New Delhi: The election to the state legislative assembly will be held on May 16 in single phase, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi announced on Friday.“In Kerala, all 140 constituencies in Kerala to go to polls on May 16,” Nasim Zaidi told reporters.“Counting of votes in all the five states to be held on May 19,” he said.

The launch of Ukraine’s new police patrol force last year sparked an internet craze of citizens posting selfies with newly recruited officers.Their popularity stemmed not from their uniforms, body cameras and tablets, but the fact they did not demand bribes.The most visibly successful reform to have emerged from the pro-European Maidan protests in 2014 is now under threat, serving and former law enforcement officials say, accusing vested interests of seeking to obstruct and discredit the force.Vladyslav Vlasiuk, a lawyer by training who rose through patrol police ranks to become Chief of Staff of the National Police, quit in March, “exhausted” by the pushback against change, he told Reuters in his first media interview since.The experience he described shows how fragile Ukraine’s progress in transforming itself into a Western-facing free market democracy could prove to be.

The police reform, possibly for the first time in the former Soviet republic’s history, “showed international partners that we in Ukraine are actually able to carry out some reforms,” Vlasiuk said.Before Maidan, police “would always do what the prosecutors say. Then it changed,” he said. “The National Police positioned itself as a separate and equal law enforcement power. Prosecutors did not like it.”“We are seeing the prosecution service chasing patrol officers for wrongdoings. There is now a tension which is blocking the reform of the national police.”

In Ukraine, prosecutors have the power to launch investigations into public servants suspected of wrongdoing — a power which police officers say is being abused.“When you are working within any public service in Ukraine you have to be ready to deal with a lot of inspections, a lot of bullshit, a lot of irrelevant regulations,” Vlasiuk said.“And the prosecution is a controlling organ which can punish you for, in their opinion, improper actions,” he said.The General Prosecutor’s office did not provide immediate comment when asked about the allegations.The United States and European Union, which are helping to fund a $40 billion aid-for-reform program for Ukraine, have repeatedly called for a clean-up of the General Prosecutor’s office, which they see as a key obstacle to fighting corruption.

Several high-profile reformers have been sacked from the government and prosecution service or resigned in frustration.First Deputy Interior Minister Eka Zguladze has also quit, to take on an advisory role in the ministry. Her resignation statement on Wednesday gave no reason but contained a warning over the fate of reforms.

“I want to emphasize that these islands of success will drown in the ocean of corruption, nihilism, the bureaucracy, if we do not build bridges between them, creating a continent,” she said. “And if in Ukraine we do not have the strength to go forward, the door, that we just opened, may close forever.”With the help of U.S. money and training, and headed by a former Georgian minister, the new police force was set up as part of a root-and-branch reform to weed out endemic corruption.

The new patrol section was launched in July and incorporated into a revamped National Police force. The patrol officers seemed to be everything those dreaming of a new Ukraine after Maidan hoped: committed, trustworthy, less susceptible to bribes and not afraid to go after the rich and the powerful.Drawn from all walks of life, they carried smart tablets as well as body cameras to make police work transparent. In a sign of changing times, Energy Minister Ihor Nasalik announced on Friday he’d been given a parking fine — and willingly paid.Vlasiuk, 27, was part of a new generation of Young Turks entering public service after Maidan. He is in the process of setting up an NGO to provide legal assistance to officers and burnish the police’s image nationally.His former boss, a Georgian technocrat called Khatia Dekanoidze in charge of the National Police, described in a separate interview cases of vested interests undermining change.

An initiative to fire corrupt or incompetent officers by vetting them in a “reattestation” process has led to hundreds of lawsuits by sacked officers, some of whom got their jobs back.

Dekanoidze said judges were deliberately reinstating discredited officers for fear the judiciary could be next.“This is a revenge of the old system, because the judiciary system, especially courts, they are part of the old system,” Dekanoidze said.

There are other obstacles to reforms. The police budget is tight in a country at war with Russian-backed separatists and an economy that shrank by a tenth last year.An incident that has grown into a cause celebre for the police occurred on the night of Feb 7. A police car chased a speeding BMW through the streets of Kiev, recorded on a black and white police camera in footage later broadcast on TV.

Starting with warning shots, three police officers fired a total of 34 bullets at the car during the course of a 40 minute chase, according to an interior ministry spokesman. Eventually, one of the bullets killed a 17-year-old passenger inside.Prosecutors accused the officer of wilful murder and abuse of authority; he is under house arrest while they investigate.Police said the officer was trying to protect the public from a driver who was drunk. Their supporters protested in Kiev holding banners saying “Keep Calm and Support Patrol Police” and the hashtag #savepolice appeared on Twitter.

Anton Gerashchenko, a lawmaker and member of the interior ministry council, said the case was an example of prosecutors seeking to show they remained in control by discrediting police.Dekanoidze echoed that view. “Police reform is the only reform that is visible, that is a real reform for Ukrainians,” she said. So when prosecutors went after those defending the lives of ordinary Ukrainians, “it looked like The Inquisition.”She added there were other cases when police had gone after illegal gambling rackets — only for prosecutors to open criminal cases against the officers.A Western diplomat, who did not want to be identified by name, said the fight back by prosecutors showed reforms were starting to have a real impact.

“Prosecutors here are millionaires,” the diplomat said. “They are powerful people who will fight to the very end to protect the resources vertical they created.”Much will hinge on the performance of the new General Prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, a former interior minister whose appointment on Thursday raised eyebrows because he had no legal background.Dekanoidze said she hopes prosecutors under Lutsenko will cooperate with the police. “Because … without a good and fair prosecution, police can’t do anything.”

Pat Conroy, the beloved author of \\\"The Great Santini,\\\" \\\"The Prince of Tides,\\\" and other best-sellers who drew upon his bruising childhood and the vistas of South Carolina and became one of the country\\\'s most compelling and popular storytellers, died Friday evening. He was 70.

Conroy, who announced last month that he had pancreatic cancer, died at home among family and loved ones in Beaufort, South Carolina, according to his publisher. The heavy-set author had battled other health problems in recent years, including diabetes, high blood pressure and a failing liver.

\\\"The water is wide and he has now passed over,\\\" his wife, novelist Cassandra Conroy, said in a statement from publisher Doubleday.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley tweeted: \\\"We can find comfort knowing his words and love for SC will live on.\\\"

Funeral arrangements were still being made.

Few contemporary authors seemed more knowable to their readers over than Conroy. An openly personal writer, he candidly and expansively shared details of growing up as a \\\"military brat\\\" and his anguished relationship with his abusive father, Marine aviator and military hero Donald Conroy. He also wrote of his time in military school and his struggles with his health and depression.

\\\"The reason I write is to explain my life to myself,\\\" Conroy said in a 1986 interview. \\\"I\\\'ve also discovered that when I do, I\\\'m explaining other people\\\'s lives to them.\\\"

His books sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, but for much of his youth he crouched in the shadow of Donald Conroy, who \\\"thundered out of the sky in black-winged fighter planes, every inch of him a god of war,\\\" as Pat Conroy would remember. The author was the eldest of seven children in a family constantly moving from base to base, a life readers and moviegoers would learn well from \\\"The Great Santini\\\" as a novel and film, which starred Robert Duvall as the relentless and violent patriarch.The 1976 novel initially enraged Conroy\\\'s family, but the movie three years later made such an impression on his father that he claimed credit for boosting Duvall\\\'s career (The actor had already appeared in two \\\"Godfather\\\" films), saying, \\\"The poor guy got a role with some meat on it.\\\"

But the book also helped achieve peace between father and son.

\\\"I grew up hating my father,\\\" Conroy said after his father died in 1998. \\\"It was the great surprise of my life, after the book came out, what an extraordinary man had raised me.\\\" The author would reflect at length on his relationship with his father in the 2013 memoir \\\"The Death of Santini.\\\"

\\\"The Prince of Tides,\\\" published in 1986, secured Conroy a wide audience, selling more than 5 million copies despite uneven reviews for its story of a former football player from South Carolina with a traumatic past and the New York psychiatrist who attempts to help him.

\\\"Inflation is the order of the day. The characters do too much, feel too much, suffer too much, eat too much, signify too much and, above all, talk too much,\\\" said The Los Angeles Times Book Review.

But Conroy focused on the advice he once got from \\\"the finest writer I ever encountered,\\\" novelist James Dickey, who taught him at the University of South Carolina.

\\\"He told me to write everything I did with all the passion and all the power you could muster,\\\" Conroy recalled. \\\"Don\\\'t worry about how long it takes or how long it is when you\\\'re done. You know, he was right.\\\"

\\\"The Prince of Tides\\\" was made into a hit 1991 film starring Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who also produced and directed it. Conroy worked on the screenplay and shared an Oscar nomination, one of seven Oscar nominations it earned, including best picture.Conroy\\\'s much-anticipated \\\"Beach Music,\\\" published in 1995, was a best-seller that took nine years to complete. Conroy had been working on \\\"The Prince of Tides\\\" screenplay, but he also endured a divorce, depression, back surgery and the suicide of his youngest brother.

Conroy had other demons. After attending (at his father\\\'s insistence) The Citadel, South Carolina\\\'s state military college, he avoided the draft and went into teaching. In 2013, he wrote on his blog www.patconroy.com/wp that he had begun his life as \\\"a draft dodger and anti-war activist\\\" while his classmates \\\"walked off that stage and stepped directly into the Vietnam War.\\\"

\\\"When I talk to Ivy Leaguers or war resisters of that era, I always tell them that Vietnam was not theoretical to me, but deeply and agonizingly painful. Eight of my Citadel classmates died in that war,\\\" he wrote.

For years, he was alienated from The Citadel, which he renamed the Carolina Military Institute in his 1980 novel \\\"The Lords of Discipline.\\\" A harsh tale of the integration of a Southern military school, the book was adapted into a film in 1983, but had to be made elsewhere because The Citadel\\\'s governing board refused to allow any crews on campus.While \\\"The Lords of Discipline\\\" had made him unpopular with Citadel officials, reconciliation came in 2000 when he was awarded an honorary degree. In 2002, he visited during homecoming weekend and fans lined up to get him to autograph copies of his books.

\\\"I never thought this would happen,\\\" Conroy said. \\\"This is my first signing at the Citadel. That\\\'s amazing.\\\" He had recently published \\\"My Losing Season,\\\" about his final year of college basketball at The Citadel.

The good feelings deepened when Conroy\\\'s cousin Ed Conroy, a 1989 Citadel grad, became the Citadel\\\'s basketball coach in 2006 — and within a couple of years brought about a remarkable improvement in the team\\\'s fortunes.Pat Conroy\\\'s other books included \\\"South of Broad,\\\" set in Charleston\\\'s historic district, and \\\"My Reading Life\\\", a collection of essays that chronicled his lifelong passion for literature.

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Barack Obama will add an optimistic pitch on Wednesday to the campaign to elect Hillary Clinton as the first woman U.S. president, as he seeks to hand off the White House to a trusted fellow Democrat and stop Republican Donald Trump.Clinton formally secured the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination on Tuesday, coming back from a stinging defeat to Obama in her first White House run in 2008 and surviving a bitter primary fight against Bernie Sanders to become the first woman to head the ticket of a major U.S. party.The 68-year-old former secretary of state will accept the nomination on the last day of the party’s convention in Philadelphia on Thursday, becoming the Democratic standard-bearer against Trump in the Nov. 8 election.Obama, due to address the meeting on Wednesday evening, has been vocally critical of the Republican candidate, and is likely to contrast his optimistic view of the United States with Trump’s darker vision, on a day when the convention will focus on national security.The New York businessman has cast America as a place in need of a strong leader, where security threats abound and law and order are breaking down. Trump, 70, has proposed deeply controversial measures such as temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country and building a wall on the Mexico border to stop illegal immigrants.

“I hope my headline (from the speech) is that the president of the United States is profoundly optimistic about America’s future and is 100 percent convinced that Hillary Clinton can be a great president,” Obama said in an interview with NBC News that aired on Wednesday.His remarks will follow his wife Michelle Obama’s opening night speech to the gathering on Monday, which was a rousing success with delegates. “I’m not going to hit that bar, so let me concede top speech-making already to my wife, but I couldn’t have been prouder of her,” Obama said.Obama “has been candid about why he thinks electing the Republican nominee is a risky path for the United States,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said on Tuesday.

But Obama’s speech will focus more “on how Secretary Clinton has the judgment, the toughness and the intellect to succeed him in the Oval Office,” Schultz said.The Clinton campaign portrays Trump, a former reality TV star whose campaign style has been freewheeling and whose remarks have been peppered with insults, as temperamentally unfit for the White House.The convention aimed to reinforce this message on Wednesday. Events would seek to contrast Clinton’s approach to national security with Trump’s “unsteady, unfit and dangerous approach,” said Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.Trump has accused Obama and Clinton of being far too weak on the threat posed by Islamist militants such as Islamic State.

“There is no more urgent priority to (Clinton) than making sure that the threat of radical jihadist terrorism (…) is stopped,” Clinton foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters, adding that speakers would seek to highlight Clinton’s foreign policy experience.“Donald Trump has disrespected our military, and I think that will shine through tonight,” Sullivan said.Obama, who beat Clinton in the 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination, will be speaking 12 years to the day since he gave a keynote address as a U.S. senator to the Democratic convention in 2004, which effectively launched him on the national stage.

Clinton waged another hard-fought primary battle this year, beating off an unexpectedly strong challenge from the left by Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont.The Democrats have sought to buttress Clinton with a star gathering of current and past party notables in Philadelphia. As well as Obama, speakers on Wednesday will include Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, Tim Kaine, Vice President Joe Biden, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Leon Panetta, a former defense secretary and former head of the CIA.Bloomberg, founder of the Bloomberg news and data service, was previously elected as a Republican and later became an independent.Bloomberg would take on Trump in the area where the New York real estate developer seeks to appeal to voters: his business acumen, said campaign chair Podesta.

“He (Bloomberg) will talk about the reason he has come to the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is the right choice to be a stable leader on economic matters, and why Donald Trump through his life in business is incapable of managing the economy let alone his own affairs,” Podesta said.Bloomberg, one of the founders of a mayors’ initiative against illegal guns, is also a strong ally to Clinton in her efforts to reduce gun violence.Kaine will also get a chance to present himself to the party. Announcing her choice of running mate last week, Clinton cast the U.S. senator from Virginia as a seasoned and steady leader and a contrast with Trump’s volatile campaign.

But the pick disappointed some supporters of Sanders who were upset over Kaine’s past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.On Tuesday night, Democrats reveled in history being made.Addressing the gathering, former President Bill Clinton called his wife, who has also been a U.S. senator, a dynamic force for change.Bill Clinton also sought to paint his wife in a warm, personal light, countering the Republican portrayal of her as a power-hungry politician who bends the rules and lacks transparency in her political dealings.

Controversy over her use of a private email server for official business while she was secretary of state from 2009-2013 dogged her during the campaign, and more than half of American voters view her unfavorably, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.Trump, who has never held elective office, is even less popular, with 61 percent holding an unfavorable view, the polling showed.Trump got a boost in opinion polls from his nomination at the Republican convention in Cleveland last week. He had a 2-percentage-point lead over Clinton in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, the first time he has been ahead in this survey since early May.

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