Prompt: I found him in the players' lounge, slicing cold cuts. His black hair was combed back and run through with grease. Clenched in his teeth was a soggy cigar. White athletic socks were hiked up to his knees above high-tops that appeared thoroughly worked over with shoe polish. ''What do you want me to do, Nick?'' I asked. ''Stay the hell out of the way,'' he answered without looking up. Two players walked over a second later: Nick, I can't find my spring training bag; old man, I need Nike batting gloves, I can't wear Adidas; Nicky, you have four

AA batteries? I must have looked as lost as I felt. I felt a tap on my shoulder and was suddenly face to face with the man himself. He had his hand extended toward me. ''Hey, I'm Don Mattingly,'' he said. ''You going to be working with us this year?'' I hadn't thought about my new job in these terms: working with the Yankees, in common pursuit of a common goal. ''Uh, I know who you are, Mr. Mattingly,'' I said, stuttering. ''I'm Matt, the new batboy.'' ''Nice to meet you, Matt,'' he said with a firm handshake. ''Listen,'' he told me, as if I could have done anything else. ''I've got a job for you. I just unpacked my bats from spring training. I don't know if it was the humidity in Florida or the altitude of the flight or what, but they're all coming up short. I need you to get me a bat stretcher.'' I nodded, trying to project competence. Get a bat stretcher. I located Nick digging through a trunk of underwear. ''Nick,'' I told him, ''I need a bat stretcher for Don Mattingly.'' I'd barely gotten the words out before Nick hit me with a barrage of expletives. Spittle hit my cheek. I'd never heard such a tirade before, not even in the movies. I scurried away, and confided in Nick's assistant. ''Don Mattingly asked me to get him a bat stretcher,'' I said, ''and Nick, uh, told me not to bother him.'' He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. ''Try Tartabull, Matty,'' he said. Danny Tartabull, the Yankees' power-hitting right fielder, was getting dressed on the other side of the clubhouse. He kicked at some baseball spikes at the foot of his locker before turning to face me. ''It's Matt?'' he asked.


Prompt: Earlier today, the Department of Commerce announced new sanctions against Russian products and companies operating in the United States. Previous sanctions only tangentially impacted the import of cheap and reliable firearms from Russia into the United States, but now the Obama administration is specifically targeting the makers of Saiga rifles and shotguns, as well as other companies. From the Executive Order. . . The following entities have been added to OFAC’s SDN List: […] KALASHNIKOV CONCERN (a.k.a. CONCERN KALASHNIKOV; a.k.a. IZHEVSKIY MASHINOSTROITEL’NYI ZAVOD OAO; f.k.a. IZHMASH R&D CENTER; f.k.a. JSC NPO IZHMASH; f.k.a. NPO IZHMASH OAO; a.k.a. OJSC CONCERN KALASHNIKOV;

f.k.a. OJSC IZHMASH; f.k.a. SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION ASSOCIATION IZHMASH JOINT STOCK COMPANY), 3, Derjabin Pr., Izhevsk, Udmurt Republic 426006, Russia; Registration ID 1111832003018 [UKRAINE2]. So the importation of new Izmash-produced firearms is now banned indefinitely in the United States. But that executive order definitely raises some questions for those currently in possession of a firearm manufactured by the now-sanctioned firearms companies. For example, can a gun dealer sell their existing stock? From the FAQ regarding the legality of items already in the United States: 374. If I own a Kalashnikov product, is that product blocked by sanctions? Am I able to resell a Kalashnikov product at a gun show or other secondary market? If a U.S. person is in possession of a Kalashnikov Concern product that was bought and fully paid for prior to the date of designation (i.e., no payment remains due to Kalashnikov Concern), then that product is not blocked and OFAC sanctions would not prohibit the U.S. person from keeping or selling the product in the secondary market, so long as Kalashnikov Concern has no interest in the transaction. New transactions by U.S. persons with Kalashnikov Concern are prohibited, however, and any property in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest is blocked pursuant to OFAC’s designation of Kalashnikov Concern on July 16, 2014. If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products are not fully paid for or are being sold on consignment), we advise that U.S. person to contact OFAC for further guidance on handling of the inventory. [7-16-2014] 375. If I have Kalashnikov products in my inventory, can I sell them? If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products


Prompt: 0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr released a statement today criticizing the bungled police raid of the mayor’s home in Berwyn Heights, Maryland. He said that no knock raids are unconstitutional, and that law enforcement has become arrogant and less accountable. The case Barr is referring to involves a bungled raid on Mayor Cheye Calvo ‘s home that resulted in the mayor and his mother in law being hand cuffed and his two dogs killed. The mayor had been victimized by drug smugglers, but law enforcement never bothered to take the

time to actually investigate and gather the facts. “Absent exigent circumstances, not present here, so-called no-knock raids are an affront to the Constitution. So is a shoot first, ask questions later philosophy by the police. Yet the Prince George’s police have done this before—last fall they invaded a house at the wrong address and shot the family dog. All Americans are at risk when the police behave this way. Just ask yourself what might happen if a suspicious package is delivered to your home and the cops bust in,” Barr said. His bigger point is that law enforcement needs to be able to do their job while protecting people’s liberties, “But there is an even larger point. Law enforcement agencies have become more arrogant and less accountable in cases other than those involving drugs. Most people are aware of well-publicized examples like Waco and Ruby Ridge, but similar abuses are common across the country, though they usually receive little or no public notice. We all want police to do their jobs well, but part of doing their job well is respecting the people’s constitutional liberties.” Barr knows what he is talking about. Before serving in the House of Representatives, he was a U.S. attorney, and before that he worked at the CIA. For lack of a better term, I think that some law enforcement agencies have gotten lazy. We see people getting shot or tasered too often without cause, but seems like if some law enforcement officers don’t want to deal with a situation, they skip right to using force. This attitude comes from the top down. It can be traced to the example set by the Bush administration after 9/11. This anything goes attitude needs to stop which is another reason why the neo-cons have to go. If you’re


Prompt: (Ottawa, November 9, 2015) – The Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA) denounces the criminal prosecution of Mr. Arthur Topham taking place in Quesnel, BC. Mr. Topham is on trial for charges under the “hate speech” provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code (s. 319(2)). The Crown is expected to make its closing statements today. These provisions criminalize belief, opinion, and expression of one’s beliefs and opinions, and are incompatible with the universal principle of free debate in a democracy. No person should ever be subjected to a criminal prosecution without the state having the onus to show actual harm to a person

and intent to produce the actual harm, beyond a reasonable doubt. The “crime” in essence is in the abstract, regarding production of an emotional response “at large”. No actual effect or imminent danger need be demonstrated by the Crown. The Crown will not rely on showing actual harm or intent to harm. Canada’s “hate crime” provisions require specific consent from the province’s Attorney General for a prosecution to proceed. This feature makes the state’s decision about whether or not to prosecute alleged “hate crimes” particularly susceptible to political influences. In the present political climate in Canada, cases where the expression can negatively impact public opinion about Canada’s diplomatic and military support for US and Israel policy and actions in the Middle East, or where state suppression of targeted expression supports the geopolitical goals of the US and Israel in the Middle East, are among those which are most at risk from being attacked using disproportionate means wielded by the state. In September 2014, the OCLA launched a petition to the Attorney General of BC asking that she retract her consent for the criminal proceedings against Mr. Topham. The petition, which gathered over 1,400 signatures, can be viewed online at the following link: https://www.change.org/p/hon-suzanne-anton-attorney-general-of-bc-jag-minister-gov-bc-ca-hon-suzanne-anton-retract-your-consent-for-the-criminal-proceedings-against-mr-arthur-topham All expression stems from the individual’s experience and perception, and is therefore of value to society, in that it reveals points of view for evaluation. Any individual’s expression of any view is needed content in the struggle for greater democracy and understanding. The OCLA defends Mr. Topham’s expression of his views, along with any other person’s expression of any view. The health of our democracy depends on freedom of speech. The “hate speech” provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada are irreconcilable with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and should be repealed. They are


Prompt: May 17th, 2017 Wests Tigers five-eighth Mitchell Moses has let the fans down after jumping ship to Parramatta mid-season. (AAP) May 17th, 2017 However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I am looking at the recruitment announcements over recent weeks since new coach Ivan Cleary was appointed at the club. I can see a new team building already. Before I get to that though, just a quick comment on the transfer of 5/8 Mitchell Moses to the Parramatta Eels this week. This is a disappointing result for all concerned. I don’t buy into the notion that Mitchell

should be so distracted by his contract situation that he could not perform for his current employers. There have been plenty of examples over the years where players have signed with rival clubs, sometimes 12 months or more before their current contract expires, yet they have been able to continue playing and giving 100% effort to their current club. I see absolutely no reason, why Mitchell Moses, as a professional sportsperson, should not have been expected, and willing, to fulfil his duties under the current contract for season 2017. Peter Sterling takes aim at Mitchell Moses I feel most sorry for the fans who looked forward to this year with great anticipation. The club plans its season, especially around sponsorship, membership, and marketing, very reliant on the playing roster they have available to them for the 12-month period. There are many of Mitchell Moses’ teammates whose own personal careers and performances would have relied heavily on playing with a player of Mitchell’s talent. All this has now been thrown into disarray because Mitchell wants to head off and start his new contract with another club as soon as possible. If that’s his attitude, then quite frankly the team, and the club, is better off without the distraction. On to the future. New coach Ivan Cleary has been very busy in the marketplace. Already the club has secured the services of experienced, representative-class players like Josh Reynolds, Ben Matulino, Russell Packer and Chris McQueen. My mail is that there will be more announcements this week on another two signings from rival clubs. In some respects, it looks like Cleary is “putting the band back together” with his recruitment of Matulino and Packer. These two big boys were a major part of Cleary’s 2011 Grand Final team at the New Zealand Warriors.


Prompt: Astronomers have known for decades that turbulent motion mixes and heats the interstellar medium (ISM), the dust and gases between the stars. But until now no one had been able to actually photograph this motion. An article published yesterday in Nature by a team of astronomers not only reveals this turbulent gas, but also that it moves at a low but supersonic velocity. The images were taken by a group of astronomers led by Bryan Gaensler, and used the Australia Telescope Compact Array. It was focused on a region in the southern galactic plane about 10,000 light-years away, in the

constellation Norma. Turbulent, supersonic gas is characterized mainly by the Reynolds number (the ratio of momentum to viscous forces, which determines when a flow becomes turbulent) and the Mach number (the flow speed divided by the local speed of sound). These quantities have been difficult to measure in the past, since astronomers haven’t been able to get an adequate picture of the gas, but they do know that structures formed by the turbulent motion range from 1,000 km to 100 parsecs (over 1015 km). Now, describing the ISM as "gas" is a bit of an overstatement, if you’re picturing gas as in our atmosphere. The ISM is extremely low density, ranging from 10-4-106 molecules per cm3 depending on the temperature (for some perspective, the density of air at ocean level on Earth is about 1019 molecules per cm3). We can’t see the ISM using visible light, so astronomers observe radio waves emitted from the Milky Way and altered by passing through this turbulent region. The gases are ionized, so their swirling, mixing turbulent motion forms electrical and magnetic fields (known as magnetohydrodynamic flow), which in turn affects the polarization of radio waves. These changes in polarization can be detected by radio telescopes (like the one the team used) and indirectly reveal the direction of flowing gases. The researchers used these measurements to make an image of the region (see above), which shows a complex field of tangled, twisting tendrils (say that three times fast) of gas. These structures are formed by turbulent vortices and intersecting shock waves. In order to figure out if the gas was moving at subsonic or supersonic speeds, they also performed three-dimensional computer simulations of the ISM, comparing subsonic (Mach number below one), transonic (Mach number around 1), and supersonic (Mach number well above one) models


Prompt: It takes three years to truly grade an NFL Draft, despite those immediate grades we all do the minute a player is picked and then again when the draft is complete. Those always come back to haunt draft graders like myself. Luckily, I can poke fun at myself when they do go bad and make their way around Twitter and other social-media avenues. I do a lot of pointing out my mistakes here as I regrade the 2014 NFL Draft. Looking back to three years ago is a fun exercise that I enjoy doing to see how teams hit and

missed -- and how I did the same. When the Oakland Raiders used their first two picks to take pass rusher Khalil Mack in the first round and then Derek Carr in the second round in 2014, I gave that draft a B grade at the time. That's an A+ draft now. It's the draft that will keep the Raiders in the playoff race for a long time. They have their franchise passer, who I wasn't so sure about when he came out, thus my previous B grade. (P.S. I loved Mack.) See, I can point out when I am wrong. So dive into this 2014 NFL Draft regrade. I think you will find some interesting things, like how Mr. Never Get Anything Wrong Bill Belichick had a crappy draft. Or how teams you thought had great drafts -- like the Minnesota Vikings -- didn't really hit the way you thought, while the Washington Redskins did. Arizona Cardinals 2014 grade: B The skinny: They had seven picks, and two of those picks enter the 2017 season as starters. First-round pick Deone Bucannon was moved from safety to linebacker and has developed into a big part of their defense. Third-round receiver John Brown is a big-play threat when he can stay on the field. Injuries slowed him last season. They also have backups in second-round tight end Troy Niklas, third-round edge player Kareem Martin and fifth-round defensive end Ed Stinson. Niklas has potential, but injuries have limited him to seven starts in two seasons. How I did: I liked the pick of Bucannon, and questioned taking Niklas in the second. I thought fifth-round quarterback Logan Thomas could be a tight end and he busted out as a quarterback. So I did OK. New grade: B- Atlanta Falcons 2014 grade: B+ The


Prompt: The Obama-era Office for Civil Rights lowered standards for convicting college students of sexual assault. We need to protect all students' rights. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on July 13, 2017. (Photo11: Alex Brandon, AP) In a series of meetings this month, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos signaled strong disagreement with the Obama administration’s aggressive erosion of due process protections for college students accused of sexual assault. While deploring the horrors of the offense, DeVos added that “a system without due process protections … serves no one.” This was a welcome change from the decrees issued by the Obama-era Office for Civil

Rights (OCR), which had told colleges to avoid any due process safeguards that would “restrict or unnecessarily delay the protections provided by Title IX” to accusers. Surveying the damage to fundamental fairness from the Obama-era policies, a recent study by UCLA professor John Villasenor concluded that an innocent student has as much as a one-in-three chance of being found guilty by today’s campus sexual assault tribunals. The Obama policy proceeded from the counterfactual claim that sex crimes — which are no doubt a serious problem — were sweeping through the nation’s campuses like an epidemic. (In fact the number declined dramatically between 1994 and 2010.) With vocal support from President Obama and Vice President Biden, OCR used this myth to reinterpret the Title IX, the statute barring sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funds. The Obama-era OCR ordered universities to use the lowest possible standard of proof (preponderance of evidence, or 50.01%) and allow accusers to appeal not-guilty findings. It also discouraged colleges from allowing cross-examination of accusing students, and urged institutions to deny accused students any right to a hearing by giving all power to a single bureaucrat to act as investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. During DeVos’ meetings, the accusers’ rights organization Know Your IX organized a protest outside the Department of Education, demanding a blanket retention of Obama’s policies. The group was joined by the leading congressional foe of campus due process, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. She maintained that “if Secretary DeVos rolls back these protections” — each of which had placed a thumb on the scale to increase, sometimes dramatically, the chance of a guilty finding — “justice will not be possible.” This from a senator who had publicly described former Columbia student Paul Nungesser as a “rapist” even after he was cleared by both


Prompt: Celestin wanted to celebrate his wife’s birthday. Using the internet he purchased a few cosmetic products from China for a value of $36. His Chinese counterpart explained to him that the package would be delivered by DHL in about 10 days with an extra cost of about $100. Author J Jacques Morisset Lead Economist and Program Leader for Cote d’Ivoire, World Bank Ten days later he was contacted by the DHL office in Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, informing him that his package had arrived but would be going through customs inspection. The next day came the bad news

(see the below copy of the official receipt). The customs duties and charges amounted to $360 or 10 times the original value of his package. The explanation was as follows: First, the value of his package was reevaluated arbitrarily by the inspector from $36 to $360, without any explanation. Second, the value-added tax (VAT), the custom duty, and the statistical tax amounted to $248.97 or seven times the original value. Third, the forward freight agent was charging him several fees for $75.94 or more than twice the original value. Figure 1: Receipt showing corruption in Ivory Coast What an expensive gift for his wife! Celestin wanted to complain, but he learned that it would take anywhere from several days to weeks to go through the legal process at the customs office with little chance of success. Moreover, DHL was going to charge him an extra $17 for each additional day of storage. Discouraged, Celestin decided to pay his customs duties. The story of Celestin is one faced by many importers in Ivory Coast and unfortunately in most West African countries. This is not a story typically found in an economic textbook or in reports produced by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund where customs duties are simply the addition of common external tariffs (ranging from 0 percent to 20 percent) and VAT (the rate is 18 percent in Ivory Coast). This is, however, the reality in Ivory Coast where a trader has to pay 10 times the original cost of his merchandise, excluding transport costs. These fees have two huge negative implications for the country. The most obvious is that imports become much more expensive, including many basic necessities, which consequently raises the cost of living. Such policies also act as a barrier to entry, protecting local industries


Prompt: Mitt Romney’s advantage among male voters has all but disappeared since the Democratic National Convention. The pattern will likely spell doom for Romney unless it represents an entirely transient “bump” for President Obama — which it might. ADVERTISEMENT Several polls released in recent days show Obama displaying new strength among male voters. Romney needs to win the male electorate by a wide margin to overcome the chronic disadvantage the GOP faces with respect to women. A CNN poll released Monday showed Obama moving into a small lead among men, besting Romney 48 percent to 47. The finding was especially notable

because CNN, in a poll conducted about a week prior, had shown Romney holding a 12-point lead among men (55 percent to 43). On Tuesday, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found Obama enjoying a 3-point edge among men. In a memo accompanying the poll’s release, its authors, Langer Research Associates, noted that “Obama’s support has reached a new high among men” — higher than at any point during this election cycle. In addition, a new poll from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling organization found that Obama has a 1-point lead among men, taking 47 percent to Romney’s 46. Democrats are delighted with those numbers. “If that holds, there’s no way Romney can win,” said Bob Shrum, the longtime Democratic strategist who ran Sen. John Kerry John Forbes KerryOvernight Defense: White House eyes budget maneuver to boost defense spending | Trump heads to Hanoi for second summit with Kim | Former national security officials rebuke Trump on emergency declaration 58 ex-national security officials rebuke Trump over emergency declaration Ex-national security officials to issue statement slamming Trump's emergency declaration: WaPo MORE’s (D-Mass.) 2004 bid for the White House. The Romney campaign has been pushing back hard against the polls in recent days. On Monday, it circulated a memo from its in-house pollster, Neil Newhouse, asserting that no one should “get too worked up about the latest polling” and characterizing the boost Obama is enjoying as a “sugar-high.” On Tuesday, a Romney campaign aide told The Hill that the shift in male voting intentions was part of the same pattern. “He got a temporary boost that shouldn’t last long,” the aide argued. Still, even Republicans who think that those predictions will ultimately prove true admit their worries about the current state of play. “It’s definitely a concern,” said Dan Judy, a vice president


Prompt: Austrian town: The name is thought to derive from a sixth century noble called Lord Focko An Austrian political party has defended a decision to promote a local beer called F***ing Hell - named after a village in the country and the German word for 'lite'. The extraordinary brand name was initially banned when the product was released in 2010 but the company took the fight all the way to the EU's trademark authority who eventually overturned the decision. And the beer was recently promoted on the website of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria, for the district of Schaerding

- which neighbours F***ing. Both districts are found in the northern Austrian province of Upper Austria and the Freedom Party say the promotion was a way of showing solidarity with their neighbours. The advert on the homepage leads to a website where it is possible to buy the alcohol on order from the neighbouring village of 'F***ing'. In 2010 the Trade Marks and Designs Registration Office of the European Union ruled that although it might be an obscene swearword in the English language, in German it was simply the name of the village - and a light 'hell' type of beer. They said in a statement that it had rejected a complaint that the trade mark 'F***ing Hell' was upsetting, accusatory and derogatory. They added: 'The word combination claimed contains no semantic indication that could refer to a certain person or group of persons. 'Nor does it incite a particular act. It cannot even be understood as an instruction that the reader should go to hell.' Battle: The extraordinary brand name was initially banned when the product was released in 2010 but the company took the fight all the way to the EU's trademark authority who eventually overturned the decision Endorsement: An advert for the beer appeared on the website of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria German marketing executives Stefan Fellenberg, 38, and Florian Krause, 32, who own the rights to the brand name, said they had referred to the town of F***ing in their application to register it. THE VILLAGE OF F***ING Location: Upper Austria Population: 104 Origin: Founded in the 6th century by nobleman called Lord Focko The recent publicity earned by the Freedom Party is likely to boost the controversial beer brand's sales - bringing money to a town that often falls victim to trophy-hunters. Franz


Prompt: One family says the ratings-grabbing reality show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" turned their personal tragedy into a practical nightmare, leaving them with virtually nothing but a lawsuit. The Higgins family, five kids between the ages of 14 to 21-years-old, lived in a two-bedroom apartment in California, orphaned by the deaths of their parents. Their story grabbed headlines. Producers at the reality show took notice. The family's church first raised money to help them out. Then, “Extreme Makeover" contacted the church to arrange an interview with the young adults. Maybe they could be the next “deserving family.” Fellow church members, the

Leomiti family, offered to take the Higgins family into their home. The lawsuit claims the family's motivation wasn't to save the kids from a life of despair. It was to get a newly built nine-bedroom house, mortgage paid, a weeklong vacation and other gifts like computers, stereos and cars. According to the suit against the Leomitis, ABC and the producers of “Extreme Makeover,” around the time the episode aired, the Higgins' moved out one-by-one as a result of a “orchestrated campaign” by the Leomiti family to get rid of them. Mrs. Leomiti called the lawsuit “bogus” in an interview with the Abrams Report over the phone. Charles Higgins, the oldest of the five Higgins children, and the Higgins' family attorney, Patrick Mesisca, explain their case to "The Abrams Report" DAN ABRAMS, 'ABRAMS REPORT’ HOST: Charles, first let me start with you. Tell me first of all what happened here. CHARLES HIGGINS, SUING 'EXTREME MAKEOVER': What happened was we were supposed to be promised a house that was to be built for everybody. My brothers and sisters were supposed to have a place to stay and now we‘re practically homeless. We‘re not together —we‘re not living together in one home. We‘re living in separate homes with each of our friends and it really hurts because I‘m 22. I‘m trying to pull an extra load. I‘ve got a lot on my shoulders here. I‘m trying to be a good role model but it's hard when you don't really have a place to stay or a place for your younger brothers and siblings to call home, so they can wake up in the morning and they don‘t have to worry about where they are going to live or what they're going to do. It really hurts, it hurts me to see the look


Prompt: By Christine Duhaime | January 2nd, 2017 The questions and answers I’ve been asked the most in 2016 about China: Q: How much money has been removed from China in proceeds of corruption? A: According to the Bank of China, way over US$120 Billion or CAD$160 Billion between the years 1995-2008. China appears to have quit sharing data officially after 2011 because it said at that time that the outflows of proceeds of corruption was severe enough to threaten its economy and its political stability. However, a Chinese Commission later said this: The amount more than doubled in 2010 to

US$412 Billion (CAD$553 Billion); In 2011, it was at US$600 Billion (CAD$806 Billion); In 2012, it was at US$1 Trillion (CAD$1.3 Trillion); and By 2013, it was at US$1.5 Trillion (CAD$2 Trillion). China also has something called “grey” income, which means income earned (or acquired off the books – basically handed to someone in the proverbial suitcases) in China that is not reported on income tax reports, and that is held by its richest families. By 2012, the grey income was CAD$1.3 Trillion according to the China Society of Economic Reform. Some of the grey income inevitably ends up in other countries. Money Laundering So, over $2,000,000,000,000 is missing from China and because China says it’s proceeds of corruption, it’s a $2,000,000,000,000 money laundering problem. Bigger than the economies of most countries If you want a sense of how come China said in 2011 that the illegal removal of $2 Trillion from corruption payments threatens its economy, note that, according to Wikipedia, there are only a few countries in the world that have an economy of $2 Trillion or more and they are: US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, China, Italy, Brazil and Russia. Another way of looking at it is that the proceeds of corruption that flew out of China and landed in the US, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands is more than the entire economies of each of over 100 countries including the economy of Spain, Mexico, South Korea, Australia, Turkey or Switzerland. Q: How many Chinese foreign nationals are involved in moving proceeds of corruption out of China? A: According to the Bank of China, about 16,000 to 18,000 officials with ties to the public sector were involved in moving proceeds of corruption illegally from China to other countries. Q: What are the 4 top countries where Chinese


Prompt: A lot of people want a Squirrel Girl movie and they are wrong! WRONG! In my learned, expert opinion, Squirrel Girl wouldn't work as a leading character in a movie - she's best when her unique qualities are being contrasted with others around her, especially more traditional superheroes. Also a movie would necessitate some sort of a big threat, which is not when I think Squirrel Girl is at her best, especially since the character's joke premise is largely that she's literally undefeatable. Seriously, she took out Thanos. But put Squirrel Girl on a team? And put that team on

TV show where the emphasis is on character interactions? And make that show a comedy? You've already sold me. Now Marvel has to sell a network; they're shopping around a new show called New Warriors, and it stars Squirrel Girl. TV Line, who broke the news, says that it's a half hour comedy. Perfect! TV Line also says that the show is about a 'junior version of The Avengers,' which doesn't quite sound right to me - there is a team called Young Avengers, after all. But maybe TV can't use the Avengers name at all, and so they have to take the Young Avengers and call them The New Warriors? It's hard to say, as TV Line doesn't have the names of the other teenage heroes on the team, and Squirrel Girl was never on either team. I love both the Young Avengers and The New Warriors, but I really love The New Warriors. I was always a fan of their original leader, Night Thrasher, a rich kid who saw his parents killed before his eyes and went on to become a skateboarding vigilante. Oh, and he just happened to be black, and the idea of a black skateboarding superhero feels pretty current in the world of Odd Future. At one point The New Warriors were on their own reality show (that ended in tragedy when member Speedball blew up a school and killed 600 people. Leave that out of the comedy show), and that would be a pretty good premise for a half hour comedy. Sort of The Office with superheroes. If it's actually Young Avengers? That book was way more soap operatic than The New Warriors, which never really had a true cohesive focus past the first volume. I would do Young Avengers in the style of


Prompt: It's true that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has called himself a "democratic socialist" (3:10 in the video); however, he's clearly stated, "No, I do not believe government should control everything." While his attempts at breaking up the banks will be attacked as socialism from Republicans and even Hillary Clinton supporters, Sanders is closer to President Theodore Roosevelt than the fabricated meaning socialism has become in our political climate. When Republicans call Sanders a socialist, what they really mean is a man courageous enough to act like Presidents Roosevelt and Taft. ADVERTISEMENT When Republicans call Sanders a socialist, they’re ignoring then-Gov.

Jan Brewer's (R) expansion of Medicaid in Arizona, President George W. Bush's $400 billion Medicare bill and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) enrolling in ObamaCare. The word "socialist" is both a political insult and a way of life for conservatives throughout the United States. According to Pew Research, 52 percent of Republicans "say they have benefited from a major entitlement program at some point in their lives" and 85 percent of Republicans believe that Medicare "has been very good/good for the country." CBS News finds that 89 percent of Tea Party advocates disagree with President Obama's expansion of government, but 62 percent of the Tea Party believes that "Social Security and Medicare are worth the costs to taxpayers." In terms of poverty, Forbes writes that Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia and Mississippi (staunchly conservative states that went for GOP nominee MittRomney in 2012) are the poorest states in the nation with "the highest percentages of households earning less than $24,999 annually." As a result, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia and Mississippi have the highest number of food stamp recipients in the nation. In terms of the poorest region of the U.S., The Wall Street Journal states that one recent study "points to the South — where a majority (59%) of counties now struggle with both high poverty and inequality." Although the GOP consistently works to cut government assistance programs, most Southern states have voted for a Republican presidential candidate consistently since 1972. Any expansion of government assistance programs is derided as "socialism" by Republicans, yet many conservatives fail to see the irony in a sign that reads, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" With Sanders against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has made an issue of America's shrinking manufacturing sector, President Reagan's policies mirrored the concerns of Vermont's junior senator. When the auto


Prompt: Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has hired a Washington lobbying firm that represents insurers and other health care industry companies and groups opposed to single-payer health care to lobby in favor of his insurer-friendly alternative to Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” proposal. The firm was hired by Hickenlooper's government office and is slated to receive a total of $210,000 in taxpayer funds from the Democratic governor’s office budget to lobby on health care after it helped bankroll his election campaign, a spokesperson for Hickenlooper's office confirmed Wednesday. According to federal records reviewed by International Business Times, the Colorado governor's office

in February hired Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck — a lobbying powerhouse whose lobbyist Doug Friednash became the governor’s chief of staff in 2015 — for $17,500 monthly from February 2017 to the same month of 2018. Friednash, according to the spokesperson for Hickenlooper, helped select Brownstein Hyatt from a pool of bidding lobbying firms, as did Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, a former Kaiser Permanente executive who launched her gubernatorial campaign early in September, former Department of Regulatory Agencies Executive Director Joe Neguse, who kicked off his congressional bid in June, and Hickenlooper himself. Lynne and Friednash served as “the primary points of contact” for Brownstein Hyatt at the governor's office, according to the firm's lobbying contract, which was obtained by IBT. The firm’s work for the governor has involved lobbying Congress, the Interior Department, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency on “issues related to federal spending and national service programs.” Brownstein Hyatt has also lobbied federal lawmakers on health care on behalf of Hickenlooper, and the governor's spokesperson, Jacques Montgomery, confirmed that the firm has been advocating for Hickenlooper's proposed alternative to Obamacare and single-payer health care measures. In recent weeks, Hickenlooper’s administration has approved a 27 percent insurance premium increase for Colorado’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges for next year. At the same time, he has been working with Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich on a plan to stabilize the ACA by offering more public money to the private insurance industry. The initiative proposes preserving taxpayer subsidies to insurers and passing a Republican-sponsored measure to create an additional $15 billion fund to further subsidize private insurers when they cover sicker people. Hickenlooper said the health care initiatives he is working on will not involve proposals for a single-payer health care system — the kind adopted in many


Prompt: Two European fintech startups are teaming up to give a glimpse of what the bank of tomorrow could look like. Number26, a Peter Thiel-backed German startup that’s setting out to create the bank account of the future, has announced a tie-up with London-based peer-to–peer money-transfer firm TransferWise. The partnership will give Number26 customers in-app access to a cheap international money-transfer service. To recap, Number26 was founded out of Berlin in early 2013 as a “mobile-first” bank account, not too dissimilar from BankMobile or Simple in the U.S. Originally only available in Germany and Austria, the service has since expanded across

the E.U. into Ireland, Spain, France, Greece, Slovakia, and Italy. In an interview with VentureBeat at Dublin Web Summit last year, Number26 cofounder Maximilian Tayenthal hinted at the company’s future plans. Indeed, Tayenthal noted the myriad nimble fintech startups that were chipping away at various elements of the traditional bank, including bank accounts and FOREX, and observed that they could band together to “rebundle” an age-old entity that had been systematically “unbundled” with the advent of the Internet. We’re seeing the first fruits of this vision today. The new service is available to all Number26 customers from today, and transfers will initially be permitted from euros into eight currencies: U.K. pounds, U.S. dollars, Swedish krona, Indian rupees, Australian dollars, Hungarian forints, Swiss francs, and Polish zloty. We’re told that additional currencies will be added “soon.” “Our goal is to leverage the best banking products from around the world and make them accessible to customers with one tap, creating a fintech hub inside the Number26 app,” explained cofounder and CEO Valentin Stalf. “And by adding one of the world’s best fintechs in TransferWise as our flagship partner, we can drive banking innovation much faster than traditional banks.” TransferWise has emerged as a key player in the fintech startup realm with a smart international money transfer service that bypasses the banks to keep costs down. Similar to Number26, TransferWise also counts PayPal-cofounder Peter Thiel as an investor, alongside other big-name backers such as Richard Branson. “We want to make it as easy and fair as possible for people who need to send money abroad, so we’re very excited that Number26 customers can now access the TransferWise experience without leaving their banking app,” said TransferWise CEO and cofounder Taavet Hinrikus. “This is a great step towards consumers having a wider choice of financial


Prompt: What can we learn from the 12 teams who ascended to the College Football Playoff in its first three seasons? From a scheduling standpoint, each of the dozen reached the end of the regular season with a 12-game resume to present to the Playoff committee. In each case it was enough to earn them a coveted place in the bracket. It illustrates, absolutely, how important the schedule is in today’s college football climate. Teams can finish the season with the same record, but the one who has the best perceived set of opponents will ultimately be given the opportunity to

play for a national championship. With 12 teams in three years, we now have enough data to begin to forecast what a Playoff-worthy schedule looks like. Any common threads among the 12 teams sends a clear message, “This is what the committee is looking for.” These are the unofficial guidelines to “scheduling your way to a CFB Playoff berth.” I. You MUST schedule a Power school out of conference play. 100% of the 12 teams who earned slots in the first three CFB Playoff brackets played a Power team in non-conference play. It is one of only two absolutes among the dozen Playoff-worthy slates. II. Schedule your bye week for Week 6 or later. Of the 12 previous Playoff schools, nine (or 75%) had at least one bye week that fell during or after Week 6 of the season. The only exceptions were Ohio State in 2016 (the Buckeyes had Week 4 off), Clemson in 2015 (also Week 4), and Oklahoma in 2015 (Week 3). III. Schedule no more than two road games in a row. The other absolute in scheduling for a Playoff, 100% of the teams sampled played a maximum of two consecutive road games during the regular season. Of these, five (or 42%) didn’t play any back-to-back road games during their Playoff campaign (2016 Clemson, 2015 Alabama and Oklahoma, 2014 Florida State and Oregon.) IV. Schedule at least three consecutive home games. The flip side of the third commandment, eight (or 67%) of the 12 Playoff teams scheduled at least one home stand lasting three weeks or more. In 2015, Michigan State enjoyed a stretch of four home games from Sept. 12 (Oregon) to Oct. 3 (Purdue) – making the Spartans the Playoff team with the longest homestretch in history. V. There is no need to double-up


Prompt: Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email A boy of two has become the youngest person in the world to have weight loss surgery. The family of the obese toddler begged for help after his weight soared to five stone and he began suffering sleep apnoea which caused him to stop breathing while asleep. Doctors who carried out a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy to shrink his stomach to the size of a banana said two bids to

slim him down through diet had failed. The “gastric sleeve” LSG op is only performed when a gastric band or a gastric bypass would be unsafe. Obesity expert Professor Paul Zimmett, of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, branded the case “shocking” and “very unusual”. He added: “It is going into unknown territory. We have no idea what effect this may have on the child’s growth. “Unless he has proper follow up he may suffer vitamin deficiencies.” The boy weighed 3st 3lb when he was first seen by a hormone specialist. But four months after his family were ordered to put him on a strict diet his weight had increased by 1st 2lb. Medics could not verify whether his parents had enforced the diet. By the time he was referred to an obesity clinic he was officially “morbidly obese” and had begun to suffer sleep apnoea and problems with his legs. A second attempt at dieting also failed and when he reached 5st 2lb doctors decided to operate on him at Prince Sultan Military Medical City, in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia. The boy was of a normal weight until he reached six months old. But as he became heavier, his parents sought the advice of doctors. He had no family history of morbid obesity or genetic abnormalities and a CT scan of his brain showed no other possible causes of obesity. Surgeons decided to perform the LSG, which involved removing the outer layer of his stomach to make it a quarter of its previous size. In the UK, only obese girls aged at least 13 and boys aged 15 would be considered for the surgery. The boy lost about 15% of his body weight and was a “normal” 3st 7lb two years after the 2010 surgery. The surgeons wrote in


Prompt: If you’re among those who have shied away from eggs despite their taste, value, and nutrition, for fear of dietary cholesterol , you must know that eggs are the handiest foods to have in your fridge. Jumpstart your day: Hit the gym? Don’t skip the yolk: Looking to please picky eaters? Store it right Let’s get EGG-Ceptional! Japanese Egg & Garlic Fried Rice Ingredients: Method: South Indian egg curry Ingredients: Method: Egg & celery salad Ingredients: Method: Sweet cours Caramel custard Ingredients: Method: Get egg-ed! Gobble them without regret! Egg Play Allergic to eggs? Quick Tip “Your kids come home

hungry? Make them an egg sandwich in less than five minutes or poach an egg and top it with stir fried vegetables - a perfect protein snack with all the essential vitamins and minerals of the veggies,” says chef Sanjeev Kapoor. “Guests have dropped in without a prior intimation? You can go in for easy-to-cook dishes like egg curry or egg biryani. It surely won’t make them wait for long,” he adds.Eggs are universally popular for an umpteen number of reasons. “They are valued the most for their nutritional content,” says chef Suresh Thampy. Available readily, eggs suit every household budget. And yes, they are easy to cook, so much so that egg preparations are a favorite among bachelors and young working couples. Your day can begin and end with an egg. It’s so very versatile! Be it a traditional breakfast, a mid-day salad, a soup for supper or even a dessert to pamper your sweet tooth. Even though eggs are of animal origin, there is an appreciable number of eggetarians among vegetarians.A study published in the journal of American College of Nutrition states that people who eat eggs for breakfast feel more satisfied and ate fewer calories at the following meal, thus helping over-weight dieters to lose more weight.Now crack the egg: High-quality egg proteins provide the building blocks your body needs to grow and perform properly. The amount and quality of protein you eat directly affects your muscle mass, strength and function. Eat eggs after exercise to encourage muscle tissue repair and growth.When eating eggs, don’t skip the yolk. One egg provides six grams of all natural high quality protein. While many think that egg white has all the protein, the yolk actually provides half of it.Eggs are a great choice for everyone as they can be cooked


Prompt: [What Steve King's 'subgroups' musing says about the party of Donald Trump] The Post's Philip Rucker interviews Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Wednesday, July 20. (The Washington Post) Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Wednesday defended his controversial comment this week that some cultures contribute more to civilization than others. "The idea of multiculturalism, that every culture is equal — that's not objectively true," King told The Washington Post's Philip Rucker, less than 48 hours after he asked on live TV what "subgroups" besides white people had made any contributions to civilization. "We've been

fed that information for the past 25 years, and we're not going to become a greater nation if we continue to do that." Here's what he told Rucker: "Western civilization is the most successful civilization the world has ever seen. And some of the reasons for that is it's borrowed from other cultures along the way, back to Mosaic law, the Greek age of reason, Roman law and the Roman order of government, and the Republican form of government, by the way that we're guaranteed in our constitution. The foundation of our ideological thought is rooted in the enlightenment of Europe and then this country was born at the dawn of the industrial revolution. ... The sum total that's been contributed by Western civilization, it surpasses any other culture of civilization, party because we borrowed from them along the way, and we're flexible enough to do that. And so I don't think we should apologize for our success." Of course, as my eagle-eyed colleague Philip Bump — who caught King's comment Monday on MSNBC — pointed out, our society is shaped by numerous nonwhite societies, past and present: Civilization first arose in cities in Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq and Syria. Arabic and Middle Eastern inventors and scientists brought astronomy to the world, which in turn aided innovations in navigation. Critical innovations in mathematics and architecture and medicine originated in the same area. The Chinese contributed philosophical precepts and early monetary systems, among other things. The specific inventions that were created outside of the Western world are too many to list: the seismograph, the umbrella, gunpowder, stirrups, the compass. Oh, and, of course, the non-Western world gave us the numeric system that will be used to tally up the delegates to make Trump the nominee of King's party. That


Prompt: It has been one year since three Al Jazeera journalists were arrested in Egypt in a case that has sparked international outrage. Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste were arrested in Cairo on Dec. 29, 2013, under false charges of aiding the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and spreading false news. In June, Greste, an Australian, and Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian, received seven-year prison terms, and Mohamed, an Egyptian, was sentenced to 10 years. Mohamed's wife, Jehan Rashed, told Al Jazeera that the day her husband was arrested had been the worst of her life. "The sentiment of injustice is overwhelming," she

said. "Baher was arrested on this day a year ago. It was the worst day Baher, our children and I have ever lived. "It was a dark day. I wonder if the [Egyptian] army and police are protecting the people. They came to arrest a journalist, while realizing deep within he is a respectable professional, but they acted as if he was a felon," she said. On Thursday an appeal for the three journalists will be heard at Egypt’s Court of Cassation. The court will look at the process behind the original trial, which Al Jazeera has always maintained was flawed. The court can dismiss the cases, uphold the verdicts and sentences or order a new trial. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi may issue a presidential pardon, but he maintains that he will not interfere in the judicial process. The Egyptian government has defended the incarceration of the journalists, arguing that it was not a political decision and that it is now up to the appeals process to determine what should happen next. Despite Sisi's stated reluctance to interfere with the judicial process, statements he made in recent months signaled a possible softening of that stance. In July local media reported that Sisi said he wished that the journalists had been deported rather than jailed, in the first signal that he disagreed with sentences handed down the previous month. In a November interview with France 24, Sisi said that when the three were arrested, he "did not have the power to make decisions about their situation. If I had been president at that time, I would have decided, for the good and security of Egypt, that the journalists would have to be expelled, to put an end to this issue once and for all." He also told France 24 that the


Prompt: On his fourth full day in office, President Trump signed an executive order that was supposed to settle this whole Dakota Access Pipeline thing—no more delays due to protests, no more reconsidering the route because of environmental worries. And for a while, it seemed to work. The protest camps are gone, and the pipe has been pumping oil since March. But Thursday, a federal judge ordered a do-over on the rush-job environmental review Trump ordered back in January. Trump came into office aiming for a blitzkrieg on environmental regulations. He got trench warfare. That's because firing from the other side

of no man's land is a nimble alliance of environmental groups that have spent decades preparing for the likes of him. You have probably heard of many of them: the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, and so on. Others are smaller, focused on regional issues—like the Standing Rock Sioux that just won a small victory against the Dakota Access Pipeline. What they all have in common are stubborn, attrition-minded legal teams. Trump's assault is just a more bombastic version of what these lawyers have weathered under past administrations. And if there's any green left in the government by 2020, they'll be the ones responsible. President Trump is famous for, among other things, his love of infrastructure and hatred of regulations. His January 24 executive order didn't actually target the Dakota Access Pipeline specifically. It was a sweeping declaration, meant to fast track every new, large, high priority infrastructure project through environmental review. "The White House's strategy is to deconstruct the administrative state and give favors to the fossil fuel industry," says Pat Gallagher, director of the Sierra Club's environmental law program. So these environmental NGOs are changing tack to adapt. "This is not an abrupt change in our overarching goals," says Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. "This is just a change in footing from offensive to defensive." Obviously, things were different under the Obama administration. Groups like the Western Environmental Law Center often worked with the government to develop policy. For example, the Bureau of Land Management's Methane Waste Prevention Rule. Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas, with more than 86 times the warming potential as carbon dioxide, plus a tendency to leak out of oil and gas drilling equipment. A lot of that drilling happens on public lands, managed by


Prompt: A Hermosa Beach woman who lost most of her sight in one eye after she was struck by a flying golf disc in Polliwog Park has sued the city of Manhattan Beach. Noreen Goodbody accuses the city of negligence and allowing a dangerous condition to exist on public property in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit. She is seeking unspecified but “serious compensation,” said attorney David Ring of the Los Angeles law firm of Taylor & Ring. “She’s probably lost 95 percent of her sight in her left eye,” he said. “She’s probably had three or four procedures on her

eye to try to remedy the problem, but none have been successful.” Manhattan Beach officials, including the city attorney, did not respond to several voice mail messages on Friday seeking comment. Goodbody was watching her high school-age daughter practice track at the park in August 2012 when she was struck by the “flying disc with a sharp edge,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in July. “She doesn’t even see it coming,” Ring said. “All she knows is something slams into her eye.” Once called Frisbee Golf, these days the sport is known by enthusiasts as disc golf. In the early days of the sport, players used plastic Frisbees. Now specialized discs are used that can weigh up to about 6 ounces, said Zach Hall, disc golf director at Burbank’s DeBell Disc Golf Course. Burbank’s nine-hole course, which opened in 2012, is used by disc golfers and regular golfers alike at the same time and designed “very carefully to make sure it wouldn’t be dangerous.” “It could hurt,” Hall said if someone were hit by one. “It’s pretty hard plastic and they’re thrown at a pretty hard velocity. “You always have to think about (disc golfers) are going to miss. It can be dangerous if folks are unaware of disc golfers around them. … The smaller the space, the worse it’s going to be.” Polliwog Park, which sits at the corner of Redondo Avenue and Manhattan Beach Boulevard, is 18 acres. “The course … runs throughout the park avoiding walkways and play areas,” according to the park’s website. “Players are asked not to throw in areas where people have congregated.” But Ring contends players do anyway. Goodbody was standing near the park’s amphitheater near the fourth hole of the disc golf course when she was struck, Ring said. “They’re


Prompt: In 1741 the Norwegian-Danish author Ludvig Holberg published Klimii Iter Subterraneum, a satirical science-fiction/fantasy novel detailing the adventures of its hero Niels Klim in a utopian society existing beneath the surface of the earth. Peter Fitting, author of Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology, explores Holberg’s book in the wider context of the hollow earth theory. In 1818 John Cleves Symmes, Jr, issued his “Circular Number 1,” sending copies to “each notable foreign government, reigning prince, legislature, city, college, and philosophical society, quite around the earth”: I declare that the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid

concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking. The fortunes of the idea that the Earth was “hollow and habitable within,” from classical references to the underworld to esoteric and New Age writers today, have been recounted elsewhere, most notably by Walter Kafton-Minkel in his Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 years of dragons, dwarfs, the dead, lost races & UFOs from inside the earth (1989). Symmes’s theories led to a number of fictional visions of the “world within”, most immediately, Adam Seaborn’s 1820 novel Symzonia – a work which has often been attributed to Symmes himself; and the novel with its diagrams and drawings was for some time cited as evidence that the world is hollow. In a somewhat different way, Symmes’s conviction that there were openings at the poles also led to the establishment of perhaps the most famous American naval scientific expedition, the “United States Exploring Expedition” which was commissioned to explore the South Pacific and led to the establishment of a national museum of natural history – the Smithsonian Institute. (The history of the expedition and its origins in Symmes’ ideas is recounted in William Stanton’s 1975 The Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842). Symmes, however, was not the first to argue that the Earth was hollow; nor is Symzonia the first novel set in a hollow earth. There are of course numerous narratives – dating back to Greek and Roman texts – of descents into the underworld, but hypotheses about vast channels or chasms inside the Earth appear to be a much more recent idea advanced by some European thinkers


Prompt: America may be one of the richest countries in the world, but its people are less healthy and more likely to die early from disease or accidents than those in any other affluent country, a damning official US report has found. Even the best-off Americans – those who have health insurance, a college education, a high income and healthy behaviour – are sicker than their peers in comparable countries, says the report by the US National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. "We were struck by the gravity of these findings," said Steven H Woolf, professor of family medicine

at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that wrote the report. "Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health. What really concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind." The report, US Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health. It compares the US with 16 affluent democracies, including Australia, Canada and Japan and many in Europe including Britain. There have been similar findings from the Commonwealth Fund over some years, but they have compared the US with only a handful of nations. The new report looked in detail at data from the late 1990s to 2008. "Over this time period, we uncovered a strikingly consistent and pervasive pattern of higher mortality and inferior health in the United States, beginning at birth," it said. For many years, Americans have had a shorter life expectancy than people in almost all the comparator countries and for the past three decades the gap has been widening, particularly for women. The US does badly in nine specific areas. It has the highest infant mortality rate of any wealthy country and also does poorly on other birth outcomes, such as low weight babies. Deaths from injuries and homicides are far higher than elsewhere and a leading cause of death in children, adolescents and young adults. US adolescents have had the highest rate of pregnancies of affluent countries since the 1990s and are more likely to acquire sexually transmitted infections. The US has the second highest HIV rate and the highest incidence of Aids among the 17 countries. Even taking out drunk driving, Americans lose more years of life to alcohol and


Prompt: By Speaking at the “A Trans-Atlantic Agenda for Shared Prosperity” conference sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the IMK Macroeconomic Policy Institute in Washington on Monday, Federal Reserve Vice-Chair Janet Yellen admitted in her speech that the official unemployment rate of 7.9 percent is actually incorrect because of a variety of factors. According to Yellen, who is considered a potential successor to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, stated that the unemployment rate is actually 14.4 percent. This number includes about 800,000 discouraged workers who have given up seeking employment and roughly eight million workers who are in part-time jobs

but would prefer to work a full-time job. “The unemployment rate now stands at 7.9 percent. To put this number in perspective, while that’s a big improvement from the 10 percent reached in late 2009, it is now higher than unemployment ever got in the 24 years before the Great Recession,” said Yellen in her prepared remarks. “Moreover, the government’s current estimate of 12 million unemployed doesn’t include 800,000 discouraged workers who say they have given up looking for work. And, as exhibit 6 shows, 8 million people, or 5.6 percent of the workforce, say they are working part time even though they would prefer a full-time job. A broader measure of underemployment that includes these and other potential workers stands at 14.4 percent.” The former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco also conceded that the poverty rate is a lot higher than it had been for the past decade and presently stands at 15 percent of the general population in the United States. The results of the recession, says Yellen, have been consequential for these individuals. “Even those today who are fortunate enough to hold jobs have seen their hourly compensation barely keep pace with the cost of living over the past three years, while labor’s share of income – as measured by the percent of production by nonfinancial corporations accruing to workers as compensation – remains near the postwar low reached in 2011,” stated Yellen. “It will be a long road back to a healthy job market. It will be years before many workers feel like they have regained the ground lost since 2007.” Despite Yellen’s admission that the federal government’s unemployment numbers are suppressed, her figures, according to other economists, are several percent lower than other projections. The unofficial unemployment rate is


Prompt: In the pre-Spotify era, one of the main ways to discover music was through MP3 blogs. In fact, some of us spent a lot of time burrowing through these obscure blogs, hoping to find and obtain rare vinyl rips and mindblowing '70s Japanese prog. But in the past several years, huge changes have occurred to change that landscape. File sharing services such as MegaUpload and Rapidshare went supernova on their own clientele, leaving many blogs deserted graveyards of links galore. Bloggers ran out of the patience to re-upload huge collections of music for the umpteenth time. Kim Dotcom went broke.

Several places proclaimed "R.I.P." on these blogs, fearing the proliferation of obscure music would have to end up behind closed doors. Yet some of these blogs remain, with people still plugging away at them, not to mention there’s new sites to carry on the never-ending battle of providing a well-curated collection privy to copyright infringement takedown notices. Here’s a brief look into some fantastic resources. Buffalo Tones What: Buffalo Tones is the equivalent of the cool older sister who pops in from time to time to teach you something new. It’s a master collection with everything you can find off the beaten and bizarre path: garage, no wave, post-punk, psych and noise music. After years of inactivity, this blog made a return with sporadic updates. Why: It is home to over 200 releases, often accompanied by good write-ups on each one. Blogs hosted on Blogspot tend to incorporate throwback features such as live comment boxes and sidebars featuring other sites you need to check out. Buffalo Tones outdoes a few of these by having a list of blogs complete with a thumbnail of its most recent post. Frustration Levels While Downloading: Low. In fact, there’s a joy to be found in discovering that ancient links still work. Evidently, we have yet to robbed of the things we (will learn to) cherish the most. Ghost Capital What: Described as an "effort to share...rare, oddball and under-appreciated music of all kinds," the ear of Ghost Capital is pointed towards the obscure and the global: psych, blues, folk, funk and more from all corners of the globe make appearances here alongside several well-curated mixes. Why: It’s incredibly niche, which is a great thing considering the amount of care that goes into each update with detailed notes to match. The site is well-maintained, easily


Prompt: A lot of the features I had dialled in on my last phone are automatic now. The dictionary is most noticeable. Since I can't program the words anymore, autocorrect has become a nightmare. Often, the phone persistently changes words that are jargon, and is really difficult to get used to. The keyboard also changed, which makes no sense. It's a classic case of IT engineers lacking basic understanding of the human counterpart. I thought buying another galaxy would get me a new improved version. I was wrong. It's a new, completely different phone. Pros: Faster processing, improved reception, better functionality

overall from a hardware perspective. This is coming from the S5, so I'm not really surprised. I liked that phone a lot though. Of all of the galaxies I've had, that one was the best. It just got old, and compatibility was becoming an issue. I also like Bixby. I haven't used it much yet, but it's pretty cool. I hope Samsung gets it running properly, instead of abandoning it like most new ideas. Cons; I can't get a lot of the functions to work the way I like. It's like Samsung feels that they know what's best, and I should learn to trust their wisdom. It's annoying. My phone is supposed to be convenient for ME. I expect to use it MY way. My old phone allowed me to make it work the way i like. This one doesn't. Maybe I just haven't found the adjustments yet, but you'd think they'd be similar. The lock screen is really annoying. I have to go through three screens to get in. There's cooler biometrics on it, but so what? Is it really more secure? Is it more convenient? I don't think so. It's nice having the clock on the screen when it's not in use if you want, but it IS a hassle. The home button is gone. Now, there's a haptic feedback pressure sensor with no other use. I suppose that makes it easier to waterproof, but there have always been cases that solve that problem. Now the phone wouldn't work properly with a watertight case. I guess that's just adjusting, but I feel better having an actual button. The phone seems like it was designed strictly for people who enjoy flaunting the newest technology, not people like me who want the absolute best functionality. If I was in charge


Prompt: Mona T. Brooks / KCPB While the world's first coders helped build the tech industry, its designers will define the industry's future, said graphic designer and computer scientist John Maeda. Maeda spoke Sunday at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, where he issued the findings of his #DesignInTech report. Before 2010, Maeda said, design played a secondary role in the technology industry. How a product or service looked or worked, and the ways users interacted with it, were typically an after-thought that focused mostly on cosmetics. Design only ever grabbed attention when companies like Apple pushed outside the norm. But

that's changing fast. Startups and large tech firms all recognize that their products need to be both visually appealing and deliver great user experiences -- and that means thinking about design from the beginning. It also means the industry needs people who can communicate those ideas and create more satisfying experiences. In other words, it needs designers who contribute from the start of a project -- not the end. "Twenty-seven startups co-founded by designers and 10 creative agencies were acquired by tech in the last four years," Maeda said. The former president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Maeda joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers last year as Silicon Valley's first ever design partner. Since he joined KPCB, he said, six other venture capital firms have brought on designers to help scout new talent and incorporate design into their portfolio companies 'products. Take Airbnb, Maeda said. Founded in 2008, the company makes it easy for people to rent out their homes or a single room to those looking for a place a stay. It was dreamed up by designers Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, both RISD graduates, after the two attended an industrial design conference. "[Silicon Valley] didn't think a designer could build and run a company. They were straight up about it. We weren't MBAs, we weren't two Ph.D. students from Stanford. Being designers they thought we were people that worked for people that ran companies," Chesky told Dezeen magazine in January 2014. Maeda also pointed to Dropbox's 2013 acquisition of Orchestra, the makers of sleek email app Mailbox, for $100 million. That deal brought former IDEO designer Gentry Underwood to the cloud storage company as head of design. Microsoft, too, has acquired design talent in the mobile app space with its purchases


Prompt: While the Orioles brass is exploring options to improve the club through the trade market, executive vice president Dan Duquette has repeatedly said he likes some of the options he has down at the minor league level. So as the second-half of the season gets underway, we’re taking a look at the reinforcements down on the farm. Here are five players from Triple-A Norfolk you could see brought up to help the Orioles through the stretch run. LHP Zach Britton: This one's automatic. The Orioles need a fifth starter to pitch Tuesday’s game against the Twins in Minnesota and all

signs point to Britton being that guy. Britton is coming off his best minor league start of the season Thursday, when he threw seven shutout innings and allowed just four hits while striking out six. The Orioles have been able to go with a four-man rotation for the past few weeks because of a bevy of off days, but they open the second half with 30 games in 31 days, so they’ll need a fifth starter for the long haul. Britton (4-1, 4.15 ERA) figures to be that man. Still it’s amazing it’s mid-July and Britton has yet to make a big league start OF Nate McLouth: The Orioles signed McClouth to a minor league deal June 5 after he was released by the Pirates. He hasn’t hit above .228 at the major league level since 2009 and he’s only hitting .250/.328/.500 in 28 games at Norfolk, but his bat is rapidly heading up. He is hitting .412 (14-for-34) with five homers and 14 RBIs in his past nine games. And the difference maker: He is a plus defender – he has a .991 career fielding percentage – and can play all three outfield positions. RHP Miguel Socolovich: If the trusty Orioles bullpen needs some help, look for Socolovich to get the nod. He’s been great all season long in various roles, going 3-0 with a 1.77 ERA in 24 games. Over 45 2/3 innings, he’s allowed just 29 hits and has 50 strikeouts to go with 11 walks. At Norfolk, he’s shown the ability to go multiple innings – he can regularly go up to three innings. In his past 10 outings, opposing hitters are batting just .150 against him OF Lew Ford: Since signing a minor league deal with the Orioles, he has dominated Triple-A pitching. Ford, who


Prompt: Attend the leading Bitcoin & Blockchain event series in Canada and meet like-minded people in one of the most exciting industries in the world. The next event will be held at the MaRS auditorium on February 6th and is titled: 'Power of Decentralization'. Be sure to RSVP well in advance as we're expecting to sell out. We've got yet another amazing line up of speakers! ------- AGENDA: 6:00pm (15 minutes): Networking 6:15pm (5 minutes): Brief Intro: Bitcoin & Blockchain SUNNY RAY (http://www.sunny-ray.com), Unocoin (http://unocoin.com) Co-founder & President 6:20pm (10 minutes): Cryptiv (https://cryptiv.com/): Enterprise Blockchain Wallet Systems MAT CYBULA (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matcybula), Cryptiv

CEO & Co-founder Mat's talk will be about the various blockchains being used today and how companies must approach security in a world of blockchain. 6:30pm (10 minutes): Ernst & Young (http://www.ey.com): Implications for Bitcoin & Blockchain RAHUL RAINA, HBSc MBA MSc | Senior Consultant | IT Advisory | Financial Services Office | Performance Improvement | EY LLP Rahul is a Senior Consultant focussed on disruptive technologies, including Big Data, and Blockchain at EY Canada. In his previous role, he served as the R&D Advisor for Rubix by Deloitte. He has also previously worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, IBM Canada, and Bell Canada. Rahul holds HBSc in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, MBA from the Schulich School of Business, and MSc in Computer Science from the University of Oxford. He is one of the few Canadians to pursue academic research at a graduate level on Cryptocurrencies from both business and technical perspectives at Schulich School of Business, and the University of Oxford, respectively. Ultimately, the key question that Rahul is trying to answer for the past 5 years is the following: how do we increase the adoption of cryptocurrencies? 6:40pm (10 minutes): BlockGeeks (http://blockgeeks.com/): Share & Grow Knowledge Around Blockchain Technology AMEER ROSIC (http://www.ameerrosic.com/), Co-founder, Blockgeeks. A vast amount of knowledge that could be valuable to many people is currently only available to a few — either locked in people’s heads, or only accessible to select groups. 6:50pm (10 minutes): RUBIX (http://rubixbydeloitte.com/): Blockchain Implementations - Method in the Madness ILIANA ORIS VALIENTE (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilianaorisvaliente), CPA, CA, CBP | Co-Founder, Rubix by Deloitte | Blockchain Strategist 7:00pm (30 minutes): Power of Decentralization TOUFI SALIBA (https://www.linkedin.com/in/touficsaliba), Co-authored fully-decentralized Blockchain protocol, cofounded ToDa Foundation, 6 blockchain companies, had 3 exits in the past, expecting 2 in near future. Loves algorithm,


Prompt: This is the second part of an ongoing look into the state of online gaming in Japan. If you’d like to read more on the subject head over to part one. Last time, we discussed the issues facing the Japanese online gamer. Of note, Japanese online gaming is so niche that the term MMORPG has very little meaning to your average online gamer, who tends to be more of a console shooter fan than PC playboys/girls. According to Akiba MMO‘s CEO Keiko, “Japan essentially skipped the PC and jumped straight to mobile phones.” Having a big, bulky machine that’s primarily

used at one’s place of work hardly seems like something that would have awesome games on it. Worse yet, because of the small market, few western companies translated their games into Japanese. No problem, right? Japanese people must be able to speak English like the rest of the world despite being an island nation no where near an English speaking country… English Only Despite having to learn it for at least six years, Japanese people really don’t speak English. As a teacher, this comes up a lot, but Keiko in particular noted that English’s role in Japan is often restricted to unique wording/phrasing that only makes sense to Japanese. In short, it’s used for adding an exotic flavor for advertisers, but as a communication language, people may only passively understand English. Even then, as founders of gaming, Japanese expect good games to be translated for them if they are indeed any good. While there are certainly Japanese players who like western games, remember that online gaming is already a niche market. Add in the fact that foreign products are even more niche, so it’s more difficult to find translated fan sites of foreign games if you’re a Japanese player. There’s even a stigma that “Western games are shit” partially due to the fact that Japan simply didn’t have the PC gaming market to support localization into Japanese. While localization teams for Blizzard games may advertise in Japanese, the client is often still in English. This is most likely why Blizzard is practically unknown in this country. Everyone I spoke to who knows Blizzard’s games enjoyed them, but when asked why the games didn’t seem popular, the answer was always the same: no Japanese language support, until recently. Even then, keep in mind from last time that Japanese gamers tend to


Prompt: Photo: Stephen Starr I'm on the shores of Lake Tuz, the second-largest lake in Turkey, and no one wants to talk about salt. It took 10 minutes of pleading with a security guard, even though he'd been told that a journalist would be visiting, to gain entry to the Kaldirim Salt Enterprise's huge facility on the eastern shore of Europe's biggest salt lake. "You can drive through and come back out again, but don't get out of the car," he warned. Inside the yard, mountains of the blindingly bright salt are piled three stories high by a conveyer belt being

fed by a convoy of trucks. Except for three men sitting around a table in the shade at the yard's edge, there are few signs of anyone willing to brave the August heat. A fourth man runs out of a beat-down building and with his arms appears to signal "get out, now." Every spring, mineral-rich snow melt and rain flow south through Turkey's Anatolia and into Lake Tuz, adding a half-meter of water. The water evaporates by summer, leaving behind a three-inch layer of salt granules ready for harvest. The salt forms because the lake is endorheic, meaning it has no outflow. Flamingos are seen at Tuz Lake on July 16, 2015. Dunaliella salinas, a type of halophile micro-algae especially found in sea/lake salt fields, colorize a part of the lake every summer. Photo: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images For locals, the lake is an important source of cash. Every summer farmers and large-scale producers go to work on the ethereal landscape that produces 60 per cent of all salt harvested in Turkey every year. Lake Tuz also provides life to the largest flamingo colony in the Middle East and North Africa combined—22,000 breeding pairs in 2013—and is a crucial resting stop and sanctuary for dozens of other species migrating between Africa and central Europe. What's more, it's a UNESCO special environmental protection area and a spectacular sight that turns red every July as a Dunaliella algae bloom explodes under the heat of the summer sun. But Lake Tuz is disappearing. Locals say submerging one's feet in the naturally-occurring salt takes away aches. Photo: Stephen Starr Since the 2013 Gezi Park protests, when people took to the streets to demonstrate against the ruling AKP party's plans to destroy a popular park in central Istanbul, environmentalists and government officials have been


Prompt: We would like to thank everyone for participating in our 2017 M&S fitness survey. As you know we conducted this research to get to know our readers a little bit better. After closing the survey, we started analyzing the data and pulled some of the more interesting data points out to share with the M&S faithful. Listed below are the results from the major questions we asked you. We’ve included several pie and bar graphs to make the data a bit easier to digest. Feel free to browse through the results and compare them to your own workout experiences. You

may be shocked by how you and your friends stack up to the numbers. Biggest challenges when working out Let’s kick things off by discussing the biggest challenges you all face when it comes to working out. This question was an open ended question and we received thousands of replies. From there, we categorized them into the following: As you can see, the number one challenge of those who took our survey was maintaining a diet that helped them reach their goals. We found this interesting. Further down in this results article, you will learn that nearly 71% of people who took our survey create their own diet plans. So, if 71% of people are creating their own diets and another 43% are finding it difficult to maintain a proper diet, the fitness industry (ourselves included) must find a way to make it easier for you guys to adopt and maintain a diet so you can better reach your goals. The next biggest challenge was finding time to workout. We all have busy schedules (which include social, familial, and work obligations). Finding time to exercise can be difficult. Luckily, we’ve got a step by step guide on how to build a workout program around a busy schedule which can be found here. The final major limitation our entrants had was the challenges faced when building muscle mass and finding the perfect workouts to help them do so. This problem is more difficult to resolve than others, as a number of factors can affect one's ability to build muscle. With that said, as we explore the results and draw some assumptions, I think we’ll be able to discover where things are going wrong in some of your muscle building attempts. Activity & Health Level of Our Respondents In this section we


Prompt: Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) told Breitbart News on Thursday night on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that the party officials who brought up Bernie Sanders’s religion should be fired. Late last week, internal Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks showed that party officials had colluded to assist former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and keep Sen. Sanders (I-VT) from winning the nomination. One email, from DNC Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall, discussed using Sanders’s religion against him. Sanders is Jewish, but Marshall presumed he was an atheist, and the apparent intent was to expose

that among conservative voters. The email read: It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist. As Breitbart News noted, the email was sent to several senior officials, including CEO Amy Dacey, who replied “AMEN.” (Marshall has since apologized publicly.) “My reaction was that was terrible,” Nadler told Breitbart News. “Whoever did that ought to be fired.” However, Nadler was at pains to defend the DNC itself. “On the other hand, what nobody’s mentioning is the DNC didn’t do that. That was a private email within the DNC. So somebody makes a recommendation, ‘We ought to do this,’ somebody else says, ‘Knock it off’ — we don’t know who that was — but it wasn’t done.” New DNC chair Donna Brazile told Katie Couric of Yahoo! News this week that Marshall would not be fired over the incident: When I read Brad’s email, and I’ve known him for 20 years, I called him and said, “Brad that was wrong, that’s inappropriate.” I apologized to the Sanders people immediately on Saturday morning. In fact, I took an earlier train … because I wanted to nip that in the bud. I’m going to handle all of these situations, but I want have some standards. I’m not throwing anybody under the bus. I want to have touch standards, the same standards that basically forced me to resign in the Dukakis campaign back in 1988 … I’m going to give everybody an opportunity to do the right


Prompt: Growing up in a Recession Individuals who grow up during recessions tend to form life-long beliefs, including that success in life depends more on luck than on effort. In Growing up in a Recession: Beliefs and the Macroeconomy (NBER Working Paper No. 15321), co-authors Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilimbergo substantiate the importance of the historical economic environment in shaping economic attitudes, affecting individuals' views of the role of government, and influencing whether those beliefs change later in life. One of the key findings of their study is that individuals who grow up during recessions tend to form life-long beliefs, including

that success in life depends more on luck than on effort. Individuals who grow up during recessions also tend to support more government redistribution, but they have less confidence in public institutions. On the whole, the authors find, orientations formed during difficult economic times can help to determine the economic system, institutional outcomes, and the role of the government across countries, although this study focused on the United States. One of the strongest results from this research is the long-lasting effect of recessions on individuals' confidence in government and its role in society. For example, individuals have a significantly lower level of confidence in Congress and the executive branch of the federal government when they experience poor economic conditions while they are coming of age. But there are off-setting tendencies, too. "On the one hand, recession-hit individuals believe that the government should intervene more, so they lean more to the left. On the other hand, these individuals distrust institutions, believing them to be ineffective, therefore leaning more to the right." And, while recessions substantially decrease the confidence in government institutions, they do not appear to have an effect on the individual's level of generalized trust -- that is, his or her trust in others or other sectors of society. The authors also report that individuals' propensity to distrust government institutions after macroeconomic shocks occur is highest when they are between the ages of 18 and 25. Although also possible between age 25 until roughly age 40, after that age people tend not to change their beliefs in response to negative economic shocks. This research is based on data culled from self-reported individual answers collected by the General Social Survey (GSS) regarding individuals socioeconomic beliefs. The GSS conducts basic scientific research on the structure and development of American society using a


Prompt: Customer Reviews The well-written, well-read, and inspiring true-life story of Brother Andrew. Overall A classic book well read. Overall Living by faith...that's all. Overall Awesome book of how God led brave men and woman behind the "iron curtain" to do His will Overall I enjoyed this biography very much. The narrator was excellent and had been engaged the entire time. Brother Andrew's story is one of faithfulness. His faithfulness to what God had called him to do and God's faithfulness to provide for him all along the way. Your faith will be encouraged after listening to this! Overall I didn't

want it to end. Wow. What a great testimony of the work God does through his children. This man's obedience and faith is something I strive for. Overall A great example of Revelation 22:17 "and all who hear say come." Overall Excellent and exciting story to listen to. This story inspired me to share the gospel more. Overall The voice of the narrator is very good, and the story was already excellent. We have listened to this over and over with my teenagers and even younger kids. Overall Great reminder of God's faithfulness to His promises. Matthew 6:33-34 "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The LORD's ways work! This is something the current day "church" at large has forgotten. Overall Very encouraging and challenging! Overall Wonderful book and challenging! A must read for any Christian. Overall Renews faith in God who answers prayer. Overall Exceptional Overall I cannot believe that I was not required to read this in an undergraduate or graduate level Bible course. It was captivating and motivating. I was skeptical before I purchased it. I had heard a bit about it, but now I am going to make sure my sons who are going into ministry listen to it Overall Loved this book! Overall Well written, believable, applicable, and powerful. Few dry spots. Overall Thanks to those who put this together so that I could benefit from the work God is doing through the faithful. It truely was a great book to listen to! Overall This is an excellent recording of a well written book chronicling the


Prompt: It’s been so long in coming that many folks stopped waiting for it, but Microsoft’s(s msft) Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service — its long-promised response to Amazon Web Services — goes live for all customers on Tuesday. Advertisement While he did not characterize Azure IaaS as an “Amazon(s amzn) killer,” Azure GM Bill Hilf did say Microsoft will match AWS on price for any of its base-level infrastructure — storage, compute instances, etc. — continuing a price war that flared last November when AWS, Google and Microsoft traded price cuts on their respective cloud storage offerings. And, Azure IaaS

pricing will be uniform across all geographies and data centers. Microsoft runs 8 data centers worldwide, 4 in the U.S., 2 in Europe and 2 in Asia. This is a pointed response to AWS, which relies heavily on its aging-but-humongous U.S. East data center farm in Ashburn, Virg. Many AWS services debut there and prices for U.S. East services are often lower than the same services originating in other AWS regions. “Many customers architect their applications in really weird ways to take advantage of that pricing,” Hilf said. U.S east is also the epicenter for most of the AWS outages over the past year or so. And before you write off Azure as too late to matter, consider this: For the many companies that run Windows applications and may want to move them betwixt and between a public cloud and their own Windows-centric server rooms, Azure may be a really smart choice. In the run up to this news Microsoft announced Active Directory for Azure last week. PaaS priority hurt Azure Microsoft’s problem is that it zigged when it probably should have zagged 3 years ago when it rolled out Azure as a full Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). It was a great idea in theory, but by then developers — especially those in startups — were already flocking to AWS and its easy-to-spin-up-and-pay-for infrastructure. That interest started to spread to bigger, more established businesses or departments within enterprises where developers loved the idea of being able to quickly build their own sandbox on AWS without IT interference. Fair or not, the perception soon became that Azure was a development and deployment platform for old-world Windows and .Net applications. It was deep and rich, but it was attacking a moribund market. Ironically, those old-school Windows shops could now be Azure’s saving grace. The


Prompt: Crusader Kings II : The Middle-Earth Project mod 0.3.1b has been released, you can download the new full build below. Posted by Lonhaldar on Jul 27th, 2014 Middle Earth Project 0.3.1b Download CK2:MEP 0.3.1b This is a full update of the Middle Earth Project mod for Crusader Kings II. This update is compatible with version 2.1.6 of Crusader Kings II. This is a beta and there will be bugs. Nothing is set in stone and we will appreciate any input that you think might improve the mod. An Extended Map Look into Belegaer, the Great Sea of the West, and

discover the borders of the lost lands of Beleriand and Numenor. New islands, like Tol Fuin or Tol Morwen appears now. We reworked too some areas, like Bellakar, or the areas of Gundabad and the Misty Mountains. Welcome to Gwaihir, the Lord of the Eagles, and all his kin in Rosroval, the "Peak of the Eagles". The Line of Golfimbul is still alive, and Mount Gram can prepar to war once again. All Eriador fears the new powers of the orcs of the North now! Create your own kingdom of middlemen in Enedwaith, and become the High King of Isenvale, to balance the power of both Arnor and Gondor! Craft your own objects ! As a Dwarf or a Noldor craftsman, you're now able to craft your own objects. Create some jewels, forge weapons, and improve your skills to be the proud heir of Telchar of Nogrod, or Celebrimbor of Eregion ! As a Noldor master or legendary craftsman, reconquer Ost-in-Edhil, and try to rebuild the Gwaith-i-Mirdain, the brotherhood of Celebrimbor, where were forged the Rings of Power. Gather the other craftsmen, and together, you'll give prestige and glory to your kin ! Use the Rings of the Dwarves to create more wealth in your mines, or try to find the One Ring, and maybe you'll find a Lesser Ring, these rings forged by the Noldor of Eregion as essays of the Rings of Power. The Palantiri Now, the Palantiri are all created, one trait by Stone. Try to keep the stones in your dynasty, and gain a lot of prestige with them ! As one of the guardians of the Palantiri, use your Stone during Wars to call your friends to the battlefield ! As an elf or a numenorean, travel to Elostirion, and try to see the Lights


Prompt: In March 2012, police responded to a call from a Brooklyn public school about a five-year old autistic boy who was having a tantrum. Officers held down the kindergartener, who was then tied to a stretcher and transported to a hospital. The little boy's mother had been called to the school and witnessed the episode. "He was crying and screaming," she said. "They strapped him to that stretcher." The episode got local news coverage. And the family eventually filed a lawsuit, which New York settled. But according to the figures that New York files with the federal government, the incident

never happened. Like all school districts across the country, New York is required to record every time a public school kid is held or tied down and report totals each year to the U.S. Department of Education. The number New York gave the government? Zero. "There's not even a remote possibility that the number zero is correct," said Johanna Miller, the advocacy director for the New York Civil Liberties Union. New York, the nation's largest school district, wasn't the only one to incorrectly report zero restraints to the federal government. So did Los Angeles and Chicago – the nation's second and third largest school districts. Indeed, Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Lauren Huffman acknowledged restraints are allowed in some cases but said Chicago doesn't keep a tally of them. "It's our intention to do a better job tracking them centrally," she said. Earlier this year, ProPublica detailed how kids are frequently restrained at public schools. As we reported, the government's first attempt at a nationwide count showed 163,000 instances of restraints in the 2012 school year. Some schools reported hundreds of restraints, which can include anything from pinning uncooperative children face down on the floor to tying them up with straps, handcuffs or even duct tape. Three-quarters of students who were restrained had physical, emotional or intellectual disabilities. Children have suffered countless injuries from restraints, including broken bones. A government report a few years ago detailed hundreds of instances of abuse and several deaths over two decades. After that report, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights made it mandatory for school districts to tell to the government how many times they have used restraints. The Department of Education declined to say whether they have penalized any districts for failing to report. But underreporting appears to be rampant. Our