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Merck is working with the bank Guggenheim and the law firm Sullivan Cromwell on the deal, which a spokesman said was fully financed with equity and debt and has not yet been discussed with Versum.
Merck has been flush with cash since the sale of its consumer health unit to Procter & Gamble for 3.4 billion euros last year.
What better way to kick off the second season of Batman: The Animated Series than with one of only two episodes that is set completely outside of Gotham City? Batman has to navigate the treacherous terrain surrounding Gotham when Killer Croc escapes while being transported to a new prison, and the change in environment fits for one of Batman’s most primal rogues.
Killer Croc’s first episode, “Vendetta,” was more of a Harvey Bullock story, but with “Sideshow,” Croc gets his own classic B:TAS episode in the vein of “Heart Of Ice” or “Mad As A Hatter.” Writer Michael Reeves, joined by Brynne Stephens on teleplay, crafts a story that finds the emotional core of Croc, using the character’s sideshow past to ask serious questions about human identity. Most of Batman’s rogues have their basis in a specific metaphorical idea, so what is Croc’s? Usually that’s established in the character’s introduction, but the focus on Bullock in “Vendetta” meant Croc got short shrift. Croc is one of the few major Batman rogues with a connection to the animal kingdom (that’s more of Spider-Man’s thing), and his primitivism is what sets him apart.
First, let’s all take a moment to admire the gorgeous title card from Eric Radomski, because you don’t notice how effective those cards are at setting the episode’s tone until they’re not there anymore. The image of Croc’s shackled hand dangling in the foreground while a single spotlight shines on a circus cage in the background tells you everything you need to know about the episode with a single evocative image, one that could easily stand alone as a great work of art.
Crocodiles have the strongest jaws around, and Croc’s mouth is his greatest weapon this episode. He escapes his chains by biting through them, and once he meets the group of ex-circus freaks in the woods, he uses lies to ingratiate himself with the group. He tells the group that he was imprisoned as a circus attraction and escaped his chains, and while yes, that did actually happen to Croc, it wasn’t any time recently. Croc conveniently skips over his years as a wrestler and criminal, and when Batman shows up to discredit him, it’s not hard for Croc to convince his hosts otherwise. Morgan is a crocodile but also a chameleon, manipulating others into seeing him as something different from what he is, turning his shackles into victimization instead of rightful punishment.
“Sideshow” is very loosely based on a Denny O’Neill and Neal Adams story in Detective Comics #410, the main similarity being that Batman chases a criminal to the cabin home of sideshow acts, including a seal boy and a strongman. The similarities end there, but it’s a great example of how the B:TAS writers turn to the comics for inspiration, then build on and improve the story in surprising ways. The series already has a character with a circus-freak past, so Reeves replaces inmate Kano Wiggins with Killer Croc, then uses Croc’s history to build an emotional, tense plot rather than using the standard action narrative of the original.
The former circus performers have built a farm sanctuary with the money they made being gawked at as freaks, showing Croc the life that he could have had. If he had been surrounded by people like Billy, May, June, and Goliath, could Croc have turned out any differently? As a crocodile man, Morgan was probably forced to be in a constant state of aggression, terrifying visitors as a way of selling himself. As a wrestler and criminal strongman, that aggression came in handy, but on the farm he experiences a life of tranquility for the first time. He is given shelter and food in exchange for labor, honest work in an environment where he is appreciated for who he is. “No one stares at you, laughing, making you feel bad. You can be yourself,” Billy the seal boy tells him, except he doesn’t realize that is the exact opposite of what Croc is doing in the woods.
When Goliath tells Croc about the $50,000 they have stocked away, the chips in his façade begin to show. He has a crisis of conscience when he finds the cash, staring at the circus posters hanging above him, reminders of what his newfound companions had to go through to make their money honestly. When Billy comes out and gives him a pep talk, it almost looks like Croc is about to give up his ways and settle down, but then Batman shows up, triggering the animal instinct that wipes away any of the progress Croc may have made.
Michael McCuistion composed great music for Justice League,but I really missed the full orchestra employed on B:TAS. Along with the hand-drawn animation, the orchestra lends the series a classic character, helping achieve the feel of the Fleischer Superman shorts. The music in “Sideshow” is used amazingly well, with different instruments helping to set the tone for scenes—but most importantly, the music knows when to stop. After Croc escapes the train, he knocks out Batman in the woods, and when he wakes up, the score is gone. Nature becomes the orchestra: Birds chirping, branches breaking, rivers running, and lungs heaving are the soundtrack as Batman hunts down Croc in the wilderness. When he catches up to his prey, the music returns with a variation on Batman’s theme, victorious, but not as powerful as usual. The music for Goliath et al. is a blend of haunting strings and cheerful circus melodies, creating a tone that is both forlorn, but strangely uplifting. There’s no doubt that this is music for a tragedy, but the occasional flourish of brightness in the score creates an inkling of hope for Croc’s rehabilitation. When Batman appears, the horns make their appearance, rallying Batman, Killer Croc, and Goliath into battle, and then the music disappears again when Croc seeks refuge in the cabin. The sudden silence amps up the tension as Batman sneaks in, then the score kicks in to set the stage for Batman’s aquatic victory as he beats Croc into submission underwater.
Boyd Kirkland turns in some of his best direction on the series yet with this episode, creating dynamic action sequences with the same care that he dedicates to the quieter, emotional moments. There’s a great sense of the geography to the terrain, and Kirkland uses pans to show how expansive the wilderness outside Gotham City is. When Croc has to figure out how to get across the gap between two cliffs, a long pan downward shows just how deep the drop is. A horizontal pan follows Batman as he leaps over environmental obstacles, showcasing his agility and speed in a non-urban environment.
“Sideshow” is a beautifully cinematic episode. When Croc knocks Batman into the canyon with a downpour of rocks, the ensuing free fall and grapple ascent through falling debris makes for an incredible action sequence. After being locked up in a circus cage by Croc, Batman escapes by pushing the cage down a hill, hitting Croc and crashing into a stream. It doesn’t sound particularly intense, but Kirkland chooses the perfect angles to give each shot maximum impact. First, a profile shot of the cage slowly descending builds the tension, showing the distance between Croc and Batman that is about to close. The shot then switches to the bottom of the hill, with Batman charging toward the viewer as the cage gathers speed and crashes into Croc, then breaks apart in the stream. It’s clear, quick, and fluid, and representative of the episode as a whole.
As the cops put a metal mask on Killer Croc and prepare to helicopter him to his new prison cell, Billy asks him, “Why Croc? Why’d you turn on us like that? We could’ve helped you. We could’ve done something.” Croc answers, “You said you could be yourself out here remember? Well, I guess that’s what I was doing. Being myself.” Like the best predators, Killer Croc is driven by self-preservation. If he were truly a wild animal, he would be free to reign in nature, but as a man with animal instincts, he must live his life in a cage. In this episode, he has the choice to kill the beast inside or keep the monster alive behind the bars of a prison cell, and ultimately he chooses the latter. It’s just who he is.
Batman Beatdown: After sneaking into the cabin where Croc is hiding, Batman pole-vaults across the room, knocking Croc through a window and into the water below.
The animation by Dong Yang (their last with layout assists from Spectrum) is gorgeous this episode, with fluid action, detailed environments, and stunning water effects. I especially love the shots of Croc and Batman’s feet changing the surface reflection of a stream as they run through it.
Killer Croc’s major role in the New 52 is serving as Roy Harper’s A.A. sponsor. Wait—what?
In “Almost Got ’Im,” Batman-as-Croc tells the other rogues how he almost killed Batman: “I threw a rock at him!” It’s one of the best lines in the entire series, and Michael Reeves pays tribute to it by having Croc through a lotof rocks this episode, a lot of big rocks.
“Wait’ll he busts out. That’ll be a story.” Gotta love some good foreshadowing.
“We are taking these actions in recognition of Libya’s continued commitment to its renunciation of terrorism and the excellent cooperation Libya has provided to the United States and other members of the international community in response to common global threats faced by the civilized world since Sept. 11, 2001,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced in a statement.
Rice used the occasion to express hope for the current U.S. standoffs over the development of nuclear weapons with North Korea and Iran.
The United States has not had formal diplomat relations with Libya since 1980, although a thaw in long-standing hostility enabled Washington to open a diplomatic office in Tripoli, Libya in 2004.
The move comes just three years after Libyan leader Col. Moammar Qaddafi surprised the world by agreeing to dismantle his country’s weapons of mass destruction programs and cooperate fully with international investigations.
American officials say that the records gleamed from Libya were crucial in tracking the illegal proliferation network run by Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan.
“As a direct result of those decisions we have witnessed the beginning of that country’s re-emergence into the mainstream of the international community. Today marks the opening of a new era in U.S.-Libya relations that will benefit Americans and Libyans alike,” Rice said.
Libyan Foreign Minister Abdurrahman Shalgham told the Associated Press the move was not a surprise.
There has not been a U.S. ambassador in Libya since 1974, three years after Qaddafi seized power in a coup. Qaddafi publicly supported international terrorism and subversion against African and Arab governments, according to State Department records. The U.S. Embassy was withdrawn in 1979 after a mob set fire to it.
Libya was placed under U.N. sanctions after it was held responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, which claimed 270 lives, most of them American.
Libya has been making concessions since 1994 when authorities agreed to take some responsibility for the bombing and reached a compensation agreement with the families of the victims.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which were denounced by Qaddafi, the Bush administration has praised Libya’s cooperation in fighting terrorism.
The much anticipated OnePlus 6 has arrived with high-end specifications which can be easily compared with any other flagship smartphone of 2018. The company also launched OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Limited Edition in India.
OnePlus 6 comes in two RAM+Storage configurations like the previous OnePlus handsets which include 6GB+64GB and 8GB+128GB. OnePlus 6 price in India is Rs 34,999 for 64GB and Rs 39,999 for 128GB variant. The new handset is available in three colour options- Mirror Black, Midnight Black, and Silk White.
OnePlus 6 will be available for buyers from May 22 through Amazon.in, OnePlus.in, OnePlus Experience stores as well as other offline sales channels across India. Amazon Prime members will be able to purchase the OnePlus 6 on May 21 in an Early Access Sale.
The company will also be hosting pop-up events across 8 Indian cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad for two days, from 21 to 22 May. Interested buyers will be able to purchase the handset on a first-come-first-serve basis.
The company also launched Marvel Avengers Limited Edition which comes with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage; this variant is priced at Rs 44,999. The Avengers edition will go on sale from May 29 in India.
OnePlus 6 runs on OxygenOS based on Android 8.1 Oreo. It is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor coupled with 6GB/8GB RAM. The handset has three storage options of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB (Avengers edition); the storage is not expandable in any variant.
The handset features a 6.28-inches FHD+ (2280x1080) optic AMOLED display with 19:9 aspect ratio and Corning Gorilla Glass 5.
The dual-SIM OnePlus 6 is backed by a 3,300mAh battery which comes with Dash Charge. However, the handset does not support wireless charging even after the inclusion of glass body. The company said that wireless charging is slow and we want to deliver our customers a great experience which Dash charging suffices.
For security, the handset comes with a fingerprint sensor which unlocks it in 0.2 seconds and face unlock feature which does the same in 0.4 seconds.
OnePlus measures 155.7 x 75.4 x 7.75mm and weighs 177 grams. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, 3.5mm headphone-jack, USB Type-C, and Location.
The handset is not IP certified for water resistance but according to the company “OnePlus 6 is well-equipped to survive a drop in the sink or a spilled glass of water. Just don’t take it for a swim.” OnePlus has used waterproof materials in the headphone jack and fingerprint scanner prevents damage to key components, while the gaps around the buttons of the device are sealed using silicone loops. Also, A special type of foam layered on the gap between the screen and the battery cover prevents water from seeping into the wiring.
This seems similar to OnePlus 5T’s dual camera but that isn’t true. This year, the company has upgraded the primary 16-megapixels sensor of OnePlus 5T (Sony IMX398) to Sony IMX519 which has 1.22 μm pixel size (an increase of 19 percent), resulting in better low-light performance. The primary camera now also includes OIS and EIS. The secondary 20-megapixels sensor is same as OnePlus 5T’s Sony IMX376K with 1.0 μm pixel size.
This year’s OnePlus flagship is capable of shooting 4K videos at 60fps. It can also record videos in super slow-motion with 1080p at 240fps and 720p at 480fps. On the front is a 16-megapixels selfie camera with 1.0 μm pixels, f/2.0 aperture, EIS, Portrait mode, screen flash and face beauty feature.
Also Read: Why OnePlus 6 has a Notch Display?
On the purchase of OnePlus 6, customers can avail a discount of Rs 2,000 on SBI Credit and Debit card transactions during the first week, No Cost EMI for up to 3 months on all popular banks. Additionally, OnePlus 6 buyers will get 12-month Accidental Damage Insurance by Servify, cashback of Rs 2,000 and handset insurance for Idea subscribers, gifts card of Rs 250 for Amazon Prime Video consumers and discounts of up to Rs 500 on Amazon Kindle.
BRUSSELS/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The European Union published new guidelines on Wednesday for labelling products made in Israeli settlements, a move Brussels said was technical but Israel branded “discriminatory” and damaging to peace efforts with the Palestinians.
Drawn up over three years by the European Commission, the guidelines mean Israeli producers must explicitly label farm goods and other products that come from settlements built on land occupied by Israel if they are sold in the European Union.
The violence is in part fuelled by the occupation and the growth of settlements.
Israeli officials, briefed that the decision was coming, were quick to denounce it. The foreign ministry said it was a political move designed to pressure Israel over its settlements policy. It summoned the EU ambassador to Israel and said it would suspend diplomatic dialogue in the coming weeks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Washington on an official visit, called the decision “hypocritical and a double standard”, saying the EU was not taking similar steps in hundreds of territorial conflicts elsewhere in the world.
Netanyahu’s office also said he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had discussed how to curb violence, improve living conditions in the West Bank and advance the diplomatic process.
It said Frank Lowenstein, the acting U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, would visit Israel next week to discuss those three issues. The last U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.
The EU’s position is that the lands Israel has occupied since the 1967 Middle East war - including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights - are not part of the internationally recognised borders of Israel.
As such, goods from there cannot be labelled “Made in Israel” and should be labelled as coming from settlements, which the EU considers illegal under international law.
The development of settlements has been one of the obstacles to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Britain, Belgium and Denmark already affix labels to Israeli goods, differentiating between those from Israel proper and those, particularly fruits and vegetables, that come from the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. Now, all 28 EU member states would have to apply the same labelling.
While there is no EU official wording, goods must carry the word “settlement” on the tag when sold in European shops. If an Israeli farmer refuses, a retail outlet can attach the label themselves, as the European Commission has sufficient information about where goods come from.
Senior Israeli diplomat Dore Gold, the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the EU move held Israel to a different standard than other countries and would threaten Palestinian jobs.
Two elements have particularly enraged Israeli officials. They see the measures as an effective boycott of Israel - akin to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that has gained traction in recent years - and say other cases of long-standing occupation, such as Morocco’s seizure of Western Sahara, are not treated in the same way.
The EU dismisses the suggestion of a boycott, pointing out that it is not telling consumers what not to buy. Those who do not want to buy Israeli settlement goods probably already avoid them, and those that support the settlements may now more actively seek out settlement produce.
The details of the guidelines, set out in a five-page document, were published online, making clear that they involve no changes to existing laws but are merely clarifications.
Israel’s Economy Ministry estimates the impact of Wednesday’s decision will be about $50 million (£33 million) a year, affecting fresh produce such as grapes and dates, wine, poultry, honey, olive oil and cosmetics made from Dead Sea minerals.
Israeli farmers and wine growers in the West Bank said they were worried about the impact on their business. Some have begun diversifying into markets in Russia and Asia to escape EU rules.
Google kicked off its Android Developer Summit in Mountain View this week with a bang, and support for foldable devices only scratched the surface. The company announced that many of the new features in Kotlin 1.3 are now natively supported, and it provided updates on Jetpack, Android Studio, instant apps, and more.
Inline classes allow you to create a type that doesn’t allocate unless boxed.
Unsigned numbers are now part of the Kotlin standard library, including UInt, UByte, and ULong. These new types are built using inline classes.
Coroutines support is now stable.
All of those have been integrated into Android’s Kotlin-specific APIs, Google said.
Google revealed Jetpack, a suite of tools and APIs designed to “accelerate” Android app development, at Google I/O 2018 in May, and it’s taken off like a rocket (no pun intended) in the months since. Today, 80 percent of the top 1,000 apps and games have adopted it, according to Google. This week, the company detailed new Architecture Component libraries that promise to make it even more appealing: Navigation, Work Manager, and Slice.
Navigation and Work Manager — both of which are launching in beta this month — offer a simplified way to implement Android’s navigation principle with animated transitions, create and edit navigation flows, and perform background tasks in “the most efficient manner,” based on application states, device API level, and other factors.
Android Slices, on the other hand — which were unveiled at Google I/O and this week move to public Search experiments — show mini app snippets containing content and actions, like playing a video or booking a flight. The list of initial partners includes Doist and Kayak, among others.
Android Studio, Google’s official IDE for Android development, got some love during the dev conference’s first keynote. Android Studio 3.3 beta 3 launches today, and it’s focused on stability — specifically “user-impacting” bugs. The frequency of crashes, hangs, and memory usage have been reduced, and Google said it’s building tools that will “help [developers] easily understand” what’s slowing an app build down.
Also announced: forthcoming support for Chrome OS.
Last, but not least, Google revealed improvements coming to the instant apps. Within Android Studio 3.3, developers can deploy and build instant apps and installed apps from a single Android Studio project and include them in a single Android App bundle.
WHY WAIT: Beebe cool on special session on Medicaid.
Gov. Mike Beebe gets it. He generally does when it comes to the legislative process.
He's not warm to the idea of putting off the Medicaid expansion issue until a special session, an idea some Republicans are floating. So he tells Andrew DeMillo of the AP. If there's to be a special session, Beebe prefers the three-day variety where there's a pro forma and quick resolution previously reached by mutual understanding.
Beebe recognizes, as I mentioned the other day, that this new idea is nothing but a classic Republican delaying tactic. Every month the decision is put off is a month more money isn't spent on the sick people of Arkansas. It is another month of Republican hoping that a legal or political Hail Mary pass will finally bring down President Obama, the health care reform legislation and, ideally, any government spending at all on the takers and moochers who rely on government help for health care, nursing homes and children's health insurance.
Arkansas needs a study such as the one done in Texas that shows that Medicaid expansion will save lives. Thousands will die early deaths without the added coverage expansion will provide. It would likely fall here on ears as deaf as those of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Really, there's little of significance we don't already know on the Medicaid expansion issue. It will save Arkansas's existing Medicaid program. It will expand it to many more people at no cost to the state for three years. It will save numerous Arkansas hospitals, nursing homes and clinics. Down the line, it will cost the state at least 10 percent of the total cost, but no one can be sure of costs way down the road, not with docs, insurance companies and drug companies scrabbling for every dollar they can grab. Democrats generally think this is a cost worth paying.
As a matter of principle, Republicans generally oppose expansion of government health programs. Many of them would reduce or eliminate those already in place.
Months of delay, committee obstructionism and Koch propaganda don't change the simple parameters of the debate.
Call the roll. Now, not later.
Confronting the fact that a loved one is showing classic signs of some form of dementia, and doing something about it, is never easy. But if you don't, it will ultimately end up confronting you.
Back in the early 2000s, my father starting losing his grip on reality. He'd always been eccentric but this was different. He started to believe that everyone was out to get him.
Despite having retired from farming years earlier, and suffering from visual problems and general frailty, he believed he still had all the skills needed to run a few beefies on his remaining land. He became obsessed with firewood gathering and ran his chainsaw most days. He refused any help.
When the cattle started getting out on the road because he'd forgotten to shut the gate, I knew we had a problem. Neighbours started reporting near-misses with black beasts on the road in the dark.
When the pieces of wood he'd cut became consistently too long for the firebox, I offered to do the chainsawing for him. He threw something at me, told me to get out of the house and not to come back - or he would shoot me.
I did keep going back for a short time, until the day he hired a lawyer to write and tell me - and others - not to come back on the property again. I kept checking on him by driving past, and keeping in touch with his neighbour who, so far, was still allowed on the property.
One rainy winter's day, I saw that the cattle had not been shifted and were standing knee-deep in mud bellowing. Because my father's capacity to understand pasture management had completely deserted him, they were close to starving.
At that point I sought advice - from mental health experts at the hospital, my own lawyer and close friends. The first step was removal of his gun. Then the starving cattle were sold. These measures were forced upon him.
The third step was to get him mentally assessed. He consistently fought, through his lawyer, to make sure this never happened. I still have the 2005 email I wrote to the mental health team at the hospital, and my lawyer, predicting he would soon come to a sticky end if he wasn't assisted in some way, and fast. Basically, I was asking for help.
He bought new cattle to replace the sold ones. That's probably what killed him. Hoof marks showed that one of them had become temporarily stuck in a creek below the house. My father, in tall gumboots, would have climbed the fence to see what was going on.
It was there, a day or two later, that my brother found him. Stuck on the fence. One leg had slipped between the wires, causing him to flop so far forward and down that he'd not had enough strength to lift himself back up. The autopsy showed that, having probably lost consciousness relatively quickly from the blood rush to his head, he had ultimately died of hypothermia. Alone, on a farm fence, on a clear, freezing July night.
Donald Trump, unlike my father, has obviously never been a particularly nice person. But, I'll bet you a cup of cold covfefe he's not the cognitive full Monty.
A lot has been written which suggests he is unstable. I'm talking the same kind of diminished capacity that comes with dementia, senility or Alzheimer's. Or straight-out mental illness.
I watched him last week exit the presidential plane and completely miss the black SUV parked, with its open door held by security staff, waiting for him to enter. Instead he wandered alone and aimlessly down the tarmac before he was swiftly ushered back to the waiting vehicle. This is one of many examples. Yet it's the one that resonated with me.
I have some empathy for the man because in a sane world he'd never have become US President in the first place. Further, in a sane world, the Republicans, his advisers and his family would not allow him to stay in the position.
We should all want Trump removed - not because he's "evil" or "dangerous" or "disgusting" but because in my opinion he's unwell. Civil societies used to care about such things.
Because in a world gone mad, without empathy what have we got?
Well, you can't blame him for walking the walk (but the feds did): Orange County tax adviser Dana Ray Reynolds sold books and videos about how to avoid paying taxes. Apparently he also took his own advice, which led to prosecution on failure to pay Uncle Sam, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.