ENFANCE - Ce jeudi 20 novembre est la journée internationale des droits de l'enfant, nous rappellent notamment Google et son Doodle. Un jour qui célèbre le 25e anniversaire de l'adoption de la Convention internationale des droits de l'enfant. La France va ratifier à cette occasion un protocole pour améliorer la protection des plus jeunes.
Parce que les enfants ne sont pas tous les jours à la fête, le 20 novembre est la Journée internationale des droits de l'enfant, nous rappelle ce jeudi le Doodle de Google. Une date qui est d'abord un anniversaire : celui de l'adoption, le 20 novembre 1989, de la Convention internationale des droits de l'enfant, qui visait à mieux protéger les mineurs, notamment en matière d'agressions sexuelles et dans le cadre des conflits armés.
Chaque 20 novembre est l'occasion de progresser vers une protection renforcée des plus jeunes. Ainsi, la France doit adopter ce jeudi le protocole de 2011, qui autorise un enfant à saisir directement le Comité des droits de l'enfant de l'ONU.
Des initiatives pour célébrer cette journée mondiale
Lorsque ce texte aura été ratifié par le Parlement, tout enfant - ou son représentant - estimant que l'un de ses droits fondamentaux protégés par la Convention a été violé pourra, si sa plainte n'a pas abouti devant les juridictions nationales, saisir le Comité des droits de l'enfant de l'ONU qui procèdera alors à sa propre enquête. Une possibilité qui devra être mise à l'épreuve des faits, mais qui a une portée symbolique forte.
"C'est un message fort envoyé à l'ordre judiciaire, et à toute la société. Il remet l'enfant à sa place, le considère comme un sujet de droit, restitue sa parole", a déclaré mardi la secrétaire d'Etat à la Famille, Laurence Rossignol, devant les associations de la protection de l'enfance.
De nombreuses initiatives auront par ailleurs lieu dans toute la France pour célébrer cette journée mondiale. Leur liste peut être consultée sur la carte publiée par l'Unicef à cette occasion.
Royal Bank of Scotland has admitted that it mis-calculated its financial strength under European tests of major banks' financial stability earlier this year.
The taxpayer-owned bank released a statement on Friday afternoonsaying that its Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio - the key measure of the bank's financial safety nets - was a whole percentage point lower than previously said.
Under an "adverse scenario" in which the financial system was subject to shocks such as a debt sell-off, falling property prices, and a new eurozone recession, RBS's CET1 ratio would have been just 5.7pc, compared to 6.7pc previously announced.
This is only just above the 5.5pc needed to pass the European Banking Authority's test. Shares in the bank fell more than 2pc on the news.
RBS said the error related to how it recognised tax credits under the adverse scenario, meaning its capital was overstated by £3.5bn.
The development does not affect RBS's current CET1 ratio, and since the bank still registers a pass in the test, it will not be forced to raise capital.
The tests related to capital positions at the end of last year, and RBS has improved its capital ratio since.
"RBS estimates that if the EBA stress-test were to be repeated based on the Q3 2014 financials, our result would at least reflect the 220 basis point reported increase in CET1 ratio," the bank said.
The readjustment means RBS performed the worst out of the four UK banks to be tested: RBS, Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays.
Lloyds passed with a CET1 ratio under an adverse scenario of 6pc, causing its shares to fall the day after.
The result may mean investors re-assessing the bank's prospects ahead of Bank of England stress tests to take place in December. However, the EBA stress tests are markedly different from the Bank's Prudential Regulation Authority ones, and are less backward-looking.
"Frankly, this does not look good at face value," said Joseph Dickerson, an analyst at Jefferies. "However in the case of RBS, the EBA stress tests are quite backward looking given that the reported CET1 ratio at [third-quarter results] was 10.8pc vs the FY 13 value of 8.6pc."
Doesn’t it seem like Taylor Swift has been everywherethese past few weeks? Whether in viral videos on YouTube, feuding with Spotify, or gracing magazine covers, the pop star seems firmly fixed in the center of the spotlight. But at different points throughout the year, couldn’t we have said the same about Beyoncé? Or Kim Kardashian? AndRihanna?
Mega fame is a more fleeting and fast-changing endeavor than ever, with top stars vying for attention at a dizzying speed. Kardashian may have created an iPhone game about it, but the real-life Fame Game is no less tricky and, it would appear, requires just as much calculation. There’s a delicate balance to maintaining worldwide fame that few have managed to master. How do you keep fans interested, while avoiding overexposure? And which star has done this to the greatest effect?
Out of curiosity, we turned to the numbers. Using Google Trends data, we mapped the top search query periods of the five biggest stars of the year: Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, and Jennifer Lawrence. Below, we compare their biggest spikes, and find that they each has vastly different strategies for staying relevant.
A man was charged late Tuesday in the fatal shoving of a subway rider in the Bronx after he was taken into custody earlier in the day in a separate assault at a Manhattan subway station this month, the police said.
The man, Kevin Darden, 34, was arrested on a murder charge in the death of the rider, Wai Kuen Kwok, 61, who was shoved into the path of an oncoming subway train on Sunday, the police said. Mr. Darden, who was located in the Bronx near his last known address, was believed to appear in surveillance video leaving the scene of the killing.
During the three-day manhunt, the victim of an earlier shoving episode, a 51-year-old man pushed to the platform of the West Fourth Street subway station on Nov. 6, told the police that he had been attacked by the same man who appeared in the video from Sunday.
“You shouldn’t walk in front of me,” the assailant told the man, according to the police, before shoving him to the ground. “I’m warning you.”
The police said investigators believed Mr. Darden was the same person seen on surveillance video walking calmly from the 167th Street station minutes after Mr. Kwok was killed just before 8:45 a.m. Mr. Kwok had been standing on the platform with his wife.
Other riders on the platform did not see the attack, but they told the police that the man they saw leaving the station was the same man shown in the video, who was seen boarding a bus two minutes later.
Until the man assaulted in the West Fourth Street attack, who is also Asian, identified Mr. Darden on Tuesday as his attacker, no probable cause had existed to arrest him. But shortly after tying him to the earlier crime, Police took Mr. Darden into custody on the street near his mother’s home on Grand Avenue in the Bronx. He was unarmed and went with detectives without a struggle, the police said.
On Twitter, the chief of detectives, Robert K. Boyce, praised the work of detectives “on the arrest of Kevin Darden, individual wanted in connection with the homicide in transit.”
A woman who identified herself as Mr. Darden’s mother said in an interview on Tuesday before his arrest that Mr. Darden had not lived there in months, adding, “He is homeless.” She said she had spoken to detectives and was cooperating with the investigation.
The building’s landlord, Shiouli Rahman, who lives at the adjoining address, said Mr. Darden was one of the woman’s two sons. Mr. Darden’s brother lives in East Texas. In 2011, Mr. Darden was arrested there, according to court records, and charged with pouring gasoline over his brother’s home in an apparent attempt to light it on fire. The case ultimately did not go forward, the local news media reported.
The killing on Sunday rattled riders across the subway system and immediately raised questions about a motive for the apparently random attack. Mr. Kwok’s wife, Yow Ho Lee, 59, told investigators that the man who attacked her husband said nothing before shoving Mr. Kwok and fleeing.
For several minutes afterward, the man who would soon be the subject of a manhunt by the police appeared to behave as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened — boarding a bus, getting off nearby, smoking a cigarette.
Waiting for an F train in Manhattan on Tuesday evening, Joe Wu, 35, said that the attack had frayed the nerves of subway riders as well as those of the city’s Asians. “There’s a lot of people who are talking about it,” he said. “If you look at the past few times this has happened, it’s been Asians.”
Mr. Darden has an extensive history of arrests, including, most recently, on Nov. 9 in Manhattan on a pickpocketing charge. After spending several days in jail, he was released on Friday pending a court date in January.
He was connected to the surveillance video, the police said, by a detective who believed he recognized the image of the man and pieced together his identity from arrest photographs and other information.
Two wanted posters were circulated on Tuesday among officers and residents in the Bronx.
One, bearing a video image of an unnamed man leaving the 167th Street station, was distributed widely. The other poster, with Mr. Darden’s name and a police photograph from a previous arrest, was shared only among those involved in the search or questioned by the police; it was not made public.
By late Tuesday, however, the police had released a picture of Mr. Darden, as the suspect in the West Fourth Street attack.
A couple of hours after Mr. Darden was arrested, Tatiana Nunez, 27, leaned against a railing in the middle of a subway platform at the West Fourth Street station. She said she never waited near the yellow stripe.
“Because of that,” she said, referring to the fatal push. “Because of anybody that’s walking fast or might push you by mistake.”
When it comes to racially lopsided arrests, the most remarkable thing about Ferguson, Mo., might be just how ordinary it is.
Police in Ferguson — which erupted into days of racially charged unrest after a white officer killed an unarmed black teen — arrest black people at a rate nearly three times higher than people of other races.
At least 1,581 other police departments across the USA arrest black people at rates even more skewed than in Ferguson, a USA TODAY analysis of arrest records shows. That includes departments in cities as large and diverse as Chicago and San Francisco and in the suburbs that encircle St. Louis, New York and Detroit.
Those disparities are easier to measure than they are to explain. They could be a reflection of biased policing; they could just as easily be a byproduct of the vast economic and educational gaps that persist across much of the USA — factors closely tied to crime rates. In other words, experts said, the fact that such disparities exist does little to explain their causes.
"That does not mean police are discriminating. But it does mean it's worth looking at. It means you might have a problem, and you need to pay attention," said University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris, a leading expert on racial profiling.
Whatever the reasons, the results are the same: Blacks are far more likely to be arrested than any other racial group in the USA. In some places, dramatically so.
At least 70 departments scattered from Connecticut to California arrested black people at a rate 10 times higher than people who are not black, USA TODAY found.
"Something needs to be done about that," said Ezekiel Edwards, the head of the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project, which has raised concerns about such disparate arrest rates. "In 2014, we shouldn't continue to see this kind of staggering disparity wherever we look."
The unrest in Ferguson was stoked by mistrust among black residents who complained that the city's police department had singled them out for years. For example, every year, traffic stop data compiled by Missouri's attorney general showed Ferguson police stopped and searched black drivers at rates markedly higher than whites.
A grand jury is considering whether Officer Darren Wilson should face criminal charges for shooting a teen, Michael Brown. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency Monday as authorities braced for more unrest after the grand jury's decision is announced.
Such tensions are not new. Nationwide, blacks are stopped, searched, arrested and imprisoned at rates higher than people of other races. USA TODAY's analysis, using arrests reported to the federal government in 2011 and 2012, found that those inequities are far wider in many cities across the country, from St. Louis to Atlanta to suburban Dearborn, Mich.
SUSPICION IN DEARBORN
A dozen people stood or slumped on benches before sunrise in Dearborn on a recent morning, waiting for officers to unlock the doors of the 19th District Court, where they had been summoned to answer traffic citations and petty criminal charges. Almost everyone who lives in Dearborn is white (including a large population of Arabs). Almost everyone waiting in the morning dim was black.
"You can see who's going in there. I guarantee they don't live here," Lawrence Wynn, who is black, said, looking at the line outside the courthouse door. Most days, Wynn said, he detours around Dearborn on his way home from his job at a suburban auto plant. It makes the journey half again as long, "but I'd rather do that than have to come through Dearborn at night."
He leaned in close. "I think they're targeting people."
Dearborn police officers and officials say that's not true. The city's police chief, Ronald Haddad, said the arrest rates are skewed because many of the people his officers arrest don't live in the city. They're picked up at the shopping mall, on their way to work or simply when they're driving through. Some are detained by private security officers before police ever arrive, meaning police would have no chance to single them out.
Haddad said it is unfair to measure his officers' work against the city's demographics. "We treat everyone the same," he said.
More than half of the people Dearborn police arrested in 2011 and 2012 were black, according to reports they submitted to the FBI. By comparison, about 4% of the city's residents are black, as are about a quarter of the people who live in Metropolitan Detroit. Over those two years, the department reported arresting 4,500 black people – 500 more than lived in the city. As a result, the arrest rate for blacks, compared with the city's population, was 26 times higher than for people of other races.
"There is a disparity. We feel like it's racial in a lot of cases," said Bryan Allen, who said he's planning to move his family out of neighboring Dearborn Heights as soon as his youngest daughter graduates from a Dearborn high school.
Allen and his wife, Shelly, said they have their own reasons to be mistrusting: Seven years ago, after Dearborn police shut down a party at a local banquet hall that got out of hand, officers brought their daughter and three other black teens to the police station. A white friend came with them because she had planned to ride home with the girls.
What happened next became the subject of a federal lawsuit: The girls charged that officers took the white teen to the lobby to call her parents but brought three of the black teens to the back of the station, where they were locked up and searched. When one of the girls asked why they were being brought in the back doors, one of the officers replied, "trash in and trash out," according to court records. None of the girls was charged with a crime. The suit was settled out of court.
LARGE GAPS, NO EASY ANSWERS
To measure the breadth of arrest disparities, USA TODAY examined data that police departments report to the FBI each year. For each agency, USA TODAY compared the number of black people arrested during 2011 and 2012 with the number who lived in the area the department protects. (The FBI tracks arrests by race; it does not track arrests of Hispanics.)
The review did not include thousands of smaller departments or agencies that serve areas with only a small black population. It also did not include police agencies in most parts of Alabama, Florida and Illinois because those states had not reported complete arrest data to the FBI.
The review showed:
• Blacks are more likely than others to be arrested in almost every city for almost every type of crime. Nationwide, black people are arrested at higher rates for crimes as serious as murder and assault, and as minor as loitering and marijuana possession.
• Arrest rates are particularly lopsided in some pockets of the country, including St. Louis' Missouri suburbs near Ferguson. In St. Louis County alone, more than two dozen police departments had arrest rates more lopsided than Ferguson's. In nearby Clayton, Mo., for example, only about 8% of residents are black, compared with about 57% of people the police arrested, according to the city's FBI reports. Clayton's police chief, Kevin Murphy, said in a prepared statement that "Ferguson has laid bare the fact that everyone in law enforcement needs to take a hard look at how we can better serve our communities and address any disparities that have existed in our departments for too long."
• Deep disparities show up even in progressive university towns. USA TODAY found police in Berkeley, Calif., and Madison, Wis., arrested black people at a rate more than nine times higher than members of other racial groups. Madison Police Chief Michael Koval said most of the arrests happen in the poorest sections of the city, which are disproportionately black, and where some residents have pleaded for even more police presence. Still, he said, "I think it would be remiss to suggest the police get out of this whole thing with a free pass. We have to constantly be doing the introspective look at who we are hiring and how we are training."
• Arrest rates are lopsided almost everywhere. Only 173 of the 3,538 police departments USA TODAY examined arrested black people at a rate equal to or lower than other racial groups.
Phillip Goff, president of the University of California Los Angeles' Center for Policing Equity, said such comparisons are "seductively misleading" because they say more about how racial inequities play out than about what causes them. Those disparities are closely tied to other social and economic inequities, he said, and like most things that involve race, they defy simple explanations.
"There is no doubt a significant degree of law enforcement bias that is the engine for this. But there's also no controversy that educational quality and employment discrimination lead to this," he said. "It's not an indicator of how big a problem there is with a police department. It's an aggregator of what's going on in the community."
Still, he said, "there's some level of disparity that is a warning sign."
Whatever the causes, Harris said such pronounced disparities have consequences. "Believe me, the people who are subject to this are noticing it and they're noticing it not just individually but as a group. It gets talked about, handed down, and it sows distrust of the whole system," he said.
'THEY WERE BEATING HIM UP'
In Dearborn, distrust was sown years ago.
Dearborn is the birthplace of the modern auto industry, a mostly white and Arab suburb snugged into the southwest corner of Detroit, the poorest and blackest of America's major cities. Its border was long a stark racial divide. Until 1978, the city was presided over by a mayor, Orville Hubbard, who said he favored segregation and boasted to newspapers that he would use the instruments of government to keep blacks from moving in. He had "Keep Dearborn Clean" emblazoned on the city's police cars.
"Our history is not always something we can be proud of. But we've learned from our mistakes," Haddad, Dearborn's police chief, said. "It's unfair that we have to keep fighting that ghost."
Dearborn today is different, he said. The police force has worked to build ties with the city's large community of Arab immigrants. Its officers have cameras in their cars and microphones on their uniforms. Soon, some will start wearing body cameras, too. Their use of force has plummeted in recent years, and so have civilian complaints.
Haddad said most of his department's arrests come after traffic stops on the city's busy arteries, or at the mall, one of the large shopping centers closest to Detroit. Many of the people his officers arrest live in Detroit – a city beset by poverty, violent crime and a faltering school system – and are passing through to work or shop.
Still, allegations of discrimination have persisted there for decades. The local NAACP branch accused Dearborn police of singling out blacks for traffic stops in 1997. Civil rights lawsuits – alleging excessive force and officers using racial epithets – have piled up, too, though the number of such complaints has fallen sharply in recent years.
"There's a lot of storied history, but I think a lot of that is either false or times have changed," said Gregg Algier, who retired from Dearborn's police department this summer after 22 years. "There's no one really getting targeted for their race."
But in suburban Detroit, there is also little doubt that blacks are far more likely to face arrest than people of other races. For example, police in Livonia, another Detroit suburb, arrested blacks at a rate 16 times higher than others. In neighboring Allen Park, it's 20 times higher.
"Our numbers are what our numbers are. Our officers aren't being told to look for any particular demographic. We come across what we come across," Allen Park Police Chief James Wilkewitz said. Allen Park has two interstate highways and a large retail complex not far from the edge of Detroit, and many of the people the city's police arrest live somewhere else.
In some ways, Dearborn has become an odd place to hear such complaints. Its police department won a civil rights award this year. Haddad is the state's first Arab-American police chief. And among the most significant lawsuits over policing there is a complaint that county sheriff's deputies didn't do enough to protect a group of white Christians who were protesting at an Arab festival in Dearborn.
Still, Haddad acknowledges the accumulated mistrust. "There are people who feel that way, and they have cause to feel that way," he said. "We shouldn't be defined by one bad episode."
Dearborn has a history of those, too.
On Father's Day in 2008, for example, two Dearborn officers arrested a diabetic man who had been pulled over by the side of a freeway. The man, Ernest Griglen, 59, was on disability from Detroit's school system after he hurt his ankle helping a special education student off the bus.
An Allen Park police officer stopped Griglen, who was black, after seeing him climb out of his car in the middle of the road. She wrote in a report that she thought he was upset; doctors later concluded he was having a diabetic episode, a sudden drop in blood sugar that relatives said could make him seem dazed or drunk.
Two Dearborn officers arrived moments later. One, Richard Michalski, wrote that officers were afraid Griglen might have a gun in his waistband, so they "guided him to the ground," and wrestled him into handcuffs. The gun turned out to be an insulin pump.
Witnesses remembered it differently. One, Yolanda Lipsey, testified in a deposition that the Dearborn officers threw Griglen to the ground and "just started hitting him, hitting him and kicking him. … They were beating him up."
When she saw her husband, Pam Griglen thought he had been in a car accident. "His clothes were all torn and dirty and looked scuffed. He had a large knot on his forehead, it was like the size of a golf ball, and he had what looked like boot prints on his face," she said. "I just couldn't believe it. And he said 'They beat me, Pam.'"
Griglen complained that his head hurt. Then he said he could not see. "That was the last time my husband spoke to me," Pam Griglen said. He spent the next 11 months in a coma and finally died in 2009. The medical examiner listed his cause of death as bleeding in his brain, caused by "blunt force head trauma."
Dearborn settled a lawsuit brought by Griglen's family. The department reprimanded both officers for turning in their use of force reports late. (Michalski later resigned after he was charged with assault and brandishing a firearm during an off-duty traffic incident. He declined to comment.)
"The Dearborn policemen seem like they're kind of a little rougher with the black community," Pam Griglen said. "My husband was a good man, a hard worker. He took care of his family. He had a diabetic episode and they thought the worst. Thought he was drunk. Thought he had a gun. Black man in a Cadillac. They thought the worst."
BUFFALO — The first snowstorm of the season has resulted in five deaths in this area so far and possibly set an all-time U.S. record for snowfall. Three people had heart attacks from shoveling snow, officials said.
The snow is still falling with more than 5 feet already on the ground, and some areas south of the city are expected to get a year's worth of snow — almost 6 feet — in just three days. Temperatures in all 50 states fell to freezing or below overnight.
The national snowfall record for a 24-hour period is 76 inches, set in Silver Lake, Colo., in 1921. Some Buffalo suburbs approached that amount on Tuesday, the National Weather Service reported. It's possibly the highest 24-hour snow in a populated area.
The cold spread across most of the eastern half of the U.S. on Wednesday morning; record cold was reported in New York City, Washington, D.C., and as far south as Jacksonville, Fla.
One death came from an accident in Cheektowaga, N.Y., where a vehicle was helping a stuck vehicle gain traction in the snow.
When the stuck vehicle was able to back up, it pinned one of the men between the two vehicles. A 30-year-old from Pennsylvania died.
Toprestaurant De Gieser Wildeman in Noordeloos behoudt zijn Michelinster. Gisteren werd in het bijzijn van veel Nederlandse topkoks in Maastricht bekendgemaakt wie wel haar prestigieuze ster of sterren hield en wie niet.
De Gieser Wildeman van meesterkok René Tichelaar heeft al jaren één ster. Het is in deze regio het enige restaurant met een Michelinster.
Restaurant Solo in Gorinchem had tot voor kort ook een ster. Toen topkok Mohamed El Harouchi in 2011 door een zwaar ongeluk wegviel, ging het echter bergafwaarts met het restaurant. Eerst raakte zij haar ster kwijt en dit jaar werd Solo failliet verklaard.
UPDATE Er zijn in Nederland vandaag drie tweesterrenrestaurants bij gekomen. Dat maakte Michelin in Maastricht bekend, waar de sterren werden uitgedeeld. Vijf restaurants kregen een eerste ster. Een van hen is FG Food Labs, het 'smaaklaboratorium' van chefkok Francois Geurds in Rotterdam. Grote winnaar is Librije's Zusje in Amsterdam, dat zes maanden na opening al twee sterren in de wacht sleepte.
Het aantal restaurants met drie sterren is hetzelfde gebleven. Dat zijn er nog steeds twee: De Librije in Zwolle en De Leest in Vaassen. Vijf restaurants hebben een eerste Michelinster gekregen. De vijf restaurants zijn:
Japans restaurant Sazanka aan de Ferdinand Bolstraat in Amsterdam, Restaurant Sinne aan de Ceintuurbaan in Amsterdam, Restaurant Wiesen aan de Kleine Berg in Eindhoven, Restaurant Ratatouille & Wine aan de Lange Veerstraat in Haarlem en Restaurant FG Foodlabs aan de Katshoek in Rotterdam.
Smaaklaboratorium FG Food Labs, het tweede restaurant van chefkok Francois Geurds aan de Hofbogen in Rotterdam, werd begin dit jaar geopend. Volgens de jury is het restaurant een waar 'smaaklaboratorium'.
Geurds runt ook tweesterrenrestaurant FG Restaurant in het Lloydkwartier. Met de opening van zijn tweede zaak kwam voor Geurds een lang gekoesterde droom uit. Alle producten worden door hem persoonlijk geselecteerd.
Grote winnaar De twee sterren voor Librije's Zusje zijn een grote verrassing, schrijft het Parool. Het restaurant in het Waldorf Astoria Hotel op de Herengracht is pas sinds dit jaar open. In totaal kregen Amsterdamse restaurants 20 Michelinsterren: niet eerder werd Amsterdam zo goed beoordeeld door de keurmeesters van Michelin.
Het is het 110de jaar dat Nederlandse restaurants door bandenfabrikant Michelin worden beoordeeld. Naast de twee driesterrenrestaurants, zijn dit jaar in totaal 19 restaurants met twee sterren en 97 met één ster bekroond.
Ah, here comes the sun! Rock Werchter's first name has now been finalised. Foo Fighters will headline the festival on Thursday 25 June 2015.
Foo Fighters are coming by general demand. Every year we collect the wish lists from the friends of the festival and this year Foo Fighters are right at the top. To be sure of landing the band of the moment Rock Werchter is moving its dates forward a week. This is because the band is heading back to the States at the end of June to play a huge concert in front man Dave Grohl's home base of Washington D.C. on Saturday 4 July. In 2015 Foo Fighters will play Werchter for the third time in their 20 year history. They made their last appearance way back in 2005. Put together in eight iconic recording studios, the new album ‘Sonic Highways’ (2014) is Grohl’s homage to the rich musical history of America, of which Foo Fighters are a fine example.
Rock Werchter 2015 runs from Thursday 25 June to Sunday 28 June. More names to follow soon. Tickets go on sale on Saturday 29 November at 9 am and are available throughticketmaster.be.
Protestujący od godz. 10 sadownicy po pewien czas chodzą po przejściu dla pieszych, po pewnym czasie umożliwiają przejazd samochodom.
– Protest w Annopolu (na trasie Kielce-Kraśnik-red.) przebiega spokojnie – mówi asp. Janusz Majewski, rzecznik Komendy Powiatowej Policji w Kraśniku. Dzisiaj rolnicy dłużej chodzą. Krótsze są przerwy kiedy mogą przejechać kierowcy. Ale żadnych zakłóceń nie ma.
Do żadnych incydentów nie doszło też w Leokadiowie na trasie Puławy-Zwoleń. – Protest jest legalny – wskazuje podkom. Marcin Koper, rzecznik Komendy Powiatowej Policji w Puławach. – Policjanci informują kierowców, aby pojechali objazdem. Protestujący przez pół godziny chodzą po przejściu dla pieszych, następnie na 10 minut jest puszczany ruch.
W Leokadiowie protestuje ok. 70 osób, w Annopolu ok. 100 osób.
Sadownicy domagają się podjęcia działań, które ustabilizują sytuację na rynku owoców, po wprowadzeniu rosyjskiego embarga. Chcą wycofania z rynku setek tysięcy ton jabłek oraz wypłaty rekompensat w wysokości kosztów produkcji.
– Eksport w ubiegłym roku do Federacji Rosyjskiej to było 800 tys. ton. W tej chwili możemy mówić o zdjęciu kilkuset ton czy kilku tysięcy ton, nie więcej” – powiedział wiceprezes Związku Sadowników RP Tomasz Solis.
Jak tłumaczył, sytuacja kryzysowa na rynku owoców trwa od początku sierpnia, a wszystkie dotychczasowe działania nie przyniosły oczekiwanych efektów. Solis przypomniał, że z budżetu europejskiego na zarządzanie kryzysami przeznaczono 120 mln euro, które były do dyspozycji w Unii Europejskiej, ale w Polsce z tych pieniędzy "wykorzystano niewielki procent, głównie dlatego, że polskie instytucje np. ARR czy ministerstwo rolnictwa, były mocno niewydolne”.
Dzisiejszy protest sadowników na drogach potrwa do godz. 14. Poprzedni protest zorganizowany przez Związek Sadowników RP miał miejsce na początku listopada w Annopolu.
If you are the kind of person who has the habit of hopping across to your nearest ATM to withdraw small amounts of cash, because you cannot really rely on the use of plastic money, or are still not compatible with the idea of internet banking, there is a piece of bad news for you.
You may soon receive a communication from your bank saying that it will charge you anything between Rs 5-20 on your ATM transactions. This is applicable if you exceed the limit of five ATM transactions in a month in your home bank. Also, if you are using the debit card in the ATM machine of a bank other than your own, the free transactions will be limited to three.
If you are a compulsive ATM hopper, banking with the largest commercial bank of the country the State Bank of India, you may already be complaining about the fact that free ATM transactions have been restricted to five in a month and you are expected to cough up anything between Rs 5-20 for your ATM transactions, the moment you cross the limit of your five free transactions. This includes non financial transactions such as checking your balance and changing your PIN as well.
The same holds true if you are banking with private sector banks such as Axis Bank and HDFC Bank as they have indicated on their website that beginning November 1st, Rs 20 (excluding taxes) will be charged for financial transactions beyond the limit of the first five ATM transactions in a month that will remain free. For every non financial transaction that also falls within the limit of five, HDFC Bank will charge Rs 8.5 (plus taxes) while Axis bank has decided to charge Rs 9.5 (plus taxes).
And so far, we have only told you about the use of your ATM/debit card in your home branch. If you are an SBI card holder using your card to withdraw cash at the Kotak Bank ATM everytime you go to dine out with your office pals after a long day's work, your free ATM transactions have now been restricted to three instead of the earlier five. But that's if you are a resident of cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. If you live in any city other than these, you can still get away with five free transactions at ATMs of lenders other than your own.
Heavy users of ATM/debit cards, however need not worry about parting with a princely sum for using your own card! You can still remain within your free transaction limits and avoid being charged at all. Wondering how it is to be done? Read on.
1. Use the debit card of a smaller bank
Unlike the big boys of banking such as SBI, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank, some smaller banks such as Federal Bank, Yes Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank have taken a step backwards and do not want to jeopardise their brand equity by charging their customers on ATM transactions at least in the forseeable future. If you have an account in any such small banks, it makes sense for you to use their ATMs instead of the big ticket banks in which your salary probably goes into.
2. Withdraw cash in bulk
If you do not have an account in the above mentioned smaller banks or are skeptical that they will follow suit by levying charges sooner than later, quit withdrawing cash from the ATM machine in tiny amounts to see you through your immediate needs. Withdraw some cash in bulk instead of hopping across to an ATM every single time you need money.
3. Make best use of various existing "branchless" facilities
Till date, there are many Indians who shy away from financial transaction made in the virtual space or are wary of revealing their PIN numbers in restaurants or retail outlets where it is now compulsory to punch in one's four digit debit card PIN whenever you pay with your credit card. In this advanced age, banks have put in many layers of security to make your debit card transactions safe at retail point of sale machines.
The same holds true for internet transactions and funds transfer online. Be assured that checks and balances have been put in place to ensure that your financial transactions are secure. Besides, why waste a free transaction by using your ATM/debit card to check your balance at an ATM machine, when you can do so by either use the phone banking facility or by signing in to your banking account
Thus you need not necessarily be the "victim" of the new charge that banks have introduced. If you use your bank account judiciously, five ATM transactions for cash withdrawal in a month may well suffice for you.
Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has opened an investigation into how the Premier League sells live TV media rights for its football matches in the UK.
It follows a complaint from Virgin Media, which said more matches should be available for live broadcast.
In a statement, the Premier League said that the way it sold its audio-visual rights was "compatible with UK and EU competition law".
BSkyB and BT share the rights to televise Premier League football games.
The price for the latest rights deal - covering 2013-16 - rose by 70% to £3bn when it was announced in 2012.
'Welcome news'
The Premier League will soon be starting the bidding process for the next tranche of rights from 2016 onwards.
Virgin claims that the current arrangements "for the 'collective' selling of live UK television rights by the Premier League for matches played by its member clubs is in breach of competition law".
In particular, it has raised concerns about the number of Premier League matches for which live broadcasting rights are made available.
Ofcom said: "Virgin Media argues that the proportion of matches made available for live television broadcast under the current Premier League rights deals - at 41% - is lower than some other leading European leagues, where more matches are available for live television broadcast."
Virgin argues that this "contributes to higher prices for consumers of pay TV packages that include premium sport channels and for the pay TV retailers of premium sports channels".
Tom Mockridge, Virgin Media's chief executive, called Ofcom's investigation "welcome news".
"The fact remains that fans in the UK pay the highest prices in Europe to watch the least amount of football on TV. Now is the right time to look again at the way live rights are sold to make football even more accessible," he said.
"We look forward to working constructively with the Premier League, the wider industry and Ofcom to ensure a better deal for football fans."
In a statement, the Premier League said: "We note that Ofcom has launched an inquiry. Ofcom has stated that this is at an early stage and it has not reached a view as to whether there is sufficient evidence of any infringement.
"The Premier League currently sells its audio-visual rights in a way that is compatible with UK and EU competition law and will continue to do so."
Kick-off times
Ofcom said the investigation would be carried out under the terms of the Competition Act.
It added it was "mindful of the likely timing of the next auction of live UK audio-visual media rights, and is open to discussion with the Premier League about its plans".
Ofcom also said it would look at the issue of how many games are moved from their traditional 3pm kick-off times on Saturdays, because of TV scheduling needs.
As part of this, it will approach the Football Supporters' Federation and certain other supporters' groups to understand their views.
Malcolm Clarke, chair of the Football Supporters' Federation, said: "Premier League football might be a global phenomenon but without fans in the stands, it wouldn't have the same appeal.
"People want to see the world's best players, but they also want to see stands packed to the rafters with fans. That vibrancy is a key part of the TV 'product'.
"Ofcom also acknowledges the importance of Saturday 3pm kick-offs to fans. All-too-often TV's needs come before match-going supporters as games are shunted around the calendar."
