick grabbed the final wicket of the match to finish with outstanding figures of 6-32.


Conference promotes science, tech, engineering and math careers: El Camino College will sponsor a conference Friday for students interested in careers in science, technology, engineering and math. The STEM Student conference will offer professional development opportunities for students. It will begin at 8 a.m. in the Marsee Auditorium. El Camino College is at 16007 Crenshaw Blvd. near Torrance.


EDITORIAL: Brace yourselves, South Carolina. Things could get ugly as candidates in key races head to runoffs.
McMaster, who skipped several debates leading up to the primary, shouldn't assume he is a shoo-in against a well-financed Warren.
In the end, having the backing of President Donald Trump wasn't enough to save incumbent Gov. Henry McMaster from a runoff in two weeks.
Greenville businessman John Warren's outsider status – he's never held public office – earned him Betsy Baumgardner's vote Tuesday. Voters like Baumgardner propelled Warren into a runoff with McMaster, the top vote-getter by a large margin.
Baumgardner said she was looking for someone "new and different."
"I'm just tired of the old guard in Columbia," she said. "Columbia's gone bad and I want to make a change."
The crowded Republican primary field made it difficult for McMaster to win outright, a fact that worked to Warren's advantage. A late push of campaign ads might have helped Warren edge out third-place finisher Catherine Templeton. And Templeton's controversial television ad, where she pretended to shoot a rattlesnake, likely backfired.
Kristen Vick, a Virginia native who now lives in Greenville, voted for Templeton because McMaster ran on an "I'm with Trump" platform. She cast her vote at Springfield Baptist Church on East McBee Avenue. After researching the candidates, she felt Templeton had the best shot against McMaster, who has been in South Carolina politics for decades.
Warren will have his work cut out for him in the next two weeks. In a speech to supporters Tuesday, he challenged McMaster to "come out of hiding" and face him in three debates, saying he wants the governor to answer tough questions about what he plans to do if re-elected.
McMaster, who skipped several debates leading up to the primary, shouldn't assume he is a shoo-in against a well-financed Warren. It's likely that the contest will get ugly, and Warren should prepare himself for incoming fire from both McMaster and Trump.
As expected, far fewer voters cast Democratic ballots in the primary. Columbia attorney James Smith won enough votes to win the primary outright, besting Greenville native and Florence attorney Marguerite Willis, and Phil Noble, a technology consultant from Charleston.
Gwendolyn Young cast her vote for Willis Tuesday, while expressing disappointment that the Democratic Party didn't do more to get voters out to the polls.
"We have a major political and social shift in our culture," she said, adding that it shouldn't be a foregone conclusion that Democrats aren't contenders in major races.
In the hotly contested race for the 4th Congressional District seat now held by Trey Gowdy, runoffs will decide the Republican and Democratic candidates who will advance to the general election.
Lee Bright and either William Timmons or Dan Hamilton will square off in the Republican runoff. Bright led all Republican candidates in the 4th District contest, but because the race for the second spot was so close there will be a recount. On the Democratic side, Brandon Brown and Doris Lee Turner will compete for the nomination.
The Greenville News will host two 4th Congressional District candidate forums to give voters a chance to hear from the top two vote-getters in each party's primary. The forum for the top two Democratic candidates will be held from 7-8 p.m. Wednesday, June 20, at the newspaper's offices at 32 E. Broad Street in downtown Greenville. The Republican candidate forum will be held on Thursday, June 21 at the same time and place.
Brace yourselves. Candidates in several key races will be campaigning hard to get you to return to the polls and cast your vote for them. The good news: There will be fewer contenders to sort through.


Now, though, is it time for the Cowboys to turn their attention to running back? It’s a deep class with plenty of options remaining outside of Gurley and Gordon to help fill the void left when DeMarco Murray bolted to the Eagles in free agency.
The Cowboys are familiar with this running back class, of course, bringing in a total of six backs for pre-draft visits, including Indiana’s Tevin Coleman and Boise State’s Jay Ajayi, who remain on the board.
So do other quality running backs in Miami’s Duke Johnson, Alabama’s T.J. Yeldon and Northern Iowa’s David Johnson.
But Jerry Jones and executive vice president Stephen Jones reiterated late Thursday that running back still isn’t a priority. They feel comfortable with the group they have for now with free agent acquisition Darren McFadden to go along with returners Joseph Randle, Lance Dunbar and Ryan Williams.


Attic Labs, the creator of Noms, an open-source decentralized database, announced today that is being acquired by Salesforce. Terms of the deal, Salesforce’s first acquisition of 2018, were undisclosed. Last year, the company only bought digital creative agency Sequence, according to Crunchbase, taking a break from an acquisition spree in 2016 when it snapped up more than a dozen companies.
Noms was launched in August 2016, at the same time Attic Labs announced it had raised an $8.1 million Series A round led by Greylock. Founders Aaron Boodman and Rafael Weinstein, along with many other members of Attic Labs’ team, previously worked on Google Chrome. Boodman also created Greasemonkey.
Like Git, Noms lets users replicated data and edit it offline on multiple machines, then syncs up the edits. It also emphasizes versioning so edits don’t destroy previous versions of data, making it easier to retrieve if necessary. Unlike Git, however, Noms is written to store structured data instead of text files and support very large data sets. In its announcement, Attic Labs said Noms will remain open source. In a Noms forum post, Boodman added that Attic Labs has “no immediate plans for additional work” on the database.


Zardari: "Accusations ... only complicate the already complex situation"
(CNN) -- Pakistan's president Tuesday pointed to a weekend raid in Kashmir as proof of his government's commitment against terrorism, urging India to "pause and take a breath" before blaming Pakistan for the November massacre in Mumbai.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari addressed India in an opinion piece in The New York Times.
In a sometimes deeply personal opinion piece in The New York Times, President Asif Ali Zardari wrote that his government, which took office earlier this year, was also the target of Islamic extremists -- "and we continue to be their victims."
But Sunday's raid on a camp used by the group India blames for the Mumbai attacks shows Pakistan is willing to crack down on "non-state actors" operating on its territory, he wrote.
"We understand the domestic political considerations in India in the aftermath of Mumbai," he wrote. "Nevertheless, accusations of complicity on Pakistan's part only complicate the already complex situation."
Pakistani security forces raided a camp near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, on Sunday and arrested 15 people, a Pakistani security official told CNN.
"As was demonstrated in Sunday's raids, which resulted in the arrest of militants, Pakistan will take action against the non-state actors found within our territory, treating them as criminals, terrorists and murderers," Zardari wrote. "Not only are the terrorists not linked to the government of Pakistan in any way, we are their targets and we continue to be their victims."
Zardari's wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed in December 2007 in the second of two attempts on her life after she returned from exile that October. The president invoked her death to express sympathy for India's victims, writing, "I feel this pain every time I look into the eyes of my children."
"The Mumbai attacks were directed not only at India, but also at Pakistan's new democratic government and the peace process with India that we have initiated," he wrote. "Supporters of authoritarianism in Pakistan and non-state actors with a vested interest in perpetuating conflict do not want change in Pakistan to take root."
Zardari wrote that militants in his country have been strengthened by the United States and its allies which empowered "the most fanatic extremists" to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the Cold War.
The Pakistani president never mentioned his country's past support of LeT, which Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, helped create to fight against Indian rule in Kashmir in the 1990s.
LeT has denied any role in the Mumbai attacks, and Pakistan has rejected accusations that the government supports terrorist groups.
Under pressure from the U.S., Pakistan banned LeT after a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.
Citing American intelligence and counterterrorism officials, The New York Times reported on Monday that LeT continues to receive assistance from the ISI which has allowed it to "quietly gain strength in recent years."
Zardari's government -- which took power earlier this year -- has attempted to reform the ISI, including appointing a new chief in September.
A key component to Pakistan's fight against terrorism is a strong economy and government, and the world "must act" to ensure that, Zardari wrote.
Pakistani was recently approved for a $7.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help it avoid an economic collapse.
Zardari warned that the terrorist groups are "trying to provoke" a war between India and Pakistan, something that his country is committed to avoiding through diplomacy.
"In the current environment, reconciliation and rapprochement is the best revenge against the dark forces that are trying to provoke a confrontation between Pakistan and India, and ultimately a clash of civilizations," the president said.


My 401(k) stinks. What are my options?
Q. I don't like the choices in my 401(k) and the expenses are high. I know I can do an IRA, but then I can't save as much. How else can I save the same as in the 401(k) in a tax-deferred investment with lower expenses?
A. Although you may not be very excited about the choices and fees in your 401(k) plan, it is hard to beat the tax advantages of 401(k) contributions - getting a deduction against current income and tax-free growth.
Don't just abandon your plan.
You should at least take advantage of any matching funds offered by your employer, said Chip Wieczorek, a certified financial planner and investment advisor with Tradition Capital Management in Summit.
After that, he said, you can use other vehicles to supplement your 401(k) contribution.
Wieczorek said a healthcare savings account (HSA) one way to save funds for retirement - if you qualify.
"An HSA is a tax-advantaged medical savings account available those enrolled in a high-deductible health plan," he said. "The funds contributed to an account are not subject to federal income tax and can roll over and accumulate year to year if they are not spent."
For 2018, the contribution limits are $3,450 for singles and $6,850 for married couples and families, plus there's a $1,000 catch up for those over 55, he said.
"HSAs are owned by the individual and can be invested like an IRA," he said. "Withdrawals for medical purposes are tax-free and funds can be withdrawn for any purpose after age 65 and would be subject to income tax."
Wieczorek said you may also want to consider a Roth IRA.
Because Roth IRAs are not subject to income tax when funds are withdrawn, this is the equivalent of putting more money into a traditional IRA.
"For example, if a client chooses to withdraw $10,000 from a Roth IRA and they are in a 25 percent tax bracket, this is the equivalent of taking $12,500 out of a traditional IRA before taxes," he said.
Good luck with your savings options.


PUCGTT: Commissioners and other members of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) at centre along with the representatives of GTT on the left and representatives of the Guyana Consumers Association at right.
Seeking to justify its application to increase wireline access and landline metered charges for intra-network calls, the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) has told the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) that it is necessary for the liberalisation of the telecoms sector.
However, its application is being opposed by a local consumers group over the company’s failure to fulfil its contractual obligations.
Speaking at a hearing on Wednesday at Duke Lodge, Mark Reynolds, head of Legal and Regulatory Affairs at GTT, explained that the present application seeks to address the gap that exists between the cost of the provision of service for landline or copper residential access and the current tariff.
Reynolds said that a balance in tariff would improve the telecommunications sector, which would encourage service providers to invest in technology. “The act of moving towards more balanced tariffs is known as rebalancing in the telecommunications industry. It’s a normal practice and every country in the telecommunications industry has done this prior to liberalisation. The reform will provide financial incentive to GTT and to all the service providers in the future to expanded service to all consumers,” he explained while stating that the recommendation for rebalancing was done by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in 2001.
He also referenced several countries, including Jamaica, Mexico and Belize, where the rebalancing was done prior to liberalisation.
“It is part of the process of stimulating competition and ensuring proper indicators are given to competitors or new entrants in terms of what is the actual cost of providing service to consumers,” Reynolds explained.
However, Guyana Consumers Association (GCA) President Patrick Dial rebutted Reynold’s arguments, while saying that the comparisons that were made were unfair since the factors in the different countries were not similar to those in Guyana.
“The ITU statement was made 17 years ago and time has changed and there’s nothing permanent and therefore whatever was there has to be re-evaluated. And we are saying in this situation that those references cannot apply because there is no direct reference to Guyana, and Guyana’s situation is both peculiar to itself and particular because it is a monopoly and these references referred to a free market. Absolutely none refers to a monopoly,” Dial said.
GTT has also said that the increases would help it achieve its guaranteed rate of return but Dial argued that an entitlement should be dependent on the company meeting its obligations.
“…When GTT came here, they [were] contracted to provide landline telephones to the entire coastal population and in six interior areas which were identified. GTT has done nothing of the sort and even on the coast here people want, there are areas where there are thirty something thousands of people want landlines and can’t get it. Until GTT satisfies these things, and this is not the only ones, there are other things. Until GTT satisfies these things I cannot see them getting an entitlement. An entitlement is dependent on your performance,” Dial argued.
Meanwhile, Delreo Newman, GTT’s Director of Inter-regional and Government Affairs, said the company is seeking a $50 increase, which he said is equivalent to 6.6% as well as another 6% in six months for local or intra-lateral calling rates.
“According to the model, if we were to maintain the same number of subscribers, all things being equal, if we’re to get a balanced tariff and that is if we are to make no return on the access lines, we would have to increase prices approximately by $2,700 more than what it currently is. That would be a balanced tariff,” Newman said.
He added that other than the 6% increase, persons who opt in to the “lifeline” service would not see any further increase to the rate.
“Also, I would like to remind the Commission that the Bank of Guyana reported that inflation for 2017 was just shy of five percent, so really we are seeing a real rate of increase of just over one percent,” he said.
Newman also noted that they will also be providing their customers with 10 minutes of local calls free and five minutes of international calls free every month.
“Currently, 38% of our customers make calls for 10 minutes or less and 46% of our customers make 5 minutes of inter calls or less. So almost 40% of customers would not see another rate increase if they opted for the lifeline service,” he said.
However, GCA advisor and former GTT CEO, Yog Mahadeo noted that the GCA is of the view that liberalisation is not something that should be used or abused and that when the lawmakers of the country were thinking of liberalising the telecommunications sector, they would have thought about the welfare of the country and the consumers by extension, along with the welfare of the companies and investors. “We would ask that your respectable office be mindful of the vision in this country in liberalisation,” he said.
Mahadeo also said that despite being advisor to the Association for more than two years, he has only seen about one application by GTT that referenced figures, and their absence results in the organisation not being able to have a holistic view of the situation and the company’s reason for its application.
Following the submissions by the GCA, GTT, Ramon Gaskin and clarifications being given to the Commissioners, the matter was adjourned until November 20th by Chairwoman of the Commission Della Britton.


Venom is finally out, Aquaman releases a 5 minute preview. What upcoming superhero movie are you most excited about? Also on today's show: Venom, A Star Is Born, Avengers 4 Captain America, Spider-Man: Far From Home villain, Daredevil Season 3, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Aquaman, Hellboy, Star Wars The Mandalorian, Vice, Holmes and Watson, Heathers, Black Mirror Choose Your Own Adventure, The Main IN The High Castle, Stallone-aissance, Creed 2, Rambo 5, Mega Man Movie, American Vandal Season 2, Jack Ryan.


Andrew Ferguson resigned from the role of CFO at Ruralco Holdings Limited on 30 July.
Having been in the CFO role for more than eight years, Ferguson worked for NRMA Tourism and Leisure and Jetset Travelworld Group before joining Ruralco Holdings Limited in April 2012.
The resignation follows on from Ruralco’s offer to acquire Elders Rural Services which was rejected in June by the Elders Board.
“The Elders Board has rejected a bid for its Rural Services business, while it has entered into final negotiations for the sale of Futuris Automotive (Futuris),” Elders said in a statement in June.
In July, Ruralco entered into a 50:50 joint venture with global agribusiness CHS to help operate and grow its grain marketing business Agfarm.
Ruralco’s managing director, John Maher, thanked Ferguson for his service of 16 months as CFO.
The company is currently working with Hattonneale to search for a new CFO and has appointed someone internally to act in the role during the interim.
CFO World has contacted Ruralco for further information.


New Delhi: It is a common feature with almost all aircraft nowadays to have onboard transponders, which connect to secondary ground-based radars spread along the flight paths to help track movement of airplanes, and also serve as a vital communication link between the crew and the ground stations.
But imagine a situation when a hijacker switches off this transponder to take full control of the aircraft! Can it still be located?
The answer is ‘yes´, with the help of primary radars that monitor the movement of planes continuously. There are alternative means of communication, too, through which a pilot can send an SOS meassage.
In its efforts to enhance primary radar coverage across the country and to meet challenges like ever-growing air traffic, Airports Authority of India is putting in place a series of radars and other high-tech equipment not only to address the security concerns but also to beef up communication, navigation and collision avoidance network.
Concerned over the growing density of air traffic over major metros like Delhi and Mumbai, AAI is also ‘sectorising´ airspaces over busy airports to enhance safety and reduce the workload of air traffic control officers (ATCOs), AAI sources said.
“Work is also going on to connect the civil and military radar network, and the launch of ₹ 774-crore GPS-aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system by 2010 is being eagerly awaited to enhance navigational accuracy to a great extent," the sources said.
Apart from providing seamless navigation over the Indian airspace and waters, it would facilitate more precise control of arrival or departure of an aircraft from anywhere in this part of the world, not just India, they added.