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A section of the M1 motorway that been closed due to an "incident" on Tuesday morning has now re-opened. |
The section of the motorway that had been affected was between Lough Road, Lurgan and Portadown. |
There were long lines of traffic joining diversion routes from the motorway. |
Superintendent Minister of the Dzorwulu Circuit of the Methodist Church of Ghana, Rt. Rev Stephen Richard Bosomtwe-Ayensu, says the posture of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Charlotte Osei and her team, has convinced him that there is a scheme to impose President John Mahama on Ghanaians after the No... |
Rt. Rev Stephen Richard Bosomtwe-Ayensu underscored the need for the electorate to choose their leaders, as that is the guiding principle of every democracy. |
His comments follow the setting up of the controversial Steering Committee by the EC to manage the general election later this year. |
Bishop Ayensu said it is not illegal for the EC to set up such a committee ahead of the elections, but advised that the Commission must consult with the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) and other stakeholders. |
“The EC chair cannot appoint the president for the people but the people must rather choose their leader.….” he said. |
Bishop Bosomtwe-Ayensu spoke with Adom Fm at the Annual Circuit Camp Meeting of the Dzorwulu Circuit held under the theme, “One Thing I Know,” in Accra on Sunday. |
“The current posture of the EC seems to portray that the Commission wants to impose the sitting President on us,” he emphasised. |
The outspoken Bishop warned the EC to desist from any scheme to favour President Mahama in the elections. |
He urged the EC to be more transparent and accountable to the people to quell suspicion among other stakeholders of the November polls. He noted that transparency by the EC would ensure peace and stability in the country. |
In a related development, a former chief director of the EC, Kwame Damoah Agyemang, has expressed concern about the attitude of the EC boss towards the November polls. |
Mr Agyemang believes that the actions and inactions of Ms Charlotte Osei clearly demonstrate that she is not in firm control of her job. |
The former EC chief director opined that some hidden hands somewhere were manipulating the Commission’s boss. |
“From the look of things, I don’t think she is in firm control. Look at the recent public forum she set up which was chaired by Justice Crabbe to solicit for the views of people as far as the call for a new voter register was concerned. |
“Why is it that when the Committee was meeting the stakeholders, you the same Chairperson had to go there and state your case? You have already stated your position so what happens to the solicited views when they are presented to you? It clearly shows that her neutrality is missing,” Mr. Agyemang told Fiifi Banson on ... |
YouTube is adding dozens of new original content channels in November. |
Looking for another reason to cut your cable cord? |
Confirming a report from two days ago, Google announced dozens of new, original content channels coming to YouTube this November, through tie-ups with major publishers, movie stars, comedians, sports associations, and more. |
"Wonderful things happen when cool technology meets great entertainment," Google wrote in a blog post published late Friday. |
Google posted a list of 66 upcoming channels, but a few that caught our eye were: "The Onion", "SoulPancake" produced by Rainn Wilson (of The Office fame, pictured left), "WWE Fan Nation", "Stan Lee's World of Heroes", "Modern Mom" with Brooke Burke, and a Latino celebrity channel from IconicTV. |
"These channels will have something for everyone, whether you're a mom, a comedy fan, a sports nut, a music lover or a pop-culture maven," Google wrote. "Our goal with this channels expansion, along with the grants and educational programs we've launched in the past year, is to bring an even broader range of entertainm... |
You'll be able to watch these channels on any Internet-connected device, but no doubt Google hopes you'll be streaming content through Google TV, which received a major update on Friday that integrates Android 3.1 aka Honeycomb. |
The push into original YouTube programming may be intended to address previous complaints about cable networks blocking streaming through Google TV. A Google TV spokesman declined to confirm this with my colleague Mark Hachman, but said that the top five "channels" on YouTube receive as many viewers as the top five cab... |
In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google was sinking $100 million to bring more original programming to YouTube. Over the summer, it was also rumored that Google wanted to buy Hulu to boost this effort, but a few weeks ago, Hulu’s owners decided to take the site off the block. |
Coroner's office inspectors probe the scene where an old grave was found, halting work on the Denver Botanic Gardens parking lot on Nov. 7, 2008. |
Crews from the Denver coroner's office inspect the construction site of the Botanic Garden parking lot on Friday, November 7, 2008, after human bones were found. |
Digging just below the surface of the Denver Botanic Gardens can turn up all kinds of things. |
The reason: The gardens, one of the largest and most visited botanical gardens in the United States, sit atop an old cemetery. |
Excavation for a new multistory parking garage at 1005 York St. came to an abrupt halt at noon today when the Denver coroner’s office announced that an old grave had been discovered. |
“We will respond, and the bones will be removed and given to the mortuary for direct burial,” said Michelle Weiss-Samaras, Denver’s chief deputy coroner. |
That bones were found was hardly unexpected, said Larry Conyers, an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Denver. |
“It doesn’t surprise me. That whole area used to be the city graveyard,” said Conyers. |
In 1858, when Gen. William Larimer claim-jumped land from the Arapaho tribe to create Denver, he put the city’s cemetery in a field now home to the current Cheesman and Congress parks and the Denver Botanic Gardens. |
Conyers annually takes his students out to Cheesman Park, where he says many coffins remain buried. |
“I know where there are a whole bunch of caskets — adults and children,” said Conyers, who is one of the world’s leading experts in ground-penetrating radar, which he compares to a CT scan of the ground. |
He tests his students to see whether they can detect the caskets below the surface. |
“I use it as a test case. I know where they are, and I see if they can find them,” said the archaeologist, who with his radar has found a Christian church in Tunisia, a buried Mayan farm village in El Salvador and Roman temples in Jordan. |
Will Jones, spokesman for the Denver Botanic Gardens, said that excavation for the new three-story parking structure, which will hold about 320 cars, began about three weeks ago. |
Because the Botanic Gardens didn’t want to block the view of people living in the surrounding neighborhood, a decision was made to have two levels below ground. |
Knowing the history of the area, specifically that it used to be a cemetery, the gardens contacted the Denver coroner’s office to coordinate efforts should graves be found, said Jones. |
“We didn’t think we’d find anything,” said Jones. But the coroner’s office said that “if you find anything that looks like anything, stop!” said Jones. |
So when construction workers spotted what looked like splintered wood and possible human remains at around noon, everything stopped, and the coroner’s office was contacted. |
Officials from the coroner’s office spent about four hours at the site today, and will resume digging at the site tomorrow morning. |
Jones said that about 9,000 bodies were removed from Cheesman Park, Congress Park and the Botanic Gardens area around 1950. |
But Conyers said the area is still full of caskets and corpses. |
When Conyers goes to the area, he often notices lumpy depressions in the land. The topsoil covering graveyards often appears lumpy because of collapsed wooden caskets, said Conyers. Even in places where bodies were exhumed, refilling the hole with different soil can cause pits in the land. |
Conyers said today that he has heard of people who live or work in the Cheesman-Congress Park area who have artifacts from the old graveyard. |
Although he knows where caskets and bodies remain, he isn’t telling anyone where they are. |
“We let them lie in peace,” said the archaeologist. |
World champion skier Gus Kenworthy, who won a silver medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, has come out as gay. |
The 24-year-old Olympic medalist and top freeskier in the world revealed the news in an interview with ESPN The Magazine published on Thursday. |
"I am gay," Kenworthy said in posts on Twitter and Facebook in which he shared the cover of the latest issue of the magazine. |
"Wow, it feels good to write those words," he said on Facebook. "For most of my life, I’ve been afraid to embrace that truth about myself. Recently though, I've gotten to the point where the pain of holding onto the lie is greater than the fear of letting go, and I’m very proud to finally be letting my guard down." |
In the magazine interview, Kenworthy described his struggle with the decision to come out, saying that he wasn’t ready to reveal the truth to the public during the Sochi Games. |
in Sochi because I felt so horrible about what I didn't do," he told the magazine. "I didn't want to come out as the silver medalist from Sochi. I wanted to come out as the best freeskier in the world." |
The U.S. Olympic Committee was quick to voice its support for Kenworthy in a post on its official Twitter account, saying "We are PROUD to say you are part of #TeamUSA!" |
Kenworthy was part of one of the few American trios in Winter Olympic history to sweep an event, taking the silver medal for the men’s freestyle skiing slopestyle in Sochi last year. |
The skier also led a campaign during his time in Sochi to call attention to stray dogs in the area, finding homes for several of the stray pups in the United States. |
A number of reforms will be implemented at Rikers Island. |
The city will lay plans to close the Rikers Island detention complex where most city inmates are housed, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced. |
"We will close the Rikers Island jail facility," the mayor said Friday at a hastily thrown-together press conference in the City Hall rotunda. "It will take many years, it will take many tough decisions. But it will happen."The Department of Corrections currently houses roughly 9,500 people a day, around 7,000 of whom ... |
As recently as Wednesday, de Blasio had withheld support for such a course of action, and rejected Crain's observation that he sounded partial to the idea of setting up borough jails in place of the centralized island jail. |
The mayor denied that his announcement was related to the expected release Sunday of a report from a commission formed by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and led by the state's former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman. That commission will release a plan recommending the phasing out of Rikers Island's jails over ... |
The jail came under federal oversight in 2015 for patterns of violence against inmates. In 2013, a report by psychiatrist and jail expert James Gilligan found that Rikers' "physical environment is not conducive to facilitate care and treatment," though an estimated 40% of inmates have psychiatric diagnoses. |
Last year, Crain's collected a range of alternate uses for the 413-acre island, including its use as an extension of LaGuardia Airport. |
What do passengers steal from planes? Anything that isn't bolted down. |
Among the items snatched from commercial flights: coffee mugs, cutlery, blankets and life jackets. |
Life jackets? Yes, life jackets. |
When Joyce Kirby worked as a flight attendant, she says, passengers routinely grabbed the emergency flotation devices under their seats before exiting the aircraft. "We had to check each seat after each flight to make sure each one had a vest," recalls Kirby, who now runs a tour operation in Palm Coast, Florida. |
But the "what" isn't as interesting as the "why." If passengers are taking everything they can carry when they leave planes, it may say more about the airline industry than it does about them. |
Not long ago, I took a hard look at the problem of disappearing hotel amenities. Experts suggested that hotel resort fees - which leave guests with the impression that everything is included - may be to blame for a rise in thefts. The airline problem is similar. Fees are everywhere, and travelers don't always have a ch... |
How much do passengers steal from planes? No one knows. There are no recent surveys on airline theft, and airlines don't publicly report thefts. But there's plenty of anecdotal evidence from my readers and from colleagues like Brian Sumers, a writer for the online trade publication Skift, who recently observed that pas... |
United Airlines last year reportedly sent a memo to flight attendants noting "some confusion about which amenities may be taken off the plane at the end of the flight." The pillows and blankets in first class, it said, don't come with the flight. "Even if only a small number of these items are taken off each flight, th... |
Let's quickly review the items people normally lift from planes. |
Airsickness bags: Travelers like Clemens Sehi collect them. "It's kind of a tradition for me to take the bags with me as a souvenir," he says. He has collected 250 bags from 50 countries, including some from airlines that now are defunct. His most prized barf bag is from Aero Lloyd, a German airline that shut down in 2... |
Table settings: I spoke with several passengers who admitted to taking forks, knives, spoons, glassware and salt and pepper shakers. This is more of a gray area. Obviously, plastic dishware is fine to take, but regular table settings are normally a no-no. When it doubt, ask. That's what Valerio Violo, a civil engineer ... |
Pillows and blankets: Simah Etgar doesn't have a problem with taking the blankets on her flights. It is, she says, "good thieving" because she donates the blankets to her school in a low-income area of Raisinghnagar, India, where she teaches English. Indeed, some airlines, including JetBlue, sell the blankets to passen... |
These are hardly the only items passengers steal from planes. Some stolen items are surprising because it's unclear what the passengers will do with them. That includes warning placards ("Life Vest Under Your Seat"), tray tables and, as one flight attendant told me, "the wings right off my uniform blazer, which was in ... |
OK, stealing a flight attendant's wings - that crosses a line. |
So what's behind the in-flight thefts? Blame the increasingly frayed relationship between passenger and airline. A generation ago, when tickets were a little more expensive, they included a lot of things, like the ability to check a bag, reserve a seat and enjoy a decent meal. Today, everything is extra, and that irks ... |
Passengers sometimes have a right to feel exploited. When the airline charges exorbitant prices for bland airline meals, it's easy to justify pilfering a bag of pretzels from the galley. Likewise, when a carrier charges five figures for a premium seat, you might assume the pillows and blankets are included. |
"I think taking things from airplanes is more of a moral choice than anything," says Andrew Mondia, an actor based in Toronto. Like most passengers, he already knows what he's allowed to take, and what he isn't. Just in case: If it's disposable, you can take it. If not, just ask. |
There's a way to stop airline passengers and hotel guests from stealing, but it could be expensive. Make the travel experience fair and as free of fees as possible. Don't hold your breath for that to happen, though. These are industries that became enormously profitable by bending the truth and inventing surcharges. It... |
Published in the Washington Post. |
Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. |
VASES WITH FACES: We guess calling these handmade Michelle Valigura vessels "vases" might be a bit too pat. They aren't traditional in the least, and we don't even know we'd put flowers or sticks or decorative baubles in them. They stand fine and strong just empty and on their own. Artist Amanda Visell turned us onto t... |
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) When George Metcalfe and Rachel Crowley pointed their rented Jeep down a seldom-traveled dirt road in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, they may have underestimated Utah's treacherous terrain and winter weather. |
After a strong snowstorm swept the region, the couple were stranded for six days. Mr. Metcalfe was finally found hiking for help miles away from the couple's vehicle and from where his companion succumbed to the freezing elements. |
One of the men who rescued Mr. Metcalfe said the couple, who weren't dressed for winter and had only brought snacks, were trying to navigate a road that even locals consider barely passable in good weather. |
The case underscores the caution urged for tourists who test the state's scenic but rugged wilderness. |
"My uncle used to always say one raindrop could make the roads slick … one sprinkle and it's enough to strand you," said Shanon Pollock, who, with his father, found Mr. Metcalfe last week. |
Mr. Metcalfe, a 26-year-old Londoner, and Miss Crowley, a 27-year-old from Quincy, Mass., flew to Las Vegas together Feb. 22, telling friends they were planning to visit Zion National Park. |
On Feb. 24, they reached the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument 1.9 million acres of canyons and plateaus. |
"We have a visitors center, and it was open. But we have determined that they drove right past it," said Barb Sharrow, assistant manager for monument services. |
The couple entered the monument on a dirt road that Miss Sharrow describes as routinely traveled, but "not this time of year." After reaching a geographic feature called Grosvenor Arch, the couple headed east on a minor dirt road that Miss Sharrow said ordinarily may be traveled by only 20 people a year. |
Cattle ranchers Shanon and Vance Pollock were riding an all-terrain vehicle into the monument to check on cows when they saw Mr. Metcalfe. |
"He was in bad shape. He was sunburned; his pants were soaking wet. He was wearing shoes like you'd wear to the office, a couple of shirts and some jeans," Shanon Pollock said. |
Their Jeep nearly buried by snow, Mr. Metcalfe and Miss Crowley had stayed inside the vehicle for nearly five days, until March 1. With only a packet of Skittles candy, some sunflower seeds and snow to eat, they set out for help. At first they backtracked about four miles from the Jeep and spent the night under a tree.... |
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