Egypt's President Visits Troops in Embattled North Sinai
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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi traveled to the troubled Sinai Peninsula to inspect troops, after an Islamic State group that carried out a deadly assault earlier in the week said it had fired three rockets at Israel a day earlier.
The news that two of the girls are married dashes any hopes their families had of seeing them return to Britain one day.
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'Freedom Frigate' Replica Tours US Portsby webdesk@voanews.com (Deborah Block)
A replica of the French warship that brought the Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington with news of French aid in 1780 is in New York as part of Independence Day celebrations. On Saturday, the Hermione replica will join hundreds of sail and motor boats passing the Statue of Liberty for an Independence Day parade. The ship will be touring the Eastern Seaboard until mid-July. The ship played a key role in the American colonists’ bid for freedom from England, historians say. On...
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A secretive Russian agency designed to flood the Internet with pro-Kremlin and anti-U.S. comments and posts has been brought into the public eye as a result of a lawsuit brought by a former employee. In a Russian court, Lyudmila Savchuk sued the Agency for Internet Studies, or AIS, on a variety of charges, including labor violations and lack of payment. In her suit, Savchuck said she worked at AIS for two months before quitting in March. She alleged she wasn’t paid for her work, was...
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Media rights groups are calling on Mexican authorities to thoroughly investigate the recent murders of three journalists in one week in the states of Oaxaca, Veracruz and Guanajuato. "We are appalled by all these murders of journalists in Mexico," said Lucie Morillon, Reporters Without Borders program director. "Three deaths in a week — when will the violence stop?" Morillon called on authorities in the three states "to ensure that impartial, independent and...
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US Senator McCain in Kabul, Asks US Bases Remainby webdesk@voanews.com (Ayesha Tanzeem)
Spending the American Fourth of July holiday weekend with the U.S. troops in Afghanistan has become an annual ritual for John McCain. The Arizona Republican and Senate Armed Services Committee chairman visited Kabul again this year to meet the forces as well as top Afghan leadership. McCain said he is suggesting that U.S. President Barack Obama re-evaluate conditions in Afghanistan and decide to keep open some of its military bases in the country beyond 2016. McCain has always been...
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CAIRO (AP) — Two years to the day after the army overthrew Egypt’s Islamist president, the sounds coming from the mosque at Cairo’s Tahrir Square were sadly telling. At the focal point of Egypt’s upheavals, where authorities had hoped to stage celebrations, there was instead a prayer for the week’s dead, including soldiers cut down by militants in Sinai and the country’s chief prosecutor, assassinated by car bomb in the capital.
A sense of foreboding fills the air, with officials and media speaking of a state of war and urging national unity. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has promised swift justice, which critics fear will mean a further step away from democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood, banned but unbowed, has upped the ante by calling for revolt against his rule. There is fear of even worse attacks of the kind that have become sadly familiar around the region.
It all presents a major challenge for el-Sissi, who as army chief led the takeover against Morsi two years ago, when millions filled the streets outraged over what they saw as Brotherhood misrule. He was later elected president, and the deal he has offered Egyptians — a curtailing of freedoms in exchange for stability and security — was one many seemed eagerly willing to embrace after several years of upheaval, in which the wider region has gone up in flames.
The first part of that equation has been carried out: the once-ruling Muslim Brotherhood has been largely crushed, thousands of its members and scores of leaders in jail and hundreds — including Morsi — handed the death penalty. Public protests are restricted, as is political activity. The media has been cowed amid an atmosphere that seems to equate criticism with disloyalty, and even many liberal activists are in jail. The result has been quieter streets, without protests that often turned to riots the past three years, and violence against Christian and Shiite minorities has lessened, though not stopped.
But stability, which for a time seemed attainable, seems to be in danger of unraveling. Militants affiliated with the regional Islamic State group have turned the northern part of the Sinai peninsula into a war zone, this week staging a brazen multi-pronged attack on army positions. Last month a key tourist site at Luxor was attacked, and on Tuesday chief prosecutor Hisham Barakat was assassinated while leaving his Cairo home for work.
Islamic radicals have claimed responsibility for the attacks. Authorities generally blame the Muslim Brotherhood itself, claiming its leaders issue orders from behind bars. Some believe the group’s denials while others don’t, and proof is scarce.
Michael Hanna, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Century Foundation, sees an “escalatory cycle … deteriorating security is eroding confidence in the capacity of the regime but at the same time also reinforcing hard-line trends in Egyptian society with respect of how to deal with these security threats.”
After the killing of Barakat, an angry el-Sissi went on TV to promise more efficient justice. He also suggested that the death penalties against the Islamist leaders would — contrary to expectations — actually be carried out.
Action will be taken within days “to enable us to execute the law, and bring justice as soon as possible,” he said. In a thinly veiled reference to jailed members of the Brotherhood, el-Sissi blamed the violence on those “issuing orders from behind bars,” and warned: “If there is a death sentence, it will be carried out.”
“We will stand in the face of the whole world, and fight the whole world,” el-Sissi said.
El-Sissi was alluding to the widespread global criticism of his heavy-handed rule — charges certainly also echoed by domestic opponents, not all of them Islamists.
On Friday, hundreds of mostly young Islamist demonstrators held several small protests in Cairo suburbs, carrying pro-Morsi signs and chanting “down with military rule.”
But el-Sissi also has wide support among Egyptians who have come to feel that liberal democracy is a bad fit in a society where almost half the people are illiterate and significant political forces would, if allowed, create a theocracy which would hardly be democratic.
“There’s progress and stability, we feel more order in the streets and the economy. But there’s nobody who’s not sad in Egypt these days because of the attacks in Sinai,” said Ibrahim Hamdy, a shopkeeper at a hardware store in a popular neighborhood of central Cairo, where Ramadan decorations hung from the buildings.
The crackdown on the Brotherhood and other opponents following Morsi’s ouster claimed hundreds of lives and landed thousands in jail. With most of the Brotherhood cadres imprisoned, youth supporters have been left leaderless. Some still protest several times a week in dilapidated Cairo suburbs and narrow alleyways, or restive rural areas off-limits to the state.
Unprecedented, coordinated attacks by militants including massive suicide bombings on the army in the Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday underlined the failure to stem an insurgency that blossomed in the area after Morsi’s overthrow, despite a heavy-handed crackdown.
The army said 17 soldiers and over 100 militants were killed, although before the release of its official statement, several senior security officials from multiple branches of Egypt’s forces in Sinai had said that scores more troops also died in the fighting. The same day, a special forces raid on a Cairo apartment killed nine leaders of the outlawed Brotherhood, which said they were innocents “murdered in cold blood,” and called for a “rebellion.”
Sinai’s main insurgent organization, which calls itself the Sinai Province of the Islamic State group, claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s assault. El-Sissi has yet to address the public about the attacks, but in the past he has described the Brotherhood as the root of all Islamic extremist groups. Just two days earlier, the assassination of Barakat was claimed by an obscure militant group.
The week’s events have pushed aside, for now, the talk of Egypt’s budding economic recovery. GDP is accelerating, foreign investment has jumped and the stock market is rising. Unemployment is down and the country’s credit ratings are up. Gas lines are gone and the country has capital to invest, thanks in part to a multi-billion dollar aid package from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Among Brotherhood’s supporters, calls to abandon non-violence are growing, deepening an internal split over the issue. Wednesday’s call for revolt may reinforce those urging the use of force.
Security expert H.A. Hellyer said it was not inevitable but “increasingly likely” that the call will result in “a more militant and insurgency-style route.” Hellyer, of London’s Royal United Services Institute, said such calls would find “a much more receptive audience against the backdrop of the political realities in Egypt and the crackdown.”
The events do not bode well for attempts to support democracy, form a more pluralistic society, or even elect a parliament, which el-Sissi had said would come at the end of the year.
Those elections, whenever they take place, are likely to produce a strongly pro-el-Sissi legislature. Islamists, in various forms, may still have a solid base of support but are likely to largely boycott — something that allowed el-Sissi to easily win election a year ago. The existing non-Islamic parties, an assortment of nationalists and liberals, were disorganized and hapless in opposition to Morsi and largely back el-Sissi now.
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General Secretary of Communist Vietnam Invited to White House by The European Union Times
Next week Obama will meet the general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party at the White House.
It is said Obama and Nguyen Phu Trong will discuss a number of issues, most importantly the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) globalist trade accord.
Vietnam plays an important role in the emerging globalist economy. Its authoritarian government works closely with transnational corporations to keep labor costs low — even lower than China.
“Seventeen year old women are forced to work 9 to 10 hours a day, even days a week, earning as little as six cents an hour in the Keyhinger factory in Vietnam,” write Mark Alfino, John S. Caputo and Robin Wynyard (McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture). “Located in Da Nang City, Vietnam, the Keyhinge Toys Co Factory employs approximately 1,000 people, 90 percent of whom are young women 17 to 20 years old. Overtime is mandatory… Wage rates average between six cents and eight cents an hour — well below subsistence levels.”
Additionally, in Ho Chi Minh City children are forced to work long hours in garment factories, often without wages, according to the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation.
The Workers Rights Consortium discovered child slave labor is tolerated by the government of Vietnam and the widespread abuse was mentioned in the July 23, 2013 Federal Register, indicating that the Obama administration and the government are well aware of the situation.
“U.S. workers should not be forced to compete against child slaves in garment factories. The last thing American working families need is another trade deal that’s unfair to American workers,” theTeamster Nation blog posted in 2013 at the TPP was being negotiated.
As noted by Forbes, the TPP is designed to allow transnational corporations to take advantage of the sort of working conditions in authoritarian communist countries like Vietnam and China.
Trade ministers argue that globalist trade deals like the TPP “commit signatory countries to enhancing labor, environmental, and social regulations. But actually, the reason businesses tend to relish free-trade agreements, and unions loathe them, is precisely that trade liberalization allows multinational brands to exploit the absence of those labor protections in poorer countries” in addition to making huge profits on dismal wages and child slave labor, according to Michelle Chen.
Obama will send an additional positive message to Vietnam when he visits the country this fall during a trip to Asia.
“Officials from the two countries are planning a number of landmark initiatives to commemorate (the 20th anniversary of their diplomatic ties),” write Murray Hiebert and Phuong Nguyen for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “By visiting Vietnam in November, when he will be in the region to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in the Philippines and the East Asia Summit in Malaysia, Obama can lock in important foreign policy gains and help expand the scope of the comprehensive partnership he announced with his Vietnamese counterpart in 2013.”
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Germany rules out Greek debt writedownby The European Union Times
German Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger.
Germany has ruled out any restructuring of Greece’s debt to international creditors, despite a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which shows the cash-strapped country is in dire need of debt cancellation.
An analysis by the IMF, which was released in Washington on Thursday, showed that Greece needed an extra EUR 50 billion (USD 56 billion) in funds through to the end of 2018 as well as a massive debt write-down.
Speaking on Friday, however, German Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said the IMF report “by no means leads to the conclusion that a cut in debt was absolutely necessary.”
The analysis said the country needed the funds and debt write-off notwithstanding the results of a Greek referendum scheduled to take place on Sunday on whether the government should agree to the lenders’ demands in return for bailout funds.
Greece received two bailout packages in 2010 and 2012 worth a total of EUR 240 billion (USD 272 billion) from its creditors following its 2009 economic crisis in return for implementing harsh austerity measures.
The country is seeking a third bailout in the hope of resolving its deepening financial crisis.
The Greek parliament passed a bill on June 27, approving a motion forwarded by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to hold the referendum and the government has been rallying the public to vote “No.”
However, Germany, France, Italy and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker have all said a ‘No’ vote would negatively impact Greece’s place in the eurozone, and maybe even in the European Union.
Jaeger also said the situation in Greece had been made much worse by the Athens government’s “mismanagement” since it was elected in January.
On June 24, Tsipras took to the Twitter hitting out at his country’s creditors for not accepting his government’s latest reform proposals and suggesting that Germany was trying to push Greece out of the euro.
Tsipras wrote, “The repeated rejection of equivalent measures by certain institutions never occurred before – neither in Ireland nor Portugal. This odd stance seems to indicate that either there is no interest in an agreement or that special interests are being backed.”
The Greek premier complained that his country was being put through the wringer, saying that other countries in a similar situation had not faced similar crippling measures.
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China Warns Russia That “State Of War” Now Exists With United States by The European Union Times
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) is reporting today the Federation has been informed by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) that a de facto “State of War” now officially exists between that Asian nation and the United States of America.
According to this report, following the “provisions and protocols” of the 8 May 2015 Russian-Chinese Cyber-Security Agreement that states a signatory to this pact that anticipates the outbreak of hostilities is obligated to immediately inform the other so that “war preparations” needed to protect critical infrastructure can be undertaken, the PRC has informed the Federation that these “conditions now exist”.
Leading to this grave war warning from the PRC, this report explains, has been the catastrophic loss of over $3.7 trillion in wealth from Chinese stock markets over the past fortnight that has seen them plunge by over 30% and has led to panic among financial investors and ordinary citizens alike.
As to the cause of this devastating melt-down, this report continues, PRC experts have stated that“evil” market forces are going short to ruin the Chinese economy, and even suspecting Western-backed investment “predators” of lurking behind the turmoil, with US banking giant Morgan Stanleyamong the names mentioned.
Similarly, this report notes, five professors from China’s top universities issued a widely distributedpublic letter on 2 July alleging sinister market forces were exploiting weaknesses in China’s financial system for profit, comparing the situation to when President Obama’s “puppet master”, financier George Soros, and others bet against East Asian currencies during the 1997-98 Asia Financial Crisis.
To what precipitated this devastating Obama regime-led financial attack upon the PRC, MoFA experts in this report say, was detailed early last month by the Washington Post News Service, who, in part, said:
“Hackers working for the Chinese state breached the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management in December, U.S. officials said Thursday (4 June) , and the agency will notify about 4 million current and former federal employees that their personal data may have been compromised.The hack was the largest breach of federal employee data in recent years. It was the second major intrusion of the same agency by China in less than a year and the second significant foreign breach into U.S. government networks in recent months.”
As to the wisdom of the Obama regime attacking the PRC’s financial markets in retaliation for their alleged hacking of US government servers, this report continues, it appears to be both “juvenile” and “ill timed” as China, with its holding of over nearly $4 trillion in foreign reserves, compared with theUnited States $121 billion…and with China’s citizens having a staggering $21 trillion saved compared to their American counterparts who have only $614 billion…is more than prepared to retaliate.
And making this situation even more fraught with danger, MoFA experts in this report warn, in a further response to the Obama regimes attacking them, two senior Chinese military leaders yesterday called on the People’s Liberation Army to beef up its naval capacity and combat readiness amid a higher risk of “warfare on the doorstep”.
In a 5,000-word article published yesterday in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, General Cai Yingting, commander of the PLA Nanjing military area command, and his political commissar General Zheng Weiping, warned that the PLA should learn lessons from the war with Japan that ended 70 years ago.
These Chinese generals further stated, “There have been profound challenges from territorial disputes on our country’s periphery, geopolitical competition among big powers, and ethnic and religious friction. Tensions in surrounding hot spots are also on the rise, and the risk of chaos and warfare on our doorstep has increased. We should be more vigilant … and put combat preparedness at the front of our minds.”
To how the Obama regime is “responding/preparing” for war with China, however, this report notes,World War III is now the hot news with Pentagon brass as the Wall Street Journal just reviewed “The Ghost Fleet” by Peter Singer and August Cole.
Singer, “one of the United States pre-eminent futurists” is now “walking the Pentagon halls with an ominous warning for America’s military leaders: World War III with China is coming.”
In fact, Singer warns, even America’s advanced new F-35 fighter jets may be “blown from the sky by their Chinese-made microchips and Chinese hackers easily could worm their way into the military’s secretive intelligence service … and the Chinese Army may one day occupy Hawaii.”
Speculation? No, the Wall Street Journal’s Dion Nissenbaum reminded readers that Chinese hackers have already got into “White House computers, defense industry plans and millions of secret U.S. government files.”
Also important to note, this report continues, China has just overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy, and as, perhaps, best written about by the Vanity Fair News Service who recently wrote:
“When the history of 2014 is written, it will take note of a large fact that has received little attention: 2014 was the last year in which the United States could claim to be the world’s largest economic power. China enters 2015 in the top position, where it will likely remain for a very long time, if not forever. In doing so, it returns to the position it held through most of human history.”
And as to who would win a war between the PRC and the US, this report concludes, the Market Watch News Service in their article yesterday titled “4th of July Fireworks: World War III with China Dead Ahead” summed it up best by writing:
“When Rand released a report in 2000 describing the potential outcome of a Sino-American conflict over Taiwan, the United States won the war handily. Nine years later, the nonpartisan think tank revised its analysis, accounting for Beijing’s updated air force, its focus on cyber warfare and its ability to use ballistic missiles to take out American satellites.Rand’s 2009 conclusion: “The United States would ultimately lose an air war, and an overall conflict would be more difficult and costly than many had imagined.”
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U.S. Senator John McCain says remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan should stay longer than planned to stop the Taliban from making advances during a current offensive.
U.S. Senator: Strong Hand Needed To Deal With Putin, Islamic State by support@pangea-cms.com (RFE/RL's Balkan Service)
U.S. Senator Roger Wicker says "freedom-loving" countries have to be united and firm in responding to both an aggressive Russia and the rise of the Islamic State (IS) militant group.
Syria Forces and Hezbollah Attack Insurgents Near Lebanonby ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAAD
Government forces and their allies in the Lebanese Shiite group began an offensive in Zabadani, a mountain town.
Syrian rebels advance in government-held Aleppoby Staff and agencies
Rebel capture of army barracks from pro-Assad forces means regime has lost important line of defence in northern city
Syrian rebels have gained ground in government-held western Aleppo, seizing an army barracks in one district, but have been pushed back elsewhere.
The fighting in the country’s former economic powerhouse is some of the fiercest since the Syrian conflict began in the northern city in mid-2012.
Continue reading...Iran and world powers reach tentative agreement on sanctions relief by Associated Press in Vienna
John Kerry and Iranian foreign minister still must sign off on package, but news on thorny issue points to progress as negotiators work to reach deal
World powers and Iran have reached tentative agreement on sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic, among the most contentious issues in a long-term nuclear agreement that negotiators hope to clinch over the next several days, diplomats said on Saturday.
The annex hammered out by experts, one of five meant to accompany the agreement, outlines which US and international sanctions will be lifted and how quickly. Diplomats said senior officials of the seven-nation talks, which include Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, still had to sign off on the package.
Continue reading...
Texas wants to bring its gold stockpile home, but where to put it?
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Power company says drones could soon scan lines for trouble, help identify storm damage
A year of legal weed sales in Washington: More stores, lower prices and climbing sales
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Opinion
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addresses a news conference after a meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) in Defense Ministers session at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, June 24, 2015. ERIC VIDAL/REUTERS
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Amid multiple signs of an impending battle in Ukraine, NATO and Ukraine have stepped up their response. But so has Russia.
Ukrainian officials claim to have 60,000 troops in the field against an estimated 54,000 Russian forces in the Donbas. A large-scale conventional theater in the Donbas is a real danger this summer.
But Moscow is not merely focused on Ukraine. Russia has made numerous nuclear threats, buzzed U.S. and NATO ships in the Black Sea, moved Iskander missiles to Crimea and Kaliningrad, built up a formidable anti-access and area-denial (A2AD) force along the Russian border, conducted major Arctic exercises and continued its probes against northern European and U.S. targets.
Russia's aggressive measures haven't gone unnoticed. NATO reinforced its forces in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe by sending ships to the Black Sea, carrying out military exercises, and tripling the size of its rapid reaction force to 40,000.
The EU renewed sanctions last week. Lithuania and Poland are building liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, and gas interconnectors are being built across Central and Eastern Europe to ensure greater energy independence from Russia.
The United States has pledged to help NATO's rapid reaction force with airlifts, air-to-air fueling as well as with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Washington will also station tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and self-propelled howitzers in six NATO countries on Russia's flank.
Russia argues that NATO's recent moves are unnecessarily provocative and may mandate some sort of undefined military response. But such claims are misplaced. Russia initiated this crisis by its unprovoked aggression against Ukraine.
Second, Moscow possesses a huge margin of conventional superiority in all theaters from the Baltic to the Black Seas. NATO's actions have hardly made a dent in that superiority and, if Russia invaded the Baltic states today, NATO commanders are skeptical that those states could hold out for any length of time.
As Russian threats continue to grow, NATO must step up its game. Permanently stationed forces in both the Baltic and Black Sea areas comprising land, air, sea and information warfare capabilities are needed. Given the size of the forces currently in Ukraine and the high likelihood of more fighting, it's entirely possible that fighting might spill beyond Ukraine's borders.
This is admittedly a sobering message to NATO and the EU, but it is also a message that must be heeded. According to recent Pew polling, all NATO member publics are more likely to think the United States will come to an ally's defense than to be willing to do so themselves.
But Europe doesn't have any alternatives. By invading Ukraine, Russia has made war in Europe thinkable, and it has raised the prospect of a war that might draw in NATO.
Russia's aggression threatens the European security architecture. Under the circumstances, there is no alternative to building and deploying a robust, viable and effective conventional deterrent force in the Baltic and Black Sea regions. Such deployments, far from being a threat to Russia as Moscow as its trolls insist, is the only reliable guarantee that peace in Europe will be preserved and that Moscow cannot further exercise its imperial options in the region.
Without an effective conventional deterrent, we risk bolstering the Russian government's self-serving, paranoid belief of the simultaneous weakness and threat of the West. Since Moscow doesn't believe in the sanctity of treaties, internationally guaranteed borders, or the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors, and has disregarded most of the arms-control treaties of the last generation, a robust conventional deterrent, which rests on a heightened but realistic assessment of the Russian threat and the willingness to spend the necessary money to meet it, is not a luxury.
Working together, NATO and the EU can help sustain Ukraine and its neighbors, thwart any further Russian aggression, increase the high costs of the Ukraine operation to Moscow and deter future aggression. Realistically this means spending a lot of money and training many troops, all investments that the West doesn't want to make.
But the experience of the last year shows us that if governments are negligent about their security, they eventually have to pay more under unfavorable conditions to secure their borders. Once again Europe must learn the ancient lesson that peace does not preserve itself.
Stephen Blank is a senior fellow for Russia at the American Foreign Policy Council. This article first appeared on the Atlantic Council website.
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