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As part of his rehabilitation‚ Botha said Van Niekerk would travel to Doha next week where he has been seeing sports medicine physician Louis Holtzhausen since he suffered the injury.
“We will probably know by the end of November or beginning of December how far he is from full recovery and if he is ready to move to the next step of his recovery programme‚” said Botha.
If he makes a full recovery‚ Van Niekerk may appear in the Diamond League‚ the World Championships in Doha in September 2019 and the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo where he will defend his 400m title.
“I have to rebuild‚ refresh myself and just use this year to come back stronger,” Van Niekerk said soon after sustaining the injury.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Olympic Games in Tokyo will be held in 2022.
The tectonic plates of the online world are shifting under our feet. Today’s White Paper on digital harms has concluded that the tech giants are incapable of self-regulation. The Government want to impose a duty of care on them.
Will this proposal solve the problem and protect the vulnerable or do we have much further to travel before we can balance freedom with effective regulation of a global space in a global world?
Exodus From The New Republic: What Will It Mean for Jewish Thought?
With the departure of most of its editorial team - including Jewish literary icons like Leon Wieseltier - will the storied magazine maintain its engagement with Zionism and Jewish intellectual life?
Screenshot of The New Republic's Aug. 1, 2013 'The Feminists of Zion' cover.
What made The New Republic's liberalism obsolete?
Last week’s departure of most of the editorial team at The New Republic — including Franklin Foer, Leon Wieseltier, Judith Shulevitz and Julia Ioffe — didn’t just blow a hole in the landscape of American journalism. It also threw into doubt the future of what has long been a primary address for American Jewish thought.
The New Republic celebrated its 100th anniversary last month, and for much of the magazine’s history — particularly since Martin Peretz took over in 1974 — it has been one of the elite American media outlets with a strong focus on Zionism and Jewish intellectual life.
Now in the wake of the decision by owner Chris Hughes to replace Foer, the executive editor, with Gabriel Snyder of Bloomberg Media — and formerly of Gawker and The Atlantic Wire — The New Republic’s identity is now in doubt. Many of the magazine’s former mainstays worry that its DNA, including its engagement with Jewish life, is in question, with nothing on the secular landscape to replace it.
Evidence of The New Republic’s Jewish DNA could be seen in the lists that have circulated on the Internet of the approximately 60 percent of the masthead who quit. Easily half are Jewish — including Foer and Wieseltier, whose resignations on Thursday under pressure from management triggered the general exodus — and many have written about their own Jewish lives.
A number of prominent Jewish staffers at the New Republic have gone on to greater prominence at other publications.
But the Jewish identity of the New Republic runs much deeper. One of its co-founders was Walter Lippmann, a German Jew, albeit a secular one. Peretz noted in an interview that one of the magazine’s early intellectual patrons was Louis Brandeis, a Jewish Supreme Court justice and a leading Zionist, and one of its early editors, Horace Kallen, was part of a circle of New York Jewish intellectuals. It was a group that included Morris Raphael Cohen and Marvin Lowenthal, who flourished in the 1910s and ’20s and published in the New Republic.
The magazine subsequently continued to engage with Jewish concerns — in December 1942, for example, Varian Fry wrote one of the first reports on the Holocaust, titled “The Massacre of the Jews.” But Peretz said that by the time he took over in the 1970s, the magazine’s engagement with Jewish issues had faded significantly.
“There was nothing inherent and, in fact, some of the staff was, I would say, from hostile to utterly indifferent” to Jewish concerns, Peretz told JTA.
Peretz, a former Harvard lecturer who purchased the magazine and installed himself as both its publisher and editor in chief, brought to it a passionate interest in Yiddish, as well as an intense, often hawkish, Zionism. The magazine’s Jewish focus intensified in 1982 when Peretz hired Wieseltier, himself a scholar of Jewish history and mysticism, to edit the arts and culture section.
Under their leadership, The New Republic flourished as a center for Jewish writers on Jewish subjects. Authors such as Primo Levi, Robert Alter and Ruth Wisse wrote on topics ranging from the Holocaust to biblical scholarship, from Yiddish literature in translation to the State of Israel from perspectives across the political spectrum. It also published a number of Israeli writers, including Benny Morris, Moshe Halbertal and Anita Shapira.
The magazine also came to serve as a sort of successor to the mid-century journals, like The Partisan Review and Commentary, that had served as homes to Jewish public intellectuals. Wieseltier famously joked that The New Republic saw itself as “a sort of Jewish Commentary” — the joke being that Commentary, which was founded by the American Jewish Committee and continues to publish, is explicitly Jewish.
The New Republic was never explicitly or exclusively Jewish, either in its staffing or its focus, and it was defined as much, if not more, by its self-declared (albeit idiosyncratic) liberalism. Still, it retained what Berman described as a “Jewish sensibility,” and became a center for young Jewish writers and journalists.
Writers who were on staff until last week and primarily wrote on other subjects have published articles, and even books, about their own Jewish experiences. They include science editor Judith Shulevitz, whose book “The Sabbath World” explores her relationship with the Jewish Sabbath; senior editor and economics correspondent Noam Scheiber, who published an article about speaking Hebrew with his daughter; and Foer, who co-wrote “Jewish Jocks” with Marc Tracy, a former staff writer and an alumnus of the online magazine Tablet.
Coates reported that he was only able to identify two black staffers who worked on the magazine in recent decades.
In 2012, following years of financial instability, as well as controversial comments by Peretz widely regarded as bigoted against Arabs, Peretz and his fellow investors sold the magazine to Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook. Although Hughes rehired Foer and retained Wieseltier, observers noted a shift in its focus on Jewish issues.
It is unclear what the editorial voice of the magazine will be going forward. The New Republic hasn’t announced any significant hires and said recently that it was postponing the December issue until February. A request for comment directed to the magazine’s media department was not returned.
JTA also emailed Snyder requesting an interview but did not immediately receive a response.
Unclear also — at least on Jewish issues — is whether any other publication can fill the void, though several writers, such as Shulevitz and Greenberg, have pointed to Tablet as a burgeoning center for Jewish thought.
Meanwhile, former New Republic devotees worry that it will be an intellectual shell of its previous self.
Dakota Johnson has debuted a drastic new haircut.
The 25-year-old actress is famous for her long brunette hair. But as she headed out in New York City on Wednesday, Dakota showed off a fresh look.
The Fifty Shades of Grey star swapped her lengthy locks for a chic, choppy bob.
Dakota was seen showing off her new ‘do as she arrived at a spa in the Big Apple for a refreshing appointment.
The pretty young star is no stranger to experimenting with new styles to mix up her look.
Prior to being cast as Anastasia Steele in box office hit Fifty Shades, Dakota sported blonde hair.
But after landing the part, she went brunette and added bangs to coincide with Anastasia’s description in E.L. James’ books.
Following the transformation, the actress’ regular hair stylist Mark Townsend spoke about the stages he follows to achieve Dakota’s flawless appearance.
However, Mark added that when it comes to maintaining her look, Dakota gets slightly impatient. So when her bangs got a bit too long, she attacked them herself with a pair of scissors.
Former Pentagon senior policy analyst F. Michael Maloof claims that Israel is using the same ultra-secret stealth H-60 Blackhawk helicopter that US Special Forces used to hunt down bin Laden. How is this possible?
These helicopters are highly modified versions of the Blackhawk. The regular version is manufactured by Sikorsky for the American military as well as the Republic of Kore, the Colombian Armed Forces and the Turkish Armed Forces. This highly modified version, however, is not available to anyone but American special forces. It was supposed to be an exclusive transport for the US Navy SEALS.
Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government officially has denied claims by Iranian officials regarding the missions. But various reports including a recent Times of London report suggest that Israel is using specially modified U.S.-supplied Black Hawk helicopters to carry 12-member armed teams with sensitive equipment to monitor radioactivity and the magnitude of explosives tests.
One of these stealth Blackhawks was shot down during the operation that ended in the death of Al-Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden and its following burial at sea.
Ares' writer Bill Sweetman at Aviation Week described this helicopters as highly modified versions of the H-60 Blackhawk. Its tail "features stealth-configured shapes on the boom and tip fairings, swept stabilisers and a 'dishpan' cover over a non-standard five-or-six-blade tail rotor. It has a silver-loaded infra-red suppression finish similar to that seen on some V-22s." Sweetman also pointed out that this secret version nobody knew about included aerodynamic and flight control adjustments that allowed less rotor speed and less noise, as well as a reduced radar cross-section.
Today more than 200 million Christians face persecution because of their beliefs.
More Christians have been killed for their faith over the past 100 years than in the previous 19 centuries combined.
Every five minutes a Christian is martyred for the faith.
Over the past several years, I’ve become more aware of the rampant persecution of Christians worldwide. I would read the news reports online and even mention it in a sermon or a prayer, but, deep down, I felt stuck.
I’m halfway around world, I would think. What can I possibly do to help?
Then several years ago my wife and I visited friends serving overseas in northern Thailand, running an orphanage for young girls. During our trip, our friends needed to renew their visas, which required a drive to the nearest border—which sits at the northernmost area of the country near the Golden Triangle.
For California’s farmworkers, toiling all day in the brutal, sun-scorched fields is hard enough; the homes they return to each night are often in even worse conditions. Though the reforms won by previous generations have extended basic labor and safety protections to seasonal and immigrant farmworkers, many remain shut out of the right to decent accommodations.
According to a new report published by California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), the housing crisis in the agricultural workforce has worsened over the last generation. Despite the locavore fads and slow-food diets that have infused today’s farm-fresh produce with an air of glamour, as a workplace, the fields still echo the social marginalization and scandalous poverty that sparked the groundbreaking grape boycott of the late 1960s.
Don Villarejo, the longtime farmworker advocate who authored the report, tells In These Times that growers have “systematically” reduced investment in farmworker housing over the past 25 years in order to reduce overhead costs and to avoid the trouble of meeting state and federal regulations, which were established as part of a broader overhaul of agricultural labor, health and safety standards during the 1960s and 1980s. According to Villarejo, workers’ modern material circumstances are little improved from the old days of the Bracero system. That initiative—the precursor to our modern-day guestworker migrant program—became notorious for shunting laborers into spartan cabins, tents and other inhospitable dwellings on the farms themselves, beset with entrenched poverty and unhealthy, brutish conditions.
Even today, however, surveys and field reports have revealed that a large portion of workers are squeezed into essentially unlivable spaces. Some dilapidated apartments and trailer parks lack plumbing or kitchen facilities, much less any modicum of privacy; others are exposed to toxic pesticide contamination or fetid waste dumps. Workers can “live in a single-family dwelling with perhaps a dozen to 20 [people] crowding in,” Villarejo says. In some residences, “mattresses are lined up against the wall because during the daylight hours you could not be able to walk through the rooms owing to all the mattresses on the floor at that time.” Though many such dwellings house single male laborers, whole families with children are also known to live in crowded multiple-household units.
This is the “market-based” answer to the rickety labor camp of yore: Though workers are now renting from a landlord rather a farm owner, Villarejo says, “their conditions are certainly no better than they were in the kind of labor camps against which we were protesting back in the ‘60s and ‘70s about horrid living conditions."
Such instability compounds the inherent uncertainty of seasonal farm labor. Even if they have a long-term home in one area, workers must often travel long distances to follow the growing cycles, with different crops harvested at different times over the course of a year. Many have to commute several hours to and from their homes each day; the costs of travel further sap the meager wages they already siphon off as remittances to relatives. Most farmworkers are from Mexico, and about 60 percent of them live apart from their immediate family members, leaving many constantly under pressure to wire their earnings home.
All those financial hardships leave little left over at the end of the month to make enough rent for satisfactory accommodations, forcing laborers to seek deeply inadequate options in California's tight housing market. And laborers aren’t just frequently priced out of decent rental homes—they also face deep racial and ethnic discrimination in areas hostile to migrants. Landlords may charge predatory rates or refuse to rent to farmworkers individually; other times, local officials might manipulate zoning policies (often with support from anti-immigrant residents) to block development organizations from setting up low-cost housing for farmworkers and their families, despite laws that protect against exclusion based on race or national origin.
Advocates also point out that code enforcement can have insidious consequences, as local authorities will sometimes opt to shutter homes that have been cited as substandard, but fail to provide residents with other better-quality options.
"We have a lot of laws on the books that say that people shouldn't live in those conditions,” says CRLA attorney Ilene Jacobs. However, when it comes to cracking down on blighted or unsafe homes, she says, “code enforcement runs a range." Sometimes, it's "totally lax because officials do not want to displace residents or the housing is needed to serve industry;" otherwise, she says, regulatory authorities become “overzealous and end up displacing people from substandard housing into no housing at all. And neither approach works."
As a result of the intensified demand, migrant laborers have become a more-or-less permanent fixture in the agricultural industry. According to the report, more than two-thirds of workers are “settled”—in permanent households and supporting at least one family member. In turn, many farmworker households are “mixed status,” a blend of undocumented, documented and citizen relatives. This further complicates access to jobs and acceptable residences, since immigrants, documented or not, are excluded from many of the rights and public benefits available to citizens.
And in extreme cases, some farmworkers settle in areas that are virtually off the map.
CRLA’s research found that a significant portion of the state’s farm workforce lives in what advocates call Disadvantaged, Unincorporated Communities (DUCs): rural or urban enclaves that are often cut off from essential municipal services like functioning water and sewage systems. Additionally, residents of these DUCs frequently suffer from a lack of parks, public transportation, good schools, or access to sources of healthy food.
A 2011 investigation by California Watch confirmed CRLA’s findings when it revealed horrific conditions in unincorporated farmworker communities in Southern California’s Eastern Coachella Valley. According to the report, the collection of trailer parks and labor camps resembles a shantytown: strewn with sewage and waste, and blanketed with poisonous air pollution from a nearby soil recycling company. Ironically, the settlements originally emerged as an emergency measure to improve conditions for poor migrant farmworkers. In 1992, the state passed a law intended to create more housing by easing permitting restrictions—instead, awful setups proliferated on sites where building regulations had been eased.
In coming years, labor advocates want to see worker housing return to the fields, with farm-supported programs such as the ones popular in the 1970s—only with higher standards. Instead of grim transient encampments, they’re fighting for a sustainable, regulated infrastructure with comprehensive health and safety protections.
The current crisis, Villarejo says, is “a combined problem of both the farmers who want the workers and of the workers who need to have a place to live, but don't earn enough in the course of a year… to afford decent housing. So I think farmers … should be obligated to contribute substantially to funding to provide decent housing for workers."
Both the federal Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act of 1983 and California’s Employee Housing Act have established a formal employer-employee relationship and outlined standards and regulations for farmworker housing provided by growers. Thus, the legal framework already exists for the industry to make concrete investments in affordable housing stock.
As far as funding goes, activists say, the state could tax growers in order to raise money for publicly subsidized rentals; farmers could also donate undeveloped land for the same purpose. In the mid-2000s, Washington state ran just such a program: a farmworker housing trust that pooled money to develop on-farm, temporary units as well as a permanent infrastructure.
Looming on the horizon, too, is the possibility of some kind of immigration reform. Allowing people to work on the books, to pay into their local tax base, to be able to raise their voices and demand public services in their neighborhoods without fear of deportation—all these are basic civic entitlements that will be essential for allowing workers to establish homes, and put down real roots, in the same country their labor feeds.
Good luck getting Americans to work for those wages.
Yes, it's a pity. This could be solved by massive deportation and hiring legals only.
The UT administration has finally notified the 40 need-based changes approved for Chandigarh Housing Board houses. The residents have been given a six-month period to make these approved changes and those who have already made the changes will have to inform the board within the time period.
The UT administration has finally notified the 40 need-based changes approved for Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) houses. The residents have been given a six-month period beginning now to make these approved changes and those who have already made the changes will have to inform the board within the time period.
It's been over two years that the board approved these changes. However, the proposal was shuttling between the board and the administration for the final approval and the notification. CHB in its last board meeting in June had decided to send the final 40 approved need based changes to administration for a final notification.
Talking to the Hindustan Times, finance secretary VK Singh said: "Informally, the changes had been approved but final approval has come now. We were going through the changes and since the administration has satisfied itself about the changes, it has notified them."
The FS informed that there are 13 other changes that were being demanded by the residents and the same were awaiting a final call of the CHB.
This final notification from the administration is definitely a reason to cheer for the city residents, as though many had already made the changes, the same were considered illegal. A senior official from CHB said: "There was still a dilemma whether the administration would approve the proposed changes or still make further modifications to the same. With the administration notifying them now, the changes will get a legal standing."
Even though illegal, more than 48,000 houses have already made these changes. During the six-month period, those who have already made the changes will be able to pay the compounding fee and those interested in making the alterations, can do so after intimating the board. Beyond this period, any alterations will be considered as violations and action would be initiated against such residents. Presently, the CHB dwelling units are in Sectors 38 (West), 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, Modern Housing Complex (Phase-III) besides duplex dwelling units in Sectors 29, 40, 41 and 47.
- Residents can alter the windows and doors. Steel grills in veranda have been allowed, though the same should not interfere with the light and ventilation of the adjacent room. This can be done to increase security in the houses.
- The residents can create a car park area by covering the front courtyard using fiberglass roof. Also, the car and scooter garage can be converted into a store, but only for personal use.
- The residents can also cover balconies wherever uncovered, again using fiberglass material.
- It has allowed underground PVC water tank within the building line and structural stability of the house and the adjoining house.
- A three-foot balcony has been allowed on the façade and rear of a house where no terrace exists.
Open championships at Carnoustie have developed an association with the grisly elements of golf. The last time the oldest major was staged here Sergio García was reduced to tears following play-off defeat by Pádraig Harrington. The Open of 1999 will for ever be synonymous with Jean van de Velde’s 72nd‑hole capitulation.
Francesco Molinari has the hardly insignificant consolation of the Claret Jug as a household accessory, given he may now be portrayed as the man who killed Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy in a single gory act. Stewart Cink, who triggered sighs when ending Tom Watson’s epic Open quest in 2009, is unburdened now.
For so long on Sunday afternoon one of the most extraordinary stories in golf was playing out. Tiger Woods, amid his latest comeback from personal and professional trauma, led the Open. Suddenly it was oh so real.
That the 42-year-old could not complete the claiming of a 15th major, a decade after number 14, owed more to Woods hitting the self-destruct button than the landing of body blows by the understated Molinari but there was still despondency in the Carnoustie air. There was not even the marquee backup option of success for Rory McIlroy or Jordan Spieth to soften the blow. Look what you could have won.
None of this, of course, should take away from Molinari’s latest and biggest triumph. His accuracy under the most extreme of pressures was robot-like. The fact he played in the company of Woods when hitting a bogey-free 69 should only heighten appreciation of the 35-year-old’s achievement. Molinari’s home city of Turin is typically famous for cars. Italy has a well‑versed passion for football. Another sport has delivered a new national hero; it can only be hoped this is properly recognised.
It was odd, in a way, that Molinari’s eight‑under‑par success came by the relatively comfortable margin of two shots. This had been a tense final day played in whipping winds, distinctive early on for how many players had the top of the leaderboard within view. McIlroy, Justin Rose, Xander Schauffele and Kevin Kisner shared second.
Drama attached to Woods had started with his birdie at the 6th. Moments later Schauffele and Spieth dropped shots; Woods was within one of the lead. At 25 minutes to five Woods was the solo leader. He later played one of the shots of the tournament, from a hazardous fairway bunker on the 10th to within 20ft of the hole.
The 11th was to prove Woods’s Carnoustie nemesis. Missing the green to the left should not have been a disaster but his attempted flop shot could not reach the putting surface. The double bogey left eight players within a shot of the lead. Woods played the closing stretch in level, his 71 and five-under aggregate enough only for a tie for sixth with Kevin Chappell and Eddie Pepperell, who revealed he had started day four with a hangover. Pepperell duly produced a 65.
A year ago it was doubtful whether Woods would play competitive golf again. A decade ago he would never have failed to press home the advantage he earned here. “I’m a little ticked off at myself,” he conceded before leaving Scotland.
McIlroy’s Sunday was in neutral before the kind of special moment that so often separates him from the rest. The Northern Irishman converted a 70ft eagle putt at the 14th, which suddenly catapulted him into a six-way tie for the lead. With an hour to play the championship was wonderfully hard to call.
McIlroy does not really have cause to rue a birdie chance at the last which slid agonisingly past, given Molinari finished two ahead of him anyway. McIlroy belied a few myths during the week relating to his supposed inability to contest at firm venues, windy venues or when the rain batters down. McIlroy was happy to turn immediate attention to praise of Molinari. “He is a fantastic golfer and a great guy,” the 2014 champion said.
Spieth, who started day four in a share of the lead, was derailed by a double bogey at the par‑five 6th. The Texan had to take a drop after landing his second shot in a bush. The defending champion did not collect another shot thereafter, with a bogey at the 15th all but ending his hopes of retaining the Claret Jug. Spieth’s 76 – the highest score of any player in the last eight Sunday groups – slid him back to tied ninth. Spieth was clearly irked at being warned for slow play by tournament officials, midway through his last round. “I think I played the fastest golf I’ve probably ever played while contending in a tournament,” he said.
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Thomas Bjorn, Europe’s Ryder Cup captain, led the immediate tributes towards Molinari, a player now guaranteed to form part of the home contingent in France this year. “Is he a man or a machine?” asked Bjorn of Molinari. After five major successes in a row for American players, this was a boost to a golfing continent. Molinari stepped firmly out of Woods’s major shadow; not many players can lay claim to that. Brillante, Francesco.
Stormy weather might have dampened some Christmas activities, but West Alabama escaped the rapidly moving storm system apparently with little damage.
Stormy weather might have dampened some Christmas activities, but West Alabama escaped the rapidly moving storm system apparently with little damage. No injuries were reported as the storm system, which brought heavy rains and gusting winds passed through the West Alabama area in the early evening.
The National Weather Service said the severe weather threat had passed Tuscaloosa County by 7:30 p.m. It brought 1.50 to 1.75 inches of rain. Colder and drier weather followed the storm.
A tornado hit some areas of downtown Mobile on Tuesday, causing severe damage.

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