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After some strategic delays, Apollo, Oaktree and the rest of the first-lien lenders would be on board too, critical if the company’s restructuring proposal was going to carry any weight with the bankruptcy judge.
As the first hints of sunlight showed in Dallas on Tuesday morning, EFH put out a news release saying it had an agreement. Young proclaimed a fresh start in employee meetings.
As the day wore on, it became clear only about a third of the credit pool had signed on. On the first day of hearings in Wilmington, Del., Thursday, so many lawyers flooded into the U.S. Bankruptcy Court building, officials had to open three courtrooms.
Among the attorneys was Edward Weisfelner, a well-know bankruptcy lawyer from New York. He had come down to represent a group of junior creditors who under the restructuring deal would see pennies on the dollar for their $1.6 billion in debt.
The company is reportedly developing a blockchain network.
College campuses are the second biggest miners of virtual currencies behind the energy and utilities sector, according to security researchers at Cisco.
Facebook's crypto team is expanding.
Money can't buy you friends.
Facebook might be working on a special type of cryptocurrency called stablecoin.
Mark Lamarr digs deep into his record collection for three hours of diverse music. Plus he's joined in session at Maida Vale by the Jamaican reggae artist Pat Kelly.
TELL 'EM WHAT YOUR NAME IS!
IN A SPIN: Yorkshire's Adil Rashid is proving one of the top bowlers in the Big Bash. Picture: Mike Egerton/PA.
ADIL RASHID’s planned arrival in South Africa prior to England’s one-day series could be delayed if Adelaide Strikers reach the knockout stages of the Big Bash.
The Yorkshire leg-spinner – officially the No 1-ranked bowler in the Australian T20 tournament – is due in South Africa on January 23 along with those not involved in the ongoing Test series.
Yorkshire first-team coach Jason Gillespie, who doubles up as Strikers coach, has revealed that Adelaide plan to ask England to allow Rashid to stay on should they reach the last four.
Gillespie’s side will seal their semi-final spot if they win their penultimate group game at home to Hobart Hurricanes today, with the semi-finals taking place on January 21 and 22 and the final on January 24.
The five-match one-day series in South Africa starts on February 3, with a warm-up match against a South African Invitational XI on January 30.
“If we make the semi-finals and final, we’ll have to be extra nice to Mr Strauss (Andrew Strauss, the England director of cricket),” said Gillespie.
“We’ll have to ask Mr Strauss if Rash can stay on a bit longer.
“I think England will certainly be pleased with how Rash is going here in Australia.
Rashid’s stint with Strikers is with England’s blessing after they overlooked the 27-year-old for the four-Test series.
England face a hectic period of white-ball cricket, with the South African series followed by two T20 internationals against the same opponents and then the T20 World Cup in India in March.
There is a growing recognition among the England management that players such as Rashid can only benefit from exposure to competitions like the Big Bash, which more accurately reflect the challenges of international cricket than our own NatWest T20 Blast.
Yorkshire’s new signing, David Willey, is another taking part in the Australian event, the left-arm pace bowler having taken eight wickets for table-toppers Perth Scorchers ahead of his own arrival in South Africa, which could also theoretically be delayed.
“It’s been a great move for Rash and he’s been the difference for us really,” said Gillespie, whose side have won five of their six games and will definitely top the eight-franchise group if they win their last two fixtures.
“He beats the bat on both sides and his variations have been absolute key.
“You can tell that opposition batsmen are pretty unsure about how to face him.
Gillespie’s knowledge of how to get the best out of Rashid has undoubtedly assisted a man who is the tournament’s second-highest wicket-taker with 12 at 13.41.
The former Australia fast bowler knows that the wrist-spinner must be given freedom to express his talent.
“Our game plan for Rash could not be more simple,” said Gillespie. “It’s basically, ‘Just go out there and bowl, mate’.
Gillespie has helped to create a relaxed and positive environment at Yorkshire and it appears that a similar atmosphere prevails at the Strikers.
Few gave them hope of pulling up trees but they have statistically been the best side and no one would fancy facing them in the knockout stages.
“It’s been a lot of fun, and that’s really been the cornerstone of what we’ve done so far,” said Gillespie. “We’re just embracing the tournament and enjoying it for what it is.
England are not alone in recognising that exposure to competitions like the Big Bash can be helpful.
Gillespie’s own presence owes to Yorkshire’s appreciation of the fact he can broaden his coaching experience in a format in which the club are anxious to excel.
“It’s been really good for me and I’m learning a lot,” said Gillespie, who has a two-year deal with his home-town franchise.
— Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" has always yearned to burst into song. The 1964 novel features a healthy serving of Oompa-Loompa verse ditties, and both of its film adaptations boast numbers by notable songwriters: Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse in the 1971 movie and Danny Elfman in the 2005 Tim ...
And this week, Willy Wonka made the leap to the lyric stage in Opera Theatre of St. Louis' world premiere production of "The Golden Ticket," the first full-length opera based on Dahl's beloved book.
As it turns out, "Charlie" was destined to be a music drama: "Roald always felt it was the one book that should be made into a musical," says Felicity Dahl, the author's widow. "I don't think he ever dreamt of an opera, but to be honest, I think he would be thrilled that it's an opera, because classical music was his p...
Since the author's death in 1990, Sturrock and Ash have worked with the medical charity that Dahl founded and runs in her late husband's name. Part of the Roald Dahl Foundation's mission is to fund new music to be performed for children. Sturrock recalls getting a demo track in the mail from one of the many people want...
"I played it to Peter to see what he felt and he said, 'I'd like to do it,'" Sturrock recalls, "Peter went for it like a dog with a bone, I can remember the look in his eye. He just came out and said, 'I'd like to make an opera out of this story.' It was clearly a project that sang to him."
This was in 1997. Their first move was to ask Dahl.
"She said she would 'let us have a go,'" Ash says during rehearsals at St. Louis' Virginia Jackson Browning Theatre. "She told us, 'Show me something. Excite me.'"
But before the men could fully dive into an operatic "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," they had to go to Los Angeles, where Ash and Sturrock were part of the creative team(as conductor and librettist, respectively) of Tobias Picker's opera based on Dahl's "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," which premiered at Los Angeles Opera...
It was in Los Angeles that parts of the operatic "Charlie" started coming together. First, Ash says he began writing the part of Willy Wonka for baritone Gerald Finley, who played Mr. Fox at L.A. Opera. While in Los Angeles, Ash had a member of the Los Angeles Children's Choir, who played one of the fox cubs in "The Fa...
Six years later, Sturrock was in L.A. again and the head of the Children's Choir, Anne Tomlinson, told him she'd like to commission a new opera for children. "She told me, 'I remember listening to that song in the rehearsal room at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and that was when I first got this idea: I'd like you and Pet...
In the nine years between "Mr. Fox" and "Keepers of the Night," Ash and Sturrock kept working on the opera of "Charlie." There were workshops of it at the National Theatre in London and a recording of extracts — plus a defining moment at a concert production in Manchester.
"It was billed as 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: A Concert Performance of a New Opera' and people just didn't see the small print," Sturrock recalls. "It was a rather disastrous experience of an audience coming, thinking they were going to see the familiar music from the film. From that moment on we thought: We've...
Soon after, the opera became "The Golden Ticket." Ash says that for him, the difference between an opera and a musical is that instead of just songs, "The Golden Ticket" offers an entire world of sound. His job, he says, is to "find musical material and a sound-world which is compelling and mysterious and dangerous and...
Ash and Sturrock agree that the opera is geared toward children, but Timothy O'Leary, Opera Theatre of St. Louis' general director, says it's for families: "The opera world has never had a 'Nutcracker,' something people take their children to because they saw it when they were children. 'Hansel & Gretel' has served tha...
Daniel Okulitch, the Canadian bass-baritone who originated the title role in L.A. Opera's "The Fly" (and who will sing as Figaro at L.A. Opera this fall), is creating the part of Willy Wonka in St. Louis.
Having already been part of a lyric adaptation of an iconic film, he insists an opera based on a movie has to be its own animal. James Robinson's modest, $1-million production strives for efficiency and fluidity instead of Zeffirelli-esque opulence.
"I think the strength of this particular piece," Okulitch says, "is that because we can't literally represent things, we're forced to hint at things. In film, they have CGI, they can do anything they want. Here, the chocolate river is fabric. It's the music, not the visuals, that fills in the blanks."
Ash does fill in the blanks, whether he's drawing parallels with the aforementioned chocolate river by evoking Wagner's "Das Rheingold," equating the violent tantrums of bratty ticket winner Mike Teavee with the battle arias of Handel's operas or simply making big musical gestures — such as trumpet fanfare when the gat...
Clearly, the story of "Charlie" still enchants readers 46 years after it was written: translated into more than 40 languages, its publisher says there are 4 million copies now in print in the United States. Ash, Sturrock and Okulitch all mentioned the book's appeal to the imagination, and O'Leary, who commissioned the ...
Despite the long odds new operas face, the creative team behind "The Golden Ticket" imagines a bright future for the piece. For Felicity Dahl, who stood up to the Warner Bros. lawyers and insisted that this long gestating opera would not interfere with the profits of the recent film or the upcoming musical, this new in...
SOUTHPORT, England -- Well, that Olympic golf cart is fast becoming an Olympic train. Which doesn't mean cumulative efforts to place the sport in the 2016 Summer Games won't be wrecked. Whatever, during a gala press conference Wednesday before the British Open at Royal Birkdale, a few of golf's big hitters declared tha...
Using that word early and often, the group announced the appointment of Ty Votaw, executive vice president of the PGA Tour, to head up a newly formed International Golf Federation committee to negotiate with the International Olympic Committee, which has two vacancies available for 2016. In October of 2009, the IOC wil...
Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A, said he has received enthusiastic vibes from the IOC about golf becoming part of the Olympic fare. "But there is much work to do," said Dawson, noting that the IOC clearly would want only the best players available (i.e. professionals, not amateurs). Also, there are other sport...
I asked Juan Antonio Votaw to explain rugby sevens, and he said, "It's a quicker version of the sport, which usually has 15 players per side, instead of seven." I guess it would be like having a basketball game of three-on-three instead of five-on-five. Votaw assured me, however, that if golf makes it, each match will ...
Tim Finchem, commissioner of the PGA Tour, said he has gleaned upbeat responses from his players on the Olympic ideal. He did not, however, name names, which is just as well because in eight years, there's a decent chance neither of his marquee members, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, will still be active. Why, in eigh...
The race to host the 2016 Summer Games is down to Tokyo, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Chicago. Finchem's league has abandoned America's third-largest market this season as the former Western Open, now BMW Championship, will be staged in St. Louis. But he and Votaw are sure the Windy City would be wonderful in 2016 if th...
"Chicago has a lot of great golf courses," said Finchem. And a lot of great squash courts.
"Long Time Coming" tells the story of the Pensacola Jaycees, which made history in 1955 when they became the first all-black team to play an-all white team in the South.
The Pensacola Jaycees All-Star team went to the Little League State Championship in Orlando in August 1955 as the regional champions from Northwest Florida.
That's because the all-white teams from the Panhandle didn't want to play against an all-black team, like the Pensacola Jaycees, and instead forfeited the regional games.
And when the Pensacola Jaycees arrived in Orlando, they were sent home by 12-year-old pitcher Johnny Lane, who silenced the Pensacola bats in a 5-0 Orlando win.
But the score of the game doesn't matter to the history books. Because the game was a landmark civil rights milestone — the first time in Little League history that an all-black team played an all-white team in the segregated Deep South.
"It was history,'' said the Rev. Freddie Augustine of Pensacola, who played second base for the local team in 1955. "It had never been done before. Not in Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Alabama or any of those deep Southern states."
Now, the story of that baseball game — the journey there and the aftermath — are the subject of a new documentary film, "Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story,'' which was produced by an Orlando film company.
There will be a free screening of the film at 7 p.m. Friday at the Jean & Paul Amos Performance Studio at Pensacola State College. The screening is sponsored by the African-American Heritage Society and the Pensacola State College Black History/Multicultural Committee.
"I remember the game well,'' said Augustine, now 75. "But I didn't do too well. They had a pretty good pitcher."
"They had a monster and he only threw strikes," recalled then-shortstop for the Pensacola team Admiral LeRoy, founder and publisher of Pensacola OutFront magazine, talking about Orlando pitcher.
Of course, it's not balls, strikes or the score that matters to history. It's the social significance that sparked the filmmakers' interest.
The film was made by Strong Films and produced by the Haddock Family Foundation, both in Orlando.
"We were doing some research on the history of baseball and civil rights in Orlando when we discovered the story,'' said Ted Haddock, executive director of the Haddock Family Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing human rights and social justice. "There had been no books or movies about it, so we launched this ...
Filmmakers came to Pensacola to interview still-living players on the team, such as LeRoy and Augustine. And earlier this year, the Pensacola players were invited to Orlando to meet the Orlando Kiwanis who they played against that day in August 1955.
"When we had the reunion, we were asking, 'Where is that great pitcher?' " LeRoy said. "He shyly raised his arm in back. It was so nice to meet up again after 63 years. You could feel the bond. I'm still excited about it."
Still, the lead-up to the game against Orlando was not easy.
The Pensacola Jaycees team included players from an all-black Pensacola Little League. Leroy said he wasn't surprised the Panhandle forfeited instead of playing.
"We were dealing with hard-nosed segregation,'' LeRoy said. "It was nothing we were not used to."
Orlando officials met about the game and decided that legally there was nothing to prohibit the game. They left any final decision up to Little League baseball, which had the players and managers in the state tournament vote on whether to play.
A majority of players and managers voted to play, though one Orlando manager resigned in protest rather than lead a team of white children in a game against black children.
"It was the kids who are really the reason the game took place,'' LeRoy said. "They wanted to play just like we did."
WHAT: Screening of "Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story"
WHERE: Jean & Paul Amos Performance Studio at Pensacola State College, 1000 College Boulevard.
Brass band fans are urged to snap up tickets for Christmas concerts as they are selling fast.
Hathersage Brass Band will be playing at The Maynard Arms in Grindleford on December 14 and 16.
Jane Hitchman, director at The Maynard, said: “To see tickets selling so quickly just shows the popularity and reputation of the Hathersage Brass Band and this annual event. Brass bands epitomise the sound and feel of Christmas and when the hotel is fully decorated it provides the ideal setting – it is a real treat for...
Drunk tanks for the helplessly intoxicated, booze buses for those in need of medical assistance, and still nobody confronts the root cause of increased binge-drinking, particularly among the young.
Alcopops. There is a reason Australia hiked the tax on these little beauties by 70 per cent four years ago. They could see the trouble being caused.
Trouble in the bars, on the roads, at A&E, trouble for the police.
Alcopops are a lunatics’ broth because they exist purely to intoxicate. They taste of Ribena or lemonade; booze for people who don’t like booze.
If we were serious about curbing the Saturday night vomitorium that was once the British High Street, there would be greater attempts to explain what a bottle of WKD says about you.
It says you’re a lightweight. It says you are unable to admit you like a soft drink, and order one, and wish to stay part of the plastered herd.
And because alcopops taste like cola, they go down like cola — until the sweetness turns sour with a night in the drunk tank or a spin on the booze bus.
Is it any wonder people behave like children when their drinks are made to appeal to kids?
These are the flavours of a ten-year-old’s birthday party: blackcurrant, orange, lemon, cola.
We move straight from the pick ‘n’ mix to a drop of the hard stuff and wonder why our town centres are awash with baby sick.
The problem with secularism is not intolerance, as Tory peer Baroness Warsi claims; it’s snobbery.

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