Honoring those who serve

A sequel to the 2000 election

A great crisis produces great people and great courage

The minority party may change but the rhetoric stays the same

The Sunshine State could use some help counting votes.

Remember those less fortunate and give

Will the benefits outweigh the risks?

General Motors announces 14,000 job cuts

Bill Titus, chair of the advisory board of A Kid Again Indiana, lists the fun events planned for families of children with life-threatening illnesses.

Reunited with Barbara and their daughter Robin

The president claims to have super trade powers

Will the Mueller investigation deliver?

A reelection campaign song

Funding for Trump's border wall is met with resistance

The latest school shooting seemed to come with a feeling of resignation that nothing will change. We can't let that feeling dominate.

The Indiana congressional delegation introduced a House resolution expressing support for the goals and ideas of ''Stomach Cancer Awareness Month."

Matt Tully was dedicated to his craft and to this community. The Matthew L. Tully Memorial Fund is a meaningful way to keep his memory and work alive.

Plainfield Correctional Facility inmates grow produce in a garden to give to needy.

Plainfield Correctional Facility inmates donate fruits and vegetables from their garden to community organizations.

Pat O'Neil, an Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, was declared cancer-free Tuesday.

The third-ranked Orioles knocked off Ben Davis 41-17 with strong QB play and a defense that just keeps scoring.

The Kansas commit threw five touchdown passes against a defense that entered the game allowing just 6.5 points per game.

Avon, ranked No. 1 in Class 6A, has had to display a high level of resiliency and develop that elusive clutch gene to remain unbeaten at 8-0.

Austin Burgett, a former Avon High School star, is rejuvenated in part by working out with IU women's basketball legend Tyra Buss.

My colleague Tanya Beckett has conducted a rare and fascinating interview with Viktor Vekselberg, one of the billionaire oligarchs who co-own TNK-BP with BP - and who have fallen out with BP over BP's desire to form a business relationship with Rosneft, Russia's largest energy group, which would involve BP and Rosneft taking stakes in each other.

It implies, perhaps for the first time, that there may be a solution to a dispute that has damaged BP's reputation and jeopardised the value of its very substantial assets in Russia.

Because of the tensions that have arisen with AAR, the group that represents the oligarchs, BP in collaboration with Rosneft would dearly love to buy AAR's half share in TNK-BP. But their offer of $27bn for 50% of TNK-BP, which values the whole of TNK-BP at $54bn, was rejected earlier this month.

All may not be lost for BP, however. Mr Vekselberg suggests that a sale is possible. He tells Tanya Beckett:

"Of course it can be happen, for sure. If it will be [an] interesting proposal for us according to our understanding of (the) valuation of this company, of course we can accept. So far we have not received this."

So what would be an "interesting" valuation of TNK-BP? Well those close to the oligarchs say that they value TNK-BP at more than $70bn.

It's not clear BP and Rosneft are prepared to pay as much that. The difficulty for BP is that if it fails to reach an accommodation with Mr Vekselberg and his colleagues on price, then it will be stuck in a difficult place - because BP will have been publicly humiliated by the failure to consummate the Rosneft deal and will somehow have to rebuild relations with AAR in order to continue to extract billions of dollars in dividends from TNK-BP.

BP's partnership with AAR is in tatters, as Mr Vekselberg makes clear, in emotive terms, because of AAR's conviction, upheld in arbitration proceedings, that BP's proposed deal with Rosneft breached its contract with AAR:

"The picture is really simple. TNK-BP was created eight years ago, 2003. It was created like [a] joint venture between Russian shareholders and BP, huge global player... The company grew very active; it's now one of the best companies - not just Russian but internationally, because we have investment outside Russia...
 
And really I personally was surprised, I was surprised why BP decided to do something which [was] not according to our shareholders agreement. I am not surprised why BP would like to do this but I am surprised why they did it without any consulting or even just like, just inform us about that (sic). I was very upset, I am still upset even now".

Mr Vekselberg says he is "not so interested in money". The billionaire
adds: "I have enough money, for my life, for my family, for all that".
But "we are businessmen, we are not ideological or something", so of course a sale to BP and Rosneft "can happen".

So what would occur if BP and Rosneft were to make him several billion dollars richer? "I am already very upset" he says "but I will [be] double upset if I have to decide to sell. It's because I dedicated for this company almost like 15 years".

These remarks by Mr Vekselberg are a sign that the impasse over the purchase by BP and Rosneft of AAR's stake in TNK-BP can be overcome.
It offers hope to BP, perhaps for the first time, that it may be able to buy AAR out of the joint venture by the time of the May 16 extended deadline set by Rosneft.

But here's the question? Is the price that Mr Vekselberg and his fellow billionaires will accept one that BP's owners will see as acceptable?

Some of them are already dubious about the terms of the new partnership it wants to form with Rosneft. At a time when BP remains financially stretched by the costs of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP's shareholders won't want it to further enrich Mr Vekselberg more than is strictly necessary.

For more on the Vekselberg interview, see Russia Business Report.

The cost of Britain's controversial new aircraft carriers is set to rise by at least £1bn, and perhaps almost £2bn, as a result of the government's decision taken last October to make them compatible with different aircraft than those originally envisaged.

I have learned that the working assumption of the contractors on the project, which are BAE Systems, Thales UK and Babcock, is that the carriers will now cost taxpayers some £7bn in total, compared with the £5.2bn cost disclosed by the Ministry of Defence last autumn - and up from the £3.9bn budget announced when the contract was originally signed in July 2008.

One defence industry veteran said the final bill was bound to be nearer £10bn, though a government official insisted that was way over the top.

The Ministry of Defence and the Treasury believe that total final costs could be nearer £6bn, if only one of the carriers is reconfigured to take the preferred version of America's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.

An MoD official said no final decision had been taken on whether the first carrier to be built, the Queen Elizabeth, or the second carrier, the Prince of Wales, or both would be reconfigured.

He said it would probably be the case that changing the design specification for the Prince of Wales would be the cheapest option. But if that happened, it is not clear when - if ever - the Queen Elizabeth, due to enter service in 2019, would actually be able to accommodate jets (as opposed to helicopters).

Whatever happens, the increase in the bill will be substantial - and is only regarded by the Treasury as affordable because the increment is likely to be incurred later than 2014/15, when the expenditure constraints put in place by the Chancellor's spending review come to an end.

The Treasury is adamant that the MoD will receive no leeway to increase spending before then.

An MoD spokesman sent me the following statement late last night:

"The conversion of the Queen Elizabeth Class...will allow us to operate the carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter that carries a greater payload, has a longer range and is cheaper to purchase. This will give our new carriers, which will be in service for 50 years, greater capability and interoperability with our allies. Final costs are yet to be agreed and detailed work is ongoing. We expect to take firm decisions in late 2012."

The disclosure of the rise in costs is bound to reopen the debate about whether the UK really needs new carriers, especially since the UK will be without any aircraft carrier till 2019, following the decision to decommission Ark Royal.

British Tornado jets are currently active in Libya, flying from a base in Italy, without the use of a British aircraft carrier.

The latest increase in likely expenditure on the enormous carriers - which are almost the size of three football pitches - stems from the decision of the Ministry of Defence in October to change the design one or both of them so that they can be used by the carrier version of America's Joint Strike Fighter.

This would mean they have to be fitted with catapults and traps - or "cats and traps" - rather than ramps.

The likely final cost will depend on whether the cats and traps are cheaper traditional steam devices, or newer-technology electromagnetic ones - and also whether the cats and traps are fitted to both carriers or just one.

Industry and government sources tell me that even if the MoD goes for the cheaper option, and even if the cats and traps are fitted to only one carrier, the additional bill will still be of the order of £1bn.

The hope however would be that in the longer term savings could be achieved because the maintenance costs of the more conventional Joint Strike Fighter should be lower.

One of the reasons the refit could be relatively more expensive is that for one of the carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, there would have to be a retrofit - because so much work has already been done on it.

"Retrofitting is always very pricey" said a senior defence executive.

The carrier project has been beset by controversy and cost increases.

In June 2009, I disclosed that the carrier costs had soared by more than £1bn as a result of a decision taken by the previous government to delay their entry into service.

Then last October the government, in its Strategic Defence and Security Review, came close to cancelling one or both carriers.

In the end, it committed to build both, but with the strange caveat that it might end up using only one of them. This was the reason given by the Prime Minister David Cameron in the Commons for building both:

"They [the previous government] signed contracts so we were left in a situation where even cancelling the second carrier would actually cost more than to build it; I have this in written confirmation from BAE Systems".

However in a memo to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Ministry of Defence estimated that cancelling both contracts would have saved £2bn and cancelling just one would have saved £1bn.

The MoD told MPs that "as the cancellation costs would have had immediate effect, the costs in the short term would have been significantly higher than proceeding with both carriers as planned; nearly £1bn more in financial year 2011/12 if both carriers had been cancelled".

The MoD was also concerned that cancelling the carriers would have undermined British capability and know-how in the manufacture of complex warships.

The carriers, called Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers, are being built by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, whose members are the UK defence giant BAE systems, the British engineering group Babcock, and Thales of France. The Ministry of Defence is also described as both a member of the Alliance and a customer.

Update 15:06:It has been pointed out to me, by what you might term a grizzled sea dog, that the UK does still possess two ships that can take aircraft. They are HMS Illustrious and HMS Ocean (which is a commando carrier with a flat top).

However they can't accommodate jet airplanes, only helicopters - so for veteran sailor it was a terrible error for the government to scrap the illustrious Harrier jumpjet.

He also takes the view, which I've heard from many other military personnel, that it would be bonkers to convert only one of the new carriers to take the carrier version of the Joint Strike Fighter - because if that were to happen, one of the carriers would be an enormous white elephant, and the other would not be able to provide a service for 100% of the time (it would need periodic servicing).

That said, the cost of retro-fitting the first carrier being built now and also redesigning the other one would certainly be nudging £2bn, maybe more.

He believes there is powerful strategic logic to building two new huge ships able to handle jets.

The problem for David Cameron is that he may find it hard to make the strategic case, since last autumn he justified building the two on the basis that it would not save any money to cancel one - which is not the most positive case for what turns out to be a very substantial public investment that anyone has ever advanced.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- It appears an IndyCar Series driver will be dancing next month on national television.

Don't blame Josef Newgarden for leaving Ed Carpenter's popular IndyCar Series team, and don't blame powerful Team Penske for signing Newgarden. It's the right thing to do for the employee and his new employer.

Indianapolis Metropolitan police are investigating after a man was found shot on the city's northwest side Thursday night.

Para Mirian Goldenberg, que pesquisa envelhecimento há 20 anos, "estamos assistindo horrorizados a discursos sórdidos, recheados de estigmas, preconceitos e violências contra os mais velhos".

Governo pretende divulgar os dados atrasados em maio, segundo afirmou à BBC News Brasil secretário do Trabalho do Ministério da Economia, Bruno Dalcolmo.

Segundo estudos, insetos liberam toxina tão potente que pode causar a morte de uma pessoa que tiver levado várias picadas.

Mudanças naturais na estrutura do vírus podem mudar o quão infeccioso ele é e afetar o desenvolvimento de vacinas.

Estudo feito com trabalhadores de quatro Estados brasileiros apontou que 89,7% dos entrevistados tiveram ganhos iguais ou menores em relação ao período antes da pandemia.

BBC preparou lista de perguntas e respostas sobre covid-19.

'Você tem 27 Superintendências, eu quero apenas uma, a do Rio de Janeiro', teria dito Bolsonaro a Moro. Primeira ação do novo diretor-geral da PF foi trocar comando no Rio.

Em Lund, gramados de parque receberam fezes para que odor espantasse frequentadores, evitando aglomerações.

Repórter da BBC volta a entrevistar líder de grupo após vídeo que virou meme.

"I could miss 15 shots, and I always have the mindset that the next one's going in," Grace Berger says. "I'm not worried about those other shots."

Holloman, a three-star prospect from Auburn Hills, also had offers from West Virginia, Nebraska, Maryland, Iowa State, and Central Michigan, among others.

Kathy Loggan (middle), wife of the late Paul Loggan, talks alongside her kids Sami (left), Will (middle left) and Michael, with his fiancé Megan Sizemore at North Central High School on Thursday, May 7, 2020.

The past several weeks have brought a whirlwind of emotions for the Loggan family as beloved North Central AD Paul Loggan died from COVID-19.

As of today, Las Vegas' Monte Carlo Casino Hotel remains closed pending the investigation of last week's fire and the impending repair work. At this time, reservations at the Monte Carlo are being moved to other MGM Mirage hotels. In addition, the Lance Burton show will be suspended for the time being and all tickets that have already been purchased will be refunded.

Plus, candidates line up to replace Susan Brooks. Restaurants give in time of need. Indy finally puts up streetlights. Legislation to help casino fails.

It's been five years since Indiana's controversial Religion Freedom and Restoration Act was passed, igniting a firestorm.

Gov. Eric Holcomb has begun reaching out to the business community to learn how to begin reopening the economy as safely as possible.

The most important decisions during a public health emergency are more likely to be made by Indiana's governor and local officials than the president.

Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and former Democratic hopeful for president Pete Buttigieg responded to the shooting of Dreasjon Reed.

The Indianapolis Colts select Michigan inside linebacker Jordan Glasgow.