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VADODARA: Barely 10 days before the nine-day dance festival kicks off in Gujarat, a right-wing group that identifies itself as Hindu Asmita Heet Rakshak Samiti (HAHRS) has issued a diktat in Godhra that Muslim youths should not be allowed to enter garba venues in the town to counter ‘love jihad’.The samiti claims it issued the diktat as Muslim youths enter the garba venues with the intention of luring Hindu girls. “Muslim boys luring Hindu girls at garba venues has always remained a problem in Godhra. Navratri is an auspicious festival. If Muslims have problem with everything including the singing ‘Vande Mataram’, why should they be allowed at garba venues?” alleged Jaimin Shah, one of the leaders of HAHRS.On Saturday, VHP leader Pravin Togadia had called for the same in Amreli and said that identity cards of each and every person should checked for participants and visitors to such events. “Our volunteers will contact all garba organizers in Gujarat and across the country to request them to make arrangements to check identity proofs of all youths. Navratri is a religious festival and Muslims should not be allowed here,” Togadia had told TOI.Some organizers have agreed to allow Muslim youths only if they are accompanied by their family. According to the samiti, they have also received support from major garba organizers in Godhra and formed a team of volunteers to ensure that Muslim youth are barred from entering garba venues.“The garba organizers have assured us that they will not allow Muslim boys to enter the garba venues. Also, we have around 1,500 active members who will keep a check at the venues,” said Shah, adding that the group which hasn’t registered itself is holding awareness meetings in different areas of the town on the issue since over a fortnight.“We won’t allow any Muslim youth at our garba venue to avoid ‘love jihad’,” said PB Baria, organizer of Aadhya Shakti Garba Mahotsav, which draws a crowd of 35,000 spectators and revelers in the town.Baria said 250 volunteers and private security personnel will keep a check at the venues to bar Muslim youth from entering the venues. “If they come with their families, they are disciplined. So, we will allow Muslim families inside the venue,” he said.“The samiti members had approached us with their demands. We don’t want any kind of disturbance and hence we have agreed that we will not collect donation from Muslims nor issue passes,” said KT Parikh, organizer of Maa Shakti Garba Group . “But we have no means to check whether any Muslim or a Hindu is entering the garba venue.”
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery By Witold Pilecki \| Translated by Jarek Garliński \| Aquila Polonica \| US$ $34.95 In the late 1960s, during one of my first visits to Warsaw, I found myself travelling by public transport along Rakowiecka Street in the southern suburb of Mokotów with a young Polish woman named Sonia, who had been deputed by kind friends to look after their exotic and no doubt naive visitor. At a certain moment she pointed discreetly at the forbidding walls of a building we were passing and whispered, with a tremor of dread in her voice, that it was a jail. Then, even more nervously, she explained to me that there were political prisoners inside. She sought my confirmation that there were such prisons in Australia too. I said there were not, which she obviously found incredible. By that time, there were far fewer political prisoners in Mokotów Prison than there had once been. But during the Stalinist period of Poland’s postwar history, many wartime anti-Nazi resistance fighters were held there for extended periods of brutalisation and torture, and multiple executions were not uncommon. Sonia was probably acutely aware of that period, and perhaps apprehensive that it might return and take an anti-Semitic turn. The politics of the ruling Polish United Workers’ Party certainly seemed to be tilting in that direction. For historical reasons, Jews had been prominent in the Polish communist regime of the Stalinist era, including within its brutal security police. A hardline, anti-Semitic faction within the regime was seeking to exploit that fact to seize power, and in 1968 it launched an internationally conspicuous hate campaign against Poland’s surviving Jews. By that time, the notorious Jewish communists of the Stalinist-era security establishment had been removed from office, and in some cases punished, and the manoeuvre did not succeed. But its failure came only after a major crackdown on the opposition-minded intelligentsia, which also contained many Jews, had pushed half of Poland’s Jewry, including Sonia, into emigration. It is unlikely that Sonia would have heard of the name, much less the exploits, of one of Mokotów’s prisoners, the Polish cavalry captain Witold Pilecki, who was held and tortured there for nearly a year in the late 1940s, and executed on 25 May 1948. For many decades following his judicial murder, Pilecki was an unperson, his heroic career unknown to the younger generation of his compatriots. Pilecki features as one of the six most outstanding resistance fighters of the second world war in the British historian Michael R.D. Foot’s 1978 book Six Faces of Courage. But because of the Western squint on the history of the war, Pilecki is not well-known among Anglo-Saxon readers either. And that means any introduction of the remarkable book, The Auschwitz Volunteer, to English-language readers must also introduce its equally remarkable author. WITOLD Pilecki was born in 1901 into a family that had been forcibly resettled to Tsarist Russia because of his grandfather Józef Pilecki’s involvement in the Polish uprising of 1863, for which Józef had spent seven years in Siberian exile. As a boy, he moved with his family to the ethnically Polish (and Jewish) city of Wilno, now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. He joined the secret Polish scout movement, which led naturally to his teenage involvement in the Polish independence struggle during the latter stages of the first world war, including the underground resistance to invading Bolshevik forces near Wilno. (Despite presenting themselves as the liberators of the Tsarist “prison of the peoples,” the Bolsheviks were in fact doing their best to restore the Russian empire, in a new “proletarian” guise.) Following Poland’s re-emergence as an independent state, Pilecki joined the newly formed national Polish army and took a very active part in the Polish–Bolshevik war of 1919–20, notably in the defence of Warsaw in 1920. Still in his teens, he was twice decorated. After the war, he returned to civilian life, working to restore his family estate while remaining active both as a reserve officer and through charitable work, for which he was again decorated. By all accounts a devoted husband and father, he also engaged in musical and artistic pursuits, including painting and writing poetry. He was later to pen a poem in Mokotów Prison to his torturer-in-chief, the notorious Colonel Różański. In 1939, Pilecki was mobilised as a platoon commander in the Polish cavalry. Contrary to the hardy myth, his poorly equipped unit did not undertake quixotic charges on horseback against the advancing Germans, but it did succeed in destroying seven tanks and three aircraft. The Polish armed forces received no help from their Western allies and were soon outgunned by the enemy. Retreating to the southeast, Pilecki and his men were overrun by Soviet forces entering Poland to claim their share of the spoils of the secret clauses of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, which carved up Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. Discouraged by Poland’s isolation and the unequal struggle on two fronts, and abandoned by a high command and political leadership that had retreated across the southeastern border, many Polish armed units also headed west via the same route, but Pilecki’s unit remained. Its last battles were fought as a partisan force. In November 1939, Pilecki helped found a pioneering resistance group called the Secret Polish Army, which became one of the building blocks of the Armia Krajowa (the Home Army), the biggest armed resistance formation in German-occupied Europe for much of the war. Pilecki’s Secret Polish Army derived from the prewar nationalist right, which had numbered extremists and anti-Semites among its members. But Pilecki’s simple personal and military code, God, Honour, Fatherland (Bóg, Honor, Ojczyzna), did not lead him in that direction. Under his leadership the Secret Polish Army quickly accumulated thousands of followers. Hitler’s occupation regime quickly began implementing its plan to decapitate the Polish intelligentsia, Polish culture and Polish education, re-Aryanising any putative Germans, seizing children with promising Germanic traits for adoption by Germans, and generally reducing the nation to a leaderless mass of slave labourers to be worked to death or deported to make Lebensraum for German settlers. Large groups of Poles were being arbitrarily seized and despatched to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the southwestern Polish region of Silesia, which, with its mixed Polish-German population, had been annexed directly to the Third Reich. The fragmentary but alarming reports about Auschwitz that reached the underground led Pilecki to propose to his superiors that he allow himself to be incarcerated in Auschwitz to organise a resistance movement there and send back intelligence. Pilecki seems to have been the only person who ever volunteered to become an Auschwitz prisoner. After his commanders agreed to the plan, he inserted himself in a German mass round-up in Warsaw. Along with some 1800 other people seized in the round-up, he was transported to Auschwitz, where he was to spend two years and eight months in Auschwitz I, the Stammlager, or main camp, in the complex. Auschwitz was not yet the mass-murder facility it was later to become, nor had adequate reports of the vicious conditions there filtered through to Warsaw. Even for someone as hardened to resistance as Pilecki, arriving at the camp after a nightmarish journey without food or water was a severe shock. Brutally extracted from their freight trucks under blinding lights, beaten, kicked and rifle-butted by SS-men and herded by snarling dogs into lines, the new arrivals were then marched into the camp. In his report, Pilecki described the scene as follows: On the way, one of us was told to run to a post at the side of the road; he was followed by a burst of automatic weapons fire and mown down. Ten men were then dragged out of the ranks at random and shot with pistols as “collective responsibility” for the “escape” which the SS themselves had staged. All eleven of them were then dragged along by leg straps. The dogs were teased with the bloody corpses and set on them. All this to the accompaniment of laughter and joking. We approached a gate in a wire fence over which could be seen the sign “Arbeit macht frei” [“Work makes you free”]. It was only later that we learned to understand it properly. Beyond the gate they were set upon by a horde of kapos (prisoner trusties) in the pyjama-like garb later to become so familiar throughout the world. Demanding in German to know what the newcomers had done in their former life, the kapos beat to death any who acknowledged they were educated professionals. The amplified voice of the Auschwitz deputy commandant, Fritz Seidler, could be heard promising the newcomers that they would be allowed to live no more than six weeks; any who did would be regarded as having stolen food, and for that they would be sent to a penal company where they could be quite certain they wouldn’t survive long. Pilecki himself endured two beatings, losing some teeth and only just managing to suppress groans of pain that might well have led to worse. Such was his introduction to Auschwitz. The daily routine of the camp proved to be very like that welcome. Prisoners were systematically starved and deprived of sleep, sanitary facilities were grotesquely inadequate, and the daily labour was back-breaking. Unless they found a niche away from the everyday grind, prisoners would indeed die soon enough, even if they weren’t killed for some alleged infringement of discipline or “hygiene.” The day was made longer by repeated parades and roll-calls, and anyone failing to appear because of hunger, fatigue or disease was likely to be routed out and murdered on the spot to encourage the others to better behaviour. Although some of the kapos and some of the German civilians employed at the camp showed some residual signs of human decency, most did not. The kapos were often the worst of all. Two ethnically Polish early arrivals at Auschwitz had ascended to the most senior kapo positions and were loathed and feared even more than the SS. Pilecki refers to the two contemptuously as “ex-Poles.” Pilecki’s report describes the conditions in the camp in grim detail, with a keen eye for camp sociology, poignant scenes and brutal patterns of behaviour, and at times with black humour. Some of the time, things got worse; at others, they eased slightly. But throughout his lengthy stay, the remorseless attrition continued. Because the prisoners were given consecutive numbers based on the time of their arrival in Auschwitz (Pilecki was 4859), it became possible to determine attrition rates by counting the numbers who had survived from any group of one hundred. After two years, each group of Pilecki’s approximate vintage had been reduced to fewer than ten. This was genocide, slow-motion genocide compared to the hideous mass-murder regimes instituted for Europe’s Jews in the adjoining Auschwitz–Birkenau camp and elsewhere, but genocide nonetheless. And camp SS officials frequently reminded the prisoners that the purpose was to finish them all off in the end. Historians estimate that at Auschwitz alone, some eighty to ninety thousand ethnic Poles perished, and over a million Jews. PILECKI survived through a combination of physical fitness, resilience, exceptional resourcefulness, coolness under pressure and good luck. At one point he was allocated a skilled labourer’s job by a junior camp official who was desperate to perform a private task for a superior. Despite not having the necessary skills, he inserted himself plausibly into the role. From there, one tradesman’s job led to another and he escaped the worst of the barbarous camp conditions. These jobs gave him the contacts, the relative freedom of movement and above all the longevity to build up his organisations of intelligence agents and soldiers-in-waiting. Through the networks they created, they were sometimes able to help themselves and others – or even save prisoners from impending disaster or exposure – and also to conduct guerrilla warfare against the worst of the camp administrators. (An example of the latter involved collusion with sympathisers on the staff of the prison hospital – itself typically a staging post to death or execution – to infect their hated tormentors with the typhus-carrying lice that were endemic in the prisoner population.) Pilecki had begun organising this elaborate resistance structure very soon after his arrival, basing it on groups of five, no members of which, apart from himself, had a comprehensive sense of the extent or membership of the organisation as a whole. Though by no means the most senior military prisoner in the camp, his natural authority and remarkable flair for organisation enabled him to unify all the existing underground cells and groups in the camp under his leadership. The resulting Union of Military Organisation included activists from various points on the political spectrum of prewar Poland who, in normal circumstances, would not have been prepared to shake hands with one another. By recruiting collaborators from among inmates who had become camp functionaries of one sort or another, Pilecki’s organisation was able to mitigate some of the worst features of camp life. It also gathered information about the crimes of the occupation regime and transmitted reports to the underground leadership via the occasional prisoners who were released from the camp (often thanks to large bribes offered to German officialdom in Warsaw or Kraków) or the very small minority who managed to escape. Neither release nor escape were viable options for any of the Jews being caught up in the mass shipments to Auschwitz and other death camps. Pilecki’s report describes how some time before Hitler’s “final solution” began to be implemented, Jews among the prisoners in Auschwitz I were forced to write letters to relatives throughout Europe describing the circumstances there as very favourable. Conditions were even eased for a time to facilitate this operation. The purpose, he later concluded, was to deceive the many thousands of Jews still to arrive at Auschwitz into believing that they were simply being resettled, and thereby to avoid mass panic or desperate rebellions as they were prepared for the gas chambers. Pilecki’s central objective was to ready an underground fighting force to rise up and overpower the camp administration in the event of an allied or Home Army attack on Auschwitz. Sadly, this worthy and understandable ambition proved to be unrealistic. Despite the information provided by the Union of Military Organisation to the underground leadership, and through them to the Allies, about the mass torture, starvation, widespread murder and hideous conditions prevailing in Auschwitz, the Allies never undertook any significant action to disable, much less liberate, the camp. And the Home Army was never strong enough to mount such an operation successfully on its own. Even when the Germans began mass gassings at Auschwitz, initially and “experimentally,” of Soviet POWs, then increasingly of Jews – all of which Pilecki reported – there was a marked reluctance in Allied circles to believe the reports. As with the news of the Holocaust conveyed to the Allies by the legendary Polish courier, Jan Karski, they tended to be dismissed as exaggerated or inaccurate. After more than two-and-a-half years in Auschwitz, Pilecki began to detect signs that the organisation may be in danger and that his own role could be exposed. If Pilecki, with his overarching knowledge of the underground structure in Auschwitz, succumbed to extreme methods of interrogation the results for all his colleagues would have been disastrous. With two comrades, he staged a successful getaway, surviving gunfire from guards in hot pursuit and an encounter with an armed German patrol a little further along the way. For many readers, the gripping description of this adventure in Pilecki’s report, extending over fifty pages, will alone be worth the price of the book. Over 800 inmates tried to escape from Auschwitz but only 144 succeeded. The failed escapees were invariably executed, and typically the Germans inflicted collective capital punishment on at least ten others who may not have been involved in any way. Pilecki’s organisation had adopted a policy of discouraging escapes for that reason. At the time Pilecki and his companions decided to escape, however, while conditions in the adjoining Auschwitz–Birkenau death camp were even more hideous, the administration had become milder in Auschwitz I, and a successful escape a short time before had brought no collective punishment. Having shaken off his pursuers, Pilecki made his way stealthily towards Warsaw. During the journey, by a bizarre coincidence, he met the real owner of the identity he and his underground colleagues had pilfered to forge the documents he had used for the round-up. The false identity had helped to protect his underground colleagues and to save him from being blackmailed by threats to his family. The real owner of his nom de guerre was startled to meet him, but bore him no ill will and indeed invited him to rest and recuperate before continuing his journey. Back in Warsaw he immediately resumed his underground activities in Home Army headquarters, where he was promoted from lieutenant to captain and deployed in the Home Army Sabotage Command. In his new post he resumed his efforts to convince his superiors of the need to launch the attack on Auschwitz that he believed could have enabled the Union of Military Organisation to liberate the camp from within. He also prepared a report on Auschwitz, called the “W Report” (later “Witold’s Report”), to be transmitted to the Allies, which formed the basis of the longer 1945 version that Jarek Garliński has now translated. The report was a key source of intelligence for the allies on Auschwitz, but regrettably, like others of its kind, it did not stir them into action. On 1 August 1944, the Home Army leadership took its fateful decision to unleash the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation of the capital. In nine weeks of fighting, over 200,000 Poles – men, women and children; civilians, underground soldiers and medical orderlies alike – were killed. Hitler gave explicit instructions that the city should be razed to the ground in punishment for its outrageous impertinence. Despite his status as an officer, Pilecki volunteered for action as a foot soldier in the uprising. With casualties mounting rapidly, however, he accepted an officer’s command, and led some particularly noteworthy acts of armed resistance against the vastly superior firepower of the enemy. One in particular, in which his unit repeatedly took and retook a strategic building on the main east–west thoroughfare through the city, caused great frustration to the German side. Reviewing the episode, the eminent British historian Norman Davies comments that so long as Pilecki “threatened this one vital pressure point, the German command was made to feel insecure. One is tempted to suggest that a single company could have won the Rising a fortnight’s reprieve.” Time was perceived as vital by the uprising’s leaders, who were calculating that the Allies would come to their assistance. But Moscow, having called in its propaganda broadcasts to Poland for the insurgents to rise up, halted its advance on the other side of the Vistula River when they did so, and waited for Hitler to crush the insurrection. With it, Stalin calculated, the powerful national underground movement, which he wanted to replace with his proxy Polish forces, would also be crushed. Stalin even refused to allow the Western Allies to make use of airstrips under Soviet control to the east of the city in their attempts to deliver vital supplies to the insurgents. (Flight distances were too great for aircraft to deliver supplies to Warsaw without landing somewhere nearby and refuelling for the return journey to Allied airfields on the Western front.) When the leaders of the uprising finally surrendered, Pilecki was taken prisoner and spent several months in German POW camps. On being released in July 1945, he joined the main unit of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, Władysław Anders’s Second Polish Corps. He soon accepted a mission from Anders to return to Poland under yet another false identity to gather intelligence on the progressive communisation of Poland by the Soviet Army, the Soviet NKVD secret police, and their Polish equivalents. These Polish forces and nascent political structures had been recruited from deportees and exiles in the Soviet Union who had not chosen, or had not had the chance, to join General Anders in his evacuation of Polish forces and their families from the Soviet Union to the West. By that time, they had been thoroughly immersed in Stalin’s methods by their Soviet masters and fully subordinated to them. Back in his homeland in October 1945, Pilecki again set about forming a resistance intelligence network. Early in 1946, the government-in-exile in London, deflated by a complete lack of support from the Allies, who had supposedly guaranteed their sovereignty and declared war against Germany in their defence, decided further resistance to Sovietisation of Poland was pointless. They ordered all the partisans still resisting the new occupiers to abandon the struggle, conserve their remaining strength and return to a civilian existence in Poland or seek to escape to the West in readiness for some future reckoning. Pilecki ignored this directive, and also warnings that the Moscow-controlled Polish police apparatus was closing in on him. He declined to respond to an amnesty offered by the regime in 1947. He was arrested in May 1947 and spent ten months in detention while a show trial was prepared against him and a number of others accused of being members of his group. Like all political prisoners in the emerging Stalinist Polish state, he was treated with great brutality, and is known to have been subjected to “interrogations” by some of the most notorious sadists in the Polish security police. In a final whispered aside to his wife and a family friend at his trial, he told them that in comparison with the communists’ torture methods, “Auschwitz had been kids’ play” (igraszka). THE trial of Pilecki and others from “Witold’s Group” began on 3 March 1948. Pilecki argued that his spying activities had been carried out on behalf of the Polish army in the West, of which he continued to regard himself as an officer bound by his oath of God, Honour, Fatherland. Regime propaganda about the group on trial included the brazenly mendacious theme that they had collaborated with the Nazi occupation. Pilecki was sentenced to death on 15 March 1948. At the show trial or in separate closed hearings, eight of his colleagues were also sentenced to death for spying against their own country, for which most of them had fought in shocking conditions throughout the German occupation. Two of the nine under sentence of death had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Thirteen others were sentenced to jail terms of from three to fifteen years. The prosecutor and the president of the court that tried Pilecki had been members of the Home Army, but when the Soviets and their Polish allies arrived in the country making mass arrests among Home Army officers, they decided instead to forge careers in the new occupation regime. Pilecki’s wife and others made efforts to have his death sentence commuted, but Poland’s communist president Bolesław Bierut declined to exercise his right to do so. Pilecki’s supporters had hopes of the prewar Socialist leader Józef Cyrankiewicz, who had been active in the Home Army and also survived imprisonment in Auschwitz. Cyrankiewicz, too, had decided to collaborate with the new regime, and ultimately led the rump of his Socialist party into a 1948 merger with the communists to form the Polish United Workers’ Party, which dominated communist Poland till 1990. As a reward, he was made prime minister of Poland (under communism an important but certainly not the top job) from 1947 to 1952 and again from 1954 to 1970. His alleged achievements as a resistance leader in Auschwitz were much trumpeted by Cyrankiewicz and the regime. But when people begged him to do something to save the life of the doyen of all Polish Auschwitz survivors, he conspicuously declined to do so. Indeed, quite the reverse, he gave evidence against him. It has been argued plausibly that Cyrankiewicz saw Pilecki as someone who could undermine his new propaganda persona as an Auschwitz hero, and for that reason wanted him out of the way. Pilecki is reported to have told a fellow prisoner, Father Czajkowski, that “if Cyrankiewicz finds out I’m in here, I’ll be killed for certain.” Another source recalled that Pilecki had told her in 1946 he had heard Cyrankiewicz was preparing a speech glorifying his own role at Auschwitz. Pilecki told her he had written to Cyrankiewicz saying, “I have a document in my possession regarding your time in Auschwitz. If you dare to speak about your role in the Auschwitz resistance, I will make that document public.” The speech was never given. Cyrankiewicz played a more creditable role in the case of the legendary courier Jan Karski, but it seems likely that he engaged in highly dishonourable behaviour in Auschwitz, about which Pilecki had been reliably informed. It was characteristic of Pilecki that he did not hesitate to make an enemy of such a highly placed opportunist as Cyrankiewicz, and accepted the consequences. After Pilecki’s death, the legend of Cyrankiewicz’s doughty deeds in Auschwitz would remain unchallenged until he, too, was dead. It was also characteristic of the communist modus operandi in Poland that they “captured” and made use of prominent figures who had compromised themselves in some way. Two prewar Polish officers (Zygmunt Berling and Michał Rola-Żymierski) recruited to leading positions in Stalin’s Polish communist army had been removed from the Polish army for embezzlement before the war. On 25 May 1948, in Mokotów prison on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw, Witold Pilecki, the only man known to have volunteered to be incarcerated in Auschwitz in the service of his country, and one of the few who risked death to escape from it again, was executed as a traitor to his homeland with a shot to the back of the head, in the best NKVD tradition, by one Piotr Śmietański. This was a rewarding occupation for Śmietański, who was literally paid by the shattered head, and was kept very busy. From a window in his cell, an imprisoned priest, Jan Stępień, caught one of the last glimpses of Pilecki as he was being led to his death: I’ll never forget that scene. There were two condemned men. Witold Pilecki was the first to appear. His mouth was bound with a white bandage. Two guards led him by the arms. His feet were barely touching the ground. I don’t know if he was still conscious. He gave the impression of someone who had fainted. And then came the gunfire. As with hundreds of other such executions, a jail functionary took the remains of the victim under cover of darkness and dug them into the ground near Warsaw’s historic and atmospheric Powązki Cemetery. The terrain in question, known in the police code as “The Meadow,” was at the time the location of a rubbish tip. Pilecki’s final resting place was not known to his family for many decades, and is still not known exactly. He was not “rehabilitated” until after the fall of communism in 1990, and only in 2012 was it possible for serious efforts to be undertaken to locate his remains. PILECKI’s manuscript was written as a military report to his superiors, not as a work of history, literature or journalism. It is direct and informal in style, with relatively little care taken to manicure the prose or mould paragraphs. The author had always been far too busy to find time to polish or contemplate publishing it. The translator, Jarek Garliński, has been at pains to retain the informal spontaneity of the original, including Pilecki’s frequent use of German terms of art for camp institutions and the threatening language of the SS and the kapos. The son of the distinguished Polish émigré historian Józef Garliński, and himself deeply knowledgeable about the subject-matter, Jarek Garliński also provides the reader with extensive and very valuable aids to understanding the details of the text. Readers who find some of this detail (the numbers of the various Auschwitz blocks, and their previous designations, for example) superfluous to their requirements can easily bypass it. The content is fascinating at a number of levels, whether in relation to Pilecki, camp life or the Third Reich in general. Parts of the book can also be read as a factional adventure story in the style of English classics like The Wooden Horse, but one with far greater depth and historical significance than most in that genre. For the outstanding American historian of Eastern Europe, Timothy Snyder, it is a document comparable with the works of Primo Levi and Tadeusz Borowski. When supplemented by a sketch of Pilecki’s life before and after Auschwitz and a description of the fate of his homeland at the hands of both its enemies and its allies, the book conjures up the full tragedy and bitterness of Poland’s wartime struggle. As Norman Davies says in his introduction, “Only when one grasps the true horror of his fate can one comprehend what the second world war in Europe was really about.” It should not be said (though it sometimes is) that Pilecki’s or Poland’s struggle was entirely in vain. But it is understandable that some of the loyal rank and file who lived to tell the tale turned into sharp critics of their own former leaders for allowing so much Polish blood to be shed in what was, they argued in retrospect, a futile cause. One can only conjecture as to whether hints of similar thoughts passed through Pilecki’s mind in the last days before he was led away to be shot by a group of his fellow Poles. (He would probably have called them all “ex-Poles,” just as his compatriots took to contemptuously calling collaborators with the new occupation “acting Poles.”) Inevitably, this account of Pilecki’s life also raises again the old debate about which of the two great tyrannies of the era, Nazism and Stalinism, was the worse. Some participants in the debate, apparently trying to preserve the memory of Stalinism as an errant but nonetheless defensible part of the Marxist legacy, denounce any comparison as immoral. Those who opposed the introduction of communism into Eastern Europe, they sometimes argue, were fascists, anti-Semites, Hitler’s pawns and so on, implying that they all got what they deserved. Most on the left take a more judicious view, and indeed it was often writers from the left (Isaac Deutscher, George Orwell and others) who brought Stalin’s crimes to Western attention. Survivors’ views of the two tyrants tend for obvious reasons to depend on personal experience. For some, Hitler represented the hope, however illusory that proved to be, for a national life, even independence, and for deliverance from mass, deliberate starvation, for example. They greeted his invasion naively with the traditional bread and salt of welcome. For Jews, by contrast, and for urgently compelling reasons, Stalin and Soviet communism represented deliverance from mass genocide and perhaps the promise of a better life. The inhabitants of Timothy Snyder’s “bloodlands,” notably the Poles and the Baltic peoples, typically experienced not one but three successive brutal and brutalising invasions. Academic objectivity and superior moral judgement can be difficult for anyone with such life experiences. “All the indications are that Soviet instruments of repression consumed more human beings than their Nazi counterparts,” Norman Davies asserts confidently in his introduction to The Auschwitz Volunteer. Stalin’s era and system lasted much longer than Hitler’s, so on some interpretations of the statistical record Davies may be right. Most contemporary historians of the period seem to be inclining to the view that Soviet statistics made available since Gorbachev’s perestroika point to a rather lower death rate under Stalinist rule than had previously been assumed. But the statistics may be imperfect – it was Stalin, after all, who suppressed the results of the 1937 Soviet census. Be all that as it may, for most people there is something uniquely horrible about the death camps and industrialised mass murder of Nazi Germany. Timothy Snyder has weighed the pros and cons and come to the conclusion that while initially Stalinism was worse, Nazism overtook it in brutality and became clearly the more evil of the two. What might Pilecki have thought of it after mature reflection in exile in the history department of an American university? •
Reminders of God can make people more likely to seek out and take risks, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings suggest that people are willing to take these risks because they view God as providing security against potential negative outcomes. “References to God pervade daily life — on any given day you might see the word ‘God’ printed on U.S. currency, drive behind a car with a bumper sticker that references God, or use one of the many colloquial expressions that use the word ‘God.’ In fact, the word ‘God’ is one of the most common nouns in the English language,” says lead researcher Daniella Kupor of Stanford University Graduate School of Business. “The fact that reminders of God are so ubiquitous suggests that this effect may impact a large number of people.” Many previous studies had indicated that religiosity and participation in religious activities are associated with decreases in people’s engagement in risky behaviors like substance abuse and gambling, but Kupor and her colleagues noticed that the risks examined in these studies tended to share a negative moral component. The researchers hypothesized that thinking about God may have a different effect in relation to risks that have no moral connotation, since people tend to view God as a source of protection and security. They decided to test this hypothesis in a series of experiments. In a group of online survey studies with nearly 900 participants, the researchers found that people who were reminded of God — either by working on word scrambles that included God-related words or by reading a paragraph about God — were more willing to engage in various risky behaviors than those participants who weren’t prompted to think about God. In one study, for example, participants were asked to choose which version of the study they wanted to complete: one version would give them a small bonus payment, but involved looking at an “extremely bright color” that they were told could potentially damage their eyes, while the other version involved looking at a harmless darker color. The researchers found that participants who had been reminded of God prior to making their choice were more likely to opt for the dangerous version of the experiment (95.5%) than the participants who hadn’t been reminded of God (84.3%). In another study, the researchers posted variations of three ads online and recorded the click-through rates for each. There were ads that promoted an immoral risk (“Learn how to bribe”), ads that promoted a nonmoral risk (“Find skydiving near you”), and ads that promoted no risk (“Find amazing video games”). In some cases, the ads included a mention of God (e.g., “God knows what you’re missing! Find skydiving near you.”) The findings were clear: When the ad included a reference to God, people clicked on the skydiving (nonmoral risk) ad more often, but they clicked on the bribing (moral risk) less often. People clicked about the same number of times on the computer games ad, with or without a mention of God. “We were surprised to find that even a simple colloquial expression — ‘God knows what you’re missing’ — influences whether people click on a real online ad that is promoting a risky behavior,” says Kupor. Additional findings indicated that people who were reminded of God perceived less danger in various risky behaviors than participants who were not reminded of God. And they reported more negative feelings toward God when they lost their potential winnings in a risk-related game, suggesting that they had expected God to protect them from losing the money and were disappointed in the outcome. The researchers point out that this effect may not hold for people from cultures in which God is not seen as a protective force; nonetheless, the findings have broad relevance for millions of people around the world. Together, the series of studies, using various measures of risk and different types of reminders, show that reminders of God can shape how people perceive and engage with nonmoral risks. Study co-authors include Kristin Laurin and Jonathan Levav of Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
AMERICA fears it may just be a matter of time before President Trump discovers the emoji keyboard on his phone. White House staff believe that once the 70-year-old realises he can communicate with happy, sad and crying laughing faces he will abandon English altogether. Chief of staff Reince Priebus said: “He already struggles with words. What’ll happen when, like a McDonald’s employee, he discovers pictures are all he needs? “We may be facing the first presidency delivered entirely in gift wrappings, champagne corks and cocktail glasses, which the courts will be powerless to rule against.” Diplomat Tom Logan agreed: “Imagine the scenario. Trump tweets a series of red stiletto heels at Kim Jong-un. “Kim responds with a police car. Trump escalates with the painting nails emoji. Kim tweets a 1960s space rocket. “Thermonuclear annihilation ensues.”
This is the full text of the speech that Kezia Dugdale will give to LGBT Youth Scotland tonight. Thank you Fergus for that introduction. It’s great to be here tonight, to celebrate LGBT History Month with you. And I want to begin by thanking Fergus and all the staff at LGBT Youth Scotland for bringing us together this evening, and Clydesdale Bank for its sponsorship. This is actually the first LGBT history month since I came out publicly last year, so for me this month is even more significant. My experience of coming out less than a year ago attracted some attention, but what was amazing was just how matter of fact it was. No scandal, no condemnation. Just the facts. It’s evidence of how much things have changed, and should be a comfort to anyone who still has doubt about whether they’ll be accepted. Having spent the majority of my time in politics not out, I’ve tried to make a difference over the past year. I’ve quite frankly been embarrassed by some of the recognition I’ve received as an LGBT politician, because I feel I’ve not made a fraction of the contribution that many before me did. I’ve always believed that those of us in politics and public life have to use our voices to make a difference. It’s not just good enough to turn up to work every day. And for those of us in public life who are LGBT, it’s essential that we use our voices to speak up for other people in our community. I don’t intend to be a leader who gets to the top and then pulls up the ladder behind me. I am very aware that one of my roles is to make sure that young people have the same opportunities I did – and more. And to make sure that those of you who aren’t LGBT, but are in positions of power and influence, hear what I have to say. Which is why when, as tonight, I’m asked the question ‘Equality for LGBTI young people in Scotland: are we there yet?’ The very short answer is no. We’ve come a long way, but we definitely have much further to travel. But let’s not forget the progress we have made. The theme of this year’s LGBT History Month is ‘heritage’, and it asks us to remember some of the major political and social milestones for the LGBT community here in Scotland. For some people in this room tonight, the campaign for equal marriage will have been the first campaign for LGBT equality that they’ll remember. And that campaign achieved success without the same struggle that previous fights for equality had to go through. It was easier, in large part, because those battles of the past had changed public attitudes. The determined campaigning and advocacy of LGBT pioneers in Scotland, and across the UK, were successful in showing people that there was nothing to fear from social change. While progress may have been fast in the past decade, it took many years of persistence and perseverance to get us to where we are today. It took a little over ten years for us to move from civil partnerships to full marriage, but it took 23 years from the Wolfenden Report recommending decriminalisation of homosexuality, to it becoming a reality here in Scotland. In those twenty three years, campaigning and visibility were the things that made a difference. Harvey Milk – who led the campaign for gay equality in San Francisco – knew the value of visibility. That’s why he said that “coming out is the most political thing you can do”. He knew – like so many of us in this room – that people are less likely to be hostile towards us if they’re able to put a face and a name to the people who might otherwise be a target of their prejudice. If they know and understand LGBTI people, they’re less likely to discriminate. The last time the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey asked people how they felt about same sex relationships, they found that the percentage of those who thought they were “not wrong at all” had increased by nearly ten per cent. And the number of people saying they were wrong had declined. In the same period, people saying that they knew a gay or lesbian person – whether a family member, friend or co-worker – had increased significantly. So, the importance of those people who were able to come out in the 1960s and 1970s here in Scotland cannot be underestimated. Without a doubt, their visibility hastened the progress towards the equal rights we all benefit from today. And that’s why the work that LGBT Youth Scotland, and many others do today, is so important. And it’s why the young people here tonight, who have been able to come out, are the most important advocates for our cause. Their example will be an injunction against bigotry, hate and prejudice for the next generation of Scots. And that’s needed, because we still have a job to do. The fight for full legal equality in the UK may now be largely won, but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. We know that recognition in law can’t be the end of the road – winning over hearts and minds, and changing society’s attitudes is just as important. Our job won’t be done until every LGBTI person – young or older – can live a life free from discrimination, without the fear that they won’t be accepted. Our job won’t be done until every LGBTI person has an expectation of inclusion – that’s what equality means to me. And the truth is that LGBTI young people still face prejudice every day. Ninety per cent of LGBTI people have experienced homophobia, biphobia or transphobia at school. Twenty seven per cent of LGBTI people have attempted suicide once as a result of bullying and 15 per cent have tried more than once. And while more than 99 per cent of LGBTI people have heard homophobic language at school, according to Stonewall Scotland, only 16 per cent of teachers have received any training on how to tackle bullying against LGBTI people. This isn’t just a mark on Scottish society, it’s holding these young people back, and can damage opportunities for LGBTI young people in the future. Because bullying at school means that more people decide to skip lessons to avoid the bullies or, at worst, re-consider whether they want to stay at school at all. No young person should have their opportunities curtailed by discrimination. That’s why there’s a responsibility for LGBTI people, like me, to make my voice heard, and for the young people here to provide support to those who need it. But it’s also not just the responsibility of the LGBTI community. In this room tonight, we have representatives from local authorities, from schools, from the NHS and from business. It is also your responsibility to keep asking what support your organisations are giving to LGBTI people who use your services, attend your schools, and work for your businesses. And for those of us in politics – we need to be pushing the Scottish Government to do more. Scotland has to do more than just be smug about having three party leaders who are LGBTI or boasting about its equality record. We need to keep pushing for more. That is why campaigns like Time for Inclusive Education are so important and why the Scottish Labour Party fully supports it. It’s why, after last year’s election, I helped establish the Cross Party Group on LGBTI issues. Why I re-established the Cross Party Group on Blood Borne Viruses with Patrick Harvie. And why I’ve led the debate on ensuring access to PrEp in Scotland. There are now three things that the Scottish Government should be doing as a matter of urgency. First, we need a strategy for dealing with homophobic, transphobic and biphobic bullying in our schools, to make sure that all schools are being proactive in dealing with bullying. This has to include clear guidance for school teachers about what they can teach in our schools. It means acting on the demands of the Tie Campaign. We don’t need any more reviews, working groups or inquiries from the Scottish Government. We need action. The need is pressing. It’s shocking that more than a third of secondary school teachers are still unclear about what they can teach about LGBTI issues. The legacy of Section 2A still looms over some of our schools and we need to deal with it once and for all. And for every year that persists, it means more young people facing inequality at school. Second, all young people, regardless of location, should have access to consistent sex education which considers LGBTI relationships and sexual health. There should not be two tiers of sex and relationship education in our schools. And finally, as trans young people become more and more visible in our society, they shouldn’t have to wait until they are 18 to be recognised as the gender they live. They should be able to do that at 16, at the same time as they are able to leave school, work, pay taxes and vote. That is the right thing to do and we will continue to push for this if it is discussed in the Scottish Parliament. Friends, my message this evening is this. While we still have a long way to go, do not underestimate how far we have come. And do not forget the heroes of the LGBTI movement whose successes make our lives all the more easy to live. The gains they made mean that we can live and love as we want and who we want. They mean that we can do the things that everyone else took for granted, but for too long were opportunities missed for LGBTI couples. Holding hands in the street. Getting married. Having kids. As a society we should always remember that together, we’re stronger. And we can only achieve our full potential if everyone – gay and straight – is able to live their life to the full. At the weekend, I said goodbye to one of my closest friends, Gordon Aikman. Gordon committed the last few years of his life to making a difference to people living with Motor Neurone Disease. He raised hundreds of thousands of pounds, and because of him, MND patients are better supported than ever before and we are closer to finding a cure. Gordon was also a proud gay man and a loving husband. Last summer at Pride in Edinburgh, he was in his wheelchair, barrelling down the Royal Mile and then over the cobble stoned streets right to the end of the march. Gordon was an inspiration to me, and he knew the need to be visible, persistent and determined in campaigning. I think future generations of LGBTI young people can take inspiration from Gordon, no matter what campaigns and causes you decide to champion. His words from a speech at Edinburgh University bear repeating tonight: “Take nothing for granted. Cherish those you care about most. Be true to yourself and live your own life. And – if you can – fight to make things that little better for those who follow.” Thank you.
Inside China's Wonderland (after the investors pulled out): The haunting images of a derelict amusement park that make it look more like the set of a horror film Wonderland on the outskirts of Beijing, was to become China's answer to Disneyland It was hoped the theme park would attract millions of visitors a year with state-of-the art rides in a fairytale setting Now the half-finished project is finally being torn down after lying abandoned since 1998 Advertisement It was to be China's answer to Disneyland - a magnificent theme park attracting millions of visitors a year with state-of-the art rides in a chintzy fairytale setting. But Wonderland, now little more than an eerie Ghost town on the outskirts of Beijing, is finally to be torn down after a catastrophic history stretching over 15 years. Construction work at the 120 acre site ground to a halt in 1998 due to a dispute between the developers and the landowners and a corruption scandal that went right to the heart of the communist party. Scroll down for video Blunderland: The boarded-up entrance gates to Beijing's unfinished Wonderland theme park which is now due to be torn down after lying abandoned since 1998 Corn grows in a field next to the abandoned site. After the developers left, local farmers moved back in and began growing crops again A half-finished medieval-style tower sits abandoned (left) and a sign for 'Wonderland' adorns an building at the site on the outskirts of Beijing (right) As a result, the huge, half-finished, Bavarian-style structures complete with their spires and battlements and a myriad of medieval-themed buildings were simply left to crumble. Back in the mid 1990s, developers Huabin foresaw a bustling theme park attracting some three million visitors and generating 6 billion RMB ($1 billion) a year. Crucially they had secured the backing Chen Xitong, then the Beijing Party Secretary who was being tipped to become the country's next leader. But when Chen was jailed for corruption in 1998, his successor, perhaps scared of being tarred with the same brush, refused to support the project. Ghost town: The fairytale castles loom out of the Beijing fog like a creepy horror movie set Construction work at the site of what was promoted as 'the largest amusement park in Asia', stopped around 1998 after funds were withdrawn due to disagreements over property prices with the local government and farmers Crack beginning to show: Back in the mid 1990s, developers Huabin foresaw a bustling themepark attracting some three million visitors and generating six billion RMB ($1billion) a year The huge, half-finished Bavarian-style structures complete with their spires and battlements and other medieval-themed buildings were left to crumble A plan to restart work to capitalise on the 2008 Beijing Olympics was allegedly thwarted by proposals tabled in 2005, to build an entire city which would have covered parts of the Wonderland site's green space. Now the farmers that used to own the land have returned to grow their crops once again, with the decaying building site filling the skyline. Photographer David Gray, who visited the magical kingdom-turned-ghost park in 2011 said: ‘Pulling off the express-way and into the car park, I expected to be stopped by the usual confrontational security guards. ‘But there was absolutely no one to be seen. I walked through one of the few entrances not boarded up, and instantly started coughing. ‘In front of me were large empty rooms and discarded furniture, all covered in a thick layer of dust, along with an eerie silence that gave the place a haunted feeling – an emotion not normally associated with a children’s playground.’ Caution: A sign warning people about potential poisons in the soil is pasted on a pillar of a half-finished building on the site Reduced to rubble: Bavarian-style towers poke up in the background as labourers go to work with sledgehammers on the ill-fated project Farmers dismantle a tower in a field that includes abandoned buildings that were to be part of the amusement park A farmer carries a shovel over his shoulder as he walks through an abandoned building frame on the site of the doomed theme park Haunting: A stone covered in fresh snow sits in the ruins of an abandoned building. A plan to resume work on the site to capitalise on the 2008 Beijing Olympics failed to materialise Ominous: Writing on a gate post tells visitors to 'be responsible for your actions' when entering one of the many abandoned buildings Local farmers told the photographer that they have returned to use the land because they say its safe to think the developers are never coming back. ‘This I can believe’, added Gray on his blog, ‘As the absence of any security (something very rare in China) leads one to think that even the developers have given up on what is already there. ‘All these structures of rusting steel and decaying cement, are another sad example of property development in China involving wasted money, wasted resources and the uprooting of farmers and their families. ‘It is a reflection of the country’s property market which many analysts say the government must keep tightening steps in place. ‘The worry is a massive increase in inflation and a speculative bubble that might burst, considering that property sales contribute to around 10 per cent of China’s growth’, Gray continued. A half-finished building in the shape of a castle stands uncompleted in a field in the Wonderland site Fears: Beijing worries that a collapsing property market will trigger a wave of defaults that in turn will hit the banks Empty: A view of what was once to be a car park in front of the abandoned buildings on the Wonderland site The steel frame of an abandoned building stands in what would have been an amusement park called 'Wonderland', on the outskirts of Beijing Wonderland is far from being the only Chinese construction project to end in disaster in recent years. Just down the road, deserted for over 20 years, a site features Greek-style columns and amphitheatre. Thames Town near Shanghai, which is based on an English town, remains a hit as a wedding venue, but few people have actually moved there to live.
About the Game Letter Monsters is a swiping puzzle game in which you combine letters to reach your goal. You'll have to be smart to work your way through the Monsters' worlds. Features: Simple and intuitive gameplay. Funny and sweet graphics. The cutest characters. A progression system that allows you to unlock challenging new levels. Powerful boosters to help you get through difficult times. Over 60 levels in this first version. New levels will follow! An awesome arcade mode. Leaderboards to watch your friends and worldwide competitors. Reviews Jayisgames: "All in all, Letter Monsters is a fun and well put-together experience that can appeal to anyone. [...] With over sixty levels to play through entirely for free, there's really no better way to practice your A-B-C's." Press Letter Monsters is a game by 1001.com. For more information, see our Press page. Besides the browser version on this page, there are seperate apps for Android and iOS users.
It's been more than a year since there's been the sound of gunfire outside of Spanky's East. The June 2013 incident when upwards of 17 gunshots rang out during a dispute outside of the Wilson Borough gentlemen's club sparked a discussion that Mayor David Perusso said will likely be coming around again: Is the Butler Street bar a problem? "We've had that many times, that conversation," Perusso said Saturday after reports surfaced of a shooting there at 2:15 a.m. "I'm sure it'll come up again." A 23-year-old Easton woman was shot in the foot early Saturday morning in the bar's parking lot, according to police. Wilson Borough police Chief Steven Parkansky said the woman told officers she was sitting in her car when she heard the gunfire and was injured. Police learned about her involvement after a call from a local hospital, Parkansky said. Police were already on scene for reports of a shots fired at the club. Three large caliber casings were recovered in the lot, the chief said. The woman is expected to recover, but Parkansky said police appear to have an uphill climb ahead of them since they've received "conflicting information" around the incident. 'They really don't bother us' Elaine Heffner, 68, who lives just across Butler Street, was lying in bed when she heard three unmistakable shots after a bit of "hootin' and hollerin'." "I heard a lot of carrying on and arguing," she said. "Then I heard three shots. Pop, pop, pop. I wouldn't look outside. I didn't want to get shot." Heffner's husband Harold, 79, was fast asleep during the shooting, he said. Generally, the owners of the bar over the years haven't really been troublesome, said the Heffners. They've even allowed them to park in the lot during large family parties over the years. "Their problems are mostly outside," said Harold Heffner. "Other than that, they don't really bother us. They do seem to control what's inside. But how can you control the people in your parking lot?" Road to nuisance bar label a difficult one, DA says That's part of any nuisance bar issue, too, said Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli. Declaring an establishment a nuisance bar is a complicated process involving the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, he said. A bar needs to have a long record of police visits and neighborhood complaints to qualify as such, Morganelli said. "It's very difficult to do. We've shut down about a dozen in the time I've been the district attorney," said Morganelli, who was elected to the office in 1991. "You need a long history of incidents both inside and outside the place. Here we have a lot of stuff outside and it's difficult when it's only outside." Neighbor James Yohn also slept through the commotion Saturday morning. Arriving home from his tractor trailer route by 8 p.m., he said he was well into "la la land" by 2 in the morning. Still, Yohn said, the bar isn't as bad a neighbor as one might expect. "They stay over there. Their trouble stays over there," Yohn said, waving away a question about whether Spanky's East concerns him. "It doesn't spill over." While the mayor said borough police patrol that area heavily, Parkansky noted the strip club isn't a frequent stop for law enforcement. "Honestly, we just don't get a lot of calls there," the chief said. "When do have an incident, unfortunately, it does tend to be serious." Before the 2013 gunfire, Jason Oliver was gunned down outside the establishment -- then called C.R. Fannys Gentlemen's Club -- and Jacob Holmes Jr. was injured. John Francis "Rue" Logan Jr. is serving time as the gunman in that crime while his co-defendant Miguel Aponte was shot to death inside the Easton Cafe in March 2009. Parkansky said the owners of the establishment have been, over the years, cooperative with police when necessary. Multiple messages for the club's current owner were not returned by Saturday afternoon. The state liquor control board, Parkansky said, will be notified about the shooting. Perusso said the establishment, which has gone through several iterations as a bar and strip club, does concern some neighbors. "Years ago they got in there and there's nothing we can do about it now," the mayor said. "We haven't had any complaints lately, but I'm sure they'll be coming in now. We'll see where it goes from there."
A doctor who treated the older brother of the Syrian boy pictured in Aleppo after an airstrike struck his home, has given an interview in which he says the brother has died of his wounds. Ali Daqneesh, 10, was wounded in the strike on his home last Wednesday, as were his three siblings and both parents. A surgeon who gave his name only as Dr. Abdelrasool said Ali suffered severe damage to his right kidney and that his lung had collapsed. A general view shows the site of last Wednesday's airstrike where five-year-old Omran Daqneesh was injured in the rebel-held al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo. The Daqneesh family lived in the building on the left. (Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters) "He stayed in the intensive care unit for three days," he said. "His general condition was unwell because he stayed behind in the rubble for a long time," unlike his brother, five-year-old Omran. The younger boy was pictured in the back of an ambulance after being pulled from the rubble, with an expression of incomprehension on his dust- and blood-caked face. Aleppo neighbourhood targeted by airstrikes 1:03 The video and pictures were widely circulated online and in the media, refocusing public opinion on Syria's five-year-old civil war and the plight of civilians, particularly in Aleppo.
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Subject property facing north along Falcon Village Lane. (City of Pflugerville) Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Subject property facing north along Falcon Village Lane. (City of Pflugerville) PFLUGERVILLE, Texas (KXAN) — The city of Pflugerville signed off on a $1.38 million economic development deal Tuesday intended to bring in the city's first hospital or a medical facility. The incentive agreement is one piece of an extended process, including zoning changes and the creation of a "planned unit development," or PUD, within which the medical facility would be built. The development area is located at the northwestern corner of Colorado Sand Drive and East Pflugerville Parkway in the Falcon Pointe neighborhood. "This is the foundation, if you will, for adding a hospital." "We did a 380-agreement with the developer that provides incentives to them that the land there is sold for a medical facility or a hospital," said Pflugerville spokesperson Terri Toledo. "This is the foundation, if you will, for adding a hospital" or medical facility. Toledo said it is not clear when construction would start. The developer, Terrabrook Falcon Pointe, LLC, is expected to invest millions of dollars in land improvements and infrastructure on the site, according to the agreement. As part of the agreement, the developer must transfer 26 acres of land to an undisclosed third-party "for the purposes of the development of a regional hospital and associated medical office buildings, among other uses," the agreement states. E. William Meyer is noted as the Senior Vice President of the development company. In return for fulfilling the agreement, the city will provide a lump-sum grant of $1,387,318 to the developer. The development area is within the Falcon Pointe Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. The development deal generated concern among neighbors, when it included a gas station. Neighbors worried about the proximity of the gas station to a preschool, among other issues. The developer has since decided not to include a gas station, Toledo explained. Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Pflugerville Planning and Zoning Commission - Falcon Pointe ALUR 2-South neighborhoods. (City of Pflugerville)
North American Challenger Series team Gold Coin United has acquired four new players as it prepares for the 2017 season with a boot camp in South Korea. The team signed former Team Liquid Academy top laner Colin "Solo" Earnest; former NRG Esports jungler Lucas "Santorin" Tao Kilmer Larsen; former Team Liquid mid laner Kim "FeniX" Jae-hun; and former Nova Esports AD carry Richard "Rikara" Samuel Oh. Yoonsup "Locodoco" Choi, who was named as head coach shortly after the formation of the team, is formerly of Team Liquid and Team SoloMid. On Team Liquid, he worked with Fenix and Solo. He worked with Santorin at Team SoloMid. "I'm excited to work with Santorin, Solo and Fenix again," Locodoco told ESPN.com. "I've had a chance to personally work with all these players and they've shown potential to grow and perform on the [League Championship Series] stage. I highly value their work ethic and willingness to improve and I can't wait to show what we can achieve." The addition of Rikara, who just began competing in the Challenger Series over the summer, comes after he became known as one of the stronger young AD carries on the North American scene. He's in a class among the likes of Cody Sun, who recently signed with LCS team Immortals. "For Rikara, he's been a quiet performer in the CS scene and hasn't gotten the recognition he deserves," Locodoco said. "With proper direction and dedication from Sam, I feel like he can make a mark on the North American scene as a top AD as he continues to grow." Gold Coin United launched its brand this week, following the purchase of the North American League Championship Series spot owned by NRG Esports. The organization is backed by 68-year-old real estate magnate James "Jimmy" Kuhn and his son Jacob Kuhn.
Florida's second gubernatorial debate got off to a bizarre start Wednesday evening when incumbent Gov. Rick Scott (R) initially refused to debate his opponent because he had a fan under his lectern. Democratic candidate Charlie Crist, the former Florida governor hoping to unseat Scott in next month's election, had a small electric fan placed under his lectern. This, Scott's campaign claimed, violated the debate's "no electronics" rule. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a an extremely peculiar situation right now," debate moderator Elliot Rodriguez of CBS Miami told the crowd, as the camera panned to two empty lecterns onstage. Seconds later, Crist walked onstage, but Scott was absent. "We have been told that Governor Scott will not be participating in this debate," Rodriguez explained. "Governor Crist has asked to have a small fan placed underneath his podium. The rules of the debate that I was shown by the Scott campaign say that there should be no fan. Somehow there is a fan there, and for that reason, ladies and gentlemen, I am being told that Governor Scott will not join us for this debate." Members of the audience booed loudly. "That's the ultimate pleading of the Fifth I've ever heard in my life," Crist said. "Do the rules of the debate say that there should be no fan?" panelist Rosemary Goudreau, a Sun Sentinel editorial board member, asked Crist. "Not that I'm aware of," he replied. Rodriguez, however, maintained that Scott's campaign had shown him a copy of the rules specifying that there would be no fans allowed. While the panelists chatted about the oddity of the situation, Florida's press corps lamented the state of affairs: Boy it's awful being a political writer in Fla — Adam Smith (@adamsmithtimes) October 15, 2014 Please tell me EVERYONE in Florida is watching this mockery of a debate. Absolutely pathetic. Not showing over a fan. WOW #FLGovDebate — Julian Glover (@JulianGloverTV) October 15, 2014 Honestly, this is the most bizarre political debate I have ever witnessed. #FLGovDebate — John Morales (@JohnMoralesNBC6) October 15, 2014 Bizarre. — Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) October 15, 2014 Scott eventually agreed to come on stage, and the debate proceeded as planned. As Craig Patrick of Fox 13 noted, Scott held up the debate for nearly eight minutes. Watch the exchange above. It was not immediately clear why Scott didn't want to appear on stage with Crist and his fan. But the specter of 1960 debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon likely loomed large. At that history-making matchup, Kennedy shot above Nixon by seeming cool, collected and presidential. Nixon, on the other hand, appeared sweaty and sickly. At that time, Nixon, too, probably would have liked a fan. Before the debate was over, Crist's campaign had begun fundraising off the "fangate" incident in an email to supporters: When asked for comment, the Scott campaign's deputy communications director, Greg Blair, referred The Huffington Post to a copy of the debate rules, which specified that candidates "may not bring electronic devices (including fans)" to the debate. Kevin Cate, a Crist adviser, countered with this: Scott campaign manager Melissa Sellers later offered a statement to The Huffington Post. “Charlie Crist can bring his fan, microwave, and toaster to debates - none of that will cover up how sad his record as governor was compared to the success of Rick Scott," Sellers said. "Crist should buy a fan for the 832,000 Floridians who lost their jobs while he was governor.” Amanda Terkel contributed reporting.
On a Friday morning in September 2010, Gary Glass steered his Mercury Mariner along the curves on Rutland Road in Davidsonville, past horse farms and McMansions, toward a gym in Gambrills. On his way, the retired accountant nearly collided with a Ford Escape. But he blew his horn and kept driving. Moments later, Glass spotted a flashing blue light behind him. It was the Ford. He pulled over. A man walked out of the SUV, leaving two small children inside, approached Glass, showed a gun and demanded identification. The 17-minute traffic stop — and the citation in which Anne Arundel County Police Officer Mark Collier said Glass was following him too closely — started a legal battle that has raged for four years and counting. Glass, 60, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Collier violated his civil rights in a false arrest. The Davidsonville man is seeking $5 million in damages. In a succession of suits filed in state courts, Glass also alleges that county officials are improperly withholding records that would help him prove his complaint. Now a confidential settlement in the federal lawsuit is due to go before a county panel on Tuesday. And the judge who presided over a four-day trial last month on one of the state lawsuits is expected to issue a ruling soon. In court papers, Glass has accused Anne Arundel County leaders, police officials and the state's attorney's office of violating the Public Information Act by denying him the records he has sought. He has filed complaints against county lawyers and judges with the state's Attorney Grievance Commission. In reams of documents, Glass says high-ranking police officers frequently shield junior officers — some of whom, like Collier, have relatives on the force — from misconduct allegations. County lawyers have scoffed at the claim. In one court filing, Supervising County Attorney Andrew Murray calls Glass a "vindictive malcontent and conspiracy theorist the likes of which Hollywood film director Oliver Stone would be proud." County lawyers estimate the county has paid at least $23,000 to defend itself from the federal case and the case that went to trial last month. Amid the dispute, one thing is certain: As U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. wrote in one ruling, Glass and Collier "offer dramatically different accounts" of the traffic stop. Glass was driving westbound on Rutland Road on the morning of Sept. 14, 2010, as Collier was leaving a doctor's office with his children. In Glass' telling, he spotted Collier's county-owned Ford stopped in the office driveway. As Glass approached, he says in one court filing, the SUV "suddenly entered" the road in front of him. Glass says he braked and blew his horn to alert the driver, then drove another 300 yards before he noticed the flashing blue light. He says he pulled over and tried to get out of his car, but Collier ordered him back inside. He says Collier yelled "there are laws against blowing your horn," lifted his shirt to show the gun and didn't identify himself as a police officer. Glass says he explained to Collier that he blew the horn because Collier didn't yield, but Collier became agitated. Glass says he called 911 because Collier didn't identify himself as an officer. Collier, who joined the county police department in 2006, has a different version of events. The plainclothes officer says in court filings that no other vehicles were approaching as he pulled out of the parking lot. As he accelerated, he noticed a car very close to his bumper, and the driver "shaking his head." He says the car continued to follow him closely for several hundred feet. After the driver sounded the horn, Collier says, he pulled the car over. Being off duty, Collier says, he lifted his shirt to uncover his gun in case he needed it. He says he asked Glass for identification and issued the citation. Glass says he called the Police Department after the stop, and was told he would need to file a written complaint, according to court filings. Days later, he says, he received a call from Lt. Scott Davis, the head of internal affairs in the Police Department. According to Glass, Davis urged him not to pursue the complaint, saying "Collier was just having a bad day," and "did not know that you cannot treat people in South County the way you treat people in North County." Collier and Davis declined through a department spokesman to be interviewed for this article. Glass received a trial summons in early 2011 for the traffic citation. His lawyer issued subpoenas for witnesses and made Public Information Act requests for internal affairs records. The county objected to the request for internal affairs records. A judge sided with the county. Glass sued the county in May 2011 for withholding public records. When Glass went to trial in November 2011 for the driving offense, Davis testified that investigators never questioned Collier about Glass' complaint. Collier also testified that he wasn't interviewed. (Records show he was questioned in January 2012.) A judge acquitted Glass of the driving offense. He filed the federal lawsuit in June 2012 against Collier, the county and six other police employees. The federal judge dismissed some of the defendants in March 2013, but allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Glass says in court filings that police leaders are protecting Collier because six relatives are current or former members of the department. Collier confirmed the relations in a deposition. Glass' attorneys also have tried to raise questions about Collier's credibility. In a deposition, attorney Cary H. Hansel III asked Collier about his resignation from the Maryland State Police academy in 2004. Collier said he was accused of cheating on a test. Glass' attorneys asked why detectives didn't ask Collier about Glass' allegations. Cpl. Alfred Barcenas, an internal affairs investigator, said Davis told him not to question the officer until a year after Glass filed the complaint — a delay that could allow Collier to avoid discipline. "My direction was we're not going to interview [Collier] until after the court trial," Barcenas said, "and it just dragged on and on and on." Davis explained his decision in a deposition to attorney Brian Patterson, who is Glass' live-in partner. Davis said "that the best course of action was to wait" to get answers from "Collier on the stand at the [traffic] trial subject to cross-examination." Davis said Collier could have been disciplined despite the delay because the one-year limit starts over if investigators uncover new misconduct.
While Republicans continue to scream about the fact that Obamacare (The Affordable Care Act) has failed and that it is raising our premiums, healthcare CEOs just sat back and chuckled to themselves because they know the truth. Over the last 7 years, 70 healthcare CEOs combined have pulled in more than $9.8 BILLION dollars in pay. These people are the reason that our healthcare costs are rising so fast – they want more money. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this. Transcript of the above video: Everybody in this country understands that the reason our healthcare premiums are rising is because of the Affordable Care Act, right? That’s the talking points Republicans have been selling us for about a year now. Everything that’s bad with our healthcare system, our rising costs, our lack of coverage, yada, yada, yada, it’s all because of Obamacare. Well, it turns out none of that is true whatsoever, and anybody who’s been paying attention understands that, but there’s actually a new report that has come out that clearly explains why our health insurance premiums are rising so high. According to a new report, the cumulative salaries of 70 healthcare company CEOs, for the last seven years, was 9.8 billion dollars. So basically, you have 70 different people who are pulling in together more than one billion dollars a year, split between them. They’re each making millions upon millions upon millions of dollars every single year in salary, in profit, running healthcare companies, health insurance companies. What this shows is that the problem is not the Affordable Care Act. If the Affordable Care Act was the reason insurance premiums were rising, because people were demanding more care and insurance companies and healthcare companies were spending more money, then they wouldn’t be pulling in millions and millions and millions of dollars a year. They wouldn’t pull in 9.8 billion dollars in seven years. There’s no way that could happen. If Obamacare was destroying it, there wouldn’t be profits, certainly not approaching 10 billion dollars, but they are. The reason our health insurance premiums have risen and have risen so much is because of healthcare CEO, corporate executive, stockholder, shareholder greed. That is the only reason. The Affordable Care Act didn’t change their greed, it didn’t curb their greed. All it said was that for the first few years, you’re not allowed to raise premiums. It didn’t say you have to raise premiums after that certain amount of time. It just said you couldn’t do it during the previous amount of time. So as soon as that limitation expired, they raised your rates. Not because they needed to, not because they had to, because they wanted to. Because they wanted more money. Go and look at the numbers. If Obamacare was hurting the healthcare industry, they wouldn’t be pulling in billions of dollars in profit a year, paying their CEOs millions and millions of dollars, and now we have the Republicans attempting to strip healthcare from 22 million people, under the guise that Obamacare is to blame for all of our problems. You know what the problem is in this instance? And I kind of hate to have to say this. It’s capitalism. Capitalism has failed us in this particular industry. Capitalism, a for-profit healthcare system in the United States clearly doesn’t work. It doesn’t. You can’t point to any statistics that show that this is better than a single payer system or universal healthcare system, or anything else. Profits have to be taken out of this equation. This is one of those industries, as we have seen from other industrialized countries in the world that are having success with it, this is one of those industries that needs to be taken over by the government. The government needs to be in charge of our healthcare, and you may not trust the government, I get it. But do you really trust these health insurance CEOs that are pulling in millions of dollars a year, that are actually actively going out there and lying to you about it? I’m going to put my faith in the government over a corporate CEO, nearly every single time.
Those of you who have been readers here at purplePTSD.com for awhile know that I’m well versed in hyperbolic reactions and language. With that, we have the title to this piece which may seem like it’s just an overreaction to the news that the Vikings are interested in former Seattle Seahawk and Denver Bronco (and former self employed agent, apparently) Russell Okung. But, really, he’s the perfect solution to a situation that the Vikings have been trying to rectify since 2012. That was the year that the Vikings had the highest draft pick in recent team history (That could’ve been higher, if not for Joe Webb and the Chicago Bears… Sigh, we could’ve had Andrew Luck…Also, props to /u/Mrbeankc for the correction…) and spent it on the “Sure thing” that was Matt Kalil at left tackle, out of USC. Kalil was a man among boys in college, and looked like the safest bet at the fourth spot. He quickly validated the trust that the team put in him his rookie season, where he emerged as one of the best young tackles in the league and even made the Pro Bowl. Since, however, he’s been mediocre at best and terrible at worst. Yes, he’s had to play through a lot of injuries and even a bout of pneumonia that dropped his playing weight by over 20 pounds, but that’s more of a negative than some sort of justification, especially after last season. Kalil defenders pointed to his improved play after a disastrous sophomore campaign. However, he’s really only been mediocre at best while also getting burned at least once a game for a sack, sometimes in really, really important situations (Denver and Arizona in 2015… I know, one of those wasn’t his fault, but I can’t remember which so I’ll just toss up both… #Journalism!). Last season he wasn’t a factor, at all, due to a hip injury (A really bad injury for an offensive lineman) while still getting paid a league leading < $11 million dollars. Ugh. What a mess… For most of this off-season it looked like the Vikings were stuck with Kalil. purplePTSD.com Writer AJ Mansour discussed this in a series of articles a week or so ago. However, when the Broncos surprisingly cut Russell Okung, things changed drastically. Sure, Okung had a down year in Denver after negotiating his own deal after leaving the Seattle Seahawks and decimating their offensive line in the process. But, he’s still a top five tackle, he’s still young and he’s still much, much better than Matt Kalil. He’s also going to end up costing about the same as Kalil would, thanks to the premium that the league puts on left tackles. So, it seems like a no-brainer for the Vikings and really, for Okung. With Okung at left tackle the offensive line suddenly becomes an asset (On paper). Okung playing next to left guard Alex Boone? The idea of it makes me salivate (More than usual). Then you have Nick Easton at center and Joe Berger filling it at right guard, leaving only the right tackle position open for competition or a draft pick. I’d take that line ALL DAY. Speaking of All-Day, or AD, with Peterson gone the Vikings also need to draft a replacement running back in April’s draft. With Okung on-board, the Vikings wouldn’t need to focus on the offensive line as much in the draft, which would be extremely helpful considering they lack a first round pick. I’ve received some feedback on this piece and decided to add another paragraph explaining my point of view a bit more (Yay, internet! And by internet, I mean Reddit). There seems to be this notion that Okung is A) Going to cost more than Kalil and thus restrict the Vikings ability to add another top tier offensive lineman and B) That Okung is essentially as good as Kalil, anyway. Now, Okung did have a down year last season, clearly, he wouldn’t be available if he played fantastically (Even though many were shocked when he was released). He cleared $8 million (At least against the cap) last season while Matt Kalil cleared $11 million (Again, making him the highest paid left tackle in the league). Okung will probably cost less than Kalil, or around the same, so the Vikings will be able to make the same amount of moves regardless of whether or not they snag Okung or Kalil. Secondly, Okung is objectively a better player than Kalil. Sure, he’s a bit older (At 29), but he’s still in his physical prime. Yes, he has had some injuries as well, but when he has been healthy he’s been considered a top five tackle in the league. He’s actually gotten healthier as the years have gone by. While last year was a down year for him, I really think that there’s no reason why a 29 year old Pro Bowler who was arguably an All-Pro in 2012 (Pro-Football-Reference.com claims he was a first team All-Pro at some point, but I don’t know if I trust that…). Whether or not Kalil is even the same player that he was before, due to his hip injury, the fact remains that he’s essentially a mediocre at best left tackle that is known for getting blown by at least once a game. Okung was part of a great offensive line in Seattle and I do believe that if/when he’s paired next to Alex Boone, great things will happen. Also, again, he’s going to be a lot cheaper than Kalil, I believe, as he really only asked for about $5 million from the Bronco’s last season, which would allow the Vikings to keep their offensive line costs low, at least initially, and retain about $33-$35 million to go after a right guard or tackle in free agency (There are a few names out there that are super intriguing and might be pretty costly, but definitely worth it…). Regardless, the Vikings know that they needed to find a replacement for Kalil at some point. It was assumed, by me, that they’d draft a replacement with their first overall (Second round) pick this season. With Okung on board, however, that plan changes and it opens up the possibility of Spielman going after one of the top running back’s on his board. Not to mention what an improved offensive line would do for Sam Bradford and company, and any rookie running back. The word after the 2016 season essentially was that the Vikings were an offensive line away from being a contender. I believe that adding Okung would immediately solve a lot of problems that the team does have, and considering the cost and the cap room they’ve recently acquired, it has to happen. I’m all in on this move, clearly. So, make it happen, Spielman! Bring Okung into town, wine and dine him at Manny’s. Seal the deal and get the Vikings fans hype meter up into the red at the same time. It has to happen.
Two more Inquisition companions have been revealed, which means there’s possibly three more to be officially announced. The fourth Dragon Age Inquisition companion spotted in a video last week has been officially identified by BioWare. After an image leak from the German PC magazine GameStar, Bioware’s lead writer David Gaider explained that the supposed Solace is in fact, Solas, a male elf mage companion in Inquisition: Just FYI, however, it’s Solas. Not Solace. Not sure where they got that. And, since this seems to be a persistent notion: Solas is not the “Dorian” from the survey. He was never that character. As to who Solas is… well, I suppose you’ll all have to wait and see. It’s also assumed that a concept art created last year by lead concept artist Matt Rhodes corresponds to the fifth Inquisition companion. His name is Iron Bull and he’s a qunari male warrior.Judging by his giant sword, he’ll probably be an aggressive warrior like Fenris in Dragon Age 2 and Oghren in Dragon Age Origins. With five companions brought from the shadows (Varric, Cassandra, Vivenne, Solas and Iron Bull) there’s possibly only one companion left to be unveiled.This of course, if BioWare follows the logic used in the previous two games, which included eight companions per game and a balanced class distribution among characters: Dragon Age Origins: Alistair (Warrior-Templar); Leliana (Rogue-Bard); Mabari War Hound (War Pet); Morrigan (Mage-Shapeshifter); Oghren (Warrior-Fighter); Sten (Warrior-Fighter); Zevran (Rogue-Assassin); Wynne (Mage-Healer). Dragon Age II: Anders (Mage-Healer); Aveline (Warrior-Defensive); Bethany Hawke (Mage-Offensive); Carver Hawke (Warrior-Fighter); Fenris (Warrior-Fighter); Isabela (Rogue-Assassin); Merril (Mage-Offensive); Varric (Rogue-Archer). Dragon Age Inquisition: Cassandra (Warrior-Defensive); Iron Bull (Warrior-Fighter); Solas (Mage-?); Varric (Rogue-Archer); Vivienne (Mage-Offensive). Following this trend, one of the remaining companions is certainly a female rogue, since we already got three males, two females and only one rogue-archer. The other two companions could fit in any class and specialization role. Comments comments
Do NOT trust Michigan Republicans on this There are reports all over the internet saying that the Republican plan to change how electoral votes are assigned in order to exploit their insidious gerrymandering of Congressional districts is dead in the water in Michigan. It’s not. The reports about the death of this scheme, which is basically a billboard saying: “Welcome to the Michigan Republican Party where we can’t win elections unless we cheat”, are based on comments made by both Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville and Governor Rick Snyder. But, as I pointed out earlier this week, both Richardville and Snyder said nearly the exact same words regarding making Michigan a Right to Work state only to turn around and jam it through in less than a week during the inflamed duck session. But, besides the fact that these two cannot be trusted when they say something is “not on their agenda”, we have the Michigan House of Representatives and Crazy Tea Party Ideologues. It is in the House where the legislation was originally introduced. They hadn’t weighed in recently on this scheme to give their conservatively gerrymandered Congressional Districts more clout the heavily-populated and generally more Democratic urban and suburban districts — until yesterday. House Speaker Jase Bolger, a man with a proud history of tinkering with elections he can’t win in order to change the outcome, had this to say (via Gongwer): I hear that more and more from our citizens in various parts of the state of Michigan that they don’t feel like their vote for president counts because another area of the state may dominate that or could sway their vote,” Bolger told Gongwer. “They feel closer to voting for their congressman or their congresswoman and if that vote coincided with their vote for president they would feel better about that. He also released this statement through his spokesperson Ari Adler: The speaker has said he is interested in looking at the proposal that Representative Lund puts forward. One of the issues right now is there is no formal legislation to review. It is merely an idea that is being discussed. People have already started to make up their minds when they don’t have all the information. Representative Lund has been talking about this for two years, and I anticipate he will continue wanting to talk about it. The speaker has said on every issue that we should be willing to have a good discussion before we make any decisions. Representative Pete Lund is the original author of the bill which failed to move in the last legislative session. He has already said that he has every intention of re-introducing this legislation at some later point, likely after all of the national attention has died down and, as is the well-known MO of the Michigan Republicans, either sneak it through when people are distracted with other things or simply ram it through in a flurry of activity in which Democrats are shut out of the process and no public input is taken. Governor Snyder’s argument is that “it’s not the right time” and should happen “before Census is taken and before redistricting takes place.” However, if you were going to go forward with this crass political power grab and consolidation and wanted to pretend that it wasn’t a partisan scheme to cheat, the time to do it actually would be now before we know which party’s candidate is mostly like to succeed. So, in reality, Gov. Snyder’s argument doesn’t really make any sense even though it sounds good. When Snyder and Richardville say “it’s not the right time”, they simply mean they are waiting for a time when it’s less visible and less politically damaging. Nothing more. They are NOT to be trusted on this and we will keep a laser focus on any Republican attempts to steal elections in this way. Adding… Think about Dick DeVos and his role in this for a moment. DeVos has got to be smarting over the fact that his corporatist pal Mitt Romney lost Michigan. If there was ever a presidential candidate a multimillionaire like Dick DeVos could get behind, it was Mitt Romney. DeVos most certainly has this on his mind as this discussion plays out across the country and, especially, right here in Michigan. If they haven’t already, I’m sure Governor Snyder and Republican legislative leaders can count on a visit from DeVos very soon. We already know that Devos is willing to buy new policies and laws by bribing/blackmailing lawmakers. There’s no reason at all to believe he’s not willing to do this same for something that is this important to his goal of corporate control of our state and national governments.
US Secret Service agents and supervisors have allegedly engaged in sexual misconduct in 17 different countries over the past few years, according to the Washington Post. Senator Ronald H. Johnson (R-Wis.), member of the Homeland Security subcommittee, told the newspaper that whistleblowers with knowledge of this behavior have come forward and notified lawmakers about the conduct. Johnson added that the information directly contradicts the agency’s claim that it does not tolerate sexual misconduct. The senator did not detail any of the allegations by whistleblowers, but “two people briefed on the accounts” told the Post they include both agents and managers hiring prostitutes and visiting brothels while overseas. One of the sources also claimed that the Secret Service’s senior management knew about the behavior and did not stop it. Specifically, one whistleblower detailed an incident in which an agency supervisor had to stay behind in Thailand in order to look for an agent that was eventually found, intoxicated, at a local brothel. He was transferred back to the United States at additional expense, but was not disciplined. The allegations come just one day after reports revealed two Secret Service agents – Ignacio Zamora, Jr. and Timothy Barraclough – were removed from President Obama’s personal security detail, the agency’s top post, for sending sexually suggestive emails to a female subordinate. These emails were discovered through an internal investigation, triggered by Zamora’s attempts to re-enter the hotel room of a woman after he claimed he had accidentally left a bullet with her. What’s more, Zamora himself was in charge of conducting the internal investigation of a prostitution scandal that rocked the agency last year as it prepared for Obama’s trip to Cartagena, Colombia. Twelve agents were implicated in the incident, nine of which have either been removed from their post, resigned, or retired. An inspector general report on that event is scheduled to be released in the coming weeks, but these new allegations of misconduct have led Johnson and Republican House Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), the chairman of the national security subcommittee of the House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, to pen a letter asking why the it hasn’t been made available sooner. They both stated that the report should’ve been complete “within weeks” of the scandal occurring. In a separate statement, Johnson also questioned whether or not the report will be comprehensive enough, saying the Department for Homeland Security has been too easygoing with the Secret Service in the past.
The indefinite strike by workers of the embassy of Nigeria against the non- payment of salaries for 5 months entered the second consecutive day Wednesday even as talks held between the acting ambassador Hakeem Balogun and striking employees failed to end the deadlock. Despite denial of the strike action by Mr Balogun, dozens of workers failed to report to their duty post Wednesday. Government offices remained shut as employees from almost every department joined the strike, except for diplomats from the ministry of foreign affairs, the ministry of interior and the NIA. All local staff are involved in the protest strike. Contract staff employed by the immigration service are helping out in the processing of visas and passports at this time. In a audio message from the Head of Chancery, one Mr Abam allegedly threatened workers with officials of the Secret Service. An irate Mr Abam, gathered all the embassy drivers, seized official vehicle keys and asked them to leave putting official diplomatic functions in jeopardy. In the audio he was overheard warning the drivers not to report for duty on Wednesday, asking them to stay at home until Abuja sent their salaries. He threatened to arrest them if they show up at the embassy premises. Some workers said Mr Hakeem Balogun, acting ambassador, overruled Abam’s threat by pleading with the workers to resume in the interest of the nation. Workers speaking to this media outfit decry inequality and insecurity at the embassy, “its being condemned all the time-yet nothing changes, except to get worse”. Speaking to Per Second News Tuesday, workers threatened to report to the U.S Department of Labor. A former accountant of the embassy one Mr Salami joined the acting ambassador to apologize to the striking workers, pleading with them to get back to work. Mr Salami admonished the workers to go back to work in the interest of Nigeria, with acting ambassador Mr Balogun promising to pay the outstanding wages soon. The striking workers are demanding the payment of their outstanding salaries for the past 5 months
Thermaltake Dragon Orb3 Heatsink Review The Dragon Orb 3 is simply a massive cooling solution. At 80mm tall, it is one of the tallest heatsinks we have have seen to date, and it has the distinction of being the only heatsink with a 30mm thick copper base we know of. With the new blue-anodized fins and the externally mounted fan in a gold-anodized casing, the Dragon Orb 3 gets high marks for its' looks. With this much copper, performance is almost a guaranteed, and bucking the trend against being suspenseful I can say right off the bat, the Dragon Orb 3 won't disappoint. All is not perfectly well however, there are a few areas of this heatsink which proved less than ideal. Designed for: AMD Athlon, Duron, Socket A. Intel Socket 462, Socket 370. Heatsink Data: Model: Dragon Orb3 (A1135) Fan: Everflow, 6800RPM, 37dBa, 38CFM, 12V, 0.37A Fan Dim: 25x60x60mm Heatsink Dim: 81x70x70mm HS Material: Extruded Aluminum, Copper Mfg by: Thermaltake Cost: $unknown Sold By: Thermaltake The largest issue we noticed with the Dragon Orb 3 is the very soft top cover for the fan. Since the heatsink is quite heavy, it was not uncommon for the side fins on the orange fan shroud to become distorted or bent. The aluminum is so soft that simply grabbing the heatsink by the fan shroud usually causes the metal to bend. The main benefit to moving the Orb3's fan to its current position from that of being mounted directly to the copper core of the cooler is more air is moved down into the small copper pins at the heart of the cooler. In previous versions, like the mini-copper orb, the fan was mounted to the copper and restricted much of the air flow in that region. The gold anodized external fan shrouds attach to the top of the Orb3, and apparently are also being sold separately as an upgrade path to previous Thermaltake Orbs. The fans lock in between two fins and are screwed into place. We used a bit too much pressure pushing the fan grill back into place in one instance and bent it a bit. As there really isn't too much space between the top of the fan and the top of the fan grill, one has to be careful not to bend the metal so much it interferes with the fan moving. The copper pegs at the heart of the Dragon Orb3 are 8mm tall and roughly 2mm square. These same types of cut-out copper pegs were used on the mini-copper orb with moderate success, but have been lengthened here. With both pegs and the blue fins adding to the overall cooling abilities, the Dragon Orb 3 is just about two heatsinks in one. The only down-side to all this copper is sheer weight. The Dragon Orb 3 is not a light heatsink by any means, and the use of all this copper has necessitated a very sturdy socket clip to keep the heatsink in place, and level on the processor die. The clip grasps on to all of the hooks on a socket to provide the most stable possible attachment for this heavy heatsink possible. The force is very stiff however, and we found it a bit difficult to engage the mechanism on our test rig. You can use both a screw driver or the thumb-hold depending on what you find easiest when engaging the clip.
Care for a double dip, anyone? On January 27th, Alice returns for her (alleged) final battle in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the sixth installment of the hit horror movie franchise that began back in 2002. It’s likely that if you’re a fan of the series you already own the previous five installments on home video, but there’s something to be said for Steelbooks. They’re shiny. And awesome. And, uh, steely. I mention this because the entire Resident Evil franchise is coming home yet again in the form of individual Steelbook Blu-ray releases, which will be exclusive to Best Buy stores. The new Steelbooks of Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction, Resident Evil: Afterlife, and Resident Evil: Retribution will arrive on Best Buy shelves on January 17th. Each of the films will come packaged with up to $7.50 in movie cash to see Resident Evil: The Final Chapter in theaters, and it looks like they’ll be selling for $17.99 apiece. Check out the art below and head over to Best Buy’s website to place pre-orders.
Chase, Samuel Samuel Chase served as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1796 to 1811. In 1804 the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase. However, the Senate did not uphold the House's action and Chase continued to serve on the Court until his death. Chase remains the only justice who has been the subject of Impeachment proceedings. Chase's decisions set several precedents for the Supreme Court, among them opinions establishing the supremacy of federal treaties over state laws and the establishment of Judicial Review, which is the Court's power to void legislation it deems unconstitutional, a power that makes the judiciary one of the three primary branches of the federal government (the other two branches being Congress and the president). "I cannot subscribe to the omnipotence of a State legislature." —Samuel Chase Known for his fiery and partisan manner, Chase was an active politician for most of his life. Before his career as a judge Chase served in the Maryland colonial and state legislatures. As a member of the Continental Congress in the 1770s, Chase was an outspoken advocate of American independence from Britain. He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He opposed the Constitution as an Anti-Federalist (an opponent of federal government powers over the states) in the 1780s. Later, however, he became a member of the Federalist Party and as a Supreme Court justice helped establish the powers of the federal judiciary. Chase generally The Samuel Chase Impeachment Trial Originally an anti-Federalist opposed to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution on grounds that it deprived the states of their independence and sovereignty, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase changed his tune about the propriety of a strong central government once he saw the anarchy and madness wrought by the French Revolution. By the time he was seated on the nation's high court, Chase had earned a reputation for his zealous defense of the Federalist Party and his harsh criticism of the Democratic-Republican Party. Generally speaking, the Federalist Party favored a strong national government, promoted legislation that advanced mercantile interests, supported the creation of a national bank, and believed that the federal government should be run by the most well-educated and affluent Americans. The Democratic-Republican Party generally favored stronger and more independent state governments, promoted legislation that advanced agricultural interests, opposed the creation of a national bank, and believed that the federal government should be run as a popular democracy, with its power being directly and closely derived from everyday, average Americans. Chase's political beliefs endeared him to the White House while Federalist John Adams was in office. But in 1800 Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson defeated Adams to become the third president of the United States, and his Democratic-Republican Party took control of both houses of Congress. Chase had rankled Democratic-Republicans even before Jefferson took office. The beginning of the fall term of the Supreme Court in 1800 had to be postponed several weeks until Chase finished campaigning for John Adams in Maryland. After Jefferson took office, Chase began openly assailing the president and his policies. Chase even took to condemning the Democratic-Republicans from the bench. In reading a charge to a Baltimore Grand Jury in May 1803, Chase unleashed what one contemporary observer called "a tirade against Democratic-Republican legislation." Dismayed that Jeffersonians in Maryland had established universal male suffrage, Chase suggested to the grand jurors that "the country … [was] headed down the road to mobocracy, the worst of all popular governments" and that, if left in power, Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans would eliminate "all security for property, and personal liberty." The "modern doctrine … that all men in a state of society are entitled to equal liberty and equal rights," Chase warned, will bring "mighty mischief upon us." Finally, Chase said that congressional Democratic-Republicans had gravely compromised the independence of the judiciary by repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801, which lame-duck Federalist lawmakers had passed to create extra federal judgeships for President Adams to fill. When Jefferson learned of Chase's grand jury charge on May 13, 1803, he immediately wrote Joseph Nicholson, one of his party leaders in the House of Representatives, suggesting action against Chase: "Ought this seditious and official act on the principles of our Constitution, and on the proceedings of a State, to go unpunished? And to whom so pointedly as yourself will the public look for the necessary measures? I ask these questions for your consideration, for myself it is better that I should not interfere." Nicholson quietly alerted his Democratic-Republican colleagues as to Jefferson's suggestion. Less than a year later, on March 12, 1804, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase by a 73 to 32 margin, naming John Randolph, a cousin of Jefferson and a mercurial politician in his own right, to head the House Managers responsible for prosecuting Chase in his trial before the Senate. The eight Articles of Impeachment centered on three charges. The first charge arose from Chase's remarks before the Baltimore grand jury. The second charge stemmed from his conduct in the 1800 Treason trial of John Fries. The third charge focused on Chase's conduct in the 1800 Sedition trial of James Callender. Together, the House managers argued, these three charges represented judicial misconduct amounting to impeachable High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Article II, Section 4 of the U.S Constitution provides that the federal judges "shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The least serious of the charges concerned Chase's conduct in the Fries trial. Fries was accused of treason for leading a riot over a dwelling tax in Pennsylvania in 1799. At the outset of the Fries trial, Chase had delivered a written opinion in which he defined the meaning of treason as a Matter of Law, without ever hearing argument from the lawyers in the case. Fries' attorneys were flabbergasted. They withdrew from the case because, they contended, Chase's conduct had irrevocably tainted the jury pool and made a fair trial impossible. Without counsel, Fries was easily convicted. In defense of his actions, Chase told the Senate that before the jury began deliberating in the Fries case, he had instructed the jurors that they had the final word on the definition of treason and the final say on how that definition would be applied to the facts of the case. The most serious charge concerned Chase's conduct at the Callender trial. Callender had been indicted under the provisions of the Sedition Act for publishing a book accusing John Adams of being a British toady and a monarchist. Passed in 1798 by a Federalist Congress, the Sedition Act made it a crime to speak or write in such a way as to bring the president or Congress "into contempt or disrepute." Jeffersonians viewed the act as a political tool that the Adams administration used to muzzle its opponents. During the impeachment trial, the House Managers presented evidence that Chase had prejudged the Callender case. They offered testimony that Chase, upon first reading Callender's book, had expressed the intent to present the offending passages to a grand jury himself and obtain an indictment against the defendant. Chase admitted threatening such action but denied following through on the threat and argued that the threat by itself did not constitute a high crime or misdemeanor. The House Managers also presented evidence that Chase failed to exclude a juror from sitting on the jury, even though the juror had formed an unfavorable opinion about Callender. Chase admitted that one juror indicated having formed such an opinion, but Chase said that the same juror also said he had not formed an opinion about the specific charges against the defendant. The trial began on February 9, 1805, and the House Managers took ten full days to present the testimony of more than 50 witnesses. Chase did not testify during the proceedings but instead read a prepared statement that attempted to refute the charges. Closing arguments started on February 20 and lasted several days. Martin Luther, one the country's most able and respected lawyers, represented Chase. Seven House Managers, led by Randolph, spoke for the prosecution. Thirty-Four senators weighed the evidence, 25 Democratic-Republicans and 9 Federalists. Aaron Burr, Jefferson's vice president, presided over the proceedings. Twenty-two votes, or two-thirds of the Senate, were necessary for conviction. On March 1, 1805, the Senate announced its verdicts. Chase was acquitted on all counts. The closest vote was 19–15 in favor of convicting Chase for his anti–Democratic-Republican remarks to the Baltimore grand jury. Contemporary observers and historians have given Martin Luther a lion's share of the credit for the acquittals. His closing argument deeply impressed the Senate with ideas that Chase was a wronged man and that the integrity and independence of the federal judiciary would be imperiled by conviction. John Randolph's closing argument, by contrast, was described as so ineffective, disorganized, shrill, and blatantly partisan that even Thomas Jefferson was alienated. The failure of the Senate to convict allowed Chase to return to the Supreme Court and serve 6 more years as an associate justice. More importantly, the acquittal deterred the House of Representatives from using impeachment as a partisan political tool. Some historians have suggested that the Chase impeachment trial was just a Test Case for House Democratic-Republicans who would have pursued other impeachments more aggressively. The Chase impeachment is also said to have left a lasting impression on Chase's friend, Chief Justice John Marshall, who spent much of his later career attempting to demonstrate that the nation's high court was separate from and even above party politics. In the final analysis, these two results represent flip sides of the same coin: one result increased the independence of the federal judiciary from interference by the legislative and executive branches, while the other result revealed the danger to that independence created by unelected federal judges who publicly attack the popular policies of democratically elected lawmakers. Further readings Presser, Stephen B. 1991. The Original Misunderstanding: The English, the Americans, and the Dialectic of Federalist Jurisprudence. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic. Rehnquist, William H. 1992. Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic. Cross-references High Crimes and Misdemeanors. favored a strong government ruled by an elite and he opposed the radical ideas of the French Revolution. Chase was born April 17, 1741, in Somerset County, Maryland. His father, Thomas Chase, was a British-born clergyman of the Church of England. His mother, Matilda Walker Chase, died at Chase's birth. In 1744 the family moved to Baltimore where Chase grew up and received a classical education under his father's supervision. Chase studied law in Annapolis, Maryland, at the office of Attorney John Hall from 1759 until he was admitted to the bar in 1763. In 1762 Chase married Ann Baldwin. They had seven children, three of them dying in infancy. Ann died sometime between 1776 and 1779 and in 1784 Chase married Hannah Kitty Giles, with whom he had two daughters. Chase established a successful law practice in Annapolis, the colonial capital and later the state capital of Maryland. He also became prominent in colonial politics. In 1764 he was elected to the lower house of Maryland's colonial legislature as a representative of Annapolis and by the early 1770s he had become well-known as a skillful legislator and outstanding leader, earning the nickname the Maryland Demosthenes after the ancient Greek orator and politician. He represented Maryland in the Continental Congresses from 1774 to 1778 and 1784 to 1785 and in 1778 served on as many as thirty committees in his tireless efforts to advance the cause of independence from Britain. He advocated a boycott of Britain and a political confederation of the colonies. He denounced those who opposed such policies as "despicable tools of power, emerged from obscurity and basking in proprietary sunshine." Together with Benjamin Franklin and Charles Carroll, Chase traveled in 1776 to Montreal in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Canada to join the American colonies in their revolt against England. He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and worked for its acceptance in Maryland. Chase helped draft the Maryland Constitution in 1776. He served in the Maryland House of Delegates for all but a year and a half between 1777 and 1788. When the U.S. Constitution came before the Maryland Convention for ratification Chase was in the minority of delegates who voted against it. He was an ardent Anti-Federalist at the time and argued that the Constitution concentrated power in the hands of the central government at the expense of the common individual. "I consider the Constitution," he wrote to a friend, "as radically defective in this essential: the bulk of the people can have nothing to say to it. The government is not a government of the people." He also argued that the Constitution failed to protect the Freedom of the Press and the right to trial by jury. His opposition to the Constitution cost him his state legislative seat in 1788. The same year, Chase also went bankrupt after several of his speculative business ventures failed. These business risks had also damaged his political career, which had been plagued with charges that he used his office for personal gain. In 1778 he had been dismissed from the Continental Congress for two years for allegedly attempting to corner the flour market and profit from speculation on prices. Dogged by Bankruptcy and charges of corruption, Chase sought refuge in the position of a local judge in Baltimore County in 1788. In 1791 he was concurrently appointed chief judge of the Maryland General Court. The state assembly, upset with his behavior on the bench and his holding two positions as judge, tried unsuccessfully to remove him from both positions. Chase might seem to have been an unlikely choice for a Supreme Court justice. However, President George Washington nominated him to the Supreme Court on January 26, 1796. Over the years Washington had been impressed by Chase's legal skills; he also admired the zeal with which Chase had worked for American independence during the Revolutionary War as well as Chase's efforts in support of Washington in the Continental Congress. James McHenry of Maryland, the secretary of war and a friend of Washington's, strongly recommended Chase to Washington. Moreover, the Supreme Court was not very powerful or prestigious at the time and it was difficult to find a lawyer who would accept a position on it. The job did not pay well and justices had to travel long distances to preside over circuit courts. Chase took his seat on the Court on February 4, 1796. He was an Anti-Federalist at the time of the Constitution's ratification but during his tenure on the Court he became a persuasive advocate for the federal judiciary's power to review legislation. Two cases from Chase's first session on the Supreme Court—Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. (Dall.) 171, 1 L. Ed. 556, and Ware v. Hylton, 3 U.S. (Dall.) 199, 1 L. Ed. 568, both decided in March 1796—stand out. In Hylton v. United States, the Court for the first time reviewed a law passed by Congress. Although the Court refrained from declaring its ability to void acts of Congress on constitutional grounds, its review nevertheless paved the way for marbury v. madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803), which established the right of the Court to declare laws unconstitutional. At issue in Ware v. Hylton was whether a treaty decided by the federal government could take precedence over state laws. The U.S. government had made a treaty with Great Britain following the Revolutionary War that provided for the payment of debts owed to Great Britain. The states, meanwhile, had passed their own laws on this issue, many of which enabled U.S. citizens to forgo repaying their debts to British citizens. John Marshall, future chief justice of the Court, argued the case before the Court for the debtors. The Court ruled that the national treaty had precedent over state law. Of Chase's opinion in this case, constitutional scholar edward s. corwin wrote in 1930 that it "remains to this day the most impressive assertion of the supremacy of national treaties over State laws." In Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (Dall.) 386, 1 L. Ed. 648 (1798), Chase wrote a highly influential opinion for the Court. He defined a constitutional interpretation of ex post facto laws—that is, retroactive laws, or laws that affect matters occurring before their enactment. Chase decided that the Constitution's prohibition of such laws extended only to criminal statutes that make prior conduct a crime, not to civil statutes. Chase also set a precedent by arguing that any law "contrary to the great first principles of the social compact" must be declared void. In his opinion, Chase emphasized that the Constitution limits the ability of legislators to disturb established property rights even when it does not expressly set forth such rights. Described by Presser as the natural-law basis of the Constitution, this argument broadened the Court's ability to test the constitutionality of legislation. In United States v. Callender, Chase's Trial 65, Whart. St. Tr. 668, 25 F. Cas. 239, No. 14, 709 (C.C. Va.) (1800), Chase further defined the powers of the Court when he ruled that a jury could not decide the constitutionality of a law: [T]he judicial power of the United States is the only proper and competent authority to decide whether any statute made by congress (or any of the state legislatures) is contrary to, or in violation of, the federal constitution.… I believe that it has been the general and prevailing opinion in all the Union, that the power now wished to be exercised by a jury, belongs properly to the Federal Courts. Chase also found himself embroiled in highly publicized political controversy for his actions both on and off the bench. For example, he made partisan speeches in 1796 for John Adams, the Federalist party candidate for president, even after he had taken the position of Supreme Court justice. He also pushed for passage of the alien and sedition act, 1 Stat. 596 (1798), which outlawed "false, scandalous, and malicious" attacks on the government, the president, or Congress. The law was designed largely to discourage criticism of President Adams by the rival Democratic-Republican Party, whose most well-known leader was Thomas Jefferson. In circuit court decisions in 1799 and 1800 Chase imposed harsh sentences on Democratic-Republicans who had published opinions critical of Adams's Federalist administration. In several cases Chase worked to keep Anti-Federalists off juries. In the case of John Fries of Pennsylvania, a strong supporter of Jefferson who had led rebellions against federal excise taxes, Chase sentenced the accused to death. President Adams subsequently set aside the sentence. In 1800 the political atmosphere in Washington, D.C., changed when Jefferson defeated Adams for the presidency of the United States. In 1803 Chase got into trouble with the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans when he severely criticized their policies in front of a Baltimore Grand Jury. Chase explained that he objected to recent changes in Maryland law that gave more men the privilege of voting. Such changes as these advanced by Democratic-Republicans, Chase exclaimed, would rapidly destroy all protection to property, and all security to personal liberty, and our Republican Constitution [would] sink into mobocracy, the worst of all possible governments.… The modern doctrines by our late reformers, that all men in a state of society are entitled to enjoy equal liberty and equal rights, have brought this mighty mischief upon us, and I fear that it will rapidly destroy progress, until peace and order, freedom and property shall be destroyed. This angered Jefferson and other Democratic-Republicans and in 1804 the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase on charges of misconduct and bias in the Sedition cases and of seditious criticism of Jefferson in the 1803 Baltimore grand jury charge. In 1805, the Democratic-Republican–controlled U.S. Senate moved to impeach Chase. Democratic-Republican senators charged that Chase had been guilty of judicial misconduct and that his partisan acts showed that he lacked political objectivity. Federalists defending Chase argued that he had committed no crime and that he could not be convicted under the constitutional definition of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. The Senate failed to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to impeach Chase and he remained on the Court until his death. Chase's acquittal set an important precedent for the Court—no Supreme Court justice could be removed simply because of his or her political beliefs. The failure to impeach Chase allowed Chief Justice Marshall to assert and define the powers of the Court in future decisions with more confidence. It was thus a step in the process of defining the independence of the Supreme Court as one of the three primary branches of U.S. government. Chase avoided controversy in his subsequent work on the Court. His near impeachment served as a warning both to him and to other justices to be careful in their choice of words while in office. As Chase suffered in later years from declining health, Marshall became the most vocal justice and assumed Chase's position as the lightning rod for the Court. Chase died June 19, 1811, in Baltimore. He was interred in St. Paul's Cemetery. Further readings Dilliard, Irving. 1969. "Samuel Chase." In The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions, ed. Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel. New York: Chelsea House. Haw, James. 1993. "Samuel Chase." In The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1993, ed. Claire Cushman. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly. Cross-references Constitution of the United States "Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists" (In Focus); Fries's Rebellion.
I began programming on an Apple Mac Plus around 1985 and have loved the capabilities computers afford ever since. Being a math major in college, database design and programming seemed to come naturally and with the explosion of the Internet, opportunities abounded and 25 years later, computers are still going strong as an important part of the infrastructure of the world. In addition to interests in computer programming, I love studying the Scriptures and also love Praise & Worship, which I lead from time to time around the country. I have been and am an avid piano player, arranger, and singer, producing a CD album yearly. When I first started taking lessons some 60 years ago, I never envisioned the role of the gift or the path it would take me down. Today, I enjoy music as much as I did when I started and have even found a way to incorporate "computers" into it. A match made in heaven! House of David Fellowship In addition to computer programming, I am the congregational leader for The House of David Fellowship in Richmond Virginia and I teach about the Hebrew Roots of the Christian faith from a Hebraic perspective. This congregation is different in that all the congregants are given homework assignments to prepare for the next service; and they Love It! Those who do not live in a location which allows them to attend can become "Members at Large". This allows them to participate in all the activites through the internet.
[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 72 (Thursday, April 14, 2016)] [Rules and Regulations] [Pages 22023-22025] From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] [FR Doc No: 2016-08566] DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Drug Enforcement Administration 21 CFR Part 1308 [Docket No. DEA-432] Schedules of Controlled Substances: Placement of AH-7921 Into Schedule I AGENCY: Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Justice. ACTION: Final order. SUMMARY: With the issuance of this final order, the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration places the substance AH-7921 (Systematic IUPAC Name: 3,4-dichloro-N-[(1dimethylamino)cyclohexylmethyl]benzamide), including its isomers, esters, ethers, salts, and salts of isomers, esters and ethers, into schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. This scheduling action is pursuant to the Controlled Substances Act and is required in order for the United States to discharge its obligations under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961. This action imposes the regulatory controls and administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions applicable to schedule I controlled substances on persons who handle (manufacture, distribute, import, export, engage in research or conduct instructional activities with, or possess), or propose to handle, AH-7921. DATES: Effective May 16, 2016. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Barbara J. Boockholdt, Office of Diversion Control, Drug Enforcement Administration; Mailing Address: 8701 Morrissette Drive, Springfield, Virginia 22152; Telephone: (202) 598-6812. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Legal Authority The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) implements and enforces titles II and III of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, as amended. Titles II and III are referred to as the "Controlled Substances Act" and the "Controlled Substances Import and Export Act," respectively, and are collectively referred to as the "Controlled Substances Act" or the "CSA" for the purpose of this action. 21 U.S.C. 801-971. The DEA publishes the implementing regulations for these statutes in title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), chapter II. The CSA and its implementing regulations are designed to prevent, detect, and eliminate the diversion of controlled substances and listed chemicals into the illicit market while providing for the legitimate medical, scientific, research, and industrial needs of the United States. Controlled substances have the potential for abuse and dependence and are controlled to protect the public health and safety. Under the CSA, controlled substances are classified into one of five schedules based upon their potential for abuse, their currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and the degree of dependence the substance may cause. 21 U.S.C. 812. The initial schedules of controlled substances established by Congress are found at 21 U.S.C. 812(c), and the current list of scheduled substances is published at 21 CFR part 1308. Section 201(d)(1) of the CSA (21 U.S.C. 811(d)(1)) states that, if control of a substance is required "by United States obligations under international treaties, conventions, or protocols in effect on October 27, 1970, the Attorney General shall issue an order controlling such drug under the schedule he deems most appropriate to carry out such obligations, without regard to the findings and procedures required by section 201(a) and (b) (21 U.S.C. 811(a) and (b)) and section 202(b) (21 U.S.C. 812(b)) of the Act." 21 U.S.C. 811(d)(1), 21 CFR 1308.46. If a substance is added to one of the schedules of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, then, in accordance with article 3, paragraph 7 of the Convention, as a signatory Member State, the United States is obligated to control that substance under its national drug control legislation, the CSA. The Attorney General has delegated scheduling authority under 21 U.S.C. 811 to the Administrator of the DEA. 28 CFR 0.100. Background On May 8, 2015, the Secretary-General of the United Nations advised the Secretary of State of the United States, that during the 58th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, AH-7921 was added to schedule I of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961. This letter was prompted by a decision at the 58th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in March 2015 to schedule AH-7921 under schedule I of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. As a signatory Member State to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the United States is obligated to control AH-7921 under its national drug control legislation, the CSA, in the schedule deemed most appropriate to carry out its international obligations. 21 U.S.C. 811(d)(1). AH-7921 AH-7921 is an N-substituted cyclohexylmethyl benzamide developed in 1962 by Allen and Hanbury's, Ltd., a pharmaceutical company in the United Kingdom. AH-7921 is a [micro]-opioid receptor agonist with analgesic activity similar to that of morphine. The DEA is not aware of any commercial or medical uses for this substance. In animals, withdrawal symptoms are observed following repeated administration of AH-7921. Currently, clinical studies evaluating the safety and pharmacological effects of AH-7921 in humans have not been reported in the scientific literature. Usage of AH-7921 for eliciting euphoria and relaxation has been documented. There have been several reports of overdoses and deaths from AH-7921 reported worldwide including at least one published case report of a death resulting from AH-7921 in the United States. Given the increasing abuse of opioid prescription drugs (e.g., oxycodone, hydrocodone and fentanyl) and increased use of heroin in the United States, there are legitimate concerns about an increased potential of abuse of AH-7921. DEA is not aware of any claims or any medical or scientific literature suggesting that AH-7921 has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. Accordingly, DEA has not requested that HHS conduct a scientific and medical evaluation of the substance's medical utility. [[Page 22024]] Furthermore, DEA is not required under 21 U.S.C. 811(d)(1) to make any findings required by 21 U.S.C. 811(a) or 812(b), and is not required to follow the procedures prescribed by 21 U.S.C. 811(a) and (b). Therefore, consistent with the framework of 21 U.S.C. 811(d), DEA concludes that AH-7921 has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States and is most appropriately placed in schedule I of the CSA. Conclusion In order to meet the obligations of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 and because AH-7921 has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration has determined that this substance should be placed in schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. Requirements for Handling Upon the effective date of this final order, AH-7921 is subject to the CSA's schedule I regulatory controls and administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions applicable to the manufacture, distribution, importation, exportation, engagement in research, and conduct of instructional activities with, and possession of schedule I controlled substances including the following: 1. Registration. Any person who handles (manufactures, distributes, imports, exports, engages in research or conducts instructional activities with, or possesses), or who desires to handle, AH-7921 must be registered with the DEA to conduct such activities pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 822, 823, 957, and 958 and in accordance with 21 CFR parts 1301 and 1312, as of May 16, 2016. Any person who currently handles AH-7921, and is not registered with the DEA, must submit an application for registration and may not continue to handle AH-7921 as of May 16, 2016, unless the DEA has approved that application for registration pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 822, 823, 957, 958, and in accordance with 21 CFR parts 1301 and 1312. 2. Disposal of stocks. Any person who does not desire or is not able to obtain a schedule I registration must surrender all quantities of currently held AH-7921, or may transfer all quantities of currently held AH-7921 to a person registered with the DEA on or before May 16, 2016 in accordance with all applicable federal, state, local, and tribal laws. As of May 16, 2016, controlled substances must be disposed of in accordance with 21 CFR part 1317, in additional to all other applicable federal, state, local, and tribal laws. 3. Security. AH-7921 is subject to schedule I security requirements and must be handled and stored pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 821, 823, 871(b), and in accordance with 21 CFR 1301.71-1301.93, as of May 16, 2016. 4. Labeling and packaging. All labels, labeling, and packaging for commercial containers of AH-7921 must be in compliance with 21 U.S.C. 825, 958(e), and be in accordance with 21 CFR part 1302 as of May 16, 2016. 5. Quota. A quota assigned pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 826 and in accordance with 21 CFR part 1303 is required in order to manufacture AH-7921 as of May 16, 2016. 6. Inventory. Every DEA registrant who possesses any quantity of AH-7921 on the effective date of this order must take an inventory of all stocks of this substance on hand as of May 16, 2016, pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 827 and 958, and in accordance with Sec. Sec. 1304.03, 1304.04, and 1304.11. Any person who becomes registered with the DEA after May 16, 2016 must take an initial inventory of all stocks of controlled substances (including AH-7921) on hand on the date the registrant first engages in the handling of controlled substances, pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 827 and 958 and in accordance with 21 CFR 1304.03, 1304.04, and 1304.11. After the initial inventory, every DEA registrant must take an inventory of all controlled substances (including AH-7921) on hand on a biennial basis, pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 827 and 958, and in accordance with Sec. Sec. 1304.03, 1304.04, and 1304.11. 7. Records and Reports. Every DEA registrant would be required to maintain records and submit reports with respect to AH-7921 pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 827 and 958, and in accordance with 21 CFR parts 1304 and 1312. 8. Order Forms. All DEA registrants who distribute AH-7921 must comply with order form requirements pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 828 and in accordance with 21 CFR part 1305 as of May 16, 2016. 9. Importation and Exportation. All importation and exportation of AH-7921 must be in compliance with 21 U.S.C. 952, 953, 957, 958, and in accordance with 21 CFR part 1312 as of May 16, 2016. 10. Liability. Any activity involving AH-7921 not authorized by, or in violation of the CSA, occurring as of May 16, 2016, is unlawful, and may subject the person to administrative, civil, and/or criminal sanctions. Regulatory Analyses Administrative Procedure Act The CSA provides for an expedited scheduling action where control is required by the United States obligations under international treaties, conventions, or protocols. 21 U.S.C. 811(d)(1). If control is required pursuant to such international treaty, convention, or protocol, the Attorney General must issue an order controlling such drug under the schedule he deems most appropriate to carry out such obligations, without regard to the findings or procedures otherwise required for scheduling actions. Id. To the extent that 21 U.S.C. 811(d)(1) directs that if control is required by the United States obligations under international treaties, conventions, or protocols in effect on October 27, 1970, scheduling actions shall be issued by order (as compared to scheduling pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 811(a) by rule), the DEA believes that the notice and comment requirements of section 553 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 553, do not apply to this scheduling action. In the alternative, even if this action does constitute "rule making" under 5 U.S.C. 551(5), this action is exempt from the notice and comment requirements of 5 U.S.C. 553 pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 553(a)(1) as an action involving a foreign affairs function of the United States given that this action is being done in accordance with 21 U.S.C. 811(d)(1)'s requirement that such action be taken to comply with the United States obligations under the specified international agreements. Executive Order 12866 This action is not a significant regulatory action as defined by Executive Order 12866 (Regulatory Planning and Review), section 3(f), and, accordingly, this action has not been reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Executive Order 13132 This action does not have federalism implications warranting the application of Executive Order 13132. This action will not have substantial direct effects on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. Therefore, in accordance with Executive Order 13132 (Federalism) it is determined that this action does not have sufficient federalism implications to warrant the preparation of a Federalism Assessment. [[Page 22025]] Executive Order 13175 This action does not have tribal implications warranting the application of Executive Order 13175. The action does not have substantial direct effects on one or more Indian tribes, on the relationship between the Federal government and Indian tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities between the Federal government and Indian tribes. Regulatory Flexibility Act The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) (5 U.S.C. 601-612) applies to rules that are subject to notice and comment under section 553(b) of the APA or any other law. As explained above, the CSA exempts this final order from notice and comment. Consequently, the RFA does not apply to this action. Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 This action does not impose a new collection of information requirement under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. 44 U.S.C. 3501-3521. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Congressional Review Act This action is not a major rule as defined by section 804 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (Congressional Review Act). However, the DEA has submitted a copy of this final order to both Houses of Congress and to the Comptroller General. List of Subjects in 21 CFR Part 1308 Administrative practice and procedure, Drug traffic control, Narcotics, Prescription drugs. For the reasons set out above, the DEA amends 21 CFR part 1308 as follows: PART 1308--SCHEDULES OF CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES 1. The authority citation for part 1308 continues to read as follows: Authority: 21 U.S.C. 811, 812, 871(b), unless otherwise noted. 2. Amend Sec. 1308.11 by redesignating paragraphs (b)(3) through (55) as (b)(4) through (56) and adding a new (b)(3)to read as follows: Sec. 1308.11 Schedule I. * * * * * (b) * * * (3) AH-7921 (3,4-dichloro-N-[(1-dimethylamino) cyclohexylmethyl]benzamide ......... 9551 * * * * * Dated: April 8, 2016 Chuck Rosenberg, Acting Administrator. [FR Doc. 2016-08566 Filed 4-13-16; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4410-09-P NOTICE: This is an unofficial version. An official version of this publication may be obtained directly from the Government Publishing Office (GPO).
Iran sanctions lifted after UN nuclear watchdog's finding; Tehran, Washington agree to prisoner swap Updated The US and the EU have lifted crippling sanctions against Iran following the UN nuclear watchdog's finding that Tehran had curbed its nuclear program as promised. Key points: IAEA report confirms Iran has honoured its side of the nuclear accord Raft of US, EU and UN sanctions lifted, oil exports to resume Iran has always said its nuclear activities were for peaceful purposes In a dramatic move scheduled to coincide with the scrapping of the sanctions, Tehran also announced the release of five Americans including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian as part of a prisoner swap with the United States. Together, the lifting of sanctions and the prisoner deal considerably reduce the hostility between Tehran and Washington that has shaped the Middle East since Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979. Tens of billions of dollars worth of Iranian assets will now be unfrozen and global companies that have been barred from doing business there will be able to exploit a market hungry for everything from automobiles to airplane parts. The UN nuclear watchdog ruled on Saturday that Iran had abided by an agreement last year with six world powers to curtail its nuclear program, triggering the end of sanctions. "Iran has carried out all measures required under the [July deal] to enable Implementation Day [of the deal] to occur," the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement. Iran to emerge from years of economic isolation Within minutes, the United States formally lifted banking, steel, shipping and other sanctions on Iran, a major oil producer that has been virtually shut out of international markets for the past five years. The European Union also began the process of lifting sanctions and Iran's transport minister said Tehran planned to buy 114 civil aircraft from European aircraft maker Airbus. Australia would also lift sanctions on the Islamic republic, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said. "The easing of these sanctions will ensure that Australian business is not disadvantaged in pursuing opportunities in Iran," she said in a statement. The lifting of sanctions means more money and prestige for Shiite Muslim Iran as it becomes deeply embroiled in the sectarian conflicts of the Middle East, notably in the Syrian civil war, where its allies are facing Sunni Muslim rebels. America's thaw with Iran is viewed with deep suspicion by US Republicans as well as American allies in the Middle East, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. US-Iranian suspicion remains deeply entrenched. Washington maintains separate, less comprehensive sanctions on Iran over its missile program. For its part, Iran detained 10 US Navy sailors on two boats in the Gulf a week ago, although they were released the next day. American prisoners leave Iran: reports In an unusual move, President Barack Obama pardoned three Iranian-Americans charged for violating sanctions against Iran, a lawyer for one of the men said, while prosecutors moved to drop charges against four Iranians outside the United States. Iran agreed to free five Americans including Rezaian and Saeed Abedini, an Iranian-American Christian pastor sentenced to eight years in prison in 2013 on charges of undermining Iran's national security. The Washington Post said on Sunday Rezaian had left Iran with his wife Yeganeh Salehi. "We are relieved that this 545-day nightmare for Jason and his family is finally over," the statement said. The other three Americans had also left the country and were bound for Switzerland, Iranian state television reported. Another prisoner, Matthew Trevithick, has left the country after 40 days in prison. Trevithick, a student and journalist, had travelled and worked in conflict-torn nations including Syria, Mali and Afghanistan. The prisoner deal was the culmination of months of diplomatic contacts, secret talks and legal manoeuvring that came close to falling apart because of a threat by Washington in December to impose fresh sanctions on Iran for recent ballistic missile tests. The detente with Iran is opposed by all of the Republican candidates vying to succeed Mr Obama as president in an election in November. Republican front-runner Donald Trump said at a campaign event he was happy Americans were being freed, "but I will tell you it's a disgrace that they were there for so long". Ted Cruz, a conservative senator from Texas and one of the leading Republicans, tweeted in support of Mr Abedini's release: "Praise God! Surely bad parts of Obama's latest deal, but prayers of thanksgiving that Pastor Saeed is coming home." Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton took credit for helping to start the sanctions pressure on Iran during her 2009-2013 tenure as Mr Obama's secretary of state. Reuters/ABC Topics: government-and-politics, crime, nuclear-energy, iran-islamic-republic-of, united-states First posted
by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, published by Berrett-Koehler in the United States and Routledge in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved. A game of checkers offers very little insight into how to solve the world’s intertwined environmental and social problems, or so I thought. In one particular game, my opponent opened with a series of reckless moves, placing checker after checker in harm’s way. When I jumped the first one and swiped it off the board, I briefly wondered if I was being lured into a trap. But it was just a fleeting thought. After all, my opponent was only five years old. I was playing against my daughter. She had just gotten home from her kindergarten class, and I was giving her a few strategy pointers from my limited bag of tricks. Her moves showed some modest improvement, but after a while, we both lost interest in the game. Besides, there are other fun things you can do with checkers, like seeing how high a tower you can build. At first, we were fast and free with our stacking — we even plopped down two or three checkers at a time. But as the tower grew, we changed our approach. With the light touch and steady hands of a surgical team, we took turns adding checkers one by one to the top of the stack. By this point, our formerly straight tower had taken on a disconcerting lean. On our final attempt to increase its height, the mighty checker tower reached the inevitable tipping point and came crashing down to earth. Like a reporter interpreting the scene, my daughter remarked, “Sometimes when things get too big, they fall.” I sat back amid the pile of checkers scattered on the floor and smiled. With a simple observation and eight words, she had managed to sum up the root cause of humanity’s most pressing environmental and social problems. Even a partial list of these problems sounds grim: Greenhouse gas emissions are destabilizing the global climate. Billions of people are living in poverty, engaged in a daily struggle to meet their basic needs. The health of forests, grasslands, marshes, oceans, and other wild places is declining, to the point that the planet is experiencing a species extinction crisis. National governments are drowning in debt, while the global financial system teeters on the verge of ruin. People desperately want to solve these problems, but most of us are overlooking the underlying cause: our economy has grown too large. Our economic tower is threatening to collapse under its own weight, and beyond that, it’s threatening the integrity of the checkerboard and the well-being of the players. The economy is simply too big for the broader social and ecological systems that contain it. That’s a strong indictment against economic growth, but this indictment is backed up by scientific studies of environmental and social systems. The evidence shows that the pursuit of a bigger economy is undermining the life-support systems of the planet and failing to make us better off — a grave situation, to be sure. But what makes the situation even more serious is the lack of a viable response. The plan being transmitted from classrooms, boardrooms, and pressrooms is to keep adding more checkers to the stack. The model of more is failing both environmentally and socially, and practically everyone is still cheering it on… it almost makes you want to climb to the top of the highest building and shout, “ENOUGH!” Crying out in such a way expresses intense frustration at the seemingly intractable environmental and social problems we face, but it also carries the basic solution to these problems. By stopping at enough when it comes to production and consumption in the economy, instead of constantly chasing more, we can restore environmental health and achieve widespread well-being. That’s an incredibly hopeful message, but it opens up all sorts of questions. What would this economy look like? What new institutions would we need? How would we secure jobs? This book attempts to answer these and related questions by providing a blueprint for an economy of enough, with detailed policies and strategies for making the transition away from more. You probably have some of the same concerns as we do about the environment and the economy. We’re not pessimists, but with all the disturbing facts that confront us, it’s hard to avoid feeling worried about the future we face. Yet there is still hope in the midst of such worries. Once we put aside our obsession with growth, we can focus on the task of building a better economy. Tim Jackson (the author of a brilliant book entitled Prosperity without Growth) has provided this much-needed rallying call: Here is a point in time where our institutions are wrong. Our economics is not fit for purpose. The outcomes of this economic system are perverse. But this is not an anthem of despair. It’s not a place where we should give up hope. It’s not an impossibility theorem. The impossibility lives in believing we have a set of principles that works for us. Once we let go of that assumption anything is possible. Enough Is Enough tries to provide a new set of principles that can work for us. We don’t want to mislead you into thinking we have a precise set of directions for fixing everything that’s wrong with the world — after all, the economy and the ecological systems that contain it are highly complex. We do, however, have an economic plan that can help move humanity toward a better future where sustainable and equitable human well-being is the goal, not economic growth. Successful implementation of this plan rests on three requirements: Widespread recognition that our planet is finite. Humanity (along with all the other species here) draws life and comfort from a limited pool of resources. Recognition of this fact requires us to change the way we regard our relationship with nature, especially within our economic institutions. Practical policies for achieving a steady-state economy. A set of well-conceived steady-state policies can replace and outperform the obsolete growth-oriented policies in use today. But people need a strong sense of these new policies before they’ll be willing to embrace them. The will to act. The economic changes that are required won’t materialize on their own. We must dismantle the prevailing institutions and policies that have produced a destructive and unfair economy. At the same time, we must initiate and nurture the required changes. This book is organized around these three requirements. If you’re already on board with the first one, you may recognize some familiar ideas in the next two chapters. Even so, it’s worth spending some time considering the problem of “too much” before jumping to the solution of “enough.” But the purpose of this book (in fact, the feature that sets it apart from others) is to describe how to establish a prosperous yet nongrowing economy. This is not a book that focuses on problems while relegating solutions to the last few pages. That said, Part I, Questions of Enough, is more about why than how. It’s where we summarize some of the scientific evidence that condemns the pursuit of continuous economic growth. Part I also considers what constitutes desirable levels of population and consumption, and then makes the turn toward how by describing the defining features of a steady-state economy. Part II, Strategies of Enough, provides solutions — an escape route from the perpetual growth trap described in Part I. It’s the part of the book that explains how, in a steady-state economy, we can: Limit the use of materials and energy to sustainable levels. Stabilize population through compassionate and noncoercive means. Achieve a fair distribution of income and wealth. Reform monetary and financial systems for stability. Change the way we measure progress. Secure meaningful jobs and full employment. Reconfigure the way businesses create value. Taken together, the policies described in Part II form an agenda for transforming the economic goal from more to enough. But these policies will sit on the shelf unless we can gain extensive support for, and concerted action toward, achieving an economy of enough. Part III, Advancing the Economy of Enough, provides the call for action. This part of the book contains ideas for moving past the culture of consumerism, starting a public dialogue about the downsides of growth and the upsides of a steady-state economy, and expanding cooperation among nations. All this discussion leads up to the presentation of an economic blueprint that summarizes the components and steps needed to build a steady-state economy. This blueprint offers hope at a time when we need it most. It provides a viable way of responding to the profound environmental and social problems of our era. The ever-present drone of what we can’t do has become both tiresome and unproductive. The time has come to figure out what we can do. We can build a better economy. We can meet our needs and care for the planet at the same time. We can live balanced lives, including time for the occasional game of checkers. This is our checkerboard, after all, and we don’t have to play by the old rules anymore. Let’s get to it. Enough is enough. The first $5,000 in royalties from sales of the book go directly to CASSE. Please click here to order a copy.
In a case that drew national attention over nearly two years — and accusations that Phoenix, Arizona, allows the profiling of innocent transgender women as sex workers — prosecutors have dismissed charges against Monica Jones. "The case against her is officially over," said attorney Jean-Jacques “J” Cabou, who represented Jones along with the American Civil Liberties Union. "Monica never has anything to fear resulting from her arrest that night." "We won a total victory on that front," Cabou said Wednesday in a phone call with BuzzFeed News. But on another front, Jones reached a stalemate. She will not get a chance to overturn the law used to prosecute her in the first place — a law she recently told BuzzFeed News "unfairly targets women, transgender women, and people of color living in poverty.” By scuttling the criminal charges, prosecutors avoided Jones's recent legal challenge to the Phoenix ordinance that prohibits a nebulous concept of "manifesting intent" to commit prostitution. Critics say the law gives police license to arrest people for engaging in lawful activity, including talking to passersby, without evidence that the person actually planned to do sex work. Jones was arrested in May of 2013 after she accepted a ride from an undercover cop conducting a prostitution-related sting. A municipal court found her guilty and sentenced her to 30 days in jail, but Jones appealed the charges to Maricopa County Superior Court, which voided her conviction this January on the narrow grounds that she received an unfair trial. While Phoenix prosecutors considered re-trying Jones in the lower court, Jones and her legal team appealed the case to a higher state appellate court, arguing that the Phoenix law violated constitutional rights no matter how it was applied. "The law on its face criminalizes protected speech, including speaking words and your appearance for the way you dress," said Cabou, who is also a partner at the national law firm Perkins Coie. The nebulously written law, based on an officer's assessment of person's intent, also "forces you to guess about whether standing on a street corner and waving your hands is criminal," he said. Jones' appeal, filed on Feb. 11, attempted to toss that law out entirely. Eight days later, prosecutors filed paperwork saying they were dropping charges. Neither Gary Shupe, an assistant city prosecutor for Phoenix handling this case, nor a spokesperson for the Phoenix Prosecutor's Office, returned calls from BuzzFeed News before this story was published asking why the city dropped charges. Cabou would not speculate on why prosecutors dismissed the case. But, he said, dropping charges right after facing a constitutional challenge "seems coincidental to say the least." "The law is still on the books, so they could send out officers to places where there is a lot of foot traffic and arrest people who are not traditionally empowered to push back against the police," Cabou continued. "Whether the city will do that after all the scrutiny of this law, I don't know. I hope not. " "Perhaps now that there is no pending legal case we can bring a political solution," said Cabou, which could entail the city officials repealing the law. "If not, we’ll blow it up the next time someone brings a case."
-- helloworld.lasm .stacksize 2 .const "Hello, World!" -- constant is at index 0 .const "print" getglobal 0 1 -- load into register 0, the global with name from constant at index 1 ("print") loadk 1 0 -- load into register 1, the constant at constant index 0 ("Hello, World!") call 0 2 1 -- call the function at register 0, with 1 parameter, and keeping no returns. For those of you that don't know, assembly languages are very nearly an exact representation of every byte in the bytecode. You will type out every instruction to the Lua VM.This simple LASM program prints the ever well known string "Hello, World!" First, we declare our constants. The order they're declared in determines the index they're at. So declaring constant "Hello, World!" puts it at index 0 (unlike Lua, the Lua VM usually works with 0 indexing). Then "print" is kept at constant index 1.Next, we use the "getglobal" instruction to load the "print" global into register 0. Next we use "loadk" to put "Hello, World!" into register 1. Finally, we call register 0 (print), with one parameter (register 1, the "Hello, World!"), and keeping no return values. For more info on "call," read the writeup posted above.So what are these "register" and "constant index" things? The Lua VM has four different stacks. The register stack, the constant stack, the upvalue stack, and the function prototype stack. The register stack is managed manually by the program. That's what .stacksize 2 is doing. It's telling Lua VM that we will be using no more registers than 2 (0, and 1). We don't have to use all the register we ask for, but we can't use more.The constant stack is automatic. As you declare constants they get added to the stack. This is managed at compile time, not runtime, so there's no modifying it.The upvalue stack is a stack that you can reference to get data from registers (or other upvalues) of the function prototype that you are a child of.The function prototype stack is pretty much the same as the constant stack, except the data held is the prototypes of functions. You see, when you declare a function in code, you're not writing magical function code to memory or anything. The bytecode has a special section where all your functions are written, and your code creates closures to use those functions (see closure instruction).
The Islamist ‘terrorist’ groups that have taken over control of northern Mali are not only the creations of Algeria’s secret police, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), but they are being supplied, supported and orchestrated by the DRS. What began ostensibly in January 2012 as just another rebellion by the Sahara desert’s Tuareg tribesmen had evolved within 3-4 months into what media commentators were calling “Africa’s Afghanistan”. The Tuareg are Berbers, not Arabs, and are the indigenous population of much of the Central Sahara and Sahel. Their population is estimated at 2-3 millions. Their largest numbers, some 800,000, live in Mali, followed by Niger, with smaller concentrations in Algeria, Burkina Faso and Libya. In addition, a diaspora extends to Europe, North America, other parts of North and West Africa, the Sahel and beyond. Since Independence in 1960, the Tuareg of Mali and Niger have rebelled against their central governments on several occasions. In 1962-4, a rebellion by Mali’s Tuareg was crushed ruthlessly. Major rebellions in both countries in the 1990s were forcibly repressed, with government forces specifically targeting civilians. Since then, Niger experienced a small rebellion in 2004 and a much greater one from 2007 to 2009. In Mali, a brief rebellion in May 2006 was followed by a two-year uprising from 2007 until 2009 when it dissipated into an inconclusive and transient peace. While the Niger and Mali governments have both been guilty of provoking Tuareg into taking up arms, all Tuareg rebellions have been driven by a sense of political marginalisation. However, the rebellion that began in Mali in January 2012 was different. The Tuareg had more and better equipped fighters than in previous rebellions. This was because many had returned from Libya after Gaddafi’s overthrow, bringing with them extensive supplies of modern and even heavy armaments. For the first time in the long history of Tuareg rebellions, there was a real likelihood that the Tuareg might drive Malian government forces out of northern Mali, or Azawad, as it is known to Tuareg. In October 2011, the Malian Tuareg who had returned from Libya joined up with fighters belonging to Ibrahim ag Bahanga’s rebel Mouvement Touareg du Nord Mali (MTNM) to form the Mouvement National de Libération de l'Azawad (MNLA). Even though Bahanga had died under mysterious circumstances in August, his men were still intent on continuing their fight against the central government. They were also joined by several hundred Tuareg who had deserted from the Malian army. The first shots in the new rebellion were fired on January 17 when the MNLA attacked the town of Ménaka. The following week, the MNLA attacked both Tessalit and Aguelhok. Tessalit was besieged for several weeks before falling to the MNLA in March. At Aguelhok, some 82 Malian troops, who had run out of ammunition, were massacred in cold blood on January 24. This ‘war crime’ has been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Such a humiliating demise of Mali’s poorly equipped forces led to an army mutiny on March 22 and a junta of low-ranking officers taking power in Bamako. Within a week, the three provincial capitals of Azawad - Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu - all fell to the rebels without resistance, leaving the whole of Azawad in rebel hands. On April 5 the MNLA declared Azawad an independent state. The declaration of Azawad’s independence received no international support, nor was it ever likely to do so. One reason for this was because of the alliance between the MNLA and the Islamist group called Ansar al-Din, a jihadist movement led by a local Tuareg notable, Iyad ag Ghaly. Ansar al-Din was in alliance with another jihadist group, Jamat Tawhid Wal Jihad Fi Garbi Afriqqiya (Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa - MUJAO), with both being supported by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). At the start of the rebellion in January, the MNLA claimed to number several thousand, while Ansar al-Din numbered scarcely a hundred. However, by April, and for reasons that have remained a mystery to the media, it was the Islamists rather than the MNLA who were calling the shots in Azawad. Indeed, on June 25, fighting between the Islamists and MNLA led to the latter being displaced from Gao, leaving Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu being ruled respectively by Ansar al-Din, MUJAO and AQIM. With the MNLA marginalized, the Islamists quickly began imposing shari’a law in Azawad. In Gao, a young man died after having his hand amputated for alleged theft; in Aguelhok, a couple were stoned to death for alleged adultery; in Timbuktu, ancient Sufi tombs, UNESCO world heritage sites, were destroyed. Throughout the region, music, smoking, alcohol, TV, football, traditional forms of dress and lifestyle were all banned as Islamists dished out beatings, amputations and executions with a vengeance. By August, nearly half a million people had fled or been displaced. In spite of concern being expressed at the apparent emergence of ‘Africa’s Afghanistan’ in the heart of the Sahara, no one has been prepared to address the key issue behind what is really going on in northern Mali. This is that the Islamist ‘terrorist’ groups that have taken over control of the region are not only the creations of Algeria’s secret police, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), but they are being supplied, supported and orchestrated by the DRS. In my two volumes on terrorism and the global war on terror (GWOT) in the Sahara-Sahel, The Dark Sahara (Pluto, 2009) and The Dying Sahara (Pluto 2012, in press), I describe and give detailed evidence of how Algeria’s DRS has colluded with western military intelligence in fabricating ‘false-flag’ terrorism to justify the West’s GWOT in Africa. The two volumes detail how AQIM was created by the DRS; how the DRS has been behind almost all of the more than 60 kidnaps of western hostages in the region since 2003 and how it has worked with the US, UK and French intelligence services in promoting the GWOT, state terrorism and co-called counter-terrorism policies. What we have seen unfold in Mali during 2012 is merely the latest manifestation of the way in which the DRS has used the ‘terrorists’ that it has created to further the interests of Algeria’s ‘mafiosi’ state. Corroboration of my long-standing analysis of the Algerian regime’s use of terrorism (‘state terrorism’) in helping to further and justify the west’s GWOT in North Africa and beyond was provided by John Schindler on July 10 (2012). In an article in The National Interest entitled ‘The Ugly truth about Algeria’, Schindler, a former high-ranking US intelligence officer and long-standing member of the US National Security Council (NSC) and currently Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, ‘blew the whistle’ on Algeria when he described how: “the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) [of the 1990s] was the creation of the DRS; using proven Soviet methods of penetration and provocation, the agency assembled it to discredit the extremists. Much of GIA’s leadership consisted of DRS agents, who drove the group into the dead end of mass murder, a ruthless tactic that thoroughly discredited GIA Islamists among nearly all Algerians. Most of its major operations were the handiwork of the DRS, including the 1995 wave of bombings in France. Some of the most notorious massacres of civilians were perpetrated by military special units masquerading as mujahidin, or by GIA squads under DRS control.” The DRS’s ‘state terrorism’ of the 1990s has changed little during this millennium. In the same way as Schindler describes how the DRS assembled the GIA in the 1990s, so, in this century, the DRS, in collusion with US, British, French and other NATO intelligence agencies, as well as the EU Commission (as documented in my two volumes: The Dark Sahara and The Dying Sahara), has created AQIM, or what I have referred to as ‘Al Qaeda in the West for the West’. This diabolical strategy, straight from the tradecraft manual of the KGB (who, incidentally trained Mohamed Mediène, the current DRS boss, and other top DRS Generals), was reactivated in 2003, when a DRS agent, Saifi Lamari (known as El Para), supported by DRS agent Abdelhamid Abou Zaïd, at the head of some 60 genuine members of the Groupe Salafiste pour le Predication et le Combat (GSPC), the successor to the GIA, in collusion with U.S. military intelligence, took 32 European tourists hostage in the Algerian Sahara. This operation, which received world headlines and was the subject of my book The Dark Sahara, was used by the US and other western countries to justify the launch of a new or ‘second front’ in the GWOT into the Sahara and Africa. In September 2006, the nondescript GSPC, with the help of the DRS and US intelligence agencies, internationalised itself by adopting the Al Qaeda brand and renaming itself as AQIM. AQIM’s three emirs (leaders) in the Sahara, Abdelhamid Abou Zaïd, Yahia Djouadi and Mokhtar ben Mokhtar (they have many aliases), were and still are DRS agents. They have now been responsible for the kidnapping of over 60 western hostages (two have been killed and two have died) and most of the other acts of terrorism perpetrated in the Sahara-Sahel region over the last few years. This is known to most western intelligence agencies. The creation of the MNLA in October 2011 was not only a potentially serious threat to Algeria, but one which appears to have taken the Algerian regime by surprise. Algeria has always been a little fearful of the Tuareg, both in Algeria and in the neighbouring Sahel States. The distinct possibility of a militarily successful Tuareg nationalist movement in northern Mali, which Algeria has always regarded as its own backyard (the Kidal region is sometimes referred to as Algeria’s 49th wilaya), could not be countenanced. The DRS’s strategy to remove this threat was to use its control of AQIM to weaken and then destroy the credibility and political effectiveness of the MNLA. Although denied by the Algerian government, it sent some 200 Special Forces into Azawad on December 20, stationing them at Tessalit, Aguelhok and Kidal (and possibly elsewhere). Their purpose appears to have been to: (1) protect AQIM which had moved from its training base(s) in southern Algeria into the Tigharghar mountains of northern Mali around 2008. Most of AQIM’s subsequent terrorism, especially hostage-taking, had been conducted from bases in northern Mali. The MNLA, however, was threatening to attack AQIM and drive its estimated 300 members out of the country; (2) assess the strengths and intentions of the MNLA; (3) help establish two ‘new’ salafist-jihadist terrorist groups Ansar al-Din and MUJAO, alleged ‘offshoots’ of AQIM, in the region. Ansar al-Din and MUJAO, which had not been heard of before, first appeared on local websites on December 10 and 15 respectively. The leaders of both groups were closely associated with the DRS. Iyad ag Ghaly first became acquainted with the DRS when he worked for an Algerian enterprise in Tamanrasset (Algeria) in the 1980s. He had subsequently been used and paid by the DRS to help manage their resolution of EL Para’s 2003 hostage-taking. He had been used again by the Algerians and the US in 2006 to engineer the short-lived May 23 Kidal rebellion and to then undertake two fabricated terrorist actions in northern Mali in September and October 2006. These were used to draw attention to seemingly renewed ‘terrorism’ in the Sahara and to advertise the name change of the GSPC to AQIM. After 2008, he became heavily involved, with his cousin Hamada ag Hama (alias Taleb Abdoulkrim), in AQIM’s hostage-taking operations. MUJAO’s leadership is less clear. Its initial leaders are believed to have included both Mohamed Ould Lamine Ould Kheirou, a Mauritanian, and Sultan Ould Badi (alias Abu Ali). Ould Badi is a Malian, said to be half Tuareg and half Arab, from north of Gao with good connections with the Polisario movement of the Western Sahara. It seems to have been through this later connection that he established himself as a major drugs (cocaine) trafficker in the region, working under the direct protection of General Rachid Laalali, head of the DRS’s external security branch. One reason for the DRS’s interest in northern Mali is that the region is the focal point on the cocaine trafficking route from South America to Europe. The UN estimates that some 60% of Europe’s cocaine, with a street value of some $11 billion, crosses through this region. It is a trade which, until the MNLA threatened to take over the region, has been controlled in large part by elements within Algeria’s DRS. These two Islamist groups, Ansar al-Din and MUJAO, although starting out as few in number, were immediately supported with manpower from AQIM in the form of seasoned, well-trained killers, and by the DRS with fuel, cash and other logistical necessities. This explains why the Islamists were able to expand so quickly and dominate the MNLA both politically and militarily. The DRS’s strategy has been brilliantly effective, at least so far, in achieving its object of completely discrediting the MNLA (and Tuareg nationalism) and minimising its threat as both a political and military force. The DRS’s strategy has, however, been extremely dangerous. Apart from turning the region into a human catastrophe, there has been, and still is, a major risk of military intervention and the possibility of a conflagration that could embrace much of the wider region. From the outset, various parties, notably the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), backed in varying degree by the African Union, France and other parties, has threatened to intervene militarily. There are also a considerable number of internal Malian forces, including a range of largely ethnic-based militia, straining on the leash to revenge themselves against both the MNLA and more especially the Islamists. A potential bloodbath has not yet been averted. However, having said that, the likelihood of such military intervention is progressively diminishing. One reason for this is because neither the African Union (whose Peace and Security Commission is headed by an Algerian) or the UN Security Council (UNSC) have given the green light for such intervention. The reason for the UNSC’s position is, I believe, quite simply because all five of its permanent members – the US, UK, France, Russia and China – are aware of Algeria’s strategy and therefore do not see the situation as being ‘Africa’s Afghanistan’, as described in the media and by those self-proclaimed ‘security analysts’ who are unaware of the true nature of Al Qaeda in this part of the world. This is not to imply that Algeria will be able to call off its dogs easily. However, signs are that Algeria and other powers in the region are trying to move towards a negotiated solution. But that will not be easy. With so many armed militias in the wings and so much anger, suffering and desire for revenge in the air, the likelihood of individual agency coming to the fore is very high. While the DRS leadership of the Islamist groups is obviously managed easily, the question of the genuine Islamists, the footsoldiers, may not be resolved so easily. Already, there are signs that Algeria is pushing towards a solution centering around the creation of some sort of shari’a based political party, amongst others, in the region. Such a party is unlikely to be endorsed wholeheartedly by the bulk of the population, and if introduced coercively is more than likely to lead to further conflict. Whatever sort of dispensation is found for the region, it will almost certainly be tied to Algeria’s hegemonic designs on the region and drugs trafficking, both of which are recipes for future regional instability. Finally, there is the matter of the ICC’s investigation. If the ICC does progress from its current preliminary investigation to a full-blown investigation of war crimes and associated atrocities in the region, it could conceivably pave the way for justice and a more stable future. However, I believe that there will be huge pressure on the ICC from western powers not to proceed with the investigation. A full ICC investigation is likely to expose the involvement of US, British and French intelligence services in their support for the DRS and therefore, it could be argued, their complicity in the atrocities that have been committed.
“Maybe this is like shock therapy,” said the economist Karl E. Case. “Maybe this will actually get the lenders to the table and encourage them to work out deals that are to the benefit of everybody.” While such a happy ending is possible, the near term is more likely to produce paralysis and confusion. As more defaulting homeowners become aware of the lenders’ problems, they are expected to hire lawyers and challenge the proceedings against them. And if completed foreclosures were not properly done, families who bought the troubled homes could be vulnerable to claims by the former owners. Apparently alarmed about such a possibility, one of the major title insurance companies, Old Republic National Title, has sent a bulletin to agents saying that “until further notice” it would not insure title to properties foreclosed upon by GMAC Mortgage , the country’s fourth-largest home lender and one of the two big lenders at the center of the current controversy. GMAC declined to comment, and Old Republic representatives did not return calls. GMAC has acknowledged legal missteps in processing mortgages, and JPMorgan Chase has acknowledged the possibility of missteps, and both have suspended all foreclosures in the 23 states where they need a court’s approval. That’s 56,000 in the case of Chase alone; GMAC declined to provide a number. Attorneys general in half a dozen states are demanding action or opening investigations. The Treasury Department said Thursday it was asking regulators to look into “these troubling developments.” “We’re seeing a fundamental breakdown in the system, because no one cared that much about getting things right,” said Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat of Florida , who unsuccessfully asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt all foreclosures in that state. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Wall Street was examining the impact the disclosures could have on the lenders. Moody’s Investors Service has placed the servicer ratings of GMAC and Chase on review for possible downgrade. The federal government has been the majority owner of GMAC since supplying $17 billion to prevent the lender’s failure during the financial crisis . Photo Other lenders said Thursday that their foreclosure filings, including the crucial affidavits, had been properly done. A Citigroup spokesman said the lender required “annual training for our foreclosure employees on the proper execution of affidavits, including having personal knowledge of the information in the affidavit.” A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said “the affidavits we sign are accurate.” A spokesman for Bank of America , Rick Simon, said, “We do not have anything to tell you at this time.” Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. GMAC and Chase are in trouble because, overwhelmed with foreclosures, they tried to process them as quickly and cheaply as possible, defense lawyers say. The companies say they are reviewing their procedures to take care of any violations. The missteps stemmed from the affidavits the lenders file as they seek a quick or summary judgment in thousands of foreclosure cases. The affidavits state certain facts about the case, including the amount owed, which the signer indicates he has personal knowledge of. Without the affidavit, the lender would have to prove the facts at trial. In depositions taken by lawyers for homeowners, executives at GMAC and Chase said they or their teams signed 10,000 or more affidavits and related documents a month. That did not give them time to review the cases. Defense lawyers say the disclosures are symptomatic of the carelessness, if not outright fraud, that lenders have been exhibiting for years in their rush to file cases. Many necessary documents have disappeared, with defense lawyers saying the lenders often do not even have standing to foreclose. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In a number of pending cases in Florida, defense lawyers there said, GMAC has already withdrawn affidavits. The lawyers said they would try to have the cases thrown out for possible fraud, although they acknowledged that might be difficult. GMAC said it would refile the affidavits. Chase said it had not withdrawn any affidavits. “The way the plaintiffs’ lawyers have handled this has corrupted our legal system,” said Thomas Cox, a Maine lawyer whose deposition of a GMAC executive in June helped prompt the current disclosures. “They tried to manufacture foreclosures the way you’d manufacture cars, on an assembly line. It can’t be done that way.” Mr. Cox is representing pro bono a rural woman who is in foreclosure on a $82,000 mortgage. The plaintiff in the case is Fannie Mae , the mortgage holding company that failed during the financial crisis and is now under government conservatorship. GMAC serviced the loan for Fannie Mae. This week, the judge in the case set aside his summary judgment in favor of Fannie when he read Mr. Cox’s deposition of a GMAC executive, Jeffrey Stephan, who said he never reviewed the file he had signed. The case will now go to trial. “I don’t think they are going to give up easily,” said Mr. Cox. As the foreclosure crisis has deepened, the length of time borrowers spend waiting for the end has lengthened. In January 2009 the time between the owner’s first missed payment and eviction was 319 days, according to LPS Applied Analytics. By August it was 478 days. Since spring, the data firm says, the lenders have been trying to clear their backlog. They have stepped up the rate at which they put defaulting owners into the formal foreclosure process. In August, they started 283,000 foreclosures, up from 220,000 in April. Now, as the lenders are pressed to examine more closely their filings, those foreclosure starts are likely to fall, prolonging the owner’s time in limbo. Many borrowers use this period, when they are living in their home but not paying for it, to try and get their financial house back in order.
In 1974 I began looking seriously at the U.S. military budget because McDonnell Douglas, headquartered in St. Louis, was a booming business. In the '70s and '80s, military spending accounted directly and indirectly for 16 percent of local jobs. Everybody had family or neighbors who worked at Mac, and ordinary people routinely made the argument that we needed to build the weapons because we needed the jobs. Arms production is capital intensive. Even in the hay day of McDonnell Douglas, it took a hundred thousand dollars to create a job there, whereas government only needed two-fifths of that to hire a teacher and even less for a bus driver or clerical staff. Today, the trillion dollars that the Pentagon spends yields less than half as many jobs as in the old days. Meanwhile, our infrastructure crumbles and our schools deteriorate. For a long time, I've thought our willingness to spend so much on weapons was a sign of some national mental illness. Really, our choices are bizarre. We continue to stockpile nuclear weapons and modernize nuclear manufacturing sites. We can't stop the F-35 fighter which is badly designed and will cost, in the end, one and a half trillion dollars. This past week the Senate voted to require women to register for the draft. At least if we reinstituted the draft, everyone would have skin in the game. Sign up for NCR's Copy Desk Daily, and we'll email you recommended news and opinion articles each weekday. Sign Up Now And now we see that somewhere between a million and three million military assault rifles are in the hands of private citizens. We do have skin in the game, and it is killing us, literally as well as economically and psychologically.
Meal replacements belong on the long list of things that are fascinating in theory, but dull in practice. Take Soylent, for example. The Reddit threads? Fascinating! The product? Fine! The experience? Boring! The results? Indistinct! And yet, despite the inevitable disappointment of bottled fiber solutions and protein-impregnated energy bars, we continue to seek efficient solutions to the problem of eating. Meal replacements promise to reduce your daily ledger of decisions, and thus your commitment of bad decisions. That is their appeal. Calorie Mate has been a subject of fascination to me for years. The reasons are obvious. Look at the packaging. Wouldn’t it be fun to open your pantry and see nothing but rows and rows of these squat, glossy boxes, each containing a preportioned, foil-wrapped nutritive ingot? My husband, who is a designer, attempted to explain the appeal to me this way: “The swashy logo looks like something you might find on a sitcom or diaper commercial from the 1970s, and the packaging seems like it should contain a Super 8 film cartridge. The fact that the front of the box is filled edge to edge with tiny type, just like a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap, makes you want to read the whole thing.” All true. There’s also the name. This is not a shake or a bar or a powder; it’s a “balanced food block.” And it comes in your choice of simple flavors: cheese, chocolate, fruit, maple, or plain. Nothing fancy, folks. That goes for the taste, too, which is like a buttery shortbread cookie. There’s a nice crumble, a mild sweetness, and a dryness that prompts you to wash down your food block with plenty of water or tea. (Stay hydrated.) It tastes like a fortified cookie because, well, that’s pretty much what it is. The ingredients are mainly wheat flour, margarine, sugar, and a thousand vitamins, plus whatever mild flavor note has been added to your choice. Is it healthy? No, but that’s not the point of Calorie Mate. The point of Calorie Mate is to fill you up for many hours, without requiring you to spend time or money preparing a meal. You don’t even need utensils to eat it. You barely need a napkin. It’s the “friends with benefits” of foods: satiating and reliable, without being overly stimulating.
President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, made another unsettling claim on Sunday regarding the controversy behind Barack Obama and illegal wiretapping. During an interview with Fox News, Lewandowski said that Obama did not only listen in on President Trump's dealings at Trump Tower, but that he also listened to then-sitting Senator Jeff Sessions and his office on Capitol Hill. “They did spend time listening to conversations between then-Senator Jeff Sessions and the ambassador to Russia while he was in his Senate office,” Lewandowski said. “If that were to take place — which supposedly did take place — what other conversations did they listen in on from the American public?” He also reaffirmed President Trump's accusation against Obama. “Is it possible that that previous administration was listening to the conversations that took place in Trump Tower from their political opponents? If that is the case, and what Donald Trump alludes to is accurate, then that’s very, very disturbing for our future going forward.”
Popcorn Time is an application that simply refuses to die, and it looks like the community has managed to keep it alive. In fact, the new version is named Popcorn Time Community Edition and it’s still up and working. A few weeks ago, a couple of developers from the original Popcorn Time project were identified, and they were forced to stop working on the application. Soon after, the official domain disappeared and any development on Popcorn Time stopped. The thing is that Popcorn Time is an open source application, and anyone has access to the source code. It didn’t take long until the community organized and managed to release the application to the public, this time with an addition to the name. Thus, Popcorn Time Community Edition was born, but not for long. Soon after the app was reborn, some of the people that were hosting the official website were contacted by the MPAA, and they were forced to drop the domains. Popcorn Time is still working, sort of The community is organized mostly on Reddit, and they update that particular post all the time, with the latest fixes and information. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep the application working, but it looks like things should improve in the coming months. The Popcorn Time Community Edition still has a lot of problems, and it requires constant maintenance. I couldn't get it to work for movies, only for TV Shows, but there is probably a solution for this issue in the Reddit thread. There are binary builds available for all the platforms, although the Linux builds seem to be a little harder to make it work. Popcorn Time sits in a rather gray legal area. It’s illegal to use in most countries, but there are a few, in the European Union at least, that allow users to run applications like Popcorn Time. Before you decide to use it, please make sure that it’s OK to do so in your country. More details about the Popcorn Time Community Edition are available on the official website. Update: There is another version of Popcorn Time available right now, with details in another subreddit, /popcorntime. That version integrates trojans and malware, as seen in this report.
A Sunrise police property and evidence technician has been accused of stealing hundreds of oxycodone pills and has been linked to the thefts through her DNA, authorities said. Norma Currlin, 50, has been charged with six counts of theft of controlled substances. She was arrested Friday evening and posted a $6,000 bond Saturday, jail records show. Currlin, of Coral Springs, has been employed by the Sunrise Police Department for 22 years and served as an evidence technician since July 2006. She was a police dispatcher prior to that. According to a police report, Currlin obtained narcotics maintained by the police department between March 2006 and May 2012. Currlin had authorization to manage the pill count in the evidence tracking system and was the primary person responsible for the signing out of pills to detectives and for the logbook she created to track the movement of pills, the report said. She also was one of two technicians with daily access to the police department's "drug room," authorities said. The other technician's DNA was excluded from tampered items in the "drug room," according to the police report. During a random audit in May 2012, police discovered that seven stored oxycodone pills had disappeared from a package that would not be needed for any pending criminal case. After the theft was discovered, police initiated a complete inventory of the narcotics room. Officials said it revealed missing pills that had been stored from two different community prescription drug drop-off operations, a narcotics seizure by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a batch slated to be destroyed and evidence for an armed robbery investigation. Investigators say Currlin tried to cover her tracks by resealing packages. For a period, surveillance video showed Currlin entering the "drug room" early in the morning on a nearly daily basis, usually under 60 seconds, and sometimes before clocking in for work, the report said. In sworn statements, Currlin "would begin to allude to a possible conspiracy theory in which someone could enter the Property and Evidence Drug Room completely undetected and somehow place her DNA on the items that had been tampered with," the report said. Currlin is on paid administrative leave, but a decision about her employment status will be made sometime next week, Sgt. Rodney Hailey said Saturday. epesantes@tribune.com or 954-356-4543 or Twitter @epesantes
A Scottish midwife has revealed how she deals with cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) on an almost daily basis, seeing around 150 affected women and girls every year. Hilary Alba is the lead midwife for Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board, and is responsible for asylum seekers and trafficked women in the city. Despite the extent of the problem, there has not been a single conviction for FGM in Scotland, where those who aid or carry out the procedure, either in Scotland or abroad, are supposed to face up to 14 years’ imprisonment. “We’re not sure if it is happening over here,” Mrs. Alba told The Times. “I think if there was a conviction, it would be huge. It would send out the right message. People know there hasn’t been a conviction and they can get away with it.” According to the paper, it has been claimed that people from England and across Europe have traveled to Scotland to have their daughters mutilated as the nation has been seen as a “soft touch” on the issue. In France, more than 100 people were jailed for FGM by 2014, thanks to a “zero tolerance” approach to the crime. Speaking in March, Mr. Alba told the Glasgow Evening Times: “I see about three or four women a week. “There are grades of it and some of the more serious cases are pretty horrific. It’s one of the questions we will ask, depending on what country the woman has come from – if she’s been cut. “You have to talk to her about the legal issues because obviously, it’s illegal in the UK to practice FGM… It’s very difficult to eradicate because it’s so embedded in the culture.” FGM is most often associated with African Muslims, although it is not exclusive to them, and is extremely prevalent in some Muslim-majority countries in Asia, such as Indonesia. Earlier this month it was revealed that more than 5,000 new cases were recorded in England last year, equating to 14 new cases being recorded a day.
“The Mesa [Arizona] police officer charged with second-degree murder for an on-duty shooting in January pleaded not guilty during his first court appearance Tuesday,” tucsonnewsnow.com reports. Officer Philip Brailsford [above] was released without bond. ‘He is not a danger to the community,’ Craig Mehrens, Brailsford’s attorney said. ‘He has honorably served the community as a Mesa police officer and he was honorably serving the day he received the call [to the shooting scene].'” Yes, well . . . Attorneys for the victim, Daniel Shaver, argued Brailsford was malicious during the shooting and raised questions about the gun used. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said Shaver was on his hands and knees when Brailsford shot him five times inside a Mesa hotel. The gun used was a personal AR-15 assault weapon that had been approved for service use by the Mesa Police Department. However, Mesa police noted that their investigation of the shooting turned up a vulgar inscription on the rifle that doesn’t meet department policy. “Inscripted on the officer’s gun, and I hate to use profanity, but it said, “you’re f*****,”’ Laney Sweet, Daniel Shaver’s wife said. According to several sources, the rifle’s vulgar inscription is on the inside of the rifle’s dust cover. The inscription is only visible if the dust cover is open, which happens automatically in order to eject spent rounds while the weapon is fired. “That statement tells me this is a person who’s enthusiastic about killing people,” Marc Victor, lawyer for Sweet and her late husband, argued. “That’s what that inscription means.”
Developer Brian Behlendorf has announced the release of version 0.6.1 of the native ZFS on Linux port. After over two years in experimental status, the developers now say the file system "is ready for wide scale deployment on everything from desktops to super computers." The native ZFS on Linux is based on the Solaris Porting Layer (SPL) which emulates underlying features of Solaris in the Linux kernel. In contrast to the FUSE (Filesystem in USErspace) implementation of ZFS, the native port delivers better performance by implementing the filesystem as a kernel module. Aside from a number of bug fixes, ZFS on Linux 0.6.1 includes a new snapdev property that controls the visibility of zvol snapshot devices. ZFS on Linux is now also compatible with the in-development Linux 3.9 and adds further man pages. The developers say they have provided new repositories for Debian, Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (which is also works with compatible distributions such as CentOS) to make the installation of the software easier. Repositories for Ubuntu, Arch Linux and several other distributions are also available. Users can also download the source code for self-compilation from GitHub. ZFS on Linux is licensed under a combination of GPLv2 (for the Solaris Porting Layer) and the CDDL (for the ZFS system); the ZFS on Linux FAQ addresses the issues around ZFS's licensing. (fab)
Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world International figures have urged the Russian government to intervene over reports that authorities in Chechnya are ‘purging’ the gay community. Early reports emerged last week that gay people are being targeted in the region, which is part of Russia but has substantial autonomy. Russian newspapers and human rights groups report that more than 100 gay men have been detained “in connection with their non-traditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such” as part of a purge. Several people were also reportedly feared dead following violent raids. In a chilling response, a Chechen government spokesperson denied that there are any gay people to detain, insisting that “you can’t detain and harass someone who doesn’t exist in the republic”. The Kremlin denied any knowledge of a purge. This week, foreign ministers from the US, UK and the European Union have all urged Russia to urgently intervene. A statement from the US State Department said: “We are aware of troubling reports that local authorities in the Republic of Chechnya have arrested or detained more than 100 men, as well as reports that three of those detained were killed. “We condemn violence against any individuals based on their sexual orientation or any other basis. We urge the Russian government to conduct an independent and credible investigation into the alleged killings and mass arrests, and hold the perpetrators responsible. We were likewise deeply disturbed by local authorities statements that apparently condone and even incite violence against LGBTI persons. “We are very concerned by the widespread discrimination and violence against LGBTI persons in Russia or any society. We call on the Russian government to protect all people from discrimination and violence, and allow the free exercise of the freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and religion or belief.” President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani said: “Appalling reports of gay men murdered in Chechnya. Perpetrators must be prosecuted.” The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office also spoke out. A statement said: “We are very concerned by reports of mass arrests of individuals in Chechnya due to their perceived or actual sexual orientation. We condemn any and all persecution. “The human rights situation for LGBT people in Russia has deteriorated significantly in recent years and we have voiced our serious concern over these developments with Russian authorities at all levels.” The international concerns come after Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group both cited on-the-ground sources that appear to confirm gay men have been targeted in raids. In its report, HRW confirmed: “The information published by Novaya Gazeta is consistent with the reports Human Rights Watch recently received from numerous trusted sources, including sources on the ground. “The number of sources and the consistency of the stories leaves us with no doubt that these devastating developments have indeed occurred.” Ekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, Russia project coordinator for the International Crisis Group, told the New Tork Times: “I got numerous, numerous signals… it came from too many sources not to be true.” “Even delivering the information is very difficult… they are just small islands, isolated.” According to HRW, LGBT Network in Russia opened a special hotline to provide emergency support to those who find themselves in immediate danger.
You might think this was an April Fool's gag, except it was published on April 2nd, not April 1st. According to testimony given by Gregory C. Wilshusen, Director of Information Security Issues for the Government Accountability Office to United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that, and I quote, "most major federal agencies had weaknesses in major categories of information security controls." Update: It's been my experience that smugness will almost always reach out and whack you on the backside. This article was no different. I confidently insisted that I interpreted the following charts correctly and everyone else got it wrong. Then I got this letter from Gregory Wilshusen: I read your article that quoted my April 2 testimony on federal agencies responses to data breaches. I'd like to clarify that the number of incidents reported by federal agencies are in the thousands, not the millions as cited in your article. You apparently applied the label for the y-axis (Number of reported incidents (in thousands)) to the exact number of incidents atop each bar. In fact, the label only applies to the two digit numbers that comprise the y-axis. In reviewing the graph anew with enlightened eyes, I can understand how one might misinterpret the data. I'll check with our graphics analysts to see if there are ways to clarify the presentation of data in our graphs going forward. Sigh. So as you'll see throughout the rest of this article, I'm redacting elements where I, oh-so-smugly, said everyone else got it wrong. Good times. Good times. In other words, some government agency data security functions more like a sieve than a lockbox. Some of the data the GAO presented was deeply disturbing. For example, the number of successful breaches doubled since 2009. Doubled. There's also a story inside this story, which I'll discuss later in the article. Almost all of the press reporting on this testimony got the magnitude of the breach wrong. Most reported that government security incidents numbered in the thousands, when, in fact, they numbered in the millions. As a way of illustrating the problem, Director Wilshusen called out a few examples of situations where personal identifying information fell into the wrong hands. The thing is, by now the various government agencies should have known better. Back in 2006, a computer was stolen from the home of a VA employee. The computer contained the personal information for 26.5 million veterans. You'd think, wouldn't you, that such an event would be a wakeup call for our various agencies. Uh, not so much. Take the Department of Energy. Last July, a hacked DOA system gave up Social Security numbers, birth dates and locations, bank account numbers and security questions and answers for 104,000 individuals. The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board operates the Thrift Savings Plan, which is a retirement program for federal employees and veterans. In May 2012, a breach managed to steal 123,000 names, addresses, and SSNs of plan participants. Down here in Florida, a laptop belonging to a NASA employee was stolen. It contained 2,300 names, addresses, and other personal information for NASA employees. Of course, the government isn't alone in suffering breaches. The rate of attack by cybercriminals has increased across the board. On Thursday, April 10, Dell's Kent Shuart will join me for a webcast discussing some of these issues and just how scary they're getting. Here are a few broad statistics taken from various data breach reports. According to the 2013Q4 Threat Report from McAfee Lab the number of malicious signed binaries found in the wild quadrupled from 2012 to 2013. Mobile malware grew three-fold. Websense reported that nasty, drive-by Web links grew more than 600 percent from 2011 to 2012. My discussion with Kent on Thursday, "As threats become more sophisticated, so too must next generation firewalls," will spotlight a bunch of these insane growth statistics, and then look at some of the reasons older firewall tech can't stand up to the latest generation of attacks and threats. It's free and you're welcome to attend. But while cyberattacks and breaches are increasing the world over, those getting through into our government systems are particularly disturbing. The GAO's Wilshusen told the Senate that information security incidents reported by federal agencies grew from about 30 million thousand in 2009 to over 61 million thousand in 2013. That's staggering. Incidents involving personal identifying information grew from about 10.5 million thousand in 2009 to over 25 million thousand last year. By the way, some press reports on this misread the GAO's charts. Update: No, apparently, they did not. For example, the Washington Free Beacon wrote about this, claiming "25,566 incidents of lost taxpayer data, Social Security numbers, patient health information." What they missed was the little notation on the chart that says "in thousands," so when they reported 25,566 incidents, what that really reads as is 25,566 x 1000 incidents. This is an example of how the Internet echo chamber can get information very, very wrong. The Chicago Tribune, via Reuters reported the same incorrect statistic. So did InformationWeek. So did FierceHealthIT. Business Insider picked up the Reuters report and happily repeated the same statistic —which was three orders of magnitude incorrect. Update: Nope, they weren't. This is why I always try to go to the original source material and not just repeat the crap other writers are parroting apparently misread it myself. It's more work, but it means the difference between reporting 25 thousand government breaches and 25 million government breaches. 25 thousand is disturbing. 25 million is horrifying. The GAO also looked at how major government agencies had implemented their information security controls. It looked at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, General Services Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Personnel Management, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, and U.S. Agency for International Development. The results were not good. All 24 had security management, configuration management, and contingency planning weaknesses. 23 had access control weaknesses, which means that just one agency had strong access controls. And 18 agencies were found to poorly segregate duties to protect against broad systemic breaches. You will, of course, note that included among the agencies listed above is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which operates Healthcare.gov and DoD, which owns the NSA. I'm not going to dive into the disaster that is Healthcare.gov or the challenges the NSA has keeping America safe. I will simply note that these two agencies, among others, are being entrusted with more and more of our personal information and yet their parent organizations are included in the broad list of agencies that had systemic failures and were unable to meet FISMA requirements for managing data. Broad failures in government and the press my analysis My report to you today is showing broad failures, not just in the government, but in my analysis as well the press entrusted to keep an eye on the government. Government agencies aren't able to meet the requirements set in place to protect American citizens and their own employees. And the press, which we rely on to keep the government honest, is too lazy to look at the original source materials, so when one reporter is incapable of reading a chart correctly, everyone else just follows along, reporting the same erroneous data as if it were real. Or one smug analyst reads the chart one way, when it's intended to have a different meaning. To my friends and colleagues in government agencies, I say this: you are screwing up and putting Americans at risk. Get your act together. To my friends and colleagues in the press, I say this: "uh, oops." you are missing important details that completely change the magnitude of the stories you "cover." Stop repeating every other report you see and do some original research. Heck, don't even do research. Just read the sources you're citing. If it's the Fourth Estate's job to keep governments honest, you're blowing it. You're being careless and accuracy is suffering. To my loyal readers out there, I say this: I am finding myself more and more tired of incompetence. Call your congresscritters. Write your favorite bloggers. Do your own reading and research. We need -- for our very survival -- to keep an eye on our leaders, agencies, and even reporters to make sure we get something at least in the ballpark of truth. And keep an eye on my numbers, too. Sadly, I can also be fallible. Discovering the three order-of-magnitude inaccuracy in the press reports really disturbed me. We're all in competition for page views, eyeballs, and attention. And we're all trying to get our stories out first. But in the quest for one or two more impressions, we're sacrificing doing our homework. So now, because of Reuters and the others who echoed them, citizens and even government officials will think that government security incidents are bad (as in thousands-bad) when, in fact, the problem is incredibly bad (as in millions-bad). That just pisses me off. This stuff is too important to tolerate laziness. C'mon people, step up, be professionals and get your act together. And I'll try to double-check my numbers even more. By the way, I'm doing more updates on Twitter and Facebook than ever before. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz and on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz. This story was updated on April 10 by its very egg-on-face author. Sigh.
The Kansas City Chiefs did not have much success on their offensive line last season. The lone bright spot on the line was center Rodney Hudson, who will be hitting free agency this off season. Hudson was drafted by the Chiefs in the second round (55th overall) in the 2011 draft out of Florida State and is now all the way through his rookie contract. With Hudson being one of the best centers in the league, demands are going to be high for him and it might be difficult for Kansas City to re sign him. So what other options are there for the Kansas City Chiefs at the center position? First, there’s Eric Kush. This would be the most likely scenario should Hudson leave, as Kush has been prepping for this moment since being drafted in the sixth round in 2013. Kush has only started one game in his two seasons with Kansas City and has played in three games total. Terez Paylor of the Kansas City Star did a nice writeup on Eric Kush on Sunday. Paylor said Kush is ready for the chance to show he’s capable of being a starter and is aware that Hudson’s departure will definitely put the pressure on him. Kush said shortly after the season that he’s going to work hard this offseason to prove he’s ready for an opportunity. Unlike some players, Kush is spending the offseason in Kansas City so he can work out at the team’s training facility – Terez Paylor of the Kansas City Star Should Hudson not come back to Kansas City, it would shock me if the Chiefs didn’t give Eric Kush a chance. Otherwise, I imagine he’d be cut since the team wouldn’t be using him for what he was initially drafted for (unless they kept him as a backup, which could work I guess).
Your progressive, LGBT-affirming church might have more in common with Donald Trump than you’d care to admit. Progressive Christians were, rightfully, outraged when Donald Trump announced on Twitter that the United States military would not “accept or allow” transgender service members. Many of us took to Twitter and Facebook to express our outrage. But when we look at our own churches, are they much different from Donald Trump’s vision for the US military? Trump said it’s too “costly” to have transgender Americans in the military… does your church not have accessible all-gender restrooms because it would be too costly to renovate? Trump has warned that including transgender Americans in the military would be detrimental to military cohesion… does your church not have a culture of asking and sharing gender pronouns because changing the culture would be uncomfortable? Listen, if you’re here, I trust that you want to be welcoming and inclusive of transgender people. That’s an awesome first step. If you’re feeling a little convicted (and maybe even a little overwhelmed) at all the work you have to do … about just how hard it is to meet transgender people’s demands … about how you’re never exactly sure what is enough so why try? … I hear you. But it’s actually quite simple. Take a few breaths, we’re gonna get through this together. If you’re committed to justice—if you’re committed to the Gospel—we put together this article to help you get started. (Need more hand-holding? Fr. Shay and I are available for training and consulting to make your church more welcoming and inclusive—and beyond that, to make it even more committed to justice for LGBTQ people.) Here a list of tangible actions you can take to make sure your church is a space for transgender people. If you’re a pastor or church leader, take steps to implement these changes right away. If you’re a congregant or a lay leader… talk to the powers-that-be in your church about why this is important (you can call us for backup if you need to). Does your church have accessible all-gender restrooms? TWEET IT All-gender restrooms take two forms: Single-stall restrooms that are either not gendered at all or (even better) explicitly designated as all-gender. They need to not just exist but be accessible. Not tucked away in the staff lounge, not on the other side of the building from all the other restrooms, not up a flight of stairs with no elevator access. All-Gender Multi-Stall Restrooms. If you already have restrooms in your church (and I’m assuming you do), the easiest thing to do is convert them all to All-Gender Restrooms. You don’t have to add a costly new bathroom; all you need to do is order some new signs! But what about men and women using the bathroom together?! This might be new to some people but using the bathroom in a mixed gender enviornment is actually quite simple: you go in, do your business, and get out. There are already private stalls for the actual business. And harassment and assault are still off-the-table (and illegal) regardless of who is in the bathroom. LGBTQ centers and conferences have had multi-stall all-gender bathrooms for ages without incident.If visitors have an issue with using an all-gender bathroom, they can use a private single stall bathroom.Here’s a great example of a sign you could use to let folks know that the bathrooms are all gender.But what if you don’t have any single stall bathrooms? Well, your two options are to make nonbinary people feel unwelcome and some trans people feel uncomfortable or to accommodate visitors who feel icky about trans people and/or hold regressive views about gender (they need to be separate!). Ask yourself who you are privileging and why. The truth is, using an all-gender bathroom should be a non-event … it’s ok to ask folks to try something new. It’s liberating! Do you have signage to indicate guests are welcome to use the bathroom consistent with their identity? TWEET IT If you have bathrooms to spare, you might designate some bathrooms as all gender and some as gender-specific. If this is the case, make sure that you have signage encouraging visitors to feel comfortable using the bathroom that is consistent with their gender identity or expression. Here’s an example of a sign you could use. Do you specify gender identity and expression in your nondiscrimination policy? TWEET IT Nondiscrimination policies generally explicitly list many protected classes (gender, disability, etc). If you have a nondiscrimination policy, make sure it explicitly includes gender identity and expression (we also recommend including sexual orientation, HIV status, immigration status, in addition to the more common ones like gender, race, ethnicity). If you don’t have a nondiscrimination policy, talk to your lawyer about creating one! Nondiscrimination policies are an easy way that transgender people can check to see if you care about them — make sure you do! Do you already have a nondiscrimination policy that includes gender identity and expression? Is it published in your bulletin and on your website in a place where it can be easily seen and found? Do you have gender-segregated groups (like a “Mens Ministry”)? If so, why? Where do nonbinary people go? Are trans women included in women’s groups? TWEET IT Groups like “Men’s Ministry” have been for so long that you might not even think to question them but take a second to ask yourself: if you have gender-segregated groups or programs, why do you have them? If your answer something along the lines of “Being a woman in society and in the church is difficult and sometimes even dangerous, we need a private space away from patriarchy and male privelege” … that sounds like a great idea! If the answer is closer to “Men are just different than women,” you might be relying on outdated (and inaccurate!) notions about gender. Consider organizing groups around shared interests such as entrepreneurs or artists, rather than assuming men or women have certain needs just because they are men/women. And if you do have gender-segregated groups, make sure that trans people are included in the group consistent with their gender (and recognize that you’ll be leaving out nonbinary or agender people). Do you actually include transgender people in the stories you tell from the pulpit? Including stories where the point isn’t about gender? TWEET IT Pastors love to tell stories. Stories of dads playing ball with their sons, stories of the woman you sat next to on the train, stories of your grandmother or stories of a stranger in a far away land. But do you tell stories about transgender people? Because being cis and straight is the norm, when you tell a story about a dad … it’s assumed to be a straight, cisgender dad. Transgender people are brilliant (and also ordinary). Include them in your stories. Transgender people have something unique to teach us about gender, but it’s also important that we let them be whole, complex people. So absolutely tell stories that include them when the point involves something about gender… but also tell stories that include them when the story is about something else too: trans people can teach us about grit, grace, courage, faithfulness, service, and a whole host of other things in addition to gender. If you want to see a powerful example of how Fr. Shay’s transgender journey enriched his faith, read Walking Toward Resurrection. Does your church’s health insurance cover transition-related costs? If not, how will you support church staff seeking to medically transition? TWEET IT Jesus made it pretty clear that taking care of people with medical needs was a priority of his. As Christians, it needs to be a priority of ours, as well. If your church’s health insurance plan does not cover transition-related medical costs, you need to do a few things: Advocate: reach out to your provider, express your support for transition-related coverage, ask them to change their policy and add it. Let them know this is serious enough to you that you will seek coverage elsewhere if they won’t include it. Adjust: switch to a plan that includes transition-related medical care coverage, if at all possible. This might mean taking on higher costs. It’s worth it. Would you take a plan that excluded prostate health care or care for pregnant parents if that meant saving money? Support: if you can’t find a plan that includes transition-related coverage, make a plan for how you will support staff in their transition. Put it in writing. Do this right now, don’t wait until you have a transgender staff person wanting to transition. It’s important to do even if you think no one is watching. You might support them by establishing a special fund that can be tapped to pay for care when needed. If your church supports causes (such hunger or homelessness), what are you doing about violence against trans people? TWEET IT Recognizing that God cares about the kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven,” many churches are engaged with causes that matter. If that’s your church, awesome! Be aware that the causes you aren’t supporting say as much about you as the ones you are supporting. Violence against transgender people (particularly trans women of color) is an epidemic—and it’s getting worse, not better. 2016 was the deadliest year on record for transgender people. How will you organize to end this violence? Employment discrimination against transgender people is a sin with far-reaching consequences (from housing to healthcare to mental/emotional well-being). How can you support transgender job seekers? 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ yet there are shockingly few shelters and beds designated for LGBTQ youth—that they know will be safe for them. Many homeless LGBTQ youth are homeless because they experienced Christian-based rejection from their families. As a Christians body, how will you repent for that sin and make it right? Ok, so you want to be a trans ally … what now? You’re committed to making your church (or school, club, or organization) more inclusive for transgender people and you’re committed to working toward justice for transgender people, so now what? In addition to this post, we also put together a 15-point checklist that your church can work through to make sure it is inclusive of LGBTQ people. Download that here. If you’re in a position to implement the changes outlined in this article, start doing so! (Maybe you’re already doing some: this process will be even easier for you!). If you need additional support, Fr. Shay and I are available for consulting and/or training to guide you, your leadership, and your congregation through this process. Reach to us at connect@queertheology.com to discuss further. If you go to a progressive or affirming church, talk to your leaders about putting these ideas into motion, we put together a one-page letter that you can customize and send to them. Download it here. It’s important to remember that being an ally is an on-going process, not a one-time declaration. It’s a commitment to a lifetime of growth and learning. It also means that sometimes, despite our best intentions, we’re going to mess it up. So being an ally means being in relationship with — and really listening to — transgender people so that we can respond to their needs, wishes, and even critiques. Sometimes that might make us uncomfortable, but it’s the right thing to do (and hey, the Gospel is costly!).
Chipotle has gone GMO-free. That means none of the ingredients will be genetically modified -- for its tortillas, rice, chips and salsa, and also in the marinades used to cook its meats. "Chipotle is really showing that there's a better way to do fast food," Chipotle co-CEO Steve Ells told CNNMoney in an exclusive video interview. "They say these ingredients are safe, but I think we all know we'd rather have food that doesn't contain them.'' Embracing ingredients that have not been genetically modified is not an easy thing, and the process has been years in the making. Ells and and his team had to wait for new GMO-free crops to be planted and harvested. All of Chipotle's restaurants are now using non-GMO corn, which goes into many ingredients. Chipotle has also switched its cooking oil from soybean oil to GMO-free sunflower oil and rice bran oil. Its pork and chicken still come from animals that eat GMO-feed. Its beef comes from pasture-raised cattle. But Chipotle (CMG) is the first national fast food chain to go this far in removing GMO from its food. GMOs are a hot button issue among the foodies. Supporters say genetically modified food is safe. But critics worry about the amount of pesticide found in GMO crops. Some 80% of the food consumed in the U.S. is genetically modified, according to the USDA. Related: Chipotle delivers burritos to your door Chipotle's stance in the debate allows Ells to distance his restaurants even further from other fast food rivals. "This is in line with the way we cook at Chipotle, we use classical cooking techniques," Ells said. Chipotle -- once partly-owned by McDonalds -- has always taken a different approach from its competitors, he said. So far the message is resonating with the public. While McDonalds (MCD) and legacy restaurant chains watch sales plunge, Chipotle is one of America' big growth stories. It has doubled its number of restaurants in 5 years -- to 1,831 from 976. Over that same time, its stock has skyrocketed about 350%, while McDonald's gained 38%. Related: Hillary goes to Chipotle, Bill went to McDonalds Carnitas problem continues: The GMO announcement comes as the company continues to try to resolve issues with its pork suppliers. Chipotle took its pork carnitas off the menu in 500 restaurants after a supplier didn't meet its health standards. Chipotle execs admitted the carnitas-less restaurants are losing customers, which is slowing sales growth. But they're confident customers will come back once pork returns to all its restaurants later this year. Chipotle also announced a week ago that it will be raising steak prices 4% to 6% in the fall. Ells tells CNNMoney the new non-GMO ingredients won't increase menu prices. He argues it's a step forward for fast food. "We want to make the old fast food model irrelevant," Ells said. "We want to make great ingredients and classic cooking techniques accessible to everybody."
Thursday on Twitter, Senator Ted Cruz took part in Free Beacon’s “caption contest” of a hilarious photo of Ben Sasse and Chuck Schumer: "So anyway, it’s a romper for guys and it’s called the RompHim and I just ordered two." https://t.co/6BNDNZRqrb — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 18, 2017 Ted’s tweet broke Twitter and won the caption contest … apparently it also ruined the romper for men (can we get an amen!?) Breaking: Ted Cruz has already ruined rompers for men https://t.co/onKljteJ3H pic.twitter.com/NSsLtKX3lB — GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) May 18, 2017 They say this like it’s a bad thing. Have you seen the Romphim for men? Here: Introducing the RompHim! Also known as the "Why I'm Still Single." pic.twitter.com/ZSDADtB7vB — Kelly Campagna (@warriorwoman91) May 19, 2017 The "RompHim" is the most effective form of contraception ever produced. https://t.co/FJMXaPgNbN pic.twitter.com/xd5dqM09KP — Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) May 18, 2017 Seriously, who thought these things were a good idea? GQ apparently. Heh. And you think this somehow makes him look bad? https://t.co/8Tz84DjOeg — Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) May 19, 2017 We think it makes Ted Cruz look like a boss, but we’re biased. "Stupid Ted Cruz ruined ebola. Now no one can have any fun" — Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) May 19, 2017 Right! @redsteeze Not all heroes wear capes. — Ned Ryerson (@Crapplefratz) May 19, 2017 Indeed they don’t. @GQMagazine Rompers were never for "men." They're for emasculated, pliant males. — D.W.Robinson (@_DWRobinson) May 19, 2017 Even the word romper sounds like something a man should AVOID. Romper. @GQMagazine Ted Cruz: the hero we need. — Tim (@tbleeper) May 19, 2017 Yes. @GQMagazine Were rompers for men ever a good idea? No. — DizzyBritches (@BelmarCPA) May 19, 2017 Related:
Credit: Milestone Milestone Media logo Credit: Milestone Media Milestone Media 2.0 is here -- but don't call it a comeback. The Washington Report has news that the 1990s publishing company has been revived by the surviving founders with plans to relaunch its characters across comics and other mediums. Discussions about reviving Milestone Media began in the wake of the death of co-founder Dwayne McDuffie, with Reggie Hudlin, Denys Cowan and Derek Dingle forming what the Hudlin calls "the core of Milestone 2.0." Originally founded back in 1992, Milestone began publishing comics in 1993 as an imprint of DC Comics. Although DC later integrated some of Milestone's characters into DC's core superhero line (including Static in the 2011 New 52 relaunch), Milestone retained ownership of all its characters and had merely licensed usage of the characters and the content they produced in the 1990s. Hudlin says the trio have been at work the past two years "sorting out all the business" in relation to reviving Milestone, and are planning to show off artwork from upcoming Milestone comics titles as soon as Comic-Con International: San Diego this year. In addition to reviving Milestone characters of the past, the trio said they'll also be introducing new characters and including new creators in the mix. Newsarama will have more on this as it develops.
“We’re doing him a huge favor! And do you realize how extreme this is to go from no debt to good old fashioned American debt? That’s the way to do it. Plus, I’ve been envisioning someone else paying for this thing the entire time.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia This was before a hurricane in Houston, almost all the shelves were bare. Not the last hurricane. So, after the Apocalypse? You can still get food from Weight Watchers®. This is the first post . . . the second post in this series is here (LINK). The Cold Equations is a short story (you can find it here and read for free (LINK) on .pdf so you should read it today) that I remember reading as a young lad up on Wilder Mountain. I think I read it in an old, moldy paperback from the Junior High library on a long bus trip. The story sets up a moral choice, and a tough one. But don’t we face those every day? Don’t we look at the short term, the now, and not realize there are vast implications for our future actions? Like if I eat all the PEZ® now, there’ll be none left for later? I’m guilty of not looking at the big picture, too. When I think about personal finance, most of the time what I’m thinking about are smaller strategies: what mix of bonds and stocks should I have? Index funds or mutual funds? Managed funds? How much of my net worth in real estate? How much car should I buy? Do I really need the signed Battlestar Galactica helmet? (Answer: YES!!!!) And these are meaningful questions, and really have been the most meaningful questions for essentially all of my life: these were the right questions to ask. And, even though the economy has had ups and downs, for the most part, we’re like ships in pretty calm water. Storm from time to time? Sure. But we’ve never see a hurricane. Outside of technology (which I’ve discussed here (LINK) and which I will likely revisit soon) probably the two biggest factors in determining your personal financial future are government debt, which we’ll discuss in this post, and future payments that governments must make, which we’ll discuss next Wednesday. I was originally going to discuss it today, but like government debt, this post got bigger faster than I was expecting. Government Debt and Why 1973 is Important: I’m picking a start date for my look into government debt as 1973. In my opinion 1973 was a pretty big year for debt. Before 1971, if a country, say, France, had a $100,000,000 in dollars, they could back up the semi and trade those dollars for gold at $35 per ounce. This really happened. France decided that they had a lot of dollars, but they decided that they liked gold even more. So, like a kid at the arcade with 5,000 Skee-Ball® tickets, they brought all of their dollars up to the counter and asked for gold. And a gummy eraser. And a set of the glasses with the nose and fake mustache. Nixon decided he liked his gold more than he liked France, so put out an emergency order that the Skee-Ball© window was closed, and that France could keep their tickets. This set in a chain of events that determined just how many dollars could even exist . . . . In 1972, Nixon ordered that the dollar be devalued from $35 per ounce of gold to $38 per ounce of gold. I’m not sure anyone listened because we’d stopped converting dollars to gold. And, in 1973 the decision was made to allow normal American citizens to own gold, something that President Roosevelt had made illegal in 1933. The gold/dollar link was severed, so the US could print as many dollars as they chose. (Roosevelt had confiscated all of the gold coins and bullion in the hands of Americans in 1933 at the price of $20.67 per ounce and made it illegal for Americans to own gold. After he had all the gold? He said it was worth $35 per ounce. Nifty way to make an instant 70% profit, if you’re the government. If you or I did that, they would just compare us unfavorably to Bernie Madoff. And that’s just the hair!) So, I picked 1973, because that approximates the date when the US dollar was completely free of any constraints put on it by a gold standard. And also, coincidently when Alice Cooper released his classic album Billion Dollar Babies. Or is it really a coincidence? Regardless, my choice of 1973 as a starting point isn’t arbitrary. A fine album – you should buy six or so. Album Picture via Wikimedia – © believed to be with Warner Music. DANGER: FALLING DOLLARS AND GRAPHS AHEAD In the graph below, I’ve listed the Debt of the United States over the years since 1973. I first converted the annual figures into 2017 dollars using magic the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, so we don’t have to worry about pesky inflation in this graph. H/T to The Balance (LINK) for pointing to all the appropriate websites for the data. When I first started inputting the data, I was surprised at how familiar the shape of the curve of the debt was – and when I tried a fit of the data to an exponential curve it matched very nicely. You can see it on the graph. The exponential curve is a pretty standard formulation. I’m not going to get all mathy, but the R2 =0.97 shows that a large amount of the variation you’d expect to see is explained by the curve that’s fit to it. An R2 =1.0 is perfect. Thanks, Excel®! More on the curve fit later. The dashed line represents the ratio of the national debt (how much the US owes as a country) divided by the Gross Domestic Product (how much the country produces in a year, both goods and services). It uses the right side scale, so you can see that now the national debt is more money than all the goods and services the United States produces in a year are worth. Hmm. Oddly, Japan leads the list of countries that have a high debt to GDP ratio, primarily because no matter what the government does, the citizens just won’t take on debt, so government takes it on for them, in order to fund more comic books, vending machines, and seven-eyed fish. Perennial economic basketcases Greece, Lebanon, and Italy have higher debt to GDP ratios than the US, but the United States is 12th out of 100 or so on a list where you really don’t want to be at the top. Admittedly, most of the countries on the bottom of the list don’t actually use money, but rather trade goats for transistor radios and nine-volt batteries so they can listen to 1970’s disco music, which is all the rage now. But let’s get back to the overall debt. If it is a good fit for the past, I can try to use that same curve to project 10 or 20 years into the future, as I did in the graph below: If the projection holds, in 2027 the debt will be above $30 Trillion dollars. That’s $30,000,000,000,000. Some people work a whole year and don’t make that much money! And in 2037, the debt will be a little higher at $55 trillion dollars. But those are 2017 dollars, and we live in world where inflation exists. Here’s that graph: This graph shows we’ll be facing a debt of $55 TRILLION dollars in ten years, and a tidy $135 TRILLION in twenty years. For grins, I deleted the last 10 years of data, back to 2006, from the projection from the inflation adjusted numbers. Result? It projected the current level of US debt almost exactly. That equation seems pretty accurate: it’s good at predicting the future. But when I deleted 10 years’ worth of data from the graph where inflation exists? Yikes! It would have projected a current debt of about $28 trillion versus the $20-ish trillion we’re at right now. The last ten years have produced inflation that is very low, and interest rates that are at all time historic lows (like all of recorded history low). Both the low inflation and low interest rates have acted to keep the debt much lower than it would normally be. This tells me our debt is very sensitive to inflationary swings (as a first year economics student would figure out and give me a resounding “duh” after thwaping me in the forehead). The ultimate rate of inflation will eventually determine the final shape of the debt’s growth, but we can get to the right range with these estimates. The Cold Equations don’t lie. I don’t know about you, but these numbers seem . . . impossibly large. And large in such a fashion that I can’t really see how the system can work. Ben Stein’s dad was famous for saying, “If something can’t continue forever, it won’t.” Interest on that $55 trillion in ten years or so at 5% would be 70% of today’s entire federal budget, for just one year. This is Ben Stein. Anyone, anyone feel like getting me a beer? The interesting thing to me is that everyone thinks that there is a choice involved, and that every aspect of the current system in the United States isn’t baked into that equation. But I tested the equation with data from before the housing crash. With data from before Obama. Hate to tell everyone, but we could have elected John McCain or a bowl of quivering strawberry Jell-O® (but I repeat myself) as president for the last eight years and we would be in exactly the same place. It’s not parties, it’s not individuals. It’s the system. And what are the consequences of trying to stop? $1.1 trillion was added to the debt in the government fiscal year ending in 2016. This amounted to around 5% of US GDP. US GDP grew by less than 2% that year. Remove the deficit? The US economy shrinks by 3% in that year. The “Great Recession” saw the economy contract 5.1%. So, yes, addiction to government debt is bad. The only thing keeping the country out of recession is adding more debt. But the Cold Equations indicate that exponential growth can’t continue forever. The Part Where Wilder Answers His Own Question So, why does this continue now? Why doesn’t somebody jump out in front of the speeding train and yell, “Stop!” (I think I answered my own question there.) It’s convenient. The United States creates dollars out of either paper or electrons, and then ships them halfway across the world to buy something real, like a car, underwear for Johnny Depp, or a barrel of oil. They take our made-up dollars as payment, and ship us the stuff. Then they take the dollars and recycle them into our system and buy the debt through Treasury Notes and Bills. If that’s not a tax, I’m not sure what is. It’s really an awesome deal if you’re the United States. Eventually someone will create a currency or mechanism to compete with the dollar. China is desperately trying (LINK) having created a mechanism to trade oil not in terms of dollars, but in terms of gold. Will that system take down the dollar? Likely not. The sheer size and psychological trust the dollar has accumulated over the past hundred and fifty years won’t go away with just one alternative Afghan (the people not the blanket) herdsmen trade actual dollar bills. In Zimbabwe when they turned their currency into the equivalent of a mathematical joke, they traded US dollars to actually buy stuff. And inertia plays a big part. You don’t tear down Rome in one day, week, or month. And, as the Romans showed (LINK) a strong army goes a long, long way to having whatever you say is money be accepted. The second thing that keeps this system going: It’s that the system has evolved to grow continually. Jerry Pournelle (who may have been the architect that brought down the entire Soviet Union while writing entertaining science fiction), (1933-2017) described it well in his Iron Law: Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers’ union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization. This is why NASA can’t launch spaceships, the Department of Education doesn’t teach, and the Department of Energy doesn’t produce power. It’s not that these bureaucrats are bad people, they’re simply focused on personal preservation – they want to have a job until they retire, and enough petty power to make them feel that they’re important. The best way to ensure that is to surround themselves with a staff of fifty. And all of this is in harmony with the equation. If you notice, both sides pick things to fund, and both sides will defend the other side’s projects to the death. Republicans complain about Obamacare, and then add more funding. Democrats complain about the military, and then add more funding. Each side is careful to preserve the one thing that Washington is good at . . . spending. What’s the favorite baby in Washington? Billion Dollar Babies! But I feel that the Cold Equations will point to a place where this cannot last. And when you violate the Equations? Your choices dwindle . . . to zero. Like this: Like Loading... Related
A team of scientists working in a Kenyan rainforest has discovered what is thought to be a new species of elephant shrew. Weighing in at a hefty 600g, the two-foot long creature is unusually large compared to other species. The mammal, which is more closely related to elephants than to shrews, was caught on motion sensor cameras set up by the Zoological Society of London's Edge of Existence programme in the threatened Boni-Dodori rainforest, which sits on Kenya's north-eastern coast next to Somalia. "It's really rare to discover a new species of mammal, and it's particularly remarkable that we've found a new species of elephant shrew just five years after the last one was discovered in Tanzania's Udzungwa mountains," says Raj Amin, who led the team. This brings the total number of elephant shrew (Macroscelidea) known to science to 18 species - all found in Africa. The crew are yet to see one of the species alive, having caught one on camera and found a dead elephant shrew in one of their nets. Members of the Boni tribe also brought them two more dead specimens of the new species. DNA from the samples is currently being analysed to confirm that the animal is a new species, but Amin remains confident: "You can distinguish elephant shrews based on their colour, and this one looks completely different from all the others." "It doesn't have a golden rump, or a rufous-coloured face, or spots, but it does have grizzled yellow-brown sides and shoulders, a black rump and thighs and what appears to be a dark mane," says Amin. Because the animal was captured on camera during the day, it is also likely to be diurnal. Until 2005, security was too tight for scientists to enter the Boni-Dodori forest but in 2008, Amin's team got permission to survey the area. They were amazed at how intact it was, as neighbouring regions have largely been logged and converted into biofuel farms. "As it turns out, the Boni-Dodori forest is infested with sleeping sickness, a parasite transmitted by the tsetse fly, so herders and other people have left it well alone for the most part," says Amin. After the inevitable buzz around finding a new species dies down, Amin hopes that the discovery will draw attention to the plight of the roughly 2,216 sq km patch of forest, which may not be protected by sleeping sickness for much longer. "China wants to rebuild a nearby port in order to ship out minerals, and there are also plans for an oil pipeline," says Amin. "In addition, biofuel companies are growing crops on freshly deforested land that's less degraded, just to make a quick profit." In January, WWF set up the first conservation project in the forest. The project will last for three years and produce an inventory of the forest's biodiversity.
Canton Ohio custom gunmaker Middlebranch Machine has released a teaser image of a new kind of suppressor, which they say is made of “carbon fiber composite” construction. Unlike previous efforts at making carbon fiber suppressors, Middlebranch Machine’s design does not seem to use a straight carbon-fiber tubing body, but appears to be 3D printed, instead. This is strongly suggested by the background of the image which shows a customized Glock with a unique looking suppressor in front of what is probably a Markforged Mark Two carbon fiber 3D printer. Mark Twos are some of the only carbon fiber 3D printing machines in the world. There have been few previous attempts at making suppressors out of carbon fiber. Though light and strong, carbon fiber tubing is not an especially good material for making suppressors. YouTuber gommie404 has a very interesting and entertaining video (embedded below) on constructing homemade aluminum/carbon fiber hybrid suppressors. In the video, he notes that straight carbon fiber tubes eventually fail, as the propellant gasses eventually stretch and work their way through the fibers, resulting in wall breaches. This phenomenon evidently plagued the carbon fiber suppressors made by Shooter’s Depot some years ago. It seems likely that the printed construction of the MM suppressor will help compensate for this problem. However, it’s not yet well established how strong printed carbon fiber is, versus the conventional weaved variety.
Since the last demo update, I started the transition to Game Maker Studio. There are plenty of changes in the way variables are initialized, the order of code execution, etc.Many features need to be redone from scratch, and many unexpected issues are still appearing. This was also a good opportunity to rewrite ancient code, remove workarounds and do things the proper way.As of now, the contents of the demo are accessible without crashes.Also, I was able to compile the project using a virtual machine running Ubuntu:It's running at a steady 60 FPS in a VM, so performance using real hardware should be even better.I had to remove all the extensions and DLLs that were used, and replace their functionality with native GM code. The music engine is in the works now, along with some other features.- The performance is a lot better, there's no random slowdown.- It loads really fast- Possibility of ports to other platforms- Faster development timeOnce I complete all the missing features, I'll release a demo update.It'll have the same contents, but using the new engine. It's also very likely that an official Linux build of the demo will be released too. A Mac build won't be available yet, since the export process isn't as straightforward as the Linux one is (it requires and actual, physical Mac).About the rest of the game, even if this change took most of my time, I was able to advance a little bit with the overall level layout of Area 4. Some rooms were redone to showcase the abilities acquired in the area, and sand was added to the side tunnels.Don't worry, it's not as annoying as the original was.As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.
Indiana NORML Supports S.B. 314 Indiana NORML applauds Senator Karen Tallian (D-Portage) for filing S.B. 314, which would call for the decriminalization of small amounts of Marijuana as well as the cultivation of the hemp plant once again in Indiana. This is the beginning of an end to prohibition of Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana in Indiana. Prohibition has been a wasteful and freedom-robbing effort to control something that needs to be regulated in an open market, where age of the buyer can be limited, the quality of the product ensured and fair business practices can be guaranteed. According to a WISH-TV/Ball State University poll taken in late 2013, 78 percent of Hoosiers want Marijuana taxed and regulated like alcohol. This would create a new tax base for the State and millions of dollars pumped into the economy. On January 1st, Colorado began retail sales of Cannabis, and are expecting sales of $260 Million in 2014. Decriminalization is a first step in this process. Indiana currently spends approximately $150 Million dollars a year locking up pot smokers. This money could be used for better things. Our current policies also help ruin any chances of people educating themselves and obtaining decent jobs by having a criminal record. Our jails remain overcrowded and our law enforcement resources continue to be tied up prosecuting Marijuana cases rather than serious, real crime. S.B. 314 will ease these problems immediately. Hemp, which has no psychoactive abilities, would be a boon to Indiana’s economy for food, fuel, fiber, paper, plastics and a range of building materials. Indiana once had a thriving Hemp industry, and could have one again. Marijuana prohibition is falling across the nation. Sooner or later Indiana will have to make the changes to end this thoughtless, immoral war on its citizens. Our state will be better off with an early end to arrests on Marijuana charges. We urge all Hoosiers to contact their Indiana State Senators and urge passage of S.B. 314. Neal Smith Chairman, Indiana NORML.
Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I-Vt.) is renewing his effort to create a panel to investigate the impact of technology on privacy as part of the Senate's cyber bill. Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, is offering an amendment to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) that would establish "a Commission on Privacy Rights in the Digital Age." ADVERTISEMENT He wants the group to look into how public and private companies gather data on U.S. citizens and how that data is used and recommend any changes "needed to safeguard the privacy of the people of the United States," according to the amendment. He also wants the panel, which would have subpoena power, to home in on any implications for privacy rights, transparency for the government and consumers and potential waste, fraud or abuse. The panel would include 13 members — five that are appointed the president, two each from the Senate's majority leader and minority leader and two each from the speaker of the House and the minority leader. The amendment isn't the first time Sanders has tried to create a body to look into the how modern technology is impacting privacy. He offered a similar amendment to an annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, earlier this year. Sanders, in his amendment to the cyber bill, argues that the panel is necessary, because "today, technology that did not exist 30 years ago pervades every aspect of life in the United States … [and] federal policies on privacy protection have not kept pace with the rapid expansion of technology." Earlier this year, Sanders voted against the USA Freedom Act, which reformed the National Security Agency's collection of bulk phone metadata, because he believed it didn't go far enough to safeguard Americans' privacy.
"It's going to be easier to exist, to put it really simply. When you are living with something that doesn't belong on your body...breasts in my case, that's not how I identify as being male. To not have to worry or be anxious and hating myself about it, would be wonderful." - 17-year-old Brynn Emond is waiting for sexual reassignment surgery For anyone struggling with gender identity disorder, just arriving at the decision to fully transition from their birth gender to the one they truly identify with, can be a difficult and painful process. But after that decision is made, another obstacle often looms large in their path. We're speaking about wait times, and wait times especially to get referred for sex reassignment surgery. It's a referral that can't come from a patient's regular physician, but from a special assessment centre. These centres may be far away, in some cases out of province. And yet they're the only way to get a green light for a life-changing procedure. Now, as more and more people are seeking surgeries to change their gender, the wait times at these clinics are swelling out of control. It's an issue that's causing outrage inside Canada's transgender community. Brynn Emond is a 17-year-old transgender male. He's waiting for an appointment at CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. It's the only clinic in Ontario approved to refer patients for this surgery. Brynn Emond joined us from Ottawa, together with his mother, Shanon Page, who belongs to a parent support group that is petitioning Ontario's Ministry of Health to amend the referral process for sex reassignment surgery. It's not just patients, but doctors too, who are calling on provincial governments to improve this situation. Dr. Chris McIntosh is a Psychiatrist, and the Clinic Head of the Adult Gender Identity Clinic at CAMH in Toronto. is a Psychiatrist, and the Clinic Head of the Adult Gender Identity Clinic at CAMH in Toronto. Dr. Pierre Brassard is a Cosmetic Plastic Surgeon, and the owner of a private hospital that performs transgender surgeries. Dr. Brassard and his partner, are the only surgeons in the country who perform genital reassignment surgery. He joined us from Montreal. If you're on a wait list for trans care or surgery, let us know your experience. Email us through our website. This segment was produced by The Current's Sarah Grant and Natalie Walters.
Looking to increase your brain size? You may want to try aerobic exercise, a new study suggests. Researchers found that participants who exercised aerobically four times a week for six months showed greater increases in brain volume than participants who exercised for that same amount of time by stretching. "This type of result is always encouraging, especially because the study shows changes not only in brain volume, but also in cognitive function," said Max Wintermark, a professor of radiology at Stanford University, who was not involved with the research. [Aerobic Exercise: Everything You Need to Know] In the study, researchers looked at 35 adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which is considered an intermediate stage between the normal cognitive decline associated with aging and more serious conditions like dementia. The researchers assigned 16 of the adults (whose average age was 63) to the aerobic exercise condition, and assigned the other 19 (whose average age was 67) to the stretching control group. The participants also underwent an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) brain scan at the beginning and end of the six-month study. MRI scans use magnetic fields and radio waves to create detailed pictures of organs like the brain. In addition, the researchers tested the participants to see whether their exercise routine effected their cognitive performance. It turned out that all of the adults in the study showed some increases in the volume of their brains' gray matter, which is made up of the type of neuron that is responsible for tasks such as processing information and controlling muscles, according to the study. But the participants in the aerobic exercise group showed greater increases in volume in a few regions, including the corpus callosum, which consists of the nerve fibers joining the left and right hemispheres of the brain, the researchers said in their study. [The 4 Types of Exercise You Need to Be Healthy] And in fact, the participants in the stretching group showed decreases in volume in an area of the brain called the right posterior corona radiata, which carries information to and from the brain regions that are responsible for thinking and perceiving. In addition, participants in the aerobic-exercise group showed improvement in their executive function after these six months, while participants in the stretching group did not. Executive function includes skills such as working memory, problem solving and reasoning. The results suggest that aerobic exercise interventions, more so than exercises such as stretching, could help preserve or even improve brain volumes in people suffering from MCI, the researchers said. This is especially significant considering that people with the condition are at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, which today affects more than 5 million Americans, the researchers said in a statement about their findings. Still, Wintermark told Live Science, "this is a relatively small study, and it definitely needs to be confirmed in a larger population." However, the finding may help shape additional research into brain-related changes of different types of exercise. Original article on Live Science . Editor's Recommendations
Credit: WWE.com Could wrestling fans see Sting perform at next year's WrestleMania 31 event? According to one report, most at WWE are expecting it. As Dave Meltzer notes in this week's (subscribers-only) Wrestling Observer Newsletter when talking about the former TNA star's status in the company right now, "Sting merchandise is being sold at WWE house shows. Sting has a merchandise contract with WWE, and most expect him at WrestleMania for what could be his one and only WWE in-ring appearance this coming year." This will no doubt be welcome news to fans of the wrestler, who have been desperate to see him appear in a WWE ring for years now. Of course, the question is, just who would Sting face at Levi's Stadium in San Francisco? The Undertaker would be the most obvious candidate, of course. But his various injuries and physical struggles, as well as his solid loss to Brock Lesnar at this past year's WrestleMania, may indicate the veteran is truly done with wrestling. Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair are possibilities too, if WWE wants to go the nostalgia route. But it's doubtful they could work a remotely decent match against Sting. Hogan can barely bump, due to his back issues, and Flair just turned 65 and hasn't had a decent in-ring performance in years. Credit: WWE.com Throwing Sting out there with any of those guys could be an embarrassment and a total disaster, even if WWE tries to keep the match short. Ideally, Sting will be given a younger foe, someone who can help carry him to a decent bout. John Cena is a possibility. It would be a big match for Cena and a good use of what will possibly be Sting's only in-ring appearance for the company. Triple H could also be a candidate if WWE wants the star to go up against a heel.
The human nose is full of surprises. Not only can we detect a trillion odors , it appears that scents influence our behavior. According to a new study , humans produce chemical cues that communicate our gender to the opposite sex, and just a whiff of these compounds influences our perception of someone as masculine or feminine. "Our findings argue for the existence of human sex pheromones," Wen Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences says in a press release . "They show that the nose can sniff out gender from body secretions even when we don't think we smell anything on the conscious level." Specifically, what we’re smelling are active steroids: androstadienone in males and estratetraenol in females. Androstadienone, which is found in semen and armpits, have been showed to improve women’s moods, but not men’s. Estratetraenol, first identified in female urine, has similar effects on males. To figure out if those chemicals are acting as sexual cues, Zhou and her colleagues asked males and females to watch “point-light walkers” (PLWs, pictured) move in place on a screen. These consist of 15 dots representing the 12 major joints in the human body, plus the pelvis, thorax, and head. You can see examples of the PLWs in this video . Each participant watched seven digitally morphed gaits, one at a time and in random order. They had to judge whether the walker was a male or female. Additionally, they completed that task while being exposed to androstadienone, estratetraenol, and a control solution -- all of which smelled like cloves -- each on a separate day. The results revealed that smelling androstadienone biased heterosexual females (but not males) toward perceiving walkers as more masculine. However, smelling estratetraenol biased heterosexual males (but not females) toward perceiving walkers as more feminine. Homosexual males responded to the scents more like heterosexual females did, and bisexual or homosexual female responses fell somewhere in between those of heterosexual males and females. Watch the video again . The figure on the far left is supposed to have a quintessential female strut. (It’s in the hip dots, though I can’t see it.) The figure on the far right has a flat gait more typical of males. The walk in the middle is gauged as gender-neutral. But androstadienone conveys masculinity to straight women and gay men, while estratetraenol conveys femininity to straight men. "When the visual gender cues were extremely ambiguous, smelling androstadienone versus estratetraenol produced about an eight percent change in gender perception," Zhou explains The work was published in Current Biology this week. Image/video: Current Biology, Zhou et al.
I have spoken before about the trauma I suffered aged six, when my brother Chris decapitated my beloved Tiny Tears doll. It is fair to say that none of us were ever the same again: – Chris realised he should never mess with his little sister – due to her nifty right hook. – I learnt to hide stuff from my brothers that I didn’t want damaged / maimed / beheaded. – Tiny Tears developed a new-found appreciation for polo neck tops. I became exceptionally good at concealing my possessions after Tiny Tearsgate, 1989. Anything of value or sentiment was stowed away in a safe place, until I left home at the age of eighteen. This included, though was not exclusive to: – A second-hand paperback copy of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, purchased for fifteen pence. – My extensive Pog collection. – One hundred high quality fibre-tipped colouring pens. – Three mixed tapes of Boyzone, Peter Andre, the Spice Girls, and Backstreet Boys. – My top secret, highly confidential, tell-all diaries, that I began writing in 1995, at the tempestuous age of twelve. With impressive foresight at just fourteen, I acknowledged that I’d probably look back on my diaries in years to come and laugh. I may have underestimated just how much. Here are some highlights from the last seventeen years in the life of me. Names have been changed to protect the innocent: 11/05/1997 SECONDARY SCHOOL: Everything in this diary seemed to have a point to it when I wrote it. That’s why I refuse to look back and cross stuff out. Even the really embarrassing stuff about fancying Dave from my Maths class and cutting my own fringe. Again. 27/12/1997 SECONDARY SCHOOL: New Year’s Resolutions for 1998 I will slap the next person who says I fancy Dave, because I don’t . I will tidy my room at some point this year. I will keep my room tidy for at least a week. I will stop worrying so much about how I look. I will marry Ronan Keating. 30/12/1998 SECONDARY SCHOOL: New Year’s Resolutions for 1999 I will cut down on chips and chocolate, eat my greens and drink more milk. I will either slap or kiss Smith for being such a git. I will snog any (well, just about any) boy who offers. I will not take my mobile to school for the sole purpose of showing off. Well, maybe. 11/05/2000 COLLEGE: Oh fudge. I tried to pluck my eyebrows to make them look better, but now it’s a case of “Eyebrows? What eyebrows?” Will have to draw them on with pencil until further notice. Note to self: step away from the tweezers. 11/03/2001 COLLEGE: 21/06/2001 COLLEGE: Have opted to come down with food poisoning on Friday. Not actual food poisoning, but this is my brilliant plan to get out of work. I am brilliant. 30/11/2001 UNIVERSITY: Nothing to report apart from my slow spiralling descent into madness. “I didn’t lose my mind; it was mine to give away.” Robbie Williams. 11/02/2002 UNIVERSITY: This afternoon was highly productive. I finally mastered the art of reading half a book and blagging the fact I read the whole thing. It’s a talent. One I am proud of and grateful for. 19/04/2002 UNIVERSITY: My plans to go into Uni today were scuppered by an overwhelming desire to sit at home on my bed and highlight stuff. Very important stuff; naturally. 22/04/2003 UNIVERSITY: 13/08/2003 UNIVERSITY: Mental note: Everything happens for a reason and anything pants that seems to crush you at the time, just makes you stronger in the end. H’mm, that’s very phylosophical of me for a Thursday afternoon. Must learn to spell phylosophycal philospohycal philosophical. 19/10/2003 UNIVERSITY: Am so proud of me! Have spent the entire day doing boring Postmodernism coursework. All something to do with hyperreality. Very confusing. Despite having written 2,503 words, I still don’t understand it. This does not bode well for the ‘A’ grade I was hoping for. 29/11/2004 UNIVERSITY: Momentous occasion: Handed in my dissertation. Takes a bow. 03/10/2005 POST-UNIVERSITY: An ode to Tony: “When I fall in love, it will be forever”. Thank you Nat King Cole. Note to self: Must put prophetic talents to good use. A winning lottery ticket would be a great start.
You must sign in or register to continue reading content. It costs taxpayers more than $57 for each rider to take the Sounder commuter train from Everett to Seattle — and that’s just one way. For Sound Transit Express buses, it costs taxpayers $4.33 for each rider between the same destinations. The standard adult train fare between Everett and Seattle is $4.50. The bus fare is $3.50. That’s why the agency should discontinue the Sounder north line and replace it with more buses, according to a retired transportation planner from Bellevue who crunched the numbers. He based his conclusions on operating and capital costs and ridership figures over the next 30 years. “If properly informed of the situation, Snohomish County taxpayers should be pressing to stop continuance of Sounder north,” James MacIsaac said in a letter to Sound Transit in January. Sound Transit officials dispute MacIsaac’s method — he includes capital costs in cost-per-rider figures while Sound Transit does not, per industry standard. Still, Sound Transit’s own figures show cost-per-rider at $32 last year without capital costs, compared to about $7 for Express buses systemwide. One of the biggest expenses for the system is $258 million the agency paid up front to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad for the permanent right to use the rail lines between Seattle and Everett. MacIsaac counted this payment as a capital cost in his cost-per-rider numbers, along with stations, trains and other costs. This access to the rail line is a long-term investment that will pay off in the future as the population grows and the roads become more congested, Sound Transit spokeswoman Kimberly Reason said. “It was really a pioneering move because we have access to that rail line forever. You really can’t put a price tag on that,” Reason said. MacIsaac, 70, worked for the precursor of today’s Puget Sound Regional Council, a planning organization, in the 1960s. He ran his own transportation planning firm, the Transpo Group, from 1975 to 1995, and worked as an independent consultant afterward. MacIsaac in January sent a report with all his calculations to Sound Transit. It’s been forwarded for review to the agency’s Citizen Oversight Panel, a 13-member group that provides input to the staff and board of directors. Sounder commuter rail and Express bus service both were approved by voters in 1996 as part of the original Sound Move ballot measure. Last year, nearly 10 times as many trips were taken on Sound Transit Express buses between Everett and Seattle than on the Sounder — roughly 2.3 million versus 280,000. The Sounder figure includes an average of 515 riders each way per weekday in 2011. It also includes 48,000 riders who took the train to sporting events on weekends during the year. By contrast, Sound Transit Express buses between Everett, Edmonds, Lynnwood and Seattle carried about 3,950 people a day each way, according to MacIsaac’s figures. Sounder trains runs eight trips per day, four each way, while the 510 and 512 routes from Everett run a combined 161, according to a Sound Transit schedule. Those 500-plus-per-day round trip riders on the Sounder line could be moved to new buses and commute for that much less, MacIsaac says. Add in the fact that the Sounder north line has at times been plagued by mudslides that have forced the cancellation of many runs over the years, and that means an inefficient operation, he says. MacIsaac said that to make his projections, he used raw data he obtained from Sound Transit through public disclosure requests. Sound Transit supplied only annual ridership and cost figures for the past few years. Harold Wirch of Brier, who recently retired from the Snohomish County public works department, is on the Citizen Oversight Panel. He said a sub-group has been formed and has just begun examining MacIsaac’s report. “You really need to take a look at everything,” he said. “We don’t want to jump to conclusions.” Everett City Councilman Paul Roberts, a member of the Sound Transit board of directors, said Sounder north ridership is a legitimate concern, but that it doesn’t mean the service should be discontinued. The trains began running between Everett and Seattle in December 2003. After ridership hit an all-time high of more than 1,200 riders per day in June 2008, it began a slow decline, hitting a low of fewer than 800 per day in late 2010, according to agency figures. That winter the line was plagued by a record number of mudslides. Ridership rebounded in 2011 and in January of this year, but agency officials are nonetheless discussing how to increase ridership, Roberts said. “It’s a fair question and we need to see if we can’t do better. They’re trying to set up some discussions and brief us in more detail,” Roberts said of Sound Transit staff. Ridership on the southern Sounder line from Tacoma to Seattle, a longer trip with more stops and nine trains per day each way, is much higher than in the north: about 2.5 million trips were taken last year, an average of nearly 9,500 per weekday. The operating cost per rider last year was slightly more than $10, according to Sound Transit figures. Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine, also a member of the Sound Transit board, said one way to increase ridership on the north line would be to add parking at the Sounder stations in Edmonds and Mukilteo. The parking lots are full to overflowing every day, he said. Sound Transit already is planning to add parking in Mukilteo. “How can you possibly get more ridership if you can’t get people down there?” he said. Either way, Marine said, the $258 million investment for the right to use the rail line has been made. “Even if we stop it tomorrow, none of that goes away,” he said. MacIsaac says Sound Transit’s belief in future ridership doesn’t hold up based on its own figures. He notes that the agency predicts 310,000 trips in 2030 — only a modest increase from today and still far fewer than buses. Sounder is limited in part by the fact that the railroad so far has not agreed to allow Sounder to run more than four trains per day each way even though the agency paid $258 million. Much of the line is a single track that Sounder and Amtrak must share with freight trains. MacIsaac said other factors favor buses as well. They make multiple stops in downtown Seattle while Sounder stops only at King Street Station, and the buses generally take less time to travel from Snohomish County to downtown than Sounder. On the other hand, as noted in a Sound Transit PowerPoint presentation, the state recently received more than $16 million in federal money for mudslide prevention projects. The agency contends that in the long term, population and employment growth will increase demands for all kinds of public transportation. It’s one thing for ridership not to meet expectations, but it’s another to conclude that the service should be discontinued, Roberts said. “It’s very easy to take a snapshot in time today,” he said, “and say, ‘Let’s make a decision that’ll have an effect 50 years out.’” Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439; sheets@heraldnet.com.
All eyes are on Andrea Horwath. And she is feeling the pressure from all sides — including her own. With a provincial budget due in 10 days, the NDP leader holds the fate of the minority Liberal government in her hands. Horwath will keep us waiting a while yet. Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, seen listening to the throne speech in February, has told the Star's Martin Regg Cohn she is waiting to "see what the government brings forward” before she decides whether her party will back the minority Liberals' upcoming budget. ( Chris Young / THE CANADIAN PRESS ) While Premier Kathleen Wynne keeps dropping hints that the NDP will get much of what it wants in the May 2 budget, Horwath is playing hardball. And settling in for a waiting game. “We’ll see, we’ll see, we’ll see — the jury is out,” she mused Monday in her Queen’s Park office over the lunch hour, just after Finance Minister Charles Sousa spoke to a blue-chip business audience about his grand budget plans. Amidst feverish election speculation, Horwath will soon decide whether to pull the plug on the Liberals or leave them on life support for a while longer. Her fellow New Democrats are divided on whether to keep wielding the balance of power in the minority legislature or wash their hands of a Liberal government tainted by scandals and boondoggles. Article Continued Below Horwath will take her time, evaluating the final budget document and holding out for improvements rather than settling for the government’s first offer. The NDP’s agenda calls for cracking down on corporate tax breaks, boosting youth job creation, bringing down car insurance rates and improving welfare rules. “I’m not in the driver’s seat here. I’m waiting to see what the government brings forward,” Horwath told the Star. “I would need to take some time to absorb what’s in the budget.” And, she added pointedly, to “suggest some different things” to improve it. For now, Horwath is skeptical of Wynne’s prebudget consultations aimed at wooing New Democrats. Her last meeting with the premier was unproductive and “very truncated,” and the NDP leader is resisting any follow-up encounters unless there is a clear public agenda. When the premier’s office put out feelers for another meeting this month, the NDP didn’t bite. “If it’s the same thing that we really talked about for 10 minutes, then it’s not really worth setting up another meeting,” Horwath says. “The ball is in their court. I’ve asked for an agenda and I’ve told them that I will be public about the fact.” Horwath has come to be highly skeptical of Liberal-NDP “conversations:” a word she herself once used but now believes Wynne abuses. She wants the premier to walk the talk. Article Continued Below (While keeping Wynne waiting, Horwath is making plans to see her Tory rival, Tim Hudak, who asked last week for a meeting for the two opposition parties to compare notes.) New Democrats dream of minority governments because they give the traditionally third-place party disproportionate leverage to advance its progressive agenda. But propping up another party also exacts a political price; it blurs the NDP’s brand. “I think you’re right, it is a tension,” Horwath concedes. “It’s a tension, but it’s something I’m committed to” because the NDP’s agenda is now “very achievable.” New Democrats got results in the 2012 budget: pressuring former premier Dalton McGuinty to freeze a corporate tax cut while imposing a surtax on the rich and raising welfare rates. This time the party’s shopping list is longer and louder. But any budget gains could be outweighed by political damage if the New Democrats are seen as Liberal enablers. Newer, younger caucus members who eviscerated Liberals in the last election are finding it hard to hold their noses now and are spoiling for a fight. Horwath says she is calming the dissenters by explaining that her budget manoeuvres are advancing the party’s progressive agenda: precisely what she promised during the last election. “That’s the conversation that I have — there, I used the word! — with my caucus at our caucus meetings: Let’s stay focused, folks ... to try to make a difference.” It’s a tough call. If she backs the budget, the party could be damaged. If she triggers an early election, she may be seen as expedient. Either way, there will be plenty of time to fight it out on the campaign trail. “The time will come,” she says. “But in the meantime let’s focus on trying to do right by the people.” Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , twitter.com/reggcohn. Read more about:
We often speak of talented musicians who inadvertently created a less-than-desirable trend: if not for Nirvana, we could have avoided Bush, deathcore as we know it would probably not exist if not for The Red Chord and Genghis Tron, Slayer played Reign in Blood in its entirety and then every other band in the known universe (including, uh, Slayer) started performing their most famous albums in their entirety, etc. Usually, my attitude in these situations is, “Hey, you can’t blame the trendsetter; they obviously had no idea that they were starting an avalanche.” But if Five Guys in a Honda is correct, well… Slipknot guitarist Mick Thompson might have some real ‘splain’ to do. See, the Dallas based life and entertainment blog posits that Thompson is The Godfather of Crabcore. Which sounds like total bullshit… until you see their extremely damning photographic evidence: Of course, to lay the blame squarely at Thompson’s pinchers is to deny the contributions of Robert Trujillo, who’s been using the “about to take a dump” stance for pretty much as long as anyone can remember. Just check out this video of him performing with Suicidal Tendencies (opening for his future bandmates in Metallica) in 1993: Still, while it’s possible to imagine the kids in Attack Attack! and other bands of that ilk being Slipknot fans, I would almost be willing to bet that they haven’t even heard of Suicidal Tendencies, and may or may not be fans of Trujillo-era Metallica. Which is to say, I do think it’s plausible that Thompson is the originator of crabcore. What chu think? Debate this oh-so-important topic in the comments section below.
When I was attending Ignite, I was pretty anxious to hear about what was called Storage Spaces Shared Nothing which is now called Storage Spaces Direct. One of the main feature of Storage Spaces Direct is the ability to leverage NVMe flash drives. Let’s look at some of the practical sizing calculation for this use case. Maximum Storage Spaces Direct Cluster Nodes: 12 at this point in time, possibly more in the future Maximum Throughput per NVMe drive: 3GB/s for a Samsung XS1715 Maximum NVMe drives per cluster node: 8 (AIC SB122 or Dell R920) Maximum Throughput/Node: 24GB/s Total Cluster Throughput: 288GB/s Those are sure impressive numbers but if you want to have a non-blocking architecture for this, your network design needs to follow. Here’s what would be needed. With each server pushing 192Gbps, a cluster could potentially push 12 * 192Gbps, so 2.3Tbps. In order to get to those numbers, from what I understand so far from Storage Spaces Direct, you would need to create basically one SOFS share per cluster node and spread your data across those 12 shares. Not too bad so far. Why? CSV block IO redirection is still around from what I gathered which means if you data slab/chunk are distributed across the cluster, you have a problem, more on this later. Let’s say you want to do something crazy like running SQL Server and leverage that nice throughput. One does not simply partition his SQL database across 12 VHDX. Why? That would mean all the IO of the cluster would need to converge back to the node running your SQL Server instance. 2.3Tbps incoming! Take cover! So what kind of hardware would you need to support this you ask? If you take 100GbE, which to my knowledge is the fastest interconnect generally available, you would need 23 ports per server running your workload or more tangibly 12 Mellanox ConnectX-4 dual port cards. You only have 10 PCIe slots in your R920? How unfortunate! Forget about the AIC 1U machine! I would also like to see the guy doing the wiring job on those servers! Another small detail, at 24 ports per machine, you could only hook up 3 servers to a set of 2 switches with 36 ports if you’re trying to do dual pathing for link redundancy. Hmm..Don’t we need to connect 12 of those servers? Looks like a incoming sizing fail to me. Perhaps I’m wrong and I missed something… If that’s the case let me know! Really what’s needed TODAY for this is 1Tbps link interconnect in order to make this setup practical and fully leverage your investment and future proof your infrastructure a bit. So the only viable option to use that kind of throughput would be to shard your database across multiple SQL Server instances. You could use AlwaysOn and create read-only replicas (up to 8 in 2014, getting close to 12 but nope, not there, not sure if that’s bumped up in 2016) but then you are wasting quite a bit of storage potentially by duplicating your data around. Azure SQL on premise running on Azure Stack/Azure Service Fabric could start to look very nice. Perhaps another NoSQL database or Hadoop would be more suitable but in the vast majority of enterprises, it’s a radical change for sure! Food for thoughts! I’ll still let that one stir for a bit… Advertisements
How to Join the Gladius Token Sale Whitelist Gladius Network Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 15, 2017 This time has come that everyone has been waiting for! The Gladius public sale whitelist is now open- and its very easy to join. The sale starts November 1st, 02:00 (UTC) and is targeted to sell out fast! Having a whitelist allows us to avoid many typical pitfalls token sales experience such as massive gas costs, scam potential, etc. The whitelist process takes only a few moments to complete. Verification of your information takes a few days to be finalized. Step 1: Navigate to Gladius.io and click on the bright pink button. (Or go straight registration here). Step 2: Enter your ETH information. Note: Purchase amount does not have to be final. Step 3: Enter your personal information. Also upload a picture of your Photo ID. Step 4: Enter your primary contact email address and create strong password. Step 5: Check the captcha and submit. Now you’re done! Verifying you have been added To verify you have successfully been added to the whitelist, simply enter you account information. You will also receive an email when you have been accepted. You’re all set to now purchase Gladius Tokens on November 1st, 02:00 (UTC). We’re excited to have you be part of our project! For more updates, also follow our Twitter and Facebook accounts. To join in the discussion, join our Telegram.
The Republican congressman Greg Gianforte may have earned himself a head start on fundraising for his next campaign when he “body-slammed” a Guardian reporter on the eve of his victory in Montana’s special election, according to a recent filing. The report from the Federal Election Committee shows that the day after the incident, Gianforte’s campaign brought more donation money than it had in the prior five days combined, including 25 donations of the maximum $2,700 allowed by law from an individual to a given candidate. For perspective, the day before the assault, Gianforte had received two such maximum donations. The day before that, he received none. In total, the campaign collected more than $116,000 after the attack. The FEC filing is consistent with statements made by Gianforte’s campaign on election day that more than $100,000 had come in since the incident. The surge in donations also corresponded with election day, which could also have pushed some people to donate – but election day fundraising spikes are also not typical, as it is more or less too late for a campaign to do anything with the money. Gianforte filed for his 2018 re-election campaign on 2 June, before he had even been sworn into Congress. The post-assault windfall will presumably roll over into his re-election fund, unless the congressman uses it to settle outstanding debts from the special election. The bodyslam giveth and it taketh away, however. The multimillionaire Gianforte pledged to donate $50,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists as part of an agreement to settle any potential civil claims. In an accompanying letter to Ben Jacobs, the reporter whom the congressman attacked, Gianforte described his conduct as “unprofessional, unacceptable, and unlawful”. Gianforte was also sentenced to community service and a small fine after pleading guilty to the criminal charge of misdemeanor assault.
According to the presentation, the system is easy to use and enables surveillance of raw data traffic "like no other system." An NSA transparency titled "What is XKeyscore?" describes a buffer memory that enables the program to absorb a "full take" of all unfiltered data for a number of days. In other words, XKeyscore doesn't just track call connection records, but can also capture the contents of communication, at least in part. In addition, the system makes it possible to retroactively view which key words targeted individuals enter into Internet search engines and which locations they search for on Google Maps. The program, for which there are several expansions known as plug-ins, apparently has even more capabilities. For instance, "user activity" can be monitored practically in real time and "anomalous events" traced in Internet traffic. If this is true, it means that XKeyscore makes almost total digital surveillance possible. From the German perspective, this is especially troubling. Of the roughly 500 million data sets from Germany to which the NSA has access each month, XKeyscore captured about 180 million in December 2012. This raises several questions. Does this mean that the NSA doesn't just have access to hundreds of millions of data sets from Germany, but also -- at least for periods of days -- to a so-called "full take," meaning to the content of communication in Germany? Can the BND and the BfV access the NSA databases with their versions of XKeyscore, which would give them access to the data on German citizens stored in those databases? If this were the case, the government could hardly claim that it had no knowledge of the Americans' vigorous data acquisition activities. German 'Eagerness' Is 'Welcomed' SPIEGEL put these questions to both agencies and the Chancellery, but it received no answers on the use of the system. The BND merely issued a brief statement, saying that it was regrettably unable to comment publicly on the details of intelligence activities. The NSA and the White House were similarly curt in their responses to SPIEGEL inquiries, merely noting that they had nothing to add to the remarks President Barack Obama made during his recent visit to Berlin. The new revelations also shine a spotlight on the presidents of the BND and the BfV, Gerhard Schindler and Hans-Georg Maassen. Both men are relatively new in their positions. But BND President Schindler in particular, in office since January 2012, has already made his mark. He embodies the new, more offensive approach being taken by the foreign intelligence agency, which the NSA has expressly praised. Schindler's "eagerness," according to the NSA documents, was "welcomed" already in 2012. When he came into office, the outspoken head of the BND encapsulated the new willingness to take risks. Internally, he asked each BND department to submit three proposals for joint operations with the US intelligence agencies. Of course, there are also positive sides to this closer cooperation with the Americans. One of the BND's responsibilities is to protect German soldiers and prevent terrorist attacks. Doing so adequately is impossible without help from the Americans. Conversely, the BND's reputation has improved among US intelligence agencies, especially after it proved to be helpful in the Kunduz region of northern Afghanistan, where the German military, the Bundeswehr, is stationed. The Germans are now the third-largest procurer of information there. They don't just share their information with the NSA, but also with 13 other Western countries. Some time ago, the agency brought its technical equipment in Afghanistan up to the latest standard. Results have been especially good since then, and the NSA is pleased. In recent years, the BND has had the capability to listen in on phone conversations on a large scale in northern Afghanistan, aiding in the arrests of more than 20 high-ranking members of the Taliban -- including Mullah Rahman, once the shadow governor of Kunduz. Relaxed Interpretation of Privacy Laws According to an NSA document dated April 9, Germany, as part of the surveillance coalition in Afghanistan, has developed into the agency's "most prolific partner." The Germans are similarly successful in North Africa, where they also have special technical capabilities of interest to the NSA. The same applies in Iraq. But according to the documents, the German foreign intelligence agency went even further in its effort to please the Americans. "The BND has been working to influence the German government to relax interpretation of the privacy laws to provide greater opportunities of intelligence sharing," the NSA agents noted with satisfaction in January. Indeed, when Schindler took office, BND officials were divided over whether it was legal to pass on information to partner intelligence agencies that had been obtained in accordance with the German G-10 law. Schindler decided that it was, and the United States was pleased. The surveillance base in Bad Aibling, a well-known American listening post in southern Germany, also shows how close ties are between the BND and the NSA. It was a symbol of technical espionage during the Cold War. Most recently, the NSA referred to the listening post by the code name "garlic." Although the last parts of the base were officially handed over to the BND in May 2012, NSA officials still come and go. The NSA chief for Germany is still stationed at the local Mangfall Barracks. Some 18 Americans were still working at the surveillance station at the beginning of the year, 12 from the NSA and six working for private contractors. The office is expected to be scaled back during the course of the year, with the plans ultimately calling for only six NSA employees to remain at the base. According to the Snowden documents, their work will be to "cultivate new cooperation opportunities with Germany." To be sure, intensive cooperation in counterterrorism activities is part of the core mission of Germany's foreign intelligence agency. But did lawmakers know about the scope of cooperation with the Americans? And, if they did, since when? Making Things Worse So far, the BND has been able to count on support from the Chancellery for its new approach. But things seem to be changing. The surveillance scandal has the potential to shake public confidence in the German government and in Chancellor Merkel -- and could negatively effect her chances for re-election. The NSA's activities, of course, are not exactly driving the German people into the streets in droves. Nevertheless, revelations as to the extent of America's surveillance abroad are chipping away at Merkel's image as a reliable manager of the government. Some 69 percent of Germans are dissatisfied with her efforts to shed light on the issue, a number that has alarmed the Chancellery. Until the end of last week, Merkel had tried to distance herself from the subject, issuing only sparse statements. Instead of Merkel, Interior Minister Friedrich was expected to handle the delicate matter. But Friedrich only made things worse, returning largely empty-handed from his trip to Washington. Instead, he seemed extremely proud of the fact that he had been allowed to speak with US Vice President Joe Biden. To make matters worse, Friedrich had hardly returned to Germany before making the remark that "security" was a "Supergrundrecht," a new concept that implies that security trumps other civil rights. A minister charged with upholding the constitution who suddenly invented an interpretation of the German constitution that suits the NSA's purposes? At that moment, Merkel must have realized that she couldn't leave things entirely to her interior minister. Last Friday, shortly before leaving for her summer vacation, Merkel unveiled an eight-point plan intended to provide more data security. But most of her points felt more like placebos. How, for example, are European intelligence agencies to agree on common data privacy guidelines if British and French intelligence agents are already snickering over the Germans' obsession with data privacy? In a Bind Merkel is in a bind. On the one hand, she doesn't want to give the impression that she is doing nothing about the Americans' lust for information. On the other hand, this also brings the scandal closer to the chancellor. In the end, it will revolve around the question of how much the government knew about the Americans' surveillance activities. Last Friday, the BND insisted, once again, that it had "no knowledge of the name, scope and extent of the NSA 'Prism' project being discussed." But even if that's true, Prism was only a part of the NSA's surveillance system, and the new documents show that Germany was indeed extremely familiar with the agency's comprehensive ability to spy. They benefited from it, and they wanted more. But Merkel claims that she knew nothing about the Americans' surveillance software. "I became aware of programs like Prism through current news reports," she told the left-leaning weekly newspaper Die Zeit last week. According to Merkel's staff, when she uses such language, she is relying on statements made by the German intelligence chiefs. But what does that mean? Does the German government still have its intelligence agencies under control? Or have they become a kind of state-within-a-state? And who exactly keeps track of whether the agencies, in their zeal to enforce the "Supergrundrecht" of security, haven't already gone too far? The place where the activities of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies ought to be debated is the Parliamentary Control Panel in the German Bundestag. By law, the government is required to regularly and "comprehensively" inform the 11 members of the board, which meets in secret, about the work of the BND and the BfV, and explain "procedures with special importance." Oddly enough, the board has met four times since the beginning of the NSA scandal, and, four times, lawmakers have learned little about the global data surveillance programs. Instead, they were forced to listen to long-winded lectures by those responsible, the essence of which generally was: We really don't know anything. Spotlight on Merkel Over the years, the board has mutated into a stage for large egos and is no longer particularly secret. The problem is that many panel members don't have sufficient time or expertise to truly understand the kind of activities the intelligence agencies are engaged in. It is a perfect situation for Germany's spies: The less the public learns about their activities, the more they can go about their business undisturbed. "Monitoring of the agencies is purely theoretical," says Hans-Christian Ströbele, the Green Party representative on the board. "We don't learn about the truly explosive issues until they've been exposed by the media." This isn't surprising, given the vagueness of statutory provisions on the supervision of intelligence agencies. The agencies enjoy "complete freedom," says attorney Wolfgang Nekovi, who once spent many years on the control board for the Left Party. The CDU, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) have now agreed to establish an intelligence body to monitor the intelligence agencies. But in light of recent events, CDU domestic policy expert Clemens Binninger believes that a "major solution" is needed. He favors the idea of a parliamentary intelligence official, to be provided with his own powers and staff. There is also growing mistrust of the intelligence agencies within Merkel's government, a situation which led to a memorable scene in the federal press conference last Wednesday. According to a NATO document that had been circulated before the press conference, the German military was indeed aware of the existence of Prism. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert stated that it was the BND's assessment that the program in question had nothing to do with NSA spy software. But he made sure to keep a distance from the intelligence agency's assessment. Later, the Defense Ministry issued a statement of its own which directly contradicted the BND statement. It is an awkward situation for Merkel. In the midst of an election campaign, her government suddenly looks to be characterized by chaos. Of course, if it turns out that the intelligence agencies were deceiving her, she could clean house. BND chief Schindler would seem to be in the front of the firing line, with Ronald Pofalla, who, as Merkel's chief of staff, is tasked with monitoring the intelligence agencies, not far behind. But the Chancellery staff has no illusions. The SPD and the Greens will continue putting Merkel in the NSA spotlight no matter what happens. "The chancellor is more interested in defending the interests of the US intelligence agencies in Germany than German interests in the United States," says SPD Chairman Gabriel. It seems unlikely that the opposition will stand down any time between now and election day, on Sept. 22. BY RENÉ PFISTER, LAURA POITRAS, MARCEL ROSENBACH, JÖRG SCHINDLER and HOLGER STARK
Here's a pretty cool little seaside casualty I found the other day. You see these guys pretty often at the beaches here but this one was a bit bigger than most so I cleaned him up and did these sketches.I hadn't really looked too closely at crab skeletons before and it proved to be a real learning experience. It's cool seeing how these little mammals have adapted to life in the sea. As warm-blooded vertebrates they share a similar basic structure to us but with a few specialised modifications.The metacarpals and phalanges have simplified and fused into a pair of opposing pincer-like shapes and with their thick epidermal layer they function as highly effective claws.The wide scapula sits far down the ribcage and forms a strong foundation for anchoring the teres major.Probably the component most far removed from our own frame is the pelvic girdle which has evolved into a six-socketed form almost unrecognisable to ours.I painted up a skull study as well - what bizarre little craniums they have! The eye sockets are open with the zygomatic bone being wholly disconnected from the supraorbital foramen - I guess this is due to the stability offered by the hardened epidermis and to allow free movement of the eyestalks.What appears to be a nasal cavity is actually a food filtering system - the "nasal concha" is in reality a gill-like arrangement for catching too-large fragments in the feeding process. It continues down behind the maxilla.A remarkable free floating pre-maxilla carries the first battery of tiny teeth with the second, smaller set of mandibles hidden away below.So there you have it! That was a pretty interesting process for me, learning about these dudes. I find it fascinating how mammals can adapt and transform to live in any environment yet still retain their inherent vertebrate humanity.You can see a photo of the guy over here: [link]
THE SCENE in the parking lot of the Mayweather Boxing Club in Las Vegas has devolved into an extended documentary on the perils of celebrity. There's a betting slip on the loose worth $80,000, earned on the merits of the Miami Heat's first-half performance about two hours earlier on this Friday night, and the quest to find it has everything but a circus-music soundtrack. It's not about the money. Really, it's not. Floyd Mayweather Jr. bets a lot, both in frequency and amount, and this betting slip is not extraordinary in any way. Just the night before, he lost $50,000 on the first half of the Thunder-Lakers game before doubling down on his beloved Thunder and winning $100,000 in the second half. This is a man who later that night will put on a pair of pants he hadn't worn in a while and pull four grand out of a pocket the way you or I might find a five in the dryer. Trust me: Eighty grand won't change his life. Mayweather is standing next to his sleek four-door black Mercedes, one of the more sedate of his roughly two dozen cars, and is wondering out loud how many people he might have to fire over this debacle. A few leggy, extravagantly dressed women watch laconically, waiting to follow the champ to dinner. Curtis Jackson, publicly known as 50 Cent, sits in the passenger seat of the Mercedes, watching the events unfold with passing interest. Several members of Mayweather's loosely defined payroll are shuffling about in an unreserved panic, particularly those who were at one time in possession of the bag, the slip's last known residence. The bag is important. The bag -- or The Bag, more like -- is a small leather duffel home to Mayweather's walking-around cash and gambling slips. Everyone must know where The Bag is at all times, for it is not unusual for the spirit to strike Mayweather and cause him to ask, with no warning, "Where my bag at?" The chain of custody is stricter than most evidence rooms. The Bag is being scoured vigorously by Tom, one of many men who help Mayweather train by handing him his jump rope or tying his headgear or merely shouting compliments during a workout. He is at least the fourth person to riffle through The Bag, and he relays to his boss the obvious: no slip. The Mercedes trunk is popped, and a second bag is searched. This bag holds nothing more than 20,000 Mega Millions lottery tickets (prize: $656 million) bought by one of Mayweather's minions after he stood in line for more than two hours outside a convenience store in California. Imagine being the guy standing behind Mayweather's guy, there to buy maybe 10 tickets, waiting in line half the damned day only to watch the guy in front of you haul $20K in hundreds out of a bag. There are many Mayweather stories like this. It's easy to get sidetracked. But back to the scene at hand. Because right now -- with the trunk open and the car doors flung wide and a now-silent Mayweather choosing to direct search operations with nothing more than a glare -- is as good a time as any to ask a few important questions: What are we to make of Floyd Mayweather Jr.? What should we see when we see him? Is he to be denounced for his singular brand of narcissism, ego and greed, or praised for his clear-eyed ability to maximize his worth in the sports marketplace? Can you do both? The history of boxing is a history of broken dreams. Young men, mostly black and Hispanic, start with nothing and appreciate anything. They're told when, where and how much, and they never look closely at the money generated by their sweat and risk. They accept what's offered because they are beholden to those doing the offering. It's an enterprise fueled by paternalism: I was there for you when you had nothing. The most successful live well for a short period before ending up broke and befuddled, their money taken by unscrupulous managers and unchecked spending, their brains taken by the rigors of the sport. Their lives travel a road from subservience to dependence before they can identify either one. "I was in that position at one time," says Mayweather. "Not anymore. Now they" -- meaning the promoters who have long dominated the sport -- "don't like Floyd Mayweather to enlighten a fighter. I don't like it when they take a third from a fighter, then he has to pay his trainer 10%. After Uncle Sam, the man putting his body on the line gets less than 50 percent." MONEY IS IMPORTANT, its outward manifestations even more so. Along with gaudy possessions and unlimited subservience comes something far more vital: self-justification. It's wealth as affirmation. A case filled with more than $5 million in watches is not a mere collection; it is a statement. Mayweather grew up in a boxing family in Grand Rapids, Mich. His father, Floyd Sr., fought 35 pro fights, including one against Sugar Ray Leonard. His uncle and trainer, Roger Mayweather, was the family's first champion. Floyd Sr., known around boxing as Big Floyd, spent five years in prison for selling drugs, and he's had a soap opera relationship with his son after training him through much of his professional career. Mayweather's mother was a drug addict, since recovered. Asked to describe his childhood, he grows defiant. "My father was a drug dealer," he says. "We didn't have nothing." Echoes of Grand Rapids are in every six-figure bet, every exorbitant purchase, every angry defense of his place in boxing history. He's determined to shatter the paradigm of the ignorant, servile pugilist. His ability not only to understand but to capitalize on his value is unrivaled in the sport, an expansion of the models established by pioneers Sugar Ray Leonard and Oscar De La Hoya. In a sport that historically -- and, at times, criminally -- takes advantage of its performers, Mayweather uses the power that comes with being boxing's most valuable commodity to control the industry. It helps, of course, not only to be 42-0 and a five-weight-class world champion but to exhibit an unapologetic brazenness that incites allegiance and disgust in equal measure. Indifference, as any promoter will attest, is hell on sales. Mayweather, just chilling in one of the four all-white luxury cars he keeps in one of his garages. Chris McPherson for ESPN The Magazine "Love him or hate him, he's the bank vault," says Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather's adviser and CEO of Mayweather Promotions. "Love him or hate him, he's going to make the bank drop." He is a one-man conglomerate, with a net worth -- not counting cars, jewelry and houses -- estimated at $100 million. Unlike manager- and promoter-dependent fighters, Mayweather dictates his share of fight revenue and his opponent's. He controls the gate receipts by setting ticket prices at the MGM Grand; for his May 5 light middleweight title fight against Miguel Cotto, they range from $200 to $1,500. He negotiates directly with HBO to set the price for the pay-per-view broadcast. HBO is advertising the fight for a "suggested" retail price of $59.95. (The Victor Ortiz fight, for which Mayweather earned $40 million, generated 1.25 million buys despite being pricey, at $59.95 for standard definition and $69.95 in hi-def.) Mayweather resurrected the idea of renting movie theaters to show his fights live, and the Cotto fight is being aired in 440 theaters, most of which will charge about $20 per person. He helped HBO develop the idea for its 24/7 franchise, a documentary-style preview show that debuted for his 2007 fight with De La Hoya. The show is now a huge hit and standard fare for major fights. "He's transcended the sport to become the franchise," Ellerbe says. "The business model is 100 percent his. When you're telling a guy, 'I'm making this, you're making this, we're doing it this way' -- well, when all that is in your hands, you're the one in control." As Mayweather stands outside the Mercedes now, his jaw set hard against the anger in his eyes, he can be excused if he doesn't feel totally in control. It's a troubling time for the 35-year-old boxer. He has been unable, after repeated attempts, to reach an agreement to fight Manny Pacquiao, in what could be the most lucrative matchup in boxing history. Instead, he is roughly five weeks away from facing Cotto and eight weeks from beginning a 90-day jail sentence for domestic violence against Josie Harris, the mother of three of his four children. The specter of those 90 days hangs over every early-evening workout, every seven-mile run down the Strip at 10 p.m. How will it tarnish his legacy? If past is prologue, not much. Mayweather has been mixed up in several violent incidents dating to 2002, when he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery after a fight with two women at a Vegas nightclub. None of it has affected his earning power. In the boxing business, fans don't expect purity. And the economies of both Las Vegas and his sport need him desperately. Perhaps that's why he was able to postpone his jail time until after the Cotto fight. Control is no small concern. Mayweather's engine runs on it, along with equal parts confidence, machismo and flamboyance. During one of his recent workouts (he's known for his epic three-hour sessions), two long rows of folding metal chairs in the gym are filled. There are women in heels (stilts?) and painted-on clothes, children in shorts and tank tops, men who have somehow found their way into the inner circle. After a session on the mitts with his uncle Roger, the cheers reverberate from the margins of the ring. Floyd likes the gym hot, so the women are constantly fanning themselves or consciously not moving, anything to reduce the risk of having their makeup sweat down their necks. One of the women is Shantel Jackson, known as Miss Jackson. She is Floyd's longtime fiancée. She's wearing an engagement ring that has an 18-carat diamond with 10 one-carat diamonds dotting the shank. The main diamond is roughly the size of an unshelled walnut. She's not the only one who's flashing. There's the omnipresent 50 Cent, who says of his relationship with Floyd, "It works because neither of us needs anything from the other." For Floyd's 35th birthday, 50 -- or "Five," in Floydspeak -- designed and commissioned an open-wheel Formula One car with a spaceship-style cockpit that seats two. Fifty claims it's street legal; it's preposterously cool. The cost: roughly $500,000. Then there's the biggest outlier in the gym today: a seaplane pilot who runs a fishing resort on Canada's Andrew Lake, near the Northwest Territories. He winters in Vegas and spends most evenings sitting on the apron of one of the rings watching Floyd train. How he came to be here every day is unclear, even to him. A member of Mayweather's team confides conspiratorially: "All those people in the gym? Floyd takes care of almost every one of them in one way or another. He's generous to a lot of people." Their job descriptions, however, are whatever he needs them to be at the moment, in any moment. His security crew routinely receives calls at 2 or 3 a.m. to accompany the nocturnal Mayweather to a local athletic club for weights and basketball. On this day, his regular workout finished, the champ tells one of his helpers to beckon two women from his entourage into his locker room. As he showers, he calls for one of them, a tall, dark-haired woman named Jamie, to soap his back while he continues to carry on an animated conversation with five or six men in the room. Dressed for the club, she complies while making it clear she will not get into the shower. It's an uncomfortable moment, especially for Jamie, who goes about her work rather perfunctorily. To break the tension, 50 Cent summons his best Chris Rock. "Damn," he says. "The man needs a little help. You can't trust nobody nowadays. What if something bad happens?" Who should be fired? That thought runs nonstop through Mayweather's head as he watches the betting-slip seekers stumble around the parking lot outside the gym. Who? Not Dave, his main runner, because Dave is trustworthy and responsible. Floyd is kicking himself over the Dave thing, because none of this would have happened if he hadn't been a good boss and let Dave leave early for the weekend (early in Floyd's world: around 7 p.m.) to be with his family in Los Angeles. "I didn't want him driving late," Mayweather says. "See what happens?" The car idles with a throaty purr. The lot resembles an anthill in a tornado: Everybody's scrambling around trying to look busy, stopping occasionally to think ostentatiously, as if the spirit of the slip might divine itself onto their brains. Mayweather keeps repeating the information as he knows it. Possession of The Bag went from Dave to Kip to Vito to Five-Three, or some variation thereof. He repeats the names in greater and greater volume as his anger rises. He's got Dave on the car speaker while he talks to Five-Three, so named for the car number from his days as a driver for a New York City car service. Five-Three politely but forcefully tells Mayweather that he handed him the slip, along with his car keys, and that Mayweather put it in the pocket of one of the many sweatpants hanging in the locker room. Mayweather doesn't remember. He was busy at the time, talking about business, planning the rest of his night and occasionally walking out of the locker room to look at the Heat game on the television in the lobby to "check on my money." All he knows is he's wearing sweatpants and there's no betting slip in the pockets. In fact, that's all anybody needs to know. In his nightly workout, Mayweather does 10 minutes of neck work, lifting a 25-pound plate with his head. Leonard Ellerbe, the spotter in glasses, doubles as CEO of Mayweather's company. Chris McPherson for ESPN The Magazine As it becomes clear that the slip will not be found soon, Mayweather leaves the lot and drives toward the restaurant. A phalanx of cars follows. The mood in the car is somber. Mayweather turns to 50 Cent and says, "Five, I think somebody stole the motherf--ing ticket." He doesn't want to believe it, but he's left with no other choice. The money, nearly quadruple the U.S. median salary, is insignificant compared with the prospect of thievery. Thievery opens up possibilities no one wants to consider. Fifty, whose demeanor has not changed through the entire ordeal, turns his head slightly and says with languor, "I've seen stranger things." Mayweather's brain, always active, goes into hyperdrive. He recounts the bag's chain of custody one more time, from Dave to Kip to Vito to Five-Three, as if sheer repetition can solve the mystery. He sets up hypotheticals, saying, "If Five gives me a bag, I ain't giving that bag to nobody else without asking Five for permission first." He tells Tom, sitting directly behind him, to make a call and tell the three guys involved that they can't come back to the gym until the slip is found. "Okay, P," Tom says, using a nickname that refers to the Pretty Boy days, and one reserved only for those on the inside of the inside. Tom makes the call, delivering the news with all the emotion of a guy ordering a pizza. Mayweather says he's going to call the sportsbook and put a hold on the payout until the slip can be found, the same way someone might stop payment on a check. Fifty looks up from his phone and says: "Floyd, you don't make that call. That's not how it works. Have Dave call." Mayweather, agitated, agrees with 50 Cent but decides to let it simmer. "We'll wait and see," he says. CONQUEST BEGAT EPIPHANY. You don't just decide to make $40 million a fight. You don't just decide to be your own promoter and set ticket prices and pay-per-view prices; you have to put in the work in the ring. There are times when that ego comes in handy too. After defeating Zab Judah in 2006, a fight in which Uncle Roger earned a one-year suspension for entering the ring and scuffling with Judah and his father, Mayweather did something unique in boxing: He became a free agent. For a guy who'd already built a 10-year résumé as an undefeated pro who put fans in the seats, this represented going all-in. He divorced himself from promoter Bob Arum's Top Rank by paying out a $750,000 buyout clause. Arum had offered Mayweather an $8 million guarantee to fight Antonio Margarito. The fighter and the promoter disagreed wildly on Mayweather's worth, and Arum publicly scoffed at Floyd's contention that a fight with De La Hoya could earn him $20 million. On May 5, 2007, in his second fight as his own promoter working in conjunction with Golden Boy Promotions, De La Hoya's company, Mayweather beat De La Hoya, the WBC light middleweight champ, in a fight that generated a record 2.15 million pay-per-view buys. It produced more than $200 million -- including a record $19 million live gate and $120 million on PPV -- and made Mayweather realize he could take economic control. He says he went from making $5 million to $7 million per fight to at least five times that in each of his five fights since splitting with Arum. "Floyd's nickname before that fight was Pretty Boy Floyd," says Richard Schaefer, president of Golden Boy. "Afterward, he became Money Mayweather. That's no coincidence." Behind the scenes, Mayweather took the necessary steps to maximize his financial power. He made an adviser out of music-promoter-turned-boxing-impresario Al Haymon, a famously reclusive, Harvard-educated marketing genius. Ellerbe, who runs Mayweather Promotions, takes the fighter's ideas to the negotiating table, with Haymon's guidance always a phone call away (they speak 12 times a day). Ellerbe is also the guy who spends seven hours in a Mayweather-Cotto marketing meeting in LA while Floyd trains. It costs roughly $10 million in fees -- site rental, infrastructure, promotions -- to put on a big fight. Mayweather Promotions essentially fronts the money, paying Golden Boy on a per-fight basis to handle logistics. As Ellerbe describes the relationship, "If you run a construction company, you have to hire someone to pour the cement." Says Mayweather: "I feel that sometimes my name is spoken in a bad way, but never in business. In business, it's spoken in a good way. I've always done good business." HE HAS MADE $30 million to $40 million for each of his past four fights. His last three have produced more than a million PPV buys apiece, another record. He partnered with 50 Cent on a movie production company and has his own record label. He says he eschews endorsement deals despite many offers -- "I don't want to sell myself short for a company," he says. The formula is obvious: Who makes money on Mayweather? Mayweather. "In everything he does, Floyd's betting on himself." Ellerbe says. "He puts up the money, bets on himself and hits a home run every time." And there's nothing Mayweather loves more than a sure thing. Which brings us, inevitably, to Pacquiao, the one fight the world wants to see. Mayweather contends he doesn't need Pacquiao as much as the Filipino fighter needs him. This, more than fear, seems to be the root of the disagreement. Why? Because Mayweather took control of his career, and he believes Pacquiao is working under the old paradigm, generating money but not realizing it. According to Mayweather, the $40 million guarantee he offered Pacquiao far exceeds whatever he's made in any one fight; how Pacquiao's camp splits it up is not Mayweather's business. Mayweather has been known to travel with jewelry worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Chris McPherson for ESPN The Magazine "The money that Floyd offered him, Floyd makes in every fight," Ellerbe says. "Factual." Michael Koncz, Pacquiao's adviser, met with Mayweather several times to try to hammer out a deal. "I was pleasantly surprised," Koncz says. "Floyd was very professional, very cordial and very knowledgeable. He's a good businessman, and there was not one curse word between us." Still, he says it would be stupid for his fighter, who is 54-3-2 in his career and an eight-weight-class champion, to accept $40 million on a fight that will reach $150 million to $250 million in revenue. Take away roughly $10 million in fees and a 50-50 split means at least $70 million each. "Why would Manny accept $40 million?" Koncz asks. Because, Mayweather says, Pacquiao can't get that much anywhere else. But Koncz says Mayweather's math is faulty when he says the two men earn at far different rates. "Floyd's not making more than us," he says. "People have convinced him that Manny's making much less, and that's not true." The sniping, going on two years, is nasty and often sophomoric. Pacquiao is proceeding with a defamation suit against Mayweather in response to his rival's suggestions that Pacquiao's success is due, in some part, to performance-enhancing drugs. It's the ultimate test of Mayweather's boxing ability--and his business savvy. Regardless of what Mayweather thinks of Pacquiao's tactics, it's clear his adversary is not the traditional subservient fighter. Pacquiao isn't taking what's offered with a smile and a thank-you. He and his people have watched Mayweather. They now understand a boxer's worth too. During one of their talks, according to Koncz, Mayweather dropped his guard. "What if I lose?" Koncz says Mayweather asked. Taken aback, Koncz answered: "Well, what if you do? Then we'll have a rematch and make even more money." THE MERCEDES is stopped at a light across from the Wynn Country Club when Tom's cell rings. It's the first phone activity in the car since Tom, on Floyd's order, cut off gym access to the three workers. In those few minutes, Floyd's demeanor has gone from vocal agitation to quiet anger. The call returns everything to high alert. "They found the ticket, P," Tom calls toward the front. "Where was it?" Floyd asks. Tom hesitates. He closes the phone and places it in his lap. Should he say it? A moment passes. Floyd asks again. Oh, what the hell. "It was in the sweatpants, P." Tom looks absently out the window. Fifty sneaks a glance to his left, a little smile on his face. The mood shifts. What now? The threat of a rat, or rats, has lifted. Three men are exonerated by a search of a pants pocket. At least one part of the champ's life has retained its order. Control is restored. A Hayes song drifts through the cabin of the Benz. What now? They await his reaction. Mayweather gives a satisfied nod but otherwise doesn't respond. Their restaurant of choice tonight is a Japanese place the fighter frequents with his crew. Inside, the mood lightens. Floyd's buoyancy returns. He addresses the group by telling his first-time visitors that he drops 10 grand a week in the place. "You order whatever you want," he says. "Everything's on me." As the waitstaff scrambles to seat the party of 18 around two teppanyaki tables, Mayweather discovers that his favorite chef is not working. This won't do. He calls the waiter over and speaks to him briefly. The waiter nods vigorously and pulls out his phone. Within 15 minutes, Mayweather's favorite chef is standing before him, smiling and bowing as he sharpens his knives and heats up the grill. The champ, it's safe to assume, is a good tipper. Before the food is served, though, Five-Three and Vito arrive at the restaurant. They find their boss, leave a bag -- not The Bag, but a bag nonetheless -- next to his chair and depart quickly. Mayweather opens the bag and places the contents on the table: $80,000 in hundreds. Mayweather smiles and nods. The slip was found, the money delivered. His friends surround him, honored to be in his presence. Kip the bodyguard patrols the parking lot outside the restaurant. The stack sits in front of Mayweather, another victory, its precision and order glorious in its symbolism. He looks down at it, pleased. Love him or hate him, he is the champ, still undefeated. Follow The Mag on Twitter (@ESPNmag) and like us on Facebook.
You must sign in or register to continue reading content. EVERETT — Two weeks after Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson said he was running for re-election, he surprised the city with an about-face. “While I had considered running once again for this post, upon reflection and conversations with my family I have decided to step down at the end of my term,” Stephanson said in a press release Wednesday. “I don’t make this decision lightly, but it is the right decision.” When he leaves office at the end of the year, he’ll go out as the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history. He’ll leave behind both a list of accomplishments as well as unfinished business. “I love serving as Mayor of Everett, my hometown and a community that has been so gracious to myself and my family,” he said. “We’ve accomplished a lot together over the past 14 years, from revitalization of our local economy to investing in our neighborhoods and serving the vulnerable with compassion.” He was not available for further comment Wednesday, city spokeswoman Meghan Pembroke said. Most people in and around the city’s political landscape, including the city council members, only got wind of Stephanson’s withdrawal Tuesday. “After attending the State of the City address, it felt like the mayor was full speed ahead on another four years,” Councilman Jeff Moore said. Stephanson’s address came just after he announced his re-election Jan. 16, setting up a likely showdown with Snohomish County Councilmember Brian Sullivan, who announced his candidacy a week later. Stephanson also used the address to announce the city would sue Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, for its alleged negligence in creating an epidemic of opioid addiction. That is just one of many issues that Stephanson’s successor will inherit. In the past two years, Stephanson has led the city in a number of initiatives, including a housing project for chronically homeless people and programs designed to reduce the impact of homelessness, addiction and mental illness on the city’s streets. Stephanson helped usher Sound Transit’s ST3 package onto the ballot last November, and pushed to ensure the future light rail alignment would serve Boeing and Paine Field. “I’ve supported Ray because he has been a great supporter of ST3 and also has been very supportive with the housing and community issues we and everyone else in the state is dealing with,” said Paul Roberts, who has served on the Everett City Council for 10 years as well as the Sound Transit board of directors. Under Stephanson’s direction, the city established the Washington State University North Puget Sound University Center at Everett and supported expanded higher educational opportunities and workforce development at WSU and Everett Community College. He was a cheerleader in Olympia for WSU’s new Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, which plans to offer courses at its branch campuses, including Everett. “WSU would not have a campus in Everett or a medical school without Mayor Stephanson’s tireless leadership and steadfast support,” WSU-NPS Chancellor Paul Pitre said in a statement. “He is an incredible champion for the people of Everett and this region, and he will be dearly missed at City Hall.” Democratic state Rep. Mike Sells, of Everett, lauded Stephanson for his tireless efforts to bring Washington State University to the city. “The stick-to-it-ness that he had really helped push that through,” Sells said. “He didn’t fade.” Stephanson avoided cuts in service and mass layoffs among the city staff during the recession even as Kimberly-Clark shut down its waterfront mill and Boeing began reducing its presence in Washington state. He also pushed for an aerospace and advanced manufacturing center in southwest Everett, ensuring that Boeing would continue to make major investments in the region, and advocated for commercial air service at Paine Field. “Mayor Stephanson stood tall in the face of enormous pressure to ensure the 777X will be built in Everett (and that) created jobs and opportunities for thousands of families for many years to come,” Ray Conner, the Boeing Co. vice chairman, said in a written statement. Even Naval Station Everett, the county’s second-largest employer, hasn’t always been a sure thing. Shortly after Stephanson first took office in 2003 he had to work to ensure the base wouldn’t fall victim to the last round of base closures across the nation. “The mayor has provided strong leadership for the city for the past 14 years, including navigating the city through the worst economy since the depression,” city Councilman Scott Murphy said. “I understand his desire to spend more time with his family and enjoy his retirement.” The city’s list of unfinished business includes managing residential and commercial development in the downtown core, on the waterfront and the riverfront. The proposed homeless housing project, being developed in tandem with Catholic Housing Services, is only now in the permitting phase, and many people in nearby neighborhoods have been vocally opposed. No one yet has publicly said they are running for mayor except Sullivan, who has clashed with Stephanson on several issues over the years, most notably commercial air service. The official filing period for the election is in May. “This is a big decision that needs to be made, and it’s important because we need to make sure we have a candidate that will capitalize on all the good things that are going on, because they will set the tone for the next 50 years,” said Greg Tisdel, an Everett businessman who ran unsuccessfully for Sullivan’s county council seat two years ago. Former Snohomish County Executive Bob Drewel, who now works for WSU, said that whoever becomes mayor next will have to understand the city’s role in the regional economy and be active on many fronts, just like Stephanson. “He always has something moving, he’s always looking toward the future,” he said. “Because of the environment and foundation that Ray has left, I think you’re going to see someone exciting, new, charged for the future, perhaps younger come forward,” Drewel said. Herald Writer Jerry Cornfield contributed to this story. Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
American hard rock band Aerosmith announced that it has cancelled its 'The Global Warming World Tour' concert, which was scheduled on May 11 in Jakarta, 'due to safety reasons'. Promoter Ismaya Live announced on its official website, saying that in a letter sent by the Aerosmith management Mitch Schneider Organization (MSO), the band explained: 'Unfortunately, we have to cancel our upcoming show in Jakarta. We want to apologize to all our fans who were expecting to see us and hope that one day we can make it up to them.' In the concert, slated to take place at JIExpo in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, the legendary band was expected to perform their title hits including 'Jaded', 'Janice got a gun' and 'I don't wanna miss a thing'. The promoter claimed that about 85 percent of 15,000 tickets had been sold. 'Due to the cancellation, we will provide a full refund to the customers starting on May 11,' it said. For further information about the refund process, customers can contact through an email address [email protected] or twitter account @askaerosmithjkt or hotline 021-92092039. ' JP
As of the writing of this article, Bitcoins on Mt Gox are trading for USD $361. At the same time, on the Bitstamp exchange, Bitcoins are trading for USD $655, nearly double the price. The only sensible reading of this is that Mt Gox is crashing and burning. Now, that sounds more dire than it actually is. In the corporate era we have seen entities emerge, collapse, an re-emerge under the same, modified, or completely different names. Mt Gox is dying and could rally or re-emerge, but it is likely at this point that it will collapse. This article will examine some of the key contributing factors and the timeline. Because the news is changing constantly and new information is emerging, this story will be ongoing and the article will be a working document, being updated accordingly. This is not the ‘truth’ or ‘secret’ of Bitcoin but rather my individual analysis – do with it what you will. In November, Bitcoin broke $250 on the Mt Gox exchange. Bitstamp was never far behind, and BTC-E had a similar trajectory. By December, Bitcoin had broken $1000 on all of these, and many more exchanges. What is remarkable about this is that a casual observation that one might (mistakenly) make is that the success of one exchange was therefore tied to the other and that these other exchanges rose because they were tied to Mt Gox’s success. This is not the case and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the De-centralized nature of Bitcoin and the free market of exchanges that has quickly emerged. These exchanges are in competition with one another and it is natural that the older exchange (Mt. Gox) has enjoyed a level of seniority and seniority-based prestige, but it is an exchange that is not without its detractors. Bitcoin users, being themselves a not exclusively libertarian but perhaps fairly exclusively anti-authoritarian and anti-authority individualists, took issue with the way Mt. Gox was run, this is evident from a casual glance at the r/Bitcoin page in the Reddit community, or a quick look at the BitCoinTalk forums. Bitcoin does have a large-if-not-majority base of libertarian/free market ideologues as users, and therefore it has been remarkable the rate at which start-ups and free-market alternatives have emerged from within the Bitcoin environment. Personally, I use Bitstamp. It is pretty reliable, and is at this point rallying while Mt Gox falls. The beauty of the free market in Bitcoin exchanges that is emerging, however, is that it makes it so that, by not keeping any of my money tied up in exchanges (which you shouldn’t really do anyway) you can simply stop using a failing exchange. This is what is happening with Mt. Gox, this is what will continue to happen with Mt. Gox, and this is what could happen to Bitstamp if it engages in similar practices or is victim to the same ultimate central point of all things free market, the freedom and encouragement of consumer pro-activity and voting with your feet. Many Bitcoin users on the internet appear to despise Mt. Gox, showing the already blatant fact that exchanges are in competition with one another. Directly. Bitstamp and other exchanges are so far theoretically doing well from the collapse of Mt. Gox, because the fall of Mt. Gox’s prices and the resilience of Bitstamp and other exchange prices. The inference that can arguably be made is that the selling of Bitcoins by Mt. Gox holders withdrawing their funds isn’t taking place on Mt. Gox’s own site anymore, since withdrawals on Mt. Gox can be a lengthy process, a large part of its recent failure. It is more likely therefore, that money finally withdrawn from Mt. Gox (who staved off withdrawals by making it sometimes take up to a month for users to withdraw) is being sold on other exchanges, such as Bitstamp, BTC-E, Coinbase, LocalBitcoins and other sites. These other exchanges have all, more or less, shown their independence from Mt. Gox through their resilience in the face of the biggest crash Mt. Gox has ever seen. Historically, these other exchanges had been selling for a lower fiat value than Mt. Gox was trading its Bitcoins for. In the beginning to some, this implied dominance or value, but to many it belied the old whiffs of inflation that Bitcoin was created to avoid. Surely enough, it has come out over time that Mt. Gox engages in quite questionable practices insofar as its relation to the individual user, such as their non-purchase of Bitcoins when they show you that you have purchased Bitcoins from them. It’s messed up in my opinion, it’s a large part of why I’ve never touched Mt. Gox, and frankly it reeks of Fractional Reserve Banking to me. The clincher for all of this is that while it would have been typical over the past few months to see Mt. Gox at perhaps $1100 while bitstamp and other exchanges would be trading at around $1000 or ~100 lower (not accurate), this is now not only flipped on its head, but drastically different than any environment we’ve seen so far in Bitcoin. The growth of these new exchanges has been staggered behind Mt. Gox because of it’s seniority, not its superiority. This is what is clear and evident from the market now, with $390 being the current price of a Bitcoin on Mt. Gox and $657, nearly double that figure, being the average trading price on Bitstamp and in the general ballpark of other exchanges. In the current cryptocurrency climate, those markets and exchanges which are most liquid will profit and succeed, and this is what the progress so far suggests as a case study. Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are truly groundbreaking for a myriad of reasons, one of which is their capacity for global Decentralization. Markets such as Kraken have also survived, and barring government crackdown on cryptocurrency the climate is still such that we are likely to be seeing new exchanges emerge, a fact which makes the failure of one old exchange a fairly trite and irrelevant bit of news for many, due to its self-evidence in their eyes of the failure as being justified based on the poor practices they employed as an exchange. While this article is by no means a gift to the good people at the Mt. Gox exchange and is often extremely critical, it is worth noting that they are in my mind crucial and vital in Bitcoin market history, if not in the current or future market climate, their rise was pinned to the rise of Bitcoin, this is why as they now fail other exchanges continue to succeed. And the many programmers and web developers and designers who worked on their exchange will go on to work in other markets and on other exchanges and on different products and will likely still be able to, in my mind, succeed in the overall Bitcoin economy, albeit perhaps not while associated with Mt. Gox. Mt. Gox is in my mind a massive case study which is available within the global Bitcoin economy and for a large part of the beginning of Bitcoin, Mt. Gox was a major player. This appears to be over or ending now, and the markets that remain will be hardened by the collapse of a titan. Bitcoin exists, in my somewhat ideological opinion, to weed out those economic fallacies which our lawmakers and politicians and bankers propose to us on a daily basis. Bitcoin is going mainstream. It isn’t there, but it is firmly steered in that direction and the next wave of adoption VIDEO CLIPS Bloomberg Video
As Stanislaw Burzynski heads to court again to answer charges made by the Texas Medical Board on behalf of a variety of patients, he is doubtlessly preparing by getting the testimony of current and former patients. In anticipation of this pony’s one trick, we are telling the stories of patients who have testified on Burzynski’s behalf over the course of his long, dubious career and see where they are now. This one is notable because not only was the patient a State Senator, but he also reported that a probable sign of getting worse was a sign of getting better. Oh, and he testified on Burzynski’s behalf in front of Congress. In the last week of the 1996 Georgia state senate race, incumbent from Macon Ed G. tried to speak on the phone, but couldn’t. Also, printed letters looked scrambled. While he initially dismissed it as stress related to his campaign, a friend who was a physician sent him to the doctor the next day. An MRI on Nov. 14th revealed not the small stroke they expected, but a brain tumor lodged in the front of his brain. The decisions that he made in the days following the diagnosis reflect his approach to his treatment: I went to three of the best neurosurgeons in Atlanta and they seemed to contradict themselves in what the best options for treatment were for me. The last doctor was one of the best neurosurgeons at Emory University in Atlanta. This doctor suggested chemotherapy and radiation and said this might control the growth of the tumor for a while but eventually it would come back and be a lot worse and at that time we would have to see what options were available. Obviously this was not a very good option in my opinion. I decided against chemotherapy and radiation because of the toxic side affects and the increase chance of other cancers they themselves caused. A person that takes chemo and radiation is 25 times more likely to have another form of cancer than the average person. I talked it over with my wife and we decided to look at an alternative type of treatment. I looked and studied the options for several weeks and decided that Dr. Burzynski had the cure for brain tumors. This, of course, is the Nirvana fallacy. Chemotherapy and radiation, while not perfect and while they carry real consequences, might actually have been the best course of action. And you reject the best advice of the best neurosurgeons at your own peril. In mid-December, he went to the Burzynski Clinic, and he reports: three weeks later 50% of the tumor was gone. After five months the cancerous part of the tumor was completely gone. I have to remain on the IV part of the treatment until the end of this year and then will take the antineoplastons for several years by capsule. Of course, he was sold on the treatment entirely at this point. Adding to his commitment was a $14,000 start-up fee and $5,000 for the first treatment, according to the Macon Telegraph, which broke the news of the state senator’s decision to undergo antineoplaston treatment on January 10th, 1997. This announcement seems not to have met any skepticism whatsoever, which is mildly surprising given that at the time Burzynski’s extensive legal troubles were at their height. The Senator’s state-run insurance was not going to cover the treatment, and so a number of public officials banded together to raise money for their unfortunate colleague’s doctor. Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard challenged people to raise funds for the treatment, and by the time the article ran, the church accepting the donations had received $35,000. The monthly treatment would cost an additional $9,000 a month, the church official interviewed reported: “He’s not sure how many months he’ll have to be in treatment. That will be decided as he goes along.” The same representative reported that the Senator had had a brain scan the previous week: “It showed that the tumor had not increased in size at all, so the treatment has stopped the growth,” Pardue said. “He said to us it was moderately growing.” So (besides it growing and not growing at the same time), even if the tumor had stopped growing, it would not mean that the treatment was having any effect, because of a feature of solid tumors known as Gompertzian growth or “day 2 of your introductory oncology class.” We also hear that the Senator is flying out to Texas every month for treatment. This is interesting because at this time it seems that the Clinic is obeying the rules that federal prosecutors were trying to enforce. The Senator will participate in the upcoming 40-day legislative session but he will be carrying a “fanny pack” that has his infusion pump. Four days later, the Telegraph reports that the 44-year old Senator has returned from his most recent trip to Texas, and that his sons help him prepare his bags of ANP. He reports: “I can’t sleep at night sometimes because of the medicine. Sometimes I have to take naps.” What this public official can’t say in polite company is that the quality of sleep of patients on antineoplaston is heavily degraded because the high sodium load means that the patient has an unquenchable thirst, and he is constantly at the toilet. At the same time, he reports: “My condition is improving, and the cancer is reducing.” As the Macon Telegraph reported the next day, the Senator thanked his colleagues in the Senate for their support. Due to their efforts, $45,000 had been raised for the expected $100,000 treatment, projected to last for a year. The paper reported that that he told his colleagues “that his tumor, located in the right front area of his brain has already been reduced by 30 percent. He said he will return to Texas on Feb. 20 for another treatment and is hoping that doctors will find his tumor gone.” We get an update from the Macon Telegraph on the 12th of March about the Senator’s progress: “Ninety-two percent of the worse part of the tumor is gone,” he said. “I think God is going to heal this thing in his timing. […] Burzynski is predicting that the ‘worst part of the tumor’ will be gone in a month, [the Senator] said. The treatment will run another eight months[.] It’s a strange qualification. 92% of the worst part? How does that relate to tumor size? Nonetheless, the Senator is now fully behind Burzynski, as you might expect. The same day, the paper would report, he presented a bill to the Senate that would allow patients to take “experimental treatment” without facing legal repercussions, though the article mentions that doctors could already prescribe experimental treatments to patients. The Senator says it will protect doctors, but the Medical Association of Georgia opposes it: “This is misguided public policy,” said David Cook, director of governmental relations for the Medical Association of Georgia. “In the bill, a doctor could tap dance around your bed and that could be the cure for cancer.” At least the tap dancing doctor could be entertaining and someone would be getting some exercise. ANP doesn’t show even those benefits. The bill passed the Senate 74-2. It passed in the House 146-19, the Telegraph reported on the 26th of March. It was rushed through by the urgency of the Senator’s situation. By June 26th, Burzynski has already exacted all of the money raised by the Senator, and another fundraiser is in the works, this time to raise $100,000. One of the guests at the fundraiser is future Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. Half way through the article, the Senator reports something horrible: [The Senator] said the treatments have shrunk the tumor to the point that brain scans now pick up a ‘2-inch circle of fluid or something. It’s not an additional mass,’ he said. ‘It’s actually eaten through the brain. And there it is. Another patient reporting that a cyst in a tumor is a sign of improvement, not a sign that the tumor has outgrown its blood supply and that the ANP has not arrested its growth one jot. Patients have repeated this horrible, unconscionable, misleading prognosis for what is ischemic necrosis for decades. Why? I bet it has something to do with the 100,000 that the future governor is raising. At this time, it seems that the Senator will be on treatment for up to two years, and that he has another 8 months at least hooked up to the IV pump. He here confirms that he is experiencing the most noticeable side effect of treatment: “The only thing that I have is a tremendous amount of fluid going going through my body. It just wears you out.” The fundraiser nets only $25,000 for the Senator. “It just means we’ll have to have another one,” he says in the July 8th edition of the Telegraph. In November, the poor guy is asking for another $25,000. The paper reports that: “[…] recent tests show his brain tumor is completely gone, but he must continue is treatment for several more months ‘just to make sure.’ He now needs $25,000 to pay for the intravenous and oral medications.” This seems difficult to believe, especially given what’s coming. In September, the Senator is one of the delegation who travel to Washington to appear before Congress on behalf of the man who is bleeding him, his family, his church, and his colleagues dry. In his testimony in front of the Government Oversight and Reform Committee, the Senator says: After learning of alternative treatments and the problems they were having with the FDA, this past January during the Georgia General Assembly I introduced and was successful in getting passed an Access to Medical Treatment Act. The citizens of Georgia believe that patients ought to have the access to the treatment of their choice when their lives are threatened. Because I am a State Senator my name has been in many stories nationwide associated with Dr. Burzynski. This has led many potential patients to call and ask me about the treatment and for help getting into a protocol. The most disheartening thing about the whole ordeal with the FDA is that while the FDA is allowing the antineoplastons to go through clinical trials to test their efficacy, they are making patients take treatments they do not want to take before they can become a part of a clinical trial. One reason we choose Dr. Burzynski is that his medicine is nontoxic. For the FDA to make a patient take radiation before they can become part of a clinical trial for antineoplastons is unreal. The FDA will not allow patients that don’t fit the protocols to take the antineoplastons without a fight. One gentleman from Texas had high blood pressure and because the medicine is a sodium based medicine taking the normal dose the way the protocol requires would have caused him more problems. This gentleman needed a special treatment unique to him. It took six weeks of fighting with the FDA and getting his Congressman involved before he could take the treatment. When the FDA was created it was with good intent. The citizens of this country needed help with determining whether drugs were safe or not. But if I allowed my two boys to grow up without supervision they would become something different than they are now. They would be arrogant, belligerent, undisciplined and uncaring much like the FDA has become. I believe it is time that Congress steps in and brings some discipline to this department and restore some integrity. Of course, a protocol is called a protocol for a reason, so that you can get reliable data by comparing like cases. A patient who has high blood pressure (and presumably a brain tumor) should probably not be on one of the sodium bombs that Burzynski’s Clinic administers. On 20 August of the following year, the Senator decides to not run for another term in office, as reported in the Atlanta Journal Constitution: State Sen. Ed [G], Republican from Macon, has changed his mind about running for re-election. [Senator G] was diagnosed with a brain tumor two years ago, and has withdrawn from the race for health reasons. [Senator G] had no opposition in last month’s primary. The state Republican Party’s executive committee has nominated Susan Cable, a Macon community activist and former Bibb County school board member, to run in his place for the 27th District seat. The Democratic nominee in the race is Floyd Buford, a Macon attorney. [Senator G] said he plans to serve out the rest of his term. However, he said the rigors of campaigning, combined with the medication he’s taking will prevent him from seeking re-election. “I probably wouldn’t be able to do it — not as well as I should,” he told the Macon Telegraph. Since his diagnosis, [Senator G] has been traveling to Texas for alternative therapy that he said has resulted in significant improvement in his condition. Yet he’s too sick to continue. What happened to the “disappeared tumor”? The Senator died on Nov 8, 1999 according to the AP, “of brain cancer.” He was 46-years old. If the Senator was in a clinical trial, it remains unpublished to this day. For reliable information about clinical trials, visit to clinicaltrials.gov. Please contribute to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, which cares for sick children even if they can’t pay. Unlike Burzynski.
Craft Brew Alliance lobbies for Omission gluten free beer 14 Gallery: Craft Brew Alliance lobbies for Omission gluten free beer Widmer Bros. brewmaster Joe Casey spent five years testing beer recipes his wife and his boss, both gluten-intolerant, could safely drink. And that he could stand to taste. Soured on sorghum, a frequent substitute for barley, Casey settled on a newer approach. He opted to brew with barley, preserving a traditional beer flavor, and then remove its gluten down the line. After a number of test batches, Casey sent jugs of the beer home to his wife, Sara, and to Terry Michaelson, chief executive of Widmer's parent company, "I'm still married, and I still have my job," jokes Casey. Now the trick is to convince federal regulators and gluten-sensitive consumers. The Obama administration is on the verge of issuing new labeling rules for gluten-free foods, as sales expand across the food and beverage industries like over-fermented ale. CRAFT BREW ALLIANCE INC. Headquarters: North Portland Brands: Widmer Bros., Redhook, Kona and Omission History: Kurt and Rob Widmer founded Widmer Bros. Brewing in 1984. It formed a joint venture with Woodinville, Wash.-based Redhook Ale Brewery in 2004, and the two merged in 2008 to form Craft Brewers Alliance. It bought Hawaii's Kona Brewing Co. in 2010. Ownership: Publicly traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market (Ticker: ). Anheuser-Busch Cos. owns 32 percent of the stock; the Widmer brothers own 14 percent; Columbia Sportswear Co. Chief Executive Tim Boyle owns 2.5 percent. Net sales: $169.3 million in 2012, up from $149.2 in 2011 Employees: 740 companywide, including about 225 in Oregon. The timing is good for , which could use a new hit product. Portland's largest brewery is grappling with for its biggest moneymaker, , and is stirring the political tanks to make sure it will be able to label Casey's new brew, the cleverly named Omission beer, "gluten-free." Right now, it can't. Last year, federal alcohol regulators barred Craft Brew from calling Omission "gluten-free" outside Oregon, though quixotically it can label the beer that way in Denmark, Canada and within the borders of its home state. Casey and Michaelson traveled to Washington, D.C., in April to lobby the White House's Office of Management and Budget, where the FDA's rule awaits approval. They persuaded Sen. Ron Wyden to contact the OMB to push Omission's case. But scientists say it's not clear the beer is safe for gluten-intolerant consumers, particularly those with , an autoimmune disorder that prevents the small intestine from absorbing nutrients. Craft Brew adds a protein-eating enzyme that attacks the gluten from barley as the beer ferments in stainless steel tanks. While other gluten-free beers use a base of sorghum, buckwheat or even chestnuts to eliminate barley altogether, Omission's method produces a more traditional-tasting beer. It also, scientists say, leaves tiny gluten fragments behind. and , many gluten-intolerant drinkers have thanked Craft Brew for the beer. But some also have reported having unpleasant reactions. "We've never had a comment like that," said James Neumeister, owner of , a Portland microbrewery that make only gluten-free beer. "If we did, I'd have to be committed. I'd be a wreck." Health vs. profits Craft Brew's full-court press leaves federal regulators balancing the health of a small number of consumers against the moneymaking interests of a politically connected business. In this case, the health of 3 million people with hang celiac in the balance with the nation's ninth-largest brewer fighting to maintain $160 million in annual sales in an increasingly competitive beer market. Omission is sold with a "gluten-free"ÂÂ label (left) in Oregon and internationally. But in the rest of the nation, U.S. regulators require Omission to be labeled as "ÂÂcrafted to remove gluten."ÂÂ The company lobbied the White House to change that, saying Omission otherwise meets proposed labeling standards for gluten-free food. "It involves the potentially competing interests of business development versus public safety, and the role that the U.S. government should play in striking a balance between the two," said Peter Olins, a Colorado-based biochemist and co-founder of the website . "If it acts true to form, the FDA will probably end up being unpopular with both interest groups." Craft Brew launched Omission in Oregon , and its success has surprised the company, Michaelson said. Lorin Gelfand, the brand's marketing manager, said Omission's pale ale and lager rank No. 2 and 3 among gluten-free beers, behind Anheuser-Busch Inc.'s sorghum-based Redbridge. Omission accounted for nearly 2 percent of its overall volume and 10 percent of its growth in the first quarter that ended March 31, . Earlier this year, Craft Brew released its third Omission beer -- an IPA -- in Oregon. Lots of wheat beers That's important because the company's biggest seller -- Widmer's Hefeweizen -- is being crowded out by other wheat beers from heavyweights . and . Sales of the German-style wheat beer fell 11 percent in the first quarter of 2013, mostly along the West Coast, where 80 percent of Craft Brew's market lies. That decline is a big reason why the brewer last quarter. Craft Brew also owns and , whose sales are growing. But multinational breweries continue to push into its space, while microbreweries and brewpubs opened at a rate of roughly one a day last year across the country. Though Casey and Michaelson have personal stakes in Omission's success, Craft Brew hopes to capitalize on the gluten-free diet craze gripping even people without celiac. The $4.2 billion gluten-free food market has grown at an annual clip of 28 percent, according to . Nearly two in 10 adults buys or eats food tagged "gluten-free," sometimes just to support gluten-intolerant friends or family, the market research firm says. "Omission allows us to get to more potential beer drinkers," Michaelson said. "The sales potential is much beyond just celiacs." Thus the importance of the "gluten-free" label. Last spring the Oregon Liquor Control Commission staff decided Craft Brew could call Omission "gluten-free" without violating its rule against advertising alcoholic drinks with false or misleading information, agency spokeswoman Christie Scott said. The FDA standard But the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which regulates interstate beer sales, the company instead has to package the beer as processed "to remove gluten." It also must carry a warning that no tests exist to verify gluten in beer, at least until the FDA rules on the issue. The bureau that affixing a "gluten-free" label to a product made with barley, rye, wheat or crossbreeds would be "inherently misleading." Since 2007, the FDA has considered allowing foods with less than 20 parts per million of gluten to be labeled "gluten-free." But its final proposal, now under tightlipped review by the OMB, would bar such labeling on foods where no valid test exists to determine safety. Early last month Wyden and four other Northwest congressmen sent OMB Director Sylvia Burwell saying the FDA was being "unnecessarily rigid." They offered an example for how the rule could be changed to include foods processed to remove gluten. A sign between Craft Brew Alliance's grain handling area and packaging area warns workers at the Portland brewery when Omission beer is being bottled. Besides, Craft Brew says, now a valid test does exist. The company says it uses the test up to 30 times on each 7,000-gallon batch of beer. It posts results that consumers can by entering a date stamped on each Omission bottle. It's taken other precautions to keep gluten out of Omission, too, Casey said. Craft Brew limits access to the bottling area and testing labs when Omission is around. It also relocated pipes that handle abrasive bulk grain in case they cause a pinhole leak and release malt dust into the bottling area. Gluten fragments But scientists say the test doesn't detect all potentially harmful gluten fragments. Recent tests by Canada's public health agency found gluten fragments in beers from Spain and Belgium that use a gluten-removal process similar to Craft Brew's. It's unclear whether the fragments are a health concern, Health Canada spokeswoman Blossom Leung said via email. Stephen Taylor, co-director of the , used to test Omission beer for Craft Brew. But he said he stopped when he discovered it was being brewed with barley. "I'm concerned that there might be big pieces of gluten protein left in this beer that are still potentially hazardous," Taylor said. Craft Brew's enzyme destroys the string of proteins the test is designed to detect, he said, "so, it defeats this test. Now, the question is, does it make the beer safe for people with celiac disease? The answer to that is nobody knows." Casey said he's confident the gluten molecules left behind are too small for the body to pick up. "There's no denial that we're going to find pieces of protein in the beer," Casey said. "Those don't go away. But those pieces are small. That's our view on it." Terry Michaelson, chief executive of Craft Brew Alliance Inc. in Portland, has lived with celiac disease for 12 years and can't drink most of the beers his company makes. But he says he drinks Omission weekly. Michaelson, having lived with celiac disease for a dozen years, knows how hard it is to avoid getting sick. Two months ago, he said, one of his favorite brunch spots served him a regular waffle by mistake. He didn't recognize the difference until he'd downed most of it and subsequently got sick. "Sometimes it's very strong and sometimes it's not," Michaelson said of his reactions. With celiac disease, he said, "any gluten you take in, whether you get sick or not, ends up in some way damaging the intestine. It's obviously not something you want to do either for short-term reaction or long-term health." Still, he said, he drinks Omission weekly and hasn't had a reaction. He said Craft Brew receives fewer complaints about Omission than it does its other beers. "We get people calling here every day who think they had a reaction to one of our beers for some reason, not because they were celiac." A bad reaction Barb Yingst, who runs , said she tried Omission this past winter, once at a restaurant and once at home. Both times she felt bloated and spent "extra time in the bathroom" within 30 minutes, she said. Her son also reacted negatively, she said. "I've seen some people say they don't have any problems with it, and I've seen other people who say they do, and my family's one of them," said Yingst, of northwest Washington. Meanwhile, the White House's decision on the gluten-free rule could come any day. Depending on the result, the alcohol bureau could change its ruling in the Craft Brew case. For now, though, Casey and Michaelson say the company continues to spend money looking for more valid tests for the beer. "We think there's going to be some more information coming out very soon," Michaelson said. "The irony of it is at the end of the day, our testing and our process and our science is probably being held to a higher scrutiny than anything else" on the market. -- Brent Hunsberger
When the Kansas City Chiefs announced in February that star linebacker Justin Houston had undergone surgery on his ACL, there were fears that he would be forced to miss the entire 2016 season due to the lengthy recovery time. However, Chiefs general manager John Dorsey said Friday that Houston will be healthy enough to play in the upcoming campaign. "Our doctors have assured us he will play this season," Dorsey said. The Chiefs gave Houston a rehabilitation timeline of six-to-12 months when his surgery was first announced, meaning his recovery would have to go perfectly if he was to play in the 2016 campaign. After struggling through injury throughout the latter part of 2015, Houston was thought to be having his knee scoped after the season. However, his ACL was found to be "intact but not functioning," during the surgery. It's still uncertain if Houston will be ready by the time the regular season rolls around in September, but it appears the Chiefs will have their top pass-rusher healthy for at least the majority of the season.
This post was updated on . Yesterday I was buying 2 large bags of Purina dog chow at I was about to check out when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog. What did she think, that I had an elephant? Since I had little else to do, on impulse, I told her that No, I didn't have a dog - that I was starting the Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I ended up in the hospital last time. On the bright side though, I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in intensive care with tubes coming out of every hole in my body and IVs in both arms. I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry and that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was enthralled with my story by now.) Horrified, She asked : "Did you end up in intensive care because the dog food had poisoned you?" I said: No not at all; I had stopped in the middle of the parking lot to lick my ass and a car hit me. The guy behind her was laughing so hard, I thought he was going to have a heart attack! won't let me shop there anymore. #### Find more funny jokes - "Pet Supplies for Dogs, Cats & More Now at Walmart.com" Your online shopping coupon code & deal source! Sign up at get your own website free Check out Savings for You! Sign up at Karmaloop.com now!Use Rep Code SAVE4YOU for every order for 20% off first order, 10% every order after that....FOREVER, or stack with another coupon cope for an additional 1% off that offer!Keep Rep Code SAVE4YOU handy for every Karmaloop order - and don't be greedy! ... Yesterday I was buying 2 large bags of Purina dog chow at WalMart for my dogs Shadow and Lady.I was about to check out when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.What did she think, that I had an elephant?Since I had little else to do, on impulse, I told her that No, I didn't have a dog - that I was starting the Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I ended up in the hospital last time.On the bright side though, I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in intensive care with tubes coming out of every hole in my body and IVs in both arms.I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry and that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.(I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was enthralled with my story by now.)Horrified, She asked : "Did you end up in intensive care because the dog food had poisoned you?"I said: No not at all; I had stopped in the middle of the parking lot to lick my ass and a car hit me.The guy behind her was laughing so hard, I thought he was going to have a heart attack! WALMART won't let me shop there anymore.#### Find more funny jokes - Click Here - ########
Arizona State University unveiled a new statue honoring former Sun Devils football player and U.S. Army hero Pat Tillman on Wednesday night. Tillman's family, friends and former teammates were on hand for the unveiling. ASU athletic director Ray Anderson and football coach Todd Graham, along with statue benefactor Arthur Pearce, Tillman's brother Kevin and former teammate/roommate B.J. Alford spoke to the assembled audience before the unveiling. Tillman, who played at ASU and for the Arizona Cardinals, died while serving in Afghanistan in 2004. The statue is placed in front of the new Tillman Tunnel at Sun Devil Stadium, and current ASU players will pass by and touch the statue as they take the field before each game. Here it is: The unveiling of the Pat Tillman statue at Sun Devil Stadium. pic.twitter.com/jksgHsJP4r — ABC15 Sports (@abc15sports) August 31, 2017 Incredible words from Pat Tillman's former teammate and roommate, BJ Alford. pic.twitter.com/TYVkrKYj1u — ABC15 Sports (@abc15sports) August 31, 2017 Pat Tillman's brother Kevin addressing the crowd before the statue unveiling. pic.twitter.com/pGoZeyivoH — Shane Dale (@ShaneDaleABC15) August 31, 2017 The back of the statue. pic.twitter.com/3tDOEwHc22 — ABC15 Sports (@abc15sports) August 31, 2017
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is intervening in the Virginia presidential primary dispute and plans to file emergency legislation to address the inability of most Republican presidential candidates to get their name on the ballot, Fox News has learned. Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul qualified for the Virginia primary, a contest with 49 delegates up for grabs. The failure of other candidates to qualify -- notably Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry -- led to complaints that the 10,000-signature requirement is too stringent. Cuccinelli, who is a Republican, shared the concerns. "Recent events have underscored that our system is deficient," he said in a statement. "Virginia owes her citizens a better process. We can do it in time for the March primary if we resolve to do so quickly."
Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un. The Donald Trump administration reportedly told Pyongyang through Beijing that it would "provide security guarantee" for the Kim Jong-un regime and invite the North Korean leader to the U.S. for direct talks if Pyongyang scraps its missile and nuclear weapons program, according to the Japan Times Tuesday.Citing unidentified diplomatic sources, the Japanese newspaper wrote that in return for North Korea foreswearing its nuclear and missile technologies, the U.S. promised it "would not seek regime change, regime collapse or an accelerated reunification of the Korean Peninsula, nor would it look for an excuse to advance north of the 38th parallel, the de facto inter-Korean border."China is believed to have already informed North Korea of the U.S. proposals, the paper continued.But assuming the North would not accept the offer, Beijing reportedly told Pyongyang that it would separately provide economic aid and guarantee "North Korea and the United States working toward concluding a peace treaty" in exchange for denuclearization.The report came a week after Trump told Bloomberg News he would be "honored" to meet with Kim if the circumstances were right, the first time he's personally given a green light to direct talks with the North Korean leader.Trump did not specify what those right circumstances were, but White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer later said the North would have to completely dismantle its nuclear capability, stressing, "Clearly, conditions are not there right now."In a vague text message to journalists Tuesday, South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the report from the Japan Times was "known to either be a matter that the U.S. could not confirm, or not true."A South Korean foreign affairs official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the ministry was "told by the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council that the report was groundless," though which part of the story was wrong wasn't specifically mentioned."South Korea and the U.S. agree that now isn't the right time for talks" with North Korea, the official said, highlighting Pyongyang's ceaseless threats to carry out a nuclear attack.North Korea, which releases official statements through the Korean Central News Agency, has yet to mention anything about Trump's proposal for direct talks.While the Trump administration has stressed numerous times that "all options are on the table" in dealing with Pyongyang, including military action, the idea of dialogue on the condition of the North's denuclearization appears to be gaining traction.During an interview with National Public Radio earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington would "obviously" like to solve the issue through direct talks, but that North Korea had to decide whether they were "ready to talk to us about the right agenda."The right agenda, he continued, was "not simply stopping where they are for a few more months or a few more years and then resuming things."BY LEE SUNG-EUN, YOO JEE-HYE [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]
The U.S. Constitution famously prohibits any religious test or requirement for public office. Still, almost all of the nation’s presidents have been Christians and many have been Episcopalians or Presbyterians, with most of the rest belonging to other prominent Protestant denominations. The nation’s new president, Donald Trump, certainly fits this pattern. Trump is the nation’s ninth chief executive to be affiliated with a Presbyterian church. Presbyterianism has its roots in England and Scotland and has been active in North America since the 17th century. Even though he no longer regularly attends a Presbyterian church, Trump was raised a Presbyterian and still considers himself one, saying “my religion is a wonderful religion.” (As a young man in New York, he began attending Marble Collegiate Church, a Dutch Reformed congregation, and in recent years, he has been associated with Paula White, an evangelical megachurch pastor who will pray at his inauguration.) The first Presbyterian to occupy the White House was Andrew Jackson and the last, before Trump, was Ronald Reagan. Both Jackson and Reagan had Scots-Irish ancestry. Trump’s mother immigrated to the U.S. from Scotland. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that many Americans care about their leaders’ faith. For instance, half of all American adults say it’s important for a president to share their religious beliefs. And more people now say there is “too little” religious discussion by their political leaders (40%) than say there is “too much” (27%). Historically, about a quarter of the presidents – including some of the nation’s most famous leaders, such as George Washington, James Madison and Franklin Roosevelt – were members of the Episcopal Church, the American successor to the Church of England. Unitarians and Baptists (including Bill Clinton and Harry Truman) are the groups with the third-largest share of presidents, each with four. Although Roman Catholicism has long been the nation’s largest religious denomination, John F. Kennedy remains the only Catholic president. And since Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, only one other Catholic, John Kerry, has been a presidential nominee on a major party ticket. Two of the most famous presidents in American history had no formal religious affiliation. The first, Thomas Jefferson, lost his faith in orthodox Christianity at an early age, but continued to believe in an impersonal God as the creator of the universe. Jefferson famously edited the New Testament by removing references to the miracles and leaving in Jesus’ teachings. The second, Abraham Lincoln, was raised in a religious household and spoke frequently about God (particularly as president), but never joined a church. Scholars have long debated Lincoln’s beliefs, including the question of whether or not he was a Christian, and some aspects of his faith remain a mystery. Lincoln is not the only president for whom there is some uncertainty surrounding his affiliation and beliefs. Some presidents were more private than others about their religious leanings and some may have evolved in their beliefs during their life. For example, Lincoln’s second vice president and ultimately his successor, Andrew Johnson, identified himself as a Christian, but never was formally part of a denomination or congregation. Another 19th century president, Rutherford B. Hayes, sometimes attended Methodist churches, but “moved among Protestant denominations during his life,” according to the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was raised in a nonreligious household but converted to Christianity as an adult and worshipped at a United Church of Christ congregation – Trinity United Church of Christ – in Chicago. However, Obama left Trinity during his first presidential campaign in 2008 after controversial statements by the church’s senior pastor, Jeremiah Wright, gained widespread attention. Today, Obama calls himself a Christian, but is not a regular churchgoer. Note: This post was originally published on Feb. 12, 2015, and has been updated. Related posts: A college degree wasn’t always a ‘must’ for U.S. presidential candidates How the faithful voted: A preliminary 2016 analysis Topics: Christians and Christianity, Religious Affiliation, Religion and Government, Religion and U.S. Politics
GIBRALTAR — Since Spain introduced tighter border checks as part of a tit-for-tat feud over the sovereignty of this British territory at the tip of Spain, Lola Ballesteros Benítez’s commute has become a lot harder. To avoid sometimes hourlong waits at the crossing, Ms. Ballesteros Benítez, an assistant nurse who lives in the Spanish port city of Algeciras but works in Gibraltar, has been parking her car nearby and walking across the border, before taking a bus. When she works nights, and the buses do not run, she takes a taxi, adding to her costs. What used to be a 45-minute commute is now a journey of at least two hours, she said. “I don’t think the government in Madrid realizes just how much harm can be done to some of its own citizens,” she said. Indeed, the dispute among Spain, Britain and Gibraltar has threatened an economic lifeline for Ms. Ballesteros Benítez and about 7,000 other Spaniards who cross the border daily to work within the confines of this 2.6-square-mile promontory — dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar — where the economy grew 8 percent last year. It is one of the few places in Europe to have emerged unscathed from the financial crisis.
As hard as it is to believe, it’s been nearly two years since the infamous Disneyland measles outbreak, which occurred after the holidays in 2014. It was an outbreak whose spread was facilitated by unvaccinated children and that had far-reaching implications. For one thing, in its wake, California passed SB 277, a law eliminating nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Opposition to the bill was fierce, and opposition to the law remains fierce, among motley coalition of antivaccine nuts, the vaccine averse, and conservative-leaning anti-government types, with rhetoric routinely invoking Nazis and the Holocaust, as though the law were the first step on the road to the gas chambers and ovens; that is, when it isn’t claiming that vaccines are a plot by white pharmaceutical companies to make African-American boys autistic. Indeed, it was the unholy union of SB 277 and the “CDC whistleblower” conspiracy theory that brought together antivaccine “hero” Andrew Wakefield with Polly Tommey and Del Bigtree to make the antivaccine “documentary” VAXXED: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, spawning the VAXXED Bus, with Bigtree and Tommey (and sometimes Wakefield) traveling the country to spread the gospel of St. Andy, cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and in general spread antivaccine conspiracy theories to the masses. They were even recently right here in my very city and state. At time, the rhetoric has even gotten violent. One of the arguments frequently made by antivaccine activists is what I like to call the “appeal to The Brady Bunch” or, sarcastically, “argumentum ad bradi bunchium.” The basic fallacy is simple and named after a 1969 episode of The Brady Bunch in which all the kids caught the measles and enjoyed a week off from school without appearing too sick and the whole thing was played for laughs and a "battle of the sexes" in which the boys want a male doctor and the girls want a female doctor,. Antivaccinationists claim that vaccine-preventable diseases are harmless childhood diseases that really don’t need to be vaccinated against, that they are no big deal, and point to that episode of The Brady Bunch or other old pre-MMR sitcom episodes in which the measles was played for laughs. Indeed, our old friend Dr. Jay Gordon has made just that argument, as has Dr. Bob Sears. Coupled with that, they like to claim that vaccines cause autism, ADHD, and all manner of auto-immune diseases ranging from asthma to much more severe conditions. They even falsely claim that vaccines cause sudden infant death syndrome. As I’ve described many times before, though, vaccines do not cause autism or any of these things, nor is measles a “harmless disease.” Last weekend, we got more evidence supporting both of these contentions. The evidence came in the form of scientific presentations at IDWeek, the annual joint meeting of four professional infectious disease medical societies. Now, I realize that these are currently just abstracts, and, since I didn’t attend IDWeek (not being an infectious disease doctor), I can’t go much beyond what’s in the abstracts and news reports. That’s why I will eagerly look forward to the full publication of these results. In the meantime, I make do with what I can. First up, there were several news stories like this one by Lena Sun in The Washington Post entitled New data shows a deadly measles complication is more common than thought: A complication of measles that kills children years after they have been infected is more common than previously thought, according to disturbing data released Friday. The research, presented at IDWeek, the annual meeting of four professional infectious disease organizations, underscores the critical importance of vaccination for everyone who is eligible. Such widespread vaccination, which results in herd immunity, protects children who can't be immunized. Particularly vulnerable are babies younger than 12 months, who because of their age cannot get the vaccine known as MMR, for measles, mumps and rubella. The complication is a neurological disorder that can lie dormant for years and then is 100 percent fatal. Researchers don't know what causes the virus to reactivate, and there is no cure once it does. The only way to prevent the disorder is by vaccinating everyone possible against measles. Those of you who pay attention to these issues will likely immediately recognize that the neurological complication being discussed is subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). According to the study: The first MMR dose is administered at 12 to 15 months of age. Babies younger than that can be infected with measles and later develop this complication, which is called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE. Scientists once thought the risk of developing SSPE was about 1 in 100,000. Recent research in Germany among children who got measles before they turned 5 identified a rate as low as 1 in 1,700. But the new findings, by researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California in Los Angeles and the California public health agency, found that for babies who get measles before being vaccinated, the rate is 1 in 609. Until quite recently, it was thought that the risk of SSPE after measles is 1-2 per 10,000 cases. So how did the study authors derive their new, much higher estimate? Well, here’s the abstract, Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis: the Devastating Measles Complication is More Common than We Think: Background: Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a fatal complication of measles. Thought to be rare, SSPE incidence decreased with routine measles vaccination, but infants with measles remain at highest risk of this complication. We reviewed SSPE cases in California from 1998-2016 to understand current risk factors for SPPE. Methods: SSPE cases had a clinically compatible illness and either 1) measles IgG antibody detection in the cerebrospinal fluid; 2) characteristic pattern on electroencephalography; 3) typical histologic findings in brain biopsy; or 4) medical record documentation of SSPE-related complications. Cases were identified though a state death certificate search, reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or through investigations for undiagnosed neurologic disease. Measles IgG detection was performed using indirect enzyme immunoassay at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) or by immunofluorescence assay at clinical laboratories. Results: Seventeen SSPE cases were identified. Males outnumbered females 2.4:1. Twelve (71%) cases had a clinical history of a febrile rash illness compatible with measles; all 12 had illness prior to 15 months of age and measles vaccination. Eight (67%) children were living in the United States when they had measles. SSPE was diagnosed at a median age of 12 years (range 3-35 years), with a latency period of 9.5 years (range 2.5-34 years). Many cases had long-standing cognitive or motor problems prior to diagnosis. Among measles cases reported to CDPH during 1988-1991, incidence of SSPE was 1:1367 for children less than 5 years, and 1:609 for children less than 12 months at time of measles disease. Conclusion: SSPE cases in California occurred at much higher rate than previously published among unvaccinated children who were infected with measles in infancy. Protection of infants younger than 12-15 months of age, when measles vaccine is routinely administered, requires avoidance of travel to endemic areas, or early vaccination prior to travel. Clinicians should be aware of the possibility of SSPE in patients with compatible symptoms, even in older patients with no specific history of measles infection. SSPE demonstrates the high human cost of “natural” measles immunity. I always say, whether it’s about screening asymptomatic patients for disease or almost anything else, the harder you look for something, the more of it you will find, and this study is yet another example. Case ascertainment for a disaease like SSPE can be difficult, and cases likely slip through the cracks or aren’t aggregated in a central database. This is how it can be pointed out in the news story above that there was a German study reporting a risk of SSPE of 1 in 1,1700, and now this study with an even higher risk. Be that as it may, these are frightening data, showing a risk of SSPE considerably higher than previously thought, particularly in children under 12 months of age. Since the first MMR dose is usually not administered before that, these are the patients who rely on herd immunity, which is degraded and rendered ineffective whenever a certain percentage of the population is unvaccinated. Because measles is so contagious, it’s generally thought that vaccination coverage of 90-95% to attain herd immunity for measles. Remember, SSPE has a long latency period. In this study, it was 9.5 years after measles infection and could be as long as 34 years. That makes measles the horrible gift that can keep on giving, even after the child has grown up. Antivaccinationists like to claim that measles is “harmless,” a childhood disease that we all endured before the vaccine, but we know better, and this study shows why we know better. There was another surprising finding not reported in the abstract but reported at IDWeek: An additional suprising finding is that Asians are disproportionately affected by SSPE, Cherry said. He is not sure why but suspects the disorder could behave like some other diseases, such as influenza, which seem to hit Asians harder and cause higher mortality than other ethnic groups. So let’s recap. Measles is not harmless, and Asians appear to be at higher risk for its deadliest complication, SSPE. That’s not all, though. Not only is measles not harmless, but, contrary to what you will read on antivaccine websites, we already know that vaccines do not cause autism, thanks to numerous studies. This study is yet another one showing that vaccines are not associated with SIDS or ADHD, either: Annual infant mortality rates from SIDS were obtained from the National Vital Statistics Reports for 2007–2013. ADHD prevalence at the state-level were obtained from the National Survey of Children's Health for 2003, 2007, and 2011. The analyses were adjusted to control for variation due to sociodemographic factors. The data showed mean incidence for SIDS was 39.9 per 100,000 live births and 8.9 per 100 children for ADHD. The rates for SIDS declined over time from 55.6 to 38.7 per 100,000 live births (P=0.4), whereas ADHD diagnoses increased from 7.8% to 11.0% (P=0.3). Mean coverage for each of the 5 vaccines significantly differed, from 47.7% to 95.1% (P<0.01). Dr. Shaw stated, "State-level vaccination coverage was not found to be associated with SIDS or ADHD rates for each of the vaccines evaluated (P>0.22)." Overall, the study showed that neither SIDS nor ADHD rates were influenced by vaccination coverage. Science, people. It is your friend. It is also the friend of vaccines. It is not, however the friend of antivaccinationists. Not only that, but, as I’ve described before, the measles vaccine protects against more than the measles, because the price of “natural immunity” is a two to three year period of immunosuppression with an increased risk of death. As I said before, I’ll look forward to the publication of the full versions of both of these studies, but in the meantime, here’s some more ammunition to counter antivaccine pseudoscience. Don’t say I never gave you anything.
[Episcopal News Service – Fairbanks, Alaska] St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, in the business center of the Interior region’s largest city, is distinctly Alaskan in its wood and its words. Log buildings are ubiquitous Alaskan structures, both the homes and churches – from St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in the small town of Nenana to Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in the Interior village of Venetie. And in Fairbanks, St. Matthew’s presents a familiar facade to the worshippers who enter the log church on First Avenue. What sets St. Matthew’s apart from churches in the Lower 48 is what is said inside: Every Sunday, the congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer and doxology in Gwich’in, the Native language most common in the region. The congregation, a mix of white and Native families, doesn’t offer a full service in modern Gwich’in, however, because official services in the language don’t exist in the Episcopal Church – at least not yet. “I would love it,” said Irene Roberts, who serves as an usher at St. Matthew’s. On Sept. 24, she greeted dozens of Episcopal bishops and their spouses as they filled her church’s 9:30 a.m. Sunday service, at the midpoint of the six-day House of Bishops meeting in Fairbanks. “It only took me 83 years to see this many ginkhii ch’oo,” Roberts said, using the Gwich’in term for bishops. The Diocese of Alaska, which hosted the bishops Sept. 21 to 26, is overseeing work on the first modern Gwich’in translation of the Book of Common Prayer. Those efforts got a boost this year with a $40,000 grant from the Episcopal Church’s United Thank Offering program, or UTO. When the translation is done, services in the Native language finally will be possible for any ginkhii, or priest, who wants to offer them. “It will be an opportunity for people to worship in the language they speak and with the prayer book that they use,” Alaska Bishop Mark Lattime said. “This has a lot of support from elders and folks in the Interior who are excited to be making it happen.” The Book of Common Prayer has been translated into more than 200 languages, including Takudh (pronounced “tah-GOH”), a Canadian dialect related to Gwich’in. St. Matthew’s also has a hymn book in Takudh. But the Takudh prayer book is more than 100 years old, and Takudh isn’t the language Alaskan Natives like Roberts speak and read in their daily lives. “Some of the hymns, I know the tune, but the words are difficult for me,” Roberts said. The Takudh translation of the Book of Common Prayer was completed in the late 1800s by Archdeacon Robert McDonald, an early Anglican missionary who is credited with helping the indigenous people put their spoken language into written words. But McDonald’s translation was based on the Canadian prayer book, not the one used by today’s Episcopal churches, and it has not been updated as the language evolved. The Takudh of McDonald’s translation is a dialect distinct from the modern Gwich’in spoken by many of Alaska’s Episcopalians. At the same time, the Gwich’in people of Alaska, like other Native tribes, have struggled to maintain their traditional culture, customs and way of life, and that includes their language. The younger generation is more comfortable speaking English than the language of their ancestors, said Allan Hayton, who works as language revitalization program director for the Doyon Foundation, the charity branch of one of Alaska’s 12 regional Native corporations. “One of the aspects of language revitalization is the prestige of the language and its public visibility,” Hayton said. To preserve, it should be spoken at home, in schools, in churches and at other public gatherings, Hayton said. “The more we can create for them … the occasion to hear the language in a public setting, all of those things make a big difference.” Hayton is a member of St. Matthew’s in Fairbanks and the head translator for the diocese’s Book of Common Prayer project. On Sept. 21, the opening day of the House of Bishops meeting, Hayton also was invited to the bishops’ 4 p.m. Eucharist to read the gospel passage in Gwich’in. He met with Native elders over the summer to begin work on translating the Rite II Eucharist. That work built on the diocese’s success in 2015 partnering with the Yukon Native Language Centre to celebrate a Holy Eucharist entirely in Gwich’in at St. Matthew’s. The scope of that earlier effort was limited, and a full translation may take years. But Hayton and church leaders think the effort will pay off in time. With the UTO grant, they hope to translate the Ministry of the Word and Great Thanksgiving Prayer A, as well as to start translation of the Collects and Prayers of the People. The goal is to publish a Gwich’in liturgical supplement that can be used alongside the English language prayer book. Translations into other indigenous languages may follow. If services can be offered in Native languages, “more people in Alaska will understand the service and might come participate,” Hayton said. “It would be easy for me,” Roberts said outside St. Matthew’s after the Sept. 24 service. She was born in Fort Yukon and later lived in the tiny village of Circle before moving to Fairbanks. Roberts is encouraged by efforts to preserve the Gwich’in language. “It makes me sad that we’re losing it.” Even in remote villages, English often drowns out the Native tongue, she said, and younger generations aren’t being taught their people’s language. She said she sometimes answers her phone in Gwich’in only to have callers hang up on her, even fellow Alaska Natives. “A lot of us are not speaking [Gwich’in] to our kids, and we should,” she said. Earlier Sept. 24, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry had preached at St. Matthew’s on the theme of family, based on the gospel reading. “Jesus came to show us how to be the family of God,” Curry repeated throughout the sermon, and he took a moment to underscore the breadth of the family that Jesus had in mind. “Make disciples of all nations, all stripes and types, all ethnicities. Teach them, indigenous folk and other folk. Teach them, black and white. Teach them, Anglo and Latino,” Curry said. “Make them a family, when you teach them and baptize them into the very life of God.” – David Paulsen is an editor and reporter for the Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.
Advertisement Pittsburgh police officers planning to boycott Beyonce concert at Heinz Field Music star will bring her Formation World Tour to Pittsburgh on May 31; city may not have enough officers to staff it Share Shares Copy Link Copy City police officers who believe Beyonce is anti-police are planning to boycott the singer's May 31 concert at Heinz Field, and the union said it will file a labor complaint if the city forces them to work the secondary employment.FOP President Robert Swartzwelder said Friday that he is not taking a position on Beyonce, and the union is not calling for a boycott; rather, officers are posting on the FOP website saying that no one should work the show.Video: Watch Marcie Cirpriani's reportRaw video: Pittsburgh police chief interviewed about Beyonce boycott"If the city compels police officers to work secondary employment again, it is further demonstration that the city is managing its fiscal responsibility on the backs of its police officers," said Swartzwelder, referring to when he said city officers were forced to work the Pittsburgh Marathon.The basis for an unfair labor practice complaint would be if the city forces on-duty officers to work the concert, which is a voluntary employment, Swartzwelder said.When asked Friday about the planned boycott, Police Chief Cameron McLay said he did not realize there was an issue."What I know is we have things covered," said McLay.When asked if he would appoint on-duty officers to work the secondary employment, he responded, "Yes, we have to police the streets of Pittsburgh."Swartzwelder said secondary employment is always voluntary and paid through private, not public, funds.Related: 'Boycott Beyonce' shirts on sale at Beyonce concertAssistant Police Chief Scott Schubert said all events must be staffed and safe."I don't get involved in controversy, I just get involved with public safety," Schubert said. "So we just need to make sure we have the appropriate public safety there for any event that we do."Heinz Field seats upwards of 68,000 people for Steelers games. Capacity varies for concerts due to lighting and stage equipment; for example, about 55,000 fans attended a Taylor Swift show last summer.Beyonce is touring in support of her "Lemonade" album, which debuted last month at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. The video for the album's first single, "Formation," has been criticized by some as anti-police, with its references to racism and police brutality. Her performance of "Formation" at Super Bowl 50 also drew a mixed reception.39648976Beyonce has denied being anti-police, and professed admiration for officers in media interviews after the "Formation" premiere. She has said that some may be misinterpreting her video's artistic message.Related: Beyonce slays concert at San Francisco tour stopGet the WTAE Pittsburgh's Action News 4 App
VENEZUELA, WHICH was once Latin America’s richest country, has become an unwilling test site for how much economic and social stress a modern nation can tolerate before it descends into pure anarchy. This month its 31 million people lurched a big step closer to that breaking point, thanks to another senseless decree by its autocratic populist government. For years Venezuelans have struggled with mounting shortages of food, medicine and other consumer goods, as well as triple-digit inflation that has rendered the national currency, the bolivar, worthless. By this month the 100-bolivar bill, the largest note in circulation, was worth only 2 cents, forcing people to carry piles of them in order to make the most rudimentary purchases. Then came this coup: On Dec. 11, President Nicolás Maduro, an economically illiterate former bus driver, announced that all 6 billion 100-bolivar notes would cease to be legal tender in just 72 hours. He also closed Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil, on the theory that traders were hoarding currency in those countries. Almost overnight, millions of Venezuelans — about 40 percent of whom do not have bank accounts in which the currency could be deposited — lost the ability to purchase even those goods still available on the market. The result was predictable: looting and riots in at least eight cities. In the eastern town of Ciudad Bolivar, with a population of some 400,000, hundreds of stores were looted and at least three people were killed in three days of mayhem. Mr. Maduro was forced to modify his fiat, extending the currency’s validity to Jan. 2 and reopening the borders. The government says it will distribute new bills in larger denominations. Meanwhile, the president is doing his best to blame the United States for the fiasco, claiming that it had somehow been orchestrated by President Obama . Venezuelans no longer believe such nonsense. A survey released this month by pollster Alfredo Keller showed that only 1 percent said the United States was to blame for the country’s crisis, while 76 percent blamed Mr. Maduro and the regime founded by Hugo Chávez. Three-quarters said they believed children were dying because of a lack of food and medicine, and 98 percent said they had been unable to find essential products. Only 19 percent said they still supported the regime. That the Maduro government somehow staggers on is due to its refusal to allow a constitutionally permitted presidential recall referendum ; a divided opposition; a military deeply compromised by corruption, including drug trafficking; and the diversion of international pressure — including from the United States — into feckless and futile attempts to promote negotiations between the government and the opposition. Instead of an election-driven political transition or a people-powered revolution, Venezuela is undergoing a comprehensive breakdown of order unlike anything Latin America has seen in decades. That its hemispheric neighbors witness this implosion without using the means they have to bring meaningful pressure to bear on the government renders the failure all the more profound.
Since this morning Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter have been abuzz with people posting photos of snow all over South Africa. People in the Northern provinces of South Africa are not used to seeing snow falls. It’s the first time since 1981 that snow falls have been recorded in Johannesburg and Pretoria. Since this morning reports of snow falling in places like Potchefstroom, Klerksdorp, Kempton Park, Edenvale, Sandton, Woodmead, Sunninghill, Centurion and other parts of Pretoria have been flowing around on Facebook and Twitter. Johannesburg is expecting a maximum temperature of 11 degrees today and 12 degrees tomorrow and Pretoria is expecting a maximum temperature of 14 degrees today and 12 degrees tomorrow. It looks like there’s a chance that we might be seeing some more snow in Gauteng tomorrow as well. We’ve managed to gather some of the photos that users have been posting since this morning and we thought that we’d like to share some of them with you. These photos were picked up on Twitter from @TrafficSA, @Krystlegeach, @ShazPhoto, @kylevl3, @GlynnRyan, @hallojanus and @WhisprdScream, @LynneMcCarthy and on Facebook from various sources.Seeing as its going to be a cold weekend in Gauteng it might be a good idea to look for an affordable heater via the Junk Mail.If you have found reading this post enjoyable, please share this post with your friends on Facebook ant Twitter. Remember: Sharing is caring. Also feel free to comment on this post if you have any thoughts, we’d like to hear from you.
President Donald Trump said he would not have named Jeff Sessions to be attorney general if he knew the former senator would step away from the investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 election. "Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president," Trump told The New York Times. "How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, 'Thanks, Jeff, but I'm not going to take you.' It's extremely unfair -- and that's a mild word -- to the president." The report continued: "Mr. Trump also faulted Mr. Sessions for his testimony during Senate confirmation hearings when Mr. Sessions said he had not met with any Russians even though he had met at least twice with Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak. "Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers," the president said. "He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren't." "A spokesman for Mr. Sessions declined to comment on Wednesday..." "The president also expressed discontent with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, a former federal prosecutor from Baltimore. When Mr. Sessions recused himself, the president said he was irritated to learn where his deputy was from. "There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any," he said of the predominantly Democratic city."
The number of people coming forward with allegations about historic child abuse is set to reach "many tens of thousands", an MP has warned. Labour backbencher John Mann, who has been campaigning on the issue, said the state "can't deal with" the volume of claims that are being made. He insisted there was too much focus on who was going to run the Government's troubled inquiry into paedophile activity, and suggested a national institute needed to be created to make progress. The comments, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, come with the shape of the wide-ranging probe ordered by Home Secretary Theresa May still mired in uncertainty. Two candidates for chair - former judge Baroness Butler-Sloss and ex-Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf - have already had to stand aside over their establishment links. But Mr Mann said there had been too much emphasis on individuals. "It's not just about who chairs an inquiry, it's about what the remit of an inquiry should be, who else should be sat on that inquiry, who should be advising it," the Bassetlaw MP said. "As an example, one of the things that survivors' groups are calling for in the discussions I've had with them is for government to set up a national institute to take forward this work on what you do with all these people coming forward. "Probably, it's going to be many tens of thousands of people across the country. The state can't deal with the numbers of people coming forward. "The police and social services cannot cope with the volume that's there, even now. And we're hardly at the beginning of people coming forward." Mr Mann went on: "I'm getting vast numbers of people, including my constituents, coming forward making allegations. Many of those people came forward in the past and weren't listened to or weren't believed. "And that's a key part of the problem. What do you do with people making allegations against people, and nothing was done in the past, when the people they're making allegations against in some cases are dead?"
The One Thing Trump Needs to Accept in Order to Win the Presidency Republicans Pray Trump Will ‘Evolve’ on Foreign Policy … Donald Trump may eventually find some common ground with Congress on economics, but there’s less hope for unity between the Republicans and their presumptive presidential nominee when it comes to foreign policy. Some senior party figures hope Trump’s views will “evolve” to the point where the party can feel comfortable defending his competence to be commander in chief. There are no signs of evolution. -Bloomberg GOP politicians continue to writhe over Donald Trump’s foreign policy views, as we can see above. Trump has enunciated policies that would remove or reduce the role that the US plays in NATO and would demand payment from countries that host US troops and other sorts of military resources. What Trump is doing here is taking Congressional rhetoric at face value. First the US was protecting countries from communism. Today, the US is protecting countries from terrorism. These are likely artificial threats that provide justification for funding the US’s titanic military industrial complex. In fact, there is ample evidence that the US and Wall Street bankers actually created the Soviet Union by funding the “Reds” at the beginning of the 20th century and tipping the balance of power to communism in the Russian civil war. You can read the entire narrative in G Edward Griffin’s famous book, The Creature from Jekyll Island. Western powers even sent Vladimir Lenin back to Russia on a sealed train like a “bacillus” to take charge. Follow the logic and you have to conclude that elements of the Cold War itself were phony, along, perhaps, with nuclear tensions and certain nuclear incidents. When it comes to terrorism, there is ample evidence that the US and its allies created first Al Qaeda and then ISIS. This is not surprising. One of the main preoccupations of Western governments in the past several hundred years has been the cultivation of enemies and the creation of armies. Pervasive military tension gives those at the top of society a reason to militarize citizens and create authoritarian social structures. In other words, the creation of military antagonism leads to the kind of Western social structures we have today. These structures are basically run by intelligence agencies and are more focused on domestic “enemies” than overseas ones. They have enormous powers and can spy on virtually anyone, supposedly, these days, because they must provide protection from terrorism. But if overseas threats are minimized via a political process, then the entire domestic power structure collapses. This is why libertarian congressman Ron Paul was such a threat when he ran for president. A determined libertarian, he had the momentum and possibly the votes to win the GOP nomination. The GOP bureaucracy did everything it could to undermine him. Now the Republican establishment is concerned about Donald Trump, who doesn’t seem committed to playing his part in perpetuating the threat of worldwide terrorism. More from the Bloomberg article: On Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman said that he had been working with members of the Trump campaign to help them get up to speed on foreign policy and national security. Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, has had a series of phone calls with Paul Manafort, whom Corker referred to as Trump’s campaign manager, and Corker’s office is supplying information to the campaign. Corker told reporters that the Trump campaign is entering a new phase, focusing more on policy, and that he thought it only right that he help when asked. He played down Trump’s often controversial statements on national security and called on his Republican colleagues to give Trump some time to study up. Let’s translate this. Corker is determined to explain to “The Donald” that he has to present the right message when it comes to foreign policy. This is the big issue, the crux one regarding Trump. He has not yet endorsed the “war on terror” and the entire multi-trillion dollar Pentagon campaign that supports it. If there is no terrorist threat, there is no need for the Pentagon. No need for the CIA and other intelligence agencies. No need for hyper-protected borders and a hundred other invasive programs aimed at “terrorists” but, in fact, affecting only Americans and other non-terrorist civilians. Trump has also suggested very violent ways of prosecuting the War on Terror. He wants to use torture and he wants to threaten the families of terrorists. Trump has been called uncivilized – bestial – for suggesting these remedies. But the war on terror is almost certainly phony, and that’s one reason Trump’s suggestions have caused so much consternation on Capital Hill. He wants to prosecute the War on Terror as if it is a life or death struggle. He’s got the entire narrative backwards. He’s in a leadership position. That means he is supposed to pay lip service to the War on Terror, not take it seriously. This is the real reason for the GOP’s consternation regarding Trump. There are other issues as well, such as his anti-immigration stance, his anti “free-trade” agreement positions and his intention to use tariffs to bring back jobs and corporations to the US. Trump has some libertarian tendencies but the reason he’s winning votes is because he is clearly attacking the lies that both major parties tell to maintain power and expand globalism. The main lie involves manufacturing enemies worldwide. Secondary lies involve nonsensical free-trade agreements that have eviscerated US industry and immigration policies that diluting US culture in destructive ways. Trump’s positions, when analyzed, are in many sense anti-globalist. But the GOP could probably live with some of his other views, if he agrees to accept the necessary mythology regarding foreign policy. It is foreign policy that justifies the primacy of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. And these power centers at the top do not report to the US government but to shadowy banking interests at home and abroad. The goal is to create ever-more aggressive globalism and by not giving credence to the current political mythology, Trump is threatening the entire hierarchy of control. Is Trump naive, or is he aware of what he’s doing? Well … what we do know is that for Trump to take formal power without endorsing modern political mythology would probably be to sign his death warrant. Conclusion: If you want to understand the current US presidential election and Trump’s place in it, watch carefully to see how much of the modern mythology he eventually accepts and promotes. That will provide a better explanation of Trump’s role as well as his staying power.
What would you get if you crossed a whale with a shark? Maybe something like Leviathan melvillei, a long-extinct, hypercarnivorous whale with teeth longer than any T. rex ever had. L. melvillei — a newly described sperm whale named to honor Herman Melville, author of the whaling novel Moby-Dick — lived between 12 million and 13 million years ago, says Olivier Lambert, a vertebrate paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The aptly named leviathan is known only from remains of a jawbone and skull, which is about 75 percent complete, Lambert and his colleagues note in the July 1 Nature. By comparing those fossils, which were found in southern Peru in November 2008, with more complete remains of other species, the researchers estimate that Leviathan measured between 44 and 57 feet in length, slightly smaller than adult male sperm whales of today. The longest of Leviathan’s teeth measure about 14 inches including the root, more than 40 percent longer than those of today’s sperm whales. And, Lambert notes, the longest tooth of Sue, one of the largest Tyrannosaurus rex specimens yet found, measures only 10.6 inches from root to tip. Wear patterns indicate that Leviathan’s teeth sheared past each other during a bite, a sign that the beast could rip chunks of flesh from prey. Lambert and his colleagues speculate that Leviathan fed on medium-sized baleen whales, whose blubber would have been a rich source of calories. “This is a pretty exciting discovery,” says Erich Fitzgerald, a vertebrate paleontologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Leviathan represents “one thing we don’t have in the oceans today — a macropredator, a hypercarnivorous whale.” Modern sperm whales feed largely on invertebrates such as giant squid, but have been known to feed on fish and other creatures as well. The extremely robust, deeply-rooted structure of Leviathan’s teeth strongly suggests that the creature fed on large, presumably struggling bony prey like sharks do. But that doesn’t mean the whale’s diet was restricted in any way. “If you’re big enough,” Fitzgerald notes, “you can bloody well eat what you want.” Images: 1) Artist's rendering of the giant raptorial sperm whale Leviathan melvillei attacking a medium-size baleen whale off the coast of the area now occupied by Peru./C. Letenneur (MNHN). 2) Three lower teeth (a,b,c) of L. melvillei compared to teeth of the modern sperm whale Physeter macrocephalus (d) and the modern killer whale Orcinus orca (e)./G. Bianucci (Universitá di Pisa), O. Lambert (MNHN) and P. Loubry (MNHN). 3) Schematic drawings of the skull and mandible of L. melvillei in dorsal (a,d), ventral (b) and lateral (c) view./G. Bianucci (Universitá di Pisa) See Also:
For centuries Malta was the center of the world. Well, the European world anyway. At roughly the geographical center of the Mediterranean, and perhaps even more importantly, in the narrow space between Sicily and Africa, Malta has long been an important military location. For navies, at least. It's perhaps not where you'd expect to find an air museum. The British had an airbase here from the '30s to the '50s, and on its former grounds is the Malta Aviation Museum, a small but interesting collection of aircraft in a series of hangers near the center of the island. A Gloster Meteor, a de Havilland Vampire, a Fiat G.91 and more awaited me after a short walk, a bus and another short walk. Here's what it looks like inside the aging hangars and Nissen huts. Island gem It's not the heat, but the humidity. It's such a common refrain it's trite. But it's also true. Temperatures in the high 80s (30-plus Celsius) aren't necessarily bad. Temperatures in the high 80s with humidity so high it's like walking in boiling soup? Not awesome. And yet it's in these conditions that I miss my bus stop and have to walk 25 minutes to the museum under the hot summer sun. Oh well. Sweatproof SPF 50 FTW. The museum itself is tucked away among Nissen (aka Quonset) huts repurposed for many other uses. It all feels like a former airbase, so the small sign for the museum is no surprise. Two long huts and two large hangars house the majority of the museum. Right inside the main entrance are two of the best preserved exhibits: a de Havilland Vampire and Hawker Sea Hawk. As you wander through the facility, a different character emerges. Pieces of a DC-3 sit together waiting for restoration, sunlight beating through the skylights adding an abandoned, mystical quality to the space. In the back, an entire de Havilland Sea Venom sits in pieces, waiting for reassembly. Pistons, electronics and countless other pieces sit in piles. In the main hangar, a complete and proud Douglas DC-3 dominates the space, surrounded by smaller aircraft and vehicles. A Fiat fighter jet is on one side, the frame of a famous Huey on the other. Behind, two Gloster Meteors and the nose of a BAC 1-11 airliner. The last hangar held only two planes when I visited: the iconic Hurricane and Spitfire. These restored beauties have special stories. The Spitfire was stationed on the island and participated in Operation Husky. The Hurricane was also stationed on the island and flew off the HMS Ark Royal. It is thought that an engine fire caused the pilot, Sgt. Thomas Hackston, to ditch at sea in July of 1941. Fifty years later, a diver found the wreck and the family of the pilot was notified. It was the first time they knew what actually happened to their brother. Several years later the plane was recovered and lovingly restored. Malta is a beautiful place, maybe a little less so at the end of July. Beaches, castles, ruins and more. Perhaps in your explorations, you can slip into the Malta Air Museum. It's a fascinating space in an unlikely place. In his alternate life as a travel writer, Geoff does tours of cool museums and locations around the world including nuclear submarines, medieval castles, iconic music studios and more. You can follow his exploits on Twitter, Instagram and on his travel blog BaldNomad. He also wrote a bestselling sci-fi novel. Tech Culture: From film and television to social media and games, here's your place for the lighter side of tech. Batteries Not Included: The CNET team shares experiences that remind us why tech stuff is cool.
Milan-San Remo, the season’s first Monument, was in some ways a typical affair. For one thing the usual San Remo style — that near-seven hour slow-burn followed by a sudden explosion in the finale — certainly bore out, with the Cipressa and the Poggio once again bringing the almost-non-stop action that we all recognise from editions past. Set off by Peter Sagan’s scintillating, race-defining attack on the Poggio, and culminating with him losing the race to Michal Kwiatkowski by less than half a wheel-length, that thrilling finale has given us much to talk about in the aftermath. Daniel Ostanek cuts through the post-race chatter and takes a look at some of the major talking points from La Primavera. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our race report from Milan-San Remo here AN OLD RIVALRY RESURFACES Saturday’s race was, among other things, set to be the latest in a series of showdowns between the two presumptive Kings of the Classics, Greg Van Avermaet and Peter Sagan. With Fabian Cancellara having already retired and with Tom Boonen soon to follow his old rival out of the sport, Sagan and GVA look like being the next ‘Big Two’ of the Spring Classics. Instead of another battle between that duo though, San Remo saw the continuation of a different rivalry; one that stretches back a decade. Sagan and Michal Kwiatkowski have been competing against one another since they were teenagers racing internationally in the junior ranks. The earliest recorded clash between the pair came all the way back in May 2007, when they both raced the Junior Peace Race. There, Sagan took a podium spot on one stage while Kwiato won the GC. A year later the pair each won a split stage at the Trofeo Karlsberg. That's how we did it before with @petosagan '08 A post shared by Micha? Kwiatkowski (@michalkwiatek) on Mar 9, 2014 at 10:02am PDT Paths diverged when the pair turned professional in 2010, with Sagan immediately winning WorldTour races (two stages at Paris-Nice, one at the Tou de Romandie), while Kwiatkowski took time developing with Caja Rural and RadioShack before making his breakthrough in the spring of 2013 (achieving top 5s at Tirreno-Adriatico, La Flèche Wallonne, and the Amstel Gold Race). Since then, the pair have faced off several times. Arezzo, at the 2014 Tirreno-Adriatico, came first, with Sagan beating Kwiatkowski in the sprint. A few weeks later it was Kwiatkowski’s turn to take the win, at a classic edition of Strade Bianche. Sagan’s triumph at the Richmond Worlds in 2015 saw him inherit Kwiatkowski’s rainbow jersey, while at E3 Harelbeke last year we saw the Pole outfox the Slovak in a two-up sprint, having previously attacked together. It’s maybe not a rivalry in the same sense as Froome vs Contador or Kittel vs Cavendish, largely because the pair defy the easy categorisation of ‘GC men’ or ‘sprinters’. Both are among the most complete riders in the peloton (though once upon a time they were very different). They are strong sprinters, and can compete on a range of terrain from the cobbles to the hills — though their main strengths lie in slightly different areas. To use a hypothetical example, it seems that both men could compete at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but for now at least, their priorities lie in different races, with Sagan focusing on the cobbles and Kwiatkowski targeting the Ardennes. But this only means that, on the occasions they do find themselves racing together, we should cherish the battles even more. SPRINTERS THWARTED More often than not, the winning move in Milan-San Remo comes on the final straight as a rider wins the sprint from a reduced bunch. Before Saturday, only four of the previous 10 editions had seen the winning move come from further out than the race’s final metres. Back in 2008, Fabian Cancellara made his solo move 2km from the line. Three years later Matt Goss sprinted to victory from a group of eight formed atop the Poggio. The 2012 and shortened 2013 edtions also saw the winners — Simon Gerrans and Gerald Ciolek — emerge from small groups which had separated themselves from the peloton on the Poggio. To find a San Remo-winning move that came from further out than the race’s famed final hill, you have to head all the way back to 1996 and Gabriele Colombo’s record-setting ascent of the Cipressa. The point is that, unlike a number of other classics where the winning moves can – and do – come from anywhere, Milan-San Remo has very few such locations. It’s not negative – it’s just the way it is, and the result is almost always a thrilling finale. So this year’s race was a rarity, and a non-sprinter won. But look what it took to do so: three of the top puncheurs in the sport conspiring to stay away while the massed ranks of the sprinters’ teams put everything into a frantic chase. When we reach San Remo weekend next season, history will tell us to expect a sprint finish once more, but this time around the sprinter’s classic was the property of the non-sprinters. THE FORM GUIDE MATTERS After Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico ended I noted that the past six Milan-San Remo winners had all managed to achieve a win, podium or top five in the fortnight preceding the race. It’s probably not a surprise to hear that back in 2010 the cunning sprinter Óscar Freire was the last to avoid doing so and still win. The above statistic still holds true after Kwiatkowski’s victory. In fact, the first nine riders over the finish line on Saturday afternoon had all either won a race or been on a podium in the past two weeks. Caleb Ewan, who rounded out the top ten, was the sole exception – the Australian abandoned Tirreno-Adriatico after a crash on stage 2. #MSR Top 10 de la 108° Milán-San Remo 1. Kwiatkowski 2. Sagan 3. Alaphilippe 4. Kristoff 5. Gaviria pic.twitter.com/3SOlTCqKfS — CiclismoInternacinal (@CiclismoInter) March 18, 2017 Meanwhile, three big names who didn’t achieve anything last week continued that trend on Saturday. Local boy Niccolò Bonifazio left The Race to the Sun (Paris-Nice) on day two, ending up 96th in San Remo. Before the race, which he won in 2009, Mark Cavendish was bullish about his chances on SAturday. However, after having failed to record a top 20 at Tirreno, he was dropped on the Cipressa and finished over five minutes down. San Remo specialist Ben Swift, riding for UAE Team Emirates, managed an anonymous 17th to follow up an equally anonymous Paris-Nice campaign. Speaking of a lack of preparation, Movistar’s mercurial Colombian Carlos Betancur finished his first race of the season at Milan-San Remo, having DNFed Strade Bianche and GP Larciano. His final result? 134th, 5:24 behind Kwiatkowski, Sagan and Alaphilippe. A final note: this year’s race also marked the first time since Gerald Ciolek’s unexpected 2013 triumph that a rider has won the race having first prepared at Tirreno-Adriatico. It’s also the only second time in seven years that a Tirreno competitor has gone on to win La Primavera. EACH TIME A DIFFERENT WINNER Michal Kwiatkowski’s victory, his first at a Monument, sees the continuation of an extraordinary record. Each of the past ten Monumental Classics – stretching back to Alexander Kristoff’s beating of Niki Terpstra at the 2015 Ronde Van Vlaanderen – has been won by a different rider. The last time the sport saw a streak to match this came almost a decade ago, stretching from Alejandro Valverde’s 2006 Liège-Bastogne-Liège victory to Tom Boonen’s second Roubaix win in 2008. A Boonen victory, or at least a non-Sagan/Kristoff/Degenkolb winner at De Ronde in two week’s time would further extend this streak. Look too to Van Avermaet or Sep Vanmarcke if you’ve become invested in seeing the run continue. On the face of it the stat is quite meaningless. Delve deeper though, and you can spot the trends, such as the retirement of serial winners Fabian Cancellara and Joaquim Rodríguez, and the decline of others once-dominant like Philippe Gilbert, Damiano Cunego and Tom Boonen. Factor in the rise of a new generation, and with it a more evenly matched set of talents than we’ve seen ever seen at the top of the sport, and it’s no surprise we’ve had a relative decrease in the number of riders winning multiple Monuments. The emergence of this new generation is substantiated by a concurrently running record — the last seven Monument winners have all been first-timers. Checking back through the record books shows this has only happened once in the past 40 years, and just three times since the Second World War. For a full list of these, see the addendum below.
Abstract Background Early life stress is a risk factor for many psychiatric disorders ranging from depression to anxiety. Stress, especially during early life, can induce dysbiosis in the gut microbiota, the key modulators of the bidirectional signalling pathways in the gut-brain axis that underline several neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Despite their critical role in the development and function of the central nervous system, the effect of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) on the regulation of gut-microbiota in early-life stress has not been explored. Methods and Results Here, we show that long-term supplementation of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)/docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) (80% EPA, 20% DHA) n-3 PUFAs mixture could restore the disturbed gut-microbiota composition of maternally separated (MS) female rats. Sprague-Dawley female rats were subjected to an early-life stress, maternal separation procedure from postnatal days 2 to 12. Non-separated (NS) and MS rats were administered saline, EPA/DHA 0.4 g/kg/day or EPA/DHA 1 g/kg/day, respectively. Analysis of the gut microbiota in adult rats revealed that EPA/DHA changes composition in the MS, and to a lesser extent the NS rats, and was associated with attenuation of the corticosterone response to acute stress. Conclusions In conclusion, EPA/DHA intervention alters the gut microbiota composition of both neurodevelopmentally normal and early-life stressed animals. This study offers insights into the interaction between n-3 PUFAs and gut microbes, which may play an important role in advancing our understanding of disorders of mood and cognitive functioning, such as anxiety and depression. Citation: Pusceddu MM, El Aidy S, Crispie F, O’Sullivan O, Cotter P, Stanton C, et al. (2015) N-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFAs) Reverse the Impact of Early-Life Stress on the Gut Microbiota. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0139721. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139721 Editor: Judith Homberg, Radboud University Medical Centre, NETHERLANDS Received: July 10, 2015; Accepted: September 16, 2015; Published: October 1, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Pusceddu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: Research was funded by Food Institutional Research Measure (FIRM) under Grant No. 10/RD/TMFRC/709, the APC Microbiome Institute under Grant No. 07/CE/B1368 and 12/RC/2273, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under Grant No. 12/IA/1537. Competing interests: The authors have the following interests. The APC has conducted research funded by Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Proctor and Gamble, Mead Johnson, Suntory and Cremo. TGD also has grant support from the Health Research Board Ireland (HRA_POR/2011/23 HRA_POR/2012/32, and HRA-POR-2014-647) and European FP7 and has been an invited speaker at meetings organised by Servier, Lundbeck, Janssen, Astra-Zeneca. JFC has received grant support from the Health Research Board of Ireland (Grant number HRA_POR/2012/32), Science Foundation Ireland (Investigator Award Grant No. 12/IA/1537), European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (Grant number FP7/2007-2013 under Grant Agreement no. 278948 (TACTICS-Translational Adolescent and Childhood Therapeutic Interventions in Compulsive Syndrome)). JFC has been an invited speaker at meetings organised by Mead Johnson and Yakult. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors. Introduction Stress, especially in early life has been identified as a cause of the disruption of this developmental pattern leading to a variety of disorders ranging from gastrointestinal disorders [1], to anxiety and depression [2]. In rodents, the maternal separation (MS) model is a well-known paradigm that induces brain-gut axis dysfunction [3]. The separated phenotype alters many components of the brain-gut axis throughout the body including the hypothalamic–pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis [3], the immune and neuroendocrine systems [4]. Growing evidence considers these abnormalities comorbid with changes in the gut microbiota [5–7] as well as crucial risk factors for the development of mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression [8, 9]. There is increasing evidence suggesting a bi-directional communication between the central nervous system (CNS) and the gut-microbiota which is recognized as the microbiome–gut–brain axis [10–12]. This communication is believed to influence the parallel development of both CNS and gut microbiota which can remarkably influence health and disease [13]. Emerging evidence has shown the involvement of the gut microbiota in maternal stress and maternal separation in brain and associated behaviour [14]. Prenatal stress has been shown to change the composition of the microbiome in adult rat [15] neonatal mice [16] and infant humans [17]. Changes in the gut microbiota composition were reported in monkeys subjected to maternal separation between six and nine months of age with shedding of lactobacilli three days following separation, followed by the return of normal lactobacilli levels seven days later. Moreover, we have previously shown, albeit using somewhat crude Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis- based analysis, that adult rats that underwent maternal separation showed altered faecal microbial composition compared with normally reared control animals [4]. It is well recognized that eating habits are of relevance to (mental) health [18]. Moreover, there is a growing appreciation for the impact of dietary fatty acids on the intestinal microbiota composition of the host [19–21]. Being critical in the development and function of the CNS, n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) have been under the spotlight for decades [22]. The possible underlying mechanisms by which n-3 PUFAs exert their beneficial effects on health are diverse, involving for instance, HPA, neuroendocrine and immune regulations [23, 24]. In light of these observations, we reported recently the beneficial effects of n-3 PUFAs on reduction of anxiety-like, depressive-like behaviours and improved cognition in female rats [25]. Here we hypothesize that these beneficial effects of long-term intake of n-3 PUFAs would have an impact on intestinal microbiota populations, which in turn, would contribute to the reverse of gut-brain axis dysfunction associated with maternal separation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to describe the impact of n-3 PUFAs on the gut-microbiota of female rats exposed to early-life stress. Materials and Methods Maternal separation Animals were provided by Biological Services Unit (BSU), UCC, Cork, Ireland. All scientific procedures were carried out in line with Directive 2010/63/EU and were approved by the Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee of University College Cork #2012/036. Maternal separation was performed as previously described by our group [25, 26]. Briefly, male and female rats were obtained from Harlan Laboratories UK (250–300 g) and mated in the local animal unit. Food and water was available ad libitum and animals were maintained on a 12:12-h dark–light cycle with temperature at 20 ± 1°C. MS animals were separated from their mothers from postnatal day (PND) 2 to 12, for three hours a day. Separations were conducted between 0900h and 1200h a.m. in plastic cages placed on top of heater pads (30–33°C) in a separate room to the main holding room. Non-separated (NS) animals were left undisturbed in their home cages with their respective dams and were returned to the holding room. After postnatal day 12, rats were left undisturbed except for routine cage cleaning every two days and a weekly body weight measurement until they were 5 weeks old. Animals were group-housed 5 per cage in plastic cages with sawdust bedding in an enriched environment with shredded paper and a cardboard roll. Treatments Oral administration of an eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)/docosaexaenoic acid (DHA) (80% EPA, 20% DHA) n-3 PUFAs mixture was administered by gavage when animals reached 5 weeks of age. In order to avoid any confounding litter effects, individual groups consisted of rats from multiple litters. Treatments consisted of 1) saline water; 2) EPA/DHA 0.4 g/kg/day or Low Dose (LD); 3) EPA/DHA 1 g/kg/day or High Dose (HD). The chosen EPA/DHA concentrations were based on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recommendations. FAO recommends a minimum DHA intake of 10–12 mg/kg per body weight for children 6–24 months old and EPA/DHA 100–250 mg/day for children aged 2–10 years. In our study, the maximum EPA/DHA intake was 100 and 250 mg for the low dose and the high dose per body rat, respectively. Moreover, previous studies have used the same concentrations proposed in this study [27, 28]. Treatments were prepared freshly every day and administered between 0900h and 1100h a.m. The experimental time line is shown in Fig 1A. PPT PowerPoint slide PowerPoint slide PNG larger image larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 1. Schematic representation of the time course of the maternal separation procedure and EPA/DHA treatment. (B) Global average microbial composition of faecal 17 weeks old rats samples (n = 10 per group) at phylum-level. * Indicate bacterial group significantly different between MS and NS groups. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139721.g001 Sample collection Faecal pellets were collected from 17 weeks old female rats. All samples were, then, frozen at −80°C for microbiota analysis. Microbiota analysis DNA was extracted using the DNA Fast Stool DNA extraction kit (Qiagen) using the protocol for Gram positive bacteria and including an additional bead beating step at the beginning of the procedure. DNA was quantified using the Qubit High Sensitivity Kit (Life Technologies), standardised and then used as a template for PCR. PCR primers and conditions are essentially as outlined in the Illumina 16S Metagenomic Sequencing Library preparation guide (Illumina) with the following exceptions: For the initial 16S PCR, the PCR was performed in duplicate 50 ul reaction volumes, and 40 cycles were used in the PCR. Products were then pooled, cleaned with an appropriate volume of Ampure beads and eluted in 30ul/sample. This was then used as the template for the index PCRs as outlined in the protocol (Illumina). Library quantification, normalisation, and pooling were as outlined in the protocol. After pooling, the sample was requantified using the Qubit High Sensitivity Kit (Life Technologies) and run on an agilent high sensitivity chip (Agilent). Library denaturation and MiSeq sample loading were then performed as described in the protocol. The final concentration of the library was 4pM and PhiX was spiked in as a control at 5% v/v. A 2 x 300bp MiSeq reagent was used for sequencing. Diversity analyses were performed in QIIME and correlations used the websites Calypso at http://bioinfo.qimr.edu.au/calypso. Conclusion We demonstrate what is to our knowledge the first time that EPA/DHA treatment normalized early-life stress-induced disruption of female rat gut microbes. Analysis of the gut microbiota of MS rats showed altered microbial composition with abundance of members previously shown to be associated with inflammation. These results indicate that transient stress-induced alteration during a crucial developmental time-window for neonatal rats has long-lasting effects on the gut microbiota composition in adulthood. Supplementation with EPA/DHA restored the composition of the gut microbiota in MS rats. Presumably, the EPA/DHA effect on the gut microbiota is related to PUFAs anti-inflammatory activity. Recently, it has been shown that omega-3 and omega-6 dramatically reduce the endotoximic and inflammatory status in metabolic endotoxemia (Kaliannan, 2015). Intriguingly, the observed effects involved changes in the gut microbiota, through the impact of omega-6, -3 on intestinal production and secretion of intestinal alikaline phosphatase. The induced alterations in gut microbiota composition resulted in reduction in levels of lipopolysachharides and gut permeability, which in turn reduces the onset of inflammation. Overall, the healthy benefits at CNS level have ascertained the contribution made by n-3 PUFAs to stress-related disorders and put them under the spotlight for decades [46–48]. The current study offers insight into a potential role of n-3 PUFAs through the modification of the gut microbiota in an animal model of stress. Our data supports the previous reports showing that the absence as well as the exacerbation of certain bacterial taxa in the gut of early-life stressed rats may represent risk factors for the development of anxiety, depression and inflammatory diseases such as IBS. We postulate that EPA/DHA administration is beneficial for restoring members of the microbiota with immunoregulatory functions in order to prevent an overly robust stress-induced inflammatory response which may contribute to the onset of mental illnesses. Supporting Information S1 File. Microbiota Data Set. NS.S, NS.LD, NS.HD stand for non-separated Saline, non-separated Low Dose, non-separated High Dose, respectively. MS.S, MS.LD, MS.HD stand for maternally separated Saline, maternally separated Low Dose, maternally separated High Dose, respectively. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139721.s001 (ZIP) Acknowledgments Research was funded by Food Institutional Research Measure (FIRM) under Grant No. 10/RD/TMFRC/709, the APC Microbiome Institute under Grant No. 07/CE/B1368 and 12/RC/2273, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under Grant No. 12/IA/1537. Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: MMP JFC TGD. Performed the experiments: MMP FC OO. Analyzed the data: MMP SE. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: PC CS PK JFC TGD. Wrote the paper: MMP SE. Commented on the written manuscript: JFC TGD.
Black Widow’s rise to badassery arguably began in 2004, when Richard K. Morgan wrote a miniseries that revamped her backstory and gave her a much stronger inner life. And now that we’re all talking about Black Widow in the wake of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Morgan has some thoughts about how to achieve her full potential. Top image: Art by Bill Sienkiewicz We were already talking to Morgan for our list of brilliant but flawed novels (for which he suggested True Detective, a “novel” on television.) And the conversation turned to Black Widow, and Morgan’s thoughts on why she’s so difficult to capture on the big screen. We found out so much interesting stuff, we wound up turning this into a separate interview. Advertisement When you took on Black Widow in 2004, what were you told about the character? What were you able to glean from reading Devin Grayson’s earlier miniseries, or her appearances in Avengers or Daredevil? My then-editor at Marvel, the very dynamic and kick-ass Jenny Lee, sent me a whole slew of stuff to bring me up to speed. But what I gleaned was mostly pretty depressing — basically, Natasha was the Marvel Universe bike; wheeled out whenever some other (male) superhero needed an edgy love interest, bent into whatever contorting shape suited a classic male gaze. Advertisement Even the few stabs at Selfhood that had been attempted tended to construct her as a sort of Bridget Jones beneath the catsuit — yeah, sure, she’s a kick-ass super spy, but underneath it all, she’s just a girl like any other; lonely, wistful, longing for lurrrve……. It’s the equivalent of having Batman peel off his gear and sit obsessing about his Facebook status or if his mates down the pub really like him. Which of course you’ll never see, because, hey, Batman is a male. Male superhero angst translates into strength, not weakness. Those are the rules. As a female, the Widow had just never been given the right to that — somehow HER angst must always weaken her, soften her harder edges — in other words, make her palatable to the fanbase as a woman. What is so great about Black Widow, in particular, as a character? Why is she uniquely great — not just as one of the few female superheroes to get a big role in the movies, but in her own right? What did you wind up liking about her? Advertisement Well, for me it was the sense of genuine moral ambiguity that the Widow carries around with her — a lot of superhero characters whinge on about some heavy burden or other they carry from their past, but this looked like the real deal. You work for the KGB as a field op, you’ve done some evil shit. No debate. And then, crossing over to the Capitalist West is pretty much an ultimate betrayal of your homeland and everything you once stood for, so there’s that to add into the balance. Long story short, here was a character you could really peel back from the cheap plastic morality that hangs around a lot of superhero fiction, and do something far grittier with instead. Plus, there was the whole gender politics issue, as I already mentioned; Natasha grew up in the Soviet Union, which subscribed to the idea of gender equality, at least in political theory; plenty of women in the Soviet military as a matter of course, plenty of women in all types of work across the Soviet Union, so she would take equality as her due without giving it a second thought. And that was a powerful character base with which to challenge the base assumptions not just of male dominated society in the storyline, but at a meta level of male dominated comicbook fiction too. It looked, potentially, like a game-changer. Black Widow had frequently been portrayed as a sort of femme fatale spy character previously — how did you approach breaking her out of that? And how is that similar to taking other noir archetypes and breathing life into them, as you did in some of the Takeshi Kovacs books? Advertisement I think noir is an immensely powerful — and elastic — lens through which to look at narrative and character. It seems to access something dark and true in us that other modes of fiction are often a bit prissy about touching. But the key to making it work as time and culture moves on is to use the elasticity, not just the power. Push the envelope, see what the form will give you. The first thing I did in Homecoming was swap out the Widow’s sidekick status — SHE was front and centre now, and I gave her a male sidekick with an adoring (if somewhat sleazy) gaze. I also gave her a modern feminist outlook on her femme fatality, which is to say I gave her full control of it — it’s a weapon in her armory, she’ll use it where she needs to, but she finds the need distasteful, and that distaste was made overt in the narrative. Advertisement Similarly, with the spy stuff, the trick was for her to own it; she’s done some shitty things and she’s living with it — but that doesn’t mean a plunge into hand-wringing and tears about being a monster. You don’t see Wolverine doing that shit, do you? The damage in his past serves to strengthen him, not break him down. I just gave Natasha the same kind of strength, tinged with a wry noirish weariness — she’s sour, she’s tough, she’s seen it all, and it didn’t break her then so it sure as shit won’t break her now. She will not fucking cry. You introduced a lot of elements that have stuck with the character since, including her false memories of being a ballerina, the Red Room where she and other sleeper agents were trained — and the forced sterilization. What were the reasons for adding this backstory? Yeah, it’s nice to know that some of Homecoming was long-term influential, especially since it sold so — by Marvel standards — appallingly badly at the time. Advertisement Again, I think my instinctive reaction to the existing backstory was “Ugh, what a load of regressive bollocks,” and so it had to go. As I said earlier, I was looking to do something meta with the arc, something that would really break the mould. So the ballerina schtick became exactly what in truth it had always been — a stereotypical little-girl dream-past, hiding far uglier truths. By taking the Widow on a journey back into her past, I was inviting the reader to wake up to what had been done to the character over time, kick it all into touch, and join us right here in the 21st century. I was largely a newcomer to comics back then, so it never occurred to me that there would be huge numbers of comicbook readers who couldn’t or didn’t want to make that journey; that they liked their superannuated Tits n Ass and mawkish tearful femininity bollocks just fine, thank you. Advertisement Why was it important to you to have Black Widow unable to have children? How was this part of telling a feminist story about her, in your mind? Black Widow #5 starts with that horrific scene where Lyudmila tells Natasha that “pregnancy is a disease.” Did you worry that this was reducing Natasha to just her fertility or lack thereof? And what was your solution? That narrative thread actually emerged not from any specific interest in children on Natasha’s part — my sense of the character is that she’s probably not keen on the idea — but because one of her fellow Widows was trying to have kids and had run up against the Red Room biotech that prevented it. So when Natasha finds this out, it’s almost a casual blow. But what’s telling, I think, is her reaction; there are no tears, no mawkishness, no collapse into becoming womanly distress — she’s just very (and dangerously) angry. And it’s important to realise why she’s angry — it’s not because she necessarily wants kids. She’s pissed off because she’s had the choice taken away. Advertisement It was always important to me that the Widow should be a genuine woman, not just a kick-ass guy-type character with T&A and legs-up-to-here glued on. And there’s no honest real-world vision of women that doesn’t take having babies into account; it’s what females have been designed for by millions of years of evolution, most women will feel the urge at some point in their lives, and remember I was positing Natasha as getting older — a woman in her late thirties minimum, so that urge might be getting urgent. But that’s biology. Feminism begins after biology, and in this case it begins with what women do (and more importantly are enabled to do) about that biological urge. See, most women I’ve ever met either already have or at some point want kids, but there are still significant numbers who don’t, or at least don’t right now. But those variations are beside the point — the real point is that among all those women, having or wanting kids or not, I never met a single one who didn’t want the choice. Ultimately, I think, that’s what feminism is about — building a world in which women’s choices are not circumvented by someone (male) else’s agenda. I read somewhere that you had a third Black Widow miniseries plotted out. What was that going to be about? Advertisement Well, to say it was plotted out would be dignifying the state of play a bit too much, I think. But certainly the second volume in the run, The Things They Say About Her, ended on a deliberate Act 2 low-point — the Widow and Matt Murdock both on Homeland Security’s Most Wanted List, Nick Fury banged up in Guantanamo as a traitor, corporate assholes in control of the White House and a puppet President, an ex-Navy SEAL assassin on the Widow’s trail, paid by Miami gangsters but driven by a personal thirst for vengeance (Natasha killed his father), and America spiralling into the grip of a Military Industrial Complex police state. Quite how we were going to pick the bones out of all that in a further six issues, I wasn’t quite sure — and in the end never had to find out! — but salient factors were going to be the Widow assassinating the President, a dirty-deeds back-door CIA hit squad called INSERT, and the reappearance of Lyudmila from Homecoming with some helpful biotech tips and upgrades. Ultimately, superannuated Soviet relics were going to save America from its own worst excesses and help restore a modicum of democracy — neat irony, huh? Of course, it was insane to think that Marvel would ever have run with something like that, or that it could find a decently large audience in the core fanbase, not five years after 9/11, in the midst of the biggest and ugliest military misadventure abroad since Vietnam and with cheap chest-beating patriotism being stoked like crazy everywhere you looked. Truth is, I’m lucky they even let me get away with Volume 2! But like I said, I was a newcomer to comics back then, and painfully naive about it all. Advertisement Why do you think it’s so hard to do justice to a character like Black Widow on screen? How would you like to see her presented? I think you’ll never do justice to Natasha, on the blockbuster superhero screen at least, because doing so would be inimical to the whole edifice of superhero fiction. That’s a boys’ club and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. It’s a franchise machine for feeding the atavistic appetites of 12-14 year old boys and men who’ve somehow grown up retaining a 12-14 year old boy heart. That’s why all this hating on [Age of Ultron director Joss] Whedon is so unfair, or at least unreasonable — it’s not like he’s writing into a vacuum here; he’s getting paid to do a job, which is to sculpt (and allow in turn to be re-sculpted with studio-level input) a narrative for pre-existing characters that fits in with the Money-spinning Superhero Franchise Machine. Any attempt to write something that didn’t fit within the desired parameters would just earn him a re-direct in notes, and get eliminated in the next draft. Because that’s how the machine works. Advertisement You want a Black Widow movie, one that really does the Widow justice, in which she’s Subject rather than Object, you’ve got to cut loose of all that. Superhero fiction is all about atavistic archetypes made flesh, and that shit’s no good for empowered women. Strong, smart, self-reliant women who don’t need men to define them only crop up in the human myth-base in one guise — the Wicked Witch. You’ve got to take the narrative somewhere else. My personal vision? — treat it like an indie passion project; drop the budget, so you don’t have to rely on the broad comicbook fanbase to make your money back, pitch the script for minimum 15 cert, shoot for the crowd who went to see Casino Royale, the Bourne movies, Noomi Rapace in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Angelina Jolie in Salt. Give it a real edge, give it some smarts. Dump the high camp paraphernalia of the Marvel universe and wipe off the perfect lipstick, go for a down and dirty vibe, blood and bruises and broken bones, vicious, desperate close-in combat, seventies-era spy paranoia and betrayal, and the Widow standing defiant in the face of it all. Get David Fincher or Paul Greengrass to direct, soundtrack by Health or Nine Inch Nails. Call it WIDOW: RUSSIAN STEEL, and backlight it in black. That, I’d pay money to see! Did you read the David Hayter screenplay for the Black Widow movie that was in development in 2004? Rumor has it that it was very closely based on your comics. I didn’t know that — but I’m immensely flattered. Like I said, my run on the Widow was an artefact of strictly limited appeal (Marvel were very gracious about keeping it going for a second arc when it was clear it was never going to do the numbers) — so it’s really nice to think that someone in Hollywood saw the potential and was prepared to run with it. Even if it was eventually canned! Advertisement When a female character has been around for decades, and has been largely defined as a sex symbol, or in terms of her relationships to the male characters, how do you extricate her from that? What’s the secret to breathing new life into a character like that? Actually, it’s colossally simple — you just put yourself in her shoes and give her agency. The same privilege you’d accord any male figure you write. She’s not this chick whose bones you’d love to jump, however cool; she’s not this damsel needing some kind of rescue, emotional or otherwise, from or by means of a handy male insert; she’s not your mother, your sister, your daughter, however dearly loved. She is YOU — now go BE her, and make it good. And finally, what are you working on now — and is the Altered Carbon movie still in the works? Advertisement Altered Carbon continues to advance steadily towards the screen with Mythology and Laeta Kalogridis; there’ve been some interesting developments in that connection, but unfortunately I’m not at liberty to discuss any of them right now. Meantime — because it doesn’t pay to dwell too much on stuff like that - I’m keeping busy putting together a new noir SF novel called THIN AIR; it’s set in the Black Man/Thirteen universe but on Mars and some time further forward in the colonisation process. Expect savage neoliberal colonial economics, corrupt cops and seedy backstreet violence, and a protagonist every bit as fucked up as Marsalis or Kovacs. It’s my first shot at first-person noir narrative since Woken Furies — feels good to be back!
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For the past year, SpaceX has been trying to gently land its Falcon 9 rocket after launching it into space. The goal is for a large portion of the Falcon 9 to touchdown on a floating barge at sea post-launch, but the two times SpaceX has tried it after a return from space, the rocket was unable to stick the landing. A recovery of the rocket would be a major step toward making a fully reusable rocket — something that’s never been done before. Then this morning, Jeff Bezos-backed spaceflight company Blue Origin blindsided everyone. The company revealed it had accomplished a rocket landing of its own. After launching the New Shepard rocket to the edge of space, the vehicle gently touched down on the ground at Blue Origin’s test facility. Is it fair to compare the two companies? Not exactly The feat was immediately compared to what SpaceX has been trying to do all year. It seemed that Bezos had beaten Musk in the race to reusability. SpaceX has had successful tests of its rocket’s landing capabilities, although those test flights didn’t go into space first. Still, the comparison struck a nerve with Musk, who issued a few tweets downplaying the historicalness of the event. @JeffBezos Not quite "rarest". SpaceX Grasshopper rocket did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around. pic.twitter.com/6j9ERKCNZl — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015 Musk has a point, though. Is it fair to compare the two companies and the types of landings they're trying to achieve for their vehicles? Not exactly. SpaceX versus Blue Origin The New Shepard and the Falcon 9 have very different designs, which stem from their very different mission goals. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is meant to launch payloads — such as satellites and cargo — into orbit around Earth and beyond. It's why the rocket's shape is so thin and tall; it creates less drag on the vehicle, allowing it to break free from the atmosphere more easily and go deeper into space. But such a shape also makes it much harder for the rocket to land upright back on Earth. The engines on the bottom of the rocket help to orient it vertically during descent, but it's almost like dropping a lead pipe from the roof and having it land on its end. The rocket is prone to tilt and fall over. The New Shepard and the Falcon 9 have very different designs The New Shepard isn't meant to go as far up as the Falcon 9, however, which is echoed in the rocket's shape. The vehicle is only designed to take people to sub-orbital space for about four minutes. An object at this height isn't going fast enough to make a full rotation around Earth, so it hasn't quite broken free of the bonds of the planet's gravity and will eventually be pulled back down to the surface. Because New Shepard doesn't need go to the same heights as the Falcon 9, its shape doesn't need to be as tall and thin. Blue Origin's rocket sports a thicker and shorter structure, making it a tad easier to land vertically — albeit a still challenging task. To be fair, the part of the Falcon 9 that SpaceX is trying to recover doesn't actually reach orbit, either. The company is only looking to land the first stage of the vehicle — the long rocket body that houses the main engines and most of the fuel. This section breaks apart from the rest of the rocket in sub-orbital space before falling back to Earth. Yet it reaches an ultimate height of 124 miles, twice the height of the 62-mile height at which New Shepard starts falling. And since the Falcon 9's ultimate goal is to achieve orbit, the first stage is traveling at a much greater speed than New Shepard when it begins its descent to the ground. New Shepard reaches a maximum velocity of Mach 3 during its trip, whereas the Falcon 9's first stage reaches between Mach 5.5 and Mach 7.5 before falling. The Falcon 9 also has a lot more thrust and energy behind it when it's going into space, too. A whopping 1.5 million pounds of thrust lift the vehicle off the ground, compared to the maximum thrust of 100,000 pounds that New Shepard achieves. That means the Falcon 9 has a lot more force behind it as it starts its final descent. If these differences weren't enough, the Falcon 9 is also oriented completely different at the time of descent. It's at a horizontal configuration compared to Earth, meaning the company must do a complicated flip maneuver to get the Falcon 9 in position for landing. The New Shepard remains mostly vertical for the entirety of its flight. Overall, comparing sub-orbital spaceflight to orbital spaceflight is pretty controversial. It's almost like comparing mountain climbing at the gym with climbing Mount Denali. The types of landing techniques involved can hardly be viewed on the same playing field, since New Shepard and Falcon 9 are drastically different vehicles. Comparing sub-orbital spaceflight to orbital spaceflight is pretty controversial "Blue Origin has designed their rocket to be reusable from day one. Elon is trying to take the first stage of his rocket, which was expendable, make some tweaks to it, and then make it reusable," said Charles Miller, president of NexGen Space LLC. "These are very interesting differences between how Musk and Bezos are approaching their rockets." A first? Depends on your definition Blue Origin's achievement has been lauded as the first landing of a commercial sub-orbital rocket, but it's only a "first" depending how you actually define the word "rocket." These days, the term is typically used to describe the cylindrical, vertical take-off vehicles that transport objects into space — like the Falcon 9 or the United Launch Alliance's Atlas V. If that's how you use the term rocket, then yes, this is the first time a rocket has reached sub-orbital space and then landed vertically on the ground afterward. It's only a "first" depending how you actually define the word "rocket" However, "rocket" has been used to describe any vehicle with a rocket engine. If that's your definition, then Blue Origin isn't the first commercial company to build and successfully test a reusable sub-orbital rocket. Scaled Composites had them beat on that with its SpaceShipOne spaceplane, which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004. That vehicle didn't launch vertically, though. It was transported to a high altitude by a carrier aircraft, where it then launched into sub-orbital space. Predating them all is the North American X-15, an experimental rocket-powered aircraft used by the US Air Force in the 1960s. Like SpaceShipTwo, the X-15 was also designed to be carried to a predetermined height and then launch into sub-orbital space, which it did twice. Regardless of what the word rocket means to you, Blue Origin's achievement is still impressive. Landing a rocket vertically after it reaches the edges of space is an incredible challenge that no one has quite mastered before. The feat belongs in the record books, though it's unclear the exact record that Blue Origin now holds. Update November 25th 8:40 am: The article was updated to clarify what constitutes sub-orbital spaceflight. Correction: SpaceShipOne is one of the few commercial vehicles to have made the trip to sub-orbital space, not SpaceShipTwo.
Cutting-edge stem cell therapy proves safe, but will it ever be effective? It’s official: The first use of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in a human has proved safe, if not clearly effective. Japanese researchers reported in this week’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine ( NEJM ) that using the cells to replace eye tissue damaged by age-related macular degeneration (AMD) did not improve a patient’s vision, but did halt disease progression. They had described the outcome at conferences, but publication of the details is an encouraging milestone for other groups gearing up to treat diseased or damaged organs with the versatile replacement cells, which are derived from mature tissues. This initial success “is pretty momentous,” says Alan Trounson, a stem cell scientist at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. But the broader picture for iPS therapies is mixed, as researchers have retreated from their initial hopes of creating custommade stem cells from each patient’s tissue. That strategy might have ensured that recipients’ immune systems would accept the new cells. But it proved too slow and expensive, says Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan, who first discovered how to create iPS cells and is a co-author of the NEJM paper. He and others are now developing banks of premade donor cells. “Using stocks of cells, we can proceed much more quickly and cost effectively,” he says. Even so, “clinical work is progressing more quickly than I had expected,” says Yamanaka, who did his groundbreaking work just a decade ago. His collaborator on this trial, Masayo Takahashi of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, had a head start. An ophthalmologist, Takahashi was familiar with the ravages of AMD, a condition that progressively damages the macula, the central part of the retina, and is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. Takahashi started investigating treatments for AMD in 2000, a time when the only cells capable of developing into all the tissues of the body had to be extracted from embryos. But she was stymied by immune reactions to these embryonic stem (ES) cells. When Yamanaka announced that he could induce mature, or somatic cells, to return to an ES cell–like state, Takahashi quickly changed course to develop a treatment based on iPS cells. Her team finally operated on the first patient, a 77-year-old Japanese woman with late-stage AMD, in September 2014. They took a sample of her own skin cells, derived iPS cells, and differentiated them into the kind of retinal cells destroyed by the disease. A surgeon then slipped a small sheet of the cells into the retina of her right eye. An operation on a second patient was called off because a number of minor genetic mutations had crept into his iPS cells during processing, and uncontrolled growth—cancer—has been a worry with such cells. “These changes do not directly induce cancer, but we wanted to make safety the first priority,” Yamanaka says. Also, Takahashi says, AMD drugs had stabilized the patient’s condition so there was no urgency in subjecting him to the risks of surgery, which include hemorrhaging and retinal damage. Immediately after surgery the first patient reported her eyesight was brighter. Takahashi says the surgery halted further deterioration of her eye, even without the drug injections still being used to treat her other eye, and there were no signs of rejection of the graft as of last December. Clinical work is progressing much more quickly than I expected. Shinya Yamanaka, Kyoto University The result is “a proof of principle that iPS cell–based therapy is feasible,” says Kapil Bharti, a molecular cell biologist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who is also developing iPS cells for treating AMD. Takahashi says once her team gains more experience with the technique they will extend it to patients with earlier-stage AMD in an effort to preserve vision. Last month, Takahashi won approval to try the procedure on another five patients with late-stage AMD. But this time, instead of using iPS cells derived from each patient, the team will draw on banked cells from a single donor. “It takes time to create iPS cells, and a lot of time for the safety evaluation,” Yamanaka says. It is also costly, at nearly $900,000 to develop and test the iPS cells for the first trial, Takahashi adds. Using donor cells to create the iPS cells will make it more difficult to ensure immune compatibility. But Yamanaka says that donor iPS cells can be matched to patients based on human leukocyte antigen (HLA) haplotypes—sets of cell-surface proteins that regulate immune reactions. HLA-matched cells should require only small doses of immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection, Takahashi says—and perhaps none at all for transplantation into the “immune-privileged” eye. Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, which Yamanaka heads, has been developing an iPS cell bank. Just 75 iPS cell lines will cover 80% of the Japanese population through HLA matching, he says. Trounson, a past president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a stem cell funding agency, says banked iPS cells have advantages. Donor iPS cells may be safer than cells derived from older patients, whose somatic cells may harbor mutations. And Jordan Lancaster, a physiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, likes the speed of the approach. He is devising patches for heart failure patients based on iPS-derived myocardial cells that will be “premanufactured, cryopreserved, and ready to use at a moment’s notice.” Patient-specific iPS cells will still have clinical uses. For one thing, Bharti says it will be difficult for cell banks to cover all HLA haplotypes. And a patient’s own iPS cells could be used to screen for adverse drug reactions, says Min-Han Tan, an oncologist at Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, who recently published a report on the approach. Other human trials are not far behind. Yamanaka says his Kyoto University colleague Jun Takahashi (Masayo Takahashi’s husband) will launch trials of iPS-derived cells to treat Parkinson’s disease within 2 years. Bharti hopes to start human trials of iPS cells for a different type of macular degeneration next year. And as techniques for making and growing iPS cells improve, researchers can contemplate treatments requiring not just 100,000 cells or so—the number in Takahashi’s retinal sheets—but millions, as in Lancaster’s heart patches. As clinical use approaches, Takahashi cautions that researchers need to keep public expectations realistic. For now, iPS treatments may help but won’t fully reverse disease, she says. “Regenerative medicine is not going to cure patients in the way they hope.”
Anyone who works in the world of SEO and internet marketing knows that no two clients are alike. In this industry, you’ll meet all sorts of clients: the good, the bad, and the unreadable. Here’s an infographic to help your company tell the difference. Even though every client is different, the best-case scenario for any business partnership is one that’s beneficial for both you and the client. You get to do what you do best, so they can gain more business doing what they do best. At the end of the day, you both want their company to be successful. But that can be tough to achieve if you’re always working against each other. As you take on more business, you’ll learn the needs and preferences of each client and their industry. You’re also going to meet a wide variety of client personalities–from the ones who don’t check in for weeks to the ones who micromanage your every click. There will be clients who listen to your suggestions and provide feedback, but there will be others who are never satisfied and expect to be #1 overnight. Some clients may even threaten to drop their contract and just do it themselves, but they should keep in mind that only 11% of businesses who do their own SEO in-house are satisfied with the results. So how do you tell the good clients from the bad clients? As you can see in the infographic above, we’ve highlighted some different characteristics that can help you get a better read on whether or not a current or potential client is really worth it: Control, Respect, Organization, Timelines, Communication/Feedback, and Payment. How a client approaches each of these issues will either be a positive sign or a red flag. If you and your client are able to work together and communicate, it’ll be much easier to get results. When it comes to taking on new clients, knowing is half the battle. By being aware of what good client relationships look like (and the warning signs of bad ones), you can avoid a lot of stressful situations and get back to helping your clients beat their competitors. Share This Infographic On Your Website:
Below is the press release from Intersection of the Arts: Dear Friends of Intersection for the Arts: We are writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Intersection for the Arts to inform you of difficult but necessary decisions that we have taken to confront fundamental challenges to the organization. For nearly 50 years, Intersection has existed as San Francisco’s oldest alternative arts space, weathering a myriad of challenges, successes and evolutionary changes. We now find ourselves at another major turning point. Our financial situation is deeply challenged, and it has become apparent that the current business model is no longer sustainable. Our financial situation has always been fragile. Like many non-profit, grassroots arts organizations, it has been a perpetual struggle, dependent on “angel donors,” "heroic" leadership and unpredictable trends. The move from our long-time home in the Mission to an improved facility in SOMA was a significant effort to address this issue, but it was increasingly clear that they were not enough to build the financial foundation we need not merely to survive, but to grow and thrive. Recognizing that the organization needed fundamental change to sustain its contributions to community life, the Board embarked on a deep organizational examination that led to a substantial rethinking of our role in the community and a refining of our mission. As of June 1, therefore, the following changes will occur: Except for a limited amount of funded projects already in the pipeline, Intersection will no longer produce its own work but will continue to provide a platform to present performances by Incubator Program and Innovation Studio members and resident artists. Resident company Campo Santo will transition to a strictly fiscally sponsored project and Sean San Jose, currently Intersection's performing arts program director, will continue to lead the company. The Visual Arts, and Education and Community Engagement Programs will be put on hold. Unfortunately, long-time program directors Kevin Chen, Rebeka Rodriguez and Sean San Jose will be laid off, as will a number of support staff, and various contractors will be released. Randy Rollison, Program Director Artist Resources, will take on the role of Interim Executive Director. The Board, staff and key Intersection stakeholders will actively engage artists, community leaders, and funders to test the programmatic elements and economic viability of this emergent platform concept. This restructure, though painful, is necessary not only to address Intersection’s current financial situation, but to serve as a catalyst for an entirely new kind of artist and community engagement model that can sustain a healthy organization through an arts-centered entrepreneurial approach that relies on multi-disciplinary and highly collaborative partnerships in the Bay Area. In the meantime, performance programs that were scheduled throughout the summer featuring the work of Incubator and Innovation Studio members will continue. And as living testament to our work in our neighborhood, community visual arts projects by Evan Bissell, Ana Teresa Fernandez, Wendy McNaughton and others are still alive and active in the streets of San Francisco. Intersection’s Incubator Program, with more than 100 fiscally sponsored projects working in performance, music, visual art, community engagement, arts education, artist services and advocacy, will continue without interruption. While not as visible as our visual arts, performing arts and community engagement programs, the Incubator program has nurtured thousands of artists since it began in the 1970’s who have gone on to show work in our gallery and on our stage as well as at other regional, national and international institutions. Many current and former members have evolved into some of today’s most vital Bay Area arts organizations and play an important role in maintaining a healthy arts ecology, among them Litquake, Cutting Ball Theater, Youth Speaks, Erika Chong Shuch’s ESP Project, Felonious, Mugwumpin and StageWrite to name a few. The Innovation Studio and the Community Rentals Program will also remain unchanged. None of these decisions have been taken lightly, and the necessity of laying off long-time staff members and releasing key contractors is particularly painful. These are the individuals who have made significant and lasting contributions to the organization and the artistic life of the entire Bay Area. They are valued members of the Intersection family and we are grateful to them for all they have given and regret terribly the impact this will have on their lives. We believe that Intersection’s long history, its impact on San Francisco artists and the arts community over the years, and its existing partnerships and programs provide a sound base for us to build a sustainable, impactful model that honors the past and looks toward a healthy and productive future. Our goal over the next few months is to craft that model and re-emerge in the fall with a new business plan that will sustain the organization’s ability to use an arts-centered approach to building engaged, inclusive, and economically and culturally vigorous communities. We know that for many of you this is sudden and unexpected news. We still don’t have all the answers or details worked out but we believe we have a solid foundation upon which to rebuild the organization. Of course, we can’t do this alone. We need you to be an active part of this process. We will continue to keep you informed of our progress and plans and hope to convene a public conversation in the very near future. In the meantime, we want to know what you think and invite you to email us at transition@theintersection.org and share your ideas, thoughts, memories, comments, criticism. Even better, attend one of our upcoming summer programs, and, if you want to support our work through this critical transition, please make a donation. https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/intersectionforthearts Intersection has always been a community based organization and you are a vital part of that community. We hope we can look forward to your continued support, patience, and perseverance as we take these difficult but necessary actions to build a sustainable foundation for Intersection that will last another 50 years. Sincerely, Yancy Widmer, Chair, Board of Directors Arthur Combs, Interim Executive Director
A STANDALONE iOS dogecoin WALLET A STANDALONE iOS dogecoin WALLET Unlike other iOS wallets, beerwallet is a real standalone dogecoin client. There is no server to get hacked or go down, so you can always access your coins. Using SPV mode, beerwallet connects directly to the network with the fast performance you need on a mobile device. — THE NEXT STEP IN WALLET SECURITY even physical theft. With AES hardware encryption, app sandboxing, keychain and code signatures, beerwallet represents a significant security advance over web and desktop wallets, and other mobile platforms. beerwallet is designed to protect you from malware, browser security holes,. With AES hardware encryption, app sandboxing, keychain and code signatures, beerwallet represents a significant security advance over web and desktop wallets, and other mobile platforms. — BEAUTIFUL SIMPLICITY BEAUTIFUL SIMPLICITY Simplicity is beerwallet's core design principle. A simple backup phrase is all you need to restore your wallet on another device if yours is ever lost or broken. Because beerwallet is "deterministic", your balance and transaction history can be recovered from just your backup phrase. — COINDROIDS COMPATIBILITY COINDROIDS COMPATIBILITY A toggle has been added within your iOS device's Settings application to trigger Single Address Mode. This lets you switch between standard wallet behaviour (new addresses are created after each one is used) and single-address behaviour that is compatible with Coindroids. — BASED ON DOUGHWALLET & BREADWALLET beerwallet is based on the open source app doughwallet which itself is based on breadwallet and adapted for DEFCON by Michael Perklin. Doughwallet is developed by Filip Noetzel, and Breadwallet is developed by entrepreneur and mobile app developer, Aaron Voisine. —
Advertisement Jaw-dropping images show a courageous woman swimming naked underwater with sharks as part of a mission to prove sharks are friendly and not deadly. The unbelievable pictures show underwater model, Irina Britanova, 27, tailing tawny nurse sharks in The Maldives whilst striking poses for the camera. Irina, who regularly poses for aquatic shoots, managed to hold her breath at a depth of 55ft so the stunning images could be captured. In some frames she gets close enough to shark to hold on to its fin and get swept along for a ride. Model Irina Britanova, 27, tails a tawny nurse shark in the Indian Ocean as part of a project to dispel the fearful myths surrounding the creatures Photographer Andrey Nekrasov said the purpose of the photos was to capture beauty At one point Irina managed to grab hold of the shark's fins and allowed herself to be swept along for the ride The magnificent images were captured in the Indian Ocean by underwater photographer, Andrey Nekrasov. The purpose of this project was to show that there's more to sharks than the fear and prejudice we place on them, and to highlight that most sharks are not dangerous to humans. 'What one can see in these pictures is a naked young woman talking underwater with sharks as they get to know each other; mutual curiosity,' Andrey said. 'The aim of this is to capture beauty in nature and not show any vulgarity.' The brave model managed to hold her breath at a depth of 55ft for the stunning images Come swim with me: Irina majestically glides along in the depths of the Indian ocean without any diving equipment Around 10 sharks were nearby and were curious to come and see who had arrived in their territory Tawny nurse sharks, scientifically known as Euro Nebrius ferrugineus, are slow-moving bottom-dwellers and have very strong jaws filled with thousands of small, jagged teeth. 'There were about ten or more sharks who showed curiosity and approached closely,' said Andrey. 'In such a situation with capturing sharks underwater, the model and photographer have to adjust to the circumstances. Irina managed to hold her breath at a depth of 55ft in order to swim with the sharks Tawny nurse sharks, scientifically known as Euro Nebrius ferrugineus, are slow-moving bottom-dwellers and have very strong jaws filled with thousands of small, jagged teeth Skilled diver Irina places a hand on the back of the tawny nurse shark, who seems completely unflustered by the gesture 'I like to show naked nature, such as it is. I think the naked human in the wild looks harmonious. 'People usually like the pictures, though everyone with their different reasons.' Tawny nurse sharks are generally very placid, but attacks are not unheard of and they will bite if harassed. They generally feed on octopus and other invertebrates and hunt at night. Let's be friends! Irina shows not sign of fear as the pets one of the sharks on the head. While tawny nurse sharks are generally placid attacks are not unheard of At one with nature: Model Irina was completely naked for the photo shoot, which was designed to highlight the peaceful nature of most sharks Brave Irina got very close to the sharks, who are generally peaceful but will bite if confronted or startled Around 10 sharks swam around Irina during the shoot, but they were completely unperturbed by their underwater visitor Video courtesy of photographer Andrey Nekrasov
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has assumed responsibility for the deaths of more than 300 birds in Yankton, South Dakota. But the USDA insists it had nothing to do with other mass die-offs of birds recently in Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky. The South Dakota killings were a result of the department’s Wildlife Services Program, which used DRC-1339 to poison a feedlot in Nebraska, across the state border from Yankton. The feedlot owners had complained that starlings were eating their feed and defecating in inappropriate areas. Starlings were introduced into the United States in 1890 by Eugene Schiffelin, who imported them from England and released them in New York’s Central Park. Since the 1960s, the government has eradicated large numbers of birds under its Bye Bye Blackbird operation, which has involved multiple species. In FY 2009 alone, the program killed more than 4 million birds and animals, including 1,259,714 starlings, 1,046,109 cowbirds and 969,889 red-winged blackbirds. -Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
For fans of the new Suicide Squad movie, this is Jared Leto in his Batman Imposter suit which was apparently to be featured in a cut scene from the movie. The only proof of this is the official Hot Toys release from Side Show Collectibles, and this is a detail for detail 6″ match of the Hot Toys figure. He features his trademark Joker grin that you won’t find on any other 6″ Joker Batman Impostor figure. This is truly one of a kind! He also features the exact paint job as the Hot Toys figure with all of the Joker graffiti! He comes with his gold and blood spattered grapple gun with detachable pennant, his gold Batarangs and smoke grenade! Heavily detailed, not a single one was left out. Joker was made from a Suicide Squad Batman, with a ML Constrictor jaw spliced onto the Batman head. Wrapped up in a seriously detailed paint job. Enjoy! AC
When analyzing tools, tactics, and procedures for different malware campaigns, we normally don’t see huge changes on the attackers’ part. However, in the Dropbox campaign we have been following, not only have the attackers shifted to a new delivery domain, but they have started to use a new malware strain, previously undocumented by the industry, named “Dyre”. This new strain not only bypasses the SSL mechanism of the browser, but attempts to steal bank credentials. Figures 1 and 2 show the phishing emails that were used against us: My first instinct was to gather intelligence on the “Cubby” domain. Upon investigation, it‘s a legitimate service from LogMeIn that allows for file sharing. According to their website, “Files are stored in the cloud for anywhere access, shared with others publicly or privately, or even directly synced between devices without using the cloud.” Since Dropbox has been quick to block phishing links, the attackers needed a new legitimate service. [Disclosure: I called LogMeIn support (owners of Cubby), and reported these attacks to the correct personnel.] The malware downloads as a screen saver file inside of a zip file. Once the user opens the zip file and runs the .scr file, the malware beacons out to several hard coded IP addresses as seen here: https://malwr.com/analysis/NjQwMDZhYmUzNTJmNDFkNDg3ZjdjZDBkNmMxMzYxNDc/ Once the IP addresses can be reached, the malware will make the following GET request for a path to /publickey/. The current function of this data is unknown. Next, the malware sends a beacon containing the OS in a GET request: Then the malware makes a GET request to “/1/”, where a potential command is sent back to the malware. Once complete, the malware continues to beacon, more than likely to let the attackers know “I’m still here”. At this point, the malware kept beaconing out with the same “I’m alive” beacon, and no other data was being pulled down. Wanting to entice the malware to do a little more, I opened Firefox, directed the browser to Google and was amazed at what happened next. Here’s a picture of the pcap: There are several takeaways from Figure 7: 1. POST request goes out to the attackers IP, 199.9.6[d]61 2. Content length is 466 bytes 3. A second POST request? Shouldn’t that go to Google, not the attackers? 4. Blue response is a 502 from attackers command-and-control 5. Back to 3. Didn’t Google go HTTPS with everything…? As previously stated, there are 2 POST requests showing up. This is by design, it’s not a mistake. Using another search engine, what happens when an infected user performs a Bing search? In Figure 8, the user’s search query is presented to the attacker. Not only that, but, their session could be hijacked as their cookie is passed also, allowing the attacker to log in as that user if they so desired. The malware is highly packed and obfuscated, giving low AV detection. At the time of writing, a little more than half of AV vendors detect it. https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/b437b92961e03f3503eba87a8f98ec556364e9771c637267dc2388335df3d0c1/analysis/ When performing malware analysis, one of the first things an analyst will do is run the command strings on the malware in order to get an idea of what they are working with. With a heavily obfuscated or packed sample like this, you can’t run strings, as you’re going to get gibberish that’s of little use. From a memory forensics / malware analysis perspective, for most code to execute, it must first be unpacked to be executed. By dumping the memory and then running strings on the dump file, we get a better picture of what the attackers are really after. (Figure 10) Additional analysis of the strings in memory yield a project name of “C:CPP_PROJECTS_GITDYREx64Releaseiebattle.pdb”, which is usually added by the compiler at compile time. This is the project path, giving us insight about the malware author and the project. For this, the source code may sit on the author’s C drive in the folder CPP_PROJECTS_GIT as the project DYRE. (Why I’m calling this new malware strain project Dyre). In Figure 9, attackers are looking for queries to places such as Bank of America, Citigroup, and the Royal Bank of Scotland. In Figure 10, if a user attempts to log into one of the banks, their data is also POSTed back to the attackers without alerting the user. A few things to point out from Figure 10: 1. Company ID used at login 2. Username associated with Company ID 3. Referrer coming back from https 4. Previously used username, included in the cookie Here’s the kicker. All of this should be encrypted and never seen in the clear. By using a sleight of hand, the attackers make it appear that you’re still on the website and working as HTTPS. In reality your traffic is redirected to the attackers page. In Figure 11, infected users are being directed to the hard coded IP address of “85.25.148[d]6” with a host field of “c1shproonline.bankofamerica[d]com”. To successfully redirect traffic in this manner, the attackers need to be able to see the traffic prior to encryption, and in the case of browsers, this is done with a technique called browser hooking. No DNS queries were performed for the c1sh Bank of America domain, suggesting the attackers simply appended this to the Host field in the network traffic. In closing, this appears to be a brand new malware family targeting users. (And if it’s not, please let us know!) Browser hooking is a very effective technique, and from the samples and screenshots above, an attacker can successfully bypass the SSL mechanism of a webpage while appearing to have the session encrypted. For protection and remediation, here’s what you can do: 1. Remove above emails from inboxes 2. Check your proxy logs for traffic to Cubby, downloading zip files containing the name “documents” or “invoice” 3. Search for traffic / block the IPs 85.25.148.6, 217.12.207.151, and 192.99.6.61 4. IDS rules looking for double POST within a short period of time (this will catch copy cats, too) 5. Look for zip files containing .exe or .scr files (web, IDS, host-based, etc)

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