Split (1)

train · 2.59M rows

text stringlengths 12 102k
Freedom Conservative Party Leader Derek Fildebrandt was in Calgary Friday where he announced the second piece of the party’s platform dubbed ‘Unleash Alberta Energy’.
Fildebrandt said his party’s energy policy centres around three strategies: ending the carbon tax, pipelines and production and affordable energy.
Menchville's Leah Andrews slides safely into second while Kecoughtan's Alyssa Vette waits on a throw during the third inning of Friday's game.
Menchville's two-run lead didn't look that safe anymore. Not with two runners on and Allyson Babinsack — who had crushed a double to the fence two innings earlier — at the plate.
"Oh, goodness …" Monarchs pitcher Bria Mizell said as she considered it later.
Mizell had handled everything else Friday afternoon, and she handled that. She got Babinsack on a grounder to third and Gabby Jenkins on a floater to first, and the Monarchs finished off a 3-1 win to keep pace with Gloucester in the Peninsula District softball standings.
"I know she's pretty good hitting pitches on the outside," Mizell said of Babinsack. "In the past, I've gotten strikes on her in the inside, so I thought the same strategy might work this time. And it did.
"If I had slipped, it could have been really bad. And I had slipped against her before."
Babinsack had ripped Mizell's first pitch up the game up the middle for a single. After walking in the third, she drilled a one-hopper to the fence that was hit so hard the Monarchs nearly nailed her at second base.
This time, with runners on first and second and one out, Kecoughtan had exactly who it wanted at the plate.
"In years past, those situations always seemed to go against us," Menchville coach Tim Dragone said. "I'm not going to lie — I was nervous. But Bria made a good pitch at her hands."
Mizell allowed only five hits and walked one. The run she gave up was unearned.
"Our team was pumped and they pumped me up," she said. "I was a little shaky in the fourth inning — I guess the nerves were starting to kick in. My teammates picked me up once again, and I took it from there."
Mizell also went 3-for-3 at the plate with a solo home run in the second inning and an RBI double in the fifth. Shortstop Kelsey Sweeney drove in the Monarchs' second run with a single in the third inning.
Kecoughtan (7-2) had its chances but went 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position. The Warriors' only run came on a fourth-inning error.
With the win, the Monarchs remained a game behind unbeaten Gloucester in the loss column. Kecoughtan fell two back of the Dukes.
"This is huge, because we knew if we lost this game, the district was over," Dragone said. "I don't envision Gloucester losing twice. We're not looking ahead to Gloucester because we have Woodside (Saturday), and with (Mike) Tallon they're always scrappy.
"Our kids were ready to play today. I'm proud of that effort."
WP: Mizell (7-1). LP: Babinsack (4-1). Standouts: Kecoughtan, Babinsack 2-3 (2B). Menchville, Mizell 3-3 (HR, 2 RBI), Sweeney 1-3 (RBI). Records: Kecoughtan 7-2, 7-2; Menchville 7-1, 7-1.
The Las Vegas 51s baseball team will have a new home soon and it is looking for a new name.
The 51s are launching the "Name the Team Sweepstakes."
The 51s are looking for community input and people can weigh in with their ideas beginning on Monday (April 16) at 3 p.m. Fans can visit the 51s website or Facebook page where they will be redirected to where they can enter the Sweepstakes by providing a unique name suggestion.
On May 4, the team will conduct a random drawing of all entries to win the Grand Prize, a $500 Shopping Spree of team merchandise, when the new Las Vegas Ballpark at Downtown Summerlin opens in 2019. Official Sweepstakes' rules are available at lv51.com. The 51s will be looking to the community for its advice through M...
It was 36 seasons ago on April 10, 1983, the then-Las Vegas Stars began playing professional baseball as a member of the Pacific Coast League at Cashman Field. After an ownership change and 18 seasons as the Stars (1983-2000), it was decided that the team's name would change to the Las Vegas 51s.
For years, federal Judge Reggie Walton, served on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which repeatedly approved the U.S. government’s requests to collect telephone metadata on millions of Americans.
Walton also served as the FISA court’s presiding judge. And he was tapped to lead the court just months before former NSA contractor Edward Snowden unleashed an era of intense public scrutiny and attention toward the court.
He left the FISA court last year after a 7-year stint.
Here is a lightly edited transcript of CNN’s interview with Walton, the court’s only former presiding judge who served during and after the Snowden leaks.
CNN: How many cases did you preside over while you were on the FISA court? And how demanding was the job?
Reggie Walton: I can’t really calculate how many cases it was. Over the course of a week you would probably hear 40 cases.
It’s very demanding. Information that is submitted by the government is 50, 60, 70 pages or more. And obviously you have to read more information to familiarize yourself with what the government is requesting.
CNN: What was your top concern as the FISA Court’s chief judge? National security or civil liberties?
Walton: I think it’s a combination of both, which makes the job very demanding.
CNN: Why do you believe the bulk data collection that you approved is so crucial to national security?
Walton: Once a potential terrorist is identified, you have to be in a position to quickly assess who that individual has been in contact with. And if we had been able to do that prior to 9/11, maybe 9/11 would not have happened.
CNN: Reform supporters point to several reviews of NSA surveillance that haven’t found any instance in which a terror plot was thwarted because of the bulk data collection program. What do you say to that?
Walton: Well I don’t know if that’s necessarily accurate.
The political branches have to decide exactly what they want because obviously with freedom and liberty comes a price and with security comes a price. And that’s the balance that the political branches need to make.
CNN: So you were basing your decisions on existing law?
Walton: That’s correct. As a judge I have an obligation to apply the law as I believe the legislature has enacted it. And it was based upon that assessment that approvals were given.
CNN: Section 215 says specifically that the government can request a secret warrant “tangible things” that would be “relevant” to an ongoing investigation. How did you come to determine that Section 215 could be used to collect data on millions of Americans based on that relevancy requirement?
Walton: Well the 215 program was in operation before I came on the court.
CNN: So you were following FISA court precedent?
Walton: Well I mean there have been several opinions that were written by my former colleagues on the court and I did not take exception with those decisions. I did not disagree with their evaluations.
CNN: Do you think it’s appropriate for the government to hold the telephony metadata of millions of Americans?
Walton: Well it’s been approved by Congress because they reauthorized the Patriot Act in 2011,the program had been in existence and I know that the Justice Department had made Congress aware of the fact that these programs were being conducted.
CNN: Why in your opinion should the government be able to continue to hold that metadata?
Walton: It’s not my prerogative. It’s the political branches that have to make that decision. Obviously if they want to terminate it that’s their prerogative within our constitutional system.
There may be a price to pay at some point down the line, but if the political branches are willing to pay that price that’s their prerogative.
CNN: Your were the chief judge when the FISA court approved the order in 2013 for the NSA to collect bulk data from Verizon. Could you take us into that decision? What kind of details could you provide to Americans about how that decision came about?
Walton: I don’t know if that’s been declassified or not so I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that at all.
CNN: You found in 2009 that the NSA hadn’t been following the rules of data collection for two and a half years.
Walton: I’ve been out of the court for about a year and memories fade, so I don’t want to comment specifically on any particular action or document.
I can only say generally that I and my colleagues did vigorously scrutinize what the government was requesting. And if we felt there were any problems with regards to that collection, we took aggressive action to ensure that that over-collection did not continue and that information that was inappropriately acquired wa...
CNN: Do you think that raises questions of how much you can trust the NSA with storing — but not looking at — the data of millions of Americans?
I had no reason to believe during the seven years I served on the court that anybody at NSA nefariously did anything in reference to data that they were acquiring.
Sometimes in the attempt to try and keep the country safe, mistakes occur. But I never found anything that they did was malicious. And I also found them to be very forthright. Whenever they realized that something had gone astray, they brought that information to us.
CNN: In your opinion, what is the biggest misperception the public has about the FISA court and NSA bulk data collection?
Walton: I think one is the misperception that the FISA court was just a rubber stamp.
After the Edward Snowden leaks, the press was reporting information provided by the Justice Department about how many applications had been approved by the court. It did not sound like reality to me.
I started to have us internally collect our own statistics to find out exactly what was going on. And in a document I produced to congress we showed that over a three-or four-month period that we were either rejecting or significantly changing what was being requested of us in about 24% of the cases.
The Justice Department was only reporting those rejections when they submitted a final draft that was rejected. They weren’t reporting the fact that initially when an application comes in it’s reviewed by one of the staff attorneys and if the staff attorneys have an issue with it, then that doesn’t go forward. They wer...
If the Justice Department was seeking 10 authorizations but the court only approved two. They weren’t reporting that eight had been denied. Or once it got to the judge and the judge had issues or thought there wasn’t sufficient information — if it was not a final application — then that was not reported.
CNN: What recommendations would you suggest to reform the FISA court or the laws governing bulk data collection?
Walton: I don’t think that’s the role of a judge. I don’t think ethically it’s appropriate for me to opine on that.
CNN: There’s a lot of discussion about adding a civil liberties advocate or someone playing an adversarial role in the FISA court. Is that something you feel like you would have liked to have when you were on the court?
Walton: It conceivably could have been helpful in a limited number of cases, but the difficulty obviously is that the information that’s being presented to the court is extremely highly classified.
In my experience the five lawyers that I worked with were extremely qualified. I always felt that they gave me an objective assessment of the pros and cons of what the government was seeking. So I felt that I was getting the information that I would get from an independent party in any event.
CNN: Would they present specific arguments tied to civil liberties concerns?
Walton: Sure. That was something that was frequently raised.
CNN: Do you appreciate or understand some of the concerns that civil liberties advocates raise?
Walton: I understand the concern when proceedings are conducted in private. I fully appreciate that. But I don’t know how you effectively conduct mass security electronic surveillance if it’s not done in private.
If you’re going to tell the world what you’re doing then you might as well not do it.
I think a lot of people don’t appreciate the significant threats that we face as a nation. I got up every day fearful that something catastrophic like another 9/11 would happen.
CNN: What else do you think Americans should know?
Walton: I feel very confident that the judges who serve on the FISA court are extremely dedicated individuals who appreciate the importance of civil liberties, but also the very important need to protect people from having to make a decision as they did at on 9/11 as to whether they wanted to burn to death or whether t...
That’s a very difficult balance about protecting the nation on one hand but on the other hand not giving them the prerogative to be able to violate the civil liberties that are the hallmark of our country.
But that’s the hard call that judges have to make.
CNN: Are there any decisions you made that you regret?
Walton: I can’t think of any specific decision.
CNN: Are you confident that you struck the appropriate balance between civil liberties and national security?
Walton: I believe so. I don’t know of any situation where somebody has been able to show that NSA or any other national security agency intentionally violated the civil liberties of American citizens.
ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES NEW YORK PHILHARMONic-At Avery Fisher Hall, N eeme Järvi conducting. Jan. 20- 22 at 8 and Jan. 25 at 7:30: The United States première of Danish composer Rued Langgaard's Symphony No.6 (a neo-Romantic work writ- ten in 1919), Bruch's Violin Concerto No 1 (with N adja Salerno-Sonnenberg), and Sibe...
7 Clover teachers earn national board certification \| Rock Hill Herald Charlene Cruse, eighth-grade science teacher at Oakridge Middle School.
Jeff Rolf, sixth-grade science teacher at Oakridge Middle School. Kristin Dover, kindergarten teacher at Larne Elementary School. Ramie Macioce, social studies teacher at Clover High School. Rhonda Welborn, fifth-grade language arts and social students teacher at Crowders Creek Elementary School.Sara Howard, third-grad...
The National Board process was created so teachers can achieve distinction by demonstrating that they meet rigorous standards.
Teachers seeking National Board Certification undertake a two-part process that takes from one to three years. The process requires candidates to reflect on their classroom practices, their understanding of subject material and their preparation techniques.
In addition to preparing a portfolio with videotapes of classroom teaching, lesson plans, student work samples and reflective essays, teachers must complete assessment center exercises that show they have mastered the subjects they teach and also know how to teach them.
Some interesting figures have emerged from one of Germany's largest retailers, Mindfactory, pointing at sky-high sales and sizeable gains in market share for AMD processors, which out-sold equivalent models from Intel for three consecutive months this year.
The data, reported by Wccftech and compiled by Reddit user Ingebor, point at AMD's Ryzen 5 2600 as being by far the best-selling desktop CPU with the second being AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X. The Ryzen 5 2600 is AMD's cheapest 2nd generation Ryzen 6-core CPU and it was already a superb product when I reviewed it back in May la...
However, a small price cut and more expensive offerings from Intel with its 9th generation CPUs have meant it now out-sells every other desktop CPU and by a big margin. AMD picks up second place too with the Ryzen 7 2700X while the Ryzen 5 2600X comes in third in the sales chart.
Intel's market share has certainly taken a battering but sales in March were roughly in line with reviews for its latest desktop CPUs. For example, the Core i9-9900K, which reviewed well in terms of performance, was the company's best-selling desktop CPU ahead of the Core i7-9700K. Despite selling fewer CPUs, though, I...
That might sound like good news, but AMD's goal with 1st and 2nd generation Ryzen has been to boost market share and with its Pinnacle Ridge Zen+ 12nm CPUs it's certainly succeeding, with these accounting for the lion's share of sales and revenue at 70% of AMD desktop sales in March.
This is in part thanks to price cuts, but they don't account for the success of the Ryzen 5 2600, which hasn't fallen much in price since its launch last year. Intel, on the other hand, has suffered from lack of supply of its 14nm CPUs, which is likely the main reason behind poor sales seeing as both the Core i9-9900K ...
The lack of availability of Intel's 9th generation CPUs seems to have had an impact on generational sales too, with the original 8th generation Coffee Lake processors accounting for a large chunk of overall desktop CPU sales. It will be interesting to see what April's figures reveal given stock of the Core i9-9900K and...
Our desire to create 3D visualizations of data—for practical purposes, artistic expression or both—stretch back many millennia. Two experts in the field have created a stunning online archive of such physical artifacts from 5,500 BC to the present day, and beyond.
Whereas words consist of immaterial sounds, the tokens were concrete, solid, tangible artifacts, which could be handled, arranged and rearranged at will. For instance, the tokens could be ordered in special columns according to types of merchandise, entries and expenditures; donors or recipients. The token system thus ...
Clay tokens suggest that physical objects were used to externalize information, support visual thinking and enhance cognition way before paper and writing were invented.
A seismoscope is a qualitative indicator of seismic activity—as opposed to seismographs which show quantitative data, typically through line graphs. The oldest known seismoscope is Chinese and dates backs from 132. It was a large bronze device that dropped a ball into a bronze container (one of the eight frogs on the i...
These three-dimensional maps were carved by Inuits from the Ammassalik Fjord in Greenland, and used as eyes-free guides for sailing. The left one shows coastline, the right one shows a sequence of offshore islands. These Inuit communities had had no direct contact with Europeans before a Danish explorer met them in 188...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

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