Split (1)

train · 2.59M rows

text stringlengths 9 93k
But lawmakers have pledged to do away with extenders before, only to bring them up again.
Finance ranking member Ron Wyden on Wednesday noted to reporters the contradiction between the pledges to end extenders and the pressure to keep renewing the tax breaks.
Despite talk of ending temporary tax policy, the recently passed budget bill adds to a now growing list of temporary breaks. Several individual tax breaks included in last year’s tax overhaul, such as lower individual tax rates and an expansion of the child tax credit, sunset after 2025. Those provisions were made temporary to allow the bill to get under a $1.5 trillion cost limit mandated by Senate rules. Tax writers said at the time that it was unlikely a future Congress would allow the popular tax breaks to expire. That, however, effectively creates a new batch of extenders for lawmakers to grapple with.
Both Gleckman and MacGuineas say they’re skeptical that this will be the last extenders package.
Republican reform blueprints would eliminate deductions for boosters buying tickets to games.
Should we be worried for Glenn Beck?
The Fox News host asks, "President Obama, why don't you just set us on fire?" and then mimics doing just that to a colleague.
Seriously, can someone check on Fox News host Glenn Beck? I ask because it certainly looks like the poor guy's finally gone completely 'round the bend, and at the very least someone should do him the favor of checking his molars to make sure that whatever alien radio station his fillings are receiving plays some good music occasionally.
On his show Thursday night, the ever-eccentric Beck seemed to be pushed over the edge by that New York Times report saying -- as the president had said repeatedly when on the campaign trail -- that the Obama admistration plans to move forward with plans for immigration reform soon. This was just too much, and Beck said, "Maybe I'm alone, but I think it would be just faster if they just shot me in the head. You know what I mean? How much more can he disenfranchise all of us?"
Question: What's the biggest obstacle you've ever had to overcome?
Jessica Valenti: The biggest obstacle I ever had to overcome. I think the biggest obstacle I still have to overcome is myself, and just kind of struggling every day with what to do with the work and where to go next. I think that we're our own worst enemies in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to doing work where you're criticized a lot or doing work where there's a lot of hater directed at you; and to not constantly second-guess yourself. And so I think just getting over that and recognizing that I actually do know what's best for me, that I do know what's best for the community that I'm helping foster with other people, that we do know what's best for the people in our lives, and to not take the haters too seriously.
As a feminist blogger, she had to learn to "not take the haters too seriously."
Microalgae could become a new cheaper and better source for biofuel thanks to a new way to grow it faster through heat and cold using a new solution. The new method was developed by scientists at Syracuse University.
By creating a new medium to culture and harvest microalgae - Tris-Acetate-Phosphate-Pluronic (TAPP) - scientists were able to transition the solution to a gel by raising the temperature by seven degrees to make the microalgae grow in clusters that are 10 times larger than those grown in a traditional medium where they grow in single cells.
The temperature was then decreased, and the medium returned to a solution. The algae was then separated through gravity from the TAPP solution, and then harvested.
Scientists were trying to solve three problems in microalgae farming. In nature, algae grows from having access to plenty of light and agitation from being on the surface of a moving water body. Lying on top of the water makes it easier to harvest.
“When you grow algae in suspension, they tend to stick to the walls of a container, making the container opaque. This makes it more difficult for required light to get through to the algae,” said Professor Radhakrishna Sureshkumar, chair of the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering in a Syracuse University statement.
The second issue is there has to be a constant stirring of the container to ensure that light does reach all layers of the algae. The third issue is the difficulty of separating algae from the broth, which requires time and energy, and is therefore costly.
The new medium prevents the algae from growing on the sides of a container and lets light penetrate each level of algae. This also eliminates the need for constant stirring.
Estime's research has been published as a peer-reviewed article in Scientific Reports.
The top US intelligence authority issued an unusual public statement on Friday declaring it now believed the September 11 attack on US diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was a "deliberate and organized terrorist attack."
The statement by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that it represented a change in the US intelligence assessment of how and why the attack happened.
During the attack on two US government compounds in the eastern Libyan city, four US personnel, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed.
Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper's office, said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, US agencies came to the view that the Benghazi attack had begun spontaneously after protests at the US Embassy in Cairo against an anti-Islam film.
Turner said that as US intelligence subsequently learned more about the attack, "we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists."
He said it remained "unclear" if any individual or specific group commanded the attack. US agencies nonetheless believe that some of the militants involved in the attack were "linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaida."
In an apparent reference to a series of contradictory statements by some top Obama administration officials, Turner said intelligence agencies' "initial assessment" had been passed on "to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available."
One US official familiar with the background to the shifting intelligence assessments said the process of figuring out from scraps of intelligence who perpetrated an event like the Benghazi attack was "imprecise" and "evolving."
Debate over whether militant groups planned the assault or whether the violence resulted from protests against the film insulting Islam has become US election-year fodder. Republican lawmakers have demanded answers about the incident from the Obama administration.
Within hours of the attacks ending, some government sources in Washington were already acknowledging they might well have been planned and organized in advance, and that members of two militant factions, Ansar al Shariah and al Qaeda's North Africa-based affiliate, known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may have been involved.
But top administration officials later made public statements that contradicted that assessment.
On September 14, three days after the attacks, President Barack Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, said the United States had no evidence the Benghazi attack was planned.
Two days later, Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said preliminary information suggested the attacks were not premeditated and were protests against the anti-Muslim film that provoked demonstrations in Egypt.
On September 19, Carney echoed Rice, saying, "Our belief based on the information we had was that it was the video that caused the unrest in Cairo and the video that — and the unrest in Cairo that helped — that precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi and elsewhere."
A day later, on September 19, Carney was still insisting, "Based on the information that we had at the time and have to this day, we do not have evidence that it was premeditated."
But that same day, one key administration official moved back toward the assessment that the Benghazi assaults had been organized and intentional.
At a congressional hearing, Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, part of the National Intelligence Director's office, labeled the assaults a "terrorist attack on our embassy" and said the United States was examining information that people involved in the attack had connections to al Qaeda or its North African affiliate.
By the next day, Carney was asserting it was "self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack."
The Yorkshire Post’s Jeremy Clifford has been appointed as Johnston Press’s first ever editor-in-chief.
Chief executive Ashley Highfield told staff in an email this afternoon: “Jeremy will lead a single editorial function across the group, where all editorial team members report hardline in to him.
Clifford (picture from Yorkshire Post), whose move was announced as part of a wider JP shakeup, is no longer editor of the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post and “details of his replacement will be shared in due course”.
Highfield said that Clifford, with the support of JP’s editorial board, “has made huge strides in aligning our editorial teams and driving transformational change in the way we share and deliver content”.
Highfield described the change as a “continuation of the journey we have been on over the last 18 months, focusing on how we grow engaged audiences and connect these audiences with advertising customers”.
As part of the shake-up, Highfield also announced the consolidation of local display, features and entertainments sales teams and the sales operations team “into one function”. This team will be led by Neil Pickersgill.
Highfield said: “Both Jeremy and Neil will ensure our editorial and sales teams continue to work effectively together in our local markets as we deliver on our promise to put quality at the heart of our business.
“Importantly, while we are organising our editorial and field sales operations as individual, dedicated functions with new reporting lines, we retain our focus on serving audiences and customers locally across our PUs. We may review the PU boundaries at a later stage, but our senior editorial and sales leaders remain aligned at the PU level and will continue to ensure our teams work closely together.
“To help co-ordinate and accelerate the delivery of our publishing strategy, we have created two group publishing director positions. These roles will focus on developing revenue streams, developing our core brands to maximise business growth across the portfolio and ensure the execution of strategies is clear and consistent.
"Both Helen Oldham and Warren Butcher will become group publishing directors and join the Executive Management Committee (EMC). Warren will continue to lead our Isle of Man and Off Road teams.
“In adopting the changes I’ve outlined here managing directors Karl Dimmock, Richard Parkinson and Stephen Plews will be leaving the business. I want to take this opportunity to thank Karl, Richard and Stephen for their commitment and dedication over the years and to wish them every success in the future.
“Any resulting functional leadership changes will be shared with you during the course of this week.
Nine Johnston Press editor directors will report to Clifford.
Carterton Farmers' Market is a Sunday market held in the centre of the town from 9am in Memorial Square. This Easter we have a special "feature market" with entertainment, music and activities for the kids!
Buy locally grown, fresh veges, Wairarapa-produced olive oils, honey and much more. Watch out for our promoted feature-markets too - with additional stalls and entertainment for the kids!
As the band played the latest country western song, gunfire erupted from the 32nd floor window across the street. Twenty minutes later, when the shots stopped and the smoke cleared, 59 people were murdered and over 520 were wounded.
The SWAT team quickly found the hiding place of the evil villain, and as they approached, the outlaw shot him-self. Thus, he avoided a date with the hangman.
Justice occurred. The casualties would have been much worse but for quick action by members of the crowd.
People, including former military and off-duty police officers, helped hide and cover others while endangering their own lives. The first responders, police, doctors, emergency medical technicians quickly tended to the wounded.
These unnamed quick responders, both civilian and law enforcement, and medical, without regard to their own life, saved others. The band had stopped playing music, but the cries of the wounded and the tears of the mourning continue.
We must have prayers for Las Vegas, and God bless them one and all.
Journalist: Indiscriminate Bombing of Civilians by Iraqi Gov’t Has Helped ISIS Recruit Supporters \| Democracy Now!
Iraqi journalist who reports for McClatchy Newspapers. He reported from Iraq for years and is now seeking asylum in the United States out of fear for his safety if he were to return.
deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The videotaped beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff have heightened global concern about the militant group Islamic State and fueled talks of an international response to their advances in Syria and Iraq. We discuss ISIS with Mohammed al Dulaimy, an Iraqi journalist with McClatchy Newspapers. Dulaimy reported from Iraq for years and is now seeking asylum in the United States out of fear for his safety if he were to return.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed al Dulaimy, you are a journalist, as well, an Iraqi journalist. You’ve come here seeking political asylum. Your response to the beheading of Steven Sotloff and, before that, to James Foley?
MOHAMMED AL DULAIMY: First of all, I would like to pass my condolences to their families. It’s really an act of barbarism, as President Obama described it. And it’s clearly an indication that ISIS has felt the pain of the U.S. air raids that targeted them and made them taste the first defeat after all the, say, victories that they have achieved during the past two months.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the effect of the Islamic State on your country, on Iraq, right now? Who is supporting it? Who isn’t?
MOHAMMED AL DULAIMY: The Islamic State is something that not only Iraq, but the religion of Islam itself didn’t witness something like that, like this, in 1,400 years. And I would dare to say they have their own differences with many other radical movements that the region have witnessed. They are a very different group than anything else that we see, we saw or we read about in the history. The abnormal situation in the region and the sectarian tensions add to it, that the globalization add to it. The Internet, social media, the capability to reach people—all of that gave them a way to communicate and spread their radical thoughts. What’s it doing to my country? It’s killing my country. And for Islam, it’s also giving an image of Islam that cannot be accepted by any Muslim. Just a few days ago in Saudi Arabia and other countries, Sunni imams and muftis gave fatwas saying that the Islamic State is the enemy number one of Islam itself, and fighting it is a duty upon all Muslims. This is just to tell you how the majority of people are repelled by their actions.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking at the White House last Thursday, President Obama said he’s asked the Pentagon to draw up a range of military options to build a regional coalition against the Islamic State.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I’ve asked Secretary Kerry to travel to the region to continue to build the coalition that’s needed to meet this threat. As I’ve said, rooting out a cancer like ISIL will not be quick or easy, but I’m confident that we can and we will, working closely with our allies and our partners. For our part, I’ve directed Secretary Hagel and our Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare a range of options. I’ll be meeting with my National Security Council again this evening as we continue to develop that strategy.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed al Dulaimy, I’d like to ask your response to what President Obama says and what you think the United States should be doing? Should it be in Iraq right now?
MOHAMMED AL DULAIMY: I will tell you what I know as a fact. I know as a fact that IS can be defeated. I know as a fact, from all our sources on the ground, from all these long years of reporting and knowing the area very well, that their numbers are not that much. They were building on anger against the government, a government that is a proxy government working for Iran. And it started recruiting for civilians, and that complicated situation in Iraq gave a window for ISIS, now Islamic State, to seize on that.
Building a coalition could be done, and I think the United States could build it. But the problem that the U.S. faces now, and I think the policymakers in Washington are facing, is if they supported the Iranian-trained militias in defeating Islamic State, wouldn’t that be handing Iraq and Syria over to Iran? They don’t have a substitute to that. There is—Iraq has disintegrated. The military itself, that the U.S. have helped building, has collapsed. So I think it’s a policy dilemma.
What is going to happen in the country after the Islamic State defeat? And I will tell you an example that might simplify that. Ten days ago, in a town northern of Fallujah, the Islamic State members asked tribal fighters to pay allegiance for their self-proclaimed caliph. And when these fighters refused, they were threatened to be killed all. They were outnumbering IS, and the best estimate that they could have taken IS on, probably within a few days. But the fight wasn’t started, in fear that the surrounding Iraqi army, supported by the militias, will seize their chance and control the town, and probably a massacre will be committed against the town. That is in their estimate. And what they did, they chose to give their arms to Islamic State.
So all I’m saying is, the coalition could be built, but the society itself might not support any action on the ground, in fear of revenge by the pro-government forces. And the Islamic State response yesterday and today, they described it as a crusade against the Islamic State. They are trying to group around them other jihadi groups to pay them allegiance to face this coalition, so they are taking measures, and they are looking like afraid, and they’re trying to bring support by describing it as a crusade.
AMY GOODMAN: How significant is what has happened in Gaza to recruitment for Islamic State? Is that at all a role? Or, of course, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, does that play a role here?
MOHAMMED AL DULAIMY: I don’t see indications of Gaza role, especially in Iraq. But I would say complicated problems would—like, it has also a long list of solutions. And the recruitment with ISIS is a long list of reasons and a buildup of years, of more than a decade, of more than a decade. But I can tell you one thing that I know for sure, that the indiscriminate use of weapons against civilians by the Iraqi government is the number one. And we’ve talked to dozens of people who were so happy that the U.S. is involving, so at least a minimum casualties will happen among civilians, and especially among Sunnis. And that is what ISIS is afraid, that the people now look to the U.S. as a force that will try to bring minimal casualties to civilians. But I can’t see Gaza. I can see the U.S.-led invasion and the series of events that took place afterward. I can see the Iranian intervention—and I’m talking about Sunnis. And the whole regional situation is so complicated, and it all plays a role in this.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed, I wanted to end back with Robert Mahoney on the issue of journalists who cover this, to bring the faces, the names of the suffering on the ground to people all over the world. Are freelance journalists more in danger than anyone else? Certainly, Foley and Sotloff were freelancers.
ROBERT MAHONEY: Absolutely. And the majority of the journalists that have been going over into Syria and northern Iraq are freelancers. They don’t have the same deep institutional backing of a large multinational news organization or a big newspaper. What is happening is that they band together, they share information. Organizations like mine provide some basic security tips for them, but they really are on their own. And they are the ones that are the most vulnerable.
AMY GOODMAN: Are people reaching out to the Committee to Protect Journalists to get out of the area now?
ROBERT MAHONEY: We help Syrian journalists who have fled. A lot of them have fled to Turkey. There are very few openly practicing journalism, obviously, in Syria. And we’ve helped bring Syrian journalists to safety from Turkey. But unfortunately, a lot of them have been killed in Syria. And those that are getting out the few images and the few stories that we see from Syria are practicing almost clandestinely, particularly in the Islamic State areas.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Mahoney, I want to thank you for being with us, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. And thank you to Mohammed al Dulaimy, an Iraqi journalist who reports for McClatchy Newpapers for years, now seeking asylum in the United States, speaking to us from South Carolina.
Following AGEIA's recent acceptance by FutureMark into their Benchmark Development Program, the makers of the first standalone physics card solution on the market (known as the PhysX) have just released a benchmarking utility of their own.
Dubbed "RealityMark" it's based on a streamlined/modified variant of the original Cell Factor demo purely used for the purpose of benchmarking a system with or without a dedicated physics processing solution. If you dont have a PhysX card the benchmark opts for software physics instead, allowing one to clearly see the differences in running a system with dedicated physics processing.
AGEIA RealityMark is a new tool which demonstrates the feature and performance value of AGEIA PhysX in a physics-intensive gameplay environment. It's designed to illustrate how next-generation game design uses the power of the PhysX processor to enable leading-edge, physically interactive gameplay elements which were not possible until now.
RealityMark is based on a version of CellFactor: Combat Training from Artificial Studios and Immersion Games. It utilizes a pre-scripted gameplay sequence much like a time demo to compare in-game performance of hardware and software PhysX. The scripted sequence is played once with the PhysX processor enabled and a second time with it disabled to determine the relative performance of each. It then returns the results in terms average Frames Per Second (FPS).
A 22-year-old man was spared a potential life sentence, but convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the fatal James Edgar Playground stabbing.
BROCKTON — A city man was convicted Tuesday afternoon in the 2015 stabbing death of a fellow teenager during a brawl at a park.
Anildo Lopes Correia, now 22, who was on trial for murder, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, but spared a potential life sentence in prison.
He will be sentenced on May 23 before Judge Brian Davis, according to the clerk's office at Brockton Superior Court.
The charge of voluntary manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison. While the Plymouth County district attorney's office sought a murder conviction, a jury is able to return a manslaughter conviction if it believes there were mitigating circumstances. Those include an intentional death caused during heat of passion on reasonable provocation; heat of passion induced by sudden combat; and excessive use of force in self-defense or defense of another.
Correia's trial lasted 2 1/2 weeks, with opening statements on March 20 and the first full day of testimony on March 25. The jury began deliberating on Thursday and went four days.
Correia had been indicted on a charge of murder in the death of 18-year-old Ywron Martins of Brockton.
The indictment stems from an April 22, 2015 incident at James Edgar Playground, where Correia stabbed Martins multiple times in the torso, face and neck, killing him. Both men had originally gone to the park to watch a planned fight between two other people. But more than 100 people were gathered at the park by the time the fight began and numerous smaller fights broke out.
During the brawl, Martins and Correia started fighting each other. At one point, Correia pulled Martins' shirt over his head and then stabbed him several times.
Martins was found on the ground bleeding from his wounds when police arrived. Nearby, a bloody knife was located wrapped in a camouflage shirt, which Correia had been wearing.
Several witnesses identified Correia as the person who fatally stabbed Martins.
Correia’s attorney, Victoria Kelleher, argued that he acted in self-defense.
The Plymouth County district attorney's office obtained a warrant for Correia's arrest days after the murder, prompting a four-day search for him. He was found on April 26, 2015 in Fall River and arrested by Mass. State Police detectives.
Correia had previously faced charges in juvenile courts in Plymouth County and Dorchester for resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, carrying a dangerous weapon and threatening to commit a crime. He had an active default warrant from 2012 and two warrants for probation violations when he was arrested on the murder charge.
The murder trial was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Jessica Elumba and Alexander Zane. The case was investigated by state police detectives assigned to the Plymouth County district attorney's office and Brockton police.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.