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The business network chose Custom Consoles furniture for its London headquarters.
Back in 2007, Winehouse hoped to work with Nas, Mos Def and more.
From the moment she burst onto the international scene with "Rehab," Amy Winehouse — the British belter who died Saturday in her London apartment — was embraced by the hip-hop community, and she embraced it right back. It wasn't enough for her to get Jay-Z or Ghostface Killah to appear on remixes of her hits (which she did); she wanted to work with them, record proper tracks with them.
This was nothing new, of course: Even before she broke big with her Back to Black album, Winehouse was bringing hip-hop into the fold. She recorded her debut disc, Frank, with producer Salaam Remi (who had worked extensively with Nas and on the Fugees' epochal The Score). And her early single "In My Bed" sampled the iconic "Apache" beat from Nas' Remi-produced "Made You Look."
But, finally riding high on the success of Black, Winehouse hoped to use some of her newfound clout to finally realize some of her hip-hop dreams, as she told MTV News in a May 2007 interview.
"There's so many people I'd love to work with: Nas, Mos Def. I'd love to work with Busta Rhymes, I'd love to work with Rah Digga ... I love them," she said. "I learned a lot of stuff about how to write songs from people like that. I just really like them, and if they like my stuff, cool. ... If they want to do a track, I'd love to."
Of course, she'd go on to actually make some of those projects happen, in one form or another. She recorded a version of "Love is a Losing Game" with Mos Def during a 2007 performance on MTV — a performance that will re-air on the channel Wednesday (July 27) at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT, as part of a tribute special to Winehouse's musical legacy. She also made headlines when she stepped out with Nas (about whom she sang on the Black track "Me & Mr. Jones") in London last year.
Winehouse was reportedly set to collaborate with Digga on the female rapper's Sucker Free project, though it's unclear whatever became of the team-up. And in 2008, Busta famously joked that Winehouse wouldn't return his phone calls.
Celebrate Amy Winehouse on Wednesday night at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT, when MTV will air an encore presentation of a performance she taped in the MTV studios in 2007.
Will you remember Winehouse more for her music or her troubles? Tell us on Facebook.
WASHINGTON (CN) – The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service plans to change its regulations for the importation, interstate movement, and release into the environment of genetically engineered plant pests.
The changes are to implement parts of the Plant Protection Act and update the regulations regarding advances in genetic science and technology and APHIS’ experience. The agency will consider public comments submitted by Nov. 24, or at one of three public forums.
This is the first comprehensive review and revision of the regulations since they were established in 1987.
Click on the document icon on the front page for details and other new regulations.
San Diego If a San Diego County jury had not acquitted Beau John Maloney of terrorizing his father and younger half-brother in July 1998, a renowned Texas artist might still be alive today. Until her murder, Helen Orman, whose paintings appear online at www.gallery3.net/ frames/orman.html, was also chair of the department of literature at Southwest College in Houston. But as she vacuumed her car in broad daylight at a Houston gas station on Saturday, March 20, of this year, a man shot her dead. The city's police suspect that man to be 34-year-old Maloney. A Texas public safety officer apprehended him at 1:00 a.m. the following Monday morning near Kerrville, beyond San Antonio, west of Houston.
Police also suspect Maloney of robbing a young woman and shooting her through the shoulder and chest in the Rice Village area of Houston. The woman picked him out of a lineup as her assailant after police took him into custody in connection with Orman's murder. But Maloney's attorney is now calling both cases matters of mistaken identity. The arraignment of Maloney on charges of murder and aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon has been reset from an earlier date to June 17.
According to Houston television's KHOU News, Houston police described the captive Maloney as "angry with the world." "He's a very irate individual, totally uncooperative, combative," said Houston police sergeant Edward Gonzales, a homicide investigator who questioned Maloney. "When he did say something, it was laced with expletives."
Beau John Maloney's father, Beau Maloney, lives in San Diego. He did not return phone calls in connection with his son's Texas predicament. But Laureen Maloney, his second wife, provided a few details. She says she married the senior Maloney shortly after he immigrated with his son to the United States from South Africa in 1984. A son of their own, Sean, was born to the couple in 1988.
At some point, the Maloneys ended up in Oregon. It was there, "years ago," says Laureen, that she and her husband began receiving restraining orders issued against the unpredictable and hot-tempered Beau John.
In 1998, the young man came to live for several days in a new home his father had acquired on Isabella Avenue in Coronado. Apparently, tensions escalated quickly. What follows in quotations is taken directly from San Diego County Superior Court documents in the case of the People of the State of California vs. Beau John Maloney. The case went to trial in early November 1998.
On the previous July 8, the older man left his son a note asking him to leave the house. The two saw each other later that evening and they argued. "Defendant choked his father, pushed him against a wall, and threatened to kill him," says a court summary of the older Beau Maloney's testimony at the trial. "Defendant said he should be number one and Sean should be number two. The defendant also asked his father for his father's gun so he could 'do it properly.' "
The father then retreated to a bedroom with his younger son Sean, ten years old at the time. Beau John began pounding on the bedroom door. The summary of the father's testimony continues: "The knocking [became] louder. Sean Maloney was afraid. Defendant was yelling, 'Tell him the truth.' [The father and younger son] scrambled quickly to the loft. Maloney was afraid the defendant was going to attack them.... The defendant kicked down the door. The defendant went under the loft."
Beau John produced a tire iron and began wielding it. The court statement is ambiguous about how vigorously he swung it, but it does report his father testifying that he needed to "jump back to avoid being hit." It also says, "The tire iron came six inches from touching [the older] Maloney" and that, as the fury unfolded, "Sean Maloney was screaming and crying in fear." Finally, Maloney Sr. brought an end to his older son's violence, the court summary states, by pulling out a gun, probably the handgun mentioned above. Beau John backed off and left the room, but not before ripping down the stairs to the loft.
In the chaos Beau Maloney Sr. managed to call 911. Coronado police officer T. Lorenzen arrived on the scene at 11:55 p.m. Lorenzen testified in court that he found Beau John Maloney carrying two bags of clothes and walking the sidewalk in front of his father's house. Maloney also had the tire iron, which Lorenzen says he impounded. The officer then entered the residence to see whether the victims had been harmed and to listen to their versions of the evening's events.
Lorenzen testified further that "fresh impressions to the carpet area of the loft" inside the house, damage to the bedroom door, and "pry marks on the outside of the door" all were consistent with the victims' reports that Beau John Maloney had swung the tire iron and had used it to break down the door and destroy the stairs to the loft.
According to the summary of a pretrial hearing, Lorenzen earlier testified, "The defendant [said] he was trying to enter the bedroom to get some of his belongings. The defendant told officer Lorenzen that he thought his father wanted him out of the house and that was why he pried the door open. The defendant stated [that] once the door was open, he grabbed his belongings and left the house without incident." Officer Lorenzen arrested the defendant for a violation of penal code section 245, subdivision (a)(1), assault with a deadly weapon.
Deputy district attorney Patrick Espinoza has only a vague recollection of the case he prosecuted in 1998 against Beau John Maloney for assault with a deadly weapon. He looks up his summary notes on the trial to explain why the jury acquitted the defendant. The jury was influenced, he thinks, by Maloney's claims that "he only broke down the door to get his clothes." Espinoza continues: "The jury also seemed to think that [Maloney] might only have intended to threaten his father with the tire iron, not to hurt him."
And then there was the issue of the father's brandishing a gun against his son. Beau Maloney Sr. did not mention it in his pretrial statements. But Espinoza recalls that Sean Maloney already told police that his father had gotten Beau John to leave the house by pointing the gun at him. When he testified at trial, therefore, Maloney Sr. finally admitted to chasing Beau John away with the gun.
The effect of these considerations in the jury's mind, thinks Espinoza, was to call the senior Maloney's credibility into question. Maloney's credibility was further compromised, says Espinoza, when the defense put his first wife Aileen on the witness stand. The clincher in destroying Maloney Sr.'s credibility, he says, was that Aileen and another witness produced by the defense both testified that Maloney was "a liar."
The jury acquitted the defendant on the charges of assault with a deadly weapon. San Diego County criminal records indicate that Beau John Maloney's altercation with his father and half-brother in 1998 was not his only legal problem during his San Diego stay. Two warrants for his arrest are still outstanding, and when he finally left San Diego, he skipped a bail of $5000.
Laureen Maloney says that her silent husband is the only person who can elucidate his son's additional troubles with local law enforcement. But she does believe that Beau John left San Diego right before a psychiatric evaluation that his probation required he receive. Both she and her husband, says Mrs. Maloney, always believed that Beau John's violent temperament was caused by drugs. Before the assault with a deadly weapon trial, according to the court record, Maloney Sr. told police that his son had "a history of drug abuse" and that "the defendant becomes violent when he uses methamphetamine."
But now, due to her explorations on the Internet, Laureen Maloney is not so sure. After leaving San Diego, according to an April 26 Houston Chronicle article she read, her stepson got into trouble with the law in Florida, North Carolina, and New Mexico before arriving in Texas. He was arrested three times in Texas before killing Helen Orman earlier this year.
The Internet also was the source of Laureen's first learning, she says, that Texas mental health providers had diagnosed her stepson as schizophrenic. The website www.click2houston.com/news reported on March 21, "Harris County records show Maloney was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder during the last several years. The suspect has a long history of mental illness, including treatments at state mental health facilities and being prescribed antipsychotic drugs."
Either the "long history of mental illness" did not extend back as far as Beau John Maloney's stay in San Diego, or someone failed to inform local authorities.
MARTINSBURG, W.Va. - A revised version of the zoning ordinance proposed for Berkeley County will be the focus of yet another round of public hearings this week as county leaders continue to work toward finalizing land-use guidelines that voters are expected to consider at the polls in May.
The Berkeley County Planning Commission is scheduled to meet at 7 tonight in the county commission chambers in the county's administration building at 400 W. Stephen St. to hear public comment.
A leading member of the advisory committee charged with helping mold the more than 100-page zoning document expects the comments to be "more focused" than at the hearing held on the first draft of the ordinance.
After sifting through about 75 public comments on the June draft of the ordinance, Berkeley County Planner Matthew Mullenax said advisory committee members made changes and added and deleted portions.
The 50 or so comments incorporated into the revised, "November draft" of the ordinance were either typed in bold or struck through so people can see what changes were made, Mullenax said.
Two of the most significant changes pertain to requirements for rural residential zoning and nonconforming areas, Mullenax said.
After the hearings this week, Mullenax said the Berkeley County Planning Commission will review public comments and decide whether to make additional changes.
A vote by the Planning Commission to send the proposal to the Berkeley County Commission for additional review could happen by mid-December, Mullenax said.
"It's going to depend on the volume and the type of comments received (this week)," Mullenax said.
After reviewing the Planning Commission's zoning report, the County Commission is expected to hold two more public hearings, Mullenax said.
If county commissioners make "substantial" amendments to the proposed ordinance, they would be required by state law to hold another public hearing before placing the proposal on the ballot, Mullenax said.
As the zoning ordinance proposal advances, a companion ordinance that would allow a landowner to sell or transfer his rights to develop property to another landowner also is approaching the required public hearing stages before it can be placed on the ballot.
Mullenax said members of the zoning advisory committee received fewer than 10 comments about the Transferable Development Rights ordinance after holding a series of public education workshops about the eight-page proposal earlier this month.
"We had, overall, about 40 people come out," Mullenax said.
If zoning is not approved by the voters, the Transferable Development Rights ordinance can not be enacted, regardless if a majority of voters separately favors the concept.
Overall, Mullenax said he believed a series of educational workshops for the zoning ordinance were very helpful and noted that some people opposed to zoning still were willing to put in their "two cents."
Though he wished more people would have attended the workshops, Mullenax said he thought those who did were representative of the county's population.
"I think we got a pretty good swath," Mullenax said. "It's just like a (good) term paper, you get more eyes on it. Kudos to all the (people) who made their comments."
What: Public comments on revised version of proposed ordinance will be heard by the Berkeley County Planning Commission.
If unable to attend, send comments to berkeley.zoning@gmail.com or mail them to Matthew Mullenax, Berkeley County Planning Department, Suite 203, 400 W. Stephen St., Martinsburg, WV 25401 or contact him at 304-263-1964.
Robotic prison guards that are meant to look friendly to inmates. For real. And that’s far from all in the latest edition of TWIB.
Soft-shelled robots have popped up from time to time, but none perhaps have been as amazing as this new innovation from Harvard. It’s a super-floppy starfish-esque robot that can crawl, maneuver, and wiggle its way along the ground…and can also squirm its way into tight spaces and even through tiny holes. Just like the worms of your squirmiest nightmares! Enjoy!
The robot is just five inches long, pneumatically powered and was designed to replicate the motions of a real sea creature. It was funded by Pentagon research, which indicates that there are inevitable military/covert surveillance goals in mind–such a bot would be ideal for making its way into buildings undetected, due to its potentially quieter locomotion–but there are also evidently uses in post-disaster scenarios, particularly in the case of collapsed buildings after earthquakes.
In an exhibition to demonstrate one future of building design and fabrication, a fleet of quadrocopters will execute a complex arial ballet to build a six-meter-high tower out of 1,500 polystyrene blocks–lifting each brick in turn, flying to the right position, awaiting their turn, then planting the brick. The show is happening in Orléans in France from today, designed by a Italian-Swiss team of architects and roboticists.
The most remarkable thing is that 50 quadrocopters will be flying in the air space in all sorts of cleverly optimized directions and speeds, monitored by a motion-sensing computer that assess the situation 370 times a second, and refines the flight path of each flying machine.
Quite apart from the impressive nature of the build, the art installation is designed to showcase how flying machines may one day help in the construction of actual buildings here on earth (with perhaps less risk to life an limb for construction engineers on skyscraper projects) or even on other planets–thinking particularly of Mars, where building big habitation structures may be tricky for space-suited astronauts.
We’ve covered all sorts of robots at Fast Company, and even the psuedo-robotic machines called telepresence droids that let remote workers maintain a physical presence in an office, or doctors faces to appear at a remote patient’s bedside. South Korea has incredible plans to pull off a half-robotic, half-telepresence trick in its jails. Robots will roam the corridors, checking inside cells and making sure prisoners aren’t misbehaving–including violent or suicidal behavior.
A month-long trial period of the five-foot-tall machines in one jail begins in March, and if successful it could easily lead to more being rolled out across the robot-friendly nation. Interestingly enough while the bots are designed to lighten the burden on human guards, they’re not supposed to be intimidating–the design team is currently working on making them look friendly to inmates.
Self-recognition in mirrors is something we use as a guide to genuine intelligence in animals. We do it, naturally, and so do dolphins, primates and elephants. But when your dog or cat spot themselves in a mirror they’re not thinking “that’s me, in a mirror” in quite the same way.
Of course Qbo has no real intelligence, so this is a trick. But it does indicate all sorts of future moral and ethical questions that’ll have to be tackled when a robot really does look in a mirror and see itself, understanding what that means. That whooshing sound you just heard was every human in the world shivering at once.
An Australian Department of Defence project at the Centre For Intelligent Systems Research has created what may be considered the ultimate in real-feel flight simulators: a carriage on the end of a giant robot arm that whirls a human pilot around to simulate all sorts of aerial maneuvers–ones that more traditional sims just can’t compete with. So many realistic rolls, yaws and dives in fact that it’s called the Haptically-Enabled Universal Motion Simulator. The device can even pull up to 6G, which is equivalent to tight combat flying turns and is otherwise only accessible in a centrifuge.
The idea is to chain them together to give pilots as realistic an experience of dogfighting as possible without risking life and limb (and taxpayer dollars) in a training aircraft. If only they were working on an arcade game version.
Now this isn’t technically a robot, apart from the cute way the device folds its chassis in on itself robotically when its put into its super-compact “parking” mode, but it’s too fabulous to leave out as it’s fantastically sci-fi. Designed for a near future of electric commuter travel in the East’s busiest cities, the concept electric Kobot vehicles from Kowa-Tmsuk are all about green transport, composite material construction, speedy transport, and minimal-space parking.
German side edges out Man City in their Champions League opener; Chelsea held by Schalke; Barca edge past APOEL.
A last-gasp goal from defender Jerome Boateng gave Bayern Munich a 1-0 win over Manchester City in their opening Champions League Group E clash.
Boateng broke the deadlock with a powerful shot after the Germans controlled the game, but failed to crack open a tight defence until the 90th minute.
But it is Roma who sit top of the group with a 5-1 thrashing of CSKA Moscow.
Elsewhere, an under-strength Barcelona got their Champions League campaign off to a solid if unspectacular start when a Gerard Pique header was enough for a 1-0 win at home to APOEL.
Barca predictably dominated their Cypriot visitors at the Nou Camp and after waves of attacks eventually found a breakthrough when Pique headed a Lionel Messi free kick into the bottom corner of the net in the 28th minute.
Meanwhile, Chelsea wasted chance after chance and had to settle for a 1-1 draw with Schalke 04 at Stamford Bridge.
Cesc Fabregas scored his first goal for Chelsea to put them ahead after 11 minutes.
But the London side, who have won all four Premier League games, were pegged back when Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scored a superb equaliser for Schalke who are without a win in Germany this season.
Can you tell me where to find data on the laws of inheriting property in Costa Rica? Preferably in English. I would like to know if property owned by a person’s father (where the mother is deceased) automatically goes to his living children or to whom? What if the children live in the United States as U.S. citizens? Thank you.
“The Legal Guide to Costa Rica” is a book in English by Roger A. Peterson that addresses many questions about the legal system in Costa Rica, from the structure of the government to contractual obligations. Peterson is an attorney and a member of the Florida Bar and the Costa Rican Bar Association and practices law in San José, Costa Rica.
Chapter eight of his book addresses the laws of succession.
The books goes on to explain that the Civil Code in Costa Rica, which contains the laws of intestacy, says that the estate of the deceased go directly to his or her legitimate heirs. First-degree heirs include the spouse, children and parents of the deceased person.
For all its cache as an Ivy League school and a beacon of research in New England, the Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH has an innovation problem. It’s looking now to one of the area’s most successful biotech entrepreneurs to solve it.
It isn’t that the ideas aren’t there. It isn’t that the university isn’t churning out smart, motivated people who are attracted to innovation. Take a quick look at some of the bigger life science venture capital firms— Venrock, Polaris Partners, SV Life Sciences, Greylock Partners, to name a few—and you’ll see Dartmouth alumni littered through their ranks. Rather, it’s that those ideas aren’t leading to commercial opportunities, and ultimately, businesses with enough regularity. And Tillman Gerngross, who started out as an associate professor there 15 years ago before forming two life sciences companies—GlycoFi and Adimab—and becoming one of the area’s most successful, well-known biotech entrepreneurs, is taking that challenge head-on with a bold plan: to reshape how the university handles tech transfer.
“The output of our education is highly entrepreneurial or very close to the innovation/entrepreneurship space, but in the institution somewhat we’ve not found a way of connecting to that outside world,” he says.
So Gerngross is heading a new initiative at Dartmouth called the Office of Entrepreneurship & Technology Transfer, through which he plans to change the way the typical university tech transfer office is run. The official duties of the office are to oversee several of Dartmouth’s existing offices, such as the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center, and the college’s existing tech transfer office. But as Gerngross explains, he wants to turn the office into a true enabler of innovation, rather than a gatekeeper of it. To do this, he wants to give entrepreneurs the ownership of their inventions, help them find the best method for them to build value, aid with the creation of infrastructure, and help connect those companies with the university’s vast network of venture capital alumni.
“I think you can create a much more exciting story than what you’re doing now, which is basically being in the taxing innovation business,” he says.
REDLANDS – Redlands East Valley High School senior Eric Rodriguez was born with wrestling in his blood.
With his father Ronnie qualifying for state at San Bernardino High School and his older brother, Ronnie Jr., a standout in the 140-pound division at REV from 2002-05, it’s no surprise that Eric has been wrestling since he was 7years old. His younger brother, Chris, is also a freshman on the Wildcats.
While Rodriguez has always had a love for wrestling, it was losing in the 130-pound finals at the CIF Masters Meet last year that has given him the determination and passion to equal that love.
It’s a passion that Rodriguez has unleashed on every wrestler who makes the mistake of getting on the mat with him. The senior has a 26-0 record heading into REV’s key Citrus Belt League dual meet with Carter tonight, winning four tournament titles in the process.
Making the best of it for Rodriguez would be qualifying for the state meet. While Rodriguez has been the champion of his weight class in the CBL in each of his first three seasons, the state meet is the prize that has eluded him.
Rodriguez is going out of his way to make sure that nothing, whether it be schoolwork or other wrestlers, get in his way this year.
That confidence comes from growing into a more complete wrestler. Rodriguez is more of a take-down wrestler, as his strength is being able to drop his opponent to the ground from a standing position by using his quickness, technique and strength.
However, it’s his work on the ground that is drawing raves from Anderson. The REV coaching staff has had Rodriguez spar with senior Ben Walters, a 125-pounder who has won two tournaments and finished second in another this season.
Walters, while being smaller than Rodriguez, excels on the ground and has been invaluable in helping Rodriguez hone that part of his game.
It’s the combination of Walters and Rodriguez, along with 103-pound freshman Chris Mecate, at the lower weights that has the Wildcats confident they can beat Carter, which is 4-0 in the CBL along with REV, tonight.
But it’s the combination of his takedown prowess and Walters’ ground strength that has given Rodriguez the confidence that he believes is essential.
Rodriguez has gotten attention from several colleges, as Anderson and REV junior varsity coach Anthony Loera sent out a highlight package of Rodriguez last year to several colleges in California, the Midwest and on the East Coast.
It’s a plan of action that Loera and Anderson will execute after this season concludes, as well. As with last season, there will be a surplus of Rodriguez highlight material to choose from.
Rodriguez is confident that his ability will allow him to prevail against anyone he faces – anyone except older brother Ronnie, who was a senior when Eric was a freshman.
No one involved in investigating the matter was willing to publicly address the allegations Wednesday to the Statesman. The AP and the Statesman generally do not name alleged victims of sexual abuse.

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