Inflated Duck Lands Russian Activist in Jail

A St. Petersburg activist has been handed a stint behind bars for displaying an inflated duck from an apartment window during a protest last month.

The yellow duck has come to symbolize corruption in Russia after opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s high-profile 2016 investigation into Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s alleged summer home suggested that it included an exclusive home for ducks.

St. Petersburg police detained Artyom Goncharenko on Sunday for showing a giant inflated duck from an apartment window during Navalny’s election boycott demonstration on Jan. 28, local youth activists said.  

The OVD-info police monitoring group cited Goncharenko’s fellow activist Yaroslav Putrov as confirming that police kept Goncharenko overnight because of the inflated duck.

The court sentenced Artyom Goncharenko to 25 days for violating public assembly rules, the St. Petersburg court system announced Monday.

Navalny, who was charged with violating the same public assembly rules for a brief appearance at the Jan. 28 boycott, has been barred from presidential elections in March due to fraud charges his supporters say are politically motivated.

Police suspect Slovak investigative journalist murdered for his work

PRAGUE (Reuters) - A Slovak journalist shot dead with his girlfriend was probably targeted for his investigative work, police said on Monday, a case that has shocked the small central European country and highlighted public concerns about corruption.

Jan Kuciak, 27, had reported for the news site Aktuality.sk on fraud cases, often involving businessmen with connections to Slovakia’s ruling party and other politicians. He and his girlfriend were found dead on Sunday at his home in Velka Maca, 65 km (40 miles) east of the capital Bratislava.

Aktuality’s publisher Axel Springer condemned the “cruel assassination” of its journalist while the international group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it was appalled.

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Slovakia’s leaders promised to bring the perpetrators to justice, with the government offering a 1 million euro reward for information leading to an arrest.

“It seems that the most likely version is a motive connected to the investigative work of the journalist,” Slovak police chief Tibor Gaspar told a televised news conference.

Kuciak’s last story for Aktuality, on Feb. 9, looked at transactions by firms linked to businessman Marian Kocner and connected to a Bratislava luxury apartment complex that became the center of a political scandal last year. 

Kocner could not be reached for comment on Monday but told the Slovak public broadcaster he had no connection to the case.

A long-time Bratislava-based investigative journalist, Tom Nicholson, told the news sits Dennik N that he had spoken to Kuciak a week ago about a case they both were looking at involving suspected Italian mafia abuse of EU funds in Slovakia.

“If it is proven that the death of the investigative reporter was connected with his journalistic work, it would be an unprecedented attack on freedom of speech and democracy in Slovakia,” Prime Minister Robert Fico said.

Slovakia’s economy has boomed and living standards have risen sharply since it joined the European Union in 2004, but many Slovaks say their country still fails to defend the rule of law, especially in punishing corruption and cronyism. 

PROTESTS OVER ALLEGED CRONYISM

The case connected to the apartment complex helped touch off protests in 2017 seeking the resignation of Interior Minister Robert Kalinak over business dealings with property developer Ladislav Basternak, who has been investigated over possible tax fraud. Both have denied wrongdoing in their dealings.

“We are shocked and stunned about the news that Jan Kuciak and his companion obviously have been the victims of a cruel assassination,” publisher Ringier Axel Springer Slovakia said in a statement.

It said there were “justified suspicions” that the murder was connected to Kuciak’s “current research”, but declined to say what that research involved.

A group of 14 editors-in-chief of Slovak publications released a statement calling on the state to solve the case and help to safeguard journalists’ work.

Fico convened an emergency meeting with Kalinak, the attorney general, the national chief of police and the head of the state intelligence service.

Kuciak’s killing dismayed EU officials, coming a few months after Malta’s best-known investigative journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was killed by a car bomb.

“Shocked by the murder of a journalist in the EU. No democracy can survive without the free press, which is why journalists deserve respect and protection,” deputy European Commission chief Frans Timmermans tweeted. “Justice must be served.”

Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka and Robert Muller in Prague, Alastair Macdonald in Brussels and Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt; Editing by Michael Kahn and Mark Heinrich 

Bali hopes to regain paradise island status with mass cleanup

Thousands will join the One Island One Voice cleanup of beaches, rivers and junglesThousands will join the One Island One Voice cleanup of beaches, rivers and jungles

Bali is a small island ill-equipped to cope with endless hotel developments and the millions of tourists that visit each year.

Overwhelmed by tides of waste and decades of mass tourism, to some, the Indonesian island of Bali is a paradise long lost.

This weekend, however, thousands of people will join in an effort to rid its coastline, rivers and jungles of rubbish and restore its natural beauty.

The mass cleanup is the initiative of One Island One Voice(OIOV), an umbrella movement of organisations and individuals wanting to reduce waste and create a “greener, cleaner Bali”.

The movement includes groups such as Bye Bye Plastic Bags, an NGO founded by two Balinese teenage sisters, Melati and Isabel Wijsen, who want Bali to ban plastic bags.

Melati and Isabel Wijsen started Bye Bye Plastic Bags after being inspired by a lesson at school.

“This event is not only a cleanup action, it is a chance to raise awareness and understanding about what really happens in Bali,” said Rima Agustina, one of the coordinators.

She said the action was as much about changing attitudes as cleaning up beaches. “All it takes is one or two hours of picking up trash and for most people the mindset is completely transformed. They would start thinking that those single-use plastics give more harm than benefits to community.”

Bali’s beaches have been swamped by unsightly mounds of rubbish for months, much of it plastic washed in from neighbouring Java during the annual rainy season – or what Balinese call rubbish season.

The waste has become such an issue that tourists are being scared away.

“Many tourists have reported that they don’t want to come back to Bali after seeing how bad the trash is,” said Sara Craves, an OIOV spokeswoman.

Indonesia is the second-largest plastic polluter in the world after China, with 200,000 tonnes of plastic flowing into its oceans via rivers and streams each year.

The initiative echoes other movements around the world trying to tackle the steady burial of the earth’s beauty under mounds of consumer jetsam.

Volunteers in Mumbai have been waging war on detritus on the city beaches for several years. Readers of this series, The Upside, have been in touch to point to local initiatives everywhere from Devizes in England to Lodwar in Kenya. 

The OIOV initiative will collect tonnes of rubbish in every region in Bali and take it to village-scale and industrial sorting centres. Some will be upcycled or turned into EcoBricks.

The significant quantities of waste that flow over from Indonesia’s larger islands are one element of the problem in Bali.

A small island ill-equipped to cope with endless hotel developments and the millions of tourists that visit each year, Bali alone produces about 5,000 cubic metres of waste a day.

With five legal rubbish dumps on the island, only about 25% of its waste is collected through official channels. The rest is burned, or dumped on roadsides and mountains and in rivers and the ocean.

Harriet Burrows, a British teacher from Bali’s Green School, will be attending cleanups on Saturday, accompanied by kindergarten and high school students and their parents in what she says is a whole-community event.

“People can take part in three cleans in one day, which is pretty incredible,” said Burrows. “So you can go from where you live to the beaches where you walk your dog, to the beaches where you surf, so it’s the idea of really focusing in on places that make up this experience of living in Bali.”

Saturday’s event even has its own theme song, Satu Pulau Satu Suara, or One island one voice, a collaboration between local and international musicians that calls for the island to be left “just the way we found her”.

The cleanup organisers say they do not expect to turn Bali’s rubbish woes around overnight.

“Cleanups are not the solution,” said Craves. “They are just the way to raise awareness and a way to bring people together, and get them involved in the problem so we can start to find solution.” 

'It's never been this extreme': Arctic warmer than Europe

Oslo: A freak warming around the North Pole is sending a blast of Arctic cold over Europe in a sign of "wacky" weather that may happen more often with man-made global warming, scientists say.

On the northern tip of Greenland, the Cape Morris Jesup meteorological site has had a record-smashing 61 hours of temperatures above freezing so far in 2018, linked to a rare retreat of sea ice in the Arctic winter darkness.

"It's never been this extreme," said Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI).

Warmth was coming into the Arctic both up from the Atlantic and through the Bering Strait, driving and cold air south.

Around the entire Arctic region, temperatures are now about 20C above normal, at minus 8C, according to DMI calculations.

To the south, a rare snow storm hit Rome on Monday and some Brussels mayors planned to detain homeless overnight if they refused shelter with temperatures set to fall as low as minus 10C in the coming week.

A bicycle is parked in front the ancient Colosseum during a snowfall in Rome.

Hit by easterly winds from Siberia, cities from Warsaw to Oslo were colder than minus 8C.

As long ago as 1973, a study suggested that an ice-free Arctic Ocean could make regions further south colder.

That "warm Arctic, cold continent" (WAC#C) pattern is sometimes dubbed "wacc-y" or "wacky" among climate scientists.

"Wacky weather continues with scary strength and persistence," tweeted Professor Lars Kaleschke, a professor at the University of Hamburg.

Sculptor Francesca Antonello moulds snow into a face as people look out towards the ancient Roman Forum covered in white.

"The question is whether this weather will happen more often. This is just one event so it's hard to make a causal relationship," he told Reuters.

Scientists say a long-term shrinking of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, linked to global warming, exposes warmer water below that releases more heat into the atmosphere.

That in turn may be disrupting the high altitude jet stream.

"The jet stream becomes wavier, meaning that colder air can penetrate further south and warmer air further north," said Nalan Koc, research director of the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Arctic Ocean sea ice is at a record low for late February at 14.1 million square km, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

That is about a million less than normal, or roughly the size of Egypt. 

Terrorists must be treated like paedophiles and have their children removed says UK's top anti-terrorism cop

 Terrorists should have their children taken off them in the same way that paedophiles do, Britain's outgoing top anti-terror policeman has said.

Assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police, Mark Rawley, said that children of terrorists were exposed to environments equally as "wicked" as victims of paedophiles were and so should be afforded the same protection.

In his valedictory speech, he told the Policy Exchange: "If you know parents are interested in sex with children, or if you know parents believe that people of their faith or their belief, should hate everybody else and grow up to kill people, for me those things are equally wicked environments to expose children to."

In November 2017, a mother of five was convicted of posting a terrorist propaganda on social media but was spared jail so she could care for her children.

"Whilst the family courts have really rolled their sleeves up, I am not yet sure, we have yet got our heads round how to deal with, if you have got parents who are effectively terrorists, convicted of sharing terrorist propaganda.

Well-wishers leave a message on London Bridge following the June terror attack last year

"Does that in of itself pose such a risk to the children so that the children should be treated the same as those whose parents are paedophiles?" Rawley said.

He also sounded the alarm over the rising threat of the extreme right in the UK and that four extreme right-wing inspired plots were thwarted in 2017.

Darren Osborne was convicted of the Finsbury Park mosque attack.

He considered that there were parallels between such groups like Isis and figures like Anjem Choudary with groups like National Action and former EDL leader Tommy Robinson.

Islamist and extreme right-wing ideologies "have a great deal in common," with their shared goals to sow division and generate distrust in the state using propaganda to target vulnerable people.

He said that the Finsbury Park mosque attacker Darren Osborne was spurred to action through online propaganda including statements from Robinson.

"The right-wing threat was not previously organised. Every now and then there's been an individual motivated by that rhetoric who has committed a terrorist act but we've not had an organised right-wing threat like we do now," he told the annual Colin Cramphorn memorial lecture on Monday (26 February).

"Such figures represented no more than the extreme margins of the communities they claim to speak for yet they have been given prominence and a platform to espouse their dangerous disinformation and propaganda.

"Each side feeds into each other's extremist rhetoric with the common goal of increasing tensions and divisions in communities," he said.

More than 200 Quebec doctors oppose proposed pay raise for themselves

They want the provincial government to backtrack on plans for pay hikes, saying other employees in the health care industry such as nurses are continuing to work under tough conditions.

Premier Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government recently concluded a deal with the province’s 10,000 specialist doctors that would see their annual remuneration rise to $5.4 billion a year in 2023 from the current $4.7 billion.

MONTREAL—More than 250 doctors and residents in Quebec have asked the provincial government to backtrack on plans to give them and other physicians substantial pay hikes, saying the money should instead be spent on the front lines of the health system.

In an open letter, they say the increases are particularly shocking given that other health-care workers such as nurses and orderlies face difficult working conditions.

The letter, which was signed by general practitioners, specialists and residents, comes at a time when many nurses are complaining about excessive workloads.

Isabelle Leblanc, president of the group behind the letter, said nurses, orderlies and other employees in the health-care system are working under awful conditions.

“Basically, the amount of money the health department has to run the system is finite,” she said in an interview Monday. “There’s only a specific amount of money and not more, and the more you give to the physicians, the less you give to workers or to improve access (to the system).”

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Leblanc admitted it was unusual for doctors to say they don’t want more money.

“But I don’t think it’s that unusual for people to say ‘the workplace we work in needs more money, put it there and don’t put it in our pockets’,” she said. “We think it’s going to help patients a lot more if the money is injected in the system, and not into the pockets of the physicians.”

Leblanc said she has never seen so many people contacting her organization, asking it to do something.

“We have to stop using the argument that doctors should be paid more because they work hard,” she said. “A lot of people work hard.”

Quebec Health Minister Gaetan Barrette says he’s ready to take some of the money out of the doctors’ hands.

“If they feel they are overpaid, they can leave the money on the table and I guarantee you I can make good use of it,” he told reporters.

Barrette also pointed out he’s already been working with Quebec nurses to deal with issues like overtime and nurse-to-patient ratios. He said it was agreed to revisit working conditions under an “historic” collective agreement that was reached two years ago.

“The subject that has to get our total attention is personnel working conditions,” Barrette said.

“So we are entering that phase, we have the money to address that. That doesn’t mean we have infinite amounts of money, but we have the capacity to resolve that issue once and for all.”

The head of the Quebec Order of Nurses says the health-care crisis is such that nurses are calling on their professional order to openly denounce the situation, maintaining they can no longer fulfil their professional duties.

President Lucie Tremblay says it’s something that has never been seen before.

“There are nurses who are calling us to say they are not able to carry out their professional obligations,” Tremblay said, adding the situation can’t last.

Some nurses have taken to social media to vent their frustrations.

A Facebook post by a young nurse named Emilie Ricard was shared more than 56,000 times after the woman from the Eastern Townships posted a picture of herself in tears, giving a sarcastic thumbs-up after a night shift in which she said she had to care for more than 70 patients alone.

The doctors also pointed out that their patients are coping with reduced services because of budget cuts in the Health Department over the last few years.

Premier Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government recently concluded a deal with the province’s 10,000 specialist doctors that would see their annual remuneration rise to $5.4 billion a year in 2023 from the current $4.7 billion.

They would also be entitled to various retroactive salary increases.

In 2016, the average salary of a specialist doctor in Quebec was $403,000, with radiologists leading the way with close to $700,000.

Last October, the government reached a deal with the province’s general practitioners to give them an increase of roughly 1.8 per cent a year over eight years.

Oakland mayor warns of impending ICE raid, ramping up sanctuary-city tension

The mayor of a sanctuary city in California issued a warning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be conducting a raid in the area as soon as Sunday — ratcheting up tension with the feds while giving her constituents an early heads-up.

Libby Schaaf, the Democratic mayor of Oakland, shared the warning — which she said she “learned from multiple credible sources” — in a press release on Saturday, “not to panic our residents but to protect them,” Fox 2 reported.

The mayor said she didn’t know further details of the ICE operation, but claimed she felt it was her “duty and moral obligation as Mayor to give those families fair warning when that threat appears imminent.”

The feds detained at least four people Sunday, a program manager for the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Education Network told the San Francisco Examiner, although the paper noted it was unclear if the detentions were related to any broader ICE operation.

Schaaf during a news conference on Sunday also said she told mayors of other Bay Area cities of the impending ICE sweep, SFGate reported.

Her tweet on Saturday aligned with previous reports that law enforcement officials in Northern California would not cooperate with ICE, and noted state law “prohibits business owners from assisting ICE agents in immigration enforcement and bars federal agents from accessing employee-only areas.”

Schaaf, who is seeking reelection, said in January that she’d be willing to go to jail to defend the city’s sanctuary city status, and has openly opposed the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

“It is no surprise that the bully in chief is continuing to try to intimidate our most vulnerable residents,” Schaaf said at the time. “We're very clear that our values are to protect all of our residents regardless of where we come from. We want to protect families, not tear them apart.”

And California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s running for governor, commended Schaaf’s public warning, telling SFGate: “We can and must protect immigrant families from Donald Trump’s mass deportations. I want to thank Mayor Schaaf for her courage and hope more local leaders will follow her lead.”

ICE told KGO-TV on Saturday that the bureau was unsure what Schaaf was referring to as “There are ICE operations every day.”

Argument over seats at NC movie theater ‘Black Panther’ showing led to shooting, police say.

GREENVILLE, NC

An argument over assigned seating during a showing of superhero movie “Black Panther” in a crowded Greenville theater led to a shooting on Friday, police said.

“That dispute quickly turned into a pistol being pulled out and at least one shot being fired off into the ceiling,” Greenville Police Chief Mark Holtzman said.

Police received reports of an active shooter at the AMC theater on Fire Tower Road at about 11:45 p.m. on Friday.

The shooting happened in Theater 2 of the multiplex, police said. When officers arrived, Holtzman said they were unaware that only one shot was fired, and treated it “as an active-shooter situation.”

Shameeka Latrice Lynch, 30, 890 N.C. 33, turned herself into the Pitt County Detention Center on Saturday, police said. She’s charged with one count of discharging a firearm in an enclosure to incite fear and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. As of Sunday, she was in the Pitt County Detention Center under a $250,000 bond.

No one was harmed in the shooting, police said, but the theater was evacuated as a precaution.

Police said the case remains under investigation and additional arrests are likely.

Holtzman said Saturday the department was looking for a man wearing a white and blue shirt and a white and blue hat. The man purchased tickets and came with a woman, the chief said.

Police are asking anyone with information about the incident and anyone who was in Theater 2 to contact the department at 252-329-4150.

Greenville mayor P.J. Connelly said he was proud of the police department’s response.

“We want to send a strong message that this type of behavior is unacceptable in the city of Greenville,” Conelly said. “We're extremely thankful we have a great police department to keep the people safe, but discharging a firearm in a unit dwelling inside the city limits is unacceptable.”

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Animal overpasses on I-90 will grant safe passage to Washington wildlife

From snow-covered mountains to northwest ocean waters, it's no secret that Washington is passionate about protecting all the wildlife in between.

In an effort to keep animals out of harm's way, the state has invested millions of dollars into creating animal overpasses that stretch over busy roadways. A bridge under construction, east of Snoqualmie Pass, will be the the first of its kind in Washington, but it's just not for conservation.

It's about balancing human transportation needs with wildlife habitats, according to Washington State Department of Transportation spokeswoman Meagan Lott

“You’re improving safety, you’re relieving congestion and you’re also looking at the environmental aspects,” she told The Spokesman-Review.

Conservation Northwest has led efforts to get an overpass to connect two important habitats in the Price Creek area near mile marker 62 in eastern Washington.

As explained in a series of interviews in a Conservation Northwest documentary, animal crossings over I-90 -- where 27,000 cars drive daily --  is a serious safety problem for wildlife and drivers.

Animal monitoring shows that it's wildlife's natural migration pattern to cross I-90 because of how they come down from the mountain. And their best solution is the 150-feet-wide, vegetated overpass because it gives animals the most natural path forward.

They decided to steer away from creating an underpass -- much like a successful construction project near the Summit of Snoqualmie -- because elk out don't like traveling underground.

If we're blocking them from moving, we're preventing them to find food, we're blocking their ability to find places to live,"  Jen Watkins, Conservation Northwest’s I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition coordinator, said in a YouTube video.

"An overpass is a bridge over the highway ... with native trees and shrubs from the surrounding forest, so they walk over the interstate and never realize they've left the forest on either side."

While the overpass -- totaling $6.2 million -- near Spokane is now visible to drivers, it won't be completed until 2019. It's one of the 20 animal crossings planned in a billion-dollar upgrade project between Hyak and Easton.

As some taxpayers find that price tag steep, transportation leaders and conservation activists say that reducing the hazards of collisions is worth it.

On a smaller scale, King County already has functioning animal crossing bridge over a roadway in Redmond.

KIRO 7 News spoke with Rick Brater, county road engineer for the King County Road Services Division, just a year after it opened  at Northeast Novelty Hill Road in 2015

"I think right now we can say it's very successful," Brater said. "We saw deer cross almost immediately as we opened it up."

It usually takes about three to five years for animals to start using crossings. The area saw significantly fewer incidents with wildlife crossings just months into the city's new bridge.

Every public school in West Virginia is closed

The map -- which sports different colors for delayed opens, early dismissals and closings -- is a solid red (for closings) since all 680 public schools in the state's 55 counties are closed because of the ongoing teachers' strike there.

West Virginia employs nearly 20,000 classroom teachers in its public schools and has more than 277,000 students enrolled.

Teachers hit the picket lines last week, demanding higher wages and better benefits. In 2016, West Virginia ranked 48th in the nation for average teacher salary, according to the National Education Association.

Gov. Jim Justice signed legislation Wednesday giving teachers a pay raise, but educators said it wasn't enough and it didn't address other areas of concern like insurance and health care costs, so they went on strike. 

 

Coinbase Tells 13,000 Users It's Sending Their Data to the IRSCoinbase Tells 13,000 Users It's Sending Their Data to the IRS

Cryptocurrency startup Coinbase will provide data on some of its customers to U.S. tax authorities in the coming weeks, the company said Friday.

In an email sent to around 13,000 customers, Coinbase confirmed on Feb. 23 that it will share "only certain limited categories of information" with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), though it did not disclose the exact details of the information to be sent. Coinbase said in the notice that it plans to provide the data to the IRS within the next 21 days.

The startup advises:

"If you have concerns about this, we encourage you to seek legal advice from an attorney promptly."

The move comes as a result of a lengthy legal battle between the IRS and Coinbase, which began in 2016 when the tax agency initially sought data on 500,000 Coinbase users.

As reported by CoinDesk, an order from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in November stipulated that Coinbase must hand over information of more than 13,000 users that had seen over $20,000 trading volume from 2013 to 2015. In the email message, Coinbase claims the reduced number of users affected as a "partial, but still significant, victory."

According to social media posts, some notable figures in the cryptocurrency industry such as the bitcoin advocate and author Andreas Antonopoulos are included in the data order. 

'Pharma bro' Shkreli to be held responsible for $10.4 million in losses: U.S. judge

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. drug company executive Martin Shkreli will be held responsible for $10.4 million in financial losses when he is sentenced for defrauding investors, a federal judge ruled on Monday, rejecting his argument that he did not cause any losses because his investors eventually came out ahead.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto could mean more prison time for Shkreli, since the amount of financial loss plays a major role in federal sentencing guidelines. While Matsumoto must consider the guidelines at the sentencing, which is scheduled for March 9, she is not bound to follow them.

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Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Shkreli, said in an email that he was “disappointed by the ruling but still hopeful that the court will find it in her heart to impose a reasonably lenient sentence.”

A spokesman for the prosecutors declined to comment.

Shkreli, 34, became famous as the “Pharma Bro” after raising the price of anti-infection drug Daraprim by over 5,000 percent in 2015 while he was chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals. He was found guilty by a jury in August of unrelated securities fraud charges brought against him in December 2015.

Shkreli has been in jail since September, when Matsumoto revoked his bail after he offered a $5,000 bounty for a strand of Hillary Clinton’s hair in a Facebook post.

He was convicted of lying to investors about the performance of two hedge funds he controlled, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, and of conspiring to manipulate the stock price of a pharmaceutical company he founded, Retrophin Inc(RTRX.O).

 

Prosecutors have not disputed that Shkreli’s investors came out ahead after Shkreli paid them in shares of Retrophin, and in some cases through settlement agreements and consulting contracts with the company. Shkreli’s lawyers argued that as a result, he should not be held responsible for financial loss.

Matsumoto said in Monday’s order that under federal law, all of the money that investors put in Shkreli’s funds as a result of his fraud, about $6.4 million, must be considered loss. She also said he should get no credit for paying investors back because he only did so after they became suspicious.

The judge said that Shkreli should be held responsible for about $4 million in intended loss to investors for trying to prop up the price of Retrophin shares by trying to stop a group of investors from selling them, even though he was not fully successful. 

Police suspect Slovak investigative journalist murdered for his work

PRAGUE (Reuters) - A Slovak journalist shot dead with his girlfriend was probably targeted for his investigative work, police said on Monday, a case that has shocked the small central European country and highlighted public concerns about corruption.

Jan Kuciak, 27, had reported for the news site Aktuality.sk on fraud cases, often involving businessmen with connections to Slovakia’s ruling party and other politicians. He and his girlfriend were found dead on Sunday at his home in Velka Maca, 65 km (40 miles) east of the capital Bratislava.

Aktuality’s publisher Axel Springer condemned the “cruel assassination” of its journalist while the international group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it was appalled.

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Slovakia’s leaders promised to bring the perpetrators to justice, with the government offering a 1 million euro reward for information leading to an arrest.

“It seems that the most likely version is a motive connected to the investigative work of the journalist,” Slovak police chief Tibor Gaspar told a televised news conference.

Kuciak’s last story for Aktuality, on Feb. 9, looked at transactions by firms linked to businessman Marian Kocner and connected to a Bratislava luxury apartment complex that became the center of a political scandal last year.

Kocner could not be reached for comment on Monday but told the Slovak public broadcaster he had no connection to the case.

A long-time Bratislava-based investigative journalist, Tom Nicholson, told the news sits Dennik N that he had spoken to Kuciak a week ago about a case they both were looking at involving suspected Italian mafia abuse of EU funds in Slovakia.

“If it is proven that the death of the investigative reporter was connected with his journalistic work, it would be an unprecedented attack on freedom of speech and democracy in Slovakia,” Prime Minister Robert Fico said.

Slovakia’s economy has boomed and living standards have risen sharply since it joined the European Union in 2004, but many Slovaks say their country still fails to defend the rule of law, especially in punishing corruption and cronyism.

PROTESTS OVER ALLEGED CRONYISM

The case connected to the apartment complex helped touch off protests in 2017 seeking the resignation of Interior Minister Robert Kalinak over business dealings with property developer Ladislav Basternak, who has been investigated over possible tax fraud. Both have denied wrongdoing in their dealings.

“We are shocked and stunned about the news that Jan Kuciak and his companion obviously have been the victims of a cruel assassination,” publisher Ringier Axel Springer Slovakia said in a statement.

It said there were “justified suspicions” that the murder was connected to Kuciak’s “current research”, but declined to say what that research involved.

A group of 14 editors-in-chief of Slovak publications released a statement calling on the state to solve the case and help to safeguard journalists’ work.

Fico convened an emergency meeting with Kalinak, the attorney general, the national chief of police and the head of the state intelligence service.

Kuciak’s killing dismayed EU officials, coming a few months after Malta’s best-known investigative journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was killed by a car bomb.

“Shocked by the murder of a journalist in the EU. No democracy can survive without the free press, which is why journalists deserve respect and protection,” deputy European Commission chief Frans Timmermans tweeted. “Justice must be served.”

Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka and Robert Muller in Prague, Alastair Macdonald in Brussels and Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt; Editing by Michael Kahn and Mark Heinrich 

Russian athlete filmed in 'I don’t do doping' shirt fails Olympic drug test

Nadezhda Sergeeva, who denies taking banned medication, appeared in the video posted to social media earlier during the Winter Olympics

 

Nadezhda Sergeeva in the Instagram video

A Russian athlete who has tested positive for a banned substance at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics had recently appeared in an Instagram video wearing an “I Don’t Do Doping” sweatshirt.

Nadezhda Sergeeva was the pilot of the bobsleigh team that finished 12th in Pyeongchang, and her positive test result was announced on Friday morning.

In a now deleted video posted to the social network on 15 February by filmmaker Roman Bibishev, Sergeeva features in several scenes wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with: “I don’t do doping, I am ZASPORT.”

Zasport is the official clothes supplier to the Russian Olympic Committee, and provided the neutral designs worn by Russian athletes at this year’s Games. Russia have been banned by the IOC from appearing as a team due to doping offences, and so athletes are not allowed to wear national symbols at the Games.

Nadezhda Sergeeva points at the anti-doping shirt while filming the video

The substance that triggered Sergeeva’s positive result at the Olympics was trimetazdine, a medication used for angina sufferers. Sergeeva has denied taking the drug, with the Russian Bobsled Federation president Alexander Zubkov stating: “She confirms she took no such medication and the team confirms she was not issued any medication.”

Zubkov won gold medals in the two-man and four-man bobsleigh at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Both medals were disqualified by the IOC in November 2017.

The disclosure of another positive doping test result came 24 hours after Russian curler Alexander Krushelnitsky was stripped of an Olympic bronze medal.

Trump says ‘Filipinos don’t have drug problem because they kill dealers’

President Donald Trump speaks with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte at an ASEAN Summit dinner at the SMX Convention Center

MANILA, Philippines — United States President President Donald Trump often talks about his desire to execute drug dealers, even commenting on the situation in the Philippines where suspected drug personalities are killed, a US news outlet reported.

The Axios report, citing five sources who have spoken to Trump about the topic, said that the US leader seems to admire the drug policies of China and the Philippines.

“He (Trump) often jokes about killing drug dealers... He’ll say, ‘You know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t have drug problem. They just kill them,’” a senior administration official told Axios.

During their meeting in Manila in November last year, Trump appeared “sympathetic” when President Rodrigo Duterte discussed the drug problem in the Philippines, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said.

Trump had earlier congratulated Duterte for his administration’s crackdown against illegal drugs.

“Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that,” Trump told Duterte.

 Individuals and organizations both at home and abroad have criticized Duterte for his ferocious “war on drugs” which has claimed over 12,000 lives, according to human rights watchdogs.

The government, however, dispute these numbers and counts a little over 4,000 “drug personalities” killed in police operations. 

The report also noted that Trump also lauds Singapore’s mandatory death penalty for drug traffickers.

“He (Trump) says, ‘When I ask the prime minister of Singapore do they have a drug problem [the prime minister replies,] ‘No. Death penalty,’” a source told Axios.

According to the report, Trump believes that a softer approach to drug reform is ineffective in the United States.

But White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, who is leading the administration’s drug policy office, told Axios that Trump is talking about high-volume dealers who are killing thousands of people.

Stoneman Douglas shooting survivor to tourists: Boycott Florida unless gun legislation is passed

David Hogg, a student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, speaks in support of gun control at the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale during a protest Saturday, Feb. 17, 2018, after 17 students and faculty members were killed at the school by a former student using an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle

David Hogg has been one of the regular voices for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students in the days following the mass shooting at the school.

On Saturday, he took to social media to ask tourists to boycott the state of Florida as a spring break destination unless state legislators make a more concerted effort on gun control legislation.

“Let’s make a deal DO NOT come to Florida for spring break unless gun legislation is passed,” Hogg wrote in a post on Twitter, adding that maybe politicians will “listen to the billion dollar tourism industry in FL.” The post has been retweeted more than 30,000 times.

In a follow-up tweet six hours later, Hogg suggested that people travel to Puerto Rico instead and help bolster the island’s economy as it continues to recover from Hurricane Maria.

“It’s a beautiful place with amazing people,” Hogg wrote. “They could really use the economic support that the government has failed to provide.”

Hogg has been one of the primary voices of the neveragain movement started and run by Stoneman Douglas students that has been recognized throughout the country. He has appeared on nearly every major network and cable news program since the shooting that resulted in the death of 14 of his classmates and three faculty members on Feb. 14

The “NeverAgain” movement, which has received $2 million in funding from George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey and other Hollywood celebrities, is planning a march against gun violence in Washington at the end of March.

The National Rifle Association and the gun industry have received noticeable backlash in the 10 days since the shooting.

The latest companies to end their ties with the NRA were Delta and United Airlines, the first and third largest U.S.-based airline companies by revenue, respectively.

Both Delta and United said Saturday they will no longer offer discounted fares to NRA members to attend their annual meetings, and both have asked the gun rights group to remove any references to their companies from the NRA website.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article202014214.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article202014214.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article202014214.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article202014214.html#storylink=cpy

Apple confirms it uses Google's cloud for iCloud

The collaboration is around storing iCloud users' data. There's no indication Apple is also relying on Google for additional computing work.

Google's cloud websites don't contain references to its business from Apple.

A file that Apple updated on its website last month provides the first acknowledgment that it's relying on Google's public cloud for data storage for its iCloud services.

The disclosure is fresh evidence that Google's cloud has been picking up usage as it looks to catch up with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud infrastructure business.

Some media outlets reported on Google's iCloud win in 2016, but Apple never provided confirmation.

Apple periodically publishes new versions of a PDF called the iOS Security Guide. For years the document contained language indicating that iCloud services were relying on remote data storage systems from Amazon Web Services, as well as Microsoft's Azure.

But in the latest version, the Microsoft Azure reference is gone, and in its place is Google Cloud Platform. Before the January update, Apple most recently updated the iOS Security Guide in March.

The latest update doesn't indicate whether Apple is using any Google cloud services other than core storage of "objects" like photos and videos. The document also doesn't make it clear when Apple started storing data in Google's cloud. Apple and Microsoft didn't respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this month Google said its public cloud and its G Suite line of cloud-based productivity apps contribute $1 billion in revenue per quarter. In the fourth quarter, market leader Amazon Web Services brought in $5.11 billion in revenue.

In addition to Apple, other Google public cloud customers include Kroger, PayPal, Snap and Spotify.

California hiker found after 6 days missing in Yosemite park

YOSEMITE, Calif. (AP) — A well-prepared California hiker missing for six days in the icy backcountry of Yosemite National Park was found in good health after an extensive search, officials said.

A helicopter crew spotted Alan Chow on Friday above Wapama Falls near the center of the park, where overnight temperatures dipped below freezing, the National Park Service said.

Park Ranger Scott Gediman told San Francisco Bay Area news station KTVU-TV that the 36-year-old Oakland resident got lost because usually well-marked trails were covered in snow.

Chow had done everything right to survive — he was prepared and didn’t “try to walk around and get even more lost,” Gediman said.

He “did the right thing by setting up his tent, using melted snow for drinking water, had some food, had warm clothing and was able to stay put,” the ranger said.

Chow, an avid outdoorsman, planned an overnight backpacking trip alone and was last seen Feb. 17. He wasn’t officially noticed as missing until three days later when Chow didn’t show up for his job at the Alameda County Social Services Agency and a co-worker became concerned.

The search effort included as many as 60 people, who focused on the area near the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, where Chow was last seen.

Chow is said to be in good condition and was reunited with his family, according to the park service.

'One in a million' yellow cardinal spotted in Alabama

Auburn University researchers say this cardinal is yellow due to a rare genetic mutation. It's been photographed around Alabaster, Alabama in February 2018

An extremely rare cardinal has birders and biologists flocking to Shelby County, Alabama this week, as images of a yellow cardinal have circulated around social media. 

Auburn University biology professor Geoffrey Hill said the cardinal in the photos is an adult male in the same species as the common red cardinal, but carries a genetic mutation that causes what would normally be brilliant red feathers to be bright yellow instead. 

Alabaster resident Charlie Stephenson first noticed the unusual bird at her backyard feeder in late January and posted about it on Facebook. She said she's been birding for decades but it took her some time to figure out what she was seeing.

"I thought 'well there's a bird I've never seen before'," Stephenson said. "Then I realized it was a cardinal, and it was a yellow cardinal."

Stephenson said she would not give out her address or specific location due to fears that people would flock in to get a look at the bird, but said she lives near the new Thompson High School in Alabaster. She shot some video of the bird, embedded below. 

The yellow cardinal is still around, she said. 

"Every time I watch the bird feeder, I can see him," she said. "The cardinals in my back yard typically come in the morning and again in the evening and I can only bird-watch on weekends until the time changes, but on weekends, I'll sit there and watch for him.

"Every time we've looked for him, he'll show up at least once that day."

Jeremy Black, a professional photographer who is friends with Stephenson, saw the posting and asked if he could come to her backyard and try to photograph the bird. 

On Feb. 19, after about five hours of quiet waiting, Black was able to capture the images he provided here to AL.com. 

"As soon as I saw it on her social media, I was kind of curious and I wanted to go explore and see if I could find it," Black said. "I finally saw it after about five hours.

"I started out sitting in her backyard hoping that maybe I would see it. A lot of cardinals came by and none of them were yellow, so I decided to be a little bit more evasive and hide on her screened-in porch. About two or three hours after I moved to the porch, it finally showed up."

'One in a million mutation'

Hill -- who has literally written books on bird coloration -- said the mutation is rare enough that even he, as a bird curator and researcher has never seen one in person. 

"I've been birdwatching in the range of cardinals for 40 years and I've never seen a yellow bird in the wild," Hill said. "I would estimate that in any given year there are two or three yellow cardinals at backyard feeding stations somewhere in the U.S. or Canada. 

"There are probably a million bird feeding stations in that area so very very roughly, yellow cardinals are a one in a million mutation." 

Photo of a yellow cardinal on a fence post in Alabama, Ala. The bird has a genetic mutation that causes its feathers to be yellow instead of red.

Hill said that cardinals and other songbirds need to consume substances called carotenoids (found in sweet potatoes and carrots) from the environment around them to achieve their bright colors. 

"Songbirds like cardinals almost never consume red pigments; rather they consume abundant yellow pigments," Hill said. "So, to be red, cardinals have to biochemically convert yellow pigments to red."

Hill was part of the research team that identified the enzyme -- called CYP2J19 -- that, for most cardinals, converts all that yellow pigment into red feathers.

Hill is on sabbatical in Australia this semester -- he responded to AL.com's questions via email -- but said he would love to get some DNA from the yellow cardinal (via feathers) to perform more tests and pinpoint the mutation that changed the bird's color. 

Stephenson said she hadn't realized how rare the bird was when she saw it back in January. 

"I'm used to being a birder and you see some leukocytic ones, you see some albino ones," she said. "But I thought this was something else and then I learned how rare it is."

Black, meanwhile, is hoping to capture more images of the bird while it's in Shelby County. He's a full-time photographer who does some wildlife work amongst portraits and weddings.

"I'm trying to get a unique photograph and that is the yellow cardinal next to a traditional North American red cardinal," Black said. "My current goal is to try and visit her backyard or neighborhood as frequently as possible and see if I can get that shot with both birds together."