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JAISALMER: Sixteen years after India created history by becoming the sixth country to have tested nuclear bombs and joining the elite nuclear club on May 11, 1998, Pak intelligence agency, ISI, is making a lot of efforts to get a sample of the sand in Pokhran. The ISI even today, is reportedly trying to spy this area and get the sand samples of the area in Pokhran where the nuclear tests were conducted.At the tail end of Pokaran field firing range , the spot where nuclear test was done, is under strict vigil and ISI has not been able to succeed in its efforts. The 3.5km long road is closely guarded and one has to pass four strictly guarded gates to get there. Even till today, the then director of United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), George Tenent feels disappointed at not being able to get the hint of the nuclear test conducted by India in 1998.According to an intelligence source, "ISI had launched its spies and agents whose objective was to take sand from this place. ISI wants to test the sand and analyze how the testing was done scientifically and technically. But due to the alertness of BSF jawans, their objective so far has not seen the light of the day."Defence spokesperson SD Goswami said, "Guarding and protecting the defence land is the responsibility of the local military authority. As such, all defence land falls under restricted area zone where permission for civilian freedom of movement is strictly monitored and depends on case to case."May 11 has been officially declared as the National Technology Day in India to commemorate the first of the five tests that were carried out on the 16th anniversary of Pokhran II. After the nuclear test done on May 11 and 13, 1988, the place is under strict Army vigil even today and no person can enter it for several kilometres without Army's permission.Just 16 years ago, Buddha smiled at Pokaran area in Jaisalmer. In hind sight, 'Smiling Buddha' a (MEA designation: Pokhran-I) was the code name of India's first nuclear weapon explosion, which took place on May 18, 1974. As a sheer coincidence, after a long silence, on May 11, 1988 in the same Pokaran range, three nuclear explosions were done and that day, too, was Buddha Purnima.It may be recalled that missile man and former president APJ Abdul Kalam, for the success of the series of nuclear tests, in a confidential manner stayed here for over two months under a pseudo name along with two scientist friends at Khetolai field firing range. For the implementation of these tests secretly, a chess table was laid and even America's chief intelligence agencies could not get a hint of the same.
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Donald Trump said Wednesday he is “not proud” that children are mimicking his rhetoric.
“There have been incidents of children, of white children, pointing to their darker-skinned classmates and saying, ‘You’ll be deported when Donald Trump is president.’ There have been incidents of white kids at basketball games holding up signs to teams which have Hispanic kids on them, saying, ‘We’re going to build a wall to keep you out.’ Are you proud of that? Is that something you’ve done in American political and social discourse that you’re proud of?” NPR news analyst Cokie Roberts asked Trump on “Morning Joe.”
Roberts’ question was prompted by reports from around the country that the language Trump has used on the campaign trail is being repeated by youth.
A Virginia school district confirmed a story about a third grader being told by his classmates that he would be deported if Trump became president. The child’s mother took to Facebook to voice her disgust, writing, “I just got a call from my son’s teacher… that two of his classmates… point(ed) out the ‘immigrants’ in the class who would be sent ‘home’ when Trump becomes President… They singled him out… because of the color of his skin… In third grade…. in Fairfax County… in 2016.”
A high school basketball game in Indiana took a controversial turn after spectators allegedly chanted statements that were taken as racist toward Latinos. A report said that fans of one team had big placards with Donald Trump’s face and were yelling, “Build a wall, build a wall.”
The business mogul’s name was also invoked during an Iowa basketball game to allegedly taunt a team that included boys from racial minorities. According to a report, fans of the opposing team chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” to rile the players.
Trump took issue with Roberts’ inquiry and insisted he did not have knowledge of these incidents. He also maintained that his rhetoric on deportation was directed toward illegal immigration.
“I think your question’s a very nasty question,” Trump said. “And I’m not proud of it because I didn’t even hear of it, OK? And I certainly do not like it at all when I hear about it. You’re the first one who’s told me about that.”
“I talk about deporting people that are here illegally,” Trump said of his immigration platform. “We have a country or we don’t.”
“But what about the children, Mr. Trump?” Roberts asked. Trump defended his message, calling it “very positive.” The Republican front-runner went on to say that he thought the United States needed to be made great again.
“I think America is right now very, very troubled. I think we’re being laughed at all over the world.”
Referencing the military, Trump said that “we can’t beat ISIS” and that veterans are being treated poorly. Trump also pointed to health care and debt after saying that the U.S. education system “is at the bottom of the heap worldwide.”
“I think we have a lot of problems,” he told Roberts.
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A great wrap of the hectic 2015 Ashes series
Steve Smith has surged back to the top of the ICC Test batting rankings after his magnificent 143 in Australia's crushing victory at The Oval.
Just a fortnight after relinquishing top spot, Smith has jumped from third to first place in the latest rankings, which were published on Monday, and swapped spots with England's Joe Root. South African star AB de Villiers remains in second position.
Veteran opener Chris Rogers retires holding the No.10 position after dropping one place, with his opening partner David Warner moving ahead of him into ninth spot thanks to his 85 at The Oval.
Warner's elevation up two spots and into the top 10 means India captain Virat Kohli has dropped one place to 11th.
Michael Clarke, who like Rogers retired following the fifth Test, finishes his career in 25th place on the batting rankings at 94th on the bowling rankings.
Behind the scenes of the final day of Test cricket for Clarke and Rogers
Sri Lankan great Kumar Sangakkara, who also retired this week, finishes in seventh position.
Smith first rose to the top spot in June following Australia’s victory over West Indies in Jamaica, where he was dismissed for 199 before scoring 54 not out.
He dropped to second after Australia’s first-Test defeat in Cardiff – where he scored 33 in both innings – but returned to the No.1 position following his 215 and 58 in Australia's crushing 405-run win at Lord’s.
But he lost top spot again after a series of low scores in Australia's defeats at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge, before he returned to form in grand style at The Oval.
In the bowling rankings, Mitchell Johnson has climbed one place to sixth while Peter Siddle is up three places to 14th after his strong performance at The Oval.
Behind the scenes of the final day of Test cricket for Clarke and RogersWatch: Peter Siddle stars with six wickets at The Oval
Siddle's elevation has pushed Josh Hazlewood down one spot to 15th while Mitchell Starc has fallen three places to 18th.
One of the men who moved ahead of Starc is teammate Nathan Lyon, who has moved up to places to 16th.
Mitchell Marsh is 71st on the bowling rankings, his highest career mark, after a strong performance with the ball at The Oval.
Indian spinner Ravi Ashwin has moved into eighth on the list after a starring role in his side's big win over Sri Lanka.
Dale Steyn retains No.1 spot ahead of England's Stuart Broad and New Zealand's Trent Boult.
Australia's thumping victory at The Oval means they will hold on to the No.2 position in the team rankings, one spot ahead of England and still trailing world No.1 South Africa.
ICC Test batting rankings
ICC Test bowling rankings
Get the full ICC player rankings here
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A team of technology entrepreneurs are working on a project to develop prototypes aimed at improving safety and security in rural Saskatchewan.
Jeff Shirley, the Saskatoon-based owner of Rivercity Technology Services Limited (RCT), was selected as the winner of the first “Rural Crime Innovation Challenge.”
READ MORE: Sask. RCMP urge safety, prevention first over frustration about rural crime
Innovation Saskatchewan announced the challenge in September for the development of technologies that can help address crime in rural areas in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice.
Shirley and RCT will participate in a 16-week residency program with the ministry.
They will also work with William Topping, founder of Brand X Technologies, to design an application-based tracking system and GPS device to alert landowners about irregular activity with assets on their property.
“You need at least one bar of cellphone coverage,” Shirley said.
“However, you can also use the app manually, so if you are somewhere where there is no cellphone coverage at all, you can still go out and using the software side of the solution. You can log events, locate areas, map GPS positions of where you’ve got problems.”
WATCH BELOW: Rural crime watch
Government officials said the goal is to be able to log these events in an application that would immediately alert law enforcement officers.
“We are excited to see the technology sector’s involvement in addressing crime in rural Saskatchewan,” Saskatchewan Justice Minister Don Morgan said in a press release.
“This collaborative approach will help us find creative solutions to make Saskatchewan a safer place to live and raise a family.”
If the team is successful, the proposed prototype will be tested in a pilot project.
The service is estimated to cost $5 monthly to rural customers. There will also be a free app.
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After 13 seasons, “Grey’s Anatomy” star Ellen Pompeo made her directorial debut on this week’s episode of the long-running medical drama.
What took so long? Well, Pompeo is busy.
She’s been at the top of the call sheet on the ABC juggernaut since its premiere in 2005, and she balances leading “Grey’s Anatomy” with her other full time job: being a mother to three young children at home.
“I’m already there really a lot of hours. Directing is even more hours. The idea of spending more time there really has never appealed to me. So basically that’s it,” Pompeo tells Variety when asked why she waited until the middle of Season 13 to sit in the director’s chair. She adds, “As far as creativity on ‘Grey’s,’ you’re kind of trapped in a hospital and there’s only so much you can do, so I wasn’t that excited about it creatively.”
Pompeo says she was convinced to direct partly because of Debbie Allen, who is in charge of appointing all of the episodic directors on “Grey’s Anatomy,” and also because of her evolution on the series, thanks to creator Shonda Rhimes allowing her to learn from the sidelines about directing, producing, and storytelling, in addition to acting.
Related 'Grey's Anatomy' Director Debbie Allen on How Industry Has Changed for Women Shondaland Stars Headline Hillary Clinton Ad
“We never can tell the way we’ll evolve — emotionally or spiritually or creatively, you never know how you’ll evolve and what will interest you creatively,” Pompeo explains. “The show has had a lot of changes and that’s precisely how the show keeps going because it does continue to change. People change, the cast, behind the scenes, the writers, everything changes. So the circumstances just changed, and when Debbie asked me to do it this time, I was more open.”
Here, Pompeo talks about her decision to finally direct, plus opens up about work-life balance, the lack of female directors, and the lack of women in politics…
Have Debbie Allen and Shonda Rhimes been asking you to direct for years?
To be honest, no one has ever asked me before. I have a pretty busy home life — I have three kids, and one of the things I’m proudest about is being able to achieve a really healthy balance. Not only do I have a great job on this show that continues to be super successful, but I have a great home life, and I cherish that a lot. I try to devote equal time to both. So no one has ever approached me about it before, and Debbie did and she started last year asking me, and I started saying no, no, no, and then she just kept at it. Debbie Allen doesn’t take no for an answer! I thought about it and everything she said was true — I do know more about the show than more of the directors that come in, so if they can do it, I certainly could. It wasn’t a question of if I could do it; it was a question of, do I want to spend that much more time here?
How much of a time commitment was it for you to direct the episode?
It was a month and I banged it out and I’m really happy that I did it. I’m lucky that I live really close to where I work, and my kids get to come to set and they get to hang out — it’s a very family-friendly set, so I just worked around that challenge by bringing my kids and my family to set all the time.
Was the schedule and time commitment the most challenging part of directing, or did you find anything else to be especially difficult?
I think the most challenging thing is just the sheer hours.
How did you decide which episode you wanted to direct?
I really wanted to direct a script from [writer] Meg Marinis and Shonda was kind enough to grant me that wish. Debbie is in charge of booking the directors so she had to just figure out in the schedule where there was space. We have a good amount of freedom because we have so many in-house directors from Chandra Wilson to Kevin McKidd and Debbie, too. We don’t book the whole season of directors ahead of time, so there were some spaces open, so it was just a matter of what slot was open and there were only a couple of episodes not spoken for, so it was pretty easy to set.
You mentioned some of your cast members who have directed. Did anyone give you advice?
No, not really. I’ve been there so long. I see everybody do it. Sara Fischer, who’s in charge of production for Shondaland and who is a remarkable human being, gave me the best piece of advice, which was to have an answer for everything and to wear sneakers, and I already do that every day [laughing]. I was already all prepared.
There is a lack of female directors in the industry. “Grey’s Anatomy” has so many female directors. Do you think that “Grey’s” is helping to pave the way for female directors?
Shonda Rhimes is definitely walking the walk. I can’t really say enough about her leadership skills and the way she’s running the company and how far she’s come. Her evolution as a leader has been very inspiring to watch. Obviously when we started, she didn’t have any employees and it was her first show and she never had a show before. So with respect to breaking down boundaries and creating an environment for people in-house to learn and create and grow is something that she definitely talks the talk and walks the walk. I don’t know if one show can change the stats and if one show is enough to move the needle with respect to the whole television business, but certainly, our numbers are much more impressive than I’m sure any other show. I doubt there’s another show that hires as many women as we do — which is so weird to me because women are such amazing multi-taskers. Directing is multi-tasking. It’s baffling to me!
It’s also baffling to me that there aren’t more women in politics because running the country is multi-tasking, and women are notoriously better at that than men. It’s so curious to me how we end up in these dynamics. Clearly, our president cannot tweet and do anything at the same time. [Hillary Clinton] can manage her emotion and tweet, all at the same time.
Would you want to direct another episode of “Grey’s”?
I am going to do another one next year. Obviously the challenge for me is I can’t not be in front of the camera. They can write me lighter when I direct. But I would direct a bunch if I could not act as much, but that’s not really an idea that anyone is interested in. Right now, I’m just scheduled to do one next year because they really want me in the show — you know, a lot. And I understand that and it’s fine.
Well, the show is called “Grey’s Anatomy,” after all.
Yeah [laughing]. I would love to direct another show or I’d love to direct a pilot where I could be really creative from the start and conceptualize everything and create a whole entire body of a story. That would be really exciting to me. That comes so easy to me, being on a television show for 13 seasons — I really have learned so much about storytelling and about all sides of it, so it comes pretty easy to me.
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Sony is taking on GoPro with the Wednesday launch of its new Action Cam (HDR-AS30V), a portable camcorder designed to brave even the most treacherous situations.
A follow-up to its previous Action Cam model, the new camcorder is 35% lighter and 25% smaller than its predecessor. Weighing in at 3 ounces, the pint-sized device is designed to be strapped to the top of your helmet, front of your surfboard or handlebars of your motorcycle.
See also: 8 Fantastic Fitness Apps to Keep You Motivated
The Action Cam can record Full HD (1920x1080 60p/50p) video, as well as take 11.9-megapixel still shots while you’re on the move. Built-in Wi-Fi gives you the ability to share those videos via smartphone, then upload them to social media.
The camera can also be controlled using your smartphone or a new Live-View remote, which looks more like a watch than a remote control. Strapped to your wrist, the waterproof controller can help frame your shot when you’ve mounted your camera in a hard-to-reach place, and can start and stop recording as well as take photos.
The camcorder captures a 170-degree field-of-view and has a new “two-screen multi view,” where you can easily pair shots from two different Action Cams into the same final video, for sharing with friends.
A “Movie Rotate” feature also makes it easy to rotate a video right-side-up, and with GPS functionality users can overlay a map of their journey over the final masterpiece.
Sony has a number of different mounts for the camcorder, including a chest mount harness, roll bar mount and, yes, even a mount for your dog.
The HDR-AS30V will be available late September for $299.99. With its release Sony’s current Action Cam, the HDR-AS15, will drop in price to $199.99. The Live-View remote will be available December for $149.
Image: Sony
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Researchers first to test therapy next to drug treatment.
Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can improve their symptoms significantly by adding exposure and response prevention therapy to their treatment regimen when common drug treatment options have failed, according to new research from psychiatrists at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Exposure and response prevention therapy is a type of cognitive behavior therapy in which the patient is asked to confront triggers that give rise to their obsessions in order to refrain from performing the rituals in response to these obsessions. The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
OCD is marked by the performing of “rituals” to decrease distress related to one’s obsessions—such as excessive hand-washing to cope with a fixation on hand hygiene, for example.
“We know that exposure and response prevention therapy (EX/RP) can benefit these patients,” said lead author, Carmen McLean, PhD, an assistant professor of clinical psychology in the department of Psychiatry at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at Penn. “But this study showed that EX/RP is also effective for OCD sufferers who do not benefit sufficiently from common drug treatments for OCD.”
A previous study compared the effects of adding risperidone, pill placebo, and up to 17 twice-weekly therapist-led sessions of EX/RP to medication for OCD. “We found compared to patients who received medication or placebo, those who received EX/RP showed significantly more reductions in OCD symptoms and depression, as well as significantly more increases in insight, quality of life, and social function after only eight weeks,” McLean said.
The current study included 32 patients who crossed over to receive 17 weeks of EX/RP treatment after not benefitting sufficiently from risperidone. Evaluation at 12 and 16 weeks showed significant symptom improvement, with 25 (78 percent) of patients completing treatment; 17 (53 percent) of them were classified as treatment responders and 11 (34 percent) classified as excellent responders at a 32-week follow-up evaluation. The remaining patients required medication changes during the follow-up period, which enabled them to shift to excellent-responder status.
This study adds to the large body of research that shows the benefits of exposure therapy for patients with OCD. “We want patients to know that there is another option, if common drug treatments have failed them,” explained senior author, Edna Foa, PhD, professor of Clinical Psychology in the department of Psychiatry and director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at Penn and the creator of exposure therapy. “The therapy can be life-saving, if patients are aware of it.”
About this neuroscience research
Additional Penn authors include Laurie J. Zandberg, PsyD; and Joseph K. Carpenter, BA.
Funding: This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH45404) and (R01 MH045436).
Source: Lee-Ann Donegan – University of Pennsylvania
Image Source: The image is credited to Lars Klintwall Malmqvist and is in the public domain
Original Research: Abstract for “Exposure and Response Prevention Helps Adults With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Who Do Not Respond to Pharmacological Augmentation Strategies” by Carmen P. McLean, PhD; Laurie J. Zandberg, PsyD; Page E. Van Meter, PhD; Joseph K. Carpenter, BA; Helen Blair Simpson, MD, PhD; and Edna B. Foa, PhD in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Published online November 2015 doi:10.4088/JCP.14m09513
Abstract
Exposure and Response Prevention Helps Adults With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Who Do Not Respond to Pharmacological Augmentation Strategies
Objective: Serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) are a first-line treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Yet, most patients with OCD who are taking SRIs do not show excellent response. Recent studies show that augmenting SRIs with risperidone benefits a minority of patients. We evaluated the effectiveness of exposure and response prevention (EX/RP) among nonresponders to SRI augmentation with 8 weeks of risperidone or placebo.
Method: The study was conducted from January 2007 to August 2012. Nonresponders to SRI augmentation with risperidone or pill placebo (N = 32) in a randomized controlled trial for adults meeting DSM-IV-TR criteria for OCD were offered up to 17 twice-weekly EX/RP sessions. Independent evaluators, blind to treatment, evaluated patients at crossover baseline (week 8), midway through crossover treatment (week 12), post-EX/RP treatment (week 16), and follow-up (weeks 20, 24, 28, and 32). The primary outcome was OCD severity, measured with the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS). Secondary outcomes were depression, quality of life, insight, and social functioning.
Results: Between crossover baseline and follow-up, nonresponders to SRI augmentation with risperidone or placebo who received EX/RP showed significant reductions in OCD symptoms and depression, as well as significant increases in insight, quality of life, and social functioning (all P < .001).
Conclusions: Exposure and response prevention is an effective treatment for patients who have failed to respond to SRI augmentation with risperidone or placebo. This study adds to the body of evidence supporting the use of EX/RP with patients who continue to report clinically significant OCD symptoms after multiple pharmacologic trials.
Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00389493
“Exposure and Response Prevention Helps Adults With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Who Do Not Respond to Pharmacological Augmentation Strategies” by Carmen P. McLean, PhD; Laurie J. Zandberg, PsyD; Page E. Van Meter, PhD; Joseph K. Carpenter, BA; Helen Blair Simpson, MD, PhD; and Edna B. Foa, PhD in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Published online November 2015 doi:10.4088/JCP.14m09513
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NBC News confirmed Israel as the Source of Secret Intelligence Trump Have to Russia 5:11 PM ET Tue, 16 May 2017 | 00:38
Israel was the U.S. ally that collected the highly classified intelligence that President Donald Trump reportedly shared in a meeting with Russian officials last week, NBC News confirmed with three government officials with knowledge of the matter.
The New York Times first reported the news.
In an off-camera briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said he could not comment on the news. The press secretary said, however, that the U.S. appreciates the "strong relationship that we have with Israel when it comes to intelligence sharing."
Late Monday, The Washington Post first reported that Trump had divulged highly sensitive information related to the Islamic State during the meeting. The Times, BuzzFeed and Reuters later confirmed the Post's report.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump defended his conduct in his meeting with key Russian diplomats, calling it "very successful."
Speaking with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a White House visit, Trump said the United States wants to get as many partners as possible involved in the fight against the terror group ISIS.
Legally, the president can share classified information when he wants. But experts have said such disclosures can threaten intelligence gathering and reduce the United States' ability to stop potential threats.
The administration has vehemently defended Trump's actions. National security advisor H.R. McMaster said Tuesday that the president's discussions with Russian officials last week were "wholly appropriate."
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One trillion dollars—that’s how much the government spent last year on means-tested welfare aid, providing cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income individuals. The food stamp program is the nation’s second largest welfare program.
The number of food stamp recipients has risen dramatically, from 17.2 million in 2000 to 45.8 million in 2015.
The number of food stamp recipients has risen dramatically, from 17.2 million in 2000 to 45.8 million in 2015. Costs have soared over the same period, from $20.7 billion in 2000 to $83.1 billion in 2014.
The most rapid growth in the food stamp caseload in recent years has been among able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs). These are work-capable adult recipients between the ages of 18 and 49 who do not have children or other dependents to support.
The Need for Work Requirements
Since 2008, the food stamp caseload of adults without dependents who are able-bodied has more than doubled nationally, swelling from nearly 2 million recipients in 2008 to around 5 million today. They gained notoriety when Fox News aired a documentary on food stamps featuring 29-year-old Jason Greenslate, a Californian who reported that he spends his time surfing and playing in his rock band, all the while receiving benefits from the food stamp program.
>>> Read the full report by Robert Rector, Rachel Sheffield, and Kevin D. Dayaratna: Maine Food Stamp Work Requirement Cuts Non-Parent Caseload by 80 Percent
In response to the growth in food stamp dependence, Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, recently established work requirements on recipients who are without dependents and able-bodied. In Maine, all able-bodied adults without dependents in the food stamp program are now required to take a job, participate in training, or perform community service.
Job openings for lower-skill workers are abundant in Maine, and for those ABAWD recipients who cannot find immediate employment, Maine offers both training and community service slots. But despite vigorous outreach efforts by the government to encourage participation, most childless adult recipients in Maine refused to participate in training or even to perform community service for six hours per week. When ABAWD recipients refused to participate, their food stamp benefits ceased.
In the first three months after Maine’s work policy went into effect, its caseload of able-bodied adults without dependents plummeted by 80 percent, falling from 13,332 recipients in Dec. 2014 to 2,678 in March 2015.
This rapid drop in welfare dependence has a historical precedent: When work requirements were established in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program in the 1990s, nationwide caseloads dropped by almost as much, albeit over a few years rather than a few months.
Government should aid those in need, but welfare should not be a one-way handout.
The Maine food stamp work requirement is sound public policy. Government should aid those in need, but welfare should not be a one-way handout. Nearly nine out of ten Americans believe that able-bodied, non-elderly adults who receive cash, food, or housing assistance from the government should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid.
LePage’s reform puts the public’s convictions into action. The Maine reforms recognize that giving welfare to those who refuse to take steps to help themselves is unfair to taxpayers and fosters a harmful dependence among beneficiaries.
Off-the-Books Employment
The Maine work requirement also reduces fraud. The most common type of fraud in welfare involves “off the books” employment. In food stamps, as in other welfare programs, benefits go down as earnings rise.
But “off the books” employment is rarely reported to the welfare office; hiding earnings enables a recipient to “double-dip,” getting full welfare benefits he is ineligible to receive while simultaneously receiving earnings from an unreported job.
A work requirement substantially reduces welfare fraud because insisting a recipient be in the welfare office periodically interferes with holding a hidden job. Recipients cannot be in two places at once. Faced with a work requirement, many recipients with hidden jobs simply leave the rolls. No doubt, a significant part of the rapid caseload decline in Maine involves flushing fraudulent double-dippers out of the welfare system.
Government data show that many adults without children on food stamps use their own funds counter-productively. Over half of able-bodied adults without dependents regularly smoke tobacco; those who smoke consume on average 19 packs of cigarettes per month at an estimated monthly cost of $111. These individuals rely on the taxpayers to pay for their food while they spend their own money on cigarettes.
The federal government should establish work requirements similar to Maine’s for the 4.7 million able-bodied adults without dependents currently receiving food stamps nationwide. If the caseload drops at the same rate it did in Maine (which is very likely), taxpayer savings would be over $8.4 billion per year. Further reforms could bring the savings to $9.7 billion per year: around $100 per year for every individual currently paying federal income tax.
Some may argue that individual state governments, and not the federal government, should choose whether to require work in the food stamp program. But over 90 percent of food stamp funding comes from the federal government. Since the federal government pays for nearly the entire food stamp program, it has the obligation to establish the principles on which the program operates.
Requiring work for able-bodied welfare recipients was a key element of President Ronald Reagan’s welfare philosophy. It was the foundation of the successful welfare reform in the 1990s. But the idea of work in welfare has fallen by the wayside. It is time to reanimate the principle.
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Parents, students and community members held a rally at this week’s Berkeley Unified School District Board of Education meeting to urge board members to provide a more inclusive district for students of color and with disabilities.
Announced by the faith-based activist group Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action (BOCA), the rally was led by education groups Parents of Children of African Descent (PCAD) and Allies in Special Education. An estimated 25 people gathered before the meeting began at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20.
Participants, both young and old, claimed BUSD has long “walked the walk” on inclusion but now needs to take action.
Protesters carried picket signs that showed statistics referencing the higher suspension rates for African Americans, and the low rates of minority teachers in Berkeley schools, and asked that the district “end hostile school climates for blacks” and “stop the hypocrisy.”
The rally targeted Wednesday’s meeting because the board was scheduled to discuss the draft of the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), a part of the new state funding program for schools around California which started this year. The district is planning to use $2.4 million for low-income students and English learners, among other groups set to receive assistance.
BUSD has been receiving feedback from the community on how to use the new money since last year. At a board meeting in April 2014, PCAD board member Laura Babitt said she believed goals set for African-American students to close the academic achievement gaps were high enough. (Attempts to reach Babitt after this week’s meeting proved unsuccessful.)
During public comments at the beginning of this week’s meeting, a few of the rally participants spoke about the need to provide more services for black students, including implementing African-American studies classes across BUSD.
“Ethnic studies should take a more prominent place in the school district curriculum for all students,” said Jazmin Riley, a Berkeley High School alumna and current student at Hampton University. “Access continues to be an issue that needs to be addressed with intentionality.”
Another commenter, Lynette Robinson, spoke to the board sardonically about its alleged inactivity in making the district inclusive.
“Thank you for not responding complaints that I know are sitting on your desks,” Robinson said. “To give proper service we need proper tools. You have the ability to give those proper tools, but instead you give those increases to yourself every year on time. Shame on you.”
In the flyer about the rally issued by PCAD and Allies in Special Education members, the groups requested implementation of a parent buddy mentorship program and parent empowerment workshop series; implementation of a special advisory education committee; an analysis to determine the financial feasibility of more instructional assistants for every class with at least a quarter of its students performing below grade level; and the district setting a goal of decreasing legal fees and other professional fees by at least 20% each year.
The demands were not discussed in Wednesday’s board meeting. The board focused on a variety of issues, including the LCAP draft, which underwent heavy scrutiny by its members.
BUSD staff in charge of drafting the LCAP are scheduled to deliver a final draft by June 10, and the final LCAP will be presented at the June 24 board meeting after a formal public hearing.
Berkeleyside publishes many articles every day. To see all our stories in chronological order, and read ones you may have missed, check out All the News.
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In an “exclusive” interview with what will soon be the only media outlet left inside the White House Press And Frozen Steak Storage Room, Donald Trump tells Breitbart that the Oscars’ Best Picture mix-up was due to their being so distracted with political talk. While this is probably indirectly true—in the same, soul-enervating sense that makes everyone’s days feel like a meaningless slog spent idly awaiting Armageddon—Trump, of course, means it with far less nuance.
“I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end,” Trump said of the moment when PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Brian Cullin mistakenly handed presenter Warren Beatty the envelope for Best Actress instead of Best Picture, a mistake that some have attributed to this year’s slightly more illegible design, while some others have accused Cullin of being too distracted with tweeting backstage celebrity photos to do his very simple job. Nevertheless, one thing is perfectly clear to him: All energy flows according to the vibrations of Donald Trump, the chaos butterfly who can flap his Twitter wings and suddenly the markets are in flux, the very definition of “facts” is in question, and Emma Stone is briefly embarrassed. We are all of us at his mercy. We may never truly know which movies are good again.
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“It was a little sad. It took away from the glamour of the Oscars. It didn’t feel like a very glamorous evening. I’ve been to the Oscars. There was something very special missing, and then to end that way was sad,” added Trump, a man who—as Sean Spicer carefully relayed—was far too busy doing more important things to watch this pointless, self-indulgent ceremony thrown for Hollywood celebrities that he didn’t even enjoy, and also definitely wasn’t as nice as the time he went. Presumably Trump found time to be debriefed on the Oscars’ sad, unglamorous, anticlimactic evening just after he completed telling a room full of black-tie-clad bureaucrats that his new healthcare plan is “something very, very special.”
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It’s Jason Bermas’ displeasure to report another ‘alleged’ pedophile in government power.
This week the Seattle times released documents that tell a very sad story.
As you read this article this abuser- Ed Murray is STILL IN POWER as the Mayor of Seattle!
This is absolutely dreadful.
From 1995-2007 he was a congressman, from 2007 – 2013 he served in the Washington Senate.
He was elected as Mayor of Seattle in 2013.
Murray worked with children from the time he left high school in social services.
.
Murray was accused of rape by his own foster son!
He had been raped by Murray since he was 13, over a long period of time.
The boy had such a troubled past, he didn’t think prosecution was possible- turns out, so far he was right!
He looked up to Murray as a father figure, and was hesitant to bring any of the allegations against him because it would ruin his career.
From the foster care’s own documents, here is the evaluation and recommendation of the situation:
So ‘The distric attorney’s office felt they could not be sure of meeting the high burden of proof… however the DA’s office did state… in no means meant that they had decided that Jeff’s allegations were not true”
The CPS also felt the allegations were true..
Other teenage boys have accused Murray of sexually molesting them as well.
To think that this man went on to be in congress, and the senate, and is still in office as mayor is absolutely unacceptable and appaling! We need to do more to expose these predators, who are harming humanity’s most vulnerable group- children.
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Call it the black hole of health care coverage. Canada is the only country in the world with a national health care plan that does not cover the cost of prescription medicines. And according to a new study, that’s creating a health inequity for the poor. Those who aren’t covered by private or public health care plans, primarily the working poor, sometimes can’t afford the drugs needed to prevent or treat a health condition, the annual report from Health Quality Ontario concludes. That can mean they need more costly care, in the long run, from a family doctor, specialist or hospital.
About one in 10 Canadians lacks the money to buy the medicines they need, resulting in needless suffering, and aggravated illness, the Toronto Star says. ( Dreamstime )
It’s an inequity that provincial and territorial health ministers should address when they meet in Toronto this week with their federal counterpart, Jane Philpott. Their discussions are to lay the groundwork for a first ministers’ meeting on a new health-care accord that could come as early as mid-December. The importance of this discussion cannot be underestimated. Study after study shows that a pharmacare program would save billions of dollars while ensuring that people don’t get sicker or suffer needlessly because they cannot afford prescriptions. As Ontario’s health minister Eric Hoskins, a proponent of pharmacare, has said: “No Canadian should have to choose between putting food on the table or filling their latest prescription.”
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But as the report from Health Quality Ontario makes clear, that’s a choice made by many poor people. Among those aged 12 to 64 in Ontario, 85.7 per cent of those in the richest neighbourhoods had prescription insurance compared to just 56 per cent of those in the poorest, though they are the ones who can least afford medications. And while people on welfare or disability insurance have their medications covered, those who are precariously employed or in low-paying jobs do not have employer-provided health plans that cover prescription drugs. One 2015 study found that 35 per cent of workers do not have employer-provided health plans. That number rises to 85 per cent for those earning less than $10,000 a year and to 70 per cent for those earning between $10,000 and $20,000. In other words, the working poor cannot afford prescription drugs on which their lives, never mind their health, may depend.
In fact, about one Canadian in 10 lacks money to buy the medicines they need, resulting in needless suffering and aggravated illness. That’s hardly in keeping with the principle of universal access at the heart of our medicare system. Sadly, even when the working poor do buy drugs, they often skip doses or split pills in an effort to make the medicine last longer. That’s a prescription for poor health.
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And cost is no reason for the ministers to shy away from pharmacare. A 2015 study found that a pharmacare plan would not only ensure all Canadians have access to the drugs they need, but would save anywhere from $4 billion to $11 billion a year, depending on how the program is structured. There’s no question that bringing in national pharmacare will involve difficult negotiations among the provinces, Ottawa and the pharmaceutical industry. That’s why the health ministers meeting on Tuesday should get on it without delay. Indeed, it should be a top priority.
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My gift arrived on Christmas eve after I visited my parents grave. This is my first Christmas without my parents and I have been feeling pretty down. I lost my dad in 2009 and my mom this may.
My Santa and his partner sent me some delicious snacks that I can't wait to dig into! I love to travel and eat local food whenever I can. They also sent me a really neat notebook that is embroidered with a pattern that represents the Ukrainian people.
There is also an ornament for my tree filled with treats!
I have had a smile on my face since seeing it in my mailbox. They also sent a thoughtful card that I will cherish! I'm so pleased that my Santa was from Ukraine because my boyfriend's family is part Ukrainian and his auntie has been teaching me to make perogies and volupchi (cabbage rolls) and other treats!
Thank you so much Santa! You have brightened my Christmas so much!
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Buy Photo Joseph Gainza, a Marshfield resident and Catholic climate-justice activist, pauses Wednesday outside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Burlington. (Photo: JOEL BANNER BAIRD/FREE PRESS)Buy Photo
The message of stewardship of the Earth rather than dominion over it, outlined by Pope Francis Thursday, resonates deeply with Vermont's Roman Catholic community, Bishop Christopher J. Coyne said at a news conference in downtown Burlington.
"This is a discussion that everyone can participate in, beyond just Catholics and people of faith," Coyne said, speaking at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
The Pope's message is "provocative," Coyne added: It "challenges people to enter into meaningful dialogue for change and for the good of all of us."
The Pope's encyclical message links rapid climate change and the widening divide between the rich and the poor, and is expected to chart church doctrine for more than a billion Catholics worldwide.
Religion's place in modern environmental advocacy also stirs close to home.
Bill McKibben, the Ripton-based author and climate activist (and not a Catholic) is best known for drawing our attention to the science of global warming.
But faith plays a role in his efforts. McKibben, founder of 350.org, wrote Thursday morning in an email:
"Science can explain to us the depth of the crisis we face, but empirically it has proved insufficient to move us to action," he wrote.
"For some of us," McKibben continued, "the sense of justice — to the poor, to the future, and to the rest of Creation — that underlies the Gospels has helped move anguish into action."
Laurie Gagne, director of the Edmundite Center for Peace and Justice at St. Michael's College also spoke to religion's ability to motive, noting the potential for the Pope to mobilize many.
"About 1.2 billion on Earth identify as Catholics. If a critical mass of them take action on this, it could make a difference," Gagne said.
Vermont's Catholics tend to be green-minded in their faith, Bishop Coyne said.
In blogs about environmental issues prior to Thursday's announcement, Coyne lauded the Pope's embrace of "integral ecology," in which climate issues are linked to extreme economic disparity, food and water shortages, land degradation and failing nation states.
"This implies a responsible reciprocity between human beings and nature," Coyne wrote. "It realizes that these crises are not independent, but closely intertwined."
Other Roman Catholics in the region voiced their solidarity with the Vatican.
"I'm not surprised — and I'm delighted he's doing it," said Joseph Gainza of Marshfield, speaking Wednesday after the Burlington cathedral's noon Mass.
To begin with, Gainza said, the current Pope took the name Francis, invoking Saint Francis of Assisi's devotion to the poor and his love of Earthly creation.
That tradition remains solid with what Gainza termed "the best-kept secret of the Church": the Catholic Social Teaching movement, a forum for activism established in the late 19th century to advance labor issues.
Today, social, economic and environmental justice are intertwined, Gainza said, and climate change "creates a lot of losers and just a few winners."
Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and those of other faiths have prominent environmental voices, Gainza added: "It turns out there's a large community of faith that sees this as a moral issue."
The Pope has always made clear his belief of "the close connection between environmental and social justice," Gagne, of the Edumndite Center added.
"The poor are vulnerable — they're just not as mobile as people with means, whether due to flooding or drought — it's the poor who are the victims," Gagne said.
"Simply put, she added, Pope Francis advocates care for creation — a message that encourages us to address a problem that all of us have the opportunity to resolve."
What about perceptions of the religious community as science-averse? Or that mankind's role in the planet's future is insignificant, compared to that of a supreme being?
"That's a huge, mistaken interpretation of the will of God," Gagne said. "There's a big difference between fatalism and faith."
She draws a parallel with the history of the American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
"The segregation of African Americans was seen by some people as the law of the land — which was the will of God," Gagne said. "That's fatalism. Faith, on the other hand, means you have to be open to the spirit of God, which inspires social change.
"You can be led by the spirit. That is a conversation that every generation has to learn."
And the divide between science and theology? They're complementary, not mutually exclusive, Gagne said.
"You really can't use the Bible for science; good science doesn't do metaphysics," she continued. "Science and faith are compatible when they stick to their respective spheres."
Vermont senators praise Pope
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., each released statements Thursday in response to Pope Francis' encyclical.
Sanders:
"Pope Francis' powerful message on climate change should change the debate around the world and become a catalyst for the bold actions needed to reverse global warming.
The pope helps us all see how those with the least among us will fare the worst from the consequences of climate change. I very much appreciate that the Republican leadership has invited the pope to address Congress.
I hope they listen to what he has to say. Denying the science related to climate change is no longer acceptable."
Leahy:
The Pope's message to the world, and to world leaders, has a justified edge of urgency. He is shining a clear and purposeful beacon on an unfolding crisis that will only worsen the longer that it is ignored or minimized.
He invokes the responsibility that all of us have for sound and respectful stewardship over this beautiful and delicate planet that has been entrusted to us. He makes clear that the choices we make have profound moral, practical, and perhaps even existential implications.
The status quo is always the easy path. Unfortunately, many in Congress — and many leaders in other lands — have preferred to ignore or even deny the clear evidence of these threats to civilization.
The earlier we take seriously these warnings and this evidence, and act on them, the more success we will have in addressing them, while at the same time growing our economy here at home by developing and deploying clean, smart and renewable energy resources.
The Pope's message is strong, it is principled, and it will sharpen our focus on what matters most in this debate.
Read or Share this story: http://bfpne.ws/1LhF7cT
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North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has promoted his younger sister to the secretive country’s powerful politburo, consolidating her position as one of the country’s most influential women.
North Korea's ruling Kim dynasty - interactive Read more
Kim Yo-jong has been made an alternate member of the top decision-making body, North Korean state media reported on Sunday. The move indicates that she has replaced their aunt, Kim Kyong-hee, who was a key decision-maker when their father, the former leader Kim Jong-il, was alive.
“It shows that her portfolio and writ is far more substantive than previously believed and it is a further consolidation of the Kim family’s power,” said Michael Madden, a North Korea expert at Johns Hopkins University’s 38 North website.
The personnel changes were announced after a meeting of the country’s central committee of the ruling Workers’ party, during which Kim said his nuclear weapons were a “powerful deterrent” that guaranteed his regime’s sovereignty and helped to counter the “protracted nuclear threats of the US imperialists”.
Kim Jong Sik and Ri Pyong Chol, two of the three men behind Kim’s banned missile programme, were also promoted amid a wider reshuffle and an increasingly tense stand off between Pyongyang and Washington over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Donald Trump said “only one thing will work” in dealing with North Korea, after previous administrations had talked to Pyongyang without results. The US president did not make clear to what he was referring, but has previously said the US would “totally destroy” North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies.
Officials in Washington have attempted to play down Trump’s opposition to the possibility of talks with North Korea, saying the president and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who supports dialogue with Pyongyang, were in agreement on how to deal with the regime.
South Korea’s unification ministry said Kim’s promotions could be an attempt by North Korea to navigate a way through its increasing isolation.
“The large-scale personnel reshuffle reflects that Kim Jong-un is taking the current situation seriously, and that he’s looking for a breakthrough by promoting a new generation of politicians,” the ministry said in a statement.
Meet Kim Yo-jong, the sister who is the brains behind Kim Jong-un's image Read more
Like all members of North Korea’s ruling Kim dynasty, details of Kim Yo-jong’s biography are sketchy. She is believed to be in her late 20s and, like her brother, is thought to have spent time at a boarding school in Switzerland during her youth.
Kim Yo-jong has long been a rising star in North Korea’s power circles and was recently given responsibility for developing the leader’s cult of personality. South Korean media recently reported that she had replaced a veteran propaganda chief and had assumed control of “consolidating Kim Jong-un’s power” by implementing “idolisation projects”.
In 2011, she featured prominently at the state funeral of their father Kim Jong-il. She then remained outside the public spotlight until early 2014, when she re-emerged at her brother’s side during elections to fill the seats in North Korea’s rubber-stamp legislature.
Since then, she has made periodic public appearances alongside Kim Jong-un. Her promotion is seen as a sign that she is trusted, and makes her one of the country’s most powerful women, alongside Kim’s wife, the former entertainer Ri Sol-ju.
In January, the US Treasury blacklisted Kim Yo-jong along with other North Korean officials over the dictatorship’s “severe human rights abuses”. A landmark UN report in 2014 found compelling evidence of torture, execution and arbitrary imprisonment, deliberate starvation and an almost complete lack of free thought and belief in the country.
State media said that Kim’s speech addressing the meeting on Saturday had described the country’s nuclear weapons as a “powerful deterrent firmly safeguarding the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and north-east Asia”.
He said the situation proved that North Korea’s policy of byungjin – the parallel development of nuclear weapons and the economy – was “absolutely right”.
“The national economy has grown on their strength this year, despite the escalating sanctions,” said Kim, referring to UN security council resolutions put in place to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes.
In recent weeks, North Korea has launched two missiles over Japan and conducted its sixth nuclear test. It may be fast advancing toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the US mainland.
North Korea is preparing to test such a missile, according to a Russian lawmaker who had just returned from a visit to Pyongyang.
North Korean state media, which operates as the regime mouthpiece, announced that several other high ranking cadres were promoted to the central committee over the weekend.
How has North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme progressed this year? Read more
Foreign minister Ri Yong-ho, who named Trump “President Evil” in a bombastic speech to the UN general assembly last month, was promoted to full vote-carrying member of the politburo.
“Ri can now be safely identified as one of North Korea’s top policymakers,” said Madden. “Even if he has informal or off-the-record meetings, Ri’s interlocutors can be assured that whatever proposals they proffer will be taken directly to the top.”
North Korean leaders have long promoted trusted family members to their inner political power circles, but these positions are precarious. Kim Kyong-hui fell from grace shortly after Kim Jong-un assumed leadership. She is reported to be in hiding after her husband, Jang Song-taek – at one time a close aide to Kim Jong-il – was executed in late 2013 for treason and corruption after being denounced as a “traitor for all ages”.
Two women are currently on trial in Malaysia accused of killing Kim Jong-un’s estranged half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, with a toxic nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur airport earlier this year. The women, one Indonesian and the other Vietnamese, have pleaded not guilty and say they were duped into believing they were playing a harmless prank for a hidden camera show. Four North Korean suspects were allowed to fly home in prisoner exchange.
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When the Islamic State (ISIS) first waged its onslaught against the predominantly Kurdish town of Shingal in August, the Kurdish morale was weakened. The public nearly panicked in the face of a notoriously well-armed group.
But then, as ISIS reached the gates of Erbil, its fighters were swiftly turned back by the Kurdish armed forces, known as Peshmerga, and by US air strikes on the militants.
The Kurdish people have since continued their daily activities with little change, despite the terror threat posed by ISIS on more than the 1,000- kilometer border the Kurdistan Region now shares with the Islamic State.
Last week, when I landed in Erbil from the United Kingdom where I live and study, I was not entering a war zone, or even an area that seemed to be in danger. It felt like the Erbil that I had always known, before the ISIS threat; it wasn’t on the verge of public panic or anxiety.
Despite budget cuts in the region, and civil servants’ salaries delayed for many months because of Baghdad’s refusal to live up to its financial commitments to the Kurdistan Regional Government, people are not allowing ISIS to instill fear into them.
The radio stations often play nationalist songs, praising the Peshmerga and embracing Kurdish unity. No one wants to succumb to the fear that ISIS has attempted to spread in the region.
The bazaars and malls are just as busy – coffee shops filled with young people chattering away. It almost feels as though there is no war.
Sadly, the brave Kurdish Peshmerga, who have made this sense of “safety” in the region a possibility, are on the frontlines battling ISIS, ensuring they do not advance towards Kurdish areas.
As Newroz, the Kurdish New Year and a celebration of victory over oppression approaches, the Kurdish people are, within their limited means, still trying to make the best of the ISIS-war situation.
It is remarkable that in the face of a heinous terror threat and extremist groups the Kurdistan Region still manages to remain largely safe. I think one thing people can appreciate is the sense of security in the Kurdistan Region, or South Kurdistan to Kurds.
Extremist groups such as ISIS thrive on instilling fear in people. They want to generate an image of a terror group that can outdo all military forces. Their reliance on “fear” as a means of instilling public dismay has worked in the Arab regions in Iraq, but South Kurdistan has resisted this tactic.
Regardless of its feeble attempts to harm Kurdish civilians and instigate societal disorder, ISIS has repeatedly failed. Through every disaster and massacre, the Kurds have united in the region and within diaspora communities.
The sense of “unity” locally and internationally has increased, bringing back bitter memories of past dictatorships and oppressors, who for the most part attempted to instigate fear as a means of controlling the masses.
It is crucial that Kurdish people continue to brush off ISIS fear tactics. When we allow extremist groups to determine our activities, we give them power and control.
In order to beat ISIS at their own game, we need to take their play-cards away by mocking their cowardly attempts to terrorize civilians.
Ruwayda Mustafah is a Kurdish activist and PhD student at the University of Kingston. Her research focuses on the socio-political aspects of the Kurdistan region.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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In response to a recent study by scientists from the University of Southern California (Cell Metabolism, Vol. 19, pp. 407-417), experts led by Donald Layman, PhD, from the University of Illinois, criticized that “inappropriate” study design and analyses, the “neglect” of key contradictory data, and the “unjustified” conclusion.
“As scientists with decades of experience studying the impact of protein on health, we are concerned that translation of these flawed data and exaggerated conclusions to the public could have serious negative health consequences for adults seeking to maintain muscle health and avoid sarcopenia,” they wrote.
To read the full statement, please click here.
The experts also criticized the editors of Cell Metabolism for declining to publish the group’s comments as a letter to the editor. Instead, the group was told to publish their statement as a comment on the journal website.
“We view the decision to confine our views on this paper to online discussion forums as a severe limitation to academic discussion and debate that completely minimizes alternative evaluations,” they wrote. “We view the position taken by the Editors as inconsistent with goals for maintaining scientific integrity.”
Controversial study
As reported recently by our European edition, a diet high in animal protein during middle age may lead to a four-fold increase in risk of dying from cancer (Cell Metabolism, Vol. 19, pp. 407-417).
Using NHANES III data for 6,381 people aged over the age of 50, scientists from the University of Southern California reported that cancer death risk among those who consumed the most protein was four times higher than those who ate the least. Death risk from any cause among the highest protein consumers was 74% higher during the period than those who ate the least protein.
The study’s conclusions received widespread media coverage at a time when added protein is appearing in more and more products
However, while the research found that even moderate protein consumption increased risk of death from cancer among the middle aged, it did suggest that moderate to high protein consumption among older adults – aged 65 and over –may indeed be beneficial and could help optimise health and longevity.
Response
Prof Layman and his co-responders, including Prof Arne Astrup (University of Copenhagen), Prof Peter Clifton (CSIRO, Australia), Dr Heather Leidy (University of Missouri), Dr Douglas Paddon-Jones (The University of Texas Medical Branch), and Prof Stuart Phillips (McMaster University) wrote: “Our overall assessment of this paper is that the conclusions and analyses are biased, and flawed.
“While there is growing consensus that a moderate protein intake between 1.0 and 1.5 g/kg/d may confer health benefits beyond those afforded by the current RDA for protein, we also recognize there are gaps in the current knowledge base and encourage discussion of important contradictory evidence/data.
“Future research must be well designed, rigorously reviewed, and credibility communicated. Unfortunately, the article by Levine et al. presents conclusions not supported by their own analyses or the greater literature.”
Prof Layman told FoodNavigator-USA that he has not had direct contact from either the journal of the authors.
“I don't expect any response because our comments are not ones they can defend,” he said.
To read the full statement, please click here.
‘Dietary guidelines should not be based on animal experiments’
Commenting separately in a briefing for the UK-based Science Media Centre, Prof Tom Sanders, Head of the Nutritional Sciences Research Division, King’s College London, said that USC’s press release headline (Meat and cheese may be as bad for you as smoking) was running ahead of the evidence, and the comparison between protein and smoking was “really unwarranted”.
“The study shows a relationship with growth factor IGF-1 and cancer risk which is already known,” said Prof Sanders. “However, the relationship between IGF-1 levels and protein intake is far more tenuous in humans. Cross-sectional data i.e. omnivores vs vegans suggest animal protein to be associated with increased IGF-1 levels but there is a lack of evidence from controlled feed studies to show that IGF-1 levels fall when animal protein intake is restricted. Much of the supporting work is based on studies in mice not humans. Dietary guidelines should not be based on animal experiments.
“Although the follow-up on the NHANES survey shows that those with the highest reported protein intake were at greater risk of all-cause mortality, it fails to adjust for other confounding factors such as socioeconomic status, smoking, and obesity. The sample size is also modest at 6381, compared with over 448,568 in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer which only found a weak association (14% increase in risk of mortality with red meat consumption, which was more consistent for processed meat (11% increase in risk)). The European data suggest a much smaller effect than the 74% increased risk claimed in this paper.”
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By Jose Colorado, Centennial College
TORONTO – Minnesota Timberwolves star Andrew Wiggins took part in the Pan Am Games after all – just not as an athlete.
In front of untold numbers at home, including the 45,000 in attendance for Friday night’s Opening Ceremony at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, the 2015 Pan Am Games opened in a grandiose celebration of the visiting nations and, more noticeably, Canadian culture, history and sport.
In the end, after all of the fireworks, extravagant dance routines and aerial bikers had settled, it was Wiggins who was basked in the international limelight, trotting into the stands at the Rogers Centre and passing the torch to Canada’s most recognizable basketball player, Steve Nash, who then ignited the cauldron at the foot of the CN Tower.
The decision by Pan Am officials to have the final two torchbearers as basketball players stands as a testament to how much the sport has grown in Canada.
The fact that Wiggins, a 20-year-old who is brimming with potential, was given the responsibility and privilege of being second in line over fellow Canadian legends – Simon Whitfield, Mike “Pinball” Clemons, Donovan Bailey, Fergie Jenkins, Bobby Orr, and Mark Messier – who contributed to the ceremonies is nothing short of remarkable for the state and development of Canadian basketball.
The NBA is being flooded by Canadian talent with Wiggins standing as the most prominent figure internationally. The former NBA Rookie of the Year often draws comparisons to some of the NBA’s best, including four-time league MVP LeBron James.
Although Wiggins ultimately passed on the opportunity to play at the Pan Am Games in the hopes of earning an Olympic berth via the FIBA America Championships later this summer, it’s clear the love for his sport and for the development of it in Canada is becoming an increasingly mutual feeling.
Leading up to these Games, however, there was a common feeling of disappointment at the lack of NBA talent participating – the sentiment being that the Pan Ams are an inconsequential event for many, including the highest level athletes found at the Olympic Games.
But after watching spectacular performances by Cirque du Soleil and the long list of Canadian sporting legends in attendance Friday night, one would be hard-pressed to argue the city of Toronto felt the same.
This was an international showcase – something to get the world talking and acknowledging what Toronto was capable of.
And with this in mind, as millions of people watched around the world, it was a pair of basketball players who were given the ultimate responsibility of topping off a night that represented what Canada was and where it’s headed in sports.
This story was produced by students from Centennial College in Toronto in conjunction with Postmedia.
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It’s been a while since I officially had an art deadline to meet. I honestly don’t recall the last piece of actual concept art I did for WARMACHINE or HORDES. These days, my art contributions amount to little more than scribbles on the back of napkins as I try to communicate a basic shape or silhouette to the art team at Privateer. In fact, most of the illustration I’ve done over the past year or so has been either storyboards or creature design for my upcoming LEVEL 7 film project and that’s been very much at my own pace. I was setting the deadlines, so if I needed to, I could move them. Not anymore.
As we were reviewing the concept documents for all the new models that will be in the next WARMACHINE book, I started to get the itch to do some drawing again, and I made the mistake of opening my big mouth. It started with an upcoming character for Cryx. It’s something we’ve never seen in that army and I have an image in my head that I need to get out by way of the illustration. I tentatively expressed my interest and thankfully found out the illustration wouldn’t be due until fall. No problem! One character in the next 4-5 months? I can fit that into my schedule. Then Ed Bourelle, Privateer’s Creative Manager got greedy and suggested I tackle some more. “You could feature it on your blog!” chimed in Simon Berman, our Community Manager. They made it sounds so easy.
Fortunately, some of my better judgment won out and I didn’t take everything Ed threw at me, but there was one I couldn’t refuse: the new incarnation of Eiryss, the much loved, much loathed Mage Hunter who now stalks the Iron Kingdoms with the fanatical Retribution of Scyrah.
Eiryss is one of two mercenary solos in the original WARMACHINE: PRIME book that came out nearly ten years ago, and she’s one of the first characters I ever created and designed for the game. She’s also the first appearance of an Iosan (elf) in WARMACHINE and is for me, one of my all time favorite personalities featured in our fiction. In our next book, we’re reinventing Eiryss once again, and not how you might expect! Instead of going solo, she’s joining up with some rank and file troopers as a Unit Attachment. That’s right, Eiryss, the original Iosan badass will now be making an entire unit of badasses even more badasser. Who would have ever thought she could be a team player?
See? I got all excited just writing about her. I almost forgot to tell you what the problem is: the due date on the concept is July 16th! Now maybe that sounds like plenty of time to do a simple illustration of one character, but to me, that feels like tomorrow. I’ve got a list of things that have to be done between now and July and heaping concept art responsibilities on top of that is insane. But like the saying goes, no rest for the wicked.
So now I’m going to do something I’ve never done before — I’m going to ask for suggestions on how to design this next incarnation of a very beloved character. NO! Not rules — don’t even think about making a suggestion for her game rules. Jason Soles graduated her out of play testing months ago. We’re just talking about the visuals, here. We’ve seen Eiryss in a dynamic leap, Eiryss stalking from a rooftop, Eiryss walking with a sexy swagger. Now she’s going to be leading a unit of razor-blade-wielding, human-hating, homicidal zealots — where do I take her from here? The only thing written in stone is that she’ll be retaining her signature weapon combination: A sword and a crossbow fixed with a nasty bayonet.
Things I have to think about:
Pose: Action, Heroic, Stealthy?
Costume: More armor? More skin?
Details: Hood up or hood down? Is it time to see Eiryss’ ears? I’m not sure the world is ready for that…
If you’ve got a good idea, let me know what you think. I have a feeling I’m going to need help with this one…
And whatever I do, I’ll show you here — progress to completion, pass or fail! Stay tuned!
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A desperate man rang the police after his Tinder date refused to leave his house for two days - during which time she stole his watch and some of his mail.
The serial dater, from the US, went out with a woman called Jennifer last week after they matched on the popular app and later took her back to his house.
When she insisted on staying he decided to call the police, who reportedly arrested her after finding expired licence plates on her car and items she had swiped from him.
A man from the US rang the police after his Tinder date refused to leave his house for two days. He shared this photo of her sleeping in his bed
The unidentified man took to Reddit to ask for advice, writing in desperation: 'Help, I hooked up with this chick on Tinder and she hasn't left my house in two days.'
He explained that after they had sex, he suggested she go home as he had work in the morning.
'I told her earlier she had to go before bedtime cause I have to get up early for work,' he wrote.
'She asked me if she could stay for dinner and I said OK,' he continued.
'Then she passed out and when I tried to wake her up to ask her to leave, she said, "No I'm too tired."
'I'm a pretty nice guy and I hate confrontation.'
But when he woke up the next day, she still refused to leave - with the man explaining that he became desperate as he had another date the next day.
He posted a photo of the woman sleeping in his bed and, after debating his bleak situation with other Reddit users, decided he had no option but to call the police.
When officers arrived at his house, they reportedly found that the tags on the car she parked outside had expired two months ago.
When she insisted on staying, he decided to call the police who reportedly arrested her after finding expired licence plates on her car and items she had swiped from him - including his watch and some mail
According to the man's account, police then searched her and discovered that she had taken a watch that he had 'not realised was missing'.
She had also taken some of his mail and several other items from his house. The woman was eventually arrested, he wrote.
'It was a rather crazy and very stressful situation that really made me think about whether this dating and the dating apps are so useful,' he concluded.
'This is why you don't have people come over right away when meeting them from an app. This is basically a nightmare situation,' one user wrote in sympathy.
One dater even said he had a similar experience with a woman, who he claimed started 'playing with my kitchen knife'.
'I had just moved, invited someone over from Tinder, I didn't really feel comfortable, so I made no moves, but then she wouldn't leave. I let her stay because I was way to nice,' they wrote.
'The next morning I was telling her she had to leave and basically pushed her out the door.
'At once point she was playing with my kitchen knife and I legit thought I was gonna have to defend myself.'
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Just hours before his first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, a cheery President Trump posed for pictures with roughly 20 Republican attorneys general. "These are some great people here," the president said – fully aware that the AGs are in the midst of filing a flurry of lawsuits against the Trump administration.
Why?
"Sometimes it turns out the best way to help President Trump ... is to sue President Trump," Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley explained to Fox News.
Despite the unusual optics of all these lawsuits, the intention of Hawley and the other AGs is to use the suits to block federal regulations, mostly promulgated during the Obama administration but now in effect under Trump's.
In Missouri, this legal tactic centers on an endangered prehistoric fish that has outlived the dinosaurs, the Pallid Sturgeon. It reproduces in river shallows which have become fewer, due to the diking and channeling of the Missouri River. To resurrect the fish population, an Obama-era amendment to the Endangered Species Act allows the feds to designate as critical habitat areas where the fish may not even exist. The amendment was designed to expand ecosystems in order to maximize the endangered fish's ability to spawn.
But some landowners find the amendment intrusive. "This is the key part," said Hawley. "We are an agricultural state. That would mean farmers and ranchers could find themselves unable to farm their land, unable to develop their land." He said it's "absolutely a killer for small businesses and small farms in our state."
Hawley is one of 18 Republican AG's suing to overturn the rule. But they are combining forces to file other lawsuits -- challenging the Obama-era Waters of the United States regulatory plan, as well as overtime rules put in place by the Obama Department of Labor and the coal-crimping Clean Power Plan.
"In West Virginia, we suffered acutely because thousands upon thousands of people were put out of work. A number of those people left the state or are pursuing other employment," said Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia’s Republican attorney general.
Democratic attorneys general, meanwhile, also are mobilizing, trying to preserve Obama-era climate change regulations and, most recently, targeting Trump's travel ban. That multi-state attack worked, when Washington states Attorney General Bob Ferguson got a federal judge to temporarily block the policy nationwide. After the ruling, Ferguson noted, "We are a nation of laws. Those laws apply to everybody in our country. That includes the president of the United States."
AG's from both parties note filing lawsuits to overturn federal regulations is speedier than internal remedies -- the laborious and slow-moving federal rule-making process. They say the facts of the suits are usually well-known, testimony is usually limited, and judges tend to act quickly.
Republican attorneys general note there's an added benefit to them. The lawsuits are helping to restore the concept of federalism, empowering the states and restoring the balance of power against the executive branch.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is launching a World Trade Organization case against China over its export restrictions on raw materials, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said on Tuesday.
In Brussels, the European Union said it was joining the United States in the action, which follows failure to persuade China to reduce its export tariffs and raise quotas on materials such as zinc, tin, tungsten and yellow phosphorous.
“After more than two years of urging China to lift these unfair restrictions, with no result, we are filing at the WTO today,” Kirk told a news conference in Washington.
“We are most troubled that this appears to be a conscious policy to create unfair preferences for Chinese industries,” he said.
Kirk said the United States was formally requesting consultations with Beijing, the first step in the case. If those talks fail, the next step would be to request that a WTO panel hear the complaint, a step that can take years.
Related Coverage EU takes WTO action vs China on raw materials
Western governments say resource-hungry China has continued to restrict exports of raw materials used in steel, semiconductors, aircraft and other products despite Beijing’s pledge to eliminate taxes and charges on exports when it joined the WTO in 2001.
The United States and other Western nations say these quotas and taxes hurt European and U.S. companies while giving Chinese companies an unfair advantage. But taking action at the WTO is expected to further damage already brittle trade relations with China.
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Illustration: Simon Letch Tianjin, admittedly a city of 11 million, has the newest, fanciest, most cavernous cultural centre and municipal buildings I've seen. I tried not to wonder how much it all cost and where the money had come from. So many of us have outdated perceptions about China. It's a poor country producing cheap clothes and toys and knick-knacks in sweat shops. That used to be true, and in parts of the country still is. But these days China is a middle-income country anxious to get rich gloriously. In the Tianjin free trade zone is a factory for the European-owned Airbus. All the jetliners it produces are sold in China.
Of course, we tell ourselves, any technology they use has come from foreigners, sometimes without proper recompense. Don't be so sure. We visited Shenzhen which, until 36 years ago, was a fishing village just across the water from Hong Kong, before someone made it a special economic zone. I remember visiting it in January 1984 on a tourists' day-trip from Hong Kong. It was a dusty country town with a big new hotel for foreign visitors and a few factories, plus stalls selling stuff to tourists. I bought a Chairman Mao cap with a red metal star. Today it's a city of 10 million, with income per person of about $29,000 a year. It has maintained 45 per cent of its area as parks and forest by the simple expedient of having housing go up rather than out. It still has some low-end manufacturers, but they're being encouraged to move inland or to some south-east Asian country, such as Vietnam.
Land and wages in Shenzhen are too expensive for low-value production. Last year in China consumer prices rose by 2 per cent, while the average wage rose by 8 per cent. So manufacturing in Shenzhen is moving to the high-tech end and the services sector now accounts for 60 per cent of its economy. Its businesses put huge sums into research and development. In 2014 R&D spending accounted for 4 per cent of Shenzhen's gross domestic product. In Oz it's about half that. BYD – standing for Build Your Dreams – is a private company founded in the city in 1995. It started out making batteries for mobile phones, but is now well advanced with the research and development needed to fulfil its "three green dreams" of making solar farms, travelling renewable energy storage stations, and electric vehicles. It still makes and sells conventional cars, but is more interested in its range of hybrid and pure electric cars and buses. It's best known in Australia for its electric forklifts.
Many Chinese cities seek to reduce pollution by capping the number of new cars they'll register each year. Buy a hybrid or electric car, however, and you avoid the lottery. Buy an electric SUV and the government gives you a subsidy of about $27,000, reducing the price of BYD's model to $47,000. The subsidy will be phased out as the company gains economies of scale. Before moving to Shenzhen, BGI began life in 1999 as the Beijing Genomics Institute. It's now one of the world's largest genomic institutes, using gene sequencing to develop antenatal tests for genetic abnormalities and to detect diseases earlier. In agriculture it's using genetic assisted breeding (not genetic modification) to develop better strains of fish and millet – a grain widely consumed in China. It has more than 800 scientists working for it, and a wall showing the many covers of the journals Science and Nature celebrating its notable discoveries.
Huawei was founded in Shenzhen in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, a former engineer in the People's Liberation Army. It started as a manufacturer of office PABX phone systems, but is now the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world. It ploughs a minimum of 10 per cent of its revenue back into research and development, spending about $12 billion last year. The company is staff owned, with Ren's share down to 1.4 per cent. It has installed Australia's largest private 4G communications network for Santos' mining operations. In China it helped the Shenhua coal company raise the capacity of its Shuo Huang railway to 200 million tonnes a year. Its 4G system permitting synchronous control of multiple locos allows single train lengths up to 3000 metres long, carrying up to 20,000 tonnes. China is big; we think of ourselves as small. China is confident, impatiently pushing towards a better future; we are fearful, waiting for more luck to turn up.
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RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- An Israeli soldier was injured with a rock during clashes at the entrance of the al-Jalazun refugee camp in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah on Thursday evening.
Clashes erupted after Israeli forces set up a checkpoint near the refugee camp, following the death of 23-year-old Clashes erupted after Israeli forces set up a checkpoint near the refugee camp, following the death of 23-year-old Maen Nasser al-Din Abu Qaraa, who was killed by Israeli forces Thursday afternoon after he allegedly attempted to stab Israeli soldiers at a bus stop in eastern Ramallah.
Israeli soldiers fired tear gas bombs and stun grenades at local youth that gathered near the flying checkpoint, while the youth threw rocks at Israeli forces, injuring one soldier. Israeli soldiers fired tear gas bombs and stun grenades at local youth that gathered near the flying checkpoint, while the youth threw rocks at Israeli forces, injuring one soldier.
Israeli forces also closed the Attara checkpoint north of Ramallah, which connects the northern and central West Bank, and a main road near the refugee camp connecting Ramallah to Jerusalem. Israeli forces also closed the Attara checkpoint north of Ramallah, which connects the northern and central West Bank, and a main road near the refugee camp connecting Ramallah to Jerusalem.
Earlier in the afternoon, Israeli forces closed the main entrances to the Ramallah-area villages of Dura al-Qaraa, Silwad and Deir Jarir towns. Earlier in the afternoon, Israeli forces closed the main entrances to the Ramallah-area villages of Dura al-Qaraa, Silwad and Deir Jarir towns.
Locals reported that the checkpoint and road closures made travel in between Ramallah and villages north of the city nearly impossible. Locals reported that the checkpoint and road closures made travel in between Ramallah and villages north of the city nearly impossible.
An Israeli army spokesperson said they were looking into reports. An Israeli army spokesperson said they were looking into reports.
Abu Qaraa was the 238th to be killed by an Israeli since the beginning of a Abu Qaraa was the 238th to be killed by an Israeli since the beginning of a wave of unrest across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel in October 2015, the vast majority of whom were shot dead by Israeli forces.
Since the unrest began, the occupied West Bank has seen an increase in Since the unrest began, the occupied West Bank has seen an increase in arbitrary military road closures , periodic blockades of Palestinian villages, towns, checkpoints, and entire districts.
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Manny Pacquiao and Brandon Rios could have just fought because it's a fight that makes sense for both of them and will draw some money and a big crowd in Macao, and serve as a major league establishing fight for that city as a new big event boxing home, but no, that can't be all there is, so Pacquiao and Rios, two bona fide fighters under a power promoter who don't need stupid belts or to give their money to any of these organizations, will be fighting for the WBO international welterweight title, and that's not all!
There will also be a "special belt" made for the winner, because the normal, second-rate, meaningless international title is obviously, truly not good enough for this fight, so we have to call it something, basically, but also make it seem like it's more important than it is. It still won't be.
Remember last December when Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez had no world titles, so they fought for the WBO "Champion of the Decade" title? Remember how after it was over, everyone was like, "Wow! Marquez is the Champion of the Decade and that means a lot!" No, I don't remember that either. Because nobody gave a damn, just like they won't give a damn about this.
I mean, let's say the idea is to match the Pacquiao-Rios winner against the Bradley-Marquez winner, where Bradley's normal WBO title will be on the line. Are we to believe, then, that Pacquiao or Rios will need the international title to secure that fight? Like the four guys being Top Rank fighters won't be enough to make that fight happen? Come on. Come on, you guys. Why give up money for a belt that means nothing for your place in the sport?
Some things, we are destined to not understand. There's your BLH Life Lesson for today.
On the other hand, Brandon Rios traipsing around China in a cowboy hat is my favorite thing.
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S²E is a platform for writing tools that analyze the properties and behavior of software systems. S²E is a virtual machine augmented with symbolic execution and modular path analyzers. S²E runs unmodified x86, x86-64, or ARM software stacks, including programs, libraries, the kernel, and drivers. Symbolic execution then automatically explores hundreds of thousands of paths through the system, while analyzers check that the desired properties hold on these paths and selectors focus path exploration on components of interest.
We have used S²E to develop a comprehensive performance profiler, a reverse engineering tool for proprietary software, and a bug finding tool for both kernel-mode and user-mode binaries. Others have used S²E to build scalable file system checkers, symbolic execution engines for interpreted languages, tools for finding trojan messages in distributed systems, verifying software routers, testing embedded systems, and more.
S²E’s novelty consists of its ability to scale to large real systems, such as a full Windows stack. S²E is based on two new ideas:
Selective symbolic execution, a way to automatically minimize the amount of code that has to be executed symbolically given a target analysis; and
Relaxed execution consistency models, a way to make principled performance/accuracy trade-offs in complex analyses.
These techniques give S²E three key abilities:
to simultaneously analyze entire families of execution paths, instead of just one execution at a time;
to perform the analyses in-vivo within a real software stack—user programs, libraries, kernel, drivers, etc.—instead of using abstract models of these layers; and
to operate directly on binaries, thus being able to analyze even proprietary software.
Conceptually, S²E is an automated path explorer with modular path analyzers: the explorer drives the target system down all execution paths of interest, while analyzers check properties of each such path (e.g., to look for bugs) or simply collect information (e.g., count page faults). Desired paths can be specified in multiple ways, and S²E users can either combine existing analyzers to build a custom analysis tool, or write new analyzers using the S²E API.
S²E helps make analyses based on symbolic execution practical for large software that runs in real environments, without requiring explicit modeling of these environments.
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PHOENIX -- Here’s a checklist of positions the Indianapolis Colts have addressed in the offseason: Running back, receiver, offensive line, defensive line, inside linebacker and one safety position.
But what about the other holes on the roster, Ryan Grigson?
The Colts addressed one of their biggest holes at wide receiver with the addition of Andre Johnson from the Houston Texans. Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports
“There can be perceived holes,” the Colts' general manager said. “Just to kind of clarify, it can’t be Christmas every day. There’s not a forever, endless river of cash flowing. We have a plan. We followed it. Say that safety is something that we went after, well, if that’s your number one need and you have player A and he gets above your ceiling where you want to go financially, you’ve got to cut off at this point to walk away and know that you still have that hole. Because if you just go screaming towards that one need, then you lose on player B, C, D, E and F. You can’t have everything.”
The most glaring hole that still needs to be filled for the Colts is at the other safety position opposite of Mike Adams for a couple of reasons. Indianapolis currently doesn’t have a starter at that position and Adams, who signed a two-year deal with the team on March 10, just turned 34 years old. Grigson talked about Winston Guy and Dewey McDonald as in-house possibilities at safety. Stevie Brown, Quintin Demps, Dwight Lowery and Quinton Carter are some of the top remaining free agents available on Bill Polian’s list.
“We’ll find somebody,” coach Chuck Pagano said. “Somebody will separate themselves from the pack, so to speak. There’s still a couple bodies out there in free agency that you can look at and then the draft. Looking at the draft, there’s some guys that are coming out in the draft that are going to be starting for somebody.”
The Colts also continue to have questions at defensive tackle after bypassing the position during the first wave of free agency. Zach Kerr, Montori Hughes, Kelcy Quarles and Jeris Pendleton are the in-house candidates.
The Colts will also use their picks in next month's draft to try to fill some of their holes.
“It gets back to good, old-fashioned development and playing your youth or waiting until another guy shakes free cap-wise or a guy that’s out there for the minimum that you like. And there’s still guys out there that we like,” Grigson said. “So sometimes they just need a chance. That’s the thing I think our coaches do a good job of not having a biased towards a young player because some places no matter how a guy’s practicing or no matter how a guy’s performing day in and day out, there’s a stigma on the young player. The vet’s going to play in front of him just because. That’s something we have to be stewards of to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
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Hezbollah and Palestine supporters staging a sit-down protest brought part of central London to a standstill on Sunday afternoon. A few hundred people marched down Regent Street, behind the Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, before sitting down at the junction with Oxford Street shortly after 4.30pm on Sunday. Many carried banners with messages including “Boycott Israel”, “Freedom for Palestine” and “Zionism = racism”. The demonstration wound its way through the capital’s retail heart, which was busy with shoppers. A man on a loudspeaker led the protesters in chants of “Free Palestine”. One speaker then blamed the devastating In Grenfell Tower fire, which has left at least 58 people dead, on Israel supporters. Addressing the crowd at Grosvenor Square, he said: “Many innocents were murdered by Theresa May’s cronies – many of which are supporters of Zionist ideologies. Some of the biggest corporations who are supporting the Conservative Party are Zionists. They are responsible for the murder in Grenfell. The Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.”
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It wasn’t long ago that Porsche claimed all-electric powertrains didn’t offer enough performance to reach the level that their customers expect from the premium German brand.
As their work on their first all-electric vehicle progresses, they are now changing their view on the technology and CEO Oliver Blume now says that he expects half of Porsche’s production to be electric by 2023.
The Mission E will be Porsche’s first all-electric vehicle and it is planned to enter production in 2019.
Last year, Blume said that they were planning for an annual production of 20,000 units for the new vehicle. It’s a significant volume for the German automaker considering they delivered just over 230,000 vehicles worldwide last year across its entire lineup.
But now they are ready to crank it up with a second all-electric vehicle based on the Macan.
In a surprising move, The CEO now says that between the two vehicles, Porsche is preparing for a capacity of 60,000 cars per year at its Zuffenhausen plant. Blume made the comment to Germany’s business magazine Manager Magazin last week.
The capacity would quickly make electric vehicles an important part of its overall production and it explains why the CEO now sees them reaching 50% of its total production as soon as 2023, which is much sooner than any established automaker.
It wouldn’t be too surprising for the company to achieve its goal if it can truly deliver on the expectations for the Mission E.
First of all, the design of the concept is simply stunning:
And the specs that Porsche has released are somewhat arguably competitive with the performance version of the Tesla Model S, which would likely be its main competitor.
The Mission E is to have “over 310 miles of range” (500 km) on a single charge, but being based in Germany, Porsche is likely talking about the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC), which is much more forgiving than the EPA rating and doesn’t really reflect real-world range. It’s should still have a more than decent range around 250 miles.
Porsche is also aiming for a 0 to 60 mph acceleration in 3.5 seconds. The automaker also claims that the Mission E will be equipped with a 800-volt charging system able to charge up to 80% in about 15 minutes.
We still don’t have a good idea of the pricing, which will, of course, be an important factor. But if Porsche can deliver on the specs, it could be sitting on a great performance electric car.
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In sad news, Titans wide out O.J. Murdock has committed suicide in front of the very high school he attended.
Tennessee Titans wide receiver O.J. Murdock committed suicide this morning in front of the Tampa high school he graduated from, according to the Tampa Police Department. He was 25 years old.
According to a news release distributed by the Tampa police, Orenthal James Murdock was found in his car at approximately 8:30 a.m. in front of Middleton High School. He had suffered an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound and was transported to Tampa General Hospital in critical condition.
Murdock was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m.
After Murdock did not report to the Titans’ training camp last week, coach Mike Munchak said Murdock had been excused for “personal reasons.” No details have emerged of the issues that Murdock was dealing with.
An undrafted free agent who signed with the Titans last year, Murdock missed the entire season with an Achilles injury. Murdock began his college career at South Carolina, where he played for two years, then transferred to Fort Hays State, where he played two more years.
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Yelping Jessica Simpson posts video on Twitter of her 'ear candling' experience
Jessica Simpson appears in this bizarre video in which she puts a lit 'candle' in her ear.
The pop star-turned-actress can be seen screaming and laughing as she holds the burning candle.
She is thought to be trying 'ear candling', which is professionally used to regulate pressure within the inner ear.
Scroll down to see the video...
Jessica Simpson holds a lit 'candle' in her ear to remove wax
Ouch: The singer-turned-actress yelped and laughed as the the flame burned and sucked the wax out of her ear and up the hollow candle tube
The Newlyweds star was told by her hairdresser Ken Paves that placing the lit candle in her ear would remove wax, so she tried it while he filmed it, before posting it on social networking website, Twitter.
The 29-year-old singer was pictured in New York yesterday, minus her make-up, where she was visiting her sister Ashlee.
Looking more like an English rose than an all-American girl, Jessica sported rosy cheeks in the Big Apple where temperatures are currently below freezing.
Glam to bland: Jessica seen here in full make-up compared with her au naturel red-faced look as she braved the freezing temperatures
Meanwhile, sister Jessica has been showing off one of her early Christmas presents. The singer posted a video of herself using a candle, given to her by designer friend Ken Paves, to rid her ears of wax. In the bizarre video she is seen lying with her head down on a table, with the burning candle wedged into her ear. The 29-year-old singer braves the snow in New York where she will be spending Christmas with sister Ashlee and parents Joe and Tina
Jessica was recently forced to deny that she'd had any involvement with Tiger Woods in the midst of his infidelity scandal.
U.S. magazine Star claimed that the two flirted in the presence of Simpson’s then-beau Tony Romo, and exchanged text messages days later.
However, Jessica said, via her Twitter page: '[I] can’t believe that I’m on the cover of star magazine with Tiger Woods, what a JOKE! ‘The Shocking Inside Story’ is (insert drumroll) A LIE!'
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Press Release: College of Fine Arts Presents Open Studio Day Friday, Dec. 6
December 02, 2013
Contact: Pam Wigley / 412-268-1047 / pwigley@andrew.cmu.edu
PITTSBURGH—The College of Fine Arts (CFA) will host a celebration of its schools and programs through Open Studio Day on Friday, Dec. 6. If you love art in any form, you'll find something to do at CFA that day.
Here's the schedule of events:
School of Art: The Open Studio Day concept originated with the School of Art, and this year's talented students are offering up some exceptional work. From 5 to 9 p.m. on the third and fourth floors of the CFA Building get a behind-the-scenes look into the artists' studios and work in progress. You also can purchase artwork as part of the holiday art sale and enjoy food, drink and WRCT DJ sessions. And don't miss performance art on the lawn outside CFA when a bubble dome takes center stage.
BXA Intercollege Degree Programs: Visit "Building BXA" — a temporary exhibition space that students have created to foster a unified BXA community. The space, located at the base of the CFA South Stairwell (just off the elevator), will be open to visitors from 5 to 9 p.m. with a special welcome and introduction by the builders at 7 p.m. The lounge is intended to gather BXA students across disciplines and promote engagement and interaction among BXA, CFA and the university as a whole. You also can check out the BXA Freshman Seminar class exhibition, "Remixing the Wunderkammer," from 5 to 6:30 p.m., in CFA Room 303. This show is the culmination of a semester spent thinking about aesthetic theory, collection and curation, and the interdisciplinary nature of creative and scholarly life.
School of Music: The annual Holiday Concert presented by the School of Music will take place at noon in the Great Hall of CFA. Under the direction of CMU alumna Maria Sensi Sellner, professor and interim director of choirs, the concert showcases the combined forces of the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, Concert Choir and Repertory Chorus. The performance is free and open to the public with first-come, first-served seating.
Note: You can also see the annual Holiday Concert at 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5, at Carnegie Music Hall.
Miller Gallery: The Miller Gallery will be open from noon to 6 p.m. Its current exhibit, "Alien She," is the first exhibition on the lasting impact on artists and cultural producers of the pioneering punk feminist movement Riot Grrrl, before touring it nationally. The exhibition focuses on seven contemporary artists working in a wide range of disciplines, including visual art, music, documentary film, new media, writing and performance, and provides a view into the passion and diversity of the original Riot Grrrl movement.
CFA Building: Finally, take time to explore the beautiful CFA building itself, which celebrated 100 years of existence this year. The building has been called the crown jewel of architect Henry Hornbostel and features sculptures, murals and other hidden gems. One of those is the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, which supports a-typical anti-disciplinary practices at the intersection of art, science and technology. Take a moment to stop in and see what interesting things may be taking place.
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Above: Jessica Aguero (left), pictured in her studio, peruses some of her artwork samples with a student visitor during 2012 Open Studio Days.
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A crash between a landscaping truck and a MAX train at Southeast 185th and Burnside shut down service in both directions Monday morning for hours.
“We were sitting there, you know, coming up to the stop, and then suddenly, bang -- I flew off my seat, hit the ground,” said Nicholls Salomone, who was riding on the train at the time. “Lady fell right here, right around the poll. I was sitting straight so I slid right off.”
Salomone said he hurt his knees and back during the crash. TriMet said several other riders suffered minor injuries, and emergency responders took two people to the hospital.
Authorities cited the truck driver for making an illegal left turn in front of the eastbound Blue Line train. His pickup truck had a trailer attached to the back.
“He didn’t get across the road and the train whacked him right across the middle,” said Salomone.
Transit police said the driver ignored a no left turn sign.
The overhead power wire and the accompanying pole were damaged significantly in the crash, and TriMet officials said they expect the service delays for the area will last through the day Monday.
“I thought the train was going to flip over and roll, but it didn’t do that part,” said Salomone.
TriMet used shuttle buses throughout the day for riders between Northeast 172nd and Cleveland.
Utility workers were working on repairing the overhead wires and utility pole and Transit police continued their investigation Monday morning.
It was unclear when service would be restored, but avoid the area or expect delays for your commute.
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HUDFramework
★ ABOUT ★
★ DETAILS ★
★ INSTALLATION ★
★ FEATURES (for mod authors) ★
Create HUD widgets and modify existing UI elements on-the-fly via a Papyrus interface.
and modify existing UI elements on-the-fly via a Papyrus interface. Write AS3 expressions directly within Papyrus and have them dynamically evaluated in Scaleform.
directly within Papyrus and have them dynamically evaluated in Scaleform. One framework for both PC and console. HUDFramework benefits from, but does not require F4SE - you can bring your UI mods to consoles.
★ USAGE EXAMPLES ★
HUDFramework hud = HUDFramework.GetInstance()
hud.RegisterWidget(Self, "MyWidget.swf", 100, 100)
hud.LoadWidget("MyWidget.swf")
hud.SendMessage("MyWidget.swf", UpdateResourceBar, 100)
hud.Eval("hud.BottomCenterGroup_mc.CompassWidget_mc.visible = false;")
★ WHAT'S POSSIBLE ★
On screen clock showing in-game/real time
Companion status widget (view health and stats)
Survival stats widget (hunger, sleep, thirst)
Custom crit meter outside VATS
Weapon wheel
Companion wheel
Custom crosshair
Hide specific UI elements
Quest-specific UI elements, such as a radar, minimap, or a timer counting down to detonation
...and more!
★ COMPATIBILITY ★
★ CREDITS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ★
[size=15][/size]HUDFramework is a UI framework that makes it possible for mods to add new UI elements to the HUD in a conflict-free way.Stats, time, widgets... and more! Welcome to a new world of UI modding.Previously, any mod modifying the HUD would necessarily overwrite and conflict with every other HUD mod. HUDFramework solves this by dynamically loading individual interface mods into the HUD at runtime. It gives modders the tools to load custom widgets and communicate with their widgets.Note that you need to have a mod installed that uses the framework to see any widgets! If you're looking for HUDFramework mods to install, there's a list on the sticky in the Comments section.1. Install with your preferred mod manager, or copy the files in the download to your Fallout 4 Data folder.2. Activate HUDFramework.esm in your mod manager, or via the Mods menu.Note: If you receive a message about overwriting HUDMenu.swf, then you have an existing UI mod installed. To use both together, you can inject HUDFramework into the other mod using the HUDFramework auto-patcher. See the Compatibility section.Retrieving a reference to HUDFramework:Load UI Widget:Communicate with UI widget:Show/hide compass:If you want to see more examples of what is possible with UI mods, see the supported modlists for UI frameworks for previous Fallout games.A DEF_UI patch is provided in the Files section.If you are using any other mod that replaces HUDMenu.swf, you should merge HUDFramework with the other mod's HUDMenu.swf. This is an automated process - the HUDFramework Auto-Patcher is able to automatically inject HUDFramework into any HUDMenu.swf. (In fact, this release itself is an auto-patch on the vanilla HUDMenu!) Get the auto-patcher in the Files section - instructions are included in the download.BISE Scripting Engine for making dynamic AS3 evaluation possible.RABCDASM for robust, nondestructive SWF disassembly and assembly.F4SE for Scaleform logging.
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Adam Brent Houghtaling, a New York-based author, should be in quite a sour mood by now. After all, he spent months listening to the saddest music ever made, from sorrowful symphonies to tearjerker Billie Holliday tunes to just about every Leonard Cohen song ever.
But Houghtaling, author of the new book "This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music," is actually pretty chipper, all things – and all songs – considered. His fascinating examination of centuries of downer music is getting plenty of attention, and his ranking of the Top 100 Saddest Songs has spawned debate.
I asked Houghtaling to explain what he's learned and ponder why we like to turn to blue notes, especially when we're notably blue.
Q: What makes sad songs unique?
A: Sad songs are a really intimate thing. They're not something you listen to with all your friends at a dinner party or when you're hanging out at a lake house with your buddies. You're doing it by yourself.
If you're listening to a lot of sad music, it's because you're not in a great state of mind. You've just gotten your heart broken or suffered some kind of loss. It becomes intimate, but it's also comforting in a way.
Q: Can sad songs actually be good for us when we're feeling down?
A: There's this idea that listening to sad songs may drag us deeper into our despair. But it may also help us go deeper into a despair and focus on whatever the problem is that brought us to that point.
Q: Do you mean a kind of catharsis?
A: I found catharsis to be a very tricky topic, but yeah, it's the idea that when you connect with an artist or a song, you feel like someone else is out there, someone has gone through this before, you're not alone.
There's a lot of ways that sad songs help us get through the despair and put us back on track.
Q: How did researching your book affect you personally?
A: It took me a couple of years, if not a little more, to write the book, and I was deeply immersed in the saddest stuff I could find, listening to it over and over again.
My mood depended on what was going on in my life. If everything was going OK, it didn't affect me much. But if a couple things went wrong, it didn't help.
It wasn't always the best thing for me. But I had a deadline.
Q: Do you feel like you're celebrating sad songs?
A: I want to celebrate being melancholy in the ruminative sense, not depression itself.
That's nothing I want to make light of and really affects people's lives in a terrible way. When you're depressed, you can't do a heck of a lot and you don't feel a lot of joy.
But when I'm kind of melancholic, I can still do all that stuff. I feel peaceful and comforted when I'm in that head space.
I wanted to make a case for enjoying that and not trying to end it. These moments of sadness are an important part of life, and you shouldn't necessarily try to chase them away at all costs.
Q: What did you think about when you developed your Top 100 Saddest Songs list, which is topped by "Adagio for Strings" (composed by Samuel Barber) and "Strange Fruit" (sung by Billie Holiday)?
A: I wanted to include artists who really owned sadness, not just people who did a couple of sad songs.
Q: Do the artists behind these songs tend to have difficult lives?
A: It just makes sense that artists who deal with emotional turmoil would have a truer, stronger sense of the material than someone who doesn't necessarily know sadness beyond a bad day or weekend. Instead, it's someone who knows a bad year or a decade.
Q: What makes a good sad song?
A: There isn't any one thing on its own that does it.
I looked at slow tempo, which can do a good job of slowing your heart rate down. But ambient music has slow tempo too, and it's not necessarily sad. I looked at minor chords, but there are plenty of upbeat songs that have minor chords. Then there are lyrics, but there are plenty of raging songs that are about loss, grief and heartbreak.
Then I got into the little things, like how someone's voice can help convey a certain kind of sadness. There are these kinds of really beat-up and broken voices, like Billie Holliday's in her last years, that convey "I've been through it all, and this is a story I have to tell."
There's also something about low-fi music, this idea that this is the honest truth: We didn't shine this up or produce it for you. It's coming from a kid in his bedroom with a broken heart.
Q: Would you prescribe sad songs to a sad person?
A: I don't think I'd have to. They probably would have found them on their own.
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To listen to Houghtaling's selection of the saddest songs of all time, sign up for the music service Spotify and head to this link: http://spoti.fi/NqWUwq.
Randy Dotinga is a Monitor contributor.
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In December, when Piccolo co-owners Doug Flicker and Amy Greeley announced that they were closing their four-star Minneapolis restaurant – the last day is March 11 -- Flicker added that he was already looking ahead.
“I want to do something else,” he said. “I’d still like to do one more project. It’s just a little too early to confirm any details.”
Now’s the time. The couple is in the process of purchasing the Sunrise Inn, one of the city’s last 3.2 beer joints. They plan to convert the bar -- which has anchored the corner of 46th St. and 34th Av. S. for 70 years -- to Bull’s Horn Food and Drink.
“It’s going to remain in the spirit of the classic, old-time dive bar,” said Greeley. “We want it to be a neighborhood place, and family-friendly.”
Flicker and Greeley are purchasing the building, which also includes a few commercial storefronts, and a parking lot. The plan is to convert the empty square footage that’s adjacent to the Sunrise into a commercial kitchen.
“Right now there’s just a little griddle and a fryer,” said Flicker. “I’m not 100 percent sure that we’ll be able to keep them, but we’d like to.”
Fans of the Sunrise, don’t worry: the room’s well-worn fixtures aren’t going anywhere.
“There’s a gorgeous wooden bar, with wooden-front coolers,” said Flicker. “It’s absolutely classic.”
Construction will commence in mid-April, with the hope of opening by July.
The project is in its early stages, but Flicker is promising “a killer burger, and we’ll dabble in some smoked meats,” he said.
“We’re trying to avoid the word ‘barbeque,’” added Greeley. “But I can see offering some kind of meat-and-three options.”
The Sunrise's 3.2 heritage will be history. (Most mainstream beer brands have a 5 percent alcohol level, and craft beers go higher). The couple plans to upgrade the liquor license to include strong beer and wine.
The Bull's Horn has been a long time in the making.
“We’ve been looking at the space for five years,” said Flicker. “Then Sandcastle [their seasonal beachside pavilion at nearby Lake Nokomis] came up, and we couldn’t do both. With Piccolo closing, I can shift my attention to this.”
The demise of the Sunrise represents the end of an era. Low-alcohol beer joints – an anachronism that sprouted out of strict post-Prohibition municipal ordinances – thrived for decades on corners all over Minneapolis. Changes, in both tastes and governance, have been swift.
Twenty years ago, the city’s 3.2 joints numbered 56. By 2007, the figure had dwindled to 15, and in 2013 it was down to the Sunrise and the T-Shoppe Bar, located in the Camden neighborhood on the city’s north side.
The friendly neighborhood dive bar is firmly entrenched in the couple’s DNA. Greeley grew up in St. Paul, a block from what was then Mickey’s Nook. And Flicker’s aunts and uncles owned (the brilliantly named) Flicker’s Liquors in Pierz, Minn.
“It was so impactful to me, as a kid,” he said. “In every sense, I’m going back to my roots. I’m super-excited. It’s that change thing, you know? It’s so fun to think of doing something completely different.”
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The Dallas Morning News brought up concerns in the editorial that the penalties on convention delegates for introducing "whatever hot-button issue is in fashion at the time" might not ultimately protect the project from "mission creep." Again, they are wrong.
The Convention of States can and must be limited. It will propose specific amendments like term limits, a balanced budget amendment and restoring the 10th Amendment to prevent any president from dictating laws.
And no matter what a Convention of States proposes, it will not be part of the Constitution until it is approved by three-fourths of the states.
To get 38 states to agree to anything will be difficult, as it should be. We should not take lightly the seriousness of this task or the threats posed by our inaction.
While the ruling elite may object, hardworking Americans are leading this movement and fighting to restore the balance of power between the federal government and the states.
The Dallas Morning News also suggests in the editorial that the proper avenue for amending the Constitution is first through Congress, which would require a two-thirds agreement of both houses.
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An Iraq war veteran who served 12 1/2 years protecting his country would be considered by most a hero.
But for this war veteran, his hero is a generous 8-year-old girl named Rachel Mennett.
“She’s helped us accomplish so much in such a little amount of time,” Nick Bailey, 34, of North Charleston, South Carolina, told ABC News. “For an 8-year-old girl to do something like this, to me, that is just heroic."
Bailey was injured by a mortar attack while on duty in Iraq. He sustained spinal injuries and nerve damage and has undergone several surgeries to try to help his physical pain, but those aren’t the only remnants of war that ail him. He also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
One of Bailey’s biggest comforts throughout it all, however, has been his faithful friend-- his dog, Abel.
He and his wife, Vanessa, have had the German Shepherd ever since he was a 10-week-old puppy. Abel comforts Bailey when he’s awoken from nightmares, lays on his lap while he suffers from migraines and helps steady his balance while he walks with a cane.
But in order to truly help to the level that Bailey requires on a daily basis, Abel needs formal service dog training, which comes with a lofty price tag.
“Our original goal was to go to a trainer in Arizona who is the best of the best, but it’s $15,000,” Vanessa explained. “We never thought we’d’ be able to reach that. But every other organization we went to kept turning us down.”
The family set up a GoFundMe page in the beginning of August to try to raise at least $6,000 before taking out a loan to fulfill the rest, but it just wasn’t coming close to the amount they needed. That is, however, until little Rachel entered the picture.
“I had never met her until that day at the pet store when her brother called and said, ‘Hey, my sister is doing a lemonade stand,” Bailey recalled.
Rachel’s older brother works at a pet store in Summerville, South Carolina, where Bailey would often take Abel. Once her brother got wind that Bailey was actively searching for service training for Abel, but didn’t have the funds to afford it, he shared the story with his family.
“He took an interested to it and went home to his family and his little sister, at 8 years old, said, ‘I think I’d like to help him. I want to do a lemonade stand,’” said Bailey. “At her age, that’s amazing.”
And sure enough, that’s exactly what the determined little girl did.
Rachel set up shop in the pet store-- painted signs, Hawaiian leis and all-- to help raise money for the wounded veteran she’d never met.
“It means a great deal to me,” Bailey explained. “For a veteran like myself who sees a lot of dismay in the world today, it gives us hope for the next generation.”
The attention the lemonade stand has received has significantly helped Bailey towards his goal, something for which he is eternally grateful.
“This little girl has done so much, more than she’ll ever know,” he said. “I‘m really hoping once Abel is finally fully-trained, that he and I can go visit her at her school to do an assembly to present her with something to thank her. She’s just an exceptional child, an exceptional human being, actually.”
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Matteo salvini (Cavicchi)
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Il clima nel quale si trovano oggi i cittadini italiani è piuttosto confuso. Se da un lato è cresciuta a partire dagli inizi di quest’anno la fiducia nella capacità del paese di riprendersi economicamente, anche se con qualche contrazione negli ultimi mesi, dall’altro si riduce la fiducia nel ceto politico e nelle classi dirigenti, non solo politiche. Gli ultimi mesi sono stati dominati da tre fenomeni: la corruzione politica con la vicenda di Mafia Capitale, i risultati delle elezioni locali (regionali e comunali) che hanno evidenziato lo scollamento nel Pd fra centro e periferia con la percezione di una diffusa rete di potentati locali difficilmente controllabili, l’acuirsi dei flussi migratori e le risposte disarticolate degli stati europei.
Tutti questi aspetti contribuiscono a rendere sfiduciati da un lato e dall’altro a creare paura. Tanto più che i segnali di miglioramento dell’economia, che pure come detto gli italiani colgono, non sembrano riverberarsi sulle condizioni concrete di vita: il Paese migliora almeno un po’ ma le mie condizioni personali rimangono al palo.
Questo sentimento di disagio emerge con nettezza anche dalle valutazioni sulle principali cariche dello Stato e sui maggiori leader politici che abbiamo testato in questo sondaggio.
Cominciamo dalle cariche dello Stato. Spicca tra di esse il presidente della Repubblica, l’unico ad avere un rilevante consenso: due terzi degli italiani nutrono fiducia nei suoi confronti. Con una piccola contrazione, peraltro fisiologica, rispetto al dato rilevato al momento dell’insediamento di Sergio Mattarella (71%). È un dato che si ripete. Lo vedevamo per i presidenti precedenti (Ciampi e Napolitano), si conferma per l’attuale. In una situazione di difficoltà, quando le prospettive sembrano negative e la classe politica non è percepita all’altezza del momento, si tende ad affidarsi al presidente della Repubblica, un uomo che per il ruolo che riveste e per l’autorevolezza che lo contraddistingue, viene pensato come capace di indirizzo e orientamento nei confronti della direzione politica.
Molto distanti le altre cariche. Il presidente del Senato, Pietro Grasso, ha la fiducia del 40% degli italiani, in calo rispetto al momento dell’insediamento, ma in crescita in relazione al dato di inizio anno. Dopo le polemiche che hanno caratterizzato alcuni momenti della sua gestione dell’aula, tornano per la seconda carica dello Stato, segnali positivi di apprezzamento per quanto la fiducia complessiva rimanga contenuta. Più bassa invece la fiducia nella presidente della Camera Laura Boldrini, che si attesta al 33%, con un calo molto consistente rispetto al momento del suo insediamento (era allora il 57%). Le attese degli elettori per un personaggio con un profilo diverso dal solito (donna, giovane, non «politica») sembrano essere disattese. Infine il presidente del Consiglio, delle cui difficoltà abbiamo più volte parlato recentemente.
La fiducia in Matteo Renzi si attesta oggi al 36%, era al 61% al momento dell’insediamento ed era salita a oltre il 70% immediatamente dopo il successo delle Europee. Ancora all’inizio dell’anno era vicina al 50%. Si è conclusa la luna di miele, le aspettative dei cittadini non sono state, se non parzialmente, corrisposte. Ma oltre a questi aspetti, in qualche modo fisiologici, hanno pesato molto le vicende sopra indicate e nelle ultime settimane una certa difficoltà di gestione (gli annunci di retromarcia sulla riforma della scuola poi rientrati, il ritiro della revisione del catasto, ecc.) che sembrano indicare un certo affanno, sicuramente non coerente con l’immagine che il presidente del Consiglio cerca di dare di sé.
Per i leader politici è stata testata non la fiducia ma la valutazione dell’operato, dato più sensibile alle variazioni dei comportamenti. Per tutti prevale nettamente il giudizio negativo. Detto questo, spicca Salvini che con un dato al 36% si colloca allo stesso livello di Matteo Renzi. Ma la crescita rispetto all’inizio dell’anno è poco rilevante. L’impressione è che il leader della Lega abbia raggiunto il livello massimo di consensi e che fatichi ad estenderli. Il suo posizionamento «radicale» gli ha consentito di massimizzare i voti ma, come abbiamo detto più volte, non gli consentirà presumibilmente di posizionarsi come leader di un centrodestra che ha al proprio interno ampie componenti moderate. Segue Beppe Grillo, con una valutazione del 30%, non entusiasmante ma in crescita rispetto ad inizio anno (+7%), tallonato da Giorgia Meloni (29%). Fortemente distanziati gli altri, all’ultimo posto Angelino Alfano, penalizzato in particolare dalle vicende dell’immigrazione.
Prevale quindi la negatività mentre cresce il consenso per le formazioni di «protesta» e «antisistema». Ma è comunque un consenso minoritario che si basa, per la gran parte degli elettori, sulla rabbia e il disagio e non sulla proposta. In attesa di una ripresa che incida veramente sulle concrete condizioni di vita dei cittadini, abbiamo di fronte un periodo di difficoltà e di ulteriore scollamento politica/popolo che sarà molto difficile ricomporre a breve.
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In a year of highs and lows, and plenty of circus like atmosphere and drama, two of the biggest pleasant surprises for MSNBC in 2010 were the late blooming success of The Ed Show, and the immediate success of The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell. Let’s take a look at two of MSNBC’s bright spots for the year.
Back in 2009 MSNBC was looking for their next big hit, and they thought that liberal radio show host Ed Schultz would be it. After his debut program drew 825,000 total viewers, the audience quickly eroded and stayed mired in the 500,000 viewer range, but something interesting happened in 2010. As the post 2008 victory glow wore off and Democrats in Washington began to struggle, the audience for Ed Schultz’s blue collar populism began to grow.
According to MSNBC, “2010 marks the best total viewer performance in the 6 p.m. hour ever for MSNBC, with “The Ed Show” ranked #2 in both A25-54 and total viewers for the full year. Compared to 2009, “The Ed Show” is up +8% in A25-54 and +20% in total viewers, while CNN has dropped -28% in A25-54 and -29% in total viewers. CNN had their lowest 6 p.m. delivery in A25-54 since 1999 and the lowest total viewer average since 2002. “The Ed Show” had 642,000 total viewers (vs. 543,000 for CNN) and 157,000 A25-54 (vs. 149,000 for CNN).”
As more left leaning middle class Americans, the group that Ed Schultz advocates for, became disenchanted with the economy, they more they tuned in to The Ed Show. Back in 2009, I originally found the program to be a dull carbon copy of other MSNBC programs, but Schultz has found his voice, and his personality, love it or hate it, shines through. He has managed to capture the voice of blue collar America in a way that Keith Olbermann can’t. Ed Schultz has found his niche and he is one of the few cable news hosts who actually saw his audience grow in 2010.
The other surprise of 2010 was the immediate success of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. For years, MSNBC viewers had been asking for a new 10 PM ET program to replace the nightly repeat of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and when they finally got their wish, they tuned in heavily and often. Powered by an interview with Vice President Joe Biden, The Last Word’s debut was MSNBC’s most watched program on September 28.
Unlike what Ed Schultz went through after his big debut, O’Donnell’s program has sustained its ratings, and on occasion draws more viewers than its lead in, The Rachel Maddow Show. O’Donnell’s show finished as the 16th most watched program on cable news, and The Last Word actually performed better with younger viewers than both Olbermann and Maddow. I had wondered when his show was announced how O’Donnell was going to approach doing a ten o’clock without rehashing all of the same stories and material that the hosts before him discussed.
The Last Word accomplished being different by doing something the other shows on the network haven’t been able to do. O’Donnell has been able to get Republicans on his show. Whereas Keith Olbermann doesn’t seem interested in having Republicans on, and Republicans are so terrified of Rachel Maddow that they won’t come on her show, O’Donnell has managed to attract a rather eclectic guest list.
O’Donnell is a veteran of both scripted television, and politics, and he and his staff appear to have an idea of how they want their show to be different from the others on the network. O’Donnell has shown himself to be a sharp interviewer who is not afraid to spar with his guests. His program is a great follow up to Rachel Maddow. Both shows share a bit of a wonkish tone, where opinion is secondary to describing what is going on and why it is happening.
MSNBC may never be in Fox News’ league, but the network has continued to add to its lineup. MSNBC’s initial success was accomplished on the back of Keith Olbermann, but now there is a lot more talent on the roster. I would love to see MSNBC add a minority host to prime time, and the network needs to be available in more homes around the country, which is something that Comcast will likely address when they take over NBC, but I think that they are missing the boat in one key area.
In my opinion, MSNBC won’t really grow until they stop catering to the small class of progressives that has issues with Obama. It is not a coincidence that the fastest growing show on the network features an old school blue collar liberal. Maybe MSNBC will someday get the message that there are a lot of potential viewers out there who might like to see less emotional criticism of the President, and more of a return to core liberal values. If MSNBC wants to reach and retain their audience in 2011 they should consider broadening the range of opinion that they present.
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Antifreeze Poisoning in Dogs — What You Need to Know
It's true: Bonedigger and his gaggle of wiener dogs have been friends their whole lives. Huh.
Bonedigger is a five-year-old, 500-pound male lion. Milo is a seven-year-old, 11-pound Dachshund.
After dinner, Milo licks the food from Bonedigger’s teeth.
His friends Bullet and Angel help, too. Bullet and Angel are also teeny-tiny Dachshunds. Bonedigger is still a 500-pound lion.
Some relationships between animals of different species are “unlikely” — your average duck making friends with a puppy, for instance. Some are “unexpected” — let’s call that anything involving a housecat.
But a lion making lifelong friends with three wiggly Dachshunds? That’s WTF, front to back. Sorry for the veiled profanity, but look at this:
Goodness gracious.
According to the Daily Mail, Milo and Bonedigger have been”inseparable for the past five years at the the Garold Wayne Interactive Zoological Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. Joe Schreibvogel, an animal expert who regularly posts videos from the park at YouTube’s JoeExoticTV, first introduced his four Dachshund puppies to Bonedigger when he was just a four-week-old cub.
Bonedigger is mildly disabled, thanks to a metabolic bone disease, according to Today.com. Schreibvogel figures this explains the bond the group has developed. Something has to. “The dogs thought it was just a big puppy and have loved each other since,” he told Today.com. “I also think they know the lion is not as normal as the rest.”
The dogs and Bonedigger also share big, hearty meals of raw meat. They spend their days with Bonedigger in his yard, and because he’s a 500-pound lion, what Bonedigger wants, Bonedigger gets.
“You do not ever try to take his dogs out of the yard,” Schreibvogel said. “[It] makes him very mad. They sleep on top of him.”
Milo, for one, may think there’s more to him than 11 pounds of wiener dog. According to Schreibvogel, “Milo does his best to copy Bonedigger when the lion tries puffing to communicate with other lions in the park.”
What’s puffing? That’s the growl lions use to speak to other prides, which can be heard more than a mile away.
Imagine: In Oklahoma, a Dachshund named Milo is talking to lions in a zoo in their own language. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lights are burning late at Pixar this week.
Photos via screengrabs from Joe Exotic TV
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Hey everybody, Scotty Fields here. As you can see I'm knee deep in my passion project, a practical FX "Ninja Turtles" movie. It's like the original, except it will have elements of horror with mutations and very violent bloody action. It will have all of your favorite characters, not just two or three. This film will have Leather head, Krang, Triceraton, Baxter Stockman and the Mousers, the Fugitoid, Casey Jones, Master Splinter, Shredder and the Foot Clan, Bebop, Rocksteady, the Rat King, April O'neil and the Turtles of course! I just love the magic of seeing these creatures come to life in a practical form.
I'm almost ready to shoot the film, that's where you guys come in. I need your help to make it a reality. I can't do this without you. By donating to this campaign, not only do you help make an awesome project happen, but you get really cool stuff in return.
27 years ago, I saw the first TMNT movie and it blew my mind! All the creatures seem to come alive, it was magic, pure magic. I saw that film 6 times in the theater. Fast forward 27 years later, I've been inspired to recreate that experience.
It's been a long road, we're nearly at the end. We have 15 days to raise the money for this film. Help me finish this....Let's make it happen, Thank you.
REWARDS
One of the limited edition Blood Brothers Ninja Turtles shirt.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Follow us on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/user/bloodbrothersfx
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It seems like everyone’s racing to bring internet access to offline users around the world: Facebook is working with Internet.org in Africa, and Mozilla has teamed up with the GSMA in Bangladesh and Brazil. Up next is Microsoft, with its vision to bring widespread Web access to India with an already available resource: the TV spectrum.
Microsoft’s plan is to tap the unused spectrum between TV channels, known as ‘white space‘, to bring connectivity across the country.
Speaking to national daily Hindustan Times, Microsoft India chairman Bhaskar Pramanik explained, “Wi-Fi has a range of only about 100 metres, whereas the 200-300 MHz spectrum band available in the white space can reach up to 10 km. This spectrum belongs mainly to Doordarshan (Indian public broadcaster) and the government and is not used at all. We have sought clearance for a pilot project in two districts.”
If the pilot projects go as planned, Microsoft’s initiative could be rolled out across the country and help Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India program move forward and enable governance for all citizens in India.
Read next: Sony's $250 SmartWatch 3 is on sale now, no phone required
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You’ve got it all backwards. Men invented the technology that liberated us from the parasitic housewife. We invented the washer/dryer, toaster, microwave oven, electric stove, refrigerator, modern plumbing/electricity, and most of the things that have now made the traditional housewife obsolete. We liberated ourselves from you. We don’t need you in the house anymore, so get the fuck out. You don’t need liberation from patriarchy, and by extension, liberation from men – in reality, you need liberation from your own obsolescence. Perhaps you should consider making yourself useful as something other than a sandwich-maker and create a meaningful existence for yourself, one that doesn’t rely on an identity as a victim of patriarchy. Again, you’ve got it all backwards.
We live in an amazing time. When, in the history of humanity, has there ever been such cultural pressure (and opportunity) for women to create their own identity, meaning, and purpose? Their default position and role within societal structures has typically and historically been one that entails their utility as mother, caregiver, and housewife—all cultural constructs that likely emerged from lower biological drives and that have evolved to exist primarily in the form of relationships to family, to husband, and as part of a marriage.
If we view marriage and the role of the traditional housewife as a form of cultural technology, it is an obsolete piece of technology—no more useful than the vacuum tubes in an old radio from the 1930s. As these vacuum tubes gave way to transistors and those to silicon chips, so too marriage is giving way to other forms of cultural technology. (See the SCOTUS decision on DOMA.)
Our culture is experiencing this transition right now. With the advent and proliferation of those aforementioned modern amenities and technologies, the housewife and marriage itself have become (and are becoming) obsolete pieces of cultural technology. If we view these pieces of cultural technology as extensions of a woman’s identity, meaning, and purpose, women have been and are experiencing a loss; it is a loss that exists in the form of their own obsolescence. Prior generations of women, unlike today’s generation, did not have to concern themselves with creating an identity, meaning, and purpose, at least not to the extent required today. Such things were built in to the culture for them. They could simply rely on the old cultural technology of marriage, housewifery and reproductive duties to find relevance and a sort of fulfillment. Given that such things as marriage and traditional gender roles are becoming less relevant, women are now confronting this sort of obsolescence.
In this way, the plight of the modern woman can be viewed not as a struggle against patriarchy, but as a struggle against their own obsolescence. It’s a struggle to remain relevant, to find identity, meaning, and purpose. It’s a struggle for fulfillment given the present absence of a cultural technology that once provided for them, as Heidegger might say, a “ready-to-hand” construct, a prefabricated role as mother, caregiver, and wife. With this “ready-to-hand” obsolescence and malfunctioning of these traditional roles and of marriage, a divide has emerged from within the once great gynocentrisms that enveloped prior cultures. As such, this divide reveals itself in the forms of radical traditionalists and radical feminists.
The traditionalist sort of right-wing feminists (think Phyllis Schlafly and her ilk) are nothing but a hodgepodge of stereotypically grumpy Luddites concerned with a sort of radical conservatism that attempts to maintain the old cultural technology and stubbornly refuses adaptation to and adoption of new cultural technologies—ones that might replace the traditional housewife and marriage. They are like neophobe geeks raging hard for a return to the HD DVD or to Betamax or for the Microsoft Zune.
Of the more radical leftist feminists and their ilk, we can view them not as Luddites, but as misguided revolutionaries who have created an identity for themselves as antagonists of the patriarchy. They are women compelled to create a narrative (a cultural technology, if you will) within our social-cultural structure—an astonishing attempt to create something that might restore to women an identity, meaning, and purpose.
Sadly, this cultural technology is a disaster loosely analogous to something like Windows ME. It was supposed to be a sort of revolutionary software technology making the home PC more useful and attractive to the home PC buyer. However, it was buggy, prone to crashing, unstable, and poorly constructed, with limited and restricted access to MS-DOS. Though some of the graphics and interfaces were stylish, the real-world user experience was painful, aggravating, and for Microsoft, it was a disaster—having barely one year of shelf-life.
Similarly, the shelf-life of these would-be revolutionaries of modern leftist feminism is also running out. That is to say, their product doesn’t perform as it should. It’s buggy and slow and prone to crash in the face of real-world experiences. Its logic is unstable and does not hold up under questioning about its foundational underpinnings. In short, their construct exists only in relation to patriarchy and if the narrative of patriarchal oppression of women doesn’t hold up under logical scrutiny, so too does their narrative and corresponding construct fail because their construct does not exist apart from its foundation—which is patriarchy. And patriarchy, as an overarching explanation for the oppression of women, is not a true paradigm. Again, it’s not patriarchy. It’s obsolescence.
If the modern woman wants to overcome this sort of obsolescence and create relevance for herself – if she wants to create identity, meaning, and purpose – perhaps she could take a clue from the philosopher Andy Clark. In Andy Clark’s Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, a phrase called the “scaffolded mind” is used to describe the “amazing capacities [of humans] to create and maintain a variety of special external structures (symbolic and social-institutional). [The scaffolded mind helps us structure] our environment so that we can succeed with less intelligence. Our brains make the world smart so that we can be dumb in peace!
Or, to look at it another way, it is the human brain plus these chunks of external scaffolding that finally constitutes the smart, rational inference engine we call mind…[and the boundaries of our mind]… extend further out into the world than we might have initially supposed (179,180).” Clark goes on to describe a “scaffolded action” as one that “relies on some kind of external support. Such support would come from the use of tools or from exploitation of the knowledge and skills of others; that is to say, scaffolding [that denotes] a broad class of physical, cognitive, and social augmentations…that allow us to achieve some goal that would otherwise be beyond us (190).”
If the modern woman has the goal of achieving something that is otherwise beyond her, she’d abandon the entire narrative of patriarchal oppression and create scaffolds for women that extend outward from her “present-at-hand,” as Heidegger might say, existence and into an existence of relevance—one that isn’t dependent upon being the victim of patriarchy, or some sort of revolutionary slayer of patriarchy.
As the modern woman faces this Heideggerian “ready-to-hand” obsolescence, she must create her own relevance, one that is independent of false narratives about patriarchy. She must create a new sort of “scaffolded” cultural technology for herself—one that extends outward from the “present-at-hand” structure and into relevance. Without this sort of scaffolded mind to bridge the gap between obsolescence and relevance, women may as well leave their minds in a jar by the door and continue screaming like the stereotypical moustache-encrusted and incoherent purveyors of misandry who demand that men provide to them a scaffolded structure into typically male spaces of cultural technology a la Adria Richards and the Donglegate fiasco.
Richard Rorty makes a beautiful and profound statement in his later work—Philosophy and Social Hope: “Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on forever.
There are, so to speak, relations all the way down, all the way up, and all the way out in every direction; you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations. (54).”If the modern woman wants to build her relational relevance, one that exists apart from the old cultural technology that provided a sort of prefabricated role of existence in relation to her utility as mother, caregiver, housewife, etc., she must not fall in to the trap of trying to build a set of relations and scaffolding from the present absence of something—literally nothing, her Heideggerian “ready-to-hand” obsolete roles of previous generations. She also cannot extend scaffolds and relations from false narratives of patriarchy. These false narratives about patriarchy are a ground in which to try and stabilize such scaffolding and that ground is a sort of quagmire, a swamp that will swallow, envelop, and dissolve those relations and scaffolds, only to prolong the “ready-to-hand” obsolescence.
We do live in an amazing time. Women have the opportunity to create for themselves a new identity, meaning, and purpose. As men have created so many of the amenities and technologies that liberated us from the “ready-to-hand” cultural technologies of marriage and of the traditional parasitic housewife, it is now time that women step up and create something other than lamentations about patriarchy or the waxed poetic words of how great things were under traditionalism.
The burden is on women to create, to remove themselves from the rut of traditionalism, and to remove themselves from the rut of blaming patriarchy. Until the modern woman removes herself from these ruts, she will be stuck in the wrongheaded direction and have within her perspective the kind of backwards thinking that gets her nowhere even close to being liberated from her own obsolescence.
You’re not needed in the house anymore, so get the fuck out.
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Two teenage men have been charged with intent to murder after a shooting that took place on the set of a Denzel Washington movie left two security guards with injuries.
The guards were on the set of the sequel to “The Equalizer” in Boston on Saturday when they were struck with gunfire, police spokesman Lt. Detective Michael McCarthy told The Boston Herald on Friday. The two security guards suffered non-life-threatening injuries from the shots and have since been treated and released from the hospital.
Two 18-year-old men, Dionte Martinez and Thomas Perkins, were arrested in connection with the shooting and charged with assault with intent to murder, unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition, according to police.
“After a complete and thorough investigation, officers were able to later learn and ascertain the identities of the suspects wanted in connection to the shooting,” police said. “Members of the Youth Violence Strike Force, along with members of the Quincy Police Department, located and arrested the suspects in Quincy.”
Police say nothing was being filmed at the time, and it does not appear that the security guards were targeted in the shooting.
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(Image: HBO)
From Frank Underwood in House of Cards to Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, there’s a trait that some of our most memorable villains have in spades: Machiavellianism. Yet until recently this has been overlooked by most of personality science.
Psychologists have long thought that measuring someone on a scale of just five personality dimensions – agreeableness, extroversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness and openness to new experiences – can capture all the variation in behaviour and attitude seen in the human race.
But it turns out that we may have been overlooking a crucial sixth personality trait – and it’s not a pretty one. It’s known as honesty-humility, but it’s people who are lacking in those two qualities that the measure is designed to pick out.
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Dark side of you
Some psychologists believe that standard personality tests based on the “big five” are failing to identify people who are sly, dishonest and greedy. “These are people who lack moral character,” says Taya Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Cohen says that “agreeableness” goes some way to measuring these undesirable traits, but only in the way we react to others – not in the behaviours we initiate. “Agreeableness captures people’s patience and forgiveness but not the actively harmful behaviours. Honesty-humility really captures that Machiavellianness,” she says.
The trait is part of a new six-factor model (see how you score here). But almost all the supporting evidence for its inclusion has been based on people doing questionnaires and giving their opinion of how likely they are to behave and think in certain ways.
Now a study has shown that people who score low on the honesty-humility trait are more likely to be dishonest in a series of lab tests. In one test of 88 people, those who cheated in a dice-rolling game to win small sums of cash had lower honesty-humility scores – but there was no link with any of the big five traits. Those in the lowest bracket for the trait claimed to have predicted a dice-roll correctly about 75 per cent of the time when their real odds of doing so were only 17 per cent.
Cheat to the top
“They were cheating like mad,” says co-author Benjamin Hilbig of the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany.
Ivan Robertson of the University of Manchester, UK, says the six-trait model does seem better at teasing out Machiavellian personality traits. But he points out that the big five is widely used, and introducing new models will make it harder for researchers to compare their work.
Cohen thinks acceptance of the big six is growing. She investigates integrity in the workplace and finds the honesty-humility trait invaluable for measuring how likely people are to do things like cheat on their time-sheets or steal office supplies. “If they have the opportunity to behave in a very selfish way, they do so, even if it might harm others,” says Cohen. “They can be nasty to co-workers too.”
Journal reference: Journal of Research in Personality, doi.org/45b
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We would like to introduce the first of our “Ghosts in the Endpoint” series, a report prepared by FireEye Labs that documents malicious software not being detected in the wild by traditional signature-based detections.
In this study, all the families identified are samples from VirusTotal (VT) with zero detections, but detected as malicious by our Multi-Vector Virtual Execution (MVX) Engine. We also added a few samples with very low detection rates (VT <=3) but with interesting bypass techniques.
Our goal is to share indicators that help the AV community and others improve their detection coverage.
Scope
So far, only samples found in VT with the following file types were included in this study:
Win32 binaries
Office documents (including Open XML format)
RTF documents
Hangul Word Processor (HWP)[1] documents
The study includes samples submitted to VT in 2015 that were still found undetected or with minimal detection rates as of January 2016 (see VT detection Tables in the Appendix).
Findings
The following samples were identified in our research:
Suspected APT malware:
GOODTIMES backdoor: Suspected APT; MS Office with Embedded Hacking Team Flash Exploit UPS backdoor: Suspected APT3 VBA Macro + Metasploit Shellcode Loader: Suspected Middle Eastern-based APT Hancom Office HWP Exploit: Possible APT targeting of South Korea.
Malware without attribution:
OccultAgent: (New) Code hidden in Excel spreadsheet Spy-Net RAT: Targeting Brazilian victims VBA Macros + PowerShell scripts: Netcat Backdoor VBA Macros + Python scripts: Metasploit Shellcode Loader Office Downloader
Detailed Sample Analysis
Malware that remains undetected by more than 56 different AV vendors over a long period of time is worth investigating. This section briefly describes the malware and techniques identified in the undetected samples. A full list of indicators can be found in the IOC section at the end.
1. 4b3858c8b35e964a5eb0e291ff69ced6 - 201507.xlsx
Type: XLSX
Description: CVE-2015-5119 (Flash exploit exposed in the Hacking Team leak)
Attribution: Suspected APT threat group targeting Taiwan
Current detection: 0/53
First Submission: July 13, 2015
Last Submission: January 27, 2016
Time undetected in VT: At least 6 months
This Excel document is PKZIP compressed (following the Open XML Format) with the structure shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Structure of XLSX document
When the spreadsheet is opened, a dialog prompts the victim to allow unknown embedded content to be played, as shown in Figure 2. In this case, social engineering is needed to convince the victim to execute the malicious Flash object.
Figure 2: Excel document content and prompt
When the victim allows the embedded content to be played, the activeX1.xml file is read to locate the OLE Control to be used (which corresponds to Macromedia Flash Player, as shown in Figure 3) through the ClassID attribute to finally load the Flash Exploit embedded in the activeX1.bin object.
Figure 3: Content of activeX1.xml file
The embedded Flash exploit corresponds to CVE-2015-5119, one of several zero-day exploits identified following the Hacking Team leak in July 2015.[2]
A look at the Flash Action Script (AS) reveals code similar to that from the Hacking Team Exploit, such as the class name exp1_fla/MainTimeLine, the function name TryExpl() with the same use-after-free technique, and even the same error message “can’t cause UaF” as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Flash exploit code
The combination of the class name exp1_fla() and classes ShellMac64, ShellWin32 and ShellWin64 built into the exploit (see Figure 5) were not observed in the original Hacking Team version of the exploit, suggesting that the group responsible for this malicious Excel file modified the original exploit code.
Figure 5: Flash Action Script classes from malicious Excel file
The exploit drops a variant of the backdoor we call GOODTIMES (also known as Linopid). The backdoor communicates to Taiwan-based IP addresses 220.128.223.75 and 220.134.47.67 on ports 8080 and 443 via HTTP.
While this particular GOODTIMES sample has not been attributed to a specific threat group, GOODTIMES has previously been used by suspected APT actors. Based on previously identified targets and the use of Traditional Chinese language and Taiwan-centric themes in spear phishing messages and decoy documents, the group appears to focus on Taiwanese targets.
Potential AV bypassing reason
1. New delivery mechanism: The leaked CVE-2015-5119 Flash exploit has been used by a wide range of threat groups, including other APT groups such as APT3 and APT18[3]. Previous delivery methods entailed luring the victim to click on a malicious link (delivered via a spear phishing message) where the malicious Flash exploit was hosted on a web page. In this case, the suspected APT group responsible for the GOODTIMES backdoor changed the delivery mechanism by embedding the exploit as ActiveX object inside the Excel Open XML Format (PKZIP compressed).
2. In addition, while an ActiveX object would normally be embedded inside a Compound File Binary Format[4], in this case the uncompressed Flash content is embedded directly in the Excel file, right after the ClassID, as shown at Figure 6.
Figure 6: Embedded Flash object
· The above steps might be enough to avoid proper parsing of the malicious Flash object. This is the first time we have seen a CVE-2015-5119 sample embedded in an Excel document this way.
2. 22da029dd4e018b7c7135a03d0ba9b99
Type: Win32 binary
Description: A variant of the UPS backdoor
Attribution: suspected APT3
Current detection: 0/57
First Submission: August 6, 2015
Last Submission: February 2, 2016
Time undetected in VT: At least 6 months
UPS is a backdoor capable of uploading and downloading files, creating a reverse shell, reconfiguring itself to use different command and control (CnC) servers, and acting as a proxy server. It uses a custom binary protocol to communicate with its CnC server and it encrypts this custom protocol using a TLS TCP connection.
While this particular UPS sample has not been attributed, UPS is commonly used by the China-based APT3.
Potential AV bypassing reason
1. Junk code insertion: Examining this UPS sample, we see a significant amount of “junk code” potentially designed to mask the malicious nature of the binary, as well as to complicate analysis or reverse engineering efforts.
In Figure 7 we see the backdoor executing a jump to address 0x4043AB by forcing the “jump if greater than” comparison to be true by moving a large value (0x4A2E88E4) to the ebx register and then comparing it with a hardcoded lower value (0x6A1E839), after which a large number of junk instructions are skipped (red square). This strategy can be seen through several different execution paths.
Figure 7: Decompiled UPS sample showing junk code
3. aedd5d8446cc12ddfdc426cca3ed8bf0 - S-old.xlsb
Type: XLSB
Description: VBA Macro + Metasploit Shellcode Loader Backdoor
Attribution: Suspected Middle Eastern-based APT
Current detection: 1/52
First Submission: September 28, 2015
Last Submission: January 28, 2016
Time undetected in VT: At least 4 months
This particular sample, an Excel Binary Workbook file,[5] has only one generic detection on VT, so we believe it is still worth mentioning in this report.
When the spreadsheet is opened, the victim is shown a table of Israeli holidays and prompted to enable macros to view the full list, as shown in Figure 8:
Figure 8: Malicious Excel file showing calendar data
When the macro is executed it creates a Windows binary in memory as shown in Figure 9. Note the Chr(77) + Chr(90) builds the MS-DOS header magic number “MZ”.
Figure 9: Macro concatenating bytes to form a Windows binary
The binary is written to the file system with the file name NTUSER.dat{GUID}.exe as shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10: Creating the Windows binary
In this case, the GUID selected corresponds to Scriptlet.TypeLib ActiveX object, creating the file name NTUSER.dat{FB9D87AE-8FEA-4583-98AB-2FB396EAB5FC}.exe (md5 6aab47b18afacbfa7423f09bd1fa6d25) that is later executed via the ShellExecute() API with the SW_HIDE parameter to run silently.
Finally, the executable comes with an embedded Metasploit Shellcode loader that connects to 84.11.146.62 on port TCP 13661.
While this sample has not been attributed, similar techniques (use of XLSB files with embedded, obfuscated macros; creation of the file name NTUSER.dat{GUID}.exe; use of the binary to download additional malware) and the same CnC IP address have been referenced in reporting on a suspected Middle Eastern-based APT group known as “Rocket Kitten”, primarily targeting Middle Eastern and European organizations.
Potential AV bypassing reason
1. The byte concatenation inside the VBA Macro, used to build a Win32 binary at runtime, helps to bypass signature-based detection.
4. 4e51143b01e99afc3bd908794d81d3cb
Type: HWP
Description: Hancom Office HWP Exploit
Attribution: None
Current detection: 3/53
First Submission: July 31, 2015
Last Submission: February 2, 2016
Time undetected in VT: At least 6 months with 3 generic detections
This sample, a Hangul Word Processor (HWP) document, has only three generic detections on VT, so we found it to be worth analyzing for this report.
When opened, the HWP document displays Korean text and some photographs, as shown in Figure 11. Behind the scenes the document will exploit vulnerable versions of Hancom Office, dropping and executing a malicious file.
Figure 11: Content of malicious HWP document
Internally, the document structure includes three sections, where section 0 will trigger a Type Confusion vulnerability while parsing the content of the paragraph located at the data record structure HWPTAG_PARA_TEXT starting at offset 0x1C (see uncompressed section 0 at Figure 12). The logic bug will cause the string starting at offset 0x50 to be treated as a control structure. This control structure contains a fake object at offset 0x56 pointing to an address (0x0e0a0e0a) filled by a heap spray that eventually will redirect the execution flow to the shellcode.
Figure 12: Section0 malformed paragraph
A similar type confusion vulnerability has been previously documented by Ahnlab,[6] however, the vulnerability trigger is different.
Section 2 has an uncompressed size equal to 112MB, used to perform the heap spray and expecting to place the shellcode at a memory address close to 0x0e040e04. In Figure 13, the beginning of the shellcode can be seen (uncompressed).
Figure 13: Start of shellcode
The shellcode drops a file on disk and executes it via HncBLXX.HncShellExecute-> SHELL32.ShellExecute. This generates a connection to a compromised Korean automotive website and attempts to retrieve a file with a .JPG extension, which we suspect may be a second-stage binary. However, the file was no longer available on the website at the time of our analysis.
This particular sample has not been attributed to any threat group. However, the use of malicious HWP documents is notable, as that format is specific to a regional word processing program used heavily in South Korea and in particular by the South Korean government. While the use of malicious HWP files could simply indicate regional targeting by unspecified threat actors, similar exploits have been used in the past by suspected APT groups.
Potential AV bypassing reason
1. Heap Spray technique change: Similar exploits used to be created with multiple large-size sections in order to spray the heap. This exploit fulfills the same purpose but with only one large-size section.
2. Vulnerability triggered in a different format: A similar type confusion vulnerability described in this section was seen implemented in the Open XML Format (HWPX extension)[7], but this time ported to the Compound File Binary Format (HWP extension).
5. 497eddab53c07f4be1dc4a8c169261a5 - Barclays_Q22015_IMS_excel_tables.xlsm
Type: XLSM
Description: VBA Macro + VBScript generated from spreadsheet
Attribution: None
Current detection: 1/54
First Submission: Julio 08, 2015
Last Submission: January 27, 2016
Time undetected in VT: At least 7 months
This sample, an Excel macro-enabled file, has only one generic detection. The embedded macro creates an encoded Visual Basic (VBE) file that connects to a CnC site and allows remote control of the victim’s computer. As we had not previously observed this backdoor, we named it OccultAgent.
When the XLSM file is opened, the user is prompted to enable macros, as shown in Figure 14. The instructions are displayed in both English and Greek:
Figure 14: Prompt to enable macros
The macro drops an encoded VBScript file named ocagent.vbe (69df0c3bab5e681c2e5eb5951a64776e), obtained from the data in a spreadsheet cell (see Figure 15), to C:\octemp001\ and executes it. The script connects to hxxp://0x5E469BFD, which is equivalent to hxxp://94.70.155.253, via the victim’s web browser.
Figure 15: Obfuscated script embedded in spreadsheet cell
The first stage Macro source code can be seen in Figure 16.
Figure 16: Embedded VBA macro
The dropped ocagent.vbe VBScript is essentially a backdoor that connects to the CnC server at 94.70.155.253 to register the victim’s computer and to obtain commands to run on the victim’s machine.
Potential AV bypassing reason
The following steps may be sufficient to bypass AV detection:
1. Adding encoded VB script into a spreadsheet cell allows attackers to hide the malicious code.
2. Representing the IP address in hexadecimal format may be sufficient to bypass regular expressions trying to match standard 32-bit IP addresses (dotted decimal notation).
6. dc15336e7e4579c9c04c6e4e1f11d3dd - dedinho no cuzinho.rtf
Type: RTF
Description: RTF file with embedded executable
Attribution: None
Current detection: 0/54
First Submission: October 22, 2015
Last Submission: January 15, 2016
Time undetected in VT: At least 3 months
In this attack scenario, the victim receives an RTF document that appears to contain an embedded JPG image. The embedded file is actually an executable that attempts to hide its file extension by using a long sequence of underscore characters (e.g., Copy of foto.jpg<underscores>.exe (see Figure 17).
Figure 17: RTF document with embedded file
The embedded binary (d409dc7e1ca0c86cb71e090591f16146) is packed with RLPack[8]. It drops a second Borland Delphi binary packed with a customized version of UPX, which will then drop the Spy-Net RAT on the system.
Spy-Net[9] allows an attacker to interact with the victim via a remote shell to upload/download files, interact with the registry, run processes and services, capture images of the desktop, and record from the webcam and microphone. It also contains functionality to extract saved passwords and turn the victim into a proxy server.
A beacon to dennyhacker[.]no-ip.org on TCP port 81 prepended with an ASCII representation of the length of the payload (33) and followed by a pipe and a new line character confirms Spy-Net activity:
00000000 33 33 7c 0a 33|.
The RAT commands are translated to Portuguese to adapt the attack to Brazilian victims; some command examples are shown below (additional commands are listed in the Appendix):
Configuracoesdoserver = Server settings
Listarjanelas = List windows
Finalizarconexao = End connection
Listarchaves = List keys
Potential AV bypassing reason
1. Packers are commonly used to obfuscate code in order to bypass traditional signature-based detection. The use of multiple files packed with two different packers may be sufficient to bypass detection.
7. b1f43ca11dcf9e60f230b9d6d332c479 – Book2 - Copy.xls
Type: XLSX
Description: VBA + Python Shellcode loader
Attribution: None
Current detection: 0/54
First Submission: September 20, 2015
Last Submission: January 28, 2016
Time undetected in VT: At least 6 months
When opened, this Excel document appears to be blank but contains the VBA macro shown in Figure 18.
Figure 18: VBA Macro with OLE Object
The macro will instantiate an OLE Object and load it via the xlVerbPrimary verb. The embedded OLE object contains two files:
python27.dll (md5 7e6dd0d7cb29103df4a592e364680075) - a legitimate file
file.exe (md5 73f16dbf535042bc40e9c663fe01c720) - a binary created with py2exe[10]
Once file.exe is executed it launches a copy of the Windows calculator (calc.exe) as a decoy. However, behind the scenes it performs a Metasploit reverse TCP Connect to a CnC server.
The unpacked version of file.exe is obfuscated python that can be seen in Figure 19.
Figure 19: Python Shellcode
The following steps describe the process in greater detail:
File.exe spawns a copy of calc.exe.
Base64-decode and AES-decrypt embedded shellcode.
Via Python ctypes, the environment is set to run the shellcode loader in memory.
The shellcode loader, which has been encoded with the Metasploit Shikata encoder, [11] is configured to connect to the host 31.168.144.18 on port 443.
The malware sleeps for 60 seconds and starts again.
Potential AV bypassing reason
Multiple tricks to evade detection can be seen here:
The file extension of the document is .xls. However, the file is actually an Open XML Format file (.xlsx). This simple trick may bypass extension-based parsers. The Embedded OLE object contains a legitimate binary (python27.dll) and a py2exe executable may appear to be a legitimate file. The malicious python script is packed using py2exe. The Embedded OLE object is extracted from a hidden Sheet3, so the VBA Macro may not appear malicious. The shellcode is Base64 encoded and AES encrypted.
8. 95e89fd65a63e8442dcf06d4e768e8f1 - Doc1.docm
Type: DOCM
Description: VBA + PowerShell + Netcat as Backdoor
Attribution: None
Current detection: 0/53
First Submission: June 19, 2015
Last Submission: January 26, 2016
Time undetected in VT: At least 7 months
The word document comes with a simple message shown in Figure 20.
Figure 20: Message distractor
When the VBA macro is executed (see Figure 21), PowerShell code is loaded from the document’s comments (see Figure 22):
Figure 21: Loading malicious code
Figure 22: Code embedded in the document comments
The PowerShell script will act as a backdoor to allow remote access to the compromised machine. The script will download and execute netcat to listen on IP 192.168.52.129 and port 3724. Once a connection is received, a PowerShell shell will be sent (via –e powershell.exe option) to the client (PowerShell Reverse shell) as shown in Figure 23.
Figure 23: Malicious code content
It is interesting to note that attackers are moving from traditional command prompt shells (cmd.exe) to PowerShell shells (powershell.exe), which are actually more powerful. For example, PowerShell allows the use of WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), something not readily accessible via the standard command prompt[12].
The script references a non-routable (RFC1918) IP address, so we suspect that the script was either a proof of concept or meant to be used during the lateral movement phase in a specific internal environment that uses this IP space.
Potential AV bypassing reason
1. Use of the .docm extension may evade extension-based parsers.
2. Embedding the PowerShell script in the document’s comments and executing it from a VB macro adds another layer of complexity. While this is clearly a suspicious behavior, it is not properly identified by signature-based detection.
We identified several other examples of malware using VBA Macros with PowerShell to mainly run shellcode loaders that allow attackers to gain remote access to victims’ machines. Another example is shown below; it has two VT detections, but serves as an example of a very common variant seen in the wild.
9. 8de1ebacb72f3b23a8235cc66a6b6f68 – Polnoe_raspisanie_igr.xlsm
Type: XLSM
Description: VBA Macro + PowerShell – Shellcode Loader
Attribution: None
Current detection: 2/54
First Submission: October 14, 2015
Last Submission: January 28, 2016
Time undetected: 3.5 months with two generic detections
When the Excel document is opened, a message is displayed in Russian. The user is even provided with a link to a legitimate article describing how to enable macros (see Figure 24).
Figure 24: Excel file with legitimate link
When the VBA Macro runs, it executes a PowerShell script that Base64-decodes and decompresses a second-stage PowerShell Script that will be used as the shellcode loader in memory (see Figure 25).
Figure 25: PowerShell script being built on the fly via VB script
PowerShell uses the Invoke-Expression (or IEX) call to execute the decompressed string, similar to the eval() functionality from other programming languages.
The Shellcode in this case comes hardcoded in the second stage PowerShell script, loaded and executed from memory with the following syntax:
$z=$o::CreateThread(0,0,$x,0,0,0); Start-Sleep -Second 100000
Where $x contains the Shellcode loaded in memory that eventually will connect to the domain spl[.]noip[.]me. Based on DNSDB query, the domain spl[.]noip[.]me previously resolved to Russian IP 81.23.177.72.
Most of the VBA Macro + PowerShell scripts we identified were created with the macro_safe.py[13] and unicorn.py[14] scripts, often used for penetration testing.
Potential AV bypassing reason
1. The .xlsm extension may bypass extension-based parsers
2. Using the VBA Macro in the first stage to build the first PowerShell script via concatenation provides an easy way to bypass signature-based detection
3. The PowerShell scripts are Base64 encoded and compressed
10. cda305a6a6c6ace02597881b01a116e3 - CVE-2013-1331-doc.docx
Type: DOCX
Description: Office Downloader
Attribution: None
Current detection: 0/55
First Submission: January 12, 2015
Last Submission: January 16, 2016
Time undetected in VT: The whole year and counting!
In 2013, a stack-based buffer overflow triggered while parsing PNG images was exploited in the wild against MS Office 2003 and Office for Mac. CVE-2013-1331 was assigned to the vulnerability.
The malicious samples did not include the PNG directly embedded in the document; rather, the PNG file was loaded from the Internet by using the INCLUDEPICTURE option[15].
This new sample uses a different option from the new XML Format called “Relationships” in order to download a resource from the Internet, as seen at Figure 26.
Figure 26: XML content loading the PNG image remotely
The same domain was used back in 2013, but now with a different download technique. Although the vulnerability has been patched by Microsoft, the aforementioned technique can be used to download any resource from the Internet.
Potential AV bypassing reason
1. Use of the XML ‘Relationship’ instead of the original INCLUDEPICTURE method to download resources from the Internet is a novel technique that may not be recognized.
2. Based on the code shown above, it is clear that the intention is not to download a .gif image but a .php resource. Signature-based engines should easily detect the unusual resource name with multiple dots.
Conclusion
Threat actors of all types continue to improve their techniques to compromise organizations and remain undetected within an environment. Our study identified a number of techniques that successfully bypassed many AV engines:
1. Alternate techniques to embed objects within Office documents that may not be recognized by AV engines.
2. The use of a multi-stage infection approach in order to look unsuspicious at each stage:
a. A document downloading an image from the Internet that cannot be flagged as malicious at that stage
b. A VBA Macro script loading malicious content from spreadsheet cells
3. Multiple techniques to load malicious content from Office documents:
a. Embedded as ActiveX
b. Embedded as OLE Binary
c. Embedded in the document’s comments
d. Embedded in the spreadsheet cell
4. Standalone packed binaries containing malicious Python scripts.
5. Multi-layer Packing: RLPack + Custom UPX.
6. The combination of multiple scripting languages to allow the attackers to obfuscate malicious code, such as VBA Script building malicious PowerShell scripts.
In several cases we note that the attackers are reusing known exploits (such as CVE-2015-5119 or CVE-2013-1331), but changing the delivery method; or leveraging obfuscation, encoding, encryption, or multiple layers of packing to disguise their malicious scripts or backdoors.
For proper detection, it is essential to monitor an attack through its entire life cycle – not simply when a suspicious document or file first enters a network. This approach is necessary to detect and block multi-stage infection strategies. While initial events (such as the delivery of a macro-enabled spreadsheet) may appear innocuous, eventually a later stage of the attack will trigger detection.
It is much easier to stop an attack – including a multi-stage attack – when it first occurs, to include detecting known and unknown exploits (zero days), or even threats that require user interaction such as macros inside documents.
This detection approach is the core logic behind FireEye Multi-Vector Virtual Execution (MVX) technology.
APPENDIX
Indicators of Compromise - IOCs
Network Based:
4b3858c8b35e964a5eb0e291ff69ced6
POST /0000/a242550.asp
IP: 220.128.223.75
TCP Port: 8080
4e51143b01e99afc3bd908794d81d3cb
GET /bbs/file/machinery/machine_body.jpg
IP: cncauto.co.kr
PORT: 80
8de1ebacb72f3b23a8235cc66a6b6f68
IP: spl.noip.me
TCP Port: 80
b1f43ca11dcf9e60f230b9d6d332c479
IP: 31.168.144.18
TCP Port: 443
aedd5d8446cc12ddfdc426cca3ed8bf0
IP: 84.11.146.62
TCP Port: 13661
497eddab53c07f4be1dc4a8c169261a5
GET /ocagnt/gethooks.asp
IP: 94.70.155.253
TCP Port: 80
GET /ocagnt/enckeys
IP: 94.70.155.253
TCP Port: 80
GET /ocagnt/getstatus.asp
IP: 94.70.155.253
TCP Port: 80
dc15336e7e4579c9c04c6e4e1f11d3dd
IP: dennyhacker.no-ip.org
TCP Port: 81
Host-Based:
dc15336e7e4579c9c04c6e4e1f11d3dd
C:\Windows\System32\install\server.exe (copy of dropped binary) d409dc7e1ca0c86cb71e090591f16146
%AppData%\Local\Temp\XX--XX--XX.txt
Mutex created:
_x_X_PASSWORDLIST_X_x_
x_X_BLOCKMOUSE_X_x_
***MUTEX***
***MUTEX***_PERSIST
497eddab53c07f4be1dc4a8c169261a5
c:\octemp001\
C:\octemp001\enccmdresults.txt
C:\octemp001\ikeycharvalue.txt
C:\octemp001\enchostnameres.txt
C:\octemp001\certutil.txt
C:\octemp001\cert.txt
C:\octemp001\commands.txt
C:\octemp001\prevcommands.txt
C:\octemp001\enccmdresults.txt
C:\octemp001\enccmdresults2.txt
c:\octemp001\key.txt
Figure 27 shows the MD5s with zero detection detailed on this report.
Figure 27: 2015 samples from VT with zero detections in 2016
Some exceptions to this study were added for samples with low detection rates, but with only generic detection (that is, not detected as part of any specific code family), that used an interesting technique or that were suspected of being used by an APT group (see Figure 28).
Figure 28: Samples with low and / or generic detection
dc15336e7e4579c9c04c6e4e1f11d3dd – Brazilian RAT
Some interesting commands from the RAT in Portuguese language:
0002A3A8: pingtest 0002A3BC: tentarnovamente 0002A3E0: mouseposition 0002A3F8: keyboardkey 0002A40C: webcaminactive 0002A424: webcamgetbuffer 0002A43C: webcam 0002A44C: desktop 0002A45C: stopsearch 0002A470: listarvalores 0002A488: maininfo 0002A49C: configuracoesdoserver 0002A4BC: disconnect 0002A4D0: uninstall 0002A4E4: renameservidor 0002A4FC: enviarexecnormal 0002A518: enviarexechidden 0002A534: executarcomandos 0002A550: openweb 0002A560: downexec 0002A574: resumetransfer 0002A58C: listardrives 0002A5A4: listararquivos 0002A5BC: execnormal 0002A5D0: execinv 0002A5E0: deletardir
[1] Hangul Word Processor is a word processing application developed by South Korean software firm Hancom.
[2] http://www.securityweek.com/zero-day-exploits-leaked-hacking-team-breach
[3] https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2015/07/demonstrating_hustle.html
[4] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd942138.aspx
[5] An XLSB file is stored in binary format instead of the normal XML format, allowing the file to be read from and written to much faster. See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd797428.aspx
[6] http://asec.ahnlab.com/1035
[7] https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/global/en/blog/threat-research/FireEye_HWP_ZeroDay.pdf
[8] http://www.pcworld.com/product/997528/rlpack-basic-edition.html
[9] https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/07/the-little-signature-that-could-the-curious-case-of-cz-solution.html
[10] Py2Exe is a distutils extension to create standalone windows programs from python scripts. See https://sourceforge.net/projects/py2exe/.
[11] https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/blob/master/modules/encoders/x86/shikata_ga_nai.rb
[12] http://www.howtogeek.com/163127/how-powershell-differs-from-the-windows-command-prompt/
[13] https://github.com/khr0x40sh/MacroShop/blob/master/macro_safe.py
[14] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trustedsec/unicorn/master/unicorn.py
[15] http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2013/06/11/ms13-051-get-out-of-my-office.aspx
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The heat is rising in Hong Kong - and not just in politics.
Temperatures in typical urban areas of the city are expected to rise by two to three degrees Celsius in the next three decades, according to findings unveiled by the Polytechnic University yesterday. But greenhouse gases are only a minor cause, expected to contribute just over 0.7 of a degree to the increase.
The main culprit is a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, common in high-density areas where buildings and roads store the sun's heat in the day and release it at night.
"The core areas [getting hotter] are the commercial districts, such as the junction between Nathan Road and Argyle Street in Mong Kok, and also the Chinatown area of Jordan around Temple Street," Professor Janet Nichol, of the university's land surveying and geo-informatics department, said yesterday.
"These are not high-rise areas; they are high-density areas where the buildings are older and there's not so much space between them."
An increase of three degrees in urban areas over three decades might not seem cause for concern to many. But Nichol said that with every degree increase above 26 the mortality rate for heat stress doubled, with those who cannot afford air conditioning most at risk.
Rain and thunderstorms are set to become more common as temperatures increase, the researchers say.
They incorporated global climate models, weather station data and planning data into their temperature projection models for the city. They also made use of thermal satellite imaging from the US space agency Nasa's Terra and Landsat satellites. Temperature measurements using helicopter-carried instruments were made in August 2013 to provide detailed thermal information of streets and buildings that assisted in the creation of 3D models.
The team's findings will be on display in an exhibition titled "Monitoring Hong Kong's Urban Heat Island" at the Science Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui starting from today until the end of the year.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Hong Kong's heating up, and it's not global warming
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Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. President George W Bush has called on Congress to end a 27-year ban on drilling for oil in US coastal waters, to reduce dependence on imports. Mr Bush said existing restrictions on offshore drilling were "outdated and counter-productive". His move comes as US consumers are calling for action to tackle high oil prices that have pushed prices at the pump to more than $4 (£2) a gallon. US energy needs are set to be a key issue in November's presidential poll. This is the culmination of the failed Bush-Cheney energy policy of the last eight years
Kassie Siegel
Climate programme director at the Center for Biological Diversity Republican John McCain favours offshore oil drilling, whereas his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, opposes it. In a news conference at the White House, Mr Bush told Congress there was "no excuse for delay" in lifting the ban. "Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response," he said. Environmentalists have reacted with alarm to Mr Bush's call, arguing that off-shore drilling would take at least a decade to have any effect on oil supply and would exacerbate climate change. US dependence Since 1981, a congressional moratorium has prohibited oil and gas drilling along the east and west coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, an area accounting for some 80% of the US's Outer Continental Shelf. OFFSHORE OIL Estimated reserves:
18bn barrels of recoverable oil
77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas US annual energy usage:
7.6bn barrels of oil
21 trillion cubic feet of gas Source: US interior department Mr Bush's father, George Bush, imposed a moratorium on coastal oil exploration in 1990. Since then offshore drilling and exploration have only been allowed in the Western and Central Gulf of Mexico regions plus parts of Alaska. The federal bans were enacted in part to protect tourism and lessen the chance of oil spills washing on to beaches. The Democrats, and some Republicans who represent coastal states, oppose ending the moratorium. "We are in this situation because of our dependence on traditional petroleum-based oil," said California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. He advocated "new technologies and new fuel choices for consumers" instead. Mr Bush, who has repeatedly pushed for an end to the ban, has accused Democrats of using their control of Congress to undermine attempts to boost domestic oil production. The president also renewed his call on Wednesday for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to be opened up to drilling. 'Failed policy' "It's cynical to say that we can drill our way out of this mess," Athan Manuel, director of lands protection for the Sierra Club, told Reuters news agency. Activists fear for Arctic wildlife "The solution to $4 gas [petrol] is not off our coast." Kassie Siegel, climate programme director at the California-based Center for Biological Diversity, condemned the Bush offshore initiative. "This is the culmination of the failed Bush-Cheney energy policy of the last eight years," she told the BBC News website. "It would do absolutely nothing for petrol prices because it would take at least a decade to produce any oil and even if the oil did flow, there would be the greenhouse gases from the additional fossil fuel development." She points out that the US government recently calculated there was a 33-51% chance of a major spill in the lifetime of an offshore oil and gas lease in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska. Such a spill, defined as a release of 1,000 barrels or more from a platform or pipeline, could affect bowhead whales, polar bears and other wildlife. However, the government's environmental impact statement concluded that "an area affected by such a spill relative to the size of the Chukchi Sea decreases the likelihood that the resources would be widely contacted by the spill". 'Political posturing' Senator McCain, the Republicans' presumptive presidential candidate, is opposed to opening up Alaska and had previously backed the moratorium on drilling in coastal waters. John McCain's drilling U-turn suggests he grasps... that this election will be won or lost on the price of a gallon of gas
Justin Webb
BBC North America editor
Read Justin's thoughts in full Send us your comments But speaking in Houston on Tuesday, Mr McCain called for the ban to be lifted to help counter US dependence on foreign oil. "We must take control over our own energy future and become once again the master of our fate," he said. Mr McCain said the US had enormous energy reserves and was acquiring methods of using them in clean and responsible ways. Senator Obama dismissed Mr McCain's call as "political posturing". "His decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades," Mr Obama said. He called for conservation and the search for alternative green energy supplies. Analysts say drilling for offshore oil and developing alternatives will both prove slow to reduce US dependence on imported oil.
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Story highlights Protesters target a vegetable market; some 400 people are reported detained
A 25-year-old man was stabbed to death last week
Some residents in the area where the stabbing happened blame migrant workers
Russian police detained almost 400 people on Sunday after protests over a recent stabbing death turned violent, state news reported.
Both the stabbing death and the protests took place in southern Moscow.
The latter targeted a vegetable market, where many migrants work, RIA Novosti reported.
The state-run Russian news agency said that protesters broke glass and set off smoke bombs.
It did not identify the 25-year-old man who was stabbed to death last week.
State-run Itar-Tass reported that many local residents blame migrant workers for the murder and rallied Sunday to demand that those responsible are punished.
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Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Why is sovereignty of the islands disputed and how serious could the row get? Rupert Wingfield-Hayes explains
China has deployed surface-to-air missiles on a disputed island in the South China Sea, Taiwan says.
Satellite images taken on 14 February appear to show two batteries of eight missile launchers and a radar system on Woody or Yongxing Island in the Paracels.
The presence of missiles would significantly increase tensions in the acrimonious South China Sea dispute.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said reports were a Western media invention.
But Mr Wang defended "the limited and necessary self-defence facilities" on islands inhabited by Chinese personnel as "consistent with the right for self-preservation and self-protection.... under the international law".
Asked about the reports, US Secretary of State John Kerry attacked China's increased "militarisation" of the contested region, saying it was a "serious concern".
Woody/Yongxing Island
Image copyright Google
Image copyright VCG
Image copyright VCG
Woody Island is the largest in the Paracel archipelago, inhabited by at least 1,000 people, mostly soldiers, construction workers and fishermen
In 1956, China established a permanent presence on the island, which it calls Yongxing
In 2012, China established Sansha city local government office on the island to administer the whole South China Sea area
There is also a military garrison, a hospital, a library, an airport, a school and mobile phone coverage
The island is claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam
Taiwan's defence ministry said it had "learned of an air defence missile system deployed" by the Chinese on Woody Island.
It would not say how many missiles had been deployed or when, but told the BBC they would be capable of targeting civilian and military aircraft.
The commander of the US Pacific Fleet confirmed the deployment to Reuters news agency.
Adm Harry Harris said such a move would be "a militarisation of the South China Sea in ways" China's President Xi Jinping had pledged not to make.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said there were "serious concerns" over China's "unilateral move to change the status quo" in the region, and "we cannot accept this fact".
China has been carrying out extensive land reclamation work in the region, which it says is legal and for civilian purposes.
But the work has angered other countries which also claim the territory, and there is growing concern about the implications of the area becoming militarised.
The latest images of Woody Island were captured by ImageSat International.
They show a close-up of a section of beach, the shape of which resembles the northern coastline as it appears on other images, and point out two missiles batteries. Each battery is made up of four launchers and two control vehicles.
Two of the the launchers appear to have been erected, says the report.
An image taken of the site on 3 February shows the beach empty.
Fox News quoted a US defence official as saying the missiles appeared to be the HQ-9 air defence system, with a range of about 200km (125 miles).
Image copyright IHS Jane's Image caption Images have also shown extensive reclamation work on islands, including Fiery Cross Reef
Analysis: Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC News, Tokyo
China's deployment of long-range surface-to-air missiles to the South China Sea is a clear escalation, but it is not a surprise.
Nor is it China's first deployment of advanced military technology to Woody Island (Yongxing Dao). Last November, photos appeared on the internet of Chinese J-11 fighter jets landing on the newly-enlarged runway there.
Sending the missile batteries now could be a warning to Vietnam, or a response to the US Navy, which sailed a missile destroyer past Woody Island at the end of January.
So far Beijing has been careful not to put any weapons on its newly-constructed islands further south, in the Spratly group. That would be much more provocative.
Last month Beijing even sent two civilian airliners to land on its newly-completed runway at Fiery Cross Reef.
It was a good publicity stunt. But no one should be in any doubt that the true purpose of those new islands and their new runways is also military.
The news comes as South East Asian regional leaders end a two-day meeting in California where South China Sea had been a topic of debate.
US President Barack Obama said the members had discussed the need for "tangible steps" to reduce tensions, including "a halt to further reclamation, new construction and militarization of disputed areas".
What is the South China Sea dispute?
Rival countries have wrangled over territory in the South China Sea for centuries, but tension has steadily increased in recent years.
Its islets and waters are claimed in part or in whole by Taiwan, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
China has backed its expansive claims with island-building and naval patrols, while the US says it opposes restrictions on freedom of navigation and unlawful sovereignty claims - by all sides, but seen by many as aimed at China.
The frictions have sparked concern that the area is becoming a flashpoint with global consequences.
Although largely uninhabited, the Paracels and the Spratlys may have reserves of natural resources around them. There has been little detailed exploration of the area, so estimates are largely extrapolated from the mineral wealth of neighbouring areas.
The sea is also a major shipping route and home to fishing grounds that supply the livelihoods of people across the region.
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BIOLOGICAL warfare troops have been rushed to the Russian Arctic amid growing concerns over a serious anthrax outbreak.
A total of 40 people - more than half of them children - are now hospitalised amid fears they may have contracted the deadly infection.
Will Stewart 9 Biological troops have landed in Salekhard
This follows the death of 1,200 reindeer suspected of contracting the disease after a contaminated corpse - buried at least 70 years ago - thawed because of a heatwave in the Yamal peninsula in northern Siberia.
Russian experts have blamed global warming for the prolonged high temperatures - of up to 35C - at the Tarko-Sale Faktoria camp, north of the Arctic Circle.
There were dramatic scenes as the Russian army's Chemical, Radioactive and Biological Protection Corps, equipped with masks and bio-warfare protective clothing, flew to to regional capital Salekhard on a military Il-76 aircraft to deal with the emergency.
Will Stewart 9 Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, which has been developed as an agent of warfare
Will Stewart 9 Russian army's Chemical, Radioactive and Biological Protection Corps are trying to deal with the situation
They were deployed by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to carry laboratory tests on the ground, detect and eliminate the focal point of the infection, and to dispose safely of dead animals.
Eight new people were admitted for observation to hospital in Salekhard on Friday, bringing the total to 40, said officials, as reported by The Siberian Times.
"As of now, there is no single diagnosis of the dangerous infection," said a spokesman for the governor of Yamalo-Nenets, Dmitry Kobylkin.
Those in hospital are all from a dozen nomadic families who herd reindeer in the far north of Russia.
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Will Stewart 9 1,200 reindeer have died in recent days
Medics were taking precautions to hospitalise any of the 'at risk' group who showed any symptoms of ill health.
More than half those in hospital are children, some of them babies.
Other herders have been evacuated at least 40 miles from the scene of the outbreak, first identified a week ago.
Anna Popova, director of state health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, warned: "We need to be ready for any manifestations and return of infection."
The concern follows an outbreak of the Bubonic Plage in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia earlier this month.
Will Stewart 9 40 now hospitalised after anthrax outbreak in Yamal, more than half are children
Professor Florian Stammler, of the University of Lapland, Finland, knows the site where the outbreak occurred and described it as a reindeer junction used by many herders.
"Due to the high mobility of herders using this site, utmost care has to be taken for preventing of anthrax being spread all over the Yamal Peninsula," he said.
Venison from this region is exported to Britain and other EU countries but local officials insisted the precautions they are taking will prevent any threat to this lucrative industry.
A spokesman for the governor insisted: 'This case won't affect exports or the quality of meat.'
Will Stewart 9 The army are trying to find the source of the outbreak
Will Stewart 9 he Sakha Republic, east of this region, has some 200 burial grounds of animals that succumbed to anthrax in the past
Russian experts say the hot summer led to the frozen infection being "unlocked by the thawing of a diseased carcass from a long time ago", reported the news website.
If correct, there is real concern of centuries-old infections reappearing in permafrost regions like Siberia.
The Sakha Republic, east of this region, has some 200 burial grounds of animals that succumbed to anthrax in the past.
Will Stewart 9
Tarko Sale Faktoriya, the focus of the outbreak at Yamal Peninsula
The army unit deployed on Friday is equipped with military helicopters as well as off road vehicles.
They face what the region governor calls 'an extremely challenging task of liquidating the consequences - and disinfecting the focus - of the infection.
"I think this perhaps will be the first in the world operation cleaning up a territory of mass deer mortality over such distances in the tundra," he said.
Will Stewart 9 Venison from this region is exported to Britain and other EU countries
Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, which has been developed as an agent of warfare.
Among its forms are inhalation, which leads to fever, chest pain, and shortness of breath.
The intestinal form presents with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or abdominal pain.
Until the 20th century, it killed hundreds of thousands of people and livestock each year.
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National broadband provider Internode this morning claimed Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull secretly “loves the NBN as a concept”, despite having been given an order by Opposition Leader to “demolish” the project.
Turnbull has had a history of involvement in the technology sector — ranging from his key role in the formation and sale of early Australian internet service provider OzEmail to his family’s investment in internet-focused businesses such as Webcentral and Chaos.com. In addition, he remains one of the only Federal Government politicians to make daily use of such personal technologies as the Apple iPad and Twitter — as well as recently ditching his BlackBerry for an iPhone.
The former Opposition Leader has also declared he enjoys the “often quite feisty” debates he regularly participates in on Twitter with respect to topics such as the National Broadband Network, noting that the medium was a good one for examining the quality of people’s arguments.
Asked on radio 5AA in Adelaide about Turnbull this morning, Internode carrier relations manager John Lindsay said Turnbull secretly loved the NBN project. “Something that I find when I talk to Malcolm Turnbull about this is that he’s got this kind of light in his eyes, he loves the NBN as a concept — because deep down he’s a technocrat,” Lindsay told listeners.
“But his job is to be the opposition spokesman for telecommunications.”
Turnbull’s approach to criticising the National Broadband Network has focused on the economics of the project — in keeping with the Coalition’s general focus on fiscal responsibility — rather than the technology involved in the rollout per se.
In a speech to parliament last week associated with the second reading of key NBN legislation re-introduced by the Federal Government, Turnbull reiterated that the Coalition was “fully committed, as I think all Australians are”, to the existence of “universal availability of fast broadband at an affordable price”.
“The most important issue of difference between the coalition and the government on this is the fact that the government is proceeding to achieve this goal, so it says, without any effort or attempt to determine whether the approach they are taking is the most cost-effective one,” he said.
Turnbull also attacked the government for its agreement with the Greens — which are opposed to privatising the NBN — on the terms under which the network and its associated company could be sold off.
“One of the prices that the Prime Minister has paid for the support of the Greens is the agreement to make the NBN virtually impossible to sell,” said Turnbull. “The way the legislation works is that it cannot be sold until such time as it is complete. It cannot be sold when it is part built; it must be absolutely complete. Looking around the room, there are a few of the younger members that may still be here when it is built, but I suspect those of us here around the table probably will not be here by that time.”
Despite Lindsay’s belief, Turnbull has also recently confirmed the Coalition would halt the NBN project if it took government in the next election — noting construction would be stopped while a cost/benefit analysis was conducted and a variety of other measures taken.
The interview with Lindsay is available online as an MP3.
Image credit: Office of Malcolm Turnbull
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For all teenagers, the internet offers a periscope to the outside world, but it’s particularly important for students who are unable to find themselves represented and understood in their immediate surroundings. For Laurel, a 17-year-old living in Minneapolis, this self-discovery happened on Tumblr. Laurel had felt alienated and had been hospitalized for anxiety and depression. Laurel, who prefers the pronouns they and them, told me that Tumblr helped them understand genderfluidity and learn how to talk about it. “Our health classes don’t even talk about homosexuality, let alone gender, so it’s a very hard thing to talk to people who have no concept that you don’t have to be the gender you are assigned,” Laurel said. “I would look for terms I felt like I connected with,” like “pansexual” and “nonbinary,” which Laurel uses today. Laurel also posts on Instagram to update friends and peers about their preferred terms, and what is respectful and appropriate and what is not. In this way, social media doubles as a means for students to find solidarity outside their schools and to communicate what they’re experiencing back to their peers.
Gabrielle Gladu attempted suicide before she started high school, when she was in the eighth grade. Before she came out as transgender, she despised her male body and found it disorienting, given how feminine she felt inside. Watching YouTube videos about gender helped her realize that she wasn’t gay but trans. During her freshman year, she came out as trans. She asked everyone to call her Belle, a shortened version of Gabrielle, and to use female pronouns. She also began documenting her transition online in a series of popular YouTube videos. Support flowed in, giving her the courage to continue, and she began her medical transition the next year. Even though she was an anomaly at her school, the internet reassured her that she was not alone. And eventually her online popularity changed what her classmates thought of her. It made her, well, cool. Best of all, her videos offered her the perfect comeback to those with probing or invasive questions: “If you want to know everything,” she recalls saying, “you can go on YouTube and follow my story.”
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Trump’s strongest supporters are sometimes the most anxious critics of his tweeting—not because his is a failing presidency bordering on caricature, but because it is adroitly unwinding the Obama transformation. But why, then, the need to go after failed media has-beens without an audience?
Of course, tweeting commentary and news over the heads of a corrupt Washington media pack is innovative and wise—and to some degree got Trump where he is today by reinventing communications with the public. But burning time ridiculing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s failed “Celebrity Apprentice” gambit or, more recently, the psychodramas and daily inanities of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski seems a misspent investment of energy.
Yet that said, there are lots of uncertainties about consequences of the latest round of Trump’s seemingly counterproductive tweets, right on the eve of the most important legislative challenges, health care and tax reform, of his young presidency—and at a time when he is regaining momentum, successfully engaging world leaders and issuing executive orders that are overturning the prior eight years of “fundamental transformation” of the country.
Is ad hominem tweeting, then, endangering or empowering Trump’s agenda? Or both? Or neither?
Start with the given that there are now regrettably few accepted norms of presidential behavior. Trump’s occasional uncouthness is a symptom, not a catalyst, of the times. Bill Clinton redefined presidential behavior when he had sexual relations with a 22-year-old, unpaid intern (so much for power imbalances as sexual harassment) in the presidential bathroom off the Oval Office, lied about his recklessness to his family and the country, smeared Monica Lewinsky, and then wheeled out to the Rose Garden feminist cabinet officers like Madeline Albright and Donna Shalala to deny and defend his unsavory predatory behavior. After that sordid episode, the apologetic Left lost all credibility as an arbiter of presidential norms.
Indeed, Clinton had brought us into new debased territory. In contrast, George W. Bush for eight years restored honor, integrity, and decorum to the White House. But he was rewarded for exemplary behavior by being branded a Nazi warmonger, as docudrama films and novels appeared imagining his assassination, and even the likes of John Glenn stooped to the Nazi slurs on his character. (“It’s the old Hitler business.”)
Out of office, Bush professionally kept quiet and busy as an accomplished artist, as Obama moved the country leftward. For that, Bush was ridiculed by the Left as reduced to a bewildered, paint-by-numbers dabbler.
The emeritus Obama, by contrast, frolics on billionaires’ yachts docked off tropical islands with the mega-rich whom he attacks in Wall Street chats for $10,000 a minute—and takes a day off from his wind surfing to weigh in on Trump’s unfitness. For all that, he remains a progressive icon.
From that brief Bush hiatus, it was a short slide back down to GloZell and Obama’s adoration in the White House of Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” (read some of the “ho’s”, “n—as”, and racist lyrics of that album and cf. the celebration over the corpse of a judge on the cover). In truth, Trump misdemeanors of attacking journalists are acerbated by his transparent over the top rhetoric; Clinton’s felonies were ameliorated by his bite-the-lip, contrived remorse.
Trump, in comic-book fashion, tweets his body slam of CNN; the socialist Bernie Sanders’ wife stands accused of evicting the disabled in what looks to be a real-estate scam by a failed college president. Trump goes after individual washed-up celebrities; Obama indicted an entire people for being lazy, clinging to their guns and religion, intolerant, nativist, and unnecessarily chauvinistic. Take your poison: personal score-settling or mellifluent contempt.
Factored into the Trump’s tweeting controversies are other variables mostly left unsaid by the media:
Trump has melted down partisan journalists and left the American progressive media in shambles. It was Obama, not Trump, who established the practice of going after journalists by name, both materially and rhetorically, from surveilling Fox’s James Rosen to using puerile hype to attack Sean Hannity (“You know, I’ll put—I’ll put Mr. Burgess up against Sean Hannity. He’ll tear him up.” [emphasis added]). Obama was angry that a few reporters did not join the cult of Obama worship; Trump is peeved almost no one in the press is disinterested. Trump saw Obama’s precedent, and proverbially trumped it.
CNN is now no longer a news organization, but has been reduced to caricature by Trump hatred. It has been exposed not just as unprofessional and dishonest (firing reporters for fake news reports; apologizing and retracting constant errors of content; producers caught on tape denigrating voters and bragging of their hyper-partisanship and anti-Trumpism), but also has run the gamut from scatology (Anderson Cooper and Reza Aslan) to violence porn (Kathy Griffin, or the jokes about Trump’s plane crashing) to simple fraud (last year’s Donna Brazile revelations).
Sputtering journalists (Jim Rutenberg, Carl Bernstein, Jorge Ramos, Christiane Amanpour.) are exasperated to the point of openly confessing that their craft should give up empirical reporting to deal with Trump, without shame any longer over the partisan propaganda their organizations and colleagues peddle. Those declarations are not a change of course, but a confession of what the media have been doing from the election of Barack Obama. The logical media progression from eerie Obama worship was to creepy Trump hatred.
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg recently warned that Trump’s attacks on journalists lowered the bar and put them in danger. He added ominously to his Aspen audience that any violence would be on Trump’s conscience: “And someone, I mean God forbid, someone is going to do something violent against journalists in a large way, and then I know where the fault lies. And we’re heading in this direction, and it’s quite frightening.”
But what an odd thing to say about “fault” after the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalisi (R-La.), when reality, not hypotheticals, offered a clear example of how extremist rhetoric can incite partisan nuts to shoot and maim. Goldberg apparently fears for what he thinks might follow unseemly rhetoric rather than what did follow from Leftist extremist rhetoric. Goldberg is confused not just because he is a journalist, and journalists are by nature self-absorbed and melodramatic, but because he is a progressive reporter, who apparently sees the sort of vulgarity voiced by an Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews, Stephen Colbert, Martha Stewart, or Bill Maher or the assassination porn of Madonna, Snoop Dogg, Kathy Griffin, or the Shakespeare troupe, in some sense as understandable in a way that Trump’s response to the media is certainly not.
It is also hard to calibrate the effect of Trump’s occasional coarse tweets. He will go for two weeks with clever and timely messaging, interspersed with real accomplishments, only to shock with an attack out of the blue on some obscure critic hardly worth the mention. Yet just when we pundits lament such suicidal behavior, Trump seems to recover without adverse effect. It has been two years now since Trump’s unkind and unnecessary comments about John McCain had supposedly doomed him—dire predictions followed by his political ascendency.
Another strange fact is that amid the extraneous tweeting, Trump displays an undeniable natural cunning. Take his most infamous and most criticized tweet:
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Try substituting “Obama Administration” for “Obama” and “surveilled” for “wires tapped “and the tweet may prove an accurate synopsis of what Susan Rice, Samantha Power, John Brennan and others in the Obama White House were doing by sweeping up the communications of political opponents like Trump, supposedly inadvertently through national security surveillance, then unmasking the names, and illegally leaking them to the press. And so far nothing incriminating about Trump has been found, and yes, it resembles a McCarthyite effort to silence criticism by leaking lies.
Or examine another of Trump’s supposedly unhinged Twitter outbursts, his equally notorious May 12 “veiled threat” about tapping Comey:
James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
Note that Trump did not say that the White House had taped Comey, only that he hoped there were not tapes of the Comey-Trump conversation (in theory from the NSA? FBI? CIA?) that might in theory refute Comey’s versions. Given that the intelligence agencies now seemed to have been surveilling almost everything Trump was saying, and given that Trump must have heard Comey was improperly and perhaps illegally leaking presidential conversations to the media (among them perhaps CNN that falsely would report that Comey would refute Trump’s assertion that he was not under investigation), and given Comey’s testimony of leaking a government document himself, Trump’s noxious tweet in retrospect seems prescient and strategic.
We do not know whether there is a saturation point at which Trump’s base will tire of the occasional ad hominem crude tweets, but so far we clearly have not reached it. Why?
So far, for three reasons.
First, half the country despises the mainstream media and sees it as arrogant, corrupt, hypocritical, and in need of comeuppance. Trump is not running against a centrist populist Democrat like John Kennedy or Harry Truman, but a crude Resistance of foul mouths like Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), unhinged celebrities like Maher and Colbert, street theater, thuggery on campuses, and not very bright media talking heads imploding as they try to top their rivals’ hatred for Trump and what he represents.
Trump in this context is seen by his supporters as a fighter in a way no prior conservative president or presidential candidate since Reagan has been. The conservative base remembers the dark years of 2005-6 when the media and progressive activists smeared Bush daily—without riposte. They want no repeat of the McCain sanctimoniousness about not discussing the hate-filled career of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or the Romney Marquess of Queensberry rules campaign that was smeared and slurred with impunity by Obama. In the midst of the Morning Joe/Mika Brzezinski controversy, “At least he fights” was a commonly heard refrain from Trump supporters.
Two, conservatives favor Trump’s ongoing agenda on immigration, health care, tax, regulatory and national security reform. Note that Trump has not just appointed a good cabinet and agency team—at HHS, EPA, Defense, Justice, the United Nations, Homeland Security, State, National Security Council, CIA, Education, or Energy—but the most effective and talented conservative group since the Reagan years. And Trump is not just putting his finger in the crumbling conservative dike, but rebuilding it entirely. The appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the vast reduction in illegal immigration, the steady restoration of deterrence abroad, the move against sanctuary cities, the energy renaissance, and the effort to get jobs back are real accomplishments; In comparison, Joe and Mika are less than fluff.
Finally, no one has calibrated quite the nation’s deep antipathy toward the coastal media-university-political-cultural nexus, most specifically its utter hypocrisy. Half the country sees not so much Democrats or progressives, but rather a bankrupt class whose venom for others is used to excuse their own exemptions from the ramifications of their own ideology.
People are tired of the social justice warrior Obama frolicking in Tahiti, the feminist Hillary Clinton excusing four decades of the sexual predations of her husband upon the weak, the supposedly in the know campus bullies picking on the vulnerable while shelling out a quarter-million dollars for a mediocre education; the progressive media decrying inequality and fairness amid face-surgeries, hair plugs, nannies, and prep schools; the Silicon Valley masters of the universe sermonizing on the evils of walls, inequality, and social justice from their gated hideaways, servants, and schemes to monopolize, offshore, outsource, and avoid taxes.
There is a limit to Trump’s crude personal tweets, but apparently no observer has yet calibrated where it is—given the country’s disdain for the media, the progressive hypocritical agenda, and the scatological and obscene rhetoric of Trump’s opposition.
I would urge the president to stop tweeting about nothings and to keep his powder dry for bigger game to come than Joe and Mika. But considering that I have been urging just such pruning of tweets as a matter of strategy for Trump for a long time and that I have been mostly wrong about the downsides of his twitter invective for just as long, perhaps the president knows something I don’t.
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In October, Xbox 360 was the No. 1 selling console in the U.S. market and maintained its lead as the No. 1 console in 2013, selling 166,000 units.
On Thursday, market research firm NPD released new statistics for the video game console market. NPD highlights from October include:
Total retail spend on the Xbox 360 platform in October (hardware, software and accessories) reached $283 million, the most for any console in the U.S.
During the month of October, Xbox 360 held five of the top 10 console game titles, including: “Batman: Arkham Origins,” “Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag,” “Battlefield 4,” “NBA 2K14,” and “Grand Theft Auto V.”
Xbox will welcome a new era of games and entertainment with the launch of Xbox One on Nov. 22, with festivities kicking off the evening of Nov. 21. Fans are invited to celebrate the launch of Xbox One with events in New York, Los Angeles and at thousands of retailers nationwide, and will be able to participate in a variety of launch activities including a performance by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis for the first 1,000 people to purchase an Xbox One console or Xbox One game in New York. There will also be several exclusive giveaways occurring at various locations for dedicated fans that line up early and are among the first to purchase the new Xbox One console. Learn more about the launch events taking place next week on Xbox Wire.
With more consoles available at launch than we’ve ever had, we anticipate the launch of the Xbox One to be the biggest in Xbox history, and we’re excited to share everything Xbox One has to offer with our fans.
Posted by Jennifer Chen
Microsoft News Center Staff
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State-wide censorship of sexually explicit material on the internet. Laws prohibiting driving vehicles on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Women allowed to bathe in the Mediterranean only a few hours a week. The face of Baruch Goldstein on the 20 shekel bill. A national holiday celebrating our spiritual founding father, Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Sound ludicrous? It's the nightmare scenario of art school graduate Yosi Even Kama - and the subject of his 4th-year thesis project. Any Israeli can step into his dystopia, on exhibit at the Shenkar College of Engineering & Design in Ramat Gan until the end of July.
Israeli Artist fears a fascist State of Judea in 2022
The project consists of four cylindrical public notice boards representing four different snapshots in time from the streets of Tel Aviv, between the years 2020 to 2023. In this twisted parallel universe, the government of Israel finally signs a peace deal with the Palestinians, in which it agrees to withdraw from the West Bank and share control over Jerusalem.
Incensed by what they believe to be high treason, Jewish supremacists manage to mobilize tens of thousands of Israeli citizens and successfully carry out a coup d'etat. In the newly-established State of Judea, there is no freedom, no feminism, and no fun. Only fascism.
"I read the most recent survey of Israeli society and I was shocked," Even Kama recalled. That report, commissioned by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, found that most Israelis believe that "there is too much freedom of expression" in Israel.
So this is what will come to pass in only ten years' time? "It won't happen exactly like that. But it's already happening right now, bit by bit: the loyalty oath law, the religious conversion law, the ban on commemorating the naqba, the ban on demonstrating at the homes of high-ranking army officers... When you break down the basic building blocks of democracy, fascism will fill that void."
Artist Yosi Even Kama David Sheen
They are not our brothers
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In the run-up to a totalitarian state, Even Kama's made-up religious right-wing extremists combine visual imagery of slithery snakes and armies of insects with slogans that demonize democratic institutions. In the following year of this imaginary timeline, the rebels post pictures of snakes being sliced open and bugs being squashed, as they make their power play with an armed insurrection.
Following the fictional narrative, what remains of the liberal left in Israel sells off its properties and evacuates the country while it is still able. And finally, fabricated rabbinical edicts quoting traditional texts provide a religious justification for the execution of the secular heretics that resist the new order.
Destroying Democracy
Unsurprisingly, Even Kama's provocative project has angered many people on the opposite end of the political spectrum. On srugim.com, an internet news portal for the nationalist-religious community, many have vilified the artist, and the Shenkar school for providing him a platform. But other visitors to the site admit that they admire his designs and even advocate adopting them. "I would use different colors, but this is basically what I believe," wrote one commenter.
These undercurrents have not escaped the attention of more mainstream political commentators. Last month (June 22, 2010), reporting on the same set of phenomena that is frightening Even Kama, retired judge and Yediot Ahronot Legal Affairs Editor Boaz Okon wrote in a chilling op-ed piece: "These dots are growing evidence of the lack of spirit of freedom and the emergence of apartheid and fascism."
Using iconography that references our historical memories of evil dictatorships is bound to push people's buttons; the most amazing artwork almost always does. It is easy to dismiss the "State of Judea" as agitation against Even Kama's political opponents. But it's a lot harder to dismiss the anti-democratic parties and populist movements that he parodies. One thing is certain: if his deepest fears are realized, he could be the first one to be burned at the stake.
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DETROIT, MI – How big of an economic impact could the NHL lockout have on Hockeytown?
With the stalemate between the league and players now 10 days old, MLive Detroit has reached out to veteran economist David Littmann, who has studied the economic impact of sports teams and major entertainment events on cities, to gauge the economic impact the Red Wings would add (or take away) from the city this year.
Littmann's conclusion: If the Detroit Red Wings do not play a single home game this season, Detroit will be out $84.4 million.
Littmann reached this number by estimating that the Red Wings would play about 45 home games at the Joe Louis Arena, with that number including a handful of playoff games.
He considered the average ticket price for a game as $53.26, based on a compilation of average rates at statista.com, and estimated the average attendance per game at about 20,000.
Littmann then estimated about $20 per person would be spent on souvenirs and food. He added transportation and parking revenues, totaling an estimated $900,000. He tacked on magazine, radio, television and other expense outlays at $200,000.
Added to those elements was a "multiplier," which he said adds the "second and third effect" of game attendees' dollars spent in the immediate area.
"I gave it the benefit of doubt," Littmann said. "Instead of the usual 1.4 multiplier I used a 1.2 multiplier. That's how I raised that $73 million to $84.4 million."
For comparison, Littmann said the typical economic impact of major non-sports events throughout Michigan range between $7 million and $30 million.
The figure he reached in the case of the Red Wings' economic impact, he noted, is only an estimate and could sway by millions of dollars in either direction.
"For a bell-curve I'd probably give it even as much as 15 to 20 percent either way," he said. "But I think that $84 million is a pretty good estimate."
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Introducing the College of Design at Georgia Tech
Click image to enlarge The Georgia Tech College of Design logo. Download Image
Effective today, Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture will be called the College of Design.
The new name is a more accurate reflection of the wide range of academic programs and work that occurs in the research centers and Schools of Architecture, Building Construction, City and Regional Planning, Industrial Design and Music.
The name showcases the College’s strengths and innovation in the multifaceted aspects of design, said Steven P. French, dean and John Portman Chair of the College of Design.
“This name change will mark an exciting new chapter for our College and the work of our students, faculty, staff and alumni,” French said. “We intend to broaden the definition of design at Georgia Tech through our academics and research. We will draw the connection between design and today’s uniquely human experiences, from buildings and cities, to products and soundscapes.”
The College has been discussing a name change for about 20 years to better capture its range of academic and research activities.
The number of academic programs offered by the College has doubled over the last decade, and three quarters of the degrees are not rooted in architecture. In response, the 2014 Strategic Plan suggested exploring a new name.
“Our architecture school is unique in how it combines design, the latest technologies and the influence of our professional practice partnerships,” French said. “But when you look at the College as a whole, you begin to understand we have a much broader range of design capabilities that shape how people live.”
The College engaged Armchair Media to conduct a positioning study and narrow the field of potential names. The company submitted potential names based on extensive surveys and interviews with faculty, staff, alumni, students and prospective students.
The College of Design best fit the College’s output as well as its environment. Academic work and research utilize the methods and conclusions of design to create products, buildings, neighborhoods, cities and human experiences, French said.
“The College of Design will be the premier college for technology-focused design education,” French said.
Learn more about the College of Design here: www.design.gatech.edu.
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Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) is fine with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump visiting his state in the aftermath of devastating floods ― just not for a photo-op.
“We welcome him to LA but not for a photo-op,” a spokesman for Edwards’ office said in a statement, according to Politico. “Instead we hope he’ll consider volunteering or making a sizable donation to the LA Flood Relief Fund to help the victims of the storm.”
Carlo Allegri/Reuters The Louisiana governor wants Trump to donate to flood relief efforts.
Edwards’ office told reporters the governor had not received a call from Trump about a visit. Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, are expected to tour flooded areas on Friday.
At least 13 people have died as a result of the flooding, which has damaged about 40,000 homes. Rains that started last Thursday have dumped more than 2.5 feet of water on parts of the state, according to Reuters.
To read how you can help Louisiana flood victims, go here.
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“This is on American soil,” he said. “As sheriffs, where our primary job is answering 911 calls, how on earth did we get to this place?”
Pinal County is about 85 miles north of the border, but Babeu says a lot of the smuggling funnels through his county.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu’s opinion of the state of the border and the administration’s policies was in high demand Tuesday as he testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary.The Arizona sheriff, known for his hardline stance on border security and illegal immigration, was one of four witnesses to testify during a hearing titled “Examining the adequacy and enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.”
I had the distinct honor of being denounced by multiple lawmakers at last week’s House Judicary Committee hearing on the “Adequacy and Enforcement of Our Nation’s Immigration Laws,” where our old friend Sherrif Paul Babeu was one of the witnesses called to testify. From the Arizona Daily Star :
Since Babeu was first elected as sheriff in 2008, he has been critical of the Obama administration on border issues and illegal immigration. On Tuesday he took issue with what he called a “mass prison break,” referring to the release of certain Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees starting in 2013. That year, ICE released 36,007 convicted criminal immigrants who are facing deportation. The federal data was first disclosed by the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative group that advocates for less immigration. As of September 2014, 16 percent had been arrested again for subsequent offenses, and 1,000 had been again convicted, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the center, testified on Tuesday, based on government records given to Sen. Chuck Grassley last month January. Besides trying to figure out how to pronounce Babeu’s last name, most Republican lawmakers in the committee thanked him for being an eyewitness to what happens at the border. Democratic members questioned the sheriff’s character by bringing up a protest of unaccompanied minors last July in Oracle [AZ] that activists say Babeu incited by disclosing the location of where the government was planning to take the youths. [Horrifying that American citizens actually find out where the government is relocating this latest deluge of illegal immigrants.] Lawmakers also brought up his 2010 appearance on the Tennessee-based “Political Cesspool,” a “pro-white” radio program. To which Babeu responded that talking with someone doesn’t mean he subscribes to their beliefs or political views.
Apparently, several Congressmen took turns bashing us during the proceedings, but the clip at 2:20:20 is particularly interesting.
Here’s the background story. Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu made a guest appearance on TPC a few years ago. He came on the show and was so impressed with our work that he invited my co-host, Eddie “The Bombardier” Miller, to personally join him for a tour of our porous border. He even publicly endorsed us as “great Americans.”
Then, of course, the media complained about the fact that he would dare talk to authentic conservatives such as ourselves, called us a bunch of inappropriate names, and Sheriff Babeu was suddenly afflicted with a dreadful case of amnesia. The story reached such a frenzy that it even became a major talking point in the GOP Senatorial primary between J.D. Hayworth and John McCain. The whole ordeal was one of the more colorful chapters in our story.
Let me first say that I truly do appreciate the stand Babeu has taken on illegal aliens, that is, except for when he’s doing stuff like this. If we had known about Babeu’s baggage we’d have not had him on. I mean, the guy apparently threatened an illegal alien with deportation if he revealed the nature of their homosexual relationship and that doesn’t get brought up by the committee, while his association with me does. How insane is that?
The fact of the matter is that I can stand someone disagreeing with me. I can even stand someone changing their mind. But I cannot stand a liar. The entire sordid affair with Babeu still rubs me the wrong way only because he lied through his teeth about not knowing of our legitimate and heartfelt positions before his appearance.
Eddie Miller personally talked to Sheriff Babeu for 45 minutes on the telephone in advance of the show, during which time he offered the Sheriff full disclosure about who we are, what we stand for, and what he could expect in response from the media.
Then after it became a talking point in Arizona, he claimed to have never spoken to us off the air and had no idea what we were about, even though he referenced the private conversation on the air with us! Sure, we’ve been betrayed before and are no strangers to having lies told about us, but this was egregious when you take into account that Eddie had phone records at the time to back up his claim.
It’s absolutely amazing that this guy will literally put his life on the line in defense of our border, then runs scared when some creepy reporters ask him about TPC. That just goes to show you the power of the “R” word, but the new scarlet letter only has as much control over us as we allow it to have.
As we’ve said before, unlike most White “men,” this type of baseless smear doesn’t make us run. We’re not “White supremacists,” or “neo-Nazis,” nor have we ever referred to ourselves as such. We are an award-winning paleoconservative talk radio program whose contributions to the community have been recognized by the Memphis City Council. We are sought-after political commentators who have appeared numerous times on national television. We’re a program of record that has been covered by over 250 prominent newspapers and magazines and one that has interviewed countless headliners and news makers. We’re pro-White, to be sure, and we’re Christians. We love our families and we are led by our faith.
The word “racist” is simply a Marxist construct, a “shut up” word used to stifle debate. We don’t give these words the power to push us around.
One of the “repugnant” views that we hold is the idea that European-Americans should seek to have more children so that we can raise our standing in the U.S. population where we are rapidly becoming a minority. Is it now “hate” to simply wish to survive? Of course not. We simply articulate on our talk radio program that which millions of European Americans instinctively believe. The viewpoints of our talk radio program are natural and healthy.
We stand tall and have become successful because we don’t allow ourselves to be intimidated by the childish tactics of baseless name calling. It’s this type of politicking that led me to write my book, Racism, Schmacism.
Just as minority groups have organizations and spokespeople that seek to advance their interests, we feel that conservative White Americans deserve to have leadership as well. We provide it, because no one else will. And we’re not about to apologize for that.
Furthermore, we have had elected officials, entertainers and celebrities of a much higher profile than Babeu come on and never pretend to be ignorant. The whole thing just left a bad taste in my mouth that still lingers upon being reminded of it.
The funny thing is that Babeu denying us, like Peter denied Christ, was ultimately a blessing in disguise, given that he turned out to be a homosexual who has been alleged to have slept with a former male student.
True heroes are hard to find these days, but I’d like to think that you have a handful of champions on whom you can depend right here in Memphis and around the country. We will never abandon or recant the righteous cause that motivates us and we will never stop fighting on your behalf. That’s a promise you can count on.
Read more about our history with Paul Babeu by clicking here.
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Liverpool will make an official complaint to UEFA after Rhian Brewster was allegedly racially abused by a Spartak Moscow player during Wednesday's UEFA Youth League clash between the clubs.
The incensed England Under-17s striker had to be dragged away by Reds team-mates and staff following the final whistle at Prenton Park.
Brewster informed referee Mohammed Al-Hakim what he was called by a Spartak defender during the closing stages of the match and those details were passed on to the fourth official.
Asked about the incident following his side's 2-0 victory, Liverpool boss Steven Gerrard said: "It's difficult for me to comment on it right now. It's something that the club will look into and deal with.
"I'd rather talk about Rhian Brewster's performance. I don't want to take any gloss off that because he was superb. The only thing that was missing from his performance was a goal. He held the ball up so well and put in a shift for us."
Match in pictures: LFC U19s vs Spartak Moscow U19s
It's the second time this season that a Liverpool youth team player has suffered racist abuse at the hands of Spartak.
In Moscow back in September, Nigeria-born attacker Bobby Adekanye was subjected to sickening chants and gestures from Spartak supporters.
UEFA charged Spartak but the punishment was pitiful. They had to partially close their Academy stadium for their next UEFA Youth League fixture by leaving 500 seats empty.
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Dishes at Cactus Cantina including, clockwise from bottom left, salsa, chips, a swirl margarita, enchiladas and the Plato Gordo mixed grill. Not to be confused with Mexican, Tex-Mex has been defined as a distinct type of American regional cuisine. (Deb Lindsey/for The Washington Post)
Tex-Mex: The term is often a bait-and-switch. Throughout the United States, and as far away as Japan, restaurants affix the label, a shimmering promise that all too frequently collapses in the wrong hands. At its worst, “Tex-Mex” can become a phony advertisement used to get customers through the door for cloying margaritas, stale chips, salsa out of a jar and overcooked slivers of grilled meat.
At its best, the cuisine is a beacon of pride for people like me who grew up in Texas regularly munching on chips and salsa — always offered at no charge.
So what constitutes Tex-Mex? It isn’t Mexican food, and it isn’t Central and South American, either. According to Robb Walsh, a partner at El Real Tex-Mex Cafe in Houston and the author of “The Tex-Mex Cookbook” and “The Tex-Mex Grill,” the food is best defined as a category of American regional cuisine, an outgrowth of the cooking shaped by Spanish priests, Native Americans and Mexican cowboys in frontier missions and later adapted by Texan entrepreneurs.
[A guide to Washington’s poke restaurants]
Fajitas are one of the genre’s most famous dishes. Their evolution began with Mexican “arrachera” and was advanced by Texas ranch hands, who were given tough skirt steak and gussied it up with marinades and mesquite wood flames. The modern version, attributed to Austin butcher Sonny Falcon, is often served with flour tortillas. Cooked on-site and held at the proper temperature, a great tortilla is soft and a little elastic, a comforting bed for meat, pico de gallo, guacamole and anything else you want to stuff inside.
That’s not to say corn tortillas don’t have a place in Tex-Mex. The masa-based wrappers are the foundation for what Walsh considers to be the quintessential Tex-Mex experience: cheese enchiladas with chili gravy. Bundles of corn tortillas are softened in hot oil, rolled and stuffed with shredded cheese and bathed in a sort of chile pepper roux. They’re topped with more cheese and raw onions and flanked by beans and rice.
After coming of age in the Houston suburbs, I’ve been on the lookout for the real deal in Washington. That’s why I scoured the area looking for the sort of stuff that even the most excessively proud and defensively provincial native Texans would deem up to snuff. I rated my picks on a scale of one margarita to five.
The Springfield Mall location of Chuy’s, known for its funky, retro vibe. The authenticity of the chain, which was born in Austin, didn’t seem to survive the long trip northeast. (Kate Patterson/for The Washington Post)
6. Chuy’s
Started in Austin in 1982, this temple of Texas kitsch, decorated with Elvis shrines and hubcaps, has gone corporate: Locations dot the map pretty much everywhere east of Texas. I may have stacked the deck against the one in Springfield Mall by showing up an hour before close on a Sunday night.
Sure enough, the beef fajitas ($15.79) carried such a heavy plume of smoke that they made our waitress cough. Though it had a nice black-pepper flavor, the overcooked Shiner Bock-marinated steak had a puzzling, soggy texture. The best part of the Elvis Presley Memorial Combo ($12.69) – a variety of unremarkable enchiladas, a ground sirloin crispy taco and a cheese-dipped tostada – was the crispy tortilla slathered in “boom-boom sauce” (queso with roasted green chiles, tomatillos, onions, lime and cilantro). The Mexican rice and green chile rice were better than just filler.
Red paint advertised handmade tortillas, but the work station below it was vacant. The imperfect shape of the flour variety vouched for the human touch, and they were tasty — but only after a requested warm-up. That pretty much sums up my experience at Chuy’s: The signs of its Texas pedigree were present, but most dishes weren’t as authentic as the aesthetics.
6793 Springfield Mall, Springfield. Additional locations in Sterling, Fairfax, Woodbridge and Rockville.
[A guide to Hyattsville: D.C.’s newest suburban dining and arts destination]
5. El Paso Cafe
Enticed by President George W. Bush’s long-ago visit, which is commemorated by a red-white-and-blue chair hanging on a wall near the entrance, I waited for a dining companion on a recent Thursday night. El Paso scores major points for atmosphere. With attentive service and a packed house, the whole dining room seemed to project positive vibes.
The downtime was more tolerable thanks to the live music, a baseball game broadcast in Spanish and a 16-ounce beer in a cowboy boot-shaped glass. Baskets of chips and bowls of smoky, pureed salsa were frequently refilled.
The grill is the predominant flavor in the subtly marinated beef and chicken fajitas ($17.99), and I don’t think Bush would approve of the square block of enchiladas. A congealed hunk of cheese dwarfs a thinly applied gravy that tastes more of tomatoes than chiles. For some reason, the onions are stuffed inside, not on top of the corn tortilla wrappers. Thankfully, the refried beans — the most flavorful I tried during my Tex-Mex excursions — did suggest the use of lard.
4235 N. Pershing Dr., Arlington.
4. Guapo’s
A hulking BE&SCO tortillamaker near the back of Guapo’s shows that the kitchen is serious — I can’t stress enough how much the commitment to fresh flour tortillas improves whatever they’re wrapped around. These are pressed thin and delicious, even though they come without the desirable brown pockmarks. Beef and chicken fajitas ($19.50) hiss on a plate so hot that the clarified butter sitting in a ramekin next to the meat is bubbling. That finishing touch yields beautifully caramelized onion and pepper slices that soak up the meats’ juices. The skirt steak takes a little effort to chew, but it packs a pleasant Worcestershire punch.
Cheese enchiladas ($11.50) pass the eyeball test, but the cheese filling is a little too solid. Shredded beef enchiladas ($11.50) encase a stewed, tomato-tinged filling that has everyone at the table nodding their heads with each bite. Eating at Guapo’s is a nice enough experience, but as a stickler for Tex-Mex, I’m left slightly unsatisfied.
4515 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Additional locations in Gaithersburg, Bethesda, Arlington, Fair Lakes.
Ceviche and a margarita at Cyclone Anaya’s, which takes a more upscale tack, in the Mosaic District shopping area and neighborhood of Fairfax County. (Cyclone Anaya's)
3. Cyclone Anaya’s
This Houston-based chain brought a refined take on Tex-Mex to the Mosaic District complex. I assume the restaurant’s high-end clientele considers sizzling platters gauche, because the mixed fajitas ($22) arrive smokeless in a small tin — a drag, although it does prevent diners from going home perfumed like a grill . The chile con queso ($9) – melted cheese dip with chopped peppers – is rich and smooth with a bounty of fresh tomatoes and a surprising addition of green onions.
Juanito’s Superior Platter ($15.50) comes with a taco al carbon – a pre-rolled taco filled with fajita meat – and an admirable enchilada made up of a bright-red tortilla and a rich, clay-colored chili con carne. But garnishes of cotija cheese and purple kale are flourishes that have no place in Tex-Mex.
2911 District Ave., Suite 170, Fairfax.
Fajitas at Mi Rancho in Silver Spring. Owner Albino Castro, a native of Portugal, knew nothing about Tex-Mex until he hired the right chef and did on-the-ground research. (Mi Rancho)
2. Mi Rancho
Whether it’s because of healthier attitudes in Washington or the dearth of Texas influence in the kitchen, most of the enchiladas I encountered locally suffered from too light a ladling of chili gravy. Mi Rancho is the exception.
On the Silver Spring restaurant’s Tijuana Platter ($15.95), two cheese enchiladas float in enough gravy to reach the rim of the plate. A crunchy beef taco and a moist pork tamale — with a nice ratio of masa to meat — round out the combo.
From plump and juicy beef and chicken fajitas ($19.95) to the nearly translucent tortilla chips, most everything looks appealing here, including the actual place. The sprawling front patio is the perfect spot to enjoy a drink. Heavy double doors open into a dimly lit interior, featuring a BE&SCO tortilla machine and a festive border of Christmas lights.
Owner Albino Castro brightens the room, making small talk with customers as he refills their waters. A native of Portugal, Castro said he wanted to create a family atmosphere when he opened Mi Rancho. After years working in French and Italian kitchens in New York, he said he knew nothing about Tex-Mex — except it was fairly easy to produce. He visited the namesake state and eventually found a Mexican chef that had worked in Tex-Mex joints. “That changed everything,” Castro said.
The results have kept the original spot in business for 27 years and spawned two more locations.
8701 Ramsey Ave., Silver Spring. Additional locations in Germantown and Rockville.
[10 summer date ideas that go beyond the typical outdoor movie or concert]
Cactus Cantina, whose tortilla chips, salsa, fajitas and cheese enchiladas — dishes that are arguably the barometer for Tex-Mex cuisine — earned the restaurant its gold medal. (Deb Lindsey /for The Washington Post)
1. Cactus Cantina
The scent surrounding Cactus Cantina is the first marker of quality Tex-Mex. It comes from the steam chugging out of the BE&SCO beta model the staff calls “El Machine,” which mass-produces soft, lush flour tortillas.
Cactus Cantina Vice President Jaime Sanchez said his father-in-law, Cuban-born owner Raul Sanchez, and original chef and partner Luis Reyes were determined to get the “border-style” food right when they opened in 1990. They source tortillas for their paper-thin chips from Texas because they can’t replicate the process perfected by their purveyor. According to Jaime Sanchez, they spent 12 years just decoding the salsa. “We were salsa maniacs,” he said. “We tasted everyone’s salsa.”
It shows. Brick-red and specked with bits of blackened tomato skins and chile de arbol seeds, the salsa arrives still warm from the grill. Part of the Tex-Mex experience means filling up on chips and salsa, which I’m happy to do while I watch fresh flour tortillas puff up on the conveyor belt of El Machine.
From the mixed fajitas ($17.50), the beef is tender and pink in the middle. A soy-and-pineapple marinade makes the skirt steak sing, and a ramekin of clarified butter is a welcome indulgence for the chicken. Sides of charro beans stewed with bacon and tomatoes make me doubly happy — once upon tasting them and hours later when I dig them out of a to-go container in the fridge.
The flat shape of the cheese enchiladas ($9.95) proves the corn tortillas have been properly softened, though the gravy is a little darker and sweeter than I like.
That peccadillo aside, Cactus Cantina is my clear favorite Tex-Mex restaurant in Washington — it makes me feel at home.
3300 Wisconsin Ave. NW.
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Constitutional law expert Marvin Ammori, one of the First Amendment scholars along with Larry Tribe who explained how SOPA would violate the First Amendment, shares a wonderful story with Boing Boing.
Snip from his blog post:
When I was quite young, I saw the first Star Wars movie and believed that, if I took part in a great cause, it would end with a medal ceremony and a princess conferring the medal. It has finally happened.
Last night, I received a medal from Princess Tiffiniy Ying Cheng of Fight for the Future, representing the “committee for the Defenders of the Internet.” Bestowed upon me was the Nyan Cat Medal of Internet Awesomeness, the “highest honor known to Internet Defenders.” I could not be more honored.
Princess Tiffiniy’s organization was one of the leaders in the Battle of SOPA. She and her partner Holmes Wilson are pretty amazingly brilliant–they were the people who organized the Free Justin Bieber campaign, led American Censorship Day on November 16, and were among the leaders organizing the January 18 Blackout. Many people pulled together from an array of communities to fight SOPA–Redditers, Wikipedians, civil libertarians, entrepreneurs, artists, venture capitalists, tech executives, consumer electronics makers, tech bloggers–alongside millions of people who just love the Internet and hate Internet censorship, from technologically advanced Wookiies to technologically challenged Ewoks. Many awesome people were involved in leading, coordinating, and taking the time to fight SOPA.
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by Charles Yu
Author spotlight
Root canal is one fifty, give or take, depending on who’s doing it to you. A migraine is two hundred.
Not that I get the money. The company gets it. What I get is twelve dollars an hour, plus reimbursement for painkillers. Not that they work.
I feel pain for money. Other people’s pain. Physical, emotional, you name it.
Pain is an illusion, I know, and so is time, I know, I know. I know. The shift manager never stops reminding us. Doesn’t help, actually. Doesn’t help when you are on your third broken leg of the day.
#
I get to work late and already there are nine tickets in my inbox. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, open the first ticket of the day:
I am at a funeral.
I am feeling grief.
Someone else’s grief.
I am feeling a mixture of things.
Grief, mostly, but I also detect that there is some guilt in there. There usually is.
I hear crying.
I am seeing crying faces. Pretty faces. Crying, pretty, white faces.
Nice clothes.
Our services aren’t cheap. As the shift manager is always reminding us.
Need I remind you? That is his favorite phrase these days. He is always walking up and down the aisle tilting his head into our cubicles and saying it. Need I remind you, he says, of where we are on the spectrum? In terms of low-end/high-end? We are solidly towards the highish-end. So the faces are usually pretty, the clothes are usually nice. The people are usually nice, too. Although, I imagine that it’s easy to be nice when you are rich and pretty. Even when you’re at a funeral.
There’s a place in Hyderabad that is doing what we’re doing, a little more towards the budget end of things. Precision Living Solutions, it’s called. And of course there are hundreds of emotional engineering firms in Bangalore. Springing up everywhere you look. I read in the paper that a new call center opens, on average, like every three days.
Okay. Body is going into the ground now. The crying is getting more serious.
Here it comes.
I am feeling that feeling. The one that these people get a lot, near the end of a funeral service. These sad and pretty people. It’s a big feeling. Different operators have different ways to describe it. For me, it feels something like a huge boot. Huge, like it fills up the whole sky, the whole galaxy, all of space. Some kind of infinite foot. And it’s stepping on me. The infinite foot is stepping on my chest.
The funeral ends, and the foot is still on me, and it is hard to breathe. People are getting into black town cars. I also appear to have a town car. I get in. The foot, the foot. So heavy. Here we go, yes, this is familiar, the foot, yes, the foot. It doesn’t hurt, exactly. It’s not what I would call comfortable, but it’s not pain, either. More like pressure.
Deepak, who used to be in the next cubicle, once told me that this feeling, which I call the infinite foot—to him it felt more like a knee—is actually the American experience of the Christian God.
“Are you sure it is the Christian God?” I asked him. “I always thought God was Jewish.”
“You’re an idiot,” he said. “It’s the same guy. Duh. The Judeo-Christian God.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
He just shook his head at me. We’d had this conversation before. I figured he was probably right, but I didn’t want to admit it. Deepak was the smartest guy in our cube-cluster, as he would kindly remind me several times a day.
I endure a few more minutes of the foot, and then, right before the hour is up, right when the grief and guilt are almost too much and I wonder if I am going to have to hit the safety button, there it is, it’s usually there at the end of a funeral, no matter how awful, no matter how hard I am crying, no matter how much guilt my client has saved up for me to feel. You wouldn’t expect it–I didn’t–but anyone who has done this job for long enough knows what I’m talking about. It seems unbelievable, but it’s there, it’s almost always there, even if it’s just a glimmer of it, and even though you know it’s coming, even when you are waiting for it, in fact, when it comes, it is always still a little bit of a shock.
Relief.
#
Death of a cousin is five hundred. Death of a sibling is twelve-fifty. Parents are two thousand a piece, but depending on the situation people will pay all kinds of money, for all kinds of reasons, for bad reasons, or for no reason at all.
The company started in corporate services. Ethical qualm transference. Plausible deniability. That kind of stuff. Good cash flow, which the founder—now retired to philanthropy and heli-skiing—plowed right back into R&D, and turned Transfer Corp. into a specialist: a one-feeling shop. Cornered the early market in guilt.
Then the technology improved. Some genius in Delhi figured out a transfer protocol to standardize and packetize all different kinds of experiences. Qualia in general. Don’t feel like having a bad day? That’s a line from one of our commercials. Let someone else have it for you. It shows a rich executive-looking-type sitting and rubbing his temples, making the TV face to communicate the stress of his situation. There are wavy lines on either side of his temples to indicate that the Executive is! really! stressed! Then he places a call to his broker, and in the next scene, the Executive is lying on a beach, drinking golden beer from a bottle and looking at the bluest ocean I have ever seen.
I saw this on American television at the lunch counter across the street that has a satellite feed. I was eating at the counter and next to me was a girl, maybe four or five, scooping rice and peas into her mouth a little at a time. She watched the commercial in silence, and after it was over, turned to her mother and softly asked her what the blue liquid was. I was thinking about how sad it was that she had never seen water that color in real life until I realized that I was thirty-nine years old and hey, you know what, neither had I.
#
That someone else they are talking about in the commercial is me—me and the other six hundred terminal operators in building D, cubicle block 4. Don’t feel like having a bad day? Let me have it for you.
It’s okay for me, a good job. I didn’t do that well in school, after all. It was tougher for Deep. He did three semesters at technical college. He was always saying he deserved better. Better than this, anyway. I would nod and agree with him, but I never told him what I wanted to tell him, which was hey, Deepak, when you say that you deserve better, even if I agree with you, you are kind of also implying that I don’t deserve better, which, maybe I don’t, maybe this is about where I belong in the grand scheme of things, in terms of high-end/low-end for me as a person, but I wish you wouldn’t say it, because whenever you do, it makes me feel a sharp bit of sadness and then, for the rest of the day, a kind of low-grade crumminess.
Deep and I used to go to lunch, and he always tried to explain to me how it works:
“Okay, so, the clients,” he would say, “they call into their account reps and book the time.”
He liked to start sentences with, okay, so. It was a habit he had picked up from the engineers. He thought it made him sound smarter, thought it made him sound like them, those code geeks, standing by the coffee machine, talking faster than he could think, every word a term of art, every sentence packed with logic, or small insights or a joke. He liked to stand near them, pretending to stir sugar into his coffee, listening in on them as if they were speaking a different language. A language of knowing something, a language of being an expert at something. A language of being something more than an hourly unit.
Okay, so, he said, they book the time, and then at the appointed hour, a switch in their implant chip kicks on and starts transferring their consciousness over. Perceptions, sensory data, all of it. Okay, so, then it goes first to an intermediate server for processing and then gets bundled with other jobs, and then a huge block of the stuff gets zapped over here, where it gets downloaded onto our servers and then dumped into our queue management system, which parcels out the individual jobs to all of us in the cubicle farm.
Okay, so, it’s all based on some kind of efficiency algorithm–our historical performance, our current emotional load. Sensors in our head assembly unit measure our stress levels, sweat composition, to see what we can handle. Okay?
(He would say, okay, when he was done. Like a professor. He wanted so badly to be an expert at something.)
I always appreciated Deepak trying to help me understand. But it’s just a job, I would say. I never really understood why Deep thought so much of those programmers, either. In the end, we’re all brains for hire. All I know is they seem to have gotten it down to a science. How much a human being can take in a given twelve-hour shift. Grief, embarrassment, humiliation, all different, of course, so they calibrate our schedules, mix it up, the timing and the order, and the end result is you leave work every day right about at your exact breaking point.
A lot of people smoke to take the edge off. I quit twelve years ago, so sometimes when I get home, I’m still shaking for a little bit. I sit on my couch and drink a beer and let it subside. Then I heat up some bread and lentils and read a newspaper or, if it’s too hot to stay inside, walk down to the street and eat my dinner there.
#
When I get to work the next morning, there’s a woman sitting in the cubicle across from mine. She’s young, at least a couple of years younger than me, looks right out of school. She has the new employee set-up kit laid out in front of her and is reading the trainee handbook. I think about saying hi, but who am I kidding, I am still me, so instead I just say nothing.
My first ticket of the day is a death bed. Death beds are not so common. They are hard to schedule—we require at least twenty-four hours advance booking, and usually clients don’t know far enough in advance when the ailing beloved one is going to go—so we don’t see these too often. But this isn’t regular death bed. It’s pull-the-plug.
They are pulling the plug on grandpa this morning.
I open the ticket.
I am holding grandpa’s hand.
I cry.
He squeezes my hand, one last burst of strength. It hurts. Then his hand goes limp and his arm falls away.
I cry, and also, I really cry. Meaning, not just as my client, but I start crying, too. Sometimes it happens. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe because he was somebody’s grandpa. And he looked like a nice one, a nice man. Maybe something about the way his arm fell against the guard rail on the hospital bed. Maybe because I could sort of tell, when grandpa was looking at his grandson for the last time, looking into his eyes, looking around in there trying to find him, he didn’t find him, he found me instead, and he knew what had happened, and he didn’t even look mad. Just hurt.
#
I am at a funeral.
I am in a dentist’s chair.
I am in a queen-sized motel bed, feeling guilty.
I am quitting my job. This is a popular one. Clients like to avoid the awkwardness of quitting their jobs, so they set an appointment and walk into their bosses’ offices and tell them where they can stick this effing job, and right before their boss starts to reply, the switch kicks in and I get yelled at.
My teeth throb.
My kidneys seethe.
My lungs burn.
My heart aches.
On a bridge.
My heart aches on a bridge.
My heart aches on a cruise ship.
My heart aches on an airplane, taking off at night.
Some people think it’s not so great that we can do this. Personally, I don’t really see the problem. Press one to clear your conscience. Press two for fear of death. Consciousness is like anything else. I’m sure when someone figures out how to sell time itself, they’ll have infomercials for that, too.
I am at a funeral.
I am losing someone to cancer.
I am coping with something vague.
I am at a funeral.
I am at a funeral.
I am at a funeral.
Fourteen tickets today in twelve hours. Four half-hours and ten full.
On my way out, I can hear someone wailing and gnashing his teeth in his cubicle. He is near the edge. Deepak was always like that, too. I always told him, hey man, you have to let go a little. Just a little. Don’t let it get to you so much.
I peek my head to see if I can steal a glance at the new woman, but she is in the middle of a ticket. She appears to be suffering. She catches me looking at her. I look at my feet and keep shuffling past.
It used to be that the job wasn’t all pain and suffering. Rich American man outsources the nasty bits of his life. He is required to book by the hour or the day or some other time unit, but in an hour or two or twenty-four hours of unpleasantness, there are always going to be some parts of it that are not so bad. Maybe just boring. Maybe even not so bad. Maybe even more okay than not. Like if a guy books his colonoscopy and he hires us for two hours, but for the first eight minutes, he’s just sitting there in the waiting room, reading a magazine, enjoying the air conditioning, admiring someone’s legs. Or something. Anyway, it used to be that we would get the whole thing, so part of my job here could be boring or neutral or even sometimes kind of interesting.
But then the technology improved again and the packeting software was refined to filter out those intervals and collect them. Those bits, the extras, the slices of life that were left over were lopped off by the program, and smushed all together, into a kind of reconstituted life slab. Like American baloney lunchmeat. A life-loaf. They take the slabs and process them and sell them as prepackaged lives.
I’ve had my eye on one for a while, at a secondhand shop that’s on my way home from work. Not ideal, but it’s something to work for.
So now, what’s left over, what we get to feel at work, it’s all pretty much just pure undiluted badness. The only thing left that can be a surprise is when, even in the middle of badness, there is something not so awful mixed in there. Like the relief in the middle of a funeral, or sometimes when you get someone who is really religious, not just religious, but a true believer, then mixed in with the sadness and loss at a funeral, you get faith, and you get to try different flavors, depending on the believer. You get the big foot on your chest, or you get the back of your head on fire. (A cold fire, it tickles.) You get to know what it is like to know that your dead lover, your dead mother, father, brother, sister, that they are all standing in front of you, tall as the universe, and they have huge, infinite feet, and their heads are all ablaze with this brilliant, frozen fire. You get the feeling of being inside of a room and at the same time, the room being inside of you, and the room is the world, and so are you.
#
The next day is more of the same. Eleven tickets, including a two-hour adultery confession. To my husband of twenty-six years.
After lunch, I pass her in the hall. The new woman. Her name badge says Kirthi. She doesn’t look at me this time.
Walking home I swing a block out of the way to check in on the secondhand shop.
Someone bought my life.
It was there in the window yesterday, and now it’s gone.
It wasn’t my life, technically. Not yet. It was the life I wanted, the life I’ve been saving for. Not a DreamLife®, not top of the line, but a starter model, a good one. Standard Possibility. Normal Volatility. A dark-haired, soulful wife. 0.35 kids, no actuals—certainties are too expensive—but some potential kids, a solid thirty-five percent chance of having one or more. Normal life expectancy, average health, median aggregate amount of happiness. I test-drove it once, and it felt good, it felt right. It fit just fine.
I don’t know. I’m trying not to feel sorry for myself. I just thought there might be more to it all than this.
Still, I’ve got it better than some people. I mean, I’m renting my life out one day at a time, but I haven’t sold it yet.
My father sold his life on a cold, clear afternoon in November. He was thirty. It was the day before my fourth birthday.
We went to the brokerage. It felt like a bank, but friendlier. My father had been carrying me on his back, but he put me down when we got inside. There was dark wood everywhere, and also bright flowers and classical music. We were shown to a desk, and a woman in an immaculate pantsuit asked if we would like anything to drink. My father didn’t say anything, just looked off at the far wall. I remember my mother asked for a cup of tea for my father.
I don’t want to sell my life. I’m not ready to do that yet.
So I sell it bit by bit. Scrape by.
Sell it by the hour.
Pain, grief, terror, worse.
Or just mild discomfort.
Social anxiety.
Boredom.
#
I ask around about Kirthi. People are talking. The guys are talking. Especially the married guys. They do the most talking.
I pass her in the hall again, and again she doesn’t look at me. No surprise there. Women never look at me. I am not handsome or tall. But I am nice.
I think it is actually that which causes the not-looking at me. The niceness, I mean, not the lack of handsomeness or tallness. They can see the niceness and it is the kind of niceness that, in a man, you instinctively ignore. What good is a nice man? No good to women. No good to other men.
She doesn’t look at me, but I feel, or maybe I wish or I imagine, that something in the way she does not look at me is not quite the same. She is not-looking at me in a way that feels like she is consciously not-looking at me. And from the way she is not-looking at me, I can tell she knows I am trying to not-look at her. We are both not-looking at each other. For some reason, for the first time in a long while, I have hope.
I don’t know why, but I do.
#
I am at a funeral.
I’m flipped to green.
You can be flipped to green, or flipped to red.
You can be there, or can just feel the feeling.
This is the one improvement they have made that actually benefits us workers. There’s a toggle switch on the headset. Flip it to green and you get a rendering of the client’s visual field. You see what he sees. Flip it to red and you still feel all of the feelings, but you see what you see.
You can do whatever you want, so long as you don’t leave your cubicle. You can just stare at the cube-divider wall, or play computer solitaire, or even chat with neighbors, although that is strongly discouraged.
I was hesitant at first, but more and more these days I am usually flipped to red. Except for funerals. Funerals, I like to be there, just out of some kind of respect thing.
This morning’s first ticket is your standard affair. Sixtyish rich guy, heart attack in the home office, millions in the bank, five kids from three marriages, all hate him.
The client is one of those kids, trust fund baby, paid extra for amnesia after the event. No feeling, no pre-feeling, no hangover, no residue, no chance of actually having any part of it, long enough to ensure that he will be halfway in the bag before any of the day’s events start nibbling at the corners of his awareness.
I see the fresh, open plot. A little rain falls on the funeral procession as they get out of the cars, but there’s a break in the clouds so that it’s raining and the sun is shining at the same time.
As usual, everyone is well-dressed. A lot of the rich look mildly betrayed in the face of death, as if they are a little bit surprised that good style and enough money weren’t quite enough to protect them from the unpleasantness of it all. I’m standing next to what I am guessing is widow number two, late thirties, probably, with beautiful sand-colored hair. We make eye contact and she is staring at me and I am trying not to stare at her and then we both realize the same thing at the same time. Raj, I say, under my breath. She smiles. Rajiv is on night shift now, but back in the day, we had beers once in a while.
The pastor talks about a full life lived, and the limits of earthly rewards, and everyone nods affirmatively, and then there is music as the body goes into the ground, I’ve heard it at a lot of funerals. Mozart, I think, but I am not sure.
#
Death of an aunt is seven hundred. Death of an uncle is six.
Bad day in the markets is a thousand. Kid’s recital is a one twenty-five an hour. Church is one-fifty.
The only category that we will not quote a price on is death of a child. Death of a child is separately negotiated. Hardly anyone can afford it. And not all operators can handle it. We have to be specially trained to be eligible for those tickets. People go on sick leave, disability. Most people just physically cannot do it. There hasn’t been one booked the whole time I’ve been here, so most of us aren’t even sure what is true and what isn’t. The rumor is that if you do one, you are allowed to take the rest of the month off.
Deep was always tempted. It’s not worth it, I would tell him. Okay, so, maybe not for you, Deep said. Okay, so, mind your own business, he would say.
#
The first time I talk to Kirthi is by the water fountain. I tell her we are neighbors, cubicle-wise. She says she knows. I feel a bit stupid.
The second time we talk, we are also by the water fountain, and I try to make a joke, one of those we have to stop meeting like this things. I probably saw it on TV and it just came out. Stupid. She doesn’t laugh, but she doesn’t frown, either.
The third time we talk, I kiss her. By the microwave in the snack room. I don’t know what got into me. I am not an aggressive person. I am not physically strong. I weigh one hundred and fifty-five pounds. She doesn’t laugh. She actually makes a face like disgust. But she doesn’t push me away, either. Not right away. She accepts the kiss, doesn’t kiss back, but after a couple of seconds, breaks it off and leans back and turns her head and says, under her breath, you shouldn’t have done that. And she doesn’t say it in a nice way. Or like a threat. Just real even, like she is stating a fact.
Still, I am happy. I’ve got three more tickets in the bucket before lunch, and then probably eight or nine before I go home, but the whole rest of the day, I am having an out of body experience. Even when I am in someone else’s body, I am still out of my body. I am double out of my body.
I weep.
I wail.
I gnash my teeth.
Underneath it all, I am smiling. I am giggling.
I am at a funeral. My client’s heart aches, and inside of it is my heart, not aching, the opposite of aching—doing that, whatever it is.
#
Kirthi and I start dating. That’s what I call it. She calls it letting me walk her to the bus stop. She lets me buy her lunch. She tells me I should stop. She still never smiles at me.
I’m a heartbreak specialist, she says.
When I see her in the hallway, I walk up behind her and slip my arm around her waist.
She has not let me in yet. She won’t let me in.
Why won’t you let me in, I ask her?
You don’t want in, she says. You want around. You want near. You don’t want in.
There are two hundred forty seven ways to have your heartbroken, she says, and I have felt them all.
#
I am in a hospice.
I have been here before. A regular client.
I am holding a pen.
I have just written something on a notepad in front of me.
My husband is gone.
He died years ago.
Today is the tenth anniversary of his death.
I have Alzheimer’s, I think.
A memory of my husband surfaces, like a white-hot August afternoon, resurfacing in the cool water of November.
I tear off the sheet on the notepad.
I read it to myself.
It is a suicide note.
I raise a glass to my mouth, swallow a pill. Catch a glance of my note to the world.
The failsafe kicks on, just in time. The system overrides. I close the ticket.
#
It’s her father.
That’s what Sunil tells me, one day over a beer.
Kirthi hasn’t been to work for the past two days.
Sunil is in Tech Support. He has seen all of the glitches. He knows what can go wrong in the mechanics of feeling transfers. He has seen some ugliness. He is fond of saying that there is no upper bound on weirdness.
Her father is still mortgaged, Sunil explains. Locked in. A p-zombie, he says. Sold his life.
“This is going to end badly, man,” he says. “You have to trust me on this. Kirthi is damaged. And she knows it.”
Sunil means well, but what he doesn’t know is that I am fine with damaged. I want damage. I’ve looked down the road I’m on and I see what’s coming. A lot of nothing. No great loves lost. And yet, I feel like I lost something. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? How about this: I lost without the love. I’ve lost things I’ve never even had. A whole life. Just like my father, I get to have my cake and eat it, too. Except that it’s a great big crap cake.
Still, as the weeks go on, I am starting to think Sunil is right.
“Kirthi won’t let me in,” I tell him. “She tells me to get away from her, to run.”
“She is doing you a favor, man. Take her advice.”
#
I ask her about her father.
She doesn’t talk to me for a week.
And then, on Friday night, after we walk for an hour in silence, before going into her apartment, she turns to me and says, how awful it is to look at him in that state.
We draw closer for a moment.
Why won’t you just love me, I ask her.
She says it’s not possible to make someone feel something.
Even yourself, she says.
Even if you want to feel it.
#
I tell her about the life I had my eye on.
It’s gone, she says.
I’ll find another one just like it, I tell her. Standard happiness package. Decent possibility. The chance of a kid. It wouldn’t be enough for us, not quite, but we could share it, take turns living the life. One works while the other one lives, maybe I work the weekdays and she gives me a break on weekends.
She looks at me. For a few long seconds, she seems to be thinking about it, living the whole life out in her head.
She doesn’t say anything. She touches the side of my head.
It’s a start.
#
When Deep was happy, before it got bad and then worse and then even worse, he was always talking about how he knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. Stuff like that. He talked like that, he really did. He loved telling stories. About a week before he cracked up, he told me a story while we were in the coffee room about a guy at Managed Life Solutions, a physical suffering shop across town, who somehow made arrangements with a prominent banker who wanted to kill his wife. The banker was going to do it, he’d made up his mind, but he didn’t want the guilt. Plus, he thought it might help with his alibi if he didn’t have any memory.
Bullshit, I said. That would never work.
No, really, he says. He tells me all about it, how they met, how they arranged it all while talking in public, at work in fact, but they talked in code, etc.
Could never happen, I say. There are twenty reasons why that wouldn’t work.
Why not, he said.
It’s just too much, I said.
Too much what? There is no upper bound on cruelty, he said.
The next Monday, I came to work, and they were pulling Deep out the door, two paramedics, each one with an arm under Deep’s arms, and two security guards trailing behind. I wanted to say something, anything, to make them stop. I knew I would never see him again. But I froze. As they dragged him past me, I tried to make eye contact, but I looked in there, and no one was left. He had gone somewhere else. He was saying, okay, so. Okay, so.
And then the next day, there it was, in the newspaper. The whole story about the banker. Exactly how Deepak told it to me. There were rumors that he was the one the banker hired; he was living with murderous guilt. Other people gossiped that he had done death of a child.
I don’t think it was either. I don’t think it was any one thing that did it. Deep just knew. He knew what was out there. There is no upper bound on sadness. There is no lower bound on decency. Deep saw it, he understood it, what was out there, and he let it seep in, and once it was in, it got all the way in, and it will never come out.
#
I open tickets. I do the work. I save up money.
Weeks go by. Kirthi opens up. (Just a little.)
She still refuses to look me in the eyes when we are kissing.
That’s weird, she says. No one does that.
How am I supposed to know that? I have not kissed many people, but I don’t want her to know it. I have seen in American movies that people close their eyes, but I have also seen that sometimes one person or the other will sneak open an eye and take a peek at the other one. I think it makes sense. Otherwise, how would you know what the other person is feeling? That seems to me to be the only way to be sure, the only way to understand, through the look on their face, what they are feeling, to be able to feel what they feel for you. So we kiss, she with her eyes closed, me looking at her, trying to imagine what she is feeling. I hope she is feeling something.
I am at a funeral.
I am having a bypass.
I am in drug rehabilitation.
I am in withdrawal.
#
She takes me to see her father.
He has the look. I remember this look. This is how my father looked.
He is living someone else’s life. He is a projection screen, a vessel, a unit of capacity for pain, like an external hard drive, a peripheral device for someone’s convenience, a place to store frustration and guilt and unhappiness.
We stand there in silence.
We go back to work.
I am at a funeral.
I am at a root canal.
The thing it is uncomfortable to talk about is: we could do it. We could get him out.
Finally, she can’t take it.
He has only four years left on his mortgage, Kirthi tells me.
The thing is, the way the market works, sellers like us never get full value on our time. It’s like a pawnshop. You hock your pocketwatch to put dinner on the table, you might get fifty bucks. Go to get it after payday and you’ll have to pay four times that to get it back.
Same principle here. I love Kirthi, I do. But I don’t know if I could give sixteen years of my life to get her father out. I could do it if I knew she loved me, but I don’t know it yet. I want to be a better man than this, I want to be more selfless. My life isn’t so great as it is, but I just don’t know if I could do it.
I am in surgery.
I am bleeding to death.
It doesn’t hurt at all.
#
Things progress. We move in together. We avoid planning for the future. We hint at it. We talk around it.
I am being shot at.
I am being slapped in the face.
I go home.
I rest.
I come back and do it again.
#
When I turned thirteen, my mother told me the story. She sat me down in the kitchen and explained.
“The day your father sold his life,” she said, “I wore my best dress, and he wore a suit. He combed his hair. He looked handsome and calm. You wore your only pair of long pants. We walked to the bank. You rode on his back.”
“I remember that,” I said.
“A man with excellent hair came out from some office in the back and sat down behind the desk.”
I remember that, too, I told her.
You get—we got—forty thousand a year, she said.
My dad sold his life for a fixed annuity, indexed to inflation at three percent annually, and a seventy percent pension if he made it full term: forty years, age seventy, and he could stop, he could come back to us, to his life.
There were posters everywhere, my mother said, describing that day, the reunion day. The day when you’ve made it, you’ve done it, you’re done.
There was a video screen showing a short film describing the benefits of mortgage, the glorious day of reunion. We would all drink lemonade in the hot summer air.
Just forty years, it said.
In the meantime, your family will be taken care of. You will have peace of mind.
“Time is money,” the video said. “And money is time. Create value out of the most valuable asset you own.”
“Don’t miss out on a chance of a lifetime.”
When we went home, I remember, my father went to lie down. He slept for twelve hours, twice as long as normal, and in the morning, while I was still asleep, he went and sold his life.
#
Things stop progressing with Kirthi.
Things go backward.
And then, one day, whatever it is we had, it’s gone. It won’t come back. We both know it.
Whatever it is she let me have, she has taken it away. Whatever it is when two people agree to briefly occupy the same space, agree to allow their lives to overlap in some small area, some temporary region of the world, a region they create through love or convenience, or for us, something even more meager, whatever that was, it has collapsed, it has closed. She has closed herself to me.
#
A week after Kirthi moves out, her father passes away.
My shift manager will not let me off to go to the funeral.
Kirthi doesn’t even ask if I would like to go anyway.
I should go.
I will be fired if I go.
But I don’t have her anymore. If I leave, I won’t have a job, either. I’ll never get her back if I don’t have a job.
I’m never getting her back anyway.
I don’t even know if I want her back.
But maybe this is why I don’t have her, could never, would never have had her. Maybe the problem isn’t that I don’t have a life. Maybe the problem is that I don’t want a life.
I go to work.
I open tickets.
I close tickets.
When I get home my apartment seems empty. It’s always empty, but today, more empty. The emptiness is now empty.
I call her. I don’t know what to say. I breathe into the phone.
I call her again. I leave a message. I know a guy in the billing department, I say. We could get some extra capacity, no one would know, find an open line. I could feel it for you. Your grief. I could bury your father for you.
I would say that I am tired of this substitute life, except that this is the only life I will ever have. It is a substitute for itself. A substitute for nothing. A substitute for something that never existed in the first place.
#
Three days later, when I get to work, there is a note on my desk, giving the time of the funeral service. Just the time and, underneath it, she scrawled, okay.
Okay.
I arrange for the hour. At the time, I open the ticket.
I am expecting a funeral.
I am not at a funeral.
I can’t tell exactly where I am, but I am far away. In a place I don’t recognize. She has moved to a place where I will never find her. Probably where no one will ever find her. A new city. A new life.
She paid for this time herself. She wanted to let me in. For once. Just once. She must have used up everything she had saved. The money was supposed to be for her father but now, no need.
She is walking along a road. The sun is hot, the air is dusty, but the day is alive; she feels alive, I feel alive for her.
She is looking at a picture we took—the only picture we took together, in a photo booth in the drugstore. Our faces are smashed together and in the picture she is not smiling, as usual, and I am smiling, a genuine smile, or so I have always thought about myself, but now, looking at myself through her eyes, I see that she sees that my own smile starts to decompose, like when you say a word over and over again, so many times, over and over, and you begin to feel silly, but you keep saying it, and then after a short while, something happens and the word stops being a word and it resolves into its constituent sounds, and then all of a sudden what used to be a word is not a word at all, it is now the strangest thing you have ever heard.
I am inside of her head.
I am a nice person, she is thinking. I deserve more, she wants to believe. She wants to believe it, but I can feel that she doesn’t. If only she could see herself through my eyes. If only she could see herself through my eyes looking through her eyes. I deserve to be loved, she thinks, but she doesn’t believe it. If only I could believe it for her. I want to believe in her, believe inside of her. Believe hard enough inside of her that it somehow seeps through.
She turns up the road and the hill gets steeper. The air gets hotter. I feel her sadness with every step, and then, right near the top of the hill, just the faintest hint of it: a smile. She is remembering us. The few happy moments we had.
I am standing on a hill. I am not at a funeral. I am thinking of someone I once loved. I don’t know if I am her thinking of me, or if I am me thinking of her, or if maybe, right at this moment, there is no difference.
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Apple recently launched an HTML5 showcase on its official website with several demos that are intended to highlight some of the advanced Web development capabilities that are made available by emerging standards. The showcase has attracted criticism from standards advocates, however, because it pops up a message telling users that they will need to download Safari in order to view the demos.
Some of the demos legitimately require Safari because they use Apple-specific Web features that are still at extremely early stages of the standardization process, but most of the demos will function properly in Chrome and Firefox. Apple's clumsy browser detection mechanism and careless attitude about the distinction between Safari features and actual standards has raised some troubling questions for the Web community.
It's worth noting from the start that the underlying idea of Apple's HTML5 showcase is not itself controversial. In fact, the Mozilla Hacks blog and Google's Chrome Experiments gallery both serve similar purposes. All three sites have some demos and content that rely to an extent on nascent technologies that are not yet supported across multiple browsers. It's also important to understand that browser-specific features are a necessary and important part of the Web's evolution—most new features that become standards are originally implemented in some experimental form by one of the major browser vendors.
The problem is that Apple's showcase lacks sufficient disclosure and clarity regarding the level of cross-browser support and industry acceptance for individual features.
Some of the language on the showcase page is misleading, and the message that it displays to non-Safari users is detrimental to the long-term goals of the HTML5 standards effort. Telling users that they need one specific browser in order to view HTML5 content downplays the availability of HTML5 support in other modern browsers and wrongly inflates the perception that HTML5 is fragmented. It's also troubling because it sets a bad example for third-party Web developers regarding best practices for browser detection.
Oddly enough, Apple has a whole separate version of the showcase on its developer website that exhibits none of these offensive characteristics. The more appropriately named "Safari Technology Demos" page has the same demos, but doesn't categorically block alternate browsers. I was able to test the demos in Chrome and found that most of them worked as expected. This alternate page is accessible by clicking the "Developers" link at the bottom of the HTML5 showcase. This alternate version of the showcase is much closer to how it should be done.
I don't think that anybody objects to Apple having a Safari Technology Demos page that shows off a mix of emerging Web standards and Safari features. But it's not appropriate to conflate browser-specific functionality and open standards in the manner that the HTML5 showcase page does.
Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard voiced his concern about the issue in a recent blog entry. He characterizes Apple's HTML5 showcase as a misguided marketing stunt and explains why it is detrimental to the browser ecosystem. He says that the browser block on the demos is a "F**k You" to the people who make and run other standards-compliant browsers. He also voices some criticism of Google, which he says has made similar mistakes in promoting its Native Client technology and other nonstandard features.
"Apple's messaging is clearly meant to say 'hey, we love the web' but the actual demos they have and the fact that actively block other browsers from those demos don't match their messaging. It's not intellectually honest at all," Blizzard wrote. "HTML5 is in a dangerous place since everyone wants to own it, but everyone is in a different place in terms of support or even what it means. I can’t promise what other organizations will do, but I can at least say what I will do in the future. At Mozilla, intellectual honesty matters and it matters to me personally. So I don’t think you’ll see us do things like this in the future."
Indeed, Mozilla has a reasonably good track record when it comes to accurately conveying the standardization status of Web technologies. This is particularly evident in the Mozilla Hacks blog, where posts consistently include appropriate disclosure in cases where nonstandard or Mozilla-specific technologies are discussed.
The real power of HTML5 is that it is vendor-neutral technology that anyone can implement and support with their own authoring tools. Apple should change its HTML5 showcase page to reflect the true spirit of the standard: interoperability and cross-browser support.
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(CNN) — From Australia to the Caribbean, there's no shortage of beautiful island hotels around the world.
Whether you're after a glitzy private island getaway or a low-key tropical destination , we've picked some of the world's most stunning island hotels where you can stay
1. Lacaula Island (Fiji)
Let's be honest: Beautiful is an understatement for this luxurious South Pacific hideaway, owned by Red Bull founder and CEO Dietrich Mateschitz. It's built on its own 3,500-acre private island studded with lush coconut groves and ringed by pristine white sand beaches.
Each of its 25 villas -- inspired by traditional Fijian bure -- boast leafy tropical gardens and private infinity-edge pools. As if that weren't enough to keep you occupied, there's also an equestrian center, five restaurants and countless coral reefs to be explored (via submarine, naturally).
2. Anantara Medjumbe Island Resort (Mozambique)
Anantara: Understated castaway chic. courtesy Anantara Medjumbe Island Resort
It doesn't get much more far-flung than this resort, tucked away on a tiny private island in the Quirimbas Archipelago, off the northern coast of Mozambique. But the views alone are worth the trek.
Upon arrival, you're greeted with miles of empty, powder-white sand and ocean so blue it barely looks real. The resort itself is gorgeous, with its castaway-chic aesthetic and whimsical, Arabian Nights-inspired decor. And though its wooden, thatched-roof villas may look simple, don't be fooled: They're decked out with luxe deep-soak tubs, roomy outdoor decks and plunge pools built just steps from the ocean.
Anantara Medjumbe Island Resort , Medjumbe Island, Quirimbas Archipelago, Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambique; +27 10 003 8979
3. Southern Ocean Lodge (Australia)
Built atop scrub-covered bluffs on the southwest tip of Australia's Kangaroo Island, this unique resort is another spot offering incredible views. Each of its 21 glass-fronted suites feature floor-to-ceiling windows and are cantilevered to ensure jaw-dropping panoramas over Hanson Bay. In contrast to its rugged coastal landscape, the lodge is sleek and ultramodern, built from sustainable materials like recycled gumtrees and local limestone.
It's also luxurious: Each suite has its own private terrace, sunken lounge and standalone bathtubs, perfectly positioned to soak in the glorious views.
Southern Ocean Lodge , Hanson Bay Road, Kingscote, Australia; +61 08 8559 7347
4. Cap Juluca (Anguilla)
This intimate boutique hotel, situated on Anguilla's turquoise-blue Maundays Bay, is a Caribbean classic. Its domed, Moorish-style villas are cheerful and stylish, decorated with colorful batiks, rattan furniture and coconut wood accents.
Though the vibe is beachy and relaxed, rooms abound with posh amenities like plush Frette linens and Hermès bath products. Added bonus: Every room is beachfront and has an ocean-facing patio.
Cap Juluca , Maundays Bay, Anguilla; +1 264 497 6666
5. Belmond Villa Sant'Andrea (Sicily, Italy)
Belmond Villa Sant'Andrea: Sicilian charm and jaw-dropping views. Roberto Bonardi
Though you'd be hard pressed to find a hotel in Sicily that's not picture-perfect, there's something especially dreamy about this one. Built as a villa in 1830, the beautifully renovated Belmond has retained the laid-back charm of a private family residence (think homemade Sicilian pastries upon check-in and fresh flowers in every room).
Suites are huge and indulgent, outfitted with enormous marble bathrooms and furnished French balconies that offer sweeping views over the Bay of Mazzarò. Added bonus: It even has its own private stretch of beachfront, fringed by lush subtropical gardens.
6. Four Seasons Resort Oahu at Ko Olina (Hawaii)
Opened in the summer of 2016 on the quiet western side of Oahu, this resort might be the island's most beautiful. The property is sleek yet earthy, and takes advantage of its gorgeous oceanfront setting with plenty of sun-drenched, indoor-outdoor spaces.
All 371 rooms are decorated in a modern Hawaiiana style, with banana-leaf wall coverings, banana leaf-printed pillows and local wood accents. But the hotel's pièce de résistance is its blissful adults-only infinity pool, which is tucked away from the main pool and beach area and overlooks the Pacific Ocean.
7. Secret Bay (Dominica)
Perched on a clifftop on the island of Dominica, this uber-luxe hotel remains relatively undiscovered compared with other Caribbean resorts of the same caliber. But therein lies its charm: Unlike the crowded, all-inclusive resorts of Bermuda and the Bahamas, this low-key boutique property feels like your own secret Caribbean hideaway.
Its eight treehouse-style bungalows are hidden amidst thick, jungle-like foliage and equipped with so many luxe features -- hammocks, plunge pools, sundecks, personal libraries -- that you won't ever want to leave. But you must, if only to walk down to its two stunning beaches or watch the sun set over the Caribbean Ocean from the gorgeous Vetiver Sunset Deck.
Secret Bay , Ross Boulevard, Portsmouth, Dominica; +1 767 445 4444
Related content 17 of the world's most overlooked islands
8. Soneva Jani (Maldives)
With 24 above-water villas and one sprawling island villa set on a private lagoon in the Maldives, the newest Soneva resort is one of the world's most beautiful hotels, period. Each of the resort's multilevel water villas -- made out of renewable plantation wood -- has its own private pool and a retractable roof that allows guests to sleep beneath the stars.
Many villas also have slides that transport guests directly from the top level into the lagoon below. Other hotel highlights include an observatory -- home to the largest telescope in the Indian Ocean -- and an outdoor floating cinema.
Soneva Jani, Medhufaru Island, Noonu Atoll, Republic of Maldives; +960 656 6666
9. The Naka Island, A Luxury Collection Resort & Spa (Phuket, Thailand)
The Naka Island: Splendid isolation. courtesy The Naka Island
Nestled on the northwest tip of Naka Yai island, off the coast of the larger island of Phuket, this Thai resort feels blissfully isolated. It's not a private island resort, but it feels that way, with just 67 villas draped along miles of deserted, unspoiled beachfront.
Villas are earthy yet luxurious, made entirely of wood, stone and clay, and equipped with private pools and steam rooms. If you can manage to drag yourself from your villa, make a beeline for the beachfront Z Bar, which serves up potent cocktails and epic sunset views.
The Naka Island , 32 Moo 5, Tambol Paklok, Amphur Thalang, Naka Yai Island, Phuket, Thailand; +66 (76) 371 400
10. The Cliff Hotel (Jamaica)
Though it sits directly on the ocean, this new boutique hotel isn't your typical beach getaway. For starters, there's no beach: True to its name, the hotel is perched on low, jagged cliffs that jut out dramatically onto the ocean.
Unlike its colorful, kitschy neighbors, The Cliff opts for a neutral-toned, minimalist vibe that allows its striking natural setting to steal the show. Still, its 33 rooms are as luxe as they come, outfitted with stylish hammocks, roomy balconies and, in some cases, private plunge pools.
The Cliff Hotel , West End Road, Negril, Jamaica; US 1 800 213 0583; UK 020 3002 0927
11. Cavo Tagoo (Mykonos, Greece)
Hugging a cliff high above the Aegean Sea, Cavo Tagoo remains a haven of peace and serenity on Greece's most visited island by tourists. The vibe is refreshingly modern and minimalist: whitewashed surfaces, exposed wood and stone, and sleek, clean furnishings.
Rooms come with with whirlpool baths, ocean-facing balconies and, in some cases, private plunge pools. No pool? No worries: The resort's communal infinity saltwater pool has an aquarium bar and the best sunset views on the island.
Cavo Tagoo Mykonos , Aegean Coasts S.A., Mykonos, Greece; +30 22890 20100
12. Belmond La Samanna (St. Martin)
La Samanna: Unspoilt beaches and killer cocktails. courtesy Belmond La Samanna
Editor's note: As of mid-April 2018, this resort was closed for hurricane repairs with a reopening target date by the end of 2018.
Easily the best resort in St. Martin, La Samanna brings tranquility and a touch of glamor to a fairly tourist-clogged island. Its 83 lavish rooms and eight Mediterranean-style villas are hidden behind 55 lush tropical acres on the unspoilt shores of Baie Longue.
Property highlights include two infinity pools, a heavenly spa, two French-Caribbean restaurants and a 12,000-bottle wine cave. But what you're really here for is the Moroccan-themed beach bar, which serves up potent cocktails and killer ocean views to match.
Belmond La Samanna , 97064 St Martin, CEDEX, French West Indies; +590 590 87 6400
Related content 10 most romantic islands in the world
13. Nihi Sumba (Sumba Island, Indonesia)
Though it's just an hour's flight from Bali, Nihi Sumba feels worlds away: It sits on a private 1.5-mile beach backed by 560 acres of tropical jungle. Its 28 thatched-roof villas are rugged yet luxurious, decorated with teak furnishings, traditional ikat-print fabrics and local Sumban art.
Though every villa is impressive, the Marrangga villas -- which feature beds elevated on cliffside platforms overlooking the ocean -- are where you want to be.
Nihi Sumba , Sumba Island, Indonesia; +62 361 757 149
14. North Island (Seychelles)
North Island: A celebrity favorite. courtesy North Island
Breathtaking natural beauty and innovative design come together on this heavenly private island resort in the heart of the Seychelles. Its 11 newly renovated villas feature a glamorous, castaway-meets-colonial vibe that blends seamlessly into its jungle-like natural surroundings.
Of course, there are five-star amenities to boot: indoor-outdoor bathrooms, deep-soak tubs and personal plunge pools, to name a few. It's no wonder that the resort's guest list includes the likes of Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt, George and Amal Clooney and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
North Island , Victoria, Mahé Seychelles; +248 4293 100
15. CéBlue Villas and Beach Resort (Anguilla)
Opened in 2014, CéBlue is one of Anguilla's newest and most luxurious resorts.
It has just eight eco-friendly hideaways built into the verdant hills above tranquil Crocus Bay on the island's northwest coast.
Lodgings are sleek and modern, and equipped with large saltwater swimming pools, 3,000-square-foot sun decks and frangipani-filled private gardens.
Thanks to the resort's linear, terraced design, guests can enjoy panoramic views over the Caribbean Sea from every single window.
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Financial assistance for the Dragon Boat Festival has been provided by the Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund and the Missouri Arts Council.
2018 The 14th Annual Kansas City International Dragon Boat Festival Dragon Boat Race Results
Community Division
First Place: JCCC China Hands
Second Place: KU Medical Pathology
Third Place: Rotary 13
School Division
First Place: University of Kansas
Second Place: Blue Valley West Chinese Club
Third Place: Kansas City Art Institute
Xi'an Delegates Participated in Kansas City's Dragon Boat Festival
Report by Joan Pu
A delegation of four members from Kansas City's sister city, Xi'an, participated in 14th Kansas City International Dragon Boat Festival on June 9, 2018. The delegation was led by Hanyun Dai, Advisor of Xi'an Municipal Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. The other delegates include two award-winning performers of Chinese traditional musical instruments, Nan Ma and Ting Li, and a horse dancing trainer, Bing Wang.
Besides dragon boat races, Kansas City's dragon boat festival has stage performance and cultural demonstration. The hour-long, high-quality professional music performance by Ms. Ma and Ms. Li received high praises from the audience. Photos of horse training also attracted curious visitors to the cultural demonstration tent.
Teresa Chien, Chair of the Xi'an Sister City Committee and President of the Society for Friendship with China, thanked Xi'an municipal government for supporting the Dragon Boat Festival and asked Ms. Dai to bring the warmest wishes from people of Kansas City to Xi'an. Ms. Dai thanked the hospitality the delegates received in Kansas City. She said she was very much impressed by the community involvement of the festival from children performing Chinese traditional dances; to over 10 dragon boat racing teams consisting of local businesses, non-profit organizations, and colleges; to hundreds and thousands of volunteering hours by local residents, some of whom are over 80 years old, to organize and help with the festival.
"Kansas City will celebrate its sister city relationship with Xi'an for 30 years next year. I would love to welcome another delegation from Xi'an to celebrate the anniversary with us at the 2019 Dragon Boat Festival," said Ms. Chien.
Dragon Boat Festival Pictures
Photo by Linda Hanley. Click to see larger view.
Photo by Dan Paulsen. Click to see larger view.
Chinese Garden Model On Display Jan Armstrong leads our Garden project.
The garden model was on display at
The Kansas City Museum, 3218 Gladstone Blvd., Kansas City, MO 54123.
The director is Anna Marie Tutera.
About Dragon Boat Festival Kansas City International Dragon Boat Festival
Dragon Boat Festival memorializes the Chinese patriotic poet Qu Yuan.
Qu Yuan - A Patriotic Poet of Warring States Period
Living in the latter part of the Warring States Period (476 BC - 221 BC), Qu Yuan was the earliest great patriotic poet as well as a great statesman, ideologist, diplomat and reformer in ancient China. He has the reputation of being one of the world four great cultural celebrities. The traditional Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated to commemorate him. His patriotic influence has left its mark on many subsequent generations in China and beyond.
Dragon Boat Festival and Qu Yuan
Qu Yuan was a minister to the Zhou emperor during the Warring States Period (475 - 221 BC). He was a wise man who was strongly opposed to the corruption of the imperial court.
Because of Qu Yuans success, he aroused jealousy in his fellow ministers. They plotted against him and convinced the emperor that Qu Yuan was a traitor. Qu Yuan was banished, and returned to his home town.
During his years of banishment, Qu Yuan collected legends and folk tales, and wrote poetry. He never lost his patriotic love for his emperor, and was greatly concerned about the future of the Zhou dynasty.
The Death of Qu Yuan
Eventually the Qin warriors overthrew the Zhou rulers and proceeded to plunder the country. On the 5th day of May, 278 BC, Qu Yuan learned about the fall of his capital city, and in a fit of despair, committed suicide by throwing himself into the Miluo River. The townspeople, hearing of Qu Yuans fate, rushed to their boats to try to save him. Since he was much loved, they tried to prevent the fish from eating his body by throwing rice dumplings into the water. They beat drums to keep evil spirits away.
To this day, the 5th day of the 5th lunar month is celebrated by eating rice dumplings (zong zi) and racing dragon boats. It is also a day for wearing talismans to keep away evil spirits. Adults drink Xiong Huang wine, and children wear fragrant silk pouches to guard against evil.
Modern Dragon Boat Racing
In Chinese culture, Dragon boat festival has been an important holiday for centuries, but in recent years dragon boat racing has become an international sport.
Qu Yuans 71st Descendant coming to Kansas City
Qu Wanshen is the 71st descendants of Qu Yuan is come to Kansas City June 14, 2014 as a Kansas City International Dragon Boat Festival observer, its a Honor for Kansas City and our Dragon Boat Festival. KC World Citizen of the Year Award: Bob Chien
Photography by Dan Gilbert Click to see larger photo
Kansas City Mayor Sylvester James Jr. presented the 2013 Kansas City World Citizen of the Year Award to Robert (Bob) Chien, long-time advocate of closer China-U.S. relations, chairman of the Kansas City-Xian Sister City Committee and President of the Society for Friendship with China. This is also a nice birthday present - the award is presented at the banquet on October 23, 2013 - Bob's 83rd birthday! Mr. Weiping Zhao, the Counsel General of Chinese Consulate in Chicago, also sent birthday card to congratulate Bob. A heart warming story --- Wang Lihong
Part II
click here for part I The Scholarship is $500=3100 Yuan. Let me tell you some details about the necessary expenses at college .You may know how much the $500 helps. The tuition in ShiDa is 3850 Yuan (the cheapest), and the accommodation is about 1200 Yuan per yea. A student may spend at least 600 Yuan per month for living. So the total expense for a student in college maybe 12000 Yuan per year. The $500 scholarship may be one fourth of the one year expense. The students in bad conditions can receive the grant from the government, 1000yuan to 3000 Yuan per year. We can also apply for loans to the bank with low rate. About 6 students in my class applied for it, including me. I applied for a total number of 20000 Yuan loan form the bank at my college. We must payback the loans within 6 years after living school. I also did some part-time job, making some money, which happened to many students in ShiDa.
In my opinion, I prefer to increase the number of scholarship to more students. If I have the power or right to give, I will give two students to share, not one student. I dont think $500 is a small amount of money. It is almost one fourth expense to a student for one year. As I know, it is a medium scholarship in similar scholarships in ShiDa. Students may find other ways to get money, such as applying for loans, part-time jobs. In addition, there are a lot of poor students in ShiDa. They may come from the villages, and even mountain villages. Their parents dont earn much, so they are in need of money. Let the sunlight shine more students that is my wish.
With the above information Society will maintain our Five annual scholarships, but we add two more scholarships this year in honor Lihong and KC marathon team, lets call Half Marathon/Scholarship Lihong can make the decision as two scholarships or become four Half Marathon/Scholarship.
Kansas City councilman Scott Wagner and Half marathon runner will make the scholarship Presentation.
With Bob Chiens suggestion, Shaanxi Normal University accept Wang LiHong as a member of Scholarship selection Committee member.
LiHong, Congratulation and keep dream and have faith in yourself. Puppeteer Show The puppeteers from City of Xi An, Jun Liang, Yunru Liang, Yi Yan, Xiaoyu Dou gave their best performance on the stage. Their shows include the Princess of Iron Fan, the Concubine of Tang Dynasty, the Dream of Red Chamber, and Zhong Kui. The audience loved the performance and was eager to take photos with the puppets and the puppeteers.
After the Dragon boat races, a thank-you dinner was provided for the guests from Xi An, the officials from Chinese Consulate and Kansas City, and more importantly, the volunteers who worked very hard for the Festival. The dinner banquet climaxed and ended with Chinese puppet shows. What a great event for Kansas City!
Photo by Dan Gilbert
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David Cook David Cook Photo by Ashlee Culverhouse /Times Free Press.
The American Bible Society just named Chattanooga the most Bible-minded city in America.
Good news? It's terrible news. Why couldn't we have ranked somewhere in the forgettable middle, crammed in between Waco (ranked 43rd out of 100) and Daytona Beach (65th)? We don't want to be at the front of the line like Peter, but rather on the outskirts, doubting and confused, like Thomas.
First place means the whole world's watching. First place means there is not one city in America that takes the Bible as seriously as we do.
Quick. We'd better get a few things in order.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.
Goodbye, 401(k). Adios, stock portfolio.
Jesus says not to invest in things of this earth, but to double down on the treasures of the spirit. Compassion. Prayer. Equanimity. All the things they don't sell at Walmart.
And get ready, Mr. Mayor. The next time you start talking about pensions, Christian protesters will flood the room, shouting about the sin of saving and storing up our money.
If they packed the house to oppose domestic partner benefits, just think of how angry they'll be about retirement funds, since Jesus talks amply about money (hint: he's not that partial to it) and never once about being gay.
Whatever you eat and drink, do so unto the glory of the Lord.
Next Sunday, I had planned on bathing in light beer and cheese dip, spending a fleshy four hours watching cheerleaders cavort while grown men -- whose combined salaries total more than some Third World countries' entire GDP -- brutalize one another for the chance to win really fat rings and tons of money.
It's called the Super Bowl.
And I'm starting to think it may be a sin.
You can't spell gluttony without g-u-t, and it's hard to experience Super Bowl Sunday without mass commercialism and consumption.
What would Jesus do?
What we really want to know is: What will Peyton do?
Every man that looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery.
At least Beyonce isn't performing at halftime again.
Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.
The top Bible city distinction is great news for the hundreds of homeless people
living in their vans and under the bridges, who undoubtedly will suddenly find themselves housed, fed and employed, as Chattanooga kills the fatted calf on their behalf.
It's wonderful news for all our nonprofits that run on budgets so thin they make shoestrings look fat. They'll be flush with money. (If we can't store it for ourselves, we have to do something with it.)
Every downtown block will have a homeless shelter. Just look at Portland, Maine. They're ranked 91st on the Bible list, and guess how many come-as-you-are, open-every-day, all-year homeless shelters they have?
(We have zero.)
"We have five," said Mark Swann.
Swann is executive director of Preble Street, a part soup kitchen, part shelter, part resource center for Portland's homeless poor. Back in the 1980s, Swann said, the city adopted a mantra: Nobody should ever sleep outside.
"It's part of Portland's values," he said.
And they're ranked 91st?
Lay down your swords.
Taken literally, this is bad news for Civil War reenactors. But with a touch of imagination, we can see that Jesus, who said this to his armed disciples, would in today's lexicon be talking about guns.
No more concealed carry. No more NRA. No more Stand Your Ground. No more guns in bars and trunks and parks.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Would this spell the end of political partisanship? Last call for military recruiters in the area? What does this mean for SEC rivalries?
What does any of this mean?
(It's a question I ask myself a lot while writing).
Let's be honest. The Bible? It's a bear of a book. One moment, I'm awash in divine love, the next, I've got Jesus telling me to sell my possessions, love my enemies and take up my cross.
It's like being embraced by a lover who's also a pickpocket. It's like standing on your head while the world turns upside down.
It's like losing your life.
"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die," Bonhoeffer wrote.
Who wants that? I'm telling you, we ought to tremble at this award, not ho-hum it. Can't we send it back? Thanks, but no thanks?
Because if we take it seriously, everything changes.
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Uh oh.
That doesn't apply to me, does it?
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.
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BHIWANDI: In a shocking incident a 23-year-old girl's private parts were slashed when she refused to get into prostitution.The pimp, a woman, had tortured the victim for few days but when she didn't budge, the pimp with the help of her two male friends slashed her breasts with a blade.Bhiwandi city police has arrested the pimp, Ruby Munshi, 34 and has launched a manhunt for her male friends Alam and Afjal who helped her.Alam lured the survivior, who hails from a poor family in Gujarat, to get married. He brought her to Mumbai and sold her to Ruby for Rs 30,000.The police learned about the incident after the victim got herself admitted in the Indira Gandhi Memorial hospital.In her complaint, the victim alleged that when she refused to get into prostitution, the accused first harassed her and then Rubi slashed her breasts and branded her with a hot iron rod."When we learned about incident on Friday from the doctor we immediately arrested Rubi." said RH Saste, police inspector of Bhiwandi city. Rubi was produced in the Bhiwandi court and remanded to police custody till March 25.
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Minnesotans could find themselves unable to use their driver's licenses to board domestic flights as early as 2016.
Updated: Dec. 31, 2015, 10:30 a.m. | Posted: Sept. 9, 2015, 7:03 a.m.
A showdown between Minnesota and the federal government over ID card standards could complicate air travel for Minnesotans as early as next year.
Federal officials have rejected a request by the state to extend the deadline. But Gov. Mark Dayton and state Senate leaders support changing the law during a special session in early 2016.
The federal government has said Minnesota will be given 120 days notice before the new IDs will be required.
If state lawmakers don't reassess their 2009 stance resisting federal security requirements for ID cards, Minnesotans could find themselves unable to use their driver's licenses to board domestic flights starting in 2016.
The path to resolving the issue — and avoiding that worst-case scenario — isn't straightforward, and may require significant cooperation between state and federal authorities.
What's behind this ID showdown between the state and the feds?
The Real ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005, required controversial new security measures for state-issued driver's licenses.
Many states were concerned about privacy and cost implications of the requirements, said state Sen. Scott Dibble, chair of the Senate's Transportation and Public Safety Committee. In response, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law in 2009 that barred the state from complying with the federal law's requirements.
"The thinking was that the states band together and try to leverage their influence," Dibble said. "The concerns are absolutely still valid, but the fact of the matter is that the states did not prevail in this debate, in this negotiation with the federal government."
Minnesota is now one of four states that is not in compliance with the federal requirement, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
What does not being compliant with federal ID rules mean for Minnesotans?
The implications go beyond being barred from air travel.
The federal government has been implementing the security requirements in four phases.
State-issued licenses or IDs that are compliant with the Real ID Act are already required at many federal facilities and nuclear power plants. The policy will go into effect at all federal facilities next month, according to a timeline published by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The final step in implementation of the Real ID Act would require people to show a federally recognized form of identification as soon as next year in order to board a domestic flight.
It's not yet clear how and when the federal government will institute any policy requiring the compliant IDs. It's important to note that full implementation of the Real ID Act, including requiring a federally approved ID to board a plane, would happen "no sooner than 2016," said Minnesota Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bruce Gordon.
"They have also said that they will give ample notice before that happens," Gordon said. "To date, they have not provided that notice."
What are alternatives to a state-issued ID?
The state does offer an enhanced driver's license or ID that does meet the Real ID Act requirement for an additional $15, but only 7,048 Minnesotans have requested those IDs, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.
Passports will also be accepted in lieu of a Real ID Act-compliant state-issued ID, although many Minnesotans don't have valid passports. About 37 percent of U.S. residents have valid passports as of 2014, according to statistics from the Bureau of Consular Affairs.
Should Minnesotans get an alternate ID right away?
This isn't a done deal yet.
The Minnesota Legislature could vote to overturn the ban. Or lawmakers could hope that the federal government blinks and backs down on the requirement. In either case, it will likely be a debate during the next session.
"To simply close our eyes and not take any action, not even consider having a discussion or debate around these issues, is playing a very interesting game of chicken with the federal government," Dibble said.
Dibble said that state officials will likely meet with U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials in the coming weeks to discuss the state's options.
It's also possible that the federal government could work with the state to ensure that Minnesotans using only state-issued IDs are granted an extension while the state distributed a new compliant ID card.
The commissioner of the Department of Public Safety is prohibited by law from implementing or planning to implement Real ID Act requirements. But Dibble said the fact that the state already issues enhanced IDs means the infrastructure to release the compliant IDs may already be in place.
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A man has died in hospital after being viciously beaten in front of about a dozen witnesses on an Edmonton LRT train last Friday.
"It looked like just some little scrap between two people … but then it kind of escalated. One guy was, like, telling the other one ‘stop, stop, stop, stop,’" said Scott McLeod, who was in the train car when the attack began.
Homicide Det. Colin Derkson says the attack took place in front of about a dozen passengers and appeared to be unprovoked. (CBC News)
Police were alerted to an attack going on inside the LRT car as it approached Clareview Station just before 2 p.m Friday.
Homicide Det. Colin Derkson says John Hollar, 29, was assaulted by another man shortly after the northbound train left Coliseum station.
The train stopped at Belvedere station, letting other passengers off, but the two men remained.
"The doors closed. The suspect was still assaulting the victim," said Ron Gabruck, director of operational support for Edmonton Transit.
He says the decision was made to continue to the next station, about 3 minutes away, where it would be easier for police and emergency workers to reach the train.
By the time the police arrived, Hollar was unconscious and the suspect had run from the scene.
"The driver is the person actually who came out and flagged down the first police officer, and then they ran together and he was able to point him out," Derkson said.
"If it wasn’t for the great teamwork … we probably would not have found [the suspect], certainly not that quickly. And it’s possible we would not have been able to identify him."
Hollar was taken to hospital in critical condition with head injuries, where he died two days later.
Jeremy Newborn, 29, is charged with aggravated assault, but police say those charges will now be upgraded to second-degree murder.
Police believe the two men may have known one another.
Passenger questions Edmonton transit response
Witness Scott McLeod says the train driver didn't offer any explanation to passengers as to what was being done to stop the assault.
He says he hit the yellow emergency bar several times.
"I didn’t hear any response. I was very scared."
McLeod and the rest of the passengers in the car got off when the train stopped at Belvedere station, but says he was surprised when the train continued on to Clareview.
"I was kind of surprised that the train didn’t just stop at Belvedere. I was expecting some kind of voice to come over the system, to tell people not to get on the train."
However, Gabruck says the security systems on the train worked as they were meant to. Passengers alerted the driver of the attack through a phone located in the car.
The driver was able to monitor the assault through a video camera.
"In fact, in this case, the driver did go over the PA system and did advise that police were called. The assault continued."
Investigators are now reviewing video surveillance.
Gabruck says it is the first homicide on Edmonton’s LRT system.
There have, however, been violent incidents on the system’s platforms. In May 2010, a woman was shot and killed in Stadium station after an argument. In November, three men were charged with attempted murder after pushing another man onto the tracks at Churchill station.
Gabruck says despite those incidents, Edmonton’s transit system isn’t any more dangerous than any other city's.
"I don’t think the Edmonton transit system is any different from any subway or transit system city across the country," he said.
"Edmonton is a big city. Crime is going to happen."
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As a first post, I figure it’s probably best to lay myself out there a bit so you can get to know me. I’ve been avoiding writing this post because it’s the one task out of all the others involved in creating a blog that makes all of this real. It’s the one piece of the puzzle that must be in place for this entire thing to work.
And that scares the ever-loving shit out of me.
I’m terrified of putting myself out there and having people hate on me, as folks are wont to do on le internets. But, such is life. Haters gon’ hate, so I may as well just be brutally honest. Propping up a facade is awfully hard work, and I’m lazy.
So, this is me with no filter:
A year ago I was depressed, kinda plump, getting lunch-drunk way too often, and was generally just a giant pile of ennui. Things weren’t bad, but they weren’t great either. Instagram-stalking the creative and edgy people whose lives I wanted to steal came to a depressing head, so I decided to cut the crap and take active steps to live the life I wanted so desperately.
Notice I said taking steps. This whole thing is a work in progress because…
…I’m rather gluttonous in that I can sometimes be found up-ending a bag of chips into my mouth, in part because I don’t want to have to wash cheese dust off my hands afterward. See? Lazy. I always have these grand daydreams of the super active life I’m going to lead; I act on those dreams 1/16th of the time. AND THAT’S OKAY. I’m working on getting better about that.
I am my own harshest critic. Something strange happens when I’m faced with a camera lens and I do this weird scared face and/or have drunk eyes. I made my poor friend Brennan take no less than 328 pictures of me so I could choose a SINGLE photo for our “about” page. #ofcourse I ended up choosing one of the first shots we took.
I have eczema and it’s been a life-long source of insecurity. The shitty thing is? Mine is mild in comparison to what some people have to endure. Eczema sucks, so I can’t imagine how bad others have it. In addition to searching for ways to slap this crap into remission (expect lots of future posts on sensitive skin care!), one of my goals for this year is to just accept my skin the way it is because I’ve come to learn that confidence counts for a great deal of how others perceive the way we look. Also, less stress hormones floating around my body = happy skin!
My main artistic jam is photography, but my soul yearns to become Norm Abrams of the New Yankee Workshop. I belong to a local hackerspace so I have some nifty tools at my disposal, but not nearly enough woodworking stuff, so sometimes I have to get creative with my limited resources. I get really weird about asking for help, so I usually teach myself how to do anything I don’t already know how to do and just try to make my own way. I’m a perfectionist and have a sponge for a brain so this typically works in my favor. As a bonus (for you all), I learn by trial and error. I’ve made pretty much every mistake ever and have learned the common pitfalls, so hopefully you won’t have to make the same mistakes I’ve made.
Obsession is my baseline operating mode. One moment, I’m buying materials to make laser etched linocuts of my face to ultimately graffiti around the city (true [unfinished] story), the next I’m drawing up plans to build myself a desk. I’m a revolving door of crafting and creating. Sometimes I finish things, but usually I don’t, unless that something is a gift for someone else (I thrive on deadlines!), but even then, not always. I’m hoping this blog will help me check some projects off my never ending to do list.
I take copious naps.
Much to my mother’s chagrin, I am often covered in lint.
Sometimes I go days without putting on real pants.
Whether we notice we’re doing it or not, most people curate their online persona to portray their bEsT eVeR!1! self. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it’s ultimately misleading. We all have faults. We all have crap in our lives we don’t want others to see, but perhaps it’s time to pull back the curtain a bit so we, as a whole, stop setting this false standard of what life is supposed to be like. Speaking from experience, when reality inevitably falls short of that impossible standard, it’s crazy-difficult to realize that everyone else has issues too. So, now you know some of mine.
My hope is that we can develop a symbiotic relationship here, wherein you will (fingers crossed) find some inspiration and usefulness in my posts, and I will be motivated to be better at life by all of you sitting there silently judging me.
If I haven’t scared you away already, you can expect fine posts like these in the future:
Making things with lasers! Because fire
Overly detailed tutorials because I’m an anal retentive crafter
How I manage my sensitive skin and being allergic to everything ever
DIY woodworking using only a dull hatchet and some shame (I kid, I kid)
My experience with a back-alley face laser, and the subsequent lesson on why face lasers are the type of thing one should not half-ass (I do not kid)
Many more posts not about lasers because I promise I have more going on than that
So, thanks for sitting through my long winded spiel. If you didn’t, here’s the tl;dr version: I’m lazy and gluttonous, I <3 wood, blog goals=you help me/I help you, LASERS.
The end!
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Xbox boss Phil Spencer has confirmed to Eurogamer that Microsoft's controversial exclusivity deal for Rise of the Tomb Raider "has a duration".
However, he declined to confirm how long that duration is set for.
Last night, during its Gamescom press conference, Microsoft and Square Enix made the surprise announcement that Rise of the Tomb Raider would launch holiday 2015 exclusively on Xbox. That, Spencer confirmed, means Xbox One and Xbox 360.
But the wording of its statement caused some to wonder whether the game would eventually launch on other platforms. Spencer wouldn't speak for Square Enix on this, but did compare the deal to that it had for Xbox One games Dead Rising and Ryse, which will also launch on PC.
Spencer's comments confirm Square Enix, owner of Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics, is free to do whatever it wants with the game and the franchise after the exclusivity deal ends, including releasing it on other platforms.
Here's our conversation:
"When people want me to say, can you tell us when or if it's coming to other platforms, it's not my job," Spencer told Eurogamer. "My job is not to talk about games I don't own. I have a certain relationship on this version of Tomb Raider, which we announced, and I feel really good about our long term relationship with Crystal and Square.
"I get the reaction I see. If I'm a PlayStation person all of a sudden I feel like, the franchise has gone. I didn't buy the IP. I didn't buy the studio. It's not mine. Where this thing will go over time, just like Dead Rising or Ryse, we'll see what happens with the game. I don't own every iteration of Tomb Raider.
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"I don't own them building Tomb Raider on other platforms. I can't talk about the franchise that way. I can talk about the deal I have."
So, what, exactly, is that deal?
"I have Tomb Raider shipping next holiday exclusively on Xbox. It is Xbox 360 and Xbox One. I'm not trying to fake anybody out in terms of where this thing is. What they do with the franchise in the long run is not mine. I don't control it. So all I can talk about is the deal I have. I don't know where else Tomb Raider goes."
Is there a time limit on the exclusivity period?
"Yes, the deal has a duration. I didn't buy it. I don't own the franchise."
Can you tell us how long the duration is?
"No. It's not because I'm trying to be a headfake on anybody. It's a deal between us and the partner. People ask me how much did we pay. There are certain things I'm just not going to talk about because it's a business deal between us and them. Obviously the deal does have a duration. I didn't buy the IP in perpetuity."
Angry gamers have directed many of their comments towards Square Enix, accusing the publisher of selling out and alienating their PlayStation and PC owning customers.
"Our friends at Microsoft have always seen huge potential in Tomb Raider and have believed in our vision since our first unveil with them on their stage at E3 2011," wrote Darrell Gallagher on the Tomb Raider tumblr. "We know they will get behind this game more than any support we have had from them in the past - we believe this will be a step to really forging the Tomb Raider brand as one of the biggest in gaming, with the help, belief and backing of a major partner like Microsoft."
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Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jorg Buttgereit (2016) Cult Epics
Directed by: Jorg Buttgereit
The name Jorg Buttgereit is infamous in the horror genre. Known the world over for being a shock filmmaker, with gory and disturbing films, yet his gritty, stylish form of filmmaking has a much overlooked artistic value to them. Jorg often gives his characters a realistic life struggle like depression or schizophrenia but a lot of the time these things are over shadowed by murder and necrophilia. With that being said there is a lot more to Jorg’s films than just corpse fucking. The four films in this set which are his most well known and most notorious movies are some of the most sophisticated and artistic that the genre has to offer, in my opinion. I believe he and his films really paved the way for some of the more shocking films you see today such as The Human Centipede series. I am fairly positive that without Jorg a lot of this stuff wouldn’t be out today.
Thanks to Cult Epics, Jorg’s four standout films; Nekromantik, Nekromantik 2 Der Todesking and Schramm are now available on BD in the U.S. for the first time. Cult Epics has released all four individually over the last year or so. But if you haven’t picked up the individual release you can snag this killer set. I am not going to review each film because we have already done so on Exorcast.
Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jorg Buttgereit is a four disc BD set containing; Nekromantik, Der Todesking, Nekromantik 2 and Schramm. You get the soundtracks of all four films in a 2 CD set, also included is a 40 page book with an introduction by Nico B. of Cult Epics, interviews and exclusive images.
This is one of those sets that every horror collector needs in their collection. All four disturbingly beautiful films in one place, uncut and uncensored. The set will only set you back about $65.00 on DiabolikDVD.com. Well worth the price of admission for all that you get.
Special features include; Two versions of Nekromantik, new introductions for each film by Jorg Buttgereit, Q&A with Jorg Buttgereit, audio commentaries, making ofs, featurettes, still photo galleries, trailers, documentary: Corpse Fucking Art, short films, music video: Half Girl by Jorg Buttgereit and a live concert of Nekromantik 2.
Nekromantik
Nekromantik tells the story of Rob (Daktari Lorenz) who works at a street-cleaning Agency, and visits roadside accidents to clean up the scene. Incidentally Rob collects the body parts and shares them with his girlfriend Betty (Beatrice M.) When Rob presents a complete corpse taken out of a swamp, their undying love reaches its peak, but soon after Betty gets a more liking towards the corpse and leaves Rob, which takes him to the sick end of his destruction.
Nekromantik 2
From director Jorg Buttgereit comes Nekromantik 2, the gore horror sequel to his 1987 classic Nekromantik. Monika (Monika M.) is a beautiful necrophiliac who lives alone in Berlin. By day she works as a nurse. By night she prowls through cemeteries while searching for fresh corpses. When she reads about the suicide of Rob (Nekromantik’s Daktari Lorenz) she finds his grave to dig up his body and brings it home. Mark (Mark Reeder) lives across town and makes his living dubbing “sex films”. After meeting Monika, romance blossoms and they fall in love. But all is not well in Monika’s world. Her relationship with Mark begins to falter and she has to make a final choice between loving the living or the dead.
Der Todesking
Cult Epics presents the third release in the series Corpse Fucking Art; Jorg Buttgereit’s powerful masterpiece Der Todesking (aka The Death King), made in between Nekromantik (1987) and Nekromantik 2 (1991). Seven stories on Death and Suicide, each taking place on a different day of the week, enframed by the decomposition of a human body.
Schramm
SCHRAMM The story of a deranged serial killer from the director of Nekromantik. Lothar Schramm (Florian Koemer von Gustorf) is dying, face down in a pool of his own blood. Behind his closed eyes, fractured memories repeat themselves. He runs by the sea. He lusts after the whore (Nekromantik 2’s Monika M.) across the hall. He staggers through life uncertainly. He kills. Schramm is the story of the notorious “Lipstick Killer” Lothar Schramm’s last days on earth. Revealed in a series of tightly constructed flashbacks, the film offers an unflinching look into the mind of a serial killer. Uncompromising in its depictions of violence and perversion, Schramm is a poetic masterpiece of horror guaranteed to make you squirm.
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This article is over 4 years old
Ian Forman of Birkenhead sentenced to 10 years in prison after making homemade bomb and drawing up list of targets
A Nazi sympathiser who planned to blow up mosques in Merseyside has been jailed for 10 years.
Ian Forman, 42, from Birkenhead, was convicted of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts following an 11-day trial in March.
Forman, who had a "deep hatred" of Muslims, made a list of mosques near his home, which he referred to as his "dreck ziel" – a German phrase literally meaning "filth target".
He researched how to make bombs online and tested explosives at his home before police discovered chemicals and a homemade explosive device in his bedroom in June last year, Kingston crown court heard.
Forman, who expressed rightwing views on social media and spoke of his admiration of Adolf Hitler and the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, owned part of an SS officer's uniform which he planned to display on a mannequin, the court heard.
Police found a film he had made of himself wearing an SS officer's hat while playing video games.
Sentencing Forman to 10 years, the judge, Paul Dodgson, said the would-be terrorist had acted in a "racist, abusive and extremely offensive manner".
He added: "You in your perverted way believed that your activities were a continuation of Nazi warfare."
David Mason QC, in mitigation, said Forman was "not your average terrorist" and had struggled in Belmarsh prison alongside a large number of inmates from ethnic minorities.
"Everything this man did was geared towards his hate towards the ethnic community," he said.
"It is consistent with someone who thought about it for a very long time but actually never stepped out of his front door to do it. He perhaps came across as someone rather pathetic, very bright, holding appalling views but not your average terrorist."
Forman came to the attention of police in April 2013 while he worked as a receptionist at a glass recycling firm in Ellesmere Port.
Colleagues found that he had been researching chemicals and explosive substances on the internet during work hours – a breach of company policy.
He was called in for internal disciplinary meetings, during which he claimed his research was for his hobby of making fireworks.
Unconvinced, the company called Merseyside police, prompting his arrest.
After the sentencing on Thursday, DS Matt Findell of the north-west counter-terrorism unit said: "Thankfully, we will never know how far Forman was prepared to go in acting out his racist fantasies.
"However, we do know that Forman had carefully selected a number of targets to meet his own means. Had he carried them out, his attacks could have caused considerable damage to both property and people at several mosques.
"The north-west counter-terrorism unit has extensive experience of investigating individuals and groups who hope to threaten, intimidate and attack people for their own twisted political ends.
"We have demonstrated once again with today's result that we will use every means at our disposal to protect our communities."
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Image caption The Greek justice ministry was taken down after being hacked
The FBI is investigating how activists linked to the Anonymous network managed to intercept a conference call between British and US police in which they discussed legal action against hackers.
Anonymous has released a tape of the call in which detectives give details of alleged hackers being tracked.
The FBI said the information had been obtained illegally.
Later, it emerged Anonymous had also hacked the websites of US police forces and the Greek justice ministry.
The FBI said in a statement: "The information was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained. A criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible."
London's Metropolitan Police's central e-crime unit said the matter was being investigated but that no operational risks had been identified.
'Highly embarrassing'
Anonymous is a loose collective of "hacktivists" which has been responsible for cyber attacks on various companies, governments and individuals in recent years.
What is Anonymous? Anonymous describes itself as an "internet gathering". The term is used to describe a collective of people who come together online, commonly to stage a protest. The groups vary in size and make-up depending on the cause. Members often identify themselves in web videos by wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularised by the book and film V for Vendetta. Its protests often take the form of disrupting websites and services. Its use of the term Anonymous comes from a series of websites frequented by members, such as the anarchic image board 4Chan. These allow users to post without having to register or provide a name. As a result, their comments are tagged "Anonymous". In the past, groups have staged high-profile protests against plans by the Australian government to filter the internet and the Church of Scientology. Many Anonymous protests tackle issues of free speech and preserving the openness of the net.
The recording of the conference call - said to have taken place on 17 January - was posted on YouTube, along with an email allegedly sent by the FBI to law enforcement agencies in various countries giving details of how to dial in to it.
It invited them to "discuss the on-going investigations related to Anonymous, Lulzsec, Antisec, and other associated splinter groups".
It was unclear how Anonymous obtained the recording, but a lawyer for one of the suspects discussed in it told the BBC it appeared to have been taken as an audiofile from an intercepted email, rather than having been eavesdropped on.
A comment on one of the Twitter accounts linked to Anonymous, AnonymousIRC, said: "The FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now."
The recording features about five men calling from the UK, Los Angeles and Washington, who discuss in detail the ongoing investigations into hacking and action being taken against suspects.
Among them are several British men accused of being behind cyber attacks in the US and UK.
The police give the online pseudonyms of suspects but the real names have been bleeped out of the recording.
When the British detectives discuss delaying some arrests while US investigations are being carried out, the FBI agent thanks them for their co-operation.
The British detective replies: "We're here to help. We've cocked things up in the past, we know that."
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the recording will be highly embarrassing for the cyber crime detectives.
'More mayhem'
Later on Friday, Anonymous said it was behind an attack on a police website in the US city of Boston.
A message posted on the site before it was taken down said it had been targeted in response to "police brutality" towards the Occupy Wall Street movement and warned there was "plenty more mayhem to deliver".
Meanwhile police in Salt Lake City, Utah are investigating a cyber attack on Tuesday on a site used by residents to report crimes.
The site was taken down and Detective Dennis McGowan said police were "knee deep in trying to get a feel for the extent of the problem".
Hackers operating under the Anonymous name also took over the website of Greece's justice ministry on Friday in a protest against the country's signing of a global copyright treaty and the government's handling of the economic crisis.
The website was replaced with a video of a figure wearing the symbolic white mask of Anonymous supporters, saying: "Democracy was given birth in your country but you have killed it."
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At their upcoming home game against Edmonton on November 1st, the Toronto Maple Leafs and MLSE Foundation will raise awareness for reconciliation and honour Indigenous people in Canada who have lost their lives to residential school and suicide, and the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women. The initiative reflects the organization's continued support of Indigenous communities, and especially the youth, across Canada.
To mark this occasion, a special video will be played at Air Canada Centre that evening featuring Gord Downie's recent live performance of Secret Path and highlighting The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund that has been created to support reconciliation across Canada. Secret Path tells the story of Chanie Wenjack, the 12-year-old Ojibway boy who ran away from his residential school in 1966 and died 6 days later on the side of the tracks trying to get home. During intermission, Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler will be present at ice level, accompanied by Fred Sasakamoose, the NHL's first Indigenous hockey player, as well as Josée Lusignan, president of I Love First Peoples.
The initiative came at the request of Lusignan: "As a non-Indigenous Canadian, I want to see more Canadians involved in reconciliation. In light of the massive impact Gord is having on our nation, we have an opportunity to bring reconciliation into every home in Canada and honour Indigenous people in a way that is unprecedented. Our organization brings forth ideas and projects that make it easy to get involved." I Love First Peoples is in talks with other NHL and CFL teams to bring more awareness events in coming months.
"The Toronto Maple Leafs and MLSE Foundation feel it is important to engage Canadians in this moment of reconciliation," said MLSE Foundation Head of Community Affairs Michael Bartlett. "Our continued programming, which directly supports the lives of today's Indigenous youth, reflects how we feel about the treatment of Indigenous Canadians - in the past and in the present."
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Portuguese
GENEVA (9 December 2016) – Government plans to freeze social spending in Brazil for 20 years are entirely incompatible with the country’s human rights obligations, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston.
The principal and unavoidable effect of a proposed amendment to the Constitution designed to ‘lock in’ a budget freeze in order to show fiscal prudence will be to harm the poor for decades to come, the expert warned. The amendment, due to be voted on by Brazil’s Senate on 13 December, is known as PEC 55 or the New Fiscal Regime.
“If adopted, this amendment would lock in inadequate and rapidly dwindling expenditure on health care, education and social security, thus putting an entire generation at risk of social protection standards well below those currently in place,” Mr. Alston said.
The independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council called on the Brazilian Government to ensure a proper public debate on PEC 55, to estimate its impact on the poorest segments of society, and to identify alternative measures to achieve the goals of austerity.
“One thing is certain,” he stressed. “It is completely inappropriate to freeze only social expenditure and to tie the hands of all future governments for another two decades. If this amendment is adopted it will place Brazil in a socially retrogressive category all of its own.”
The plan to change the Constitution for the next 20 years comes from a Government that came to power after the impeachment of the former President and which has thus never presented a program to the electorate. This raises even stronger concerns about the proposal to tie the hands of future governments.
Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy and has suffered its deepest recession in decades, with an unemployment rate that has almost doubled since the beginning of 2015.
The Government says a spending freeze mandated by the constitution will increase investors’ confidence by reducing public debt and interest rates, and will therefore help pull the country out of recession. But the special rapporteur warns it will have a severe impact on the least well-off.
“This is a radical measure, lacking in all nuance and compassion,” he said.
“It will hit the poorest and most vulnerable Brazilians the hardest, will increase inequality levels in an already very unequal society, and definitively signals that social rights are a very low priority for Brazil for the next 20 years.”
He added: “It clearly violates Brazil’s obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which it ratified in 1992, not to take ‘deliberately retrogressive measures’ unless there are no alternative options and full consideration has been given to ensure that the measures are necessary and proportionate.”
Mr. Alston pointed out that over the last few decades, Brazil had established an impressive social protection system aiming to eradicate poverty and recognize people’s rights to education, healthcare, work and social security.
“These policies have contributed substantially to reducing poverty and inequality in the country. It would be a historic mistake to turn back the clock now,” he said.
Brazil’s National Education Plan calls for adding R$37 billion annually to provide a quality education for all students, while this amendment will reduce planned spending by R$47 billion over the next eight years. With more than 3.8 million children out of school, Brazil cannot ignore their right to go to school, nor the right of all children to a quality education.
The debate on PEC 55 has been rushed through the National Congress by the new Government with limited participation by the groups affected, and without studying its impact on human rights. A recent survey suggested that that 43% of Brazilians are not aware of the plan, and among those who are aware, a majority oppose it.
The expert, who is engaging with the Brazilian Government to clarify the process and substance of the proposed amendment, stressed that “showing fiscal and economic prudence and honouring international human rights law are not mutually exclusive, as both focus on the importance of carefully designed measures that avoid negative effects on people as much as possible.”
“Immediate negative effects need to be balanced with potential longer-term gains, as well as efforts to protect the most vulnerable, especially the poorest in society,” he the noted.
“International economic studies, including research by the International Monetary Fund, show that fiscal consolidation typically has the short-term effect of reducing incomes, raising unemployment and increasing income inequality. And in the long-term there is no empirical evidence to suggest that these measures will achieve the objectives suggested by the Government,” the expert underscored.
Mr. Alston’s appeal to the Brazilian authorities has been endorsed by the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Ms. Koumbou Boly Barry.
The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms of the Human Rights Council that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity. Learn more, log on to: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/Welcomepage.aspx
UN Human Rights, country page – Brazil: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/LACRegion/Pages/BRIndex.aspx
For more information and media requests, please contact Ms. Junko Tadaki (Tel: + 41 22 917 9298 / jtadaki@ohchr.org ) or write to srextremepoverty@ohchr.org
For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts:
Xabier Celaya – Media Unit (+ 41 22 917 9383 / xcelaya@ohchr.org)
For your news websites and social media: Multimedia content & key messages relating to our news releases are available on UN Human Rights social media channels, listed below. Please tag us using the proper handles:
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Death Row inmates oppose Prop. 34
This injection table, with straps, would be used for the exectuion of a condemned prisoner. Officials from San Quentin State Prison display the newly completed Lethal Injection Facility, on Tuesday Sept. 21, 2010 in San Quentin, Calif. less This injection table, with straps, would be used for the exectuion of a condemned prisoner. Officials from San Quentin State Prison display the newly completed Lethal Injection Facility, on Tuesday Sept. 21, ... more Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Death Row inmates oppose Prop. 34 1 / 4 Back to Gallery
Like other state prisoners, the 725 inmates on California's Death Row can't vote. But if they could, there's evidence that most of them would vote against a November ballot initiative to abolish the death penalty.
It's not that they want to die, attorney Robert Bryan said. They just want to hang on to the possibility of proving that they're innocent, or at least that they were wrongly convicted. That would require state funding for lawyers and investigators - funding that Proposition 34 would eliminate for many Death Row inmates after the first round of appeals.
Bryan has represented several condemned prisoners in California as well as Mumia Abu-Jamal, the radical activist and commentator whose death sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman was recently reduced to life in prison. The attorney said California inmates have told him they'd prefer the current law, with its prospect of lethal injection, to one that would reduce their appellate rights.
"Many of them say, 'I'd rather gamble and have the death penalty dangling there but be able to fight to right a wrong,' " Bryan said.
Or, as Death Row inmate Correll Thomas put it in a recent newspaper essay, if Prop. 34 passes, "the courthouse doors will be slammed forever."
Added legal rights
The seeming paradox reflects the tangled legal procedures surrounding capital punishment and the state's efforts to guard against wrongful convictions and executions by providing additional rights to the condemned.
All criminal defendants who can't afford to hire a lawyer have a right to legal representation, at state expense, for their trial and appeal. But only those sentenced to death are guaranteed a state-funded legal team for the post-appellate proceedings known as habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus allows inmates to challenge their convictions or sentence for reasons outside the trial record - typically, incompetent legal representation, misconduct by a judge or juror, or newly discovered evidence. Such challenges are reviewed by both state and federal courts.
For condemned prisoners, it often represents their best chance to stave off execution by presenting their claims to federal judges, who are appointed for life, rather than elected state judges. A ruling that leads to their acquittal, or even a finding of innocence, is also more likely in habeas corpus than in the earlier direct appeal.
Life without parole
Prop. 34, on the Nov. 6 ballot, would replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. Death Row inmates would have their sentences reduced to life - and, as a consequence, lose access to state-funded lawyers for habeas corpus, except for those who have already filed their claims.
They would have to file them on their own, or with volunteer lawyers. A judge who finds strong evidence of innocence could order the state to pay the inmate's legal costs for further proceedings.
More than 300 inmates would be affected by the measure's passage, said Bryan, who as a state-appointed habeas corpus lawyer won a state Supreme Court ruling last month overturning a death sentence for a double murder in San Jose.
Same legal footing
Attorney Natasha Minsker, the Yes on 34 campaign manager, said the initiative would place now-condemned inmates "in the same position as every prisoner convicted of a serious felony in California," with the same right to go to court.
They would no longer automatically get state-funded lawyers for habeas corpus claims, Minsker said. The main purpose of those lawyers now is "to save a person's life" from a wrongful execution, but that task would disappear if Prop. 34 passed, she said.
No one has polled Death Row inmates on Prop. 34. But an organization called the Campaign to End the Death Penalty sent letters to 220 condemned prisoners in California and received about 50 replies, all but three of them against the ballot measure, said Lily Mae Hughes, the group's director.
The reasons were described in commentaries carried in June by San Francisco's BayView newspaper from three condemned prisoners, two of them opposing Prop. 34.
"We are in fact taking a step backward in our ability to challenge our convictions," said Kevin Cooper, convicted of murdering four people, including two children, in San Bernardino County after his escape from prison in 1983. State and federal courts have upheld his death sentence, although five federal judges declared in a dissenting opinion two years ago that they believed he might be innocent.
Thomas, whose death sentence for the fatal shooting of a San Diego motorist was upheld by the state Supreme Court last year, said fellow inmates agree with him that life without parole is "another death penalty."
Donald Ray Young, one of two brothers sentenced to death for the 1995 murders of five people at a bar in Tulare - crimes they deny committing - supported Prop. 34.
"Let us choose the ballot box," he wrote, "or the pine box will choose us."
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Bi the Bi: Two Bi Writers on Big Bi Issues
This blog post is part of an ongoing conversation between two bisexual activists. A.J. Walkley and Sarah Smith* are both monogamous, bisexual, cisgender females who are in long-term relationships. A.J. is in a relationship with a cisgender male, and Sarah is in a relationship with a cisgender female. Both A.J. and Sarah are committed to remaining visible as bisexuals in spite of society's tendency to want to label A.J. as heterosexual and Sarah as a lesbian. Together they came up with the idea for "Bi the Bi: Two Bi Writers on Big Bi Issues" as a way to help eliminate stereotypes and bias against people in the bisexual community.
*pseudonym
Question: "Does 'bisexual' imply that there are only two genders?"
A.J.: The idea that bisexuals are attracted to only two genders is an incredibly common stereotype of all bisexuals. Many people assume that the "bi" aspect of the word "bisexuality" implies a gender binary, and that those who identify as bisexual are only attracted to males and females. Though there are definitely bisexual individuals who are only attracted to cisgender people with male and female gender identities, there are also bisexuals who are attracted to people who are transgender, intersex, genderqueer and more; this assumed definition of "bisexual" leaves out those of us who are attracted to gender-nonconforming people -- those who fall outside the "male" and "female" ends of an incredibly wide gender spectrum. Last summer I actually wrote a blog post about this issue in which I explained that, according to the definition of bisexuality put forth in the 1990 "Bisexual Manifesto," bisexuality does not "assume that there are only two genders." On the contrary, the binary implied in the word "bisexual" pertains to our ability to be attracted both to individuals who are the "same" as us and to those are "different" from us -- meaning we have the capacity to be attracted to people all across the gender and sexuality spectra.
Unfortunately, definitions of "bisexual" do not always encompass this truth. Just look at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of the term: "of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward both sexes." The fact that "both sexes" is referred to not only leaves out an incredible amount of people with whom many bisexuals enter into relationships but disregards the fact that there are many, many more than just two sexes or genders. Would you agree, Sarah?
Sarah: Defining bisexuality, just like defining any identity label, can be complicated and controversial. My definition of the label "bisexual" is informed by the work of The Bisexual Organizing Project. It includes people who use labels such as "bisexual," "non-monosexual," "persexual," "omnisexual," "ambisexual," "pansexual," "queer" or any other term that people use to identify themselves as individuals who are emotionally, romantically or physically attracted to people of more than one sex, gender or gender identity. I also recognize that not everyone chooses to adopt a label to describe their sexual orientation, and I also include non-labeling people who see themselves as part of a queer, non-monosexual or bisexual community under my definition of "bisexual."
When I say I'm a bisexual activist, I conceptualize myself as someone who is taking action to improve the lives of all people who fit under my definition of bisexual. As a bisexual person I have a tangible understanding of what biphobia is and how it is unique from other forms of oppression. I understand the power of bi pride, and I'm on a mission to strengthen it in myself and share it with others.
The word "bisexual" doesn't imply that there are only two genders any more than the words "heterosexual," "homosexual" or lesbian do. Each of the sexual identity groups I just mentioned is going through its own process of developing a more sophisticated understanding of gender. I applaud everyone who is talking about and challenging the concept that people must be trapped in gender roles assigned to them by society. I stand in solidarity with those who are working to build a society that embraces all forms of gender identity and expression.
Readers, it's your turn: How would you answer this question?
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Tim Miles buys 100 tickets to ensure Nebraska students get in free
Tim Miles is picking up the tab for 100 UNL students to get into Sunday's Husker hoops game against Northwestern.
In order to get one of the free tickets, students are instructed to line up at the student entrance at Pinnacle Bank Arena (south side next to the Husker Fan Shop) when gates open at 11:45 a.m. on Sunday. A valid student ID must be shown to be eligible for the free tickets, and they will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.
The Huskers are off to their first 3-0 conference start in 41 years, and Miles wants PBA rocking when NU hosts the Wildcats.
Hey #UNL students, still need tickets for Sunday?
Coach Miles has you covered.
????: https://t.co/xysKOO1V8f pic.twitter.com/8KREvXT4UM — Nebraska Basketball (@HuskerHoops) January 6, 2017
via Nebraska athletics
Tag: Huskers
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The only reason to think Republicans are serious about their threat to have the Federal government default rather than raise the debt ceiling is that they have an undue fondness for apocalyptic outcomes. I suppose I should actually favor this sort of thing; I’ve long thought the only hope for getting the US freed from rule by financiers was another financial crisis, provided it came soon enough and it was big enough. This one might fit the bill on those scores.
However, with the immediate trigger being pigheaded Congressmen, the banks might look like innocent victims, when the ballooning of public debt around the world was the direct result of their recklessness and the resultant global economy near-death experience. So a debt-ceiling-row-induced great big financial dislocation would probably not produce the opportunity to break the power of banks that yours truly and many others are looking for.
As the hour of reckoning approaches, more and more creative ideas to disarm the Republican weapon are being put forward, and an intriguing one comes from, of all places, a Republican, Ron Paul. As described by Dean Baker in the New Republic last week, Paul’s plan is simple – have the Fed cancel some or all of the Treasuries it got via its quantitative easing programs:
Unlike the debt held by Social Security, the debt held by the Fed is not tied to any specific obligations. The bonds held by the Fed are assets of the Fed. It has no obligations that it must use these assets to meet. There is no one who loses their retirement income if the Fed doesn’t have its bonds. In fact, there is no direct loss of income to anyone associated with the Fed’s destruction of its bonds. This means that if Congress told the Fed to burn the bonds, it would in effect just be destroying a liability that the government had to itself, but it would still reduce the debt subject to the debt ceiling by $1.6 trillion. This would buy the country considerable breathing room before the debt ceiling had to be raised again. President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership could have close to two years to talk about potential spending cuts or tax increases. Maybe they could even talk a little about jobs.
Baker points out a second benefit. Canceling the bonds The only use the Fed had for those bonds was to eventually sell them back to the public to soak up liquidity when it started worrying about inflation. But the Fed can achieve that end the old fashioned way, by raising reserve requirements.
So getting rid of the bonds formally in one stroke really would reduce the debt level, because it saves the interest payments that would have been made to investors after the Fed’s Treasury bonds were sold back in the open market.
The Baker discussion says Congress would have to approve this maneuver, and that would seem to put everything back at square zero. But perhaps not. I’m not terribly conversant with the fault lines within the Republican camp, but Ron Paul has a great deal of appeal with voters. The fact that he’s willing to put out a clean, viable third option may suggest that he is not alone in recognizing that his fellow party members are playing Russia roulette with all chambers loaded. And as one of the Fed’s longest-standing critics, for him to say, effectively, that some of the Federal debt has effectively been monetized, why not quit pretending otherwise, is close to a Nixon comes to China moment.
Paul’s gambit is also a clever way to hoist the banks on their own petard. The deficit hysteria has in no small measure been driven by the banks as part of a desire to enforce their new program of insulating bondholders from losses, including those of inflation. State support for policies like that amounts to socialism for rentiers, since the reason bonds pay more interest that Treasury bills is interest rate risk and credit risk. If investors want a premium yield, they should expect to bear the hazards which go with them.
I hope Paul prevails. When a Congressman who has often been depicted as a wingnut has the best idea in the room, you know a serious house cleaning is in order.
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Raiders undrafted rookie cornerback, Jansen Watson, has left the team to "contemplate his future" a Raiders spokesman told members of the media Sunday, including Steve Corkran of the Bay Area News Group.
This on the heels of what was a pretty good looking performance in the Raiders' preseason opener against the Vikings. He had a couple of passes defended which were very nearly interceptions. He had made several plays very much like that in training camp as well, and even if making the roster was going to be a tough climb, the practice squad was not out of the question.
Watson went undrafted out of Iowa State and was one of two players the team signed immediately following his tryout for the team in rookie minicamp.
The 5-9, 174-pound Watson was a fifth year senior. He started 19 games over his final two seasons for the Cyclones. In his final season he had one interception, a team leading 8 passes defended, and 29 tackles over nine starts. His one interception last season was the only of his college career.
Follow @LeviDamien
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According to financial research firm ICI, total retirement assets in the Land of the Free now exceed $23 trillion.
$7.3 trillion of that is held in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs).
That’s an appetizing figure, especially for a government that just passed $19 trillion in debt and is in pressing need of new funding sources.
Even when you account for all federal assets (like national parks and aircraft carriers), the government’s “net financial position” according to its own accounting is negative $17.7 trillion.
And that number doesn’t include unfunded Social Security entitlements, which the government estimates is another $42 trillion.
The US national debt has increased by roughly $1 trillion annually over the past several years.
The Federal Reserve has conjured an astonishing amount of money out of thin air in order to buy a big chunk of that debt.
But even the Fed has limitations. According to its own weekly financial statement, the Fed’s solvency is at precariously low levels (with a capital base of just 0.8% of assets).
And on a mark-to-market basis, the Fed is already insolvent. So it’s foolish to think they can continue to print money forever and bail out the government without consequence.
The Chinese (and other foreigners) own a big slice of US debt as well.
But it’s just as foolish to expect them to continue bailing out America, especially when they have such large economic problems at home.
US taxpayers own the largest share of the debt, mostly through various trust funds of Social Security and Medicare.
But again, given the $42 trillion funding gap in these programs, it’s mathematically impossible for Social Security to continue funding the national debt.
This reality puts the US government in rough spot.
It’s not like government spending is going down anytime soon; it already takes nearly 100% of tax revenue just to pay mandatory entitlements like Social Security, and interest on the debt.
Plus the government itself estimates that the national debt will hit $30 trillion within ten years.
Bottom line, they need more money. Lots of it. And there is perhaps no easier pool of cash to ‘borrow’ than Americans’ retirement savings.
$7.3 trillion in US IRA accounts is too large for them to ignore.
And if you think it’s inconceivable for the government to borrow your retirement savings, just consider the following:
1) Borrowing retirement funds is becoming a popular tactic.
Forced loans have been a common tactic of bankrupt governments throughout history.
Plus there’s recent precedent all over the world; Hungary, France, Ireland, and Poland are among many governments that have resorted to ‘borrowing’ public and private pension funds.
2) The US government has already done this with federal pension funds.
During the multiple debt ceiling fiascos since 2011, the Treasury Department resorted to “extraordinary measures” at least twice in order to continue funding the government.
What exactly were these extraordinary measures?
They dipped into federal retirement funds and borrowed what they needed to tide them over.
In fact, the debt ceiling debacles were only resolved because the Treasury Department had fully depleted available retirement funds.
3) They’ve been paving the way to borrow your retirement savings for a long time.
Two years ago the government launched a new initiative to ‘help Americans save for retirement.’
It’s called MyRA. And the idea is for people to invest retirement savings ‘in the safety and security of US government bonds’.
Since then they’ve gone on a marketing offensive involving the President, Treasury Secretary, and other prominent politicians.
(Most recently Nancy Pelosi published an Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle a few days ago promoting the program.)
They’ve also proposed a number of legislative reforms to ‘encourage’ American businesses to sign their employees up for MyRA.
Just last week, Congress introduced the “Making Your Retirement Accessible”, or MyRA Act, which would charge a penalty to employers whose workers don’t have a retirement account.
The proposed penalty is $100. Per worker. Per day.
Imagine a small business with, say, 10 employees who don’t have retirement accounts. The penalty to Uncle Sam would be a whopping $30,000 PER MONTH.
There’s a word for this. It’s called extortion.
Obviously when facing a $30,000 monthly penalty, an employer will pick the easiest option.
Given the absurd amount of government regulation on the rest of the financial industry, MyRA is the fastest choice.
This isn’t about fear or paranoia. It’s about facts.
And the reality is that the government in the Land of the Free is moving in the direction of borrowing more and more of your retirement savings.
If you still remain skeptical, remember that last year the government stole more from its citizens through Civil Asset Forfeiture than thieves in the private sector.
Or that just 45-days ago a new law went into effect authorizing the government to strip you of your passport if they believe in their sole discretion that you owe them too much tax.
No judge. No jury. No trial. They just confiscate your passport.
This is happening. It’s a reality that rational, thinking people should plan for.
And yes, there are solutions for now.
For example, it’s possible to set up a more robust retirement structure that protects your savings and gives you much greater influence over your funds.
This is something that may make sense no matter what; it may be a good idea regardless to do some long-term financial planning that increases your influence over your own retirement savings and expands your investment options.
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"Our American friends presented their proposals concerning our Security Council draft resolution, which contained 29 paragraphs," said Surkov, according to TASS.
"Our delegation came to the conclusion that three of them were acceptable. Not a lot, really. But three is not zero. It’s better than zero," Putin’s aide added.
According to Surkov, the parties decided to continue the work to bring their positions closer.
Read alsoVolker recalls civilian casualties in Donbas ahead of meeting with Surkov
A joint statement by the two interlocutors released on the website of the U.S. embassy in Russia says it was "their third meeting and was a thorough discussion of the current diplomatic state of play concerning efforts to end the war in Donbas."
"It is not surprising that the United States and Russia have different concepts for how to make peace, but we will continue to work to get there," the statement reads. "There has always been a need for a combination of political and security measures to be taken under Minsk. Both sides agreed to reflect on the discussions today and to think about further ways to address this challenge."
On September 20, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appealed to the UN Security Council on the deployment in Donbas of a peacekeeping mission.
Read alsoTurchynov: Russia pulling in troops to Ukraine border to "repaint" them for peacekeepersSpeaking at the general debate of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly, he stressed that the UN peacekeeping force should be deployed throughout the entire territory of the occupied Donbas, including the Ukrainian-Russian border.
In turn, Russia has declared that a full-fledged peacekeeping operation in the occupied Donbas is unacceptable from the point of view of Minsk agreements, and insists that UN peacekeepers should be deployed only along the line of demarcation between the warring sides to ensure the safety of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission observers.
Read alsoVolker on Russian peacekeepers in Donbas: "I can't imagine it"On September 9, Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Administration Kostyantyn Yeliseiev said that the Ukrainian mission to the UN had submitted its draft resolution on the deployment of peacekeepers in Donbass for consideration by partners from the Security Council.
On September 12, Russia prepared its own draft UN Security Council resolution, proposing to set up an armed UN mission to be deployed in Donbas for a period of 6 months.
Early November Kurt Volker said Washington had advised Kyiv not to come up with its own draft of a United Nations resolution on deploying a peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine.
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NORTH CENTER — The truck driver who fatally struck a 23-year-old Loyola University graduate near Damen and Addison on Monday has been ticketed in the accident, police said.
Anastasia Kondrasheva was riding her bike northbound on Damen Avenue south of Addison Street when a flatbed truck driving next to her made a right turn onto Addison Street, hitting her in the process, police said.
The driver was issued a ticket for failing to exercise due care to a pedestrian in the roadway, police said Tuesday.
The driver remained on the scene after the crash police said, and he ended up having to leave in an ambulance due to being too "distraught," said a coworker of the driver who came to help police with the truck.
Chris Sanders said he works with the driver at Westmont Interior Supply House. He learned of the crash after the driver failed to show up at a work site, so Sanders said he called him.
"I heard him on the phone, he was crying," Sanders said at the scene. "It's in his head. He's distraught."
Adrian Juarez, Kondrasheva's boyfriend, said he was shocked to hear that the driver will not be charged in her death.
"That's insane," Juarez said. "I'm at a loss [after] reading that."
Kondrasheva worked in a health care center after graduating from Loyola University with a biology degree last year. Co-workers believe she was on her way to work when hit by the truck.
She was riding her bike north on Damen Avenue south of Addison Street about 7:50 a.m. Monday, according to Officer Bari Lemmon, a Chicago Police spokeswoman.
The driver of a small flatbed truck was also driving north on Damen Avenue when he turned right onto Addison and struck the woman, Lemmon said.
Juarez told DNAinfo he started to worry after Kondrasheva's employer called him and said she hadn't showed up Monday morning. That's when he saw news reports of an accident involving a bicyclist.
"I saw the picture and it was her bike," the boyfriend said. "This was the route she always took."
Kondrasheva, formerly of Naperville and most recently of the 3600 block of West Shakespeare Avenue, worked as a health coach at Harken Health in Edgewater where her fellow employees were distraught over her death. Her co-workers saw a photo of her distinctive bicycle on DNAinfo and knew the rider must have been their fellow employee, who worked as a health coach.
They knew their co-worker was the victim, one employee said, because "she never calls in sick."
On Tuesday, Harken issued a statement to DNAinfo saying they were "very saddened" to learn of Kondrasheva's passing, whom the staff called a "colleague and friend."
"She was an exceptionally valued care team member, and our deepest condolences go out to her family and friends," Harken said.
The boyfriend said he was with the woman's family and "we can't believe it...it's just shocking."
The young woman died at the scene, police said. Her body remained there for hours after the accident Monday morning as the major accidents unit for the Police Department investigated the collision. Her bike lay beside her, mangled with a few pieces broken off.
Kondrasheva's boyfriend said she loved nature — water, forests. She was vegan, interested in animal rights causes. She loved the earth too much to eat meat or byproducts, he said. She made an online video applying for a PETA job, describing her animal rights beliefs.
She also wanted dreamed of being an acrobat, and was even taking trapeze classes.
"Her dream as a girl was to perform in front of people and make them happy so she was learning how to do that and join the circus one day," Juarez wrote to DNAinfo. "As well as get her medical degree."
Kondrasheva will be honored with a ghost ride on Friday night, according to a tweet Tuesday from BikeCHInorth.
Damen and Addison is busy intersection for both cars and bikes. This sign is across the street from an accident that killed a woman. (DNAinfo/Joe Ward)
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
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A controversial bill to bring back executions by firing squad, passed the Republican-dominated Utah House on Friday, by a 39-34 vote. Utah requires a minimum of 38 votes to pass legislation through the House, so the measure had just one vote to spare. The proposal would allow the state to execute inmates by firing squad if the drug cocktail needed to perform a lethal injection were unavailable at the time of a scheduled execution.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bill Ray (R-Clearfield), tried to steer the debate away from discussion of whether the death penalty itself should be called into question. Ray argued that because the state has the death penalty, the legislature needs to be responsible for choosing how the death penalty is carried out. He maintained that death by firing squad was more humane than other alternatives like electrocution, gassing, and hanging.
Many House Democrats strongly argued against the measure. African-American lawmaker Sandra Hollins (D-Salt Lake City), voiced her objection, questioning not only the method of killing, but also the rationale for the death penalty itself. She stated:
The death penalty disproportionately affects my community. The death penalty also is not fairly given across socioeconomic status, racial or gender lines. …I refuse to vote yes on a bill that gives a tool to carry out the death penalty.
House Minority Leader Brian King (D-Salt Lake City), was equally critical. Calling death by firing squad, “cold-blooded execution”, he argued:
This is not just a conversation about different ways of the state putting people to death. It’s a question about moral and fiscal responsibility and whether the state of Utah chooses, or not, to be a moral and fiscal leader on such a controversial topic.
Several Republican lawmakers had misgivings about reinstating firing squads as well. Rep. Stephen Handy (R-Layton) expressed concern that bringing back deaths by firing squad would harm the state’s image with tourists. He opined:
If we do this, if you think that we have problems with air quality and other things with the image of the state of Utah, to bring back the firing squad would be going down that path.
Utah ended the practice of allowing inmates to be slated for death by firing squad in 2004. The last execution by firing squad in Utah took place six years after that decision. Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed on June 18, 2010, by a team of five marksmen armed with .30 caliber Winchester rifles. Prior to Gardner’s execution, the last Utah execution carried out by a firing squad was in 1996.
Executions by firing squads seem to be growing in popularity with Republican lawmakers in the West. On Thursday, Wyoming’s House approved death by firing squad. Wyoming, which borders Utah, is similarly dominated by Republicans. However, unlike Utah, Wyoming currently has no prisoners on death row. Both states will need the measures to pass through the State Senate and be signed by their respective Governors in order to become law. However, because Republicans control each legislative chamber and the State House in both Utah and Wyoming, the laws stand a reasonable chance of passing.
To most of the developed world, the Death Penalty seems inhumane and antiquated. The United States, however, has never abandoned the practice, although it is outlawed in several states. However, in the American West, lawmakers seem eager not to move forward to a nation interested in restorative justice. Instead, they seem much more inclined to return to 19th-century style methods of execution. The Utah House has taken a step backward. The only question now is whether the Utah Senate and Governor will follow suit.
Image via Wikipedia
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Published: Thursday, June 23, 2016 @ 2:52 PM
Updated: Thursday, June 23, 2016 @ 9:35 PM
Complete coverage This newspaper was first to bring you the news that the city of Dayton is considering a 0.25 percent income tax increase. We have covered the city’s finances and will continue to provide you insight and reaction to the city’s proposal.
The city of Dayton plans to ask voters to approve a 0.25 percent income tax increase that supporters said will help close a projected shortfall, fund police and fire services and pay for universal pre-school.
While Dayton voters will decide if the increase takes place, the tax is paid by people who work in the city.
If approved, the tax rate would climb to 2.5 percent for a period of eight years.
>> COMMENTARY: Mayor Whaley says plan ‘fair, accountable and necessary’
The additional 0.25 percent would generate about $10.5 million annually and cost someone who works in the city and earns a $35,000 salary an additional $83 each year, city officials said.
The tax increase will help close a $5 million funding gap. It also will pay to maintain fire services, add about 20 police officers, roughly triple the amount spent to pave and resurface residential roads, improve parks and better maintain vacant lots, said Shelley Dickstein, Dayton’s city manager.
About $4 million of the annual revenue will be put toward providing universal access to high-quality pre-school for all 4-year-old children citywide, she said.
>> EARLIER: Consultant says Dayton Convention Center needs millions
News of the proposed tax increase provoked some negative reaction on social media, including from former Dayton Mayor Gary Leitzell.
He said the city should cut spending instead of increase taxes.
“We need to focus on doing things that attract residents,” he told this newspaper, “not things that would make people want to leave.”
Leitzell was defeated by Mayor Nan Whaley after serving one term.
City commissioners next week expect to introduce legislation to put a measure on the November ballot.
In May 2014, Dayton voters voted overwhelmingly to make the 1984 income tax increase permanent.
The city is earning the same amount of money as it did in 1998, which is insufficient to sustain current service levels and pay for strategic investments, Dickstein said.
“We’ve been good stewards for the tax dollars, but we can’t make ends meet on 1998 revenue levels,” she said.
Dayton’s income tax rate last changed in 1984, when voters authorized increasing it to 2.25 percent from 1.75 percent.
Dayton voters in 2014 overwhelmingly supported making the 2.25 percent rate permanent.
The city projects it will take in about $158.5 million in revenue this year.
The city projected earlier this year would end 2016 with expenses exceeding revenue by $3.4 million and projects a $5 million shortfall next year.
Expenses are rising and revenue has not kept pace, especially because the state has reduced funding support by $40 million since 2011, Dickstein said. She said the city has cut 700 jobs from the payroll since 2007.
The city faces more cuts unless it increases revenue, she said.
The increase will pay to maintain current fire and emergency medical service levels, and it will pay for up to 22 more police officers over six years, Dickstein said. The city has about 325 sworn police personnel.
The city also proposes increasing annual spending on repairing and paving roads to $4.7 million from $1.3 million.
The city would pave 73 lane miles of residential roads each year, compared to 20 right now, which would result in every residential road being in good condition by the end of the eight-year period, Dickstein said.
Dayton is home to about 1,028 lane miles of road.
About $4 million of the funds will be directed toward providing high-quality, universal pre-kindergarten for every child in the city, said Mayor Whaley, who has been a leading advocate of improving access to pre-school.
A demonstration of the “Preschool Promise” program is taking place in Northwest Dayton and Kettering.
The additional income tax revenue would allow the program to expand citywide, benefiting about 1,900 children who are four years old, Whaley said.
High-quality pre-K has been shown to help children read better and succeed in school and learning, she said.
About 80 percent of children in Dayton start kindergarten unprepared, and preventing them from falling behind will have a big impact on later economic success, she said.
“If they learn to read and read to learn, it changes the whole trajectory of the workforce over the next 20 years for Dayton,” Whaley said. “These are the long-term investments that communities and governments are supposed to engage in.”
The city also plans to use the additional revenue to fund the last phase of park improvements and maintain the 5,700 vacant lots in the city’s care, officials said.
The city would mow these lots once a month instead of the current practice of three times a year, officials said. The grass in the city’s major thoroughfares would be mowed more frequently too.
The city’s funding commitment for universal, high-quality pre-school would help provide Dayton’s youngest learners with the foundation they need to succeed later in life, said Robyn Lightcap, director of ReadySetSoar, which launched the preschool promise demonstration.
“This will benefit all of us as we build an educated workforce, which leads to a stronger Dayton and stronger region,” she said.
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THE REPUBLICAN-controlled Congress has wasted entirely too much time sitting on President Obama’s request for emergency funding to combat the arrival of the Zika virus to the mainland United States. The National Governors Association, not exactly an alarmist group, declared that “the nation is on the threshold of a public health emergency.” Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says that Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory where the virus is already on the move, “is on the precipice of a really serious disaster.” Now that Congress has returned from its recess, it is time to buckle down and approve the president’s request for about $1.9 billion in emergency funding, or something close to it.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell told us this week that, although the administration has already shifted about half a billion dollars from fighting Ebola to the battle against Zika, that is not enough. There is no vaccine ready nor any known effective therapy to stop Zika. Without the full emergency funding, she said, research on creating a vaccine and work on badly needed diagnostics will slow, while surveillance and tracking of those sickened will be hampered. Although Zika causes only mild symptoms in most cases, thousands of babies, if their mothers are infected during pregnancy, could be vulnerable to serious birth defects. The virus causes fetal neural abnormalities such as microcephaly.
The time to prepare for the onslaught of virus-carrying Aedes mosquitoes was yesterday — and yet Congress has stalled the president’s February funding request. The House Appropriations Committee chairman, Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), has claimed the proposal lacked enough specifics. Here are some specifics: In Puerto Rico, where 631 cases of Zika have already been recorded, the virus is spreading rapidly from direct transmission. Although all 472 cases in the continental United States have come from travelers, Florida, the Gulf Coast and California also may be vulnerable to local transmission once the weather warms.
Where it hits, Zika is not easy to deal with. “Vector control” — fighting the mosquitoes, to dampen the virus’s spread — is the front line of defense, but that job is handled by a crazy quilt of state and local government offices. Warning the public, creating and scaling up diagnostics, and carrying out spraying and other prophylactic measures are all vital, and these take time to prepare, time that is being lost on Capitol Hill.
Vaccine development also requires a long lead time. Dr. Fauci told us the first vaccine candidate will begin an initial clinical trial of about 80 people in September, and if all goes well, could be ready for approval in 2018. This will be especially important if the Zika virus remains a threat at that time. We can’t know now if that will be the case, but it makes good sense to fund vaccine development robustly at this early stage.
We are told that House Appropriations Committee staff, still dissatisfied with the administration’s request, are working up their own package. That’s encouraging — but they must not dally. It is long past time for Congress to deliver the money needed to fight a virus that, if unchecked, could ruin thousands of young lives.
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Brandon Jew, the chef and owner of Mister Jiu's in San Francisco's Chinatown, has one mission: to "define San Francisco Chinese food." And he's doing that with a new approach to a cuisine most associated with takeout. "All the dishes [at my restaurant] have a story of a farm or a place within the Bay Area that I think is exceptional, and then we mix that with something that is steeped in Chinese tradition," often from the local Chinese American immigrant community he grew up in.
From this intersection come dishes like scallion pancakes reimagined with San Francisco sourdough and local scallions and quails from Wolfe Ranch, a Bay Area purveyor popular with fellow chefs, like the team from State Bird Provisions. For Chinese New Year, Jew stuffs the boutique birds with a blend of sticky and jasmine rices, dried shrimp, and mushrooms, then lacquers the skin with sugar and ginger (see the recipe), a play on a dish his family used to eat for Thanksgiving.
"Just how American chefs have been putting a lot into defining American food, I think the next generation of Chinese American chefs will start to express their region as well," he says. And he's not talking about regions of China, but rather, regions of the U.S. Jew isn't alone here. Following in the footsteps of places like Mission Chinese Food and Red Farm, a select group of chefs and restaurant owners (both of Chinese descent and otherwise) are opening restaurants across the country that reflect their neighborhoods, regional food traditions and what's being grown nearby.
RELATED Inside the Lucky Kitchen: Danielle Chang's Lunar New Year Feast »
Down in Austin, at Old Thousand, Uchi alum chef David Baek and James Dumapit, who worked at the critical favorite's little sister, Uchiko, are working to define Austin Chinese food. "We don't look out to Tex-ify," Dumapit says about their food. Rather they work touches of the city into their menu via dishes like a fried rice made with smoked brisket from nearby barbecue spot Micklethwait. Dumapit says the approach is a natural fit. "We don't want to hang on to the idea of 'authentic' Chinese food, because that would be disingenuous," he explains, while noting that neither he nor Baek are of Chinese descent. "But both of us came up cooking in Austin, and we didn't seek out to be authentic to anybody but ourselves."
A smile welcomes guests to the bar at Mister Jiu's. | Photo: Krescent Carasso
You'll find a similar sentiment in Milwaukee at DanDan, a restaurant that Dan Van Rite and his business partner, Dan Jacobs, describe as having "a Chinese soul with a Midwestern sensibility." For Van Rite, that means dishes like char siu on a pancake made with potatoes and scallions—which he likens to a latke—topped with pickles and fermented mustard greens, ingredients that can be sourced locally despite long winters. "[The dish] is super homey, and it reminds me of something you would see in Wisconsin," he says.
Across Lake Michigan, Detroit newcomer The Peterboro is serving a more modern take on almond chicken, a city favorite that was, according to local lore, first served at Detroit's iconic, now-shuttered Chung's. Here, chef Brion Wong prepares shredded chicken that's dunked in a batter made with a local IPA then served with Marcona almonds.
Detroit's signature almond chicken gets updated by chef Brion Wong at The Peterboro. | Photo: Jason Leinart
For the team here—and for Mister Jiu's, as well as Chinese Tuxedo in NYC—this idea of a new generation of American Chinese restaurants is about more than what's on the plate: It's about helping to give new life to local Chinatowns. Diners regularly tell the staff at The Peterboro they are unaware their city even has a Chinatown, managing partner Charles Inchaustegui says. In Manhattan, where Chinatown is bustling and unmissable, Aussie Eddy Buckingham and Jeff Lam, who immigrated to the neighborhood in 1978 from the Fujian province, are using Chinese Tuxedo to bring out an element of the neighborhood mostly lost up until now: high-end contemporary Chinese cuisine. Their restaurant, which serves "pan-Chinese" food, is located in what was once the Chinatown Opera House and is named for a spot that used to exist across the street. "It was the best restaurant in Chinatown in 1897," Lam says. The pair wants to create "that kind of contemporary environment" again.
The team at Chinese Tuxedo unearthed the original walls from the Chinatown Opera House. | Photo: Oleg March
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Jew knew early on which neighborhood he would be setting up shop in. "I didn't want Chinatown to feel like a museum or like a dinosaur. I wanted to make sure it was still active and thriving" well into the future, he says.
These chefs and restaurant owners are ushering in a new generation of American Chinese cooking and even more so giving a new meaning to regional cuisine—one that speaks not only to where they come from but also where they're going.
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Like what?
Helen Harwatt is a researcher trained in environmental nutrition, a field focused on developing food systems that balance human health and sustainability. She’s interested in policy, but realistic about how much progress can be expected under the aforementioned leadership. So she and colleagues have done research on maximizing the impacts of individuals. As with so many things in life and health, that tends to come down to food.
Recently Harwatt and a team of scientists from Oregon State University, Bard College, and Loma Linda University calculated just what would happen if every American made one dietary change: substituting beans for beef. They found that if everyone were willing and able to do that—hypothetically—the U.S. could still come close to meeting its 2020 greenhouse-gas emission goals, pledged by President Barack Obama in 2009.
That is, even if nothing about our energy infrastructure or transportation system changed—and even if people kept eating chicken and pork and eggs and cheese—this one dietary change could achieve somewhere between 46 and 74 percent of the reductions needed to meet the target.
“I think there’s genuinely a lack of awareness about how much impact this sort of change can have,” Harwatt told me. There have been analyses in the past about the environmental impacts of veganism and vegetarianism, but this study is novel for the idea that a person’s dedication to the cause doesn’t have to be complete in order to matter. A relatively small, single-food substitution could be the most powerful change a person makes in terms of their lifetime environmental impact—more so than downsizing one’s car, or being vigilant about turning off light bulbs, and certainly more than quitting showering.
Read: The economic case for worldwide vegetarianism
To understand why the climate impact of beef alone is so large, note that the image at the top of this story is a sea of soybeans in a silo in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The beans belong to a feed lot that holds 38,000 cattle, the growth and fattening of which means dispensing 900 metric tons of feed every day. Which is to say that these beans will be eaten by cows, and the cows will convert the beans to meat, and the humans will eat the meat. In the process, the cows will emit much greenhouse gas, and they will consume far more calories in beans than they will yield in meat, meaning far more clearcutting of forests to farm cattle feed than would be necessary if the beans above were simply eaten by people.
This inefficient process happens on a massive scale. Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of red meat, holds around 212 million cattle. (In June, the U.S. temporarily suspended imports of beef from Brazil due to abscesses, collections of pus, in the meat.) According to the United Nations, 33 percent of arable land on Earth is used to grow feed for livestock. Even more, 26 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of Earth is used for grazing livestock. In all, almost a third of the land on Earth is used to produce meat and animal products.
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Whatever the reason, the thief went to considerable trouble.
“You’d need a tractor to pull it out,” Mr. Chambers said. “It was not only a difficult financial loss, but an insult to our mission, a moral slap in the face. This is a volunteer organization. When things like this happen, you ask, why bother? It’s wrong to steal, but why break people’s spirit?”
An investigation by the Warren County sheriff’s office has come up empty, though witnesses say they saw someone with an orange Kubota tractor at the location.
“We just haven’t identified who it is,” Sheriff Nathan H. York said. “Obviously it was someone who really wanted that historical marker.”
While saddened by the theft, Mr. Chambers and other Brady admirers say they hope the crime produces greater awareness of his contributions to photography — and to history.
Image A picture of Abraham Lincoln that Brady took in New York. Credit Library of Congress
“Mathew Brady and those he taught or employed forever captured the vast majority of all of the roughly 10,000 documentary Civil War photos,” said Garry Adelman, the vice president of the Center for Civil War Photography. “Therefore, the man himself, his motivations and methods as well as where he came from is important to the perpetuation of our heritage.”
Ed Burke, a photojournalist from Saratoga Springs who does extensive work in the Adirondacks, said he felt a kinship with Brady. “I’m kind of intrigued by the whole thing,” he said. “I think they should create a Mathew Brady museum in North Creek. It’s already a destination. You could really build on this thing.”
Brady left Johnsburg when he was 16 and went to Saratoga Springs, where he met the portrait painter William Page and became a student of his. In 1844, they went to New York City, where Brady studied under Samuel F. B. Morse, who also painted portraits but was known as the inventor of the telegraph.
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<<< NEWS FROM THE LAB - Monday, August 9, 2010 >>> ARCHIVES | SEARCH How to Install LNK Update (KB2286198) on Windows XP SP2 Posted by Sean @ 16:04 GMT Microsoft discontinued support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 on July 13th, and that means there is no SP2 update for the recent LNK shortcut vulnerability (KB2286198). If you review the comments from this SANS Diary post, you'll see that there was some initial confusion regarding SP2 support, due to a typo in Microsoft's Security Bulletin (MS10-046). The bulletin is now corrected.
However, even today, the download for Windows XP still includes SP2 in the file properties.
But if you try to install the update on an SP2 system, you'll get this error message:
"Setup has detected that the version of the Service Pack installed on your system is lower than what is necessary to apply this hotfix. At minimum, you must have Service Pack 2 installed."
This minimum requirement reminded us of some other software that required SP3… Grand Theft Auto IV.
GTA IV wouldn't install on SP2 systems when it was released in December of 2008.
And so some determined gamers came up with a registry hack.
It turns out that an SP2 system will think its SP3 if you edit this key: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows, and edit the DWORD value CSDVersion from 200 to 300 (and reboot).
It worked for GTA IV, so we decided to test it with KB2286198. And our test worked, WindowsXP-KB2286198-x86-ENU.exe installed on our SP2 test system once we tweaked the registry. We also tested an LNK exploit, and it did not infect the system after the patch.
Cool.
But remember, this update is NOT officially tested or supported by Microsoft for SP2. And we do NOT recommend that anybody use this tweak in a production network of any kind. Hacking the registry and applying updates is likely a very quick way to destabilize your system. You really should update to Service Pack 3 if at all possible.
If you want to experiment, do so at your own risk.
Updated to add: A reader added this link to Security Active Blog into the comments of this post.
The Security Update for Windows XP Embedded also installs on Windows Service Pack 2 systems and no registry tweak is needed. The file is called WindowsXP-KB2286198-x86-custom-ENU.exe.
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Ron Duwell | Gaming Reviews & News Gallery by Longtime Konami fans are right to be apprehensive about its future. The rumored departure of Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is just the latest in a long line of iconic figures who have departed while the Japanese publisher re-shifts itself to focus on free-to-play games and the booming mobile market It sucks, but that’s just the name of the game. Not all hope is totally lost for Konami’s style of console gaming, at least. Flashback to about the mid-2000s when Capcom closed Clover Studio and lost a good deal of its star talent. For example, Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, Devil May Cry director Hideki Kamiya, and Phoenix Wright producer Atsushi Inaba. Those aren’t exactly creative minds you can simply replace overnight! That’s a hall-of-fame lineup from one of Japan’s most popular developers! Capcom has recently been regaining its feet with a few up-and-coming teams handling its biggest franchises, but many of these towering figures went on to form Platinum Games and Tango Gameworks to reinvigorate the spirit of old Capcom games on a more indie basis. There is nothing stopping Hideo Kojima from doing the same. However, like Capcom’s former stars, he’ll be forced to work without the franchise he is known for. Who knows? Without the burden of the Metal Gear franchise, perhaps he could do something new! Anybody remember Zone of the Enders or Boktai? Good stuff! In the meantime, Konami benefits from success on the mobile market, and it is also left with a massive library of classic gaming IPs which could lead to freemium titles or pachinko machines. Let’s take a quick stroll through memory lane to look at the classics that Konami is sitting on. What happened to the series, and is there any chance we’ll see them again in the future? Advertisement
Metal Gear Solid
The obvious elephant in Konami’s room is Metal Gear Solid. Many longtime Konami fans view the franchise as the final bastion of Konami as a traditional game developer, but the potential departure of creative lead Hideo Kojima and the closure of Kojima Productions have thrown the future of this oasis into a deep crisis. Konami has buckled down on the rumors, even going so far as to commit itself to a Metal Gear game beyond the departure of Hideo Kojima. Whether or not fans buy into a new game without Kojima has yet to be seen. The man has been the creative anchor for every game in the series, and unlike a lot of directors and producers from Japan, he remains the face of the franchise in the public as well. No upstart, young and blooming developer is going to quickly replace a legendary developer with 30 years of unique storytelling and ideas to his name. Look for Konami to try and hype them as such though. Metal Gear was born on the MSX2 home PC in 1987 out of the console’s inability to scroll, and it was brought to America via an ugly and forgettable NES port made beyond Kojima’s reach. Most discovered the series in 1998 when Metal Gear Solid revolutionized gaming cinematics and taught the world how to use in-engine graphics to tell a story.
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Since then, it’s been a wild ride of convoluted stories, highs and lows, and awkward humor. Metal Gear Solid 2’s incredible hype all came crashing down when we found out we were actually controlling Raiden for much of the game. Metal Gear Solid 3 had Snake chewing on frogs, amazing boss battles against The Boss and The End, not to mention that excellent 007-inspired theme song. Metal Gear Solid 4 shocked us with the reveal of Old Snake and the pistol in his mouth. Peace Walker, good enough to be a main entry in the franchise, introduced Monster Hunter battles and the hilariously effective Fulton extraction system. All wonderful memories for good or ill. I’m not so sure if anybody other than Kojima is capable of recreating such an insane consistency, and even if they were successful, it would come off more as imitation. “Look how closely we can emulate Hideo Kojima!” Either that or the new Metal Gear will be a freemium mobile game. I’m not so sure if I want to play such a game. The series’ timeline has come full circle, and the time is right to cut it off. Nothing lasts forever. It’s time to close the book on Snake, Raiden and Big Boss and allow them to survive intact in our memories.
Silent Hill
While not Konami’s second most important franchise, I’ll tuck Silent Hill right under Metal Gear Solid only because it is the only other series with an immediate future that could be in jeopardy. Hideo Kojima’s departure could also spell the end of production on this promising title, and poor Guillermo del Toro might even lose another chance to release a video game! My knowledge of Konami’s survival horror doesn’t extend far beyond the first three games. Silent Hill was first released in 1999 as Konami’s attempts to capitalize on the survival horror fad which took off with the dawn of 3D graphics and the success of Resident Evil. Nowadays, it feels a little unplayable, but who can forget running through those blocky, dark streets with nothing but a crowbar to keep yourself safe? Harry Mason’s “agile” feet could barely get the job done! Silent Hill hit its creative peak with the second game in the franchise on the PlayStation 2. Silent Hill 2 still holds up today as one of the finest examples of Japan’s survival horror genre with its brilliant storytelling and playability. I mean, who doesn’t like games that they can actually control? This spark of genius trickled over into Silent Hill 3, a solid game that just had to combat standards that were a bit too high.
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All three capitalized on the potential of 3D at the time, creating worlds that felt genuinely creepy and that picked away at the inner turmoils of your brain rather than rely on the cheap “Boo!” moments of other survival horror franchises. Unlike Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill doesn’t have a consistent human face to put to it. No director or producer carried over from game to game, but only writer Hiroyuki Owaku seems to be the constant in the credits. He departed after the third game, and that’s when the series started to lose its relevance. Releases started becoming smaller and smaller with Konami aiming for handhelds and even the Wii! Because every Grandma who owned a Wii wanted to struggle through these horrific worlds of hidden sexual desire. Most recently, it was pitched to fans as a Diablo clone in Book of Memories, and I don’t think anybody even noticed let alone cared to respond negatively. Silent Hills was supposed to be the grand return to prominence, but as we said, who knows at this point. I have suspicions that Kojima’s name was attached to the game just to generate hype, similarly to how Lord of Shadows was dealt with, so perhaps him being a bit distant won’t affect development at all. Maybe he was more involved than I give him credit for, and his departure affects everything! At least we got a sweet demo out of it.
Castlevania
Castlevania is the last of the three “big” franchises we are going to be talking about today. The kids might see Metal Gear Solid as Konami’s defining franchise, but I would be hard pressed to ever associate Konami with another franchise more so than I do with Castlevania. For such a defining franchise, the series comes from humble roots. It began as a forgettable Famicom Disk System game that never came to prominence until getting an accessible port on the NES. Konami turned to Universal Studio’s classic horror films to mold this game, using iconic images of bats, vampires, Frankenstein’s monsters, and mummies to see this timeless 8-bit classic. Simon Belmont’s iconic whip also provided a different mechanic from the guns NES fans typically used. This 8-bit success carried over for the next two excellent games, peaking with the Famicom version of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. Japan’s is the definitive edition of that game thanks to the VRC6 chip installed by Konami to boost the quality of its soundtrack and animation. Nintendo of America did not allow this customization of its carts in the States, and our version is sadly only “almost a masterpiece.”
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Konami also hammered out Super Castlevania IV for the Super Nintendo, one of the best tech-demos of all time, but the series found its new face in 1993’s Castlevania: Rondo of Blood for the PC Engine CD when Koji Igarashi first joined the franchise. His brand of storytelling and 2D exploration would kick off in its direct sequel, the legendary Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and carry on for six more portable games across the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow are proving to be the longest lasting of that bunch. Rondo of Blood also got an American release on the PSP with Igarashi’s remake in 2010, seventeen years a little too late. Most fans regard this run as the series’ peak and were dismayed when it came to a crashing end. Sales were not where Konami wanted them to be, and it instead turned to the AAA 3D market to sell its vampire hunting series. Koji Igarashi was stepped over on the 3D market, since his 3D work with Castlevania proved to be fruitless, and instead, Konami tapped Spain based developer MercurySteam to rebrand the series with a AAA look. All seemed fine for a while. Lords of Shadow launched as the best selling game in the franchise’s history. While it might not adhere to what the purists want from Castlevania, the series could have been a lot worse as a AAA sellout. MercurySteam proved that with the release of the following two Lords of Shadow games, and both games bombed so spectacularly that the franchise might never have the chance to recover. Do we really want it to though? We already lived through Castlevania being sold to us as an empty shell just using the franchise’s name. I don’t think I could handle the pain of seeing that again. Unless Konami repairs bridges with Koji Igarashi to put the series back on track, I would rather have the Belmonts, Alucard and Soma Cruz solely exist in a happy place in the back of my mind. No need to drag the corpse out on this one anymore unless Konami does it right.
Suikoden/Ganbare Goemon/Gradius/Contra
Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Castlevania might be the three biggest franchises from Konami’s history, but they are hardly the only great examples of fine game development. Its B-tier franchises are equally impressive with a solid showing that could be the star lineup of a lesser publisher. Did you know I am a fan of the Suikoden games? It’s true! There was a time earlier this year when I couldn’t talk about anything else, but my brain has taken a bit of a break from it thanks to the revival of Final Fantasy. That won’t stop me from sharing my beloved memories here though. Suikoden, Suikoden II, Suikoden III and Suikoden V succeed about as excellently as a B-tier JRPG franchise possibly can. We’ll throw Suikoden IV under the rug for now. Each capitalizes on the world-building of the previous game to tell fantastic war stories with a constant sense of continuity. These four games are a “must” for any JRPG fan, with the peak of the series coming from the ultimate boss fight against Suikoden II’s big baddie, Luca Blight. Konami has already tried to revive Suikoden two times since writer director Murayama Yoshitaka left to pursue other passions. Suikoden Tierkreis on the DS proved to be a solid game but hardly what fans wanted. Suikoden: The Woven Web of A Century also failed to impress Japan on the PSP and never made it to the States. Suikoden is long dead, and sadly, I think it should remain that way unless Konami can find a way to hit that creative storytelling genius again. HD ports or even just simple digital releases of Suikoden III and V are the only concessions that can be made anymore for this beloved cult franchise.
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Ganbare Goemon is a franchise that sadly never saw its best games released in the States. The first Super Nintendo game was localized as a beloved platformer called Legend of the Mystical Ninja, but Konami’s experimentation with Super Famicom cartridges in Japan didn’t fly well with Nintendo of America. The following three games, some of the best platformers you’ve never played, never made it to America. The series saw a small revival with the release of the Nintendo 64 entries and a few crappy Game Boy games, but none are especially fun to play anymore. Konami’s last attempt to give Goemon a shot was on the Nintendo DS but it was never localized and crashed into the ground in Japan. Ganbare Goemon was a fixture of the Super Famicom line-up, but his heyday never reached past a single generation. Sad, but that is was happened when a lot of franchises jumped into 3D. Speaking of which, here’s Contra. This franchise defined the run ‘n gun formula, inspiring similar franchises like Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes and SNK’s Metal Slug. Again, the first three games are solid gold, with Contra on the NES and the Super Nintendo’s Contra III The Alien Wars walking away as all time greats. The transition to the PlayStation all but murdered Contra, but unlike plenty of other franchises, Konami gave it two more chances to really shine. The PlayStation 2’s underrated Contra Shattered Soldier does a perfectly fine job of recapturing Contra III’s spirit, but Konami chose to follow up with Neo Contra, which sadly, did not. Following that, WayForward was gifted the chance to develop Contra 4, which is an excellent run ‘n gunner that polarizes the hardcore fanbase. Nothing substantial has been seen from it recently, but Konami attempted a spin-off of the Genesis game Contra: Hard Corps by publishing Arc System Works’ Hard Corps: Uprising. Again, middling success led to the death of one of Konami’s early iconic franchises.
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The last of Konami’s big properties we’ll talk about here is Gradius, from the very very early arcade days of the company. This SHMUP series defined the genre for nearly two decades, with the best being the PlayStation’s Gradius Gaiden and a small masterpiece revival in the form of Gradius V on the PlayStation 2. What a wonderful game that is! Gradius as a whole though is outshined by its two main spin-off series, Parodius and Salamander. We know Salamander in the States as Life Force on the NES, one of the best the genre has to offer to this day. Parodius succeeds wonderfully as a self-parody franchise which borrows all of Gradius’ main elements and sets them to cute and adorable sprites. You’ll never know what you’ll find in a Parodius game, and the franchise is secretly home to some of the greatest video game music you’ll ever find. Shoot the core, baby!
Licensed Games
Not all of Konami’s best hits have been original ideas either. The publisher has dabbled in plenty of world known entertainment properties and done more of a fabulous job at reinvisioning them in video game form. The most notable of the bunch is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which Konami used for a successful run of gorgeous arcade games in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When walking through a pizzeria in 1989, it would be impossible to find a video game on a home console that looked more beautiful than the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game. This partnership went out with a bang in 1992 when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time hit the Super Nintendo. I mean…wow, what a game!
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Konami is also responsible for that ridiculous six player X-Men: The Arcade Game. It’s not the deepest game, but when you and some buddies stumbled across that thing in an early 90s arcade, someone had to drop a quarter in it. We’d never seen such an impressive looking co-op game. Konami’s second most impressive licensed run comes from Tiny Toons, and the company turned out three wonderful platformers for the NES, Super Nintendo and SEGA Genesis. In line with early 1990s Warner Bros cartoons, it also made one of the better Batman games, The Adventures of Batman & Robin on the Super Nintendo. The graphics look like they could have been pulled straight from the popular cartoon.
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Many will point to The Goonies II as Konami’s absolute best NES licensed game, and they aren’t far off. In an age before Metroid or Castlevania had written the rules of the ‘metroidvania’ genre, The Goonies II did so magnificently with one of the catchiest soundtracks on the console. Konami really knew how to work those NES sound channels. My personal choice for the best licensed NES game Konami ever published though is Bucky O’Hare. Developed by members that would eventually go on to form Treasure, this challenging game is loaded with grueling level design, great 8-bit graphics, and some excellent ideas regarding power-ups and unique abilities between characters. Way ahead of its time and vastly under-appreciated. One of my absolute favorites.
Miscellaneous
And we have the one-hit wonders. Konami didn’t always capitalize on every great game it made, but probably, my weird taste could possibly be playing these up more than their financial statistics would show. Azure Dreams is the clear winner for me in this bracket. This PlayStation RPG could have been a much bigger hit in today’s world, home to everything we love about the indie market. Randomized roguelike level design and combat, monster collecting, and town building, throwing in touches of a dating simulators and mini games. I couldn’t defend its ugly graphics if I tried, but there is more than enough here to justify curious fans checking it out. Konami only ever followed up with a Game Boy Color remake to capitalize on the Pokemon explosion, but if there was a Konami franchise that deserved a second chance, left in the right hands of course, then this is it. Konami also produced the highlight of the SEGA Genesis, a little game called Rocket Knight Adventures. While it might come off as a stereotypical mid-90s anthropomorphic platformer, Konami crammed enough genius and big, beautiful sprites into this tight action game to set it apart from the rest of the competition. Plus our possum hero is just too cute to be tossed into the pile with Croc, Gex and Bubsy. He should be cherished forever! Two more games were developed for the Super Nintendo and Genesis, as well as a weird Rocket Knight HD revival a few years back, but none were able to recapture this lost masterpiece’s spirit. The Goonies II often gets the most credit for being Konami’s first ‘metroidvania’ style game, but Knightmare II: The Maze of Galious is another early contender that only came out a month later. Stuck on the MSX2 in Japan, this lost classic is one of the best game’s you’ve never played, and it stars an adorable pair of love-struck knights. This game evolved The Goonies II’s formula by being one of the first to include RPG elements in the genre, and it even is notable today for being the main inspiration behind NIGORO’s Japanese indie hit, LA-MULANA. Brutal to the end screen, but worth checking out.
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Fans of the Super Nintendo gravitate towards Axelay a lot. This game is Konami just plain showing off, a SHMUP game with just the most boisterous and flamboyant 16-bit graphics imaginable. Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa is a pretty standard platformer for the Famicom Disk System in Japan. It sets itself apart though by allowing players to control a genius baby throughout its colorful levels. Konami finally brought this to America many years later through the digital powers of Virtual Console on the Wii. Highly recommended. Underrated Game Boy Advance gem Ninja Five-0 combines the best of old school stealth mechanics with a one of a kind grappling hook mechanic. Good luck finding an affordable copy on the second-hand market. Vandal Hearts and its sequel get a brief mention for the sole purpose of being a “PSOne RPG.” That means somebody out there must passionately love it to pieces. Tough to play in the post Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem world, but never underestimate a game’s fanbase. Most will point towards Metal Gear Solid 2 as the first great Konami game on the PlayStation 2, but many still loyally follow the mech strategy game Ring of Red, which beat it out the gate by a full six months.
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Mentioned before but certainly not forgotten, we can’t neglect to include Hideo Kojima’s two major attempts to break away from the Metal Gear Solid series. His love-letter to the mecha anime genre, Zone of the Enders, puts a fast pace twist on battling aerial robots, and it hits all the right storytelling marks. The other, Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hands, is also a wonderful little dungeon crawler that forces you to play outside on a bright day. A solar panel installed on the game’s cartridge powers our hero’s gun, and he uses it to blast away vampires. Excellent idea that works better on paper, but still a charming little game that deserves more recognition. His pre-Metal Gear Solid games as well, Snatcher and Policenauts, rank right up there for their excellent storytelling in the visual novel genre. Snatcher on the SEGA CD gets a special nod for its outstanding localization. /section]
Where do we go now?
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Story highlights The head of the Iraqiya bloc says the attacks reveal a "weakness" of services
Prime Minister al-Maliki vows the attackers "will not escape punishment"
20 different explosions targeted residential and commercial districts of Baghdad
Finance minister: We warned the U.S. but no one listened
A wave of explosions across Baghdad killed dozens of people Thursday and spread fears that Iraq's government could collapse in the wake of the U.S. military's departure.
At least 65 people were killed and at least 196 were wounded in 20 explosions just days after the final U.S. troops withdrew, police said.
The attacks targeted civilians across all walks of life. One took place at a market. Another, at a school as children were arriving. A third was at a coffee shop.
The attacks were a painful reminder of Iraq's most violent years.
The seemingly coordinated explosions Thursday struck during the height of morning rush hour, hitting a number of Baghdad's primarily mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. Nine car bombs, six roadside bombs and a mortar round all went off in a two-hour period, targeting residential, commercial and government districts in the Iraqi capital, two police officials told CNN.
There have been no immediate claims of responsibility, though the attacks resemble previous bombings that have been claimed by both Sunni and Shiite insurgents as well as al Qaeda in Iraq.
The deadliest attack was a suicide car bombing outside the offices of the Integrity Commission, the country's main anti-corruption body. At least 23 people were killed and 43 others were wounded in the explosion, which also damaged part of the building, police officials said.
The violence comes as Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political leaders square off over a warrant issued for the arrest of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who is accused of organizing his security detail into a death squad that targeted government and military officials.
JUST WATCHED Iraq's future hinges on political crisis Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Iraq's future hinges on political crisis 02:41
Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has demanded that Kurdish lawmakers hand over the Sunni vice president, who has denied the charges and refuses to return to Baghdad from northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
Finance Minister Rafie al-Issawi told CNN he does not believe the violence is directly connected to the latest political developments, "but there is a good environment for terrorists to be active in these bad circumstances."
Terrorists "will justify their criminal activities" and argue that the solution to Iraq's woes "isn't in the political process," said al-Issawi, a member of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya minority political bloc.
The head of Iraqiya, former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, complained that the bombings "reveal the weakness of the security and intelligence services to achieve security and stability because some of these services were busy chasing down political forces." He accused those services of creating confusion in the political process, "which is essentially broken."
Al-Maliki meanwhile, called on "clerics, politicians, parties, tribal leaders and all the national groups to bear responsibility in this delicate situation, support the security forces and unify ranks."
"The criminals and those who stand behind them will not be able to change the course of events and the political process or escape punishment that they will face sooner or later," he said.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement condemning the attacks.
"We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families and communities of these victims," the statement said. "It is especially important during this critical period that Iraq's political leaders work to resolve differences peacefully, through dialogue, and in accordance with Iraq's constitution and laws. Senseless acts of violence tear at the fabric of Iraqi unity and do not in any way help the people of Iraq or any of its communities. "
]At the Medical City hospital in central Baghdad, doctors treated the wounded whose bodies were peppered with what appeared to be shrapnel from explosions.
Images of bloodied, battered bodies and destroyed storefronts and homes were broadcast on Iraqi television stations.
While violence in Iraq has fallen off in recent years, the latest spate of attacks are among the worst since August when a series of coordinated bombings killed at least 75 people in 17 Iraqi cities.
The attacks come amid heightened sectarian tensions, raising fears that the political turmoil in Iraq could spark a return of sectarian bloodshed that nearly ripped the country apart during the height of the war.
Al-Hashimi has denied the charges against him, saying the accusations are politically motivated amid the rivalry between his Sunni-backed Iraqiya minority political bloc and al-Maliki's Shiite majority bloc.
The warrant for al-Hashimi's arrest was issued just days after Iraqiya suspended its participation in parliament, claiming it was being cut out of the political process by al-Maliki.
The prime minister has said failing to hand over al-Hashimi or allowing him to flee to another country "could cause problems."
Al-Issawi, the finance minister, told CNN that before U.S. troops left, Iraqi officials made clear their fears of what could happen.
"So many times we warned the Americans, both the political and security situation (are) very fragile. Unfortunately, no one listened."
In a speech this month about bringing the U.S. troops home, President Barack Obama said, "Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. "
"There can be no fuller expression of America's support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are," Obama added.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, cited the latest violence in an interview Thursday with CNN's "American Morning."
He complained that the president is "spouting how we have left a stable and Democratic Iraq."
"Unfortunately, what I anticipated is taking place," he said, adding that the United States should have maintained a "residual force" in the country.
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Windfall - Chapter 1 - A new published novel from Tempo!
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otter mouse Windfall novel not your usual husky train for this site
Windfall
Chapter 1: On the Train
This is the complete first chapter of my new novel! Which just sold out at Anthrocon 2015!
>> Physical copies:
E-book: << Physical copies: http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=798 E-book: http://baddogbooks.com/?product=windfall
~ ~ ~

Max didn't really miss being a TV star. He did, however, miss Kylie, his co-star and co-conspirator.
In the six months since the show had ended, the husky had tried to fit in with the rest of the world. He'd moved back into his parents' house and his old, normal life. He'd caught up with the lives of his large, close family and the sights and smells of his childhood home, but it was weird not having Kylie around to fire off a wisecrack or save him from some awkward social situation. Really, it made sense: dogs excelled at missing friends.
Now, at long last, he sat aboard a passenger train as it rumbled down the long line of tracks between the Rocky Mountains and New England. When the trip started, he'd never been so happy to sit on so lumpy a seat—It'd be good to spend time with her again, even if it was only for a few weeks. As the countryside sped past, though, time had dilated to a crawl. He'd reached that anxious period of near-arrival found toward the end of every long trip. He stifled an impatient whine, breathed, and blinked to clear his mind. When his eyes opened, scenery still rolled past the window: trees, hills, rivers, power lines; all superimposed on his blocky canine face in the glass's reflection. He rested an elbow on his duffel and watched the rocky, wooded landscape roll by, knowing only a few hours lay between him and his best friend.
The train car rumbled, almost empty. Almost.
The mouse two seats ahead peeked at him over the back of her chair. She couldn't have been older than mid-teens, judging by her glittery bracelets and neon fur clips. She'd gotten on with her father about an hour ago and gradually started staring at him. The weight of her gaze pressed down on him, drooping his pointy ears and burying his nose further in the book he kept trying to read. Back on the show, he never dealt with fans in his day-to-day life, since filming ensured he never had a day-to-day life. Besides, he'd only been a second-string character, regardless of what the Internet insisted.
His phone buzzed, a blessed diversion. He dug the mobile from his pocket and swiped a paw pad across it.
Kylie Bevy: {The show jumped the shark when the director hired triplets to be in the background of every scene and wouldn't tell us why.}
Max grinned. Speak of the otter...
Max Saber: {What about the mirror universe panda with reverse-dyed fur?}
Kylie Bevy: {Hmm! I'd forgotten about her. XD How's the ride?}
He sighed, glancing up from his phone. The giggly mouse girl still stared at him.
Max Saber: {Train should be on time. Being stalked by suspected fan.}
Kylie Bevy: {Hunky huskies get stared at, especially when they're famous. Nobody stares in Montana?}
He looked up again. The mouse's whiskers bounced with the motion of the train; her gaze flicked away once he made eye contact.
Max Saber: {Well, we do, but we pretend not to.}
Kylie Bevy: {See ya soon, Maxie. ; ) If you survive.}
The husky put his phone away and checked his watch. An heirloom with two time zones, his father had given it to him when he left for filming full-time. He kept it set half on Kylie time and half on family time.
The train rumbled on, tree shadows flickering against the windows. With every sweep of darkness, the fan crept a little nearer, appearing in the next closest seat.
Max closed the mystery novel. He'd already read it, but he'd been going over it again to pick it apart and figure out why he liked it. He relaxed his shoulders and smiled at the mouse, trying not to be huge and intimidating.
The scrawny young rodent seemed to encounter thinner and thinner air the closer she got. Her pink paws clutched a battered and very familiar DVD set.
He gave a disarming wag, his tail thumping the seat. "Hi?"
She bounced and swept away a nervous lock of hair. "Oh. My gosh. Are you Serge from Strangeville? Because if you're not, I'm sorry if I'm, like, coming off like a total weirdo."
Behind her, a taller, graying mouse had peeked around his chair to see where his daughter had gone. His eyes met Max's with a shrug of silent apology.
There'd been a time Max would've leapt from the train sooner than have this conversation, but Kylie had spent three years beating a semblance of social grace into him. "Um, yeah." He shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. "But in real life, people usually call me Max."
"Ohmygosh! My friends are gonna be soooo jealous!" Her hyperventilation was prevented only by the air resistance of her braces. "This is soooo cool! Okay, okay, so like, what's it like being, like, a TV star?"
"I wasn't really the star—more like a supporting cast member."
She trembled with excitement, mobile phone charms clattering. "So what's it like?"
He contemplated the experience, then distilled it down: "You get up early, go to bed early, and spend most of your day working." It wasn't so different from farm life, really.
"Ugh!" Reality left a bitter taste in the mouse's mouth. "You make it sound totally like school."
"I guess so." He offered a smile.
She glanced down at the scuffed DVD box set, studying the cast list in search of a conversation topic. "Is your name really Max Saber?"
"Yep." A polite nod. "It was a birthday present."
"Like, really really?" She donned the look of a reporter gunning for a scoop. "It's not, like, some kinda stage name?"
The husky glanced at the middle-aged mouse opposite her original seat. They traded shrugs across the aisle. "Saber is an old husky name. The casting director wanted to add a second X to Max, but everyone else said that was too cheesy."
"Yeah, you wanna keep things, like…genuine or whatever." A pause. Wheels turned in her mind. "I didn't like it when they tried to ship you with that fortune-teller bat lady."
Max couldn't suppress a wry smile as the conversation took a familiar turn. He shrugged. "Yeah, I don't think anybody liked that."
"Why didn't you get together with Cassie at the end?" A cheery scoff bounced her whiskers. "Everybody knows you should."
His ears drooped, suspecting where this line of dialog led. "Um, that was really more the writers' call."
"Oh…" The mouse seemed to run off the edge of the conversation, then scrambled back onto it. "Soooo, are you guys dating in real life?"
Max squirmed. The inevitable question; the writers had always flirted with the idea of them flirting. "We weren't really dating in the show…"
"Yeah, but you know what I mean!" The mouse cornered him, blocking all escape from the seat or conversation. "Where are you headed? I mean, if it's okay that I ask that. I don't wanna, like, train-stalk you."
"I'm going to see Kylie, actually." He retreated against his carry-on luggage as he realized what he'd said: those words would keep her glued to the spot until one of them got off the train. Still, he thought, no way out but forward. "Cassie from the show."
Sure enough, a quiver traveled up the mouse's entire body, from tail to ears. "Oh my gosh! Did you finally propose?"
"What?" His ears shot up again, flushed hot. This wasn't the first time a conversation had taken this route. The fandom seemed determined to conflate him with his character, and Serge and Cassie had been the target of a lot of speculation over the seasons. "We aren't dating in real—"
"Does she actually live out here?" The rodent looked around, as if Kylie would spring out from the luggage racks. Then she focused like an awkward laser back on him. "It's totally awesome you two're together like that!"
"We're just friends. And, I don't know, we were on the show together forever, so I figured I'd visit. I wasn't really doing anything back in Montana anyway." Max's family had gotten used to his presence around the house after so much time in Hollywood, and it had taken some work to get them to endorse a two-week trip to the Eastern Seaboard. In the end, his mother's parting hug had been less "have fun, honey" and more "come home soon."
"Ya-huh!" She jabbed an unsteady glitter marker in his direction. "Would you mind signing my Season One, please please please?"
"Okay." He took the box. "I'll sign on the disc I actually appeared on, how's that?"
She nodded, whiskers whipped with enthusiasm. "Sure!"
Sitting up straight, he autographed the DVD with her squeaky felt-tip marker. It was his first signing in some time. At home, surrounded by people who'd known him from diapers, he'd felt foolish playing the Hollywood big shot. "Why do you have this on a train?"
Her pink paws lifted at how obvious the answer was. "In case I need to watch it on the way!"
"Ah, okay." Max gave a slow nod. "Aren't you kinda young for Strangeville?"
"Nah, my parents know I'd just watch it on the Internet anyway."
"Can't argue there." He handed the box set back.
A quiet hiss of deceleration. A train station rolled into view out the windows.
Her dad rose from his seat and gathered their bags.
"Ohmygosh! This is my stop!" She fumbled out her phone and held him and her father hostage with it. "Can I take a picture with you?"
He took a deep breath and tried to seem cool and friendly. "Sure." With a good-natured shrug, he stood, careful not to bump his head on the overhead rack.
Shoving the phone into her dad's hands, she scrambled over and hugged Max with disturbing strength.
The canine gave his best smile. The last thing he wanted was to seem all jaded and bitter.
A screech of brakes brought the train to a gradual halt. The mouse grinned back, colorful braces shining. "It was super awesome meeting you! Say hi to Cassie for me! Thanks so much!"
He chuckled. "Kylie, you mean. And sure."
The mice disembarked. A few more people loaded onto the train, but none seemed very interested in Max—save for the mouse girl who waved so hard she seemed in danger of spraining her wrist. As the train pulled away, the husky waved goodbye to the mice on the platform, then sunk into his seat. His thoughts lingered on Kylie. Before long they'd be together again, without any of the rigors of filming, getting into weird little adventures and feeling special for more than their moderate fame and his considerable tallness. He liked that idea. At least the weirdness with her was weirdness he enjoyed.
~ ~ ~
Windfall is now available online! Over three years in the making and it's finally here. :D The book is a M/F furry romantic comedy in a Lovecraftian horror setting.
More previews here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/10973174/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/12950193/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/12278672/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/14827336/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/14467401/
>> Physical copies:
E-book: << Physical copies: http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=798 E-book: http://baddogbooks.com/?product=windfall
All art for the book: Slate
-Tempo
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One of the Nameless Ghouls from Swedish occult rockers GHOST was interviewed on the October 31 edition of "Whiplash", the KLOS radio show hosted by Full Metal Jackie. You can now listen to the chat using the widget below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
On the lyrical and musical themes that will be covered on GHOST's upcoming follow-up to 2015's "Meliora" album, tentatively due in the fall of 2017:
"Let's just say that it's a continuation of 'Meliora', but it's sort of a response, where… I've used the word 'pre-acopalyptic' on 'Meliora'. It's sort of the height of civilization; it's symbolism for… Just look at the cover. It's, like, skyrisers and everything; you don't even see the ground. It's all covered and built material. And, obviously, there has to an end to that. So there will be a call and response. And the next album will be the response to that. So if there was an absence of a God, there might be a return of a deity, which usually comes in horrible form. So it will be a darker album."
On whether he has had a vision of where he wanted each album to go from the beginning or if he is doing it as he goes along:
"Both. A little of both. I mean, in the beginning, it was a little shooting from the hip. I mean, just making the songs for the first album was… I had no idea where it was going, but then, as it materialized from nothing to something in the sense that all of a sudden we were a touring band and, 'Wow, this is a job, apparently,' then obviously you quickly need to reassess. And I think that there were… Even though I'm still proud of the first album, I guess there were a few things on there that had I known beforehand, lyrically, some of the things that were said in there, was gonna be resulting in material that you were gonna play potentially for the rest of your life, it might have looked different. But that's why I'm glad that we never knew. The album came out of a purity and naïveté that, obviously, you cannot fake. But then 'Infestissumam' was starting to shape up your writing a little. And with 'Meliora', it was definitely more of a… There was a point. There was way more… This is basically what I wanna describe, or the mindset I wanna have people put in."
On the evolution of GHOST's sound:
"Being the main songwriter, I tend to wanna write songs that will complete our live show. So it's almost like a double perspective, where on one hand you have to write a record, an album, or a collection of songs, downloadable and in a certain order, that will be compelling and tell sort of a story. But 'Square Hammer' [from the latest EP, 'Popestar'] is definitely an example of, I guess, myself and us as a band, you pick up on the vibes needing a straighter song, basically. Ever since we started touring six years ago, we've always opened up with the opening track of the album. And every album has started with this weird, [sped-up] waltz prog number, which is great. It's fun, it's cool, but you wanna run to the hills in there as well. And that's why I guess when the embryo of 'Square Hammer' came up, which was just that [opening] riff. And that's how it started; I basically hummed that into my phone. I think I still have the file somewhere."
On GHOST members staying anonymous:
"I don't think it's funny at all; it's just a nuisance. From a practical point of view, of course it would be more convenient to just be a normal band and you can just put a fly on the wall, as they say, and just let it happen and just be yourself. Everything nowadays is about content. Content means online chatter about clips, news, a picture — anything that creates 'likes' and comments. If we were a so-called 'normal' band, we can just create twenty posts a day, just filming what we just ate and how it looked when it came out and 'We're here now,' and 'We're doing this,' and all of this sort of unnerving hysteric things that most people do. From a personal point of view, I'm very happy that we're not — or at least I am not personally — doing that. I have no Facebook, I don't have Twitter, I don't have Instagram. I have an old Hotmail address. I managed to sort of dodge the whole social-media thing, which I'm happy that I'm not… Obviously I live in a world where that surrounds me, so I know what's going on, but I don't follow it."
On social media:
"I think that there's definitely a backside to the world of social media. I think some people that didn't have a social life before probably might have had magical things happening to their lives, which I fully bless and condone. Absolutely, if you were a sad person before and now you have a social scene, absolutely fantastic. Information to the people — right, great, fantastic. But I know so many people that are so unhappy because of it. It ruins a lot of things. So for the majority of the people that used to have a somewhat working life situation in the past, I don't think we know yet the downside of this. We think of conveniences as something that helps us, but the more conveniences that we allow for in our lives, the less purpose we have as persons. You know, Uber is great, but Uber will suck if Google is gonna make self-running cars with Uber in it. And that's just one example of how we dive headfirst into conveniences that end up biting us in the ass."
"Popestar" was released on September 16 by Loma Vista Recordings and is available online and in record stores on CD, vinyl, and digital. The surprise five-track offering also contains covers of selections by ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO, EURYTHMICS and IMPERIET. "Popestar" was recorded by Papa Emeritus III and his Nameless Ghouls in Linköping, Sweden and produced by Tom Dalgety (PIXIES, ROYAL BLOOD, OPETH).
Additionally, GHOST released a deluxe version of "Meliora", their acclaimed 2015 Grammy Award-winning album. "Meliora Deluxe" contains the "Popestar" EP as a bonus disc (CD or LP or digital).
The arrival of the "Popestar" EP coincided with the launch of the band's 41-city U.S. headlining "Popestar" tour, which kicked off on September 16.
GHOST is known for its eccentric performances and is composed of six members easily recognized for their satanic attires. Five men who call themselves as Nameless Ghouls play the instruments while the lead vocalist is known as Papa Emeritus. The Nameless Ghouls who are wearing identical devil masks and costumes represent the five instrumentalities or elements (fire, water, air, earth and aether or quintessence) while their leader Papa Emeritus represents the group's anti-pope symbol.
"Whiplash" airs every Monday night from 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. on the Los Angeles radio station 95.5 KLOS. The show can be heard on the KLOS web site at 955klos.com or you can listen in on the KLOS channel on iHeartRadio. Full Metal Jackie also hosts a nationally syndicated radio program, which can be heard all over the country.
To see a full list of stations carrying Full Metal Jackie's show and when it airs, go to FullMetalJackieRadio.com.
Interview (audio):
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One of the constant battles of working online either alone or remotely with a team, is finding the right tools to streamline your productivity. In the current era of tech start-ups, we are privileged but cursed by the shear amount of apps on the market to boost productivity. Probably like yourself, this can be overwhelming at times and makes it even more of a challenge to find a tool that makes your digital work-space that much smoother. With that being said, I have compiled a list of my go to apps that after trial & error, have still stuck to my menu bar.
Alternote: A modern note-taking App
Alternote is a new note-taking app that integrates with your Evernote account. Even though I like my pen & notebook, I always find myself gravitating to using Alternote when brainstorming, meeting with a client or planning out a project. It’s minimal UI and extensive tagging, labelling & notebook system make it a dream to use. It’s completely free to use and is currently in Beta.
Mailbox: Inbox transformations
Mailbox is an app released by Dropbox and first was a Mobile only version. Last fall they released a desktop version of the app. Even though it does take a bit getting used to, it’s swipe gesture system has made going through email a breeze. It constantly syncs with your Dropbox account, so if you use a POP3 email, you don’t have to worry about backing anything up.
Atom: A Hackable Code Editor
Atom is probably one of my favourite apps of the last few months. It’s a new code / text editor from Github that is fully extendible. I was a devout Sublime Text user, but Atom made me make the switch. There is a considerable amount of community-driven plugins to make this editor highly extendible.
Toggl: Simple Time-tracking App
Toggl is a free time tracking app that makes it easy to track projects, with built in reporting & tagging. Similar to Harvest, but with a cleaner UI and without a monthly charge. What attracted me to this app over it’s contenders was it’s straightforward UI. It even comes with a mobile app to easily hit button when your hours start.
Slack: Communication made simple
Slack is team chat app you’ve likely heard a lot about in the past months. What makes it so great is how much it can streamline your communication between teams or projects, while creating a instant message connection. Sometimes emails can be hard to keep track of and can create distance between remote teams. Slack helps create a bond between remote team members. Having a general chat is necessary to blow off steam or to share an entertaining GIF.
Trello: Tasks into cards
Trello is likely another app you’ve heard about. It makes turning your to-dos into something fun and easy to track. You can make a series of boards to organize your tasks and make them into cards with descriptions, checklists, attachments & comments. It evens lets you sync card deadlines into your iCalendar.
Dropbox: Online Storage
Dropbox a well-known cloud based storage app. Ever since I put all my work into a dropbox folder, it makes things much more worry free. I no longer have to worry about a hard drive crash wiping my data, or old files clogging up limited SSD drive space. While dropbox has competitors (Box, Google Drive, etc), I find it the one I always go back to.
Skitch: Screenshot to the Cloud
Skitch is an app put out by Evernote, which allows you to easily take screenshots, upload online and make annotations. This is a great tool to use for projects when communicating visually with clients.
Final Thoughts
Overall these are just some of the few great tools out there for boosting your online productivity. This selection is my preference and the ones I find myself using on a daily basis.
What are some productivity apps you use? Feel free to post in the comments!
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