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Pendle Sculpture Trail, in Aitken Wood, has ten ceramic plaques, which represent each of the Pendle people who were hanged in the witchcraft trial. There is also artwork from Philippe Handford, including tumbling tree arches, plus a life size Witchfinder General figure and creatures such as bats and a spider.
Ribble Valley Sculpture Trail includes more than 20 permanent works of art. The trail travels through Brungerley Park and Cross Hill Quarry, as well as woodland and flower rich grassland and includes views over the Forest of Bowland.
The 5.5 mile Tolkien Trail explores the Ribble Valley which inspired the Lord of the Rings author.'It starts and finishes at Shireburn Arms, Hurst Green, and includes Stoneyhurst College, Cromwells Bridge, Shire Lane and River Shirebourn.
The Federal Communications Commission will likely adopt rules that will allow programmers to attach a code to digital broadcasts that will in most cases bar consumers from sending copies of popular shows around the world, said the officials, who declined further identification.
The approval, expected as early as next week, would be another step along the long road to the higher-quality, crisper digital signals, which have been slowed because of worries about piracy, high-priced equipment and limited available programming.
An agency spokeswoman declined to comment on when the five commissioners would vote on the issue.
Consumer advocates have warned that consumers will have to buy new DVD players if they want to play programs that have been recorded on machines that recognize the digital flag. But agency officials stressed that always happens when new technology hits the market.
"It will simply prevent consumers from illegal piracy, from mass distribution over the Internet, which is the problem with the music file-sharing," Kenneth Ferree, head of the FCC's media bureau, said.
Consumers will still be able to make unlimited copies of their favorite shows and watch them in various rooms of their homes, but they will not be able to send them over unsecured networks until protections are established.
"Why should anyone in the world buy if it's on the Internet?" said Andrew Setos, president of engineering at News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group.
Initially, the FCC is aiming for a relatively open process for approving equipment that will read encrypted shows, officials said, and the agency will likely retain some oversight along the way to help ensure a fair review of new technologies.
Programmers had wanted a role in approving television equipment to ensure that security features were robust enough. But some technology companies, such as Microsoft had worried they would be shut out from developing new ways to deliver protected digital content.
IBM has been developing technology so that someday consumers will be able transmit shows over secured networks, such as between their homes and offices.
Television set makers hope to begin installing the necessary equipment for the broadcast flag in new sets to go on sale next year.
"As a solution for addressing the single narrow problem of Internet redistribution, this is a pretty good solution," said Dave Arland, a spokesman for Thomson, which manufactures RCA television sets.
But consumer advocates warn that it would make obsolete 50 million DVD players already in Americans' homes.
"If a consumer records a program on a new Broadcast Flag-equipped machine and then tries to take that program and play it on Grandma's older DVD player, it's just not going to work," said Chris Murray, legislative counsel for Consumers Union.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., added a new wrinkle to the gun debate recently with a proposal to force Americans to sell off their so-called assault weapons — or else.
Swalwell says he was inspired to act by the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the surviving students who have since led a nationwide campaign to tighten gun laws. His plan, which he debuted in a USA Today op-ed, is modeled on Australia, which responded to a 1996 mass shooting by forcing gun owners around the country to sell newly prohibited weapons.
But while Australia comes up often in gun debates, almost no prominent figures have proposed national laws that would demand that gun owners turn in existing weapons en masse. Gun safety groups and leading Democrats have rallied around more modest bipartisan measures like expanded background checks and mostly tiptoed around ideas that Second Amendment activists could label "gun confiscation."
Until now, that is. NBC News talked with Swalwell to discuss his plan, its critics, and why he thinks Democrats need to be more aggressive in their thinking on guns. Below is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
NBC NEWS: Tell me a little about how you came to this idea and why you thought there needed to be a proposal that went further than the existing bills out there now.
Swalwell: It's something I've given a lot of thought to over the last 10 years working as a prosecutor who saw the devastating effects that an assault weapon could do to someone's body, leaving almost little chance of surviving if you are hit.
I told a story in the op-ed about a victim who was shot in the back of the thigh. I remember his family members asking me while I was interviewing them, "How could you die if you're shot in the thigh?" When the pathologist told the jury that the sheer energy from that round was enough to cause the blood loss after hitting an artery, I think they were just stunned that a weapon that is legal in our country could do that kind of damage. Then when you think about the features, a pistol grip which allows you to essentially spray a crowd, we've seen time after time that too many people just don't have a chance.
I thought about the different ways to address it, with a lot of respect for the assault weapons ban that was in place and expired, but once I gave it careful thought and listened to these students I concluded the only way to do this is to get those weapons out of our communities. But while recognizing that people bought them when they were legal and there should be compensation during a grace period ideally to buy them back and then a ban on possession.
I'm not naive about this, I understand this is quite an undertaking. But I don't accept that we have to be so defeatist about it that doing nothing or nibbling around the edges is going to make us safer. I also don't believe you will get every single assault weapon back, but I think you can get a good amount of them back and seriously reduce the number of people killed by them.
How would you define an assault weapon? One common criticism of the original 1994 Assault Weapons Ban is that it was fairly narrow and gun manufacturers were able to sell weapons that offered similar firepower after making relatively small changes.
I would stick largely to the definition that has been used before, recognizing it would have to evolve as manufacturers try to come up with technical ways around it. I'd make sure we get rid of detachable magazines and the pistol grip — to me that’s the feature that make it most deadly.
You estimate up to 15 million guns would be affected by a ban. How would you enforce that? There are only about 5,000 employees at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The way I see it is you have a grace period to buy them back. If you do not participate in the buyback, I'm proposing that we would have a way that they could be kept at a licensed shooting range. You could still fire them there, shoot for sport at a licensed range or licensed hunting club, but they would no longer be at a shopping mall, at a church, in a car, but kept securely to protect the most people.
I'm not proposing a roundup or confiscation. It would be like anything else that's banned: If you're caught with it there would be a steep penalty. Any fear of ATF agents going door to door to collect assault weapons is unfounded and not what is proposed here. They don't go collecting drugs that are banned or any other substance or weapon that's banned and I’m not proposing that here.
Jumping off that parallel with drugs, there's a renewed look at our drug laws in recent years and a common argument for scaling them back is that they turn many ordinary nonviolent Americans into criminals. Are you worried about setting up a situation where large numbers of currently law-abiding Americans are suddenly subject to arrest?
I have great faith that most Americans are law-abiding and care about the rule of law and if they're told a weapon is no longer allowed in their community and they would be compensated they would find a way to do the right thing. If somebody doesn't sell it back and doesn't keep it in a secure place then, yeah, they would be subjected to stiff penalties.
Tell me about those stiff penalties. Are we talking about a felony with jail time or more a misdemeanor?
I'd want to first get the gun. I wrote this to start a conversation and I'm open to what those penalties would be and it would be state-by-state driven. I'd say there would be a federal assault weapons ban that would give a federal prosecutor their own ability to enforce it, but whether it's a misdemeanor or felony, I'm more focused on ideas that get the most guns out of the hands of anyone who could do harm to a community.
Are you prepared for some of the confrontations that might erupt from this? You’re surely familiar with the slogan, "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands."
You know what gives me the courage to do something about this and doesn't make me afraid are these kids. I'd had it backwards this whole time. I've told town hall participants and reporters in the media that we can protect the Second Amendment and also protect people's lives. What these kids have taught us is their right to learn, their right to go home, their right to live is supreme over any other right. We should put that first.
It sounds like you take issue with how Democrats have approached this in the past, which is a more conciliatory strategy where you say, "Of course, I support the Secondment Amendment, but…" and then look to centrist members to find areas of agreement for legislation.
I think (the old) approach has created a false equivalence between the Second Amendment and someone's right to go to the church and go home, someone's right to go to a mall and go home, someone's right to go to a concert and go home. In that false equivalence, we've allowed I think an expansion of harmful weapons being put out in our communities.
That approach isn't bringing us any changes that are protecting us, that approach hasn't gotten us background checks, that approach hasn't gotten us mental health records being reported federally, that approach didn't even stop bump stocks from being administratively approved.
It's also a defensive approach in that nobody is saying the Second Amendment is not important or guns should be taken away. (My approach is) saying that assault weapons aren’t protected by the Second Amendment so it's not even accepting the argument that we're talking about the Second Amendment.
They've used that phrase, they've already accused me of starting a civil war, it's already out to their members and all over social media and conservative news sites. I understand. I was wide-eyed about what the risk would be doing this, but I just am not convinced that there's another way to protect people in our communities from these weapons of war other than taking them off the streets.
What's your plan for what comes next? Is there going to be a specific bill? Have you identified any potential co-sponsors?
I’m going to talk to my colleagues when we get back. There are a lot of issues important right now and this (younger) generation isn't a single-issue generation: They care about health care and climate change and education. But their right to live is pretty important because they’re living in fear right now. The number of high school students who have told me all over this country the panic that sets in when a fire alarm goes off, or when a book drops, is something that no one should have to experience. They're all sitting on the edge of their seats fearing that the next shooter is going to come into their classroom and they're seeing we're doing nothing to protect them.
What I'm hoping to do is start a conversation, to work with my colleagues on this, but to address this boldly and not be resigned to thinking that we're helpless, because we're not helpless. We were sent to Washington to do big things and protect people.
A new spin on the controversial struggle song, Dubul' ibhunu, this time calling for Jews to be shot instead of "boers", has been criticised from all corners.
Dubula e Juda, which means "shoot the Jew", was sung outside Wits University’s Great Hall last week by protesters from Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel (BDS) South Africa, an organisation that supports the Palestinian call for broad-based Israeli boycotts.
Those sympathetic to the cause of BDS South Africa and Palestine denounced the incident, saying it was a setback for the movement.
"A series of organisations that support the boycotts have made it clear they don't think it's a remotely acceptable slogan," said political analyst Professor Steven Friedman, who supports the concept of boycotts.
"It is very important that those of us who support the boycott make it clear it's about the denial of rights and the denial of self-expression and self-government for the Palestinian people. It's not targeted at a particular ethnic group."
BDS South Africa's campaign against Wits University for hosting an Israeli jazz quartet has been long-running, including allegations of racial profiling by Zionist organisations to control access to the Daniel Zamir Israeli Jazz Quartet concert.
The concert took place despite strong efforts by student groups and staff to lobby management to cancel it, the Mail & Guardian reported last week. Some postgraduate students and staff, both academic and administrative, wrote letters to the university's vice-chancellor Adam Habib on Wednesday, telling him of their condemnation "in the strongest possible terms of the racial/ethnic profiling" allegedly by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and the South African Zionist Federation.
But the silent protests outside the hall turned into a new take on the controversial "shoot the boer" struggle song, to take on Jews.
Respected health and education activists respectively, Nathan Geffen and Doron Isaacs, who have also been in support of Palestinian rights, came out strongly against the song.
"We are committed to the struggle for Palestinian freedom, equality and justice.
It is an extremely difficult struggle waged against one of the most effective and dishonest propaganda campaigns in history," they said last week.
"Anti-Semitism, besides being personally insulting to us, scores an own-goal. It undermines the struggle for Palestinian freedom."
Friedman agreed. "It gives a publicity break to the other side," he told the M&G.
Indeed, "the other side" in the form of the strongly pro-Israel South African Board of Deputies were quick to condemn the statement in strong terms. "SAJBD national chairperson Mary Kluk believed that by allowing its members to make such hateful and dangerous statements and subsequently defending them for doing so, BDS SA had revealed its true colours," the organisation said on Monday.
Kluk said: "What this incident unmistakeably shows is that BDS SA's real agenda is not to stand up for the Palestinian cause but to incite hatred, and possibly even violence, against Jewish South Africans."
Friedman said people around the world support BDS South Africa based on its moral power and stance against human rights abuse in Palestine, but the organisation risked losing its moral power over the incident.
"If people start saying 'shoot the Jews', people will say I don’t want to support that, and inevitably the other side will make a meal of this."
Pro-Palestinian organisations like the Media Review Network (MRN) distinguished between Jews and Zionists.
"Our arguments are never against Jews," said MRN’s Firoz Osman, who recently co-authored a book Why Israel? The Anatomy of Zionist Apartheid – A South African Perspective. "Ronnie Kasrils gave a powerful keynote at the launch of Why Israel," said Osman.
"He is Jewish and anti-Zionist, and we’re very close to him. We are very clear at distinguishing between fighting against Israeli apartheid, not Jews or Judaism," he said.
However, Osman found it difficult to believe that BDS South Africa had made the statement.
Muhammed Desai, co-ordinator of BDS SA, explained the use of the song to Wits Vuvuzela, saying: "Just like you would say 'kill the Boer' at a funeral during the eighties; it wasn’t about killing white people, it was used as a way of identifying with the apartheid regime."
He added: "The whole idea of anti-Semitism is blown out of proportion."
Geffen and Isaacs condemned the alleged racial profiling around the concert but said it did not justify anti-Semitism.
"We support BDS South Africa's right to protest but the behaviour of the protesters and Desai's subsequent comments simply cannot be justified. We call on BDS South Africa to issue an unequivocal apology and to commit to stamping this out."
BDS South Africa was due to release a press statement on the matter on Monday afternoon.
BDS South Africa heeded calls to apologise for the song and issued a statement on Monday distancing themselves from the song. "We unequivocally distance ourselves from the singing of this song and its sentiments. Also, to tarnish all Jews with the Zionist brush is racism regardless of who does it. Racism is racism and racism is abominable," said Professor Farid Esack, in a statement on behalf of BDS South Africa.
No mention was made of Desai's earlier statements made to Wits Vuvuzela newspaper.
Esack also bemoaned the advantage the incident had given the organisation's detractors. "It is unfortunate but not unexpected that supporters of Israel will focus on the singing of this song," he said.
"The purpose and context of the protest were and remain the larger struggle against Israeli apartheid, Israel's illegal occupation and its violation of Palestinian rights."
Despite a few quirks, the Samsung CLX-6220FX color laser multifunction printer is well worth considering for small-workgroup use. It offers only average performance and toner costs, but its output quality is very nice. Although the printer lists for $699, we'd seen it advertised for less than $500 as of September 15, 2010, so it could also represent a minimal initial investment.
The CLX-6220FX faxes, copies, prints, and scans--via both USB and ethernet. Duplexing is standard for both printing and copying or scanning via the 50-sheet automatic document feeder. You get a 250-page input cassette and a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, plus a 170-page output tray. An additional 500-sheet, bottom-mounted cassette is available for $235. The control panel is minimal but efficient, with a four-line monochrome LCD, a logical menu and navigation-button layout, and a numeric keypad for faxing. Bundled applications are provided for both Windows and OS X, and they are easy to use. In our tests, however, the installation on the Mac tucked them away in the Applications folder without leaving a clue as to their existence.
As mentioned earlier, the CLX-6220FX's output quality is very good for a midlevel laser printer. On tests with both our PC and our Mac, text was sharp. Color images exhibited a slightly bright but still realistic default palette, which made the mild background pattern and graininess more tolerable. Our PC scan sample (a high-resolution snapshot) looked cartoonish, while the Mac scan sample (an even higher-resolution, near-full-page photo) tended to get too murky in darker areas. Copies on both platforms were crisp and well colored.
You should stick with the high-yield toner for the Samsung CLX-6220FX. The standard-size supplies, a set of which ships with the unit, are pricey: A 2500-page, standard-size black toner cartridge costs $90 (3.6 cents per page), and 2000-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges each cost $99 (4.9 cents per color, per page). A page with all four colors would cost 18.4 cents, more than many inkjet MFPs charge. The high-yield cartridge costs are average, but still a relief, as a 5000-page black cartridge is $120 (2.4 cents per page), while 4000-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges are $140 each (3.5 cents per color, per page). A four-color page with these cartridges would cost a reasonable 12.9 cents.
The CLX-6220FX's middling performance is adequate for a small workgroup's needs. Copying and scanning speeds were about average. Printing a mix of plain-text pages, some with simple monochrome graphics, it managed a ho-hum 11.5 pages per minute; on our Mac, the rate was a slower 9.5 ppm. Snapshot-size photo samples (printed on letter-size paper) rushed out at a chart-topping 3.1 ppm on our PC; meanwhile, a near-full-page, high-resolution photo took 94 seconds (about 0.6 ppm) to emerge from our Mac testbed. We also encountered one noticeable quirk: On our Mac, a four-page PDF file of complex graphics took forever to print in Acrobat Reader 9; the poky 2.8 ppm time we show in our test results was when we printed from Apple's Preview. Samsung is aware of the problem.
The Samsung CLX-6220FX offers great text quality and decent high-yield toner costs. The PDF print problem aside, this MFP will serve a small workgroup capably.
Small workgroups will like this color multifunction's features and print quality, which balance out its middling performance and toner costs.
The race to make the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup took another interesting twist Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway, where Brad Keselowski nursed his fuel mileage in the final laps to win the Quaker State 400 over Carl Edwards.
Keselowski's victory was his second straight and fourth of the year, tops in the Cup series.
Eleven drivers have won races already this year and are all but assured of Chase spots.
Behind Keselowski, Kyle Busch has three victories, while Edwards and Jimmie Johnson have two each.
Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, Joey Logano, Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart have one win apiece.
With eight races to go in NASCAR's regular season, there are five winless drivers who are currently eligible for Chase spots.
After the Kentucky race, the top winless driver in points is Chase Elliott, who now has 492 points.
Despite crashing out of the Kentucky race, Elliott leads Ryan Newman (463), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (461), Austin Dillon (460) and Jamie McMurray (439).
The big loser on the night in terms of points was Ryan Blaney who came into the race on the Chase bubble, but fell to 18th in points after colliding with Elliott.
Conversely, Tony Stewart's excellent fifth-place finish allowed him to remain 30th in points, which makes him Chase eligible, but extended his lead over 31st-place Brian Scott to 31 points. Stewart is now a virtual lock to make the Chase.
Spelling Bee is a small application that lets you check the spelling of words using OS X's central spelling server. It is useful when using other applications that do not support spell checking, or if you are writing with a pen or pencil!
Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.
A new brew of corruption chatter clouds Gore's race.
Al Gore got another unpleasant reminder of Clinton-scandal ghosts. The Associated reports that Democratic fundraiser Pauline Kanchanalak has agreed to plead guilty to pouring more than half a million dollars in illegal contributions into the Democrats' coffers. Kanchanalak committed the crime shortly after attending one of the infamous White House fundraising coffee klatches in 1996. As a Thai citizen, Kanchanalak could not legally contribute the money on her own, so she funneled contributions to the Democratic National Committee through the accounts of close relatives. Her actions raised the hackles of Clinton administration enemies, causing widespread speculation that the White House had fallen under the power of foreign donors. Kanchanalak, who is cooperating with Department of Justice investigators, could face up to six years in prison.
Trust ranked among the priorities of voters surveyed by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, and was one reason why Gore trailed Bush 41 percent to 49 percent in that poll. Bush led Gore for being trustworthy by a margin of 37 percent to 29 percent. Results further suggested that neither of the major candidates has much to gain from a four-way race. Ralph Nader picked up 7 percent support, while Pat Buchanan scored 4 percent. Overall, when factoring in the third-party players, the race between the major party candidates tightens to 43 percent Bush and 38 percent Gore. This smaller gap still falls outside the poll's 2.2 percent margin of error.
The vice president attacked "price gouging" by oil companies during a campaign trip through Iowa, according to Reuters. "Oil companies' profits have just gone up 500 percent in the first part of this year at the same time they were raising these prices by such an extraordinary amount, particularly in the Midwest," Gore said. The issue has heated up as summer gas prices climb well past $2 a gallon in some states and the Federal Trade Commission probes the industry for possible unfair practices. Responding to the misconduct charges, the American Petroleum Institute denied wrongdoing and accused industry critics of playing politics. API president Red Cavaney said in a prepared statement: "Those allegations do a disservice to the American taxpayer by encouraging competing investigations that focus attention and resources away from solving very real regulatory problems."
The Texas governor used the price surge to take a swing at the current administration. While supporting the probe, Bush blamed Clinton and Gore for the problem. "I want to remind people that this administration is devoid of an energy policy," he said. The Washington Post reports that Democratic leaders were quick to point out that Bush can afford to be generous to the oil and gas industry. "That's where he's getting all his money," said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, "from the oil companies, his friends." According to the Center for Responsive Politics, oil and gas companies have donated more than $1.4 million to Bush's campaign, compared with less than $100,000 to Gore's.
Bush endured another day of heckling by death penalty foes as Gary Graham's execution drew near. ABC News reports that protesters disguised as deep-pocket donors have infiltrated Bush fundraisers, shouting "Don't execute an innocent man!" and demanding that Bush grant Graham a reprieve. Thus far, Bush has been unwavering in his insistence that the Texas death penalty system is perfectly fair. "As far as I'm concerned, there has not been one innocent person executed since I've been the governor," said Bush, who has presided over 134 executions as governor. Bush has refused to impose an Illinois-style moratorium on executions while the state's justice system is reviewed. "I thought about it," he said, "but we don't need a moratorium."