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Talent City Council meeting Tuesday adjourned during the discussion of the short-term rental ordinance. Now the council will have to decide how to proceed, either to continue with a first reading or table the item.
According to a city official, a number of citizens spoke on the ordinance but the council decided not to extend the meeting further than two short periods Tuesday which halted the public discussion.
This will mark the third time the Talent City Council reviewed the amendment due to the high level of interest surrounding the topic.
Amending the city ordinance could lead to popular rental services like Airbnb to enter the city of Talent by allowing residents to rent their property for a short period of time.
Residents and elected officials have reservations to allow rental services to operate within the city, one of which is the desire to create a stable housing market.
Talent city officials have said that allowing short-term rental services to operate within the city would have a negative effect on the already delicate housing market.
A proposed requirement that would resolve that issue suggested by city council and citizen commentators include prohibiting the rental an entire dwelling unit and making 270 days the maximum amount of time allowed as a resident of a short-term rental.
Talent community members that spoke during the last few meetings also noted that noise is likely to be an issue to which the city suggest setting up a short term rental telephone line for the first few years of the ordinance as a way for residents to register noise complaints.
Talent residents also noted that the parking requirements for short-term rental tenants are too strict as they were during the first draft of the ordinance, to which Talent recommended, having different parking requirements in a commercial district but the requirements are to stay the same for residential neighborhoods.
UPDATE: Story updated to reflect 2/6/19 city council actions.
Two years after Walmart Inc. acquired it for $3.3 billion, Jet is getting a fancy makeover to woo millennial customers. A new shopping experience tailored to attract affluent, higher-income, urban millennial customers in urban areas, a group that has proven difficult for Walmart.
Jet’s facelift will provide more personalization, with item recommendations and services and faster delivery for New York residents. The e-tailer aims to rival Amazon-owned Whole Foods, Target and Kroger. Jet will be using its fulfillment center in the Bronx that opens later this fall to help with the slew of upgrades.
In addition to partnering with local stores, Jet has also added key brands such as Nike and Apple to attract the young crowd. Big and small brands alongside tighter delivery windows is the logical way to upscale Amazon Prime in cities.
The revamp comes as studies show Jet’s traffic and market share have drastically declined. A Hitwise study noted that Jet’s traffic dropped 56% in August from August 2016, when Walmart bought the two-year-old startup co-founded by Marc Lore. Comparatively, Walmart’s online traffic rose 37%, and Amazon’s jumped 22% over the same period.
Jet will have bring back shoppers who are already hooked to Amazon Prime.
Marc Lore is now the CEO of Walmart’s e-commerce business in the United States. He strongly believes the big push perfectly complements Jet’s overall e-commerce portfolio strategy.
Ninety percent of the US population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart store. Jet could prove to be a key tool to quickly and effectively expand. Walmart has already captured lower-income consumers. Right now its biggest challenge is that it doesn’t have a reputation of being friendly to affluent customers.
Jet will have to bring back shoppers who are already hooked to Amazon Prime. As a part of the facelift, Jet.com is unveiling its biggest marketing campaign on TV, radio, online and social media starting Thursday in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Boston. It will advertise on billboards, bus stops and subways to raise awareness.
A big part of musical performance is about display, and Friday night's fine concert by the San Francisco Symphony was a practically nonstop exercise in impressive showing off.
It wasn't just the solo concerto, which is the usual province of showmanship - although the young German violinist Arabella Steinbacher gave a fascinating and often beautiful account of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto as the centerpiece of the Davies Symphony Hall event. But the entire evening, led with panache and sensitivity by guest conductor Charles Dutoit, was devoted to the matter of how superbly this orchestra can play.
The program seemed to have been designed for just that purpose. It opened with Stravinsky's extravagantly colorful showpiece "Le Chant du rossignol" ("The Song of the Nightingale") and concluded with Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.
The two pieces deal in contrasting types of virtuosity - and Dutoit and the orchestra excelled in both. The Stravinsky, an orchestral collection of music from his opera "The Nightingale," finds the composer at his most detailed and painterly, working exquisite instrumental effects as he tells the opera's fairy-tale story drawn from Hans Christian Andersen.
To hear Friday's performance was to marvel yet again at the individual gifts of the Symphony's musicians. Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik played sweetly but with just a touch of the requisite urgency, flutist Tim Day's extended solo curled and floated arrestingly, and trumpeter Mark Inouye brought his trademark warmth and suavity to the fisherman's song.
Dutoit wove all these strands, and many more, into a tapestry of compelling shapeliness. In a work whose dependence on narrative makes it vulnerable to a sense of formal choppiness, he brought clarity and integrity to the overall line.
Those qualities also informed the Bartók, where the call for virtuosity is less personal than communal. In its five sharply delineated movements, the Concerto demands flexibility and responsiveness from the ensemble, and Dutoit again elicited a splendid and vivacious performance.
There was power and sweep in the opening movement, a crisp sense of swagger in the subsequent "Game of Couples," and a buoyant rhythmic wit in the "Interrupted Intermezzo." Dutoit and the orchestra collaborated to give the finale an exuberant sense of release.
Steinbacher's approach to the Tchaikovsky concerto was marked by a casual elegance that was revelatory at its best. In the opening strains of the first movement, and again in the lyrical slow movement, she played fluidly and with a wonderful insouciance about tempo. But in faster passagework, that insouciance sometimes shaded into carelessness.
Could you be a hero and save a life ?
Julia Whitworth pictured with her daughter Laura.
Nine years on from a lifesaving heart transplant, Laura Whitworth has blossomed into a bubbly high school student.
The Mirfield 12-year-old, who was born with the rare heart condition dilated cardiomyopathy, was flown 200 miles by helicopter from Leeds to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London in a desperate bid to find her a donor organ in 2007.
After her family was told that Laura, who was then aged just two, could succumb to her heart problems at any time, she was kept alive by a machine for six weeks before a match was found and the five-hour operation could take place.
Speaking during Organ Donation Week, her mother Julia, 40, is urging people to think of their loved ones by signing the NHS Organ Donation Register – and potentially save lives.
It comes as the Be A Hero campaign asks more people to sign the register as around 700 people in the region await lifesaving transplants.
Julia said: “It was really hard for us all. When I think back I don’t know how we did it.
The youngster has faced a few health scares in recent years, while the Whitworths have learned to keep a constant eye on her condition.
But, thanks to her heart transplant, she has grown into a bubbly, active and outgoing girl.
After her 2007 operation, Laura’s old heart was donated in case its valves and tissue could be used help others.
The first Be A Hero Day in Yorkshire will aim to boost the register on Friday. To sign up visit leedsth.nhs.uk/be-a-hero.
ARSENAL are reportedly planning a £30million swoop for Hirving Lozano to replace wantaway striker Alexis Sanchez.
Manchester United have also previously indicated their interest in PSV Eindhoven's talisman.
The Dutch giants are not willing to sell the in-demand 22-year-old for less than his £30m release clause, according to Football.London.
He has attracted interest from a host of clubs after becoming the first player to score seven goals in his first eight games in the Eredivisie.
After bagging a brace against Vitesse on Sunday, he now has nine league goals to his name.
Lozano left Pachuca in June 2017 to sign a six-year deal with Phillip Cocu's side for a fee of £7.04m.
The Mexican already has more than 20 caps for his country and he is expected to be a key figure during next year's World Cup contest.
Arsenal have previously sent chief scout Steve Rowley to monitor the 22-year-old.
Sanchez's contract is due to expire at the Emirates this summer and Arsene Wenger is already having to consider his replacement.
The French boss has admitted that he might be forced to accept a January offer for the 28-year-old to prevent losing him on a free.
He came close to joining Manchester City earlier this year, but the deal collapsed after Wenger failed to sign Thomas Lemar.
The Citizens are expected to now wait until next summer before making another move.
Of all the scuffles in today's acerbic debate between New Jersey's two Democratic candidates for the Senate, no clash was more bitter than the contestants' exchanges over the volatile issue of Social Security.
Former Gov. Jim Florio and Jon S. Corzine both tried to appeal to the elderly, who are expected to make up a large segment of the Democrats who vote in the June 6 primary. In their heated remarks about ways to extend the solvency of Social Security, the candidates even disputed whether President Clinton had turned away from his own plan to invest part of the Social Security trust fund in the stock market.
Mr. Corzine, the former co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs & Company, has embraced Mr. Clinton's proposal to invest 15 percent of the government surplus devoted to Social Security in the stock market and use the proceeds to shore up the government's popular retirement program.
Mr. Corzine, whose staff has described the proposal as the ''Clinton-Corzine Social Security plan,'' said the plan would yield greater returns than investing in government bonds, and would ensure the system's viability for future generations.
But Mr. Florio called the plan ''a colossally bad idea,'' invoking Franklin D. Roosevelt to warn that it would generate millions of dollars for Wall Street brokers while placing elderly Americans at the whims of a volatile stock market.
''The president and the vice president have clearly and decisively come out and said this is not something that either of them support,'' Mr. Florio said.
In fact, Vice President Al Gore has withdrawn his support for the proposal. The president has shelved it, citing a lack of support in Congress. But Mr. Clinton's spokesman said earlier this month that the president still supported the concept.
After the debate, advisers to Mr. Florio conceded that his description of Mr. Clinton's position was a bit of a stretch, but said their intent was to emphasize that the president no longer advocated the proposal.
Mr. Corzine in turn attacked Mr. Florio's Congressional record on Social Security, saying that Mr. Florio voted against a 1985 bill that would have forced the Treasury Department to restore Social Security assets that the Reagan administration had dipped into to avert a cash crisis.
But Mr. Florio insisted that Mr. Corzine's description was a distortion. The bill in question was actually a procedural measure to extend the government's borrowing limits, Mr. Florio said, and the Social Security amendment was simply tacked on to make it appear more palatable.
While the Israelis and US want to isolate Hamas, some Arab states see need for Palestinian unity.
As the high level meetings continue in the aftermath of the violent split between Hamas and Fatah, it is becoming clear that two competing visions are emerging for the best way forward for the Palestinians.
While the Americans and Israelis want to continue to strengthen Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his secular Fatah Party against the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian and Jordanian governments are coming to view the need for a new Palestinian government that reunites the two rivals.
On Tuesday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who attended a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh the day before with Mr. Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and Jordanian King Abdullah, told state TV that a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation is inevitable.
"I believe that after a period of calm, especially as they have a legislative assembly where [Hamas] has a majority, an understanding between them is bound to come about," he said.
Egypt has been "mediating between the two sides," though President Mubarak added that Abbas is as yet unwilling to make concessions. "It needs a period of calm and a return to sense … then [dialogue] will become possible," he said.
Those comments followed days of harsh statements from Egyptian officials – Mr. Mubarak had called the Hamas takeover of Gaza a coup that had harmed the interests of the Palestinian people. Another Egyptian official says there is no inconsistency between the two positions.
"It's not that we like Hamas or anything they stand for or what they've done in Gaza – we've been very strong in condemning that," says the official. "But if the Americans or the Israelis think you can ignore a player that has the support of a lot of Palestinian people and think you can possibly reach peace, they're wrong."
In Israel, Mr. Olmert's spokeswoman Miri Eisin did not rule out negotiations with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, but said the movement would have to recognize Israel's right to exist, forswear armed struggle, and promise to abide by existing Palestinian and Israeli agreements. "We've already said that we would deal with a Palestinian government, including if it had Hamas, if they would accept those three international principles," she said.
Israel refused to negotiate with the former unity government because it grouped Fatah, which recognizes Israel's right to exist, with Hamas, which does not.
In February in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Saudi officials brokered the agreement that led to the unity government. That deal forced Fatah – the long-dominant force in Palestinian politics that has lost much support because of rampant corruption – to recognize the parliamentary popularity of Hamas.
The Monday meeting in Egypt was largely focused on trying to shore up Abbas's position. Though some concessions were made – Israel has agreed to release some of the $600 million in frozen Palestinian tax revenue and plans to release about 250 members of Fatah from its prisons – they stopped short of what he asked for and, analysts say, short of steps that would improve living conditions in the Fatah-controlled West Bank.
The Middle East negotiators who make up the Quartet – peace makers from the US, United Nations, the European Union, and Russia – also met Tuesday in Jerusalem.
Officials in Egypt say Abbas is pressing for Israel to remove roadblocks that restrict Palestinian movement in the West Bank, and for the release of popular Fatah figure Marwan Barghouti.
Though Olmert has said he would like the roadblocks eased, the Israeli security heads have been opposed and have carried the day so far. Olmert's statement that no Fatah members with "blood on their hands" will be released appears to rule out a concession on Mr. Barghouti: He's serving a life sentence in Israel for murder, though his supporters claim the charges were fabricated.
Within Israel, both the left and the right appear to agree that the notion of improving life in the West Bank in order to help Fatah, and hurt Hamas, is likely to be unsuccessful, though for different reasons.
"Anyone who thinks they can strike a deal with half of the Palestinian people is deluding themselves. Legitimacy rests at the bottom, with the religious people, the refugees. Hamas can provide that legitimacy. You need them to maintain any agreement with Israel," says Shaul Mishal, a Tel Aviv University professor and author of "The Palestinian Hamas."
"Don't rush toward Fatah, because it's a pillar of sand," he says. "It's too corrupt, too confused, and tired."
He also says he thinks the two movements will patch things up. "This isn't the end of the game, this is the beginning of the game. Israelis shouldn't delude themselves that the harsh words are indicative of the long-term strategy of Fatah. I am sure within days or within weeks they are going to talk to each other."
A more right-wing Israeli view is that building up Abbas is a waste of time, since he hasn't been able to stop rocket attacks on Israel or secure the release of Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who's been held in Gaza by the armed wing of Hamas for the past year. On Monday, Hamas released an audio tape of Corporal Shalit in which he said his health was deteriorating and called on Israeli to meet his captors' demands – a prisoner exchange.
Raphael Israeli, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says Israel should not waste its time on trying to work with Abbas and his Fatah Party but instead should focus on treating Gaza as its own state and, if necessary, use tough sanctions like turning off the water that Israel provides.
"The Sharm el-Sheikh conference was no more than a show. All the pressures are on Israel to make concession to Abu Mazen who is a virtual reality," he argues, using Abbas's nickname. "Abu Mazen showed he would turn against the terrorists only when the terrorists threaten his own government. We should put an end to this problem."
Ms. Eisin said the Shalit issue has stood in the way of more Palestinian prisoner releases and implied that until it's resolved, Israel will have nothing to do with Hamas.
"What Hamas did [Monday] is definitely within the lines of their own cruelty. It's the same Hamas that took Shalit, the same Hamas that took over the Gaza Strip, the same Hamas who was in the government, and the same Hamas we won't deal with," she said.
Nevertheless, with Egypt appearing to call for Fatah to reconcile with Hamas, Israel may not have long to deal with Fatah alone. But the formation of a new unity government may come with a more quiescent Hamas, some analysts argue.
Meir Javedanfar, a Middle East expert and author of "The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran," says Iran, which has provided funding to Hamas, is pressuring the movement to reenter unity talks, partially because the recent round of fighting makes Iran look like it's fueling civil war among Arabs.
"The recent takeover of Gaza has backfired. … Hamas has become more isolated than before,'' he says. "They've lost popularity because they've been shooting Palestinians in the street."
Mr. Javedanfar also says he believes new unity talks are a matter of time, but doesn't argue against helping Abbas now as any increase in his popularity will give him more leverage at the negotiating table.
"The easier Israel can make the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, the more that's to Fatah's advantage," he says. "The best gift that Israel could give to Abbas is to carry out more withdrawals in the West Bank, that would make Abbas look like a leader who can deliver. But unfortunately I don't think Ehud Olmert is in a position to do that."
• Ilene R. Prusher contributed from Jerusalem.
My Win7 box on 5400 rpm rust has never been internet connected, no updates, Office 2000 from a CD, various other maths based s/w. Starts and shuts down in under 10 seconds each. Why would I want to update it? It boots faster that the M.2 SSD Win10 box mentioned below.
Alas the paired 20 year old HP printer has finally bitten the dust, and I await to see if the new HP printer plays ball.
Alternatively, the Win10 box has auto updates and just this week got a KB that purported to stop Specter Variant 2 (worryingly that was microcode from intel too). It took two attempts to install, the first to a black screen of doom, the second reducing the game frame rate to 2 fpm (yes, minute is intentional). That got rolled back pretty sharpish on the grounds that someone crafting an SV2 exploit on it is unlikely and a lower impact than essentially bricking the PC for its intended use.
The incidents happened in February, and on Saturday, Waverly police made arrests following their investigation.
A Waverly couple was arrested Saturday, accused in a child abuse case, after a 3-year-old boy was treated for a chemical burn.
The incident happened Feb. 17, and the child was treated for his injury, which was in his groin area, at Geisinger Medical Center in Pennsylvania, according to Waverly police. On Saturday, police charged Amber McDuffee, 31, and her boyfriend Mark C. Terry, 30, in connection with the child's injury.
Police said deep bruising and abrasion injuries were also found on a 22-month-old child who was in the couple's care between Feb. 13 and 17.
The Tioga County Department of Social Services assisted Waverly police during their investigation, which alleges McDuffee recklessly caused injury to a child who was in her care.
McDuffee was charged with a felony count of second-degree assault, and misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child and second-degree reckless endangerment. She was sent to the Tioga County jail with bail set at $15,000 cash, to await further court action.

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