Police caught 29-year-old John Williams, the man authorities say killed Corporal Eugene Cole on Wednesday, after four days on the run.
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Australia on Sunday pledged a major cash injection to restore and protect the Great Barrier Reef in what it said would be a game-changer for the embattled natural wonder. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said more than A$500 million (£275 million) will go towards improving water quality, tackling predators, and expanding restoration efforts. The World Heritage-listed site, which attracts millions of tourists, is reeling from significant bouts of coral bleaching due to warming sea temperatures linked to climate change. The reef is also under threat from the coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish, which has proliferated due to pollution and agricultural runoff. Mr Turnbull said it was the "largest ever single investment - to protect the reef, secure its viability and the 64,000 jobs that rely on the reef." "We want to ensure the reef's future for the benefit of all Australians, particularly those whose livelihood depends on the reef," he added. The reef is a critical national asset, contributing A$6.4 billion (£3.5 billion) a year to the Australian economy. A mass bleaching event of coral in the Great Barrier Reef happened during an extended heatwave in 2016 Credit: GREG TORDA/AFP/Getty Images Canberra has previously committed more than Aus$2 billion to protect the site over the next decade, but has been criticised for backing a huge coal project by Indian mining giant Adani nearby. With its heavy use of coal-fired power and relatively small population, Australia is considered one of the world's worst per-capita greenhouse gas polluters. Canberra insists it is taking strong action to address the global threat of climate change, having set an ambitious target to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Coral reefs | The main dangers Mr Turnbull said part of the money will be used to mitigate the impacts of climate change, but gave no details. The bulk of the new funding - just over A$200 million - was earmarked to improve water quality by changing farming practices and adopting new technologies and land management. "The money will go towards improving water quality, working with farmers to prevent sediment, nitrogen and pesticide runoff into the reef," said Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg. "It will ensure that we tackle the crown-of-thorns... and use the best available science to ensure our coral is resilient to heat and light stress."
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Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced a deal with state legislative leaders Friday to raise teachers’ pay 20 percent by 2020, as educators stayed away from classrooms a second straight day in a spreading revolt over salaries and school funding. In a joint statement with Arizona Senate President Steve Yarbrough and House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, Ducey said the deal would also restore funding for schools that were cut in the last recession. The funds would be “flexible dollars for superintendents to use for support staff pay increases, update antiquated curriculum and improve school infrastructure – without raising taxes,” the statement said.
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Alfie Evans, the 23-month-old British toddler whose grave illness drew international attention, died early on Saturday, his family said. Alfie had a rare, degenerative disease and had been in a semi-vegetative state for more than a year. After a series of court cases, doctors at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool removed his life support on Monday, against his parents wishes.
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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday said the temporary ban on Filipinos going to work in Kuwait is now permanent, intensifying a diplomatic standoff over the treatment of migrant workers in the Gulf nation. Mr Duterte in February imposed a prohibition on workers heading to Kuwait following the murder of a Filipina maid whose body was found stuffed in a freezer in the Gulf state. The crisis deepened after Kuwaiti authorities last week ordered Manila's envoy to leave the country over videos of Philippine embassy staff helping workers in Kuwait flee allegedly abusive employers. The two nations had been negotiating a labour deal that Philippine officials said could result in the lifting of the ban but the recent escalation in tensions has put an agreement in doubt. "The ban stays permanently. There will be no more recruitment for especially domestic helpers. No more," Mr Duterte told reporters in the southern city of Davao. There was no immediate response from Kuwait, where around 262,000 Filipinos are employed - nearly 60 percent of them as domestic workers, according to the Philippines' foreign department. Last week the Philippines apologised over the rescue videos but Kuwaiti officials announced they were expelling Manila's ambassador and recalling their own envoy from the Southeast Asian nation. In quotes | Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines Kuwait also detained four Filipinos hired by the Philippine embassy and issued arrest warrants against three diplomatic personnel, Manila said. Mr Duterte on Sunday described the treatment of workers in Kuwait as a "calamity". He said he would bring home Filipina maids who suffered abuse as he appealed to workers who wanted to stay in the oil-rich state. "I would like to address to their patriotism: come home. No matter how poor we are, we will survive. The economy is doing good and we are short of our workers," he said. About 10 million Filipinos work abroad, seeking high-paying jobs they are unable to find at home, and their remittances are a major pillar of the Philippine economy. The Philippine government has for decades hailed overseas workers as modern heroes but advocacy groups have highlighted the social cost of migration, tearing families apart and making Filipinos vulnerable to abuse. Mr Duterte lashed out at Kuwait in February, alleging Arab employers routinely rape Filipina workers, force them to work 21 hours a day and feed them scraps. However after the latest row, Mr Duterte used a conciliatory tone as he addressed the "diplomatic ruckus" on Saturday. "Apparently it seems as if they have anger against Filipinos ... I do not want to send (workers) because apparently you do not like Filipinos," he said in a speech before Filipinos in Singapore. "Just do not hurt them. I plead that they'd be given a treatment deserving of a human being," he said in the same event.
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One mile away, another historical monument tells a very different tale about the American south: the First White House of the Confederacy celebrates the life of “renowned American patriot” Jefferson Davis, who served as the president of the Confederate states, while making virtually no mention of the hundreds of black people he and his family enslaved. The contradictions of Montgomery’s historical narratives were on full display this week as thousands of tourists and progressive activists flocked to the city to mark the opening of the country’s first memorial to lynching victims – while some locals quietly seethed, saying they resented the new museum for dredging up the past and feared it would incite anger and backlash within black communities. “It’s going to cause an uproar and open old wounds,” said Mikki Keenan, a 58-year-old longtime Montgomery resident, who was eating lunch at a southern country-style restaurant a mile from the memorial.
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Steamboat Geyser, in Yellowstone National Park, erupted at around 6.30am local time on Friday morning, geologists said. The eruption is the latest event in a rare period of activity at the geyser this year, following similar water discharges on March 15 and April 19 this year. Before this year, Steamboat had not erupted since September 2014.
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Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinians along the border with the Gaza Strip in two separate incidents on Sunday, the Israeli military said. The shootings follow a month of violence along the Israel-Gaza border, where Palestinians have been holding protests every Friday pressing for the right of return for refugees and their descendants to what is now Israel. In the first incident on Sunday, two men "attempted to infiltrate" into Israel from the southern Gaza Strip, the military said in a statement.
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Northrop Grumman is only bidding on projects that the company believes will generate the best financial returns on its investments. Continuing a recent trend amongst major defense companies, Northrop Grumman is only bidding on projects that the company believes will generate the best financial returns on its investments. The company even ruled out bidding on certain programs where it is the incumbent, such as a new replacement electro-optical distributed aperture system (DAS)—the contract for which ended up going to Raytheon.
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Larry Harvey, the co-founder of the Burning Man festival who grew it from an event on a San Francisco beach to a desert arts festival of global significance, died Saturday. He was 70. Harvey had been hospitalized after a stroke on April 4, and had remained in critical condition. "Though we all hoped he would recover, he passed peacefully this morning at 8:24am in San Francisco, with members of his family at his side," wrote Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell in the organization's official announcement. SEE ALSO: Burning Man Isn't What You Think, and Never Has Been Harvey's story has already passed into countercultural legend. A former landscape gardener and carpenter, he and his friend Jerry James decided to burn a large wooden figure of a man on San Francisco's Baker Beach in 1986. The Burning Man event, repeated annually, began to draw exponentially increasing numbers of attendees — so many that Harvey and friends needed a new location where it could grow relatively unchecked by authorities. In 1990 they found one in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, and the week-long extravaganza of Burning Man began. Much of the event's energy in those early years was provided by the Cacophony Society, a culture-jamming collective of California artists. But it was Harvey who became the face and the driving force behind Burning Man's expansion. After a particularly anarchic version of the festival in 1996, in which one participant ran his car over a number of people in tents, Harvey oversaw Burning Man's transformation into Black Rock City — a temporary urban environment with roads, gas lamps and an army of volunteers. Harvey was a self-educated deep thinker who would never use one word where a paragraph would do. He was often to be found delivering lectures and giving interviews, his signature cowboy hat never far from his head. But that ceaseless brain provided the philosophy and principles that made Burning Man what it is today — a year-round global network with 85 official regional events on six continents. He insisted that the event resist commercialization, so that even now, with around 70,000 regular annual attendees, the only things you can buy with actual money at Burning Man are ice and coffee. He balanced the "radical self reliance" needed to survive in the harsh desert environment with a "gift economy" culture — encouraging participants to offer goods and services freely to others in the name of community. Harvey insisted that everyone think of themselves as a participant and a provider; at Burning Man, there were to be "no spectators." Indeed, the volunteerism rate at Black Rock City — roughly 70% of attendees get involved with one of the events' many sub-organizations such as the Lamplighters or the Department of Public Works — has amazed the urban planners and city managers who made the pilgrimage. Burning Man's fame soon far outgrew the numbers who made the actual trek to Black Rock. In particular, Silicon Valley took to the event with a vengeance. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were regular attendees. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were not only enthusiastic Burners themselves, but chose their CEO, Eric Schmidt, because he was the only candidate who had been to Burning Man. SEE ALSO: Make Burning Man suck again! Harvey allowed and accommodated the increasing number of celebrities (such as Kanye West and Katy Perry) to attend. He weathered storms of grumbles from old-time Burners over the "turnkey" camps that accommodated the rich, pointing out that only 2 percent of attendees were members of society's wealthiest 1 percent. He soothed the event's constant conflicts with its landlords at the Bureau of Land Management, and encouraged the artists whose work has spread out from the festival, now installed in locations such as Las Vegas and the San Francisco Bay Bridge. But his mind was forever on the philosophy behind the event and the good it could do in the world at large. Burning Man was never just a party or an arts festival to Harvey; it was what anarchists call a Temporary Autonomous Zone, a space to try different ways of living, that would inspire change back in the "default world." Harvey called Burning Man a "hundred year movement," and felt that regional events known as "burns" would soon overtake the need for one central Burning Man. And still it grew. Every year Harvey designated a theme for the event — from the simple ("Floating World," a nod to the prehistoric lake bed of Black Rock) to the historical ("Da Vinci's Workshop") to the obscure ("Caravansary"). Some themes were more successful than others, but they all inspired jaw-dropping art and playfully improvised theme camps. Harvey had initially set up Burning Man as a private corporation — one that began to take in more than $10 million in annual ticket revenue. (Its expenditure often matched that, not least because the BLM kept raising its land use fees). Facing down criticism on this front, Harvey turned the organization into a nonprofit. He ceded day-to-day management to Goodell, his dear friend and colleague for 22 years, and designated himself Chief Philosophical Officer. A sign above his office door read "Larry Harvey does not exist." But he did. He most definitely did, and he changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who have attended the event and found it to be transformational. "Larry Harvey had an idea and because of that idea my life changed forever," wrote one attendee on Facebook who first got together with her husband at the event. "That idea brought me dozens of amazing friends from across the globe, obscene amounts of fun, broken bones, an empty wallet, dreadful over-confidence, desert survival skills (sometimes), the ability to cook dinner for 50 people in tent in a sandstorm, some beautiful corsets, a half-share in a lock-up garage in Reno, camping kit that's eternally full of gypsum, and the love of my life." Harvey is survived by a son, a brother, a nephew, and a hundred-year movement.
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