Recag/C4_38 · Datasets at Hugging Face

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And by “starkly divided,” I mean mostly white — a flipped reality in an overwhelmingly black city, where, as of the 2010 Census, only about 10% of the population was white.
In cities across America, a trendy new restaurant often signals the coming gentrification of a distressed neighborhood. But in Detroit, the blackest and most segregated large city in the country, the implications of that trend are especially polarizing.
We need to talk about this thorny issue, Wey says, but while we’re having these sometimes uncomfortable conversations, we might as well be eating delicious food.
For two nights in April, about two dozen diners — black and white — gathered around tables inside Midtown Detroit’s Urban Consulate, run by Wey’s wife, Claire Nelson, to eat his family’s traditional Nigerian dishes of dodo (grilled plantain) with ayamase (a sauce of pepper and locust beans) and whole grilled flounder with a side of jollof rice — a west African dish similar to jambalaya.
But the food, despite its novelty to Western palates, was barely mentioned.
And that’s kind of the point.
“Restaurant spaces can be more than just a space to talk and babble about how wonderful food is,” Wey told me recently over a plate of grilled chicken at Taqueria El Rey in southwest Detroit.
“In our own lives, every time we are extended by noticing that other people around us are different from us, we are expanding our reality,” Wey explains.
At the April 9 dinner in Detroit, Wey was joined by special guest and editor of BLAC Detroit magazine Aaron Foley. The pair shared their own experiences as black men in America with complex, layered identities, and diners chimed in, often with palpable emotion, on topics like black feminism, the gentrification of Detroit and its impact on black residents, modern forms of white supremacy and Detroit’s legacy as a black city. The white folks in the room mostly listened.
For his part, Wey eludes easy characterization. He is black but not African American, despite being an African who has spent exactly half of his 32 years in America. He cooks for a living, but doesn’t consider himself a chef. (In a recent New York Times mini-documentary profile of Wey, he describes himself as a “Nigerian food dude.”) And he’s uncomfortable with the “activist” label, too.
Wey says he “stumbled into” restaurants. In 2013, he’d been mulling a move to Chicago for art school but decided to stay in Detroit instead and just say “yes” to everything. So when Peter Dalinowski, a former roommate, asked Wey to help him start a permanent restaurant pop-up in Hamtramck, he found himself as co-founder of Revolver, which features ticketed prix-fixe dinners with a revolving roster of guest chefs.
“And it was just so precious and so self-aggrandizing and referential and conceited,” he said. “All of that made me uncomfortable.
Indeed, in these tumultuous times, there are more important things to discuss over dinner than dinner itself.
And yet, we often go to restaurants to escape reality for an hour or two, to forget about our troubles and just enjoy life in a carefully constructed alternate universe. Restaurants insulate us from the harsh world outside, and the ones that do that most convincingly are often considered the best.
That means the road for From Lagos is sure to be a tough one. Selling staunchly traditional Nigerian food to American audiences isn’t a surefire hit. And when you add the designed discomfort of the conversations into the equation, it only gets trickier.
Still, Wey’s perspective is a welcome counterpoint to the prevailing “foodie” culture, which has made modern-day rock stars of chefs and equates dining out at bucket-list restaurants with cultural superiority.
Ironically, that same culture that has turned restaurants into powerful public platforms is helping Wey in his efforts. Even the national media is paying attention.
“People listen to me or there's some sort of credibility attached to my name now because I had a restaurant,” he said.
And he’s using that credibility to raise the public consciousness.
As a white guy raised in the suburbs now living in Detroit and covering its dining scene for a living, my own relationship with the city is a complicated one. By definition, I am a gentrifier — and I’m uncomfortable with that role. But the only way to confront it is to discuss it, first by listening to longtime residents who are most affected by the changes in the city. Wey’s dinners are an important venue for those discussions.
As for Wey, he’s taking the show back out on the road, with “Blackness in America” dinners slated for Boston and Austin, Texas, in late May.
Even if he fails to open a brick-and-mortar version of From Lagos — a long-term goal — Wey has already succeeded in fostering the difficult conversations Detroiters need to be having during these times of rapid change, politeness be damned.
An alternative budget put together by Idaho’s former state economist, Mike Ferguson, demonstrates clearly that Idaho Gov. Butch Otter’s proposed budget missed the boat on education.
The alternative budget has supporters on both sides of the aisle, including former Superintendents of Public Instruction Jerry Evans and Marilyn Howard, a Re-publican and Democrat respectively. It’s also gotten the support of two members of the Governor’s Task Force for Improving Education.
The alternative budget would power up education spending at a far higher rate than the governor’s proposal. It would re-duce by $71 million the amount of money targeted at boosting the state’s $291 mil-lion in Rainy Day funds. It would elimi-nate $30 million in tax relief. It would re-direct this money to funding education.
Ferguson and the Idaho Center for Fis-cal Policy produced a report in 2012 that showed that Idaho’s public school funding had decreased significantly for 13 years because of tax cuts and increased funding of Medicaid.
Today, Idaho ranks 49th of the states in funding education. It’s not a rank to be proud of especially when the nonprofit Education Week Research Center gives Idaho kids a mediocre C- grade in K-12 achievement.
Gov. Otter has touted his efforts to move the Idaho economy to more than $60 billion. Now he should try to move the needle on the state’s dismal level of just one in four people with a bachelor’s de-gree.
Socking away more money in savings and reducing taxes isn’t going to get the state the prosperous economy Idahoans want and need. With signs of economic recovery beginning in a state slammed hard by the national recession, it’s a time to fuel the recovery by producing better educated, innovative and resourceful citi-zens instead of squirreling away money that sits idly by.
Wigan indie-rockers Lyon Road are preparing to play one final show at the place where it all started.
The band – which comprises Tom Byrom, Alex O’Brien, Cameron Gaskell and Sam Birchall – called it a day in December 2016, when they played an emotional farewell gig at The Old Courts, just two years after bursting on to the scene.
Now they are hoping for a very special occasion as they jam together one last time at the same venue.
During their relatively short stint together, Lyon Road gained a lot of recognition locally and quickly became constantly booked up at Wigan venues as well as playing shows across the North West.
They played at Manchester’s well-known Night ‘n’ Day Café and Academy 3 venues and shortly after they released their EP titled Cognition, they managed to get some of their tracks on Spotify.
However, just as everything was going right, it started to go wrong, causing the band to end things, although the departure was on good terms .
Lead guitarist Alex said: “We’ve done quite a few gigs at The Old Courts, we feel comfortable playing there and thought it might be fun to do one more gig.
“I’m nervous and excited at the same time, it’s quite strange really.
Frontman Tom is still playing weekly around town with regular spots at The Royal Oak, Fifteens and Indiependence, hosting open mic nights and doing solo sessions.
However, he admitted: “I prefer playing with the band – it’s not as lonely on stage.
Support for the May 12 gig is from Binx, Different Oceans and fellow local indie-rockers Ravellas, who are good friends of the band away from the music stage.
Tickets are on sale at www.eventbrite.co.uk and are £5 in advance or £6 on the door.
The gig is in the Grand Vault at The Old Courts.
Royals 4-2 on opening road trip. Had only 3 winning trips all last season. Alex Gordon's 2-run single in 2nd gave Royals lead.
MARANA, Ariz. \| Eight months later, Tiger Woods looked as if he had never been away.
Woods made a triumphant return to golf Wednesday in the Match Play Championship with a start that showed golf what it had been missing in the 253 days since he limped his way to an epic U.S. Open title.
Just past high noon in the desert, Woods fired an 8-iron into five feet for birdie. Then came a gentle fist pump when his 3-iron from 237 yards on the par-5 second settled four feet from the cup for eagle.
He closed out Brendan Jones of Australia with a 3-foot par on the 16th hole for a 3-and-2 victory.
But this was no ordinary day.
Before thousands of fans who scurried through the high desert, eager to see every shot from the world’s No. 1 player, Woods showed no sign of the reconstructive surgery done on his left knee a week after winning the U.S. Open.
Woods said he had looked forward to the rush of competing. It was as if all that time away from golf had been bottled up inside him. And then it came gushing out on a scorching day on Dove Mountain, where temperatures approached 90 degrees.
Fans packed into the bleachers around the first tee, with more lined up behind the ropes all the way to the green, and the cheer when Woods walked onto the tee could be heard all the way down the fairway.
Woods backed off his tee shot and without much expression belted a fairway metal down the right side of the fairway.
“You are back!” one spectator shouted.
He won the first two holes before some rust settled in. Woods made three bogeys over his next five holes and was leading 1 up until he birdied the par-5 eighth with a 6-foot putt.
Jones never got any closer.
Woods seized control when Jones couldn’t save par on the par-3 12th, and then Woods struck another familiar pose by raising his putter above his head as his 20-foot eagle putt dropped on the 13th.
It was the third time in five years Woods had surgery on his left knee, adding to the mystery of whether he would be as good as the player who has won 65 times on the PGA Tour, including 14 majors.
His return dwarfed everything else that took place in the first round.
Stewart Cink was the second match out, and there were only a few dozen fans in the bleachers. His match with Richard Sterne was tied after 18 holes, so they headed back to the first tee - making Woods and Jones wait a few extra minutes.
Sergio Garcia, the No. 2 seed, lost to Charl Schwartzel on the 18th hole when the Spaniard hit into the bunker and made bogey.
Third-seeded Padraig Harrington lost to Pat Perez on the 18th hole.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on July 09, 2015, on page 12.
Netflix revealed its latest rollout of star-studded new films Tuesday, with movies featuring Idris Elba, Adam Sandler and Michelle Yeoh topping its list of releases in the coming months.
Written by award-winning Cary Fukunaga and starring British Golden Globe winner Elba – who it seems will portray the next big screen incarnation of James Bond – the film will be released globally on Netflix, and in select U.S. theaters.
"The Ridiculous Six," a comic western starring Sandler, Luke Wilson and Nick Nolte will hit Netflix on Dec. 11 .
Again breaking with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over the situation in Syria, President Donald Trump on Wednesday taunted Moscow via Twitter, scoffing at talk by Russian lawmakers that their nation would stop any U.S. missiles which might be aimed at Syrian facilities in the wake of chemical attacks in that country by the Assad Regime.
"Get ready Russia," the President wrote on Twitter just before 7 am ET.
"You shouldn't be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!" the President added, as he said U.S. ties to Russia were deteriorating.
It was almost exactly a year ago that the United States launched a series of Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. Navy vessels, striking a Syrian military base which officials said was involved in a chemical weapons attack.
The President's tweet was just the latest in an increasingly testy verbal back-and-forth between the United States and Russia; on Tuesday, the Russians vetoed an effort at the United Nations to launch a full inquiry into the latest chemical weapons attack.
During debate, the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations accused the U.S. and other Western nations of "trying to mislead the international community," arguing it was a step on the road to military action.
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley meanwhile accused the Russians of "protecting a monster," by giving their backing to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
After months of tip-toeing around Russian leader Vladimir Putin on many issues, the President has been much more pointed in his criticism of Moscow since this latest gas attack - on Sunday, he specifically warned Russia and Iran that they would pay a "Big price" for backing Assad.
On Tuesday, the President scrapped his scheduled trip to South America for next week, as the White House said he wanted to remain in the United States to oversee any possible military response on Syria.
"President Trump will remain in the United States to oversee the American response to Syria and to monitor developments around the world," said Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said the President had spoken with the British leader about Assad's "vicious disregard for human life."
In Congress, the latest tweets by the President left Democrats concerned.
"15 months in, and the Trump administration has no Syria strategy. Threats, tweets, one off strikes are not a strategy," said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA). "Baiting Russia is not a strategy."
Democrats also immediately dug out an old tweet by Mr. Trump - from 2013, during the Obama Administration - in which he criticized how the Democratic President was conducting policy on Syria.
NORWICH CITY will be without another first-team player as they host Manchester United at Carrow Road on Saturday, but this time through suspension.
Centre-half Michael Turner will be missing as he serves his ban, while midfielder Jonathan Howson (back) remains doubtful.
Wingers Anthony Pilkington (hamstring) and Elliott Bennett (knee) are still sidelined, along with midfielder Alexander Tettey (ankle).
Provisional squad: Ruddy, Whittaker, Martin, Bassong, Olsson, Fer, Johnson, Snodgrass, Redmond, Hoolahan, Hooper, Bunn, Becchio, R Bennett, Josh Murphy, Elmander, Van Wolfswinkel, Garrido, Howson.
"The fight for freedom and justice for all life forms on Planet Earth"
About Me Very involved in the animal rights and welfare movements as well as rights, justice and equality for the human species, the environment, and insuring this planet will be habitable and 'life friendly' for many, many centuries to come. The planet itself shall survive for many billions of years to come; but if that planet can support life for another century is highly doubtful under current ways of thinking, trends, and human abuse of our Earth.
What/who changed my life and why The Beatles (particularly John Lennon), Dylan, 'Easy Rider', 'Dr. Strangelove', Woostock '69 (and I WAS there), the Dali Lama, Dr. Martin Luther King, the American invasions of Viet Nam and Iraq, Dr. Benjamin Spock, disgust with all weapons from guns to nuclear arsenals, napalm and its producer Dow Chemical, Exxon, BP, and every other corporation and individual who lusts with greed, hate, and the notion of 'could care less' disdain for life, justice, equality, and human/non-human animal life on our Planet.
J. J. (30) I just now did a double-take when I saw on your profile that you live in Roswell! People must say this to you all the time but I totally loved that series!
ALBANY — He's a mystery man no more.
The anonymous benefactor who tucked lucrative tax breaks for five major city developers into a housing bill was Asssembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the Daily News has learned.
Several sources involved in the process identified Silver as the source of the quintet's gold.
Bill sponsors and legislative officials speculated and pointed fingers for weeks when asked about the origin of the controversial abatements. One 57th St. building in Manhattan was projected to save $35 million over 10 years.
The tax breaks, delivered to developers of luxury housing towers, became tangled in negotiations last year involving various other housing programs.
The different aspects were eventually combined into one comprehensive bill that ultimately passed in January.
Steven Spinola, president of the influential Real Estate Board of New York, said his group had been asking to have properties citywide that once were eligible for a decades-old 421a residential tax abatement to again qualify for the program.
But Mayor Bloomberg's budget staff warned it was impossible to know how many projects would be covered by such a change. Assembly Democrats also objected to extending the tax breaks citywide.
Spinola said City Hall and Silver's chief counsel, James Yates, instead each asked for a list of specific properties that the organization wanted covered.
Spinola delivered the list to the mayor's office, the Assembly Democrats and the state Senate. The city had two conditions, but was otherwise fine with it, Spinola said.
The city was more focused on extending a different tax break program for co-op and condo owners.
The Assembly pushed to expand protections for loft tenants. There were also talks to extend a property tax exemption program for renovators of residential apartment buildings.
The issues were intermingled in a single bill, with little public attention given to the developers' tax breaks until exposed by the Daily News last month.
The anti-corruption commission appointed by Gov. Cuomo is looking into the matter, having subpoenaed the five developers.

And by “starkly divided,” I mean mostly white — a flipped reality in an overwhelmingly black city, where, as of the 2010 Census, only about 10% of the population was white.

In cities across America, a trendy new restaurant often signals the coming gentrification of a distressed neighborhood. But in Detroit, the blackest and most segregated large city in the country, the implications of that trend are especially polarizing.

We need to talk about this thorny issue, Wey says, but while we’re having these sometimes uncomfortable conversations, we might as well be eating delicious food.

For two nights in April, about two dozen diners — black and white — gathered around tables inside Midtown Detroit’s Urban Consulate, run by Wey’s wife, Claire Nelson, to eat his family’s traditional Nigerian dishes of dodo (grilled plantain) with ayamase (a sauce of pepper and locust beans) and whole grilled flounder with a side of jollof rice — a west African dish similar to jambalaya.

But the food, despite its novelty to Western palates, was barely mentioned.

And that’s kind of the point.

“Restaurant spaces can be more than just a space to talk and babble about how wonderful food is,” Wey told me recently over a plate of grilled chicken at Taqueria El Rey in southwest Detroit.

“In our own lives, every time we are extended by noticing that other people around us are different from us, we are expanding our reality,” Wey explains.

At the April 9 dinner in Detroit, Wey was joined by special guest and editor of BLAC Detroit magazine Aaron Foley. The pair shared their own experiences as black men in America with complex, layered identities, and diners chimed in, often with palpable emotion, on topics like black feminism, the gentrification of Detroit and its impact on black residents, modern forms of white supremacy and Detroit’s legacy as a black city. The white folks in the room mostly listened.

For his part, Wey eludes easy characterization. He is black but not African American, despite being an African who has spent exactly half of his 32 years in America. He cooks for a living, but doesn’t consider himself a chef. (In a recent New York Times mini-documentary profile of Wey, he describes himself as a “Nigerian food dude.”) And he’s uncomfortable with the “activist” label, too.

Wey says he “stumbled into” restaurants. In 2013, he’d been mulling a move to Chicago for art school but decided to stay in Detroit instead and just say “yes” to everything. So when Peter Dalinowski, a former roommate, asked Wey to help him start a permanent restaurant pop-up in Hamtramck, he found himself as co-founder of Revolver, which features ticketed prix-fixe dinners with a revolving roster of guest chefs.

“And it was just so precious and so self-aggrandizing and referential and conceited,” he said. “All of that made me uncomfortable.

Indeed, in these tumultuous times, there are more important things to discuss over dinner than dinner itself.

And yet, we often go to restaurants to escape reality for an hour or two, to forget about our troubles and just enjoy life in a carefully constructed alternate universe. Restaurants insulate us from the harsh world outside, and the ones that do that most convincingly are often considered the best.

That means the road for From Lagos is sure to be a tough one. Selling staunchly traditional Nigerian food to American audiences isn’t a surefire hit. And when you add the designed discomfort of the conversations into the equation, it only gets trickier.

Still, Wey’s perspective is a welcome counterpoint to the prevailing “foodie” culture, which has made modern-day rock stars of chefs and equates dining out at bucket-list restaurants with cultural superiority.

Ironically, that same culture that has turned restaurants into powerful public platforms is helping Wey in his efforts. Even the national media is paying attention.

“People listen to me or there's some sort of credibility attached to my name now because I had a restaurant,” he said.

And he’s using that credibility to raise the public consciousness.

As a white guy raised in the suburbs now living in Detroit and covering its dining scene for a living, my own relationship with the city is a complicated one. By definition, I am a gentrifier — and I’m uncomfortable with that role. But the only way to confront it is to discuss it, first by listening to longtime residents who are most affected by the changes in the city. Wey’s dinners are an important venue for those discussions.

As for Wey, he’s taking the show back out on the road, with “Blackness in America” dinners slated for Boston and Austin, Texas, in late May.

Even if he fails to open a brick-and-mortar version of From Lagos — a long-term goal — Wey has already succeeded in fostering the difficult conversations Detroiters need to be having during these times of rapid change, politeness be damned.

An alternative budget put together by Idaho’s former state economist, Mike Ferguson, demonstrates clearly that Idaho Gov. Butch Otter’s proposed budget missed the boat on education.

The alternative budget has supporters on both sides of the aisle, including former Superintendents of Public Instruction Jerry Evans and Marilyn Howard, a Re-publican and Democrat respectively. It’s also gotten the support of two members of the Governor’s Task Force for Improving Education.

The alternative budget would power up education spending at a far higher rate than the governor’s proposal. It would re-duce by $71 million the amount of money targeted at boosting the state’s $291 mil-lion in Rainy Day funds. It would elimi-nate $30 million in tax relief. It would re-direct this money to funding education.

Ferguson and the Idaho Center for Fis-cal Policy produced a report in 2012 that showed that Idaho’s public school funding had decreased significantly for 13 years because of tax cuts and increased funding of Medicaid.

Today, Idaho ranks 49th of the states in funding education. It’s not a rank to be proud of especially when the nonprofit Education Week Research Center gives Idaho kids a mediocre C- grade in K-12 achievement.

Gov. Otter has touted his efforts to move the Idaho economy to more than $60 billion. Now he should try to move the needle on the state’s dismal level of just one in four people with a bachelor’s de-gree.

Socking away more money in savings and reducing taxes isn’t going to get the state the prosperous economy Idahoans want and need. With signs of economic recovery beginning in a state slammed hard by the national recession, it’s a time to fuel the recovery by producing better educated, innovative and resourceful citi-zens instead of squirreling away money that sits idly by.

Wigan indie-rockers Lyon Road are preparing to play one final show at the place where it all started.

The band – which comprises Tom Byrom, Alex O’Brien, Cameron Gaskell and Sam Birchall – called it a day in December 2016, when they played an emotional farewell gig at The Old Courts, just two years after bursting on to the scene.

Now they are hoping for a very special occasion as they jam together one last time at the same venue.

During their relatively short stint together, Lyon Road gained a lot of recognition locally and quickly became constantly booked up at Wigan venues as well as playing shows across the North West.

They played at Manchester’s well-known Night ‘n’ Day Café and Academy 3 venues and shortly after they released their EP titled Cognition, they managed to get some of their tracks on Spotify.

However, just as everything was going right, it started to go wrong, causing the band to end things, although the departure was on good terms .

Lead guitarist Alex said: “We’ve done quite a few gigs at The Old Courts, we feel comfortable playing there and thought it might be fun to do one more gig.

“I’m nervous and excited at the same time, it’s quite strange really.

Frontman Tom is still playing weekly around town with regular spots at The Royal Oak, Fifteens and Indiependence, hosting open mic nights and doing solo sessions.

However, he admitted: “I prefer playing with the band – it’s not as lonely on stage.

Support for the May 12 gig is from Binx, Different Oceans and fellow local indie-rockers Ravellas, who are good friends of the band away from the music stage.

Tickets are on sale at www.eventbrite.co.uk and are £5 in advance or £6 on the door.

The gig is in the Grand Vault at The Old Courts.

Royals 4-2 on opening road trip. Had only 3 winning trips all last season. Alex Gordon's 2-run single in 2nd gave Royals lead.

MARANA, Ariz. | Eight months later, Tiger Woods looked as if he had never been away.

Woods made a triumphant return to golf Wednesday in the Match Play Championship with a start that showed golf what it had been missing in the 253 days since he limped his way to an epic U.S. Open title.

Just past high noon in the desert, Woods fired an 8-iron into five feet for birdie. Then came a gentle fist pump when his 3-iron from 237 yards on the par-5 second settled four feet from the cup for eagle.

He closed out Brendan Jones of Australia with a 3-foot par on the 16th hole for a 3-and-2 victory.

But this was no ordinary day.

Before thousands of fans who scurried through the high desert, eager to see every shot from the world’s No. 1 player, Woods showed no sign of the reconstructive surgery done on his left knee a week after winning the U.S. Open.

Woods said he had looked forward to the rush of competing. It was as if all that time away from golf had been bottled up inside him. And then it came gushing out on a scorching day on Dove Mountain, where temperatures approached 90 degrees.

Fans packed into the bleachers around the first tee, with more lined up behind the ropes all the way to the green, and the cheer when Woods walked onto the tee could be heard all the way down the fairway.

Woods backed off his tee shot and without much expression belted a fairway metal down the right side of the fairway.

“You are back!” one spectator shouted.

He won the first two holes before some rust settled in. Woods made three bogeys over his next five holes and was leading 1 up until he birdied the par-5 eighth with a 6-foot putt.

Jones never got any closer.

Woods seized control when Jones couldn’t save par on the par-3 12th, and then Woods struck another familiar pose by raising his putter above his head as his 20-foot eagle putt dropped on the 13th.

It was the third time in five years Woods had surgery on his left knee, adding to the mystery of whether he would be as good as the player who has won 65 times on the PGA Tour, including 14 majors.

His return dwarfed everything else that took place in the first round.

Stewart Cink was the second match out, and there were only a few dozen fans in the bleachers. His match with Richard Sterne was tied after 18 holes, so they headed back to the first tee - making Woods and Jones wait a few extra minutes.

Sergio Garcia, the No. 2 seed, lost to Charl Schwartzel on the 18th hole when the Spaniard hit into the bunker and made bogey.

Third-seeded Padraig Harrington lost to Pat Perez on the 18th hole.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on July 09, 2015, on page 12.

Netflix revealed its latest rollout of star-studded new films Tuesday, with movies featuring Idris Elba, Adam Sandler and Michelle Yeoh topping its list of releases in the coming months.

Written by award-winning Cary Fukunaga and starring British Golden Globe winner Elba – who it seems will portray the next big screen incarnation of James Bond – the film will be released globally on Netflix, and in select U.S. theaters.

"The Ridiculous Six," a comic western starring Sandler, Luke Wilson and Nick Nolte will hit Netflix on Dec. 11 .

Again breaking with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over the situation in Syria, President Donald Trump on Wednesday taunted Moscow via Twitter, scoffing at talk by Russian lawmakers that their nation would stop any U.S. missiles which might be aimed at Syrian facilities in the wake of chemical attacks in that country by the Assad Regime.

"Get ready Russia," the President wrote on Twitter just before 7 am ET.

"You shouldn't be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!" the President added, as he said U.S. ties to Russia were deteriorating.

It was almost exactly a year ago that the United States launched a series of Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. Navy vessels, striking a Syrian military base which officials said was involved in a chemical weapons attack.

The President's tweet was just the latest in an increasingly testy verbal back-and-forth between the United States and Russia; on Tuesday, the Russians vetoed an effort at the United Nations to launch a full inquiry into the latest chemical weapons attack.

During debate, the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations accused the U.S. and other Western nations of "trying to mislead the international community," arguing it was a step on the road to military action.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley meanwhile accused the Russians of "protecting a monster," by giving their backing to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

After months of tip-toeing around Russian leader Vladimir Putin on many issues, the President has been much more pointed in his criticism of Moscow since this latest gas attack - on Sunday, he specifically warned Russia and Iran that they would pay a "Big price" for backing Assad.

On Tuesday, the President scrapped his scheduled trip to South America for next week, as the White House said he wanted to remain in the United States to oversee any possible military response on Syria.

"President Trump will remain in the United States to oversee the American response to Syria and to monitor developments around the world," said Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said the President had spoken with the British leader about Assad's "vicious disregard for human life."

In Congress, the latest tweets by the President left Democrats concerned.

"15 months in, and the Trump administration has no Syria strategy. Threats, tweets, one off strikes are not a strategy," said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA). "Baiting Russia is not a strategy."

Democrats also immediately dug out an old tweet by Mr. Trump - from 2013, during the Obama Administration - in which he criticized how the Democratic President was conducting policy on Syria.

NORWICH CITY will be without another first-team player as they host Manchester United at Carrow Road on Saturday, but this time through suspension.

Centre-half Michael Turner will be missing as he serves his ban, while midfielder Jonathan Howson (back) remains doubtful.

Wingers Anthony Pilkington (hamstring) and Elliott Bennett (knee) are still sidelined, along with midfielder Alexander Tettey (ankle).

Provisional squad: Ruddy, Whittaker, Martin, Bassong, Olsson, Fer, Johnson, Snodgrass, Redmond, Hoolahan, Hooper, Bunn, Becchio, R Bennett, Josh Murphy, Elmander, Van Wolfswinkel, Garrido, Howson.

"The fight for freedom and justice for all life forms on Planet Earth"

About Me Very involved in the animal rights and welfare movements as well as rights, justice and equality for the human species, the environment, and insuring this planet will be habitable and 'life friendly' for many, many centuries to come. The planet itself shall survive for many billions of years to come; but if that planet can support life for another century is highly doubtful under current ways of thinking, trends, and human abuse of our Earth.

What/who changed my life and why The Beatles (particularly John Lennon), Dylan, 'Easy Rider', 'Dr. Strangelove', Woostock '69 (and I WAS there), the Dali Lama, Dr. Martin Luther King, the American invasions of Viet Nam and Iraq, Dr. Benjamin Spock, disgust with all weapons from guns to nuclear arsenals, napalm and its producer Dow Chemical, Exxon, BP, and every other corporation and individual who lusts with greed, hate, and the notion of 'could care less' disdain for life, justice, equality, and human/non-human animal life on our Planet.

J. J. (30) I just now did a double-take when I saw on your profile that you live in Roswell! People must say this to you all the time but I totally loved that series!

ALBANY — He's a mystery man no more.

The anonymous benefactor who tucked lucrative tax breaks for five major city developers into a housing bill was Asssembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the Daily News has learned.

Several sources involved in the process identified Silver as the source of the quintet's gold.

Bill sponsors and legislative officials speculated and pointed fingers for weeks when asked about the origin of the controversial abatements. One 57th St. building in Manhattan was projected to save $35 million over 10 years.

The tax breaks, delivered to developers of luxury housing towers, became tangled in negotiations last year involving various other housing programs.

The different aspects were eventually combined into one comprehensive bill that ultimately passed in January.

Steven Spinola, president of the influential Real Estate Board of New York, said his group had been asking to have properties citywide that once were eligible for a decades-old 421a residential tax abatement to again qualify for the program.

But Mayor Bloomberg's budget staff warned it was impossible to know how many projects would be covered by such a change. Assembly Democrats also objected to extending the tax breaks citywide.

Spinola said City Hall and Silver's chief counsel, James Yates, instead each asked for a list of specific properties that the organization wanted covered.

Spinola delivered the list to the mayor's office, the Assembly Democrats and the state Senate. The city had two conditions, but was otherwise fine with it, Spinola said.

The city was more focused on extending a different tax break program for co-op and condo owners.

The Assembly pushed to expand protections for loft tenants. There were also talks to extend a property tax exemption program for renovators of residential apartment buildings.

The issues were intermingled in a single bill, with little public attention given to the developers' tax breaks until exposed by the Daily News last month.

The anti-corruption commission appointed by Gov. Cuomo is looking into the matter, having subpoenaed the five developers.