“The suspect is deceased,” Austin police chief Brian Manley told a news conference. Manley said the suspect is believed to be responsible for all five bomb explosions that have killed two and wounded several more and put people on edge in the Texas capital since March 2.

Police had traced the man’s car to a hotel outside Austin. As authorities waited for tactical teams to arrive, the man started to drive away.

As police moved to stop and arrest him, the man detonated a bomb inside his car and was killed, Manley said. One police officer was injured by the blast.

The suspect’s motive is not known, he added. Manley said the suspect was a 24-year-old white man. Police zeroed in on him over the past 36 hours as evidence came in from video footage and witness accounts, Manley said.

“It has been a long almost three weeks for the community of Austin,” the police chief said. CBS affiliate KEYE in Austin published what it said were photos of the man, wearing a blue baseball cap, gloves and possibly a wig as he dropped off packages Sunday at a FedEx office. The photos came from security video at that office.

One of the Austin bombs went off early Tuesday at a FedEx sorting facility. Manley said it was not yet known if the man was acting alone or with accomplices.//AFP

“Was I in a rush to get to Cabinet this morning (March 21) and couldn’t find a pair that matched? Is this a new OOTD (outfit of the day) thing? No.

“My mismatched socks today are a tribute to World Down Syndrome Day,” he said in an Instagram post on Wednesday (March 21).

Khairy said that World Down Syndrome Day, which falls on March 21, is about loving people as they are.

“It’s to remind people that things and people can be different but also beautiful and amazing as they are,” he said.

Khairy said that his mismatched socks were also in honour of his niece Aisha, who has Down Syndrome.

“She is smart, beautiful, funny, active and has been a confident public speaker advocating inclusive education where typical and atypical kids study together,” he said.

“She is a constant source of inspiration for me to make society more compassionate, to reduce barriers for people with different abilities to reach their full potential, and to ensure no child is ever left behind in a dark room, out of sight and out of mind,” said Khairy.

He also praised his sister and Aisha’s mother, Kak Hana, for raising her daughter as a single mother.

“I remember once asking her, if she had the power to change things, would she change Aisha so that she didn’t have Down Syndrome.

“My sister said: ‘No way would I change anything. Because if I did, she would no longer be my amazing Aisha.’,” recalled Khairy.

“Happy World Down Syndrome Day. Come as you are. As you were,” he said.

Munir Zanial had the Kansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a civil advocacy organisation, filed a lawsuit on his behalf. The organisation described it as “an act of egregious racial profiling and blatant religious discrimination”.

The Malaysian flag in question was used at a party at a lake in the city of Wichita in Kansas last September.

The owners of the property, the Spirit Boeing Employees’ Association (SBEA), had filed a complaint with the employers of engineer Munir, who organised the party.

They alleged that Munir and his guests were in possession of an IS flag and were conducting an IS meeting on SBEA property.

“On September 2, 2017, Mr Zanial [Munir] hosted a party to celebrate Eid al-Adha at the SBEA Recreational Lake in Wichita, Kansas,” the ACLU said in its suit.

“Following the party, SBEA reported Mr Zanial to the Spirit Aerosystems security team based on a concern that Mr Zanial was affiliated with radical Islamic terrorism and alleged that he had used the SBEA lake to hold an ISIS meeting.

“SBEA alleged that Mr Zanial and his guests had an American flag that had been ‘desecrated by ISIS insignia’ and were wearing ‘Muslim garb’,” it said.

Munir’s own employers, Spirit Aerosystems, subsequently filed a complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

While the FBI cleared the aerospace engineer in October 2017, SBEA hired a private investigator to continue looking into the incident and terminated Munir’s rental benefits.

That action led to the ACLU filing a federal lawsuit on March 18 against the SBEA for racial profiling and religious discrimination against Munir, a duesขpaying member of the association.

“At no point in time did the SBEA personally discuss the allegations with Zanial before terminating those benefits, and he was not notified of the termination until he again tried to reserve the recreational facilities at a later date.

“The ordeal has caused Zanial to experience a great deal of stress and anxiety.

“He is concerned that the investigation could affect his lawful permanent resident status and feels distress and humiliation based on this experience of being singled out because of his ethnicity, race and religion,” the ACLU said in a statement on its website.

Munir has resided in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and two young children since 2011.

Local media in the state of Kansas as well as The New York Times have reported on the lawsuit.

According to the statement of facts in the ACLU’s filing, the party was attended by approximately 45 guests, the majority of whom were Malaysians of Indian ancestry.

Several of Munir’s female guests, including his wife, wore hijab. The party was held to celebrate a Muslim celebration and Malaysian independence day.

Munir earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Wichita State University and completed a work-study programme at the National Institute for Aviation Research.

Justice Tun Abd Majid Tun Hamzah fixed the date after Selangor prosecution director Muhamad Iskandar Ahmad informed the court that Datin Rozita Mohamad Ali and her bailor, a Royal Malaysian Air Force official, could not be contacted.

DPP Muhammad Iskandar said that they went to Rozita’s house in Damansara, her family’s home in Melaka, and also the bailor’s home to serve the notice for them to appear in court, but no one was around.

He said attempts to serve the notice on Rozita and the bailor were made right till late last night (Tuesday).

Other than local media, Indonesian reporters and officials from the Indonesian Embassy were also seen in court.

On March 15, Rozita was bound over for five years on a good behaviour bond of RM20,000 for causing grievous hurt to her maid Suyanti Sutrinso, 21.

Judge Mohammed Mokhzani Mokhtar meted out the sentence against Rozita after she pleaded guilty to causing grievous hurt to Suyanti.

Judge Mokhzani made the order after Rozita admitted to an amended charge under Section 326 of the Penal Code for causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means.

Rozita, 44, was charged with using among others, a kitchen knife, a mop and an umbrella that were used to attack Suyanti at a house in Mutiara Damansara here between 7am and 12pm on June 21, 2016.

    This one, an app called “thisismydigitallife”, was a personality quiz, asking questions about how outgoing a person is, how vengeful one can be, whether one finishes projects, worries a lot, likes art, or is talkative.

About 320,000 people took the quiz, designed by a man named Alexsandr Kogan.

Kogan was contracted to do it by a company called Cambridge Analytica, founded by US Republican supporters including Steve Bannon, who would become the strategist for Donald Trump.

Because Kogan’s app was circulated via Facebook, it reaped far more than just the information on those who took the test. At the time, in 2015, such apps could scrape up all the personal details of not only the quiz-taker, but all their Facebook friends.

That ultimately became a horde of data on some 50 million Facebook users — their personal information, their likes, their places, their pictures, and their networks.

Marketers use such information to pitch cars, clothes, and vacations with targeted ads. It was used in earlier elections by candidates to identify potential supporters.

But for Kogan and Cambridge it was a much bigger goldmine. They used it for psychological profiling of US voters, creating a powerful database that helped carry Trump to victory in the 2016 presidential election.

The data let the Trump campaign know more than perhaps anyone has ever known about Facebook users, creating targeted ads and messaging that could play on their individual biases, fears and loves — effectively creating a bond between them and the candidate.

– Psychometric profiling –

The project was based on the work of a former Cambridge scientist, Michal Kosinski, who studies people based on what information they generate on line.

Kosinski and fellow researcher David Stillwell had for several years tapped into Facebook for psychometric profiling using their own personality test app, “myPersonality”.

The app accumulated six million test results, along with users’ Facebook profiles, and their friends’ profiles, in a powerful research database.

In 2015 they published a study carrying the bold title: “Computer-based personality Judgments are more accurate than those made by humans.”

They showed, for example, that they could divine a fairly accurate psychometric portrait of a person using only their Facebook “likes”.

“Computers outpacing humans in personality Judgment presents significant opportunities and challenges in the areas of psychological assessment, marketing, and privacy,” they wrote.

Kosinski would not share the database with Kogan and Cambridge Analytica, reportedly knowing it would be used for a political campaign.

But Kogan created his own app quiz and, through that, amassed the database on 50 million people that would be the backbone of Trump’s social media campaign.

Facebook now says Kogan did that illegally. And it has since also restricted apps from such broad data collection on friend networks.

– Powerful results —

But Cambridge Analytica proved that Kosinski’s methods were powerful.

They started with the standard psychological profiling test known as Big Five or OCEAN, which measures five traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

The test-taker answers a list of statements like “I am someone who tends to be organized” or “who rarely feels excited” or “has few artistic interests,” using a scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.

Those basic results were combined with the data raked from Facebook profiles and friend networks, associating longer lists of traits.

For example, to categorize voters, an algorithm could find links between “agreeableness” or “neuroticism” and gender, age, religion, hobbies, travel, specific political views, and a host of other variables.

The data generated an incredible 4,000 or more data points on each US voter, according to Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive before he was suspended on Tuesday.

The power of psychographic data, experts say, is not in the granularity itself, but in combining data to make significant correlations about people — something with requires powerful computer algorithms.

Ultimately, it allowed the campaign to know far more about voters than anyone ever has before.

The output was put to work in what Nix called “behavioral microtargeting” and “psychographic messaging”.

More simply said, the campaign could put out messages, news and images via Facebook and other social media that was finely targeted to press the right buttons on an individual that would push them into Trump’s voter base.

For Trump, it worked.

“If you know the personality of the people you’re targeting, you can nuance your messaging to resonate more effectively with those key audience groups,” Nix said in a 2016 presentation.//AFP

    The Liaoning and accompanying vessels entered Taiwan’s air defence zone on Tuesday and left around noon Wednesday, the ministry said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a blistering nationalist speech on Tuesday, warning against what he called any attempts to split China.

“All acts and tricks to separate the country are doomed to fail and will be condemned by the people and punished by history,” Xi said in an address ending the annual session of the National People’s Congress.

China still sees Taiwan as its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, even though the two sides split in 1949 after a civil war and have been ruled separately ever since.

Ties have turned frosty since Taiwan’s Beijing-sceptic President Tsai Ing-wen came to power. Her government refuses to acknowledge that the island is part of “one China”.

Tsai has warned against what she called China’s military expansion — the increase in air and naval drills around the island since she took office in May 2016.

The aircraft carrier — a second-hand Soviet-built ship — caused a stir in Taiwan when it first entered the strait in January last year in what was seen as a show of strength by Beijing.

It returned in  January this year.

“We are monitoring the whole process of the Liaoning’s cross-region drill,” Defence Minister Yeh De-fa told parliament Wednesday when asked to comment on its latest moves.

The defence ministry said in a statement that it sent aircraft and vessels to conduct surveillance. “No unusual activities have been spotted and we urge the public to rest assured,” it said.//AFP

The president is an old school friend of Suu Kyi, serving as her proxy in an office she was barred from occupying according to Myanmar’s military-drafted constitution.

His role was largely ceremonial given Suu Kyi had awarded herself the title State Counsellor and called the shots within her civilian administration.

But he was nonetheless the country’s head of state and a key domestic ally for Suu Kyi within her party.

Speculation had swirled for months about the health of Htin Kyaw, 72, who had recently lost weight and has had heart problems in the past.

“Myanmar President U Htin Kyaw resigned on March 21, 2018,” a statement on the president’s official Facebook page said.

His office did not give many details for why he resigned Wednesday, only saying that “he wanted to take a rest from his current duty”.

It added that a new leader will be selected in “within seven working days”.

There were no immediate candidates put forward as long term successors, but several senior party names were floated when Suu Kyi took power.

Myanmar’s Vice President Myint Swe, a former general, will move into the role until a new president is in place, according to the constitution.

Loyal school friend

Htin Kyaw, the country’s first civilian president since 1962, was widely respected and seen as completely loyal to Suu Kyi’s who said she would rule “above” him after he was elected in 2016.

He has stood firmly by her side even as as her reputation lies shattered internationally for not speaking up on behalf of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim community.

A violent military crackdown has forced some 700,000 Rohingya to flee over the border into squalid camps in Bangladesh, in what the UN has branded as “ethnic cleansing” with possible “hallmarks of genocide”.

The military justifies its campaign as a legitimate response to Rohingya militant attacks against police posts in August.

The civilian government is in a transitional power-sharing arrangement with the army which still retains huge political and economic power.

The army controls three key ministries – home affairs, borders and defence — effectively giving the army a carte blanche to conduct any security operations it chooses.

It also has a quarter of legislative seats reserved for officers, giving the military a de facto veto over any constitutional change.

Defenders of Suu Kyi say her government’s hands are tied by the military but critics maintain it could and should have done more to speak up against alleged army atrocities, particularly in Rakhine State.

Htin Kyaw is the son of a revered poet and helped run Suu Kyi’s charitable foundation before taking over the presidency.

According to an official biography, Htin Kyaw studied at the University of London’s Institute of Computer Science from 1971 to 1972.

In a varied career he worked as a university teacher and also held positions in the finance and national planning and foreign affairs ministries in the late 1970s and 80s before retiring from government service as the military tightened its grip

The mums are all part of a Facebook group known as “Designer Genes” created for parents who have a child with Down’s Syndrome born in 2013/14.

They got together to show the world just how ordinary and fun life with the condition is and how they “Wouldn’t Change a Thing”. The video was originally inspired by Singing Hands – a UK organisation who’s videos have helped many in the group learn Makaton for supporting their children’s communication development.

Makaton is designed to help hearing people with learning or communication difficulties using signs, symbols alongside speech. With thanks to the artist Christina Perri for her support and Singing Hands for the original concept.

You can download the original track here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/a-t…Singing Hands YouTube

Marcus Holmes, who has been CEO since late 2017, said on Tuesday that the negotiations with the GDT began in December.

“It’s so routine,” he said, referring to the negotiations. “We fully expect we are going to explain this, [the GDT] is going to accept that and everyone is going to be happy.”

News articles published by online outlet AEC News and Catholic newswire UCAN had asserted that the negotiations were exceptional and threatened the newspaper with closure, claims that Holmes disputed. The pieces relied on anonymous sources claiming to be either “hackers” or close to Phnom Penh PostPublisher Bill Clough.

Holmes rejected various claims that The Post was threatened with closure in the next 60 days; that the company was being penalised for failing to disclose a $2.5 million transfer from Australia; or that a deadline to pay back a $200,000 loan from a local bank was “very soon”.

He did acknowledge that the government had sent a letter alleging that the paper failed to follow proper reporting requirements regarding a $2.5 million money transfer from Australia, where Clough resides.

“There’s some very complicated tax legislation to do with injecting capital into Cambodia from outside,” Holmes said, explaining that it was a routine part of The Post’s operation to receive funds from Australia.

He said that the issue was now subject to negotiations, and that the talks are confidential. The GDT’s policy is to not comment on specific negotiations.

The issues of tax compliance and press freedom intersected last September when English-language newspaper the Cambodia Daily, often critical of the government, was shuttered over a disputed $6.3 million tax bill. Observers connected the paper’s shutdown to a larger crackdown on independent media and the political opposition that was occurring at the time, though that claim was fiercely rejected by the GDT.

But throughout Tuesday’s interview, Holmes characterised The Post’s negotiations as routine for any business, and said that The Post’s status as the last independent newspaper in Cambodia had not affected the negotiations with the GDT.

Holmes said on Tuesday that the negotiations were ongoing and had no specific deadline, adding the newspaper was likely to file its latest reply to the Tax Department this week or early next week.

Other matters raised in the articles included a loan owed to a local bank, which Holmes said was normal, adding that the company had plans to pay it off within the next year.

The articles also referred to a payment ordered by the courts in a wrongful dismissal suit brought by former CEO Chris Dawe, who was dismissed for cause in 2015. The Post will be appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court soon, Holmes said.

“None of this is new, or interesting, or surprising,” he said.

“It’s all painted in these apocalyptic terms because we’re the last independent newspaper in Cambodia. If we weren’t . . . it would be very boring, and no business editor would be vaguely interested in publishing anything about it.”

The bus, which was heading to the capital Manila, skidded off a mountain road on Mindoro island late Tuesday, said regional police spokeswoman Imelda Tolentino.

Rescue workers were pulling the dead and injured from the vehicle, which landed at the bottom of a wooded ravine, she added.

“Police are investigating why the driver lost control — whether there was mechanical trouble or the driver fell asleep,” Tolentino told AFP.

Police photos showed rescuer workers clambering down the cliff to reach the bus, which lay on its side amongst trees and grass about 15 metres (49 feet) below the road.

The accident occurred near Sablayan town, which is about 195 kilometres (121 miles) south of Manila.

Road accidents are common in the Philippines, where poorly maintained buses and poorly-trained drivers form the backbone of land transport options.

In 2010, 41 people died, including five foreigners, when a packed bus plunged into a deep ravine in the northern Philippines. Another 31 people perished in bus crash in the country’s north in April last year.

Public transport regulators said Wednesday they may suspend the franchise of the operator of the bus involved in the most recent disaster.