pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 134
1.03M
| source
stringlengths 37
43
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__cc
| 0.628893
| 0.371107
|
2Smoke Detectors
Okay, so NASA didn't really invent the first smoke detector, but in the 1970s they did develop a newer version with the collaboration of Honeywell Corporation. At that time, their version became the most practical smoke detector ever invented. The modernized detector was equipped with a self-charging nickel cadmium
battery.
The first U.S. Space station was the Skylab, and the astronauts on board needed to be instantly alerted in case of fire or noxious gasses. NASA's modification of the smoke detector had an adjustable sensitivity, which was a phenomenal asset when it came to preventing false alarms.
Next 1 Artificial Limbs
More in The Biggest
15 Things You Need To Know Before A Hurricane Hits
The 15 Richest Fictional Villains Of All Time
15 Cities With The Richest Citizens In The World
15 Of The World's Most Insane Water Slides You NEED To Visit
Top 15 Countries With The Most Billionaires
10 Highest Grossing Horror Franchises Of All Time
10 Most Expensive Things Jay-Z Has Bought
10 Most Expensive Celebrity Homes of 2019
10 Of The World's Most Expensive Parking Spots, Ranked
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751093
|
__label__wiki
| 0.59447
| 0.59447
|
Nymox Announces Positive New Results In 7 Year Study Of NX-1207 For Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
Mar 16, 2011 10:23 AM EDT
HASBROUCK HEIGHTS, N.J., March 16, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (Nasdaq:NYMX) today announced new 2011 positive results from a long term outcome study of NX-1207 for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). The study evaluated symptomatic change and treatment status of patients involved in the Company's NX02-0012 and NX02-0013 Phase 1-2 U.S. studies of NX-1207 initially undertaken in 2003. The new data indicates that a significant percentage of patients given a single treatment of NX-1207 have now shown sustained improvement in their symptoms without other treatments for over 7 ½ years.
Patients treated with NX-1207 were followed-up on an unselected and as available basis and assessed for symptomatic improvement, treatment outcomes, and durability of efficacy 7 ½ years after a single treatment with NX-1207. As an inclusion criterion, all subjects enrolled in these studies were previous failures on conventional approved drug treatments. Data was available for 63% of the patients from the initial studies. Overall, 58% of the men in the new outcome study treated with NX-1207 reported no subsequent surgical treatment and no current drug treatment for their BPH, and had an ongoing mean improvement of 11.7 points in AUA BPH Symptom Score 7 ½ years after a single treatment with NX-1207. In addition, 38% of the patients treated with NX-1207 reported no prolonged use of any approved treatments at any time for their BPH since their original treatment with NX-1207, with a mean improvement of 13.7 points. There were no indications of any drug safety issues in any of the patients.
The Company has successfully reported four U.S. clinical trials of NX-1207 and conducted a series of long term follow-up studies of available subjects from those trials in order to monitor and assess long term safety and efficacy of NX-1207 treatment for BPH. The follow-up trials to date have provided further confirmation of the excellent safety and side effect profile of NX-1207 and evidence of enduring benefit for a significant percentage of patients treated with NX-1207.
This sustained improvement in AUA BPH symptom score after NX-1207 treatment compares favorably to the 3 to 5 points reported in published studies of currently approved BPH drugs, which, unlike NX-1207 treatment, require permanent daily administration to be effective. Currently approved drugs also have undesirable side effects such as loss of libido, impotence, retrograde ejaculation, dizziness, and other problems.
NX-1207 has entered its Phase 3 development program, the last stage before filing with the FDA for approval. NX-1207 is injected by a urologist in an office setting and involves little or no pain or discomfort. For more information about the NX-1207 Phase 3 clinical trials please go to www.clinicaltrials.gov or contact Nymox at info@nymox.com.
BPH treatment represents a growing market with more than 100 million men worldwide being estimated to suffer from BPH symptoms. The disorder is a common affliction of older men, affecting approximately half of men over age 50 and close to 90% of men by age 80, and is associated with growth in prostate size as men age. BPH causes difficulties with urination associated with aging, such as urination at night, urge to void frequently, hesitancy, weak stream, and other problems.
More information about Nymox is available at www.nymox.com, email: info@nymox.com, or 800-936-9669.
This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" as defined in the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and the actual results and future events could differ materially from management's current expectations. Such factors are detailed from time to time in Nymox's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory authorities.
CONTACT: Roy Wolvin Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation 1-800-93NYMOX www.nymox.com
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751094
|
__label__wiki
| 0.891985
| 0.891985
|
15 Famous Serial Cheaters In History
The things about cheating is that it is not just a mistake, it's a choice and, unfortunately, it's a choice that many people make a lot. We all know that being cheated on is one of the worst things that can happen to a person but whenever the news gets out about a scandalous affair between famous people, it's really hard to not pay attention. Let's be honest, we all want to know the juicy details about scandalous Hollywood hookups. Hollywood may be known for its famous cases of infidelity but the truth is that all of history is littered with stories of famous adulterers.
Pretty much everyone is familiar with the famous cheating scandals of Tiger Woods, John F. Kennedy, Jesse James, Hugh Grant, and Bill Clinton but it's not just men, there are plenty of women who have cheated too such as Claire Danes, Kristen Stewart, Kim Kardashian, Meg Ryan, and Sienna Miller. It doesn't matter if you're the President of the United States or the star of You've Got Mail, being unfaithful is a hard thing for people to forgive. Among these famous adulterers of history are queens, pop stars, painters, presidents, writers, and actresses and it does not stop there. What sets the famous cheaters on this list apart is that they were either caught or admitted to cheating multiple times. These are some of most famous people in history, all of which were serial cheaters.
Swipe to continue
Use your keyboard arrows to navigate
Let's start by going all the way back to 44 B.C. when Cleopatra was the queen of ancient Egypt. She was known for being a beautiful, confident, and wise ruler who was involved in a tragic love affair with the Roman general Marc Antony. However, she was also romantically involved with other men besides the general. When Cleopatra first came to power at 18, she was required to marry her brother, Ptolemy XIII, because a queen had to be led by a king. When she was thrown out of Egypt by her brother, she met Julius Caesar and they became entwined in a love affair though it was mostly just a political agenda on both parts. She eventually met Marc Antony and the two were married. Basically, Cleopatra cheated on her husband multiple times with Marc Antony and Julius Caesar but her husband was also her brother so it's a forgivable offense.
via Fox News
Now let's fast forward in time to another famous love affair of ancient history--Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. Throughout their relationship there were many rumors of Kutcher cheating on Moore with multiple women and now that the dust has settled, we know that quite a few of the rumors were actually true. Many women have come forward to say that they spent the night with Kutcher while he was still married to Moore including Scott Eastwood's then-girlfriend Sara Leal which Eastwood also confirmed. In a recent interview, Eastwood said that Kutcher hooked up with Leal and another young woman who was dating one of his friends at the time, proving once and for all that Kutcher was, at one point, a total scumbag and a serial cheater. Though he and his current wife Mia Kunis seem blissfully in love, we hope for her sake that he has changed his ways for good.
via The Sun
The dating history of Madonna is long and legendary and the list includes Dennis Rodman, Warren Beatty, Antonio Banderas, Lenny Kravitz, Vanilla Ice, Michael Jackson, Willem Defoe, Guy Ritchie, Alex Rodriguez, and Sean Penn. There have been cheating rumors about Madonna for decades throughout her numerous relationships and, let's be honest, there was bound to be some overlap. Her most notorious cheating scandal was the one between her and A-Rod (one of the only celebs whose dating history may actually be longer than Madonna's) which allegedly broke up her marriage with Guy Ritchie. She also dated John F. Kennedy, Jr. while she was still married to Penn (they were separated at the time) but it's hard to feel sorry for Penn who once tied Madonna to a chair and tortured her for hours before she was able to escape. Never forget.
via The Telegraph
He may have been one of the greatest writers of the 20th century but Ernest Hemingway was definitely not the ideal husband or lover. He was a heavy drinker, volatile, physically abusive, and misogynistic. Basically, not a great guy. Over the course of his life, Hemingway had four wives and countless mistresses and often times, his wife and his mistress were forced to interact with each other. Why did they put up with this? Well, he was very charismatic, charming, and handsome which explains why so many women wanted to get it on with the author of The Old Man and the Sea. It would appear that while he showed a soft and romantic side of himself to his wives and mistresses, it was his obsession with his own masculinity that seemed to require him to never be without a woman and it was his goal to seduce every woman he desired even though he saw them as inferior. It's safe to say that Hemingway was definitely not a feminist.
via Mashable
The women in Pablo Picasso's life were very often his muses and it all started with Fernande Oliver who he painted during his Rose Period and had a relationship for seven years. When Oliver left, he then fell in love with a woman named Eva Gouel who soon became sick and died an early death. Picasso claimed to have loved Gouel but he was in a relationship with Gaby Lesinasse while she was ill. He married ballerina Olga Khokhlova and while he was married, he had a mistress named Marie-Thérèse Walter who he kept secret...at least until she became pregnant with Picasso's child. Picasso and Khokhlova separated but never divorced because he didn't want his wife to receive half of his wealth. He had a relationship with Françoise Gilot who eventually left because of his abusive nature but while they were still together, he had an affair with 17-year-old Genevieve Laporte (he was 70 at the time). Great painter but not a great guy.
via Ranker
While Whoopi Goldberg was busy EGOTing, she was also busy with her love life. Goldberg has admitted to cheating multiple times in her life. She admitted, "Yes, I screwed around. Yes, while I was married. I did it five or six times, I did those mistakes." Whether she meant five or six times with one guy or with five or six separate guys, we'll never know but it doesn't matter either way--cheating is cheating. Goldberg has even said on The View that she believed that married men are "fair game" saying, "I believe if a guy allows you to come on to him or you discover he's married and you say no, and he says no no it's ok, I'm not with my wife then he's fair game." Maybe for you Whoopi, but maybe not for the rest of us. Cheating is cheating, no matter what.
This famous painter is known for her eyebrows and her red hot love affairs. Frida Kahlo was married to Diego Rivera for ten years but their marriage was riddled with affairs on both sides. One of her affairs was with Leon Trotsky and another was with Heinz Berggruen who was introduced to Kahlo by her husband before they ran off together for a month-long affair in New York. She eventually returned to her husband and never spoke to Berggruen again. She also had relationships with poets André Breton and Isamu Noguchi. But she did not just have affairs with men, Kahlo was also romantically entangled with famous women as well such as painter Georgia O’Keefe, American actress Paulette Goddard, and Mexican actress Dolores del Río. She also had a famous fling with Josephine Baker who also swang both ways. Though she only lived to be 47, she kept herself pretty busy with her beautiful works of art and her long list of lovers.
via Dallas News
Marilyn Monroe had many marriages (not as many as Elizabeth Taylor though) and many love affairs. Her most famous affair was with President John F. Kennedy which may not have even happened though many believe that it did. However, there are many stories of Monroe cheating on her first husband with executives and producers in order to further her career which is something many aspiring actresses were pressured into doing so this rumor probably isn't far from the truth. If her many biographies are to be believed, she had affairs during all three of her marriages with celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, and even Joan Crawford. These allegations are most likely untrue but Monroe did have a habit of never being without a man and said of her many relationships that she couldn't stand to be alone but she also couldn't stand to being in a relationship either.
Albert Einstein may have been smart but his smarts couldn't keep him from cheating. He and his first wife, Mileva Maric, were married in 1903 and he was cheating with many women throughout the marriage. Maric and Einstein were divorced in 1919 and just a few weeks later, Einstein married his second wife...who also happened to be his first cousin. Albert and Elsa had begun an affair in 1912 while he was married to Maric but Elsa was just one of many women. Einstein's second marriage did nothing to stop his adulterous ways and while he was discovering the theory of relativity, he was having affairs all over town. He had affairs over the course of his marriage with Elsa with women named Estella, Margarete, Ethelle and two women who were both named Toni. He may have been a genius when it came to physics but he wasn't very smart when it came to marriage.
via Mix 104.1
Matriarch of the Kardashians and self-proclaimed "momager", Kris Jenner has been pretty upfront about her affairs. In her book Kris Jenner and All Things Kardashian, she wrote about an affair while she was married to Robert Kardashian. She described the man who she called Ryan as a producer who she met at a party and that she now regrets the affair. Former soccer player, Todd Waterman has since stepped forward to confirm that he was the man that she had an affair with. There have also been rumors of Jenner having romantic relationships with other men such as O.J. Simpson and her daughter Kourtney's ex-husband Scott Disick but these rumors are not likely to be true. She was also accused of cheating on Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner) with Waterman again years after their first fling. We may never know for sure since gossip mags are not the most reliable sources of information.
Though he wrote dozens of famous plays, much of William Shakespeare’s actual life is a mystery. In the film Shakespeare in Love, the playwright is depicted as having an affair with an actress while he was still married but how much of that is actually true? He was married to Anne Hathaway after he had gotten her pregnant and we know that he was probably having an affair with a woman known as the ‘Dark Lady’ which he wrote about in his sonnets. "The Dark Lady" may have been the poet, Emilia Lanier, Elizabeth Wriothesley, Countess of Southampton but there are theories that his sonnets are actually about the countess’ husband Henry Wriothesley. Many people believe that Shakespare may have been into men and women. We’ll never know if he was a serial cheater for sure but if his steamy sonnets are any indication, he was definitely having multiple affairs.
via Lisa's History Room
Elizabeth Taylor had eight marriages over the course of her life and numerous affairs, the most famous affairs involved Eddie Fisher who was married to Debbie Reynolds at the time. After Taylor's husband died suddenly in a plane crash, Fisher was there to be her shoulder to cry on and the two began an affair and he eventually left Reynolds for the actress. However, Fisher got a taste of his own medicine when Taylor met her future husband Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra and the two began their famously torrid relationship and she divorced Fisher and married Burton a week later. She had many other affairs after her relationship with Burton and even remarried him years after they divorced only to divorce him again. As Cleopatra's actual relationship with Marc Antony was doomed from the start, so would the relationship of the actors who played the respective characters.
via WorldAtlas
Catherine the Great was known for her many affairs but she is probably known best of all for a rumor that was definitely untrue. The rumored affair is memorable because it involved a horse. Obviously, this rumor is completely untrue. Catherine had an arranged marriage to the heir of the Russian throne who was named Peter III but the two were not a match made in heaven. They were married for eight years and she bore him a son, Paul, who was probably not Peter's son as he looked very much like her lover Sergei Saltykov. She also had affairs with Stanislaus Poniatowski and Grigory Orlov while she was married and she bore them both children. Her husband was assented in 1762 and she never married again but she had many romantic entanglements. The rumor about the horse was believed to have been started in order to ridicule her for her many affairs. Say what you will about her but she definitely didn't deserve to be implicated in a rumor about her being in love with a horse.
via Salon
You may not know if from looking at a $100 bill but Benjamin Franklin was quite the babe magnet in his day. Though he was married to his wife Deborah for 44 years, he still fathered an illigitimate child on the sly who she eventually helped raise. He spent 18 years of their marraige away in London or Paris where he had many mistresses. In a famous letter to a friend, he explained how exactly to choose a mistress. He told his friend that he should always choose an older mistress rather than a younger one because you didn’t have to worry about them getting pregnant, they offered more stimulating conversation, and they would be much more likely to keep the affair to themselves. He basically gave his friend lessons on cheating. That’s right, this founding father was a grizzled, paunchy, randy old man. Just remember that the next time you see a $100 bill.
via Gawker
Back before he was president, Donald Trump was still gross and had many affairs with various blond women. He had an infamous affair with Marla Maples while he was still married to Ivana Trump. He has since implied that there have been many more affairs than the one with Maples. A former bunny claimed to have been one of his mistresses over a decade ago while he was married to Melania. The National Enquirer paid her $150,000 for her account on her romantic entanglement with Trump but the story never ran. This is probably because the company has close ties to Trump and the idea of people being paid to keep quiet about affairs with Trump is not at all surprising. There is probably something there since they had to cover the story up. In an interview, Trump was asked about his affairs and he said that he never discussed it because "it was never a problem." Sure.
Swipe through the list Easily swipe through the list for a faster and better reading experience
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751095
|
__label__wiki
| 0.562099
| 0.562099
|
How a Toddler Shot His Parents
A three-year-old in Albuquerque was looking for an iPod when he instead grabbed his pregnant mother’s handgun and shot both of his parents with one bullet. In a country with 1.7 million houses with unsecured, loaded guns in them, the only surprise is that these tragedies don’t happen more often.
Cliff Schecter
Updated 04.14.17 12:08PM ET / Published 02.02.15 2:19PM ET
Ingram Publishing/Getty
Recently, the so-called happiest place on Earth became the site of a not-very-gleeful, viral outbreak, that of the measles, "eliminated" in the United States, to much fanfare, back in 2000. Obesity in the United States continued its march upward last year, with nearly 10% of American adults suffering from diabetes--more than double the number of only 20 years ago.
And, this weekend, a 3-year-old in a northeast Albuquerque reached into his 8-months-pregnant mom's purse looking for her iPod, but instead found her gun, proceeding to shoot her and his father with one shot. Luckily for them, they will both survive.
What do all these cases have in common? America's unique brand of stupid, where anti-vaxxers trust a former Playboy model for their health information and where other ignore or deride healthy diet information shared by the First Lady solely because of her party, or worse. Where a phrase in the Second Amendment of the Constitution, clearly granting "well-regulated" militias the right to weapons for defense of the homeland has been translated into any yahoo's right to publicly carry military weapons, in many parts of the country without a permit, with a criminal record and no idea how to safely aim, store or hold a gun.
Frankly, the above themes pretty much lay out the thesis of "legitimate" Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's new book: "God, Guns, Grits & Gravy" (not gay though, for he made it clear this weekend that unlike guns or gravy, that "lifestyle" is unhealthy). It’s exactly as pathetically trite and pandering as it sounds, with the usual bromides about how all the virtuous people not on our coasts (which I suppose includes me, as I live in Cincinnati?) know better than listening to damn Commie doctors and scientists.
Guns don't kill good people, you see.
Guns are always sexy and nobody ever gets hurt, like for example, what happened this weekend in a New Mexico hotel room (or when kids in Minnesota play cops and robbers or when moms in Idaho go shopping or…).
In this case, the parents will live, and it seems at first blush they may even get prosecuted. This is actually a big deal. Often in these cases, we hear from the police that "the parents have suffered enough" or it was an "accident." Because, this weekend, in one of the 1.7 million households that allow unsecured, loaded guns to sit around waiting for a curious child—a curious child merely played his role.
In fact, a gun in the home is a significant risk factor for homicide, suicide, and unintentional shootings, according to the Brady Center’s recent report “The Truth About Kids and Guns” shows that one out of three homes with children has guns, many left unlocked or loaded.
Funny thing: If you let your three-year old play near your pool and go inside for a snooze or don't put on their seatbelt because that's Big Government Tyranny—you won't hear about accidents or the poor parents having already gone through hell. You’ll only hear about the neglect of a child.
Whether Tea Party or libertarian or whatever you want to call the “don’t tread on me” impulse, this idea cannot be an organizing principle when it drifts into obtuseness and gets other innocent people killed. There are many smart, able, and reasonable people out there, but if even 10 percent of American adults (and this would be quite generous) lack any judgment or common sense, that is 24,200,000 Americans, per the 2013 census. That’s too many people whom we're supposed to just trust to use good sense with a loaded weapon.
I believe there's a conservative demi-god who once said "trust, but verify." So yeah, what he said.
If the lives of my children are on the line, I need a bit more to go on than "don't tread on me."
Through law and regulation we do this with most potentially dangerous things, from what speed you're allowed to drive to how old your kids need to be to allow them in the hotel hot tub. We can similarly regulate, encourage (see, for example, The Ask Campaign), and use shaming techniques to get people to safely lock up their guns, vaccinate their kids and maybe feed them a salad every once in a while.
Yeah, I know we can't outlaw doltishness. But we don't have to glorify it. And we certainly don't have to enable it—via lack of sensible regulation—to hurt innocent bystanders.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751099
|
__label__wiki
| 0.979759
| 0.979759
|
Politics Democratic Institutions Minister rejects call to subject political parties to privacy laws
Democratic Institutions Minister rejects call to subject political parties to privacy laws
Bill Curry
Published October 15, 2018 Updated October 15, 2018
The federal government is rejecting opposition calls for its electoral reform bill to be amended to subject political parties to federal privacy laws.
Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould appeared Monday as the last scheduled witness before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee dives into a marathon effort this week to review and vote on more than 300 amendments to Bill C-76, which makes changes to the Canada Elections Act.
NDP MP Nathan Cullen and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May both urged the minister to accept amendments to the bill that would address concerns that political parties are exempt from federal laws ensuring the personal information of Canadians is kept safe and is not used in unauthorized ways.
While Ms. Gould did not state categorically that she opposes such a change to the bill, it was strongly implied in her comments.
“I would like to see a broader study of privacy and political parties. I think that it’s something that is really important,” she said. “I think it does require a deeper dive.”
Mr. Cullen said he was told that the Liberal MPs on the committee will vote this week to defeat all of the NDP’s amendments.
“It’s so disappointing and dangerous for the Liberals to be dogmatic about this,” he said.
Both the federal Privacy Commissioner and the head of Elections Canada have called for privacy laws to apply to political parties. The Commons access to information, privacy and ethics committee – which has been studying allegations that a Canadian company was used during the 2016 Brexit referendum as a way of getting around Britain’s domestic election financing laws – made an all-party recommendation in June that extending privacy laws to political parties was “urgently” required.
Ms. Gould also informed MPs that she would soon be announcing an independent commission that would set the rules for leaders’ debates during election campaigns. However, she said this would be done without legislation, for which she was promptly criticized by the Conservatives and NDP.
“When you’re looking at an election campaign, you need to have all parties on board to have the legitimacy of a process such as this," Tory MP John Nater said.
Bill C-76 and several government amendments promise to address the potential for foreign actors or mysterious third parties to influence voters with targeted ads in traditional media or online platforms.
Any third party that spends more than $500 on partisan advertising during a campaign or in a new “pre-election” period will be required to register with Elections Canada and open a dedicated Canadian bank account. All ads will have to identify the source of the message.
“These measures will ensure greater transparency and provide Canadians with more information with respect to who is trying to influence their decision,” Ms. Gould told MPs. The sudden urgency to pass the bill comes after lengthy government delays, despite repeated calls from Elections Canada to do so in time for the 2019 federal election.
The Liberal government introduced many of Bill C-76’s proposals in November, 2016, as Bill C-33. That bill promised to deliver on a campaign pledge to overturn the controversial Fair Elections Act, which Parliament approved in 2014 under a Conservative government. The Liberal legislation would end the previous government’s restrictions on the ability of Elections Canada to promote voter turnout and would reinstate the voter identification card as a valid source of ID, reversing a key element of the 2014 act.
Liberals strike deal with Conservatives to raise pre-election spending limits
Federal government beefs up bill aimed at preventing foreign interference in Canadian elections
Preventing election meddling requires a collective international effort. Canada should take the lead
Follow Bill Curry on Twitter @curryb
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751101
|
__label__cc
| 0.507061
| 0.492939
|
US presidential candidates can’t afford to ignore welfare reform
Zaid Jilani
The number of Americans living on less than $2 a day has doubled from 1996 to 2015 – and researchers point to the law as one of the drivers of extreme poverty
Thu 11 Apr 2019 11.17 EDT Last modified on Thu 11 Apr 2019 12.07 EDT
‘Among 2020 Democratic candidates, it is entrepreneur Andrew Yang who has proposed the largest cash transfer program that would benefit the poor.’ Photograph: Kristin Callahan/ACE Pictures/REX/Shutterstock
In late 2015, a pair of researchers stumbled upon a remarkable finding: since the 1996 federal welfare reform law, the number of people who are living on less than $2 a day in America has doubled. They found that 1.5m American households, including three million children, are now living at or near this threshold, as guaranteed government aid that once existed in this country has all but disappeared. While they didn’t place all of the blame on reduced government aid, they pointed to the welfare reform law as one of the main drivers of increased extreme poverty in the US.
With that finding in hand, I attended a 20th anniversary event in Washington DC featuring many of the architects of the welfare reform law, which placed strict limits on aid to needy families. Bruce Reed, one of Bill Clinton’s chief domestic policy advisers and the man who coined the former president’s pledge to “end welfare as we know it”, told me that while the law had its shortcomings, overall it was a “success”. Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, another early advocate for welfare reform, was similarly unrepentant. “It did work,” he said. “Poverty went down and more people are working.”
Trump wants to give 62 cents of every dollar to the military. That's immoral | Reverend William Barber, Dr Liz Theoharis and Lindsay Koshgarian
In the years since the passage of the welfare reform law, its architects have generally shied away from discussing any shortfalls of the law. You could chalk this up to ego, as if they simply are unwilling to admit their role in gutting America’s social safety net. But strong economic growth in the 1990s helped shield many of the law’s effects from the eyes of the public and government officials.
A growing body of research performed since then, such as the finding about extreme poverty, has shown us some of the downsides of eliminating “welfare as we know it”.
Earlier this year, a group of researchers released a working paper that examined the relationship between welfare reform and various social behaviors among adolescents. What they found is that welfare reform increased a number of antisocial behaviors – ranging from increasing smoking and drug use among boys and girls to increasing fighting and skipping school among boys.
These findings call into question claims among welfare reform proponents that the law, by reducing dependence on government aid, would reduce an intergenerational “culture of poverty”. In fact, the paper found “no significant effects of welfare reform on youth prosocial behaviors” – such as volunteering or participation in school clubs – for either boys or girls.
Lest you think the researchers were leftwing ideologues, previous research they conducted found that welfare reform was associated with an increase in civic participation among women and a decrease in illicit drug use, findings which many welfare reform proponents are likely to use to defend the program.
Rutgers University public health economist Nancy Reichman, one of the authors of the study, wrote to me over email that the results of the welfare reform law are a “mixed bag”, and that the main lesson is that “policies often have unintended consequences, that large-scale changes such as the 1996 welfare reform legislation should not be implemented based on assumptions for which there is a limited evidence base (eg there was no evidence underlying the assumption that welfare reform would prevent the intergenerational transmission of welfare dependence), and that success should not be declared based on a limited set of short-term outcomes”.
But their conclusion about the law’s impact on children – as well as the finding about extreme poverty – should force us to actually debate the impact of the law and talk about how it could be improved, something most politicians in America have refused to do.
The one exception was in 2016, when Vermont senator Bernie Sanders – locked in a battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination – called for repealing the welfare reform law. But since then, Sanders has not authored and released a proposal to alter or repeal the welfare reform law.
While the idea may seem utopian on first glance, cash transfer programs have been implemented all over the world, with some success
Among 2020 Democratic candidates, it is entrepreneur Andrew Yang who has proposed the largest cash transfer program that would benefit the poor: the universal basic income (UBI). Under Yang’s UBI, every American adult would get $1,000 monthly, with no strings attached. While the idea may seem utopian on first glance, cash transfer programs have been implemented all over the world, with some success.
Brazil’s cash transfer program bolsa família (family allowance) is credited with halving extreme poverty in that country; one US state, Alaska, even has a UBI funded by oil residuals and state investments. In 2017, every Alaska resident received about $1,100 annually from the state. While some on the right may worry that a UBI would reduce work incentives, comprehensive research on Iran’s UBI found that most residents did not cut back on work hours.
Welfare reform’s proponents, like Reed, would argue that the law has overall been a success. Critics would point to the recent findings by Reichman and her colleagues that the law has appeared to harm the children of recipients. Wherever you come down on the debate, it is long past time to have it.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751102
|
__label__cc
| 0.657508
| 0.342492
|
The internet grows up
Mary Richert
Social networking sites like Facebook are now more popular than porn sites, but does that mean we want real relationships?
It's an old joke among web geeks that "the internet is for porn". OK, so it was invented by the department of defence for the sake of communications, but if there's one industry that can commodify a resource faster than the oil industry can waste it, it's porn. It makes sense, too, since sex is both a basic animal (and human) instinct and also something we frown on and obsess over to the extent that it's frightening. When the internet was young and users were still basically anonymous, there was no better way to indulge in a guilty pleasure than from behind the veil of your monitor.
But the internet is maturing, or at least its users seem to be. Porn sites have now been overtaken in popularity by social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster and Facebook. At first blush, this seems like a distinction without a difference. After all, the voyeuristic aspect of being able to peek into other people's personal lives is part of the attraction of social networking sites. But the sites have evolved beyond poorly designed collections of profile pages where teenagers and college students trade photos and gossip. At times, these sites are little more than sophisticated time-wasting devices, but as communities of friends and professional contacts integrate these new resources, the sites become more functional.
It seems we're finally starting to use the internet for its intended purpose: communication and information sharing. If you think of the internet as a model for the collective human brain, it's encouraging to know that slightly more than half of it is occupied by subjects other than sex, and that we are, in fact, still quite interested in forming meaningful connections to one another. Yep, that was the point all along, but at least initially, it was much easier to simply put smutty pictures on a website than facilitate real human interaction.
That's not to say we've reached the pinnacle of communication. We still fail to communicate with the people next to us every day. Devices like mobile phones, PDAs and do-it-all units like the iPhone have tethered us to our bosses, co-workers and friends, but emails and text messages are no substitute for face-to-face contact.
There's something similarly antisocial about social networking sites. An internet connection does not a relationship make. Part of the attraction of sites like Facebok is that we can be on friendly terms with people we don't particularly care to spend much time with. Even with good friends, though, being able to walk away from the keyboard can sometimes be a lifesaver. Maintaining close personal friendships can be exhausting. That long conversation about your friend's breakup of the century is much less of an imposition when you can take a break, grab a cup of coffee and mutter to yourself about how she's better off without that loser anyway.
Facebook and other networking sites may be popular, not because of their potential as avenues for oversharing, but because they have struck upon ways to allow us to stay in touch while minimising the awkwardness of those drawn-out phone calls. All too often, we don't say what we mean, we don't choose the right words and we don't listen and make a sincere effort to understand each other. Unfortunately, the sincerity and compassion required for real communication isn't part of the programming. That's something we still have to develop ourselves.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751103
|
__label__wiki
| 0.970956
| 0.970956
|
'Like prisoners of war': North Korean labour behind Russia 2018 World Cup
Claims of long hours, few breaks, dire living conditions, low pay and death emerge from construction of stadium in St Petersburg
Alec Luhn in St Petersburg
Sun 4 Jun 2017 05.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 6 Jun 2018 05.34 EDT
A light show at the newly completed Zenit Arena. Photograph: Alexander Demianchuk/Tass
A test opening of St Petersburg’s Zenit Arena in February treated 10,000 spectators to car racing, motorcycle tricks, dancers and a performing bear introduced as “Russia’s greatest hero”. But the patriotic ceremony failed to note that the stadium, in which Russia kick off the Confederations Cup in a fortnight in preparation for next year’s World Cup, was built mostly by immigrant workers from Asia, including from one of the world’s most repressive countries, North Korea.
A subcontractor who asked to remain anonymous said at least 190 “downtrodden” North Koreans had worked long hours with no days off between August and November last year and that one, a 47-year-old, had died on site. “These guys are afraid to speak to people. They don’t look at anyone. They’re like prisoners of war,” the subcontractor said.
An employee of a North Korean state company that brings workers to Russia told the Observer at a St Petersburg construction site that the men often worked long hours and had to give part of their pay to the regime in Pyongyang to “facilitate the country’s defence”, which includes its nuclear weapons programme.
Tens of thousands of North Korean labourers in Russia work in often “slave-like conditions”, according to Marzuki Darusman, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The companies that hire them “become complicit in an unacceptable system of forced labour”, he said.
The Zenit Arena under construction in July 2015. Photograph: Grigory Dukor / Reuters/Reuters
Although a law passed in Russia in 2013 exempts employers connected with the World Cup from much of the country’s labour regulations, the North Koreans’ work at the stadium calls into question Fifa’s and Moscow’s commitment to human rights in the preparations for the tournament. In a blanket statement in response to questions about the use of North Korean labour, Fifa told the Observer it monitored conditions for migrant workers and would “continue to follow up any allegations made with regards to human rights violations”.
The St Petersburg construction committee said the authorities had conducted regular inspections to make sure conditions at the Zenit Arena site met Russian labour laws. But according to the subcontractor, North Koreans at the site worked at least 11 hours a day for $10-$15, seven days a week. They not only earned less than other migrant workers but lived in more cramped conditions, six to eight workers sharing one construction caravan.
The North Korean had died from a heart attack, the subcontractor said. He added that fatigue was a danger. “When you lose your reaction time due to fatigue, you can get hurt out of the blue, just like that.”
While Russia’s World Cup preparations have not had the same number of fatalities as those for the 2022 competition in Qatar, where hundreds of migrant workers have been killed during a huge construction boom, the Observer found in 2015 that at least five workers had died in accidents at the Zenit Arena. The subcontractor said another five had died between August and December 2016, including the North Korean.
Allegations of exploitation of North Korean workers are only the latest chapter in the spotted history of the Zenit Arena. When St Petersburg started planning a new stadium in 2006 for Zenit, the project was scheduled to finish by the end of 2008 and cost 6.7bn roubles (£92m at today’s exchange rate). As construction finally neared its end almost a decade later, the city’s vice-governor, Igor Albin, said the cost of the 68,000-seat venue had risen more than sixfold to 43bn roubles.
The actual cost is very likely to be much higher – owing to corruption, mismanagement and fluctuations in the exchange rate – making it one of the most expensive stadiums per seat in the world, according to Dmitry Sukharev, a former construction worker who heads the St Petersburg branch of the global anti-corruption NGO Transparency International. The St Petersburg construction committee did not respond to a request for comment about costs.
Despite the huge spending, Fifa reportedly found last year that the Zenit Arena’s removable pitch did not meet its shock absorption standards. Vladimir Putin is said to have told Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, that the stadium’s scandal-ridden construction was a “very sad story” and promised that all defects would be fixed. After the city fired the general contractor last July over delays and cost overruns, the vice-governor Albin managed to gather more than 4,000 workers at the site for a final push to finish it. That is when three companies brought in North Korean workers, the subcontractor said.
Delays, corruption and cheap labour: the budget-smashing World Cup stadium - video
Pyongyang has been exporting manpower to Russia since Soviet times, including to logging camps in Russia’s far east. In testimony provided to the Observer, Choi Myong-bok, a refugee who escaped a logging camp in the Amur region in 2002, said the camp was “a living hell, it was an open-air prison, wardens watched us around the clock”. He said he lived in inhumane conditions in crowded construction caravans infested by lice and bedbugs and subsisted on melted snow, rice, salt and whatever mushrooms and berries he could gather.
Pyongyang earns up to $2.3bn (£1.8bn) a year sending workers such as Choi abroad, mostly to China and Russia. This is despite UN sanctions meant to deprive it of foreign currency for developing nuclear weapons. Moscow has recently signed agreements with Pyongyang to increase trade and employment of North Korean workers at agricultural and timber operations. According to the federal migration service, 30,000 North Koreans were estimated to be in Russia as of 2015.
Last year the two governments signed a treaty to extradite citizens who illegally enter either country, an agreement condemned by the UN as a mechanism to send North Korean workers who seek asylum back to face torture or death. But only a handful have sought asylum. “They all have families and if one runs away then it wouldn’t be good for his family, because it’s a communist order there, like we had under Stalin,” said Maria Trush, the administrator of a branch of Apart Hostel, a five-storey dormitory in an industrial zone outside St Petersburg close to where a North Korean subcontractor has an office.
Trush has been housing construction workers on and off for the past five years. She said the North Koreans typically worked “like ants”, starting at 8am and ending at 11pm. In the little free time they had, they watched North Korean state television or dubbed Soviet films.
Malsar Khuseinov, the director of Soyuz-Stroi, a construction company that employs 200 North Koreans, said workers were allowed to “extend the work day as much as they need” to meet a deadline. Pyongyang “commands and controls them” through “captains” on the ground, he said. “They have the right kind of discipline,” he said, adding that it was “out of the question” that any of them would run away.
Another construction firm, Dalpiterstroi, employed 60 North Koreans at the Zenit Arena, the company’s PR and advertising director, Anna Bochenkova, said. But they worked eight, not 11, hours a day, and she denied allegations of low pay and overcrowded construction caravans. “They work in good conditions with standard pay, like all workers on St Petersburg construction sites, at market price, and have good living conditions,” she said.
Bochenkova said she could not comment on the North Korean worker who died but denied it could have been caused by overwork. “A person can die from a heart attack just walking down the street anywhere in the world,” she said.
On a recent night in the suburb of Shushary, this reporter found a two-storey, metal-sided dormitory where North Korean workers live in a large cluster of similar housing. A man preparing food in the small, low kitchen immediately made a call on his cellphone and within minutes a well-dressed man who gave his name only as Choi arrived. He said he was a translator for the North Korean state company that brings workers to Russia.
Thirty-two men lived in the Shushary dormitory, he said, and another 100 were working in the suburb of Pargolovo. A North Korean fell to his death from a nine-storey building there in June, Choi confirmed. The men are sent to Russia for five years, work 12 hours a day with two hours for lunch, rest on weekends, and make 50,000-60,000 roubles a month (£685-£825), of which they give 5%-10% to the Pyongyang government, he said.
This aerial view shows the construction site of the new Zenit Arena. Photograph: Dmitry Lovetsky/AP
Nearby, a group of North Korean workers were still pouring concrete on the 22nd storey of a residential tower at 10.30pm. When asked, one of them at the base of the tower said he made 50,000 to 60,000 roubles a month. A security guard quickly ended the conversation.
The Observer also ran into Choi and another worker on a muddy track between the dormitories and the building sites. The worker said he started each day around 8.30am or 9am and carried on until 7pm or 8pm, with two hours for lunch. That day, a delayed batch of concrete had pushed work later, he said. “I came to see this city, which is beautiful and famous around the world,” he said, adding that he had worked in Russia since 2014.
Asked how much he made, he also said 50,000 to 60,000 roubles a month. The conversation was cut short by security guards who briefly detained this reporter in a construction trailer.
World Cup 2018: Fifa admits workers have suffered human rights abuses
The Norwegian football magazine Josimar recently found another group of about 100 North Koreans who were living in construction caravans and working long hours at another Dalpiterstroi site, surrounded by barbed wire and guards with dogs.
In reality, the workers are likely to make far less than the figures they cite as the Pyongyang regime takes 30%-50% of their income, according to Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert. Nevertheless, working abroad was one of the few ways for North Koreans to improve their financial situation, he added.
While there are many exceptions to the standard 40-hour week stipulated in Russia’s labour code, working at least 10 hours a day for most of five years, like the North Koreans said they do, would violate the law, two lawyers told this newspaper.
Last week it emerged that Infantino had admitted that Fifa was aware of the issues. In a letter dated 22 May to Nordic FA presidents who had raised the issue, he said: “Fifa is aware of and firmly condemns the often appalling labour conditions under which North Korean workers are employed in various countries around the world.” He acknowledged that an inspection team for Fifa’s decent work monitoring system, set up to address concerns about human rights abuses, did find “strong evidence for the presence of North Korean workers on the construction site in St Petersburg” on a visit in November. “The issues found were subsequently raised with the respective company and with the general contractor,” Infantino wrote. Fifa said a further inspection in March found no more North Koreans working at the site.
According to Svetlana Gannushkina, a veteran migrant rights activist who helps North Korean refugees, the authorities rarely raise any questions about these workers. “The rights of people working on our territory should be respected, no matter who their overlords are, but this isn’t done,” she said. “It’s an area of complete lawlessness.”
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751104
|
__label__wiki
| 0.999164
| 0.999164
|
Socks the Blue Peter cat at centre of new deception scandal
Ben Dowell
Wed 19 Sep 2007 19.07 EDT First published on Wed 19 Sep 2007 19.07 EDT
The former Blue Peter editor who was moved to a new job following the show's fake phone-in scandal is understood to have been suspended after another instance of alleged viewer deception on his watch emerged.
Richard Marson is said to have been sent home on Monday after it emerged that the wrong name had been chosen for the new Blue Peter cat in an online poll.
It is understood that the name - Socks - chosen for the cat that joined the show on January 9 2006 was not the one that came out top in the online poll and the situation was not explained to viewers. According to a senior production source, the BBC head of children's programmes, Richard Deverell, is said to have told Mr Marson of the decision after being told to take that course of action by more senior executives.
Mr Marson is understood to be consulting his lawyers and is currently not at work.
Staff at the BBC were said to be in shock at the decision to suspend one of the most popular members of the children's programming department.
"I think the feeling was that if we can't honestly name a Blue Peter cat, then really, that is perhaps the last straw in this whole fiasco," the source said. "The feeling has always been that when alleged deception involves children it is a bit more serious."
A BBC spokesman declined to comment on Mr Marson's situation.
Mr Marson was moved from his role as editor of Blue Peter in May, two months after the programme admitted it had rigged the result of a phone-in competition.
He moved to a different role with the BBC as an executive producer following an internal review of the incident, in which a girl on a studio tour was asked to pose as the winner of a phone-in competition after technical difficulties meant callers could not get through.
A later Panorama investigation into the premium phone lines scandal claimed that Mr Marson "commended the researcher responsible for their initiative".
In July Ofcom imposed a £50,000 fine on the BBC - the corporation's first financial sanction by the regulator - for the Blue Peter deception.
An internal investigation into the phone-in was commissioned by the director of BBC Vision, Jana Bennett, and conducted by the former BBC chief adviser on editorial policy, Andrea Willis. It was passed to the BBC Trust in May.
It also emerged yesterday that the producer of Liz Kershaw's BBC 6 Music radio show had been dismissed for alleged misconduct.
In July it was revealed that the Liz Kershaw show on 6 Music was using production staff on competitions on recorded shows. The programme was suspended.
Television industry
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751106
|
__label__wiki
| 0.754934
| 0.754934
|
Inside the Guardian: how the live blog has changed the face of news reporting
The readers’ editor explains how the Guardian’s live blog has transformed the way journalists in the UK, Australia and US work together to cover international news stories 24/7
Thu 4 Feb 2016 11.00 EST Last modified on Fri 5 Feb 2016 13.09 EST
The Guardian Australia office in Sydney picks up news reporting at about midnight UK time. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian
Once, wherever Guardian readers lived in the UK, they received just one edition a day.
Now, within seconds of a news event they have access to Guardian reports in a 24-hour global rolling news cycle. Coverage is passed from journalists in the UK to their colleagues in the US and then Australia and back to the UK. The opportunities are exciting, the responsibilities immense.
After the attacks in Paris that left 130 dead last November, readers commenting on the coverage underscored that responsibility. Readers caught in the area of the attacks used the Guardian to follow events as they hid and as a guide to safety. One wrote: “I was also struggling to find a safe way home and the Guardian played a role in helping me do so.” When I was a young reporter it never occurred to me that either I or any of my colleagues would carry such a responsibility.
The Paris attacks, which began on the Friday evening of 13 November, illustrated the complexity of covering such a sprawling story requiring “instant reporting, analytical context and vivid presentation”, according to an internal report circulated to the Guardian’s executive board.
The first reports came through too late for our first newspaper edition, which is printed at about 9pm for the west country and Scotland. As the scale of the attacks became apparent we ran a special “slip” edition at 11pm, and by the end of the night 63% of all the papers we had printed carried coverage of the attacks. We sold 10,000 extra copies on Saturday.
One hundred and 30 people were killed in a series of bombings and shootings across Paris in November. Photograph: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images
At the heart of the online coverage, as the internal report made clear, was the live blog that ran for 12 days: “The ability to pass – the live blog in particular – from London to New York, on to Australia and back to London around the clock, maintaining 24-hour coverage, gives us a huge advantage.”
The technique of passing major stories to Guardian journalists around the world has been developed over the past 18 months. Its first major test was the rolling Greek financial crisis.
The US takes over a live blog on major events such as the Paris attacks from the UK at about 6pm-7pm. Then at about midnight, UK time, Australia takes over and the UK picks it back up again at 7am.
The internal report sets out the first few days after the Friday evening attacks: “Saturday was an extraordinary day – by mid-morning we had six reporters in Paris and desk editors arranged around the clock with support from video, pictures, interactives and commentary. The figures from the web tell part of the story: 14.4 million unique browsers – when our previous best was 9.99 million. The live blog was astonishing – it had pace and accuracy, but did not fall into the trap of reporting every rumour – and there were many – every claim and accusation.
“This sustained effort with scores of people working 12- to 14-hour days, coming in on their days off, continued through to Wednesday.” The interest in the story remained intense: 10 million unique browsers on Monday – three days after the attacks – and 9.75 million on Tuesday.
There were key lessons to be learned, according to the report: “That we are now succeeding in joining up all the parts of editorial – from visuals, interactives, graphics and pictures to reporting, through community and data, through to production.”
In the last nine years or so we have gone from a one-dimensional way of telling the story to a very complicated one.
Live blogging, a technique of telling a story that fuses original reporting and aggregated news and comment, has become the default way to tell major stories, the trunk of the tree from which individual stories branch off. Live blogs need to be written with care and restraint, or they can appear too breathless.
Every day, there is a political live blog, a business live blog and at least one sport live blog. At weekends, the Guardian can have 10 sport live blogs running at the same time. So successful are they with readers that we are even running live blogs on Barcelona and Real Madrid matches. We are also translating Premier League football and international boxing matches into Spanish, which attracts terrific traffic in the US, where a third of Guardian online readers are based.
Contributing to the success of live blogs is the user-friendly nature of the software tools that make it possible for a reporter, both in the office and out, to work in one file in which he or she can embed video, tweets, pictures, audios and text.
Paul Johnson, the Guardian’s deputy editor, said a good example of how this works was the publication on 21 January of the report on the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, which stated that Vladimir Putin “probably” ordered the assassination.
Johnson said that early on that morning journalists were locked in a room with the report and given 30 minutes to read it and five minutes to file stories.
Marina Litvinenko and her son Anatoly listen as their lawyer, Ben Emmerson, speaks during a press conference on 21 January. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
Reporters write directly into a file using the workflow software and the story is published as soon as a desk editor has checked and “released” it. “That is very close to real-time publishing,” according to Johnson, “whereas other newspapers still have to file copy to their news desk, which must then send it to subeditors and publish on the web. Speed is really important.”
The Litvinenko story is another good example of the complexity of news in an integrated print and online world where up to 600 articles are published every day by the Guardian.
Before the publication of the report on the Thursday morning, two stories to set the scene are launched by 7am – a preview by Luke Harding, sketching out the story so far, followed by an article by Shaun Walker about Viktor Ivanov, named in the report, who denies any involvement with the death of Litvinenko.
These two stories are overtaken two hours later as the report is published when a further three items are launched on the site: a live blog that takes in all events, a separate story about the report’s publication and, thirdly, a dramatis personae of all those involved.
All stories are updated with reaction from those involved, including Litvinenko’s wife, Marina. A video of Marina Litvinenko being interviewed by Harding is launched during the morning, so six items are up on the site by midday. In the afternoon, fresh stories are planned for the website and the following day’s paper.
Johnson said: “In the last nine years or so we have gone from a very one-dimensional way of telling the story to a very complicated one.”
On the same day, there were other big stories such as TFL taking over London rail routes, the shares crash, the leaked Jimmy Savile report and the latest instalment of the Guardian’s month-long campaign on the NHS. And liveblogging Davos.
It is indeed a complicated world.
• This article was amended on the 5 February 2016 to remove a redundant definite article.
To support Guardian journalism and take part in live events and online debates sign up to become a Guardian Member.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751107
|
__label__wiki
| 0.726551
| 0.726551
|
Sarah Boseley's global health blog
Time to target the shocking neglect of stillbirths
Minnie Driver's new film, Return to Zero, is about a couple who suffer a stillbirth, said to be the first feature film on the subject. Is it time for a post-2015 global target to reduce their numbers?
Sarah Boseley
Wed 21 May 2014 07.58 EDT First published on Wed 21 May 2014 07.58 EDT
Every year 2.6 million babies are stillborn. It is a tragedy for their parents, but this statistic is largely forgotten by everybody else. Photograph: Alamy
Minnie Driver, in a new film from the US, plays a woman who is told a while before she is due to give birth that her baby is dead in the womb. Return to Zero tells the desperate but all too common story of a couple who suffer a stillbirth. It was written, directed and produced by Sean Hanish who went through the horrible experience with his wife himself.
Perhaps it is because it is so sad, but stillbirth is little discussed. In acknowledgement of that, the film's website offers a place for people to tell their own stories. There are charities like Sands in the UK, which offer support, but it is surprising how little attention stillbirths get in affluent and in poorer countries alike. There seems to be a willingness to brush them under the carpet, as if these were babies that were never meant to be.
That's not so. Joy Lawn, professor of maternal, reproductive and child health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and lead author of a new five-paper series on stillbirths and neonatal deaths in the Lancet, which I wrote about here, points out that by 28 weeks' gestation, the point at which the World Health Organisation classifies death in the womb as stillbirth, babies are usually viable.
Every year 2.6 million babies are stillborn. But, says Lawn, these babies, whose loss is a tragedy for their parents, are forgotten by everybody else. And it does not look as though they will be remembered in the post-2015 global targets that will follow on from the Millennium Development Goals. She told me:
We have been told the post-2015 goals should have a target for newborns, but no way will there be a stillbirth target.
Why is there this resistance to focusing on stillbirths? From the family's point of view, there is little difference in the scale of the tragedy between having a stillborn baby and the death of a baby a few days old. And from a practical and economic point of view, while everybody applauds efforts to bring contraception to more people, while parents run a high risk of the death of their babies, there is far less incentive to limit the numbers conceived.
Infant and child mortality
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751108
|
__label__wiki
| 0.878171
| 0.878171
|
A half-hour's inaction and wagging feet – chess is a world beyond my grasp
Staring at a stage on which a man is doing nothing tops the long list of bizarre sporting events I have had to report on
Andy Bull
Tue 15 Dec 2009 13.01 EST First published on Tue 15 Dec 2009 13.01 EST
English Grand Masters Luke McShane (R) and Nigel Short play a game of chess in a London Eye capsule ahead of the London Chess Classic. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
I have covered some curious and extraordinary things in the four years I've been reporting sport for the Guardian. There was the pig derby at Cholderton, and the cricket match on a sandbank in the English Channel. I've written about the wall game at Eton, and the cheese rolling on Cooper's Hill. I have sung along to Neil Diamond at the world indoor bowls championships at Potter's leisure resort, sheltered from the pouring rain during the beach volleyball in Beijing, and slipped up in the mud at the bottle-kicking in Hallatrow.
But none of it compares to what I saw at the London Olympia conference centre last Thursday. There, I sat in a theatre room along with 100 or so other paying spectators, staring at a stage on which a man was doing nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever, for 30 minutes.
I say nothing, but internally, invisibly to us punters, I assume David Howell's mind was working overtime. Either that or he kept distracting himself from the task in hand by thinking about what he would have for dinner that night. Three feet away his opponent, Magnus Carlsen, was fiddling idly with a cufflink. Howell sat staring at the board, head in hands, black hair spraying out from between his fingertips. Carlsen had just castled his king, a move evidently so latent with unforeseen ramifications that it stunned Howell into inaction. And so he sat there, staring, unmoving. And so did the crowd.
Carlsen squirmed in his seat. On the stage alongside him, three other games were also in progress. He turned his head to examine the big screen backdrop, which mapped out the progress of all four matches in real time. He slouched, wagged his foot, sipped his drink, toyed with his cuff again, and then got up and walked up and down the row of tables, staring over the shoulders of his rival players to examine their matches.
Ten minutes ticked by before Carlsen exited stage left. Fifteen passed, and he returned stage right. Howell has still not moved.
Chess is not a great spectator sport.
Carlsen, a 19-year-old Norwegian who looks a little like Matt Damon, is the world's No1 player. He has a penchant for wearing shiny silk shirts that shimmer under the stage lights. Howell, who is a year younger, has a world ranking of 202. This was the biggest mismatch at the London Chess Classic.
Six other players were competing in the Classic. Three of them, like Carlsen, had come from overseas, the others, like Howell, are British. There was Vladimir Kramnik, the former world No1 from the town of Tuapse on the Black Sea (world rank No5); Ni Hua, the stoical captain of the Chinese international team (61); and Hikaru 'H-bomb' Nakamura, the US champion (24), renowned for his aggressive style and willingness to play blitz chess against all-comers in the lobby between matches. The English contingent were led by Nigel Short (ranked 29), and Michael Adams (36) the national No1 and No2, and two younger players Howell (202), and Luke McShane (158).
The format is a good one. The eight players play in a round-robin, seven games each in seven successive days. There are three points for a win, and one for a draw. This rule, it transpires, is a little unpopular with the purists, who are more accustomed to the system of one point per win, and a half for a draw. The three points rule is sniffily referred to as the "football system". Unsurprisingly, the purists are in the majority at the London Chess Classic. Unless you love and understand chess, which I don't, there was really no reason to be there.
That said, even for a beginner like myself the competition had its moments, they just weren't on the board. The eight competitors have engagingly distinct personalities, magnified by the cartoonish portraits of them that are hung all along the corridor walls of the conference centre. Short, dressed in a sober black suit which he keeps buttoned up all day long, is a schoolmasterly sort. Like Carlsen, he likes to stroll up and down the stage looking at the other games in between his moves, only Short does it with the air of a teacher supervising an exam, peering knowingly over his pupils' shoulders.
On the first day at the Classic, Short played out an eight-hour match with McShane. He lost, as he knew he was likely too a long way before the match had reached its 163rd, and final, move. But he played on, he later admitted, out of a desire to set a new personal record for his longest-ever game. Even the purists, I'm told, struggled to sit through that one.
I like McShane. He is 25. Like all of the players here, he was prodigiously talented as a junior player. Since then, though, he had decided that he would struggle to make a full-time career from the game and gone off to work for Goldman Sachs. On the Classic's third day, he was eight minutes late for his match because he was caught in traffic. Howell was also late, but given that he was staying in a hotel around the corner with the six other players, he had less of an excuse. "David will be here just as soon as he has got out of bed or finished his drink," explained the tournament director Malcolm Pein. I can't help but wonder if his tardiness explains the half-hour deliberation of a single move he subjected us all to shortly afterwards.
If the tournament were being played under FIDE (World Chess Federation) rules both Howell and McShane would have been disqualified for their late arrivals. Two Chinese players, I later learned, were recently forced to forfeit their matches because they were a minute late back from their cigarette breaks. This is not a FIDE tournament, though, it has been organised to popularise and promote chess in London, and to make a profit. The organisers had done a good job. The place was thronged with fans, many of them from school chess clubs on outings.
Kramnik, who was playing McShane, was not at all flustered by his opponent's tardiness, a reaction which befitted his stature in the game. Kramnik, who beat Gary Kasparov in London in 2000, is a tall, looming figure with a donnish demeanour. He wore brown corduroys and a woollen jacket, and he did not smile very much. He is an impatient player when it is not his move, leaving the stage at every possible opportunity, and letting his opponent sit alone studying the shapes. Kramnik always returning with either a top-up of Coca-Cola or a fresh cup of coffee, which he places alongside the half-drunk predecessors he has left on the table, next to a packet of tissues.
After 30 minutes had passed, Howell made his move. Carlsen responded with dismissive promptness, slapping his palm firmly down on his clock's stop-button. Howell ran his hands through his hair, and slumped his head back into his palms, resuming his pose of a moment before. This, it occurred to me, could be a very long afternoon.
Exhausted by the soporific, stultifying atmosphere, I stepped out into the foyer, worrying that the rustling bustle of my exit would draw black looks from the more committed spectators. Outside, as I leant against a wall, I overheard two British grandmasters in conversation.
"No, the next tournament I play will be somewhere warm and sunny," said the first.
"Hastings?" replied the second.
These two were part of the team providing the online commentary for the tournament, which is being followed live on the net by an audience of thousands. In a room adjoining the auditorium, their fellow commentators were providing a rolling analysis of all four matches to a live audience. When I went in, it was standing room only.
This, it seems, is the area that attracts the more outspoken fans. One man in particular seemed very unhappy with almost everything that the commentators were coming out with, and repeatedly shouted them down with quotations and citations from the chess books of the Guardian's own Leonard Barden, whose works he seems to have memorised verbatim. "If you've read Barden," he opined over and again, "you'll know that what I am saying is all proper theory."
Later, when the commentators jokingly asked if there was anyone in the room who had stumbled in by mistake, I felt it was time to go. McShane had long since lost to Kramnik, but later that evening Howell would battle his way to a draw against Carlsen. Baffled, I staggered out into the dark night, leaving behind me a world entirely beyond my ken.
Magnus Carlsen
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751109
|
__label__wiki
| 0.972426
| 0.972426
|
The Guardian profile: Mordechai Vanunu
An imprisoned hero, a Nobel prize nominee, a victim, or a traitor: Israel's nuclear whistleblower represents many things to many people. How will he and his country react when the day of his release from jail dawns next week?
Duncan Campbell
Thu 15 Apr 2004 21.57 EDT
Nearly 18 years ago, a young Israeli nuclear technician went to London to reveal the secrets of his country's atomic weapons programme to the world. Then, lured to Italy by an Israeli secret service agent, he was drugged, gagged, bound and returned to Israel, where he was convicted of treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment.
Next week, after serving most of that sentence in solitary confinement, he will finally be released.
Mordechai Vanunu is 49 and has become a symbol for the international peace movement. He has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize, and a long-running campaign has sought his release.
When he finally walks out of the gates of Shekma prison next Wednesday, to be met by scores of his supporters from a dozen different countries around the world, he will not be allowed to leave the country for at least six months, or communicate with any foreigner.
Born in 1954 in Marrakesh, Morocco, into a large and deeply religious Jewish family which emigrated to Israel in 1963, Vanunu served for three years in the sappers' unit of the Israeli Defence Force after he left school. He held the rank of sergeant and was given an honourable discharge. He then became a technician at the nuclear reactor centre in Dimona. He worked there from 1976 to 1985, when he was made redundant.
At the same time, he was studying philosophy at Ben Gurion university and already beginning to feel uncomfortable about a number of his government's policies.
He was also beginning to come to the attention of the authorities, not least because, along with four other Jewish students and five Arab students, he had formed a radical group, called Campus. He was also an admirer of his professor, Evron Pollakov, a radical who had refused to serve with the Israeli army in Lebanon and had been jailed as a result.
The security services noted Vanunu's increasing radicalism, his professed sympathy for the Palestinians, and the fact that he had links with an organisation called the Movement for the Advancement of Peace.
By now he was starting to suffer what he later described as a crisis of conscience while working at the Dimona plant, which was clandestinely producing nuclear weapons.
He started to take photos of the plant, without having made a decision to do anything with them. As he later explained: "It crossed my mind, of course, but I just wanted to think over my future and make plans to see more of the world."
Made redundant in 1985, he used his $7,500 payoff to travel round the world, visiting Nepal, Burma and Thailand before arriving in Australia, where he booked into a hostel in the Kings Cross district and found himself odd jobs as a hotel dishwasher and later a taxi driver. "The people are friendly," he wrote to a former girlfriend. "They drink a lot of beer."
At around this time, he introduced himself to the local church, St John's, where he was made welcome by the Rev John McKnight, who was well known in the area for his work with homeless people and drug addicts. He gradually decided to convert to Christianity, being baptised as an Anglican in 1986 - a move that was to alienate him from his parents and most of his 11 brothers and sisters.
At the church, during a discussion on peace and nuclear proliferation, Vanunu divulged some of the knowledge that he had gained at Dimona. By chance, a freelance Colombian journalist called Oscar Guerrero was working at the church. He heard about Vanunu and encouraged him to tell all.
Guerrero contacted the Australian press, but without success. He headed for Europe and approached the Sunday Times, which assigned the investigative journalist Peter Hounam and the Insight team to the story. In the summer of 1986, Hounam flew to Sydney to assess the strength of the allegation that Israel, despite its denials, was secretly developing a nuclear arsenal.
"I liked him straight away," said Hounam this week as he prepared to set off to Israel for Vanunu's release. "We spent 12 days together and he answered all my questions in a very straightforward way. He spoke about his disillusionment about what was going on in Israel."
It was agreed that Vanunu should come to London, where he could talk to nuclear scientists in the peace movement and be debriefed. Hounam continued to interview him, and the paper prepared to publish the revelations.
However, before the story had even appeared in the Sunday Times, Vanunu disappeared. He had grown frustrated with a delay in publication, and was upset by a piece in the Sunday Mirror which wrongly accused him of being a hoaxer. Crucially, he had also met a woman, "Cindy", who he believed was an American tourist. She seemed to be attracted to him, and was critical of the Israeli government.
Hounam told him: "Morde, this woman might be lying, she might be a Mossad plant," but Vanunu thought she was genuine.
"Cindy" paid for air tickets to Rome, said that her sister had a flat on the outskirts of the city, and suggested that they could have a holiday there. Vanunu believed her until the moment he entered the flat and was overpowered by two men. He was injected with a drug, smuggled on to a ship and taken back to Israel. At Mossad's headquarters, he was shown a copy of the Sunday Times story which had appeared on October 5 and told: "See the damage you have done."
Convicted of treason and espionage at a closed trial, Vanunu was jailed for 18 years. The first eleven and a half were spent in solitary confinement. There was fear for his mental health as he grew increasingly despairing. For the first part of his sentence, the light in his cell was kept on all the time.
Since being allowed to mix with other prisoners, his health has apparently improved considerably. He has read voraciously, for many years studying Kant, Sartre, Camus and Nietzsche, but more recently reading historical works, and in particular the history of the US. He listens to opera on a cassette player and hopes to travel eventually, possibly settling in Minnesota with Nick and Mary Eoloff, a couple from the peace movement who have gone through an adoption process to name him as their son.
His natural parents are still alive, but it has mainly been his two brothers, Meir, a photographer in Israel, and Asher, the deputy head of a high school there, who have supported him during his long incarceration.
"It's a terrible tragedy," said Hounam. "I've been waiting since 1986 for this moment. I want him to be able to resume his life, maybe get married and have kids. It's been a scandal what has happened to him."
Although denounced as a traitor by his government and the subject of frequent allegations about his motives in some of the Israeli press, his actions have won him international support.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers in an attempt to end the war in Vietnam in the 70s, has described Vanunu as "heroic" and often refers to him as such in his public speeches.
Sabby Sagall, one of the founding members of the London-based Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear Free Middle East, said: "He is one of the bravest and most inspirational people of our time. If Bush and Blair want to find weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, Vanunu has told them where to go."
Professor Joseph Rotblat, a Nobel peace prize winner, has also been outspoken in his support.
Among those flying to Israel this weekend are Bruce Kent, vice-president of CND, and the actor Susannah York.
Ernest Rodker, the secretary of the campaign, said: "He is in some physical danger if he remains in Israel. A talkshow host called for him to be wiped out recently."
Rodker said that Vanunu had a wide range of correspondents who had kept in touch with him over the years. He hoped that, if Vanunu wanted to come to Britain, he would be allowed to do so - Britain had a responsibility towards him because he was in effect lured away while on British soil. It was believed at the time that Vanunu was not seized in Britain because the Israeli government did not want to embarrass Mrs Thatcher.
Over the years, pleas for his release or for a less harsh jail regime met with little response. The Israeli government position was made clear in 1997 when President Ezer Weizman said at a press conference in London: "He was a spy who gave away secrets, and the fact that he did so for conviction rather than for money makes no difference. He was a traitor to his country."
In one of the hundreds of letters that Vanunu wrote in prison, he said he saw himself as a free man.
"I'll stay free, to prove that I was right to reveal the madness of the Israeli nuclear secrets. I am not a spy, but a man who helped all the world to end the madness of the nuclear race."
Life in short
Born: October 13 1954, Morocco
1963: family emigrates to Israel 1971-74: military service in army 1976-1985: technician at Dimona nuclear reactor centre.
Travels in far east before arriving in London to talk to Sunday Times
September 1986: disappears.
October 1986: Sunday Times publishes his story.
November 1986: Israel admits it has him in custody.
March 1988: convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment.
Vanunu on impending release
"I'll be free, I won. The gates and the locks will be opened. They didn't succeed in breaking me or driving me crazy."
Vanunu on future
"I have no interest in fighting the state. I want to live a normal life, a simple life, as a free man outside of Israel"
Mordechai Vanunu
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751110
|
__label__wiki
| 0.890061
| 0.890061
|
Letter From Silicon Valley
May 26, 2003 Issue
As unemployment soars, many workers are rethinking their libertarian views.
By Rebecca Vesely
Ellen Chase never thought her life would be like this at age 52. More than a year ago, her husband, Russ, was laid off from his job as a quality assurance engineer in San Jose, California. Then last August, she lost her job as a secretary for a fruit-labeling company that was relocating out of the area. They’ve both been looking for work ever since. Between paying monthly rent of $1,114 and shelling out nearly $600 a month for COBRA health insurance, the Chases are barely able to make ends meet. No other healthcare company will insure the couple because Russ, 57, had open-heart surgery–putting them in the dreaded category of “pre-existing condition.” A few years ago, they brought in a combined annual income of $65,000 and were saving for retirement. Today, they live on unemployment benefits of less than $2,000 a month that will expire in May.
She describes herself as politically conservative, and yet Chase says that her plight has changed her views on issues like healthcare, workers’ rights and government responsibility. She now believes that the United States needs “socialized medicine, like in England,” and should offer more help to those who find themselves without a safety net. “I really feel that the government is not taking care of us,” she says. “For people who have worked as long and as hard as we have, a married couple who pay their fair share of taxes, it’s very upsetting.”
In Silicon Valley, long synonymous with an entrepreneurial spirit, free-market capitalism and libertarianism, more and more workers are, like Chase, rethinking their political views. Not that people are trading in their computers for picket signs, but worker protection, universal healthcare, affordable housing and other traditionally liberal causes are gaining popularity. This shift became evident last November when California bucked a national voting trend that put control of both the US House and Senate into Republican hands. Despite Democratic Governor Gray Davis’s low approval ratings, Californians elected Democrats to all eight of the top state positions for the first time since 1882. The California Congressional delegation is now overwhelmingly Democratic, and San Francisco Representative Nancy Pelosi reigns as House minority leader. Membership in the state Libertarian Party has dropped by about 5,500, from a high of nearly 95,000 in 2000, according to the party’s website.
Peter Leyden, a former editor at Wired magazine and co-author of The Long Boom, once imagined twenty-five years of free-market prosperity where government played only a supporting role. Today Leyden says that a backlash against globalization and corporate irresponsibility, coupled with terrorism and a Republican agenda that doesn’t support technological innovation like stem-cell research, are responsible for the shift in the laissez-faire Valley credo. “I really believe that we are entering an era where we will see a rebalancing toward more government and a conscious effort to force corporations to take more responsibility,” says Leyden, now a “knowledge developer” at Global Business Network and co-author of a new book, What’s Next?
The sustained recession in Silicon Valley has challenged many residents. For ten consecutive months through February, San Jose has reported the nation’s highest unemployment rate for metro areas with populations of more than 1 million. The jobless rate for San Jose in February was 8.5 percent–compared with 5.8 percent nationally and 6.6 percent statewide. Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, lost 85,000 jobs between 2000 and 2002. The office vacancy rate in the Valley is 24 percent, compared with less than 2 percent in early 2000. In a Field Poll released on April 28, 82 percent of Bay Area residents surveyed said that jobs were scarce. And a first-quarter consumer confidence study of Silicon Valley by the Survey and Policy Research Institute found that the proportion of people who say their families are worse off now than a year ago grew to 41 percent–about 10 percent more than last year.
This growing lack of confidence can be partly attributed to joblessness, but it also reflects a widespread sentiment that the good life is out of reach. Despite the large number of people who have lost their sources of income, Santa Clara County remains one of the most expensive places to live in the country, with a one-bedroom apartment renting for about $1,200 a month. Foreclosure proceedings in the county climbed 8.2 percent from the first quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2003, yet housing prices continued to rise. The median home price in the Bay Area last December was $416,000, up from $377,000 the previous December.
Business is booming among social services. The first statewide study of hunger, released by the University of California at Los Angeles last November, found that one in four low-income adults in Santa Clara County has trouble buying groceries. Just north of San Jose, in the affluent town of Sunnyvale, a nonprofit group called Sunnyvale Community Services gave out nearly $600,000 in the 2001-02 fiscal year to help people on a one-time basis pay their rent and electricity bills, an 88 percent increase over 1999-2000. Second Harvest Food Bank, which serves Silicon Valley, now feeds 167,200 people a month; one out of four has a college education. Jennifer Luciano, communications director for Second Harvest, says she is witnessing a rising level of anger among those in need and a greater willingness to talk publicly. “People are starting to feel that if speaking out will help educate public leaders about hunger and poverty and perhaps result in changes to the system, then they will talk,” she says, “despite the dignity issue of coming forward.”
People are also expressing their views through the ballot box. In the 2002 election, pro-labor candidates for San Jose City Council garnered 61 percent of the vote, moving an already moderate Democratic council farther to the left. The growing population of Latino and Asian immigrants is contributing to the rising support for such candidates, because of immigrant worker concerns about housing costs, wages and benefits. Santa Clara County has the highest number of immigrants in the Bay Area, according to US Census data. Some believe a wider workers’ rights movement is brewing. “We are entering a more populist era,” says Amy Dean, executive officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council. “I’ve been in grassroots politics for twenty years, and what we are seeing today is not just that people want workers to have more power–in issues like a living wage, holding developers accountable and renters’ rights–but we are seeing that people want unions to have more power.”
A national survey conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates last August for the AFL-CIO suggests that union support is higher than at any time since the group began collecting data in 1984. Half of workers who don’t already have a union say they would join one tomorrow if given the chance, compared with 42 percent in 2001, according to the report. Dean attributes this not just to the economic downturn but also to 9/11 and recent corporate scandals. “For the first time in decades, people are articulating positive views about the important role that government plays in their lives,” she says. “They are yearning for protection from corporate interests and terrorism.”
Those views are not confined to the working and middle class. “Companies today say, ‘Let’s hire people to meet investor needs, and then let’s lay them off,'” says an unemployed telecom executive in Silicon Valley who once earned $160,000 a year. “I’ve never been a political person, but now I see that unions keep companies in line. We need unions to defend workers, because companies sure aren’t thinking about them.”
Pete Bennett, a 46-year-old former software developer, has launched his own workers’ rights campaign. A father of two, Bennett says he folded his software development company in 2000 after being repeatedly underbid for contracts from companies in India. He looked for work at high-tech companies in the Valley, only to find, he says, that he was competing with Indian software developers here on H-1B visas, which allow employers to temporarily hire specialized foreign workers. “US citizens are getting a raw deal,” Bennett says. “But the H-1B workers are also being victimized by corporations because they aren’t getting a fair wage.” Bennett contends that soaring unemployment rates in Silicon Valley and other high-tech corridors are a direct result of a lack of worker protection in the United States and companies moving their software operations offshore. “It’s like we’ve created our own recession,” he says. “The damage has been done.”
During the dot-com boom, high-tech companies clamored for an expansion of the H-1B visa program. Congress complied, raising the ceiling from 95,000 in 1998 to the current 195,000. Now labor groups have stepped up their efforts to limit the program.
A Forrester Research report released in December projects that companies will move 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages overseas in the next fifteen years, with technology companies leading the way. Silicon Valley companies like Oracle and Nortel Networks have already moved software development jobs to India and other countries to cut costs. Hewlett-Packard services chief Ann Livermore told Wall Street analysts in the fourth quarter of last year, “We’re trying to move everything we can offshore.” This strategy includes adding more workers to the several thousand the company already employs in India.
Not everyone agrees that foreign workers are the Valley’s problem. John Aaron Atkins, who was laid off from his job doing software quality assurance at Nortel Networks in November 2001, points out that some H-1B workers have lost their jobs, too. “It’s the boom-and-bust cycle of the Valley. If you’re going to live here, you have to get used to it,” he says. Peter Leyden of the Global Business Network argues that the exodus of jobs involving tasks that will become more automated over time will, in the long term, be better for California workers. These workers should instead be looking toward more creative and higher-paying jobs, like those in biotechnology, nanotechnology, wireless and sophisticated security industries, he says. “I hate to stand back and be a hard-ass about this because I know a lot of people are suffering right now,” he says. “But I do think that things are picking up. Old Internet jobs are going offshore, but I don’t think that will create a long-term vacuum here.”
President Bush stopped by Santa Clara in early May to push his $550 million tax-cut plan and pledge to bring jobs to the embattled region. He said “I know there’s people hurting here in Silicon Valley.” But this doesn’t help the many people like the Chases get through the meantime, when unemployment benefits are running out and no jobs are in sight. Ellen Chase has been repeatedly rejected for retail jobs at Target, Starbucks and Barnes & Noble. Her husband, Russ–near retirement age and with a bad back–is looking for work as a day laborer, hoping to make $8 an hour. After years of living firmly in the middle class, the Chases face an uncertain future. And yet, they say, what else can they do but wait for the upside?
Rebecca VeselyRebecca Vesely is a healthcare reporter at the Oakland Tribune and a former editor at Business 2.0 and Wired News. Her articles have appeared in Wired, Mother Jones and many other publications.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751114
|
__label__wiki
| 0.938856
| 0.938856
|
Jamal Khurshid
Chief secy told to resolve heavy vehicles terminal’s land allotment issue
The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday directed the chief secretary to submit a report with regard to the allotment of land for intercity buses and goods transporters’ terminals in Karachi after convening a meeting with the stakeholders.
Hearing a petition with regard to the prevailing situation of traffic and movement of heavy vehicles in different parts of the city, a division bench of the SHC, headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar, enquired of a Board of Revenue member why land was not allotted for the intercity buses. The court also observed that heavy traffic could not be allowed to ply on the roads of the city.
To a court query about allotment of land for the purpose of intercity bus terminal on the Lyari Expressway, the transport secretary and the Board of Revenue member submitted that they had formed a committee to visit 30 acres of private land on the Lyari Expressway. They submitted that they would examine the title of the land and consider whether the land was feasible for the intercity buses’ terminal and then submit a progress report.
Regarding construction of oil tankers’ terminal for Balochistan, Revenue Assistant Commissioner Abdul Sattar Hakro submitted that 50 acres of land in Deh Mochko had already been handed over to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC). However, KMC Land Director Sheikh Kamal Ahmed contended that the land in question had not been properly transferred with proper documentation.
The SHC directed a representative of the commissioner officer along with the Mukhtiarkar concerned to hold a meeting with the KMC land director for the proper demarcation and transfer of the land. The SHC also directed the KMC land director to submit a proper proposal for the construction of oil tankers’ terminal for Balochistan.
The court was informed that 150 acres of land was available on the Northern Bypass for the construction of goods transport terminal and the land would be handed over to the KMC against a price, to which a counsel for the KMC submitted that the corporation had no funds to pay for the land as it was already in a financial crunch.
The SHC directed the chief secretary to convene a meeting with the Karachi commissioner and the KMC land director to resolve the issue as the land was required in the public interest. The outcome of the meeting should be conveyed to the court on the next date of hearing, the bench directed.
Representatives of the transporters’ association submitted that 150 acres of land would not be enough to serve the purpose and requested the court to direct the revenue authorities to allocate further land for the construction of terminals to satisfy the needs of buses, truck and goods transport vehicles. The revenue officer informed the SHC that in addition to the 150 acres of land, another land of 250 acres had also been earmarked on the Northern Bypass but the same would be handed over to the KMC on payment of cost.
The court directed the chief secretary to submit a report by August 6 after convening a meeting with the stakeholders with regard to the allotment of land to the KMC and the payment of cost.
It is pertinent to mention here that a technical committee constituted to streamline heavy traffic in the city had suggested the removal of encroachments from all the main arteries in the city and the construction of Southern Bypass, and elevated expressways and interchange bridges in different parts of the city to accommodate the flow of the 107,000 heavy vehicles plying in the city.
The technical committee, which was headed by the transport secretary, also suggested various long-term and short-terms plan for the improvement of the traffic situation in the city. The committee suggested that proper implementation of the traffic routes should be made and traffic laws as per ground realities be revisited. The committee suggested that as short-term measures, encroachments from all the main roads and arteries should be removed and oil tankers shifted to the Zulfiqarabad Oil Terminal.
It was suggested that U-turns along the Northern Bypass, Mauripur Road and Lyari River should be closed and all the civic agencies should establish mobile repairing material for immediate maintenance of damaged portions of roads and removal of debris after accidents.
The committee also suggested that the plan to make the Northern Bypass dual carriageway should be executed as early as possible and new truck terminals be constructed on the Northern Bypass and the National Highway as long-term measures. The committee suggested that an elevated expressways, bypass roads, interchange bridges, overhead bridges and underpasses be constructed in the sea port and Quaidabad areas and industrial zones to restrict the heavy vehicles’ movement on the roads of the city.
Faisal Bengali and others had filed the petition in the court with regard to the prevailing situation of traffic in the city and the movement of heavy traffic in the city during day hours. The petitioners had submitted that the route map earlier submitted by the traffic DIG before the court was not being implemented in its letter and spirit.
More From Karachi
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751115
|
__label__wiki
| 0.915757
| 0.915757
|
Young Marines motivates youths to improve their lives and the community
ORO GRANDE — Pfc. Aubrie Moya rakes a dirt patch atop a 100-year-old gravesite, just minutes after a private from her unit plucked the surface weeds.
It’s not the military, but it’s close.
Moya, 14, is a private first class in the Excelsior High Desert Young Marines. Laser-focused, Moya and the rest of her unit are tidying up Oro Grande Cemetery on a windy Saturday morning.
Watching is Adelanto’s mayor, Gabriel Reyes, who made a short drive from the neighboring city to encourage the kids and offer his support. They present him with a sweatshirt and address him as “sir” after every sentence.
Since 2012, hundreds of youths between the ages of 8 to 18 across the High Desert have participated in the Young Marines program. The kids complete at least 50 hours of community service per year, all while performing drills and service around the community every other Saturday.
It’s the local branch of a national nonprofit that strives to teach kids about patriotism, self-discipline, an anti-drug lifestyle and community service, among other values.
Some join the program eager to enlist in the armed forces later. Others tell the Daily Press simply being a part of the program has changed their lives for the better.
At the other end of the cemetery, Pfc. Angelo Estrada pulls weeds. The cemetery is the oldest cemetery in the High Desert and possibly the county, says caretaker Joe Manners as he works and teaches history simultaneously.
When Estrada is asked if he could see himself visiting the historic cemetery if he was not in the Young Marines, he laughs. Without the motivation he learned from the program, Estrada said, he couldn’t see himself doing much besides drinking Dr. Pepper.
“It taught me how to actually exercise,” he said, crouching over a gravesite to pull a two-foot-tall weed.
According to the unit commander, parents and teachers alike say joining the program results in positive changes.
“A lot of teachers notice a change in their students when they become a Young Marine,”
says Randi Barnett, the unit commander. “They are like, ‘wow their motivation and attitude about completing homework changes.’”
Founded in 1959, the Young Marines grew from one unit with a handful of boys to almost 300 units nationwide today. The organization’s website boasts over 9,600 participants in 46 states, the District of Columbia, Germany, Japan and affiliates in other countries.
In 2012, the Excelsior High Desert Young Marines were granted a charter through Excelsior Charter Schools, whose location on the old George Air Force Base is the unit’s home base today.
Before the Young Marines, Moya, the 14-year-old raking the gravesite, said her focus was always on the present, not her future.
“Now that I’ve been in this program,” she says, “I want to do something to change the world.”
Garrett Bergthold can be reached at 760-955-5368 or GBergthold@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DP_Garrett.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751117
|
__label__wiki
| 0.969743
| 0.969743
|
Prince Philip makes 'joke' about 'terrorist' at Sandringham church on New Year's Eve
Prince Philip was with Queen Elizabeth II at a New Year's Eve church service at Sandringham when a bearded man caught his attention.
Prince Philip makes 'joke' about 'terrorist' at Sandringham church on New Year's Eve Prince Philip was with Queen Elizabeth II at a New Year's Eve church service at Sandringham when a bearded man caught his attention. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://usat.ly/2C0lCnD
Jocelyn McClurg, USA TODAY Published 4:17 p.m. ET Dec. 31, 2017 | Updated 4:46 p.m. ET Dec. 31, 2017
Queen Elizabeth II, 91 and her husband Philip, 96, were married on November 20, 1947. The couple is celebrating their 70th anniversary together in Buckingham Palace. USA TODAY
Britain's Prince Philip leaves after attending a traditional Christmas Day church service at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, Norfolk, eastern England, on Dec. 25.(Photo: Adrian Dennis, AFP/Getty Images)
Gaffe-prone Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, gave the Brits something to talk about on New Year’s Eve after evidently making a “joke” about a terrorist.
British media lit up with reports that the Duke of Edinburgh, 96, joked that a bearded man in the crowd at a church near Sandringham might be a “terrorist.”
According to reports from The Daily Mail, The Sun and Sky News, Philip and the queen were on their way to attend a morning service at St. Mary Magdalene church when the prince saw a white man with a long red (or ginger, as the Brits call it) beard.
According to one onlooker: “Philip was wishing lots of people a ‘Happy New Year’ and then he spotted this guy with his distinctive beard. He pointed at him in a funny way and turned to one of his royal bodyguards, saying: 'Is that a terrorist?’”
According to one report, the question prompted laughter from the crowd.
The Telegraph presented the incident in a rather lighthearted manner, quoting one onlooker:
"He was obviously having a little joke, but he said it within earshot of the man who burst out laughing and appeared to find the whole thing hilarious. I think Philip knew he was going to be overheard.
Prince Philip walks in front of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, left, and Meghan Markle, Prince Harry's fiancee, as they arrive to attend the traditional Christmas Day church service at St Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham. (Photo: Adrian Dennis, AFP/Getty Images)
"I'm sure Philip didn't mean any harm. His grandson Prince Harry has a ginger beard, so perhaps Philip had been cracking jokes about that over Christmas."
Ian Smith, 39, told the Telegraph: "Everyone knows Prince Philip has got a sense of humor, although some people night have thought it was a risqué comment."
Philip officially retired from royal duties over the summer. He and the queen celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in November.
William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince Harry and his American fiancé, Meghan Markle, skipped the New Year’s Eve morning service. On Christmas Day, the foursome joined the queen and Prince Philip at church.
Prince Philip turns 98: The life of Queen Elizabeth's husband in photos
This portrait of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, by Australia-born artist Ralph Heimans, was released by Buckingham Palace on Dec. 11, 2017, to mark his the prince's retirement from public duties. He is standing in The Grand Corridor at Windsor Castle, wearing the sash of the Order of the Elephant, Denmark's highest-ranking honor. The painting will be on display at the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark as part of an exhibit on the many connections between the royal families of Britain and Denmark. (The duke is a descendant of the Danish royal family.) Ralph Heimans/Buckingham Palace, AP
Prince Philip, the often-irascible husband to Queen Elizabeth II, is Britain's oldest and longest-serving royal spouse in 10 centuries.The queen has called him her "strength and stay." Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at the wedding of his granddaughter, Princess Eugenie of York, to Jack Brooksbank in St. George's Chapel on Oct. 12, 2018 at Windsor Castle. Alastair Grant/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Prince Philip attended the May 19, 2018, wedding of his grandson Prince Harry to Meghan Markle at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, walking into the church just weeks after successful hip replacement surgery. Gareth Fuller/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Inside St George's Chapel, Prince Philip, in his place next to the queen, examines the order of service for the wedding of their grandson Prince Harry to Meghan Markle, on May 19, 2018. Jonathan Brady/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Prince Philip leaves after attending the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, in Windsor, on May 19, 2018. GARETH FULLER, AFP/Getty Images
Prince Philip at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle on on May 19, 2018. Jason Dawson, Newsquest, via USA TODAY NEWTWORK
The day he announced his pending retirement from royal duties, Philip and the queen were back on the job, attending an Order of Merit service at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace in London, on May 4, 2017. EPA
Before his wife became queen, Philip was a serving naval officer and loved it, then had to give it up. But he frequently doned a uniform for events such as this Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey on Nov. 10, 2016. Eddie Mulholland/AFP/Getty Images
When he turned 90 in 2011, Philip said he would be winding down his public appearances. Five years later, he was still showing up for scores per year, such as this tour of the Brompton bicycle factory with CEO Will Butler-Adams on Nov. 28, 2016, in London. Getty Images
Philip was born into the Greek royal family in 1921. His father's family were Danish royals and his mother descended from German and British royals, including Queen Victoria. Here he's in the arms of his mother, Princess Alice, in a picture exhibited at Windsor Castle in 2011. HRH The Duke of Edinburgh via AP
Prince Philip of Greece in 1933. His family, recruited by Greece to be its royals, were exiled after a coup. His mother ended up in an insane asylum; his father drank his life away in Monaco. Philip was an orphan and ending up being raised by his British relatives. HRH The Duke of Edinburgh via AP
Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth married on Nov. 20, 1947, amid the splendor of Westminster Abbey. The distant cousins were introduced when she was 13; she insisted on marrying him despite resistance from some in her family and in the British establishment. Central Press/Getty Images
Prince Philip of Greece became Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, on his wedding day, created so by her father, King George VI. AP
Prince Charles, the new heir, was christened Dec. 15, 1948, in the music room at Buckingham Palace. The queen is flanked by her grandmother, Queen Mary, and Philip's grandmother, Princess Alice, Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven. Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
The queen and Prince Philip leave after she addressed Bermuda's Colonial Parliament in Hamilton, Bermuda, in November 1953. AP
Philip and Elizabeth with their first two children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, in the early 1950s. AFP/Getty Images
A later family portrait shows Philip, the queen, Charles, Anne and baby Andrew, taken on Sept. 8, 1960, at Balmoral in Scotland. Notice there's also a corgi. AFP/Getty Images
Philip and his eldest, Prince Charles, on Oct. 27, 2016, for the dedication of a statue of the Queen Mother in Poundbury. Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Philip with his second-eldest son, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, at The Derby on June 2, 2012, in Epsom. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Philip with his youngest child, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, on Derby Day at Epsom in June 2012. Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
Philip had some health scares. In 2011, he was rushed to a hospital for surgery after he suffered a heart event while celebrating Christmas at Sandringham. He was released after four days. Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
He missed some of the queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June 2012, spending five days in a London hospital for treatment of a bladder infection. Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
In 2013, he spent 10 days in the London Clinic after undergoing exploratory surgery on his abdomen. Dominic Lipinski/AP
Philip accompanied the queen to ceremonial events such as the State Opening of Parliament (this one on May 25, 2010), a ritual dripping with history, tradition and glittering jewels. The queen addresses Parliament with a speech written by the government of the day to proclaim its agenda. Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
One of the most affecting public appearances of the queen and Philip was in October 2014 at the stunning art installation 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' at the Tower of London, where 800,000 ceramic poppies were 'planted' to commemorate British and Colonial military fatalities in World War I. Chris Jackson/AFP/Getty Images
Nothing says royal Britain like the Order of the Garter, the senior and oldest British Order of Chivalry, founded by Edward III in 1348. Membership is limited to the sovereign, the Prince of Wales, and no more than 24 members. Philip, in colorful Garter robes, arrives at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle on June 13, 2011. Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Another annual ritual is the Trooping the Colour parade to mark the public celebration of the queen's birthday. In June 2016, it was her 90th, and the queen and the duke rode the parade in a carriage instead of on horseback. But Philip still wore that heavy bearskin hat. Tim Ireland/AP
Philip was in the hospital during the queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012, but he was on the balcony for her grand 90th birthday celebrations in June 2016. Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Royalty and the military go hand in hand. Philip, along with son Prince Charles and grandsons Prince William and Prince Harry (all of whom have served), boarded the Spirit of Chartwell in a flotilla of more than 1,000 boats during the Diamond Jubilee Thames River Pageant on June 3, 2012, in London. Getty Images
Royals love a wedding. The queen, Philip and Prince Charles sing during the wedding in Westminster Abbey of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April, 29, 2011. AP
In public, protocol required Philip to walk a few paces behind the queen, so it's rare to see them like this, arm in arm. This picture is from June 2007 at Broadlands, Philip's family home in Hampshire. Fiona Hanson/AFP/Getty Images
This is one of the most memorable images after the death of Princess Diana. Philip walked with her sons, his young grandsons Prince William and Prince Harry, along with their father, Prince Charles, and their maternal uncle, Earl Spencer, behind Diana's coffin during the funeral procession on Sept. 6, 1997. William had been reluctant to do it; Philip helped persuade him he would regret it later if he didn't. Jeff J. Mitchell/AP
Philip and the queen look at the carpet of floral tributes left for Diana at the Buckingham Palace gates, after the royal family agreed to public and government pleas to return to London from Balmoral to see the outpouring of grief and to take part in a service for the Princess of Wales. Santiago Lyon/AP
Philip was a pilot, an athlete and a sportsman. Besides polo and shooting, he also drove carriages. Here, he grimaces as he takes control of the reins after being thrown off in a water obstacle during the International Driving Grand Prix at the Royal Horse Show in Windsor on May 14, 1994. Adam Butler/AP
Philip wasn't given to brooding over the past, but in 1994 he went to Jerusalem, the first British royal to visit the state of Israel. His mother, Princess Alice, is buried there with honors, after she risked her life in Nazi-occupied Athens by sheltering a family of Greek Jews. Philip met Greek Orthodox priests at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives, where his mother's coffin lay. David Silverman/Reuters
Queen Elizabeth II speaks to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh through the car window at the third day of the Royal Windsor Horse Show on May 11, 2018 in Windsor, England. Dan Kitwood, Getty Images
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2C0lCnD
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751119
|
__label__wiki
| 0.75147
| 0.75147
|
John Hart gives UVic staff a tour of Spirit Bear Farm
Learning from and with the land
Listening to the sound of waves crashing on the side of rock formations, John Hart sits on a tree stump and breathes deeply before launching into a story, “When I was a little boy, I would escape to a tree because it felt like a safe place for me.” Hart explains. “Being in and around nature was always a restorative and calming place for me.
John’s yearning to share his love of nature led him to East Sooke and the Spirit Bear Farm. “I hoped to preserve the 60 acres as a place where people could learn with and from the land,” he explains, “There is so much benefit to learning within nature and cultivating respect for Indigenous cultures.”
In Collaboration with UVic’s School of Child and Youth Care, Hart opened up the farm to students and faculty as a living classroom to support Indigenous land-based education.
“It is especially important for Indigenous students and young people to see their ways of knowing included and learn from elders through traditional practices involving learning with land and waterways and all our relatives,” explains Sandrina de Finney, UVic School of Child and Youth Care associate professor. "We can’t just think of a classroom in the context of four walls with desks and books.”
de Finney says the experience both fosters a deeper connection with Indigenous knowledges and teaches holistic ways of healing that can address social issues many communities face today.
Canet Foundation Graduate Scholarship
For Hart, creating dynamic learning experiences was only part of his vision. “I wanted to make sure that students have the financial freedom to develop projects that directly impact communities.
With that in mind, the Canet Foundation also established a graduate scholarship in the School of Child and Youth Care for students working with children and families to improve mental health and well-being and Indigenous education.
“Words cannot express how grateful I am for the Canet Foundation’s support,” explains Addison Mott, a 2018 recipient of the award, “It reassured me I was on the right path and pushed me to expand the reach of my research.”
Mott is studying how the use of space affects counselling. The funding allowed him to travel around to see differences in counselling techniques and areas across Vancouver Island and British Columbia.
“I am inspired by the all the work students and professors are doing at UVic,” says Hart.
Sisters Rising hosted forum on Indigenous gender well being at UVic's First Peoples House
Support for Sisters Rising
Working with de Finney, the Canet Foundation helped fund a community-based research project for Indigenous youth. In its third year, the project called Sisters Rising, aims to honour Indigenous youth who have experienced sexualized or gender-based violence by offering traditional land- and arts-based teachings.
“It is so important that our research and knowledge translates into real projects in communities that address social issues,” says de Finney, “through Sisters Rising we can do that.”
Rather than focus on trauma, participants are supported to speak to their strengths through learning and experiencing Indigenous knowledge systems involving artwork, ceremony and land-based practices One of the locations where students and participants have undertaken their projects is Spirit Bear Farm.
“It is incredibly inspiring to see the young girls engage in leadership building, and share their stories and artwork”, says de Finney.
For Hart, supporting Sister Rising brings his vision of the Canet foundations gifts full circle. “My hope is my gifts continue to empower students and communities to create a better world.”
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751120
|
__label__cc
| 0.717117
| 0.282883
|
Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG 2012 Magnum 3L (cassetta) - Poliziano
The Nobile di Montepulciano by Poliziano is produced with Prugnolo Gentile grapes, which characterize the area of Montepulciano, the potential of a territory with a recognized wine-growing vocation. The result is this structured red, long-lasting and intense, but not unnecessarily caricatural fragrances, which faithfully express its deep Tuscan origins.
€70.00 -30%
Our company was born in 1961 and in 50 years it has become a true Tuscan winery known all over the world. Poliziano is the name that founder Dino Carletti, father of current owner Federico Carletti, chose for the company in honor of humanist Angelo Ambrogini and its roots. A name that reflects an important vocation: attention to the territory, love for one's own story, the tradition of innovation.
Our wines recall the historic tradition of the area but are able to speak to the world. Their is a long story: born in the 80s, they retain their original labels but refined and evolved, pursuing the goal of uncompromising quality. Each of our wines is predominantly made from Sangiovese grapes, called in the area with the historical name of Prugnolo Gentile.
My family had the first contacts with the world of viticulture in 1961, when my father, Dino Carletti, purchased 22 hectares of land in the municipality of Montepulciano, where he planted the first specialized vineyards in the area. To suggest to my father that investment was more heartfelt than economic reasons, dictated by the desire to keep alive the contact with the places of his childhood and with the culture of his own country of origin. This bond, rather than producing immediate results in the management of the company, influenced above all my training choices, which led me to Florence, where I graduated in agriculture in 1978.
In the years that followed, I had a job in a farm in northern Italy, where I did not care about viticulture, but where I could enrich my training with precious experiences.
At the end of 1980, at a delicate moment due to the economic crisis and the decline in consumption, I decided to accept the challenge and take over the management of my company, setting a new and more modern production philosophy, according to my personal view of agriculture . Immediately, the passion for the art of "making wine" pushed me to confront the most advanced techniques in use in viticulture and in international arena, creating an ever closer and more profitable dialogue with industry specialists and with the Chianti Classico producers.
I soon realized that the company's renewal could only take place through the synthesis of the best technical knowledge, courage and creativity. The result of the combination of these ingredients is the new Viticulture of Poliziano, thanks to which for more than a decade our wines, strictly based on the Prugnolo Gentile, know how to assume an international style of great pleasure, while maintaining a strong bond with their territory of origin.
In over thirty years of wine-winemaking my company never made a decision with the comfort of market analysis, but all the choices were inspired by my great passion for agriculture and the real emotion of imagining and theorize a vineyard, grape, wine and then see them finally made after having followed them step by step throughout their lives.
Looking to the future, I propose to consolidate the well-identifiable character of my products, which will be born from the new vineyards, and in this perspective I carry out a continuous and passionate research, which never ceases to verify all the possibilities of qualitative growth of my wines. In recent years, research has focused on the environmental sustainability of viticulture, with the decrease in the use of chemicals with study and testing of organic farming and biodynamic agriculture. In the cellar we have increasingly applied a natural oenology where technology is respectful of the original and classic wines.
Reference PLZ-NOBILE-2012
Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG
Grape / Raw material
prugnolo gentile 85%, colorino 15%, canaiolo, merlot
Color: ruby red.Bouquet: mushrooms and plums, enriched with delicious spicy notes of china and tobacco.Taste: balanced, with polished tannins and good freshness.
Pasta or Rice with Meat, Roasted Beef, Stewed Meat, Aged Cheese, Game
16° – 18° C.
Large calyx with a long stem
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751124
|
__label__wiki
| 0.851805
| 0.851805
|
Millisle
Millisle is a popular seaside resort with an extensive sandy beach and a man-made lagoon
Millsile is steeped in history and beauty. It was given the name due to the number of mills that operated in days gone by.
The village is recognised for its support during the Second World War. Many Jewish children were relocated to a farm near the village after escaping from Nazi Germany. Over 300 children were cared for during the farm’s 10 year tenure.
Ballycopeland Windmill is a late 18th century tower mill that is the only remaining working windmill in East Down. Although it fell into disrepair in the First World War it was gradually restored between 1950 and 1978 to full working order.
Millisle Lagoon and Beach Park boasts a beach that has received an award for its natural beauty and cleanliness. The golden sands and seawater lagoon provide a safe bathing area for all to enjoy.
Notable people from Millisle include, Amy Carmichael. Amy Carmichael was a Christian missionary who was born in the village in 1867. The Carmichael townhouse, in which she lived, was demolished in 2002. However, a commemorative plaque was erected in her memory by the town to mark the site.
For further information, see our Millisle walking guide, available here
To find out more contact
Ards Visitor Information Centre
Regent Street, Newtownards, Co.Down, BT23 4AD
Email ardsvic@ardsandnorthdown.gov.uk
Bangor Visitor Information Centre
Tower House,34 Quay St, Bangor, Co. Down, BT20 5ED
Email bangorvic@ardsandnorthdown.gov.uk
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751125
|
__label__wiki
| 0.640113
| 0.640113
|
BEAUTY&STYLE Published April19, 2015 By Milafel Hope Dacanay
Botox Can Get into the Central Nervous System—But
(Photo : Win McNamee | Getty Images News)
While the Fountain of Youth remains elusive, men and women are choosing science to help them turn back time or at least delay the signs of aging. One of these is Botox.
Botox is a product that, when injected, leads to temporary paralysis or relaxation of the muscles, reducing the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, and crow's feet. It has also been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of excessive sweating (hyperhidrosis), chronic migraine, uncontrolled blinking, and muscle spasms.
However, there's been a lot of controversy surrounding Botox for one simple reason: it is made from a neurotoxin.
Botox is a play of the term Clostridium botolinum, a bacterium that produces a very potent toxin called botulinum whether it is in its most natural or synthetic form. A person who's been poisoned with the toxin can suffer from droopy eyelids, blurred vision, difficulty in swallowing, slurred speech, nausea and vomiting, difficulty in breathing, and eventually paralysis.
To determine how the potency of the toxin can affect the body, especially the central nervous system, a team of researchers from Brain Institute Laboratory of University of Queensland led by Professor Frederic Meunier tries to visualize the movements of the toxin's molecules.
During their study, they discovered that the molecules can indeed penetrate and travel to the central nervous system, which means the toxin has the capability to reach the brain. However, since there are no reported cases of morbidity from Botox, it signifies that the treatment is generally safe and doesn't cause any brain damage.
But they also want to stress that the toxin can go to a cellular dump yet doesn't disintegrate. It can also intoxicate the cells nearby.
The scientists are now looking into trying to gain a much deeper understanding on how Botox affects the central nervous system. Moreover, since the pathway of the toxin is also used by other harmful micoorganisms such as rabies and West Nile virus, learning more about the toxin's journey may help them find the cure for such viruses.
Study: Teens show decreased risk for heart disease later in life after bariatric surg… Top Best 10 Benefits of Cucumber Drug-Resistant 'Super Lice' Cases on the Rise Across 25 States Wearing Sunglasses Can Prevent Stress, High Blood Pressure, and Even Pain? Being Fashionable is Being Healthy, Study Says
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751136
|
__label__cc
| 0.620255
| 0.379745
|
Midnight Harvest
By: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Publisher: Warner Aspect Books
Before there was Anne Rice there was Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, who took the traditional vampire story and stood the notion on its head by creating le Comte de Saint-Germain. The Comte, known also as Ferenc Ragoczy, hails from those haunts favoured by the most famous denizen of the undead, but is cut from entirely different cloth. Dracula was a predator; Saint-Germain is a benefactor.
In Yarbro’s vampirology the condition is a kind of disease, and Saint-Germain has had it since the days of the Roman Empire. Her vampires are distressed, but not immobilized, by such things as sunlight and running water, and rest most comfortably over a layer of their native soil, but are not necessarily the evil demons that populate most stories.
Her take on the race is that they are displaced persons who must be constantly re-inventing themselves through their long lives in order to survive. They’re a bit like the immortals in the Highlander series.
Saint-Germain does need blood, which he takes in small quantities only from those who are willing donors. Since the act of feeding is rather like sex in its intensity, most of his special friends are women. He also takes sustenance from shared emotion, and can sustain himself while providing good dreams to sympathetic souls, most of whom never realize what he is doing.
Yarbro’s novels have followed the count on his journeys through history, dipping into his life in 18th century France, ancient Rome, China, and more than a dozen other settings in 16 books that have covered about 3500 years.
In this one, the villains are all human, and Saint-Germain is merely trying to cope with the rise of fascism in Spain, where he has become a successful aviation industrialist, and then in California, where he resettles for a time. In both places he has willing friends to whom he renders assistance. As he travels we see him establishing new business interests and making investments of time and money in ways which only a person with a really long range view of the world could do.
There are moments of extreme tension in Midnight Harvest, but much of the book is like a blend of the romance and the historical novel, with no more actual vampire trappings than are needed to remind us who our main character is. One of the interesting devices used in the book is the series of letters from a variety of individuals which serve to show us how wide the count’s circle of friends is and how he is valued by them.
This was a leisurely read. It was broken into three neat sections and I approached it almost as three stories, setting it down between narratives. I like the character but I hadn’t run across a new book in the series for awhile. This one was a treat.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751138
|
__label__wiki
| 0.801853
| 0.801853
|
California mom confronts daughter’s bullies in the classroom, gets banned from school
‘Y’all think y’all are bullies? I’m a big bully. Ok?’
May 16, 2019 at 5:50 PM CDT - Updated May 16 at 5:54 PM
LOS ANGELES (KCBS/CNN) - A mom was banned from a school in California after she walked into her daughter’s middle school classroom on Tuesday morning and threatened the students she said bullied her kid.
“Sisters, aunts, anyone over 18 - I'll f ‘em all up. Do you understand me? Leave my daughter alone. If I have to go to every class, I'll do that,” Christian Tinsley says in a video of her confrontation in the classroom.
Tinsley said the bullying has been going on for months and that several boys were a part of it.
“Y’all think y’all are bullies? I’m a big bully. Ok? Let that be known and understand that,” she said in the video.
When the officials at Nigel Hills Middle School told the boys to stop, the bullying only got worse, she said.
Her daughter reported that the bullying happened in the classroom, on social media and her walk home. She even reported that one boy sexually harassed her.
After the school investigated the incident and spoke to witnesses, it suspended the boy, but that’s when things got worse, according to Tinsley.
On Tuesday, when Tinsley was dropping her daughter off for school, she began crying and begged to stay in the car.
“Then she made a comment to me that if she wasn't as strong as she was, she would have killed herself. That's when mama bear mode went into effect,” Tinsley said.
She said she knew the school likely would ban her if she took matters into her own hands, but she went against the school’s recommendation not to speak to the bullies or parents herself.
She wasn’t thinking of the school when she talked to the students.
“Sometimes if you've done everything that you can do - I was prepared for that because my daughter is No. 1,” she said.
The school’s policy is to immediately investigate any concerns about bullying or harassment at the school site as soon as it’s reported to administration, teachers or staff. School officials will contact both students and their parents.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department was asked to investigate the case.
Copyright 2019 KCBS via CNN. All rights reserved.
Two people injured, one dead in East Birmingham shooting
SEC Football Media Days leaving Hoover
Ashley Knight
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751139
|
__label__cc
| 0.64504
| 0.35496
|
Definition of Rotating. Meaning of Rotating. Synonyms of Rotating
Here you will find one or more explanations in English for the word Rotating. Also in the bottom left of the page several parts of wikipedia pages related to the word Rotating and, of course, Rotating synonyms and on the right images related to the word Rotating.
Definition of Rotating
Rotate Ro"tate, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Rotated; p. pr. & vb. n. Rotating.] 1. To turn, as a wheel, round an axis; to revolve. 2. To perform any act, function, or operation in turn, to hold office in turn; as, to rotate in office.
Meaning of Rotating from wikipedia
- rotation. (Although they do appear to change when viewed from a rotating viewpoint: see rotating frame of reference.) In modern physical cosmology, the cosmological...
- Rotating bolt is a method of locking used in firearms. Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse developed the first rotating bolt firearm, the "Dreyse needle gun" in...
- apply Newton's laws of motion in the rotating frame. The Earth constitutes a rotating reference frame because it rotates once every 23 hours and 56 minutes...
- A rotating wheel space station, or von Braun wheel, is a hypothetical wheel-shaped space station that rotates about its axis, thus creating an environment...
- Contra-rotating, also referred to as coaxial contra-rotating, is a technique whereby parts of a mechanism rotate in opposite directions about a common...
- In anatomy, the rotator cuff is a group of muscles and their tendons that act to stabilize the shoulder. Of the seven scapulohumeral muscles, four make...
- A rotating black hole is a black hole that possesses angular momentum. In particular, it rotates about one of its axes of symmetry. There are four known...
- Aircraft equipped with contra-rotating propellers, also referred to as CRP, coaxial contra-rotating propellers, or high-speed propellers, apply the maximum...
- A rotating magnetic field is a magnetic field that has moving polarities in which its opposite poles rotate about a central point or axis. Ideally the...
- Rotating bookmarks were a special kind of bookmark used in medieval Europe. They were attached to a string, along which a marker could be slid up and down...
corn flagCorniceCornicularCornificCorninCorollatecorona lucisCorporation aggregateCorps of EngineersCorrelateCorridor trainCorrivalshipCorrovalCorrupt
Related images to Rotating
This is the place for Rotating definition. You find here Rotating meaning, synonyms of Rotating and images for Rotating
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751145
|
__label__wiki
| 0.800479
| 0.800479
|
Tunisian youth fight back
Michael Elms
Since the start of 2018 demonstrators have taken to the streets in Tunisia, protesting against the rising cost of living. The army was deployed following the death of a protestor, Khomsi el-Yerfeni, in Tebourba on 9 January.
When mass protests in Tunisia, led by the labour movement and the UGTT trade union federation, toppled the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011, the work of dismantling the neo-liberal order he had built was only beginning.
Tunisia's unemployed rise against poverty
Dan Katz
Tunisia has been rocked by a series of major demonstrations by unemployed workers.
Protests began in the interior town of Kasserine following the death of 28 year-old Rida Yahyaoui. He was electrocuted after climbing a transmission tower in a protest after he failed to get a government job. Action spread through the heartlands of Gafsa and Sidi Bouzid and on to the capital, Tunis, and other coastal cities.
How to fight Daesh
The killing of at least 39 people by a gunman in Sousse, Tunisia, along with the destruction of a Shia mosque in Kuwait, on Friday 26 June, may signal a shift in strategy for Daesh (ISIS).
Until now, their declared aim was the establishment of a caliphate in Iraq-Syria. This latest development could be the start of a new global jihad. The targeting of tourists is a move away from the targeting of religious minorities and non Sunni Muslims.
“Morbid symptoms” in Tunisia
Edward Maltby
The Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci once described the disarray in Europe after World War One in this way, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”.
Tunisian unions fight Islamist violence
The 600,000-strong Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) organised a general strike on Friday 26 July in response to the murder of a secular politician, Mohamed Brahmi, a leader of the Popular Movement.
The strike brought Tunis, the capital, to a standstill, as flights were cancelled, trains stopped running and most shops were shut.
The following day police fired teargas on thousands of demonstrators protesting outside the parliament.
Who are FEMEN?
When Tunisian feminist Amina Tyler posted topless pictures of herself online with “Fuck Your Morals” and “My body belongs to me and is not a source of anyone’s honour” written across her chest, she received death threats and was put in a psychiatric hospital.
“Topless Jihad Day” was the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN’s response.
In various cities, topless activists’ slogans were “Free Amina”, “Fuck Your Morals”, “Bare Breasts Against Islamism” and “Viva Topless Jihad”. A few FEMEN supporters also wore fake beards to dress as stereotypes of Arab men.
Clerical fascism?
Critics of Solidarity sometimes say that our description of Islamist political movements as “clerical fascism” is too simplistic, or too sweeping.
A recent report from Tunisia (Financial Times, 18 February) makes us think we are right after all. Ennahda, which currently leads a coalition government there with two smaller secular parties, is always described as “moderate” Islamist.
Tunisia: shaking the Islamists
Mobilisation since the murder on 6 February of a left-wing politician, Chokri Belaïd, has shaken the Islamist government in Tunisia.
Prime minister Hamadi Jebali has called on all ministers to resign so that he can replace the current administration — a coalition of his Islamist party, Ennahda, with two smaller secular parties — by a “government of technocrats” to run until parliamentary elections in mid-July.
The threat from the Islamists in Tunisia
Ahlem Belhadj, a doctor and a member of the UGTT trade union, is best known as the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women. Ahlem has also been a Trotskyist for many years, and is currently a member of the Left Workers’ League (LGO).
Against Ennhada [the Islamist party currently ruling Tunisia], what about those who propose a broad front ranging from the left to the supporters of the old regime?
Several problems are posed by Ennahda. There are those concerning democracy and freedom, and also the social and economic problems, which are fundamental.
Tunisian Islamists attack artists
In June Salafists — hard-line Islamists — attacked a Tunis art gallery, sparking riots that left one person dead and more than 100 injured.
During the riots trade union buildings, courts and police stations were also attacked.
The government then banned Islamist marches apparently organised by the groups Hizb ut-Tahrir and Ansar al-Shariah.
Subscribe to Tunisia
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751146
|
__label__wiki
| 0.579991
| 0.579991
|
The Code of Chivalry
The Church attempted to regulate this rather violent society, and eventually a code of honor evolved known as the code of chivalry. (The word chivalry comes from the Latin word for horse, caballus, as does the word cavalry.) Those who aspired to be knights had to have aristocratic ancestors and wealth enough to own warhorses and armor and to provide for a team of supporters. After years of training, a young man became a knight—his status as a noble, mounted warrior confirmed by a ritual that included solemn oaths and vigils. The knight swore to live by a Christian code of conduct, to honor and protect the Church, the weak and elderly, and especially women. He was expected to behave courteously, generously, and graciously. Knights displayed their athletic and military skills in tournaments, which were in effect mock battles. Favorite forms of recreation were hunting with horses, hounds, and falcons and board games like chess, which was part of the warrior’s training in strategy. Eventually knights—encouraged by royal and noble ladies like Eleanor of Aquitaine—became courtiers, attendants at the royal court, well versed in the civilian arts of music, poetry, and polite conversation.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751147
|
__label__wiki
| 0.670899
| 0.670899
|
Home > Asia > One sugar plantation–owned by the family of ex-President Aquino–illustrates the contentious path of land reform in the Philippines
One sugar plantation–owned by the family of ex-President Aquino–illustrates the contentious path of land reform in the Philippines
Workers loaded sugar for delivery last month at Hacienda Luisita, a Philippine plantation that is owned by the family of former President Corazon C. Aquino. Photo: Jes Aznar/New York Times
HACIENDA LUISITA, the Philippines — Like his father before him, Buenaventura Calaquian worked the sugar cane fields at Hacienda Luisita, a plantation owned by the family of former President Corazon C. Aquino. In the long-running, sometimes bloody battle over control of the land here, Mr. Calaquian, 58, has come out better than most.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751148
|
__label__wiki
| 0.931419
| 0.931419
|
US measles cases still climbing, topping 800 for year
75 new measles cases hit the U.S.
May 13, 2019 at 10:45 AM EDT - Updated May 16 at 5:29 AM
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials say this year’s count of measles cases has surpassed 800, a growing tally that is already the nation’s highest in 25 years.
A total of 839 cases were reported as of last week. That's the most since 1994, when 963 were reported for the entire year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the latest numbers Monday.
In all, 23 states have reported cases this year. The vast majority of illnesses have been in New York — most of them among unvaccinated people in Orthodox Jewish communities.
That pattern continued last week, with most of the 75 new cases coming from New York.
Measles was once common in the U.S. but gradually became rare after vaccination campaigns that started in the 1960s.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751151
|
__label__wiki
| 0.774264
| 0.774264
|
Natural resource issues Lane, Heck discuss challenges around natural resources, D.C.
Written by Saige Albert
Casper – Public Lands Council (PLC) Executive Director Ethan Lane and National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) Government Affairs Associate Chris Heck likened Washington, D.C. to a three-ring circus.
“Think back to when we were kids at a circus – the old circus before the animal rights people ruined them,” Lane said.
A traditional circus isn’t complete without a man-eating lion and a lion tamer with a chair and whip, a group of clowns packing them into small cars and an elephant wrangled by peanuts and bullwhips, he said.
“This is Washington, D.C. right now,” Lane commented.
Appropriations bills
Despite the chaos in D.C., Lane and Heck both emphasized that appropriations is the priority issue.
“Every year, the government has to be funded,” Lane said. “This is must-pass legislation, and it’s a great opportunity to make changes.”
Thus far in 2017, the House of Representatives has passed all of its appropriations bills, while the Senate has passed none of theirs.
“There are 12 legislative days left in this year, and a lot fewer days until Dec. 8 to fund the government before it shuts down,” he added. “The work rests on the Senate side of Congress.”
With the tight deadlines, Lane predicted that the bills will likely not go through the subcommittee mark-up process. It is also likely that the Dec. 8 deadline will be extended until next spring.
“When they get to the floor, there will not be much time for amendments,” Lane said. “We’re not as worried about adding in new pieces because we got our priorities in early. We are worried about preserving those pieces.”
Both the House and Senate versions of the bill include language delisting the grey wolf.
“This is good news and major progress on an issue we’ve been pushing really hard on,” he explained.
The House version of the bill also includes language related to wild horses that will give the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) more flexibility to transfer wild horses and euthanize horses on the advice of a veterinarian. This language is critical for the agency to manage the horses according to the act.
“We also continue to work to against any funding cuts to watershed programs, conservation programs and mandatory farm bill conservation programs receive no CHIMPs,” Heck said, explaining that CHIMPs are changes in mandatory programs that allow appropriators to make spending reductions to mandatory programs. “CHIMPs are often used to make additional funding cuts to conservation beyond what the farm bill intended. For conservation efforts to be effective, their programs need to be adequately funded.”
Tax bill
Another piece of legislation that is important for both houses of Congress and the White House is the tax bill.
As of Nov. 30, the House has a bill that has worked its way through the process, but the Senate has yet to pass a measure.
Provisions regarding the estate tax, deductions, caps on interest for ag operations and more are all part of the bill, and Heck said, “Everything changes every day and every minute. The final bill will be dramatically different from what we see today.”
“This bill will add about $10 trillion to the debt,” Lane added. “There are a lot of open gates with not much time left to close them.”
Lane and Heck echoed Gov. Matt Mead in their enthusiasm for modernizing the Endangered Species Act (ESA)
“We’ve taken a lot of interest in modernizing the ESA, and we are working closely with members on The Hill to craft modernized legislation that would resemble recommendations,” Lane said, noting that sage grouse, wolves and grizzly bears are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to endangered species.
“As we look at the rest of the country, we’ve got northern long-eared bats, voles and gnats,” he continued. “Most terrifyingly, the Monarch butterfly has been proposed for listing. Anyone who wants to keep themselves up at night should look at the range of the butterfly.”
Related to sage grouse, Lane noted PLC is encouraged by the process that has begun to unfold.
“Ranchers have been helpful in providing feedback and commenting on the things that are unfolding with sage grouse,” Lane said. “We are also encouraged by the Forest Service’s delayed implementation of their sage grouse plans. Forest Service backed off and recognized that they have to go through a similar process in BLM with revisions to make sure their plans are effective.”
“BLM’s plan revision is due Dec. 1, and Forest Service is due the first week of January,” Heck added.
Despite process, Lane said that implementation will be key. Both PLC and NACD will continue to work with Department of the Interior and USDA staff as they move forward.
Another rangeland issue across the West is wild horses, and Heck serves as the chair of the National Horse and Burro Rangeland Management Coalition.
“The coalition has been very active,” Heck said, meeting with House and Senate Appropriations staff to discuss the Stewart Amendment, which allows BLM and Forest Service to utilize all potential tools in wild horse management. “The language brings management of wild horses back to the Wild Horse and Burro Act and bring all the tools back to BLM and Forest Service.”
The amendment does not allow slaughter of horses, but it does allow a veterinarian to authorize euthanasia for horses.
“We’re proud to see the wild horse and burro advisory board this past October recommended that, three years from now, BLM should not have a single, long-term holding facility,” Heck explained. “That means the focus of wild horse and burro management would once again be on-range management. Currently, over 60 percent of the program's budget is spent on off-range holding, while range conditions continue to degrade and populations continue to outpace management efforts.”
With so many issues facing ranchers in the West, Lane and Heck encouraged ranchers to get involved and actively participate to ensure that their interests are protected.
“We are looking to continue to improve our grassroots outreach and increase our advocacy efforts,” Heck said, noting that NACD utilizes e-mail and print publications, known as e-Resource and Forestry Notes, to inform their membership on issues.
“On the PLC side, we have the Daily Roundup that provides information to our members,” Lane said. “We also have the Weekend Roundup which is geared for just producers. It includes some of the viewpoints of our opposition for ranchers to think about.”
He concluded, “We’re appreciative for active participation from our members. People who don’t participate can’t benefit from being engaged. Those of us that are involved need to share our passion with our neighbors and get the word out.”
Saige Albert is managing editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Send comments on this article to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751152
|
__label__cc
| 0.632909
| 0.367091
|
Senator Chuck Schumer Considers Supreme Court Confirmation Delay
By: Martin Hunter, Xiro Xone News March 24, 2017 Updated: 5:55 PM
Last year President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill the seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death over a year ago, but Republicans refused to hold hearings, believing Garland would tip the ideological balance of the court more left, than right.
After the presidential election, President Trump chose federal judge, Neil Gorsuch, as his Supreme Court nominee, to fill the conservative seat.
As the Gorsuch confirmation hearings got underway, serious revelations and previously unknown investigations involving President Trump and members of his campaign and transition team have taken center stage.
As early as Wednesday morning Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer started calling on Democratic lawmakers to refuse to vote on Gorsuch’s confirmation while the Trump administration is under FBI investigation.
When asked about his decision, Senator Schumer said, “You can bet, if the shoe were on the other foot and a Democratic president was under investigation by the FBI, the Republicans would be howling at the moon about filling a Supreme Court seat in such circumstances. After all, they stopped a president who wasn’t under investigation from filling a seat with nearly a year left in his presidency. It is unseemly to be moving forward so fast on confirming a Supreme Court justice with a lifetime appointment, while this big gray, gray cloud of an FBI investigation hangs over the presidency.”
Many in Schumer’s party agree and as of today, Schumer will vote, no. Some democrats remarked how last year, President Obama carried out his constitutional responsibility of putting forth a nominee who was never given a hearing and a vote.
The major concern for democrats is past opinions written by Judge Gorsuch that have been in favor of big money, big business. And less in favor of the little guy or pro se litigants who cannot afford an attorney.
Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court in an 8-0 decision, decided against a case presided over by Judge Gorsuch who believed, a school did not have to provide anything other than the smallest amount of education to an autistic child. Gorsuch, in a 2008 opinion that involved Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which requires that the public school systems that take certain federal funds, provide a “free appropriate public education” to certain students with disabilities. In this case, a student with autism.
Under Gorsuch’s opinion in Luke P., a school district complies with the law so long as they provide educational benefits that “must merely be ‘more than de minimis.’” “De minimis” is a Latin phrase meaning so little to almost none. Gorsuch essentially decided that school districts complied with their obligation to disabled students so long as they provide those students with the smallest amount or bare minimum education.
All eight Supreme Court justices rejected Gorsuch’s approach. Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “is markedly more demanding than the ‘merely more than de minimis’ test applied by the Tenth Circuit.” Indeed, Roberts added, Gorsuch’s approach would effectively strip many disabled students of their right to an education. Roberts went on:
“When all is said and done, a student offered an educational program providing “merely more than de minimis” progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all. For children with disabilities, receiving instruction that aims so low would be tantamount to “sitting idly . . . awaiting the time when they were old enough to ‘drop out.’”
Democrats believe this case alone, is enough to slow down the confirmation hearing and find out more about the jurist before handing him a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751153
|
__label__wiki
| 0.711974
| 0.711974
|
Climate change and conflicts are set to plunge millions into food crisis
A man carries food aid he received from a local charity during the holy month of Ramadan in Sanaa, Yemen
Image: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
This article is published in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org
Thin Lei Win
Food crises will affect tens of millions of people across the world this year, researchers warned on Tuesday, after war, extreme weather and economic woes in 2018 left more than 113 million in dire need of help.
Conflict and insecurity were responsible for the desperate situation faced by 74 million people, or two-thirds of those affected, in 2018, said the the Global Network against Food Crises in its annual report.
The Network's members include the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme, and the European Union.
Analysing 53 countries, it uses a five-phase scale with the third level classified as crisis, fourth as emergency and fifth as famine/catastrophe.
Luca Russo, FAO's senior food crises analyst, warned that millions more are now at risk of reaching level three and above.
"The 113 million is what we call the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the numbers further down, you have people who are not food insecure but they are on the verge," Russo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
These people, a further 143 million, are "so fragile that it just takes a bit of a drought" for them to fall into food crisis, he said.
"Unless we work substantially on these people and remove some of the drivers that can bring them to a worse situation, the overall numbers are likely to increase," Russo added.
Of countries that suffered food crises in 2018, the worst affected was Yemen, where nearly 16 million people needed urgent food aid after four years of war, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo at 13 million and Afghanistan at 10.6 million.
As dire as the situations seem, they would be worse without international humanitarian assistance, with estimates showing the number of hungry people in Yemen would have reached more than 20 million, Russo said.
This is the third year running where the number of people in food crisis hit more than 100 million, but it is slightly lower than in 2017, when 124 million were in need of help.
Can forest foods help solve the global hunger crisis?
A food crisis is coming to Southern Africa. Can we stop it?
Is a food crisis coming to Southern Africa?
The decrease is mainly because in 2018, countries did not experience the same levels of drought, flooding, erratic rains and temperature rises they did in 2017, said report.
However, climate shocks and conflicts would continue to cause hunger in 2019, the report added.
Dry weather and El Nino conditions are likely to affect southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, while the needs of refugees and migrants in Bangladesh and Syria would remain high, it said.
"The number of displaced people, refugees and migrants are expected to increase if the political and economic crisis persists in Venezuela," it added.
The study excluded 13 countries and territories including North Korea, Venezuela and Western Sahara due to a lack of recently validated data.
This article is published in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751154
|
__label__cc
| 0.60261
| 0.39739
|
Bradbury Leads Wellesley Track & Field With PR at NE DIII Indoor Championships
Maya Bradbury set a PR in the 3000m (Frank Poulin).
BRUNSWICK, Maine -- After collecting qualifying marks throughout the season, eight members of the Wellesley College track & field team represented the Blue on Saturday at the New England Division III Indoor Championships. First year Maya Bradbury (Freeport, Maine) set a PR in the 3000m to lead the Blue.
Bradbury was 11th in the 3000m with a time of 10:28.99, topping her prevous top-time of 10:33.65 set at this year's Tufts Cupid Challenge.
Sophomore Grace Cowles (Yarmouth, Maine) finished with the top place for the Blue, just missing out on all-region honors with a tenth place finish in the mile. Cowles finished in 5:13.14 to lead the Blue in the event. Junior Eva Paradiso (Burlington, Vt.) followed Cowles in 17th place with a time of 5:24.88. Cowles and Paradiso also represented the Blue in the 4 x 800m relay, teamming with sophomore Ava Shipman (Makawao, Hawaii) and junior Elizabeth Wegman (East Sandwich, Mass.). The Blue team finished 18th overall in 10:11.99.
In the field, senior Helen Andersen (Madison, N.J.) took 13th in the shot put and 16th in the weight throw. Andersen's top mark in the shot came on her final attempt (11.09). In the weight throw, Andersen's top toss was 13.51m on her first attempt.
Senior Cathy Chen (Parsippany, N.J.) and first year Ava Yokanovich (Stillwater, Minn.) were the final two competitors for the Blue, taking part in the 60m Hurdles and the 400m, respectively. Chen finished 21st (9.79) in the hurdles and Yokanovich was 19th (1:02.10) in the 400m.
Saturday's meet concludes the outdoor season for the Blue. The team will return to action on March 22-23 at the Emory Invitational in Atlanta, Ga.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751155
|
__label__cc
| 0.731897
| 0.268103
|
Academics Sidebar Menu
David Hunter, Ph.D.
dhunter@westmont.edu
Winter Hall 303
Office Available
Student Hours on Mondays - Thursdays from 2:00-3:30pm
Specialization(s)
Applications of algebra, geometry, and topology to computing and data
Biography/Details
Dr. Hunter graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and completed a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Virginia. He has taught at Westmont since 2000. His publications include a book, Essentials of Discrete Mathematics, and numerous journal articles such as How rare is symmetry in 12-tone musical rows?, Better Estimates from Binned Income Data: Interpolated CDFs and Mean-Matching, and New metrics for evaluating home plate umpire consistency and accuracy. He has co-directed Westmont in Mexico and enjoys running Santa Barbara’s trails, cheering for the Cubs, and cooking.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751156
|
__label__wiki
| 0.703198
| 0.703198
|
Wolf God Limited Gatefold Vinyl LP
by Grand Magus
Grand Magus Wolf God Limited Gatefold Vinyl LP
The riff gods are back! A little more than two years have passed since the great ‘Sword Songs’ album was released, but GRAND MAGUS can never quench their thirst for action. Accordingly, the Heavy Metal giants started to develop new songs as fast as possible after their last record. Singer and guitarist JB points out their new way of working: “We decided to let go of the current philosophy to record drums first and then bass and then guitar etc. This time, we met up, jammed and created together during the last six months with the goal to record basic tracks live.“ Recorded in Sweetspot Studio in Sweden, together with producer Staffan Karlsson (ARCH ENEMY, FIREWIND, SPIRITUAL BEGGARS), with the majority of the songs recorded in the first take.
GRAND MAGUS was founded in 1996 and worked under the banner of SMACK until the band changed its name. In their over 20 year career, the trio from Stockholm, Sweden, can look back on a treasure chest full of all-time Heavy Metal anthems. Their self-titled debut album ‘Grand Magus’ (2001) started to stir up the underground and is now considered to be a cult favourite. At that time, they played Doom Metal/Stoner Rock in the way it's meant to be. But over the years, GRAND MAGUS introduced a penchant for classic Heavy Metal which combined with their inherent groove became the band’s signature sound – the first signs of this can be found on ‘Monument’ (2003) and ‘Wolf’s Return’ (2005). Yet the breakthrough was their 2008 work ‘Iron Will’ that took the fans' heart by storm. In addition to the countless live shows, including a tour with legends ELECTRIC WIZARD and CATHEDRAL, it played a key part in the bands prominent rise to the forefront of the genre. ‘Hammer Of The North’ (2010) continued with this momentum and the band toured with other scene legends: MOTÖRHEAD and Doro Pesch. Their entry into the German album charts was inevitable. The same can be said for the three records that followed ‘The Hunt’ (2012), ‘Triumph And Power’ (2014) and ‘Sword Songs’ (2016) – all albums that belong in any great record collection. It’s safe to say that the same can be said for GRAND MAGUS’s latest opus ‘Wolf God’.
Their 9th studio album ,‘Wolf God’, rises over the Heavy Metal scene majestically and lets the guitar riffs speak for themselves. The groove and heaviness that were featured on the successful predecessor can also be found on the new, ninth studio album which once again holds a number of future classics. This is joined by a superbly-placed JB whose voice hovers emotionally over the solid musicianship.Crafting melodies, riffs and rhythms that were forged under the overwhelming influence of the likes of Dio, Judas Priest and Manowar, the trio have earnt their place in the throne room of Metal history. No wonder Metal Hammer consider them the “leaders of the Viking Metal pack”.
1. Gold And Glory
2. Wolf God
3. A Hall Clad In Gold
4. Brother Of The Storm
5. Dawn Of Fire
1. Spear Thrower
2. To Live And Die In Solitude
3. Glory To The Brave
4. He Sent Them All To Hel
5. Untamed
Label: Back On Black
Triumph & Power Limited Reissue Vinyl LP
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Sword Songs Limited Vinyl LP
IRON WILL Limited Edition Silver Reissue Vinyl LP
Label: Rise Above
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751158
|
__label__cc
| 0.634511
| 0.365489
|
Home Home Buyers Guide Record highs for Equitable’s retail, commercial assets
Record highs for Equitable’s retail, commercial assets
By Steve Randall | this page was last updated on the 10 May 2019 Font size :
Equitable Group is hailing its strong financial performance with record highs for its retail and commercial assets.
The group’s results show strength for its Equitable Bank subsidiary and the positive impact of its acquisition of Bennington Financial.
"Equitable got off to a great start in Q1," said Andrew Moor, President and Chief Executive Officer. "Our award-winning EQ Bank digital platform added 5,000 customers to reach over 76,000 Canadians with differentiated daily banking solutions. Our retail and commercial businesses grew assets to all-time highs and we completed the accretive acquisition of Bennington to establish our place as a leader in the equipment leasing market. These advancements generated record adjusted earnings and supported our second dividend increase of 2019.”
First quarter highlights
Adjusted Diluted earnings per share were a record $2.72, up 16% from $2.34 in Q1 2018.
Adjusted Return on Shareholders' Equity was 15.0% compared to 14.5% in Q1 2018.
Retail loan principal outstanding at March 31, 2019 was $16.6 billion, up 25% from $13.4 billion a year ago on strong originations and lower attrition.
Commercial loan principal outstanding at March 31, 2019 was $7.7 billion, up 24% from $6.2 billion a year ago as a result of organic growth and the addition of Bennington's $449 million equipment leasing portfolio.
The Provision for Credit Losses ("PCL") was $9.6 million or 0.16% of average loan principal outstanding and included a one-time, IFRS 9-related charge of $5.7 million on the Bennington acquisition.
Deposits at March 31, 2019 were $14.6 billion, up 23% from $11.9 billion a year ago and included a 28% year-over-year increase in EQ Bank deposits and a 20% increase in brokered deposits.
The Bank's Common Equity Tier 1 Capital Ratio at March 31, 2019 was 12.9% compared to 14.7% at March 31, 2018due to asset growth and the Bennington acquisition.
Positioned for the future
“Strategically, we will continue to expand EQ Bank's positioning by adding to our digital product portfolio and partnerships with industry leaders and fintechs, while becoming the first bank in Canada to migrate our core banking system to the cloud,” added Moor. “ As the Canadian government contemplates the creation of an open banking eco-system, the actions we're taking this year will secure Equitable's place at the epicentre of the banking industry of the future."
Down payments are the biggest fear for first-time buyers
Property portfolio management solution launches in Canada
Sotheby’s International Realty Canada franchise rights sold
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751159
|
__label__cc
| 0.681095
| 0.318905
|
ISSUES/LOCATIONS
Select ISSUES Aesthetics General Human rights Impacts Economics Emissions Environment Grid Health Noise Property values Tourism Wildlife Law Contracts Filings Ordinances Regulations Safety Siting Technology LOCATIONS Africa Egypt Americas Canada Alberta British Columbia Manitoba New Brunswick Nova Scotia Ontario Prince Edward Island Saskatchewan Chile Mexico U.S. Alaska Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Asia China India Iran Japan Turkey Europe Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland U.K. England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Oceania Australia New Caledonia New Zealand Photos Videos
Documents Home
View PDF, DOC, PPT, and XLS files on line
Add NWW documents to your site (click here)
posted: October 4, 2012 • Emissions, U.K.
Wind power does not reduce CO2 emissions as much as claimed
Author: Hughes, Gordon | Emissions, U.K.
“The assertion that wind turbines don’t reduce carbon emissions is a myth, according to conclusive statistical data obtained from National Grid and analysed here in the Guardian for the first time,” Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas claimed in a recent Guardian blog.
Professor Gordon Hughes responds:
1. It is unfortunate that the polarisation of positions renewable energy has coarsened arguments about the impact of wind and solar power on electricity systems. This has been apparent in a series of postings on, inter alia, various blogs hosted by The Guardian and associated publications. Some weeks ago Maria McCaffery, Chief Executive of RenewableUK, published some absurd statements about one of my reports for the GWPF. It is the job of lobby groups to defend the indefensible, so there is no reason to give such comments more weight than they deserve. However, on September 26th Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas (Goodall-Lynas) published a blog purporting to provide empirical evidence disproving suggestions that wind power might not reduce CO₂ emissions by as much as the advocates of wind development claim. While their logic and evidence are only marginally stronger than the usual claims, it is worth examining the details of the argument in order to clarify the central points at issue in this debate.
2. The Goodall-Lynas claim rests upon setting up and then knocking down a straw man. It is a variant of the one-for-one substitution calculation that is used to support claims that a proposed wind farm will “save” X tons of CO₂. The essence of such claims is that 1 MWh of electricity generated by wind will directly replace 1 (or somewhat less) MWh generated by power plants using coal, gas or oil. This is a straw man because, to the best of my knowledge, all of those who question the contribution of wind power to reducing CO₂ emissions argue that this is an incomplete and very one-sided description of the impact of wind power on the electricity system as a whole. The evidence produced by Goodall-Lynas is little better because they have made no attempt to take account of these broader impacts. Further, they have chosen to represent my analysis of the impact of the UK’s policies in 2020 as if it is relevant today, which I have explicitly ruled out.
3. There is no dispute that the amount of electricity generated by wind farms cannot be controlled in the same way as the electricity generated by a gas plant. If the amount of wind is too small or too large, wind plants do not operate either at all or at full output regardless of whether demand for electricity is low or high. It is how this intermittency affects the design and operation of the electricity system as a whole which lies at the heart of the dispute.
4. In fact, the issue is rather more complicated than this statement implies because the variability of wind output has different dimensions and, thus, induces different responses. The total output from wind farms can vary significantly in the very short term – for example, from one 5 minute period to the next. It is impossible to start up or shut down thermal plants so quickly in order meet demand, so that such fluctuations in wind output must be offset by drawing upon plants that are already running but which are not feeding electricity into the grid – called spinning reserve. Even with no wind power a margin of spinning reserve is required to maintain the frequency and voltage of electricity supplies and to cope with unexpected failures or fluctuations in demand. If the level of wind generation is a small proportion of total demand, short term fluctuations in wind output can easily be accommodated by drawing upon the margin of spinning reserve. This is the case in the UK in 2012 as wind output is typically less than 10% of total demand.
5. This is the first point where the Goodall-Lynas evidence is incomplete. It relies upon data about the plants which are supplying electricity to the grid. It takes no account of the CO₂ emissions of plants that are operating as spinning reserve. For simplicity, let us suppose that all spinning reserve is provided by gas combined cycle plants (CCGTs). If changes in wind output are balanced by changes in the level of spinning reserve, then the total amount of gas that is burned – and, thus, CO₂ emissions – is completely independent of change in wind output. In terms of the Goodall-Lynas evidence, higher levels of wind generation displace gas generation one-for-one. But, there is absolutely no saving in CO₂ emissions because the gas plants carry on running as before but they are just feeding less electricity into the grid. The reason for the error is that their figures take no account of what is happening in the parts of the electricity system that they have ignored.
6. There is another problem with the Goodall-Lynas evidence, even as a description of short term responses to wind variability. They state that their data covers “the last 3 months”. To be precise – and allowing time for data processing and writing the article – let us assume that this is June 16th to Sept 15th. This is the worst possible period to carry out any analysis of such data. Both electricity demand and wind output are at their seasonal troughs in June, July & August, so that there is a huge margin of spare capacity. The analysis tells us little about how the electricity system will respond when the margins of spare capacity are smaller and over periods that require adjustments in the composition of available and operating capacity.
7. Once we look beyond very short term variations in wind output a different set of issues come to the fore. These are discussed at length in my GWPF report titled “Why is wind power so expensive?” so I will only provide a brief summary here.
8. To maintain secure reserve margins, each MW of wind generating capacity has to be backed by approximately 1 MW of generating plant which can be run on demand – called dispatchable plant (and interconnectors don’t count in such calculations). The ideal backup for wind power is hydro, but the UK has very limited opportunities to develop more hydro plants. At the moment, the UK electricity has large amounts of old coal, gas and oil plants that provide backup for the limited amounts of wind and solar capacity. That situation will change as the amount of installed wind capacity increases and older fossil fuel plants are decommissioned. Hence, the problem of the nature and performance of backup to wind power only starts to arise after 2015 and becomes acute by 2020.
9. The argument then rests on a comparison between two options for meeting projected electricity demand in 2020. One option is to continue with the government’s strategy of promoting renewable energy, so that a substantial fraction of total demand in 2020 is met from wind power. My calculations suggest a requirement for 36 GW of wind capacity in 2020, while current official projections suggest that wind capacity would be 28-29 GW. The difference is partly a consequence of downward revisions in official projections of electricity demand in 2020. More importantly the official estimates are based on what are, in my view, much too optimistic views of the load factor for wind plants in 2020. Nonetheless, on either view this is a large increase in wind capacity relative to the current figure of about 7.5 GW and it will require a large expansion in dispatchable plant to back up intermittent wind energy.
10. The second option is to construct a sufficient number of CCGTs to meet the demand that would be met from wind generation and associated backup. This is what the market would deliver without subsidies and targets for renewable energy, even after allowing for a carbon price that is higher than the floor level for 2020 stated in official policies. Since it would be the least cost way of meeting both electricity demand and CO₂ emission targets in 2020, this option must be treated as the reference or baseline scenario. Hence, all comparisons of CO₂ emissions and costs refer to changes in 2020 relative to the baseline scenario. This is the correct way of assessing the future impact of policies.
11. In this framework, the reduction in CO₂ emissions achieved by the government’s current policies is much smaller than is implied by one-for-one substitution, though the exact outcome depends upon how the gap left by intermittent wind generation is filled. In Germany, for example, it seems likely that the gap may be filled by coal plants and the result will almost certainly be an increase in CO₂ emissions relative to a baseline of gas but no wind and coal. In the UK it is more likely that the gap will be filled by gas plants. The problem, which is rarely understood by those who don’t go into the details of system operation, is that the typical load factor for backup plants will be very low – well below 20%. This is not unusual in systems that are dominated by hydro power. Investors do not build CCGTs to meet such demand. That is why I have argued that the backup plant will be dominated by open cycle gas plants, which have lower construction costs and lower thermal efficiency than CCGTs.
12. The outcome of the comparison between the two options is that the overall reduction in CO₂ emissions due to large investments in wind power is likely to be very small. It could be negative – i.e. with higher CO₂ emissions in 2020 relative to the baseline option – if old and relatively inefficient coal and/or gas plants are retained as backup to the large increase in wind capacity.
13. The Goodall-Lynas evidence is entirely irrelevant to these arguments. The possibility that increasing the amount of wind power may not reduce CO₂ emissions refers to a comparison between alternative system configurations in 2020, when the planned level of wind capacity is 4-5 times higher than in 2012. It has nothing to do with short term changes in wind output for a fixed composition of capacity in one short period of time, whether in 2012 or 2020. Sadly, but inherent in the nature of the problem, there can be no appeal to direct evidence from a single country over time to test the argument. It is possible to draw upon comparisons of investment and operating decisions in countries with different profiles of generating capacity and reliance upon non-dispatchable sources of energy.
14. A final note on civility. After my GWPF report on the economics of wind power, Mark Lynas contacted me by email with a substantial number of requests for elucidation and additional data. I replied promptly and at considerable length. He is entitled to take a different view of the evidence and to reach different conclusions about the impact of further investment in wind power on future emissions of CO₂. However, it is neither courteous nor constructive in the broader context to create a straw man that is supposed to represent my position when I have provided detailed analysis and arguments that are clearly different. It is an elementary precept of both journalism and academic enquiry to check whether the views presented are accurate. No attempt has been made to carry out such checks in this case.
15. This is not a matter of offended academic amour-propre. If energy and environmental policies are to be based on solid evidence rather than just who can shout loudest or has the most money for lobbying, then the impacts of alternative policies must be assessed by careful analysis of complex hypotheses and relevant data. Attacking the arguments of those with different views on grounds that are either silly or spurious is rarely effective and undermines the prospect of constructive dialogue. Outsiders may draw the inference that if the proponents of one view have to resort to foolish or misleading arguments, then this may be because they do not have any sound evidence or arguments to support their case.
[Also see: “The Limits of Wind Power” by William Korchinski, Reason Foundation]
This material is the work of the author(s) indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.
The copyright of this material resides with the author(s). As part of its noncommercial effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send queries to query/wind-watch.org.
[ Short URLs: https://wind-watch.org/doc/?p=3117 | http://wndfo.net/D3117 ]
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751163
|
__label__wiki
| 0.981893
| 0.981893
|
Will Harrison County voters say yes to new schools?
Harrison County’s school board wants voters to ratify a $55 million bond. (Source: Photo Pixabay)
By Brad Kessie | September 24, 2018 at 2:45 PM CDT - Updated September 25 at 10:39 AM
HARRISON COUNTY, MS (WLOX) - Harrison County’s school board wants voters to ratify a $55 million bond.
WLOX News Now has confirmed a referendum will be placed on Harrison County ballots in November. It asks voters to approve funding for new school construction and school renovations. A spokesperson for Harrison County schools says specifics about what will be in that referendum will be released at a Tuesday news conference.
The Harrison County Circuit Clerk’s office released a sample ballot for the November 6 general election, which includes the exact wording for the school bond referendum. It says a K-8 school would be built on the east side of the district and a new middle school on the west side of the district. The referendum also includes renovations and enhancements to security and safety.
At an August 6 school board meeting recorded by Keith Wilson/STREETCAR PR, Superintendent Roy Gill talked about the school bond and why it’s necessary.
Gill noted that based on current projections, the bond will not require a tax increase. That the overloading of D’Iberville Elementary, D’Iberville Middle, North Woolmarket and Woolmarket made expansion on the east side of the school district necessary. He also talked about a new West Harrison Middle School somewhere near County Farm Road. “That new middle school would feed directly to West Harrison High School to where they would all go to high school there,” Gill told board members.
The board voted 4-1 to endorse the referendum.
Gill said the new West Harrison school would alleviate overcrowding concerns at North Gulfport 7th and 8th and West Wortham Middle School. If voters go along with the bond vote, Gill said North Gulfport would send 450 students to the new school and West Wortham would send 200 students.
The superintendent said he’s been pushing this plan for over a year, but the August 6 school board meeting was the first time all five board members discussed it in public.
That didn’t sit well with Dr. Barbara Thomas. She was the lone vote against the referendum. “The community needs input,” she told Gill and other board members at the meeting.
Additionally, Gill said referendum plans included turning North Gulfport Middle School into a kindergarten through eighth grade campus. However, while speaking to Dr. Thomas, the superintendent noted, “That’s still up in the air, because you said something about you didn’t know if people wanted that or not.”
Thomas responded, “I have been privy to that information, that’s not what a majority of the community wants.”
Nineteen days later, Gill met with the North Gulfport Civic Club to share his vision. He vowed to meet with other groups between now and the November 6 school bond referendum vote. “We have to get the word out,” he declared.
The school bond referendum needs 60% support to pass. The referendum will be on ballots in 23 Harrison County precincts because only voters who live within the Harrison County School District will participate in the referendum.
Copyright 2018 WLOX. All rights reserved.
Brad Kessie
Moments after Hurricane Katrina's eye passed through South Mississippi, it was Brad Kessie who stood near the water's edge and summarized the storm with a sentence that nobody will ever forget. He looked into a camera lens and said, "You're absolutely not going to believe what you're about to see." Brad was named news director at WLOX in 2009.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751165
|
__label__wiki
| 0.950216
| 0.950216
|
West Midlands works as one to bring Four to the region
Wednesday 27 June, 2018
The campaign to convince Channel 4 (C4) to choose the West Midlands for its new national HQ reached fever pitch today with the formal presentation to the broadcaster.
The West Midlands pitch team was a mixture of political leaders and industry experts, who worked as one to highlight the multiple reasons and benefits that make the region such an attractive proposition to the broadcaster.
The formal pitch was part of C4’s tour across the nation as it visits the shortlisted cities to assess the viability of each bid.
C4 chief executive Alex Mahon addressing the West Midlands delegates at the presentation.
The delegation from C4 included Alex Mahon, chief executive; Jonathan Allan, chief commercial officer; Sophie Jones, head of corporate relations; Kathryn Barry, HR business partner; Gill Wilson, consultant/former head of features; Will Fox, project manager – Nations and Regions.
As part of the pitch, the West Midlands assembled a cast of creative talent, which included: Adil Ray (writer/actor/director); Stephen Knight (screenwriter/film director); Debbie Isitt, creator of film franchise Nativity; and local poet Casey Bailey.
The formal bid from West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) featured Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands; Dawn Baxendale, chief executive, Birmingham City Council; and Martin Reeves, chief executive, Coventry City Council.
The leaders of Birmingham and Coventry City Councils were also on hand to lend their support to the bid.
Cllr George Duggins, leader of Coventry City Council, said: “We were delighted to meet the Channel 4 team and show them what a great site the West Midlands would be for a new headquarters.
“We believe we are the perfect choice, with our central position, first class transport links and strong cultural scene, and we put across a very strong case for why they should join us and be part of our exciting future.
“Coventry won the title of UK City of Culture 2021 by working with partners and other organisations to show the potential of our young, skilled and diverse population and how our city is growing and changing for the future.
“Those same strengths make us the perfect choice for Channel 4 and I believe that we put across a very strong argument and showed them how relocating to the region would not just help the West Midlands, but help Channel 4 and create something special for both of us.”
Cllr Ian Ward, leader of Birmingham City Council, said: “A wealth of knowledge and creativity, combined with one of the youngest and most diverse populations in Europe, make Birmingham a perfect fit for Channel 4.
"There's never been a better time to come to the West Midlands. Our thriving region is undergoing an exciting cultural renaissance and we have the digital skills, talent and energy needed to make the move a huge success."
The Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street said: “The prize of Channel 4’s National HQ is a huge one for the region.
"Today we brought together everybody who has been working with us from the political and industry to really press the case to the leadership team at Channel 4.
“Because our region has put the hard work into this over the last few years and because everybody has got right behind this bid, we have honed our case, gathered support and have every right to feel confident.”
The WMCA bid highlights the many strengths of the West Midlands under the strapline of ‘Get Closer’, including: the region’s unparalleled connectedness to talent, ideas and resources, its youth and diversity, and the ongoing success and development the region is experiencing such as Coventry named UK City of Culture 2021, and the Commonwealth Games in 2022.
C4 is seeking to establish three new creative hubs outside London, as part of its '4 All the UK' strategy.
The largest of these hubs will become the national headquarters, consisting of offices, a new studio, a base for daily programmes and a new digital production unit.
The final announcement will be in October, with the broadcaster moving to the new HQ in 2019.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751166
|
__label__wiki
| 0.894252
| 0.894252
|
WMCA to provide £31m to help Coventry get ready for UK City of Culture
Friday 28 June, 2019
A £31m funding package to help Coventry get ready for its role as the UK City of Culture 2021 was today (Friday June 28) given the go-ahead by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).
The money will be used to enhance and improve the city centre ahead of the arrival of millions of visitors for City of Culture and the Commonwealth Games in 2022.
Both events are set to give a huge boost to the cultural identity and reputation of the region offering an opportunity to increase its attractiveness as a place in which to invest, live, work and study.
The funding package will build on the city council’s own work to change perceptions of Coventry so it can better attract investment, retain talent and increase visitor tourism.
Previous work has seen more than £150m spent over the last eight years on improvements to the city’s public spaces and infrastructure.
The £31.6m awarded by the WMCA Board today will be used to help fund the Coventry City Centre First – City of Culture project which involves improvements to:
The urban environment and public realm areas which will include enhanced lighting and safety
The city’s road and cycle
Improved coach parking and refresh of the area around Pool Meadow bus station
The city’s signage and wayfinding infrastructure including the development of travel planning solutions for visitors
Refresh of public spaces and public art
Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street, who also chairs the WMCA, said: “The UK City of Culture offers a unique and golden opportunity for Coventry to showcase itself to the world.
“Coupled with the Commonwealth Games, where thousands of visitors will stay in and visit the city, it really is absolutely vital that we make not only a wonderful first impression but create a lasting legacy for those living in Coventry.
“That is why I am thrilled that the WMCA Board has today agreed to make this funding available to help do just that.”
Cllr George Duggins, leader of Coventry City Council and WMCA Board member, added: “I’m delighted that we have secured this funding to invest in our city centre. We are set for a wonderful year as city of culture but we have also committed to ensuring we provide a lasting legacy for local people. This money will help us to fulfil our commitment.
“We will use it to transform areas of the city centre including Upper Precinct, Market Way and Smithford Way as well as the area outside The Wave where we will take the best of the old and combine it with the best of the new.
“These are exciting times for our city and we can’t wait to get started.“
The WMCA Board was told today how the work of Coventry City Council to change perceptions was already making a real difference in the look and feel of the city.
A report setting out the case for funding said the work had put more focus on links to culture, tourism and leisure alongside repurposing properties that had previously been used for retail.
Jonathan Browning, chair of the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (CWLEP), said: “This funding decision enhances the area’s commitment to ensuring Coventry provides the best possible UK City of Culture in 2021.
“By investing in the public realm and infrastructure in Coventry city centre we will be providing an attractive location for visitors who will not only be travelling from the UK and beyond but also for local people.
“Agreeing this investment highlights the importance of partnership-working between the WMCA, Coventry City Council and businesses through the CWLEP and our combined efforts will leave a legacy for the region.”
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751167
|
__label__cc
| 0.747152
| 0.252848
|
Police searching for suspects in North Memphis triple shooting
Police investigating triple shooting
By Janice Broach | June 14, 2019 at 9:49 PM CDT - Updated June 14 at 10:28 PM
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - Memphis Police need help finding the suspects responsible for opening fire in a North Memphis neighborhood, killing one person and injuring two others.
Many people gathered at at a crime scene near Pope Street and Chelsea Avenue, where three men were shot Friday.
"We left the park and saw all this going on. We don't know what happened. We didn't see it. We just heard the gunfire,” one woman said.
The woman, who did not want to be identified, said she and her friends heard what sounded like 50 shots.
Police blocked the area off with crime scene tape, as well as several houses down on Pope.
People said they believed one person might be dead but they weren't sure.
Everyone wanted to know what had happened.
They were left with looking at the scene and trying to figure it out.
One car had plastic torn on the back window and a taillight out.
It’s not clear if what happened on the street had anything to do with it.
Another car in the middle of the road had the driver's side door smashed up against the fender, as if the door was open and someone drove by knocking it into the fender.
You could see a drink cup on the ground next to the car.
Firefighters arrived on the scene with wire cutters and a pry bar.
Two police officers pushed on a door that seemed to have something on the side that kept them from opening it.
Eventually they were able to walk into the home and there were about 15 evidence markers all over the street.
The neighbors didn't seem to be surprised by all of it.
"Happens out here all the time,” one neighbor said.
Police say all three shooting victims are in critical condition.
At this point police have not released a motive.
Investigators say the suspects took off in a gray sedan.
Anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers at 901-528-2274.
Janice Broach has traveled the world covering stories for WMC Action News 5, from the Rwandan refugee crisis to medical missions in China and Vietnam. You can watch her weekdays at 10 p.m.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751168
|
__label__wiki
| 0.884101
| 0.884101
|
NEWS OUTRAGE!WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Judges blow off separated family's plea for justice
Advocates urge public appeal directly to court
Published: 01/15/2011 at 10:20 PM
Bob Unruh About | Email | Archive
Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.
Christer and Domenic Johansson
Judges at the European Court of Human Rights for more than six months have ignored a separated Swedish family’s plea for justice and reunification, and advocates for Christer and Annie Johansson say now it’s time for the citizens of the world to demand action.
“It is quite concerning that this court has not responded to the pleadings filed – it has been rumored that there may be a court official who is hostile to anti-Sweden applications,” said Michael Donnelly of the Home School Legal Defense Association, which is working on the case.
“Our hope is that a number of letters inquiring about the case from the public will get the needed attention on the case,” he said.
“You’ve Decided to Homeschool, Now What?”
His organization is working with the Alliance Defense Fund on an appeal to the court.
The case developed in mid-2009 when social services and police forcibly took custody of their son, Domenic, then 7, over government concerns he was being homeschooled. The local courts later denied the parents the legal representation they sought, demanding instead they be represented by a government-approved attorney. The courts ultimately ruled the state must keep custody of Domenic.
Ruby Harrold-Claesson, the president of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights, had been working on the family’s case but was ordered off by the court in favor of a locally appointed representative the family opposed. However, she has kept up on the case.
“I am absolutely astonished that they haven’t replied to any of the applications that [ADF attorney] Roger [Kiska] filed for Christer and family and sent him a case [number]. They haven’t replied to my fax letter of September 29, in which I inquired about the application,” she said in a statement to the HSLDA.
Donnelly noted that the ECHR case is separate from the “increasingly tragic events” surrounding the family.
But he said the case at the level of the regional court could be used to send a message about family rights.
“A judgment from the ECHR could order Sweden to pay damages and could be taken to European institutions such as the Council of Ministers to seek enforcement,” he said. “The sad truth is that there is no reparation that could ever make up for the damage done to this family by Swedish authorities. Domenic and his parents continue to live a nightmare and will be scarred by this experience for life. It is the kind of experience that is difficult to ever recover from.”
He continued, “Mr. Johansson has told me that he hopes his case may show the world what kinds of things can happen in Sweden, a country that, he suggests, is looked to by too many as a role model. His suffering is very deep however as he is held without bail waiting the outcome of his trial. Please keep this family in your thoughts and prayers and take action to encourage authorities involved in the case to take action that will help this family overcome these heartbreaking difficulties.”
The “nightmare” to which Donnelly referred was the continuing demands by government officials in Sweden to keep the parents and son apart.
It was just weeks ago that authorities jailed the father and ordered him to remain behind bars for taking his son hojme, following a state-supervised “visit,” to see other members of his family.
Reports have confirmed that authorities have ordered unspecified psychological studies or evaluations for Christer, pending his trial on charges of interfering with the state custody of his son.
Details have remained sketchy about the local court hearing, held just before Christmas, in the Gotland, Sweden, case. But a Swedish broadcast station website reported that Johansson is accused of kidnapping or unlawful detention for the Thanksgiving week incident in which he took his son, now 9, with him following a social services-supervised visit.
The government took custody of Domenic in mid-2009 when police officers stormed a jetliner which the family had boarded en route to a move to India, the home country for Domenic’s mother, Annie Johansson.
The HSLDA said now is the time for people to become involved in protecting the family’s rights.
“Although more than six months have now passed, the ECHR has failed to address the application, even though a special emergency measures order was requested. It is highly unusual that the Johanssons’ application still has not been assigned a case number. The court has also not responded to a letter requesting an explanation for the unusual delay. Instead, the application languishes while the Johanssons continue to endure the forced separation from their 9-year-old son Domenic,” the organization said.
It recommended contacting the ECHR with the following message:
I am writing in reference to the application put before the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of Christer, Annie, and Domenic Johansson from Sweden.
Although the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) submitted this application in June 2010, I have been informed that the Court has yet to assign it a case number. Nor has the Court answered letters from the applicants inquiring why the ECHR has been so slow to respond to the application.
Justice should be swift, and this family needs your help.
The Johansson family has been denied the right to make decisions regarding their son’s education, the right to leave their country, and the right to select their own legal counsel.
As a parent who enjoys the freedom to exercise my human rights, including the right of parents to direct the education of their children, the freedom of movement, the right to due process, I respectfully request that you explain why the Court has been so slow to respond to the Johansson’s application.
The HSLDA said the letters should go to:
67075 Strasbourg-Cedex
A standard weight letter should cost 98 cents through the U.S. Postal Service, HSLDA said.
The HSLDA said encouragement to the family can be addressed, also for 98 cents, to:
Christer and Annie Johansson
c/o Rune Johansson
Alva Gudings 363
623 46 Hemse
This is not the first time that European social workers have concluded “psychiatric” troubles are linked to homeschooling.
Melissa Busekros, after her return to her home. (Photo courtesy Klaus Guenther)
In 2007, German social workers forcibly took custody of a 15-year-old girl who was being homeschooled and held her for several months for evaluations in a psychiatric hospital.
Ultimately, when she turned 16 and was subject to different laws in Germany, she simply walked away from the custody in which she had been held and returned to her family. A court later returned legal custody to her family.
The original court decision had ordered police officers to take Melissa Busekros – then 15 – from her home, if necessary by force, and place her in a mental institution for a variety of evaluations. She was kept in custody from early February until April.
At that time, Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, commented on the issue on a blog, stating the government “has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole.”
Drautz said homeschool students’ test results may be as good as those in school, but “school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens.”
The German government’s defense of its “social” teachings and mandatory public school attendance was clarified during an earlier dispute on which WND reported, when a German family wrote to officials objecting to police officers picking their child up at home and delivering him to a public school.
“The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling,” said a government letter in response. “… You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers. … In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement.”
Annie and Domenic Johansson
It was a blog called FriendsofDomenic that earlier outlined a plan for concerned parents, homeschoolers and others around the world to let the Swedish authorities know the case is cause for alarm. The plan was for people around the globe to send a polite and direct message to the judge in the case.
The Alliance Defense Fund, an international public interest law team, has explained the latest controversy.
“Despite the ill-advised decision on the part of Mr. Johansson, the only menace here is a government drunk with its own power,” said Roger Kiska, legal counsel for ADF.
Gustaf Hofstedt, president of the local social services board in Gotland, has told WND by telephone from Sweden that there is more to the dispute than homeschooling, but he refused to explain.
“I understand the public debate has been that is a case that is only concerning the fact of homeschooling,” he told WND. “But that is not the case.”
Asked to explain, he said, “I can’t answer that question because of secrecy.”
There also is a petition on behalf of Domenic.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751169
|
__label__wiki
| 0.792621
| 0.792621
|
You are here: Home / Institution / Botanic Garden / Garden and Arboretum
Garden and Arboretum
At the University of Leicester Botanic Garden & Attenborough Arboretum, we focus on global biodiversity. You can see and learn about a wide range of plants that grow in our extensive collections from around the world.
We are fundamentally an academic institution engaged in teaching and research. Our mission is to:
Maintain the most diverse garden in the region, in terms of plants, conservation collections, landscape features, and historically and architecturally important buildings;
Underpin scientific research and teaching at the University;
Devise and provide education programmes aimed at all age groups, reaching out into the wider community to demonstrate the contemporary significance of plants in a rapidly changing world.
Founded in 1921 with the assistance of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, the University of Leicester Botanic Garden was established on its present site in Oadby in 1947. It comprises the grounds of four houses: Beaumont, Southmeade, The Knoll and Hastings, which were built early this century and are now used as student residences.
The four once-separate gardens have been merged into a single entity, whose 16 acres of lovingly cultivated grounds and greenhouses, display a wide variety of features and environments. The formal planting centres around a restored Edwardian garden.
Other planting includes an arboretum, a herb garden, woodland and herbaceous borders, rock gardens, a water garden, special collections of Skimmia, Aubrieta, and hardy Fuchsia, and a series of glasshouses displaying temperate and tropical plants, alpines and succulents.
The plant collections and landscape features make this garden one of the most diverse in the region. The water features and sculptures are particularly pleasing and add character to the setting. It is the perfect place for a pleasant walk and there are benches for those who simply wish to relax and admire the surroundings. Variety is the key to this garden's strength.
Garden preview
Sculptures in the Garden: short guide
Fibonacci pavements
Attenborough Arboretum
The Attenborough Arboretum is a satellite facility of the Botanic Garden. Opened on 23 April 1997 by Sir David Attenborough, it occupies about five acres in the old village of Knighton, and forms part of the land that used to belong to Home Farm.
Now swallowed up by Leicester, the Arboretum site features one of the few surviving examples in the city of a medieval ridge-and-furrow field, and also contains two large ponds, complete with a board-walk. The planting scheme is designed to display our native trees in the sequence in which they arrived in this country following the ending of the last ice-age, approximately 10,000 years ago. Managed as a 'wild' site, we encourage you to record any interesting wildlife in the Arboretum on the Nature Spot website (http://www.naturespot.org.uk/wild-place/attenborough-arboretum), where you can see a list of species that have been identified.
Importantly for schools and other visiting groups, the Arboretum includes a fully-equipped, purpose-built classroom, with access for disabled people.
Arboretum Guide
Events & community engagement
Friends of the Garden
Donations, bequests & memorials
Summer Stitching 2019
Book a school visit
Book a guided tour
Book wedding photos
Looking good now
Full-moon Maple in Sandstone Garden
Full programme of Friends of the Garden visits and lectures for 2017-2018 on the Friends of the Garden pages
Visitors to Botanic Garden
The visitor entrance to the Botanic Garden is on Glebe Road, Oadby LE2 2LD. Parking is on Glebe Road
University of Leicester Botanic Garden,
University Road,
Leicester, LE1 7RH
Botanic Garden office phone: 0116 271 2933
(Mon-Fri 9am-5pm)
botanicgarden@le.ac.uk
The University of Leicester is committed to equal access to our facilities. DisabledGo has a detailed accessibility guide for the Botanic Garden.
Café in the Garden
Refreshment facilities
We regret that University Catering no longer provides a café in the Botanic Garden. However, we will be offering refreshments at some of our special events. For details see our events calendar on our website.
|
cc/2019-30/en_head_0002.json.gz/line1751171
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.