President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised $7.5 billion for youth job training and aid to the elderly Wednesday, keystone programs that could make Mexico’s business sector one of the biggest beneficiaries of his first year in office.

Lopez Obrador pledged the government would pay the salaries of apprentices employed by Mexican companies as part of a $5 billion package of scholarships and job training.

The once-fiery leftist met with Mexican businessmen on Wednesday in a surprisingly chummy encounter where he sealed the job-training deal in a handshake with business chamber leader Juan Pablo Castanon.

The programs for the elderly and youths will be the cornerstones of Lopez Obrador’s first year in office, which starts when he takes office Dec. 1.

“We will have to come up with this funding … even if we are left without a shirt on our backs,” Lopez Obrador vowed. The president-elect — whose victory must still be certified by electoral authorities and the courts — implied that most of his other campaign promises will be left to later years in office. Lopez Obrador was elected in a landslide Sunday.

Lopez Obrador pledged $2 billion to extend and increase old-age supplementary payments to the elderly so that every Mexican over 68 will receive at least the equivalent of $2.25 per day.

The elderly payments initially started in Mexico City when Lopez Obrador was mayor in the early 2000s, but he has now pledged to fund them at the same level as in the capital — currently about $60 per month — nationwide.

But the youth program appeared to be a big gift to the…

Rarely does the demure Paris couture week see a standing ovation.

Even rarer is the whooping and screaming that echoed around the gilded salons of the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild as Pierpaolo Piccioli took his bow following Valentino’s collection Wednesday evening.

Mika, Valentino Garavani, Natalia Vodianova and Tracee Ellis Ross all got to their feet as the rousing operatic voice of Maria Callas played out the sumptuous creations from what was the week’s strongest collection.

Here are some highlights of the last day of haute couture week fall-winter displays.

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VALENTINO’S OPERA

With the stirring aria of “Casta Diva,” the couture seemed to take as its starting point the glory days of the height of legend Callas’ career in the 1960s.

Giant brushed-back wig hair and an unstructured celadon blue silk gown with intricate intarsia cape opened the 63-look show in that era’s exaggerated style. It took 1,120 hours to make.

Large round multicolored floral headpieces continued the retro feel.

Loose, exaggerated plays on proportion then followed.

Gargantuan scarf-wraps surrounded the body — and one, in vermilion, came actually attached across the bust.

Bows at the collar in mikado, one in fluorescent yellow, were so big they finished at the hip.

Despite the size, the looks were never over-theatrical as Piccioli ensured to keep the proportions balanced from top to bottom, and in keeping with the models’ body size.

One floor-sweeping triangular feather dress could have been overpowering, but was modelled on 5ft 10 inch model Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford’s daughter, with…

Authorities on Wednesday raised by more than 130 the number of people officially missing from last month’s deadly eruption of the Volcano of Fire.

Guatemala’s disaster agency, known as Conred, said the new figure of 332, up from 197 previously, came following a review of nearly 200,000 records and verifying lists of people living in shelters.

The disaster agency has confirmed at least 113 deaths from the June 3 eruption, which sent superheated flows raging through small villages. Eighty-five of those bodies have been identified.

But an independent group known as Antigua to the Rescue, after the nearby city of the same name, said at a news conference that the death toll could be high as 2,900.

Antigua to the Rescue said its figure was compiled through its own investigations and interviews with people in shelters, especially the inhabitants of the devastated village of San Miguel Los Lotes.

Conred spokesman David de Leon said the agency was respectful of others’ comments about the disaster’s toll, but stood by its official count.

“It is important to know the base or sources that served to determine the figure that was made public,” he said.

More than 3,600 people remain in shelters run by local authorities and charities.

Last week, Conred declared almost 200 communities surrounding the Volcano of Fire as uninhabitable or at high risk due to the threat of another eruption.

The volcano is one of the region’s most active, located to the southwest of Guatemala City.

Source: Associated Press

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A group of city counselors in Munich say they want the southern German city’s main train station to have a landing pad for flying taxis.

Five city council members from the Christian Social Union party submitted a motion Wednesday calling on rail company Deutsche Bahn to consider the space needed for the small, drone-like passenger aircraft in its plans for a future redesign of the station.

In their motion, they write that “it is to be expected that within a few years technology will have advanced so far that flying taxis can be used to transport people.”

The party, which has a majority across Bavaria but is in opposition in the state capital’s assembly, has recently been championing the idea of flying taxis as a future means of travel.

Source: Associated Press

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