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'Three Famines': A Struggle Shared Across The Globe Famines, like the one happening in the Horn of Africa, share common threads with each other, even when they happen on different continents or in different centuries. Host Audie Cornish talks with Thomas Keneally, author of Three Famines: Starvation and Politics, about the modern history of famines.
'Three Famines': A Struggle Shared Across The Globe
'Three Famines': A Struggle Shared Across The Globe 4:22
< 'Three Famines': A Struggle Shared Across The Globe
October 30, 20118:00 AM ET
Famines, like the one today in the Horn of Africa, share common threads with each other, even when they happen on different continents or in different centuries. Author Thomas Keneally's most recent book is "Three Famines: Starvation and Politics." He joins us from the studios of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney.
Thomas Keneally, welcome to the program.
THOMAS KENEALLY: Thank you very much.
CORNISH: Now, your book examines three famines in history: the so-called Great Hunger in Ireland in the 1840s, the famine in Bengal in the early 1940s, and the Ethiopian famines of the '70s and '80s. Thomas Keneally, tell me to start, how did you get interested in this topic?
KENEALLY: I come from the driest continent on earth, Australia.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
KENEALLY: And we have heartbreaking, long-running climate change sort of droughts. And there's struggle and there's heartbreak, and the farmer has to sell up and come to the city and become a security guard or bartender or cab driver. But there's not starvation.
So I'm naturally drawn to the question of why does a drought in Africa seem inevitably to produce some famine. Well, my argument this morning is it's not inevitable because when there was a more stable, even though undesirable, government in Somalia in the past, in the 1980s, Somali suffered drought but did not starve.
CORNISH: What's the conventional wisdom about why famines occur?
KENEALLY: Well, the conventional wisdom is that they're due to food shortages and phenomenon such as drought. But increasingly, this idea is under attack. Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, says that food shortages don't cause famine, human agency is what causes the famine. And the armies that have rampaged across Somalia, and particularly southern Somalia, the Ethiopian army in recent years, the al-Shabaab militia now create a state of instability in which the livestock die, the price of the ones you sell falls, while the price of food - even if you can get to it by going to Mogadishu - goes up and up.
CORNISH: In effect, you've traded one argument that, you know, it's the conventional wisdom about it being the weather. You've basically traded it for something else, which is political instability; something else that seems sort of inevitable in our world. What did you learn from your research that could help us avoid future famines?
KENEALLY: Our reaction has to be quicker, obviously, when a serious drought hit in an unstable area. And in these societies where famine occurs there is also a problem of logistics. There's a problem of getting to the trucks together. There's the problem is that these governments have not provided proper roads for their people, proper storage facilities against the day when catastrophe strikes. And there are great storehouses of food in Mogadishu which through corruption and inefficiency, lack of infrastructure, the fact of al-Shabaab in the countryside are not getting out to people.
We have to try to make sure that that situation is amended. And another problem that needs to be addressed as that in the three famines I write about work partly caused as well by early denial of their seriousness by governments and agencies. And we have to react quicker.
CORNISH: Thomas Keneally, author of "Three Famines: Starvation and Politics." Thank you so much for speaking with us.
KENEALLY: Not at all, thank you.
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We are NRG 6762, a FIRST FTC robotics team. With a persistent, enthusiastic, hardworking group of combined Middle School and High School students, we do everything together. Although everyone has various ideas and skills, we all contribute to the team in a different way. Our group is in its seventh year! At our first year's competition we won the up and coming judges award. Last year we won another judges award and was part of the State Championship Winning Alliance Team! We can't wait to see what new members will bring to our team.
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Home / Your Government / The Premier / Media Releases from the Premier / Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, welcomed to Sydney
Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, welcomed to Sydney
Published 16th October, 2018
Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have been welcomed to Sydney by Premier Gladys Berejiklian – and the Royal couple have enjoyed a close encounter with two very special koala joeys gifted to them by the people of NSW.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were greeted this morning by Australia’s Governor-General His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Ret’d), Lady Cosgrove and Ms Berejiklian during a short reception at Admiralty House.
Representatives from the 18 countries competing in the Invictus Games also welcomed the Royal couple at the start of their 10-day visit to Australia, which includes stays in Sydney and Dubbo.
After the short reception at Admiralty House, Ms Berejiklian took the Royals on a tour of Taronga Zoo, where The Duke and Duchess of Sussex met their namesake koala joeys, Harry and Meghan - a wedding gift from the people of NSW.
“I am delighted to welcome Their Royal Highnesses to Sydney today and to show them around our great city,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“The Duke and Duchess were very excited to meet the koala joeys and expressed their deep gratitude to the people of NSW for such a truly Australian gift.”
Following the marsupial meet and greet, the Premier joined Their Royal Highnesses in officially opening the Taronga Institute of Science and Learning, a state-of-the-art facility, the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and home to the largest zoo-based conservation science team in Australasia.
“It is an absolute honour to have Their Royal Highnesses officially open the new Taronga Institute as strong advocates for conservation,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“The groundbreaking research conducted by the team of dedicated scientists here will be instrumental in inspiring future generations and shaping the future for Australia’s much-loved wildlife.”
The Premier will also join the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Sydney Opera House today, for a public walk along the Western Boardwalk.
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University of Michigan-Flint Nursing School Review
The University of Michigan- Flint (UM-Flint) is a university under the flagship of the larger University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. Its history started course in 1944, many years after the founding of the main University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The board of education in Flint requested the formation of higher education institution in Flint and so came into being the UM-Flint.
The university initially operated as a two-year college where students could complete studies for transfer to the main UM at Ann Arbor. The two-year college; then known as Flint College was re-organized to become the current UM-Flint leaving the grounds of the college of what currently known as Mott Community College.
Department of Nursing – UM Flint
The department of nursing at University of Michigan Flint has been approved and accredited by the Michigan Board of Nursing and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. Nursing degrees range from undergraduate to doctorate programs as outlined below:
Undergraduate Nursing Programs
At undergraduate level, the University of Michigan Flint offers students three distinct routes leading to the award of Bachelor of Science in nursing degrees.
Basic BSN
The program is for entry-level nursing students who do not have any prior nursing experience. The curriculum of a minimum of 120 credits is designed to be completed in four academic years with the aim of preparing students to write the NCLEX-RN exam. Students are awarded the Bachelor of Science in nursing degree.
Accelerated Second Degree
For four full time semesters of intensive work and compressed curriculum, students with other non- nursing degrees are welcome to be trained to be RNs at UM Flint department of nursing. For 16 months, students engage in rigorous nurse training in both clinical and classroom instructions. Students are basically trained to complete the NCLEX-RN exam as part of their ambitions to become registered nurses.
RN/BSN Program
This program is meant for already registered nurses who wish to advance their nursing and complete a Bachelors of Science in nursing program. Basically, the program targets the adult learner and as such, the curriculum is designed to be flexible. On this note, students getting into this program have the options of completing their nursing courses via exclusive online, campus or as a hybrid of the two. This is the nursing program at UM-Flint that welcomes transfer students from articulated colleges.
Accelerated MSN Program
The Master of Science in nursing at UM- Flint offers only one track of concentration towards becoming an advanced practice nurse; Adult Nurse Practitioner. The program is designed to be completed in a full time- online based format of study. Students are therefore expected to come to campus on only four days per semester. Due to the flexibility of the program, students are able to attend clinical sessions at their local neighborhoods. At the end of the program, 43 credits must be completed in about 16 academic months.
The doctor of nursing practice program takes the form of distance learning program utilizing online format for curriculum delivery. The program can be taken by either BSN or MSN prepared students by following the two tracks outlined below:
This program takes up to four years to complete after taking 82 credit hours. The program takes in BSN graduates and helps them through the program without taking the MSN degree. Students taking this DNP program can major in one of the following three concentrations:
Adult Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner
MSN to DNP
For MSN prepared students, this 36 credits DNP track at University of Michigan-Flint is the best option. The program takes between 2 to 4 years to complete and welcomes applicants who have a MSN degree as CNS, Nurse Anesthetists, NPs or Nurse Midwives. Both DNP tracks are offered as a part time option of distance learning with only single campus visits per academic year.
University of Michigan-Flint
303 E. Kearsley Street, Flint,
MI 48502
Consider a Sponsored Online Program: ACHIEVE ONLINE LPN to RN: LPNs earn your ADN or BSN degree online in up to 1/2 the time and cost of traditional programs. With No Waiting List to get started, Free Books, and Low Cost financing options available, this is the perfect way for LPNs, and LVNs to earn your Associates or bachelors Degree in Nursing and your RN license. Our convenient, LIVE instructor led test-out program allows you to learn at an accelerated pace and earn college credit-by-examination which then is eligible to be transferred to an ACEN accredited nursing school or 100's of universities nationwide.
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Sign In Article Navigation
Likenesses
<p>Printed from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see <a href="https://global.oup.com/privacy" target="_blank">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="/page/legal-notice" target="_blank">Legal Notice</a>).</span></p><p>date: 18 July 2019</p>
Hayward, Sir Jack Arnold
Martin Adeney
https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.108953
Hayward, Sir Jack Arnold (1923–2015), businessman and philanthropist, was born on 14 June 1923 at 300 Dunstall Road, Wolverhampton, the son of Sir Charles William Hayward (1892–1983), then a director of a motor cycle manufacturing company, and his wife, Hilda, née...
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publishing and the book trade
art publisher (1)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] Education and scholarship (1)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] scholars of language and culture (1)
translator or interpreter (1)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] Law and crime (2)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] crimes of deception (2)
swindler (2)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] construction (1)
property developer (1)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] Music (2)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] music education and scholarship (1)
music critic (1)
music scholar (1)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] music industry (1)
music editor or publisher (1)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] Writing and publishing (17)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] journalism (1)
media owner, manager, or publisher (1)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] publishing and the book trade (17)
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[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] Catholic (1)
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[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] Other (2)
publishing and the book trade x
Judaism x
Cass, Frank (1930–2007), publisher
Michael Freedland
Cass, Frank (1930–2007), publisher, was born on 11 July 1930 at 31 Leweston Place, Stamford Hill, London, the son of Simon (Sid) Cass (1891/2–1959), cabinet manufacturer, and his wife, Fanny, née Greenwich (1900–1985). His parents were Jewish immigrants, from Russian Poland. His career as a publisher arose from a love of books that he discovered as a child while attending ...
Deutsch, André (1917–2000), publisher
Anthony Curtis
Deutsch, André (1917–2000), publisher, was born on 15 November 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, the only child of Bruno Deutsch, dental surgeon, and his wife, Maria, née Havas. His father was Jewish and his mother partly so. Deutsch was educated at various schools in ...
Deutsch, André (1917–2000)
Maker: Leonard Rosoman
André Deutsch (1917–2000) by Leonard Rosoman, 1987 © Leonard Henry Rosoman; collection National Portrait Gallery, London
Elias, Julius Salter, Viscount Southwood (1873–1946), printer and newspaper proprietor
Huw Richards
Elias, Julius Salter, Viscount Southwood (1873–1946), printer and newspaper proprietor, was born in Birmingham on 5 January 1873, youngest of seven children of David Elias, a Whitby jet merchant, and his wife, Esther Jones (d. 1907). The failure of his father's business forced a move to ...
Gollancz, Sir Victor (1893–1967), publisher and writer
Sheila Hodges
Gollancz, Sir Victor (1893–1967), publisher and writer, was born on 9 April 1893 at 256 Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale, London, the youngest of the three children of Alexander Gollancz (1854–1933) and his wife, Helena Michaelson. His father, a jeweller of Polish descent, was the brother of ...
Gollancz, Sir Victor (1893–1967)
Maker: unknown photographer
Sir Victor Gollancz (1893–1967) by unknown photographer © National Portrait Gallery, London
Harari [née Benenson], Manya (1905–1969), publisher and translator
Harari [née Benenson], Manya (1905–1969), publisher and translator, was born at Baku, Russia, on 8 April 1905, the fourth child and youngest daughter of Grigory Benenson, a Jewish financier, and his wife, Sophie Goldberg. While Benenson amassed an enormous fortune Manya's childhood was spent amid the opulence of a rented top floor of ...
James, Richard Leon [Dick] [formerly Isaac Vapnik] (1920–1986), music publisher
Michael Brocken
James, Richard Leon [Dick] [formerly Isaac Vapnik] (1920–1986), music publisher, was born on 12 December 1920 at 1 Underwood Street, Mile End New Town, Spitalfields, London, the son of Morris Vapnik, master butcher, and his wife, Annie, née Puff. Three years after leaving school at fourteen he became a professional vocalist by joining ...
Maxwell, (Ian) Robert (1923–1991)
Maker: Ida Kar
Maxwell, (Ian) Robert (1923–1991), publisher and swindler
(Ian) Robert Maxwell (1923–1991) by Ida Kar, c. 1960 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Richard Davenport-Hines
Maxwell, (Ian) Robert (1923–1991), publisher and swindler, was born on 10 June 1923 in Synagogue Street, Slatinske Doly (Szlatina), a village in Czechoslovakia on a disputed frontier with Romania. He was one of seven children of Mehel Hoch (1887–1942?), agricultural labourer, and Chanca (...
Neurath [née Itzig], Eva Urvasi (1908–1999), publisher
David Plante
Neurath [née Itzig], Eva Urvasi (1908–1999), publisher, was born in Berlin on 22 August 1908, the youngest of five daughters of Rudolf Itzig, a Jewish clothier, who, after suffering from a breakdown, died when she was eight. Her mother, an art gallery proprietor who greatly influenced her, then married a solicitor called ...
Sadie, Stanley John (1930–2005), musicologist and music critic
Alison Latham
Sadie, Stanley John (1930–2005), musicologist and music critic, was born on 30 October 1930 at 57 Forty Avenue, Wembley, the only son of David Sadie, a silk manufacturer's agent, and his wife, Deborah, née Simons; he had one older sister. He was of Jewish descent. He was educated at ...
Samuel, Howard (1914–1961), property developer and publisher
Peter Scott
Samuel, Howard (1914–1961), property developer and publisher, was born on 2 February 1914 at 1 Maisemore Mansions, Canfield Gardens, Hampstead, London, one of at least two sons of Henry Samuel, jeweller, and his wife, Grace Jacobs. He was educated at St Paul's School...
Tuck, Raphael (1821–1900), art publisher
Adrian Room
Tuck, Raphael (1821–1900), art publisher, was born into a Jewish family in Germany. He came to England as a young man at a time when both Jews and gentiles from Germany were settling abroad, bringing with him his German wife, Ernestine, three years his junior, and his children, including four sons, ...
Warburg, Fredric John (1898–1981), publisher
Jane Potter
Warburg, Fredric John (1898–1981), publisher, was born at 117 Gloucester Terrace, Paddington, London, on 27 November 1898, the only son of the three children of Jewish parents, John Cimon Warburg (1867–1931), amateur photographer, and his wife, Violet Amalia, née Sichel (1868–1925), who was born in ...
Woolf, Leonard Sidney (1880–1969), author and publisher
S. P. Rosenbaum
Woolf, Leonard Sidney (1880–1969), author and publisher, was born on 25 November 1880 in Kensington, London, the third of ten children of Sidney Woolf QC (1844–1892) and his wife, Marie de Jongh (1848–1939). He was brought up in Reform Judaism, became an atheist in his teens, and remained sceptical about the religious temperament. Some of his earlier writing depicts antisemitism, but ...
Woolf, Leonard Sidney (1880–1969)
Maker: Vanessa Bell
Leonard Sidney Woolf (1880–1969) by Vanessa Bell, 1940 © National Portrait Gallery, London
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Pirkko Moisala
6 X 8.5 in.
9 black & white photographs, 4 maps
Music Biography & Personal Papers Women & Gender Studies Ethnomusicology See all Subjects
Kaija Saariaho
Introducing a bold contemporary composer whose work embraces both technology and traditional structures
This book is the first comprehensive study of the music and career of contemporary composer Kaija Saariaho. Born in Finland in 1952, Saariaho received her early musical training at the Sibelius Academy, where her close circle included composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. She has since become internationally known and recognized for her operas L'amour de loin and Adriana Mater and other works that involve electronic music. Her influences include the spectral analysis of timbre, especially string sounds, micropolyphonic techniques, the visual and literary arts, and sounds in the natural world.
Pirkko Moisala approaches the unique characteristics of Saariaho's music through composition sketches, scores, critical reviews, and interviews with the composer and her trusted musicians. Drawing extensively from this material, Moisala describes the development of Saariaho's career and international reception, the characteristics of her musical expression, and the progression of her compositional process.
"This insightful book is a foundational resource for anyone seeking an understanding of Saariaho's music. It is a stimulant to the imagination and the creative spirit."--Linda Dusman, composer, sound artist, and chair of the department of music, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
"A significant contribution. An in-depth study of the life and music of a critically acclaimed yet controversial composer who is redefining the boundaries between music and noise."--Ellen K. Grolman, author of Joan Tower: The Comprehensive Bio-Bibliography
Pirkko Moisala is a professor of musicology at Helsinki University, Finland, and a coeditor of the anthology Music and Gender.
//www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/86kst2wf9780252032776.html
Music and Gender
Edited by Pirkko Moisala and Beverley Diamond
Leonard Bernstein and the Language of Jazz
Katherine Baber
Composer and Critic
Blues Before Sunrise 2
Interviews from the Chicago Scene
Steve Cushing
Rethinking American Music
Edited by Tara Browner and Thomas L. Riis
The Man That Got Away
The Life and Songs of Harold Arlen
Walter Rimler
Bluegrass Generation
Neil V. Rosenberg
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Falmouth council meets privately with possible developer
By Emily Parkhurst
FALMOUTH — The Town Council held a closed-door meeting Monday night with the owner of OceanView Retirement Home and its development company in advance of producing a request for proposals for use of the Lunt and Plummer-Motz school buildings and development of the school property.
Voters on June 14 rejected a proposal to move Falmouth Memorial Library to Lunt, create a community center at Motz and renovate Plummer for possible rental by an outside organization.
OceanView, the town’s largest taxpayer, abuts the land and has expressed interest in purchasing part of the school property.
No formal deal has been inked, and representatives of OceanView declined to comment Monday after the meeting.
While some councilors were concerned that meeting privately with developers before an RFP is drafted would give the impression the town had already decided who would get the project and reduce the number of proposals, ultimately, the council voted unanimously to go into executive session.
Before hearing Sea Coast’s presentation about what the company would like to do with the school property, which has not yet been turned over to the town by the School Department, councilors publicly discussed whether what they were doing was legal.
“I don’t see any harm in talking to people, as long as you’re willing to talk to everyone,” said town attorney Bill Plouffe, of the Portland law firm Drummond Woodsum. “A level playing field is embedded in this process.”
Plouffe emphasized that the Town Charter and town ordinances require a competitive bid process for dispensation of any town property. However, he added that the council could decide to waive the competitive process if it believes there are “unusual circumstances.”
Councilor Fred Chase, who asked for the discussion, said he wanted to know what was Sea Coast was thinking before the council approves issues a request for proposals.
“We were elected to represent the taxpayers of this town. We weren’t elected to sit on our hands and determine whether we’re doing something illegal or legal,” Chase said.
The council decided it would meet in executive sessions with any developer interested in the school property at its next meeting. Town Manager Nathan Poore said after the meeting that the information would be advertised on the town’s cable TV channel.
“It’s important not to give one person a leg up,” Plouffe said. “Are you forbidden from talking to one person? I don’t think so, but be careful how you do it.”
The councilors voted unanimously to go into executive session with OceanView, which, according to Chase, lasted until 11 p.m.
“We needed to hear from them,” he said Tuesday.
Chase said he felt the circumstances are unusual because OceanView abuts the school property on three sides, and also because the property is “solid ledge,” meaning any development there will require blasting.
“Any other development is going to have to come up under their window and start blasting,” Chase said. “Most of their residents, they own their own houses. They’re just like any other neighborhood in Falmouth.”
Newly elected Councilor Chris Orestis said Tuesday that he felt comfortable the process would be a “level playing field,” because there are councilors who will make sure that’s the case.
“I recognize deal fatigue when I see it,” said Orestis, adding that he believes it is important to continue the competitive bidding process and get the best deal for Falmouth.
He said often people tell him they wish government functioned more like a business.
“If you want us to run things like a smart business, then that’s what we’re going to do. Sometimes that might mean it takes a little longer,” he said.
The council will review a draft of the request for proposals on Aug. 8 and act on it Aug. 22.
Emily Parkhurst can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 125 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @emilyparkhurst.
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Home / News / Bursary launched for new photographers
Bursary launched for new photographers
A printing professional and a photography network are set to launch a bursary designed to bring new images to life in physical print.
Redeye and professional photographic printer Rob Sara are due to work together to donate two days of directed hand printing in order to produce a series of images for a photographer's portfolio up to the value of £750. It will also allow for one night's stay nearby.
Mr Sara told How Do that the scheme aims to “encourage the production of previously unseen personal photographic projects”. He added that it should also help to prove the relevance of analogue printing and display its benefits alongside more technological methods. More on printing and editing can be found in Photography Courses Videos Photo Editing.
Amateur photographers who wish to take part will need to be members of Redeye in order to do so. They will also need to upload their work to the members' portfolio page on the website or send it in order to give the judges something to consider their application on.
More information is available from www.redeye.org.uk but the deadline for applying is 20 February, while the final work will be exhibited on 10 March at The Hive in Manchester.
Stay in touch with us on...
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What is a self-charging hybrid?
Future electric cars
Qualcomm car news
Qualcomm: Expect your car to do more than offer you Wi-Fi in the future
Stuart Miles | 25 October 2012
Future electric cars: Upcoming battery-powered cars that will be on the roads within the next 5 years
Qualcomm has told Pocket-lint that it is working with car manufacturers to make the connected car a standard rather than something you only see on Sci-Fi movies, but that it is still a long way off.
"The product lifecycle in cars is really slow. For us, it is more than just providing connectivity to the car manufacturers so they can build a module that talks back via internet," Rob Chandhok, president of Qualcomm Internet Services and senior vice-president of QCT, explains before telling Pocket-lint the company is: "Just starting to engage with car manufacturers on high-level engagement systems."
Those high-level engagement systems include a range of different things beyond simply offering Wi-Fi on the go in the back of a taxi.
"At some point car makers have to ask what value they can add themselves," Chandhok says, before suggesting that many opted to support the iPod because that made sense over trying to build their own infrastructure.
"As a car manufacturer, do I want to be asking people to download Android apps for their car? Or do you just want to be able to use the car as part of the consumer electronic world that I live in? If we abstract it correctly that will be more powerful than asking every consumer device to run Android or Windows."
READ: How will we drive in 2015?
Chandhok's vision is that the car, along with our laptops, phones, and tablets, will simply slot into a connected world where eventually it doesn't matter what OS we are running.
It's a utopian vision, but one that companies like Amazon are already starting to achieve, Chandhok believes. Its Kindle reader app, for example, lets users read a book they've bought on a dedicated eBook reader as well as numerous dedicated apps and even the web, almost regardless of the device.
"I would love to be able to get in a car and leverage the best solution, sharing things back and forth. If I have a video on my phone and want to play it in the back for my kids, it shouldn't be complicated. I think the way to make it not complicated is to make it wireless because cables are a pain, and is has to be interoperable and cross platform, so don't just do it for one ecosystem, because there are at least three that are important."
Chandhok acknowledges, though, that the car has its own set of rules and pace sometimes.
"You need to recognise that some people's lifestyles change faster than others, so you want to define the basic services at a level that will persevere over time. I think we are at a point where we kind of realise what some of those things are, and that they are more than just profiles in Bluetooth."
For Chandhok, and his boss Paul Jacobs, it is all about the "internet of things". It is a concept that, in the future, everything will be connected and able to talk to each other. It is not about surfing the web from your washing machine.
READ: Jaguar XJL Ultimate pictures and hands-on
"For me it is about the proximal network. It's about wherever you are. The difference between that and GPS is that GPS is an absolute location - 'I am here'. Proximal is, wherever I am there are things around me but I am the original of the co-ordinate system - 'I am zero, zero'.
"So when I get in my car I am going to interact with the things that are around me and my car. There may be a relationship between the things in my car and my home; it may be that my mobile phone is the bridge that carries that relationship."
Chandhok says he is looking forward to having generic services which give him things such as notifications on the display of his car, but that aren't specific to a certain operating system, a sort of DLNA or Bluetooth if you like, but for all devices be it the car or the TV.
When will this happen? It's unlikely to be tomorrow, but Chandhok is hopeful that it might happen the day after that, with systems capable of the above in the home by 2014 and the car following shortly after.
That suggests that for the short term, if you want your phone to talk to your car, you're going to have to wait a little longer, or at least expect to plug it in first.
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Video: Illegal Immigrant Opens Fire on Arkansas Officer at Traffic Stop
November 16, 2018 • by Staff Writer
Newly released dashcam video shows an incident over the weekend in which 29-year-old Luis Cobos-Cenobio—reportedly an illegal immigrant—opened fire on Corporal Brett Thompson of the Washington County (AR) Sheriff's Office.
According to Fox News, Corporal Thompson tried to initiate a traffic stop in Tontitown, located just outside Fayetteville.
The driver refused to stop and the officer reportedly initiated a brief chase. After eventually pulling over, Cobos-Cenobio got out of his vehicle and began shooting at Thompson, officials said.
Thompson quickly returned fire, and Cobos-Cenobio fled the scene.
The gunman was eventually taken into custody in Fayetteville. He has been charged with four counts of attempted capital murder, committing a terroristic act, fleeing, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to police.
Read more about Arkansas the south Officer-Involved Shootings Dashcam Video patrol Arkansas agencies Illegal Immigration
A deputy with the Stone County (AR) Sheriff's Office was shot and killed in the line of duty Thursday morning, the Stone County Office of Emergency Management announced on Twitter.
According to the Dallas Morning News, police were called to respond to reports of an active shooter event at a little before 11:30 local time on Thursday morning. The suspect was reported to be in custody at around 12:45.
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AbSciCon: The Cab Ride
When I settled into a cab at Washington's Union Station last night, the driver amiably asked why I'm visiting the capital. "I'm here for an astrobiology conference," I said.
"Astrology?" he pronounced in a thick Cambodian accent.
"No, as-tro-biology. It's the search for life in the universe."
"Ah," he replied, "that's my area of study! I wrote a book on the solar system."
John, it turns out, is a radio broadcaster for Voice of America by day, a cab driver by night, and has a masters in philosophy, which he taught before immigrating to the United States 30 years ago—a week before Communist forces captured Phnom Penh. He began studying astronomy, he told me, because he firmly believed the Earth was flat and at the center of the universe, and he wanted to know if it was true.
"It's not!" he said. "It's not true at all!"
Stay tuned for posts from the 4th annual Astrobiology Science Conference, hosted by NASA. And remember to pay close attention to life here on Earth, because it can be pretty interesting, too. —J.Bogo
The Inspiration for Mind-Control Conspiracy Theories Faces Its Demise
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Scientists Create Synthetic Yeast Chromosome (And Unlock the Future of Beer)
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The business case for holistic management
Photo by gustavo centurion on Unsplash
Written by Alexander Lykins, GreenBiz
Allan Savory — Zimbabwean ecologist, farmer, soldier, exile, environmentalist, international consultant and president and co-founder of the Savory Institute — has a world-saving message: The answer is in the soil. In the 1960s, Savory originated the concept of holistic management, which has been popularized by several articles and a TED Talk that has been viewed nearly 4 million times.
Holistic Management is a framework, most commonly applied to grassland management, that when properly practiced has the potential to regenerate damaged land. It focuses on mimicking the evolutionary grazing patterns of cattle to regenerate soils and restore grasslands. This technique has proved effective in hundreds of areas across the globe, one of the most popular being via Operation HOPE, winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.
In December, Bard MBA student Alexander Lykins sat down with Savory to discuss holistic management, how it can be applied to business and how young entrepreneurs can become involved.
Alexander Lykins: For some of our listeners, holistic management may be a new concept. Could you please give a brief overview?
Allan Savory: It’s an easy way, really, for anyone to manage their business or any management situation more successfully. Management, in any situation, always involves a web of social, environmental and economic complexity. Even managing feeding your family or living in a city involves complexity.
All management actions also need a reason and a context. If you think about that, you’ll realize that the reason is that you want to meet a need or a desire. In the case of policies, the context always has to do with the problem. There’s no other reason why governments develop a policy — it doesn’t matter if the policy is on drugs, terrorism or anything else. Whatever it is, the context is the problem.
When we do that, we take this great web of complexity that we cannot avoid and reduce it to a simple context for our actions. That’s reductionist management. All of us do it — we always have, in all cultures. Unfortunately, reductionist management commonly leads to achieving our actions but also later experiencing unintended consequences. And that’s where we are today.
Young entrepreneurs can use the holistic framework in business by becoming involved.
Now, we had to develop something else. Holistic management is a framework. It works by first determining what the situation is — with managing a household or a farm, a national park, a government — and then getting the people who make the management decisions together. They develop one overarching, holistic context that guides all management actions from then on.
The holistic framework guides our management actions as we go about meeting our needs and desires, or dealing with problems. The really new idea in this is this holistic context. It expresses how we want our lives to be, based on what we value most in life. Then we tie that to the behavior that is central to live that life, and we tie it to our life-supporting environment. When we use this framework, it works amazingly well, and it avoids experiencing unintended consequences to our actions.
Lykins: Is there a business case for holistic management? How can the next generation of young entrepreneurs apply the holistic management framework to business and contribute to a closed loop and regenerative society?
Savory: Yes, there is a case for it in business, because business is management, isn’t it? Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community or nation is actually derived from green-growing plants on regenerating soil. You can’t have a choir, you can’t have a church, you can’t have an army, you can’t have a political party, you can’t have any business without agriculture.
Tragically, American business is not grasping or recognizing that fundamental scientific truth. It does begin to come out, though, the moment a business begins to manage holistically, because you have to have that holistic context tying your actions to your life-supporting environment.
As a consequence of today’s mainstream business, agriculture is the most extractive and destructive industry in the history of mankind. That’s really not going to change until the public is better informed and begins to insist that management be holistic and no longer reductionist.
The problem lies with governments, major environmental organizations and international agencies.
So, the next generation of young entrepreneurs can use the holistic framework in business by becoming involved. If they remain passive or apathetic, then really, that amounts to taking sides and not being neutral. If you’re passive or apathetic, you are automatically supporting current reductionist policy and mainstream corporate agriculture.
Lykins: One of the most at risk locations for desertification is the Sahel region that runs through North Africa. Many people who own cattle in the region are nomadic pastoralists. Can holistic management be taught in a culturally relevant way to bring nomadic pastoralists on as stakeholders?
Savory: Yes, it’s entirely teachable, and this is already being done. In particular, the Africa Center for Holistic Management, one of our first hubs, has spent years developing simple training materials. They’re so simplified that it could be taught with pictures entirely, for illiterate people. We just train a few of them to do it and teach the others. It can also be translated into any language very quickly.
Already, there are pastoralists from that troubled Horn of Africa region you mention who state openly that nothing but holistic management can save their cultures. They realize that it’s all about saving their culture, not just the land or their livestock. So the problem doesn’t actually lie with the pastoralists; they’re ready to go.
The problem lies with governments, major environmental organizations and international agencies. All of these are forcing reductionist policies on people, policies that are not even based on good science or understanding of desertification.
What we need to do is just follow the science.
Some of this I made clear in my TedTalk on desertification, where I said we once thought the world was flat — we were wrong then, and we’re wrong again. I point out how all this blaming of livestock — they’re just a resource, and no resource can cause you problems — we had the bull by the udder, frankly. Only livestock, not any technology imaginable, can reverse man-made desertification. So we need to get that into our institutions because they’re blocking the way.
Lykins: Despite many successes at showing the efficacy of holistic management, such as operation hope in Zimbabwe, there are still some who remain unconvinced. What is one thing you would like to say to those who are still unconvinced?
Savory: To understand what’s going on, I had to study system science: how all organizations or institutions are complex soft systems and have what are called wicked problems. Our organizations always reflect the public opinion of the societies they’ve formed in. They’re very efficient at doing what they’re formed to do, but one of their wicked problems is that they are incapable, even if they wanted to change, of accepting new scientific insights such as we’re talking about ahead of the public. So public opinion has to change first.
It doesn’t matter how much data, facts, figures, evidence there is, how many people are dying — nothing matters. Institutions do not change until public opinion begins to shift. So that’s been a big part of the problem, the last 50 years — one that I, and many others, didn’t understand.
What we need to do is just follow the science. Now, skepticism is healthy. I couldn’t have developed holistic management without a heavy dose of skepticism myself. But most of the now 50 years of delay in public and institutional acceptance has been caused by influential academics who state firmly that holistic management is not scientific.
Holistic management is 100 percent based on good, sound, long-established scientific principles that no scientist has ever disputed. What holistic management does not have is academic approval from narrowly trained range management experts, who simply cannot see the difference between management that’s supported by science and their disapproval of something they do not understand.
Originally published by GreenBiz on Feb 17, 2017
ethan steinberg November 30, 2018 savory institute, holistic management, Allan Savory, Buckminster Fuller Institute, holistic business management, holistic context, complexity, soil
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ethan steinberg November 7, 2018 farming, regenerative agriculture, General Mills, organic, regenerative farming, environmental stewardship
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Changing Horses
№ of discs
Stock Status (?)
Folk, Folk-Rock
Format: Compact Disc
Add this product to your site
1969 album from The Incredible String Band, first released on Elektra Records.
All the material is original by Mike Heron and Robin Williamson. The album briefly made the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from a brief reunion, both Heron and Williamson have pursued solo careers. Digitally remastered, slipcased and with extensive new notes.
Catalogue number BGOCD1320
Packaging type Jewel Case
Imported No
Dimensions (LxWxH) 142mm x 10mm x 125mm
Track Listing — Disc 1
1. Big Ted -
2. White Bird -
3. Sleepers, Awake! -
4. Mr. & Mrs. -
5. Creation -
Kailyard Tales Wilson & Swarbri…
Kailyard Tales is the follow up album to 2014's Lion Rampant. Sadly, it marks Dave Swarbrick's last studio album, recorded before he passed away in 20…
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Decade (The Best Of 2007-2017) Lau
AWARD-WINNING, GROUND-BREAKING GROUP LAU: THE FIRST TEN YEARS 'DECADE (THE BEST OF 2007-2007). DELUXE GATEFOLD 6 PANEL DIGI PACK WITH BOOKLET Lau i…
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The Circle Is Broken Live And… The Incredible Strin…
The Incredible String Band were a psychedelic folk band formed by Clive Palmer, Robin Williamson and Mike Heron in Scotland in 1966. The band built a…
The Incredible String Band/The… The Incredible Strin…
The Incredibles' first three albums for Elektra Records, dating from 1966, 1967 and 1968 Clive Palmer left the group after the first album, resurfa…
Wee Tam & The Big Huge (2C… The Incredible Strin…
Originally released as a two LP set on Elektra Records in 1968. Though at the height of their popularity, the album didn't make the UK charts but b…
Ducks On A Pond (2CD+DVD) The Incredible Strin…
Double CD and DVD in a slimcase 3 disc pack of the Incredible String Band's 2003 show at the Lowry Theatre in Salford.
U (2CD) The Incredible Strin…
Originally a double album released by Elektra Records in 1970. Recorded in a hectic 48 hours by long-time producer Joe Boyd, 'U' is an eclectic mix…
I Looked Up The Incredible Strin…
ISB's 1970 album for Elektra Records, reaching No.30 in the UK Album chart and just creeping into the US chart. The album was produced by long-time…
Be Glad For The Song Has No En… The Incredible Strin…
Hard Rope & Silken Twine The Incredible Strin…
The Scottish folk/hippy band's last album for Island Records, dating from 1974. These recordings feature founder members Mike Heron and Robin Williams…
Live At The Fillmore 1968 The Incredible Strin…
Described as one of the most engaging groups to emerge from the esoteric 1960s, The Incredible String Band was essentially the duo of Mike Heron and R…
First two Island Records albums from the early 1970's. The Incredible String Band are still alive and well, and touring constantly in the UK, Europ…
Earthspan / No Ruinous Feud (2… The Incredible Strin…
The Incredible String Band's third and fourth albums for Island. The Incredible String Band are still alive and well, and touring constantly in the…
The Incredible String Band The Incredible Strin…
Deluxe, definitive re-mastered edition of the Incredible String Band's wonderful debut album. The Incredible String Band was founded in Edinburgh i…
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2017 Letter to all MPs on Genetic Engineering 17 November 2017
To all Members of the New Zealand Parliament
PSGR is a not-for-profit, non-aligned charitable trust whose members are science and medical professionals. Since the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification to proceed with caution PSGR has maintained a watching brief on the scientific developments in genetic engineering (also referred to as genetic modification).
Genetically engineered organisms
This letter is to request that all Members of Parliament work cooperatively with all other Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum, in order to ensure a precautionary approach to the use of genetically engineered organisms. We ask this in the interest of protecting New Zealand's GE-free production and natural environment, and the economic advantage of a GE-free status for our export markets.
It is with concern that we again read proposals of using genetic engineering / modification technology outside of a laboratory. While New Zealand has worked soundly in this field in projects requiring the strictest confinement, there has been long-standing and strong academic and public opposition to approval of these novel organisms for release into any environment.
The basic problem inherent in all the discussion about genetic manipulation and gene editing (especially CRISPR) is that it is based on unscientifically naive exaggerations of what the technology actually achieves. Proponents talk about it being so precise and accurate and only making small changes that could have occurred as a result of ordinary germline mutations. This is fundamentally misleading. What they are talking about is the change which is targeted, but the targeted change is invariably accompanied by a very large number of other changes at similar sites in the DNA of the genome being altered. Although each of the changes may be small, genetic CRISPR is still a scattergun approach like earlier methods of genetic engineering. And the correlations between the sites affected by the scattergun are very likely to be of some genomic significance, which may eventually come to light at the population level after a long time. The effect of many changes are likely to remain undetectable using standard techniques of phenotyping because of their wide dispersal in the genome. Thus, genetic engineering and the recently acclaimed CRISPR are not much like the way enthusiasts describe them.
Once again the problems with gene drive technologies arise because of the disconnect between the engineering plan and biological/ecological reality. There is so little that is really known about the long or short term effects of gene-drive deployment that, in our opinion, it would be utter foolishness to unleash it on the environment, especially something as delicate as our native ecology. It is as if Hahn and Meitner[i], having discovered nuclear fission on the laboratory bench, told everyone to get busy designing and building a nuclear power plant.
Molecular biologists present inflated views of the worth of what they do in order to get research grants, start believing what they have said and then peddle it to the community as a way of justifying their funding. It all has to sound clever, smart, innovative, commercially viable, entrepreneurial and a solution to climate change, world hunger, antibiotic resistance, other medical problems, or ecological collapse. What is done is mostly scientifically and/or commercially speculative. Most of it does not work. The few magic bullets that are produced are dressed up so that their side effects are masked like the herbicide, glyphosate - and sold as complete solutions that are actually partial.
All molecular biological explanations are couched in terms of accepted concepts like gene that are not only problematic philosophically but also practically. We still have very little idea how complete genomes work. It is important to understand much more than the relationship between the genes and the features of individual organisms. We need to know what the effects of changes are on entire populations many generations down the line. That is what ecology depends on. It is likely there are huge chunks of ˜junk DNA" in the human genome, and in that of any other mammal, whose sudden loss would drive the species to extinction. None of that is ever considered in technological evaluations. As long as a proponent demonstrates the target effect and nothing else very evident, the world can be convinced that what is being done is safe and smart.
The main problem we are facing with biotechnology is that we are not, as a species, humble enough. Predictions of safety by proponents have been shown to be false, with short term monetary gain taking precedence over long term risks. We ask who, in ten years' time, would be held accountable for environmental damage. We repeat, once released, genetically engineered organisms can self-replicate and contaminate wild species.
Recently, talk has again suggested applying the technology for uses that would expose genetically engineered organisms in the New Zealand environment that are capable of replicating. As has been seen overseas, once released the novel DNA is irretrievable, will spread, and has negative results.
The request for your support to a precautionary approach reflects:
Evidence from two decades of commercial use of genetically engineered organisms overseas;
Improvements in society's understanding of complex natural systems, and knowledge in epigenetics;
The long term impacts from transgenic organisms;
Success in developing effective non-GE solutions to issues society seeks to address.
PSGR urges caution be adopted by New Zealand's political leaders, in national and local government, for the regulation of such novel organisms outside of full containment.
Under current legislation there is no requirement for the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to apply the precautionary principle, or to require a bond, or to require proof of financial fitness from applicants. These are mechanisms that should encourage moderation of commercial risk-taking. Â This leaves New Zealand vulnerable to similar detrimental effects seen overseas, and at risk of repeating past mistakes on the scale of the destruction of 3000 genetically engineered sheep at Whakamaru in the Bay of Plenty.
This 2002 event resulted from the clinical failure of products outlined in Application Code GMF98001 made to the Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA), now the EPA, and the collapse of the overseas investment company running the experiment, leaving no funds for scientific bio-security tests or remediation at the site. At that time, ERMA admitted there was no monitoring at the Whakamaru farm and no recommendations in place for on-site monitoring. Requests from a range of interested parties for scientific analysis of the carcasses for future scientific benefit were denied.[ii]
Contradicting the need for precaution regarding genetically engineered organisms, there are calls from some commercial interests seeking to 'relax' rules, to reduce the EPA's oversight of experimental genetic engineering techniques. These calls are effectively encouraging the transfer of risk to the wider community and 'New Zealand Inc.' in order to advance interests in commercialising transgenic organisms, and leveraging Intellectual Property (IP) for their financial gain.
The US is the largest producer of transgenic crops; herbicide tolerant and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Since mass commercialisation two decades ago, adoption has grown dramatically as can be seen from this graph produced by the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture.[iii]
Recent reports show US farmers are abandoning transgenic crops because of poor monetary returns. A media report says: Bold yellow signs from global trader Bunge Ltd are posted at US grain elevators barring 19 varieties of GMO corn and soybeans that lack approval in important markets.[iv]
A closer-to-home study will show how planting transgenic canola in Tasmania led to disaster with volunteer seedlings appearing many years after the cessation of plantings. The Moratorium that resulted was made indefinite in 2014 to protect its clean, green brand.[v] [vi]
The evidence overseas from commercial release of such novel organisms also includes:
Increased use of toxic chemicals in agriculture[vii];
Disruption of complex natural systems;
Changes in gut flora in animals and humans consuming genetically engineered foods;
Increased incidence of tumour development shown in long-term feeding studies;
Genetic instability and unexpected effects from the processes of genetic engineering;
Contamination in the field, including by experimental and unauthorised test-crops emerging years after field-trials, even hundreds of miles away from the trial site, a result of horizontal gene transfer;
Extensive spread of weeds that have become resistant to genetically engineered DNA sequences as a result of in-field horizontal gene transfer[viii];
A new generation of transgenic crops being engineered to resist even more toxic chemicals such as 2,4-D responding to the growing failure of herbicides such as glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup used on Roundup Ready transgenic food crops;
The potential for unexpected effects impacting gene expression in future generations.
These and other issues have raised local and international concern in scientific and civil-society communities. The transfer of risk that commercial release of transgenic organisms involves is indicated by the fact the insurance industry refuses cover for the potential damage of these organisms occurring, whether quickly, or slowly, or over an extended term.
Drawing on scientific, legal and other expertise, some New Zealand councils used the then standing Resource Management Act to consider in their Plans their responsibilities regarding precaution around genetically engineered organisms in the environment and on long-term land use. This process is ongoing with more Councils examining what steps they can take to protect their region.
Challenged in the Environment Court, these measures stand. They include a local level of oversight of transgenic organisms such as requiring bonds from commercial users of genetically engineered organisms to mitigate exposure of costs to ratepayers under 'socialised risk'. Â The measures respond to community and scientific concerns and may also help regional development for producers of safe, clean, premium-quality, GE-free foods for local and export markets; many of the latter demand 'GE Free' produce. In depth research showed Councils they needed to think long-term and for future generations, especially as the EPA loses jurisdiction at the point of approving a commercial release of a genetically engineered organism.
Federated Farmers have recently withdrawn their challenge to Northland Environment Court decisions giving Councils the right to oversight.
Thank you in advance for reading the information we have provided and for working with other Members of Parliament irrespective of political affiliation and responsibilities. Working together to ensure precaution in legislation is vital in responding to the proven risks from existing and new experimental techniques in the development of genetically engineered organisms.
Whatever your party's official stand on the transgenic debate, we urge you personally to recognise and support the need for precaution, and look forward to hearing from you.
For further reference, we recommend the following:
Genetic Engineering and New Zealand, PSGR, released May 2017 http://www.psgr.org.nz/glyphosate/viewdownload/ 10-glyphosate/39-2017-genetic-engineering-and-new-zealand-9-may-2017
An Overview of Genetic Modification in New Zealand, 1973-2013: The first forty years, a review of genetic engineering research in New Zealand by the independent McGuinness Institute, Wellington. It recommended that a moratorium on commercial transgenic release be instigated. http://mcguinnessinstitute.org/includes/download.aspx?ID=130247
Public Health Concern: Why did the NZ EPA ignore the world authority on cancer? A report released by Jodie I Bruning, B.Bus.Agribusiness and Steffan Browning, MP https://www.green s.org.nz/sites/default/files/NZ%20EPA%20Glyphosate%20and%20Cancer%202017.pdf
A Monograph on Glyphosate from the Pesticide Action Network Aotearoa New Zealand (PAN) http://www.pananz.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Glyphosate-monograph.pdf http://www.psgr.org.nz/glyphosate/viewdownload/10-glyphosate/36-glyphosate-pan-mongraph
Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility New Zealand Charitable Trust - Glyphosate http://www.psgr.org.nz/glyphosate http://www.psgr.org.nz/glyphosate/viewdownload/10-glyphosate/16-glyphosate http://www.psgr.org.nz/glyphosate/viewdownload/10-glyphosate/25-glyphosate-calling-for-a-ban
The Trustees of Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility New Zealand Charitable Trust
[i] In 1938, physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch made a discovery that could lead to the atomic bomb; that a uranium nucleus had split in two.
[ii] http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/business/qoa/47HansQ_20040518_00000758/12-transgenic-sheep%E2%80%94environment-whakamaru-farm.
[iii] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx
[iv] US traders reject GMO crops that lack global approval, 7 May 2016, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-gmo-crops-idUSKCN0XX2AV
[v] 10 January 2014 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-09/tasmania27s-gmo-ban-extended-indefinitely/5192112
[vi] Audit Report May 2014 Former Generically Modified Canola Trials sites http://dpipwe.tas.gov.au/Documents/ GM%20Canola%20Former%20Trial%20Sites%20Audit%20Report%20May2014.pdf
[vii] Herbicide-resistant crop technology has led to a 239 million kilogram (527 million pound) increase in herbicide use in the United States between 1996 and 2011†https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2190-4715-24-24
[viii] Environ Sci Eur. 2017; 29(1): 5. 2017 Jan 21. doi: 10.1186/s12302-016-0100-y PMCID: PMC5250645 Herbicide resistance and biodiversity: agronomic and environmental aspects of genetically modified herbicide-resistant plants Gesine Schutte https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5250645/
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Download PTC Play Mobile Application
At PTC Play, the online video streaming Over The Top (OTT) platform, we truly believe that entertainment needs to be easily accessible and you need to feel it. PTC Play both in Android and iOS gives you an instant access to LIVE TV, Latest Punjabi Songs, Punjabi Movies, Punjabi Web Series, Live Award Shows, Reality Shows, Punjabi Virsa, Punjabi Short Films, Kids Special Content and Live News Updates from India and abroad in English and Punjabi language.
With PTC Network’s official app ‘PTC Play’, you can now get on-the-go access to LIVE telecast of Gurbani from Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar and Sri Huzoor Sahib, Nanded, besides other gurudwaras in India.
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PTC Punjabi started its operations on 6th August 2008 and since then it has established itself as the leading Punjabi entertainment channel of state of Punjab...
PTC News is a Punjabi News channel focusing on delivering true content to its viewers. Under the able leadership of experienced editors, the channel has established itself ...
PTC Chak de is a Punjabi language music channel. The channel broadcasts a mixture of contemporary Punjabi music. Programmes include star interviews, artist profiles...
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Bale reaches 150 LaLiga games
NEWS | 03/04/2019 | Bárbara Jiménez | PHOTOGRAPHER: Helios de la Rubia
The Welshman has scored 78 Real Madrid goals in the competition.
Real Madrid were up against Valencia at Mestalla as Gareth Bale made his 150th LaLiga appearance for the club. The Welshman reaches the milestone in his sixth season with the Whites, having won 98 games and scored 78 goals in the competition.
The season which saw him make the highest number of LaLiga appearances was 2014-15, with 31, followed by 2013-14, with 27 and 2017-18, when he played in 26 games. He played 23 times in the 2015-16 campaign and made 19 appearances in 2016-17. So far this season, he's been involved in 24 league matches.
Kit 2019/20Buy now!
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Rediff.com » Business » Who will regulate the regulators?
Who will regulate the regulators?
March 16, 2018 09:01 IST
It would be a good idea to create independent oversight committees for each regulatory institution and indeed, even for their appellate bodies, says A K Bhattacharya.
Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that in India while the political leadership is held accountable for all its actions and inaction, the regulators are not accountable in the same way.
Jaitley’s comment came in the wake of the letter of undertaking (LoU) scam that has engulfed the state-controlled Punjab National Bank.
A few days prior to the finance minister’s statement, the lack of an oversight mechanism in India for key policy-framing bodies and institutions was highlighted by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who was the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission before it was wound up by the current government.
Ahluwalia made his comment while discussing the role of independent evaluation of the International Monetary Fund at a seminar organised by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
The context of the two statements was completely different.
Jaitley’s observations came in response to the need for government action after the PNB was allegedly duped of $2 billion.
And Ahluwalia’s desire for a discussion on an oversight of policymakers in India arose out of the largely positive outcome of the Independent Evaluation Office set up by the IMF board to oversee its own functioning.
Ahluwalia was the first director of the IEO set up by the IMF board in 2001.
Yet, issues raised by both of them are relevant and critical for governance.
How do you make regulators accountable?
Is there a need for an oversight body to evaluate how fiscal policies or monetary policies are being implemented by the finance ministry under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act and by the Monetary Policy Committee under an amended Reserve Bank of India Act?
To begin with, it is not entirely correct to assert that regulators in India are not accountable.
Most regulators at present have appellate bodies that sit in judgement over orders issued by them and also have the powers to overrule them.
Appeals against all decisions taken by regulatory bodies overseeing the stock markets and the insurance sector can be heard by the Securities Appellate Tribunal.
The electricity regulator has an appellate body and so has the telecommunications regulator.
Similarly, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal hears appeals against decisions of the Competition Commission of India and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India.
A notable exception is perhaps the Reserve Bank of India, which combines in itself the two primary roles of regulating banks and formulating monetary policy.
There are ombudsmen in the central bank, but they only redress complaints from bank customers.
But beyond this, there is no other appellate body for the RBI and none of its decisions on regulating banks, in particular, can be challenged before a higher appellate authority.
So, what did the finance minister mean by saying that regulators in the Indian system are not accountable?
All regulators, except the RBI, have an appellate body above them and their decisions can be challenged.
The RBI, for good reasons, has a unique place in the hierarchy among all regulators. Any sudden change in a system that has served well in the past is inadvisable.
Yet, the question of regulating the regulators and making them accountable has been bothering governments for quite some time.
But it must also be realised that merely setting up an appellate body does not ensure accountability.
Appellate bodies do serve a purpose in some sectors by ensuring that the regulators are aware that their actions can be reviewed and even be overturned.
However, a more effective way of ensuring regulatory accountability will be to create independent oversight bodies for all regulators or policy-making institutions.
What Ahluwalia said is relevant for the government to ponder over.
Instead of chasing the goal of making them accountable, it would be a good idea to create independent oversight committees for each of these regulatory institutions and indeed even for their appellate bodies.
The dangers of not creating these oversight bodies are many.
In their absence, there would be an increasing demand from the political establishment to make the regulators accountable, which as a consequence is likely to enfeeble them apart from making them subservient to the government’s wishes that are often inspired by short-term political considerations.
Another danger could be an expansion in the brief of the existing auditing bodies that report to Parliament on the manner in which the government and its arms spend the resources allocated to them.
Auditing how effectively and efficiently the resources have been spent is an important function.
But problems may arise when the same financial auditors expand their role and start evaluating the appropriateness and efficacy of policy.
The yardsticks or the mindset cannot be the same for both judging policy implementation and evaluating financial practices or expenditure efficiency.
It is, therefore, necessary to have dedicated oversight bodies to evaluate how the government has fared in terms of adhering to its predetermined road map for fiscal consolidation and whether the Monetary Policy Committee has succeeded in achieving the twin goals of reining in inflation within the target while ensuring growth and stability.
More importantly, these oversight bodies could advise both the finance ministry and the RBI on what corrective action they need to take for achieving the goals.
Independence of these oversight bodies is crucial to their playing a meaningful role in governance.
They may report their findings to the finance ministry or the RBI, for that matter, but they should be allowed to function independently even though their funding could come from the government.
The erstwhile Planning Commission did set up an independent evaluation office at the fag end of its existence.
That office was abolished once the Planning Commission was dissolved.
It is time the concept of independent evaluation offices for different regulators and even for the administration of fiscal and monetary policies was revived.
Taxpayers or citizens of India deserve no less.
A K Bhattacharya
Related News: Reserve Bank of India, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, International Monetary Fund, Planning Commission, Independent Evaluation Office
Moneywiz Live!
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India Business News | Indian Stock Market News | Bollywood Movies | Indian Cricket News | India News
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What Is the Approximate Popula...
Home Geography United States The West
What Is the Approximate Population of California?
According to the United States Census Bureau, the approximate population of California in 2013 was 38,041,430. This was a 2.1 percent increase from the last census in 2010.
Based on historical trends of the state, California should reach 38.801 million people by 2015, and continue to grow at a rate of 2 percent every year thereafter. California is 560 miles across, from east to west, and it's about 1,040 miles long. Given the approximate numbers, the population density of the state is about 242 people per square mile. Despite such a large population, California is home to Alpine County; one of the eight smallest counties in the state, it doesn't have a high school, ATMs, banks or traffic lights.
California Population - Information - kensaq.com
www.kensaq.com/California Population/Now
Search for California Population on the New KensaQ.com
What Is California Known For?
What Are Some Facts About California?
What Is California Famous For?
What Are Some Major Landforms in California?
what is the population of the us
canada's largest cities
what is population of california
what is population of usa
what is population of china
what is population of india
what is population of interest
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Flexible offices in University & Dundas
University & Dundas
439 University Avenue, 5th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 1Y8
A tree-lined major thoroughfare through bustling downtown Toronto is the convenient site for the University Avenue business centre. It's located on the fifth floor of an office tower that is located steps from the St. Patrick Subway Station in the heart-of-the-city. The building is minutes away from the AGO, financial district, World renown Hospitals and Clinics, Ontario Courthouses, Upper Canada Law Society, Toronto City Hall and Queen's Park, Embassies, Consulate General Offices, OCAD and the University of Toronto, one of four universities that help to educate the city's workforce.
In this neighbourhood the business centre is located among the main economic and financial centre, with a diverse number of business clusters ranging from fashion and design to legal, insurance and financial services to engineering and technology companies. Top employers in central Toronto include big names in computer programming, construction, many financial services firms, pharmaceuticals, legal firms and publishing. It's a global hub for IT and new media and an incubator for many alternative energy and clean-tech companies.
From $18.20 - $25.10 per day
From $16.10 per day
From $2.80 - $11.90 per day
Find customer parking on-site or nearby.
439 University Avenue, 5th Floor
Toronto - Queen West
M5T 1X5
1 Dundas Street West
M5G 1Z3
Queen & Bay
M5H 2Y4
Yonge & Shuter
229 Yonge Street
M5B 1N9
0.4 miles View centre
Yonge and Richmond Centre
M5C 2W7
M5X 1C9
Toronto Street
36 Toronto Street
M5C 2C5
King East
36 King Street East
M5C 3B2
Toronto - on Bay
200 Bay St
Queen & Richmond Centre
111 Queen Street East
M5C 1S2
TD Canada Trust Tower
M5J 2S1
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Saiber LLC is pleased to announce that Ami Foger has been elevated to member of the Firm, effective April 1, 2019.
Ami practices in Saiber's Business Services Practice Group. He provides counsel to businesses in a variety of industry sectors, including consumer products, apparel, food services, energy, pharmaceuticals and technology on a wide range of transactional matters, including commercial contracts, mergers and acquisitions, data security and advanced technologies and corporate governance.
“We are thrilled to welcome Ami Foger to the Firm’s membership,” said William F. Maderer, Saiber’s Managing Member. “Ami has proven to be a talented lawyer who is focused on providing exceptional client service.”
Prior to joining the Firm in 2017, Ami served as counsel in private practice at top regional law firm. Most recently, Ami was named as a "New Leader of the Bar" by the New Jersey Law Journal, an award that recognizes attorneys who have left a mark on the profession through consistent excellence in his or her career by moving the law forward, achieving significant litigation results, or otherwise making an impact.
Ami received his J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 2007 (summa cum laude) and his B.A. from Rutgers University in 2003.
Ami Foger
afoger@saiber.com
Business Counseling
Health & Hospital Law
Ami Foger Named as ‘New Leader of the Bar’ by New Jersey Law Journal
Arnie Calmann Featured in Q&A with Super Lawyers on Intellectual Property Infringement in New Jersey
Saiber LLC Seeks to Expand its Business Services Practice
Saiber Welcomes Ami Foger as Counsel
Saiber Prevails on Behalf of BCB Bancorp in Post-Merger Insurance Coverage Dispute
Saiber Elevates Two Associates to Counsel
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Supreme Court limits life sentences for juveniles
5-4 ruling says youth convicted of crimes other than murder must have a chance of parole
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com/2010/05/17/us_supreme_court_juvenile_sentences/
Mark Sherman
The Supreme Court has ruled that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven't killed anyone.
By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court says the Constitution requires that young people serving life sentences must at least be considered for release.
The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 22, is in prison in Florida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.
"The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. "This the Eighth Amendment does not permit."
Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with Kennedy and the court's four liberal justices about Graham. But Roberts said he does not believe the ruling should extend to all young offenders who are locked up for crimes other than murder; he was a "no" vote on the ruling.
Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh for juveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious than killing, although roughly three dozen states allow for the possibility of such prison terms. Just over 100 prison inmates in the United States are serving those terms, according to data compiled by opponents of the sentences.
Those inmates are in Florida and seven other states -- California, Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina -- according to a Florida State University study. More than 2,000 other juveniles are serving life without parole for killing someone. Their sentences are not affected by Monday's decision.
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from Monday's ruling.
Thomas criticized the majority for imposing "its own sense of morality and retributive justice" on state lawmakers and voters who chose to give state judges the option of life-without-parole sentences.
MORE FROM Mark Sherman
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Is the gerrymander tide turning?
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Justice Ginsburg blames Roe v. Wade for current anti-choice fervor
Ginsburg said the landmark ruling gave "opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly"
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/justice_ginsburg_blames_roe_v_wade_for_current_anti_choice_fervor/
May 12, 2013 10:06PM (UTC)
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an audience at the University of Chicago Law School on Saturday night that a lack of "judicial restraint" in the court's ruling on Roe v. Wade gave abortion opponents a "clear target" that continues to fuel anti-choice activism 40 years later.
As reported by the Associated Press:
"That was my concern, that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly," [Ginsburg] told a crowd of students. "... My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change."
The ruling is also a disappointment to a degree, Ginsburg said, because it was not argued in weighty terms of advancing women's rights. Rather, the Roe opinion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, centered on the right to privacy and asserted that it extended to a woman's decision on whether to end a pregnancy...
Ginsburg would have rather seen the justices make a narrower decision that struck down only the Texas law that brought the matter before the court. That law allowed abortions only to save a mother's life.
A more restrained judgment would have sent a message while allowing momentum to build at a time when a number of states were expanding abortion rights, she said. She added that it might also have denied opponents the argument that abortion rights resulted from an undemocratic process in the decision by "unelected old men."
As noted by the New York Times editorial board and Yale Law School professors Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel, Ginsburg's previously-asserted idea that the court got "ahead of public opinion" on abortion and "short-circuited" an evolving political process at the state level is deeply problematic:
[P]olitical conflict over abortion was escalating before the Roe decision, and state progress on decriminalization had reached a standstill in the face of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1970, a measure legalizing abortion in New York cleared the State Assembly by just a single vote. Only a veto by the state’s Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, blocked its partial repeal two years later. Had the Supreme Court waited for the states to move, women in a large portion of the country would still be denied the fundamental right to make their own childbearing decisions.
The claim that the court invited a backlash by getting too far ahead of public opinion does not hold. At the time of the ruling, a Gallup poll showed a substantial majority of Americans favored letting the abortion decision be made “solely by a woman and her physician,” with more Republicans than Democrats in favor. In fact, at the confirmation hearing for Justice John Paul Stevens in 1975, not a single question about Roe v. Wade was posed.
In her Saturday remarks, Ginsburg went on to say that a "worst-case scenario" in which Roe is overturned wouldn't "matter that much" because there are "a number of states that will never go back to the way it was."
Ginsburg's comments are dangerously narrow-minded; the loss of a constitutionally-protected right to abortion (as scaled-back and inaccessible as certain state lawmakers have already made it) would most certainly "matter" to women in those "other states" -- and reproductive health advocates everywhere. Ginsburg herself has acknowledged that a Roe reversal would signal a virtual end to accessible abortion care for low-income women. (Which is, by the way, already a serious problem.)
As she told audiences at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2010: "The only women who would be truly affected are poor women. Because even at the time before Roe, women who wanted abortions could have a safe, legal abortion… Whatever the court may do, it's only the poor women who will suffer. When people realize that, maybe they will have a different attitude."
And that doesn't "matter that much?"
It seems Ginsburg's neck doily might be on too tight.
Abortion Reproductive Rights Roe V. Wade Ruth Bader Ginsburg Supreme Court
Abortion: The problem with coat hangers
Justice Breyer sends out a warning
What's at risk if Roe is overturned
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Atlanta Gas clears hurdle to take advantage of LNG
Vicky Eckenrode
ATLANTA - The Georgia Public Service Commission cleared the way Thursday for Atlanta Gas Light to tap into liquefied natural gas resources near Savannah.
The regulators, voting 3-2, approved AGL's capacity plan, which this time includes intentions to run converted LNG from the Elba Island terminal, south to Brunswick and then northwest to metro Atlanta.
The LNG terminal, one of four in the nation, is owned by Southern Natural Gas. The company receives tankers carrying the liquefied fuel from overseas, converts it back to gas, and pipes it out.
Georgia lawmakers and regulators have pointed to the facility as a way for the state to diversify its sources of natural gas, which now are primarily on the Gulf Coast.
"I campaigned on using Elba Island more," said Chuck Eaton, the newest member of the PSC's board. "The Gulf reserves, I don't think there's any question that they're declining. I believe this country is going to become more dependent on LNG."
In order for AGL to take advantage of the LNG shipments, the company has to enter into a contract with Southern Natural Gas and lease part of its lines for the next 15 years.
AGL plans to handle that lease through a separate, unregulated affiliate company. The terms of that lease prompted disagreements among board members.
Commission Chairman Bobby Baker voted against the final plan, which was based on an agreement AGL forged with nine of the natural gas marketers that operate in the state.
Because some changes were made to the utilities' agreement, AGL and the marketers had to review it but a majority of the group decided by Thursday afternoon to sign off on the plan.
The state no longer regulates the marketers, who actually set up service and bill customers, but does maintain control over AGL for distributing to the marketers statewide.
All natural gas customers pay for those distribution costs as part of their monthly bill.
Baker said he was concerned the agreement reached Thursday might not be in the best interest for those customers in the future. He said he still had questions about how the leased pipe would be sold back after 15 years if for some reason the company decides not to continue getting gas from the LNG supplies.
Craig Dowdy, an attorney representing AGL, told the regulators it would be $69 million cheaper to go with the LNG pipeline route compared to another service for year-round, uninterrupted natural gas supply.
When faced with the staff's suggestion to delay the contracts until the regulatory agency could get more information about the LNG plan, Dowdy argued that it could kill AGL's deal with Southern Natural and shut them out completely from the pipe system, which connects to other states.
"The transaction is only secure if there is a favorable order out of this commission," he said during presentations before the vote. "Elba is sitting there. The firm capacity is about to be gone by South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida."
Another sticking point came when the PSC's advisory recommended cutting the amount of gas-line capacity AGL wants to maintain in its overall system.
It is more expensive for the company to keep extra capacity available, but the supply is worth it when extremely cold weather hits and people begin running their heat systems continuously.
Dowdy said the difference between the company's proposal and the PSC staff's recommendation would be 0.50 cents a month per customer.
He said the staff's fuel use projections to justify the lowered capacity factored in warmer temperatures and not what would happen on the coldest days of the year if temperatures hit 10 degrees in parts of Georgia.
"The peril is that you could lose (service to) over 100,000 customers," Dowdy said about the reduced capacity option. "It could take weeks or months to restore that in the coldest months of the year.
"This is something that could happen next year. Do you want to gamble with it not happening?"
Eaton briefly considered dropping AGL's capacity amount but withdrew his suggestion during the debate.
"I could have gone either way on that," he said. "That capacity to me is like buying insurance. Most of the time you're not going to need extra capacity."
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An exceptional way to experience New York City.
An elevated green park with a sense of rear window curiosity. High Line Park is open from 7 am to 10 pm year 'round, featuring unique characteristics throughout the four seasons with the natural changing landscape and events. Surrounded by the wildflowers and green foliage, the pathway meanders alongside the buildings, intimate park benches and inviting seating steps providing plenty of resting spots. The cityscape unfolding among the brilliant design structures, integrated seamlessly with the urban setting. A hideaway above the street traffic with amazing views from dusk to dawn, it is equally magical for tourists and residents alike.
The High Line, originally constructed in the 1930s, was used to elevate dangerous freight train traffic off of the streets of Manhattan’s busiest industrial district. 30 feet up in the air, The High Line trains delivered supplies directly to the second floor of warehouses all along the west side route from 14th Street up to 30th Street. The trains ceased operation in 1980, and the rail line became overrun with weeds, wild flowers and rust. Threatened with demolition, in 1999 Friends of the High Line was founded by two visionary residents Joshua David and Robert Hammond, which led to the eventual transformation of the old freight line into one of New York’s most unique public parks runs above Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to West 34th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues).
A collaboration flourished with leading urban design and landscape architecture team James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and planting designer Piet Oudolf. Construction on the park began in 2006. The first section, from Gansevoort Street to West 20th Street, opened June 9, 2009. The second section, from West 20th Street to West 30th Street opened in June 8, 2011. The construction of the third and final section opened in 2014.
The abandoned High Line has now evolved into a cultivated destination sitting above one of the most trendy neighborhood in New York City. The cobblestone streets below lined with art galleries, design shops, restaurants, nightclubs and boutique hotels. The Meatpacking District and Chelsea are delightful be around as you explore The High Line’s points of interest. The history of this area has been preserved through a well-thought out one-of-a-kind transformation.
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Authentic Hong Kong Hospitality
Fine traditional Chinese cuisine with a modern twist ...
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Michelin-Conti venture to open U.S. tire/wheel assembly plant
VANCE, Ala. (Aug. 13)—TW Fitting N.A. L.L.C., a Groupe Michelin/Continental A.G. joint venture, is setting up a plant in Vance to supply Mercedes-Benz of America Inc. with mounted tire/wheel assemblies.
TW Fitting is a unit of Eurofit, a Belgian subsidiary of Michelin Continental Projects, a 50-50 Michelin-Continental joint venture. This is the first North American factory for Eurofit, which operates several tire/wheel assembly plants in Europe.
The new company will occupy half of a $10 million, 100,000-sq.-ft. facility under construction in the Legacy Industrial Campus in rural Tuscaloosa County near Vance close to the Mercedes plant where the M-class sport-utility vehicle is assembled. Mercedes is doubling the size of its operation in Vance to 160,000 vehicles annually, including assembly of the new Grand Sport Tourer and the next-generation M-class.
The TW Fitting operation will create 35 jobs initially, according to the Tuscaloosa Industrial Development Authority, which has approved tax abatements for the project totaling $453,581. Construction should be completed by September, the authority said.
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The SADC Executive Secretary meets the Former President of Botswana and Chairman of the Champions for an AIDS-Free Generation in Africa
The SADC Executive Secretary visited the office of the Former President of Botswana and Chairman of the Champions for an AIDS-Free Generation in Africa, H.E. Festus Mogae on the 15th June 2017, to discuss how the Forum and the SADC Secretariat could continue to work together in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
The vision of the Champions is to create an AIDS free generation by mobilizing and encouraging African leaders and global policy makers to renew and continuously intensify the fight against HIV and AIDS. The SADC Secretariat and the Champions would continue to collaborate in this noble initiative.
The Champions comprises the following former Presidents and eminent persons: H.E. Festus Mogae of Botswana; H.E. Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia; H.E. Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa; H.E Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria; H.E. Alpha Oumar Konare of Mali; H.E Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique; H.E. Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania; H.E. Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe, Former Vice President of Uganda; H.E. Joyce Banda of Malawi; H.E. Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia; Professor Miriam Were, Former Chairperson of the Kenya National AIDS Control Council; Mr. Edwin Cameron, South Africa Supreme Court of Appeal Judge; and Dr. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
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Obituary: Professor Krzysztof Ludwik Birkenmajer
SCAR is saddened to inform the community of the death of Professor Krzysztof Ludwik Birkenmajer, who passed away on Saturday 23rd February after a short illness, at the age of 90.
Professor Krzysztof Birkenmajer was a pioneering geologist and outstanding polar explorer. He was one of founders of the Polish Polar Station in Hornsund, Spitsbergen, Svalbard in 1957 and a significant supporter of the establishment and operation of the Henryk Arctowski Station on South Shetland Islands in Antarctica (since 1977). Professor Bikenmajer was a member of numerous Polish, Norwegian, Danish and international expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica. He was Honorary Chair of the Committee on Polar Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences and made a significant contribution to polar research as author of the geological map of Pieniny, numerous maps of polar areas and hundreds of scientific articles.
He served for many years as the Polish Delegate to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and to the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), playing an important role in both organisations. He was the Executive Secretary of SCAR from 1992 to 1996, and a member of the Group of Specialists on Environmental Affairs and Conservation. He was also a member of the ad hoc committee on SCAR organisation and strategy in 1999-2000, which led to a complete reorganisation of SCAR into the organisation it is today.
SCAR’s thoughts are with Professor Birkenmajer’s family and friends.
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How to Tell If Your Child Is Gifted
Plus, advice for navigating the testing process.
By Samantha Cleaver
In first grade, Ryan Boik brought a toy helicopter to school for Show and Tell. As the other 6-year-olds gathered around, Ryan proceeded to explain the principles of aerodynamics and to describe the differences between the way helicopters and airplanes fly.
Clearly, Ryan, who lives in Northville, MI, understood some advanced concepts. He also frequently asked in-depth questions and was reading at a fifth grade level. His first-grade teacher urged Ryan's mom, Janette, to have her son tested for giftedness- but by the following year, when it came time for the testing, Ryan's second-grade teacher disagreed. She thought that Ryan was most likely high-achieving, not gifted, and she advised against testing.
Janette Boik decided to go ahead with the testing for practical reasons. She felt that Ryan was bored and unhappy in school and needed a change. A gifted program could provide just that, she thought, without the financial challenge of sending him to a private school where he might receive more individualized attention. Ryan aced the test. Now 16, he's been happily enrolled in gifted programs ever since.
Ryan's story illustrates an issue many parents wonder about: How are we supposed to know whether our children should be tested for giftedness if we can't all agree on what makes a child gifted in the first place?
PLUS: HOW TO RAISE KIDS WHO LOVE TO READ
A Starting Place
Definitions of "gifted" vary widely. By one measure, a child is considered academically gifted according to how well he does on an intelligence test. Using a standard IQ test with a score of 100 as the "norm," those children who earn 130 or above are considered gifted; 145 is profoundly gifted. In other instances, assessment may be based on a combination of intelligence test scores, creativity, and ability to focus on a task.
But many experts believe that a child's ability to learn is more important than test scores. When Carol Horn, coordinator of advanced academic programs for Fairfax County Public Schools in Fairfax, VA, identifies gifted children, she looks for quick learners with exceptional memories who can apply knowledge in innovative ways.
To Test, Or Not To Test?
If you're considering testing your child for giftedness, first ask yourself an important question: Why? "Don't test just because you want to find out how well your child scores," writes Julie Zuckerman, principal of Central Park East 1 Elementary School in New York City, in a letter she sends home to parents in the fall. Zuckerman's point is that every child is unique and gifted in her own way, and every child faces challenges. Labeling a child and separating him from others may not improve his happiness or success; it's far more important to make sure he's doing work in school that interests and challenges him. (Shannon Harrison, young scholar program manager with the Davidson Institute for Talent Development in Reno, NV, advises parents to wait until their children reach elementary school before testing. If you test too early, she explains, the results may not be accurate.)
If you're happy with your child's school and confident that he's making progress, a test might not be worth the effort. But if it seems that your child's class is too easy for him, a test may be beneficial. Being assessed as gifted could allow him to enroll in a special program that might better meet his needs.
Does She Need The Label?
A "gifted" label isn't what matters. "The more important question is what are you doing to challenge the child," says Arlene DeVries, co-author of A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children.
The goal is to make sure that your child is learning something new every day and getting the attention he deserves. If that's not happening, start by meeting with his teacher. Bring a portfolio of your child's work and focus the conversation on his needs. "Avoid 'hot-button' words like 'bored,'" recommends Harrison. Ask solutionoriented questions: "Can we give him a different list of spelling words?" instead of making demands such as "He needs new spelling words."
The key to reaching all learners is differentiation - making sure that each student is working at his or her own level. Ask about specific differentiation for your ehild. For example, if Liam knows how to read but the class is working on letter recognition, can he spend the letter practice time reading instead?
Gifted Programs
There are a variety of options for high-achieving kids, from special programs within a public school to private school to arts or science magnet schools. Each state has different requirements for programs, so check with your state's department of education for more information.
In the early grades, it can be simple for a child to move up a grade for reading or math lessons. Also ask about the district acceleration policy. "Accelerating a student to the next grade does not have many disadvantages," says Del Siegle, associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut. "Research shows that accelerated students do very well, both academically and socially."
PLUS: TOOLS FOR RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN
Among gifted students, six percent are known as "twice-exceptional," which means that they have a condition such as ADHD or a learning disability. The concern, says Janette Boik, whose son has ADHD, is that the two exceptionalities can mask each other. The disability may hide the giftedness, or the giftedness may allow the child to compensate for the disability. As a twice-exceptional child gets older, she will likely need accommodations that can be agreed upon by parents and school officials and put into writing with a document called a 504 Plan. Accommodations range from allowing the student to take classes at a higher level to receiving more time on tests.
Lifelong Learner
Whether or not you decide to test, and whether your child is assessed as "gifted," it's important to keep in mind that success in school - and in life - is about more than just a test score or a label. Success requires things like creativity, commitment, and inspiration. "Research shows that many people of great accomplishment have not been the highest test scorers," points out Joseph Renzulli, director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented in Storrs, CT.
We all want our kids to be lifelong learners, whatever their ability level. Even profoundly gifted students aren't likely to get far without hard work; conversely, diligent work can pay off even when learning doesn't come easily. "We do a disservice when we focus on [being] gifted too much," says Horn. "It's important for kids to realize that they need to be thinkers and problem solvers."
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Ullyot Lecture: “Guiding the Best Policy Decisions: Evidence Matters!”
the Institute welcomes Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences and former editor in chief of Science, to deliver the 2017 Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture.
Making sound policy decisions about how to invest scarce public resources has never been more urgent. But in this “post-truth” world, is science still a valued factor? How has the application of science made a difference in the quality of our lives, health, economy, and safety? And how can we help others understand the role of science in the benefits we are enjoying now and the promise of science to positively affect the quality of our lives in the future?
This annual award and lecture, endowed in 1990 by chemist Glenn Edgar Ullyot, seeks to illustrate how chemistry, biology, and the sciences in general contribute to the public welfare.
6:00 p.m. Lecture
7:00 p.m. Reception
marcia mcnutt.jpg
Marcia McNutt is a geophysicist and the 22nd president of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2013 to 2016 she was editor in chief of Science journals.
McNutt was director of the U.S. Geological Survey from 2009 to 2013, during which time USGS responded to a number of major disasters, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. For her work to help contain that spill, McNutt was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard’s Meritorious Service Medal. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Geological Society of America, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and International Association of Geodesy. Her honors include membership in the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
McNutt received a BA in physics from Colorado College and a PhD in earth sciences from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
For more information about this event, please contact Sarah Reisert at sreisert@sciencehistory.org or 215.873.8263.
This program is presented in partnership with the Philadelphia and Delaware Sections of the American Chemical Society, the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.
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Patrick Smith Kelly hired to write GK Films' Benighted
By Jeremy Kay2007-10-15T22:01:00+01:00
Patrick Smith Kelly has been hired to write the screenplay adaptation of GK Films' adaptation of Kit Whitfield's supernatural novel Benighted.
Graham King acquired rights to the book in 2006 and will produce with Andrew Adamson for Warner Bros.
Adamson is in talks to direct the story about a minority human population charged with keeping werewolves at bay during the full moon. The book is published as Bareback in the UK.
Rick Schwartz is serving as executive producer and Kevin McCormick will oversee the project for Warner Bros.
Kelly wrote the screenplays for A Perfect Murder and Don't Say A Word, and is currently working on Ink for Universal Pictures, among others. Kelly is represented by CAA, Adamson by UTA, and Whitfield by Sophie Hicks at the Ed Victor Agency.
GK Films is currently in production in the UK on The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt.
'The Lion King' crossing $100m international box office, 'Toy Story 4' hits $800m worldwide
Jon Favreau’s rebooted animation debuts in UK, Mexico, Spain on Friday.
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This holy city and former capital, found 350 mi/565 km north of Addis Ababa in the northern province of Tigrai, is ancient, dating back 2,000 years. A major stop in caravan routes heading to the Red Sea, Aksum (the early site is referred to as Axum) was the home of Ezana, the Ethiopian king who converted to Christianity in the fourth century.
Several sites in Aksum are legendarily associated with the Queen of Sheba, to whom Ethiopians refer as Makeda and claim was impregnated by King Solomon on a visit to Jerusalem. The fruit of this royal union was Emperor Menelik I, the founder of the so-called Solomonic Dynasty that ruled Ethiopia almost continuously until the death of Haile Selassie almost 3,000 years later. However, most credible historians regard these legends as pure fabrication, and sites such as the "Queen of Sheba's Palace" and the "Queen's Well," although very ancient, probably postdate her era by several centuries. An equally unverifiable local legend has it that the Ark of the Covenant was stolen from King Solomon by his son Menelik I and now lies in a special building in the fourth-century church compound of Tsion Maryam (Mary of Zion). The chapel is guarded night and day by a monk who is forbidden to let anyone inside.
What is true is that sometime after the conversion to Christianity, Ezana's dynasty incorporated the Solomon story into its origins. Not to be outdone, later dynasties, such as that associated with King Lalibela, went to even greater historical depths and claimed Moses as their founder. A display in a modern church in Aksum contains the crowns of ancient kings.
Although the civil war left its scars, most of Aksum's ruins, which date from AD 400, were untouched. The ruins include palaces, buildings and dozens of stelae, or obelisks, each carved from a single piece of stone (some as tall as 75 ft/22 m). The stelae, several of which have fallen, mark the burial places of Aksumite kings and resemble three- or four-story buildings, complete with windows and doors.
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HEAR DUTCH UNCLES NEW TRACK ‘OH YEAH’
Manchester’s idiosyncratic art-popologists and Silent Radio firm favourites Dutch Uncles return with Big Balloon, their new studio album, on 17th February via Memphis Industries. Today, the band shares one of the new album’s standout tracks Oh Yeah which features backing vocals from Stealing Sheep and Everything Everything. Frontman Duncan Wallis explains the positive sentiment behind […]
– EVERYTHING EVERYTHING, DAVE HASLAM, SILENT RADIO & BRIAN CANNON AMONGST PANEL SPEAKERS CONFIRMED AT OFF THE RECORD – Brand new emerging artist multi-venue music event and conference, Off The Record confirms Mercury Music Prize nominees, Everything Everything, as its special keynote speaker as part of the conference element of the event held in Manchester […]
NOW CLOSED – FANCY 2 FREE TICKETS TO OFF THE RECORD MANCHESTER?
WATCH EVERYTHING EVERYTHING PERFORM LIVE ON LOW FOUR
Everything Everything helped launch Low Four – Manchester’s new online music platform, studio and event space – by performing five songs at Old Granada Studios. The show was live-streamed last week, but fans can now watch it back on the Low Four website and on YouTube. “We loved it. It’s technologically up-to-date but they’ve maintained […]
Old Granada Studios presents Low Four: a new music project based at their iconic Manchester city centre site. The multifaceted project will add to the building’s musical legacy – which includes TV debuts from The Beatles and The Sex Pistols – by hosting, streaming and archiving its own television-style, online music programming. Boasting a six […]
INTRODUCING LOW FOUR: A NEW MANCHESTER STUDIO AND ONLINE MUSIC TV PLATFORM
BLUEDOT FESTIVAL AT JODRELL BANK LINE UP ANNOUNCED: HEADLINERS CARIBOU / UNDERWORLD / JEAN-MICHEL JARRE
The brand new 3 day festival to take place at Jodrell Bank Observatory has announced the headliners will be Caribou, Underworld and a UK festival exclusive from Jean-Michel Jarre. Taking place 22-24 July at Jodrell Bank, the Cheshire observatory at the cutting edge of humanity’s quest for knowledge, bluedot is a festival of discovery that […]
ALBUMS Blanck Mass: Dumb Flesh Alternately transcendental and crushing, Blanck Mass’ second album takes the abrasive ambience of his debut and marries them to stuttering glitch and punishing beats. Powerful, throbbing sound disorientates, blurring into high contrast synths and ravey stabs, walls of droning noise, exotic rhythms and twitchy samples. It’s aggressive, it’s blissed out, […]
2015 END OF YEAR – ANDY VINE
END OF YEAR 2015 – BOBBY COLCOMBE
ALBUMS Chastity Belt – Time to Go Home The Seattle band’s second LP is a brilliant testament to drunken mayhem and pondering self-reflection. Sounding a little like an all female version of DIIV. It is lyrically very open to confronting past regrets whilst, at the same time, feeling sedated to them and looking forward. Chiming […]
Everything Everything will release ‘Spring / Sun / Winter/ Dread‘, on 4th September through RCA Records. It’s the third track to be taken from acclaimed third album “Get To Heaven” – Produced by Stuart Price, the album hit the UK Top 10 on release. The video is another Jonathan Higgs production, he explains “The song […]
EVERYTHING EVERYTHING ANNOUNCE NEW SINGLE
EVERYTHING EVERYTHING, BADLY DRAWN BOY, GAZ COOMBES AND MORE FOR FESTIVAL NO.6
Everything Everything, Badly Drawn Boy and Gaz Coombes are the latest acts to be added to the line up for this year’s Festival No.6. James Bay, Catfish and the Bottlemen and Jane Weaver are also part of the latest additions to the line up of the festival, which takes place from September 3 to 6. […]
Everything Everything have shared the latest single from their new album, which will be released on June 15. The Manchester based four-piece have also released an accompanying video for the track, Distant Past, which is taken from their third album Get To Heaven, which will be released through RCA Records. The video was directed by […]
EVERYTHING EVERYTHING SHARE NEW VIDEO AND ANNOUNCE TOUR DATES
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Rebel Women and the Rise of a '70s Beauty Brand
Speaking with Benefit's "Guardian of the Brand DNA" Annie Ford Danielson about the company's rose-tinted, nipple-rouge past.
By Alene Dawson
Courtesy of Jean and Jane Ford
Way back in 1976, after a brief modeling stint in New York City, twenty-something, Indiana-born twins Jean and Jane Ford decided to move to San Francisco and open a tiny beauty boutique in the Mission District called The Face Place. Many years later, this store would be renamed Benefit Cosmetics — and many years after that, it would take the beauty world by storm.
Context matters. "The Summer of Love" — where hippies "turned on, tuned in, and dropped out" in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury — had happened just nine years prior. Watergate and anti-war demonstrations were barely in the rearview mirror after President Tricky Dick "I’m Not A Crook" Nixon resigned in ’74 and the Vietnam War ended in ‘75. And now, on the heels of Civil Rights sit-ins and passionate protests, the glam-rock, punk-rock, prog-rock, disco-soaked, platform-shoe/bell-bottom/afro-and-shag-haircut-wearing country was in the thick of the women’s and gay liberation movements — with San Francisco activist Harvey Milk serving as the country’s first openly gay elected official.
Jean and Jane Ford in 1997.
It was an era of disruption, and the Ford sisters decided to plant themselves right in the middle of it. Their first product, "Rose Tint" — now called Benetint — was created when a stripper walked into their boutique in need of nipple rouge, and the brand hasn’t stopped shaking things up since. Years later, in 1999, Benefit was bought by luxury brand behemoth LVMH, and in 2016, WWD listed it as the 7th strongest beauty brand in the world. The brand is now sold in over 50 countries.
Now, according to Benefit’s SVP of U.S. Marketing Susan Kim, the beauty industry is facing an "epic disruption" of its own — thanks to the digital takeover of planet Earth, the rise of e-commerce, the beauty vlogosphere, changing demographics, and more. We spoke with Benefit’s Guardian of the Brand DNA Annie Ford Danielson, one of Jean Ford’s daughters, about the brand's history of disruption, how to stand out, and thriving as a beauty business in the midst of a tsunami of societal change.
You have a heck of a title.
It's a little embarrassing! I have two titles: One of them is “Global Beauty Authority." And then the other one is "Guardian of the Brand DNA." [But] I'd like to go on the record to state I did not create those titles — they were given to me.
What does "Guardian of the Brand DNA" mean to you?
We have a really strong history and culture here at Benefit. My job is to [not only] ensure that we keep that top of mind both internally and in our communications externally, but [to also] create a lot of programs and training tools to educate our people as to why the heck we do what we do every day and what makes our brand so special — to us, at least.
We’ve heard the story about how Benefit started by making a nipple rouge for a stripper, but I'm curious as to what that really means. How did that actually happen?
I am so glad you asked! There is such a moral story behind it, [with] such great values, and also so much history and culture. You go back in time to the mid-1970s — in San Francisco of all places, which you know, as I'm sure, was the epitome of cultural disruption, female empowerment, women's lib — all kinds of stuff was going on. My mom and aunt had just opened their first boutique in the Mission District, which today is one of the hottest areas in San Francisco, but back then, it was a really rough neighborhood and it was really dangerous. But it's what they could afford because it was their very first business. So they opened up their store, and a stripper walked in, and she was just like, "This is my beauty dilemma. I need something that is going to make me more money and get better tips and this is my issue." And in true Benefit fashion — and in true Jean and Jane fashion, we are born saleswomen — they were like, "Oh girl, you have come to the right spot. We make that product, that exact product" — they are also good liars — "but we are sold out. So come back tomorrow."
Benetint.
Wait, wait, wait. They said we make that product as if they were just prepared for a nipple rouge walk-in?
100 percent. They were like, "We make that. That's so crazy that you just walked in, but we're also sold out of it so come back tomorrow." So they went home that night and they literally took a bunch of red rose petals and threw [them] in a pot of water and it turned the water red and they boiled it up. And my mom, who has always been the more artistic one, she created a little label and she called it Rose Tint and they poured it into this tiny little glass jar and put an actual cork in it... And did they go back to the store and give that tint to this woman who truly needed this product? Yes, of course. What I always say today, what I challenge myself with all the time, is we need to have these "Benetint moments." These moments where, even if every ounce of your body and being is saying, "Oh, sorry, no, I don't have that. Go somewhere else, lady," you do what it takes to make her day and to get her what she needs — because at the end of the day, that's what we do at this brand. I always tell people, "Are you having a Benetint moment or are you just saying 'no'?" Because how our brand keeps going forward is by saying "yes" and taking risks and doing whatever it takes to give [a customer] what she needs.
I love that these two Midwestern girls, your mom and aunt, weren't judgmental when this stripper came in. Also, that they were drawn to San Francisco in that era.
That's what I love so much about that story. To me, it really represents the open-mindedness, the accepting-ness of our brand, and that's why we always say [that] we are for anyone who wants to look good and feel good and have fun with beauty. We don't have an ideal look or shape or size that she or he needs to fit into. As my mother would always say, "If they've got money, they're our customers."
So San Francisco in the ‘70s was the right place at the right time for this business to launch?
I think it's the only place it could have — I just think that Jean and Jane would never have created what they created had it not been in the city of San Francisco during the ‘70s. They were in Indiana then went to New York and they dabbled in modeling… Never in a million years were they like, "We want to start a business." That’s really the beauty behind our brand. There was never a long-term strategy of female empowerment. This is just who they were, and the environment that they were surrounded by allowed this kind of magic to happen. I do think this could have never happened in LA, it could have never happened in New York or Paris or Italy — it had to be San Francisco. And we always say, especially with LVMH brands, that it always depends on where you were in the world. What was the era? Who were the founders? And then some kind of magic happens. This idea is born and if you can hold onto it long enough, it's going to turn into something… Jean and Jane always say, "You have to just trust your gut, your instinct, and your surroundings." That needs to be what guides you — don't create a long-term plan because it's just going to come and bite you in the ass.
Annie Ford Danielson and Maggie Ford Danielson in 2011.
Would you describe Jean and Jane as rebels? Benefit is marketed with this rebellious independent streak.
That's an understatement. I think it's [partly] because they're identical twins. They have only ever listened to each other and they never really question themselves. They never were like, "Well, society says to do it this way." They basically had a built-in-for-life partner-in-crime who always had each other's back. And the really incredible thing about the two of them is if you ever told them [they] blew marketing and cosmetics out of the water, they'd be like, "No, we didn't. We just gave women what they wanted and we listened to them and we had a really good time." That was truly their goal. And I think that because they've always been so true to who they are, it got them and this brand really far. They've definitely gotten in trouble along the way, and they've been told "no" a million times, but they never listened. And I think that that's why the brand is what it is today.
What do you think being a rebel in the beauty industry means now compared to the '70s?
I think that a lot has come full circle since the creation of this brand. I mean you look at the conversation on feminism, you look at breaking the rules of so-called traditional beauty, and that is so relevant in today's conversation. It’s all about authenticity and it's all about being true to who you are, what you want to put out into the universe, and how you want to put it out there.
What's the secret to keeping an indie vibe while being a global beauty brand?
We have not gotten greedy, and we are thankful for every single day that we put good products out in the world. Every single thing we do matters, whether it's an Instagram post [or] even a cartoon on a lipstick… You can't be afraid to have opinions even if it could cost millions of dollars. It's worth it to stand for something.
So many recent award shows and other events have talked about disruption. The beauty industry is itself in the middle of epic disruption. There’s (finally!) a mainstream recognition of diverse consumers, Gen Z consumers thinking of each other as the trusted voice of authority, influencer culture, e-commerce, online reviews, and more. How have the rules changed for big beauty companies and does it feel like it all hit at once?
Oh, 100 percent. Everyone is doing quadruple the work to keep up with the pace that a brand is now being digested. There's two ways that I look at it. I think the first way is, how incredible to be 13 and growing up right now in a world where you know you’re getting the authentic truth about anything you're about to buy. I remember when I was a teenager… you just bought something because everyone kind of told you. So, when you look at it from a consumer's point of view, I don't think there's anything better that could happen for her in the beauty industry. When you look at it from a brand's perspective… it has put a lot of pressure on every single brand to perform better in their innovation, communication, and marketing. It's really created a shift in how we have to behave as a company… You want to keep up in a way that's still authentic to what your brand believes in. And I think that's where we're going to see a lot of brands succeeding and a lot of brands dying off if they don't know who they are.
Who do you think of as the Benefit consumer?
Our girl varies. Whether she's 13, 35, or 65, she's someone who wants to dip her toe in, learn tips and tricks, and get educated… I think a lot of women come to Benefit because they’re in this exploration mode of beauty and Benefit is very non-intimidating. They look at our social feeds and we have a really welcoming tone. We truly believe that there are no beauty rules. So whether you want to slay all day and contour the hell out of your brows or your cheeks, or you put three products on just to survive your day — you’re our girl.
What advice do you have for women beauty entrepreneurs wanting to make a big splash in the industry?
Oh, God. I say: Just don’t try to make a big splash. Do what you’ve got to do, girl. Do it one step at a time.
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Our Products >> THE RESTLESS GUN starring John Payne
THE RESTLESS GUN starring John Payne
The Restless Gun was a western television series that appeared on NBC. When John Payne's movie career was slowing down he turned to television with this western series. He played Vint Bonner, legendary western hero who drifts from town to town as a gregarious, intelligent, wandering cowhand/gunslinger. Unfortunately young toughs looking to make a reputation and people in distress in general wouldn't let him rest.
In his saddlebag he carried a barrel which could be screwed into the business end of his six shooter and a rifle stock which could be attached to the other end. When one was ambushed from a distance on the trail this became a handy tool to have around. Payne was a thoroughgoing professional in every kind of film be it musical or dramatic. That was much in evidence in The Restless Gun.
The half-hour black and white ran from 1957-59. It was based on the old radio series "The Six Shooter". Some episodes of the series were based on the radio programs. Actors making appearances on the series included Henry Hull, Edgar Buchanan, Jack Elam, Dan Blocker, James Coburn, John Dehner, Claude Akins, Denver Pyle, Olive Carey, Robert Fuller, Ellen Corby, Don Grady, John Mitchum (Robert Mitchum's brother), Mala Powers, Fay Spain, and Ray Teal. Blocker and Coburn each had their first substantive screen roles on the show. One of the show's producers, David Dortort, would go on to produce the more successful Bonanza TV series, which debuted right after The Restless. The quality of this set is excellent.
MAN AND BOY
CHEYTENNE EXPRESS
HORNITAS TOWN
THE WOMAN FROM SACREMENTO
THE HAND IS QUICKER
THE GOLD STAR
JEBEDIAH BANNER
BONNER?S SQUAW
LADY AND THE GUN
BLOOD OF COURAGE
INCIDENT AT BLUEFIELDS
A CODE FOR A KILER
REMEMBER THE DEAD
NO WAY TO KILL
MULTIPLY ONE BOY
PAINTED BEAUTY
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Four-star wideout Osiris St. Brown commits to Stanford
Scout.com
Wide receiver Osiris St. Brown has committed to play at Stanford
Four-star wide receiver Osiris St. Brown has committed to play at Stanford, the recruit announced on Twitter.
The 6'2", 175-pound prospect also had offers from Notre Dame, Michigan, UCLA, USC and Washington among other schools.
“I consider this the best, hard decision I’ve ever had to make,” he wrote in a note posted to Twitter.
St. Brown is the younger brother of former Notre Dame receiver Equanimeous St. Brown, and has a younger brother, Amon-Ra, who is in the class of 2018 as a wideout.
This is Stanford’s sixth commitment for the class of 2017.
stanford football
Stanford Recruiting
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JOIN MORE
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MORE Realty
14945 SW Sequoia Pkwy
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Feinstein’s big name and big money will make it hard for Kevin de León
Local // Politics
Joe Garofoli and John Wildermuth Oct. 16, 2017 Updated: Oct. 16, 2017 7:34 p.m.
Feinstein’s big name and big money will make it hard...
1of2Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles listens as Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown, discusses the scaling back of a proposal to address climate change that he supported during a news conference, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015, in Sacramento, Calif. Citing opposition from the oil industry, de Leon, said he was dropping a mandate in his bill, SB350, that the state cut petroleum use by 50 percent.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, AP
2of2FILE - In this Oct. 4, 2017, file photo, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference about gun legislation on Capitol Hill in Washington. Seeking momentum for gun restrictions, Feinstein said only broader legislation would be effective in outlawing "bump stocks" like the Las Vegas gunman used. Democrat Kevin de Leon, president of California State Senate, announced Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017 he will challenge Sen. Dianne Feinstein in next year's election. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta, Associated Press
Deciding to challenge a California political institution and a leader of his own party will turn out to be the easy part for state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León. He’s about to find out how many obstacles stand between him and an election victory next year over Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
De León faces significant disadvantages in funding his campaign. Practically everyone in California has heard of Feinstein, while almost no one has heard of de León — even the left-wing voters he hopes to energize by styling himself as a progressive alternative to the state’s senior senator.
And de León, 50, has to delicately navigate the most sensitive topic in the campaign — the 84-year-old Feinstein’s age. If he handles it badly, he’ll jeopardize not just his chances in the 2018 election, but his entire political career.
“Those were all the things that made it hard for him to jump in — and potentially hard for him to win, too,” said Thad Kousser, chairman of the political science department at UC San Diego.
Focus on Feinstein
By Joe Garofoli
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Here is a look at some of the challenges that de León, a career legislator from Los Angeles, faces against a senator who has been in office for a quarter of a century.
Where will the money come from? Over the years, de León has been a successful fundraiser for his state campaigns. But almost none of what he’s raised can be used to run against Feinstein.
As of June 30, the deadline for the state’s most recent campaign finance filings, de León had $886,000 left over from his 2014 campaign for state Senate and $2.82 million from a once-prospective 2018 run for lieutenant governor. But federal campaign finance rules put most of it off-limits, because de León raised it under more lenient state laws.
California, for example, allows contributions of up to $4,400 for a state Senate race and $7,300 for lieutenant governor. In a campaign for U.S. Senate, however, the limit is $2,700 from individuals and $5,000 from a political action committee.
And the federal government doesn’t allow contributions from labor unions or corporations, major sources of campaign cash for politicians in the state capital.
In the first six months of the year, for example, de León’s campaign for lieutenant governor had five contributors that gave the maximum $14,600, $7,300 each for the 2018 primary and general election. They came from a school-employees union, a California dentists’ political action committee, the state building trades council, the state laborers union and the iron workers union.
That means de León starts with a bank account of zero. Feinstein raised more than $2.1 million for her Senate campaign in the first six months of the year, and had a total campaign fund of $3.57 million on June 30.
And Feinstein has another, huge advantage: She will tap her $79 million fortune to self-fund her campaign if necessary, campaign adviser Bill Carrick said.
How famous is Sacramento Famous? De León is a powerful force in state politics as the head of the state Senate. But the Sacramento area, where the Legislature’s activities get more local coverage than in most of the state, has only about 15 percent of California’s voters.
The last time he won re-election in his district, in Los Angeles, de León had to win over just 57,000 voters. When Feinstein won her last re-election, in 2012, she received 7.8 million votes.
When voters were asked in a Berkeley IGS poll in April whom they would want to replace Feinstein should she choose not to run, de León was named by just 3 percent of respondents — the same as Secretary of State Alex Padilla and San Francisco billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, who is still mulling a Senate bid. Voters preferred seven other people to replace Feinstein before mentioning de León, including Ashley Swearengin, the Republican former mayor of Fresno, who was the choice of 22 percent.
Feinstein has nearly a half-century of public service, starting with her election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969. She not only has widespread name recognition, Kousser said — “she has a trusted brand name. People know what they are getting with her.”
That said, Kousser pointed out that “nobody knew who the hell Barack Obama was when he ran for the Senate (in Illinois in 2004). He had much less of a policy record than Kevin de León had.”
“But,” Kousser said, “the big difference was that Barack Obama wasn’t running against Dianne Feinstein.”
How are they different on the issues? While de León intends to run to Feinstein’s left by emphasizing his opposition to President Trump and his support for single-payer Medicare-for-all, on many other domestic issues “they’re in pretty close alignment,” said Bill Honigman, the California director for the national Progressive Democrats of America.
Although the organization disagrees with Feinstein’s past support for the Patriot Act and the Iraq War, “we don’t know much about (de León’s) position on national security issues,” Honigman said.
And while there is a lot of frustration with Feinstein from California’s left, 50 percent of voters still approve of the job she’s doing in Washington — including 73 percent of Democrats — according to a Berkeley IGS poll taken in September. People with no party affiliation approved of her performance by 41 to 36 percent.
Given de León’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president both in 2008 over Obama and in 2016 over Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., “he is going to have a lift with progressives, there’s no doubt,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the progressive National Nurses United, which has 100,000 members statewide.
Still, DeMoro said, “the fact that he would break away and challenge the political establishment will speak highly of him to the progressive community.”
The O-word: One of de León’s biggest challenges will be drawing a generational contrast between him and Feinstein without being seen as ageist. The Berkeley IGS poll in April found that 56 percent of respondents would support Feinstein’s re-election, but that dropped to 50 percent when they were told of her age.
However, analysts say de León has to be careful about using phrases such as “her time has passed,” because “basically you’re saying she’s old,” said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan analyst publication about Congress.
“He has to stay positive and explain how he embodies the new California,” Kousser said. “The voters know who Dianne Feinstein is. They can draw their own conclusions.”
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli. John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
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Home » Hardware, Picture Gallery » Nortel Announces Closure of Share Transfer Registers
Nortel Announces Closure of Share Transfer Registers
Posted by Publisher Hardware, Picture Gallery Friday, 21. June 2013
TORONTO, ONTARIO — (Marketwired) — 06/20/13 — Nortel(i) Networks Corporation (NNC) (OTCBB: NRTLQ) and Nortel Networks Limited (NNL) announced today that, effective as of 5:00 p.m. (E.S.T.) on June 28, 2013 (the Effective Time), the share transfer registers for NNC-s common shares and NNL-s preferred shares will be closed, as described in the attached notice. Consequently, after the Effective Time Nortel will no longer accept or register transfers of NNC common shares and NNL preferred shares. In addition, as of the Effective Time, Computershare Trust Company of Canada will cease acting as registrar and transfer agent of NNC-s common shares and NNL-s preferred shares.
This action is being taken as a result of the determination by Ernst & Young Inc., the court- appointed monitor in Nortel-s creditor protection proceedings under the Companies- Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), that the costs of maintaining the share transfer registers and continuing transfer agency services can no longer be justified having regard to the current stage of the CCAA proceedings, the discontinuance of financial reporting by NNC and NNL and the cease trade orders issued by various Canadian securities regulatory authorities as a consequence thereof, and the previously disclosed view that equity holders of NNC and NNL are expected to receive no value for their shares and such shares will ultimately be cancelled in the CCAA proceedings.
The attached notice gives details of how shareholders may obtain additional information concerning these actions.
About Nortel
For more information, please visit Nortel Networks Corporation-s website at .
Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as “could”, “expects”, “may”, “should”, “will”, “anticipates”, “believes”, “intends”, “estimates”, “targets”, “plans”, “envisions”, “seeks” and other similar language and are considered forward-looking statements or information under applicable securities laws. These statements are based on Nortel-s current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important assumptions, risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict, and the actual outcome may be materially different. Nortel-s assumptions, although considered reasonable by Nortel at the date of this press release, may prove to be inaccurate and consequently Nortel-s actual results could differ materially from the expectations set out herein.
Actual results or events could differ materially from those contemplated in forward-looking statements as a result of the following: (i) risks and uncertainties relating to the Creditor Protection Proceedings including: (a) risks associated with Nortel-s ability to: obtain required approvals and successfully consummate remaining divestitures; successfully conclude ongoing discussions for the sale of Nortel-s remaining assets; develop, obtain required approvals for, and implement a court approved plan; resolve ongoing issues with creditors and other third parties whose interests may differ from Nortel-s; maintain adequate cash on hand in each of its jurisdictions to fund remaining work within the jurisdiction during the Creditor Protection Proceedings; obtain any further required approvals from the Canadian Monitor, the U.K. Administrators, the U.S. Principal Officer, the U.S. Creditors- Committee, or other third parties; utilize net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes in the future; avoid the substantive consolidation of NNI-s assets and liabilities with those of one or more other U.S. Debtors; operate effectively, and in consultation with the Canadian Monitor, the Canadian creditors- committee, the U.S. Creditors- Committee, the U.S. Principal Officer, and work effectively with the U.K. Administrators and French Administrator in their respective administration of the EMEA businesses subject to the Creditor Protection Proceedings; continue as a going concern; actively and adequately communicate on and respond to events, media and rumors associated with the Creditor Protection Proceedings; retain and incentivize key employees as may be needed; retain, or if necessary, obtain court orders or approvals with respect to motions filed from time to time; resolve claims made against Nortel in connection with the Creditor Protection Proceedings for amounts not exceeding Nortel-s recorded liabilities subject to compromise; prevent third parties from obtaining court orders or approvals that are contrary to Nortel-s interests; and resolve disputes regarding the allocation of sale proceeds of Nortel-s various business and asset divestitures and other inter-estate matters, including inter-company claims;
and (b) risks and uncertainties associated with: limitations on actions against any Debtor during the Creditor Protection Proceedings; the values, if any, that will be prescribed pursuant to any court approved plan to outstanding Nortel securities and, in particular, that Nortel does not expect that any value will be prescribed to the NNC common shares or the NNL preferred shares in any such plan; the delisting of NNC common shares from the NYSE; the delisting of NNC common shares and NNL preferred shares from the TSX; the discontinuance of preparing and filing NNC and NNL-s quarterly and annual financial statements and related filings under Canadian and/or U.S. securities laws; and the cease trade orders that have been, or may in the future be, issued by the Canadian Securities Administrators to prohibit trading in securities of NNC and NNL by reason of NNC and NNL-s failure to file their respective financial statements and related disclosure filings for the third quarter of 2012 or future periods by the required filing deadlines; and (ii) risks and uncertainties relating to Nortel-s remaining restructuring work including fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; the sufficiency of workforce and cost reduction initiatives; any adverse legal judgments, fines, penalties or settlements related to any significant pending or future litigation actions; failure to maintain integrity of Nortel-s information systems; and Nortel-s potential inability to maintain an effective risk management strategy.
For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel-s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other securities filings with the SEC, although readers are cautioned that such flings are not current and, therefore, do not reflect developments subsequent thereto. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
(i)Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.
NOTICE OF CLOSURE OF SHARE TRANSFER REGISTERS
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that, effective as of 5:00 p.m. (E.S.T.) on June 28, 2013 (the “Effective Time”), Nortel Networks Corporation (“NNC”) will close the share transfer register for its Common Shares (the “NNC Common Shares”) and Nortel Networks Limited (“NNL”, and together with NNC, “Nortel”) will close the respective share transfer registers for its Cumulative Redeemable Class A Preferred Shares, Series 5 and Non-Cumulative Redeemable Class A Preferred Shares, Series 7 (collectively, the “NNL Preferred Shares”) and, thereafter, Nortel will no longer accept or register transfers of NNC Common Shares and NNL Preferred Shares. In addition, as of the Effective Time, Computershare Trust Company of Canada will cease acting as registrar and transfer agent of the NNC Common Shares and the NNL Preferred Shares.
Holders of NNC Common Shares or NNL Preferred Shares may contact the following automated telephone hotline for further information: 1 800 834 9814.
In addition, a “Nortel Shareholders Frequently Asked Questions” document has been posted on the Restructuring Document Centre website of Ernst & Young Inc., the court-appointed monitor in Nortel-s Canadian creditor protection proceedings, which may be accessed at: . This document is also available on Nortel-s website at: .
Nortel Announces Cease Trade Orders Issued by Manitoba Securities Commission TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 02/14/13 -- Nortel(i) Networks Corporation (NNC) (OTCBB: NRTLQ) and Nortel Networks Limited (NNL) announced that they have received notice from the Manitoba Securities Commission ("MSC") that the MSC has issued cease trade orders ("CTOs"), dated January 25, 2013, in respect of the securities of NNC and NNL.Unlike the CTOs issued in December 2012 by the Ontario Securities Commission and the Autorite des marches financiers, which orders rem...
Nortel Obtains Further Extension of Stay Period Under CCAA TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 10/30/12 -- Nortel(1) Networks Corporation (OTCBB: NRTLQ) announced today that it, its principal operating subsidiary Nortel Networks Limited and its other Canadian subsidiaries that filed for creditor protection under the Companies- Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) have obtained an order from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Canadian Court) further extending, to February 2, 2013, the stay of proceedings that was previously granted by the Canadian Cour...
Nortel Obtains Further Extension of Stay Period Under CCAA TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 04/13/12 -- Nortel(i) Networks Corporation (OTCBB: NRTLQ) announced today that it, its principal operating subsidiary Nortel Networks Limited and its other Canadian subsidiaries that filed for creditor protection under the Companies- Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) have obtained an order from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Canadian Court) further extending, to July 31, 2012, the stay of proceedings that was previously granted by the Canadian Court. ...
Nortel Confirms Filing of 2011 Annual Financial Statements and Related Management-s Discussion and Analysis with Canadian Securities Administrators TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 03/22/12 -- Nortel(1) Networks Corporation (OTCBB: NRTLQ) and Nortel Networks Limited confirmed today that their audited consolidated financial statements and related Management-s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations for the year ended December 31, 2011 have been filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators. Such filings will be made available on Nortel-s web site at as soon as practicable after the filings.About Nor...
Nortel Announces Cease Trade Order Issued by Alberta Securities Commission TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/29/13 -- Nortel(i) Networks Corporation ("NNC") (OTCBB: NRTLQ) and Nortel Networks Limited ("NNL") announced that they have received notice from the Alberta Securities Commission ("ASC") that the ASC has issued a cease trade order ("CTO"), dated May 13, 2013, in respect of the securities of NNC and NNL for their failure to file certain periodic disclosure documents.The CTO prohibits trading and purchasing of any se...
Posted by Publisher on 21. June 2013. Filed under Hardware, Picture Gallery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
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Battery storage “gigafactory” planned for Darwin for 2018 | Solar Heroes
Battery storage “gigafactory” planned for Darwin for 2018
Australia’s first battery storage “gigafactory” is likely to be built in Darwin, with a new consortium planing to establish a large-scale lithium-ion manufacturing plant by the end of 2018.
Energy Renaissance, a company backed by engineering group UGL (now owned by CIMIC) says the first phase of the $100 million plant will create four distinct production lines, and will target niche utility and industrial scale markets in Australia and Asia.
Energy Renaissance is partnering with US battery storage company 24M, and is said to have the enthusiastic support, if not the financial backing, of the new Labor government, which also has a 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030.
“Renaissance One” – as it will be known – is one of at least two “gigafactory” proposals for Australia, with the Boston Energy consortium led by former Macquarie Group property guru Bill Moss looking at a much larger 15GWh production line in Townsville.
It also comes on the same day that a 5MW battery storage installation was announced for Alice Springs, where Vector Energy won a tender for LG Chem batteries that will allow a significant increase in solar capacity in the city, already with the highest penetration in the country.
Renaissance Energy managing director Brian Craighead said Australia was a logical place to build a gigafactory, given its obvious demand for battery storage, its abundant resources of lithium, cobalt and graphite, and its proximity to Asia markets.
“Australia is the only country that you could throw a wall around and still have all the materials you need – cobalt and graphite and lithium – for battery storage,” Craighead told RenewEconomy in an interview.
Battery storage is expected to be a huge market in Australia, with the likes of the CSIRO predicting more than 90GWh of battery storage, much of it “behind the meter” by households and businesses, but also partnered with large scale renewables and in grids.
Large arrays are already being planned for large-scale solar plants across the country. Lyon Group has announced projects totalling 1GW of battery storage to accompany its planned solar installations, to help with grid security, offset network upgrades, smoothing out solar power and shifting loads.
The factory has been more than two years in the planning. Chair Su McCluskey, the former head of Regional Australia, stood down in 2015 to “pursue other opportunities” and this turns out to be one of them. UGL has a 10 per cent stake, while the remaining owners, including McCluskey and Craighead, are private.
Craighead said the factory will focus on the utility, industrial, defence, telco, mining, and off-grid sectors – and not the household market. Around 70 per cent of production will be targeted for export.
The technology – semi-solid lithium-ion – will be designed specifically to take into account the warmer climate in Australia and Asia. Its target market means container-style installations full of batteries, and temperature control is the key and air-conditioners a significant draw on resources.
“Batteries in Australia are still pretty expensive. And although the cost per kWh is coming down due to the scale of manufacturing, most of the chemistries have an operating window of around 25°C. So y0u need air conditioning to keep temperatures down, and that’s a significant parasitic load.”
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based 24M describes its manufacturing process as significantly more efficient than conventional lithium-ion products.
“The simple truth is that lithium-ion batteries are made the wrong way,” it says on its website.
“The process is cumbersome. It’s wasteful. It’s woefully inefficient. 24M’s novel manufacturing process strips out the waste, speeds production and reduces the overall footprint to slash today’s lithium-ion battery costs by 50% and accelerate its adoption.”
Craighead expects to have up to seven different production lines producing niche products – all of around 150MWh each. He expects four such lines to be in place by the opening late next year.
He says Darwin was chosen over other port cities, such as Newcastle, Geelong and Gladstone, because of the availability of raw materials, the proximity to Asia markets, the local engineering expertise and the support of the government.
The size of the plant is dwarfed by the 50GWh Tesla gigafactory currently being completed in Nevada, but that factory has a guaranteed market for Tesla electric vehicles and its Powerpack and Powerwall products.
“Energy storage is the key to the future,” he says. “There are times when pumped hydro works perfectly, time for hybrid plants, and times for battery storage. Stored energy makes so many things possible that weren’t possible before.”
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Blog, Music, Essay, Analysis, Critical, HipHop
Exploring Why is Childish Gambino's - This Is America Important?
In this writing I aim to explore (some of) the ways in which Donald Glover uses his song ‘This Is America’ (TIA) and its video to present a message about identity, race and consumerism in America today. I will do this by explaining the role hip-hop and music videos play in the construction of the African American identity. I will then analyse the song for symbolic and linguistic features that further represent his message.
Brief Overview of the Video
In the opening scenes, we hear harmonic singing and see Glover dancing with both his face and body distorted as he takes a gun and shoots a black musician with a bag over his head. The music then changes to a trap beat and Glover raps.
Glover continues to dance throughout, remaining the central focal point of the, nearly, one-shot film. As we focus on him, at various times, a group of children join his central dancing, and in the background chaos unravels. A dead body is dragged from the scene, there are repeated cyclical fights, kids cycling and dancing on cars, a black choir is shot down in a moment by Glover. There is apparent rioting, a man jumping to his death, teens on their phones, a police car on fire, a white horse gallops behind, and multitudes of stationary cars.
The final scene sees Glover running into the darkness with fear etched across his face.
In 1981, MTV (Music Television) first adorned our television sets and levels of performance, dance and their context all entered the realm of the ‘music video’ which was resurrected with the recent digitalisation of the music industry: global media platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo reinstated this form of expression with great success.
Music videos act as an audio-visual (sound and image) medium, and thus a medium defined by an inherent hybridity: neither is it simply imagery, nor music. Therefore it requires a multidisciplinary analysis: a re-mediation across a multitude of disciplines from media studies, to sound and cinematography (Korsgaard, 2017).
In surveys by Statistica: 5 billion people have access to the internet and 10 billion have mobile phones. Thereby making music videos an unstoppable force with the potential to go viral, rendering them as virtually un-deletable information. (Statistica, 2018)
Hip-Hop and It’s Diaspora
Hip-Hop grew as an alternative identity for marginalised and economically oppressed communities, lack of funding led to innovative music making techniques such as DJing. Donald Glover fits the rhetoric of a reinvention of identity and self-definition via the portal of his now famous hip-hop studio name ‘Childish Gambino’.
Hip-Hop is a direct relation to the culture in which it was created ; Glover represents this by styling the musicality of his song to sonically represent the living society and cultures on which he’s commenting. Lyrically and metaphorically he does this, but also in the very musicality: by starting with choral harmonies with wide vocal ranges he represents the long tradition of black music, art and spirituality from gospel choirs, the church, the community and a response to pain. Furthermore, choirs represent the coming together of community into one entity representing black people against their oppressors. Glover moves musically from this imagery, and at the sound of the gun shot, the music drops into ‘trap’ and his delivery moves to a low staccato monophthong clipped triplet flow. A rhythmic flow which in itself is interrupted by the repeat of the chorus’s musical passage. This is a representation of our inability to remain focused on the issue (Rose, 2018).
We know that in order to be successful in hip-hop you must have a level of cultural authenticity - you must serve the needs of your community identity. In his chapter “Jewels Brought from Bondage,” Paul Gilroy asserts that:
“music and musical style were the only forms of language that were transportable for enslaved Africans coming to the new world… (he calls this the)“Topos of Unsayability”….inaccessibility to traditional western forms of literacy gave black music disproportional importance as it replaced written and spoken language” (Gilroy, 2018).
Glover further asserts his authenticity by speaking in the African American Vernacular and following hip-hop syntax. He uses restricted code: short grammatically simple unfinished sentences, few conjunctions, simple and repetitive lyrics, monosyllabic phrases. Perhaps most notably the heavy use of the copula “ This IS America” linking the subject to the predicate, which in this case, is Glover’s presentation of racism, gun violence, and role the African American plays in his own story.
I believe Glover also uses the racial signifier ‘black’ 28 times in the song to signify the lack of equality amongst those that assert that race “isn’t a thing” - all the while, in American, there is a disproportionate access to fundamental human rights (Lyubansky PhD thesis, 2018). Glover adds to his authenticity by including ad-libs by others within the scene such as Young Thug, Slim Jxmmi, Blocboy JB, 21 Savage, and Quavo and Thug.
Furthermore, his assured flow continues smoothly, and directly after every scene in which Glover uses the gun to shoot another black man thus continuing this juxtaposition of inhumanness with humanness, an affirmation of violence, and displacement of the African American in the complicity of gun violence and its willingness to be distracted by media (Rose, 2018). In every shot where Glover instantly kills and ends lives with a gun, he then gently places the gun on a red cloth, perhaps representing the value the red Republicans place on gun laws over human lives.
This Is America Video
The use of the music video as a transmission broadcasting tool cannot be underestimated; it is one that is void of socio-political regimes whilst existing in a paradigm void of spatial-temporal elements (Korsgaard, 2017).
Just as a hip-hop was born out of remix-culture, appropriating and borrowing elements from other fields - such as DJ-ing, sampling, roasting - music videos can now be analysed in the same way. Korsgaard says that we experience audio visuals and music differently from one another. For example, if we took Glover’s TIA music away from the video, our perspective of context would be greatly skewed. Without sonic signifiers we would be unable to determine Glover’s intended message: if the music was minor or major (sad or happy) for example. This is an element that enhances a music video’s power - a combination of forces and disciplines. (Rubin, 2016)
Glover’s TIA amassed ten-million views in the first twenty-four hours. In its first week TIA was the biggest debut of any music video this year with 85.3 million views reaching no.1 in the YouTube Song Charts in 11 countries. Lastly it’s the fifth fastest video ever to reach 100 million views - which it did in only nine days.
Glover uses the spatial-temporal space of music videos to reflect and reference the past experiences of the black American. Examples are his caricature-esc resemblance to the racist character ‘Jim Crow’ offering connotations of repressive racist customs (Andrews, 2018), his re-enactment of the racially led Charleston Shooting (BBC News, 2018) and the use of Gospel-esc vocals. Whilst all the while relentlessly stating that “This ‘IS’ America” - ‘is’ being the verb for present.
Therefore Glover disrupts history, and creates a paradigm that comfortably sits in the past, present and alludes to the future, thus capturing a vivid image of his perceived truth (Korsgaard, 2017).
Urban Space - Appropriation - Remediation
Hip-Hop is about symbolically appropriating urban spaces and this is done through a variety of Hip-Hop characteristics such as sampling. Also in dance, as we see in TIA, Glover uses his body and dance expression as a way of occupying the narrative created around him (Rose, 2018). He appropriates the setting of the video to one which resembles American prison cells. The importance of this appropriation comes from the symbolism of the African American black kid being unjustly incarcerated. A study showed that ‘African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites’ (NAACP, 2018).
Furthermore, Botler and Grusin said that: “…all processes of mediation are always also instances of remediation, meaning that any new medium is defined by the way in which it incorporates or reworks the techniques, forms, and aesthetics of existing media” (Botler and Grusin, 1999). Relating that to Glover’s TIA means that we can mediate the existing media he’s highlighting, the elaborating dancing, his clothing’s asethetics, the symbolism of the cars and the biblical running white horse in the background. We can assume that Glover has created himself in the position of exerting influence into the remediation of the black American experience with himself symbolically representing ‘America’ or ‘the black man’.
Position of Self
Glover’s position within the TIA video is contested online. Some say he positions himself as the proverbial black man in America, others say he IS America.
On one hand, Glover conforms to the characteristics of appropriating self through a critique of satirical style: many hip-hop stars in the spot light will brag about their new Versace, and new flashy cars. Gambino points ironically to this by wearing two gold chains depicting an obsession with consumerism and commodities. Also when we first see Glover, he has wild unkempt hair and a ruffled beard. This image provokes as a reminder of how Western slave owners decided to call Africans ‘savages’ in order to dehumanise them.
Glover also chooses to be naked from the waist up to, in turn, humanise himself and as nudity represents vulnerability. This is Glover recycling black American trauma into mainstream art, just as he does with the shootings, the burning of police cars, the riots, the references to police brutality and unlawful deaths of Black kids.
“This a celly (ha), That’s a tool (yeah)” is reference to the 2018 killing of an innocent Black teenager by police (Levin, 2018). In the same way, it can be argued that the African American has compartmentalised its trauma of racism in America
“I can’t stop being black because of trauma and discrimination. I still have to live life and forge on” (Loughrey, 2018). In this way Glover is working towards “normalising blackness”.
So perhaps Glover is playing a caricature of the black experience in America, presented through his juxtaposed imagery. He is a black man, but he is centralising himself in the argument that the black man allows himself to be distracted by consumerism and thus allows his oppressor to stay on top. Glover also wears trousers that resemble oppressive Confederate trousers. In this way, I feel that Glover is stating he IS his own oppressor in allowing this distraction.
Throughout the video, this is played out, in the medium of dance and in which Glover is the centre shot. At times his moves resemble the flamboyance of Fela Kuti who is a famous advocate and activist for black rights and a progressive and unapologetic figure in black history. All the while children join Glover in the latest internet dance craze such as the “Roy Purdy Dance” or the “Gwara Gwara” dance from South Africa (a reference perhaps to racism and apartheid) which all seem pointless in the context of the African American experience of violence and racism Glover is displaying the obscured background.
Every second and syllable of TIA can be analysed further, be alas, I’ve no space, however in conclusion I have proved that, through the use of the hybrid medium of audio-visual music videos, Donald Glover has attempted to re-appropriate the America that represents an ideal of equality amongst the races. But that Glover has instead placed it in a position whereby African Americans turn the mirror on themselves to question why the progression has stalled and why they are implicit in the violence, murdering and repetition of racism in America.
In this ‘trap’ song, Glover provokes imagery of the desensitised African American being trapped in black-American existentialism: guns are more important than lives, black innocent lives being taken is seen as being as important as the current entertainment spotlight. Described as the ‘black renaissance’, Glover’s ‘This Is America’ rightly sparked reactions from the black diaspora the world over.
Andrews, E. (2018). Who was Jim Crow?. [online] HISTORY. Available at: https://www.history.com/news/was-jim-crow-a-real-person [Accessed 5 Nov. 2018].
Aniftos, R. (2018). Childish Gambino's 'This is America' is YouTube's Biggest First Week Debut This Year. Billboard. [online] Available at: https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8456014/childish-gambino-this-is-america-youtube-statistics [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
BBC News. (2018). Charleston shooting - as it happened. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-33181651 [Accessed 5 Nov. 2018].
Botler, J. and Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. 1st ed. MIT Press.
Coates, T. (2018). I'm not Black, I'm Kanye. The Atlanta. [online] Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/05/im-not-black-im-kanye/559763/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
Gilroy, P. (1993). Jewels Brought from Bondage. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness,.
Johnson, T. (2018). Donald Glover’s ‘This Is America’ Is a Nightmare We Can’t Afford to Look Away From. Rolling Stone, [online] p.https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/donald-glovers-this-is-america-is-a-nightmare-we-cant-afford-to-look-away-from-630177/. Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/donald-glovers-this-is-america-is-a-nightmare-we-cant-afford-to-look-away-from-630177/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
Korsgaard, M. (2017). Music video after MTV. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, pp.1-16.
Levin, S. (2018). 'They executed him': police killing of Stephon Clark leaves family shattered. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/27/stephon-clark-police-shooting-brother-interview-sacramento [Accessed 5 Nov. 2018].
Loughrey, C. (2018). Childish Gambino music video director says 'our goal is to normalise blackness'. Independant. [online] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/childish-gambino-this-is-america-music-video-director-ibra-ake-normalise-blackness-a8344606.html [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
Lyubansky Ph.D., M. (2018). Psychology Today. [Blog] A Racial Analysis of Childish Gambino's "This is America". Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-the-lines/201805/racial-analysis-childish-gambinos-is-america [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
NAACP. (2018). NAACP | Criminal Justice Fact Sheet. [online] Available at: https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/ [Accessed 5 Nov. 2018].
Rose, T. (2018). “All Aboard the Night Train”: Flow, Layering, and Rupture in Postindustrial New York. The Improvisation Studies Reader Spontaneous Acts. [online] Available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781136187148/chapters/10.4324%2F9780203083741-37 [Accessed 4 Nov. 2018].
Rubin, J. (2016). Hip Hop Videos and Black Identity in Virtual Space. Journal of Hip Hop Studies, [online] 3(1), pp.74-85. Available at: http://jhhsonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Hip-Hop-Videos.pdf [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
Statista (2018). Global digital population as of October 2018 (in millions). Global digital population as of October 2018 (in millions). [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
Statista (2018). Number of mobile phone users worldwide from 2015 to 2020 (in billions). [online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/274774/forecast-of-mobile-phone-users-worldwide/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
THOMAS, K., Day, K. and Ward, L. (2018). Multiculturalism and Music Video. In: Multiculturalism and Music Video. [online] Available at: https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/23145_Chapter_20.pdf [Accessed 3 Nov. 2018].
Tagged: Childish, Gambino, This, Is, America, HipHop, Video, Analysis, Essay, Official, Donald, Glover, Politics, Social, Commentary, Racism, Collonialism, Meaning, Exploring, Important, Activist, Acitvism, Critical
Why is BBC Sounds Important?
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Helgo Zettervall
Home > Tags > Helgo Zettervall
Lund Cathedral
Lund Cathedral was consecrated in 1145, and contains many well-known artefacts and features of considerable historical interest. Since then service has been held here every day for almost 900 years. Today over 700 000 persons visit the church each year with some 85 000 who attends a service. The first cathedral was built in Lund before 1085, but it is difficult to know if the present building was built in the same place. ...
Founded: 1080-1145 | Location: Lund, Sweden
Uppsala Cathedral
Uppsala Cathedral is the largest and tallest cathedral and one of the most impressive religious buildings in Scandinavia. Originally built in the 13th century under Roman Catholicism and used for coronations of the Swedish monarch, since the Protestant Reformation, it has been controlled by the Lutheran Church of Sweden. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Uppsala, the primate of Sweden. The construction of the cathedral ...
Founded: 1287-1435 | Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Lund University Main Building
The city of Lund has a long history as a center for learning and was the ecclesiastical centre and seat of the archbishop of Denmark. A cathedral school for the training of clergy was established in 1085 and is today Scandinavia's oldest school. A studium generale (a medieval university education) was founded in 1425, although it was not until 1438 that education was started by the Franciscan order for a baccalaureus degr ...
Founded: 1882 | Location: Lund, Sweden
Linköping Cathedral
The Linköping Cathedral is the seat for the bishop in the Church of Sweden Diocese of Linköping. The present church is about 800 years old. However, its history starts in the 11th century, with a wooden church being built. Later, around 1120, a stone church was being constructed; a basilica of about half the size of the present building. Around 1230 it became necessary to construct a larger church, as the basil ...
Founded: c. 1120 | Location: Linköping, Sweden
Kalmar Castle
The first defensive construction, a round tower, was built on Kalmarsund in the 12th century concurrently with the harbour. At the end of the 13th century King Magnus Ladulås had a new fortress built with a curtain wall, round corner towers and two square gatehouses surrounding the original tower. Located near the site of Kalmar's medieval harbor, it has played a crucial part in Swedish history since its initial construc ...
Founded: 12th century | Location: Kalmar, Sweden
Oscar Fredrik Church
Oscar Fredrik Church was drawn by Helgo Zetterwall and completed in 1893. It represents the neo-Gothic style, but the influence is not the Nordic gothic style but rather the style one can find in the large cathedrals down in continental Europe. The church and the parish got its name from king Oscar II (Oscar Fredrik being his full name). The church has been refurbished three times: 1915, 1940 and 1974. The 1940 refurbish ...
Founded: 1893 | Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Skara Cathedral
Skara Cathedral is the seat for the bishop of the Church of Sweden Diocese of Skara. It is also one the largest churches in Sweden. The history of cathedral is traced from the 11th century and it was inaugurated as a cathedral around 1150. The current appearance is from the 13th century. The current Gothic design dates to the 1886-1894 restoration under the leadership of architect Helgo Zettervall. The furnishings are uni ...
Founded: 11th century | Location: Skara, Sweden
Allhelgonakyrkan
The neo-Gothic Allhelgonakyrkan (All Saints Church) was built between 1887 and 1891. The tower is 72m high and of the highest buildings in Lund.
Häckeberga Castle
There has been a stronghold in Häckeberga since 1530s. It wa demolished in the 19th century and the current Häckeberga Castle was built in 1873-1875 by Tönnes Wrangel von Brehmer. Helgo Zettervall's architecture represents neo-renaissance style with French details. Today there is an countryside hotel and fine restaurant.
Founded: 1873-1875 | Location: Genarp, Sweden
St. Nicholas' Church
St. Nicholas' Church in Trelleborg was built around 1250. It was completely restored in 1881-1883 according the design of Helgo Zettervall. The font is the oldest inventory, dating probably from the 1300-1400s. The altarpiece was made of stone in the mid-1600s.
Founded: c. 1250 | Location: Trelleborg, Sweden
St. Olaf's Church
The church of St. Olaf was built in the 1200s, but it was enlarged in 1400s. The major restoration was made in 1870s by Helgo Zettervall. The church and the locality is named after the Norwegian Saint Olaf due there is a so-called St. Olaf"s Well near the church. It was a famous pilgrimage site in past centuries.
Founded: 13th century | Location: Sankt Olof, Sweden
Dagsnäs Castle
The earliest known records of Dagsnäs estate date back to the 15th century, when it was owned by Gumsehuvud family. The current main building was built in 1772-1782 by Per Tham. The current appearance originates from the restoration made according the plan of Helgo Zettervall in 1874. Over the years several Viking age runestones from the region have been moved to the castle grounds.
Founded: 1772-1782 | Location: Falköping, Sweden
Genarp Church
Genarp Church was built in 1590-1593 and is the only existing church in Scania built in the 16th century. The church was built as a basilica by Chopper Ulfstand, the master of near Häckberga Castle. The church was renovated by Helgo Zetterval in 1870. The pulpit dates from the 16th century and altar from 1780. The original organs, also from the 16th century, were probably the oldest still working in the world. It is ...
Vomb Church
Vomb Church was built around the year 1200 and vaults were added in the late 1400s. Mural paintings date from 13th and 15th centuries. The current tower was erected in a restoration made by Helgo Zettervall in 1871. Baptismal font, made of limestone, dates from the 13th century. The pulpit and sculptures of Apostles were made in the 16th century.
Founded: ca. 1200 | Location: Veberöd, Sweden
Björnstorp Castle
Björnstorp Castle was built in 1752 and reshaped in 1860-1880, with its final appearance set in 1868, by architect Helgo Zettervall. The original builder was Christina Törnflyckt who was married to famous stateman Carl Piper. The castle represents romantic Rococo style.
Founded: 1752 | Location: Genarp, Sweden
Klågerup Castle
The history of Klågerup estate dates from the early 15th century, when it was owned by Peter Spoldener and his son. In the 18th century buildings were in bad shape and in 1737 Fredrik Trolle started an extensive restoration. The present main building got its appearance in 1858, when it was rebuilt to the French Renaissance style by architect Helgo Zettervall. Klågerup was a center of local peasant riots in 181 ...
Founded: 1858 | Location: Klågerup, Sweden
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Medieval castles in Czech Republic
Home > Tags > Medieval castles in Czech Republic
Strekov Castle
Střekov Castle (Schreckenstein) is perched atop a cliff above the River Elbe, near the city of Ústí nad Labem. It was built in 1316 for John of Luxembourg, the father of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, to guard an important trade route to Germany. After changing hands several times, the castle was acquired by the Lobkowicz family in 1563. Its strategic importance led to occupations by Imperial Habsburg, Saxon, ...
Founded: 1316 | Location: Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic
Decin Castle
Perched atop its cliff where the Ploučnice meets the Elbe, Děčín Castle is one of the oldest and largest landmarks in northern Bohemia. In the past several hundred years it has served as a point of control for the Bohemian princes, a military fortress, and noble estate. The forerunner of the Děčín Castle was a wooden fortress built towards the end of the 10th century by the Bohemian princes. The first written reco ...
Founded: 993 AD | Location: Děčín, Czech Republic
Znojmo Castle
Znojmo Castle was initially a wooden structure built by the Přemyslid Bretislaus I, Duke of Bohemia, and completed around 1080. The structure was intended to replace an old castle that was located across the Granice Valley, as part of an attempt at strengthening the defenses along the river Dyje against Austrian attack. From the new castle the river valley and surrounding area could be observed. However, in 1140, the woo ...
Founded: 12th century | Location: Znojmo, Czech Republic
Stramberk Castle
Štramberk Castle ruins have an unknown origin (according to an old tale, the site of its original planned location was on the opposite hill Kotouè, but that was prevented by dwarves from the cave Devil's hole). Apparently, it was made to protect country boundaries. According to the most recent information, the castle was built either by members of the aristocratic family, Benešovic, or more precisely, ...
Founded: 13th century | Location: Štramberk, Czech Republic
Benesov nad Ploucnici Castle
The dominating feature of the Benešov nad Ploučnicí town is actually two castles from the 13th century, the Lower and Upper castles. There is a permanent exhibition of Chinese art and day and night tours are available as well as social meetings. The history of the castle started in the 13th century when a settlement of tradesmen and shopkeepers began under the castle Ostrý. The people were satisfied there, the set ...
Founded: 13th century | Location: Benešov nad Ploučnicí, Czech Republic
Vranov Castle
Vranov nad Dyjí castle was first mentioned by Cosmas of Prague in 1100 as a border sentry castle. It was built by the Dukes of Bohemia to defend the southern border of Moravia against raids from the neighbouring Austrian March. Until 1323 the castle was in royal hands but in that year king John of Bohemia pawned Vranov to a powerful Bohemian nobleman, the viceroy Jindřich of Lipá. In 1421, during the d ...
Founded: c. 1100 | Location: Vranov nad Dyjí, Czech Republic
Roztoky Castle
It is not clear when and by whom the Roztoky fortress was found. Appearance of the fortress was documented by the archaeological research from the period of the 2nd half of the 13th century, when the place around the fortress consisted of a huge stone residential tower, surrounded by a high city wall, a moat and a rampart. The floor plan of the residential tower is marked in the stone pavement of the courtyard. In written ...
Founded: 1476 | Location: Roztoky, Czech Republic
Hazmburk Castle
Hazmburk (Hasenburg) is a Gothic castle ruin located on a mountain peak near the town of Libochovice. The castle was home to Zajíc noble family of which Zbyněk Zajíc was the first to own the castle (since 1335). After 1586, it remains desolate and later, in the period of romanticism, it became a source of inspiration for writers, most notably K.H. Mácha. The castle is open to public in summer and can be either acce ...
Founded: c. 1335 | Location: Libochovice, Czech Republic
Svihov Castle
Švihov castle was built by the House of Rýzmberk ze Skály. It was besieged by the Hussites during Hussite wars, the garrison surrendered after their water moats were siphoned. It was rebuilt between 1480 and 1489 by the order of the castle’s owner, Puta Schwihau von Riesenberg, in the Late Gothic style. His sons continued in rebuilding the castle after he died and invited a famous architect Benedikt Reid. ...
Founded: 1480-1489 | Location: Švihov, Czech Republic
Zvíkov Castle
Zvíkov, often called 'the king of Czech castles', is located at the junction of the Vltava and Otava rivers. It stands on a difficult-to-access and steep promontory above the confluence of the Vltava and Otava rivers. The castle is one of the most important early-Gothic castles in Czech lands. The area was inhabited as early as prehistoric times, when the Celts built a fort here in the 1st centu ...
Founded: 13th century | Location: Písek, Czech Republic
Jánský vrch Castle
Jánský vrch castle stands on a hill above the town of Javorník in the north-western edge of Czech Silesia, in area what was a part of the Duchy of Nysa. For most of its history the castle belonged to the Prince-bishops of Breslau (Wrocław) in Silesia. The castle is first mentioned in written sources in 1307, when it was still the property of the Princes of Svidník. In the 1348, they sold ...
Founded: 13th century | Location: Javorník, Czech Republic
Hnevín Castle
Hněvín Castle was named after the hill it was built upon. Archaeological investigations have uncovered the remains of a castle that was there in the 9th century, but a stone castle was probably built by the Hrabišics, the owners of Most. Wenceslaus I granted Most royal city status in the 12th century and the castle becoming the seat of the district administrator. In the 13th century, the castle was brought by Wenc ...
Founded: 13th century | Location: Most, Czech Republic
Radyne Castle
Radyně Castle, like the similarly conceived Kasperk, represents the height of the 14th-century trend towards the merging of castle buildings. When the castle of Starý Plzenec fell into disrepair in the first half of the 13th century, it was necessary to build a new centre of royal power for the administration of the region of Plzeň. Construction apparently began in 1353, during the rule of Charles IV, an ...
Founded: 1353 | Location: Starý Plzenec, Czech Republic
Buchlov Castle
The Buchlov royal castle was built in the first half of the 13th century, but archaeological finds suggest that the area around Buchlov castle was settled in the oldest periods of civilization. The first castle was created with two massive prismatic towers situated on opposite parts of a rocky plateau. A high palace on the southern part of the yard was built at the same time and it was surrounded by a wall. The second co ...
Founded: 13th century | Location: Buchlovice, Czech Republic
Tolstejn Castle Ruins
The Tolštejn Castle (now reduced to ruins) was built in 1278 as part of the Zittau region"s defense structure. George of Poděbrady ordered the castle to be seized shortly after the Hussite Wars and after many conflicts, the Tolštejn dominion was taken by 1471 by two Saxon princes, Ernest and Albrecht. During the Thirty Years War, the army of the Austrian Emperor occupied the castle. In 1607, the Swedi ...
Founded: 1278 | Location: Varnsdorf, Czech Republic
Kadan Castle
In the 13th century, the town of Kadaň was promoted to a 'Royal City'. It began to thrive and a new town was built on the heights above the river, with a castle and Franciscan monastery. The castle was mentioned first time in 1289. It was established as a four-wing Premyslid castle with a housing palace over the river. It served as the seat of the royal burgrave – the administrator of the Kadan region. The ...
Founded: 13th century | Location: Kadaň, Czech Republic
Krupka Castle Ruins
Krupka castle was probably founded by John of Bohemia sometime around the year 1320 when the king wanted to boost fortifications in the border region with Saxony. King John donated the castle, together with the town of Krupka, the tin mines and Trmice in 1330 to the Meissen noble Thimoteus (Těma) of Kolditz. Thimoteus subsequently purchased the Kirchlice fort and in 1335 made a contract with the Lords of Bergau to adju ...
Founded: c. 1320 | Location: Krupka, Czech Republic
Kokorin Castle
Kokořín Castle was built around 1320 by order of Hynek Berka of Dubé. At the close of the 15th century the castle was heavily damaged during the Hussite Wars and renovated in the late Gothic style by the lords of Klinštejn. Since the middle of the 17th century Kokořín had been tenantless and it deteriorated. The ruins were not bought until 1894 by Václav Špaček of ...
Founded: 1320 | Location: Mělník, Czech Republic
Hasistejn Castle
Hasištejn (Burg Hassenstein) is a ruined medieval castle situated near Kadaň, Klášterec nad Ohří and Chomutov. The castle, first mentioned in Maiestas Carolina, was probably founded by Friedrich of Schönburg to guard the way from Prague to Saxony. The castle was seized by Václav IV of Luxembourg in the early 15th century and given to Nicholas of Lobkowicz. The most renowned inhabitant of the cas ...
Founded: 14th century | Location: Chomutov, Czech Republic
Silesian Ostrava Castle
Silesian Ostrava Castle was originally built in the 1280s near the confluence of the Lučina and Ostravice rivers. The castle was built for military purposes due to its proximity to the Polish border. In 1534, the gothic castle was rebuilt into a renaissance chateau. It burned down in 1872 but was rebuilt. It was restored recently after many years of dilapidation, caused by coal mining under the castle. Today, the ca ...
Founded: 1280s | Location: Ostrava, Czech Republic
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don't stop your growing.
"i am deliberate and afraid of nothing"
it's not even mid may, and it's cold today. i haven't touched sunlight in a couple days. i'm wearing a thermal and another layer of long sleeves, a flannel. some days, i need to wear soft things, because my skin just generally hurts.
i don't fully understand the connection between feelings and our physical bodies- and neither do scientists... they're just figuring it out too- but whether it's because i haven't had natural vitamin d in days or because i'm kinda generally Sad, i feel tender, but not in a sweet way. tender like i could be broken open at any moment.
is this at all surprising tho? i feel myself splitting between utter devastation and apathy. non-American friends text me with exclamation points when there is another shooting and, seriously, sometimes i'm like "ye what about it." i cringe to say it. but it's true. because otherwise i'm going to shrivel into my sheets and never get out of bed.
what's the middle ground between the way my body tenses every time someone enters the movie theater i'm sitting in, or the way my toes curl when an unfamiliar car door slams outside, and shrugging about another school shooting? i feel like i'm either tearing up and trying to keep breathing, swearing incessantly in my head and fantasizing violence, or ignoring it all. or i'm caught between worry about sounding like an asshole to educate my coworkers, or silently hoarding compostable materials in my locker because it doesn't matter if something is biodegradable if you throw it in a landfill- nothing composts in a landfill.
what’s the difference between devastation and ignorance? it’s like either i’m going to be broken hearted, always, or blissfully unaware, which sounds outright irresponsible, at this point.
i've said it before, and i'll say it again: i hate who Some people make me into. i hate who the president forces me to be. i hate who politics is making me become, etc etc. i could go on and on. i'm sitting here in the colorful children's section of my library, and felt vegetables stick to the deep green wall, and emily and i laid down blank newsprint on the table for kids to color on. within minutes it is covered in bright blue clouds drawn by five year olds. yet i still feel this deep, sinking feeling in my chest, because of who i don't see here, and whom i will never see. because who knows how long this will last?
yeah yeah yeah. i know. "it's a process." that's what everyone tells me every time i start voicing my spirals.
i think it's more like balance.
maybe it’s gratitude. driven gratitude.
being so in love with what we have that we can't help but push it outwards.
or just recognition. namaste: the light/divine/human in me recognizes and honors the light/divine/human in you. a mix of love and respect and mama bear anger.
a demand to both take up space and be so gentle in how we tread.
i'd like to be deliberate and afraid of nothing, as audre lorde said, but part of the reason i feel driven about things is out of fear. jus gotta decide what to be afraid of, i guess.
a friend sent me this thread, and i think it's worth reading.
there are some things essential for us to notice, and yes, the first of these is that harm is escalating.
but then, we have some things to acknowledge, to inspire and push us, and i think this is key to not.... losing my damn mind and heart. and such things include:
this isn't a call to contentedness with the way things are. it's a reminder that no matter what/who we are fighting for, we are not alone. and that are so many facets to big problems. that's why they're so big. but also that we might focus on only some facets. there are many of us, and that's the beauty of it:
and yeah. we'll get angry. but anger is dangerous... as long as we are hopeful, we become unstoppable. and more connected.
i work in a "neutral spaces" job, a public library. this means, we are to remain politically neutral. one of my biggest learning curves has been to learn that this does not equate to living as a silent welcome mat... how to remain neutral, but to stand up for people and earth. this neutrality issue is a much bigger concept which i spend too much time reading and writing and venting about, and i can only touch it here. but really. neutrality doesn't exist, and i'm not sure it needs to. i think, really, we just need to remember that there are many ways to be angry, and some of them are so so soft and tender and welcoming and artistic and kind.
so, daily, i return to the sticker on the front of my work notebook. i keep it here, with me. it's that balm i need. perhaps you do too.
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly now.
You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
/ pirkei avot
m
ps, if you need a pick me up, may i present to you: heaven.
is a poet-yogi-youth librarian, found here and here, armed with thai coffee, poetry books, and a lot of questions. M's words may be found puddled in paper, and in various journals too.
the sprout club
a small collective dedicated to personal, creative, and communal growths.
Photo used under Creative Commons from Stefans02
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Andy Dolloff, Team Leader, Research Fishery Biologist
Current: Innovative Web App Blends Trails and Forest Science
Innovative Web App Blends Trails and Forest Science
Asheville, NC — Today, just in time for Memorial Day, the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) unveiled the Forest Trail Explorer, a searchable web application (web app) that combines details on three popular trail systems in western North Carolina with the state-of-the-science information the SRS Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) unit collects on the region’s forests.
SRS, the Forest Service National Forests in North Carolina (NFNC) and the University of North Carolina Asheville National Environmental Modeling Analysis Center (NEMAC) collaborated on the project. The new web app can be found at www.nctrails.org.
“The Forest Trail Explorer illustrates how Forest Service research, the national forest system, and partners can collaborate to create innovative products for today’s outdoor enthusiasts,” said SRS director Rob Doudrick. “This site uses today’s technology to benefit visitors and communities, and it could serve as a model for other national forests interested in using FIA data to inform and enhance the user’s outdoor experience.”
The Browse Trails section of the web app provides details on trails in the Tsali (pronounced “SAH-lee”) Recreation Area, located in the Nantahala National Forest Cheoah Ranger District, and the Jackrabbit Recreation Area in the national forest’s Tusquitee Ranger District. The site also features two large sections of the Appalachian Trail that pass through the Nantahala National Forest.
Hikers, mountain bikers, horseback riders and others will find trail information they need to have a safe and enjoyable trip, including trail type, length, difficulty, elevation, and fly-overs of some trails. In addition, users can download files of the trails and view them on their computers or tablets using Google Earth. The files allow users to see the trails and terrain in a detailed interactive format. Users can easily view the Forest Trail Explorer with a smartphone or other mobile device.
“I commend the Southern Research Station for their leadership in developing this product, which has the potential to promote tourism in western North Carolina and benefit local economies,” said Kristin Bail, NFNC forest supervisor. “At the same time, the site informs visitors about the forest issues and health in the region.”
Users can learn about nature and the environment surrounding the national forest trails in western North Carolina. The Forest Trail Explorer uses FIA information to provide information on topics ranging from ecosystem and threats to forest products, recreation to weather and climate.
Information included in the Learn About Nature section is based on a regional assessment called the Western North Carolina Vitality Index (www.wncvitalityindex.org), which uses metrics to report on the unique aspects of the region’s natural and socioeconomic environment. The report analyzes forest characteristics on private land as well as public land.
Additionally, the Forest Trails Explorer offers safety tips and connects visitors to safety alerts issued by NFNC. The site also includes camping information. The Forest Service hopes to expand Forest Trail Explorer in the coming years.
“Our goal is to enhance the Forest Trail Explorer by adding more trails and more science-based information in the future,” said Doudrick.“By collaborating with partners, we’ll accomplish more than we can do individually.”
The Forest Service designed Forest Trail Explorer for planning purposes only. Forest visitors should always carry a map and compass when in a national forest.
News Release Contact
Jennifer Plyler
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State Line Meetings
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Home Sport Article
Triple triumph for Bethany ahead of British Championships
By James Bedford
james.bedford@iliffepublishing.co.uk
Deepings Swimming Club travelled to Eindhoven for the 2019 Netherlands Invitational and swam away with 17 medals, including five gold, after an outstanding weekend of racing.
The squad of 12 competed in the 50m and 25m pools at the Pieter van den Hoogenband Zwemstadion against international opposition from Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Romania and the United Kingdom.
Five swimmers medalled while the rest of the team achieved numerous personal bests.
Bethany Eagle-Brown collects gold in the 100m butterfly, one of her six medals. (13628637)
It rained gold all weekend for 16-year-old Bethany Eagle-Brown who warmed up for next month’s British Swimming Championships with three first place finishes in the 50m pool.
Bethany won gold in the 100m butterfly 2003/04 age group and showed her versatility by winning the 50m and 100m freestyle titles.
She also collected silver in the 100m backstroke and 50m butterfly and bronze in the 50m backstroke.
Also topping the podium was Holly Leggott in the 200m freestyle (2002 and older age group).
Despite being one of the youngest in the event, an excellent swim saw her leave the competition trailing behind.
Sixteen-year-old Holly added four more medals to her tally with three silver – 50m freestyle, 100m backstroke and 200IM – and one bronze in the 100m freestyle.
Lilly Tappern, swimming in the 25m pool, took home a hat-trick of medals in the 2007/08 age group, with a brace of silvers in the 50m butterfly and 100m freestyle, and bronze in the 100m breaststroke.
Her older sister, Amy, was also among the medals, winning bronze in the 200IM 2003/04 age group.
Harry Cardell tops the podium in the 200m freestyle. (13628641)
Leading the way for the boys’ team was Harry Cardell with two podium finishes in the 2003/04 age group.
Harry stuck gold in the 200m freestyle and touched home in third place for bronze in the 100m butterfly.
The rest of the team also put in strong performances, achieving many personal bests, for Deepings at the Netherlands Invitational.
They were Lauren Saunderson, Bailey Jackson-Chilvers, Lottie Bussey, Millie Bussey, Maya Sangiorgio, Bethany Wilde and George Shaw.
Lynn Chapman, Deepings Swimming Club head coach, said: “Despite travelling overnight on the ferry, the team showed no sign of fatigue.
“They were really excited for this meet which resulted in some excellent swims by all swimmers in both the 25m and 50m pools.
“It was fantastic to come away with 17 medals and it was a great experience to be mixing with and competing against other countries.”
The Deepings squad celebrates its 17 medals at the Netherlands Invitation meet last weekend. (13628639)
MEDALLISTS IN FULL
Bethany Eagle-Brown (2003/04 age group): gold - 100m butterfly, 50m and 100m freestyle; silver – 100m backstroke, 50m butterfly; bronze - 50m backstroke; Amy Tappern (2003/04 age group): bronze – 200IM; Holly Leggott (2002/earlier age group): gold – 200m freestyle; silver - 50m freestyle, 100m backstroke and 200IM; bronze - 100m freestyle; Lilly Tappern (2007/08 age group): silver – 50m butterfly and 100m freestyle; bronze – 100 breaststroke.
Harry Cardell (2003/04 age group): gold – 200m freestyle; bronze – 100m butterfly.
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“Guitar is the best form of self-expression I know. Everything else, and I'm just sort of tripping around, trying to figure my way through life.”
— Slash
Though a lot of people think that younger bands are living a life defined by promiscuous sex, drugs and rock and roll, the truth is that the majority of the musicians I’ve met are in a relationship, drink away the few bucks they make at each show, and spend most of their time outside of the rehearsal space working a pedestrian job. It’s not a glamorous life, or even a lucrative life, but your band mates become like family as you spend hours working your way through tunes, bickering, and debating chords and notes over an endless flow of beers and cigarettes. Our music is often times much too loud, though this is the case for just about every band in the facility with the exception of some vibraphonist with the name of a shrub or an herb who practices in the room next door to us and the passive-aggressive jazz guy who has his room across the hall from us. The former meekly asks us to turn it down; the latter leaves obnoxious notes on our door. Why these two have not opted to set up shop in a quieter locale is entirely beyond me.
Truth be told, Pistols 40 Paces, my band, may not generate the most pleasing sound to an older generation of people who find Bob James and Kenny G appealing. In fact, we may not even seem like a commercially viable band to such people. However, I know that our music is fueled by a lot of talent, a lot of bottles of High Life and the desire to create something entirely unique. It’s perplexing, rebellious and violent. It’s difficult, too, and it can be hard to keep up sometimes, especially when you’re eight beers deep and you have to hit several F#m7 arpeggios in a very quick 13/8. But you continue on, the riff eventually becoming second nature, even if your fingers couldn’t find the notes fast enough when you started playing it to turn it into anything that even remotely made sense.
Lowlands Bar
Given the difficulty of some of the parts, we end up going over the same songs ten or twenty times in a given session. Consequently, practices go late. Really late. They have been known to flirt with the dawn, though sometimes we head out a bit earlier to have a drink. Typically we end up going to one of two places in the neighborhood—Lowlands (543 3rd Avenue, Gowanus) or the Draft Barn, which we have been calling the Booze Dungeon since it opened a few years ago. The Booze Dungeon is an Austrian-style beer hall that’s run by a bunch of Russians. It doesn’t pull in too many people, even with some of the best schnitzel I’ve ever had and a comprehensive selection of European beers. Perhaps it’s the cavernous appearance of the place, which certainly does have that minatory German feel to it. To me, however, the only real drawback of the place is that it closes around one or two in the morning. Unless we leave the rehearsal space early or stop in for food before practice, we typically don’t pop into the Dungeon, though it was, at one point in time, our second home.
The second bar, Lowlands, has become a staple over the past few months because it’s open until 4, a bit cheaper than the Dungeon and closer to the rehearsal space than any other bar. It’s a fairly new place, and has an aesthetic that has become common to south Brooklyn. There’s a certain element of elegance to the bar that makes it feel dated, kind of like a San Francisco dive from some grainy noir flick. A lot of musicians hang out at Lowlands well into the single digit hours of the morning. Some of them may not be from our rehearsal space at all, but just live in the neighborhood (Gowanus, which has recently become a hotspot for a variety of artists). Though gentrification is definitely occurring, Lowlands is still one of the only bars in the area—besides the Dungeon, of course.
Lowlands is the type of bar that is cozy, unassuming and usually fairly empty. This impression, however, may be somewhat skewed, as I usually find myself walking in with the band around two in the morning, arguing about politics or whether or not a portion of one of our songs is in 5/4 or some bizarrely syncopated 6/8. We take shots of Jameson, chase them with High Life and end up closing down the bar even if we promised ourselves that we would head home after one round. It’s not simply that we’re a bunch of drunks with a shared love for one another and the music we create; it’s something more important than that. True, we all want to be rock stars, to travel the country one stage at a time, to quit our day jobs and dedicate all of our time to writing music, but the actual joy of just creating our bizarre brand of music and hanging out over several beers in the rehearsal space or at a place like Lowlands is just fine. For now, anyhow.
Photo of Jay Fox by Ashley Sears
Jay Fox's Profile at Stay Thirsty Publishing
Jay Fox is the author of The Walls.
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Revised MH370 search zone by month's end: Australia
In this file photo taken on April 13, 2014 from a Royal New Zealand Airforce (RNZAF) P-3K2-Orion aircraft, co-pilot and Squadron Leader Brett McKenzie helps to look for objects during the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, off Perth. Australian officials said on Wednesday they will announce the new search zone for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 by month's end, as mapping of the Indian Ocean seabed resumed. -- PHOTO: AFP
Jun 18, 2014, 1:18 pm SGT
http://str.sg/Z3Rd
SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian officials said on Wednesday they will announce the new search zone for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 by month's end, as mapping of the Indian Ocean seabed resumed.
The jet went missing on March 8 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and despite a massive aerial and sea search, no sign of the aircraft which was carrying 239 people has been found.
An underwater probe of the Indian Ocean seabed where acoustic signals, thought at the time to have come from the jet's black box recorders, were heard also proved fruitless.
Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said analysis of satellite and other data to determine the search area for the next underwater phase would be concluded soon.
"The search area will be confirmed before the end of June, after completion of extensive collaborative analysis by a range of specialists," it said in a statement. "It is already clear from the provisional results of that analysis that the search zone will move, but still be on the seventh arc (where the aircraft last communicated with satellite)."
The search has been frustrated by a lack of information, with experts modelling the plane's most likely flight path based on signals between it and an Inmarsat satellite.
The seventh arc, or "handshake", is the final signal from the plane and thought to be when the jet ran out of fuel. Scientists from the British firm have suggested that searchers are yet to target the most likely Indian Ocean crash site because they became distracted by the acoustic signals detected in April.
"It was by no means an unrealistic location but it was further to the northeast than our area of highest probability," Mr Chris Ashton at Inmarsat told the BBC's Horizon programme on Tuesday.
But JACC said the area in which the Australian vessel Ocean Shield used a mini-sub to scour the ocean floor was "based on the best information and analysis available at that time", including from Inmarsat.
"The location was identified by the satellite communications sub-group, which included accident investigation agencies from the USA and the UK along with their technical advisors, including from the aircraft manufacturer, the satellite manufacturer and Inmarsat as operator of the satellite," JACC said on Wednesday. "Based on analysis at the time, it represented the most likely location of the aircraft."
Australia, which is leading the hunt given the plane is likely to have crashed in its search and rescue zone, said the vessel Fugro Equator, which it contracted, had begun its work in mapping the ocean floor.
It will be joined by Chinese PLA Navy ship Zhu Kezhen in conducting the bathymetric survey crucial to carrying out the deep water search for the plane which is set to begin in August.
"So far, the Zhu Kezhen has surveyed 4,088 square kilometres of the ocean floor," before it was forced back to port for repairs, JACC said. The survey of a 60,000 square kilometre search zone was expected to take three months.
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US Furious over Russia’s Arms Supplies to Myanmar: The Pot Calling the Kettle Black
Alex Gorka
Myanmar is one of many countries increasingly interested in Russian weapons, and it was recently announced that it is preparing to purchase six Russian Su-30 fighters. That agreement was reached during Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s visit to the republic on Jan. 20-22. Russian weapons for land and naval forces were part of that agenda.
The US State Department slammed the move, claiming that weapon sales to that country were inappropriate because of the Rohingya crisis. According to State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, the deal would add fuel to Myanmar’s internal conflict. It should be noted that she said nothing about US shipments of lethal weapons to Ukraine. Nor did she mention the fact that the Rohingya rebels are just one of many armed insurgent groups operating in Myanmar, although it is the only one the US government is worried about.
Bill Richardson, a former US ambassador to the United Nations and the ex-governor of New Mexico, has just resigned from an international advisory panel on the Rohingya refugee crisis. According to him, it is a "whitewash and a cheerleading operation" for Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he blames for the fallout from her military's operations against the Rohingya rebels."
That conflict has nothing to do with Russia and Moscow has not taken sides, but the US State Department will seize upon anything as a pretext for attacking Russia and painting it as an “evil empire.” One does not have to be an expert on defense issues to see that the Su-30 fighter jet is not designed for fighting rebels. Its primary mission is delivering high precision strikes against naval targets. It is also effective against any high-value ground assets an enemy might have. In a nutshell, it is an aircraft for a big war against a sophisticated enemy. The Myanmar military has US-made F-16s to use for guerilla warfare purposes. When Washington was selling F-16s to the Myanmar government, it did not care one bit about the fact that that US-made aircraft could be used against rebels.
The US military has disliked the Su-30 ever since the Indian Su-30MKI version outperformed US F-15C Eagles in 2004 and 2005. In any comparison, the Su-30MKI dominates the US-made F-16. In 2015, the Su-30 MKI outmaneuvered the UK Typhoon during training exercises. Myanmar is a lucrative market for arms exports. The US views Moscow as a competitor. Moscow and Naypyidaw were working together militarily as far back as the 1990s. Myanmar has purchased Russian MiG-29 fighter planes, Yak-130 combat jet trainers, Mi-17, Mi-24, and Mi-35 combat helicopters. Russia is their biggest supplier of surface-to-air missiles.
US-made weapons are used to kill civilians in Yemen. American arms have also managed to find their way into the hands of Syrian rebels. The Islamic State has used American weapons in Iraq and Syria. Washington sells weapons to more than 100 countries and many of those are authoritarian regimes. Recently, US weapons were used by Shi'ite Muslim militias against the Kurds, America’s allies, in Iraq.
Russia is the second–largest arms exporter in the world and it is strengthening its position at breakneck speed. It is busily inking lucrative contracts with America’s traditional partners in the Middle East. Russia has a global edge in air-defense systems. Its latest S-400 is a huge success, with ongoing deliveries to China and a signed contract with Turkey. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are just two more potential customers currently negotiating terms. Russia owes its success to the fact that its defense industry is able to offer the highest quality at an acceptable price. Washington is ready to go to any length to buck that trend.
Washington also relies on this same policy in other parts of the world.. The US has resorted to openly pressuring Europeans buy its gas, which is more expensive than what Russia can provide. Nor does it shy away from using any methods it can find to promote its foreign-policy objectives. Now that Washington sees Russia as a competitor that can withstand pressure and pursue its own independent foreign policy, it is blamed for anything that goes wrong in the world. And so, once again the pot is calling the kettle black.
January 29, 2018 | Security
Defense and diplomatic analyst
Ukraine’s Proposal to Have NATO Warships in Azov Sea Finds Receptive Audience in US
The West Stays Mum About Aleppo Chemical Attack
Major Psy-Op in Europe Exposed: UK Government Tramples on Values It Vowed to Protect
International Chemical Watchdog Makes a Bad Decision That Places Its Relevance and Future in Doubt
UN Vote on Crimea: Some Thoughts on the Issue
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Home Essays Hijab as a Religious Symbol...
Hijab as a Religious Symbol or Security Concern?
Topics: United States Constitution, High school, Headgear Pages: 2 (790 words) Published: April 28, 2008
The Hijab has recently become a major cause of concern in the United States and around the world. Certain countries are trying to impose a law that bans the hijab from being worn at schools and at the workplace. These bans cannot be considered legitimate if they are set to target a specific religion, such as Islam, and allow other religions, such as Judaism and Christianity to be practiced without restraints. These restrictions can, however, be compromised when public safety becomes a dilemma.
In the case Hearn’s & the Rutherford Institute v. Muskogee Public schools, sixth grader Nashala Hearn was suspended from the Benjamin Franklin Science Academy in October 2003 for refusing to remover her hijab at school. The hijab, according to the Muslim belief, “is an Arabic word that describes Muslim women's entire dress code, which includes a veil and whatever else is needed to cover everything except the face and hands. It is adopted at puberty - an age when Muslims, say children, should become accountable for their actions” (Kahn, 52). The school district’s policy originally forbade its students from wearing hats, caps, bandana’s or other headwear inside school buildings. This was done in the hopes of preventing gang violence and had been in effect at the school for six years. Nashala’s headscarf was seen as a violation of this dress code, thus she was suspended. Nashala’s family & The Rutherford Institute decided to take action against the school board. The Rutherford Institute is a civil rights group that gained popularity and a national reputation for supporting prayer in public places, parental rights and the rights to display the Ten Commandments in public places (Hearn at page 1). Nashala’s parents and the Institute filed suit in the U.S. District Court in late October of 2003 asking the district to reverse Nashala’s suspension, change the school dress code to specifically include a distinction between regular hats and bandanas versus hijabs, and pay the...
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Parliamentary Form of Government in India
There are two forms of government: presidential and parliamentary. In presidential system, the three organs of government are independent of one another. There is absence of close relationship between the executive and the legislature. The United States of America has a presidential form of government. But, in a parliamentary form of government, there is a very close relationship between the executive and the legislature.
United Kingdom has a parliamentary form of government. In fact, the Constitution makers of India adopted the British model, as the system of government that operated in India before 1947 was to a great extent quite similar to the British parliamentary government. In India, there is parliamentary form of government both at the central and state level.
The Indian system reflects all the main features of a parliamentary government:
Close relationship between the legislature and the executive
Responsibility of the executive to the legislature
The executive having a Head of the State as the nominal executive, and a Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister as the real executive
1. Close Relationship between Legislature and Executive
In India, there is a close relationship between the executive, i.e. the Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister at the head and the legislature, i.e. the Parliament. Only the leader of the majority party or coalition of parties can be appointed as the Prime Minister. All the members of the Council of Ministers must be the Members of Parliament.
It is only on the advice of the Council of Ministers that the President can summon and prorogue the sessions of both Houses of Parliament and even dissolve the Lok Sabha. All the elected Members of the Parliament participate in the election of the President and he or she can be removed from office only when an impeachment motion against him/her is passed by both the Houses of Parliament.
2. Responsibility of Executive to Legislature
The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to Lok Sabha. It means that the responsibility of every Minister is the responsibility of the entire Council of Ministers. It is responsible to Rajya Sabha also. In fact, both the Houses have powers to control the Council of Ministers. They do it by asking questions and supplementary questions on the policies, programmes and functioning of the government.
They debate on the proposals of the government and also subject its functioning to intensive criticism. They can move adjournment motion and calling attention notices. No bill tabled by the Council of Ministers can become law unless it is approved by the Parliament. The annual budget also is to be passed by the Parliament.
In real terms, the tenure of the Council of Ministers depends on the Lok Sabha. The Council of Ministers has to resign if it looses the confidence of Lok Sabha, which means the support of the majority in that House. The Council of Ministers can also be removed from office by the Lok Sabha through a vote of no-confidence.
3. Nominal and Real Executive
There are two parts of the executive in India, nominal executive and real executive. The President who is the Head of the State is the nominal and formal executive. Theoretically, all the executive powers are vested by the Constitution in the President of India. But, in practice these are not exercised by him or her. These are actually used by the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers.
The Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister at the head is the real executive. The President can not act without the advice of the Council of Ministers.
4. Prime Minister as the real executive
It is the Prime Minister who is the pivot of the parliamentary executive. All the members of the Council of Ministers are appointed by the President on the recommendations of the Prime Minister. The allocation of portfolios among the Ministers is the prerogative of the Prime Minister. He or She presides over the meetings of the Cabinet and is the only link between the Council of Ministers and the President. Any Minister can be removed from office if the Prime Minister decides. When the Prime Minister resigns, the entire Council of Ministers has to go.
The parliamentary system in India has been functioning quite satisfactorily. The parliamentary governments in States also are structured on the pattern of the Central government. The executive consists of the Governor and the Council of Ministers with Chief Minister at the head. Whereas, the Governor functions as the Head of the State, the Chief Minister and the Council of Ministers act as the real executive.
State legislatures are bicameral (State Assembly and Legislative Council) in only a few States; in most of the States these are unicameral (Legislative Assembly).
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North-East police arrest three suspects as part of OAP courier fraud scam
Sunderland AFC v Benfica B LIVE: Action, reaction plus transfer latest from Portugal
'gameChange' study tests using virtual reality to help people with severe mental health problems
A game-changing study which will see technology used to help people suffering from mental illness has been rolled out in the region.
A new clinical trial in the North East is testing whether virtual reality (VR)-based psychological therapy could help people with severe mental health difficulties.
The “gameChange” studyis the largest ever clinical trial of virtual reality for a mental health disorder, with over 400 patients in Newcastle, Manchester, Bristol, Nottingham and Oxford taking part.
The study is led nationally by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and is being delivered by partners including Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (NTW) which provides mental health and disability services in the North East, and Newcastle University.
The organisers hope that VR technology may be able to transform NHS provision of psychological therapy.
Dr Rob Dudley, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and lead for the gameChange VR study at Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, said:
“Many people with psychosis find it hard to cope with busy social situations and may avoid places that they need or want to go to. By using virtual reality technology treatment people can experience feared places like a local shop, cafe or GP surgery in a virtual environment which feels real enough to allow people learn how to manage, and that they are safer than they feel.
“We very much hope that people will be able to take this learning into the real world letting them do more whilst feeling less anxious or distressed around other people.
“Our Trust is proud to be a partner on this project, and we are especially pleased to have involved a group of local service users from an early stage in the process. The service users have acted as a steering group helping oversee the delivery of this study, and we would like to thank them for their amazing support.”
Daniel Freeman, gameChange lead researcher, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford said:
“The gameChange VR therapy is for people with conditions such as schizophrenia whose fears have caused them to withdraw to such an extent that everyday tasks – such as getting on a bus, doing the shopping, speaking to other people – are a challenge.
“It aims to help patients re-engage with the world and go into everyday situations feeling more confident, calm and in control.”
Patients taking part in the study will be provided with a series of 30-minute sessions using VR technology, with a virtual coach guiding them in how to overcome their fears.
The technology allows participants to practise the experience of a range of everyday situations at their own pace. The virtual coach is animated using motion capture and the voice of an actor and provides information on how to overcome anxiety.
Funded by the National Institute for Health Research, the study lasts 18 months and aims to find out whether VR therapy works.
To do this, half the participants will receive the VR therapy and half will not. A comparison will then be made to see how the people who received VR therapy got on compared to those who did not receive the therapy.
The study started on Monday and people in the North East with severe mental health conditions who meet the criteria for the study are encouraged to apply to take part if they wish.
To be a participant in the studies individuals need to be in receipt of care from one of NTW’s psychosis pathways, from community mental health treatment teams, inpatient settings or Early Intervention in Psychosis services.
In the North East, NHS staff have worked closely with a local group of service users who have had support from NHS mental health services, to support the study, trial the VR equipment and act as a steering group providing oversight for the study.
For more information on taking part in the gameChange trial email pru@ntw.nhs.uk, or call NTW’s Early Intervention in Psychosis service on 0191 4416598 and ask for one of the gameChange team.
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Libre: Cuaron and Brocka
MEL LIBRE
Seriously now
WHILE it did not win an Oscar as the Best Picture in the 91st Academy Awards, “Roma” took three awards: Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Foreign Film. Nominated in 10 categories, Alfonso Cuaron’s black-and-white cine obtained wide media buildup, thanks to the promotional campaign of the Netflix. It was much a victory for Cuaron as it was for Netflix.
Cuaron is no stranger in Hollywood. He has proven himself reliable in directing artistically appealing, as well as commercially successful motion pictures. His work in the George Clooney-Sandra Bullock film “Gravity” got him his first Oscar, while directing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban put him on the A-list.
Netflix has challenged major players in the film industry and is rattling theater operators. It now produces direct-to-TV movies that are at par in quality with those backed by the likes of Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. It is changing the viewing habit of the public away from the movie houses to the comfort of their homes. Netflix spends good money on popular actors and noted directors for flicks meant for its subscribers; but for years it could not compete for the Oscars as its films have no theatrical exhibition. To circumvent the rule, it had “Roma” shown in theaters for a limited period prior to releasing this on cable.
Described as a highly personal film of Cuaron, “Roma” chronicles the life of a live-in domestic helper to a middle-class family living in the Colona Roma neighborhood in Mexico City. I doubt if any of the big studios would have financed the feature even with Cuaron’s credentials, considering its lack of commercial appeal and casting of unknown actors. For Netflix it was a no-brainer: brilliant director, low production cost and potential contender for awards.
Cuaron is in his element in “Roma.” The choice of black-and-white is a master stroke, as it gives the film periodic authenticity. The story line is as real to life as it gets. The 56-year-old filmmaker tied up the personal struggle of the main character to the poor state of his native land at that point in time. The actors do their parts so seamlessly without the drama, so much so that it has the feel of a documentary.
Actually, “Roma” reminded me of the films of Lino Brocka, one of the Philippines most illustrious directors. Growing up during Martial Law, I found Brocka’s motion pictures revealing of the ills of society--poverty, criminality, abuse of authority and discrimination. Who can ever forget “Insiang,” “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang,” “Ora Pro Nobis” and “Manila: Sa Kuko nga Liwanag”? I have to say this: the body of work of Brocka dwarfs this “masterpiece” of Cuaron.
Cuaron is lucky as with his brilliance, he was able to get his feet into Hollywood, a chance that Lino Brocka never had.
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Conservative Group
Our vision and priorities
Denise Turner Stewart, Cabinet Member for Communities
Denise has served the residents of Spelthorne as a borough councillor for four years and a county councillor for eight years. She manages a small family business, manufacturing and supplying tooling to the civil and defence aviation industry.
Denise is keen to maintain public and road safety and improve the quality of life for all age groups in the local area. She engages in regular communication with residents and is active with local organisations
Denise would like to continue to work with Borough Councillors, Surrey Police, youth services and local services and local schools to eradicate the pockets of antisocial behaviour that blight hardworking and law-abiding communities.
Denise wishes to ensure that every resident of Staines South and Ashford West has a strong voice to represent their views, needs and expectations and will deliver to the best of her ability.
David Hodge, Leader of SCC Conservative Group
David was brought up in a Dublin orphanage, leaving at the age of 14 and moving to England at 18.
John Furey, Deputy Leader & Cabinet Member for Economic Prosperity
Delivering value for money is key for Surrey,
Clare Curran, Cabinet Member for Children
Clare Curran has lived in Bookham for 20 years with her husband; and their three teenage children all attend local schools.
Mary Lewis, Cabinet Member for Education
Mary was elected as Surrey County Councillor for Cobham in May 2013. Prior to that she was a school teacher in the Cobham area and her interest in young people and education informs her work as the Surrey County Council Cabinet Associate for Children, Schools and Families.
Mel Few, Cabinet Member for Adults
Mel has lived in Virginia Water since 1982, and knows the areas he represents extremely well.
Colin Kemp, Cabinet Member for Highways
Colin was elected to Goldsworth East and Horsell Village in 2013 and since that time has also become a Borough Councillor in Horsell West. He dedicates his time to education, highways and infrastructure issues in both areas and is a strong voice for residents.
Mike Goodman, Cabinet Member for Enviroment & Transport
Mike is the candidate in Bagshot, Windlesham & Chobham
Tim Oliver, Property & Business Services
Tim represents Esher on Elmbridge Borough Council and also the Leader of the Conservative Group at the Council. He served as Cabinet Member for Resources from 2011 to 2016. He is married to Debi, a former GP.
Helyn Clack, Cabinet Member for Health
I have been the County Councillor for Dorking Rural for the last twelve years, live in Charlwood with my husband Bryan and brought up my family here. Over the last four years I have:
Peter Martin, Chairman of SCC
Peter Martin has served as the County Councillor for Godalming South, Milford & Witley since 2005 and is also the Deputy Leader of the County Council with responsibility for business and economic growth.
Peter was educated at Oxford and Durham University and is a qualified accountant. After voluntary service overseas in the Sudan he worked for over 30 years in the International IT Industry in London, Paris and New York.
Surrey Conservative Group
Promoted by Dorothy Ross-Tomlin on behalf of Surrey Conservatives, both of 83 Bell Street, Reigate RH2 7AN
Copyright 2019 Surrey Conservative Group. All rights reserved.
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Myles Reichling
Updated: Feb. 8, 2018, 8:21 a.m.
Myles P. Reichling, age 24 of rural Mineral Point, passed away unexpectedly on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018 at his home. He was born on Feb. 12, 1993 in Darlington, as the son of Patrick and Diane (Jacobson) Reichling. Myles graduated from Mineral Point High School in 2011 and later went on to receive his degree in Agricultural Business from Southwest Technical College in Fennimore in 2013. He grew up and lived in rural Mineral Point his whole life. Following his graduation, he farmed with his Dad and uncles, Tom and Joe, and his grandpa David on Reichling Farms. Myles also showed his passion for selling trucks as he operated “Reichy Auto Sales”.
Myles is survived by his parents: Patrick and Diane Reichling of rural Mineral Point; two sisters: Whitney (Nate) Reichling-Runde of Belmont and McKenna Reichling at home; one brother: Ryan Reichling at home; his beloved dog: Charlie; maternal grandmother: Marjorie Lee of Darlington; paternal grandfather: David Reichling of Darlington; three nieces: Alea Reichling, Reese and Claire Runde, all of Belmont; He was preceded in death by his maternal grandfathers: Roger “Trig” Lee and Carl Jacobson, Jr., and his paternal grandmothers: Donna Reichling and Joann Reichling.
Myles was a member of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Darlington. Myles subbed in pool leagues and also bowled league at Midway Lanes in rural Mineral Point. He loved boating at Yellowstone Lake, snowmobiling, riding his Harley, and took a keen interest in trucks and sports cars. Myles cherished his family and the memories they created together. He will be deeply missed and fondly remembered by his family and friends.
A Time of Family Remembrance will be held Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018 at 10:30 a.m. followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at 11:00 a.m. at Holy Rosary Catholic Church (104 E. Harriet Street, Darlington) with Rev. Joji Reddy officiating. Burial will be in Holy Rosary Cemetery. A visitation was held Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018 from 4:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. at Holy Rosary Catholic Church where a rosary was prayed at 4:00 p.m. A visitation will also be held Thursday from 9:30 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. at the church. The Erickson Funeral Home in Darlington is serving the family. Online condolences may be expressed to the family at www.ericksonfuneralhome.com.
In lieu of flowers, a memorial fund has been established in Myles’s name.
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Pass It On: Addiction network CEO emphasizes education
By MATTHEW PERRONE , AP Health Writer, Associated Press
In this undated photo provided by the American Addiction Centers, the company's CEO Michael Cartwright poses for a photo. Cartwright discussed the bar
WASHINGTON (AP) — American Addiction Centers CEO Michael Cartwright learned the lessons of recovery and treatment first hand.
He struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol as a teenager and young adult. After recovering in his 20s, he found his passion working as a rehabilitation caseworker and eventually created a series of drug and alcohol treatment facilities.
Today he prizes education and expertise in running his company's nationwide network. When personal and professional challenges arise, he relies on meditation and prayer. Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity:
Q: What key things can a manager do to create a workplace culture that makes a business top notch?
A: I think you should expect and demand excellence from yourself first. As a leader, I try to come in early and stay late. I try to read a lot and inform myself. I try to become highly educated about what I'm doing in the field that I'm doing it in.
And I ask all my team members to do the same, whether you're a nurse in one of our facilities or you're a front-line staffer checking in patients.
I think at every level in your company I would hope that your workforce is trying to truly get knowledgeable. At American Addiction Centers I would hope that everybody here is as passionate as I am about saving lives and, on a daily basis, trying to make a difference in somebody's life to get better from the disease of addiction. And you're in a better position to do that if you're knowledgeable.
Q: What are the keys to tackling your most difficult challenges?
A: Whenever I've faced a very challenging personal or professional dilemma, I think the number one thing to do is to stay calm and pray a lot. I know that sounds simple, but it is very effective.
A lot of times we build stuff up in our mind that we think is a problem, but it's not even really a problem. And so I always try to start out with prayer and meditation and then I ask myself "Is this really a problem or is this something I just need to work on?"
There have been very few times in life where I've had an insurmountable problem. It's usually just that you've got to work through the answer and sometimes it's just working seven days a week, 12 hours a day to figure it out. But that doesn't constitute a problem, it's not a crisis. It's just that you've got to put some extra effort into figuring out the answer ... When things are really tough I rely a lot on exercise because it gets the endorphins pumping and gets your mind clear.
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RIM begins layoffs, 10 per cent of workforce to go
By Chris Smith 2011-07-25T18:44:00.205Z Mobile phones
2,000 jobs cut in battle at Waterloo
RIM downsizes workforce
Research In Motion has confirmed that it is to begin making 2000 redundancies this week as the company faces the reality of falling BlackBerry sales.
The cuts, which equates to over 10 per cent of the company's workforce, arrive following a 12 per cent drop in revenue during the last fiscal quarter.
RIM will also reshuffle the deck at the top of the pile, with a number of executives moving around as part od the "cost optimisation program."
The Canadian smartphone giant says that the speed at which the company grew in the previous five years meant that staff has swelled to a bigger-than-necessary numbers.
In a statement, RIM says the cutbacks are "believed to be a prudent and necessary step for the long-term success of the company.
"[They follow] an extended period of rapid growth within the company whereby the workforce had nearly quadrupled in the last five years alone."
Despite maintaining a strong grip on the business-phone market, RIM has struggled to keep pace with the iPhone and Android handsets.
Recent iterations of the Bold brand haven't caught the imagination, while the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is still thought to be a work in progress.
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We asked five Texas musicians—Guy Clark, Patty Griffin, Sonny Throckmorton, Robert Earl Keen, and Jack Ingram—to tell us the secret to writing a great country song. Their answers were predictable (avoid Nashville), surprising (read Rumi), and downright quirky (two words: “graph paper”).
John Spong
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/pitch-perfect/
From the August 2009 Issue Subscribe
Clark, Griffin, Throckmorton, Keen, and Ingram, photographed at the Hotel Saint Cecilia, in Austin, on May 11, 2009.
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
(THE PANELISTS)
Sonny Throckmorton
Sonny Throckmorton lives in Brownwood and is one of country music’s most successful songwriters, penning more than fifteen number one hits and dozens of songs that are now considered standards, including “Why Not Me,” for the Judds; “The Way I Am,” for Merle Haggard; “Middle Age Crazy,” for Jerry Lee Lewis; “It’s a Cheating Situation,” for Moe Bandy; and “Friday Night Blues,” for John Conlee.
Patty Griffin first received attention as a singer-songwriter while performing in Boston coffeehouses, but she moved to Austin shortly after the release of her debut album, Living With Ghosts, in 1996. Her songs have been performed by artists ranging from Bette Midler and Linda Ronstadt to Solomon Burke and the Dixie Chicks, who recorded “Truth No. 2,” “Top of the World,” and “Let Him Fly.”
Jack Ingram began his career in the mid-nineties and has gone on to mainstream commercial success, having been named 2007 New Male Vocalist of the Year by the Academy of Country Music. The Austin-based musician has recorded seven Top 20 hits, including one number one, “Wherever You Are,” by Nashville writers Jeremy Stover and Steve Bogard.
Kerrville’s Robert Earl Keen was part of the wave of Texas singer-songwriters who followed Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt in the early eighties, building a devoted audience with intimate, literary portraits (“Mariano”) and sing-along fare (“Feelin’ Good Again”). He’s best known for two songs that grew into bona fide cultural phenomena, “The Road Goes on Forever” and “Merry Christmas From the Family.”
Though he’s lived in Nashville since 1971, Guy Clark remains the dean of Texas singer-songwriters. Born and raised in Monahans, he has written two number one hits—Ricky Skaggs’s “Heartbroke” and Rodney Crowell’s “She’s Crazy for Leavin’ ”—but he is better known for his own versions of highly personal songs, like “L.A. Freeway,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “Homegrown Tomatoes,” and “The Randall Knife.”
I. “I’VE GOT NO IDEA WHAT COUNTRY SONGS ARE ABOUT.”
John Spong, Texas Monthly Senior Editor: Let’s start with definitions. When I talked to Guy about getting together to discuss country songs, he said, “I don’t know what that is. That’s not what I do.”
Guy Clark: I’ve got no idea what country songs are about. Hell, I’m a songwriter. I try to write about what I know, and if somebody country does one of my songs, I love it. That’s probably the reason I still live in Nashville. I went there to try to be a songwriter, but I gave up trying to understand that marketplace. Writing for a marketplace just offends my sensibilities. I always said, “If I ever break even, I’m movin’ back to Texas.” I haven’t done it yet.
Spong: Sonny, do you consider yourself a country songwriter?
Sonny Throckmorton: Well, I guess I do. But I never set out to be. I wrote a whole lot of country hits, but I never tried to write one.
Clark: That might be the secret.
Throckmorton: I starved to death until I was 35. But all of a sudden they were cutting everything I wrote. That just happens. You sit down, start rambling, and bam, you’ve got something. Trying to write hits is hard. Roger Miller said that it’s like takin’ a candy bar from a gorilla.
Clark: I was there when he said that. I even put it in a song [“Must Be My Baby”].
Throckmorton: For “Trying to Love Two Women” [a number one hit for the Oak Ridge Boys in 1980] I was turning my car around at the end of my driveway one morning after getting my newspaper. I lived on a farm and my driveway was pretty long, so, being a lazy songwriter, I took my car. And the guy next door was standing out in his yard, and he says, “Are we keeping you awake at night?” I said, “No, you’re not.” And he said, “Well, would you do me a favor? If you hear shooting down here some night, would you call the cops?” And I said, “Well, sure. What’s going on?” And he said, “I’m trying to love two women.” Boy, by the time I got home I had that song already wrote. It was one of those God-given songs.
Jack Ingram: Does the guy know you wrote it?
Throckmorton: Yeah. And can you believe he wanted part of it [the royalties]?
Spong: Robert, you tried for a while to go the commercial-songwriter route in Nashville, right?
Robert Earl Keen: That did not go very well. But I was really successful with all the temp agencies in town. I signed up with two or three, so my phone rang all the time, but it wouldn’t be anybody from Music Row. I remember my defining moment as a Nashville songwriter was when I was literally digging a ditch, cramming this shovel in the ground and throwing that dirt over my shoulder . . . and thinking my dad had said that if I kept trying to make a living writing songs, I’d end up digging a ditch.
Spong: Patty, people are always asking what category to put you in, if you’re folk or country or what. What are you?
Patty Griffin: I don’t know what I am. I just make up songs. I used to hate the title “folk music,” because I liked rock and Motown. I never listened to folk music when I was a kid. And then I started the girl-with-guitar thing in Boston, and everybody called me a “folksinger,” which made me picture a girl in a field of daisies. I wanted to be a rocker, so it pissed me off.
Spong: Jack, when did songwriting first occur to you?
Ingram: Well, Sonny, when did y’all write “The Cowboy Rides Away”?
Throckmorton: In 1980.
Ingram: So it came out on the George Strait record Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind, in 1984, and I heard it in the backseat of my mom’s car as a fourteen-year-old kid. I didn’t like country music necessarily, but I got this feeling, just like later when I first heard one of Robert’s records. Or one of Patty’s. I didn’t want to be a guitar player; I wanted to chase that emotion—
Throckmorton: To be a writer.
Ingram: Yeah. To connect with the world—when you hear a song and all of a sudden everything stops, everything is okay for three and a half minutes. That’s why I did it.
II. “THE EASIER IT SOUNDS, THE HARDER IT IS.”
Spong: So I asked each of you to come here today with a song in mind—maybe an old favorite or maybe just something you’ve heard on the radio recently—that you could discuss as an example of great songwriting.
Keen: I would say that John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind” [a hit for Glen Campbell in 1967] is my all-time favorite song. And I can’t say exactly why except that the words just all fit together so nicely—like the ending, when he’s standing by the barrel, cupping his hands around the tin can. You know how a great book is like a tight bud of a flower that blossoms when you get to the part that’s really good? It’s the same with this song.
Griffin: The song I heard on the radio when I was little that made me fly was another Glen Campbell song, “Wichita Lineman,” which Jimmy Webb wrote. I don’t really know what it’s about, but I love that baritone guitar thing.
Keen: Those Jimmy Webb songs have great melodies.
Throckmorton: Melodies are what do it for me, man, one song that I can put in my car and listen to over and over and over the whole drive from Brownwood to Nashville.
Clark: To me the melody is just a vehicle to get the words out. I’m not a great guitar player or a great singer. And a song like “The Randall Knife” [about a knife belonging to Clark’s father that he broke when he was a child] is really just spoken word. Hopefully the music will complement the words, make a song pretty or fun or whatever.
Spong: Sonny, what song did you bring?
Throckmorton: I’d say “Green, Green Grass of Home” [a number four hit for Porter Wagoner in 1965] is a pretty damned good song. I like it because of that turn, when the guy wakes up and he’s only dreaming. That gets me big-time. And I like it because Curly Putman, who wrote it, has probably had about a hundred hits, and that song has made more money than all the other hits put together. I like songs that make a lot of money. But really I like it because it’s simple, and that’s the hardest kind of writing there is. The easier it sounds, the harder it is.
Ingram: Simplicity is not dumb.
Clark: Uh-huh. It’s learning what to leave out. Like with good guitar players—it ain’t the licks they play, it’s the holes they leave. Or when you listen to Hank Williams and think, “How’d he do that?”
Griffin: When you hear a Hank Williams song, it sounds like it’s always been there.
Spong: Jack, do you have a song in mind?
Ingram: When I first started playing music, I had 25 songs, and 24 of them were either Robert’s or Guy’s or Jerry Jeff Walker’s or Willie Nelson’s. And then every week I’d learn a new song, and one of theirs would have to go. It’s pure Darwin. One that has been speaking to me lately is Billy Joe Shaver’s “Old Chunk of Coal.” It means more and more to me every day that I walk around. He does what a lot of guys I’ve always loved do. Their songs feel like they were written in three and a half minutes. And I love the way John Anderson attacks that song in his version. Done different ways, a song can make you laugh and party or make you cry.
Clark: I was thinking today about Joe Ely’s “Indian Cowboy.” The first night I met Joe, we were in Antone’s [the famous Austin blues club], and afterward we went over to Gary P. Nunn’s yard with a guitar. We sat there and played songs and drank all night long. The sun came up, and Joe said, “I got one more,” and he played that song. And it has charmed me from that moment. So we all went inside and made Joe record it, and I took that tape with me. Then I recorded it. And Joe said he heard me doing it on the radio one day, three or four years later, and that there was something familiar about it. But he didn’t remember it. So he went and bought the record and saw it was his name on it and had to relearn it.
Spong: Did he want part of it?
Clark: He wanted all of it.
III. “IF YOU GET TIRED OF WRITING, GET UP AND WHITTLE.”
Ingram: Guy, somebody told me that you write on graph paper?
Clark: I do. I drafted structural steel for a while when I was younger, and there’s just something about graph paper that makes you write straighter. And I can always find whatever I’m writing because there’s nothing else lying around that looks like it.
Spong: I think I even read that you took a while trying to find the right grade of pencil lead.
Ingram: He went to therapy for that.
Clark: There’s something about the feel of graphite on paper that I just adore. I don’t like ballpoints, and I don’t like computers, and I don’t like typewriters. But a really good, dark piece of lead on a really good piece of paper just makes you write better.
Griffin: I like red Flair pens. My mom and dad were teachers, so it’s probably genetic.
Clark: I had a song lying around once when Billy Joe Shaver was in the house, and after he left, I looked down at it and he’d written, “B minus. Needs work.”
Spong: Robert, how do you put songs together?
Keen: I sorta keep them in my head till I’m finished, then write it down. I don’t know if it’s some test to see if I can remember the words while I’m doing it or see if it can all stick together. And it doesn’t mean I won’t edit it. I learned from Guy that editing is a good idea instead of a bad idea. When I first started, I used to think the voice of God was going through my brain and onto this piece of paper. That was not true at all.
Clark: Sometimes, not very often but once in a while, I’ll write a song and finally get it down on paper and find that I know it without having to go back and learn it. Those are the ones that are really cool.
Keen: Yeah, I hate relearning songs. I think there is something wrong with ’em if you have to relearn ’em. They should just stick.
Throckmorton: That’s funny—I always said that if you can remember the words to your songs then you’re not writing enough.
Spong: Patty, you’ve said that you don’t write down melodies or music when they first come to you, because if they’re good enough, they’ll stick.
Griffin: Pretty much. I don’t mind tweaking a song for a few months. I think that’s part of the fun of writing, just kind of shaping it and seeing where you can take that formality and turn it just slightly different here and maybe make this bridge pop out. But mostly it just shows up or it doesn’t. I think melody writing is the easy part.
Throckmorton: What’s that ol’ boy that had “Polk Salad Annie”?
Ingram: Tony Joe White.
Throckmorton: Yeah, Tony Joe White. He used to say, “I like to get in E and be still.”
Griffin: B flat is my favorite.
Spong: Robert, where do you write?
Keen: I’ve got a little shack between Bandera and Kerrville I call the Scriptorium. I go out there and stay by myself and eat venison sausage and bang on guitars and read books for ten days at a time. I’ve got Graham Greene and [Cormac] McCarthy and [thirteenth-century Sufi poet] Rumi. I’ve got a bunch of westerns too, a whole series of Zane Grey—things I read when I get to thinking that I think I’m too smart.
Spong: And Guy, your place in Nashville is kind of a famous spot. People go there just to write with you in your woodworking room.
Clark: I always wrote by myself for years and years, wrangling words, figuring stuff out. But when you’re writing with somebody else, you actually have to say it out loud. If you’re writing alone, you can sit there and mumble it for two weeks and think it’s the greatest thing in the world. But when you have to play it for somebody, it’s just like, “Oh, man, that’s sorry.” I love having a good place to write, and I love building guitars, so what can be better than doing it in the same room? If you get tired of writing, get up and whittle; if you make a mistake there, sit down and write.
Throckmorton: I gotta come write with you. I’ve never done that.
Clark: We’ll work on your guitar. But none of the formality of Music Row co-writing. I am pretty much against that.
Throckmorton: I am too. I’d never work in Nashville anymore, cause I’d tell them to kiss my butt real quick on that deal.
Spong: But clearly you’re not opposed to co-writing.
Throckmorton: No, but let’s do it in a bar, not an office. Like when I wrote “Why Not Me” for the Judds [a number one hit in 1984]. I got a phone call from Harlan Howard, and he said, “Sonny, we’ve got to write a song for this wonderful woman and her little girl.” And he kept on and on, and finally I went over to his house. And I hummed a little bit of this melody that I’d been humming for years that I called “How ’Bout Me” and he said, “Why not make it ‘Why Not Me’?” And I said, “Gold!” And then he wrote most of the lyrics while I sat and watched. So I had the melody—it was half mine—but that was one of those instances where I probably got more than I gave.
Griffin: When I first got to Nashville, in 1994, I played the Bluebird Cafe, and this big songwriter guy saw the show and said, “I’d love to write a song with you that’s left of center.” I met him the next day in his little office, and I had never tried anything like that before, going and collaborating. So I’d throw out a melody idea and he’d go, “Now, let’s not go all Sarah Vaughan here.” I got this splitting headache and just thought to myself, “This day will end, and I’ll remember not to do this again.”
Throckmorton: Co-writing with some people is like co-painting. You don’t hear about Van Gogh ever co-painting a picture.
IV. “NOTHING BAD WILL EVER HAPPEN TO ME BECAUSE I GOT PLAYED ON THE RADIO.”
Spong: Jack, you’re selling more records and playing in front of bigger crowds than the rest of the table. And you write your own songs, but your hits have been written by other people. What do you look for when you’re trying to find a song that’s going to sell?
Ingram: It still boils down to that thing I talked about at the beginning: a song that stops my world for a few minutes. So I’ll look through a thousand songs and then tell my producers, “Here’s five that work for me. You guys tell me which ones work for you, because y’all are the ones that are trying to get it on the radio.”
Spong: So a “hit,” in the context of purely commercial success, isn’t a dirty word?
Ingram: Absolutely not. Nothing bad will ever happen to me because I got played on the radio.
Throckmorton: A hit just means that people like what you do.
Ingram: For me, it came down to not wanting to play for 25 people. I’m from Texas and proud of it. But I don’t make music for just Texans. My music is for as many people as want to hear it. Plus, I like riding in a bus. [Everybody laughs.] It means that after the show I get to go home and wake up with my kids. It’s not the ego part of having a bus, it’s—
Griffin: The sanity.
Ingram: I like having a sane life.
Throckmorton: You know, all four of these guys make a living by going and playing to people. Crowds actually show up to hear ’em and love ’em. And here I’ve written a bunch of hits, and I can’t draw flies. My dream was always to do what they do.
Ingram: But you just have to walk out to your mailbox and grab that royalty check.
Spong: When you open your mailbox, you don’t hear the crowd roar?
Throckmorton: I do. And that’s nice.
Spong: Robert, didn’t George Strait just cut one of your songs? The few people I’ve ever talked to who wrote songs that he recorded, guys who’d grown up listening to him, called that a distinct kind of thrill.
Keen: That was very cool. I wrote “West Texas Town,” a fun little swing song, with Dean Dillon about three years ago, and it was fun because we hung out for a couple days, going to all these thrift shops looking for Old Spice bottles, and then sort of at the end of the day, Dean says [Keen affects a gruff voice], “Hey, Robert Earl, let’s write a song.” And I said, “Okay.” We sat down and wrote that one in about thirty minutes. Then three years later, he calls up [Keen uses the same gruff voice], “Hey, Robert Earl, George is going to cut that song, and I’m going to sing it with him. How cool is that?”
Griffin: What’d he want Old Spice bottles for?
Keen:I guess he collects them. I didn’t know much about Old Spice.
Spong: Sonny, when I read about you writing for Tree Publishing in the seventies, I pictured a Brill Building—type organization and you running down a hallway, waving sheet music over your head, screaming, “I just wrote ‘The Last Cheater’s Waltz.’ ”
Throckmorton: We were a looser group than that. We used to hunt bottles too. I collect Fire-King bottles, so we’d go driving around looking for ’em. One time Glenn Martin and I jumped in the car and just took off for Florida. We had to be back by Monday, because that was my time to demo—
Ingram: You recorded demos of new songs every Monday?
Throckmorton: Every Monday. I actually had all day to record if I had that many songs. So me and Martin went to Florida knowing we had to write something to demo by the start of the next week, and we wrote “If We’re Not Back in Love by Monday” [a number two country hit for Merle Haggard in 1977]. It was just a great time, and Nashville has never been the same. [Publisher and producer] Don Gant was running the company—
Clark: He was a cool guy.
Throckmorton: Yes, he was. And he knew songs. He could hear a song once and tell if it was going to be a hit. And he discovered so many great artists. Keith Whitley. And, uh, that “Margaritaville” guy. [Everybody laughs.] Lots of folks. It was so much fun. We were all getting drunk and writing hits.
Spong: With you, Guy, I think of the difference between a personal song like “The Randall Knife” and a number one hit like “Heartbroke.” Did you approach writing them differently?
Clark: Well, yeah. “The Randall Knife” is a cathartic thing that I never thought was even going to be a song. I wrote that when my father died, and that was just to get it out there. It never occurred to me to make it a song. “Heartbroke” was different. I used to write in bound notebooks, and you couldn’t shuffle pages around like you can with graph paper. I had these four verses that I thought were really good, and about two pages over I had this great chorus. And one day, just by chance, I happen to pull those two things and put them together, and that was “Heartbroke.” They just fit.
Ingram: Like chocolate with peanut butter.
Clark: Exactly. But I must speak to this with a song. [Clark plays a new song called “Somedays the Song Writes You.”] “You can search for the way / You can curse you can pray / But the words have a way of their own.” I wrote that with Gary Nicholson and Jon Randall Stewart, and it just popped right out of the three of us. My sensibilities tell me that’s a real cliché-ridden song, except that when it all came together, I thought, “Well, it’s not something I would ordinarily sing, but it sure is true.” You can’t argue with it.
Throckmorton: And it is true. They do write you.
Ingram: See, that’s what I was talking about. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the rest of the world. Maybe it’s because Guy’s one of my all-time heroes, but sitting here—you get drawn in. You feel it curling up inside you. It’s like a drug. And that’s what songwriting is. It can take you completely away from everything that bothers you. Even a sad song. It’s comforting because you know the rest of the world has felt that way. “The Randall Knife” is the perfect example. It is the most personal story that Guy could tell. I had issues with my dad, and that connection is immediate. It made me feel like, “All right, this happens to everybody.”
Clark: You know, Vince Gill loves that song. He told me that it touched him so much, that he had the same feud with his father. Except his was over a 4-iron. He broke his dad’s 4-iron. But it’s the same thing. If you leave a place where the listener can connect to it, but not write the listener out of it by putting in so much detail that it excludes them—
Griffin: Are you thinking that when you write? “Don’t leave the listener out”?
Clark: Actually, maybe not when I’m writing it, but certainly when I’m editing it, going back over it and working it out. I do consciously think about that. But it still has to be intelligently written. You can’t write down to the listener. You have to give people credit for being smart enough to get how cool you are.
Spong: And if you write it that simply, with the right specificity, it’ll become universal.
Clark: See, I have this real haiku approach to the end result, the yin and the yang of it.
Spong: How long had your dad been dead when you wrote “The Randall Knife”?
Clark: About two weeks.
Griffin: Wow.
Spong: Because you’ve written songs about your childhood, memories you’ve carried around with you for years.
Clark: Well, yeah. “Texas, 1947.” And “Desperados Waiting for a Train” is about something that happened to me when I was six. Some things just come to the surface whenever they want. It doesn’t matter why, just so long as you get the song.
Tags: Music, Billy Joe Shaver, Country Music, Guy Clark, Joe Ely
Lee Ann Womack: “Huge Country Music Success Didn’t Feed My Soul”
The Story Behind Guy Clark’s “My Favorite Picture of You”
Aaron Watson: “I Relate More to Johnny Cash Than to Billy Graham, But They Both Loved Them Some Jesus”
The Best Thing in Texas: Willie Nelson Performs a Guy Clark Tune on the ‘Tonight Show’
The “Red Headed Stranger” Rides Again: Here’s What We Learned
By Cat Cardenas
Texas Monthly Recommends: Eugene Lee Yang Comes Out in New Music Video
Texas Monthly Recommends: Kevin Abstract’s Sophomore Album, ‘Arizona Baby’
Bushwick Bill: “I’m Not Going to Allow People to Love Me for Who I’m Not”
Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis Revisit the Astrodome in New Video and Album
By Thomas Mooney
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Meet some of the people featured in the December 2016 issue of The Scientist.
Ben Andrew Henry
COURTESY OF ELLEN YUBorn in Milwaukee, Dan Lin went to high school in a suburb of Chicago before he glimpsed his future scientific career at Washington University in St. Louis. A summer research project and a stint in a lab during his sophomore year oriented his interests toward research, which grew into a definitive focus on structural biology. Lin earned his degree in biomedical engineering, with extra study in biochemistry, graduating in 2011. As he was interviewing for graduate schools, André Hoelz was just setting up his lab at Caltech, and Lin felt it was the right fit. The nuclear pore complex is “just an amazing structural biology problem,” Lin says, and a field steeped in questions that a young biologist could make his name answering. Progress in resolving the enormous structure has been staggeringly fast in Lin’s few years, “beyond our wildest expectations,” he says. Next year, he’ll leave the lab to start a postdoc at the Whitehead Institute researching posttranscriptional gene regulation.
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYAndré Hoelz studied chemistry as an undergraduate at the University of Freiburg in Germany, and he wanted to apply this groundwork to biomedical research. “If you wanted to broaden your research interests . . . that was not easy to do in Germany,” he says, but many more opportunities existed in the U.S. He came to Rockefeller University in 1997 to study the structure and function of protein kinases, working in the labs of John Kuriyan and Nobel Laureate Günter Blobel. Hoelz earned his PhD in 2004 and began to pursue an atomic model of the nuclear pore complex as a postdoc in Blobel’s lab. He continued this ambitious work as a research associate and then as a research assistant professor, spending a total of 14 years at Rockefeller. Hoelz now runs his own lab at Caltech, where he continues to pursue not just the atomic structure of the nuclear pore, but the functional interactions of its many parts.
Lin and Hoelz offer a rundown of what’s known and what remains to be solved about the nuclear pore complex in “Nuclear Pores Come into Sharper Focus.”
COURTESY OF ANTHONY MORGANJohn Parrington first began writing about science during a media fellowship at The Times, where he leveraged his scientific background to pen stories about the latest advances in research. While there, he started researching the Human Genome Project and later wrote a book on the subject. His interests shifted then to a related topic: advances in genome editing, which became the subject of his second book, published this October. When he is not writing, Parrington studies the signaling pathways involved in egg cell activation and other key physiological events at the University of Oxford. Parrington arrived at the university in 2002 following a string of research fellowships that focused on the molecular mechanisms of fertilization. His next writing project will be a book exploring the science of human consciousness. “It’s those big themes I seem to like,” he reflects.
Read Parrington’s essay based on Redesigning Life: How Genome Editing Will Transform the World.
QUEST DIAGNOSTICSCharles Strom is vice president of genetics and genomics at the Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute in San Juan Capistrano, California, where he leads research into genetic tests for developmental disorders, including Down syndrome and Fragile X syndrome. He took his current position in 2002, before which he was both a practicing pediatrician and a researcher in the field of genetics. “My goal my whole life has been to apply state-of-the-art genetic techniques to help my patients,” Strom says, with the particular goal of improving the accuracy of genetic testing while reducing its cost. He earned a PhD in biology and a medical degree from the University of Chicago, and has held faculty positions at Rush Medical College, University of Chicago, and University of California, San Diego, where he is now an assistant clinical professor. In recent years, he has begun research into cancer detection using next-generation sequencing and large-scale clinical databases.
Strom addresses the shortcomings and potential of clinical genetic databases in “Not All Genetic Databases Are Equal.”
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Opinion: Preparing for Potential Disasters
How to increase the resiliency of biotechnology organizations in the face of emergency risks
Larissa Paschyn
PIXABAY, FELIXIONCOOLHurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, fires, steam explosions, chemical spills, terrorism—all are threats biotechnology facilities face. These hazards can lead to extensive damage and large-scale business interruption. Most biotech firms are familiar with business continuity planning. However, many organizations develop business continuity recovery plans that rely on the belief that first responders will reach them in time. Planning to protect against greater physical and financial loss by recovering their vital research, documents, and technology, these firms may be forgetting about their most important asset: their people.
Company-based emergency response teams (ERTs) are now beginning to take root in the private sector. These are based on community emergency response teams (CERTs), which are sponsored by city and state governments and populated by volunteers. Organizations often mistakenly assume that, in times of disaster, first responders will be there to help. But when the “big one” strikes, first responders may not be able to assist right away. Emergencies can happen suddenly, overwhelming traditional staff support services. It is imperative that biotech organizations are able to self-sufficiently respond to emergency conditions so as to quickly and effectively stabilize safety issues.
See “Weathering the Storm”
Before disaster strikes, biotech organizations can take steps to not only make their businesses more resilient to emergency risk, but also develop response operations that can support first responders in times of crisis.
Developing an ERT
ERTs enable organizations to respond to on-site emergencies—as well as those in neighbouring sites and communities—before first responders arrive. By being able to initiate response procedures, ERTs likewise permit an organization transition to the recovery and resumption of business phase sooner.
In developing ERTs, there are four main teams you will want to include: evacuation coordinators, plus medical response, search and rescue, structural specialists, and hazardous materials (hazmat) teams. These are comprised of staff member–volunteers.
Evacuation coordinators are employees on each floor of a given building, informing personnel in their direct area to immediately evacuate the work area and/or building when an evacuation notification is received or in progress. They conduct floor sweeps, checking normally unoccupied rooms (storerooms, training areas, meeting rooms, and restrooms) adjacent to their departments, ensuring everyone has evacuated when necessary. Evacuation coordinators also enlist the help of other personnel to assist in the evacuation of handicapped staff or visitors.
The medical team provides on-site evaluation and treatment—within the scope of its training, qualifications, and available resources. Medical team members are accountable for all field medical emergency response, including setting up a treatment area, plus fielding emergency triage, medical transportation, first aid, mortality management, and casualty counts.
The search and rescue team is responsible for locating for people reported as missing, triaging victims, providing rapid lifesaving treatment, and transporting wounded and injured persons.
In earthquake-prone areas, establishing a structural assessment team is just good business. This crew, comprised of facilities and structural experts, will usually be the first to conduct a hot lap of the structure after a catastrophic event that has the potential to impact a building and its contents. This team is in charge for conducting a rapid safety evaluation of the building, determining whether it is safe to enter, shutting off utilities as needed, and, if safe, allowing other emergency response groups to enter.
During on-site hazmat releases, the hazmat team is tasked with ensuring the safety of staff, facilities, and the surrounding community. Hazmat team members contain and clean spills. During incidents in which where person is injured and/or trapped near a spill, this team is critical in isolating and containing the spill before search and rescue and medical team members can enter.
Practice makes prepared
Holding exercises is essential after establishing ERTs. Without testing the team, an organization cannot assess its ERT’s capabilities or shortcomings. Practice runs provide team members with the experience required to respond to a real emergencies down the line.
Of course, developing an ERT will require buy-in from the top of an organization, down. Selling the program to staff in order to generate interest in volunteering is the most important step in the process.
At the end of the day, an organization has to determine the potential value of implementing any business continuity programs. In the biotech industry, where chemical spills and explosions are only too likely, implementing an ERT program shows employees that the company cares about their well-being, and is an act of goodwill to the local community. ERTs create a resilient community and a culture of preparedness within an organization, which will not only boost its ability to recover after a disaster, but strengthens customer confidence.
Larissa Paschyn is a certified emergency manager in San Francisco.. Previously, she was the external affairs officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Region 9 Incident Management Assistance Team.
Potential Causes of Irreproducibility Revealed
Opinion: Test Brain-Reviving Technology in Infants First
US Senators Call for International Guidelines for Germline Editing
Opinion: How to Stop Women’s Silence in STEM
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Scenes From the Moscow Metro
Moscow’s underground transit system is now more than 80 years old, and carries up to 9 million passengers through more than 200 stations every day. Most of the architecture and decor was built decades ago, meant to be a showcase for Soviet artists, ideals, and icons. The system is now modernizing, in part, preparing for the 2018 World Cup, which will be hosted in Russia. Several Reuters photographers have captured images of the varied and unique Moscow Metro stations, as well as the workers and passengers underground, over the past year.
People gather at Ploschad Revolyutsii (Revolution Square) metro station in Moscow, Russia, on March 6, 2016. #
Maxim Zmeyev / Reuters
The Metro sign is seen at the entrance to VDNKh metro station, with the Monument to the Conquerors of Space seen in the background, in Moscow on June 2, 2016. #
Commuters walk through Fonvizinskaya metro station in Moscow on April 13, 2017. #
Grigory Dukor / Reuters
A station manager controls trains coming and leaving the platform as she sits in a booth at Zhulebino metro station on April 18, 2017. Another visible change is the controversial replacement of many of the elderly women who used to sit in a booth at the bottom of the seemingly endless escalators, who were famous for telling passengers off if they sat down on the escalator steps. One attendant known by locals as Auntie Lyuda was famous for telling jokes on Mondays, reading poems and telling passengers to imagine they were in England—if passengers want to walk up and down the steps of the escalator, they should do so on the left. Now the attendants are mainly young men, and have yet to show any skill in bantering with passengers. #
An interior view shows Komsomolskaya metro station on the Koltsevaya (Circle) line on February 20, 2016. #
A woman stands next to a bas-relief representing Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin, at Ploschad Ilyicha metro station on March 9, 2016. #
An interior view shows Mendeleyevskaya metro station on March 7, 2016. #
A sign reading "Schukinskaya" is on display at Schukinskaya metro station on June 13, 2016. #
The entrance to Smolenskaya metro station in Moscow, Russia, on February 25, 2016. #
Otradnoye metro station on June 7, 2016. #
A fragment of interior design at Novokuznetskaya metro station on February 1, 2016. #
People travel on an escalator at Park Kultury metro station on March 14, 2017. #
Mendeleyevskaya metro station on March 7, 2016 #
People wait for the train at Kievskaya metro station on April 17, 2017. #
A Moscow metro employee drives a train through Paveletskaya metro station on March 20, 2017. #
An interior view of Barrikadnaya metro station on February 25, 2016. #
People walk during rush hour in Kievskaya metro station on April 17, 2017. At Kievskaya, a station built in 1954, when Ukraine was firmly a part of the Soviet Union, this vivid mosaic dedicated to Russian-Ukrainian friendship occupies one wall. #
An employee washes the train carriage at Krasnaya Presnya metro depot in Moscow on March 20, 2017. #
Aviamotornaya metro station photographed on April 13, 2017 #
A child looks at one of several statues in Ploschad Revolyutsii (Revolution Square) metro station on March 6, 2016. #
People wait for the train at Kurskaya metro station on March 21, 2017. #
A detail of the interior design at Dubrovka metro station on February 22, 2016. #
A worker restores a stucco ornament during renovations at Kievskaya metro station on March 18, 2017. #
The platform controller signals that the train can leave at Komsomolskaya metro station in Moscow, Russia, on March 24, 2017. #
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The Founding Fathers Encrypted Secret Messages, Too
Centuries before cybersecurity, statesmen around the world communicated with their own elaborate codes and ciphers.
Rachel B. Doyle
A replica of a Jefferson cylinder cipher at the National Cryptologic MuseumWikimedia Commons
Thomas Jefferson is known for a lot of things—writing the Declaration of Independence, founding the University of Virginia, owning hundreds of slaves despite believing in the equality of men—but his place as the “Father of American Cryptography” is not one of them.
As a youth in the Virginia colony, Jefferson encrypted letters to a confidante about the woman he loved. While serving as the third president of the newly formed United States, he tried to institute an impossibly difficult cipher for communications about the Louisiana Purchase. He even designed an intricate mechanical system for coding text that was more than a century ahead of its time.
Cryptography was no parlor game for the idle classes, but a serious business for revolutionary-era statesmen who, like today’s politicians and spies, needed to conduct their business using secure messaging. Codes and ciphers involving rearranged letters, number substitutions, and other now-quaint methods were the WhatsApp, Signal, and PGP keys of the era.
Going into the Revolution, Americans were at a huge disadvantage to the European powers when it came to cryptography, many of which had been using “black chambers”—secret offices where sensitive letters were opened and deciphered by public officials—for centuries. It was not uncommon for the messages of Revolutionary leaders and, later, American diplomats in Europe, to be intercepted and read by their enemies, both at home and abroad.
As a result, early Americans “operated in multiple secret languages during the Revolution,” says Sara Georgini, the series editor of The Papers of John Adams, at the Massachusetts Historical Society. “They didn’t throw away those habits once the new nation got formed.” The Founding Fathers continued to rely on encryption throughout their careers: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, and James Madison all made ample use of codes and ciphers to keep their communiqués from falling into the wrong hands.
But no one went as deep into the encryption game as Jefferson. Born in 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia, Jefferson was learning Latin, Greek, and French by the age of 9. He went to the College of William & Mary at 16, to study physics, math, and philosophy, and by early 1764, Jefferson, then 20 years old, was writing letters in code. At first glance, a cryptic letter he sent that year to John Page, a close college classmate, is difficult to parse: It drops Latin phrases in the middle of what sound like emotional ultimatums about an upcoming contractual agreement with some man, whose name is written in Greek characters.
“My fate depends on αδνιλεβ’s present resolutions: by them I must stand or fall,” Jefferson writes. But the Greek characters are in fact an anagram for Rebecca Burwell, a 17-year-old from Yorktown he wanted to marry. Four days later, Jefferson decided that his earlier code was too obvious. “We must fall on some scheme of communicating our thoughts to each other, which shall be totally unintelligible to every one but to ourselves,” he told Page.
Although most encrypted letters were a mixture of cipher and “plaintext,” deciphering them could be a patience-straining process. It was easy to mess up during the encoding or decoding process. Letters using dictionary and book codes—where the writer provided a set of numbers that indicated the page, column, and position where the word they wanted could be found in an agreed-upon book—could become garbled by line-counting errors.
The alternative was having secrets stolen and—then as now—even leaked in an embarrassing scandal. As some of the colonists grew more radical following the Boston Massacre, a cache of private letters by Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson and his lieutenant were leaked and published in newspapers up and down the Eastern Seaboard. In the letters, Hutchinson said that colonial Americans were owed only a fraction of the rights English citizens could expect. Americans took to the streets to burn effigies of the two men.
On Christmas Day in 1773 none other than Benjamin Franklin copped to being the source of the leak, a sort of colonial Julian Assange. He lost his job as deputy Postmaster General of North America, but things accelerated quickly toward revolution and war, raising the stakes for secret communications even higher. Soon, similarly compromising documents emerged from the offices of colonial governors in New York, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina—duly stolen and leaked to newspapers.
During the Revolutionary War, American leaders had “an informal and amateur approach to espionage,” says Georgini. Some relied on dictionary codes. George Washington, a code enthusiast himself, used an invisible-ink formula devised by John Jay to communicate with the members of his spy cell, the Culper Ring, in British-controlled New York City. “If deciphered, the British could identify the senders, arrest them, and hang them,” says Alexander Rose, the author of the book Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring (now a TV series, Turn: Washington’s Spies).
Even after the war was finished, Washington remained suspicious of sending letters by mail. “By passing through the Post offices [my sentiments] should become known to all the world,” he complained in a 1788 letter to Marquis de Lafayette.
As the newly formed United States entered the world of diplomacy, invisible ink and book codes were no longer going to cut it. Forced to hold its own against sophisticated European players, American cryptography evolved in tandem with U.S. diplomacy, explains Georgini. Its foreign ministers communicated in a riot of different secret methods, and the deluge of codes and ciphers sailing across the Atlantic was a chaotic assemblage of individualized systems. The diplomatic corps in Europe generally relied on variations of the clunky, medieval-era nomenclator system, which saw statesmen lugging around long code lists, where hundreds or thousands of words and syllables—from “a” to “Amsterdam” or “Aaron Burr”—were reassigned as combinations of digits. Still, it is estimated that more than half of all U.S. foreign correspondence ended up in British hands.
Back on U.S. soil, domestic surveillance was still a major concern heading into the 19th century. “The infidelities of the post office and the circumstances of the times are against my writing fully & freely,” Jefferson concluded in 1798, when he was vice president. His concern, says James McClure, the general editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton, “was the opposition getting a hold of something he wrote: They would put it in the newspapers and use it against him.” But even writing in code was not a failsafe. Jefferson understood that the popular nomenclator system was vulnerable to security breaches; all it took was a code list falling into the enemy’s possession. So he decided to go a step further. “Jefferson got interested in encipherment systems that didn’t rely on lists,” says McClure.
Sometime in the 1790s, Jefferson designed a “wheel cipher,” which was “so far ahead of its time, and so much in the spirit of the later inventions, that it deserves to be classed with them,” writes David Kahn in his seminal cryptography book, The Codebreakers. Jefferson’s device, which included 36 turning wooden wheels with the letters of the alphabet marked on their edges, was remarkably similar to a device the U.S. Army adopted more than a century later, in 1922.
“Had the President recommended his own system to Secretary of State James Madison, he would have endowed his country with a method of secret communication that would almost certainly have withstood any cryptanalytic attack of those days,” Kahn writes. “Instead he appears to have filed and forgotten it.”
Many of the other methods that Jefferson was most enthusiastic about, such as the “perfect cypher,” designed for him by the mathematician Robert Patterson, just never caught on. As with privacy-minded people trying to get their friends to use PGP keys today, sometimes the newfangled inventions felt like too much trouble. Jefferson’s U.S. minister in Paris, Robert Livingston, simply refused to use Patterson’s complicated transposition cipher—where plaintext is reordered and transformed—while negotiating the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson developed a specialized non-list cipher to be used by Meriwether Lewis for his expedition into the Louisiana territory that hinged on the keywords “antipodes” and “artichoke.” Lewis did not appear to share the president’s enthusiasm, or was just too tired from crossing the continent on boat, foot, and horseback. He never ended up using it.
The best method of keeping encrypted messages completely secure appears to have been losing or destroying the translation key. To this day, scholars are still working to piece together decoded passages in diplomatic letters from the revolutionary generation. “There are at least three codes for which no key has been found,” says McClure.
A couple of years ago, a cryptographer at Princeton finally managed to crack Patterson’s supposedly “indecipherable” code. It turns out, an encoded block of text that Patterson sent to Jefferson in 1801 as an example of an unbreakable code was the Declaration of Independence.
Rachel B. Doyle is a journalist based in New York.
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Video Doesn’t Capture Truth
Like text and audio, it can be manipulated and interpreted for political ends.
Evan Vucci / AP
The White House has revoked the press pass of Jim Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, after a testy exchange between the reporter and President Trump at a news conference on Wednesday. Acosta posed a question about the Central American migrant caravan, challenging Trump’s framing of it as an “invasion” meant to reap political advantage. An irritated Trump tried to move on, but Acosta resisted relinquishing the floor. When a White House press aide—a young woman—attempted to retrieve the microphone from Acosta, a light skirmish ensued, and was captured on film.
The White House called Acosta’s exchange with the aide an inappropriate physical contact. In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that President Trump “believes in a free press” but will “never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman.”
The original incident has exploded into shrapnel. Trump’s disdain for the media appears to have crossed over into suppression, only a day after U.S. midterm elections produced a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives—and with it the promise of intense new scrutiny on the president. Critics have also accused the White House of deploying false information about the incident. When White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted about suspending Acosta’s press pass, she included a video of the pressroom incident as evidence that supposedly justified the censure. But observers quickly pointed out that the clip she shared didn’t appear to be the original video, but a “doctored” version, which had been sped up in order to make the contact between Acosta and the aide appear more aggressive than the original footage had done.
Journalists and Trump opponents have sprung into action, investigating the doctored video, defending Acosta and the media, or even calling for a boycott on the part of the White House press corps. Though valiant, those efforts might miss the point. The incident shows how adept and deliberate politicians have been, for decades now, at deploying words, images, and video to advance their ends—even absconding with the ideas, words, and values of their opponents in the process.
Photographs and moving images have long been thought to record the world as it actually appears, capturing a scene or an event dispassionately and without bias. Unlike painting or writing, the photograph and the cinema camera are thought to have a special relationship to actual fact: They appear able to point at reality and capture it in an evidentiary way.
That capacity has come under fire in recent years. Thanks to machine-learning techniques, it has become possible to digitally manipulate video to construct new footage that never really took place. These “deepfakes,” as they are sometimes called, pose a threat to the trustworthiness of film.
Read: The era of fake video begins
Now that the public is attuned to the risk of technological manipulation of moving images, that great bastion of documentarian truth, it has become more attuned to the erosion of that truth. Sanders’s dissemination of apparently manipulated footage of the Acosta incident raised hackles in part because of that concern. But worse, the clip appears to be the same one that was first shared by an editor at the conspiracy website Infowars, which might have been created purposely to mislead observers.
At BuzzFeed News, Charlie Warzel dug into the creation of the Infowars clip, establishing that it was made by zooming in on a GIF excerpt from the original video. GIFs can drop frames when constructed, and video-encoding methods can introduce other changes. In the end, Warzel couldn’t decide whether the video had been doctored or not. Citing experts, Motherboard concluded that the video wasn’t doctored, but that it was altered—a distinction that might confuse as much as it clarifies.
But as Franklin Foer argued in The Atlantic earlier this year, advanced techniques like deepfakes are just the latest example of a longstanding problem. Trust in filmic reality was never as sound as it seemed. “Unedited video has acquired an outsize authority in our culture,” he writes. “That’s because the public has developed a blinding, irrational cynicism toward reporting and other material that the media have handled and processed.” Lens-based media were never really as impartial as people came to believe they were, even before digital alteration, and then artificial intelligence, made it easier to manipulate their contents outright. The Acosta clip only reinforces that state of affairs.
Before alteration or doctoring, photographs and videos impose many unseen prejudices, even before computational manipulation enters the picture. Filming strips acts from their broader context. The qualities of an optical instrument and the film or sensor used to capture a scene can change the way it appears. So can the framing of a shot, the perspective from which the scene is shown, or the way audio is captured for it. No computers are even required.
For example, the CSPAN footage of the Acosta incident is shot from two cameras, one behind Acosta and framed on President Trump, and the other from the side, showing a wider shot of Acosta in the front row, addressing the president. The latter shot is the one from which the interaction between Acosta and the aide can be seen. But because the two are close to one another at some distance, the image flattens the viewer’s perspective, making it difficult to tell how their arms and bodies are interacting as they grapple for the microphone.
When the aide finally lays her hand on the mic, her reach looks bold, although not combative, and Acosta attempts to defuse the situation: “Pardon me, Ma’am, I’m—” he attempts. Then the aide, having been gently reproached, physically crumbles before Acosta. She crouches to the floor between him and the president. She was probably trying to clear a line of sight between the two, but from side of the room, she appears meek or servile, subordinating herself to Acosta. In that moment, the wide camera shows the two men in profile but the aide facing the camera in the foreground. Viewed from the angle of a news camera in a slightly different position, she becomes the subject of the shot, and it becomes difficult not to empathize with her accidental embarrassment, now captured and broadcast globally.
A still from the press conference as seen from a CBS News camera. (CBS47 KSEE / CBS News)
Lens-based media are media of perspective. Whether or not the pretzeling of arms was “doctored” by Infowars, and whether or not it was knowingly disseminated in its manipulated fashion by Sanders, the video itself never captured “truth” anyway; it recorded a sequence of events in space at a moment in time, offering them as raw material for interpretive effort.
Interpretation is at the heart of this conflict. Before the dispute over the mic began, Acosta had been challenging Trump on his characterization of the migrant caravan as an “invasion” of immigrants. “Why did you characterize it as such?” Acosta asked. “Because I consider it an invasion,” Trump responded. “You and I have a difference of opinion.”
Trump knows that the visual and verbal rhetoric of an “invasion” has political utility. Invaders come to steal and ransack. Images of the caravan—also captures of “real reality” by the lens—can easily be selected to represent different views on the caravan, from a hulking mass of anonymous people, extending to the horizon, to the fragile desperation of an individual family. Acosta accused Trump of an interpretive act that can’t be defended. “They’re hundreds and hundreds of miles away,” he charged. “That’s not an invasion.”
But for Trump and his supporters, the idea of an “invasion” need not entail the literal seizure and occupation of a sovereign nation. Invasion also has a metaphorical connotation. All those immigrants, fleeing from worse fates to confront still bad ones, can be characterized as a threat to American sanctity even from far away. Yes, that threat is partly a racist one—the brown-skinned Hondurans sending affronts to a dying dream of a white America that never was. But that fact doesn’t reduce the effectiveness of calling it an invasion. And in the process of defending the idea, Trump managed to get Acosta to repeat the term several times, reinforcing its attachment to the caravan.
Read: The man who broke politics
The GOP’s mastery of language for politics began in the 1990s, when the political strategist Frank Luntz started conducting polling and research for conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich. Luntz was instrumental in Gingrich’s steamrolling of Congress, having helped author the Contract for America’s aggressive Newtspeak, which used previously off-the-table terms like sick, corrupt, and traitor to describe Democrats.
Luntz soon became the craftsman of specialized language for the GOP. For example, he urged his clients to use the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming,” and “death tax” instead of “estate tax” on behalf of the Republicans. Their purpose was to change the emotional content of issues. Global warming sounds threatening, but climate change? Some change can be good, after all. An estate tax sounds like it’s for the wealthy (which it is), but a death tax sounds like it penalizes everyone. Luntz’s terms remain powerful and effective even today—climate scientists now embrace the toothless term climate change even as it undercuts the threat of global warming.
You can see this same kind of thing in today’s political discourse. Take “fake news.” It takes a real threat that existed thanks to the internet—websites and Facebook accounts posing as news outlets in order to spread propaganda—and recasts it upon actual, non-fake news organizations whom the president or the administration doesn’t like. Trump parried Acosta’s invocation of the “invasion” with a “fake news” accusation during the press conference. But the press just leaned into it. Defending Acosta against Sanders, CNN vice president Matt Dornic called the supposedly doctored video of the incident “actual fake news.” His attempt to undermine the White House by calling them out for hypocrisy only reinforced the term’s connection to CNN. The statement played right into Trump’s hands.
CNN accused the White House of having done so “in retaliation for his challenging questions at today’s press conference.” It’s clear that Trump does want Acosta, CNN, and the press in general out of his business. That desire, and this act in service of it, is chilling. But focusing on those matters alone ignores another victory for Republican rhetoric: the White House’s clever, if ignoble, contortion of a #MeToo-style intervention as justification for revoking Acosta’s press access.
Acosta fell into the trap when he tried to defend himself against Sanders: “This is a lie,” he posted on Twitter, in response to the claim that he had “placed his hands on a woman” during the encounter. Acosta can’t really deny that he came into physical contact with the White House press aide. He could observe that the contact was initiated by her, not him, to put an end to his questioning. But that’s a losing move too: It casts a woman in a powerless position as an instigator of aggression, when she was simply trying to do her job. He could invoke his own right to offer an interpretation of the incident, but as a white man in his own position of authority— the chief White House correspondent for CNN—doing so also risks unseemliness. Acosta has no good options.
The same is true for his profession by extension. To journalists, Acosta’s attempt to keep hold of the microphone looks like good reporting—an attempt to press a man in power for satisfactory answers to reasonable questions. That’s what NBC News White House correspondent Jim Alexander seems to have celebrated when, after receiving the mic after Acosta, he defended the latter as a “diligent reporter who busts his butt like the rest of us.” But the same scrappiness that reporters celebrate as a virtue of their profession, and their civic duty, can seem like aggression and disrespect to some of the very citizens that reporters hope to serve.
Read: A cultural history of mansplaining
That discord is made worse by the fact that the badgersome, persistent male interlocutor has become a figure of general cultural disdain—the guy who won’t let anyone get a word in edgewise, bumping and scrabbling to keep the floor. From that perspective, calling Acosta “rude,” as Trump did, not only squares with some people’s understanding of rudeness but also conforms to one of the left’s common positions on informal male aggression—men who talk over women or won’t cede the floor to them, men who take up more physical space than they deserve, men who think they always know the answers, men who use their more-imposing bodies in physical space to gain advantage, and so on.
These habits apply much more to President Trump than they do to Jim Acosta, both in this circumstance and in general. For those who want to exert strength to achieve a goal, hypocrisy just isn’t a concern. The White House managed to catch the left, and the media, in a trap they themselves had help set.
All of these examples show that unraveling the truth of the Acosta encounter isn’t so simple as determining if the video Sanders posted was doctored. Even the idea of “doctoring” the video is subject to interpretive slippage. And the irony of the doctoring controversy is that the White House might not even have needed a more aggressive-looking version of the encounter between Acosta and the aide to ground the position it eventually took in order to revoke his White House access for supposedly inappropriate behavior toward a woman.
That’s not necessarily because the Trump White House really believes in preserving the sanctity of respecting women—on that front Trump’s position of disrespect has been eminently clear. Rather, it’s because the idea of such disrespect, particularly as it has been focused and amplified by #MeToo, makes it easy to weaponize when the opportunity arises, as it did here.
This article is part of “The Speech Wars,” a project supported by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the Fetzer Institute.
Ian Bogost is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His latest book is Play Anything.
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Why the IUD Can’t Beat Its Bad Reputation
By Melissa Dahl
Bad reputations are hard to come back from, and that’s true whether you’re talking about a kid in high school battling an unfair rap, a celebrity with an image crisis — or a teensy, T-shaped birth control device called the IUD. It’s something worth considering today, as the Supreme Court ruled in the Hobby Lobby case that companies can’t be required to provide contraception coverage if it doesn’t jive with their religious beliefs. The decision won’t affect the most common birth control methods, like condoms or the pill, USA Today reports, but it will affect what the Guttmacher Institute calls the most effective birth control method available: the IUD.
But even women — and their doctors — who aren’t religious may still be wary about the device. It’s much less popular than the pill, condoms, and even sterilization, according to Guttmacher estimates, and that’s likely at least in part because the IUD is facing a double whammy here in terms of a bad rap. In the 1970s, an early version of the device was recalled after reports of nasty infections, and even some cases of infertility. It also comes down to disagreement over what the IUD actually does; as today’s Supreme Court ruling over religious beliefs and contraceptives demonstrates, science and religion don’t always agree over what counts as “conception,” as The Atlantic’s Olga Khazan wrote in March.
That’s a lot of negativity for a little device to overcome. Here, some psychological findings that help explain why the IUD can be a hard-sell:
We remember negative information more clearly. Our brains may have evolved to cling to the bad, scary stuff in life more tightly than the good. For example, research shown that the psychological hangover you get from one bad day can last well into the following day; the same isn’t true for a good day. And, as Florida State University psychologist Roy F. Baumeister (and others) argues in a 2005 paper, the same is true for sexual experiences — research has shown that the psychic pain of one bad romp can last for years, but no matter how great any single sexual experience is, it won’t have the same lingering effect as the deleterious one. Applying this logic to the IUD, it seems the threat of risk is something our minds take more seriously than its potential reward.
Inaccurate information may be stickier than accuracy. Rejecting inaccurate information requires more cognitive effort than just accepting the truthiness at face value, a recent paper in Psychological Science in the Public Interest argues. In the context of the IUD, what these researchers are essentially arguing is this: If all you’ve heard about the device is that it’s dangerous, even immoral — who has the time or energy it would take to change your mind? We’ve got stuff to do.
Attempts to correct misinformation often backfire. In that same paper, the authors write that research has consistently found that retractions rarely, if ever, work. Even when people understand and can later recall the corrected information, it’s unlikely to change their beliefs. It’s not fun to be wrong, about a medical device or otherwise, and an attempt to rectify false information can make people dig even more deeply into their inaccurate beliefs, they argue.
One factor that might help the IUD catch a break? It could be as simple as time. Recent research is showing that younger American women, who of course weren’t alive during the 1970s, are increasingly using the device. Plus, the IUD has long been among the most expensive birth control options, but the Affordable Care Act offers full coverage for birth control, including the IUD; as the Daily Intelligencer post notes, this is likely to hold true despite the Supreme Court ruling today. Hang on, little IUD. Your day may be coming yet.
lawsuits 5 mins ago
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For Ethiopia's Abiy, big reforms carry big risks
Wednesday June 13 2018
Ethiopian Prime Minister Dr Abiy Ahmed. Analysts say even though he has been cast as a reformer, they warn that his pursuit of change may not prove smooth sailing. AFP PHOTO | SUMY SADRUNI
It remains unclear how deep Abiy's support runs within the ruling EPRDF for carrying out a flurry of reforms to reshape the nation.
Abiy's plans for the economy may run into resistance, as ERPDF elites are believed to be entrenched in the state-run industries at the heart of the country's economy.
Even though he has been cast as a reformer, few expected him to move so fast.
Ethiopia's new prime minister Abiy Ahmed has announced a flurry of reforms to reshape the nation but implementing them will be harder, analysts say.
Last week alone, Abiy shook up the security services, ended a nationwide state of emergency and announced plans to liberalise the economy and resolve a two-decade-old conflict with Eritrea.
Yet those moves represent dramatic shifts in the power balance within Africa's second-most populous country.
It remains unclear how deep Abiy's support runs within the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) for carrying them out.
And if the reforms are bungled, he risks inflaming relations between the country's many ethnic groups.
"There is political expectation on the part of the public for very quick change," said Awol Allo, an Ethiopian commentator who teaches law in Britain.
Ethiopia to reduce stake in major firms
Ethiopian military chief replaced
Ethiopia pulls out of disputed border region
"My worry is that he's moving too fast in a country without the institutional safeguards to implement these policies."
Observers say that the EPRDF, in unchecked control of Ethiopia since 1991, was forced to shift course by anti-government protests, led by the country's two largest ethnicities, that started in late 2015 and left hundreds dead.
The unrest prompted a 10-month state of emergency, declared in October 2016.
The upheaval was seen as one reason behind the February resignation of Abiy's predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, and the immediate imposition of a second emergency declaration that parliament repealed last week.
Elevated by the ruling party to the prime minister's office in April, Abiy is the first leader from the largest ethnicity, the Oromo.
1991 redux
Abiy last week reversed decades of policy, announcing key state-run industries — among them Ethiopian Airlines and Ethio Telecom, the country's only internet and telephone provider — would be opened up to foreign and private investors.
In a still more surprising move, Abiy declared Ethiopia would respect a 2002 United Nations commission ruling that demarcated the country's border with Eritrea, setting the stage to end years of hostility between the two countries.
The prime minister then removed Ethiopia's intelligence and military chiefs along with the national security advisor, the latest in a host of older government officials Abiy has shown the door to since taking over.
"These people have been in the system for far too long and are by and large blamed by the public for the problems," Awol said.
Longtime independent Ethiopia researcher Rene Lefort compared Abiy's reforms to 1991, when the EPRDF, then a rebel army, stormed the capital Addis Ababa and removed the Derg military junta from power.
"I expected some changes, but only step-by-step. But so fast, and so deep, that's astonishing," he said.
The powers that be
Yet analysts warn Abiy's pursuit of change may not prove smooth sailing.
A former province, Eritrea's 1993 vote to leave Ethiopia has always been controversial, particularly among Ethiopia's so-called "centrists" who believe in a strong, centralised state.
"Centrist" ideology is especially popular among the country's second-largest ethnicity, the Amhara.
They, along with the Oromos, spearheaded recent anti-government protests and have been seen as generally supportive of Abiy and his reform campaign.
Eritrea has not responded publicly to Ethiopia's overture and Abiy's government has not announced a pullout from the disputed border regions.
But giving up land to Eritrea could alienate those who see the territory as belonging to Ethiopia.
This week, a protest against Abiy's announcement was held by residents of territory inhabited by the Tigrayan ethnic group that Ethiopia would cede under the border ruling.
"The key thing to watch out for is Abiy's ability to rise over the inevitable disappointment or sense of betrayal, to put it strongest, over the Eritrea decision," said Christopher Clapham of Britain's University of Cambridge.
Abiy's plans for the economy may run into resistance, as EPRDF elites are believed to be entrenched in the state-run industries at the heart of the country's economy.
"How will the cake be redistributed among these different elites through this liberalisation?" Lefort asked. "Which kind of liberalisation, and for the advantage of whom, remains an open question."
The secretive EPRDF will hold a key meeting in August, and Lefort said Abiy needs to secure strong support from party kingmakers to make good on his proposals.
Though relations within the ruling party can at times be rancorous, Awol believes Abiy enjoys support both within the EPRDF and on the Ethiopian streets — at least for now.
"The risks are increasingly declining," Awol said. "He's consolidating himself, with the support of the people."
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Week in geek
Why Peter Jackson must step in to direct The Hobbit
With Guillermo del Toro's decision to pull out as director of The Hobbit, a part of Peter Jackson must be happy he might end up directing instead – and we should be, too
Ben Child
@BenChildGeek
Thu 3 Jun 2010 08.46 EDT First published on Thu 3 Jun 2010 08.46 EDT
Out with the new, in with the old ... Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson. Photograph: Reuters/Getty
When Peter Jackson announced two years ago that he was handing Guillermo del Toro the reins to The Hobbit, there were more than a few raised eyebrows. Sure, Del Toro had the vision, skill and understanding of fantasy to adapt JRR Tolkien's earlier book in a manner that would allow it to sit comfortably with the three Lord of the Rings films while maintaining its own distinct character. But why was Jackson himself not directing? They say never go back, but The Lord of the Rings trilogy was Jackson's making as a major commercial director. How could he resist returning to Middle Earth?
It turned out that he couldn't. Initially positioned as an executive producer, Jackson soon moved on to working with Del Toro on the screenplay, along with his regular collaborators, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh. Later, Jackson said he had offered his services as second unit director; with Del Toro planning two films, the argument went, he would need all the help he could get.
Given that Del Toro announced earlier this week he was leaving The Hobbit, you may wonder where I am going with all this. Have no fear: I am not doubting the Mexican film-maker's given reasons, nor am I suggesting a conspiracy. Del Toro says he signed up for three years, but is unwilling to commit to six, and we must believe him. Yet it would be pretty naive to suggest there is no part of Peter Jackson pleased to find he might still get to direct The Hobbit.
Will he take on the project? Jackson himself said earlier this week that he might, should it be the only way of safeguarding Warner Bros' investment. His manager seems to think it's pretty unlikely, however. Jackson has commitments to several other movies, and would need to be released from those first.
The vagaries of inter-studio bartering are of little interest to filmgoers. All we want to know is who is the best person for the job, and Jackson is clearly the fellow. This is the director who transformed The Lord of the Rings from an unfilmable white elephant of English literature into a blockbuster trilogy. Jackson suggested three years ago that he did not want to compete with his own previous films, but that seems like strange and shallow reasoning: given all the work he and his team have done to prepare the screenplay, he is the ideal man to plunge straight in and make the film happen. Any other option risks further delays.
If he does not direct, he must decide whether to plump for an established film-maker who has the back catalogue and standing to offer their own take on the story, or bring in a less experienced director to do the donkeywork while Jackson pulls the strings as a creative producer. Go for the former and further delays are risked, as whoever comes in might want to change aspects of the screenplay or art direction. Take the latter option and he might as well just direct the thing himself.
Here's another reason Jackson might want to take the controls: The Hobbit mess is largely of his own making. While much of the delay in shooting has been due to the financial crisis at MGM, the project has also changed shape dramatically during the screenwriting process. At first, it was supposed to be two films: one based on Tolkien's Hobbit, and another acting as a bridge leading up to the events of The Lord of the Rings. Then, last year, it was announced that both films would be based on The Hobbit alone. This was an eminently sensible decision, since there is little in Tolkien's writings to draw on for a bridge film, yet it ignores an essential problem: only one film is needed.
Jackson ought to have stood up to the studios in the first place and insisted that there was no need for the narrative to be split in two. Warner and MGM have in mind the huge success of the Lord of the Rings films, and are no doubt imagining back-to-back Christmas releases. But The Hobbit is a far shorter, simpler tale, and should be shot as a single movie.
Any director who arrives this late in the day is going to have to accept all of their predecessor's decisions, and that is a big ask. Alfonso Cuarón or Sam Raimi would make fine choices if Jackson wants film-makers with experience and vision. Both love the fantasy genre, as viewers of the excellent third Harry Potter film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, or the third Evil Dead movie will be well aware (let us not mention Xena: Warrior Princess). District 9's Neill Blomkamp would work well with Jackson acting as a mentor, as he did on last year's Oscar-nominated sci-fi movie.
But in the end, there is only one person for the job. When it comes to Middle Earth, Jackson took us there, and he should take us back again.
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Phase II and Friends plays Remembrance Day special in Summerside
Published: Nov 04, 2018 at 7:01 p.m.
Updated: Nov 04, 2018 at 7:05 p.m.
Phase II and Friends will honour those who served and those who continue to serve with Remembrance Day Special on Thursday, Nov. 8, at Trinity United Church in Summerrside beginning at 7 p.m. Performers include, from left, Pat King, Gerry Hickey, Keila Glydon, John McGarry, Jeanie Campbell, Ed Young and Blaine Murphy - Contributed
Trinity United concert series in Summerside offers Remembrance Day Special on Thursdayov. 8
SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. - Phase II and Friends will take to the stage at Trinity United Church on Thursday, Nov. 8, at 7 p.m., for another show in the Fall and Winter Concert Series.
The Remembrance Day Special is a two-part show which features a script about the tragedy of war as well as honouring the many men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice. The music is varied and includes songs by John McDermott and Gordon Lightfoot, along with traditional songs like “Waltzing Matilda” and “One Tin Soldier”, the theme of the movie, “Billy Jack”.
There will also be a few protest tunes, and a couple of poems.
The second part of the show will feature a singalong featuring some of the old, familiar tunes from the war years.
The Phase II team has worked very hard on this show to entertain, educate and inform audience members. They believe they owe much to those who fought in the wars.
Keila Glydon and Jeanie Campbell are a welcome addition to the formerly all-male dance band. Other band members include Ed Young, drummer, Pat King, keyboards and saxophone, John McGarry, bass, and original founders Blaine Murphy, lead guitar, and Gerry Hickey, vocals.
Trinity United Church is located at 90 Spring Street in Summerside and is fully wheelchair accessible. Advance tickets are available from the church office at 902-436-3155 or by calling Wendell at 902-436-8600. Advance tickets are $10.
Admission at the door is $12.
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Brokerage settles discrimination lawsuit for $160M
By MICHAEL TARM Associated Press
CHICAGO - Lawyers for hundreds of black financial advisers have reached a $160 million settlement in a lawsuit accusing Wall Street brokerage giant Merrill Lynch of racial discrimination, a plaintiffs' attorney said Wednesday.
If approved by a federal judge in Chicago as expected, the payout by Merrill Lynch to around 1,200 plaintiffs would be one of the largest ever in a racial discrimination case, Chicago-based attorney Suzanne E. Bish said.
Bank of America-owned Merrill Lynch - one of the world's largest brokerages with more than 15,000 financial advisers - issued a statement Wednesday saying only, "We're not at this point commenting on the existence of the settlement nor the status of a settlement."
The primary plaintiff, George McReynolds, alleged a pattern of discrimination resulting in blacks having lower production and making less money than white men at the company. McReynolds, of Nashville, Tenn., is still employed at Merrill Lynch, Bish said.
"I'm getting goose bumps thinking about it," she said about the coincidence the settlement came around the anniversary. "What (the plaintiffs) wanted to achieve was the same opportunities for the next generation - for their children."
Bish said the settlement should force changes beyond the company singled out as the defendant in the eight-year-old lawsuit.
"They are leaders on Wall Street," she said. "And increasing opportunities for African-Americans at Merrill Lynch should spill over to the rest of Wall Street."
Plaintiffs claimed discrimination pervaded Merrill Lynch, at least partly because the company employed relatively few African-Americans overall. In a 2009 plaintiffs' filing, they contended fewer than 2 percent of the brokers at Merrill Lynch were black.
"Far from being a colorblind meritocracy, race permeates policy and practice in a way that creates substantial obstacles to equal employment opportunity for Merrill Lynch's African-American employees," William T. Bielby, a professor of sociology, said in the filing.
Merrill Lynch sometimes relied on stereotypes, the filing also asserted, once allegedly suggesting managers encourage black brokers to "learn to play golf or other activities designed to learn how business gets done in manners (they) might not be familiar with."
The black brokers at Merrill Lynch claimed they were systematically steered away from the most lucrative assignments; consequently, under a compensation system emphasizing production, they couldn't earn what white counterparts made, plaintiffs alleged.
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Patrick Whittle (AP)
Uncertain future for ‘super’ seaweed after court ruling
In this Nov. 4, 2015, file photo, kelp grows on spools of twine in an aquarium at a lab at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. The lab provides baby seaweed to populate a growing number of commercial farms. Members of Maine’s seaweed industry say a court ruling could dramatically change the nature of the business in the state, which has seen the harvest of the gooey stuff grow by leaps and bounds this decade. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)
PORTLAND — Maine’s seaweed business has grown like a weed in recent years, with proponents touting it as both a “superfood” and an economic generator for the rural state — but the industry is now facing sticky new restrictions.
Maine has a long tradition of seaweed harvesting, in which the algae is gathered for a wide variety of commercial uses, including some popular food products. Now, a recent court ruling could dramatically change the nature of the business in Maine, which has seen the harvest of the gooey stuff grow by leaps and bounds in the last decade, industry members said.
The state’s highest court ruled last month that permission from coastal landowners is needed for harvesting rockweed, a type of seaweed that’s critical to the industry. The Maine Seaweed Council, an industry advocacy group, has called the ruling “a disappointing setback” that will force harvesters to adjust.
The court’s decision could mandate the implementation of rules that are difficult to enforce, said George Seaver, a vice president of Waldoboro firm Ocean Organics who has been involved in processing rockweed for 40 years. Rockweed is harvested from tidal mudflats where property boundaries can be ill-defined, he said.
“You can’t put a pin in the mud, and you certainly can’t put a pin in the water,” Seaver said. “One of the fundamental things about the court case is who owns the intertidal zone.”
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling was an outgrowth of a lawsuit involving Acadian Seaplants, a Canadian company that has harvesting operations in rural Maine. The court ruled that rockweed grown in the intertidal zone is the private property of upland land owners. That means it “cannot be harvested by members of the public as a matter of right,” the justices ruled.
Gordon Smith, a Portland attorney representing the group of landowners, said one of their motivators was conservation. Rockweed has been harvested at an accelerated rate in recent years, causing some in coastal Maine to question its sustainability.
The harvest of seaweed in Maine reached its highest point in recent recorded history in 2018, at more than 22 million pounds (10 million kilograms), according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The harvest in the 2000s was frequently less than 10 million pounds (4.5 million kilograms), before interest began to shoot up in the early part of this decade.
Rockweed typically makes up most of the state’s seaweed harvest, which was valued at a little less than $1 million at the docks last year. But the total economic impact seaweed has on the state is around $20 million per year, said Trey Angera, a member of the Maine Seaweed Council.
And these days, edible seaweeds — which also include dulse, sugar kelp, Irish moss and others — have cachet in Maine and beyond. Saturday was the final day of Maine’s first “Seaweed Week,” which put a focus on restaurants that use the product. Part of the driving force behind the seaweed industry’s boom is the accompanying wave of interest in health foods, “neutraceuticals” and nutritional supplements. It’s also become more popular to feed to cows because of possible environmental benefits.
But the property owners have their own environmental concerns, arguing in the lawsuit they “think that rockweed is a vital cornerstone of the Gulf of Maine food web, and other species depend on it,” Smith said. “The concern had to do with the extraction of a resource that all these fisheries depend on.”
Seaver, Angera and others in the business said it’s unclear how the ruling will shape the seaweed harvest in years to come, other than that harvesters will now need to ask permission from landowners. That differs from the harvest of tidal resources such as clams, which are considered a public resource under the law. Rockweed is also just one of several kinds of seaweed harvested in Maine.
Jean-Paul Deveau, president of Acadian Seaplants, said in a statement last month the ruling is “extremely unfortunate” for an industry he believes is at the forefront of “creating sustainable and environmentally friendly products.” Seaver said he thinks the ruling creates “impossible problems” for harvesters and landowners.
“I have a feeling someone’s just going to say, ‘We have to go to court to figure this out,’” he said.
Published in Biz
More in this category: « UMS: Over 4,000 Maine residents receive free tuition, fees Are retail jobs in a funk? It’s complicated »
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Barry Levinson Net Worth
Richest Directors
Net Worth: $150 Million
acting, directing and producing films
actor, screenwriter, director and producer
About Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson is an American screenwriter, director, actor and producer who has an estimated net worth of $150 million.
Levinson started his career as a writer. He wrote for several variety shows, including The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, The Lohman and Barkley Show, The Tim Conway Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.
Then, he shifted his career to working as a film director. His directorial debut, Diner, was released in 1982, and led to his Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.
His notable work as a filmmaker came when he did the film Rain Man in 1998. The film won four Academy Awards, the Golden Bear during the 39th Berlin International Film Festival.
Other critically-acclaimed films that Levinson directed inclute The Natural, Good Morning, Vietnam, Toys, and Bugsy.
In the 1997 film, Wag the Dog, which starred Robert De Niro, which won the Silver Bear – Special Jury Prize at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival.
He collaborated with Tom Fontana, formed a production company, The Levinson/Fontana Company. They served as executive producers for several TV series, such as Homicide: Life on the Street, and Oz.
In 2003, Levinson published his first novel, Sixty-Six. In 2004, he received the Distinguished Screenwriter Award from Austin Film Festival.
Barry Levinson was born on April 6, 1942 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He is married to Diana Rhodes and has two children.
Every Cast Member Of Sons Of Anarchy’s Net Worth
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MLS announces 2016 Generation adidas class
January 7, 201612:28PM PST
MLSsoccer.com StaffMLSsoccer.com
Follow@ MLS
Major League Soccer announced the 2016 Generation adidas class on Wednesday, confirming the signing of five talented NCAA underclassmen who will enter the professional ranks through the 2016 MLS SuperDraft, presented by adidas, on Jan. 14 in Baltimore, Maryland. The league also announced that it has signed Stanford defender and 2015 NCAA Men’s College Cup winner Brandon Vincent ahead of the SuperDraft.
Update: North Carolina midfielder Omar Holness was subsequently added to the 2016 crop and has joined his colleagues at the adidas MLS Player Combine in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Leading the 2016 crop is Georgetown defender Josh Yaro, the Big East's 2015 Defensive Player of the Year. He's joined by Clemson goalkeeper Andrew Tarbell, who led the Tigers to the NCAA Men’s College Cup final and led the ACC with 84 saves.
Syracuse midfielder Julian Buescher, an import from Germany, notched eight goals and 11 assists and was named to the College Cup all-tournament team. The only freshman to be named an NSCAA first team All-American, English midfielder Jack Harrison was vital for Wake Forest in 2015, while Toronto native Richie Laryea led College Cup semifinalists Akron in scoring with 11 goals on the season.
Find full MLS SuperDraft coverage here
Players who join MLS as part of the Generation adidas program receive the opportunity to develop their game and hone their skills at the professional level by training and playing with one of Major League Soccer’s 20 professional clubs. Generation adidas players do not count against an MLS team’s salary budget.
Vincent, a senior left back, will also be available for draft selection. The 2015 MAC Hermann Trophy semifinalist and 2015 first team All-American co-captained the Cardinal to the 2015 NCAA Men’s College Cup final, where they defeated Clemson 4-0.
2016 Generation adidas Players
Julian Buescher | MF | Duelmen, Germany | Syracuse University
The sophomore midfielder put in a memorable season for the Orange, ending the 2015 season with eight goals and 11 assists on the way to being voted second team NSCAA All-America and selected to the 2015 College Cup all-tournament team. The native of Duelmen, Germany was also voted first team all-ACC and to the ACC all-tournament team.
Jack Harrison | MF | Bolton, England | Wake Forest University
Harrison was the only freshman in the nation to be named an NSCAA First Team All-American and ended the 2015 season with eight goals and 11 assists. The England native, who attended boarding school in Massachusetts, was also named the ACC Offensive Player, Freshman of the Year and to the all-ACC first team.
Omar Holness | MF | Kingston, Jamaica | University of North Carolina
Made a total of 17 appearances for North Carolina in his sophomore year, recording one goal and one assist. The young midfielder was named to the 2015 All-ACC Second Team and has made one appearance for the Jamaican national team. In 2014, Holness played for the Timbers U-23s PDL side.
Richie Laryea | MF | Toronto, ON, Canada | University of Akron
The sophomore had a standout season for the Zips, earning an NSCAA third team All-America nod, while also claiming first team All-Mid-American Conference honors. Laryea had a team-best 11 goals on the season and ranked second on the team with seven assists.
Andrew Tarbell | GK | Mandeville, LA | Clemson University
The redshirt junior put in an impressive season for Clemson, earning an NSCAA All-America second team nod and being named to the College Cup all-tournament team. The Louisiana native posted a .792 save percentage and nine shutouts, while his 84 saves led the ACC on the way to being named first team all-ACC.
Josh Yaro | DF | Santa Barbara, CA | Georgetown University
The junior defender had another standout season for the Hoyas, being named to the 2015 NSCAA All-America second team. Yaro recorded one assist on the season and was selected as the Big East Defensive Player of the Year and earned a first team All-Big East nod. The native of Kumasi, Ghana, was also honored for his academic achievements after being named a Division I first team NSCAA Scholar All-American.
SuperDraft
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Doctor Who, the BBC science fiction serial, first appeared on UK screens in 1963, and has now been part of British popular culture for over 50 years. The programme still has a primetime slot on BBC television.
Tom played the Doctor from 1974 to 1981 and, decades later, is still warmly remembered for that role. He made an appearance as The Curator at the end of The Day of the Doctor, the 50th anniversary feature length movie transmitted simultaneously in 94 countries on 23rd November 2013.
Who is the Doctor?
An overview by Nicholas Pegg
When Tom Baker stepped aboard the TARDIS in 1974, Doctor Who was approaching its eleventh anniversary and was already an established fixture in BBC1’s Saturday evening schedule.
Originally conceived in 1963 as an educational family adventure series to bridge the viewing gap between Grandstand and Juke Box Jury, the show was the brainchild of the BBC’s then Head of Drama, Sydney Newman. He entrusted the first series of Doctor Who to an unknown young producer called Verity Lambert, who would go on to become one of the most prominent and influential figures in British television.
At a time when science fiction drama was generally the preserve of square-jawed young heroes equipped with ray guns and rocket ships, Newman and Lambert instead offered viewers a cantankerous old man who travelled through time and space in a battered metropolitan police box. And if the original Doctor was something of an anti-hero, in many ways Doctor Who itself was a kind of anti-science-fiction. During the 1960s the programme listings in the Radio Times subtitled each episode of Doctor Who “an adventure in space and time”, and sure enough both time and space were of equal importance: in its early days the series dipped into the past just as often as the future, seeking to educate its young audience not only about science and space, but also about the Crusades, the travels of Marco Polo, the Battle of Hastings, or even the complex political and religious intrigues leading up to the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
The first Doctor, played by William Hartnell, was a wily and unpredictable figure whose curmudgeonly exterior disguised a heart of gold. Hartnell was succeeded in 1966 by Patrick Troughton, who played the Doctor as a mysterious Pied Piper-like character whose clownish behaviour masked a sharp intelligence and a ruthless edge. In 1970 Jon Pertwee brought style and flair to the third Doctor, reinventing the character as a flamboyant man of action with a natural authority and a strong moral code.
Enter the fourth Doctor
During his seven years in the role, Tom Baker combined all of these elements and added some fresh ingredients of his own, which were seized with enthusiasm by the many scriptwriters whose work helped to fashion the character. The fourth Doctor is driven by a freewheeling bohemian spirit and a wide-eyed, childlike sense of wonder at the ways of the universe. As befits a product of the age of Watergate and Vietnam, there’s also something of the student radical about him: he has a healthy disregard for authority and a hatred of tyranny in all its forms, and he is an adept rabble-rouser, often stirring the downtrodden proletariat of oppressed planets into action against their despotic rulers. He’s a well-read Doctor, always prepared with an apt quotation by anyone from Anton Chekhov to Alexander Pope, from Karl Marx to Thomas Huxley, and above all from the immortal William Shakespeare: in The Armageddon Factor he pokes fun at the warlike Marshal of Atrios by boosting his rhetoric with interjections from Richard II, while in State of Decay he rallies the revolting peasants with an impromptu adaptation of the St Crispian’s Day speech from Henry V. In Planet of Evil he lets slip that he once met Shakespeare (“Charming fellow – dreadful actor”), and in City of Death we learn that he even lent a hand with the transcribing of Hamlet after the Bard had sprained his wrist writing sonnets.
Alongside intelligence and individuality, the fourth Doctor champions imagination, spontaneity and freedom of thought: on one occasion, when charged to explain how he’s able to disprove the theories of another scientist, the Doctor replies, “To be fair, I did have a couple of gadgets which he probably didn’t, like a teaspoon and an open mind.” Such good-natured flippancy underscores a deeply felt philosophy; and, in exactly the same way, his celebrated bag of jelly babies is more than just a comic prop. Time and again the unexpected proffering of a jelly baby is the fourth Doctor’s chosen method of distracting his enemies or rewarding his friends, until the jelly babies themselves seem to become a metaphor for the spirit of spontaneous inventiveness and universal benevolence by which he chooses to live his life.
After the patrician rectitude and moral certainty of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, Tom’s interpretation introduces a new element of alien unpredictability, manifested in unexpected reactions and startling swings of mood. The toothy grin and the flashes of warm-hearted wit are never far from the surface, but there are times when he retreats unexpectedly into a distant broodiness. Nowhere is this clearer than in the 1975 story Pyramids of Mars when, in one of the best-remembered scenes of Tom’s period, the Doctor shocks his companion Sarah Jane when he seems coldly unaffected by the cruel death of a comrade, his mind already focused on the bigger picture and the millions of deaths yet to be prevented. Alongside this alien streak comes an occasionally shocking tendency toward manic recklessness: in his early adventures he resorts to such lethal contingencies as poison gas, Molotov cocktails and makeshift mattress bombs, and he isn’t above getting involved in brutal stand-up fights with his opponents.
The moral maze
Such developments didn’t go unnoticed by the viewing public: while Doctor Who’s ratings began to top 13 million, and many viewers enjoyed the show’s increasingly dramatic content, there were some who strongly disapproved. In 1975 and 1976, Mary Whitehouse of the self-appointed National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association made several complaints about the series, culminating in a furious letter to the BBC in response to the third episode of The Deadly Assassin, which ended with a freeze-frame of the Doctor’s head being held underwater. Mrs Whitehouse was accustomed to having her complaints ignored, but on this occasion she got results: from the next story onward, Doctor Who was rescheduled in a later transmission slot, and in subsequent years any suggestion of graphic violence was carefully monitored by the production office and the BBC drama department. Tom himself was none too keen on the portrayal of violence for its own sake: on one memorable occasion while shooting The Face of Evil, he put his foot down regarding a piece of scripted business which involved the Doctor threatening another character with a knife: instead, reasoning that the alien tribesman in question had never seen a jelly baby before, Tom produced one from his pocket and declared to the assembled company, “Now drop your weapons, or I’ll kill him with this deadly jelly baby.” The threat of violence was removed and an extra dimension was added to the scene, which is now remembered as one of the defining moments in Tom’s portrayal of the Doctor.
Even when thrown into the direst peril, Tom’s Doctor often veils the gravity of the situation beneath layers of frivolity: his approach seems to be guided by the notion that although there’s nothing in the universe more frightening than someone with no sense of humour, there’s also nothing a bully hates more than being laughed at. While earlier Doctors had tended to confront their enemies on a straight-faced moral high ground, Tom’s Doctor is just as likely to poke fun at them. In The Robots of Death he informs a hostile interrogator that he is “a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain”, and in Horror of Fang Rock he responds to an alien monster’s threats of universal domination with the withering put-down: “That’s the empty rhetoric of a defeated dictator, and I don’t like your face either.” Such quotations speak volumes about the difference between Doctor Who and the usual kind of science fiction: you’re unlikely to catch Captain Kirk coming out with a line like that.
Clothes make the man
The fourth Doctor’s rebellious, counter-cultural outlook is reflected just as clearly in his celebrated wardrobe, a ramshackle ensemble of rumpled trousers, voluminous jacket, floppy hat and absurdly long scarf. With a little help from Tom himself, the original outfit was the work of BBC costume designer James Acheson, who created some of the show’s best-remembered monsters as well as the classic Time Lord costumes first unveiled in The Deadly Assassin, before moving on to win acclaim and Academy Awards for his work on films like Dangerous Liaisons, The Last Emperor and Spider-Man. Among the many other costume designers who worked on Doctor Who during Tom’s era were John Bloomfield, who created Louise Jameson’s Leela outfit and memorably dressed Tom in a Sherlock Holmes-style ensemble for the Victorian tale The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and later went on to design films including Conan the Barbarian, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Mummy. The most prolific costume designer of the period was June Hudson, who handled twice as many of Tom’s Doctor Who productions as any other designer and was responsible for some of the show’s most flamboyant alien creations, as well as a new burgundy-coloured version of Tom’s outfit which he wore during his final year in the role.
Gentlemen and players
As with any television production, the making of Doctor Who was very much a team effort, and Tom was fortunate to be surrounded by some of the most talented people working at the BBC at the time: as well as his four producers Barry Letts, Philip Hinchcliffe, Graham Williams and John Nathan-Turner, the programme’s contributors included a host of writers, directors, designers and, of course, actors. Besides faithful companions like Elisabeth Sladen, Ian Marter, Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward, Tom’s travels through time and space were enriched by a gallery of guest stars as diverse as John Woodvine, Philip Madoc, Julian Glover, Beatrix Lehmann, Geoffrey Bayldon, Catherine Schell, Peter Jeffrey, Frederick Jaeger, Tony Beckley, George Baker, Graham Crowden, Eileen Way, John Challis, Emrys James, Iain Cuthbertson and even John Cleese.
Script to screen
Many of Tom’s adventures were scripted by Robert Holmes and Terrance Dicks, widely regarded as among the finest of all Doctor Who’s writers, and other notable authors included Robert Banks Stewart (who went on to create the detective shows Shoestring and Bergerac), Louis Marks (who later became a BBC producer responsible for dramas like the JM Barrie biography The Lost Boys, Bertolt Brecht’s Baal starring David Bowie, and the acclaimed 1994 adaptation of Middlemarch), and a young unknown called Douglas Adams, whose breakthrough success with The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy coincided with the production of his first Doctor Who story in 1978 and was followed by a year as Doctor Who’s script editor, during which he collaborated on a number of fondly-remembered productions including the classic City of Death, whose Parisian filming marked Doctor Who’s first overseas location shoot.
City of Death was one of several serials directed by Michael Hayes, a veteran of classic BBC dramas like A for Andromeda and An Age of Kings. Other directors during Tom’s time on Doctor Who included highly-regarded names like Douglas Camfield, who had directed all three of the earlier Doctors and was a production assistant on the show’s very first episode; Michael E Briant, who went on to direct Secret Army, Blood Money and Howards’ Way; and David Maloney, who later produced When the Boat Comes In, The Day of the Triffids and another BBC science fiction classic, Blake’s 7. There was also Kenny McBain, later famed as the developer and original producer of Inspector Morse, and Rodney Bennett, whose subsequent directorial work included the aforementioned The Lost Boys as well as numerous literary adaptations and the BBC Shakespeare production of Hamlet.
Flights of fantasy
Of the many scenic designers who worked on Doctor Who during Tom’s era, perhaps the most notable and certainly the most prolific was Roger Murray-Leach, who worked wonders with modest budgets to create some of the show’s most striking environments, including a sophisticated space station in The Ark in Space, the Doctor’s home planet in The Deadly Assassin, an array of Victorian settings for The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and a magnificent alien jungle constructed at Ealing Film Studios for Planet of Evil. Other designers included Christine Ruscoe, who was responsible for the gothic splendour of Pyramids of Mars and State of Decay, and Barry Newbery, a veteran from the show’s earliest days who designed three of Tom’s serials including The Masque of Mandragora, for which he created the TARDIS’s seldom-seen “secondary control room”, a vision of mahogany-panelled Victoriana reminiscent of the works of HG Wells or Jules Verne.
Such comparisons are wholly appropriate; when all is said and done, Doctor Who and its altruistic hero have more in common with the scientific romances of Wells and Verne, not to mention the children’s fantasies of Lewis Carroll and CS Lewis, than with the full-blown science fiction of Arthur C Clarke or Isaac Asimov. The Doctor’s police box, with its miraculous dimensions and infinite possibilities, is more closely related to Alice’s rabbit-hole or Lucy’s wardrobe than to the USS Enterprise. During Tom’s period Doctor Who revels in its fairytale flavour, blending science with folklore, vampires with spaceships, minotaurs with black holes, Egyptian mummies with Mars, Druids with hyperspace, Leonardo da Vinci with time travel. Other fantasy narratives have included such ingredients, but only Doctor Who has the ability to mingle them together at will to create such surprising results.
The legend continues
From its earliest days Doctor Who was a hit with viewers, but during Tom’s period a combination of favourable factors propelled the show to its greatest successes yet: while viewing figures rose in Britain, the show began to sell abroad more widely than ever before. The series was already established in several overseas territories, but it was during Tom’s era that Doctor Who began to catch on in the United States, where the show had previously failed to achieve a foothold. Tom found himself in demand for publicity appearances on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in Australia and New Zealand. By the beginning of the 1980s, it was reported that Doctor Who was reaching 110 million viewers in 60 countries.
Doctor Who has continued to evolve and adapt over the years, and although at various times in its history it has tried its hand at mimicking the style and content of other fantasy franchises like The Avengers, Star Wars or Buffy, in the end it has outlasted them all. Doctor Who’s hybrid origins as “an adventure in space and time” have always remained with it – and the power and ingenuity of that original recipe have ensured that the exploits of the BBC’s wandering Time Lord remain, at heart, unique.
Tom’s 7 series
Tom with Elisabeth Sladen in The Pyramids of Mars
Tom as the Doctor with extras in a scene in the Panopticon in The Deadly Assassin.
Tom with Louise Jameson in The Face of Evil
June Hudson’s 1980 design for Tom
Tom as Doctor Who in Paris recording City of Death. Picture © BBC
Tom and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith in the jungles of Zeta Minor – The Planet of Evil. Picture © BBC
Tom as the Doctor reads the Ancient Law of Gallifrey book. Picture © BBC
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Driving to Mexico: Renting a Car or Using Your Own
All Mexico
By Kathleen Crislip
Orbon Alija/Getty Images
Driving across the southern border of the United States into Mexico is relatively easy no matter where you decide to cross. However, the documents you'll need to bring with you vary depending on whether you plan to drive your own vehicle or you want to rent one to drive back across. Whichever way you choose to drive, prepare for your trip by reviewing the rules of the road, which include what you'll need to know to cross the border into or from Mexico.
Driving Requirements
Whether you're renting a car in Mexico or driving your own across the border, there are several documents that are needed to operate a motor vehicle in Mexico.
To drive your own car into Mexico, you'll need a tourist card and a temporary vehicle importation permit, which you can get on arrival at the border. However, in some tourist border areas, you don't need this permit or a tourist card—just ask at the border if you have any doubts. In any case, you will need several documents to acquire a Mexico vehicle permit or tourist card, including proof of car ownership, proof of American registration, an affidavit from any lien holders authorizing temporary importation, a valid American driver's license, and proof of citizenship (like a passport).
Alternatively, if you're simply renting a car in Mexico, you will need to have a valid U.S. driver's license, civil liability car insurance, and a valid credit card to reserve the rental and cover incidental costs.
If you're renting a car in Mexico, your credit card will provide insurance, but you should buy the Mexican car insurance anyway. If you get in a car accident and don't have Mexico car insurance, you might not be able to leave the country until the damage has been paid for. However, your credit card will reimburse you when you get home regardless of whether you purchased additional insurance.
When you rent a car in Mexico, look the car over before you sign the rental agreement, and have the agent write down every scratch or non-working part on the vehicle—or you'll have to pay for those scratches and parts when you return the car. It's worth taking photos of every single scratch on the car before you get in to use as proof in case the companies try to claim you caused them when you come to return it.
Mexican Car Insurance
The rumors about possibly going to jail if you have a car wreck in Mexico are true, but having Mexican insurance helps alleviate that possibility. The minimum required insurance coverage to drive in Mexico is civil liability insurance, which covers you in case you cause injury or damage to another driver or vehicle. Your American liability insurance is not valid in Mexico for bodily injury, but some American insurance policies will cover you for physical damage—check with your carrier to make sure.
If you want some flexibility on the date you'll take your car out of Mexico, consider a six-month policy. Check with Mexinsure or Mexpro, which both allow travelers to purchase policies from them before leaving home. Alternatively, sites like RentalCars let you buy travel insurance from the major providers and compare prices so you can score the best deal.
You can also buy Mexican car insurance in several American border towns—there will generally be several stores or just storefronts selling Mexican car insurance near the Mexico border (except in Deming, New Mexico).
Tourist Cards and Vehicle Permits
The two other primary documents all drivers will need in Mexico are a tourist card and a vehicle permit.
Get a tourist card (an arrival/departure card) at the border with a U.S. driver's license and proof of citizenship. Fill out a simple form at the border immigration office declaring information (your purpose in Mexico, for instance), pay approximately $44, and then hang onto the card! It's good for up to 180 days and you should carry it with you at all times while you're in the country.
As of 2019, the vehicle permit costs $44USD and you must pay with a credit card; if you don't have a credit card, you'll have to pay a bond and a processing fee. Keep the permit on your windshield while you're in Mexico.
Crossing the Mexico Border From the U.S.
At the border of the United States and Mexico, you'll drive through one of several lanes, the number of which depends on how much traffic the border crossing handles. Traffic lights hanging above the lanes will then direct traffic into the country or into the inspection area.
If the light turns green when you're under it, proceed directly into Mexico. However, if the traffic light is red, you'll be directed to an area where you'll park and a Mexican customs official may ask you some questions or search you and your car. Fortunately, as long as your papers, like your Mexico vehicle permit and tourist card, are in order and you are carrying nothing illegal like switchblades or illicit drugs, you'll be fine and allowed to proceed into Mexico.
Driving in Mexico
The country's laid-back attitude is evident in the citizens' casual driving habits and logical driving patterns. While the way Mexican drivers operate on the roads may seem a bit extreme to U.S. citizens, they make perfect sense once you've got the hang of them, and as a result, big metropolises like Mexico City are no worse than Denver, Colorado, at rush hour.
Areas to avoid do exist, like the Toluca Highway—Carretera Nacional 134 in Guerrero, locally called carretera de la muerte (Highway of Death)—which is known for random encounters with Bandidos (bandits). However, you're more likely to get held up in downtown Detroit than on a Mexican back road, which isn't to say you shouldn't follow the same safety rules when driving in Mexico that you do when driving back home.
It's not worth taking risks and driving dangerously just because that's what the locals seem to be doing—they have far more experience than you do, and what looks like a danger to you may be well-rehearsed and safe for the locals.
If you've never driven in Mexico before, there are several rules of the road you need to be aware of to avoid accidents, emergencies, and getting stranded south of the border. While there are a number of rules that differ from driving laws in the United States, the top tips for safely driving in Mexico are:
Avoid driving at night: Road fatalities are far higher at night in Mexico than by day, so avoid it if at all possible. There are a lot of animals (alive and dead), pedestrians, and plenty of vehicles without taillights on the road at night, which increases your risk of having an accident. Additionally, there are very few overhead lights on most Mexican roads, meaning you won't be able to see broken glass, potholes, or topes (frequent speed bumps).
Don't panic if you break down at night: If you break down in a remote area at night, you'll most likely be stuck where you are until morning. To survive the night, simply wind up your windows, lock your doors, and try to sleep in your backseat until dawn. It's very rare that something will happen to you on the side of the road in most parts of the country.
Wait for the Green Angels if you break down in the daytime: Los Angeles Verdes (The Green Angels) will come to your aide in a short time if you break down on a roadway in Mexico in the daytime. The Green Angels are a fleet of green trucks with government-paid bilingual crews cruising the roads every day carrying tools and spare parts, looking for motorists in trouble. They'll even go to an auto supply store to buy a part for you if necessary. If you need them, call "060" (Mexico's version of 911) or pull over to the side of the road and put your car's hood up.
Stay on the main roads when driving alone: While Bandidos are few and far between, road conditions can be very iffy off the beaten track, so it's best to avoid the backstreets if you're alone and not a confident driver. Mexico also has a number of toll roads known as cuota roads that are kept in excellent condition but can be relatively expensive to use. You'll speed right along to your destination on these well-maintained highways, but you'll miss the local cafes and the charm of the countryside if you stay exclusively on them.
Turn signals mean "you can pass:" Unlike in the United States, where turn signals are used to indicate the intention to turn, in Mexico, they are used to indicate that the driver behind you is clear to pass. However, they can also be used to indicate turns, so make sure you look out for intersections up ahead before deciding to take the invitation to pass when the driver in front of you turns on their signal.
Drive on the shoulder to accommodate oncoming traffic: If you see an oncoming vehicle trying to pass another in your lane of the road, you're expected to drive on the shoulder while they pass. You can also pass cars on the right shoulder, but make sure to be quick about it as Mexican drivers use every inch of the road in order to keep traffic flowing.
Don't drive under the influence: Ever. You don't want to make friends in a sweaty jail cell or accidentally kill someone or yourself, so driving while drunk or other the influence of other substances is simply not worth the risk. If you're intoxicated and need to get to a hotel, take a taxi and come back for your car the following day when you've sobered up.
Do not try to bribe police officers: If you're pulled over and think you're being asked for a bribe, ask to be taken to the jefe (chief)—if the officer just wants money from you, he will probably back off at that request. It's also worth mentioning that you should never be the person who suggests paying a bribe, as this could land you in a lot of trouble. If you do try to bribe a cop, keep in mind that many Mexican policemen are honest, don't take bribes, and you may get in hot water for doing something that is technically illegal in the country.
Crossing the Border Into the U.S. From Mexico
At the Mexico-U.S. border, you'll drive through one of several lanes (the number of lanes depends on how much traffic the border crossing handles). A customs official will probably be standing at the side of the road and will motion for you to stop; he'll ask if you've anything to declare. Tell the truth because you and your car might be searched, and if you've lied, you may go straight to jail and lose your car.
It's said that U.S. customs officials are notoriously more difficult than their Mexican counterparts because there is a good deal of smuggling traffic crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. Stay calm, polite, and cooperative, and you'll pass through with few problems. Sadly, if you're Mexican, you can prepare for a greater interrogation at the border.
U.S. Customs
Avoid any problems with U.S. customs at the Mexico border by declaring exactly what you have brought back from Mexico with you and, obviously, don't bring back anything illegal.
There is a $400 exemption for gifts and personal articles you've purchased in Mexico; anything over that amount will be taxed
One liter of alcoholic beverage per person over 21 is okay—more will be taxed, and the state of Texas taxes all alcohol brought back from Mexico
No steroids are allowed, and you must have a prescription (American) for any medicines brought across the border
No illegal drugs; if you have the slightest amount, you can be fined and sent to jail, and your car may even be confiscated
No switchblade knives
So many fruits from Mexico are prohibited in the U.S. that you may as well not bring any back
No guns of any kind are allowed, and even ammo is prohibited at the border; however, you can get documentation showing that you legally purchased a firearm you're carrying in the U.S.
Fish you caught in Mexico are permitted across the border
No clothing, purses, wallets, or shoes/boots made of endangered species, like sea turtles, are allowed
If in doubt, leave it behind
This article has been edited and updated by Lauren Juliff.
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Medical Border Town: Los Algodones, Mexico
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Tijuana, Mexico Visitor's Guide: What You Need to Know
What Mordida Means in Mexico
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Ivanka Trump Is Writing a New Book to Empower Working Women
"Every day, we're seeking to inspire and empower this next generation of women, and there's nothing more powerful than that," she said in the book's announcement.
By Kacie Celli
Ivanka Trump, the mother and mogul who graced the cover of our February issue, is publishing her second book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, next spring.
"I was really convinced that we needed to change the dialogue around women and work," Trump said in her announcement. "This is a conversation that's so much bigger than me and we're really looking forward to hearing your input. Every day, we're seeking to inspire and empower this next generation of women, and there's nothing more powerful than that."
Together with the #WomenWhoWork digital campaign Trump launched two years ago, the publication will be a next-gen guide for professional women. "Creating something that is lasting and impactful excites me," Trump told us last winter. Here's what else she had to say:
On women who work:
"I'm not saying that if you're working at home, raising a family, that's not work. I want to disrupt the narrative around what it means to be a woman who works. The whole point of my brand is that women should be architecting the lives they want to live."
On dressing for the workplace:
"We're able to express our femininity very differently from just a decade ago, and I think that's something my brand really embraces: the polished, appropriately sexy aesthetic. It's a dress you can wear in the boardroom and on a date with your husband."
On finding time to spend with family:
"Everything that you choose to do outside of being with them has an opportunity cost that's much more real than the choice of hanging out with your girlfriends after work."
On work/family balance:
"I abhor this question of 'having it all.' People talk about balance. Balance is an awful measure of things, because it implies a scale that inevitably tips. I like to look through the filter of, 'Is the life I'm leading consistent with my priorities?' For me, my family is the ultimate litmus test. Do I feel like I'm giving my children what they need? But I don't do everything. I wouldn't be able to do what I do professionally if I did. For some people that's a compromise they aren't willing to make, and I respect that."
On whether her father, Donald Trump, respects women:
"Well, clearly. Otherwise, I wouldn't be where I am. I think this is one of his great strengths: he fully prioritizes merit and accomplishment and skill and ability over background, education, and gender. This company, over four decades, has always had women in its highest ranks. I think he's one of the great advocates for women, and he has been a great example to me my whole life."
Ivanka Trump Talks Being a Mogul and a Mother
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College of Agricultural and Life Sciences >
Featured Stories >
Adventurous Apparel
Sewing Machines and Whitewater Rafting
The first time Santos Vargas used a sewing machine he was a sophomore at the University of Idaho. Prior to that, the closest he came to a needle and thread was watching his grandmother sew as a child growing up in Yakima, Washington.
The first time he went whitewater rafting was before his junior year at U of I. Now 24, Vargas is a product coordinator at NRS — a Moscow-based company that produces a variety of outdoor gear and apparel — where sewing machines and rafting are part of his everyday life.
Discovering Apparel, Textiles and Design
Like many students, Vargas wasn’t sure what he wanted to do for the rest of his life when he was considering college. He chose U of I because of the close proximity of the Moscow campus to his family and the offer of a scholarship to run cross-country and track and field for the Vandals. When he arrived at U of I he decided to major in business.
“I just thought, I’m going to go into business because if I get a degree in business I’ll be able to find a job somewhere,” Vargas said.
It was during his sophomore year Vargas knew he needed to make a change and wanted to do something more creative. He began to search for different options at U of I.
“I like creativity and being able to make something,” Vargas said. “I just thought of the things I was really interested in. Being an athlete and wearing all that different apparel, I thought why not focus on athletic apparel and go into that industry. I knew I wasn’t going to be an athlete forever and I wanted to stay connected to the world of athletics in some form.”
Vargas discovered the apparel, textiles and design program in U of I’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and decided to make the switch — even though he had no prior experience or knowledge in the field.
“I had no knowledge of textiles so it was fun to be able to start at ground zero and build all of that knowledge up in a program like they have at the University of Idaho,” Vargas said.
Stepping into a program he wasn’t familiar with had its difficulties — like learning how to use a sewing machine.
“I was kind of really scared of the sewing machine just because I didn’t want to have like a finger sewn off,” Vargas said. “I’ve seen my grandma sew dozens of times and it just seemed like something that was super technical and super-fast. It was more just getting over the intimidation factor of using the sewing machine.”
The course structure for the apparel, textiles and design major helped Vargas piece together the skills he was lacking. The faculty in the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences also played a key role.
“A lot of what did help was the experience that the faculty had,” he said. “I think it’s a lot easier to learn from someone if they are credible. They just had so much experience there between the faculty that it makes it easy to pick up and not so hard to make that transition. I think that is what helped get over that intimidation factor.”
Discovering the Outdoor Industry
Vargas decided to stay in Moscow the summer between his junior and senior years and applied for a job with NRS, fulfilling orders in the warehouse. He didn’t have much experience with the outdoor industry up to that point, but two summers spent with the company opened his eyes to new possibilities.
“I had never rafted before. I didn’t have any interest in the outdoor industry and I started working here because I needed a summer job,” Vargas said. “I slowly got introduced to this culture of the outdoor industry and that made me realize that maybe there is an opportunity somewhere else. That I don’t have to work for the Nike and Adidas’ of the world.”
During his final semester at U of I in 2017 the company approached Vargas about a new position that they were adding to the product team.
“It kind of lined up perfectly,” Vargas said. “I graduated and then the next week I started working here full time.”
Vargas wears many different hats in his role as product coordinator — everything from design to research and development to reviewing prototypes and arranging samples for the sales team.
“Not every day is the same,” Vargas said. “As much as I love the design part, I love that everything is kind of seasonal. Every day looks different and every part of my year looks different.”
The first project Vargas worked on was the redesign of the company’s river duffle bag — a project he never envisioned taking on.
“That was a challenge of its own because I had never designed a duffle bag before,” he said. “Right away I got thrown into the fire with something like that but it was good for me because it pushed me to do something outside of apparel.”
Although Vargas came into the apparel, textiles and design field with the idea of one day designing gear for athletes like himself, the culture that he has encountered in the outdoor industry has set him on a new path. He now enjoys paddleboarding and whitewater rafting. The outdoors have helped to fill the void left after being a competitive athlete for so many years.
“After working in the outdoor industry, I want to stay in the outdoor industry,” he said. “I thought I was going to do solely athletic gear, but now applying that to the outdoor industry is kind of similar. You still have that active motion. We sponsor athletes like professional kayakers. The people that are out there on whitewater and competing in these events, you still have to prepare them and provide them with the gear they need to perform at the highest level. In a sense, I’m still doing what I thought I would be doing.”
Article by Amy Calabretta, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Published in November 2018
Apparel, textiles and design, B.S.
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New ABC chief vows to increase 'Bachelor' diversity
Says the casting process for new suitors will better reflect the country.
New ABC chief vows to increase 'Bachelor' diversity Says the casting process for new suitors will better reflect the country. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/2aKqz71
Gary Levin, USA TODAY Published 11:32 a.m. ET Aug. 5, 2016 | Updated 3:03 p.m. ET Aug. 5, 2016
JoJo Fletcher hands out her final rose on the season finale of "The Bachelorette,"(Photo: Craig Sjodin/ABC)
Corrections and clarifications: A photo in an earlier version of this story misidentified Jordan Rodgers.
BEVERLY HILLS — Critics and fans alike have complained for years that while ABC's The Bachelor franchise is short on lasting relationships, but its bigger problem is a lack of diversity.
Even as networks make strides in increasing the numbers of blacks, Latinos and Asians in their sitcoms and dramas, there are few on the dating series, and those tend to exit quickly. Echoing her predecessors, new ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey, network TV's first black female programming chief, vowed to change that at the Television Critics Association press tour Thursday.
'The Bachelor’s’ chance to break its diversity stalemate
How? "One of the biggest changes that we need to do is, we need to increase the pool of diverse candidates in the beginning, because part of what ends up happening as we go along is there just aren’t as many candidates to ultimately end up in the role of the next Bachelor or Bachelorette," Dungey said. "So that is something we really want to put some effort and energy towards."
But it's a self-perpetuating cycle, because new Bachelors and Bachelorettes are invariably chosen from the pool of spurned suitors in previous seasons.
"The show has been very much in a cycle where the first runner-up in one cycle becomes the person who leads the next cycle, and it’s worked very well for us because the audience feels really engaged in helping to choose that candidate. So I think what we would like to try to do is just widen the pool of choices" in casting the show, she said.
ABC chief on 'Star Wars,' 'Scandal' and what happened with 'Castle'
Time will tell if that mission is accomplished.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2aKqz71
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District Assessment and Research
Contact the Grants Department
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Assessment Protocol
Schedule overview of assessments administered district-wide.
Wichita Public Schools Assessment Protocol-wScreening_19-20_6-10-19.pdf 284.33 KB (Last Modified on June 10, 2019)
The district's comprehensive assessment system is comprised of a variety of assessments with a range of purpose. Students enter the classroom with diverse backgrounds and skills; assessments help teachers understand students' academic needs. Assessment results are used to help teachers with instruction by identifying skills that are mastered and skills needing review. Assessments are also used to determine the effectiveness of instruction so teachers know how to make adjustments to better assist learning.
Universal Screening is a critical first step in identifying students who may be at risk for experiencing reading, math or behavior related difficulties and might need additional supports. Screeners are a first look at who might need further diagnostics. The universal screeners the district uses are FastBridge (academic foundational reading and math skills), and in some schools, the SAEBRS behavior screener (social, academic, and emotional).
Diagnostics follow screening for only the students needing specific skill support identification. Diagnostic tests are only given when there is a clear expectation that the assessment will provide new or more indepth information. The diagnostics used to identify literacy skills are the Quick Phonics Screener (QPS) and the Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST).
State Assessments in reading and math are given online each spring in grades 3 through 8 and 10. Students in grades 5, 8 and 11 also take science assessments each year. Every other year, students in grades 6, 8 and 11 participate in history/government state assessments. The state assessments are taken over a period of 3-4 weeks. See the assessment schedule or assessment calendar for specific date ranges.
Beginning with the 2015 state assessments, the data from previous state assessments is no longer comparable. Moving forward, student performance will be measured according to four performance levels. Click the link here to view or download the grade level performance level descriptors. State assessment performance may be viewed at Kansas Report Card.
The Kansas State Department of Education expects all students to participate in state assessments; however it is also recognized that parents have the right to opt their student(s) out of state assessments. We will respect your wishes in that regard. If you feel this is the best decision for your child, please visit with your child's school principal and provide documentation of your wishes.
With regard to our screening and district assessments, we do not allow parents to opt out of these assessments. These assesments provide data to help your child's teacher(s) target areas in which your child may need to improve or areas in which their performance is below what is expected of a student at their grade level. This data is critical so that teachers can make sure your child is making the progress expected at their grade level.
College and Career exploration and preparation is an ongoing process that develops as students progress through their academic career. The district uses a variety of exercises in grades 4-6 and tools and assessments from Career Cruising-Xello that work together to help students make educational and career planning decisions in grades 7 thru 12. Most Career Cruising-Xello activities and assessments begin in October.
Eleventh and twelfth grade students typically register for the ACT college entrance exam that includes four parts: English, mathematics, reading, science, and an interest inventory. Students register for and take the exam at designated times from February to June.
The Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) is a predictive assessment of a student's strengths and weaknesses when considering post-secondary options. The PSAT is a National Merit Scholarship qualifying test that is administered to registered 10th and 11th grade students in mid-October.
For more information on preparing for post-secondary options, visit College Board.
To see post-secondary techincal education partnership opportunities offered in Kansas visit the Kansas Department of Education (KSDE).
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Singapore Hyperscale Data Centre Startup AirTrunk secures US$621 million for Australia, APAC expansion
Mon Aug 20, 2018 - 6:41am UTC
20/8/2018 – AirTrunk, a Singapore-founded provider of hyperscale data centres, has secured an A$850 million (about US$621 million) financing that will fund the expansion of its two Australian data centres and a move into Asia Pacific to take advantage of the growing cloud computing market.
The funding comprises of new senior secured debt facilities, as well as capital reserves from AirTrunk’s Founder and CEO Robin Khuda, and existing investors Goldman Sachs and TSSP. Deutsche Bank was the lead arranger, underwriter, and bookrunner for the financing process which is said to be the largest by a data centre company in Australia.
This latest financing also comes on top of an A$150 million (about US$110 million) six-year term loan from ING Groep NV and Natixis SA secured in February 2017, in addition to a US$400 million funding round co-led by Goldman Sachs and TPG Capital in the same year.
Established in 2014 as a hyperscale data centre provider, AirTrunk develops and operate large-scale wholesale data centres that provides a platform for cloud, content, and large enterprise customers across the Asia Pacific region.
It takes advantage of a surge in cloud computing as companies that once ran in-house servers are gradually shifting storage and processing off-site. To meet their demand, AirTrunk provides its clients with the physical space, internet connections, power and cooling for their own servers.
The startup maximizes energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness by implementing a single computer architecture that can be rapidly scaled by bringing more machines online as and when they are needed.
According to research firm IDC, it is estimated that public cloud demand in the Asia Pacific region excluding Japan will hit US$47 billion by 2020.
So far, AirTrunk had opened two Australian data centres last year – AirTrunk Sydney in September and AirTrunk Melbourne in November – which will be upgraded and expanded using majority of the capital raised from this investment.
AirTrunk said these two facilities are set to be the largest data centres in the Asia Pacific region when completed at 90 megawatts and 84 megawatts respectively.
“Together with the new capital recently contributed by our shareholders, the new funds put us in a strong position to meet the growing demand from large cloud, content, and enterprise customers in the Asia-Pacific region,” said former CFO at NextDC, Khuda.
AirTrunk which measures inventory in terms of power capacity, will have 174 megawatts within 12 months, of which 100 megawatts will be built up and ready for customers. The rest is made up of land that can be upgraded as needed.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the money raised will go toward expanding into Asia with Singapore, Tokyo, and Hong Kong key priorities. Facilities in the region are expected to be online by end-2020.
“AirTrunk continues to pursue its ambition to be the leader in hyperscale data centers for the region. The expansion in Australia will establish as the largest data centre operator in Australia by deployed capacity, and we continue to pursue aggressive growth opportunities across the Asia Pacific region,” Khuda added.
Allianz to acquire Sri Lanka’s Janashakthi General Insurance in US$106 million dealGlobal Brain launches US$175 million sixth fundBehavior Analytics Firm Interana Raises US$18 Million In Funding Round Led By Vertex VenturesIFC to invest US$10.2 million in Vietnam agribusiness PAN FarmDo Day Dream to raise up to US$123 million via IPO
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> 5 Exceptional Bay Area Redwood Groves
5 Exceptional Bay Area Redwood Groves
Posted by Carole Terwilliger Meyers on June 27, 2018
Photo: David H. Collier
While you may not be able to beat the sheer size of the groves at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (pictured here) or Muir Woods, there are awe-inspiring redwood groves worthy of a visit all around the Bay Area.
You don’t have to go all the way to Muir Woods, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, or Big Basin to stand in awe under redwoods. While the big three are your best bet to see old-growth forests, there are plenty of lower key, second-growth groves to explore throughout the Bay Area. Even better, most of these spots are free, have easy parking, and are gloriously uncrowded.
Old Mill Park, Mill Valley
Located just a few blocks from town center, Old Mill Park is sheltered by coast redwoods to create an ideal spot for a picnic. The particularly popular Redwood Grove picnic area is set amid a fairy ring of trees that grew around the now decomposed base of a tree that had a circumference of 20 feet. The park has approximately 50 fairy rings among its more than 400 redwoods, most of which hover around 200 feet tall. A sun-speckled playground and several swing sets draw children, and a reconstruction of the original namesake sawmill, which in the 1840s and ’50s provided lumber for the Presidio in San Francisco, is set picturesquely beside a shallow stream.
Courtesy of Transamerica Pyramid Center
Hidden under one of San Francisco's most iconic sky scrapers, this small park is the perfect place to take a mid-day break.
Transamerica Redwood Park, San Francisco
A redwood grove in the middle of San Francisco’s skyscrapers? Yes, indeed! Situated on the east side of the Transamerica Pyramid, this urban park is privately owned and locked up each night. The 56 trees that make up the half-acre grove sprang from nursery-grown sprouts planted in 1957. They are slowly stretching up, and the tallest now reaches about 100 feet. Benches invite respite, and sculptures of children at play add whimsy.
Redwood Regional Park, Oakland
Redwood Regional Park is what’s left of the dense old-growth redwood forest that was long ago harvested to build homes in San Francisco after the Gold Rush. The 100-year-old trees have since sprung up stretch to 150 feet and make up the largest group of redwoods in the East Bay. The park is also home to the only fish ladder in the Bay Area where rainbow trout spawn. The popular, mostly paved Stream Trail follows Redwood Creek and offers views of redwood groves and meadows.
Photo Courtesy of University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley
The five-acre Mather Redwood Grove is a little-known treasure on the UC Berkeley campus.
Mather Redwood Grove, Berkeley
Located behind the college campus in the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, the five-acre Mather Redwood Grove is a little-known treasure. It is situated across the street from the main gardens and requires a gate code to enter. (Simply request access when you pay admission.) Planted in 1932 by the Works Progress Administration, the grove contains 474 coast redwoods. Back in the main garden’s Asian Area, you can see all three types of redwood: the coast redwood, which is the world’s tallest tree species; the giant sequoia, which is the largest living thing on Earth; and the dawn, which was thought to be extinct until 1943 when it was re-discovered in China.
Redwood Grove Nature Preserve, Los Altos
Tucked into a residential area, Redwood Grove Nature Preserve is a surprise of a park. To the left of the entrance, a boardwalk follows a creek through the 150-tree grove that was planted as saplings in the 1920s, then turns into the more rustic Hillside Trail. To the right of the entrance, a short trail leads to larger Shoup Park, which is equipped with a creekside party area and children’s playground. Approach the park via North San Antonio Road to see many tall redwoods lining the road.
Looking for redwoods on a grander scale or a park with more amenities? There are more than 45 state parks with the giants sprinkled throughout California. Visit them for free this year, on the second Saturday of each month, thanks to California’s Save the Redwoods League. Passes must be reserved in advance.
Video: A 360-Degree View of the Lands End Labyrinth
Take a contemplative stroll through this San Francisco spiral.
Extraordinary Winter Sports
Try some new activities this season, such as bobsledding, curling, or skiing with a kite.
San Francisco: Like a Local
Choose your own adventure in six neighborhoods packed with old favorites and new twists.
Golden Gate National Recreation Area: A Treasure Trove
Natural beauty and human history hide in plain sight.
Easy Coastal Trails for Hiking in Northern California
You won't break a sweat on these relatively flat, easy trails that lead to the the wild Pacific.
The Best Places to Rent Camping Gear
Instead of spending a small fortune or begging friends for gear, renting can get you outside without blowing your budget or space.
5 Incredible Guided Bike Tours in the West
A bicycle can take you places you’ve never been and show a destination in a whole new light. Here are the best guided bike tours to join.
Distracted Driving: The Latest Facts
New research says our minds wander for nearly half a minute after a hands-free call or text.
Places to Visit in California > San Francisco
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How Putin's Russia Became Mafia Heaven
Inside the long, strange story of organized crime taking over the former Soviet Union—and how Russia tamed it only to unleash it on the West.
by Seth Ferranti
Mark Galeotti has been interested in all things Russia as far back as he can remember. The British-born author and expert on international crime, who writes regularly for the Moscow Times and is currently based in Prague, is a historian by training. His interest in the underworld dates back to 1988—the stretch preceding the Iron Curtain’s fall—when he was working on his doctorate in the Soviet Union.
Galoetti's research consisted in part of meeting with veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan soon after they came back from the front—before visiting them again a year later to see if they had acclimated back to normal life. While some adapted, he noticed an alarming number seemed to be hanging around in the shadows, working for dubious businessmen pilfering state assets. The idea that organized crime might proliferate in what, at that time, remained a police state fascinated Galeotti. It drove home a truism that applies as much in New Jersey as Moscow: Just because you can't see the mob on the street doesn't mean it's not there.
Thanks to insider contacts on the ground in Russia, Galeotti—who has written for VICE in the past—embarked on a project 30 years in the making. The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia, out Tuesday from Yale University Press, is the result. Galeotti digs into the origins of Russia's notorious vor-v-zakone (thief-in-laws), explores their rise in concert with the collapse of the USSR, investigates how their values and practices have influenced modern-day Russia, probes how Putin has kept them in check, and touches on what ties, if any, President Trump might have to this vast underworld.
I called him up for a chat about a story that, even for an ex-con obsessed with La Cosa Nostra like me, had its share of bizarre and surprising episodes.
VICE: One thing that fascinated me was the long arc of the history here. Can you talk about how Stalin's Gulags shaped the men that became the thief-in-laws, and laid the structure for what would become the Russian Mafia?
Mark Galeotti: There had been an underworld culture beforehand, the so called Vorovskoy Mir, the Thieves' World. They had tattoo[s] and slang of their own, but it was the experience of being swept up in this whirlwind of horror that was the Gulag labor camp system [that set this in motion]. Stalin wanted to run these camps cheap and offered the Vory a deal: those willing to collaborate with the state would get a much easier life [in the brutal gulags].
Stalin had worked with gangsters before the revolution, organizing bank raids and even piracy to raise money for the Bolshevik revolutionaries. [He got them] to basically become the security guards and foremen to keep the bulk of the prison population—the political prisoners—hard at work. Now that meant going against one of the fundamental elements of the old code of the Vory, which was you never, ever, ever cooperate with the authorities.
But there were enough of them who actually thought it was a good deal and they became the so-called "sukas" [or] "bitches" in the eyes of the traditionalists. Through the 1930s and the first half of the 40s, these two kind of different criminal groups didn't really interact much. The collaborators knew better then to try and to mess with the traditionalists, and the traditionalists knew if they messed with the collaborators the state would come down hard on them.
I've been in prison and that sounds like a situation ready to explode. Which is exactly what happened, right?
After the Second World War you suddenly had a change in the balance of power. You had more prisoners coming in, and essentially this cold war that had existed between the two groups couldn't last. You had this explosion of violence, basically a civil war that was fought out within the Vory inside the Gulag system in the late 1940s and early 50s—a bloody war fought with lynchings and people turning whatever sharp implements they could find at their disposal [into weapons]. When it came down to it, ultimately, the collaborators won, not least because the state backed them and gave them opportunities to win.
Stalin died in 1953 and the Gulags opened up. All these criminals come out—these new collaborator-criminals—and basically colonized the rest of the Soviet underworld. It was a whole new culture of Vorovskoy Mir. Which was basically: We're gangsters, we're hard men, we have our own culture, our code and things. We see that because the state is so powerful, it's worth collaborating—when it's in our interests.
They were the judges, the community leaders, the high priests of the criminal world. Not necessarily gang leaders, but the kind of people who could resolve disputes and lay down the law, quite literally. That was essential, because all underworlds work out ways in which they resolve disputes. Whether it's La Cosa Nostra sit-downs or whatever. The way the Russians did it was to have this cast of highly respected criminals who [are] able to be a judge.
Why did the collapse of the USSR feed the growth here so astronomically?
Suddenly you had a new country, just created at the stroke of a pen. This had been a country dominated by the Communist Party, it's economy was planned centrally, and suddenly it’s a democracy—a capitalist free-market system. All the old rules no longer seemed to apply. The old power structures were in crisis. It was a period of total chaos. From the point of view of organized crime, this was a massive opportunity.
The various gangs that had existed largely in the shadows, when they were still worried about the state and KGB, suddenly could rise up. Everything was there for the taking: industries, assets, property, control over territory. There was no sense of turf lines or who's more powerful than who, and there was a massive explosion of violence. All the gangs were trying to grab everything they could with both hands before someone else got it. It was sort of a war of all against all.
From this kind of Darwinian mess, what emerged were about a dozen or so major alliances. They were not like formal gangs—not like a New York crime family with a single Godfather—but alliances with lots of smaller gangs. It was Moscow's gangs against everyone else. They regarded themselves as being the elite and had a lot more money and power. By the late 1990s, we were beginning to see turf lines being drawn. The pecking order had been established and the violence was beginning to go down, even before Putin came into power.
A key difference, it seems, between the Vory and the mob in the United States—besides their relative strength in this current moment—is their influence over the rest of the country. Americans love mob movies and The Sopranos, but Russia seems like a whole other level, where organized crime values, codes, and practices essentially mafia-ized the country. How do you explain that?
The Vory were amongst the people at the forefront of creating the new political and economic system in the 1990s. Let's be honest: Russia is run by people who are stealing left, right, and center. Its a kleptocracy. They're not doing it in usual mob ways, like shaking people down on the street corner. They’re doing it through government contracts and corrupt sweetheart deals. There’s a considerable overlap between how the gangsters operate and how the elite operate. The boundaries between the two are pretty permeable.
Capitalism emerged in the midst of mob wars in Russia and the idea was: it's just about making money. We know that working capitalism relies on institutions, rule of law, property rights, and trust in the system. But that's not how the Russians saw it. They only cared about money, and if that's all you're interested in, a lot of criminal methods seem quite appealing. I'm amazed at the extent to which one sees things like blackmail and extortion being used as business tactics within Russia.
What is normal and acceptable behavior within the business and political class is clearly heavily influenced by tactics that say laws don't matter—what matters is actually getting the job done. I'd almost say that every Russian businessman is a crook. The Vory were part of and amongst the stakeholders—the founding fathers of the New Russia. We shouldn't be surprised to find their values enshrined in this country.
He's often described as being in bed with financial criminals of all stripes, but Vladimir Putin, despite his history with gangsters, has kept the Vory in check. Why is that?
When Vladimir Putin was a deputy of the mayor in Saint Petersburg in the mid 1990s, his job was to be the liaison with everyone who needed to be talked to, whether it was foreigners, businessmen or organized crime. He was in charge of making sure the city ran smoothly. There was some kind of interaction with Vladimir S. Barsukov, who was known as the Night Governor. The idea was that by day the official authorities were in charge, but by night Barsukov ran Saint Petersburg. Then Putin's career took off, he went to Moscow, became Prime Minister, and then president.
That's not necessarily a problem as long as Barsukov knows the limits, knows the rules of the game. The problem was that after a certain point, he was just too visible and it began to be a bit embarrassing to Putin. He was a sort of walking skeleton in Putin's closet. In 2007, they decided to take him down. They airlifted in police commandos from Moscow. It was basically a full military operation to grab Barsukov, then they airlifted him straight back out back to Moscow. What they were doing was simply wanting to show it doesn't matter how big you are, the state is back and we can reach out and take down anyone.
You describe Russia as a kleptocracy, where there's no distinction between crime, politics, and law enforcement. What does this mean for America and the world going forward?
It's a problem because Russia is a serious player in world politics and global economics. The trouble is that Russian kleptocracy and the close ties between the Kremlin, business, and organized crime means that Russia can infect other countries with it's own practices. Putin is engaged in this kind of political war with the West—he’s effectively trying to weaponize Russian organized crime against the west.
We have seen Russian-based organized crime groups being used to kill enemies of his, to gather intelligence, to move spies across boarders, and raise money for Putin by supporting particular groups or media outlets that he likes and are good at spreading disinformation.
These are all serious problems, but there’s a bit of hope. I think there’s this slow build up of pressures for some kind of change inside Russia. I think you're getting a population that is tired of corruption and an elite that has outgrown the gangsters and finds them a bit of an embarrassment. I don't think were going to see it while Putin is still in the Kremlin, but after Putin goes, which might be two years or six years, or longer, it's going to happen. There’s a decent chance that we're going to start seeing a kind of a slow fight back against organized crime in Russia. But for now, this is clearly a problem for us all.
What do you think the Mueller investigations into President Trump's alleged ties to Russia will uncover in regards to the Vory, if anything? Trump has a history of Italian mob ties in the US and some of his lackeys like consigliere Michael Cohen have even claimed to be tight with Russian mobsters.
From Donald Trump down, through Michael Cohen, for me what I see unfolding in the States is not so much a story about everyday Russian organized crime so much as a story of unusual American greed, of a lack of morals and a depressing belief that any business is good business, regardless with whom it is conducted. I have seen no serious evidence of any explicit link between Trump and Russian mobsters. Rather, what I have seen is evidence of the extent to which the Trump Organization seems to have been willing to engage with dubious investors and buyers—some Russian, many not—whom more reputable corporations would not have touched. In the process, it is likely it laundered money from all kinds of questionable sources, but that is not the same as a direct link to gangsters. Above all, this is a story about corruption, framed in both legal and moral terms, and about a horrifying absence of ethics and transparency.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Learn more about Galeotti's book here.
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VICE US
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A local success story: Paris reaches over 6 lakh local shoppers in Surat
Coffee, Colleagues, Dosa and Data
Sony Liv attracts cricket lovers in India through the power of Vserv Authentic Data
Sony Liv, India's leading premium Video on Demand (VOD) service by Sony Pictures Networks India Private Limited (SPN) wanted to reach out to heavy mobile data consumers for the India V/S Sri Lanka test match.
Heavy mobile data users who consume more than 2GB of data per month.
The main challenge Sony Liv faced, was reaching out to such a niche audience set.
Approach & Execution:
We leveraged Vserv Authentic Data and further segmented consumers based on their mobile data consumption habits. Based on this, we created a unique targetable user persona called 'Data Guzzlers'. These included users who consumed more than 2GB of data on an average. We devised a strategy of creating a Facebook post that appeared in user’s Facebook news feed. The post informed them that they could watch the India v/s Sri Lanka match live on Sony Liv, with a call to action that took them users directly to the page from where they could begin watching the match.
We kick-started the campaign at 10:00 a.m. and focused on key turning points of the match such as when Virat Kohli was cruising towards a 100 which resulted in additional viewership. We ended the first phase of the campaign at 1:00 p.m. when India declared. We re-started the second phase of the campaign post lunch when Sri Lanka came on to bat, with viewership increasing along with their quick fall of wickets.
The Facebook campaign was a huge success, reaching over 6 lakh data guzzlers in India, in a span of just 3 hours and receiving a CTR of 0.8%. By leveraging Vserv Authentic Data combined with Facebook targeting data, we were able to increase the marketing efficiency of the campaign by reaching the most relevant audience.
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MediaCurrently selected
Integrated technologies to recover metal and plastic from electronic waste
Photo: Tekes
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a new electronic waste recycling concept that combines a range of technologies and reduces waste. One of the technologies included in the concept is gasification, which is used to recover not only metals and rare-earth elements from the waste but also organic components that can be used to produce energy or products, such as plastic and chemicals. VTT has brought together a group of Finnish partners to promote material-efficient production.
Vast amounts of valuable raw materials are lost through recycling and processing: As much as half of all materials can end up in landfill. Products are becoming increasingly complex, which is why traditional mechanical recycling processes are no longer enough.
Traditional recycling focuses on recovering base metals and precious metals, such as gold, leaving other valuable resources, and especially hydrocarbon-containing organic matter, unutilised.
VTT has developed a recycling concept based on integrated technologies, which can be used to increase the efficiency of material recovery and reduce the use of virgin minerals and fossil resources. In addition to the mechanical sorting of waste, the range of techniques includes gasification, which is a thermal conversion process for separating not only metals but also organic materials that can then be used to produce energy or products, such as plastic and chemicals.
MINEWEE circular economy experiment to take place in the autumn of 2018
VTT's role in the MINEWEE project is to build an industrial ecosystem for recovering critical raw materials from metallic waste, such as residues from electronic waste processing. The project team is currently developing a process for handling electronic waste as well as circuit board and shredder residue, which consists of scrap pretreatment, mechanical separation of metals, gasification and hydrometallurgical unit processes.
VTT's tasks in the project include pretreating and characterising materials, thermal conversion and the associated chemical dissolution. Aalto University focuses on recovering rare-earth elements.
MINEWEE is one of Tekes's Challenge Finland projects, and the project consortium includes businesses from all levels of the value chain, such as metal waste processing companies and technology suppliers.
In addition to VTT and Aalto University, the consortium currently consists of Loimi-Hämeen Jätehuolto Oy, BMH Technology Oy, Kuusakoski Oy, Stena Recycling Oy, Technology Industries of Finland, Finnish Car Recycling Ltd and Global EcoSolutions Oy.
Building new value chains and piloting technologies will take place in VTT's BIORUUKKI pilot centre in Espoo during 2018. The goal is to prove the effectiveness of the techniques from the pretreatment of waste to the recovery of new raw materials in practice.
WEEE is an important source of critical raw materials
The manufacture of batteries and laser technology, for example, depends on materials whose global availability varies. Demand for these critical raw materials continues to increase, which is why their availability must be ensured and recycling increased. Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is the second most important source of critical raw materials after the primary sector of the economy.
Electronic waste and the waste generated by WEEE processing are heterogeneous materials that are difficult to recycle. The organic matter contained in them, such as fibres and plastics, can be turned into energy and hydrocarbons, which can be used in products such as plastic. Metals that have until now been left unutilised can be separated from the ash generated by gasification.
Critical raw materials
Critical raw materials, such as gallium, germanium, platinum group metals and rare-earth elements, are used extensively in electronics and energy industry products, such as rechargeable batteries, displays and computers. The EU's list of critical raw materials includes materials that are of high importance to the EU economy and of high risk associated with their supply. Critical raw materials cannot generally be easily substituted by other materials. The electronics industry of European countries is almost completely dependent on the import of these materials.
Demand for most critical raw materials will grow to several dozen times the current level by 2030. WEEE, which Finland currently produces more than 20 kg per person per year, depending on the estimate, has been identified as a crucial secondary source of critical raw materials.
Nieminen Matti Principal Scientist +358405442262 Matti.Nieminen@vtt.fi
Email info@vtt.fi
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Man fatally shot near D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood
By Dana Hedgpeth
Dana Hedgpeth
Reporter covering local breaking news
A 29-year-old man has died after a shooting in Northwest Washington.
The shooting happened around 9:24 p.m. Wednesday in the 700 block of Princeton Place NW just off Georgia Avenue near the Petworth neighborhood.
When officers arrived, they found a man suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
D.C. police later identified him as Juan Marcell Grant of Northwest Washington.
The D.C. region has had more than 130 homicides so far this year. Of those, 73 have been in the District, according to a tracking done by The Washington Post.
Local newsletters: Local headlines (8 a.m.) | Afternoon Buzz (4 p.m.)
Like PostLocal on Facebook | Follow @postlocal on Twitter | Latest local news
Perspective She famously flipped off the president. Now Juli Briskman is running for office.
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On Leadership Opinion
The glaring leadership problem in Donald Trump’s tweets following the Orlando massacre
By Jena McGregor
Jena McGregor
Reporter covering leadership issues in the headlines
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally. His other favored venue is Twitter. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The backlash following Donald Trump's tweets Sunday after the horrific massacre in Orlando felt, in some ways, familiar. It's now a pattern -- a disturbing, unsettling one -- that comes after a mass shooting in this country: Tragedy, followed by expressions of thoughts and prayers, followed by debate over what politicians say and how it gets politicized as the country grapples with the human carnage.
Yet this time, the backlash focused on Trump's willingness to insert himself into the news -- to make even a single moment of the immediate aftermath in the senseless tragedy about himself.
Not once, but twice, Trump took up the valuable 140 characters of Twitter's real estate to point out that he was right. He said he "appreciate[s] the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism," even if yes, he said he doesn't "want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance." (More on that below.) Hours later, after saying "our leadership is weak and ineffective," he said "I called it and asked for the ban," referring to the ban he has proposed on Muslims from entering the United States.
In a statement on his web site, he again said he was right: "I said this was going to happen – and it is only going to get worse." On Monday, he told Fox News that he's been "right about many, many things" and told "Today" that "I'm the one who predicted it, and I'm the one who said what you should be doing and I don't want the credit." When he renewed his call for a ban on Muslims entering the country in a speech Monday in Manchester, N.H., he went beyond his prepared remarks, saying "I've been saying that for a long time" about the threat of terrorism getting worse, as well as that "I've gotten no credit for it, but these are minor details," about his push to change a NATO policy.
The "I-told-you-so" refrain didn't go unnoticed. Just one example: Republican strategist Ana Navarro tweeted "Translating Trump: '20 people are dead. 42 people are injured. But of course, 1st, it's all about Me. Me. Me.' Ugh."
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Trump has a big ego. This is the same man who criticized a news anchor for not congratulating him and who talks of winning at every turn. An NBC News report shows that he's tweeted about getting credit or "being far more correct about terrorism than anybody" amid tragedies in the past.
But in the hours following a horrific tragedy -- whatever the cause, whoever the perpetrator -- there is no place for reminding people who was right, for saying "I called it," for talking about who predicted it. Yes, as Trump's supporters on Twitter have pointed out, Trump did say he doesn't "want congrats" or doesn't "want the credit." If that's the case, why bother bringing it up at all? He could just publicly ignore the messages he's getting. The immediate aftermath of a tragedy this senseless should be a time for leaders to focus all of their words and attention on the people who died, on the first responders treating the injured, on the families grieving their immense loss, on the course of action for the future.
In truth, while deflecting attention from oneself is particularly important in a time of crisis and catastrophe, it's also useful for any leader at any time. The concept of an authoritative, ego-driven style of leadership has long been seen as out of step with what most people want in the people who lead them. Leaders are there not to remind us they were right, but to serve and support the people they lead.
This is particularly so when it comes to people who aspire to government leadership. It's called public service for a reason. And when it comes to the highest, most powerful job in public service, the standard for suppressing the need to be right is rightfully, appropriately steep. What matters isn't who predicted it, only what can be done to keep it from happening again.
Trump and Clinton and their very different responses to the Orlando shootings
Corporate America’s embrace of gay rights has reached a stunning tipping point
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Jena McGregor Jena McGregor writes on leadership issues in the headlines – corporate management and governance, workplace trends and the personalities who run Washington and business. Prior to writing for the Washington Post, she was an associate editor for BusinessWeek and Fast Company magazines and began her journalism career as a reporter at Smart Money. Follow
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PowerPost
DNC moves ahead on superdelegate reform, but fight looms on ‘transparency’
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), left, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez during a DNC rally in Mesa, Ariz., on April 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Matt York)
David Weigel
National reporter covering politics
The Democratic National Committee moved one step closer toward reforming its presidential nominating process Tuesday, as the Unity Reform Commission created to deal with the aftermath of the last primary voted to advance new rules that would essentially make superdelegates irrelevant.
The compromise, which emerged after the URC’s suggestions were debated by the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, would prevent the hundreds of unpledged delegates — figures as diverse at former presidents and low-ranking DNC members — from voting on the first ballot of a presidential nomination. While they would be free to make endorsements, their support would not count toward a candidate’s delegate total, except in the event of a brokered convention.
“It’s the most democratic and equitable option,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said on a conference call with URC members, which was open to the public. “No candidate will be able to build an accumulated lead, whether perceived or real, before a vote has been cast.”
That reform, which was first pitched by party activists at the 2016 convention in Philadelphia, diverged from the URC’s original recommendation. Led by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), commission members initially debated proposals that would have bound superdelegates to the results of state primaries, and bound superdelegates who did not represent states to the national vote total.
The idea, initially embraced by Sanders supporters, was rife with logistical problems. After the “no vote till second ballot” compromise emerged, Sanders himself endorsed it, smoothing its path through Rules and the URC.
But other reform priorities — Sanders has delineated four of them — were handled more skeptically. The one that most rankled some URC members was an effort to open up the budget process. The URC’s original recommendation was that all DNC members get to look at the budget during the election, an idea designed to prevent a repeat of 2016, when, Sanders supporters claimed, Clinton allies were getting key contracts, teeing up her nomination:
In addition to ex officio members (DNC CEO and COO), the composition of the Budget and Finance Committee should be by election of qualified members, allowing for adequate representation of the Party’s caucuses and councils and State Party Chairs and regional caucuses. No person under contract with the DNC or any Democratic Party affiliate organization should serve on the Budget and Finance Committee. As called for in the Bylaws, the Budget and Finance Committee should provide the Executive Committee for discussion, in a closed session, its “annual reports … on the goals, purposes of expenditures, and results of expenditures and staff.” The results of the report and the Executive Committee discussion should then be sent to the full DNC membership.
The revised language voted through Tuesday cut out most of the new transparency requirements:
[T]he Budget and Finance Committee shall review the budget of the Democratic National Committee on an on-going basis and make periodic reports, including an annual report to the Executive Committee and the full Democratic National Committee on the goals, purposes of expenditures and results of expenditures. The Budget and Finance Committee should issue its annual report in writing to ensure full transparency and accessibility to the information.
That, said URC member James Zogby, would be a point of contention as the reform package advanced. In five weeks, when the full DNC meets in Chicago, some URC members would suggest that the original financial transparency language be restored.
“We should not wait until a reporter writes a story or Donna Brazile writes a book to find out we have problems,” Zogby said. “If the only reports we get, as DNC members, are how much we raised and how much we owe, that’s not transparency.”
Brazile, who served as interim chair of the DNC during the 2016 campaign, released a 2017 memoir that raised questions about whether Clinton allies got favorable treatment from the party.
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David Weigel David Weigel is a national political correspondent covering Congress and grass-roots political movements. He is the author of "The Show That Never Ends," a history of progressive rock music. Follow
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Attack of the bite mark matchers
This is part three in a four-part series. Read part one here and part two here.
There were red flags that bite mark analysis was flawed even as the first cases in the 1970s secured its use in the courtroom. For example, a 1975 study asked bite mark analysts to match bite marks made in pig skins under optimal laboratory conditions to the teeth that were used to make the marks. The error rate was 24 percent. When the analysts were asked to make their matches from photos of the marks taken 24 hours later — as is often done in criminal cases — they were wrong nine out of 10 times.
But neither proficiency test results nor a lack of scientific research to support the field seemed to bother America’s courts. By the early 1990s, judges were welcoming bite mark testimony into courts across the country. In 1990, the Supreme Court in Arizona — the state where Ray Krone would soon be wrongly convicted because of bite mark evidence — ruled that so long as a bite mark expert has been accredited, the state’s courts no longer needed to submit their opinions to a Frye test. (See part two for more about the Frye standard.) A 1995 article in the Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal found that as of 1992, bite mark matching had been admitted as evidence in 193 criminal cases across the country and had been accepted by appellate courts in more than half the states.
There had been a few critics in the 1970s and 1980s, but the practice wasn’t yet widespread enough for anyone to care. But by the early 1990s, bite mark analysts were testifying often enough to begin to raise some alarms.
Michael Bowers was one of those early critics. Bowers is a practicing dentist in Ventura County, Calif. He also has a law degree and serves as a consultant with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office and the Ventura County Medical Examiner. Bowers joined the American Board of Forensic Odontology in 1989. While he was a member of ABFO, Bowers wrote articles for the organization’s newsletter and served on its board of directors and its credentialing committee.
Michael Bowers
But Bowers grew increasingly blunt in voicing his concerns about bite mark matching. In a 1996 article for the newsletter of the American Society of Forensic Odontologists (ASFO is an educational organization, and while there are many overlapping members between the ABFO and the ASFO, the ASFO doesn’t offer board certification), Bowers didn’t mince his words. He wrote that the “physical matching of bite marks is a non-science which was developed with little testing and no published error rate. It is supported by anecdotalism and a minuscule number of inadequate population studies.”
In another article for the ABFO newsletter the same year, Bowers encouraged the group to rein in its experts. He urged more cautious testimony, at least until the underlying assumptions behind bite mark matching could be verified or disproved with science-based research.
There is no reliable way of saying, other than colloquially, that one or more tooth marks seen in a wound are conclusively unique to just one person in the population. Because of this vacuum, value judgements abound in our discipline. Proffering the testifying expert’s years of experience is a popular means of “proving” uniqueness.” He or she has seen more bitemarks. This misses the scientific point and is misleading to a lay jury that is given the responsibility of filtering good science from bad. The confidence level of expert testimony must be based on data available to BOTH the dentist and the court. This scientific data does not exist. Until this changes, the admissibility of bitemark analysis should be limited to a “possible” determination. The odontologist doesn’t have a basis to expand an opinion beyond that.
. . . Research must progress to raise the current anecdotal level of individuation in contemporary bitemark analysis. A concerted effort to find funding and research facilities has to be done by this organization. It will be the cheapest assurance that our future in court will be positive, rather than controversial. After the research is done, the “possible” might then become “unique.”
That research didn’t happen. In the early 1990s, the FBI set up more than 20 scientific working groups to study and improve the practice of more than two dozen forensic disciplines. Some of those groups uncovered the flaws in forensic analyses that inspired a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report in 2009. Others weren’t as successful. But notably, forensic odontology is the only widely used forensic discipline that wasn’t subjected to the scrutiny of a working group at all.
As Bowers watched the ABFO and its membership duck serious scientific scrutiny, his criticism grew stronger, and his relationship with the organization began to sour. In 1999, he conducted a bite mark “workshop” at an American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) conference. Bite mark analysts were asked to match bite marks with the teeth that made them. More than 60 percent made an incorrect identification. Bowers then published the results of his test, further agitating the bite mark community. To this day, ABFO officials refer to that 1999 test as a “workshop,” not a competency test, and insist that the results were meaningless.
“That criticism might have some validity if ABFO administered its own competency tests,” says Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation for the Innocence Project. “But the organization has shown no interest in testing to see if two or more of its own certified experts can look at the same set of bite marks and independently come to the same conclusion. There’s no reliability in these methods. Therefore, there’s no way to test for accuracy. That means this isn’t science. And if it isn’t science, it doesn’t belong in the courtroom.”
Increasingly frustrated with ABFO’s disinterest in keeping unscientific testimony out of criminal cases, Bowers resigned from the group in 2011. Since then, he has continued his criticisms in journal articles, presentations at conferences, a textbook, court testimony and a blog he runs with fellow dentist and bite mark matching critic David Averill.
But the pro-bite mark matching community began to fight back.
The first shot at Bowers came from Carl Hagstrom and Russell Schneider, two bite mark specialists who testified for prosecutors in the 1986 trial of Bennie Starks, an Illinois man found guilty of raping a 69-year-old woman. The testimony from Hagstrom and Schneider was the primary evidence against Starks. In 2000, DNA testing on semen found in the woman’s underwear excluded Starks as the source of the semen. But citing the bite mark testimony, Lake County, Ill., assistant state’s attorney Michael Mermel insisted that Starks was guilty and prevented the DNA profile created from the semen from being run through CODIS, the federal DNA database. Mermel added that if the semen had been taken from the woman’s vagina instead of her underwear, he’d be advocating for Starks’s release himself.
Mermel’s promise was put to the test in 2006, when a vaginal swab previously thought to have been lost was found and tested. Again the DNA profile excluded Starks. This time, Starks’s conviction was overturned by an appeals court. But despite his earlier statement, Mermel again insisted that Starks was still guilty, and again he cited the bite mark testimony from Hagstrom and Schneider. He kept Starks in prison pending another trial, positing that Starks must have bitten the woman while someone else raped her, or alternately, that the victim must have had consensual sex shortly before the incident. (The victim, who survived the attack, insisted that she hadn’t.)
Mermel was forced to resign in 2011 after an unflattering New York Times Magazine feature cited Starks’s conviction among other cases in which Mermel had concocted implausible theories after DNA testing revealed a likely wrongful conviction. Meremel’s boss was defeated in the 2012 election and shortly after taking office the following January, the new Lake County district attorney finally dropped the charges against Starks.
Bowers cited the Starks case in a presentation at the 2011 AAFS conference in Chicago. Hagstrom and Schneider sued Bowers in 2011, claiming that his presentation caused them “ridicule and a loss of business.” The two dentists argued that the appellate court never explicitly ruled that their bite mark testimony was flawed, only that Starks deserved a new trial. This was true. But given the DNA evidence, it didn’t need to. The men’s lawsuit against Bowers implicitly relied on the discredited Mermel’s still-unlikely theory: Starks must have bitten the woman while someone else raped her. Bowers settled the suit for $1,250 with each dentist, an amount significantly lower than what it would have cost him to litigate.
In October 2013, Bowers published the book “Forensic Testimony: Science, Law and Expert Evidence,” which includes essays by Bowers and other critics of modern forensics. The essays are meticulously researched and generally skeptical of a wide array of forensic disciplines. It comes down especially hard on pattern matching analysis and on bite mark matching in particular. The book was an honorable mention for a PROSE Award in law and legal studies.
Four months after the book was published, Bowers was dropped from the editorial board of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, the AAFS flagship publication. In an e-mail, editor Michael Peat told Bowers he had been “termed out” of his position due to the “need to bring on new members.” Peat did not respond to a request for comment, but other forensic specialists said in interviews for this article that the timing of Bowers’s ouster is suspicious. They point out that another member of the editorial board, Robert Barsley, is a bite mark analyst who has held numerous leadership positions at both the ABFO and the AAFS. The editorial board also includes Ken Melson, chair of the ethics committee that would later recommend Bowers’s ouster from AAFS. The board does include at least one other bite mark skeptic. So it’s at least plausible that dropping Bowers from the board wasn’t related to his criticisms of pattern-matching forensic specialties. Others speculated that with the building tension between Bowers and the ABFO, the journal may have just wanted to avoid controversy.
But then came the ethics complaint. In November 2013, two weeks after Bowers’s book was published and a month after Gerard Richardson became the latest bite mark exoneree, recently elected ABFO President Peter Loomis filed a six-page complaint against Bowers with the AAFS ethics committee. Loomis cited three cases in which he claimed Bowers had violated AAFS ethical regulations, one in 2008 and two in 2010. Loomis wasn’t present at any of the proceedings where the alleged ethical violations occurred, nor were there any complaints filed against Bowers by any of the attorneys or judges in those cases. The complaint also came as Bowers has been preparing to testify as an expert witness in two lawsuits against bite mark analysts brought by people who had been convicted by bite mark testimony and were exonerated after serving long terms in prison.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the ethics complaint was retaliation,” says Fabricant. “Look at the timing. The complaint came a month after the high-profile exoneration of Gerard Richardson. Of all the exonerations in bite mark cases, of all the perversions of justice caused by bite mark analysts over the years, the first ethics complaint an ABFO officer ever files with the AAFS is against one of the most effective critics of bite mark analysis. This was an attempt to silence a critic.”
Michael Saks, an Arizona State University law professor and expert on forensic evidence, agrees. “It’s a beautiful example of the adversarial process in action. When you first read it, the complaint sounds as if it could have some merit. Then you read Bowers’ response. You get the context, and you realize that there’s no there there. The complaint is either badly mistaken, or it’s a transparent attempt to purge someone who has been a problem for them.”
“Bowers has been a thorn in the ABFO’s side for forever,” says Michael Risinger, a Seton Hall University law professor who specializes in law, science and expert testimony. “This certainly looks like an attempt to purge a critic. ”
To understand the significance of the complaint, it’s important to understand that the AAFS is the largest forensics organization in the country. It is the main professional body of the forensics community. While they’re technically private organizations, groups such as the AAFS and the ABFO have enormous influence over who does and doesn’t get to testify in court. “An AAFS finding that Bowers committed ethical violations would render him useless as an expert witness,” Saks says. Even if Bowers could persuade judges to continue certifying him, an opposing attorney could use the finding to discredit him to the jury.
At the time Loomis filed his complaint, the chairman of the AAFS ethics committee was Haskell Pitluck, a retired Illinois state court judge. As it turns out, Pitluck is also the legal counsel for the ABFO and a nonvoting member of the ABFO’s ethics committee. One year before Loomis’s complaint, the ABFO established the “Haskell Pitluck Award,” which the organization presents annually to someone who has “served the ABFO community in an exemplary fashion.” The first ABFO Haskell Pitluck Award was given in February 2012. The first recipient: Haskell Pitluck. And the person who would determine whether there was any merit to the complaint filed by the ABFO president against the ABFO’s biggest critic? Haskell Pitluck.
“It was such an obvious conflict of interest, all I could do was laugh,” Bowers says. He and his attorney requested that Pitluck recuse himself and that the AAFS bring in a neutral arbiter. Pitluck refused. He then found probable cause for Loomis’s complaint. The AAFS would proceed with an ethics investigation of Bowers.
Loomis’s complaint alleges 13 ethical violations committed by Bowers over 13 years. But a close look at the accusations reveals them to be rather thin. For example, Loomis alleges that in the 2008 case California v. Frimpong, Bowers first claimed he could not exclude the defendant as the source of a bite mark, then, after the defense paid him, claimed he could exclude the defendant. Loomis is alleging that Bowers is a “hired gun” willing to change his mind in exchange for pay.
In his response, Bowers explains that his initial opinion was based on no more than a photo of a bite mark that he felt lacked enough detail to draw any conclusions at all. He wasn’t sent the dentition evidence taken from the defendant until the night before the trial. Because he didn’t have sufficient time to properly analyze the new evidence, he “could not exclude” the defendant as the source of the bite mark. Consequently, he didn’t testify. After the trial, Bowers had time to do a more thorough analysis with more evidence and came to the conclusion that the defendant could be excluded.
To say a defendant “can’t be excluded” is another way of saying that the available evidence doesn’t say much either way. It doesn’t indicate guilt, but it doesn’t exonerate either. Bowers explains in his response that he didn’t “change” his opinion; he went from “no opinion” to “having an opinion,” but only after he was presented with more evidence and given time to analyze it properly. This would seem to be exactly what we’d want from a conscientious expert witness.
Loomis also alleged an ethics violation because a judge once found Bowers’s testimony to be “not credible.” But this is hardly evidence of an ethical violation. In fact, because of the very subjectivity of bite mark evidence, these cases will often feature two expert witnesses offering two diametrically opposed opinions. During a bench trial or a hearing on admissibility of bite mark evidence, the judge will naturally have to rule for one side or the other. Judicial opinions aren’t scientific pronouncements, and in fact, as previously noted in this series, they’re often ignorant of or oblivious to the prevailing science. On many occasions, judges have vouched for the credibility of bite mark experts in upholding the convictions of defendants who were later proved innocent by DNA testing.
But even this is beside the point. Even if the judge had been correct about Bowers’s credibility, this sort of ruling isn’t proof — and doesn’t claim to be proof — that the expert who testified for the losing side was unethical. It really only means that he failed to persuade the judge. And as Fabricant points out, it also magnifies the selectivity of Loomis’s complaint: “You have two-dozen cases where a judge or a prosecutor found a bite mark analyst to be ‘credible,’ after which the suspect was completely exonerated of the crime. Some of these people spent decades in prison. Where are the ethics complaints against them? Michael Bowers helped exonerate many of those people. But he’s the one hit with a complaint, because a judge in one case didn’t find him credible? It’s just brazen.”
The most serious allegation in Loomis’s complaint is that Bowers altered or fabricated evidence in the Frimpong case. Loomis’s evidence for this charge is Bowers’s testimony during a hearing for the 2010 case Alabama v. Ramirez-Vitae. In that case, Bowers told the judge that in the Frimpong case he had reversed the orientation of the suspect’s teeth. Bowers’s testimony to the judge about why he did this is somewhat ambiguous, and Loomis’s complaint alleges that Bowers reversed the orientation in order to deceive. But to believe that, you’d have to believe that Bowers, a reputable expert witness with no prior allegations of ethical misconduct, not only deceptively and intentionally distorted evidence, but also openly boasted about doing so, directly to a judge, in a case two years later.
Bowers says he was open about what he was doing. He thought the state’s experts had the orientation wrong themselves — that they had mistaken the upper teeth for the lower teeth. And in fact, during post-conviction, one of the state’s own experts actually agreed with Bowers. The new expert, Greg Golden, disagreed with Bowers that when properly aligned, the marks excluded the defendant as a suspect. But he agreed with Bowers that the state’s expert at trial (a different analyst) had misaligned the teeth and the bite marks.
In other words, the prosecution offered up two ABFO-certified bite mark analysts as experts, one at trial and one during post-conviction. The analyst at trial said the bite marks implicated the defendant. During post-conviction, the second analyst analyzed the same bite marks, only with the upper and lower teeth of the defendant switched. But he, too, said they implicated the defendant.
Bowers says he brought the case up at the Alabama hearing because it illustrated the absurdity of the entire field of bite mark matching. “I told the judge in the Alabama case that this was an example of how ambiguous bite marks can be. How you can have multiple theories with multiple conflicting assumptions and opinions, but all of them within the ABFO guidelines,” Bowers says.
Obviously, an individual’s lower teeth are going to leave different marks than his or her upper teeth. One might think that the president of the organization that sets the standards for bite mark analysis would be concerned about the fact that two of its members implicated the same defendant despite the fact that their analyses were done with opposing orientations of the defendant’s teeth. Yet it’s Bowers that Loomis has targeted, for calling attention to the problem.
I asked Loomis about his complaint against Bowers in a phone interview last year. He said that AAFS bylaws prohibited him from discussing any ethics proceedings, so he could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any complaint. He also expressed concern about the fact that I had obtained a copy of his complaint and cautioned me about publishing it. Later in the conversation he added that if, in theory, he had filed a complaint against Bowers, anyone who read it would be thoroughly convinced of Bowers’s guilt.
“Dr. Bowers is not credible,” Loomis said. “I can’t confirm the existence of any complaint, but if there was one, and I could talk about it, I would change the minds of Bowers’ supporters.”
Loomis is right about the AAFS bylaws requiring confidentiality. But those bylaws are intended to protect the accused. Bowers stands as the accused and has asked for complete transparency. In his initial response to Loomis’s complaint, Bowers stated: “I waive all rights to confidentiality and hereby request a public hearing to adjudicate this matter . . . Moreover, I request the proceeding be videotaped, transcribed, and made available to the public.”
Pitluck eventually found probable cause for the complaint against Bowers to move forward. A hearing was scheduled for July 8, 2014, in a conference room at a Chicago hotel. By the time of the hearing, Pitluck’s term on the AAFS ethics committee had ended. He was replaced by Melson, a former federal prosecutor for 24 years who had most recently served as acting director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Melson was reassigned from his position in 2011 in the wake of the “Fast and Furious” scandal.
Despite the controversy surrounding his previous position, two forensics experts and advocates for forensics reform interviewed for this article say they considered Melson to be reputable and fair and initially considered him a good choice to chair the ethics committee. (Neither wished to be named.) In fact, Melson was also a president of AAFS in 2003-2004. In his “President’s Message” in the organization’s newsletter, he repeatedly emphasized the need for forensics reform, better certification and taking ethical obligations seriously.
When I first interviewed Risinger about the complaint last summer, he seemed confident that the AAFS would dismiss it. He said the organization had to treat the complaint seriously because there was a national spotlight on forensics at the moment. To disregard an ethics complaint — even one that appears to be retaliation against a whistleblower — would send the wrong message.
“In my opinion, the ethics complaint filed against Mr. Bowers is thin on its face, and without merit when viewed in the light of the responsive filing,” he said. “I know the AAFS is committed to being a reliable agency of self-regulation in forensic science, and, as in other contexts, that means not only reliably convicting the guilty, but also reliably acquitting the innocent. Under these circumstances, I believe their process will come to the right conclusion in this case.”
But Melson would surprise Risinger and other forensic watchdogs with an astonishing proceeding that fell far short of any reasonable conception of fairness or due process.
It actually began before the hearing, when according to Bowers, Melson turned down all of Bowers’s discovery requests. When the hearing was just a couple of months away, Bowers’s attorney Gabriel Fuentes wrote to Melson to complain that he he and his client still hadn’t been informed of what format the hearing would take, what evidence would be used against Bowers or who would be sitting in judgment of him. In fact, Fuentes wrote, Melson had turned over “absolutely no documents or information whatsoever.” From the time he first received notice of the complaint, Bowers had asked for an explanation of how each allegation against him violated AAFS ethical guidelines. Again, Melson refused. (Melson declined to be interviewed for this article, citing AAFS bylaws about confidentiality in ethics investigations.)
Fuentes was most concerned about Melson’s role in the hearing. In his letter, he complained that Melson had yet to make it clear whether he’d be acting as a prosecutor, as a representative of AAFS or as a judge in his position as chair of the ethics panel. The answer would turn out to be all three.
On the morning of the hearing, Bowers learned that Melson had actually met with Loomis the previous night. Not only that, but the purpose of the meeting was so that Melson could help Loomis prepare. Later, during the hearing, it was revealed that Loomis got the idea for the complaint after a conversation at a dinner party hosted by Golden — the same analyst who agreed with Bowers about the proper orientation of the bite marks in Frimpong. Golden also preceded Loomis as ABFO president and now sits on the group’s executive committee. In addition, Loomis revealed that it was Golden who brought up the Frimpong case, the heart of Loomis’s complaint. (Golden was the opposing expert in that case.) None of this had previously been disclosed to Bowers.
Paula Brumit, also a member of the ABFO executive committee, was also one of the ethics committee members who was sitting in judgment of Bowers last July. Brumit had also met with Melson and Loomis the night before the hearing — also to help Loomis prepare his testimony. None of this was disclosed to Bowers or his attorney until the morning of the hearing.
“So two of the people on this supposedly unbiased committee, including the chairman, had met with my accuser the night before to help him prepare his case,” Bowers says. He adds, wryly, “And they’re aghast that anyone would dare suggest they’re on a witch hunt.”
The proceedings only got more absurd from there. Melson ran the hearing, acting as both judge and prosecutor. There are surreal passages in the transcript in which Bowers’s attorney objects to a question Melson asks as Melson is playing the role of prosecutor. At that point, Melson takes on the role of the “neutral fact-finder,” or judge, and overrules the objection. It also includes passages in which Melson the prosecutor objects to questions by Bowers’s attorney — then slips into the role of Melson the judge to sustain his own objections.
“It was a Star Chamber,” says Fabricant, who attended the hearing. “I’ve never seen anything like it. At every turn, they failed to afford Bowers even minimal due process. It was outrageous.”
On Sept. 6, Melson sent Fuentes a letter informing him that the committee had ruled against Bowers on one count. It had determined that Bowers had “committed a fraud on the court” in the Frimpong case. The ethics committee recommended that Bowers be expelled from AAFS. Melson told Fuentes that he would forward a copy of the committee’s report to the AAFS president and board of directors.
Under AAFS bylaws, Bowers is permitted to make his own appeal to the board. The problem is that Melson has refused to let Bowers see a copy of his committee’s report. In other words, Bowers is allowed to make an appeal, but he doesn’t get to see what exactly it is that he’s appealing.
Moreover, Melson didn’t specify on which of the allegations the committee ruled against Bowers. He still hasn’t. So Bowers must not only appeal without seeing the committee’s reasons for ruling against him, but he also must do so without knowing for certain exactly what the ethics committee thinks he did wrong. (Through the process of elimination, Bowers and his attorney are fairly certain that it’s the complaint alleging Bowers altered evidence in the Frimpong case.)
Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in criminal procedure and innocence cases, reviewed the transcripts of the hearing and found them astounding. He submitted a declaration on Bowers’s behalf. In his declaration, Garrett wrote that the entire adjudicative process “failed to satisfy minimal, but fundamental, due process protections.”
The AAFS convenes for its annual conference this month in Orlando. During the conference, the AAFS board will consider the charge against Bowers. If the board votes to uphold it and expel him, Bowers can appeal and ask the entire AAFS membership to vote on the matter.
(Note: After the first of installment of this series ran on Feb. 13, the AAFS board voted on Monday to dismiss the charge against Bowers, against the recommendation of the ethics committee.)
After the ethics committee issued its recommendation, I spoke again with Risinger, the forensic evidence expert and law professor who initially seemed confident that Melson and his committee would do the right thing. He, too, was taken aback by what transpired during the hearing.
“Assuming that what I’ve heard about the hearing is correct, I was wrong to have as much faith as I did in the ethics process,” he said.
Tussles with the Bushes
By 2009, just as the ABFO was battling Bowers’s increasingly vocal criticisms and the fallout from the NAS report, the organization ran into another problem. In 2007 Mary and Peter Bush, a married couple who head up a team of researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo, began a project to do what no one had done in the three decades — conduct tests to see whether there’s any scientific validity to the bite mark evidence presented in courts across the United States.
The Bushes sought to test the two main underlying premises of bite mark matching — that human dentition is unique and that human skin can record and preserve bite marks in a way that allows for analysts to reliably match the marks to a suspect’s teeth. The Bush team was the first to apply sophisticated statistical modeling to both questions. It was also the first to perform such tests using dental molds with human cadavers. Previous tests had used animal skins.
When they first set out on the project, the Bushes received preliminary support from some people in the bite mark analyst community. “Franklin Wright was the ABFO president at the time,” says Mary Bush. “He visited our lab, and then put up a message praising our work on the ABFO website.” They also received a small grant from the ASFO, the discipline’s non-accrediting advocacy and research organization.
“There was a lot enthusiasm at the outset,” says Fabricant. “I think some analysts were excited about the possibility of getting some scientific validation for their field.”
But when the Bushes began to come back with results that called the entire discipline into question, that support quickly dried up.
The Bushes’ research found no scientific basis for the premise that human dentition is unique. They also found no support for the premise that human skin is capable of recording and preserving bite marks in a useful way. The evidence all pointed to what critics such as Bowers had always suspected: Bite mark matching is entirely subjective. The Bushes’ first article appeared in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences. The couple have since published a dozen more, all in peer-reviewed journals.
Outside of ABFO and their supporters, the Bushes’ research has been lauded. “I think there’s a chance that because of the Bushes’ research, five years from now we aren’t going to be talking about bite mark evidence anymore,” says Risinger. “It’s that good. Their data is solid. Their methodology is solid. And it’s conclusive.”
Other legal scholars and experts on law and scientific evidence interviewed for this article shared Risinger’s praise for the Bushes’ research but were less optimistic about its implications, in part because the criminal justice system so far hasn’t recognized the significance of their work.
But from a scientific standpoint, the Bushes’ research was a direct and severe blow to the credibility of bite mark analysis. At least initially, it threatened to send the entire field the way of voice print matching and bullet lead analysis, both of which have now been discredited. And so when defense attorneys began asking the couple to testify in court, the bite mark analysts fought back with a nasty campaign to undermine the Bushes’ credibility. In a letter to the editor of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, seven bite mark specialists joined up to attack the Bushes in unusually harsh terms for a professional journal. When that letter was rejected for publication, five of the same analysts wrote another. That, too, was rejected. A toned-down but still cutting third letter was finally published.
In the unpublished letter dated November 2012, the authors — all bite mark analysts who hold or have held positions within ABFO — declared it “outrageous that any of these authors would go into courts of law and give sworn testimony citing this research as the basis for conclusions or opinions related to actual bite mark casework, especially considering that no independent research has validated or confirmed their methods or findings.”
Of course, critics would say this was a bit of rhetorical jujitsu — that the last clause could describe exactly what bite mark analysts have been doing for 35 years. For emphasis they added, “This violates important principles of both science and justice.” In the other letter, the authors referred to the Bushes’ testimony in an Ohio case, which was based upon their research, as “influenced by bias” and “reprehensible and inexcusable.”
The primary criticism of the Bushes’ research is that they used vice clamps to make direct bites into cadavers that were stationary through the entire process. This is quite a different scenario than the way a bite would be administered during an attack. During an assault, the victim would probably be pulling away, causing the teeth to drag across the skin. For the Bush tests, the clamp they used to make the bites moved only up and down. A human jaw also moves side to side. A biter might also twist his head or grind his teeth. A live body will also fight the bite at the source to prevent infection, causing bruising, clotting and various other defenses that would alter the appearance of the bite.
“We acknowledge that our lab tests are different from how bites are made in the real world,” says Mary Bush. “But to the extent that our tests differed, they should have made for better preserved samples.”
In other words, the tests that the Bushes conducted made for cleaner, clearer bites that could be easily analyzed. If they were in error, they were in error to the benefit of the claims of bite mark analysts. And they still found no evidence to support the field’s two basic principles.
“That’s exactly right,” says Risinger. “If there was any validity to bite mark analysis at all, these tests would have found it. They gave the field the benefit of the doubt. The evidence just wasn’t there. Their data is very, very strong.”
To argue that the Bushes’ experiments should be disregarded because they weren’t able to replicate real-world bites is also an implicit acknowledgment that real-world bites aren’t replicable in a lab, and therefore aren’t testable. You won’t find many people volunteering to allow someone else to violently bite them for the purposes of lab research. Even if you could, a volunteer won’t react the same way to a bite that an unwitting recipient might.
The Bushes’ research not only failed to find any scientific support for bite mark matching, but it also exposed the fact that for four decades the bite mark community neglected to conduct or pursue any testing of its own. It put the ABFO and its members on the defensive. The bite mark analysts responded by intensifying their attacks on the couple and making the attacks more personal.
At the February 2014 AAFS conference in Seattle, the ABFO hosted a dinner for its members. The keynote speaker was Melissa Mourges, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, one of the most outspoken defenders of bite mark matching in law enforcement.
Mourges already had a high profile. The combative, media-savvy prosecutor was part of the prosecution team featured in the HBO documentary “Sex Crimes Unit,” which followed the similarly named section of the Manhattan DA’s office, the oldest of its kind in the country. Mourges herself founded a cold-case team within that unit. At the 2012 AAFS conference she spoke on a panel called “How to Write Bestselling Novels and Screenplays in Your Spare Time: Tips From the Pros.” At this year’s conference, she’ll be on a panel that’s titled “Bitemarks From the Emergency Room to the Courtroom: The Importance of the Expert in Forensic Odontology.” She’ll be co-presenting with Franklin Wright, the former ABFO president who initially supported the Bushes’ research.
Mourges was also the lead prosecutor in State v. Dean, a New York City murder case in which the defense challenged the validity of the state’s bite mark testimony. In 2013, Manhattan state Supreme Court Judge Maxwell Wiley held a hearing on the scientific validity of bite mark evidence. Mary Bush testified about the couple’s research for the defense. It was the first (and so far the only) such hearing since the NAS report was released, and both sides of the bite mark debate watched with anticipation. In September 2014, Wiley ruled for the prosecution, once again allowing bite mark evidence to be used at trial. (I’ll have more on the Dean case in part four of the series.) Mourges’s talk at the ABFO dinner was basically a victory lap.
There’s no transcript of Mourges’s speech, but those in attendance say it was basically a no-holds-barred attack on Mary Bush. Cynthia Brzozowski has been practicing dentistry in Long Island for 28 years and sits on the ABFO Board of Directors. She practices the widely accepted form of forensic dentistry that uses dental records to identify human remains, but she doesn’t do bite mark matching, and she won’t testify in bite mark cases. Brzozowski was at the dinner in Seattle and says she still can’t believe what she heard from Mourges.
“Her tone was demeaning,” Brzozowski says. “It would be one thing if she had just come out and presented the facts of the case, but this was personal vitriol against the Bushes because of their research.”
According to Brzozowski, Mourges even went after Mary Bush’s physical appearance. “At one point, she put up an unflattering photo of Mary Bush on the overhead. I don’t know where she got it, or if it had been altered. Mary Bush is not an unattractive person. But it was unnecessary. You could hear gasps in the audience. It was clear that she had chosen the least flattering image she could find. Then she said, ‘And she looks better here than she does in person.’ It was mean. I had to turn my back. I was mortified.”
Other ABFO members — including two other members of the board of directors — also complained, to both the ABFO and the AAFS. The complainants described Mourges’s attack on Bush as “malicious,” “bullying” and “degrading.” According to accounts of those in attendance, other members were also upset by Mourges’s remarks but didn’t file formal complaints for fear of professional retaliation.
A few weeks later, Loomis sent an e-mail to the ABFO Board of Directors to address the complaints. Loomis defended Mourges and her presentation. He described the dinner as a “convivial affair” where members can socialize, have a libation and “be entertained” by the invited speaker. He argued that “anyone who understands litigation” should not have been unsettled by the talk and described the presentation as “sarcastic, serious, and even light-hearted.” He stood by the decision of his predecessor, Greg Golden, to invite Mourges, calling it “a good decision,” adding, “I apologize to those who were offended. However, I do not apologize for the message.”
“‘Bullying’ is exactly what it is,” says Peter Bush. “We’re scientists. We’re used to collegial disagreement. But we had no idea our research would inspire this kind of anger.”
Loomis had good reason to know exactly what he’d be getting in Mourges. At the previous AAFS conference in Washington, D.C., Mourges heckled the Bushes during a panel in which they tried to explain their research. According to those in attendance, she brought a printout of Mary Bush’s testimony from the Dean case and essentially tried to continue her cross-examination in a public forum.
Even in her brief in the Dean case, Mourges went well beyond standard legal arguments to launch personal attacks at the critics of bite mark matching. At one point in the brief, she implies that Bowers is cut from the same cloth as the notorious bite mark charlatan Michael West. She notes that both have resigned from the ABFO and that she finds it “a relief” that neither plans to testify in court again. (Note: Bowers says he doesn’t know where Mourges got this — he’s still testifying presently and plans to do so in the future.) She also references Bowers’s testimony in the Frimpong case, falsely stating that he “admitted publicly and under oath that he manipulated evidence,” a good indication that the attacks on Bowers and the Bushes have been well coordinated.
Mourges’s attempt to conflate the most notorious fraud in the annals of bite mark analysis with a man who has spent the past two decades trying to expose the field’s shortcomings is certainly audacious. Multiple advocates for forensics reform said it’s also completely unmoored from reality.
“It’s patently absurd,” says the Innocence Project’s Fabricant. “Michael Bowers is well-regarded and well-respected. His work was cited in the NAS report. To my knowledge, the only people who have ever questioned his ethics are the people he’s been trying to expose.”
(The Manhattan DA’s office did not respond to my requests to interview Mourges for this series.)
This is the way it has been for critics of bite mark matching. Despite the trail of innocents put behind bars — some of whom were nearly executed — it’s the critics who have been put on the defensive. They’re heckled and belittled at forensics conferences, are subjected to lawsuits and ethics complaints, are attacked in court briefs and can expect their professional reputations to be called into question.
Ian Pretty testified for Bowers at the AAFS hearing. Pretty is a professor of public health dentistry at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. He’s somewhat critical of bite mark matching but less vocal about his objections than someone like Bowers. He also chairs the AAFS odontology section. At the hearing, Pretty alluded to the treatment of Bowers and the Bushes and said he feared that the attacks on them would chill critics and stifle an open debate.
“One thing that I have noticed and I’ve become increasingly concerned about is the tone in which . . . certain [individuals’] research has been received,” Pretty said. “I’ve found that the discourse around our scientific sessions has become more aggressive than I would like to have seen.” He added that “there’s been somewhat of an attack on the ability for people to speak freely. ” He also worried that the hearing would create a new method of attacking critics through the ethics process, “that we will have situations where people are concerned about what they say, be it in court, be it in depositions, be it in an Academy meeting, [they’ll] fear that they will be brought in front of this Ethics Committee for expressing an opinion.”
“We were naive going into it all,” says Mary Bush. “We thought we were providing research that would help prevent innocent people from getting convicted. We expected disagreement, but we expected polite, academic disagreement. We never expected the response to be so vitriolic.”
That vitriol has been persistent. In June 2013, Fabricant moderated a panel on forensics at a New York City conference hosted by the American Bar Association. Mary and Peter Bush were on the panel. During the question-and-answer period, the Bushes were once again subjected to some pointed criticism from a member of the audience. He derided the Bushes’ research and defended bite mark matching.
That audience member was Ira Titunik. The following month, DNA testing exonerated Gerard Richardson, the man Titunik’s bite mark testimony had put in prison for 20 years.
Addendum: After this post was published, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance sent the following statement:
Melissa Mourges is a veteran prosecutor and a nationally recognized leader in her field. As Chief of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Forensic Science/Cold Case Unit, she has solved dozens of cold case homicides, including two recently attributed to “Dating Game” serial killer Rodney Alcala. In addition to being a Fellow at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, ADA Mourges has also served as co-chief of the DNA Cold Case Project, which uses DNA technology to investigate and prosecute unsolved sexual assaults. As part of that work, she pioneered the use of John Doe indictments to stop the clock on statutes of limitation and bring decades-old sexual assaults to trial. Her work and reputation are impeccable, and her record speaks for itself.
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Before her arrest as an alleged Russian agent, Maria Butina’s proud defense of her homeland drew notice at American University
Moriah Balingit ,
Moriah Balingit
Reporter covering national education issues
Shane Harris and
Shane Harris
Intelligence and national security reporter
On a campus full of ambitious students aiming to land influential U.S. government and policy jobs, Maria Butina cut an unusual profile.
It wasn’t just the outspoken conservative politics of the auburn-haired Russian woman that drew the attention of other graduate students at American University. There was also her almost zealous embrace of her homeland.
Butina’s cellphone case was emblazoned with a famous photograph of Russian President Vladimir Putin riding shirtless on a horse. She would buy friends rounds of vodka at Russia House, the Dupont Circle restaurant popular with the Russian diplomatic set, sometimes challenging male friends to down horseradish-infused shots. She bragged to classmates that she had worked for the Russian government.
Butina’s arrest last week on charges that she was acting as an unregistered Russian agent and allegations that she has ties to Russian intelligence rattled those who knew her at American University, where she spent two years in the global security program at the School of International Service.
Wouldn’t a Russian agent have been more covert, many at the school now wonder, and have worked to keep her Kremlin advocacy under wraps?
[‘She was like a novelty’: How alleged Russian agent Maria Butina gained access to elite conservative circles]
“It’s sort of disbelief,” said one person who knew Butina at AU, describing the campus reaction. “Can you imagine you just moved to D.C. for school from, like, rural Pennsylvania and you find out a couple months later you’re sitting next to a Russian spy?”
Maria Butina poses in a photo she posted on a Russian social media page in May, about a week after receiving her master’s degree from American University.
To others, however, her indictment on federal charges validated their unsettling suspicions.
Butina’s embrace of Russia was so public that people affiliated with AU worried about possible links to the Kremlin and alerted school officials during her tenure there, according to three people familiar with the conversations. University officials did not appear alarmed and did not appear to take any immediate action, they said.
Mark Story, a spokesman for the university, said he could not comment on Butina’s case but said generally that “education, service and integrity are at the heart of who we are at American University.”
“When concerns about student conduct, safety or security are brought to the university’s attention, we evaluate those concerns and investigate or involve outside partners as appropriate,” Story said.
This portrait of Butina’s stint as a full-time student in Washington is drawn from the accounts of more than a dozen people who have encountered her during the past 18 months. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the ongoing federal investigation into her activities.
During her time on the manicured campus in a tony Northwest Washington neighborhood, Butina embraced the opportunities available to graduate students at the university. She had a student job with a workspace near the office of former Obama administration national security adviser Susan E. Rice, a visiting research fellow. She co-authored a paper on cybersecurity with two professors at the business school.
Butina in a photo posted on her Facebook page in January 2017. That month, she attended Donald Trump’s inauguration.
She studied cybersecurity policy at the School of International Service, which prides itself on drawing students from around the world for a program designed to educate future global leaders. One person affiliated with the program noted that the school is known for attracting well-connected foreigners, many of whom work for their home country’s embassy while enrolled.
Roen Agdeppa, a rising sophomore who represents the school in the AU student senate, said students are worried the school will now be linked to the ripped-from-a-spy-novel allegations about Butina.
“It taints our prestige as a university,” Agdeppa said.
Butina, now 29, pursued several advanced degrees in Russia before arriving in the United States, including master’s degrees in political science and education and a doctorate,, according to biographies she posted online.
During that time, she became a well-known personality in Russia as an advocate for loosening the country’s restrictive gun laws.
“She is a charismatic leader,” said Dmitry Gubanov, a website designer in Moscow and friend of Butina.
Starting in 2014, she began traveling to the United States to attend National Rifle Association meetings and other gatherings of conservative leaders, often acting as an aide to Russian central banker Alexander Torshin.
Along the way, Butina managed to have brief encounters with Republican presidential candidates, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Donald Trump — part of a scheme to cultivate access to Republican leaders and promote the Kremlin’s views, prosecutors now allege.
Butina with Russian central banker Alexander Torshin at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington in February 2017.
Federal investigators found evidence that Butina and an American colleague discussed the risks of her traveling on a tourist visa and ways she could remain in the United States, according to court papers. The description of the American matches that of Republican political operative Paul Erickson, with whom Butina’s attorney has said she was romantically involved.
After allegedly consulting Erickson, Butina sought a student visa, and in August 2016 she arrived in Washington to begin her studies at American University.
Prosecutors claimed in court papers last week that her attendance at AU was Butina’s cover while she was continuing to work to promote Russian government interests.
But Robert N. Driscoll, Butina’s attorney, said that she was not a Russian agent and that her interest in the AU program was genuine.
He said she was eager to be closer to Erickson and was winding down her gun rights activities in Russia. She also believed that an American graduate degree would help her make a career change into business, perhaps with a focus on cryptocurrency, he said.
“What was left for her in Russia?” Driscoll said. “America was looking pretty good.”
The AU program also gave Butina the opportunity to be near powerful figures — and those aspiring to be.
Robert Driscoll, an attorney for Butina, speaks outside federal court in Washington on July 18. (Yuri Gripas/Bloomberg News)
One wall of the light-filled, soaring atrium of the School of International Service building on Nebraska Avenue NW is lined with large photos of the luminaries who have spoken on the campus of 13,000 students. They include Rice, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Jimmy Carter. Many who attend the program aspire to work in the Foreign Service or do consulting work for the federal government.
Butina enrolled in a master’s program in international affairs in the global governance, politics and security program. Required coursework included classes on intelligence analysis and organized crime, including one titled “Cyber Warfare, Terrorism, Espionage, and Crime.”
Gubanov, her friend from Russia, said she found the program difficult at first. “The language was different. The surroundings were all new,” he said, but he added that she came to enjoy it.
She moved into an apartment in McLean Gardens, a collection of brick condominium buildings not far from campus, and began to build a social life.
In November 2016, just three months after arriving, she hosted a “Stars and Tsars”-themed costume party at Cafe Deluxe, a restaurant in Cleveland Park, to celebrate her birthday
Erickson was there, dressed as the Russian mystic Rasputin, while Butina went as Empress Alexandra, the wife of the last emperor of Russia, as the Daily Beast first reported in February 2017.
One person who attended the party said there was a giant glass bottle shaped like a Kalashnikov rifle. Guests poured shots of vodka from the barrel of the glass gun.
A few months later, she took part in the celebrations of Trump’s inauguration, snapping a selfie in front of the Capitol during the swearing-in ceremony and then attending a ball with Erickson.
[In the crowd at Trump’s inauguration, members of Russia’s elite anticipated a thaw between Moscow and Washington]
With fellow students, Butina was coy about how she was paying for school. She told the Senate Intelligence Committee in April that she had received some income in 2016 from a $5,000-a-month consulting deal with the Outdoor Channel television network to provide advice on a planned program on hunting in Russia, according to a person familiar with her testimony.
The network’s chief executive, Jim Liberatore, accompanied an NRA delegation that was hosted by Butina and her gun rights group in Moscow in December 2015, photos of the trip show.
A spokesman for the Outdoor Channel did not directly address the payment but said Liberatore had visited Russia to develop interest in the channel’s conservation programming and streaming app.
Butina also got two student jobs, first as an assistant in the School for International Service’s undergraduate honors program and then as a research assistant in the Kogod School of Business, according to an AU spokesman and her LinkedIn profile.
At the international service school, she had a desk in a suite near an office for Rice, who joined AU as a professor after President Barack Obama left office, according to people familiar with the location.
Rice, who worked in the office only briefly, did not know Butina, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In February 2017, Butina and a group of other AU students from former Soviet-bloc countries traveled to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where they met with American students who were studying the collapse of the Soviet Union in a course taught by Susan Eisenhower, a granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In February 2017, Butina met Susan Eisenhower, a granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was teaching a course at Gettysburg College about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Eisenhower recalled that Butina stood out among those in the group, most of whom were new undergraduates — she was better dressed, more practiced, more polished.
In a photo from the outing, Butina stands in an overcoat and high heels next to classmates in pants and sneakers.
“She was clearly older than the rest of the students and more confident,” said Eisenhower, an author and expert on U.S.-Russia relations who later realized she had once run into Butina at an event in Washington. “She seemed like a networker.”
Butina had a photo taken with Eisenhower and posted it to her own Facebook page.
In classes and at parties, Butina was a proud defender of Russia. At times she wore a Russian flag on her lapel, and she defended the country’s invasion and occupation of Crimea, said a person who studied with her.
In the fall of 2017, she jumped into a class discussion that touched on Russian cyberattacks, including reports of interference in the U.S. presidential campaign. A classmate said she brushed off the attacks, saying that other countries — including the United States — employed the same tactics.
“She was trying to justify it,” the classmate said.
Her pro-Russian views drew notice.
One of her former professors told the Daily Beast last year that Butina had claimed several times in class to be part of communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Butina complained about the Daily Beast report to university officials, telling them that she did not recall making such claims and that it was inappropriate for a professor to disclose what was said in classroom discussions, Driscoll said.
She defended herself further when The Washington Post reported in April 2017 on her ties to the NRA and Torshin, declining to be interviewed but sending long emails in perfect English.
“I have not been involved in American politics the past few years — other than to form friendships with a few American allies on gun rights,” she wrote in one email. “The politics of Russia have been challenging enough.”
[Guns and religion: How American conservatives grew closer to Putin’s Russia]
She told The Post that her job as Torshin’s assistant was informal and unpaid and that she had not been asked by anyone in the Russian government to build ties with Americans.
Butina — who had posed a question to Trump at a 2015 town hall and briefly met his eldest son the following year — also said she had “never met or spoken to any member of either President Trump’s campaign, his presidential transition team or his administration.”
At school, classmates were chattering about her relationship with Erickson, who would accompany her to campus social events where he was decades older than others in the crowd.
One person recalled that Erickson joined Butina at an AU event to guide international students through the work visa process, peppering the immigration lawyer leading the seminar with questions on her behalf.
This courtroom sketch depicts Maria Butina, a 29-year-old gun-rights activist suspected of being a covert Russian agent, listening to Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson as he speaks to Judge Deborah Robinson, left, during a hearing in federal court in Washington, Wednesday, July 18, 2018. Prosecutors say Butina was likely in contact with Kremlin operatives while living in the United States. And prosecutors also are accusing her of using sex and deception to forge influential connections. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)
Prosecutors allege that Erickson would routinely help complete her academic assignments by editing papers and answering exam questions.
Driscoll disputed that, saying that Erickson helped her with grammar and English idioms but that otherwise Butina completed her own schoolwork, maintaining a 4.0 grade-point average.
“That really pissed her off,” Driscoll said. “She worked really hard. She spent a lot of weekends in the library. She went to all her classes. She’s proud of her accomplishments at the school.”
Erickson did not respond to requests for comment.
Classmates agreed that Butina put in long hours at the library working on assignments. She told fellow students that she hoped to get a job in cybersecurity but was worried her nationality could pose barriers.
As the school year ended this spring, she prepared to leave Washington and move in with Erickson at his home in South Dakota, according to Driscoll.
In May, Butina walked across the stage at the AU graduation in a blue gown, smiling slightly, her red hair tucked beneath her mortarboard.
Almost exactly two months later, she was arrested.
Alice Crites, Ellen Nakashima and Debbie Truong in Washington and Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow contributed to this report.
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Democrats, in California, confront deep divisions over how to handle increasing calls for President Trump’s impeachment
By Sean Sullivan
Reporter covering national politics
SAN FRANCISCO — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was just moments into her speech Saturday when a man shouted out from the back of a convention hall stuffed with thousands of delegates to the state Democratic Party convention.
“Impeach Donald Trump!” he screamed, uttering a battle cry Pelosi has rebuffed, despite growing demands from her party’s activist wing.
“President Trump will be held accountable for his actions,” she said. The I-word never left her lips.
Less than an hour later, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) stepped to the same podium to deliver a very different message. “We need to begin impeachment proceedings!” the presidential candidate bellowed. The crowd roared.
The party’s deep divisions, refreshed when last week’s remarks by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III raised new questions about whether Trump had committed impeachable violations, played out time and again during the first full day of the weekend convention as they have across the nation.
Democrats’ dueling messages highlighted the dilemma confronting the party’s congressional leaders and presidential hopefuls: how to balance the demands of a fervently anti-Trump activist base without alienating the more moderate voters who helped hand them the House in 2018 and could deliver the presidency in 2020.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D- Mass.) speaks to thousands of delegates at the convention in San Francisco. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Saturday was the first of two days that in total will feature speeches by 14 Democratic presidential candidates in the self-styled home of the Trump resistance. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) electrified the crowd with a fiery address that appeared to take a swipe at former vice president Joe Biden, who did not attend. Three of the candidates are scheduled to speak Sunday, rounding out the largest gathering of 2020 presidential contenders to date.
Among activists, fury with Trump reached the boiling point after Mueller reiterated Wednesday that he could not clear the president of obstructing justice in his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump’s defiant attitude toward congressional oversight has stoked further anger.
“That’s adding salt to the wounds,” said Maria Elena Durazo, a Democratic National Committee vice chair and California state senator.
It has also opened a fissure between Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s White House hopefuls, who were once largely united in opposition to impeachment. After Mueller’s comments, the list of presidential candidates calling for impeachment grew, even as House Democratic leaders stood firm.
Pelosi and her top lieutenants are seeking to persuade Democrats that the best action is to stay the course they have charted — to continue to investigate Trump and rely on the courts to intervene when they are stonewalled by the administration.
Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) speaks at a labor gathering before the convention in San Francisco. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
“Our investigations are breaking through the Trump administration’s coverup to get the truth. We want the truth for the American people,” Pelosi said Saturday. She noted two recent court victories and Mueller’s public statement.
“Why is it that the president won’t defend our democracy?” she asked. But rather than appease activists, her words prompted some in the crowd to chant “Impeach!”
“I tell you, this is like coming home for me,” Pelosi joked, in reference to San Francisco’s cutthroat politics.
Warren, who was among the first of the major presidential candidates to come out in favor of impeachment proceedings, did not mention the word in her address.
She did, however, offer a line used by several of the speakers, including Pelosi, when she called for a party that “believes no one is above the law, not even the president.”
On Friday, Warren unveiled a new plan to ensure that a sitting president can be indicted on a charge of criminal conduct. A Justice Department finding that a president cannot be indicted played a role in his refusal to accuse Trump of criminal acts, Mueller has said.
The senator from Massachusetts, who has been climbing in the polls, also attracted attention with a sharp critique of unnamed figures in her party she deemed unwilling to think big and take dramatic steps to improve the country.
“Some say that if we just calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses. But our country is in a crisis. The time for small ideas is over,” Warren said. The crowd booed at her allusion to caution and offered Warren the biggest applause of the day.
The comments appeared to be a dig at Biden, who has vowed to work with Republicans he contends are a different breed than the president. He has predicted that Republicans will have an “epiphany” on bipartisanship after Trump leaves office.
Biden, the leading candidate in the polls, was far away on Saturday, scheduled to be in Ohio to speak at a dinner hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, which promotes LGBTQ rights.
Like Warren, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke also spoke Saturday but did not bring up the topic of impeachment. In a gesture of deference to the heavily Hispanic state Democratic Party, he started his address by speaking in Spanish.
“We have a president who seeks to further divide,” said O’Rourke, holding up California and the dozens of lawsuits it has filed against the administration as a strong example of how to stand up to Trump.
At a forum near the convention, sponsored by the liberal group MoveOn, presidential candidate and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said that the country was facing a crisis and that the president would keep flouting the law unless he were stopped. The tug-of-war over potential impeachment is perhaps best exemplified by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was scheduled to speak Sunday. While he represents the most liberal facets of the party on policy, the presidential candidate has long warned that pursuing impeachment could overshadow the issues Democrats are hoping to underscore as the 2020 election approaches.
“The House of Representatives should move toward impeachment proceedings,” said Booker, who first embraced that stance on Wednesday after Mueller’s statement.
But following Mueller’s statement, Sanders said at a campaign stop in Nevada that Congress “should begin impeachment inquiries” to “determine whether or not Trump has committed impeachable offenses.”
At the same time, he did not abandon his concerns, saying it would be challenging for Democrats to walk down that road and also champion the issues they hope will help propel them to victory in 2020.
Democratic candidates for the House found a formula for success in 2018 with a focus on what they called “kitchen table” issues such as health care and economic matters rather than campaigning on more polarizing topics.
Some party strategists see a road map for similar success in 2020 and fear that possible impeachment proceedings and an appeal based on animosity toward Trump will not only overshadow their policy platforms but could turn away suburban swing voters who sided with them in the midterms.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who has both taken on Trump and sought to work with him since his 2018 election, sought to navigate the divisions after his morning address.
“We’re in the middle of a process,” Newsom told reporters, defending Pelosi’s cautious approach to potential impeachment. “This is the not the end of a process.”
Asked if Trump should be impeached, Newsom gave a long-winded answer that referred to Pelosi’s comments and to what he just said. He would not say yes or no.
A short time later back in the convention hall, however, billionaire environmentalist and party donor Tom Steyer demanded that Democratic leaders embrace calls for impeachment — but his remarks were drowned out by music meant to signal the end of his speech.
“This is one of those things where you don’t get to duck,” Steyer, a longtime advocate of impeachment, said in an interview.
David Weigel contributed to this report.
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Top Trump Organization executive asked Putin aide for help on business deal
The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig and Tom Hamburger explain the Trump Organization's efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. (Jenny Starrs,Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
Carol D. Leonnig and
Carol D. Leonnig
National investigative reporter focused on the White House and government accountability
A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.
The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.
“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled.
“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.
Cohen’s email marks the most direct outreach documented by a top Trump aide to a similarly senior member of Putin’s government.
Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests View Graphic
Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests
Cohen told congressional investigators in a statement Monday that he did not recall receiving a response from Peskov or having further contact with Russian government officials about the project. The email, addressed to Peskov, appeared to have been sent to a general Kremlin press account.
The note adds to the list of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials that have been a focus of multiple congressional inquiries as well as an investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III exploring Russian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin intervened to help elect Trump.
Cohen’s email to Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests.
Cohen told congressional investigators that the deal was envisioned as a licensing project, in which Trump would have been paid for the use of his name by a Moscow-based developer called I.C. Expert Investment Co.
Cohen said that he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015. He said the Trump company began to solicit designs from architects and discuss financing.
However, he said that the project was abandoned “for business reasons” when government permission was not secured and that the matter was “not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Cohen’s request to Peskov came as Trump was distinguishing himself on the campaign trail with his warm rhetoric about Putin.
Cohen said in his statement to Congress that he wrote the email at the recommendation of Felix Sater, a Russian American businessman who was serving as a broker on the deal.
In the statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Cohen said Sater suggested the outreach because a massive Trump development in Moscow would require Russian government approval.
White House special counsel Ty Cobb said Trump knew nothing about Cohen’s effort to enlist Peskov’s help.
“The mere fact that there was no apparent response suggests this is a non-collusion story,” he said.
Cohen has been one of Trump’s closest aides since 2007, serving as a business emissary, lawyer and sometimes spokesman for Trump. Friends said Trump has treated Cohen like a member of his family.
Cohen, who was executive vice president of the Trump Organization, did not have a formal role in Trump’s campaign. But he spoke with reporters as a defender of Trump and appeared on television as a surrogate for the candidate. He left the company shortly before Trump was inaugurated as president, and, since January, has served as one of Trump’s personal lawyers.
In a statement to The Post, Cohen described the potential Moscow project as “simply one of many development opportunities that the Trump Organization considered and ultimately rejected.”
“It should come as no surprise that, over four decades, the Trump Organization has received and reviewed countless real estate development opportunities, both domestic and international,” he added.
Cohen said he abandoned the project because he lost confidence that the Moscow developer would be able to obtain land, financing and government approvals. “It was a building proposal that did not succeed, and nothing more,” he said.
The Post reported Sunday that Cohen had been in negotiations with Sater and foreign investors to build a Trump Tower in the Russian capital from September 2015 through the end of January 2016, at the same time Trump was campaigning for president. Trump entered the race in June 2015, and by January 2016 he was leading in the polls for the Republican nomination.
Cohen told congressional investigators that Sater “constantly” pushed him to travel to Moscow as part of the negotiations, but that he declined to do so.
He said that Sater, who has attempted to broker Trump deals for more than a decade, was “prone to ‘salesmanship,’ ” and that, as a result, he did not routinely apprise others in the company about their interactions and never considered asking Trump to go to Moscow, as Sater had requested.
Sater said in a statement Monday that he brought the idea of the largest tower in Russia to Cohen, his longtime friend. Despite Sater’s enthusiasm for the plan, he said, the Trump Organization abandoned it.
“Michael Cohen was the only member of the Trump Organization who I communicated with on this project,” Sater said.
Over email, Sater bragged to Cohen that he could get Putin to assist with the project and that it would help Trump’s presidential campaign, according to correspondence submitted to congressional investigators.
“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in a November 2015 email. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
The Post on Sunday first reported on the existence of the emails, copies of which were published Monday by the New York Times.
In another email published by the Times, and confirmed by The Post, Sater described accompanying Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump on a 2006 trip to Moscow. “I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,” Sater wrote.
Ivanka Trump said she had taken a “brief tour” of the Kremlin but did not recall sitting in Putin’s chair.
She added, “I was not part of Michael Cohen’s discussions surrounding a potential Trump project that he was evaluating in 2015 in Russia with the exception of recommending architects to consider as part of the routine design process for any potential deal.”
Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Sater, a New York developer whose office was located in Trump Tower and who helped broker licensed Trump deals. Sater had served time in jail in the 1990s after a bar fight and pleaded guilty in 1998 to his role in Mafia-linked stock fraud. Federal officials have said he then cooperated on various national security and criminal investigations.
In writing to Peskov, Cohen was reaching out to a Kremlin official considered one of the main gatekeepers to Putin.
Peskov was appointed the head of the presidential press service in 2000, during Putin’s first term, and has served as a spokesman for Putin in various roles since, staying with Putin during his four years as prime minister. Because he regularly travels with and speaks to Putin, he is a target for lobbyists and petitioners trying to attract the Russian president’s attention.
“Aside from being the Kremlin’s mouthpiece, he’s definitely someone who is viewed as a senior lieutenant, an important oligarch in Putin’s power system,” said Steven L. Hall, who retired from the CIA in 2015 after 30 years of managing the agency’s Russia operations. “If you’re looking for someone who is close to Putin, Dmitry Peskov is as good as any of them.”
Asked for comment about the Trump Tower negotiations, Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, emphasized Monday that Cohen did not pursue the deal beyond its initial stages. “After the signing of a non-binding letter of intent . . . it was not significantly advanced (i.e., there was no site, no financing, and no development),” she wrote in an email to The Post. “To be clear, the Trump Organization has never had any real estate holdings or interests in Russia.”
Still, Trump repeatedly tried for three decades to build in Russia. In 2013, he signed a preliminary agreement to build a tower in partnership with Aras Agalarov, a billionaire who had financed the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant when it was held in Moscow in 2013. Agalarov told The Post last year that his company’s deal with Trump was on hold because of the presidential campaign.
A representative of Agalarov’s company attended a June 2016 meeting with top Trump aides and a Russian lawyer organized by Donald Trump Jr., after he was told that the lawyer would provide damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton provided by the Russian government.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov, said Agalarov and his company played no role in the 2015-16 Trump Tower proposal.
Andrew Roth in Moscow contributed to this report.
House votes to kill impeachment resolution against Trump, avoiding a direct vote on whether to oust the president
Analysis A new poll shows why Trump attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar — and why it could get even uglier
House votes to hold Attorney General Barr, Commerce Secretary Ross in contempt for failing to comply with subpoena on 2020 Census
How well do you know the Democratic candidates?
Opinion Surprise, surprise. This GOP lawmaker gets the booby prize for moral imbecility.
Opinion Rahm Emanuel: No, the Democratic Party hasn’t lurched to the left
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Wizards will get breath of fresh Air
By - The Washington Times - Thursday, January 20, 2000
NBA legend Michael Jordan embarked on the stiffest challenge yet of his remarkable basketball career yesterday, joining the beleaguered Washington Wizards as part-owner and president of basketball operations.
The deal, the hottest rumor around Washington this week, will give the 36-year-old Jordan a sizable equity stake in the Wizards, Capitals and MCI Center and full administrative control over the basketball team. Jordan becomes one of a handful of black owners in the NBA, joining Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers, and Edward and Bettiann Gardner of the Chicago Bulls.
"The expectations for me and by me for this team are definitely high," Jordan said. "There are a lot of fundamental changes that need to happen in this organization.
"I look forward to turning this thing around and having my fingerprints all over this," he said.
Terms were not officially disclosed, but Lincoln Holdings, the Ted Leonsis-led group that owns 100 percent of the Capitals and 44 percent of the Wizards and MCI Center, is selling a large number of its shares to Jordan. Estimates by several sources close to the deal pegged Jordan's financial involvement at more than $40 million in return for 20 percent of Lincoln Holdings. That means he will own about 9 percent of the team.
America Online Inc. executive Leonsis remains Lincoln Holding's chairman and lead shareholder. Wizards owner Abe Pollin still owns 56 percent of Washington Sports & Entertainment LP (WSELP), the holding company for the Wizards, MCI Center, the Washington Mystics, management of the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Va., and the local Ticketmaster franchise.
Pollin was not involved in any equity deal with Jordan. Rather, two separate deals with Jordan were reached: one for Jordan to become part of Lincoln Holdings and a second to join Wizards management.
Wes Unseld, the Wizards' vice president for basketball operations, will remain in his post and report to Jordan. Susan O'Malley, WSELP president, also will continue in her role. Both Jordan and Pollin insisted yesterday the working relationship with Unseld will be productive.
Jordan inherits control of a Wizards team in desperate need of help both on and off the court. The Wizards, 12-27 and next to last in the Eastern Conference entering last night's game against Dallas, are at least $18 million over the league salary cap and likely will have no first-round draft pick this June.
Meanwhile, the Wizards have failed to fill the 20,674-seat MCI Center even once this season and the average attendance of 14,006 is 16 percent below last year.
"We asked ourselves what we could do to spruce and spice things up and make the Wizards a winner," Pollin said. "We looked to the best of the best, and that's Michael.
"Jordan means class in every sense of the word, and he's going to electrify this team and this city."
Actually, Jordan's arrival is far more complicated and ends nearly six months of discussion. The idea first hatched late last summer at Columbia, Md., Country Club, where Leonsis and Lincoln Holdings co-owner Jonathan Ledecky played golf with Washington-based Jordan representatives David Falk and Curtis Polk.
Discussions that started at the links soon trickled to Jordan, and Leonsis and Ledecky were invited to Jordan's restaurant in Chicago. After the pair quizzed Jordan about his commitment to working in Washington and were satisfied with the response, Jordan met with Pollin about a role with the Wizards.
Jordan went to Pollin's Bethesda, Md., home for dinner early last month, and the private meeting went a long way toward rebuilding a relationship fractured by heated discussions during last year's NBA lockout. Both men yesterday called last winter's contentious fights over a new players union contract a dead issue.
Jordan faced repeated questions yesterday about joining a franchise with seemingly intractable problems and no playoff wins since 1988. In fact, Jordan in the past year has entertained several other offers to become an NBA owner, including in Denver, Orlando, Fla., and most seriously in Charlotte, N.C. Several basketball insiders, including Hall of Fame player Bill Walton, yesterday openly criticized Jordan's involvement.
"A lot of it had to do with the relationships I formed with Ted and Abe, certainly [Falk's] presence here," Jordan said. "These kind of opportunities come along only so often.
"I'm not really going back to basketball [in the previous sense]. It's a different level, a different challenge," he said.
Jordan's negotiations in Charlotte fell apart because Hornets owner George Shinn would not relinquish full organizational control to Jordan.
"There's no doubt Michael could have had more power and a lot more equity somewhere else," Ledecky said. "But we're just more than a basketball team or a hockey team. When you factor in all the other holdings here and what we're now doing on the Internet, we're well on our way to becoming a dominant, diversified regional sports company.
"Michael is a very, very big part of that. For all of us to give up part of our equity and agree to a dilution of the shares, you have to be absolutely certain the new pie is going to be worth a lot more. That's definitely the case because Michael Jordan is the best brand in the business and Ted Leonsis is the best brand manager. It's a very potent combination."
Jordan, who won six titles as a member of the Chicago Bulls, will maintain his primary residence in Illinois and commute to Washington to work with the Wizards. No expectations have been placed on Jordan's hourly schedule, and he will maintain his extensive battery of other business holdings and his active role as a corporate pitchman for MCI WorldCom, Nike and numerous other companies.
"I'll be here as much as it takes to turn this thing around," Jordan said.
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Miamisburg To Lose Dozens Of Jobs Under Evenflo Parent Company Restructuring
By Jess Mador • May 11, 2018
Originally published on May 15, 2018 5:09 pm
Baby-product company Evenflo has announced dozens of jobs will be leaving Miamisburg. The changes were announced earlier in the week as part of Evenflo’s parent company Goodbaby North America’s corporate restructuring.
Under the plan, the company’s headquarters will relocate to Boston and eliminate roughly 60 jobs in Miamisburg within the next year.
Officials say the move will begin in the summer of 2018 and is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2019.
Miamisburg development manager Chris Fine says another 50 or 60 jobs are expected to remain in the city as part of a new operations center.
“It’s always concerning when one of your largest employers leaves or significantly downsizes," he says. "Fortunately, we have a pretty diverse economic base. We are able to withstand these bumps. We are somewhat worried about it but I think we’ll weather it just fine.”
Three years ago, the city secured a package of more than half a million dollars in incentives, including a forgivable loan of around $400,000 and another $175,000 in grant funds from Montgomery County's EDGE program to upgrade Evenflo’s facilities.
The funds were contingent on the company meeting agreed-upon hiring, payroll and other benchmarks. Fine says it’s too soon to know whether the company’s pending relocation would impact the status of that agreement.
“We understand the impact this move will have on all of our employees,” said Goodbaby North America CEO Jon Chamberlain in an emailed statement. "Each one will be given the opportunity to relocate or continue their jobs until the transition to Boston and Charlotte is complete.”
The company's restructuring also includes plans to create a new so-called Car Seat Center of Excellence in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Evenflo officials say its manufacturing facility in Piqua will continue operations.
Copyright 2018 WYSO. To see more, visit WYSO.
Kentucky Tourism Industry Generates More Than $15 Billion In 2017
By Liz Tretter • May 8, 2018
James St. John / Flickr Creative Commons
Kentucky’s tourism industry generated more than $15 billion dollars in 2017. Department of Tourism Commissioner Kristen Branscum said in a release Monday the industry saw a 3.8-percent increase over the previous year and supported more than 195,000 jobs.
How To Get A Job That's In Demand, No College Degree Required
By Dan Hurley • May 7, 2018
OhioMeansJobs.com
May 7 through May 11 has been designated In-Demand Jobs Week in Ohio, a celebration of jobs, industries and skills that are most in-demand in the state. Career opportunities continue to increase in healthcare, transportation, engineering, information technology and several other industries. And many of the jobs available don't require a four-year college degree.
New Toolkit Helps Employers Establish Economic Stability Of Workers
By Dan Hurley • May 28, 2018
Note: This show originally aired on May 1, 2018
The Women’s Fund of The Greater Cincinnati Foundation works to ensure the economic self-sufficiency of women in our region and ignites a shared desire to improve it.
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49th Annual ACM Awards Held Recently
By: Malaya Koger
On Sunday, April 6, the Academy of Country Music held its 49th annual awards show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
This year Entertainer of the Year had Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, George Strait, and Taylor Swift all competing for the chance to take home the award. Luke Bryan had an awesome year with five number 1’s and ten top five appearances. Miranda Lambert also had an explosive year with her hit song “Mama’s Broken Heart”. It was George Strait, however, who ultimately walked away with the award.
The Female Vocalist of the Year award went to Miranda Lambert, who was up against heavy hitters like Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood. Jason Aldean took home the Male Vocalist of the Year trophy for the second year in a row.
Other awards of the night went to Florida Georgia Line for Vocal Duo of the Year, The Band Perry for Vocal Group of the Year, and Justin Moore for New Artist of the Year.
Album of the Year went to Kacey Musgraves for Same Trailer Different Park, Single of the Year went to “I Drive Your Truck”, which was written by Jessi Alexander, Connie Harrington and Jimmy Yeary and performed by Lee Brice. Miranda Lambert and Keith Urban received the Vocal Event of the Year for “We Were Us”, while the Music Video of the Year went to “Highway Don’t Care” by Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift, and Keith Urban.
In addition to the awards, the highlight of the night came when the Academy gave presented country music legend, Merle Haggard with the Crystal Milestone Award. Before receiving the award, Haggard was honored by performances of his songs from George Strait, who sang “The Fugitive”, Merle’s first No.1 single in 1966, and Miranda Lambert, who sang his 1966 hit “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down”.
The show, which aired this year on CBS, will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year at the AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas.
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Wolf Blass Signs As Official Wine Partner For ICC Cricket World Cup
Wolf Blass has been named the official wine partner of the Cricket World Cup under a three-year deal with the International Cricket Council (ICC)
The global contract names Wolf Blass as the Official Wine Partner of the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup and the 2020 ICC World T20 events, to be held in England and Wales, and Australia respectively.
“Wolf Blass is pleased to be the Official Wine Sponsor of the ICC Cricket World Cup in a partnership that extends globally,” Treasury Wine Estates Deputy Chief Marketing Officer Angus Lilley said.
“Wolf Blass has a fantastic history aligning to sport, including the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup, and we’re looking forward to aligning again with one of the biggest events on the sporting calendar.”
Wolf Blass will release a range of limited edition labels to the UK market in July this year. The release of will be linked to a consumer promotion offering fans the chance to win tickets to the World Cup Final.
“As one of the world’s most celebrated sports, we’re delighted to partner with Wolf Blass, one of the world’s most celebrated and awarded wineries,” ICC General Manager Commercial Campbell Jamieson said.
“The global reach of the ICC’s events means we can provide Wolf Blass with an outstanding platform to showcase the breadth of their portfolio.”
The 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup runs from May 30 to July 14. The full schedule is available here.
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MONTREAL (Reuters) - An Air Canada flight was diverted on Thursday to Hawaii after a sudden case of severe turbulence left 35 customers with minor injuries, the carrier said in a statement.
Flight AC33, carrying 269 passengers and 15 crew, was flying from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia, when the Boeing 777 aircraft "encountered unforecasted and sudden turbulence approximately two hours past Hawaii," the carrier said. The plane was diverted to Honolulu and landed at 12:45 pm EST.
"As a precaution, medical personnel are on standby to examine passengers in Honolulu," the carrier said.
The carrier's initial reports were of 25 people with minor injuries.
A case of severe turbulence in June on a flight from Kosovo to France was captured on video, showing a flight attendant hitting the ceiling and another praying.
In another case, 29 people were injured after a Turkish Airlines flight encountered severe turbulence on its approach to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in March.
(Reporting by Allison Lampert; Editing by Alistair Bell and James Dalgleish)
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Andrea Kocsis, LCSW, Executive Director
100 Abendroth Ave.
Port Chester, NY 10573
Located in downtown Port Chester, New York and drawing members from the entire region, HOPE House provides a place where those recovering from mental illness can find the support and resources needed to allow them to more fully pursue their goals and dreams.
The clubhouse program of HOPE House focuses on the abilities and talents of its members. Together, members and staff operate the club which is open five days a week, nine to five, and evenings and weekends for special events. HOPE House is modeled after Fountain House in New York City whose pioneering concept and philosophy has since been replicated around the world. HOPE House is also a member of the International Center for Clubhouse Development (ICCD), an organization dedicated to expanding the Clubhouse movement worldwide.
For more information contactHolly Simmons at hollysimmons23@gmail.com.
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We’re on the frontline of support for adolescents and young people, helping them access lifesaving HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights services.
© Frontline AIDS
Home > From the Frontline > Supporting adolescents and young people
Adolescents and young people face some of the highest risks when it comes to HIV. Peer pressure, gender discrimination and sexuality all have an impact on the possibility of exposure to the virus. So much so that AIDS is the leading cause of death among 10-19 year olds in sub-Saharan Africa and the second most common cause of death globally.
We want to change that.
We start by asking adolescents and young people what they need most and work with them to create programmes and services that support them. For example, we provide:
Information on HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
Linked up HIV and SRHR services, which includes HIV testing, care and support, psychosocial support and SRHR services.
Mentorship and accompaniment to support young people to be on the frontline of service delivery within health facilities, in the community and to advocate for their SRHR.
Our programmes offer comprehensive services that help protect young people’s general sexual health and wellbeing, such as family planning, sexually transmitted infection (STI) diagnosis, cervical cancer screening and post-violence care.
READY exists so that young people lead on designing and implementing health programmes.
We’re proud of the support we offer for and with adolescents and young people. In 2016 our linking organisations and partners:
Helped connect more than 775,000 young people to HIV prevention services.
Helped connect more than 193,000 young people living with HIV to comprehensive HIV services.
Supported organisations and representatives of adolescents, women and girls and marginalised groups to advocate for their SRHR in 26 countries.
HOW OUR WORK HELPS NTSIKI
This is Ntsiki. She is a young woman living with HIV in Eswatini. Like so many her age, Ntsiki felt angry and alone when she first discovered she was living with HIV.
But with the help of a Frontline AIDS partner, she was able to get the information, counselling and support she needed, learning how to take her treatment correctly and consistently. Today, Ntsiki provides that same support to other young people living with HIV.
“My role is to empower and encourage [others] that even if you’re HIV-positive you can still fulfil that dream,” says Ntsiki. “My dream is to become a full-time counsellor.”
Watch Ntsiki’s story
Will you help us end aids?
I would like to make a donation of:
Please enter the amount you would like to donate, ie: '10.00'
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Canucks Sign GM Benning to a Multi-Year Extension
admin February 15, 2018 Headlines, NHL No Comments on Canucks Sign GM Benning to a Multi-Year Extension
The Vancouver Canucks have signed general manager Jim Benning to a multi-year extension. Benning is the 11th GM in Canucks history and has held the position since May of 2014.
“I’m grateful to the Aquilini family and to Trevor Linden for the commitment they’ve made to me and for their confidence in our long-term vision for the Vancouver Canucks,” Benning said in a team release.
“I’m excited about the direction of our team and the depth and talent we continue to build. I believe we are on the right track and I am pleased to continue the work we started four years ago when we set out to build a championship team.”
Travis Green, who is in his first season as Vancouver’s coach, said he and Benning are on the same page when it comes to player development.
“Jim and I have the same vision, the same ideas on how we need to get places and where we need to go,” said Green. “I think [his signing] is a great move by the organization.”
Benning, an Edmonton native, spent seven seasons as the Boston Bruins assistant GM, earning a Stanley Cup ring in 2011. He also held a 12-year tenure with the Buffalo Sabres as Director of Amateur Scouting and played nine seasons in the NHL as a defenceman for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks.
Zdeno Chara’s Status Unclear for Game 5 After Taking A Puck to Face
Coyotes Speak with Leafs About Marleau
Edmonton Oilers to Hire Dave Tippett as Head Coach
Edmonton Oilers Hire Ken Holland as Their General Manager
NHL PLayoffs – The Year of the Underdogs
Controversial Call May Have Cost The Knights Game 7 of the Playoffs
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Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
About CCJ
Faculty and Student News
Student Opportunities and Department Resrources
Lambda Alpha Epsilon
Alpha Phi Sigma
Specialized Courses
Students Attend Professional Conferences
Institute of Criminology
Criminal Justice Information Center
Terrorism Studies
Criminology and Criminal Justice Major
Cybercriminology and Security Studies Major
Intelligence Analysis Major
Criminology and Criminal Justice Minors
Award Winning Oline Programs
Master of Science Comprehensive Exam
Graduate Program Admission Requirements
Assistantships/Scholarships
Graduate Course Description
Graduate Policies
Award Winning Master's Program
Group Scheduling Sessions
Advising 101
Advising FAQ
Graduate Plan of Study
Graduate Advisor Contact
Guest Speaker Videos
Vigo County Children's Homes
Heather Ryan--Former NCIS Agent
Police Panel
Human Trafficking Takes Center Stage
Careers in Criminal Justice
Career Readiness Video
Policy Papers, Conference papers, and Professional Presentations
Home » Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice » About CCJ
Student Opportunities and Departmental Resources
Internships: The Department participates in internships for students to explore the field of criminal justice. The internship allows students to gain "real-work" experiences which can help them secure jobs in the field following graduation. Many students are offered jobs by their placement agencies during or immediately following the completion of their internship. Notable internships have included placements with the Organization of American States, the U.S.Marshals Service, the U.S. Customs Service, the federal Department of State, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Federal Law EnforcementTraining Center, and the Indiana State Police.
Crime Lab: The crime lab provides opportunities for students to see how evidence obtained in the field is identified and/or analyzed. The crime lab allows "hands on" experience with forensic laboratory techniques at 24 work stations.
Students Attend Professional Conferences: Students routinely accompany faculty members to professional conferences where the students have an opportunity to visit and tour local criminal justice agencies, to meet students from other criminology and criminal justice departments, and to hear criminology and criminal justice faculty members from Indiana State University and other universities present papers. Our graduate students themselves routinely present scholarly papers at national conferences.
Specialized Courses: In addition to its regular curriculum, the department offers a variety of symposia to address special needs and interests in the field. Such courses have included "Satanic Cults and Hate Groups," "Serial and Mass Murderers," "Law of the Family: Husbands, Wives, Parents and Children," "Women in the Criminal Justice System," "Minorities in the Criminal Justice System," "Enforcing Environmental Laws," "Comparative Criminal Law," "Legal Aspects of Private Security," "Drug and Alcohol Use and Crime," "Advanced Criminalistics" and "Terrorism."
Journals: The Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice is proud to host or support three prestigious journals. Dr. Mark Hamm serves as associate editor for Crime Media Culture: An International Journal (http://cmc.sagepub.com) which focuses on crime, media, and culture. Dr. David Polizzi is the editor of The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology (www.jtpcrim.org) which focuses on connecting theory to practice.
Conferences: The Department hosts periodic seminars and conferences on a variety of topical issues. We are also pleased to host the annual International Crime, Media & Popular Culture Studies Conference: A Cross Disciplinary Exploration each year. Authors, researchers, and students from around the world meet to discuss the effect of media and culture on crime and society.
Faculty: Many of our faculty members have worked in the criminal justice field and are able to weave both theory and practice into their classroom presentations. Several of our faculty members have been elected to offices in state, regional, and national professional associations. Some faculty have research grants which allow students to work on field research projects. One of our faculty members has gained a national reputation as a writer and has won a number of awards for his publications. Our faculty have served as consultants to the National Institute of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Navy, Army, and Air Force, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Private Detectives' Association ofSpain, the Indiana State Police, the Alabama Highway Patrol, the Indiana Department of Correction, the Indiana Department of Transportation, the National Sheriffs' Association, the Indiana Sheriffs' Association, the Indiana Association of Chiefs of Police, the Indiana State Coroners Training Board, the IndianaCampus Law Enforcement Administrators Association, the Indiana Association of Community Corrections Act Counties, the Hudson Institute, and numerous criminal justice agencies of local government.
International Studies and Students: The Department participates with the University of Zagreb in a joint study program. American students have opportunities to study in Croatia, and Croatian students study on the campus of ISU. The faculty of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice has opportunities to teach in the criminology program at the University of Zagreb. The Department has always had a significant enrollment of international students from countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Malaysia, China, Japan, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mexico,Venezuela, France, Italy, Germany and Canada. These international students are often practitioners who have taken professional leaves of absence to pursue degrees in the United States. Their presence in the classroom enriches the experience of American students by exposing them to other cultures, other criminal justice systems, and other ideas about law and justice. Our international alumni include an assistant superintendent of police in Sabah Province, Malaysia; the assistant to the governor of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the associate warden of a major prison in Lagos, Nigeria; a professor at the Venezuelan national military academy; and many senior police officers in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Malaysia.
Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice
A Message from the Department Chair
Study Abroad and other Global Engagement Opportunities
Faculty and Students in the News
The Institute of Criminology
Criminology & Criminal Justice Major
Criminology & Criminal Justice Minors
Academy to Degree Plan
Award Winning Online Programs
Undergraduate Advising Contact
Graduate Advisor Contact Information
Apply to Indiana State University
Boys and Girls Club
Ryves Hall
Heather Ryan - former NCIS agent
CCJ Videos
Holmstedt Hall 210
ISU-Criminology@indstate.edu
Google Map: Holmstedt Hall (HH)
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Featured Exhibit
The Mantle Site Display
Wendat Village Public School opened in 2012 near the site of an early 16th century ancestral Wendat (Huron) village, called the Mantle Site, located within the West Duffins Creek system in the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ontario. The school was named in honour of the rich history of the site. Since its opening, the school has engaged its students with the history of the Huron-Wendat and the surviving archaeological record of the area.
Created by ASI Lab Managers Alexis Dunlop and Caitlin Coleman, this temporary display features objects exclusively from the Mantle Site. It outlines the incredible size and scale of the site (occupied by over 1800 people) as well as role of children in ancestral Huron-Wendat society. The goal of the exhibit was to have the students reflect on how children lived in their community in the past. To achieve this, the display includes information and artifacts relating to village games and activities, education and the various tasks of boys and girls.
ASI has made regular visits to the school to engage with the staff and students in helping to develop their understanding of the unique cultural history in their area.
For more information about the site, visit our Mantle Site Featured Project.
Display cases featuring pots made by students with traditional Wendat decorations.
Display cases featuring Mantle site artifacts.
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C.W. Parker Amusement Co. collection
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: 115.8000
PrintGenerating
Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong
Collection Organization
The C.W. Parker Amusement Co. collection contains materials from 1892 through 1956, with the bulk of the papers dated between 1900 and 1928. This collection contains business cards, envelopes, order forms, letterhead, blank leases, a blank agreement of payment, original and reproduced letters, tickets, articles, logos, ride descriptions, a flier, a postcard, and other ephemera. Additional scope and content information can be found in the Contents List section of this finding aid.
The C.W. Parker Amusement Co. collection has been arranged into four series. The collection is housed in one archival document box and one oversized folder.
Majority of material found within 1900 - 1928
Conditions Governing Use
This collection is open for research use by staff of The Strong and by users of its library and archives. Though intellectual property rights (including, but not limited to any copyright, trademark, and associated rights therein) rights have not been transferred, The Strong has permission to make copies in all media for museum, educational, and research purposes.
0.1 Linear Feet (1 box, 1 oversized folder)
This collection contains correspondence and various ephemera related to the C.W. Parker Amusement Company, a manufacturer of amusement devices from Leavenworth, Kansas. The bulk of the materials are dated between 1900 and 1928.
The C.W. Parker Amusement Company was a Kansas-based amusement rides manufacturer from 1892 until 1955.
Charles W. Parker entered the amusements business in 1882, establishing a lucrative shooting gallery next door to a saloon in Abilene, Kansas. After Parker purchased a second-hand Armitage-Herschell carousel in 1892, he officially founded the C.W. Parker Amusement Company in Abilene. The company expanded rapidly, and by 1900 manufactured a wide variety of amusement rides and attractions; these included Parker’s signature “Carry-Us-All” (a name he created as a derivative of “carousel”), shooting galleries, military band organs, cylinder pianos, carved wagon show fronts, mechanical and electrical shows, and the railroad cars which transported the company’s products. Parker believed that carnivals should be clean, moral, and instructive as well as entertaining, and his carnival companies bore the distinctive “Parker’s Seal of Cleanliness” stamp. By 1908, the C.W. Parker factories claimed to be “the largest establishment of its kind in the United States, devoted exclusively to the manufacture of amusement devices.” In 1911, the company moved to a bigger factory in Leavenworth, Kansas, where it remained in operation until 1955.
Over the course of its existence, the C.W. Parker Amusement Company produced approximately 1,000 carousels. As of 2017, fewer than 20 of these carousels are still in operation.
Series I: Administrative papers, c. 1896-1920 and n.d.
Series II: Correspondence, 1927-1928 and n.d.
Series III: Descriptions of rides, n.d.
Series IV: Miscellaneous/ephemera, 1912-1956 and n.d.
The C.W. Parker Amusement Co. collection was part of the original estate of Margaret Woodbury Strong. The papers were registered by The Strong under Object ID 115.8000 and were contained in one folder.
The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play holds multiple trade catalogs and newsletters (The Bedouin: Published for the Traveling Show Man) produced by C.W. Parker.
Processed by
Nicole Pease, March 2017
Abilene (Kan.) -- History
Amusement ride equipment industry
C.W. Parker (Firm)
C.W. Parker Amusement Company
Carry-Us-All
Leavenworth (Kan.) -- History
Midwest history and culture
Parker, Charles Wallace, 1864-1932
Parker, Paul D.
List 02. Archival Collections Related to Artifacts of Play
Finding Aid & Administrative Information
Finding Aid to the C.W. Parker Amusement Co. Collection, 1896-1956
Nicole Pease
Description rules
Physical Storage Information
Box: 1 (Mixed Materials)
oversize: Folder 1 (Graphic Materials)
External Documents
Repository Details
Part of the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong Repository
http://www.museumofplay.org/about/library-archives-play
The Strong
One Manhattan Square
Rochester NY 14607 USA
library@museumofplay.org
C.W. Parker Amusement Co. collection, Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong http://archivesspace.strongmuseum.org/repositories/3/resources/141 Accessed July 18, 2019.
Anticipated arrival date
Note to the staff
Repository Information
Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play
Rochester, NY 14607 U.S.A.
Copyright ©2019 The Strong®. All Rights Reserved.
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