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https://www.nist.gov/publications/security-and-privacy-controls-federal-information-systems-and-organizations-including-0
Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations [including updates as of 1/15/2014]
Ronald S. Ross
[Superseded by NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 4(April 2013 w/ updates through 1/22/15): http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=917904] This publication provides a catalog of security and privacy controls for federal information systems and organizations and a process for selecting controls to protect organizational operations (including mission, functions, image, and reputation), organizational assets, individuals, other organizations, and the Nation from a diverse set of threats including hostile cyber attacks, natural disasters, structural failures, and human errors (both intentional and unintentional). The security and privacy controls are customizable and implemented as part of an organization-wide process that manages information security and privacy risk. The controls address a diverse set of security and privacy requirements across the federal government and critical infrastructure, derived from legislation, Executive Orders, policies, directives, regulations, standards, and/or mission/business needs. The publication also describes how to develop specialized sets of controls, or overlays, tailored for specific types of missions/business functions, technologies, or environments of operation. Finally, the catalog of security controls addresses security from both a functionality perspective (the strength of security functions and mechanisms provided) and an assurance perspective (the measures of confidence in the implemented security capability). Addressing both security functionality and assurance helps to ensure that information technology component products and the information systems built from those products using sound system and security engineering principles are sufficiently trustworthy. [Supersedes NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 4 (April 2013 w/ updates through 5/7/13): http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=913693]
Special Publication (NIST SP) - 800-53 Rev 4
800-53 Rev 4
NIST Pub Series
Special Publication (NIST SP)
NIST Pubs
Supercedes Publication
Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations [includes updates as of 5/7/13]
Superceded By Publication
assurance, computer security, FIPS Publication 199, FIPS Publication 200, FISMA, Privacy Act, Risk Management Framework, security controls, security requirements
Created January 15, 2014, Updated February 19, 2017
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Summary and Analysis Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Summary and Analysis - Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Related Topics Carried Interest Estate Tax Business Interest Deductibility Like-Kind Exchanges Tax Depreciation Rules Tax Reform
Copyright: wutzkohphoto
House Republicans released tax reform legislation this week that would cut tax rates for individuals and businesses. In particular, a portion of multifamily business income that is earned by the pass-through entities that dominate the industry (i.e., LLCs, partnerships, and S Corporations) would be eligible for a 25 percent tax rate. As currently written, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would preserve interest deductibility, like-kind exchanges, and carried interest. The 27.5-year depreciation period for multifamily properties is left unchanged; andthe estate tax is repealed in 2024, while stepped-up basis is retained.
Notably, the Act would retain the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. However, as currently drafted there is concern that the equity generated by the credit could be reduced given that the corporate rate is proposed to fall to 20 percent. Additionally, the Act would eliminate tax-exempt bonds, which could jeopardize the efficacy of the 4 percent LIHTC.
The House Ways and Means Committee intends to begin marking up the package beginning next Monday, which would be followed by floor action. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch today said he would introduce his chamber’s version of tax legislation once the Ways and Means Committee completes its markup.
Tax Rates on Pass-Thru Income: The multifamily industry is dominated by pass-through entities (e.g., LLCs, partnerships and S Corporations) that pass through a company’s earnings to owners who are taxed at individual rates of up to 39.6 percent. The Act would allow a portion of this income, which would be designated as business income, to be taxed at a maximum rate of 25 percent. The remaining income would be considered compensation and taxed at ordinary income tax rates.
The Act specifies the following:
Active owners would have to separate business income from compensation. Under one option, active owners could designate 30 percent of their total income as business income eligible for the 25 percent rate. The remaining 70 percent would be taxed at ordinary income tax rates. Alternatively, and positively for real estate, a higher capital percentage would be available for capital-intensive businesses. It would be calculated based on a rate of return (Federal short-term interest rate plus 7 percent) multiplied by the capital investments of the business. The Act would maintain current definitions of active and passive income.
Passive income would be fully eligible for the 25 percent rate.
REIT dividends would be taxed at 25 percent, down from today’s maximum 39.6 percent rate.
Income attributable to brokerage services would be ineligible to use the 70/30 split but could use the alternative method to calculate business income attributable to capital invested.
Business Interest Deductibility: The Act preserves the full deductibility of business interest for the multifamily industry. That said, the Act generally limits net interest expense to 30 percent of an entity’s EBITDA.
Depreciation: The Act retains current law that depreciates multifamily real estate over a 27.5-year period. It also enables the full expensing of non-real estate assets through 2022. However, real estate businesses would be ineligible to expense such assets because they retain the full deductibility of business interest.
Like-Kind Exchanges: The Act preserves like-kind exchanges for real property, though eliminates them for non-real estate assets. Separately, a new study demonstrating the value of Like-Kind Exchanges can be found here.
Carried Interest and Capital Gains Taxes: The tax treatment of carried interest is unchanged as is the maximum 20 percent tax rate on capital gains.
Estate Tax: Under current law, the estate tax provides for a $5.49 million ($10.98 per couple exclusion), a 40 percent top rate and stepped-up basis. The Act doubles the exclusion amounts before repealing the estate tax in 2024. Inherited assets would retain the benefit of stepped-up basis before and after repeal of the estate tax.
Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit is not changed under the Act. However, this may pose concern given that equity raised could drop given the proposal to cut the corporate tax rate to 20 percent. Additionally, private activity bonds issued after 2017 would lose their Federal tax exemption, which could harm 4 percent LIHTC deals.
State and Local Income and Property Taxes for Business: The Act retains the ordinary and necessary tax deduction for state and local income and property taxes attributable to a business.
Rehabilitation and New Markets Tax Credits: The Rehabilitation and New Markets Tax Credits are repealed.
Corporate Tax Rate: The corporate tax rate is reduced to 20 percent from 35 percent.
Individual Income Tax Brackets: There are currently seven tax brackets ranging from 10 percent to 39.6 percent. The Act provides for tax brackets of 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent and 39.6 percent. The 39.6 percent bracket would begin at $500,000 in taxable income for single filers and $1 million in taxable income for married couples. The 12 percent bracket would be phased out for single filers earning over $1 million and married couples earning over $1.2 million.
Standard Deduction / Personal Exemptions: The standard deduction is doubled, taking it to $24,400 for married couples. The Ways and Means Committee estimates that whereas approximately one-third of taxpayers today itemize their deduction, this would fall to fewer than 10 percent. Personal exemptions are repealed.
Employer-Provided Housing: The employee tax exclusion for employer-provided housing is limited to $50,000 and is phased out for individuals earning over $120,000.
Wyden Introduces the “Ending the Carried Interest Loophole Act”
NMHC and NAA Signify Support for 20 Percent Tax Deduction for Pass-Through Businesses
199A Pass-Through Deduction Coalition Letter - April 2019
NMHC and NAA Urge Congress to Reject Carried Interest Tax Increases
Real Estate Coalition Letter Regarding Carried Interest March 2019
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Marlene Dumas looks for a Regional Transit Authority bus while transferring at a temporary bus stop set up on the corner of Canal Street and South Claiborne Street in place of the hub at North Rampart hub that is closed due to the partial collapse of the Hard Rock hotel in New Orleans, La. Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019. RTA employees were at the bus stop directing traffic and assisting riders who had many questions about the route changes.
Some passengers board a Regional Transit Authority bus and some wait for other buses to arrive at the temporary bus stop set up on the corner of Canal Street and South Claiborne Street in place of the hub at North Rampart that is closed due to the partial collapse of the Hard Rock hotel in New Orleans, La. Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019. RTA employees were at the bus stop directing traffic and assisting riders who had many questions about the route changes.
New Orleans RTA to spend $9 million more in 2020 as public payroll rises
BY JESSICA WILLIAMS | Staff writer
Jan 8, 2020 - 10:43 am
The Regional Transit Authority expects to spend $109 million to run New Orleans' public transit system in 2020, or almost $9 million more than it spent last year when it ran a mostly privatized operation.
The increase, reflected in a budget the RTA's board approved last month, is happening largely because the agency added more than 70 public employees to its payroll but hasn't significantly decreased its payout to its private contractor.
The hike also reflects the costs of added transit service to Algiers and New Orleans East and other service improvements.
RTA Chief Financial Officer Mark Major said the budget includes the cost of a full year of salary and benefits for 70-plus employees the RTA hired after Aug. 31, 2019, when the board stripped its private contractor, Transdev, of much of its managerial responsibility.
In 2019 budget, RTA eyes new projects as it prepares for management changes
New Orleans Regional Transit Authority officials are aiming to improve bus service and expand connections into surrounding parishes with a $11…
Last year's budget included only a few months of those new hires' salaries, he said.
But that explanation didn't satisfy some members of the agency's board, who said the figures suggest that a sharp knife should be taken to either the RTA's or Transdev's operations.
"I want to make sure there's no redundancies between the staff at RTA and the staff at Transdev," said Laura Bryan, who also heads Mayor LaToya Cantrell's Office of Transportation.
Major said RTA leaders intend to meet with Transdev in coming weeks to discuss potential budget changes.
Mayor-elect Cantrell asks RTA to delay new management hires
Mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell has asked the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority to put a pin in its search for a new executive director as we…
The RTA announced last year that it would change its management structure to bring more senior administrative functions under the agency's direct control. Officials cast the move as a way to better hold the private contractor that actually runs the buses to account.
The French conglomerate Transdev had been running every part of the RTA's operation, and some transit advocates complained that the private firm's local executives were more beholden to their corporate supervisors than they were to the riding public.
The new employees will cost the agency $8.3 million in 2020. They include new CEO Alex Wiggins, who is being paid $225,000, and 75 others.
New Orleans RTA taps Alex Wiggins as CEO, Transdev as private contractor under restructuring
The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority took two key steps Tuesday toward re-establishing public control over its operations, appointing a …
At the same time, the RTA is paying Transdev $78.9 million to run its buses, streetcars and paratransit vehicles this year, or only about $800,000 less than it paid the firm in 2019, even though the new RTA staffers supposedly have relieved Transdev of a considerable amount of its responsibilities.
The agency separately gets about $7.6 million from the state to operate its ferry system, and it has hired Labmar Services to do that job in 2020.
The higher public payroll, plus smaller hikes in insurance and other costs, will cause an overall budget increase of almost $9 million from 2018's $100 milion.
Major cast the payout to Transdev as a necessary consequence of putting more buses on the streets in Algiers, New Orleans East and other areas — route changes the RTA board approved in the latter half of 2019 that the agency is continuing in 2020. Transdev’s base rates for various types of services also rose with its new contract.
New Orleans RTA putting more buses on Algiers, New Orleans East routes
Starting Sunday, buses serving New Orleans East and Algiers will begin running more often and the Canal Street-Algiers Point ferry will begin …
Still, Bryan and Sharon Wegner, one of the board's Jefferson Parish representatives, urged the staff to try to trim expenses.
A study of transit routes due later this year could prompt further changes to the spending plan.
For now, the RTA plans to spend $109 million against $107 million in operating revenue — cash that largely comes from sales taxes. Its overall budget, including capital projects and debt service, totals roughly $181 million, or about what it will take in once it refinances bonds to help balance its budget.
RTA wants more money from hotel taxes for local public transit
The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority is looking to take back a slice of revenues levied on hotel sales that have gone to a pair of touri…
New Orleans City Council to back RTA push for greater hotel-tax share
Follow Jessica Williams
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Home > Artists > Richard Thorn
November Teign
Ocean Light, Cornish Coast
On The High Moor
River Vignette
Silver Bend
Slumber Wood
Surf At Priest’s Cove
The Gleaming Bay
The Lighthouse At Rosemodress
The Long Afternoon
Richard’s interest in art began at the tender age of 5. He would draw ad sketch everything and anything, which became his first love. This period of drawing became the ‘Prima Materia’ for his later painting work. At school he was noted for his drawing and he later enrolled in the Newton Abbot School of Art on leaving school.
After leaving college he set out to pursue a career in music. This later led him to become an accomplished Jazz Guitarist. He currently leads a Latin/Jazz quartet for which he writes all the material. Music has always accompanied Richard throughout his painting career; which began in the early 80’s. ‘For many years these two art forms seemed independent of each other but in recent years I have come to realise that they have always informed each other, springing from the same emotional well-spring’.
In the early days of his painting career, The Torbay Art Society presented a painting of Thorn’s as a gift to the Princess Michael of Kent at a Devon County Show, after taking an interest in his work. Thorn was incited to stage an exhibition of his paintings in Portugal at the Portuguese Embassy in London; the Portuguese Ambassador purchased one of the paintings. He has since exhibited in numerous one-man shows and mixed exhibitions in the South of England and the Home Counties. His work can be seen in numerous galleries from Cornwall to Kent.
Thorn works essentially in watercolour but in the last 5 years has incorporated other mediums to his paintings, which has had the effect of expanding not only his textural width but also his subject matter. Working with acrylic, gouache and pastel has also broadened the Artist’s appreciation of both colours and dynamics.
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All film-documents
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The storytellers. (1982)
Footage, 1 footage, Duration: 0:09:39.08 to collection G 1/27/2019
Oral folk art to the accompaniment of various musical instruments performed by narrators of different nationalities (Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Altaians, Uzbeks).
Consequences of mudflow. (1988)
Footage, 1 footage, Duration: 0:01:04.2 to collection G 1/27/2019
Crushed machine.
Residents of the village affected by the disaster talk with cameramen.
Remains of destroyed houses.
Police officers inspect the ruins.
Residents among the ruins.
Views from the driver's cab.
Train departs.
People are looking for documents in the sand.
Restoration of railways and power lines.
Railwaymen and members of the commission.
The remains of a ruined house, broken things.
Rewarding the Turgai region with the Order of Lenin. (1980 - 1989)
The award ceremony was held by Dinmukhamed Kunayev.
Representatives of the region were congratulated by schoolchildren.
Victory Day - 35 years. (1980)
Meeting of veterans.
The solemn part of the celebration was held in the building of the Kazakh Abai Theater of Opera and Ballet; in the presidium Dinmukhamed Kunayev.
NA's visit. Nazarbayev to Switzerland. (2002)
Footage, 1 footage, Duration: 0:10:32.982 to collection G 1/27/2019
View of the monument to the unification of Geneva and Switzerland in the Geneva area.
The bridge over the Rhone River.
Sightseeing train on the quay.
View of part of Lake Geneva.
The musicians perform in the park, the faces of the spectators.
The arrival of the President of Kazakhstan N.Nazarbayev. to Geneva airport.
The airport building.
100th anniversary of the writer Magzhan Zhumabayev. (1993)
The building of the school in Petropavlovsk, named after Magzhan Zhumabayev.
View of the square and the building with a portrait of Zhumabayev, a watering machine in the square.
Portrait of Zhumabaev on the facade of the building.
Panorama of the building of the former Romanov School in Petropavlovsk.
The inscription above the entrance, dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the Romanov House.
The poster of the film "Batyr Bayan" based on the play by Magzhan Zhumabayev at the entrance to the building of the cinema "Kazakhstan".
The participants of the events in honor of the 100th anniversary of Zhumabayev and the guests invited to the premiere of the film talk while standing at the entrance to the cinema.
The launching of the dry cargo ship "Mukhtar Auezov". (1980)
Panorama of a part of Navashino shipyard, dry cargo ship "Mukhtar Auezov" before launching.
Type of dry dock (top).
Panorama of a part of the plant.
Workers tie a rope to a champagne roll.
The girl is holding a tied bottle before the ceremony of launching the ship to the water.
The rally in honor of launching the dry cargo ship "Mukhtar Auezov", the type of vessel.
The rally participants applauded.
Delegation of the Kazakh SSR at the 26th Congress of the CPSU. (1981)
Two members of the delegation of the Kazakh SSR, together with cosmonaut Shatalov VA. go along Red Square past the GUM building.
Shatalov greets the members of the delegation and talks with them.
Shatalov and members of the delegation are walking along the red square.
Delegates of the 26th Congress of the CPSU in the foyer of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses before the meeting.
Shatalov in the foyer gives autographs to members of the Kazakh delegation and other delegates to the congress.
Members of the Kazakh delegation talk with Shatalov.
The view of the foyer of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses (from above), delegates come out during the break of the session of the congress.
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Women Get a Bigger Kick Out of Cartoons
Robot Lawyers are Coming Soon
A Robot that Moves Like an Amoeba
source: Hong/Ingram
Discovery.com is reporting today that researchers from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University have developed a robot that does not use wheels or legs to move, but rather uses its skin as its means of propulsion in much the same way that amoeba do. While this method of locomotion will not be practical in most applications it does give the robot the unique ability of squeezing through spaces that are much smaller than its own diameter – a feat not easily accomplished by robots employing traditional propulsion systems.
The robot was developed by engineering professor Dennis Hong and his graduate student Mark Ingram. Hong is already well known for his outside-of-the-box thinking in regards to robot locomotion. Just last week we reported on his efforts to build a robot with “whegs,” a combination of wheels and legs. Hong and Ingram’s “whole-skin locomotion,” while inspired by amoeba, does not replicate the physical process exactly. They have, however, built a system that uses the same principles and produces the same type of motion.
Amoeba is a genus of well-known unicellular organisms consisting of a liquid endoplasm surrounded by an amorphous, gel-like ectoplasm. In order to move, the endoplasm flows to the front of the organism where it breaks through the ectoplasm skin and is converted into ectoplasm itself. Concurrently, the ectoplasm skin at the rear of the amoeba liquefies into endoplasm. Theses changes in its skin drive the amoeba forward.
In order to replicate this motion, Hong and Ingram’s robot is built like a hollow sausage. The exoskeleton consists of several rings covered by a flexible membrane. When the rings contract or expand, the skin slides forward (or backward) causing the robot to move. This allows the robot to turn itself completely inside out in one smooth motion. This description of the structure and appearance immediately reminded me of the water snake toys that were popular in the 1980s, although they had no skeletal structure.
This design makes the robot uniquely suitable for applications including squeezing between obstacles and fitting through openings smaller in diameter than itself. The major drawback at this time is the durability of its skin since it is in constant contact with the terrain. The researchers are evaluating using a wire mesh instead in order to address that problem.
amoebas, biomimetic, ectoplasm, endoplasm, locomotion, propulsion, robotics, robots, virginia tech
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Interview with Paulette Licitra
The biannual Alimentum: The Literature of Food is a passionate, aesthetically pleasing print magazine filled with poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. It has been lauded in such places as the New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Times Literary Supplement. In 2010 it won Gourmand’s International World Cookbook award for “Best Food Magazine in the World.” In July 2012 it will become on-line only.
I recently spoke with Publisher Paulette Licitra about the decision to go online, electronic vs. print submissions and other nuts-and-bolts details involved in switching formats, as well as Alimentum’s “Eat and Greet” tours and what we can expect next from this excellent publication.
I caught up with Licitra right before she headed out for a gig of “Duette,” the acoustic band she plays in with partner Duane Spencer, Alimentum’s Music Editor. Licitra recently moved from New York City to Nashville, Tennessee where, in addition to making music and publishing a magazine, the Institute of Culinary Education graduate teaches Italian cooking classes. Here are the highlights of our conversation:
How did you get into food writing?
I don’t even think of Alimentum necessarily as “food writing.” Alimentum is this funny thing in the middle because it’s fiction and creative writing and it’s poetry, but it’s about food—so some people think of it as “food writing.”
The magazine started as a bridge between literary writing and food, since they were a big part of my life. Some lit mags do food-themed issues once in a while, but I wondered: why not a journal that was food all the time? We started in 2005 and we still get terrific submissions from writers who somehow incorporate food as a catalyst or character in their stories and poems.
We have a diverse audience—including people who read Saveur and Bon Appetit and are interested in recipes and who’s the trendiest chef and all that stuff—but then they get into Alimentum and it’s a whole other thing. A lot of lit journals might have readers who love to read literature, but we also have people who just love food. That’s what helps us—we’ve got a couple of audiences.
Alimentum is a very successful print magazine—it’s been written up in the New York Times and gotten lots of other good press, and the layout is gorgeous. . . . Tell us why you decided to go online.
Partly for financial reasons and partly because we were looking to reach a bigger audience. We’re not associated with a university budget. We have sponsors who help pay our costs, but in this economy it was getting harder. Then there was this pull to make the website bigger—so we made the decision to switch over.
It’s almost as if Alimentum is busting out and can’t be contained between those two small covers! We have a fabulous web editor, Eric LeMay, who is also a terrific writer, and he has a million great ideas for the website. The home page is a menagerie of pictures and places to jump into. It looks like a salon-style gallery of images, but each picture will bring you to a piece of content: food-related fiction, nonfiction, poetry, book reviews, recipe poems (poems you can cook from), art galleries, songs, “Eat and Greet” events, Alimentum news, and a store for cool food-related stuff. We’ll also have a department called “featurettes” which will be mostly videos from the field on food-related experiences. And we’ll feature favorite food blogs from around the country and the world.
Will it be free?
Totally free.
How will that affect the current subscribers?
We told our subscribers that we’ll be starting an Alimentum Press, with a “Best of Alimentum” Anthology, and also single author books—like a collection of poetry or short stories of writers we’ve worked with. We’re offering any subscribers who have subscriptions left these future books. They seem pretty excited about that.
Will the website content be updated frequently?
We’re thinking definitely monthly for all of the features, and for some we may change more frequently.
Will this change anything about the type of work you look for? I know the fiction is already pretty short so should lend itself well, but sometimes, at least in journalism, people go for extra-snappy-sounding writing on the Internet. Will that affect the writing?
No—the only thing that will be affected is length. We’ve been wrestling over longer pieces—over 2,000 words—that we love, thinking of how we might make them episodic.
We still want our kind of literature. We want the sensibility that is Alimentum. That is very hard to describe but we know what we want when we see it. I think our readers get it and that’s what they love too, and we want to keep with that tradition.
It’s not only about the food because it is literature . . . so it’s not just straight, like an ode-to-an-orange kind of thing; it’s got to have some personal mix in there, and it’s got to have a voice and a story. Food is such a deep part of everybody’s life that if someone can express what that relationship is it can be pretty amazing.
We’ll also continue our “Eat and Greet Tours.” We’ve done a lot of them in Nashville, and one in New York, but more are coming. I also took a small group of avid cooks on a trip to Rome, Italy to food shop and cook there. That’s another audience opening up.
The tour in New York was a two-day tour. We explored the great culinary neighborhoods in Queens, and when we’d take a break from eating and shopping, we’d sit at a café and do some writing. We do other tours where it’s mostly about food and not about writing. We’ve visited cafes that do their own coffee roasting, artisanal chocolate makers, CSA farms, restaurant kitchens . . . we did an Indian Culture tour in Nashville, and visited a Hindu temple where the guide talked to us about Hinduism and gave us a tour, and then we had a wonderful Indian lunch. So it was a culture-plus-food experience.
We’re making videos of the tours too, and they’re becoming little stories on their own.
Generally when people hear a magazine is going online, they’re like, “Oh no! That’s the end of that publication!” I was going to ask you why Alimentum is going to be different, but it sounds like you’re answering that.
That’s exactly how and why it will be different.
I’ve gotten several letters from people expressing a lot of sadness—one bookstore, Kitchen Arts & Letters up in New York, wrote “We’ve been carrying you from day one . . . I’m so sorry to hear this but I know that wherever you’re going, it’s going to be great. . . .” Our readers really love the journal and are sad to see the print edition go, but they seem to be equally excited about the new format.
How are you going to archive the web issues?
That’s something our web editors are trying to figure out, but everything is going to be there. You’ll be able to access whatever’s been online. All of the back print issues are still available (except for #1). They are for sale and many people collect them. We’re also going to have a store with cool food-related items.
Up to now you’ve only been accepting submissions by snail mail. Is this going to continue?
It’s so funny that this is an issue. The other day Eric, our Web Editor, and Ruth Polleys, our Assistant Web Editor, were trying to convince me to use a submission manager online. I still don’t understand why that’s important. Peter Selgin, our Fiction and Nonfiction Editor, and Cortney Davis, our Poetry Editor, and I seem fine with the snail mail (maybe we just have luddite brains or something), but I’ve been told: “Now that you’re an online journal you should be accepting submissions digitally.” I don’t know. What do you think?
I think one reason it’s supposed to be easier is that when you accept the work you can actually cut and paste it into the publication. . . .
Once we accept a piece of writing, we ask them to send us a word doc.
Well, I can think of a reason not to do it—it’s pretty easy to submit online, and I wonder whether the added steps you have to take to submit it via snail mail might mean that you’d get better work.
I don’t know—Eric was saying you might get more submissions too. . . .
But do you want them?
I remember in the beginning, when we accepted e-mail submissions, that Cortney noticed poems sometimes lost their formatting. But I’m sure with a submission manager program that probably doesn’t happen.
But I just thought of a possible plus: now that we’re an online journal, when you’re reading a submission on your computer, rather than a piece of paper, it can help you better visualize how the piece works for a digital format . . . maybe that’s a reason there.
Right. But maybe you should hold firm—especially now because you’re doing so many new things. I assume the amount of submissions would go way up as people receive links from each other and are like “Oh, I should submit here. . . . ”
Which is great—I’d love to get twice the amount of submissions.
Alimentum debuted online on July 4. To check out their great new features and find out whether they decide to begin using a submission manager, stay tuned to their website: www.alimentumjournal.com.
Tanya Angell Allen is a writer from New Haven, Connecticut. Her poems and essays have been published in such places as The Lyric, Expansive Poetry & Music, and The New York Times.
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David Noonan
Worth Your Time: "Breaking the Slump"
Watching Tiger Woods, perhaps the most mentally tough athlete of all time, dominate the PGA Tour, you can forget how insidiously difficult golf actually is.
Health Matters: Feeling Healthier as a Vegan
As millions of middle-aged Americans have discovered, it's a lot easier to grow a belly than to not grow one.
Health Matters: Surviving Tennis Elbow
I once ignored the moans and groans of people in pain; now people ignore my own moans and groans.
How Insurance Can Change Your Treatment in the ER
Uninsured patients are 50 percent more likely to die of traumatic injuries than those with health insurance.
Health Matters: The Science of Gun Control
Local background checks are more effective at reducing suicides and homicides than federal checks.
When Doctors Kill Themselves
Every year, between 300 and 400 doctors take their own lives—roughly one a day. No other profession has a higher suicide rate.
Noonan: Every Breath They Take
Hundreds of thousands of kids with asthma and no insurance can't manage their condition properly.
A New List for a New Year
There is a natural tendency to be shocked every time we hear that someone is sick. In fact, illness is a constant.
More Information, Please
When Dr. Delos "Toby" Cosgrove started his career as a cardiothoracic surgeon in the 1970s, he found that the doctor-patient relationship was essentially a one-way street. "The doctor was the repository of information," says Cosgrove, now the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic. "The patients came to you, you told them what they should do and they generally did it." By the time Cosgrove was ready to hang up his scalpel—he stopped operating last December—the basic equation had changed dramatically.
Noonan: The Mad Magic of the Summer of Love
But it was magical to be young during the Summer of Love. For those who weren't there, a not-too-rose-colored look at what you missed.
Al Unser Jr.: "I Am an Alcoholic."
On the eve of the Indy 500, two-time winner Al Unser Jr. speaks candidly about his battles with alcohol. And what it's like to see that checkered flag.
Boomer Humor: The Way We Laughed
The generation that grew up with Mad magazine and the Vietnam War created its own brand of irreverent comedy.
Case Study: Special Care at The End of Life
Terminal patients and their families get what they need at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Hey, Doc, Minimize It
Heart surgeons are offering patients new operations that dramatically reduce wear and tear on the body
More than 20 percent of the coronary bypass operations in the country are done 'off pump,' with the heart pounding in the chest like the living thing it is.
It's a Gene Pool Party
Scientists cross natural barriers to create new therapies by combining DNA from different species.
A Little Bit Louder, Please
More than 28 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss, a number that could reach 78 million by 2030. The latest science, new treatments--and how to protect yourself.
A Conversation With a Basketball Legend
Renowned UCLA coach John Wooden, who led the Bruins to 10 NCAA championships, died Friday night at 99. In 2005, NEWSWEEK spoke with Wooden about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and whether the dunk should be banned. Read the interview.
Hypnosis can help with problems from anxiety to pain. How it works, and what it does in the brain.
At 27, Beth, an Indiana housewife, came down with chronic diarrhea that plagued her for the next three years. "I knew where every bathroom in town was," she says with a laugh.
FAST BREAK TO THE BIG TIME
The squeak of basketball shoes on hardwood, the chirp of whistles, the thump thump thump of the ball. The familiar sounds echoed through the gym on Chicago's Near North Side as a bunch of high-school kids zipped and soared through their best moves.
Why Don't We Call Them Quirky?
Like the conscientious pediatricians they are, Perri Klass and Eileen Costello keep up with the ever-evolving vocabulary of childhood dysfunction. They know all about autistic spectrum disorder, sensory integration dysfunction, pervasive developmental disorder, Asperger's syndrome and more.
A New Age For Aarp
William Novelli had a hell of a week. Last Monday at the White House, President George W. Bush personally thanked him and AARP, the huge organization of seniors Novelli heads, for endorsing a Republican bill to add prescription-drug coverage to Medicare.
Health Breast Cancer's 'New Era'Breast-cancer patients deserve good news, and they got a nice helping of it last week when a large, international clinical trial was halted early because the drug being tested was found to dramatically reduce the risk of relapse.
Health: Breast Cancer's 'New Era'
Breast cancer patients deserve good news, and they got a nice helping of it last week when a large, international clinical trial was halted early because the drug being tested was found to dramatically reduce the risk of relapse.
Fast Chat: 'You Don't Get That Excitement Anymore
Jack Nicklaus, who had a total hip replacement four years ago, is the spokesman for a new promotional campaign by Stryker Corp., the company that made his hip.
High On Testosterone
Things weren't going well for Tristan Logan last winter, physically or mentally. The 55-year-old, an avid weight lifter with a black belt in tae kwon do, was tired and weak.
When Safety Is The Name Of The Game
Every Year, Millions Of Young Athletes End Up In The Hospital. What Parents And Kids Can Do To Prevent Sports Injuries.
'Allowed To Be Odd'
Christopher John Francis Boone, the 15-year-old narrator of the new novel "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," knows lots of stuff, including the capitals of all the countries in the world and every prime number up to 7,057.
You Want Statins With That?
You Know You Should Exercise, But You Also Know That Little Pill Will Let You Eat Rich Food And Still Keep Your Cholesterol Down. Now Scientists Think It Might Even Fight Alzheimer's
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Chile's President Signs Law For Vote On New Constitution
The law will allow for a public vote to be held next April on whether to change Chile's constitution.
Chilean President Sebastián Piñera has agreed to allow a referendum on a new constitution.
Piñera signed the law, which was approved by Congress last week, during a public ceremony on Monday. The law will allow for a public vote to be held next April on whether to change Chile's constitution, a key demand of protesters in the country.
What began as protests against a public transit fare hike earlier this year soon grew into a broader uprising by hundreds of thousands of Chileans protesting rampant economic inequality. They say the country's current constitution fails to guarantee proper human and social rights, as well as citizen participation in government.
The president said he hopes the new constitution will "serve to leave behind the violence and divisions that we have seen resurface with pain and sadness during these days."
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Report: Death Penalty On The Decline In The U.S.
By Adam Elrashidi
The Death Penalty Information Center reports 2019 is the fifth straight year with fewer than 30 executions and fewer than 50 death sentences.
Use of the death penalty in the U.S. continues to decline, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, or DPIC. The report notes that in 2019, New Hampshire became the 21st state to abolish the death penalty and California became the fourth with a moratorium on executions.
The DPIC says use of the death penalty remained "near historic lows in 2019, with 22 executions and a current count of 33 new death sentences." 2019 is also the fifth straight year with fewer than 30 executions and fewer than 50 death sentences. The latter have reportedly declined by at least 85% since they peaked in the '90s.
Robert Dunham, the executive director of the DPIC, said there's been "a wave of death penalty abolition" along the East Coast and that 2019 represented a "microcosm of the climate change in the U.S." toward capital punishment.
He said: "If you started your car in the northeastern tip of Maine and you drove to the southwestern tip of West Virginia, you would go almost 1,300 miles without ever driving through a state that had the death penalty. And so there's this sense that death penalty is eroding — one by one, state by state."
Dunham also said the history of the death penalty in the U.S. is "inextricably intertwined" with its racial history. He said the possibility of innocent people being executed by the state — particularly innocent black people — has changed public perception of capital punishment.
Maurice Chammah is a staff writer for Newsy partner The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering criminal justice. He's currently writing a book about the history of the death penalty. He told Newsy that the decline in support for capital punishment has been a part of a "larger rethinking of the criminal justice system."
Chammah said: "I also think that the decline of the death penalty has shown that people who commit really terrible crimes, really atrocious crimes — ones that Americans really want to punish — has sort of shown the reasons why they committed those crimes, whether it's mental illness or intellectual disability or addiction. And that has led to a larger sense of mercy around people who are in prison who commit crimes."
Last year, the Trump administration moved to reform the federal justice system by passing the bipartisan First Step Act. Then in November, the Justice Department vowed to pursue reinstatement of the death penalty at the federal level. It's not entirely clear how popular that notion is. Last month, a Gallup poll found that for the first time, the majority of people in the U.S. — 60% — felt life in prison was a better punishment for murder than the death penalty. That said, 56% still broadly supported the use of the death penalty for convicted murderers.
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Recognized for Innovation and Leadership – Carrie Penman Named ECI’s 2017 Marshall Award Winner
Bob Conlin
As her story goes, it was a typical day at Westinghouse when Carrie Penman’s phone rang. A mid-level manager at the time, the supersize caller told her she was being promoted to the company’s first “ethics officer” – and that she would report directly to CEO.
Carrie has also been a true force among the generation who essentially established ethics and compliance as both a discipline and a professional calling.
It’s been more than 20 years since Carrie – now NAVEX Global’s chief compliance officer – got that call. In the intervening years, she became one of the most respected practitioners in the ethics and compliance profession. And I am proud to say that on April 25, Carrie will be the 2017 recipient of The Ethics & Compliance Initiative’s (ECI) Carol R. Marshall Award for Innovation in Corporate Ethics.
It’s a well-deserved recognition for Carrie and a cause for celebration for all of us at NAVEX Global. ECI describes the Marshall Award as one that “honors ethics and compliance officers who established an E&C program, built on to an existing program, advanced the ethics and compliance field and provides a role model for emerging leaders in ethics and compliance.” Carrie has done all of those things. She has also been a true force among the generation who essentially established ethics and compliance as both a discipline and a professional calling.
Her start in the compliance field may have been unique, but she wasn’t alone. Carrie was one of a small group of young managers who were tapped by their respective companies to establish an ethics and compliance function in the wake of high-profile corporate scandals and the promulgation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1991. Carol Marshall, who worked for Lockheed Martin at the time, was among them. In fact, she and Carrie were professional colleagues as well as friends. The two of them – along with other change makers working for enlightened companies – were building brand new functional “departments” within their respective organizations. To do this effectively, they sought each other out and even shared best practices among competitors. As Carrie tells it, this counter-intuitive cooperation made sense: “It was in all of our best interests to have our competitors compete ethically.”
Many of the best practices Carrie helped establish nearly a quarter-century ago persist today.
At Westinghouse, she pioneered the values-based approach to a company code of conduct. She also introduced the concept of detailed incident reporting and data analysis. Novel at the time, these practices are now routine – and Carrie continues refine them as the workplace evolves.
Her passion for analytics led her to create and publish NAVEX Global’s annual Ethics & Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report, now in its sixth edition. The 2017 report analyzed almost 1 million reports from among 38.5 million employees at more than 2,300 organizations. It is widely regarded as the industry standard for hotline reporting and incident management measurement. It is also recognized as one of the most valuable benchmarking tools for ethics and compliance professionals globally.
As I mentioned, Carrie is our chief compliance officer. Her expertise and guiding hand are present throughout the company, informing both our workplace culture and the products we deliver. So in a way, you could say that her ethical influence extends to the more than 12,000 plus clients we serve around the globe. Her influence just keeps expanding.
Entering the Era of Operational Resilience
Matt Kelly | Dec 19th, 2019
Real Answers to Common Questions on Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is not a new risk concern for organizations; however, there are a number of new cybersecurity threats that are surfacing as well as a number of old threats manifesting themselves in new ways. Take a look at some of the top questions being asked by compliance professionals, and hear answers that will help you create a cross-functional approach to defend against enterprise-wide risk.
Pamela Passman | Apr 18th, 2017
The Importance of Trust in the Age of Weaponized Transparency
We are entering an era in which organizational transparency is no longer an option, and where organizations need to ensure their company culture and practices are up to snuff. If the scene behind your company’s curtain is positive, transparency is a great thing. If not, there is some work that needs to be done. Let's take a closer look at the importance of trust.
Matt Kelly | Apr 28th, 2017
Definitive Guide to Compliance Program Assessment
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Rose selected 2010-11 NBA Most Valuable Player
At 22 years old, Rose is the youngest MVP in NBA history and the second Bulls player to win the award, joining five-time winner Michael Jordan.
>> Sam Smith: Rose is Most Valuable Player… and person
>> NBA Commissioner Stern presents Rose with NBA MVP award
Sam Smith's previous discussion of Rose & MVP:
>> Derrick Rose was right—he can be NBA MVP - 11.29.10
>> Race for MVP about more than scoring and big games - 4.04.11
May 3, 2011 -- The National Basketball Association announced today that Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose is the winner of the Maurice Podoloff Trophy as the 2010-11 Kia Most Valuable Player Award. At 22 years old, Rose is the youngest MVP in NBA history (22 years-191 days on the final day of the regular season; previously Wes Unseld in 1969, 23 years-9 days). Rose is also the second Bull to win the award, as he joins five-time winner Michael Jordan as the only Bulls to be named league MVP in team history.
"Derrick had an outstanding season for us, and we would not be where we are today without him. Very few players have the work ethic and dedication that he has for the game of basketball," said Chicago Bulls General Manager Gar Forman. "He is a terrific example for not only the Chicago Bulls, but also for the NBA. We are very pleased that Chicago's MVP is the NBA's MVP."
Rose led the Bulls to an NBA-best record of 62-20, and to the most wins by a Bulls team since Chicago won 62 games in 1997-98 en route to the franchise's sixth NBA championship. In 81 games this season, he averaged 25.0 ppg (seventh in the NBA), 7.7 apg (10th), 4.1 rpg, 1.05 spg, 37.4 mpg, and he shot .445 from the field, .332 from behind the arc and .858 from the line. Along the way, he posted career highs in scoring, assists, rebounds, steals, blocks, three-point shooting, free-throw shooting and minutes played.
With his scoring, assist and rebounding averages, he became just the seventh player in NBA history to average 25.0 ppg, 7.5 apg and 4.0 rpg in a single season (Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James). He also became the fifth player in NBA history to post 2,000 points, 600 assists and 300 rebounds in a single season (Oscar Robertson, John Havlicek, Michael Jordan and LeBron James).
Selected as an All-Star for the second straight season, the Chicago native made or assisted on at least half of Chicago's field goals in 26 games, the highest such total for any player in the NBA in 2010-11. He also was the only player in the NBA to rank in the top 10 in points per game and assists per game. In doing so, once again, he joined Michael Jordan (1988-89) as the only players in franchise history to finish in the top 10 in scoring and assists in a single season.
Rose collected 113 out of a possible 121 first-place votes from selected media, and he became the first player since Steve Nash in 2005 to win the MVP award after not receiving any votes the previous year. He also is the 10th player in NBA history to win the award within his first three seasons in the league (rookies: Wilt Chamberlain, Wes Unseld; second season: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bob Pettit, Bill Russell; third season: Abdul-Jabbar, Dave Cowens, Moses Malone, Bob McAdoo).
2010-11 Kia NBA MVP Award Results
Player, Team 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Total Points
Derrick Rose, Chicago 113 6 2 -- -- 1182
Dwight Howard, Orlando 3 57 31 16 11 643
LeBron James, Miami 4 26 39 31 12 522
Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers 1 18 32 40 12 428
Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City -- 6 10 20 38 190
Dirk Nowitzki, Dallas -- 5 3 11 30 113
Dwyane Wade, Miami -- 1 1 2 6 24
Manu Ginobili, San Antonio -- 2 -- -- 6 20
Amar'e Stoudemire, New York -- -- 1 -- 4 9
Blake Griffin, L.A. Clippers -- -- 1 -- -- 5
Rajon Rondo, Boston -- -- 1 -- -- 5
Tony Parker, San Antonio -- -- -- 1 -- 3
Chris Paul, New Orleans -- -- -- -- 2 2
All-Time MVP Winners
Season - Player, Team
1955-56 - Bob Pettit, St. Louis
1956-57 - Bob Cousy, Boston
1957-58 - Bill Russell, Boston
1959-60 - Wilt Chamberlain, Philadelphia
1963-64 - Oscar Robertson, Cincinnati
1968-69 - Wes Unseld, Baltimore
1969-70 - Willis Reed, New York
1970-71 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Milwaukee
1972-73 - Dave Cowens, Boston
1974-75 - Bob McAdoo, Buffalo
1975-76 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Los Angeles
1977-78 - Bill Walton, Portland
1978-79 - Moses Malone, Houston
1980-81 - Julius Erving, Philadelphia
1982-83 - Moses Malone, Philadelphia
1983-84 - Larry Bird, Boston
1986-87 - Magic Johnson, L.A. Lakers
1987-88 - Michael Jordan, Chicago
1992-93 - Charles Barkley, Phoenix|
1993-94 - Hakeem Olajuwon, Houston
1994-95 - David Robinson, San Antonio
1996-97 - Karl Malone, Utah
1999-00 - Shaquille O'Neal, L.A. Lakers
2000-01 - Allen Iverson, Philadelphia
2001-02 - Tim Duncan, San Antonio
2003-04 - Kevin Garnett, Minnesota
2004-05 - Steve Nash, Phoenix
2006-07 - Dirk Nowitzki, Dallas
2007-08 - Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers
2008-09 - LeBron James, Cleveland
2010-11 - Derrick Rose, Chicago
What do you think? Leave a comment below:
Rose, Derrick, Bulls
Sam Smith:
Nene with a no no and Bulls back in series
Blogs.Bulls.com:
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Ask Sam | Sam Smith opens his mailbag
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Amazing ride continues for Bulls broadcaster Funk
Bulls sticking to the plan as series shifts to Washington
Bulls lose in overtime to trail Wizards 2-0
News archive | Sam Smith index
2013-14 tickets on sale now
Rose, Derrick
Bulls win on the road in Detroit
Chuck's Daily Check In - 1.8.20
BullsTV Recap: Bulls 98, Bucks 111 - 1.20.20
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Olympic Medalist Will Claye Embarks on Music Career
The result is "Look What You Created," a hip-hop album with 12 tracks of music Claye says "will put you in a good mood"
Published at 11:28 am on April 21, 2017
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Will Claye has earned three medals as a track and field athlete for Team USA. His most recent success came at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio when he brought home a silver medal in the triple jump.
Since returning from the Summer Games, Claye has continued to compete at the highest level on the track but wanted to make sure all his time wasn't consumed by training and competition.
MLB 4 hours ago
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Ben Simmons Posts Triple Double in Sixers’ Thrilling Win Over Nets
He has been working on something he has been passionate about since he was a child, music. When he was young, it was singing in the church choir or making a mixtape on a boom box.
Now, as an Olympic medalist, new opportunities have presented themselves for Claye, including a chance to record his own album.
The result is "Look What You Created," a hip-hop album with 12 tracks of music Claye says "will put you in a good mood."
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Governor Cooper Announces Lowe’s Will Locate New Global Technology Center in Charlotte
Governor Cooper Announces Lowe’s Will Locate New Global Technology Center in Charlotte Expansion will add more than 1,600 jobs and build on N.C.’s tech leadership
Raeligh, N.C.
Governor Roy Cooper announced today that Mooresville-based home improvement company Lowe’s will locate a major new technology center in Charlotte, creating more than 1,600 jobs.
“Lowe’s is expanding in a way that will take technology to new heights and this company knows its home state can provide the highly trained workforce it needs,” Gov. Cooper said. “We are committed to ensuring workers have the right skills to encourage companies to grow their footprint in our state with confidence.”
Lowe’s serves more than 18 million customers a week in the United States and Canada across more than 2,200 home improvement and hardware stores. Associates at the new center will help accelerate the company’s technology transformation, serving as an epicenter for the team that will help modernize technology systems for the company. The company announced in December 2018 it would add up to 2,000 technology associates to transform the company’s technology. Most of the new positions will be based at the new center in Charlotte, while others will join at existing Lowe’s locations where it has a strong technology team presence, including its Mooresville headquarters.
“We’re excited to stand up our new global technology center here in North Carolina to continue to drive our company’s growth,” said Marvin R. Ellison, Lowe’s president and CEO, who joined the company in July 2018. “Locating our new facility in the heart of Charlotte, the state’s largest metropolitan area, will enable Lowe’s to attract top technology talent and foster collaboration with our teams in our nearby Mooresville headquarters. This team will create technology solutions that will accelerate our commitment to becoming a best-in-class, omni-channel retailer and strengthen our associate and customer experiences.”
In conjunction with selecting North Carolina, Ellison announced Lowe’s intention to locate its new global technology center in Charlotte’s South End. Set to open in late 2021, a 357,000-square-foot facility will be located in a new 23-story tower, branded with Lowe’s, in the bustling neighborhood immediately south of uptown Charlotte. The developer, a joint venture between Childress Klein and RAM Realty Advisors, plans to break ground on the building, called Design Center Tower, in August 2019.
Adjacent to the Lynx Blue Line light rail, the Rail Trail, restaurants and available parking and housing, the new building will provide attractive amenities for the area’s top tech professionals. The Charlotte Plaza in uptown Charlotte will serve as the interim home for the Lowe’s tech center.
“For nearly 75 years, Lowe’s roots in North Carolina have run deep, growing from one small hardware store into a Fortune 50 home improvement retailer,” said North Carolina Commerce Secretary Anthony M. Copeland. “Their story exemplifies North Carolina’s strengths as a business location and demonstrates how our state provides everything a company might need, no matter the stage of growth or level of skill sought.”
Today, Lowe’s employs nearly 11,000 associates in the Charlotte area and more than 28,000 associates across North Carolina.
The North Carolina Department of Commerce and the Economic Development Partnership of N.C. (EDPNC) led the state’s support for the company’s expansion.
In addition to its $153 million capital investment in the project, Lowe’s will add a variety of technology positions, including software and infrastructure engineers, data scientists, analysts, architects, User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) professionals, and technologists with Artificial Intelligence and machine learning engineering experience.
Lowe’s expects to fill the first 400 positions in the next year and plans to begin hiring for these positions immediately. Candidates can visit jobs.lowes.com/technology to learn about available positions and apply online. While salaries will vary by role, the average wage for the new positions will be more than $117,000.
Lowe’s technology center expansion in Mecklenburg County will be facilitated, in part, by a Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) and a grant from the One North Carolina Fund.
The JDIG was approved by the state’s Economic Investment Committee earlier today. Over the course of the 12-year term of this grant, the project will grow the state’s economy by an estimated $6.3 billion. Using a formula that takes into account the new tax revenues generated by the 1,612 new jobs, the JDIG agreement authorizes the potential reimbursement to the company of up to $54,090,750, paid over 12 years. State payments only occur following performance verification by the departments of Commerce and Revenue that the company has met its incremental job creation and investment targets. JDIG projects result in positive net tax revenue to the state treasury, even after taking into consideration the grant’s reimbursement payments to a given company.
Because Lowe’s chose to expand in Mecklenburg County, classified by the state’s economic tier system as Tier 3, the company’s JDIG agreement also calls for moving as much as $18 million into the state’s Industrial Development Fund – Utility Account. The Utility Account helps rural communities finance necessary infrastructure upgrades to attract future business. Even when new jobs are created in a Tier 3 county such as Mecklenburg, the new tax revenue generated through JDIG grants helps more economically challenged communities elsewhere in the state. More information on the state’s economic tier designations is available here.
A performance-based grant of $2 million from the One North Carolina Fund will also support the project. The One NC Fund provides financial assistance to local governments to help attract economic investment and to create jobs. Like with the state’s JDIG grants, companies receiving OneNC grants must meet job creation and capital investment targets to qualify for payment. All One NC grants require a matching grant from local governments and the state award is contingent upon that condition being met.
North Carolina Department of Commerce and the EDPNC counted the following groups among their partners in this project: the North Carolina Community College System, Duke Energy, Mecklenburg County, the City of Charlotte, Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, Davidson College, Duke University, East Carolina University, Johnson C. Smith University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, Carolinas Fintech Hub, Road to Hire, Tech Talent South, and Charlotte Works.
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Assessment and Management of Damages
The initial assessment of the damages is the first step in evaluating a major case. The assessment requires a sophisticated analysis of the injuries and their relationship to the other aspects of the plaintiff's world.
There are components of damages claims that may not be readily apparent or are misunderstood. Recoverable damages may include loss of inheritance, loss of vocational opportunities, loss of future income, subtle but significant injuries such as neuropsychological impairment, foreshortening of life expectancy, implications of the injuries on other medical comorbidities, psychiatric damage, loss of parental guidance and nurture, loss of household services and consortium, derivative claims, loss of enjoyment of life, and the physical and emotional impact of the injuries upon the injured person and that person's family and world.
Although not every case has all of these elements of damages, each case must be reviewed to assure that proper steps are taken at the outset to solidify these claims. An accountant may be needed to assure that the outstanding income tax returns are properly prepared and are in order. The right physicians must be consulted. All necessary and appropriate medical tests must be done. The client must be educated as how to properly express his/her injuries to the healthcare providers so that accurate and permanent records are made of the complaints. Interviews of bystanders, family friends, co-workers, teachers and relatives may need to be conducted before time dulls recollections. Written statements, photographs, and videos may have to be taken.
Theories of Liability
Sometimes there are multiple causes of an injury. Consideration must be given to all of the possible theories of prosecution. In an ordinary negligence claim there may also be the basis for a viable products liability or medical malpractice case. In an automobile accident case there may be an accompanying municipal liability claim involving a defective roadway design that contributed to the accident. These are just a few examples of cases that can have multiple foci of prosecution.
In order to protect a client's rights, especially where there may be inadequate insurance coverage, the attorney must explore all of the possible theories of prosecution, some of which may not be apparent to the inexperienced.
It is equally important for the attorney to promptly recognize when there is not a case. It is in both in the client's and the attorney's interest that a case does not go meandering down the path of litigation for years only to find that the time, money and emotional investment on the part of both was in vein.
Unless there is a pressing statute of limitations that requires an immediate lawsuit, it ordinarily takes at least several months to properly investigate a case before commencing litigation. This pre-action phase can be critical to the ultimate outcome of the case. The litigation ducks must be carefully lined up, fed and groomed before suit is started in order to avoid disappointing surprises and to control any potential problems at the outset.
In products liability cases, inspection, photography and preservation of the defective product must be performed at the earliest time. It may be necessary to immediately retain experts to go to the scene of the accident, photographers to video and photograph the subject, and investigators to take statements from witnesses.
In medical malpractice cases the medical records must be obtained and reviewed, physicians, experts and witnesses contacted and, in death cases, an estate representative must be promptly appointed.
In all cases an inquiry must be made to determine whether there is or will be liens or claims by governmental or healthcare providers or others for reimbursement that might essentially eviscerate any potential recovery.It should be apparent that the undertaking of a major case requires a commitment by the attorney to invest a great deal of time, energy and funds in order to aggressively harness the forces that are necessary to lay the foundation for a successful prosecution.
Selection of Experts
Major cases generally require the retention of at least some experts at an early stage. These experts will often be the ones who will help direct the investigation and assess whether there is a sufficient basis to proceed into litigation.
There are experts and there are experts. Some are quick to find liability but whose opinions cannot be taken at face value whereas others have a defense bias which color their views. In my personal experience I have retained experts who have recommended prosecution of cases but could not logically or scientifically justify their positions. Whether they were not sufficiently knowledgeable or had some hidden agenda or personal motivation was unclear. Other experts have counseled against prosecution but, when pressed, were unable to support their position. Attorneys that regularly handle major cases are able to expose these predilections and weed such experts from their ranks. Over time, law firms cultivate a cadre of professionals whose opinions they value and who can be counted on to thoroughly and candidly weigh in on the scientific merits and detractions of the case.
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Beauty amid the ruins
The images are horrific—photos of homes and businesses ravenously consumed by raging infernos, videos of people fleeing for their lives through the maelstrom of engulfing flames and choking smoke about to overtake them.
By Karen Fliedner, Managing Editor
Roaring across the landscape at a rate of one football field in length every three seconds, the Northern California wildfires that broke out in early October, incinerating the heart of wine country, are all-too-real to those in the midst of the deadly catastrophe. With entire cities evacuated—and entire neighborhoods destroyed—piles of smoldering or melted debris are all that remains of homes, businesses, and lives.
In 2017 alone, according to the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, nearly 7,900 wildfires have torched close to 900,000 acres of land—and still counting.
Yet rising out of the ashes is a type of beauty not often seen in the divisive clamor of everyday life. Observes TSgt Ryan Padgett, USAF, an OCF member stationed at Travis Air Force Base, “The wildfires have provided an opportunity for the church to function as God intended it to do. It’s a really cool thing to see, a little touch of heaven even.
Photo courtesy of the 146th Airlift Wing
View from the flight deck of the MAFFS 6, from the California National Guard’s 146th Airlift Wing.
“No one’s talking politics. There aren’t ideological lines separating others. Everyone’s pitching in to help out one another. People coming together in unity to help out one another, working together for a common cause. And in the process, lifelong friends are being forged through the fires that wouldn’t occur any other way. Police, first responders, the community—all are drawing closer together.”
Not a military chaplain but a volunteer chaplain for the Fairfield, California, police department, TSgt Padgett coordinates efforts with local businesses to help fire fighters, police, and first responders in their work. “If you ask most companies, they will step up to help—and will do so on a daily basis. One business is donating coffee and cases of energy drinks at $200 a pop each day,” he said.
He’s also the public relations point of contact for the volunteer effort at Travis Air Force Base, helping raise money and collecting food, blankets, toiletries for shelters and other local churches and organizations coming alongside those who left everything behind in the Napa Valley fires except for the shirts on their backs.
Even with roughly 75 percent of his unit deployed to do relief work in Puerto Rico, which was ravaged by Hurricane Maria in late September, some 40 airmen from different squadrons immediately stepped forward to help when the squadron commander asked for volunteers. From their military experience they immediately developed a plan, assigned tasks in areas of expertise, and pitched in to do whatever needed to be done.
“These airmen just want to serve, whether in their military service or to the community,” said TSgt Padgett. “In addition to helping on the tasks, many of them also gave from their own resources on the GoFundMe page we set up.”
“Listen to others in their pain. If you can, fill a practical need—a glass of water, where a shelter is, a place to get a meal. Those little things make a big difference.” —TSgt Ryan Padgett, USAF
Asked about what he’s seeing and experiencing in the wildfire disaster, TSgt Padgett said, “It’s heartbreaking to see a city of 1,500 homes reduced to rubble.” Among the police and first responders he’s assisting, he said there’s a “serious get-to-work” tone because of the daunting scope of demands upon them.
And on the civilian side, “there’s a profound, deep undercurrent of fear, because ‘wildfires and displacement—those things happen to other people, and now it’s happened to me.’ They’re scared. Everyone knows the fire is there—and they don’t know what to do,” he said.
“Since I was in uniform, a frightened woman in a restaurant was asking me what she should do. One thing I encouraged her to do was to pack a 3-day bag ready to take just in case we’d all be evacuated too.” He and his family themselves have their 3-day packs ready to go.
As a servant leader being the hands and heart of Christ to others in life’s tragedies, TSgt Padgett suggested that helping others is as simple as being aware of the ways you can do so. “Listen to others in their pain. If you can, fill a practical need—a glass of water, where a shelter is, a place to get a meal. Those little things make a big difference.
“As it’s said, people don’t care what you know; they want to know you care,” he said.
When the reaction to help others in a calamity eventually tapers off, what are some ways servant leaders can continue modeling true Christ-like service to others? “Most people walk through everyday life with blinders on,” said TSgt Padgett. “When there’s a clear need, they come off and most people try to help in some way.
“Be that someone who gives a glass of water to someone needing it. Or just walk with them in their pain. Rejoice with them. Cry with them. When you ask someone how they’re doing, stop to listen. Be quick to listen, slow to speak. Be inconvenienced—go out of your way to help someone. It cost the Good Samaritan time and money to help someone (Luke 10:33).”
Asked about the inevitable rejoinder of “where’s God in all this?” when disasters strike, TSgt Padgett replied, “God is not an evil god. He uses unfortunate circumstances to draw us closer together, laying it on the hearts of others to take care of each other. It’s only through being vulnerable in our lives that we can be blessed by Him through others working to help us.
“God’s there if you truly stop to look for Him, in the way strangers are helping strangers. No one is doing this as a show or for a pat on the back. Cups of cold water, as spoken of in the Bible (Mark 9:41), are literally being handed out to share with others. They’re sharing water, the thing they have, because it’s the right thing to do.
“It’s been encouraging to see local churches rally together to help others, living our lives as a family as we are meant by God to live. As it is said, we’re to preach the Gospel at all times, using words only when necessary.”
OCF Communications2018-06-23T12:25:58-06:00Categories: Embracing the Culture|
Mike January 24, 2019 at 9:00 pm - Reply
Chaplain Padgett,
Thanks for your service both in the USAF and as a First Responder Chaplain. As a 30+ year veteran of the Fire Service in California, I can attest that the work you do and the ministry you provide cannot have a value placed upon it. There is hardly anything more devastating than a wind-driven Wildland Urban Interface Fire. They destroy lives, property, and the environment without prejudice. I really appreciate the fact that you are taking care of Law Enforcement, Fire, and EMS personnel. In these types of incidents, the FR’s take a huge beating and due to the nature of the fuel, topography, and weather end up walking away from the incident feeling quite defeated. No matter how much property or lives get save, its the ones that we fail to save that haunt us. It takes a strong and caring chaplain to minister to a hard core group such as FR’s, especially when they feel they have failed.
Please continue the hard work. Chaplaincy is not easy, therefore please remember your self care as well.
In appreciation for taking care of the brothers and sisters in public safety.
Chaplain Mike Norris
Fire Chief, RN, Paramedic (Ret.)
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I won't be broken: Gray
Jack Brady
Sat 27 Feb 2016, 07:00 AM
Five months since a prescription painkiller overdose threatened his life, South Sydney's Aaron Gray has come out the other side with a career perspective unlike any other.
One week out from the Rabbitohs' season-opener against the Roosters, Gray said he could have let what happened break him but was confident in his understanding of how good he has it.
"I don't know what you'd call it other than a lesson in life," Gray told NRL.com.
"100 per cent it brings your career into perspective. It's put life into perspective too, not only my career.
"I have come to the conclusion that it can either make me or break me and I'm definitely not going to let it break me so I can't wait to get out there and play footy again."
In what has been an injury-ravaged career so far for Gray, the 21-year-old appeared to put any fleeting concerns aside last year by playing 12 NRL games in his debut season.
With Dylan Walker and Joel Reddy departing the club, a spot on the wing has opened up in the Rabbitohs' NRL team though Gray is unsure as to where he stands with coach Michael Maguire.
"It's hard to say, I've tried to put my best foot forward so I'll guess we'll just have to see what happens when Round 1 comes around. Everything is kept under wraps by Madge for the most part up until the team is named really," Gray said.
"This is the best my body has ever felt. I'm really looking forward to the season beginning. Hopefully I can stay injury-free and see where that takes me, it's been good to get almost the entire pre-season under my belt and not worry about falling behind."
An extra motivation for Gray this season lies in helping his brother Brock develop for the future.
The younger Gray, a 19-year-old back-rower in South Sydney's NYC team, may not earn his NRL debut this season, but his older brother can't help dream about playing with his younger sibling in the top grade in the near future.
"It's always good to have close mates in the team let alone your brother. I love training with him and hopefully in the next couple of years we can get on the big stage and get a game together," Gray said of Brock, who is two years his junior.
"I've wanted to do that since I first started playing first grade. We have Sam, George and Tom (Burgess) all out there and it's pretty special when they get out there together so the chance to have my brother out there with me would be pretty good.
"I'm trying to push him along the best I can to help him get to where he wants to be and that's in the first grade team. It might not be this year but in the next couple of years, I hope to see up there for sure."
Video first featured at rabbitohs.com.au
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Home / About Us / About Us
The Pool & Hot Tub Alliance was formed in 2019, combining the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals (APSP) and the National Swimming Pool Foundation (NSPF). With the mission to “Celebrate the Water,” PHTA facilitates the expansion of swimming, water safety and related research and outreach activities aimed at introducing more people to swimming, making swimming environments safer and keeping pools open to serve communities.
To learn more about the future of the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance, visit our new site here!
Encouraging happier and healthier living by increasing aquatic activity through education and research
We believe everything we do helps people live happier and healthier lives. Whether it’s encouraging more aquatic activity, making pools safer, or keeping pools open, we believe we can make a difference. Founded in 1965 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit and located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, our proceeds are directed to fund education and research and to help create swimmers.
We offer books, online courses, and training programs that are technically sound, convenient to access, and beautifully designed. Our Instructors have trained over 500,000 professionals in more than 100 countries through the Certified Pool & Spa Operator® (CPO®) Certification program. Aquatic professionals around the world learn to prevent injuries, illnesses, and accidents through our online training courses, such as Pool Operator Primer™, Water Chemistry Basics, and Advanced Service Technician™.
Through funding over $4 million in grants, we have impacted policies and practices around the world. In addition, each year we host the World Aquatic Health™ Conference which attracts professionals worldwide to learn of the latest advances in aquatics. In 2018 we welcomed The Alliance to the NSPF family, now the largest member association in the aquatics industry. In 2016 we merged with GENESIS, the educational leader for designers and builders of residential pools and spas. In 2012, we launched the Step Into Swim™ campaign, a 10-year initiative to create one million more swimmers.
NSPF Company History
Birth of the National Swimming Pool Foundation
In 1963, a group of visionary leaders in the growing pool and spa industry formed the National Swimming Pool Foundation® (NSPF®). These leaders recognized a need for educational to supplement and accentuate practical experience. In addition, they realized research was needed to answer many technical questions and fill knowledge gaps.
NSPF received 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service. The original mission of this new organization was to generate funds to conduct scientific research and provide education to positively influence the design, construction, and operation of swimming pools. Funds would be used either directly or by NSPF, or distributed via contributions to organizations that qualified as tax-exempt and supported the NSPF mission.
Origin of the CPO® Certification
The first pool operator course to educate the public on the safe and proper care of swimming pools and spas was developed by NSPF as a correspondence course. Upon successful completion of the course, recipients received the Certified Pool & Spa Operator® (CPO®) Certification.
In the early 1970’s, Seattle-based professor Don Van Rossen, Ph.D., authored the first formal, black and white, Pool & Spa Operator course handbook, which outlined best practices to care for swimming pools and spas. By the late 1970’s, the booming pool industry had taken notice of the first complete swimming pool manual, and Dr. Van Rossen sought to expand the reach of the course beyond his own teaching.
Fontaine Piper, Ph.D., a Missouri-based university professor, was hired to create an Instructor school to train select CPO® Certified individuals to become Instructors. By 1985, 58 Instructors were trained in the United States. Today, there are approximately 900 NSPF-trained Instructors worldwide; more than 100 Instructors are international, delivering training to professionals in English, Spanish, French, and Ukrainian. Dr. Piper continues to lead the Instructor program as Instructor Education Committee Chairman.
Leif Zars, a respected engineer, builder, and pioneer in the swimming pool industry was hired as NSPF Board Chairman. He was responsible for establishing the foundation’s distribution center in San Antonio, Texas.
Les Kowalsky, a prudent American businessman, joined NSPF as Chief Executive Officer. Kowalsky raised the standard of CPO® Certification by requiring pool operator recertification every five years. CPO® Certification gained popularity and credibility throughout the U.S.
The NSPF Board reorganized and selected Board Member Ray Essick as interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO), with the goal of relocating the foundation headquarters from Texas (distribution) and New York (headquarters), to beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. Essick formerly served as USA Swimming Executive Director, located in Colorado Springs. During his tenure, the foundation searched for handbook authors and recruited the next chief executive officer.
Thomas Lachocki, Ph.D., was appointed CEO by the NSPF Board of Directors in December. As former Director of Product Development for BioLab, Inc. (a Chemtura Company), Dr. Lachocki’s experience in chemistry, research, education, and business development allowed insight into the issues and opportunities affecting the swimming pool and spa industry.
A History of Education
NSPF Board contracted Ronald Ford, a respected pool professional and NSPF Instructor, to author and update the Pool & Spa Operator™ Handbook. A research grant program was established and has awarded over $4 million since 2003. Through these funded grants, it has been demonstrated that research can guide the growth and significance of the aquatics field.
The new, full-color, indexed, and updated handbook was released. The foundation committed to update the handbook regularly with both practical field information and research-based findings. Regular updates have ensured that CPO® Certification students have access to the latest, unbiased, scientific information. A Scholarship and Fellowship program was established to reinforce NSPF’s commitment to education. The annual World Aquatic Health™ Conference was launched, an unmatched educational and networking event that highlights scientific advances and spotlights issues, emerging trends and opportunities in the aquatics field.
A joint partnership with Human Kinetics was created to publish the International Journal of Aquatic Research & Education, the first scientific scholarly journal in the field.
International efforts were expanded with the release of a Spanish Pool & Spa Operator® Handbook, shortly followed by a French Pool & Spa Operator Handbook the next year. During this time of tremendous innovation and growth, the organization reinvested nearly $4 million in research grants to better the industry. Research focused on two things:
Keeping pools safer and open through research on drownings, illnesses, injuries, and chemical exposures
Helping the industry flourish by documenting how immersion and water activity can benefit an individual’s health and give justification for the existence of pools and the growth of the industry
The introduction of Pool Operator Primer™ was the first of now over 40 online training courses offered by NSPF. Primer presented a flexible and effective CPO® Certification format, utilizing both online and in-class instruction.
Partnering with the American Red Cross, the Home Pool Essentials online course was launched to help residential pool and spa owners understand water safety and basic maintenance of the pool and spa. The close of the first decade of the new millennium culiminated in the expansion of the NSPF mission statement: To encourage healthier living by increasing aquatic activity through education and research.
To complement the new mission, NSPF initiated Step Into Swim™ a 10-year campaign to create one million more swimmers. The campaign goals were crafted to support the NSPF mission: To reduce drownings, improve public health, and build demand for the industry.
To broadcast the health benefits of aquatics, NSPF began publication of the Aquatic Health Benefits Bulletin. For pool and spa industry influencers who want to help build demand for pools, spas, and aquatic facilities, this bulletin was created to promote the benefits of water immersion and activity.
To further support the mission and meet the educational demand within the industry, NSPF® merged with GENESIS®, the world’s leading university for pool and spa builders, designers, and engineers. Celebrating 20 years in 2018, GENESIS® University trains 1,500 students annually and offers the prestigious Society of Watershpape Designers® Certification.
Utilizing technology to provide efficient and effective training to pool and spa service professionals, NSPF released Advanced Service Technician™. AST Certification® was an industry-first comprehensive blended (online and in-class) training designed to provide service professionals with the knowledge and skills to service residential pools and spas, including equipment installation, maintenance, repair, and service company management.
To meet the need for member representation in the industry, NSPF merged with the California Pool & Spa Association and formed The Alliance, the largest member association in the aquatics industry. The Alliance is the go-to source for effective legislative protection, top-notch education, and innovative programs that promote demand for swimming.
Now, more than ever, as society ages and as we struggle with the health consequences of sedentary lifestyles, aquatic activity in healthy water becomes more and more important. We all have the responsibility to continue to learn and understand the health benefits of aquatics for ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world. NSPF remains committed to furthering advances in research to demonstrate how aquatic activity creates healthier lives. We continue to support initiatives that help keep pools safer, keep pools open, and grow the future of aquatics.
Please join us in encouraging healthier living by increasing aquatic activity through education and research. Email our Customer Service team or call 719-540-9119 to learn more about partnership opportunities.
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Health|Need Therapy? A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Need Therapy? A Good Man Is Hard to Find
By Benedict Carey
Between unresolved family conflicts, relationship struggles and his mixed-race identity, James Puckett had enough on his mind in college that he sought professional help. But after bouncing from one therapist to another, he still felt stuck.
“They were all female, and they did give me some comfort,” said Mr. Puckett, 30, who works for a domestic-abuse program in Wisconsin. “But I was getting the same rhetoric about changing my behavior without any challenge to see the bigger picture of what was behind these very male coping reactions, like putting your hand through a wall.”
He decided to seek out a male therapist instead, and found that there were few of them. “I’m just glad I ended up with the person I did,” said Mr. Puckett, who is no longer in therapy, “because for me it made all the difference.”
Researchers began tracking the “feminization” of mental health care more than a generation ago, when women started to outnumber men in fields like psychology and counseling. Today the takeover is almost complete.
Men earn only one in five of all master’s degrees awarded in psychology, down from half in the 1970s. They account for less than 10 percent of social workers under the age of 34, according to a recent survey. And their numbers have dwindled among professional counselors — to 10 percent of the American Counseling Association’s membership today from 30 percent in 1982 — and appear to be declining among marriage and family therapists.
Some college psychology programs cannot even attract male applicants, much less students. And at many therapists’ conferences, attendees with salt-and-pepper beards wander the hallways as lonely as peaceniks at a gun fair.
The result, many therapists argue, is that the profession is at risk of losing its appeal for a large group of sufferers — most of them men — who would like to receive therapy but prefer to start with a male therapist.
“There’s a way in which a guy grows up that he knows some things that women don’t know, and vice versa,” said David Moultrup, a psychotherapist in Belmont, Mass. “But that male viewpoint has been so devalued in the course of empowering little girls for the past 40 or 50 years that it is now all but lost in talk therapy. Society needs to have the choice, and the choice is being taken away.”
The reasons for the shift are economic as well as cultural, most people in these professions agree. Managed care took a bite out of therapists’ incomes in the 1990s. Psychiatry, the most male-dominated corner of therapy, increasingly turned to drug treatments. And as women entered the work force in greater numbers, they proved to be more drawn to the talking cure than men — in giving the treatment as well as in receiving it.
At the American Counseling Association's annual conference in March, women predominated, as they do in the profession. Credit...Stuart Hill
“Usually women get blamed when a profession loses status, but in this case the trend started first, and men just evacuated,” said Dorothy Cantor, a former president of American Psychological Association who conducted a landmark study of gender and psychology in 1995. “Women moved up into the field and took their place.”
The impact of this gender switch on the value of therapy is negligible, studies suggest. A good therapist is a good therapist, male or female, and a mediocre one is a mediocre one. Shared experience may even be an impediment, in some cases: therapists often caution students against assuming that they have special insight into person’s problems just because they have something in common.
Still, perception is all important when it comes to seeking help for the very first time. In a recent study among 266 college men, Ronald F. Levant, a psychologist at the University of Akron, found that a man’s willingness to seek therapy was directly related to how strongly he agreed with traditionally male assumptions, like “I can usually handle whatever comes my way.” Such a man on the fence about seeking treatment could be discouraged by the prospect of talking to a woman.
“Many men like this believe that only another man can help them, and it doesn’t matter whether that’s true or not,” Dr. Levant said. “What’s important is what the client believes.”
Both male therapists and men who have been in treatment agree that there are certain topics that — at least initially, all things being equal — are best discussed within gender. Sex is one, they say. And some men are far less ashamed about affairs when speaking to another man.
Aggression is another. Many men grow up in a world of hostile body language and real physical violence that is almost entirely invisible to women. A bar fight that sounds traumatic to a female therapist may be no more than a good night out for a man. Likewise, a stare-down in the sandbox that looks vanishingly trivial from a distance may lie like a poisoned well in the stream of the unconscious.
In some men’s groups he used to run, Dr. Levant passed out index cards and had each participant write down the one thing he was most ashamed of, that he was reluctant to admit to himself, much less to anyone else. “I would get things like, ‘I backed down from a fight in junior high school,’ ” he said, “and these were mostly middle-aged, married guys.”
In just the past few years, psychologists have identified a number of issues that are, in effect, male versions of the gender-identity issues that so many mothers face in the work force: the self-doubt of being a stay-at-home father, the tension between being a provider and being a father, even male post-partum depression.
“In the same way that there is something very personal about being a mother, something very important to female identity, the experience of fathering is also very powerful,” said Aaron Rochlen, a psychologist at the University of Texas, Austin. “And some men, I think, prefer to talk about that — the joy of being a father, the stress, how it’s impacting them — with a therapist who’s had the same experience,” from the same point of view.
If they can find one, that is. “I remember when I started training, I looked around and realized that for the first time in my life, I was an endangered minority,” said Ryan McKelley, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. “Now I tell my male students, if you’re interested in clinical care, you can write your own ticket. You’ll be hired immediately.”
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The next steps in Peterborough’s circular journey
Home » Blog » The next steps in Peterborough’s circular journey
An internationally renowned eco-project in Peterborough that’s helped hundreds of businesses across the city save money, cut waste and improve productivity will be entering a new phase this year as it takes on a sector specific approach, starting with manufacturing and engineering.
The Circular Peterborough project has committed the city to developing a fully circular economy by 2050, in other words, the city will have zero waste. This means much more than recycling – the circular economy encourages businesses to get maximum value from materials and resources already in use. Businesses are already saving money by making sure products last longer, processes are more efficient, and fewer natural resources are used. This encompasses redesigning products so they can be taken apart for repair or remanufacturing more easily down to whole new uses for waste streams, such as turning waste coffee grounds into bio-fuel.
Circular Peterborough is part of the city’s Future Peterborough programme, run jointly by Opportunity Peterborough and Peterborough City Council. The programme was founded in 2012 when Peterborough became one of four UK Future City Demonstrators.
Initiatives like the Circular Peterborough Commitment, which brings together local partners who share the ambition to integrate circular economy principles in the city, and the launch of the sharing platform, Share Peterborough, have made Peterborough a leading voice in circular economy thinking and practice. The Commitment has had over 70 companies as signatories, and Share Peterborough has over 300 users who have together saved thousands of pounds by reducing new purchases and landfill fees, and have diverted over 220kg of resources from landfill.
“The circular economy achievements of Peterborough have really pushed the city into the international spotlight and we want to remain at the forefront,” explains Tom Hennessy, chief executive of Opportunity Peterborough.
“We hosted an international conference in January for circular economy professionals from all over England, Scotland, Wales, Denmark and even as far as Lebanon! This gave people a chance to discuss the challenges and solutions around how cities and businesses can move beyond supporting circular economy principles to actually adopting and implementing them.
“There’s a real hunger for change, but enabling and empowering that change is the difficult part. We’re essentially migrating from the old economic model of ‘take-make-dispose’ to a new way of looking at our resources so we’re getting the maximum value from them and reducing the life costs of products. Some businesses already have circular practices in place without knowing it, but we want more people to consciously adopt the circular economy to support sustainable business growth in Peterborough.
“We continue to support businesses to adopt circular economy practices but we’re also looking at how we can measure the impact of circular projects and practices on the city as a whole.
“Measurement isn’t easy – the circular economy doesn’t happen in one place in isolation, there is a butterfly effect and what happens in one area has an impact in another. Through our sector workshops and partnerships with University College London and Cranfield University students, we’ve been able to develop more effective measurement systems on the impact of circular economy.”
Using existing guidance on sustainable cities from the British Standards Institute, which Opportunity Peterborough has helped to develop, the Future Peterborough team looked at approximately 75 indicators to create a baseline from which to measure progress towards becoming a circular city. This breaks down into three key areas:
Qualitative data for businesses and the city covering people, culture, infrastructure, digital technology, processes and procedures, and goals and metrics. In time this will become more quantitative.
Quantitative key performance indicators – including the amount of materials sent to landfill, resources recycled, and the amount of energy produced from renewable sources
Urban material flows – initially this will focus on Peterborough City Council’s supply chain – identifying major providers of goods and services, and the nature, size and movement of related materials.
Tom continues, “The way we measure circular economy may change over time – we need to be ready to adapt if there are better ways to measure progress and highlight challenges.
“Circular economy is evolutionary so change won’t happen overnight, but we want to accelerate the pace of change. At the moment we’re considering taking a much more sector focused approach so we can make a big impact in key areas like manufacturing, engineering, agri-food, and construction”
To build on Peterborough’s international reputation for its circular economy achievements, Opportunity Peterborough is currently leading on a unique new initiative called Circular by Design includes partners such as Cranfield University, Kaimai Research, the SERC Group and Cambridge University Judge Business School.
The aim is to establish a circular community with representatives from a broad range of sectors that can show the real environmental, economic and social impact of circular economy within the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority area.
Members of Circular by Design will share the lessons they’ve learnt from current and past projects to develop innovative and effective circular economy projects that can be used as best practice examples and delivered at local, national and international levels.
The Circular Peterborough programme was also featured as a city level case study on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website. To read it please visit: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/Peterborough_-Case-Study_Mar19.pdf. To find out more about Peterborough Circular Peterborough programme, visit: www.futurepeterborough.com.
As submitted to the Peterborough Telegraph innovation supplement 28.03.2019.
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Nick de Semlyen
Wild and Crazy Guys
4.04 based on 817 ratings & 148 reviews on Goodreads.com
Hardback PaperbackAudiobookEbook Buy Amazon Blackwell's Book Depository Hive Waterstones WH Smith Wordery Foyles
Wild and Crazy Guys is the larger-than-life story of the much-loved Hollywood comedy stars that ruled the 1980s.
As well as delving behind the scenes of classic movies such as Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places and dozens more, it chronicles the off-screen, larger-than-life antics of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, John Candy et al. It’s got drugs, sex, punch-ups, webbed toes and Bill Murray being pushed into a swimming pool by Hunter S Thompson, while tied to a lawn chair.
It’s akin to Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, following the key players through their highs and lows, and their often turbulent relationships with each other. Nick de Semlyen has interviewed many of the key directors such as Walter Hill, John Landis and Carl Reiner, as well as the comedians themselves.
Taking you on a trip through the tumultuous ’80s, Wild And Crazy Guys explores the friendships, feuds, triumphs and disasters experienced by these iconic funnymen. Based on candid interviews from the stars themselves, as well as those who entered their orbit, it reveals the hidden history behind the most fertile period ever for screen comedy.
An enjoyable romp that vividly captures the manic ups and downs of the remarkable group of funny folk who gave us a golden age of small and big screen comedy, from SNL to Groundhog Day.
Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders and Raging Bulls
Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy—they’re all here like you’ve never seen them before (with no shortage of drugs, competitiveness, and egos). Fast-paced and addictive, Wild and Crazy Guys is the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls of the wild and crazy ‘80s Hollywood comedy scene.
Chris Nashawaty, author of Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story
It's amazing that anybody survived making comedies in the impulsive, excessive, drug-fueled, rage-filled period in the decade following the explosive arrival of Saturday Night Live. And some didn't. But, aided by the sharp recollections of those who did, Nick de Semlyen gives that more-is-more period of comedy what it desperately needs: Clarity and perspective. Wild and Crazy Guys maps the era and its swaggering players beautifully.
Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back
Books by Nick de Semlyen
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Examination of Myriad-Mayo Guidance Comments -- BIO Joint Comment
By Donald Zuhn --
On March 4, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a guidance memorandum, entitled "Guidance For Determining Subject Matter Eligibility Of Claims Reciting Or Involving Laws of Nature, Natural Phenomena, & Natural Products" (or "Myriad-Mayo Guidance"), to implement a new procedure for determining the subject matter eligibility of claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in view of the Supreme Court's decisions in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (2013), and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. (2012). At a biotechnology/chemical/pharmaceutical (BCP) customer partnership meeting in April, the Office announced that it would be hosting a public forum on the Guidance in May to receive public feedback on the Guidance, and at that forum encouraged shareholders to submit written comments on the Guidance. Since the forum, the Office has encouraged the patent community to provide further feedback regarding the Guidance (despite the Office's announced deadline of July 31 for submitting comments).
Comments regarding the Guidance, including at least three received after the July 31 deadline, have been posted on the USPTO website. The comments are divided into seven groups (with the number of submissions in each group also provided): Intellectual property organizations and other associations (21), government agencies (0), academic and research institutions (4), law firms (7), companies (8), individuals (43), and comments received after August 1, 2014 (3). Today, we examine the joint comment submitted on October 14, 2014 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the Coalition for 21st Century Medicine, five companies (GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis AG, Novo Nordisk Inc., PharmaMar S.A., and Verenium Corp.), and six individuals (Nancy J. Linck, Gladys H. Monroy, Kate H. Murashige, Kenneth H. Sonnenfeld, Suzannah K. Sundby, and Warren D. Woessner).
The BIO joint comment letter begins by "strongly recommend[ing] that the USPTO . . . publish its proposed revisions and provide an opportunity for public feedback before the Revised Guidance is finalized and implemented by examiners," stating that "[a]dditional opportunities for input by the interested public would at any rate be more likely to increase acceptance of such a Revised Guidance by the patent user community." The letter also suggests that "[o]nce the Revised Guidance is promulgated, claims that were first rejected under the March Guidance should not get a second action final rejection under the Revised Guidance."
The rest of the 9-page joint letter addresses seven substantive issues that the signatories argue would benefit from public comment before any Revised Guidance is finalized and implemented. Among these issues are the use of additional case law, a closer reading of Supreme Court and other case law, the use of "function" to demonstrate patent-eligibility, examiners' use of claim interpretation, the possibility of limiting § 101 analysis to claims "directed to" (as opposed to merely "reciting" or "incorporating") a judicial exception, the use of preemption, and the possibility of implementing a "unified" analysis.
With respect to the use of additional case law, the letter states that:
In framing the March Guidance, the USPTO seems to have focused only on selected Supreme Court cases and has not drawn on all available precedent. Despite being extensively briefed, the Supreme Court has not overruled or distinguished Parke-Davis, Merck v Olin Mathieson, In re Kratz, In re Bergstrom and other cases. To the extent these and other cases are not clearly inconsistent with recent Supreme Court decisions, they remain good law until the courts say otherwise, and it should not fall to the PTO to administratively abrogate them by giving them the "silent treatment."
The letter also states that "[a]dditional insight can be gleaned by a closer reading of those Supreme Court cases on which the USPTO has focused." In particular, the signatories suggest that "Supreme Court cases dealing with patentable subject matter are generally framed in broad conceptual brushes, but they are decided on the specific facts presented," and therefore "urge[s] the USPTO to closely scrutinize the particular claims at issue in each precedential case, and where necessary analyze the record to appreciate the scope of the claimed subject matter considered by the Supreme Court." By doing so, the letter contends that the Office will be able "to more accurately put the Court's decisions in context and properly apply the concepts they set forth."
As for the Office's suggestion that applicants will be able to establish patent eligibility using functional differences, the signatories note that they are "greatly intrigued by this concept and would much appreciate further clarification of what the USPTO means and how it expects such evidence is to be used in the analysis." Referring to the Guidance's amazonic acid example (Example B), the letter asks whether:
[T]he USPTO mean[s] by considering "function" that purifying amazonic acid allows skilled persons to formulate it into tablets, to administer it at a precise dose with a predictable pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profile, and for the first time to treat human disease while avoiding side-effects, and that in this sense purifying it conferred a new "function" as disease-treating agent?
The letter then answers that question by expressing the signroties' belief that the conclusion is supported in the case law, and adding that:
Case law also supports the concept that even if a function is known for a natural substance, patent eligibility may be further buttressed by evidence that any "function" is enhanced by purification or enrichment, such as an IC50 that is greatly increased over raw preparations out of a bacterial fermentate, or the absence of impurities (specified or not) that would otherwise make cruder preparations unsuitable for human administration.
With respect to establishing patent eligibility using functional differences, the letter suggests that:
The Revised Guidance should emphasize that even absent chemical modifications, purification or enrichment can give rise to preparations that are every bit as "distinctive" in "name, character, or use," having characteristics "markedly different" from the natural state, or demonstrating an "enlargement in the range of . . . utility." We recommend that the USPTO seek inspiration in the case law when developing additional examples to illustrate this point. Good fodder for such examples can be found in Parke-Davis' remarkable distinctions between purified adrenaline salt vs. the older medicinal powders of shriveled adrenal glands, or in the great advantages of enriched preparations of pure vitamin B12 which the Merck court contrasted to the disgusting earlier raw beef liver extracts that had, up to that time, been the only treatment for pernicious anemia.
As for the Office's proposal to limit § 101 analysis to claims "directed to" a judicial exception (as opposed to merely "reciting" or "incorporating" that exception), the signatories indicate that "as communicated the concept still seems to be very much in flux, and is poorly understood at least by the patent user community." The letter suggests that problems with the above analysis may be overcome if examiners were "required, as a first step, to define precisely what they regard as the applicable judicial exclusion and where it is recited in the claim."
The BIO joint letter closes by focusing on the possible implementation by the Office of a "unified" analysis. The letter contends that:
Alice provides guidance as to how to analyze process claims based on abstract ideas. But, Alice set forth only "a" (not "the") framework for an eligibility analysis that was particularly suited for the kind of claimed subject matter at issue. Its mode of analysis does not necessarily apply in the same way to compositions or manufactures, which have their own line of case law. None of the cases dealing with compositions and manufactures -- Myriad, J.E.M. Ag-Supply, Chakarabrty, Funk Bros. -- has applied an "inventive concept/significantly more" analysis.
The letter also points out that:
The Supreme Court may have applied an "inventive concept" / "add enough" analysis when it discerned abstract ideas, laws of nature and natural phenomena in disembodied methods and processes. But when it encountered physical compositions and articles, it engaged in a less intrinsic, and more comparative analysis that queried whether the claimed thing has a "distinctive name, character or use" compared to the natural thing, has "markedly different characteristics," or enlarges its "range of utility."
The BIO joint letter concludes by reiterating that the issues discussed in the letter "would benefit from further public dialogue with the USPTO before the Revised Guidance is finalized." It will be interesting to see whether the Office follows the letter's suggestion to release the revised Guidance as a draft and to seek public comment on the draft before implementing the revised Guidance or proceeds to release and implement the revised Guidance first and collect public feedback later.
For additional information regarding this topic, please see:
• "USPTO Outlines Changes to Myriad-Mayo Guidance at BIO Symposium," September 30, 2014
• "USPTO Expected to Issue Revised Myriad-Mayo Guidance in October," September 17, 2014
• "Guest Post: Myriad-Mayo Guidance -- Consistency With International Harmonization and TRIPS," August 26, 2014
• "Examination of Myriad-Mayo Guidance Comments -- AUTM, COGR, AAU, and APLU," August 21, 2014
• "Examination of Myriad-Mayo Guidance Comments -- International Bioindustry Associations," August 11, 2014
• "Examination of Myriad-Mayo Guidance Comments -- ACLU," August 5, 2014
• "Guest Post: Overview of First Published Comments on Myriad-Mayo Patent Eligibility Guidance," July 13, 2014
• "Guest Post: USPTO Public Forum on Patent Guidance: My Thoughts as a Speaker and Attendee," June 11, 2014
• "USPTO Holds Forum on Subject Matter Eligibility -- Part IV," May 22, 2014
• "USPTO Holds Forum on Subject Matter Eligibility -- Part III," May 15, 2014
• "USPTO Holds Forum on Subject Matter Eligibility -- Part II," May 14, 2014
• "Guest Post: How to Patent Grapefruit Juice -- The New USPTO Guidance for Patent Eligible Subject Matter Is Both Sticky and Sour," May 13, 2014
• "USPTO Holds Forum on Subject Matter Eligibility -- Part I," May 12, 2014
• "USPTO Tries to Address Public Misunderstandings Regarding Myriad-Mayo Guidance," April 16, 2014
• "USPTO Issues Guidance for Analyzing Subject Matter Eligibility of Claims Reciting Laws of Nature/Natural Principles, Natural Phenomena or Natural Products," March 4, 2014
Posted at 11:51 PM in Patent Office Rules & Procedures, Patentable Subject Matter | Permalink
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2017 Unibet Champions League Preview
THE world's top stars will descend on Cardiff this weekend for the second staging of the Unibet Champions League of Darts.
The BBC-televised tournament sees their eight stars competing across four sessions at the Motorpoint Arena, with a round-robin group stage followed by the semi-finals and final on Sunday evening.
Group A features four World Champions as Michael van Gerwen, reigning champion Phil Taylor, Adrian Lewis and Raymond van Barneveld do battle in an eagerly-awaited series of fixtures.
Their rivals in Group B are headlined by two-time World Champion Gary Anderson and reigning UK Open champion Peter Wright, alongside Champions League debutants Dave Chisnall and Mensur Suljovic.
Taylor defeated Van Gerwen in last year's final and will meet the World Champion during the Group Stage, although he begins his title defence on Saturday afternoon against Lewis.
"It was fantastic to win the Champions League last year and it would be wonderful to win it again this weekend," said Taylor. "It's a great event and it should be a good weekend in Cardiff.
"It's eight great players and our group's fantastic with Michael, Adrian and Barney, so it should be exciting. I want to get off to a good start against Adrian and then see what happens from there."
Lewis is making his first appearance since the World Matchplay after recovering from a back operation, having battled through to the semi-finals in Blackpool early in his recuperation.
"I can't wait to get back playing again - it feels like ages since Blackpool but I'm excited," said Lewis. "To get so far in the World Matchplay despite it only being a couple of weeks after the operation showed what I can do.
"This will be tough because there are three other great players in my group but I'm really looking forward to it. I've been working hard in practice in the last couple of weeks and I want to get back up on stage now."
Van Gerwen takes on Van Barneveld in an all-Dutch opener on Saturday afternoon, with the world number one aiming to erase the memory of last year's defeat in the final.
"I'm really looking forward to the Champions League event for many reasons," said Van Gerwen. "One is because it is something I haven't won yet and that makes me very motivated.
"I have been playing very well since my month's break, and becoming a dad has made me focus more and be more relaxed at the same time – that is when I play my best darts.
"Of course, I want to put right what went wrong in my last TV tournament when I lost to Phil Taylor in Blackpool and I'm going to get the chance to do that in Cardiff.
"Everyone will be talking about that match between myself and Phil but I am not concentrating just on that - it would be silly to write off Adrian Lewis and Raymond van Barneveld.
"They haven't won World Championships for no reason and whoever wins that group will deserve it.
"I think that it will be me because if I play near to my best game then I can win any match against any opponent, and I expect myself to win any tournament I play in."
Group B's opening matches see Scottish star Anderson taking on Austrian ace Mensur Suljovic, the 2016 European Championship finalist, while world number three Wright faces heavy-scoring Chisnall.
"My preparation has been good and I'm really looking forward to the Champions League now," said Wright. "I've been working really hard in practice and my aim is to win the group and hopefully take that into the semi-finals.
"It's a great tournament with the top eight in the world, so it would be massive for me to win it."
The Unibet Champions League of Darts, offering £250,000 in prize money, will be broadcast live on BBC1 and BBC2 throughout the weekend, as well as through the PDC's series of international broadcast partners.
Tickets for the Unibet Champions League of Darts are available through motorpointarenacardiff.co.uk or by calling 029 2022 4488.
Unibet Champions League of Darts
Afternoon Session (1.15pm) – live on BBC1
First Group Matches
Peter Wright V Dave Chisnall (B)
Gary Anderson V Mensur Suljovic (B)
Phil Taylor V Adrian Lewis (A)
Michael van Gerwen V Raymond van Barneveld (A)
Evening Session (6.45pm) – live on BBC2
The afternoon session's winners face each other, and the losing players face each other.
Sunday September 17
Afternoon Session (1pm) – live on BBC2
Final Group Matches
Group Matches - Best of 19 legs
Semi-Finals & Final - Best of 21 legs
Paddy Power Champions League of Darts
Paddy Power Champions League
Van Gerwen: "I'm back and more confident than ever"
Green Sweep For Van Gerwen!
Michael van Gerwen claimed the Paddy Power Champions League of Darts title for the first time in an amazing final.
Gurney completes charity head shave
Daryl Gurney has raised over £15,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Care charity after having his head shaved.
2019 Paddy Power Champions League Day One
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Timeline/Stages for Collapse of our Way of Life
Fri, May 13, 2011 - 11:35pm
xraymike79
Client dictators being
Client dictators being overthrown by the disenfranchised citizens of the Middle East, a nuclear meltdown in one of the ‘most advanced’ economies of the world, bankrupt governments trying to choose between tax subsidies for Big Oil and financial aid for college-bound youths…. Boy, these really do seem to be nail-biting times we are living in.
Time for some grim humor…..
Jen Sorensen is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer best known for her weekly comic “Slowpoke” which appears in alternative newspapers around the nation. Her work has been published in the Village Voice, Ms. Magazine, LA Times, Nickelodeon, and NPR.org. In 2010, Jen received a Grambs Aronson “Cartoonist With a Conscience” award, part of the James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism given out by Hunter College. She has also won several awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. More of her writing and art can be seen at Slowpoke Comics.
Click for larger version.
Matt Bors is a nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist based in Portland, OR. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Village Voice, among others. His first graphic novel, War Is Boring, a collaboration with journalist David Axe, was published last year by New American Library. He has reported from Afghanistan and is the Comics Journalism Editor for Cartoon Movement.
Sat, May 14, 2011 - 04:35am
Vanityfox451
Capitalism, Materialism, Freedom and Death …
[quote=treemagnet]
Capitalism is not the enemy – its the answer! The problem is the system we know of as capitalism is so perverted and corrupt that some throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Federal Reserve…..now there is the enemy. A fractional reserve ponzi based on necessarily ever-expanding credit/debt that must, must “reset” from time to time (like now) – folks, theres your enemy. A political system such as ours relying on “I’ll vote for you if you give me something” is a very, very close number two. What do I know, its their world – I just live in it.
Hello Treemagnet,
Have a play in this sandpit … …
~ VF ~
Sun, May 15, 2011 - 04:28pm
More Shocking News from
More Shocking News from TEPCO…
Two Other Reactors Suffer Serious Damage
By MITSURU OBE
TOKYO—Substantial damage to the fuel cores at two other reactors of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex has taken place, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday, further complicating the already daunting task of bringing the reactors to a safe shutdown while avoiding the release of high levels of radioactivity.
The revelation followed an acknowledgement on Thursday that a similar meltdown of the core took place at Unit No. 1….
Workers also found that the No. 1 Unit’s reactor building is flooded in the basement, reinforcing the suspicion that the containment vessel is damaged and leaking highly radioactive water.
The revelations are likely to force an overhaul of the six-to-nine-month blueprint for bringing the reactors to a safe shutdown stage and end the release of radioactive materials. The original plan, announced in mid-April, was due to be revised May 17.
The pressure vessel, a cylindrical steel container that holds nuclear fuel, “is likely to be damaged and leaking water at Units Nos. 2-3,” said Junichi Matsumoto, Tepco spokesman on nuclear issues, in a news briefing Sunday.
He also said there could be far less cooling water in the pressure vessels of Unit Nos. 2-3, indicating that there are holes at the bottom of these vessels, with thousands of tons of water that was pumped into these reactors mostly leaking out.
Tepco found the basement of the Unit No. 1 reactor building is flooded with 4.2 meters of water. It isn’t clear where the water came from, but leaks are suspected in pipes running in and out of the containment vessel, a beaker-shaped steel structure that holds the pressure vessel.
The water flooding the basement is believed to be highly radioactive. Workers were unable to observe the flooding situation due to strong radiation coming out of the water, Tepco said.
A survey conducted by an unmanned robot Friday found radiation levels of 1,000-2,000 millisieverts per hour in some parts of the ground level of Unit No. 1, a level that would be highly dangerous for any worker nearby. Japan has placed an annual allowable dosage limit of 250 millisieverts for workers.
The high level of radioactivity means even more challenges for Tepco’s bid to set up a continuous cooling system that won’t threaten radiation leaks into the environment….
The nuclear industry lacks a technical definition for a full meltdown, but the term is generally understood to mean that radioactive fuel has breached containment measures, resulting in a massive release of fuel….
On the brighter side, if there is one, Japan has scrapped its plans to increase nuclear power from 30 percent to half of the nation’s energy source by 2030 and will promote renewable energy as a result of its ongoing nuclear crisis.
Glenn Greenwald’s articles
Glenn Greenwald’s articles have articulated quite well how the ‘War on Terror’ is a self-perpetuating beast with no end in site, as it is being conducted today. And the bigger point is that a democracy, as defined by any rational person, cannot exist if the Rule of Law is disregarded in the name of Security. And according to Prez Obama, anyone who questions the legality or rationality of the ‘War on Terror’, “needs to have their head examined.”
The President spoke openly about the dissent among his advisors in the plan to kill bin Laden. He says that the division of opinions amongst those around him was critically important in fleshing out all possible scenarios. Indeed, he says that differences in opinion are important, welcome, and make better policy.
At the end of the interview, however, Obama did something spectacularly hypocritical. Just minutes after acknowledging the importance of diversity of opinions he says:
“Justice was done and I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn’t deserve what he got, needs to get their head examined.”
Say what? Was that George W. Bush speaking?
How is difference in opinion about the mission valuable, but the diversity of opinion about the justness of assassinating bin Laden the result of mental instability?
It’s not. Those who are uncomfortable with, or skeptical of, the legality, justice and legitimacy of killing bin Laden aren’t “crazy”. They have legitimate concerns.
Once more, the discussion that has proliferated about whether assassinations and target killings, like that of bin Laden, are just and legal is critically important. The skepticism of scholars, every-day observers, religious figures, politicians etc. has created a healthy debate. Simply discarding the views of all those who dissented with the US decision on killing bin Laden as being mentally ill is more 1984 than 2011. It is worth adding that it is the fumbled recanting of facts regarding the mission to kill bin Laden that has fueled much of the criticism.
It is a sad day, when freedom of expression is actively being quashed in places like Syria, Libya, Bahrain, that the President of the US equates “anyone who questions” his decision with suffering mental illness.
What is a ‘Rogue State’?
Is it a nation that spreads phony democracy and crony capitalism by the barrel of a gun?
They hate us for our freedoms
The New York Times reports today:
For the second time in three days, a night raid in eastern Afghanistan by NATO forces resulted in the death of a child, setting off protests on Saturday that turned violent and ended in the death of a second boy. . . .
“American forces did an operation and mistakenly killed a fourth-grade student; he had gone to sleep in his field and had a shotgun next to him,” [the district’s governor, Abdul Khalid]. said. “People keep shotguns with them for hunting, not for any other purposes,” Mr. Khalid said.
The boy, [15], was the son of an Afghan National Army soldier . . . When morning came, an angry crowd gathered in Narra, the boy’s village, and more than 200 people marched with his body to the district center. Some of the men were armed and confronted the police, shouting anti-American slogans . . .
The police opened fire in an effort to push back the crowd to stop its advance to the district center. A 14-year-old boy was killed, and at least one other person was wounded, Mr. Khalid said. . . .
On Thursday, a night raid by international forces in Nangahar Province resulted in the death of a 12-year-old girl and her uncle, who was a member of the Afghan National Police.
There’s nothing much new to say here, but every now and then, it’s worth highlighting not only what we’re doing, but what the results are. Just imagine the accumulated hatred from having things like this happen day after day, week after week, year after year, for a full decade now, with no end in sight — broadcast all over the region. It’s literally impossible to convey in words the level of bloodthirsty fury and demands for vengeance that would arise if a foreign army were inside the U.S. killing innocent American children even a handful of times, let alone continuously for a full decade.
It’s the perfect self-perpetuating cycle: (1) They hate us and want to attack us because we’re over there; therefore, (2) we have to stay and proliferate ourselves because they hate us and want to attack us; (3) our staying and proliferating ourselves makes them hate us and want to attack us more; therefore, (4) we can never leave, because of how much they hate us and want to attack us. The beauty of this War on Terror — and, as the last two weeks have demonstrated, War is the bipartisan consensus for what we are and should be doing to address Terrorism — is that it forever sustains its own ostensible cause.
UPDATE: When President Obama explained to the nation (after the fact) why he committed the armed forces to Libya, he declared that the U.S. must not “stand idly by” in the face of violent assaults on unarmed civilians. Today:
Violence erupted on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, leaving at least eight dead and dozens wounded . . . Israeli troops shot at protesters in three separate locations to prevent crowds from crossing Israeli frontier lines in the deadliest such confrontation in years.
In other words, Israeli troops opened fire on unarmed protesters on three separate borders today (and other reports now suggest higher numbers of people shot). The protesters were reportedly attempting to infiltrate Israeli territory in commemoration of the annual Palestinian protest of Israel, but by all accounts were unarmed, and some were shot at on their side of their border. Will the U.S. stand “idly by” while this happens, or . . . issue a statement in ringing support of Israeli actions? Sadly, there is no plausible third alternative, and that, too, may shed some light on “why they hate us.”
UPDATE II: For a succinct exhibit of the actual meaning of Freedom when exploited to justify wars, see here.
Peter Carson
Pour another double folks
In response to conclusions drawn by Mickey Foley, per : “but most Americans can still afford to feed, clothe and house themselves.”
One fairly simple explanation why millions of Americans, Canadians and Europeans et al, are able to continue consumer driven partys – is at least in part because after realizing their mortgages are “underwater”, (oxymoron – Reverse Equity )- and the fact they will never be able to pay off the mortgage, combined with learning through word-of-mouth and or the internet – that they can live for free because foreclosures are taking 1, 2, 3, or more years to complete – jumped-on the bandwagon and stopped making payments after realizing it was a losing proposition.
For the last 30+ months – Billions of dollars which would “normally” flow to fund bankster mortgages – have been diverted instead into consumer toys and items such as : Iphones, flat-screen TV’s, cars, clothing etc. – thus keeping a consumer driven party alive, effectively delaying fundamental consequences of catastrophic results for another day, with shortsighted hopes disaster will be passed on for another generation to deal with.
Ergo: Millions live like there is no tommorrow, and they are basically right – so why not pour another double or triple – WHILE THEY STILL CAN ?
collapsenet is a fraud
Michael C Ruppert is a charlatan, and collapsenet is a fraud. Data and details in his film have been available and posted on many sites prior to MCR attempting to *re-package* same, as a purely marketing ploy to generate cash flow – with ZERO RESOURCES FOR PAID MEMBERS.
FYI – Collapse was filmed in early 2009, and if you decide to watch it – you will notice the fact – THERE IS NO MENTION OF collpasenet.com in the credits – because MCR failed to predict audience reaction. In fact, it was not until almost a year after Collapse was released that MCR decided to begin trying a series of failed efforts to create collapsenet.com. I could detail a lengthy list of failures defining MCR as a charlatan, whose sole purpose is to direct cash-flow to himself – it would fill this page several times over.
As an early paid member, I saw first-hand that MCR is lying wind-bag – who regurgitates yesterdays newspapers and calls his spin *predictions*.
In May 2010 – MCR repeatedly claimed total economic crash was ABSOLUTELY DUE TO ARRIVE IN SPADES within 2 months, by July 2010, as hype to generate membership fees by lying through his teeth make repeated false claims his new website had all the answers and resources to build what he referred to as *lifeboats*. Any claims from MCR that his site has lifeboat templates – WERE THEN, AND STILL ARE NOW – COMPLETE LIES
Even better – anyone who saw the first 5 evolutions and re-launches of collapsenet – would instantly recognize MCRs website formula WAS AN EXACT – but fraudulently hollow – DUPLICATE of Martenson – right down to the lighthouse. The reason why I define MCRs site as devoid of content – was due to the fact all of his energy was directed to con vendors into paying exorbitant fees to market products and services. The website only had one single thread – with no division of contents for members to pool intelligence on any specific matters or topics – virtually the same as MCRs earlier failed website – From the Wilderness – also a complete failure, leaving dozens of MCR suppliers in financial straights when he decided to run-away to Venezuela – which also resulted in another MCR failure – because Chavez woudl not grant his application to immigrate – thus MCR ended-up running back to U$$A with his tail between his legs. Reliable sources indicate MCRs business partner at FTW, was convicted as a pedophile in 2010.
During the first few months of collapsenet, a handful of members – including myself – repeatedly posted constructive comments for MCR to improve his site – with ZERO RESULTS. In fact, despite repeated claims by MCR that he and his *team* were open to constructive input – my personal result – was to be possibly the first man thrown overboard from MCRs lifeboat movement – and it is my understanding many others have since removed or resigned.
Exploring collapsenet to form your own opinions, which I am secure will affirm my conclusions : Martenson is one of the very best sites on the web.
Tue, May 17, 2011 - 07:36am
Crony capitalism apparently
Crony capitalism apparently leads to revolt, as was seen in such countries as Egypt and Libya and now Syria:
Syria’s Rami Makhlouf
…When Hafez al-Assad died in 2000, his son literally inherited the presidency.
Neoliberal economic reforms accelerated, although the regime kept Syria out of the International Monetary Fund.
This led to the rise of crony capitalists, a decline in the technocratic middle class that had been based in the state sector, and the sinking of the working class and peasantry into desperate poverty, with huge levels of unemployment.
It is no coincidence that the Syrian uprising began with unemployed youths writing graffiti inspired by the uprisings against the pro-Western regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. The combination of political and economic oppression that the uprisings in those countries were against also exists in Syria.
Egypt had Ahmed Ezz, the steel magnate who favored tight Italian suits (and now faces trial in white prison garb). In Tunisia, it was Leila Traboulsi, the hairdresser who became the president’s wife, then a symbol of the extravagance of the ruling family. Rami Makhlouf, 41, is Syria’s version, a man at the intersection of family privilege, clan loyalty, growing avarice and, perhaps most dangerously, the yawning disconnect between ruler and ruled that already reshaped authoritarian Syria even before the protests.
Makhlouf’s father was the brother to Syria’s first lady, Hafez Al-Assad’s wife, whose family is deeply embedded in the country’s power elite. Makhlouf’s brother, Hafez Makhlouf, is head of the Damascus branch of the General Security Directorate.
As Syria began tepid efforts at privatization in the 1990s, Makhlouf, whose father was an important figure in the Syrian’s government corporations apparatus, began acquiring and starting up companies. Critics say he used his family’s influence to win no-bid contracts and licenses. His biggest catch was one of two licenses the government tendered in 2001 to operate cellular-telephone networks.
Syriatel, the mobile phone company he controls, comprises more than half the mobile market and has in at least one case acted as a wing of the Baath party. When the United Nations in 2005 announced it was launching a probe into Syrian complicity in the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Syriatel subscribers received text messages asking them to attend rallies showing “love of country and the rejection of external pressures,” according to a New York Times report of the time.
As the reforms moved Syria away from a state-led economy, he penetrated the economy’s most lucrative sectors — real estate, transport, banking, insurance, construction and tourism — and his interests run from a five-star hotel in Damascus to duty-free shops at airports and the border. He is the vice chairman and, Syrian analysts say, the real power in Cham Holding, which was set up in 2007 with 73 investors and $360 million, in what seemed an attempt to tether wealthy Sunni businessmen to the government. It has effectively been charged with renovating Syria’s aging infrastructure, attracting Arab capital in another network of support for Mr. Assad’s rule.
When the dam finally burst two months ago, protestors chanted slogans calling for more freedom and eventually for regime change. But Marcus Marktanner, associate professor of economics at the American University of Beirut, said joblessness, stagnant standards of living, the crony capitalism symbolized by Makhlouf and the absence of economic opportunity factored in as well.
“Economic malaise played an important role,” said Marktanner. “Syria’s social safety nets have eroded while widespread economic opportunities have not emerged. At this point, the government lost its legitimacy.”
“Ideologically the regime doesn’t stand for much anymore beyond the interests of certain individuals,” said Nadim Houry, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Beirut. ” Makhlouf is a symbol of what is perceived as private interests controlling large chunks of Syria’s economy.”
http://satellite.tmcnet.com/news/2011/05/16/5511621.htm
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47563
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11121/1143389-82-0.stm?cmpid=news.xml
Wed, May 18, 2011 - 10:34pm
I wouldn’t believe this
I wouldn’t believe this stuff if I hadn’t seen/heard it myself. The UAE has hired Eric Prince, formerly of Blackwater, to build a mercenary force comprised of 800 non-Muslims who will being willing to fire upon and kill protesting citizens of the UAE.
If the USA is aware of this, and they must be, and have signed off on it, then how long will it be before they use such forces against American citizens within the U.S.
“If you look at a place like the U.A.E. — that has more money than man power — it is a logical thing,” New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti said. “The country sort of outsources for everything. Why not outsource defense? This is a new chapter in the boom and defense contracting since the Sept. 11 attacks.”
Mazzetti explained how hundreds of Latin American, South African and mostly Christian troops are being trained by army veterans from the United States and other countries in a desert.
The Godfather of mercenaries arms the UAE which is paranoid about the Arab Spring
Erik Prince, the 41-year-old former Navy Seal billionaire who years ago created the controversial private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, has started a new venture in the desert outside Abu Dhabi. With millions in cash from the emirates, Prince is building an army for the oil-soaked sheikhs. In the process, he’s hiring South Africans who know their way around a dirty war.
When Erik Prince leaves this earthly realm, Hell is going to have to pull out all the stops. Where, precisely, does one eternally house a man who built a private army that has shot unarmed civilians, fled prosecution in several war-torn countries and generally behaved like the planet is one big free-for-all? The saddest thing about Prince, though, is not that he’s a really, really bad guy. It’s that he so perfectly fits the post 9/11 zeitgeist, the us-vs-them, win-at-any-cost mentality prosecuted so enthusiastically by the Bush administration.
“We are trying to do for the military service what Fed Ex once did for the postal service,” Prince said when founding Blackwater (since renamed Xe Services LLC) in North Carolina, in 1997. His ice-cold pragmatism—let’s call it Cheney-ism—is exactly what made Iraq, after the invasion, one of the darkest moments in American history.
The men and women who hired Prince and his Blackwater mercenaries to guard pipelines, man outposts and shoot children in the wilds of Afghanistan and Iraq—all to keep up the Rumsfeldian fiction that “only” so-and-so number of troops were needed to engineer regime change in these restive lands—have now turned on their janissaries. In 2004 four Blackwater contractors were gruesomely slain and hung from bridges in Fallujah, which prompted the battles in that city, twin gong shows that will one day be regarded as critical in America’s downward imperial trajectory. The moment that proved Blackwater’s tipping point, however, was the shooting of 17 citizens of Baghdad in September 2007, while the company’s guards were escorting US state department officials to a meeting. Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq was revoked. The name was changed to the inscrutable Xe Services, and a dark star was placed alongside Erik Prince’s name on the CIA’s list of dodgy no-bid contractors.
Prince has proved beyond a shadow of doubt what should have been perfectly obvious in the first place: Fed Ex and the contracting out of military services have slightly different moral implications. And very different outcomes. That’s not to say the process has stopped. Far from it. Indeed, mercenary armies are as old as the art of war. And in the deserts of the United Arab Emirates, where paranoid oil sheikhs stare out into the Persian Gulf and see an encroaching, metastasizing Iranian menace, Erik Prince has come to embody a solution. His new employers are not squeamish. They do not have to answer to their polity. They want a blue chip army to go with their new Louvre museum and their flagship Louis Vuitton megastore, and they want it now.
So, on a sweltering night last November, tens of Colombian soldiers set down in a new facility built nearby the oilopolis of Abu Dhabi, juiced by $529 million in funding. The barracks keeps prying eyes out and the soldiers in. They train, entirely sheltered from the rest of the population, and have a very specific mandate: Answer only to Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, owner—sorry!—crown prince of the UAE. The al-Nahyans are, of course, terrified of Iran, and not necessarily in the conventional sense of the term. Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah have proved remarkably resilient in other parts of the Middle East. Hezbollah is by any measure the most successful proxy army in the region, having been painstakingly built by Iranian support over the course of the past three decades. The sheikhs are nervous of the destabilising threat posed by Iranian (read: Shiite) interests in the emirates.
They are no less afraid of the tens of thousands of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and others being radicalised in the cheap labour camps that have powered the region’s growth for so long. When push comes to shove, the al-Nahyan will need a private force to fire upon those skinny, underfed men and put down any nascent rebellions that flare up. (The rancid fruits of economic exploitation and ideological differences have overthrown a couple of regimes of late, have they not?) The al-Nahyans aren’t looking for a repeat performance. Only about 10% of the emirates’ population is indigenous – almost all the labour in the region, skilled and unskilled, is performed by foreigners. That is a brewing desert dust storm the sheikhs are looking to quell.
Prince’s “new model army” will eventually be 800 strong, has a strict “no Muslim” hiring policy, and is meant as a stopgap for a conventional military viewed as woefully inadequate. Unsurprisingly, a breakdown of nationalities is not publicly advertised, but it is thought many of Prince’s troops are South African military veterans, which doesn’t bode well for the emirates enemies, whoever they turn out to be. Our local mercenary class is notoriously trigger-happy, and certainly not averse to a little shoot-up every now and again. We should be proud.
That said, this caper might not be strictly legal, at least from the US state department’s point of view. Last year, Xe Services paid more than $42 million in fines for training foreign troops in Jordan and elsewhere—such activity is “verboten” without a licence. No one is entirely sure whether this army has any tacit state department or CIA backing, but it stands to reason the US administration is only too happy to see the Emirati sheikhs shelling out for stability. Trouble-free oil is a dwindling commodity these days. Abu Dhabi drills some of the last of it.
Erik Prince, and his new company Reflex Responses, will see billions of dollars in contracts when all is said and done. The emirates will cough up more and more to ensure their pipelines and cyber-networks are secure, and Prince’s own expanding desert empire will be there in the breach. Which suggests an intriguing possibility: Prince could one day turn on his employers, shoot up their palaces, and stand astride their glittering towers as lord of all he surveys. And a South African mercenary with a pencil moustache could run the Emirati justice ministry, conjuring up memories of a regime we assumed was long dead. Stranger things have happened. One hopes, for the al-Nayhan’s sake, they have a good contract in place, and a new New Model Army to counter their New Model Army. Erik Prince might turn out to be their most dangerous high-end acquisition. DM
Thu, May 19, 2011 - 07:54pm
Joined: Jul 22 2008
Safe food? Frac it.
Dick Cheney – evil incarnate
“A year later, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act with a “Halliburton loophole,” a clause inserted at the request of Dick Cheney, who had been Halliburton’s CEO before becoming vice president. The loophole specifically exempts fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the CLEAR Act, and from regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency, and it unleashed the largest and most extensive drilling program in history, according to Josh Fox, the creator of the film Gasland.”
http://www.gilttaste.com/stories/327
Fri, May 20, 2011 - 05:59am
MarkM wrote:Dick Cheney –
[quote=MarkM]
I read that article and have come to believe that the supposed terrorists(fabricated or otherwise created by our own foreign policy), whom we spend trillions to chase down overseas, pale in comparison to those we have right here at home, i.e. those who use the government as an instrument to circumvent laws, meant to protect the public health and the environment, in order to enrich themselves. The U.S. is the epitome of crony capitalism (the wolf) in sheep’s clothing.
“For sustainable agriculture, fracking is a disaster,” says Jaffe. The gas rush started in the South and West, but has spread to the East and now affects 34 states. Under much of West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York lies a 400-million-year-old geographic formation called the Marcellus Shale. Although estimates vary, the shale may hold 50 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, enough to meet New York State’s needs for 50 years. To see what fracking can do to food production, Jaffe has only to look at what has happened to some of his colleagues in nearby Pennsylvania, where the first fracked well came into production in 2005, and where there are now there are now more than 1,500.
Last year, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture quarantined 28 cattle belonging to Don and Carol Johnson, who farm about 175 miles southwest of Jaffe. The animals had come into wastewater that leaked from a nearby well that showed concentrations of chlorine, barium, magnesium, potassium, and radioactive strontium. In Louisiana, 16 cows that drank fluid from a fracked well began bellowing, foaming and bleeding at the mouth, then dropped dead. Homeowners near fracked sites complain about a host of frightening consequences, from poisoned wells to sickened pets to debilitating illnesses.
The Marcellus Shale itself contains ethane, propane, and butane, arsenic, cobalt, lead, chromium—toxins all. Uranium, radium, and radon make the shale so radioactive that companies sometimes drop Geiger counters into wells to determine whether they have reached the gas-rich deposits. But those compounds are almost benign compared to the fracking fluids that drillers inject into the wells. At least 596 chemicals are used in fracking, but the companies are not required by law to divulge the ingredients, which are considered trade secrets. According to a report prepared for the Ground Water Protection Council, a national association of state agencies charged with protecting the water supply, a typical recipe might include hydrochloric acid (which can damage respiratory organs, eyes, skin, and intestines), glutaraldehyde (normally used to sterilize medical equipment and linked to asthma, breathing difficulties, respiratory irritation, and skin rashes), N,N-dimethyl formamide (a solvent that can cause birth defects and cancer), ethylene glycol (a lethal toxin), and benzene (a potent carcinogen). Some of these chemicals stay in the ground. Others are vented into the air. Many enter the water table or leach into ponds, streams, and rivers.
For the most part, state and federal governments have turned a blind eye to the problems brought about by fracking. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims that it has no jurisdiction to investigate matters related to food production, a contention disputed by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), who wrote a report urging the EPA to study all issues associated with fracking. A concerned farmer who prefers not to be identified forwarded me an email written to him by Jim Riviere, the director of the Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank, a group of animal science professors that tracks incidents of chemical contamination in livestock. Riviere wrote that his group receives up to 10 requests per day from veterinarians dealing with exposures to contaminants, including the byproducts of fracking. Nonetheless, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has slashed funding to his group. “We are told by the newly reorganized USDA that chemical contamination is not their priority,” Riviere wrote.
“The dangers of fracking to the food supply are not something that’s been investigated very much,” said Emily Wurgh of Food and Water Watch, an environmental group based in Washington, D.C. “We have been trying to get members of Congress to request studies into effects of fracking on agriculture, but we haven’t gotten much traction.”
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More Culture:
View live tarantulas at the Academy of Natural Sciences
The largest of all tarantulas will be on display
By Sinead Cummings
Events Exhibits
Outhouse Exhibit Services/Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
A Mexican red knee tarantula.
The newest hands-on exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University will feature nearly 20 species of tarantulas. Among the species on display are the Goliath bird-eating tarantula (the largest of all tarantulas) and the rare green bottle blue tarantula. Starting on Saturday, Jan. 30 the museum will present the spiders and a schedule of interactive activities for all ages.
Goliath bird-eating tarantula is the largest spider in world.
During the tarantula exhibit, attendees will learn why certain species prefer the rainforest or the desert, how spiders play an important role in medicine and which species are the quickest to ambush their prey.
There will also be a scavenger hunt, a “Tarantulas of the World” interactive map, live feedings and a chance to view spider fangs under a microscope.
Guests can also step into an air current that simulates the sensitivities of a hairy tarantula or play in a human-sized bug collecting jar.
The most exciting part of the exhibit, however, is that every Saturday and Sunday at 11:45 a.m. a tarantula will be taken out of its enclosure so that a tarantula keeper can talk about the spider's features and answer questions.
The museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
Prepare for your visit with little-known tarantula facts or read up on what tarantula tastes like.
Tarantulas: Alive and Up Close
Saturday, Jan. 30 to Monday, May 30
$3-$5 per person
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
1900 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy
Sinead Cummings
sinead@phillyvoice.com
Read more Events Exhibits Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Education Bugs Science Family-Friendly Shows and Exhibits
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Manhunter. The Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal. America has participated in a long and twisted celluloid love affair with Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. Now, 10 years after evading Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in 1991’s hugely successful Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal’s hiding out in Florence, Italy. But he has two determined foes hot on his trail: Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi, an ambitious Italian cop, and the extremely wealthy Mason Verger, a rare survivor of Hannibal’s predations. Not that FBI special agent Starling has ever completely forgotten her encounter with the intelligent, vicious and flesh-obsessed murderer.
The movie opens as Agent Starling is made to take the fall for a botched drug bust. A corrupt Justice Department aide, Paul Krendler, pushes Starling off the case to avoid bad PR and puts her on what he believes is a dead case: the pursuit of Hannibal. Meanwhile, Inspector Pazzi recognizes Hannibal from the FBI’s most-wanted list and pursues him on his own time—not in the pursuit of justice, but for the $10 million reward. And Mason Verger has hired a team of Italian hitmen to exact his own personal revenge.
What follows is a monstrous trip through the dregs of humanity as greed, ambition, vindictiveness and resentment clash with an implacable, remorseless killer.
positive elements: Agent Starling places honor and duty ahead of personal gain. Inspector Pazzi allows his life to be put in jeopardy to protect his wife.
spiritual content: A man with a hideously disfigured face asks Agent Starling, "Have you accepted Jesus?" She responds, "I was raised Lutheran." He answers back, "That’s not what I meant. ... You can look me in the face, but you’re shy when I mention God." The man later says in regard to a crime, "I have immunity from the risen Jesus."
Hannibal asks a soon-to-be victim to say grace at the dinner table. After the victim makes a crude remark to Agent Starling, Hannibal says, "You’re like the Apostle Paul. He hated women too."
nudity and sexual content: A flashback scene hints at homosexual flirting. The cameras linger on a line drawing of a topless woman. A cop propositions Agent Starling with a crude reference to genitalia. Crude remarks are made about deviant sexual acts. A stone statue features full male nudity.
violent content: Intense, sick and repugnant. Among other things, there’s a violent shootout between cops and drug pushers. A man’s head is crushed against a windshield. Blood spurts from the mouth of a shot man. A man’s head explodes. A woman holding a baby is shot in the head. A man high on drugs peels his face off, and the scraps are fed to a dog. Hannibal attacks a nurse and bites her ear off. A pickpocket is knifed. A man’s throat is slit with a straight razor. A man is disemboweled, then hanged from a balcony—his entrails splatter to the ground below. Wild boars attack and eat humans. Hannibal cuts off the skull of a heavily drugged man, exposing his brain. He then proceeds to cut out a portion of the brain, fries it in a wok, and feeds it to the still-alive man, who replies, "Hey, that tastes pretty good." Hannibal also feeds a small portion of fried brain to a young boy on an airplane.
crude or profane language: God’s name is abused four times. A handful of other profanities and obscenities include two uses of the f-word.
drug and alcohol content: Cops smoke cigarettes. Agent Starling consumes a mixed drink. Lecter drinks wine on several occasions. Other characters also imbibe.
other negative elements: Director Scott apparently tried to "lighten the mood" of this movie compared with that of The Silence of the Lambs. But the jokes aren’t funny, they’re just disgusting. After screening the movie, gory storyteller Stephen King said, "It was okay, but it was done in bad taste." That’s an understatement. Hannibal is a vicious and methodical executioner, yet most of the film’s other characters (with the exception of Agent Starling) are made out to be worse than the urbane, cultured Hannibal.
conclusion: Newspaper editors and film critics alike have cracked all kinds of jokes and made bad puns about Hannibal’s cannibalistic subject matter. And the fact that the movie grossed $58 million opening weekend (outpacing How the Grinch Stole Christmas’s debut) gave them all kinds of opportunities to do so. But there is absolutely nothing humorous about this film. It is grotesque and, dare I say, downright evil. Anthony Hopkins, who put a face on this evil in both Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, told GQ, "Hannibal Lecter is one of those creatures from the dark side of the human personality. ... He’s self-governing, and he may tap into our desire to become like machines: to have no pity, to have no conscience." Hannibal costar Julianne Moore says shooting the film landed her in a therapist’s office. "I actually talked to my shrink about it," she told Vanity Fair. "As a parent, as a person—what is this? Hannibal is the dark side that is part of everyone. ... We are socialized, civilized, but in our fantasy lives we explore those themes. That’s okay, but it’s a fine line I feel uncomfortable with. I don’t want to sound as if I’m sitting here rationalizing violence." And yet her very involvement with the film is an attempt to rationalize. Don’t let your family’s involvement do the same. Cross Hannibal off the "possible" list and give the entire phenomenon a wide berth.
HorrorDrama
Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter; Julianne Moore as FBI special agent Clarice Starling; Giancarlo Giannini as Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi; Ray Liotta as Paul Krendler; Ivano Marescotti as Carlo; Zeljko Ivanek as Dr. Cordell Doemling; and an uncredited Gary Oldman as Mason Verger
Ridley Scott ( )
Tom Neven
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Craft beer, food will soon be served from…
Craft beer, food will soon be served from shipping containers in Bixby Knolls
Conceptual plans for SteelCraft, a new food court and beer garden coming to Bixby Knolls this spring.
By Josh Dulaney | josh.dulaney@presstelegram.com |
PUBLISHED: November 14, 2015 at 5:56 pm | UPDATED: September 1, 2017 at 1:11 am
Craft beer and artisanal eats are coming soon to shipping containers near you. If you live in Bixby Knolls.
It’s called SteelCraft, and the food court and beer garden will open in 10 shipping containers at Long Beach Boulevard and Bixby Road next spring, with eight vendors slated, including Long Beach Cup Ramen, Waffle Love and the Torrance-based Smog City Brewing.
“The idea is that we can open this type of eatery that’s invested in the community, and has really great food and great beer and great conversation, and it’s really exciting,” said Kim Gros, whom many are calling the mastermind behind a group of local foodies looking to create a communal space that caters to neighbors and draws out-of-towners. Gros, who grew up California Heights and lives in Bixby Knolls, said the project has been about three years in the making as developers looked at several locations around Long Beach. Bixby Knolls seemed like the perfect spot to blend a love of food and drink with the passion for community-building, she said.
“We knew we wanted to be in an area where people could walk from their homes,” Gros said. “I feel like the area is just beginning to develop. There’s breath being blown into it.”
SteelCraft is the fruit of several groups coming together, including DeMaria Design Associates, a Los Angeles-based architecture and design firm, Howard CDM construction in Long Beach and the Carson-based IPME — International Port Management Enterprise — which is fabricating the shipping containers.
Once the containers are ready, they will brought into Bixby Knolls and the kitchens will be installed.
City Fabrick, a nonprofit design studio based in Long Beach, is one of the key players involved with the project. Brian Ulaszewski, executive director of City Fabrick, said SteelCraft is a pop-up food hall using shipping containers arranged to create a series of outdoor spaces, including dining patios and flexible community space. The shipping containers are modified to accommodate restaurants, a taproom, produce stand, flower shop and restrooms.
“We’re thrilled what this project brings for Bixby Knolls as a social space, somewhere people can gather with friends and meet new people,” Ulaszewski said in an email. “The spaces were designed for a variety of social interactions and activities with the intention of this being something the community can emotionally take ownership of.”
Gros said the containers are a natural fit in the port city of Long Beach, and are the centerpiece of a project that speaks to the power of sustainability and restoration. But SteelCraft mainly is about people coming together and sharing stories over good food and drinks, she said.
A big catch was the family-run Smog City. Laurie Porter, head of marketing for Smog City, where her husband Jonathan Porter is brewmaster, said they had been looking for a satellite taproom location for about a year. They checked out downtown Los Angeles and Echo Park, among other spots.
“I really had this great feeling about it,” she said of Bixby Knolls and SteelCraft, adding that the project provides an opportunity to reach a neighborhood and local customer base.
“We knew with our satellite we wanted some options for food, but we didn’t want to do it ourselves,” she said. “This gave us an opportunity to marry our beer and other people’s food.”
Porter said customers can expect Smog City at SteelCraft to be staffed with beer ambassadors who have a passion for brew.
“They’re going to want to share our story,” she said.
Blair Cohn, executive director of the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association, said SteelCraft is not only unique to the neighborhood, but also the city.
“It’s just great to have another significant center, especially along Long Beach Boulevard,“ Cohn said. “The whole neighborhood is going to be thrilled.”
Josh Dulaney
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Connecting the dots between housing and health in Chicago
This week, Polk Bros. Foundation and Michael Reese Health Trust were awarded the 2018 HUD Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships. This post is about the work recognized by the award, and was originally published on the Council of Foundations blog.
By Debbie Reznick, Senior Program Officer at Polk Bros. Foundation and a board member of Funders Together to End Homelessness
When I learned Polk Bros. Foundation and Michael Reese Health Trust would be presented with the 2018 HUD Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships, I was glad to have an opportunity to share what we’ve learned in our work to connect the dots between housing and health in Chicago – and to also highlight housing’s essential role as a social determinant of health.
A Locally-Unprecedented Partnership
Fifteen years ago, Michael Reese initiated and Polk Bros. supported the Chicago Housing for Health Partnership study to better understand how housing – or the lack of it – affects health. The study drew strong connections between improved housing and improved health, and helped set the stage for Chicago’s housing and health sectors to more meaningfully and formally work together. Guided by the study, Polk Bros. and Michael Reese partnered to facilitate the success of our shared supportive housing and healthcare grantees as they navigated a rapidly-changing healthcare environment. Together, we found ways to fund pilot projects that fostered relationships and highlighted shared goals between permanent supportive housing and healthcare providers.
The conversations we initiated, the stakeholders we convened and the pilot projects we funded all helped lay the groundwork for the Chicago and Cook County Housing for Health Strategic Plan (H2), the locally-unprecedented public-private partnership recognized by this award and supported by Polk Bros., Michael Reese and the Chicago Community Trust. We hope, by sharing what it took to make this happen, we might inspire similar funder-led endeavors. Because H2 is making incredible and scalable strides in its goals to create additional housing opportunities for people experiencing homelessness, share data across the housing and health systems, and provide cross-sector training and coordination. It is a highly-effective partnership that brings together important stakeholders who might otherwise be isolated from each other – including city, county, state and federal leaders, healthcare systems, housing-focused nonprofits, health-focused nonprofits, and private foundations.
Greater Impact by Collaborating Beyond our Sectors
Our partnership with Michael Reese illustrates how much more impact we can have as funders when we collaborate across sectors. Polk Bros. was deeply engaged in solutions to end homelessness as one of our areas of focus, and Michael Reese had expertise in the healthcare sector and was forward-thinking about the social determinants of health.
Partnering gave us the opportunity to spur innovation. We figured out how our collective resources could best be coordinated and leveraged to create momentum, attract public funding and lead to systemic change.
Through our work together, we remained aligned that sufficient and long-term support would be critical. Both our organizations have long invested in finding solutions to homelessness and opportunities for improving the health of vulnerable people: Polk Bros. for 30 years and Michael Reese for over 20. Through our collaboration, we helped launch – and we and other funders continue to support – the Center for Housing and Health, the lead agency that initiated and fostered the development of the H2 plan.
We know safe and affordable housing is critical for people’s health, their ability to get and keep a job, and their children’s development and success in school. Do the people reached by your organization have access to stable housing? If not, could you make faster progress toward your organization’s goals by collaborating with others on housing?
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Twin Peaks, Ep. 2.20, “The Path to the Black Lodge”
Jake Pitre
Twin Peaks, Season 2, Episode 20, “The Path to the Black Lodge”
Written by Harley Peyton & Robert Engels
Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal
Originally aired April 18, 1991 on ABC
With an episode full of various expressions of love, it does not feel like a coincidence that Earle’s real endgame is finally revealed at the same time, as he hopes to find the Black Lodge. Love seems like a concept that is the antithesis of the Lodge, though one it cannot exist without, so it makes sense for their paths to converge like two ends of a magnet.
Dale comes to the realization that all this time, Earle hasn’t been after him, but after the Lodge. “He has engaged us in subterfuge and red herring…a fish I don’t particularly care for,” Dale says. By delaying the police force long enough with all these distractions, Earle has been able to discover more and more about the Lodge – often using Dale to get there. As everyone draws nearer to the evil emanating from the Lodge, various people around town begin to have their hands shake eerily, out of their control and with matching music to boot. It happens to a random old woman in the Double R, to Pete, and to Dale. Nothing seems to connect them all, except their precarious proximity to evil.
The most simplistic expression of love in the face of that evil comes from Audrey and Jack, if what they share can indeed be called love. It is certainly physical and reaches soap opera levels of absurd when Audrey literally chases down Jack’s plane before it takes off on the tarmac. “I’m a virgin,” she tells him, “I want you to make love with me.” Sure, why not. Elsewhere, Annie tells Dale plainly, “When you hold me, when we kiss, I feel safe and eager. I’m not afraid.” Annie and Dale are both very direct people, saying what they want in exact terms. In other shows, this could feel like messy writing, a case of telling and not showing, but in the unique world of Twin Peaks, it comes off as surreal, as if to question why everyone else doesn’t speak this way.
Audrey’s straightforward talk to Zane is equally direct, and it seems as though our love storylines are being laid out so that the stakes will be apparent in the endgame of the season. Bobby, too, explains his feelings to Shelly in a clear way, like he never has before. The writers are championing truth and honesty when it comes to love and feelings, at the same time as everyone spins more quickly around the sinkhole of evil that is Windom Earle, BOB, and the Black Lodge.
Twin Peaks, as a series, oscillates often between black and white polarization as well as abstraction. David Lynch is obsessed with dualities, most perfectly captured with the Black and White Lodges, but he is also intimately interested in the dreamlike middle ground, a contradiction that fascinates as much as it obfuscates. This series is in a constant state of simultaneity, as the abstract concept of love must contend with the polarity of good and evil, as if it will comfortably fit on either side. Of course, it doesn’t. The citizens of Twin Peaks haven’t yet realized this, but they will soon enough.
Pie crusts and coffee grounds
Log Lady intro: There are clues everywhere – all around us. But the puzzle maker is clever. The clues, although surrounding us, are somehow mistaken for something else. And the something else – the wrong interpretation of the clues – we call our world. Our world is a magical smoke screen. How should we interpret the happy song of the meadowlark, or the robust flavor of a wild strawberry?
When Dale dances with Annie, the Giant appears, saying nothing but waving his arms ominously in what appears to be a warning. Is he warning Dale about getting too close to Annie? Will his love blind him from the encroaching evil? Will it be a liability?
The mayor intones on the microphone, “There’s something wrong. This isn’t right. There’s something wrong here.” He’s talking about the technology, but following the Giant, it seems like a pretty obvious foreshadowing.
Though Earle’s true evil intentions are revealed here, as he gets closer to the Black Lodge, it can’t help but feel like he is a wannabe, especially when compared with BOB, who is much more difficult to pin down or talk about. This is certainly in large part thanks to the imprecise characterization Earle has received, rendering him still hard to take seriously, but he comes off as though he desperately wants to join the Evil Club in the lodge. But Earle’s brand of cruelty is so much simpler than what the lodge seems to inhabit and hold. The lodge is something else entirely, something that feels so far past what Earle could ever be capable of. It stands to reason that it will swallow him up, too.
I’m not sure I totally buy where Bobby’s earnestness comes from here, especially considering the storylines for him and Shelly in recent episodes, but it has the advantage of being based on their series-long relationship, as opposed to those between Jack and Audrey, and Dale and Annie. The writers have done a good job of making us care about Annie and Dale, or at least how much Dale seems to genuinely care about her, but the forced chemistry between Jack and Audrey only serves to remind us how excellent the problematic chemistry was between her and Dale. This seems like something the new episodes will likely explore (fingers crossed, anyway).
I’m not sure about Pete’s heartbreak cure: “There’s nothing quite like a trout jumping in the moonlight.”
Tags:David Lynch, Twin Peaks
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CHILVERS WILL RELISH PROMOTION
Chris Parsons
Goalscorer will appreciate the moment this time round
Liam Chilvers will savour promotion with Port Vale after scoring his second goal in a week to help Port Vale clinch promotion to League One albeit a 28 goal swing next week.
The 31-year-old central defender wants to soak up the atmosphere as much as possible over the coming weeks.
“As a youngster you don't really appreciate it, I got promoted with Colchester when I was 23 or 24, I just think it is one of those things,” said Chilvers.
“You have near-misses through your career and to do it again at 31 is just brilliant.
“I think I will enjoy it a lot more this time.”
A crowd of over 12,000 packed the park on Saturday as the players came out to guns of flames and a deafening roar.
Chilvers said: “Coming down the tunnel was just brilliant hearing the fans.
“I hadn't heard it like that before, it was just fantastic.
“They really got behind us, with what has happened with the club and the lads over this season it has been fantastic.”
This seasons success will be dubbed administration to celebration after the clubs difficult start to the campaign off the field. With three players signed before the start of pre-season Chilvers admits that the players have experienced every emotion.
He said: “The lads have had the highs and lows of everything.
“Yesterday me and Chris Neal were in the High Street in Burslem and a man stopped us and said we had given them something to be proud of for the first time in 20 years, that was a nice thing for him to say to us.
“We've only had good wishes and we've pulled it off today.”
Despite three draws in a row Vale will be promoted officially next week when there superior goal difference comes into play if they do not get three points at Wycombe. Chilvers believes it was just about staying ahead of their rivals.
“We had the patch were we couldn't buy a win at one point but we knew if we stuck at it we would come though.
“Obviously we have had a lot of draws recently but we had that cushion of a few points and we managed to stay ahead of the pack.
“That's football and it happens over a season, at the end of the day we have done what we set out to do, it's been a good season,” said Chilvers.
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La Verne (Bubbles) Starbuck (March 29, 1926 – Nov. 14, 2016)
Obituaries | November 16, 2016
La Verne (Bubbles) Starbuck was born March 29, 1926, to Clyde W. Morris and Laura (Voss) Morris in Arvada, Colorado. She passed away November 14, 2016.
La Verne attended Arvada schools graduating from high school in 1944. After high school, she attended Colorado State University receiving a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Education in 1962. She went on to the University of Colorado and in 1969 received her Master’s degree in Secondary School Administration. On August 19, 1951, La Verne married Frank Starbuck in Rifle, Colorado, at the First Christian Church. La Verne, known by many as Mrs. Starbuck, taught school at Hunter Mesa during the years of 1947-1948 and 1950-1951, Fairview and Dry Hollow rural schools from 1951-1957.
After teaching at the rural schools, she taught for 20 years at Rifle Junior High School for Garfield RE-2; first as a teacher and then as principal of the junior high. She left her educational field in 1976. La Verne had many accomplishments during her lifetime. In 1952, she was Garfield County Fair and Rodeo Queen and in the same year was Flag Day Rodeo Queen. She was a member of the Enterprise Grange in Arvada, Divide Creek Grange of Silt, and Elk Creek Grange until 2003.
La Verne gave back to the community through the many years of service to local boards. She served on the Grand River Hospital Board from 1972-1984. She was a member of the Board of Adjustments and Garfield County Planning Commission from 1976-1988. From 1984-1996, La Verne was a member of the Garfield County Library Board of Trustees as well as being a member of the West Divide Water Conservancy District Board of Trustees from 1991-2008. La Verne was a past member of Delta Kappa Gamma Teacher’s Sorority and the Fairview Reading Club. In 2013 she was inducted into the Garfield County 4-H Hall of Fame.
She is preceded in death by her husband, Frank; parents Clyde W. and Laura Morris of Arvada, and her nine siblings; three brothers – Laythan (Arvada, CO), Glenn (San Diego, CA) Clyde Jr. (Grand Junction) and six sisters – Neola Hawkins (Arvada, CO), Elaine Becker (Cincinnati, OH), Thais White (Arvada, CO), Lynette Ivanick (Los Angeles, CA), June Nelson (Minnesota), and Marie Morris (Lakewood, CO). She is survived by seventeen nieces and nephews. Visitation services will be held at 12 p.m. on November 19, 2016, at the First Christian Church in Rifle, CO with funeral services to follow at 1 p.m. Interment will be at Divide Creek Cemetery. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to Silt Historical Park, PO Box 401 Silt, CO, 81652.
Lynne Fry
Henry O. Ash
Lynne Marie Fry (October 6, 1958 – November 14, 2019)
Henry O. Ash (July 4, 1930 – December 1, 2019)
Justin Bair
What's your favorite wolf tale?
White Fang
Three Among the Wolves
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Miami Injury Lawyer > Philanthropy
Working with Dedicated People in the Medical Profession
Skip Pita and Shannon Del Prado started Project Peru with the direct participation and support of the Coral Gables Congregational Church. Project Peru is a Miami-based volunteer organization that provides free surgical services to the indigenous of Peru. Since 2008, four Project Peru medical teams have travelled to Peru and have performed over 175 surgeries. The teams have been in the areas of: Gynecological Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery, and Plastic Surgery. In June 2012, the Plastic Surgery Team returned from its third trip to Peru. 66 surgeries were performed. These included cleft lip and pallate patients, burn victims, ear reconstructions, and other types of life-changing surgeries.
At Pita Weber & Del Prado, we advocate for justice. And for us, Project Peru fulfills many core principles. Among them, three are critically important to our firm. First, Project Peru provides health care in a remote part of the world where people would otherwise have none. Second, Project Peru destroys the notion that Miami lacks volunteerism. And finally, Project Peru improves the image of our country in the world community.
We are proud to be associated with the excellent doctors and nurses in Miami that are involved in Project Peru. The doctors include Dr. Anthony Cardella, Dr. Byron “Pat” Pazmino, Dr. Daniel Kalbac, Dr. Gabriel Salloum, Dr. Emery Salom, Dr. Miguel Cobas, Dr. Ferne Braveman, Dr. Balazs Horvath, Dr. Michael Diaz, and Dr. James Voglino. Project Peru’s volunteer nurses have come from Doctors’ Hospital, Baptist Hospital and Miami Children’s Hospital. Special Thanks to the to the supernurses: Amie Roberts and Yoly Roque.
United Christian Church of Christ Christmas service 2019
Pita Weber Del Prado partners Rosanna Molinari Weber, Shannon Del Prado, Skip Pita and Randy Weber along with their families had the privilege of attending The United Christian Church of Christ in West Coconut Grove pre-Christmas service with many of the congregation’s children. The children celebrated the true spirit of Christmas with song, dance, and prayer.
The UCCOC, which is housed in a historic structure built more than 100 years ago, has provided a place of worship and community for hundreds of West Coconut Grove children for over 5 decades.
In the last several years, PWD has worked closely with UCCOC Pastor, Dr. Marthenia “Tina” Dupree, in many fund raising and collection efforts. This year, the UCCOC children were asked to prepare a specific wish-list of Christmas gifts. From there, PWD partners, staff and families reached into our community to obtain gift donations. Especially important were BNI Chapters BNI 305 (Shannon Del Prado’s group) and BNI Accelerators (Rosanna Weber’s group), who not only made generous donations, but also helped to distribute the presents to each child.
PWD appreciates the generous donations and is grateful for the opportunity to celebrate Christmas with the UCCOC family. We very much admire the efforts of Dr. Dupree and her team at UCCOC. Dr. Dupree is a blessing to our City and PWD is proud to be COMMITTED TO OUR COMMUNITY.
Dear Pita Weber Del Prado Clients, Friends and Family –
The PWD Team wants to thank you for your loyalty, trust and confidence during the past year. We enjoyed spending Sunday Night, December 8, 2019, with many of you and your family at the PWD Annual Client Appreciation Event. Together we enjoyed a thrilling, “edge of your seat” Miami Heat game against the Chicago Bulls. As you know, the Heat won the game in overtime through hard work, dedication and a drive to win. Something that the Heat refers to as “Court Culture.”
At PWD, we are proud to say that we embrace and practice these same core values every day. We are committed to the relationship with our clients, our community and to excellence in the practice of law. We are proud to say that “Commitment is our Culture.”
Thank you for joining us for a great game and for being a part of the PWD Family! We posted some of the pictures from the event on the Pita Weber Del Prado Facebook and Instagram pages. We had a great time and hope that you did too!
Looking forward to the next event,
THE PWD TEAM
Skip Pita and Shannon Del Prado also help raise money for Joe Theismann’s Childrens Charity.
Randy Weber is a member of the Board of Directors for Assistance to the Elderly, the Board of Directors of Miami-Bridge Youth and Family Services, an area coordinator for the Big Brother/Big Sister Program, a project coordinator for Hands on Miami, a Guardian Ad Litem Lawyer, participates in the Dade County Bar Association pro-bono program “Put Something Back” and the E-Mentoring program, coaches the Dade County Bar Association High School Mock Trial Team, is a financial contributor to the Voices for Children Foundation, Inc. and a Florida Bar Grievance Committee Chairman. He will soon be a member of the Executive and Development Committee for Special Olympics in Miami-Dade.
Rosanna Molinari Weber is grateful for all the wonderful opportunities that our great country has afforded her, but continues to maintain close ties to her country of origin, Ecuador, S.A. Most recently, Rosanna has been active in the Ecuadorian-American Chamber of Commerce (former vice president), the Bi-National Chamber of Commerce and Fundacion Chichi Puig (former Secretary and President), a charity whose purpose is to aid underprivileged Ecuadorian families.
Area Stage Company. PWD believes that theatre is vital to the Miami community. Since 2018, Skip Pita has served on the Board for Area Stage Company. Area Stage is an award-winning professional theatre company and conservatory. Area Stage produces world-class live theatre and musicals in all age groups, from children to adult. Area Stage has professional classes and workshops. And most importantly, Area Stage has an Inclusion Theatre Program for our community members with special needs who want to be involved in theatre. Area Stage has been a part of the Miami community for 30 years and is one of South Florida’s most influential theatre companies. PWD is proud to be a part of Area Stage. To learn more about Area Stage, upcoming performances, and opportunities, please visit their website https://www.areastagecompany.com.
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Senegal Gets Rid of Its Senate to Save Money
Politics 2329 VIEWS
Thursday, June 18, 2014 5:14 PM /thisdaylive
Senegalese lawmakers, who are divided between a 150-seat National Assembly and a 100-seat Senate, voted to do away with the Senate, passing a law, which dissolves the institution in order to save an estimated $15 million.
Minister of Justice Aminata Toure explained that the suppression on Tuesday of the Senate is intended to curb government spending, and would provide the cash needed to help the victims of the yearly rains, which have left thousands homeless and killed at least 13 people.
Unlike the National Assembly, the senate is a relatively recent institution, and has become a symbol of government waste.
It’s been frequently pilloried and described as an instrument of cronyism, a way to reward loyal party workers who did not get elected to the larger National Assembly. Around half the senators are directly appointed by the president.
Congress also voted to abolish the Office of the Vice-President, established in 2009 by then President Abdoulaye Wade, the BBC reports. It has never been occupied.
Nigeria in 1min: Economic, Business & Financial Headlines – 190615
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Supreme Court Affirms Tambuwal, Ganduje As Governors Of Sokoto, Kano States
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President Buhari Appoints Alhaji Garba Abubakar As Registrar-General of CAC
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ALEXANDER V. LANDOLINA, JR.
November 2, 1938 - March 20, 2017
Walden, NY and Palm Coast, FL
Alexander V. Landolina Jr. of Walden, NY and Palm Coast, FL, beloved husband, father and grandfather, passed away Monday, March 20, 2017 in Poughkeepsie. He was 78.
The son of the late Alexander V Landolina Sr. and Gertrude Richford Landolina, he was born November 02, 1938 in Brooklyn.
Alex was a retired Lieutenant in the New York State Park Police, and Town of Montgomery Police Department. He served in the Marines during the Vietnam War.
Survivors include his wife, Mary Ann Landlolina at home; son, Alexander Landolina III and his wife, Wendy Baldwin of Pine Bush, NY; daughter, Alison Montaperto and her husband, Steve of Marlboro, NY; grandchildren, Joseph Landolina, Anthony Landolina, Gianna Montaperto, Matthew Landolina, Benjamin Landolina, Emily Landolina, and & Salvatore Montaperto; sister, Barbara Roth; several cousins, nieces and nephews.
Visitation will be Thursday, March 23, 2017 from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at Millspaugh Funeral Home, 22 Bank St., Walden, NY 12586.
A Funeral Mass will take place Friday, March, 24, 2017, at 10:30 a.m. at Most Precious Blood, 42 Walnut St., Walden, NY 12586. Burial will be in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to Hudson Valley Guns and Hoses, http://www.hvgunsandhoses.org/donate or American Lung Association, 418 Broadway, 1st Floor, Albany, NY 12207.
Arrangements were made by Millspaugh Funeral Directors. For directions or condolences please visit millspaughfuneralhome.com
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Regis Catholic Schools Administration
Regis Catholic Schools is led by the President. The President has two main areas of focus.
1. System Administration and Comprehensive Advancement:
Under the direction of the President, the RCS Administrative Office provides for the financial management, financial advancement, enrollment management, communications, personnel administration, and general operations of Regis Catholic Schools.
2. Education Administration:
Each school is served by a Principal and the early childhood programs are led by an Administrator. The Principals and the Administrator work in collaboration under the direction of the President. They are responsible for the daily operation of their buildings and directly serve the staff, students and parents of Regis Catholic Schools.
The Education Commission provides input and guidance on various topics and issues to the RCS President, Dean, and supporting Pastors. Regular members of the Commission include the RCS Dean, supporting Pastors, Regis Chaplain, President, school administrators, one representative from each of the supporting parishes, a representative from the Regis Catholic Schools Foundation, and the Diocesan Superintendent of Catholic Schools.
The Finance Council reviews financial statements and budgets, provides solutions to financial challenges and facility needs, and capitalizes on opportunities available to Regis Catholic Schools. Regular members of the Council include the RCS Dean, supporting Pastors, RCS President, RCS Controller, one representative from each of the supporting parishes, and a representative from the Regis Catholic Schools Foundation.
The Regis Catholic Schools Foundation, Inc. is a tax exempt charitable corporation with the purpose of providing financial support to Regis Catholic Schools. The RCS Foundation is led by a Chairperson and a Board of Directors and is an independent organization. Today, Regis Catholic Schools and the RCS Foundation work together, with a sense of shared responsibility, to assure the viability, sustainability, and growth of Regis Catholic Schools. If your estate plan includes Regis and you want it held in an endowment trust, please learn more at www.RegisCatholicSchoolsFoundation.com.
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Office space in Frankfurt, Messeturm
Messeturm, 25th floor, 60308 Frankfurt
The Frankfurt Messeturm Centre is on the 25th floor of the second tallest building not just in Germany but in the whole European Union. This 257m skyscraper has 63 floors and is named Messeturm, or 'fair tower', because it is situated in the Frankfurt trade fair grounds, the third largest exhibition site in the world. The three-tiered building, topped with a distinctive pyramid, was built in 1990 and is one of the few buildings in Germany to have its own postal code. It also has full banking services. The centre is close to the city's central business district and banking district, home to many international companies. Frankfurt's main train station, one of the biggest terminals in Europe is close by and there is ample car parking available nearby in a public parking garage.
Frankfurt, Messeturm
+49 (0) 69 509 565 500
See all locations in Frankfurt
More ways to work in Frankfurt
Regus leases office space in business centres around Canada. Each private office can be upgraded to add more desks or relocated at no extra cost; we also rent temporary offices to cover the duration of a project, with rolling one month contracts.
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The Morning Show Season 2
Based on Brian Stelter's Top of the Morning book, The Morning Show is set to take a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to produce a fictional America morning show.
The Morning Show Season 2 release date for Apple TV+expected Q4 2020 11 Months Left (US)
The upcoming The Morning Show Season 2 Apple TV+ release date is expected to be Q4 2020 in the US.
Notify me when The Morning Show Season 2 is available.
Notify Me about The Morning Show Seas...
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Rosberg Wins Seventh Grand Prix In A Row, Fourth of 2016
Despite a race-long charge to second, Lewis Hamilton couldn't overcome yet another mechanical fear and loses even more ground to his teammate.
By Fred Smith
Sergei SavostyanovGetty Images
After just four races, second-placed Lewis Hamilton is just seven points away from being two full races out of the championship lead. If it weren't for the last two years of results at Mercedes, it would be easy to think that Nico Rosberg had more or less already secured his championship.
Observers of Formula 1 know better, of course. While it isn't exactly uncommon for a single driver on a single team to come out of the gates incredibly hot and make it clear from the first quarter of the season that it was theirs to lose, when that happens it usually doesn't happen for a driver still teamed with the twice-over defending World Driver's Champion. Rosberg's lead is massive after today's win (another quiet one for him, albeit mostly because he was a few seconds ahead of Hamilton's drama), but he's still not the favorite, and it'll take another five or six races like this for him to be favored over his teammate.
Despite starting 10th after yet another engine miscue yesterday, Lewis Hamilton was up to second and catching Nico Rosberg at a pretty quick pace by lap 25. After getting a boost from two separate first-lap incidents found to be by Daniil Kvyat, including one that would end the race of Sebastian Vettel, Hamilton had to pass just four cars in the race's first half to get to Rosberg in time to catch up to him. He did so, and by lap 35 had closed the gap to Rosberg to just 7 seconds, only to be told by his team that he had a water pressure issue and needed to slow his pace. He had to settle for second behind his teammate, and though Mercedes would yet again claim a 1-2 finish, Hamilton himself would have to settle for second by nearly 30 seconds.
With Vettel, who has quietly had nearly as many setbacks as Hamilton this season, out, Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen would claim a quiet third and final spot on the podium, ahead of the Williams duo of Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa. Impressively, a struggling McLaren team would get Fernando Alonso's Honda-powered racer all the way up to sixth, while the driver he was pushed out for, Kevin Magnussen, would finish seventh for a Renault team that has had its fair share of struggles itself.
In eighth, Haas F1 would return to the points with Romain Grosjean. The finish makes three points finishes in four races, with the American team again proving that the realities of a wholly new Formula 1 team don't necessarily involve that team being a backmarker for its first few seasons.
Formula 1's next race, its first of the traditional European season and last before the Monaco Grand Prix, is in Spain in two weeks.
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Comoros Islands - Beaches, Perfumes & Volcanos
Comoros, pronounced Co-MORE-oh, with a silent s, is an adventurer's paradise. A former French colony, this archipelago in the Mozambique Channel has been the site of 20 coups since gaining independence from France in 1975. Things have calmed down since 2002 after the country had democratic elections, and become more attractive to foreign investment and tourism.
Islands Of The Moon
While under French rule, colonists set up plantations on the islands, and about a third of the land on the islands is still taken up by plantations. The islanders are Muslim and speak dialects of Comorian, though most also speak Arabic and French. These are the descendents of Arab traders, French colonists, Persian sultans, African slaves, and Portuguese pirates.
Tourists can visit ancient mosques, royal tombs, a fortress, and sulfurous crater lakes. Check out the protected green turtle, and threatened birds and insects at the marine reserve on Mohéli. Hike through lush rainforests to see breathtaking waterfalls, and look for the giant fruit bat with a 4’ wingspan. Wander through cities to view Swahili architecture and photograph carved doors. Watch folk dancers perform throughout the islands.
Cloud Coup Coup Land
The country is made up of four islands, though one of them, Mayotte, refused independence, and remained under French rule. White sand beaches, palm trees swaying in the breeze that carries the scents of ylang-ylang and cloves; if that’s all it takes to be a tropical paradise, these islands have it in spades.
However, you won’t find massive hotels, topless sunbathing, or fancy cocktails, for Islamic law forbids alcohol, and women must be modestly dressed. The SCUBA diving is terrific, and there is a dive school and shop at Galawa Beach, on Grande Comore.
There are two seasons here. Wet season from December to April where temperatures will be in the mid 80’s, and dry season, from May to November which is a little cooler.
Mt Karthala
Grande Comore, the largest island in the archipelago, is also home to the largest active volcano in the world. It’s last big blast in 2005, which flattened surrounding villages, created an unusual desert landscape on the mountain which has become a popular hiking spot. The crater is accessible to hikers, and can be reached in a day from Moroni. There is a bivouac at the top where you can spend the night.
The country’s largest exports are spices and perfume extracts. The plantations produce vanilla, cloves, and ylang-ylang, lemongrass, jasmine, citronella, abelmosk, among others. You can tour the distilleries where they process essential oils in Bambao. They are the world’s leading producer of ylang-ylang, the essence used in Chanel #5, and the second biggest producer of vanilla.
The tropical climate means that ylang-ylang grows year round but the ideal harvest time is in the wet season. The blossoms are gently hand-picked, and immediately processed to retain the fragrance. It takes 100 pounds of flowers to produce a quart of essence. While the flowers are simmered with water in a copper vat for a few hours, the essential oil is condensed and drawn off. Two subsequent distillations extract weaker grades of the essence. All are bottled and labeled for export.
Mark Bals works as the lead to various Swahili learning programs. He currently lives in Mozambique.
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ChemChina, Sinochem merge agricultural assets: Syngenta
FILE PHOTO: A man walks out of a Sinochem office building in Beijing, China February 21, 2017. REUTERS
ZURICH (Reuters) - ChemChina and Sinochem (600500.SS) are consolidating their agricultural assets into a new holding company to be called Syngenta Group, ChemChina unit Syngenta said on Sunday.
Chen Lichtenstein, current president and CEO of Shenzhen-listed crop protection company ADAMA (000553.SZ), which will also be incorporated into the new group, will be nominated CFO of the newly formed Syngenta Group.
He will be based in Basel, Switzerland, the Swiss group said in a statement.
Reuters reported last month that China National Chemical Corp, or ChemChina, had approached Chinese state-backed investors for up to $10 billion in funding as part of a reorganisation of its agrichemicals business ahead of a public float.
The reorganisation includes Syngenta, the Swiss pesticide producer that ChemChina agreed in 2016 to buy for $43 billion.
The fundraising efforts and eventual stock market listing are designed to cut ChemChina’s debt ahead of a long-awaited mega-merger with state-owned peer Sinochem. Frank Ning, the chairman of both companies, has encouraged individual business units to tap capital markets ahead of any tie-up, which has been in the works since 2016.
ChemChina wants to list Syngenta on China’s technology-focused STAR market in mid-2020, according to fundraising documents dated from October.
Reporting by Michael Shields; editing by Jason Neely and David Evans
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Qishloq Ovozi
U.S. Envoy To Astana Predicts 'Very Busy Bilateral Relationship'
By Bruce Pannier
U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan George Krol
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has ended his official visit to Washington and headed to New York to preside over a session of the UN Security Council.
Nazarbaev's meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump dominated media coverage, but the Kazakh leader had other items on his agenda.
After the visit, RFE/RL spoke to current U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan George Krol, who was also in Washington.
Krol has met with the Kazakh leader many times, and the ambassador said Nazarbaev "views ties with the United States very positively in the context also of Kazakhstan's own foreign policy where it is what they describe as the multivector policy where they have strategic partnerships with their neighbors, particularly their large neighbors to the north [Russia] and to the east [China] and farther afield to the United States."
RFE/RL spoke recently to former U.S. Ambassador William Courtney about the rapid progress in U.S.-Kazakh relations after Kazakhstan gained independence in late 1991.
Krol offered this take on the subsequent period: "Over these last 25 years, the relationship has grown -- and the contacts, of course. President Nazarbaev has met every American president since President George Bush Sr., so this was another opportunity to connect with the leadership, the new administration of the United States."
'Enhanced Partnership'
Krol said of this week's U.S. visit, "Right now the priority -- and this is something that came out in the preparation for this visit, and it's stated in the joint statement of the United States and Kazakhstan -- is an enhanced strategic partnership for the 21st century, with an emphasis on "enhanced."
He said that part of that strategy includes "particularly Afghanistan, which is a key part of my president's South Asia strategy...as the world changes and has its challenges of dealing with violent extremism, if you will, [and] dealing with issues like the North Korean nuclear issue," Krol said. "The fact that the United States and Kazakhstan are now members of the Security Council of the United Nations...[means] the relationship has been transforming in the number of ties, the number of issues, and also increasing the level of engagement between our governments...to push for engagement beyond the traditional sectors, which have been in the energy sector."
U.S. President Donald Trump (left) and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev in Washington.
One area was business and opportunities for the United States to become further involved in Kazakhstan.
"I know that Kazakhstan has a priority to move from being a source of raw materials to be a source of processed goods and services and wanting to transform and diversify their economy and also to diversify that relationship with the United States, to encourage American business and investment in areas outside the energy sector, and that is something that both governments are pushing for particularly in this meeting," Krol said.
One achievement he pointed to was "an agreement signed between the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, OPIC, which is a U.S. government agency, and Kazakhstan. OPIC which provides investment insurance, it also provides investment itself, is sort of open for business in Kazakhstan for American COMPANIES? That wish to develop business in Kazakhstan to have that focus and diversification in the economic side."
And Krol said that, after the meeting with Trump, Nazarbaev "had...a meeting at Blair House with the secretary of energy, Secretary [Rick] Perry, and then he spoke at a roundtable at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There were present the CEOs of numerous American companies that are doing business in Kazakhstan or those that are intending on doing business [in Kazakhstan]."
'Fruitful Meetings'
RFE/RL asked about some specific issues in Kazakh-U.S. ties.
One was speculation that Nazarbaev might offer his services as a mediator to smooth ties between Russian and the United States. Nazarbaev successfully helped mediate between Russia and Turkey after a Turkish fighter shot down a Russian warplane near the Turkish-Syrian border in November 2015 and several rounds of international talks on Iran's nuclear program were held in the Kazakh capital, Astana.
Krol said simply: "The subject of trying to alleviate tensions in relationships around the world was certainly touched upon and spoken about. Let's just say that, obviously, as President Nazarbaev said, he wishes to have a relationship, a productive relationship among all the partners that Kazakhstan has, which includes the United States and [Kazakhstan's] neighbors."
At the end of December, the Bank of New York Mellon froze more than $22 billion of assets from Kazakhstan's National Fund over a lawsuit launched by a Moldovan businessman.
Asked whether those funds were a topic of conversation during Nazarbaev's visit to the United States, Krol said, "No, because as I understand it, this freezing of [Kazakh assets], it's a London filial of the Bank of New York Mellon, and I think the court which froze it was a British court.... It's not an issue of the United States government being involved."
But Krol indicated Nazarbaev's meetings were fruitful. "I think one of the big takeaways of this visit is, again, the reason why these are so important is they meet together and they spend [time] together to understand each other and where they're coming from -- and not just the leaders but the delegations that came together. Because for those who are on the [Kazakh] delegation, this is also an opportunity to have the first meetings with senior members of the American administration. I should simply say as a result of this visit, because they discussed so much, I think we're going to have a very busy bilateral relationship to move a lot of these things forward in diversifying the relationship."
The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.
Ex-U.S. Envoy Cites 'Moderate' Kazakhstan, Its Desire For 'Global Role'
William Courtney, former U.S. ambassador to Georgia
From the first days after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the newly independent countries, the United States has had a unique relationship with Kazakhstan in comparison with other Central Asian states.
The two have disagreed on many issues -- notably on respect for human rights, freedom of speech, and the media, as well as their respective commitments to political pluralism -- but there are many spheres where the two have common interests.
RFE/RL spoke to a former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, William Courtney, about Kazakh-U.S. relations ahead of an official visit to Washington by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev. The January 16-19 visit will include a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.
ALSO READ: Nazarbaev Thanks Trump For Backing Kazakh Territorial Integrity
Courtney described Astana as reliably "moderate [and] pragmatic" in its decisions.
"One of the great strengths of Kazakhstan is that it has had moderate traditions, if you will, economic policy, political policy, other areas," Courtney said, "and that moderation in Kazakhstan's policies is probably a good sign for the future of Kazakhstan that whatever changes happen in the region,... one can count on Kazakhstan to take a moderate, pragmatic approach."
Courtney, the first U.S. ambassador to independent Kazakhstan, cited the U.S. recognition of Kazakh sovereignty. "The U.S. was the first country to recognize Kazakhstan. Our embassy was set up about five weeks after [Mikhail] Gorbachev signed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, right at the beginning of February 1992."
Denuclearization, Oil Wealth
Washington was quick to establish relations with all the former Soviet republics but, as Courtney noted, there were two areas of particular importance where the United States wished to engage with Kazakhstan.
"One was denuclearization. Kazakhstan had suffered horrible consequences of atmospheric nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk. And so, the [Kazakhs] were quite ready and willing to cooperate with the West and the United States, and Russia on denuclearization," Courtney said.
Belarus and Ukraine also relinquished nuclear arsenals that they inherited from the Soviet Union, but "Kazakhstan was the first of the three to eliminate...its strategic nuclear weapons."
"The second early priority," Courtney said, "was [that] Kazakhstan has immense oil wealth in western Kazakhstan right on the edge of the Caspian Sea, both onshore and offshore."
Many knew the oil was there, but a newly independent Kazakhstan faced enormous challenges to taking advantage of that resource.
"The oil, which was of a high quality of light oil, was very hard to get," Courtney said. "It's deep, it's below a salt dome, and it has high sulfur content. The Soviet Union did not have the technology to exploit that. So Kazakhstan was looking for Western investment. The U.S. company Chevron had been exploring that possibility, and so Chevron ended up negotiating what was the first huge foreign investment anywhere in the former Soviet Union for the rights to develop the Tengiz deposit."
Chevron continues to work the Tengiz deposit; another U.S. company, ExxonMobil, joined that project.
ExxonMobil is also a partner in another huge Kazakh oil field, at Kashagan, in the Caspian Sea.
"Those two projects have been by far the dominant major investments of Western companies in Central Asia," Courtney said. But he added that "General Electric has a locomotive factory close to Astana and there are other projects as well."
Multinational Force
Astana's relations with Washington have another unique feature: Kazakhstan is the only Central Asian country that sent troops (demining units) to participate in the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq.
Courtney called that "part of [Kazakhstan's] overall strategy to play not only a regional role but really a global role." He added that Kazakhstan has trained some of its troops to serve as peacekeepers, should the need arise.
Courtney noted that Kazakhstan has chaired the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (2010), the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (2011), and founded and hosts the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures with "over 25 countries now participating in that organization." It currently has a rotating seat on the UN Security Council and took over the Security Council's rotating presidency in January.
All of which hints at a higher international diplomatic profile than other Central Asian states.
Topics on Nazarbaev's agenda in Washington include the situation in Afghanistan, which the Kazakh government has been watching carefully for more than two decades. "Kazakhstan is relatively well informed about Afghanistan and the subtleties of political and economic, and security life there," Courtney said.
International Terrorism
International terrorism will probably also be a subject of discussion. "Kazakhstan is also relatively well informed about the [militant group] Islamic State and activities surrounded that in Iraq and Syria," Courtney told RFE/RL. Hundreds of Kazakhs have left their own country to join extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, and Kazakhstan has hosted Syrian peace talks since last year.
Kazakhstan also hosted talks on Iran's nuclear program that contributed to the landmark deal between Tehran and world powers in 2015 that traded sanctions relief for curbs on Iran's nuclear activities. Trump has derided the agreement as "the worst deal ever" and urged the U.S. Congress and U.S. allies to seek modifications.
But Kazakhstan's position on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons is likely to be welcomed by the Trump administration as it ponders the situations in Iran and a nuclear North Korea.
Courtney said there are reasons why the United States is likely to continue to seek strong ties with Kazakhstan.
"Kazakhstan is likely to be one of the top 10 oil producers in the world in a few years in great part because of Tengiz and Kashagan, and the United States also is a large producer of oil and will have a strategic interest in maintaining a close dialogue with Kazakhstan," Courtney said.
The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
Qishloq Ovozi is a blog by RFE/RL Central Asia specialist Bruce Pannier that aims to look at the events that are shaping Central Asia and its respective countries, connect some of the dots to shed light on why those processes are occurring, and identify the agents of change.
Bruce Pannier
Content draws on the extensive knowledge and contacts of RFE/RL's Central Asian services but also allow scholars in the West, particularly younger scholars who will be tomorrow’s experts on the region, opportunities to share their views on the evolving situation at this Eurasian crossroad.
The name means "Village Voice" in Uzbek. But don't be fooled, Qishloq Ovozi is about all of Central Asia.
Majlis Podcast: The Blackening Skies Of Central Asia
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Majlis Podcast: The Eurasian Economic Union Is Calling. Is Uzbekistan Listening?
How Much Is The Russian Military Helping Turkmenistan?
Podcast: Majlis
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Ladies football and camogie in line for €1m cash boost
Updated / Wednesday, 15 Jun 2016 11:30
Cork's Marie Ambrose and Roisin Phelan battle for possession during last September's All-Ireland Ladies SFC final
Ladies football and camogie will receive a €1m cash injection over the next two years in a major boost to the health and growth of the games.
The Minister of State for Tourism and Sport Patrick O’Donovan TD announced a two-year agreement to provide funding of €500,000 in 2017 and again in 2018, through Sport Ireland, to support programmes included in a joint proposal by the Women’s Gaelic Players Association (WGPA), the Camogie Association and the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA).
A steering group comprising the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Sport Ireland, the WGPA, the Camogie Association and the LGFA has been established to agree the details of the two-year funding programme.
The financial support will be aimed towards programmes such as injury prevention and medical cover, maximising player and team performance, and access to training facilities.
“I want to take this opportunity to recognise the valuable contribution that our inter-county ladies football and camogie players make to Gaelic games," Minister O’Donovan said.
"Their success is important, not just at a sporting level, but also on the ground level where they inspire young women to become involved in ladies football or camogie, and stay involved throughout school and into their adult life.”
Minister O’Donovan said the the two-year agreement was a huge forward stride, adding that “the funding allocation shows the confidence held by the government in the success of our inter-county ladies football and camogie players, and that it recognises the role of the teams, the volunteers and the supporters in forming strong community spirit throughout the country”.
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A second connection between al-Qifti and Bar Hebraeus
We all know that Bar Hebraeus described the destruction of the library of Alexandria by the Moslems, and we have seen a very similar story at somewhat greater length given by the Moslem writer al-Qifti translated for us yesterday.
Quite by accident I have come across a mention of an example where Bar Hebraeus displays knowledge of al-Qifti’s book On Learned Men. It’s in Shlomo Pines An Arabic version of the Testimonium Flavianum (1971), which I came across while scanning and throwing out old articles and sat down to read a few minutes ago. I had, in truth, forgotten how mind-numbingly dull that paper was, interesting tho the subject is. But then I reached the appendix on p.73, Galen on Christians, according to Agapius. This reads as follows (bits in [] are me):
In a portion of a book bearing the title Galen On Jews and Christians [Oxford, 1949, p.15-6, 57f., 87-98], Professor Walzer treats of a text attributed to Galen by some Oriental, Moslem, and Christian authors, which refers very favourably to the Christian way of life. All these authors but one state that the text occurred in Galen’s summary of Plato’s Republic. The single exception is Bar Hebraeus, who both in a Syriac and in an Arabic work tells us that the text is extracted from Galen’s summary of the Phaedo. …
[Walzer:] “… it is almost certain that the substitution of the Phaedo for the Republic is due to Bar Hebraeus’ notorious carelessness in such matters and of no significance whatever. In addition, Bar Hebraeus is by no means an ‘independent witness’, since his discussion of Galen’s life is nothing but an abridged copy taken from the History of Learned Men by Ibn al-Qifti (published after 1227 C.E.), who, again, attributes the statement to Galen’s summary of the Republic. Bar Hebraeus can therefore be eliminated from future discussions of this statement.”
If we know that Bar Hebraeus was excerpting material from al-Qifti, then we may reasonably suppose that the passage about the library of Alexandria has a similar provenance, surely?
Posted in Ancient worldTagged Bar Hebraeus, Library of Alexandria
« Al-Qifti on the destruction of the library of Alexandria
284 Greek manuscripts online at the British Library »
5 thoughts on “A second connection between al-Qifti and Bar Hebraeus”
Cottrell says:
If you add that both Ibn al-Qifti and Bar Hebraeus lived in Northern Syria at some stage in their life, and that only 50 years separate them, you reach almost a certainty, if ever we can hope attaining certainty when dealing with “ancient” literature !
This is where we could really use complete translations of both Bar Hebraeus and Ibn al-Qifti; if we could just read through them, we’d probably find more examples.
I’d like to get at least dynasties 9 and 10 of Bar Hebraeus translated if I could.
Galen mentions Christians? If true that would count as one of the earlier non-christian references to Christianity.
I’m not sure, myself. The context is claims in Arabic sources, 1,000 years later, that such a work exists.
Galen’s works are very voluminous — as much as 20% of all surviving Greek literature, if I recall correctly — and nearly all untranslated.
On the other hand, I think the edition of his works is online, so one could do a search.
Pingback: the ancient Library of Alexander's tribute to knowledge
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We always knew this place was special!
The story of 2017 is one of successful partnerships and on Tuesday 9 January a new exhibition, Tell The World, will open to showcase the organisations who helped make the Hull 2017 story possible.
From bus operators to law firms, manufacturers and construction companies, a total of 80 partners had the belief, commitment and confidence in this city to give £32 million, making Hull’s unparalleled year possible.
But it wasn't just about the money: behind the scenes, thousands of staff from organisations across the city did their part to make the year truly remarkable. They embraced every moment and every opportunity to try something new and demonstrate what makes this city so incredible.
In Tell The World, a selection of Hull 2017’s partners tell their stories of the year and share their plans for the future.
Rollits, founded in the city’s Old Town more than 175 years ago and firmly rooted in Hull, is hosting the celebratory event. A firm believer in the city and a supporter of cultural and artistic programmes for many years, we quickly got behind Hull 2017, supporting it every step of the way.
Ralph Gilbert, said: “The amazing spectacle of Hull 2017’s year would not have been possible without the partner organisations who have sponsored the programme. From funding the volunteer army to enabling some of the year’s biggest events, the support has helped make the year truly remarkable. It is with great pride that not only have we supported the programme but that so many organisations have got behind Hull and given the city such a boost. We’re so glad we’ve been part of the story, it’s been quite a journey.
Fran Hegyi, executive director at Hull 2017, said: “The partners of Hull 2017 have been crucial to our success. They have contributed both significant financial investment and broader experiential support which helped ensure our programme excelled. It has been fantastic that so many organisations recognised Hull’s year as something worth supporting and would it could do the for the people and the city. Their generous support for Hull’s year of arts and culture has been enormous and the impact can be seen far and wide.”
Tell The World will open 10am-4pm from Tuesday 9 January 2018 until Sunday 14 January in Block C, C4Di, Queen Street, Hull.
This article is for general guidance only. It provides useful information in a concise form. Action should not be taken without obtaining specific legal advice.
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What if you could stand in The Sistine Chapel, under Michelangelo’s masterpiece, The Creation of Adam, with no-one else around? Only you, your loved ones and a tour guide? Throughout history, only Popes and Princes have had the privilege of seeing The Sistine Chapel in solitude – until now. Roma Experience now offer exclusive VIP Vatican tours, so you can see the Sistine Chapel in total privacy, or within a small group. Our VIP Vatican Tours includes access to many parts of the museum normally closed to the public.
See all the highlights of the main collection and get behind the locked doors of some of the most beautiful rooms in the Vatican Museums.Experience parts of the Vatican Museum people rarely see, and marvel at Michelangelo’s creative genius under his masterpiece, The Last Judgement, in a quiet Sistine Chapel with no crowds.
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
HIDDEN SECRETS OF THE VATICAN MUSEUMS
There are over 1,200 rooms in the Vatican Museum and the whole history of the world at your fingertips. Whether you are interested in obscure Jewish history or contemporary Catholic art, there is an artefact for every taste.
Take in the spectacular art of the High Renaissance in the grand halls, apartments and labyrinthian corridors of the Vatican museum. From the refined frescoes of Pinturicchio in the Borgia apartments, to the grandeur of the Raphael Rooms, through to the charming novelty of the Gallery of Maps, these VIP Vatican Tours paint a picture of how lively a Renaissance court it once was.
The Vatican Museums contain a staggering range and quality of ancient sculpture. Marvel at the craftsmanship of the iconic Laocoön and His Sons, and tremble beneath the Belvedere Torso, a fractured masterpiece that’s still potently masculine and powerful.
THE BRAMANTE STAIRCASE
Before you think, ‘That’s no secret; I’ve walked down the Bramante Staircase in the public collection of The Vatican!’ You would be right – and wrong. The modern Bramante Staircase is an architectural triumph in and of itself, and guides the visiting crowds in and out of The Vatican Museums. However, there is an original, 16th century staircase, hidden behind closed doors, a marvellous and evocative piece of interior architecture.
The original Bramante Staircase was designed by an architect of the same name, Bramante. The staircase was built to connect Pope Julius II’s residence, the Belvedere Palace, with the outside world, and was large enough for a carriage ascend. Bramante developed a design that would allow the paths of the ascenders and descenders never to cross, much to the amazement of architects of the age.
Today, many lovers of art and science delight in just how much The Bramante Staircase resembles a double-helix, a strand of human DNA. Of course, there was no way for Bramante to have known that in the Renaissance, but today, the staircase appears a subtle peon to humanism, as it enchants in its warm orange and yellow tones, supported all the while by elegant Doric columns.
Experience the height of artistic achievement in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.
THE NICCOLINE CHAPEL
In 1447, Pope Nicholas V commissioned Fra Angelico to decorate a pre-existing mediaeval chapel, within the Vatican Walls. At that time, the significance of these works may or may not have been lost on its Papal audience, but today, we can clearly see how these particular frescos mark a turning point in Christian art and thought. These frescoes articulate a particular branch of Christian Humanism, first sprung from Tuscan soil and hitherto unseen in Rome, that was about to spread across the Italy and, later, the world.
Scenes from the lives of the early saints St. Stephen and St. Lawrence do not depict men in the early days of Christianity, in a Roman Empire that’s catastrophically unravelling. Instead, they show scenes from Renaissance civilization. Despite the violent deaths that met both saints, the most prominent scenes show them moving through the city state, and attending meetings with peers, in clothes that would have been fashionable in the 15th century. The depiction of administrative figures show the resurgence of bureaucratic structures in Europe during the Renaissance period. The depiction of the Saints paying alms to the poor demonstrates the importance of Christian charity, in a world that was accelerating and becoming increasingly globalized. Most people never get to see the masterful Niccoline Chapel, which shows Fra Angelico at the height of his creative capabilities. However, on one of our exclusive Vatican VIP tours, you’ll be able to see it for yourself.
All the world’s greatest wonders are within Vatican City’s walls.
THE CABINET OF MASKS
The Cabinet of Masks has delighted artists and art lovers for centuries – those who get to see it, that is. Most of the time, the Cabinet of Masks is closed to the public. The German titan of literature Goethe would spent hours in this room contemplating, in fascination, a beautiful sculpture of a nymph; she’s now known as The Ballerina of Goethe.
The Cabinet of Masks is one of the most elegant renderings of Baroque interior design the world has ever seen. The room, elegantly rendered in white and blue marble, contains many beautiful pieces of classical statuary and carefully crafted reproductions – but that’s not what most people come to see. Most visitors seek out The Cabinet of Masks to see the mosaics on the floor, from which the room gets its name. These mosaics were pilfered from the Emperor Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, and the most remarkable among them is a depiction of the masks of actors rendered in tiles so small, they could only be made with special tools.
THE SISTINE CHAPEL: MICHELANGELO’S GREATEST WORK
Yes, the Sistine Chapel contains works by other Great Masters of the Renaissance, including Perugino, Pinturicchio and Botticelli, but people really gather to see the 12,000ft of Michelangelo’s masterful frescoes, which span from wall to wall. On these VIP Vatican Tours, you’ll stand alone in the Sistine Chapel, either in a group of no more than 15 or totally alone. Botticelli may get a big crowd in Florence’s Uffizi, but in the Sistine Chapel, it’s Michelangelo’s masterpieces that draws the crowds.
There’s no mystery as to why Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel produces this effect. His expansive system of frescoes, all of which are taken from narratives in the Book of Genesis, contain some of the most evocative scenes European Art has ever produced. Of the 300 hundred characters portrayed within these frescoes, there is a multitude of human emotions; a whole life’s worth. The pain and terror on faces of condemned sinners in The Last Judgement portrays the emotional consequences of a terrible mistake so accurately, that it must stir even the hardest heart to sympathy.
A more joyful image is the figure of God in Dividing Light from Darkness, an incredible affirmation of the joy in the act of creation. God reaches his muscular arms upwards, waving the darkness away and bringing in the light. To a modern viewer, it appears as though he is dancing.
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CHOOSE ONE OF THE VIP VATICAN TOURS FOR AN EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME
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Whichever tour is right for you, both give you an incomparable chance to experience the emotive power of Michelangelo’s frescoes in a serene Sistine Chapel. Choose one of our Alone in the Sistine Chapel: VIP Vatican Tours to create a memory that’ll last a lifetime.
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P.J. Hogan
Highest Rated: 78% Muriel's Wedding (1995)
Lowest Rated: 14% Unconditional Love (2002)
Australian director and screenwriter P.J. Hogan spent the 1990s virtually putting his trademark on black comedies revolving around marriage-obsessed young women. Hogan had his breakthrough with 1994's Muriel's Wedding, a film of the aforementioned nature that proved to be an international sleeper hit.Before the film's success, the director, who graduated from the Australian Film and Television School, spent much of the 1980s toiling in relative obscurity and poverty. He did find a bit of early success as the director, writer, and editor of the 1984 short Getting Wet, which won two Australian Film Institute awards. In 1991, Hogan served as the second unit director and script editor on wife Jocelyn Moorhouse's acclaimed Proof; two years later, with virtually no payment, he wrote and directed Muriel's Wedding. The great success of the film, which also helped to launch the careers of actresses Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths, afforded its director recognition on both sides of the Pacific.Just how much recognition was evident when Hogan was tapped to direct the Julia Roberts vehicle My Best Friend's Wedding. Like Muriel's Wedding before it, the 1997 film was a black comedy revolving around its heroine's matrimony-inspired borderline insanity, and it proved to be one of the most popular films of the year. In addition to further securing Hogan's reputation, it made a star out of Rupert Everett (who stole the film as Julia Roberts' gay confidante) and marked the triumphant return of Roberts to the romantic comedy genre. Hogan and Everett re-teamed in 2000 for another romantic comedy, Unconditional Love, which cast the actor as the lover of a murdered pop star (Jonathan Pryce) who joins forces with an American woman (Kathy Bates) to solve the star's murder. The film featured a script written by Hogan and wife Moorhouse.
56% The Dressmaker Executive Producer Screenwriter $2.1M 2016
44% Mental Director Screenwriter $2.3M 2013
25% Confessions of a Shopaholic Director $44.3M 2009
No Score Yet The American Mall Screenwriter — 2008
76% Peter Pan Director Screenwriter $48.5M 2003
14% Unconditional Love Director — 2002
73% My Best Friend's Wedding Director — 1997
78% Muriel's Wedding Screenwriter Director — 1995
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Bank Robber Industries
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Ben Ringel
Among rock ‘n’ roll’s many mistresses and muses, California remains one of the most enigmatic, enduring, and enchanting. The Golden State’s allure can notably be attributed to the intoxicating melodic excess of the Eagles’ “Hotel California” and the finger-picked pensiveness of Led Zeppelin’s “Going To California,” to name a few.
The West Coast’s influence courses throughout The Delta Saints’ 2017 full-length album, Monte Vista. Irresistible lead single “California” snaps from a vintage synth swell into a rough-n-tumble guitar riff and bluesy howl. It’s an anthem for throwing caution to the wind, skipping town and setting out to find something more. “California has always been a sort of haven for the band both physically and emotionally,” says front man Ben Ringel. “We’ve got a home base at our guitarist Dylan’s grandmother’s house in La Jolla on Monte Vista Street. That’s where the album title comes from. When we wrote the song, we were in the middle of a dismal Nashville winter. We were all feeling the need to escape the cold, but also had this drive that had been building up over the previous year to really push ourselves beyond where we were. I think we all felt a bit stagnate, and ‘California’ is about us getting up and actually doing something about it.”
The Nashville-based quintet—Ben Ringel [vocals & guitar], Dylan Fitch [guitar], David Supica [bass], Vincent “Footz” Williams [drums], and Nate Kremer [keyboards]—craft raw and visceral rock music with psychedelic flares, fuzzed-out guitar riffs, arresting drum patterns and blues tendencies over the course of 10 tracks produced by Third Man Records alum Eddie Spear [Jack White, Arctic Monkeys, Chris Stapleton]. It’s the triumphant culmination of a long journey comprised of ceaseless touring in the United States and Europe and fan favorite records such as the crowd-funded Death Letter Jubilee in 2013 and 2015’s Bones. The latter yielded “Sometimes I Worry,” which landed a prominent placement on the most recent season of Showtime’s Shameless. It also spiritually set the stage for Monte Vista, an album brimming with a restless spirit and coming-of-age ruminations on life, love, self-discovery and the world at large.
“We started working on the new music shortly after we finished Bones, which was an incredibly transitional record for us,” Dylan recalls. “We switched gears from primarily being a foot-stomping bayou blues band into the psychedelic and indie rock realms. We pivoted from harmonica to keyboard. It’s a little less roots. And now we’re independent again after being on a label. Through the whole process, we had this need to continue writing. There was a lot of stuff going on in the world and a lot to be inspired by, whether it was losing artists such as David Bowie and Prince or the political climate. So, we came up with ideas throughout 2016.”
During this time, the band found that their songwriting was evolving as well. Sharper hooks and bigger melodies took shape, invigorating The Delta Saints’ sound with a jolt that makes each one soar to new heights. Drawing a heavier energy from Alice In Chains and Rage Against The Machine, a succinct delivery courtesy of The Kinks, Oasis, and Kasabian, and a cinematic expanse a la Pink Floyd and Radiohead, The Delta Saints fell into a groove that finally felt right. They seamlessly began to create undeniable rock songs with Spear at the helm.
“In the past, we wrote the music first and then put the choruses down afterwards,” elaborates Dylan. “With Monte Vista, we started the opposite way. We came up with the lyrics and the choruses first. Figuring out what we wanted to say was the initial goal.”
“Bones was way more focused on instrumentation,” says David. “With these songs, we would show Eddie a jam, and he’d be like, ‘That’s cool, but I don’t care. There are no fucking words!’ He wouldn’t listen to anything until it had a melody. That forced us out of our comfort zone and established a new system. Ed had a major impact on the album.”
The Delta Saints recorded the entire record in just six days at Sound Emporium in Nashville. As a result, a palpable energy carries the music.
“Sun God” blazes with bright bombast as Ben chants, “I am the Sun God. Come take it from me.” It’s about the conflict that comes with generations giving way to the next; a poignant snapshot into modern day politics. “In Your Head,” is a swaggering tune accented with pops of playful, drowsy synths, an adrenaline-spiked chorus and raucous vocals telling the story of an early morning cab ride back to the hotel after a long night out. Inspired by Alabama Shakes, the rollicking “Burning Wheels” ends with a Celesta solo. Throughout the record, the band enriches its sonic backdrop with a 1969 Moogerfoogerkeyboard and delay.
“It’s the exact delay you hear over Dark Side of the Moon,” Dylan beams. “As soon as you put any instrument, vocal, guitar, or keyboard through it, it takes you to ‘Us And Them.’ We found some great places to incorporate the sound.”
“Space Man” is a tribute to the late David Bowie. An acoustic guitar starts off with Dylan and Nate coming in from out in the atmosphere, before Footz and Ben fade in to fly the ship. “This was one of those really magical moments, when a song just pours out onto the page, and you have to just try to get it all down. Bowie is undeniable. A musical force.” says Ringel. The song shows a softer side of the band, but builds until you feel the boosters kick in on the chorus.
Monte Vista concludes with the haunting harmonies of “Two Days,” illuminating Ben’s vivid lyricism. “I had a stretch where I didn’t leave home for a few days, and I started to lose it,” the front man admits. “On top of it all, my wife was out of town, so I just stayed in the house and got lost in my head for a little too long. She returned and pulled me back to reality, fed me vegetables, and made me step out into the sun. The song is about needing that person to pull you out sometimes, when you get too deep down in the rabbit hole.”
The band proudly continues a rock ‘n’ roll legacy for Nashville. “While it obviously is the heart of contemporary Christian and Country music, the city has a really incredible rock scene,” adds David. “Between Jack White, Black Keys, and Kings Of Leon, I’d argue that the biggest rock stars of today live in this town. I’ve personally felt a lot of support from the community.”
Now, The Delta Saints are ready to bring Monte Vista to listeners everywhere as they hit the road for another marathon of touring.
“I hope that listeners hear the story in the record and can relate to it in their own way,” Ben concludes.
“I’d love for people to listen to this record and replay it the way I did when I first heard Aha Shake Heartbreak by Kings of Leon,” Dylan leaves off. “I hope we’re able to set the bar for what rock music can be right now.”
The Delta Saints Monte Vista
Space Man
Young and Crazy
In Your Head
The Delta Saints Death Letter Jubilee
Death Letter Jubilee
Sing to Me
From the Dirt
The Devil's Creek
The Delta Saints A Bird Called Angola
Bird Called Angola
Good in White
Company of Thieves
Callin' Me Home
Swamp Groove
Voodoo Walk
The Delta Saints Pray On E.P.
Train Song
Steppin'
I Feel Rain
© Copyright 2020 - Bank Robber Music - Built by 45PRESS
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Secretive ‘Children of Israel’ backs Trump at $25,000-per-head California fundraiser
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump © Carlo Allegri © Reuters
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump headlined a $25,000-per-ticket fundraiser at the California home of Saul Fox, a private equity CEO and secret donor behind the "Children of Israel."
Forty people attended the Monday fundraiser including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who arrived with Trump.
The visit was the billionaire’s first visit to San Jose since a clash between his supporters and protesters in the Silicon Valley city.
Fox is one of the many political donors who use so-called ‘ghost corporations’ to conceal their identity.
It was revealed only earlier this month that he was the main donor behind ‘Children of Israel,’ who have donated $734,000 to the Republican party so far this year, according to The Intercept.
This includes a $400,000 donation to the Super PAC Stand for Truth, which supported Ted Cruz’s presidential run, as well as $334,000 to the RNC.
Shaofen Gao, a realtor in Silicon Valley with no history of making political contributions, was listed as the registered agent for Children of Israel in mid-2015, but a later filing revealed that the sole person behind the money was Fox.
Fox hasn’t commented on why he channeled the money through the company, keeping his identity hidden. In addition to the company’s donations, Fox himself has also donated to the GOP.
Most recently, he donated $100,000 to speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s aptly-titled fundraiser "Team Ryan" as well as a $25,000 donation to Trump’s joint fundraising committee.
Fox’s 2016 donations also include $2,700 to Mike Huckabee’s presidential bid and the $5,400 maximum to the campaigns of both Cruz and Marco Rubio.
READ MORE: Donald Trump agrees to meet Mexican president south of ‘the wall’
Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v FEC decision in 2010, the 2016 election cycle has seen an unprecedented influx of corporate donations with one out of every €8 collected by super PACs coming from ‘ghost corporations,’ according to the Washington Post.
In 2015, Children of Israel gave $50,000 to Pursuing America’s Greatness, a super PAC supporting Huckabee’s run, as well as $100,000 to a pro-Huckabee group.
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NASA’s Endeavour blasts off in final flight
NASA space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 16, 2011 in Cape Canaveral, Florida (AFP Photo / Getty Images) © AFP
The second-to-the-last US shuttle flight is on its way to the International Space Station with a crew of five American astronauts and one Italian astronaut.
Endeavour was built to replace Challenger, which was lost in a tragic accident in 1986, and first flew in 1992. The shuttle Endeavour is commanded by Commander Mark Kelly, the husband of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was wounded by a shot to the head in a shooting at a political event in her home state of Arizona.Giffords, who has been undergoing rehab, was in attendance for the launch. Her doctors have called her recovery astonishing.This is the second-to-last shuttle take off, as the program will be retired shortly. Following failed attempts by NASA to produce a shuttle program replacement, the goal is to now outsource space travel to private companies and work with other national space programs – such as those in Russia and the European Union. At present a number of companies are awaiting final approval from NASA to take over certain cargo and transport operations to the ISS.
NASA loses $424 million satellite in launch failure
No cheap seats for NASA
Cocaine found at NASA Space Center
NASA Messenger probe first to enter Mercury orbit
Space tourism for all
Russia rockets off as NASA lags behind
Next ISS crew put to the test ahead of mission
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Saorise Ronan in "Little Women", & Constance Wu in "Hustlers" (Columbia Pictures/Annapurna Pictures)
How both "Hustlers" and "Little Women" anticipated their own Oscar snubs
Both "Little Women" and "Hustlers" look at how women's creative ambitions are stifled by a male-dominated society
Amanda Marcotte
Oscar nomination announcements, otherwise known as the annual reminder that Hollywood is dominated by white guys with narcissistic and blinkered tastes, have come and gone. This year was particularly brutal when it comes to the Academy overlooking the contributions of female directors, which particularly stung when Todd Phillips, an overprivileged whiner who directed the truly dumb "Joker", managed to snag a directing nomination.
The irony deepens because two of the overlooked lady directors — Greta Gerwig and Lorene Scafaria — both made movies that far surpass the ability of Phillips, in his silly clown movie, to tell a story about what happens to people whose considerable talents are being squashed by the cruel world that doesn't care very much about people like them. But these movies are about women, a group that faces very real economic, legal, and social oppression, so I guess it's not as interesting as watching Joaquin Phoenix chew scenery.
Still, I recommend that readers who are interested in watching genuinely smart movies that tackle the subject of creative ambition and struggling against The Man, to have a mini film festival and watch Gerwig's "Little Women" and Scarfaria's "Hustlers."
On the surface, these two movies may not seem to have much in common, beyond being ensemble films about women (which is unusual enough in itself). But watching them in quick succession, what's striking is how these two movies are different, but equally compelling, takes on the same story: How creative, ambitious women struggle to succeed in an economic system run by men who don't care very much to see women as full human beings.
Emphasis on "economic," because the driving question of both "Hustlers" and "Little Women," which are set more than 150 years apart, is one of money and how creative women have to distort or even destroy their own work in order to appease the men out there who control the purse strings.
[Editor's Note: Beware of spoilers from here on out.]
This theme is not particularly subtle, though beautifully wrought, in "Little Women," which has a much chattered-about "twist" ending that stomps whatever showy but empty garbage certain other clownier movies might come up with. For, as readers of the book know, the original Alcott novel has a deeply unsatisfying ending, where the main character, Jo rejects marrying her beloved friend Laurie and then ends up marrying a crappy old man who is mean to her, while Laurie marries Jo's bratty younger sister Amy.
One interpretation of that ending is that Alcott was trolling a bit with it. As she wrote to her uncle at the time, "publishers are very perverse" in their demands and "so my little women must grow up & be married off in a very stupid style." Alcott wanted Jo to be a spinster, this view suggests, and therefore married her off to a man that also made readers wish Jo had remained a spinster.
Gerwig takes that interpretation and runs with it, showing Jo (Saoirse Ronan) — an aspiring writer who, on-screen, doubles as an Alcott stand-in who is explicitly writing a book called "Little Women" — grumpily agreeing to tack a marriage plot on the end of her book in order to appease a sexist publisher. Viewers are left to wonder whether the extreme silliness of Jo's marriage is "real" or fictional within the fiction of the movie. (The real Alcott never married.)
Whatever meta games you want to play with the narrative, however, what is unmistakable is the point of this twist ending: To illustrate the often ugly compromises creative women have to make in order to succeed in a male-dominated world that, as the Oscar snubs show, still doesn't see women as legitimate artists in their own right.
And Jo's portrayed as the lucky one, who is holding her leather-bound book with a satisfied smile at the end. Her other two living sisters, Meg and Amy, explicitly realize that they're probably never going to make it as artists and end up in marriages that viewers are meant to be discomfited by.
"Hustlers" is, if anything, even more cynical about money, art, and gender. Even though it takes place in a world where women have the vote and the word "spinster" has no real meaning anymore, the women of the story are just as trapped by their gender as those in "Little Women" and are just as threatened by the very real possibility of being sucked into poverty because of it.
They are also, as the opening section of the movie makes clear, artists. Ramona, played by the Oscar-snubbed Jennifer Lopez, enjoys a spectacular opening scene that demonstrates the creativity and athleticism she pours into stripping, leaving the other strippers at the club in awe of her skills.
What follows is the collapse of the economy, emptying the strip clubs of customers, which leads in turn to a zany crime story in the style of classic gangster films like "Goodfellas." Except that instead of once again digging into the well-mined area of using crime films to explore (and sometimes romanticize) toxic masculinity, "Hustlers" digs into the darker side of what women will do if they feel marginalized and forgotten.
The characters aren't sympathetic, exactly — this is a much better tribute to the Scorsese-style crime movie about anti-heroes than "Joker" ever will be — and, as their inevitable downfall shows, there's really no such thing as a victimless crime. Still, their reasons for drugging and robbing men aren't entirely unsympathetic, either.
At the beginning of the movie, the strippers are flush in the heyday before the crash, when rich Wall Street types enjoyed showing off their wealth by dumping in on the strippers. And it's only because those rich men abandon the strip club after the economic crash, which made throwing money around less fashionable, that the now-desperate strippers turn to crime.
These women are driven by resentments against men that they can't even articulate to themselves. The male customers, it turns out, never really appreciated the hard work and creativity strippers put into their work, and didn't think twice about what happened to the women they stopped paying for that work. Having the esteem of other women may be nice, but it won't pay the bills.
The scheme the strippers hatch plays out as more than an easy way to get money. It's revenge against men for rejecting them. But ultimately, victimizing individual men is no way to get even for what men, as a class, do to women. Real justice for women remains elusive.
Both "Little Women" and "Hustlers" circle around this unfortunate conclusion: Men simply can't — or more likely, won't — accept women fully as creative professionals. As "Walking Dead" writer and producer Glen Mazzara tweeted Monday, white men are "feeling threatened by recent pushes to hire more women & POC" and therefore "are not voting for films made by those people because that would validate those films & create a shift in the market place."
This is a problem, since men control who gets rewarded for what work. We see that in the movies, as women's ability to make a living depends so wholly on the whims of fickle men. And we see it in real life, when the tremendous work these female directors did to get these movies to the screen is being shrugged off by the male Hollywood establishment that is in charge of handing out accolades and recognition. Success without compromise or cheating remains elusive for women in a male-dominated world.
Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon. Her new book, "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself," is out now. She's on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte
MORE FROM Amanda Marcotte • FOLLOW AmandaMarcotte
Commentary Editor's Picks Feminism Greta Gerwig Hustlers Jennifer Lopez Little Women Lorene Scafaria Louisa May Alcott Oscar Snubs Oscars Sexism
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com2020/01/14/little-women-hustlers-oscar-snubs/
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/ Current: School pupils in the majority at climate strikes
School pupils in the majority at climate strikes
Greta Thunberg’s school strike outside the Swedish Riksdag initiated what is now a global climate campaign among school pupils – but who is participating in these strikes? Researchers in nine European countries have investigated and presented the results in a new report, showing that more than one in three school pupils who participated in the Global Strike for Future in Stockholm had never previously taken part in a demonstration.
The Global Strike for Future was held on 15 March 2019. It appears to have been the biggest-ever globally coordinated youth action, with protests in almost 2000 towns and cities in about 100 countries.
Protests studied across Europe
To investigate who is participating in these protests and their beliefs about the issue of climate change, researchers in nine European countries conducted a coordinated survey of people who participated in the climate protests on 15 March. In Sweden, surveys were performed in Stockholm and Malmö. Outside Sweden, surveys were conducted countries including Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Austria and the UK. Magnus Wennerhag, professor of sociology at Södertörn University, is one of the researchers behind the report.
“The climate is one of the decisive issues of our time, but has not previously led to such extensive and continual protest actions, apart from some mass demonstrations associated with the UN climate change summits,” says Magnus Wennerhag. “It’s therefore interesting to see that Greta Thunberg’s climate strike has such a global reach, and that many young people have become involved in this issue.
“The climate strike has been widely covered in other European countries, so we wanted to investigate this new type of activism during demonstrations happening on the same day, to discover which groups are most likely to be demonstrating, their previous political experience and the way they want to deal with climate change,” he continues.
Some preliminary results from the questionnaire (link in Swedish) used in Stockholm have now been presented and compared with the results from Malmö and other European countries.
Women in the majority among participants
The results show that pupils at compulsory and upper-secondary school are the biggest group of demonstrators in the climate strikes, but that many adults are also participating. The majority of protesters are women.
“That the school strikes are so associated with Greta Thunberg is almost certainly a reason why they mobilise so many women, and so many young women. We should not underestimate the importance of role models that people can identify with among people who become politically active,” says Magnus.
Genuine commitment behind the protests
More than one in three of the school pupils who participated in the Global Strike for Future in Stockholm had never previously taken part in a demonstration.
“This shows that these new protests are reaching out to young people who have never before been politically active, which is interesting. It also appears that the strikes are really based upon a genuine commitment, because participants are also making individual efforts to reduce environmental problems – for example by eating differently or consuming less,” states Magnus Wennerhag.
The report includes data about the level of education, membership of organisations, information channels, political views and the protesters’ opinions about how climate change should be stopped.
“This survey should be regarded as a pilot project, one we conducted without any external funding. If you study political protests you must be prepared to work with short notice, when a political issue suddenly comes into focus and many people take action. Naturally, we want to continue studying this new form of youth action, to see how it develops over time. Will the climate strikes be replaced by other forms of climate action, and to what extent will people who have never previously protested continue to do so?”
This article was updated on 23 April 2019. Nine countries participated in the survey, not ten as previously stated.
Södertörn University provides high quality research and education at all levels, offering a friendly atmosphere and an inspiring environment. Our modern, attractive campus is located in Flemingsberg, 19 minutes from central Stockholm on the commuter train.
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NASIRI
Design and Art
Spurred by Light
This pavilion is a steel structure frams with different densities in 3 parts that is made in an organic form.
The structure creates experiential spaces with use of two modifiers light and opening which are engaging together. The distance between each steel structure plays an important role in this pavilion. It lets the light and shadow intertwine and create a path through the space. There is a journey through the space. The distance between each steel structure in the first area is more than other areas which it lets the light brighten up the space and suggest walking and starting the journey. The second area’s structure are much closer together and there is more shade in the space than light. There are 3 seating areas that are built with the steel structure and because of decreased light it encourages people to sit in the space. The third part of the structure are built next to each other with a tiny space between them and this creates a shaded area and the structure formed in an deep angle that allows people to lay down on top of it. The journey spurred by light.
ELEVATION 1
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Looking for ideas on how to spend a family weekend? Take a look at our Family Fun itinerary, or book a ready-made vacation package for the entire family to enjoy. In the meantime, here are some of Monterey’s most popular family friendly attractions.
Life was different at the turn of the last century, and the Agricultural and Rural Life Museum in King City's San Lorenzo Park is a walk back in time. See first-hand how students of the era learned at a one-room schoolhouse, complete with students' desks and slates for writing, and teachers' tools for discipline. The blacksmith is still at work, and the farmhouse gives visitors a view into how people lived 100 years ago. Antique mining and farming equipment are on display, as are a tack shop, country store and antique printing press. The barn and outdoor displays are open daily from 10am-4pm all year. The other buildings are open weekends, April-October. Free guided tours.
Dennis the Menace Playground
This famous playground, located at El Estero Park in Monterey, is known throughout the state for its whimsical equipment, which includes a drinking fountain inside the mouth of a lion, a swinging rope bridge, a roller slide, a life-sized hedge maze, and much more! A snack bar is located directly outside the park. Open daily at 10am (closed Tuesdays September-May); free admission.
The Carmel Mission, also known as San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo Mission, is home to some of the most significant religious artifacts in California. Founded by Father Junipero Serra, the mission was built in 1770 and is still home to a thriving Catholic community. Today, visitors can get a taste of mission life as it was back then. An on-site museum houses California's first library, as well as a collection of tools and equipment used by the Spaniards and Native Americans in their day-to-day lives at the mission. The simple cell where Serra lived is also recreated in detail. Located on Rio Road in Carmel. For hours, fees and a schedule of mass, call 831-624-3600.
Built in 1791, the Soledad Mission is the 13th of the 21 California missions. Free and open to the public, visitors can see the original adobe ruins, which are under restoration. Museum, gift shop and gardens are open daily, except Tuesdays. The Soledad Mission is on Fort Romie Road, Soledad. Call 831-678-2586 for more information.
Mission San Antonio is the third California mission, founded by Father Junipero Serra in 1771. It, too, is still active as a parish church. Pack a picnic and savor the peace and quiet. There is a $1 donation to visit the grounds and museum. Mission San Antonio is located in Jolon/Fort Hunter Liggett. Call 831-385-4478 for more information.
Pop up next to penguins, observe playful fresh-water otters, crawl past giant clams and see eye to eye with tropical sharks in Splash Zone at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Here, kids can explore life in colorful coral reefs and along rough rocky shores. See blackfooted penguins, moray eels and other live animals in this child's introduction to the wonders of the ocean. Hands-on learning activities let you play games, try on marine animal costumes, and create your own tidepools. Splash Zone is a rich educational experience that's also oceans of fun!
Monterey County Youth Museum (MY Museum)
The Monterey County Youth Museum gives children the chance to discover the thrill of learning through unstructured play at its 80 exhibits. MY Museum has recently relocated and more than tripled in size, providing space for even more galleries that encourage children to discover how they learn best. Exhibit areas include the Creation Station; the toddler-centric MY Day at the Beach, with a sandbox, a slide, a boat and a walk-through lighthouse; MY Hospital, with a life-size version of the game Operation; MY Theater, where children can perform on stage and even use a TV camera, and more!
American author John Steinbeck's works come to life in this hands-on, interactive museum in Salinas. Here, kids can climb on The Red Pony and take a peek at marine specimens from Doc Rickett's lab in Cannery Row. Treasure hunts that encourage children to find specific items in the exhibit galleries and an "Eye Spy" game are two ongoing ways to encourage understanding and learning at the National Steinbeck Center museum.
Welcome your kids to the jungle with a stop at the Monterey Zoo in the Salinas Valley. Various tours are available daily where tiny tots can see lions, tigers and bears. Need even more of an adventure? Book one of Vision Quest Safari's cozy African-style bungalows and have your breakfast served by an elephant!
Stop by "America's Last Hometown," and visit the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. Here, families can explore the natural history of Monterey County including its native tribes, animal species, plants and geology. Special exhibits include "Living with Mountain Lions" and "Illustrating Nature," which showcases work from California State University students. For a current list of all the exhibits click here. Don’t miss out on the photo op with the life-size whale sculpture out front!
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7 Ways To Use Big Data To Your Advantage On Social Media
How Using Data For Your Social Media Marketing Campaign Can Help
Experts Warn AI And Social Engineering Lead To New Digital Scams
Understanding The Nuances of Instagram Data Transparency Policies
Measuring Social Media ROI: Leveraging Data To Boost Results
Hollywood looking at big data to find the next big hit
Melissa Thompson August 12, 2016 August 12, 2016
There may be hidden creativity within your Facebook posts and tweets. Moreover, it might even be used to create the next blockbuster in Hollywood.
Audiences that were once hooked on television alone have started migrating to the Internet, a move that has affected the viewers’ creativity without them even realizing it. Through their blogs, social media posts, and file downloads, streaming companies and producers learn what themes, writers, and actors they need to combine in order to maximize their chances of success.
There is a clear prize for every business in the entertainment industry, starting from Netflix with its 81 million subscribers in almost every country in the world, to Stan Entertainment, a startup from Australia trying to make its stand against the $42 billion giant. By providing customers with what they want in advance, the chances of success for a show are increased, while, at the same time, it builds loyalty for the content provider, at least according to several industry executives.
“We are trying to find out what’s trending, what people talk about, and what’s hot in the world right now,” said Matchbox Pictures managing director Chris Oliver-Taylor, who’s also Glitch’s and The Real Housewives of Melbourne’s Australian producer.
“If one thing is in the center of attention throughout Twitter, or if a certain trend exists in that area, and we provide content that is directly associated with it, then the rational conclusion is that people will be interested in it,” says Oliver-Taylor.
The leadership conference of the New York-based parent company last year concentrated almost solely on how to use big data securely, he added.
Home entertainment’s evolution from free-to-air TV to content delivered to multiple devices via streaming over the internet has provided greater knowledge regarding the type, the time and the duration of consumers’ viewing. The same knowledge was used to inspire the production of “Wolf Creek,” a novel 6-part series derived from the 2005 homonym horror classic from Australia, according to Stan Entertainment.
“When we discuss with the producers and creators of original productions, we essentially brief them on a high-level about what we’re looking for,” says Mike Sneesby, chief executive officer at Stan’ Entertainment, in an interview. “Part of the information contained in that brief is data derived from our platform.”
For instance, Lucy Fry, the Australian actress who played Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife in the television series “11.22.63”, was selected as the female lead of Wolf Creek to widen the appeal of the show past its splatter origins, said Sneesby. To see how the female members of the audience would react to this choice, Stan promoted Fry’s part in the show by disseminating 20-sec video trailers of Wolf Creek on social media in advance of the series’ launch. The results justified the decision and showed the program would do fine.
James Sullivan, Asian equity research managing director at JPMorgan Chase, wrote that the holder of the largest amount of data has the advantage, and the value of metadata is going to leave content distribution and shift to actual production.
However, he added that no agreement exists regarding which type of metadata will have the biggest effect on the entertainment industry. Singapore-based Sullivan recently visited Europe, Asia, and North America, to gather the thoughts on big data of entertainment lawyers, writers, and executives from Netflix and Google.
“The ultimate question is, can you build a plot around it?” Sullivan stated in an interview. “In the end, I believe there will be a positive answer, but this subject is far from settled. I’ve heard a lot of creative concerns, especially from the side of screenwriters.”
Oliver-Tayler from Matchbox pointed out that the entertainment business is still looking for ways to reap maximum benefits from customer intelligence of such high level. After achieving this, shows that are based on big data will become the norm, he added. “It isn’t always feasible to coincide project availability with data results,” Sneesby says. Sneesby was in L.A. the previous month, to attend annual screenings of pilots and first episodes of new shows, by Hollywood studios.
Amazon.com Inc. said it launches pilots at Amazon Studios from time to time for its customers to watch and evaluate. Customer feedback is then considered when people in charge decide on the pilots that will proceed to full series.
One example of this process is “Transparent,” a comedy series based on a Los Angeles family with a transgender person at its head. When it debuted in 2014, it coincided with increased social awareness about transgender issues and the following years it earned the best TV series Golden Globe award. The award for best actor also went to star Jeffrey Tambor.
Amazon and Netflix representatives said they had no one available to talk about big data. An HBO spokesperson, Time Warner Inc.’s pay-television, said that the company makes no use of data whatsoever to schedule its programming.
Netflix, the distributor of shows like “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards,” was a pioneer in the employment of statistical equations in the promotion of titles with the greatest chance of being enjoyable to subscribers. Data factored in include the location of the subscriber, the previously downloaded content, and the general popularity of the show.
In a research paper published in an academic journal last year, two Netflix employees wrote that the average subscriber of their service might lose interest if 60 seconds pass without something interesting coming up. The system utilized by Netflix to provide individualized viewing recommendations results in over one billion USD every year, by minimizing the number of subscriptions canceled, they added.
SBS, a public TV network in Australia, tags each show with dozens of identifiers to track data like writers, cast, themes, director, location, tone, and plot. This information is essential in order to match viewers with the most appropriate content, according to Marshall Heald, director of television and online content at SBS.
According to Heald, this has been evolved into a black art by Netflix. “We can’t match their sophistication level, but in the long-term, we aspire to catch up.”
However, even with this kind of intelligence to navigate audiences to shows that are likely to make an impact, it is still important that viewers feel like they made the discovery themselves, he added.
“Quite often these discoveries look like real accidents,” says Heald. “The art and science is to maintain that feeling of magic while really understanding the tastes of the audience.”
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Add More Fuel to Your Migration with these Parse Alternatives
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SHL News
Meticulous work: organic winegrowing
A different style
Wine tourism activities
Events & Receptions
Tél. +33 (05)5 57 83 11 22
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By Stan Greene
$8.6 million in annual grants have not been audited in a generation
Statue of a homeless man in front of the former HQ of Home Savings. Like the statute, an online petition calling for more accountability in Santa Monica social services, has stirred controversy.
Santa Monica residents are circulating an online petition at Change.org, demanding that the City of Santa Monica perform annual assessments of its funding for social service agencies and programs.
"City staff publicly admitted that they do not prepare annual assessments," the petition says. "This lack of transparency and accountability is unacceptable."
Lacking a "realistic mechanism for annual assessments," Santa Monica "will continue to simply collect unverified, self-reported data from the providers, rubber-stamp it, and write a check for the next grant cycle."
"This petition was necessary, because the City is just about to remove the requirement that the City performs assessments," said one petition author. "The assessments are necessary to ensure that taxpayer money is spent efficiently and lawfully."
"The social services commission was asked to resign in February, due to their repeated failure to perform the annual assessments," she added.
"Like PAL and OPCC dba The People Concern, the failure to perform the proper assessments are precisely what went wrong in the process," she said.
The petition, available on change.org, appeared just two days before the City Council prepares to delete a requirement in the Municipal Code that the Social Services Commission to perform the audits.
A resolution approved by the Commission last month states that the City "professionalized the collection of data and evaluations" of the grants in 1982.
Since then, City funded programs have "expanded significantly. Therefore annual assessments are "beyond the time, resources, and expertise of a volunteer commission," states the resolution the Council will consider at its special meeting late Tuesday afternoon.
Annual assessments should consider participant complaints, states the petition, in order to avoid problems in the Police Activities League and The People Concern programs.
The petition may be seen at:
https://www.change.org/p/santa-monica-city-council-demand-assessments-accountability-for-social-services-programs-in-santa-monica
Target Coming to the Staples Store at 16th and Wilshire Blvd in Santa Monica
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Scientists Say Earth's Inner Core Formed 1 to 1.5 Billion Years Ago
Scientists say Earth's inner core formed 1 to 1.5 billion years ago. The scientists say the core "froze" from the surrounding molten iron outer core. Previous estimates of the inner core formation have ranged from .5 billion to 2 billion years ago.
The researchers analyzed magnetic records from ancient igneous rocks. They found there was a sharp increase in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field between 1 and 1.5 billion years ago. A related study from earlier this year found Earth's magnetic field is over four billion years old. When the inner core began to freeze the convection generated by the motion of the liquid iron alloy in the outer core increased.
Dr. Andy Bigger, University of Liverpool palaeomagnetism expert and lead author of the study, says in a statement, "This finding could change our understanding of the Earth's interior and its history. The timing of the first appearance of solid iron or 'nucleation' of the inner core is highly controversial but is crucial for determining the properties and history of the Earth's interior and has strong implications for how the Earth's magnetic field - which acts as a shield against harmful radiation from the sun, as well as a useful navigational aid - is generated."
Dr. Biggin also says the finding "suggests an average growth rate of the solid inner core of approximately 1mm per year which affects our understanding of the Earth's magnetic field."
Dr. Biggins also says the theoretical model that best fits with their findings indicates the core is losing heat more slowly than at any point in time over the past 4.5 billion years. He says the flow of energy should keep Earth's magnetic field going for at least another billion years.
Biggins says, "This contrasts sharply with Mars which had a strong magnetic field early in its history which then appears to have died after half a billion years."
The new study was published here in the journal, Nature. It also included scientists from Helsinki, Michigan Tech, UC San Diego, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Image: Kay Lancaster, Department of Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences
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Join SCL
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EVENT REPORT: Exploring bias in AI
Kate McKenna presents some key take-aways from the recent SCL Ireland event that took place on 28 November 2019.
The second SCL Irish Group event built on the first event - an introduction to AI - by exploring one of the known shortcomings of AI, bias. This was an exploration of whether artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) could be developed in ways that could counteract much of the gender, demographic and racial biases that are present in traditional coded software technology and design. For example. giant smartphones that don’t fit in women’s hands, virtual assistant AI that fails to understand accents or women’s voices, technology services that fail to cater for people living with a disability and health care algorithms that put lives at risk because the data is derived from a non-diverse dataset.
In our capacity as lawyers, during this time of progress, it is incumbent on us to try to understand these risks. Outside identifying and managing legal risks, however, is there a place for lawyers to challenge product teams to ensure that such biases are not carried over into AI or ML software? Can we play our part so that the technology of the future can be more socially inclusive? Are we engaging with our clients at an early product design stage and asking those difficult questions? To borrow and tweak Emma Watson’s gender equality motivational phrase; given the lack of any meaningful EU or domestic regulation or oversight in this field at present: if not now, when? And if not us, then who?
We asked Dr. Suzanne Little of DCU School of Computing and Principal Investigator at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics and Co-Director of the SFI Centre for Research and Training in AI to tackle the subject of bias in AI with interactions from the floor. Here are some of the key take-aways:
1. Automation gets a bad rap, but…
AI has made huge strides in the fields of medical devices (makes them safer), data analytics (can handle greater volumes of data), security (can more easily detect cybersecurity threats). However, in the field of driverless cars, the high point of automation to date, the Uber car that fatally hit a woman in 2018 failed because “the car failed to identify her properly as a pedestrian”. She had been walking and wheeling her bike on the footpath. This scenario had not been considered during the design phase and cost a person their life.
2. AI or ML and the lure of Big Data
AI is any technique that allows computers to mimic human intelligence and ML is a subset of AI which generally uses statistical techniques to learn from data fed to it. AI is driven by data and we humans have generated a lot of it. It is commonly thought that if we have more data we will ‘know’ enough about it and create a perfect, unbiased AI system. As mere mortals we are guilty of thinking that data equals fact. Data is an aggregation of facts, statistics, things known or assumed as facts, collected information or even just a set of 1s and 0s. Many people think it is black and white, precise and 100% accurate. People are complicated but computers are binary. But what happens when we place our trust in the incorruptible-ness of data as opposed to the people that create it?
3. Consequences of AI Bias
The many real-life examples that have arisen over the last few years highlight the consequences of AI bias. They are wide ranging with the most serious resulting in the perpetration of social injustices. The below are some examples:
I. the Natural Language models that display gender bias in word association (e.g. the word doctor co-occurs more frequently with male pronouns than female ones) even in languages with no gender (Finnish); to
II. Tay (Microsoft Chatbot) that became extremely racist within hours because it was designed to machine learn from Twitter’s users but was infiltrated by 4Chan trolls; to
III. the COMPAS algorithm used by judges in the USA to determine the reoffending propensity of a criminal defendant which was found to be racially biased against black defendants who were incorrectly judged to be at a higher risk of reoffending than their white counterparts; to
IV. facial recognition technology that works best for white males.
4. How does AI become biased?
1. AI is built and taught by people;
2. People choose the data;
3. People create the data;
4. Data is an imperfect representation of reality
5.Users (people) think ‘data’ is trustworthy
6. Users (people) don’t understand machine learning confidence – or should we say over-confidence (!).
Therefore, if AI is driven by data and people create and choose that data and people are biased then it seems inevitable that the AI will be biased. A prime example of this bias arose a week before our event when news of Apple’s ‘sexist’ credit card broke. It appeared to favour men because it gave them significantly higher credit limits than their wives. Embarrassingly, even Steve Wozniak agreed saying “that he had also been given a much higher credit limit than his wife, even though the pair have no separate cards, accounts or assets.” The credit card issuer, Goldman Sachs, is now under investigation by the Department of Financial Services and has stated publicly that “Any algorithm that intentionally or not results in discriminatory treatment of women or any other protected class violates New York law.” Whilst this is to be lauded, it highlights the fact that the vast majority of these algorithms remain unaccountable to anyone but their proprietors and until there is more widespread regulation or indeed a movement within the industry itself to become more transparent and subject their coding practices to outside objective scrutiny we’re going to see or more insidiously not see future scenarios where bias has been at play in our technology.
5. Can we fix it?
Bias is, according to the Oxford English dictionary defined as “a strong feeling in favour of or against one group of people, or one side in an argument, often not based on fair judgement”. The underlined part of this sentence is what should concern us. Whether algorithmic bias or the ‘coded gaze’ a phrase coined by a Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist and digital activist based at MIT, is intentional or not by the relevant coder is irrelevant. Increasingly, these algorithms are being deployed in many aspects of our lives, for example, in law enforcement, employee recruitment processes, eligibility for health care insurance, car or home insurance, or as in the previous paragraph, credit cards. The lack of transparency in the code is largely based on the fact that it is proprietary to the authors of that code.
So how do we balance the risks of AI bias against the reward incentives for intellectual property creators and maintain fairness, inclusiveness and transparency in this technology? Should we start with the premise that all AI is inherently untrustworthy and should not replace human decision makers? Or should be mandate transparency in AI systems such that all results should be explainable? Or should we treat AI like we do pharmaceuticals and have public and well-defined evaluation protocols?
A lot of food for thought but it was agreed that the more people that are party to the conversation around software design and development the more inclusive that software is going to be. Developers need to think about the social impact of the technology they are creating and understand who will suffer the consequences. And, in this author’s opinion, so do their lawyers.
Kate McKenna is Senior IT/IP Counsel at The Stars Group
Published: 2020-01-08T14:00:00
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Send Flowers for Donald
Donald Clyde Adams
September 15, 1926 ~ June 11, 2019 (age 92)
Adams, Donald, 92
God welcomed home Donald Clyde Adams on June 11, 2019. He passed in the early morning at the age of 92, holding hands with his wife, Betsy Adams, and his daughter-in-law, Kelly Adams.
Donald was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised by his parents, Clyde and Irene Adams. Though school was not for him, he was strong-willed and clever, managing to fudge his paperwork to join the Navy two years early at the age of 16. He served in the Philippines from 1942-1944 during World War II. Upon returning to Savannah, he met his “ole gal,” Betsy Ann, and they were married in June of 1948. They moved to Miami, Florida, after the wedding into the infamous 18-foot trailer that was missing a bathroom. Home to him, however, became St. Petersburg, Florida. This is where Donald and Betsy raised their three children: Donna, Jill, and Donald Clyde Jr, in the house in Allendale Terrace. When he became a grandfather and then a great-grandfather, Donald became “Poppy” to his growing family. As the neighborhood grew, residents came and left, but one thing remained constant. Poppy sitting in his driveway on the tailgate chatting with anyone who walked by.
Donald harbored a strong love for his family, especially his Betsy. They shared 71 years of marriage together, setting a fine example for those who were lucky to witness their loving relationship. He had a powerful faith in the Lord. A humble disciple, he loved to praise God by singing hymns and he spread the Word to anyone who would listen. He had a giving heart, a witty mind, and the best luck when it came to any card game known to man. He was the Champ of the Ramp, Ace of the Base, and the best husband, father, and Poppy a person could ask for. Donald lived in the house on Allendale Terrace until his last day. His memory lives on through his wife, 3 children, 8 grandchildren, and 7 great grandchildren.
There will be a viewing Monday, June 17, 2019 at 9:30 A.M. followed by the service at 10:30 A.M. at Sorensen Funeral Home. Burial will be 12:00 P.M. at Memorial Park Cemetery in St. Petersburg.
To send flowers to Donald's family, please visit our floral section.
Memorial ParkMemorial Park Cemetery
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Exchange Tower, Lvl 1
530 Lt Collins St, Melbourne 3000
info@spectrum29.com.au
1300 33 SOLAR
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Working Towards a Better Tomorrow
Updated Jan, 2019
This following document sets forth the Privacy Policy for the Spectrum29 Pty Ltd website,
http://www.spectrum29.com.au
Spectrum29 Pty Ltd is committed to providing you with the best possible customer service experience.
Spectrum29 Pty Ltd is bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), which sets out a number of principles concerning the privacy of individuals.
There are many aspects of the site which can be viewed without providing personal information, however, for access to future spectrum29 Pty Ltd customer support features you are required to submit personally identifiable information. This may include but not limited to a unique username and password, or provide sensitive information in the recovery of your lost password.
We may occasionally hire other companies to provide services on our behalf, including but not limited to handling customer support enquiries, processing transactions or customer freight shipping. Those companies will be permitted to obtain only the personal information they need to deliver the service. Spectrum29 Pty Ltd takes reasonable steps to ensure that these organisations are bound by confidentiality and privacy obligations in relation to the protection of your personal information.
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Spectrum29 Pty Ltd,
Exchange Tower
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New tracksBrowsed throughEarl's Court Tower: Fairytale …
>> image source
In addition, a restaurant and a casino were built there. Beside the conspicuous cottages (in the background) there was a water tower in the middle of Earls Court Road, which was regarded as an important supply facility. A cylindrical stone base formed the foundation, above it was a wooden superstructure with an oversized giant grasp. We are told that this ensemble was built between 1887-1888 - in the same period when the city was experiencing its renaissance. A draft of the structure drawn in March 1887 is said to have appeared on the cover of the Architects and Builders Edition of Scientific American. There this tower is presented as a windmill tower with an attached water tank. But I couldn't research photos of a windmill at the upper gable anywhere.
Today only a stone tower covered with ivy remains, as the upper wooden part was destroyed by a hurricane in 1938 that hit New England. What I thought was a dragon is usually referred to as a bronze griffon and has unfortunately been lost in history. The griffin is a frequently used symbol in Tartar heraldry. A metal staircase apparently goes up to the side, but disappears behind ivy in the above illustration (right side). The following picture shows the stairway. Whether it was added much later after the construction of this curiosity is not known.
Strange decline and destruction of important parts of the town
In 1912 three of the cottages behind the water tower were destroyed by fire. This fire actually started in the kitchen of Sherry's Casino and with strong winds, sometimes typical of the area, the flames crossed Gibson Avenue to cause further damage. The early stages of the fire were actually photographed and can be seen on a historic postcard of that day.
What happened to the tower? In 1928 a violent storm destroyed the upper wooden part of the tower, but the cylindrical lower part of the Earl's Court Tower still exists today. It is rumored that the former owner saved the griffin, although it was never found.
Pitiful rest of the Fairytower today; >> picture source Wikimedia Commons
There are hardly any stones left in the area today. The once popular summer resort is said to have suffered at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century from the rise of automobiles. It is said that the tourists did not appreciate the connection to the place so much anymore and therefore preferred the mobility to the summer idyll. That sounds quite strange to me.
Other "catastrophes" occurred on 12 September 1900, when the prestigious Narragansett Pier Casino burned down (with the exception of the granite foundation and the walls of its magnificent Porte Cochere archway and towers). The fire had started in the nearby massive Rockingham Hotel and allegedly destroyed much of the village centre. The casino was considered the heart of the city and its loss had a direct negative impact on the attractiveness of the city as a tourist destination.
More towers that blessed the time of the earth: The Porte-Cochere, which was halfway fireproof because of its granite foundation and walls, had survived the fire of 1900 to a small extent.
>> picture source Here the Narragansett towers before the fire
Here the few remains after the fire of 1900; >> picture source
And this is what it looks like today; an entire part of the building is missing >> picture source Wikimedia Commons
A short report from the NY Times from 13.9.1900 about the fire, which crossed whole streets:
"The summer season here ended suddenly and catastrophically this afternoon with the complete destruction by fire of the great Rockingham Hotel, Sherry's beautiful and famous Casino, the Hazard Block, the Knights of Pythias Hall and a number of smaller buildings.
While the violent storm undoubtedly greatly assisted the spread of the flames, it is likely that if the wind had been in the opposite direction, little would have remained of this popular summer resort.
The fire started in the upper part of Rockingham shortly after noon, and within a few hours almost all neighbouring buildings, including the casino, had been destroyed. The damage is estimated at approximately $350,000, half of which is covered by insurance. The fire is similar to the destruction of Ocean House in Newport only three years ago, but was much more extensive.
No one has yet commented on the facts as to how the fire was triggered. The large hotel was practically empty as it was closed for six days, so fortunately the fire remained unattended by the injured. In a few minutes, the Rockingham, six floors high and built entirely of wood, burned like a huge tar barrel.
The heat of the burning structure was immense, and although the wind coming from the west carried much of the smoke and flames at sea, the fire spread directly into the storm's teeth and obliquely towards the casino.
Every effort was made to save the popular resort, but within an hour the southern part of the casino burned, and soon the entire building with its magnificent dance hall, beautiful dining rooms and other attractive facilities was covered in smoke and flames. At about the same time, the Hazard Block, west of Rockingham, caught fire.
The traders in it were soon expelled and stood ready, while their belongings were devoured. This block was inhabited by about a dozen companies. After Hazard Black came the destruction of the Knights of Pythias Hall, and then the fire spread to the small buildings on Exchange Place.Here the firemen resisted, and the course of the flames to the north and west was maintained and the rest of the city was saved. In addition to the Rockingham, an annex was burned and used with the help of the hotel, while the steamboat pier half a mile away was slightly damaged. Fortunately, the Mathewson, not far from Rockingham, escaped destruction."
What didn't burn was torn down
The famous hotel New Mathewson also existed in the immediate vicinity of the beach. It was built in 1858 or 1868 (??) and was one of the largest and most popular hotels, which was extended several times until it could host up to 500 guests. The Mathewson was known for its upscale accommodations, including fine dining and hot and cold freshwater and seawater baths in some rooms. In addition, there is a wide piazza overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Allegedly, the hotel did not attract enough visitors. Allegedly, it was believed that the hotel could not adapt to the changing social and economic conditions. Therefore, the hotel was demolished in 1919. The records and information to this epochal building are extremely poor.
>> picture source
Also suffered through several fires: Canonchet
Old postcards of the magnificent building that was supposedly built in 1867.
The Canonchet, a > 60-room building built in 1867 by the Civil War Governor and Senator (as well as the first President of the Narragansett City Council), burned down in 1909. As a place of many historical and romantic encounters, this was considered a great loss. The villa stood for almost 50 years until two a.m. on 11 October 1909, when sparks from a defective chimney draught lit the building. Despite the efforts of firefighters and firefighting equipment from Narragansett, Wakefield and Peace Dale, the villa burned to the ground. Although Canonchet's foundations survived the 1909 fire, strangely enough another fire in 1950 rendered them unusable. Here one can hardly speak of coincidences.
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Shaefer Inaugural Director for New UM Poverty Solutions Initiative
UM President Mark Schlissel announced the new Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan initiative on Wednesday. The initiative will explore and test models to ease the effects of poverty and share the knowledge broadly. “The initiative will be solution-oriented, building on work that focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of poverty,” said H. Luke Shaefer. “That work is incredibly important and will continue. Our initiative will be deeply interdisciplinary and seek to take poverty research at U-M to the next level.”
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Romans on the Vliet Canal
Two thousand years ago, in Roman times, Forum Hadriani stood on the site of present-day Voorburg. Forum Hadriani was populated between the end of the first century AD and the end of the third century AD. A flourishing governance and trade centre, it was the only city of considerable size in the north-west of the Netherlands, and the most westerly city of the Roman Empire.
Forum Hadriani had its own bathhouse, a temple complex and a paved main street. It hosted markets, had a port providing access to the Fossa Corbulonis waterway and boasted impressive embankments, indicative of its significance. The Roman Emperor Hadrian visited the city in 120 AD during a tour of the northern territories of his empire. During his visit, he gave the city its name.
Forum Hadriani’s history has continued to fascinate us for more than two centuries. The early-nineteenth-century scientific excavations that led to the rediscovery of the city were the earliest of their kind in the Netherlands. New discoveries are still being made, and our concept of Forum Hadriani is being constantly updated.
Belangrijke vondsten
Museum Swaensteyn showcases several significant discoveries, including an extremely rare and well-preserved Roman well, ingeniously constructed using cart wheels.
Nowadays, there is little visible evidence of Forum Hadriani and the Fossa Corbulonis waterway in the public space. The majority of the archaeological remains of Forum Hadriani are located under Park Arentsburg – a national listed heritage site in Voorburg.
With the support of the municipalities of Leidschendam-Voorburg and Voorschoten, Museum Swaensteyn is now taking the initiative to place Forum Hadriani and the story of the Romans firmly back in the spotlights. Within the Heritage Line (Erfgoedlijn) Limes project (Limes is the Latin term used to refer to the frontier of the Roman Empire), the Dutch Province of South Holland has made a subsidy available to develop a master plan for this. Putting the Romans on the Vliet Canal back on the map: now still a dream, soon to become reality.
https://www.facebook.com/HuygensmuseumHofwijckhttps://twitter.com/museumhofwijck
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Home » Alumni News » Successful Alumni Profiles » Nick Nerangis ’04
Nick Nerangis ’04 is a working actor under the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA. He is currently the lead male actor in “Spent,” a full-length film noir that premiered in Los Angeles in October. Some of Nerangis’ previous credits include several productions at Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre, “House of Cards,” “The West Wing” and many more. One of the most rewarding experiences Nerangis has had in his field is being awarded the Best Actor Award at the World Music and Independent Film Festival.
Nerangis was first enrolled at Shenandoah in 1985, however, due to a busy day job, and new acting opportunities, he had to suspend his studies. “ When I decided that my desired career path was to pursue performing full time upon selling my business interest, the obvious move was to return to Shenandoah.” Nerangis re-entered as a freshman in 2000 at the age of 59, and was accepted by both the students and faculty with open arms. To this day, Nerangis uses Hal Herman’s quote “ Why are you telling us that?” to prepare his character work.
Nerangis’ advice to current students is: “Never stop learning. Your dream to give others thrills, happiness and a temporary passport to a world of make believe requires your full effort and persistence. You will succeed in a very competitive field only if you set your goals and pursue them with every fiber of your being. It took me 67 years to be offered my first leading film role. Now I’m looking at commitments two plus years in the future. Those commitments came to me because I continually studied my art and worked very hard to become someone that directors desire to work with. I wish you the same joy.”
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Wristbands and toss coin - Greco or Freestyle! Whether the tournament is Greco (GREEN/RED) or Freestyle (BLUE/RED), wrestling referees will find this new package indispensable. Kit includes one of each color wrist band (1 RED & 1 GREEN OR1 RED & 1 BLUE) and one flip disc (RED/GREEN OR RED/BLUE). Buy 5 or more, only $6.99 each! Free Shipping
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Setan, Malaysia’s leading box office film in the romantic genre and Ombak Rindu, the highest grosser of Malaysian cinema. The rest have been nominated for 18 categories in major Asian film festivals and a few are to release soon. Tarantella Pictures Sdn Bhd is on track to make more feature films based on Malay bestselling novels and original scripts of diverse genres. The quality of films has met with international standards of production and post-production.
Despite shifting its focus to filmmaking, Tarantella Pictures has not forgotten its roots in television. The company has successfully produced two television series of 26 episodes each in 2011 & 2012. It now has a vision to move further and combine stories from many successful writers from the region and beyond to produce quality TV dramas and TV films to satisfy the growing demand of the viewers. It is also in talks with major TV channels of the region to start a reality TV show.
Over the years, with the help of our brilliant and hardworking staff, the company has integrated creative excellence with an effective corporate work culture of transparency and accountability. Tarantella Pictures is an amalgamation of creative, administrative and marketing talent that is expanding greatly.
"Tarantella Pictures is an amalgamation of creative, administrative and marketing talent that is expanding greatly."
Tarantella (A traditional form of 'song and dance' in Northern Italy) was launched in the year 1995, since then it invests in the best talent of the South East Asian industry and delivers world-class entertainment in any language and genre. The company has had many successful feature films, tele-films and daily soaps to its merit. It combines the richness of human emotions and the finesse of technological advancement to create quality entertainment. The company focuses on conception, production and distribution of feature films and television programs primarily for the South East-Asian market.
Initially named Tarantella Television in Indonesia, the company was launched by Sharad and Renu Sharan in 1995. It developed over 70000 minutes (around 1500 episodes and over 38 titles) of television programming in collaboration with PT Tripar Multivision Plus, the pioneers of television programming at the time. Out of the 38 titles, 30 were listed on the top ten list of Indonesian Television. One of the series, entitled Bidadari, ran for 15 seasons and was rated the number one series for 3 years consecutively. Moreover, Indonesia’s Ministry of Social and Youth Affairs awarded it ‘The Best Youth Series’ of 2003.
Tarantella Television was was re-established in May 2006 as Tarantella Pictures Sdn Bhd to make feature films for the Malaysian market films. Two of which being Malaysia’s blockbuster titles; Lagenda Budak
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Invocation by Attorney
Jul 1, 2017 — by Charles Gillingham — pdf
Recently a defense attorney came to the station where his client was being held. For some reason he was allowed access to the suspect even though the suspect had not yet been given his Miranda warnings or asked for counsel. Nonetheless the attorney told the officers he represented the suspect and that the suspect would remain silent and the officers would not be speaking to the suspect. The attorney then left. Officers then provided the Miranda warnings to the suspect and he confessed. How can that be legal?
Miranda rights are personal
Miranda rights can not be invoked by third parties. Miranda rights are personal and can only be invoked by the suspect. In This case, def’s lawyer attempted to make blanket invocation on client’s behalf even as to crimes the lawyer was not appointed for. P v. Beltran 75 CA4th 425
Def’s pub def files document invoking Miranda on def’s behalf for any future investigations. HELD: document is meaningless. You cannot invoke Miranda UNTIL you are in custody facing immediate questioning. 75 CA4th 416 People v. Avila
Attorneys cannot place a blanket invocation about other crimes.
The proposition that counsel in one case can file a blanket invocation preventing the police from questioning their client about any other case, even where the client voluntarily waives his rights to remain silent and to have his attorney present during questioning, has been foreclosed by the United States Supreme Court in Moran v. Burbine (1986) 475 U.S. 412, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 and McNeil v. Wisconsin (1991) 501 U.S. 171, 183, 111 S.Ct. 2204, 115 L.Ed.2d 158.
In Moran the court held that the respondent validly waived his Miranda rights even though he was unaware counsel obtained on his behalf sought to speak with him but had been turned away by the police. (Moran v. Burbine, supra, 475 U.S. at p. 421, 106 S.Ct. 1135.) “Events occurring outside of the presence of the suspect and entirely unknown to him surely can have no bearing on the capacity to comprehend and knowingly relinquish a constitutional right.” (Id, at p. 422, 106 S.Ct. 1135.) In a footnote, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected “a novel `agency’ theory of the Fifth Amendment under which any perceived deception of a lawyer is automatically treated as deception of his or her client. This argument entirely disregards the elemental and established proposition that the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination is, by hypothesis, a personal one that can only be invoked by the individual whose testimony is being compelled.” (Id. at p. 433, fn. 4, 106 S.Ct. 1135, emphasis added.)
In McNeil v. Wisconsin, supra, 501 U.S. at p. 183, 111 S.Ct. 271*2712204, the United States Supreme Court held that the petitioner’s invocation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel at the initial hearing to set bail did not operate to also invoke his Fifth Amendment right to counsel. (Id. at pp. 173, 178, 111 S.Ct. 2204.) The court declined to adopt such a rule as a matter of public policy because the result would be that “most persons in pretrial custody for serious offenses would be unapproachable by police officers suspecting them of involvement in other crimes, even though they have never expressed any unwillingness to be questioned. Since the ready ability to obtain uncoerced confessions is not an evil but an unmitigated good, society would be the loser. Admissions of guilt resulting from valid Miranda waivers `are more than merely “desirable”; they are essential to society’s compelling interest in finding, convicting, and punishing those who violate the law.'” (Id. at p. 181, 111 S.Ct. 2204, emphasis in original, quoting Moran v. Burbine, supra, 475 U.S. at p. 426, 106 S.Ct. 1135.)
If the attorney tries to invoke on behalf of her client, disregard, get a valid waiver and question.
N.B. California Penal Code section 825(b) makes it a misdemeanor if a police officer does not allow a suspect to meet with his attorney after the attorney has been contacted by the suspect or his family and is present at the station.
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3 bills form Tax Reform 2.0
On September 13, the House Ways and Means Committee passed three separate bills that will be the cornerstone of what is being referred to as Tax Reform 2.0.
The bills focus on making permanent certain provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that affect individuals, families, and small businesses. They also promote family and retirement savings and new business innovation. For example, one proposal would allow new businesses to write off more of their initial start-up costs. Here’s a brief overview of the three bills.
Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act
Many provisions of the TCJA currently are scheduled to expire after 2025. The proposed Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018 would make the following individual and business-focused provisions permanent:
Increase in the standard deduction,
Increase in and modification of the child tax credit,
Increased limitation for certain charitable contributions,
Increased contributions to Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) accounts,
Rollovers to ABLE accounts from 529 plan accounts,
Extension of the reduction in threshold for the medical expense deduction,
Treatment of student loans discharged because of death or disability,
Repeal of the deduction for personal exemptions,
Limitation on the deduction for state and local taxes (the SALT deduction),
Limitation on the deduction for qualified residence interest,
Modification of the deduction for personal casualty losses,
Termination of miscellaneous itemized deductions,
Repeal of the overall limitation on itemized deductions,
Termination of the exclusion for qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement,
Qualified moving expense reimbursement exclusion limited to members of the armed forces,
Deduction for moving expenses limited to members of the armed forces,
Limitation on wagering losses,
Increase in the unified gift and estate tax exemption, and
Increased alternative minimum tax exemption for individuals.
Deduction for qualified business income, and
Limitation on losses for taxpayers other than corporations.
The second bill, the Family Savings Act of 2018, provides for changes to retirement and education accounts and creates a new tax-deferred savings account. Specifically, this proposed law would:
Establish “Universal Savings Accounts,” described as a “flexible savings tool that families can use any time that’s right for them,”
Expand Section 529 plans,
Allow penalty-free withdrawals from retirement plans for individuals in the case of a birth of a child or adoption,
Provide rules for multiple employer plans and pooled employer plans that would “allow small businesses to join together to create a 401(k) plan more affordably,”
Provide rules relating to the election of safe harbor 401(k) plan status,
Treat certain taxable non-tuition fellowship and stipend payments as compensation for IRA purposes,
Repeal the maximum age for traditional IRA contributions,
Prohibit qualified employer plans from making loans through credit cards and other similar arrangements,
Provide for portability of lifetime income investments,
Explain the treatment of custodial accounts on termination of Section 403(b) plans,
Clarify retirement income account rules relating to church-controlled organizations,
Exempt individuals with certain account balances from required minimum distribution rules, and
Clarify the treatment of certain retirement plan contributions picked up by governmental employers for new or existing employees.
The third bill, called the American Innovation Act of 2018, is the briefest of the three, at only 15 pages. It would allow new businesses to deduct up to $20,000 in start-up expenses in the year they’re incurred so long as they meet certain qualifications. Specifically, this bill would:
Simplify and expand deductions for start-up and organizational expenditures, and
Preserve start-up net operating losses and tax credits after an ownership change.
A full House vote on the bills is expected to take place at the end of September or in October. If the bills pass the full House, it’s not expected that the legislation will be taken up in the Senate before the midterm November elections, though experts believe the provisions on retirement savings could eventually find bipartisan support. A major sticking point is the estimated price tag of the legislation: $627 billion over the next decade, according to a recent analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Regardless of the chances of passage, it’s important to keep abreast of any tax law changes. We can answer your questions on how current tax law and any proposed legislation may affect your individual or business tax planning.
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LG LP1215GXR Review
If you want top-notch cooling power and live in more moderate climates, then this is the A/C for you
Price: $460 List | $552 at Amazon
Pros: Exceptional cooling power, decently portable
Cons: Loud, high energy consumption
Manufacturer: LG
By David Wise and Austin Palmer ⋅ Sep 20, 2018
Cooling Power - 40% 7
Portability - 25% 5
Energy Cost - 15% 2
RELATED: The Best Portable Air Conditioners
As of Mid 2019, the LG LP1215GXR is Discontinued
Delivering the largest temperature drop in our cooling test after an hour, the LG LP1215GXR earned an Editors' Choice Award for its superior chilling power. This portable air conditioner isn't the absolute easiest to move around, is a bit loud, and uses a significant amount of energy, but its cooling power can't be beaten. It's about average in terms of price, though it might add a bit to your electrical bill. Additionally, this unit is a single hose model, so its performance can drop off a bit when the temperature gets really, really hot, but it is a great option for those that want maximum cooling during the warm summer months and where the temperature isn't routinely above 100°F.
While the LG LP1215GXR led the group when it came to scores for our cooling test, it finished in the middle of the group when it came to the overall scores. This model finished a few points behind the Frigidaire FGPC1244T1, which uses slightly less energy, but can't cool as well. It also is a bit easier to move and quite a bit lighter, but cost quite a bit more. The LG LP1215GXR cools much better than our top scoring models, the Whynter ARC-08WB and the Whynter ARC-122DS Elite, but both of these models are a little more energy efficient and easier to move.
Our Editor's Choice award winner the LG LP1215GXR.
In the process of figuring out which portable air conditioner is really the best of the best, we started off by looking at most — if not all — the commonly available models out there, then researching existing reviews and their specifications, as provided by the manufacturer. We then picked out the portable air conditioners that appeared to have the most potential and purchased them to test side-by-side and really compare their performance. We divided up our testing process into four weighted rating metrics: Cooling Power, Noise, Energy Cost, and Portability, with the LG LP1215GXR 's award-winning results outlined below.
One of our top performing A/C units in cooling down a room.
Constituting 40% of the overall score, our cooling challenge made up the largest portion of the total for each of the portable air conditioners in our review. We scored each product on how much of a temperature drop it could cause in our test room after one hour. The LG LP1215GXR delivered an unmatched performance in this test, meriting a 7 out of 10 for its results.
Before we began each A/C, we waited until it was the hottest time of the day in the middle of summer and our test room was receiving direct sunlight, then ran a trio of space heaters to get our test room as hot as we could. We gave enough time for the temperature to stabilize, then ran each portable air conditioner for 60 minutes and measured the temperature drop. The LG caused the highest drop in the group, cooling the room by 13.81°F at the end of the test. The majority of this drop occurred in the first 20 minutes or so, with the temperature measuring a 10.88°F drop at that point.
The LP1215GXR A/C by LG is on the heavier side, but still 10+ pounds lighter than the heaviest models tested.
After cooling prowess, we moved on to ranking and scoring how easily moved each of these allegedly portable air conditioners actually are. This set of tests constitute 25% of the total score for each product, with the LG LP1215GXR delivering a somewhat lackluster showing, earning it a 5 out of 10.
We started off by weighing each of these products, which set the tone for the LG LP1215GXR's somewhat disappointing performance. This is one of the heftier models of the entire group, weighing in at 64.5 lbs.
This model is also one of the hardest models to carry out of the entire group, both due to its weight and its annoyingly small handles. The handles are right at the top of the unit and only really have enough room for very ends of your fingers. This makes it quite hard to get a good grip and the edge of the handle cuts into your fingers while carrying it, making it a highly unpleasant task to carry this portable air conditioner up or down a flight of stairs.
However, this air conditioner did redeem itself slightly when it comes to rolling it around. This model offered very little rolling resistance and is quite easy to maneuver around the room. It doesn't have the sharpest turning radius, but tracks straight while pushing.
90º bends slow down air flow.
The window insert requires you to use a screwdriver to drive screws into pre-drilled holes, which takes a bit more time and limits the adjustability compared to some of the other models. However, it does have one of the larger size ranges, able to adjust to fit windows between 18" and 50".
This model has its interface on the front of the unit rather than the top.
Next, we took a break from lugging all of these appliances around and ranked and scored when it came to noise levels. We had a handful of people rate the noise level of each air conditioner side-by-side, as well as measuring the sound output with an SPL meter to determine scores for this metric, which is worth 20% of the total score. The LG LP1215GXR didn't do terribly well, meriting a 4 out of 10 for its higher than average sound output.
This portable air conditioner measured in at 60.3 dBa on the meter, which was on the upper spectrum of the group.
However, our panel definitely noticed a few different annoying sounds when evaluating the sound of this air conditioner. It has one of the loudest startup sounds of the group and some of our judges could hear the compressor squeaking when the fan is on the low setting.
This was the most expensive model to run.
For the final 15% of the score, we projected the cost of running these units for an entire summer, then scored each based on our calculations. The LG LP1215GXR is a bit of an energy glut, earning it a 2 out of 10 in this metric.
First, we made some assumptions about how much an average person might use one of these products. We settled on running it for 12 hours a day, each day of the summer — 90 days. Additionally, we also went off the assumption that two of those hours would be on the maximum setting for each A/C to rapidly cool your home when you returned home at the end of the day and the remaining hours would be on a low setting to maintain the cooler temperature. We then measured the power draw of each appliance on both settings, then used an average cost of electricity — $0.135 kilowatt-hours — to figure out the total additional cost to your power bill.
This number is just an estimate and can vary quite a bit based on the cost of electricity in your area and your usage, but you can always count on the LG causing one of the largest increases to your power bill compared to the other models we tested.
This model isn't particularly expensive, but it isn't an amazing value, especially when you consider its tendency to add quite a bit to your utility bill.
While this portable A/C definitely has some drawbacks, it is hard to argue with its unmatched performance in our cooling test and is a great option if you want to cool a room quickly and it isn't crazy hot outside. If that's the case, then a dual-hose might be a better option for you.
— David Wise and Austin Palmer
Amazon $551.54
*You help support TechGearLab's product testing and reviews by purchasing from our retail partners.
The Best Portable Air Conditioners
Looking for a new portable air conditioner to combat the summer heat? We got all the best A/C's that you can get today...
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Wondering about which A/C unit to buy? We break down what to look for when shopping for a new A/C model, how to size...
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Terrorism in the UK
Islamist terror plot to target UK foiled
Police are questioning four suspected Islamist terrorists amid fears they planned to attack public places in the UK armed with guns.
By Tom Whitehead, Security Editor
11:46AM BST 14 Oct 2013
Armed police arrested the men in three separate areas of London in dramatic simultaneous raids last night.
The men are now being questioned on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
The men had been monitored by counter-terrorism police and MI5 for some time and the arrests were part of a pre-planned operation.
A large number of armed officers were deployed because it was feared the men may have had access to weapons, the Daily Telegraph understands.
The men had been under surveillance by police and MI5 for some time.
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Guardian leak 'interest' to terrorists and 'should be investigated by police'
Edward Snowden, MI5: who is the bad guy?
They have all been taken to a south London police station, while six addresses across the capital are being searched, a force spokesman said.
Two men, both aged 25, were arrested in Mansell Street, east London, a 28-year-old was arrested at a premises in Westbourne Grove, west London and the fourth man, 29, was arrested in Peckham Street, south-east London.
The arrests took place at 7.10pm yesterday, Scotland Yard said.
The deployment of armed officers raises the prospect that police were looking at a possible plot to target public places with guns.
A man who witnessed the arrest on Westbourne Grove – a street lined with restaurants and boutiques in Notting Hill – said what unfolded was "quite a scene".
The man, who did not want to give his name, said: "Well, I walked by and it seemed to be a couple of guys being arrested.
"There were three."
The man said the men "looked white" and were "up against the wall".
He added: "And there was quite a lot of police. There was quite a scene as I approached."
He recalls seeing two police vans and a police car.
The area is now clear and there is no sign of an anti-terrorism operation having taken place, the man said.
Witnesses described the arrest of a man on Westbourne Grove on suspicion of terrorist activities as "ultra quick and ultra professional".
Businessman George Paul, 30, who saw the arrest from his flat on the smart West London street, said: "Two unmarked police cars had blocked off the road and there were three officers were handling a man on the pavement.
"There was a lot of noise, the man was shouting, 'Don't break my arms' or something like that.
"There were a few people gathered around watching who were told to move on.
"Then they must have bundled the man into a vehicle, although I didn't see that, because it was all over in about ten minutes and they drove off.
"One of the vehicles was black with a blue siren and the other must have been an undercover police car because it had no markings or anything.
"It was ultra quick and ultra professional."
Police swooped on the man in the street outside an Iranian restaurant at 7.10pm on Sunday.
Another man who lived nearby said: "We heard loads of shouting and screaming coming from the street.
"There were people shouting, 'Stay down' and things like that.
"We assumed it was just someone being drunk and disorderly or something."
Tom Whitehead »
In Terrorism in the UK
Operation Strong Tower
Snowden leaks caused 'serious damage' to national security
Al-Qaeda terrorist begs Europe for freedom
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M&A wrap: Molex, Advent, Connected Vehicle, Most Influential Women
Molex Electronic Technologies LLC is acquiring Connected Vehicle Solutions from Laird Ltd., a portfolio company of private equity firm Advent International, in a deal that underscores the dramatic technological transformation taking place on the way to self-driving cars. The target makes connected devices and other electronic wireless systems for automobiles. “There is tremendous demand for seamless end-to-end network integration across hardware, software and services in the automotive industry,” says Tim Ruff, senior vice president, Molex business development. “Laird CVS expands our geographic reach and strengthens our ability to support automotive OEMs seeking to introduce future-ready vehicles with critical functionality while still containing costs. Molex makes electronic products for connected devices for the auto, consumer and industrials sectors. For more on auto tech deals, check out our slideshow: Car parts makers fuel M&A, as industry readies for self-driving vehicles. Jones Day and Evercore (NYSE: EVR) are advising Molex. Weil Gotshal, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Citibank are advising Advent.
With football season underway, Mergers & Acquisitions takes a look at star players who invest in companies through private equity, venture capital and other investment vehicles. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady recently teamed with former New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan (pictured), who is the co-host of ABC’s Good Morning America, to launch a sports media startup called Religion of Sports Media, which has raised $3 million in venture capital funding from CourtsideVC and Advancit Capital. Muhsin Muhammad, who played wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers and the Chicago Bears, is a managing director of private equity firm Axum Capital Partners. Steve Young, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is a co-founder of PE firm HGGC. For more, read the full story: Tom Brady, Muhsin Muhammad, Michael Strahan, Steve Young also build companies.
Mergers & Acquisitions has opened up the nomination process for the 2019 edition of The Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A. Efforts to recruit and retain women in the financial services industry have increased in recent years; nevertheless, women still make up only about 14 percent of dealmakers in the middle market. By identifying and featuring dozens of influential women, Mergers & Acquisitions nurtures the community of female leaders and provides role models for women who are at earlier stages of their careers. To be considered, candidates must be women who are outstanding dealmakers both inside and outside of their firms. Evidence of influence in the broader M&A industry is essential. When nominating a candidate, please explain how she outperforms her colleagues at her firm and in the industry. Please provide examples of deals she has led, initiatives she has launched and other instances that show evidence of her influence in the middle market. While considering the merits of candidates, it’s helpful to read about women who have met our criteria in the past, such as Kainos Capital co-founder Sarah Bradley, who graced our 2018 cover. See the profiles of 35 women in our previous edition. Nominations must be received by Monday, October 15, 2018. Click here to learn more about the criteria and to submit a nomination.
AlixPartners is acquiring independent financial advisory and interim management firm Zolfo Cooper. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP is representing AlixPartners and Wollmuth Maher & Deutsch LLP is representing Zolfo Cooper.
Clearlake Capital Group is buying ASP Unifrax Holdings from American Securities. Unifrax is a supplier of high-performance fibers and inorganic materials used in emission control, thermal management, filtration, battery and fire protection systems. Goldman Sachs and William Blair are advising Unifrax. Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, UBS Investment Bank, RBC Capital Markets and Stifel are providing financing.
Online photo printer Snapfish is buying CafePress (Nasdaq: PRSS), an online retailer of personalized gifts. Needham & Co. and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP are advising CafePress. Arent Fox LLP is representing Snapfish.
H.I.G. Capital has invested in Iron Bow Technologies, an IT services for the government and healthcare industries.
Slack, a messaging app, has purchased Astro, which allows workers to view their messages in one place. Slack also recently bought Missions, which allows users to automate tasks, and agreed to buy messaging programs Hipchat and Stride.
For more deal announcements, see The weekly wrap: Inspire Brands, Kettle Cuisine, Sirius XM.
For ongoing coverage of private equity fundraising activities, see our weekly column: PE fundraising scorecard: Three Hills Capital and Triton Fund.
Food & beverage M&A offers plenty of mouth-watering deals. Giants Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) and PepsiCo Inc. (Nasdaq: PEP) update their product lines with healthy offerings, while private equity firms, such as Brynwood Partners, breathe new life into tried and true brands, like Pillsbury. And lots of buyers experiment with meal kits and delivery methods, fueling M&A. Read the full story: 9 food & beverage companies loved by consumers and dealmakers alike.
Strategic buyers leverage data, sell more snacks and cater to seniors. Mergers & Acquisitions outlines the M&A strategies of 8 corporations, including Best Buy, Energizer, Fortune Brands, Hershey, Nike, P&G, Stanley Black & Decker and Tyson Foods. See the full story: Best Buy, Hershey, Nike, P&G and more wield M&A to grow.
Tyson Foods Inc. (NYSE: TSN), the owner of Hillshire Farm, wants to “feed the world” with its protein brands and will seek acquisitions to help. How Tyson is focusing on what it does best through M&A.
Between 70 and 80 percent of all M&A integration projects fall short of delivering anticipated value. This isn't because the acquisition target is somehow subpar, it's because the acquiring firm lacks a strong integration strategy. Read the full story: How to accelerate value in the first 100 days after an acquisition.
Why investors like diversity. "Companies that are inclusive and also diverse tend to outperform companies that aren't," says investor Lorine Pendleton of Pipeline Angels and Portfolia in this video interview shot at Exponent Exchange, a gathering of 200 female dealmakers. Watch the full video: M&A Insights: Inclusion investing.
M&A East, hosted by ACG Philadelphia and held Oct. 24-25, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, brings together 1,300 top strategic and financial dealmakers and leading middle-market advisors for deal sourcing and networking. Featured speakers include Walter Robb, former CEO Whole Foods, and Chris Voss, former FBI lead hostage negotiator. The Women in Dealmaking session will focus on Women in the Board Room.
Exponent Evening with Tequila Casa Dragones, hosted by Exponent Women LLC, a networking group for female dealmakers, held Oct. 25 at The Dream Downtown in New York, features tequila, food and a conversation between Bertha Gonzales Nieves, co-founder and CEO of Tequila Casa Dragones, and Mary Kathleen Flynn, editor-in-chief of Mergers & Acquisitions. For more on networking group’s previous event, see Exponent drew 200 women dealmakers to event featuring Sallie Krawcheck.
ACG Florida Capital Connection, held Nov. 12-14, at the Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort & Golf Club, puts “sun and fun” into dealmaking for the middle market, bringing together hundreds of dealmakers. The keynote speaker is Forbes Media CEO Steve Forbes, and the featured speaker for the Women’s Forum is Valerie Crites Fowler, who served as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service for over 29 years, reaching the rank of Minister Counselor in the Senior Foreign Service.
Middle Market Week, hosted by ACG New York and held Nov. 26-30 at various locations throughout New York, brings together leading global middle-market dealmaking professionals to develop and enhance their dealmaking activities, strengthen their long-term relationships, and provide numerous opportunities for networking all week long. Mark your calendar for the Private Equity Annual Wine Tasting Gala on Nov. 28 at Gotham Hall. The building was constructed in the 1920s as the headquarters of the Greenwich Savings Bank. The gala brings together the leading middle market private equity firms for an evening of fine wines and networking.
Demitri Diakantonis
Managing Editor, Mergers & Acquisitions
Connected carsPrivate equity firmsAdvent InternationalHGGC
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© 2019 by Monique Renee. Proudly created by Vokel House Live
Monique Renee Music
Monique Renee, a talented, anointed, dynamic power vocalist who's voice reaches the ears of people all around the world!
Born and raised in the city of Dallas, TX, singer Monique Renee has been singing since she has been able to speak. She cultivated her talents in any venue available to her such as church, showcases, and open mics around the city. In 2009, Monique had a desire to expand her brand to share her gift to all those willing to listen, so she began to collaborate with her band “Struxtr' to play live shows for her fans, friends and family; her vocal style became demanded even more by her followers, and her humble fan base flourished and continues to grow.
Monique released her first r&b self-titled solo EP in 2014, which garnered the attention of a BET network producer, which earned her the opportunity to travel to New, York to perform for a few record lables. After which, Monique was highly sought after for studio work and as an opening act for national recording artist. In 2017, Monique Renee, released a single entitled “Funk You” produced by Justin Lyons. With a heavily bassline infused, funky, upbeat hit record reached the ears of music lovers from around the world; Rome, Japan, Africa and Australia just to name a few.
Monique Renee isn't just an artist and a singer; she has a passion and desire to inspire, motivate and encourage people! “The music is bigger than me, everything I do, it's with a prayer that somebody may be blessed from my actions and decisions” she says! Monique Renee continues to create a lane of her own and earn the respect of musical legends as a humble, down to earth southern girl who has a voice as big as Texas, but a heart that's even bigger! She is producing music that will create a firm impression on music lovers who are attracted to the power of versatility and raw talent. Monique Renee is sharpening her craft and developing a distinctive vocal style that will mirror the very image she hopes will reach the ears of future generations!
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Teens Vie for All-Expenses-Paid Trip to U.S.
By Jonathan Earle
Teenagers applying Sunday at a Moscow school to study under the FLEX program for a year in the United States. Igor Tabakov
Editor's note: This is the first in a series.
One year from now, Pasha Kormiletsyn could find himself studying at an American high school, sitting around an American dinner table or playing football — American football — in a town like Bozeman, Montana; Willis Point, Texas; or Morrisdale, Pennsylvania.
He might come back to Russia with a Southern drawl. Or a cowboy hat. But he would certainly return with a new perspective.
"It's a chance to fundamentally change my life," Pasha said as he joined about 800 other teens in a Moscow schoolhouse to participate in the first step of the application process for the U.S. government-funded FLEX program, which began for Muscovites on Sunday.
About 240 teenagers from across the country will make the cut to spend a school year abroad, living with American host families, attending high school and participating in community life. The teens are an elite sample of the first post-Soviet generation, and the things they bring back could very well change Russia.
The more than 7,300 Russians who have graduated from FLEX, which will mark 20 years in Russia and the former Soviet Union next year, have brought their experience and language skills to leadership positions in business, government and elsewhere. Their commitment to building a more prosperous and equitable society has touched many and, as they mature, their influence is certain to grow.
Over the next two years, The Moscow Times will be following the selection process and later the winners as they settle into their new lives in America, cope with separation from home and analyze their experiences. We also will meet with alumni to see what impact they have made on their communities.
For Pasha and other applicants to the 2012-13 pool, the long journey started in school classrooms in 50 cities across Russia, where workers and volunteers from the American Councils for International Education — the nonprofit organization that operates FLEX on behalf of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs — first tested their basic knowledge of English. So it happened that applicants from Moscow and nearby regions found themselves lining up outside a squat, beige building on a gray Sunday afternoon.
They were ushered inside in groups of 15 and 20, eager to begin the competition and find out how they measured up to "American" standards. Seeing their faces, Yekaterina Kazakova, a program graduate volunteering at the test center, said, "I want to be them again. I want to go back." The logo printed on her blue T-shirt spelled out the FLEX acronym: "Future Leaders Exchange."
Last year, less than 2 percent of the 740 high school students who passed through this test center got a spot in the program. Harvard University's acceptance rate is three times higher. And just like getting into an elite U.S. college, acceptance to FLEX is an inexact science, with organizers looking for a particular set of character traits.
"We select the ones we think will be most able to adapt to a new culture, be part of a host family and talk about their own culture," said Matthew Mulherin, who oversees the selection process for the American Councils.
To get the scholarship, applicants must pass three rounds of testing — each more rigorous than the last. On Sunday, the applicants — 14 to 16 year olds — took a 15-minute, 16-question English comprehension test. A third of them will move on to the second round, a standardized English proficiency test and three written essays. Those who make it to the third round — semifinalists — will face two more essays, an interview and a formal application. The winners of the competition will be announced in early April.
"I'll always remember getting that phone call," said Ksenia Semyonova, a 2002 graduate. "I figured I wouldn't get it because everything is corrupt in Russia."
Mulherin said the program offers many students their first glimpse of a "major, high-integrity process," meaning there's no cheating and no currying favor. It's pure merit, he said.
The United States' image might have suffered during the 2000s "war on terror" and the 2008 financial crisis, but the word "America" still inspired many at the test center Sunday.
"America is a country of possibilities. America beckons," said Yekaterina Volodicheva, who waited in near-freezing temperatures for her daughter, Yelizaveta, to finish the test. The two came all the way from Kaluga, 140 kilometers southwest of Moscow, for Yelizaveta take the test for a second year in a row.
Volodicheva said the chance to go to America had inspired her daughter to study Russian folklore and history. "She said, 'What will I tell the Americans?'" Volodicheva recalled. Part of the student exchange requires the Russian teens to prepare presentations in which they share their culture with their American classmates.
Like many parents, Volodicheva wasn't thrilled about sending her daughter away for a year. "But how can you put a stick in the spokes of a child's enthusiasm?" she said.
Oleg Pirogov said his daughter — the applicants were predominantly female — was very shy and interacted with foreigners over the Internet. This is the second year she'll be competing, and she wants the opportunity to improve her language skills.
Applicants gave various reasons for trying out, but most touched on language learning and cultural exposure. Yekaterina Berulava, 14, said she wanted her English to be as good as that of her brother, a program alumnus. Dasha Timerbayeva, 15, said she wanted to follow her boyfriend, a Russian-American, to the United States. Some expressed the desire to leave Russia.
"I don't like it here," said Ksyusha Kuzmina, 14.
Others said they wanted to get out of Russia, "as fast as possible."
But because the program is partly about building up an active alumni network in Russia, applicants looking to emigrate aren't likely to get a ticket. In fact, alumni aren't even allowed in the United States for two years after they return, though some will later study at U.S. colleges and universities on U.S. government programs.
That was a distant thought for the teens hopping down the schoolhouse steps into the cold. For them, the most important thing was passing this first hurdle, getting one step closer to following a dream most of them could scarcely articulate.
From behind his desk, Volodya, the school's graying security guard, watched them leave. "I would have gone to America when I was young," he said. "Hell, I'd go now."
Ukrainian crash
Iran had purchased the missiles from Russia as part of a $700 million contract.
The spa in Russia’s republic of Dagestan did not say what prompted the abrupt rule change.
Deadly Blaze
Eleven people died in the fire.
Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Bubnov to seven years in prison.
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14 charged in Ohio fraternity hazing incident
WILMINGTON – Police have charged 14 people in connection with an alleged fraternity hazing incident last fall at a s...
14 charged in Ohio fraternity hazing incident WILMINGTON – Police have charged 14 people in connection with an alleged fraternity hazing incident last fall at a s... Check out this story on thenews-messenger.com: http://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/2014/05/30/14-charged-in-ohio-fraternity-hazing-incident/9765311/
AP Published 11:42 a.m. ET May 30, 2014
WILMINGTON – Police have charged 14 people in connection with an alleged fraternity hazing incident last fall at a southwest Ohio college that ended with a pledge requiring surgery for an injury.
Police made the arrests Thursday after an investigation into the Halloween incident at Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity house at Wilmington College that resulted in the fraternity being kicked off campus until at least 2019.
The Clinton County prosecutor’s office says the suspects are all charged with either misdemeanor assault or hazing.
Court records said the pledge was injured when he was struck with a towel “fashioned as a weapon” and then needed surgery to have a testicle removed.
Jim Reynolds, president of the Quaker college of about 1,000 students southeast of Dayton, says the conduct is unacceptable.
Read or Share this story: http://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/2014/05/30/14-charged-in-ohio-fraternity-hazing-incident/9765311/
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A Short Reflection on Audio Drama
We know what an audiobook is. Now you can hear professionals read books to you on your drive to work in the morning instead of having to read them yourself. You can listen to books while you do yard work or exercise at the gym instead of having to find the time where you can sit down to read in your favourite fireside armchair. Personally, I prefer fireside reading. Making time to read a book or read aloud to the family is so worthwhile. But if you're busy doing something on your own, sometimes an audiobook is the best option.
They do have their drawbacks though. Some books don't work as well as audiobooks. Some voices are better suited for audiobooks than others. And then there's that bothersome concept of comprehension. How much do you remember from the audiobooks you've heard? For me there's a noticeable difference between the two. There's just no comparison to holding a physical book in your hands.
But as it turns out, there's another option out there for hearing stories. It's called audio drama. Unlike audiobooks, today's audio dramas boast a full cast of actors, music, and sound effects. An audio drama is like a movie, but without the visuals. The movie plays in your mind instead of on a screen. The BBC has been adapting classic literature into audio drama on the radio for years. In the U.S., the long-running kids' show Adventures in Odyssey stands out as an example of original content. And there are many more great audio dramas out there waiting to be discovered.
Audio drama can captivate you for hours. I remember as a kid sitting in the living room drawing pictures or colouring or playing with LEGO, all the while listening through the audio dramas of all seven books in The Chronicles of Narnia. Whereas an audiobook sticks to a dry reading of the words on the page, an audio drama brings the story to life. It puts you right in the middle of the action. Unlike some audiobooks, audio drama is the farthest thing from being boring or bland. And yet it accomplishes it all with sound alone—no brightly flashing screen required.
Whether you're looking for classics like Oliver Twist, Anne of Green Gables, and The Secret Garden, or the World War II era biographies of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie ten Boom, or even rare books that no one's ever heard of (see Lamplighter Theatre), audio drama has you covered. I think one of the reasons audio drama works so well is because it adapts the stories for the audio format. It's not simply a reading, but a dramatization. And it also allows sound designers to use the full range of tools at their disposal. These are stories which engage your imagination, stories you remember. Whatever genre you like or whatever age you are, there's something out there for you. I really can't recommend audio drama highly enough.
Music is Magic
“Where words fail, music speaks.” This quote is attributed to Hans Christian Andersen, the 19th century author of fairy tales such as “The Little Mermaid,” “The Ugly Duckling,” and “Thumbelina.” He’s saying that for all its precision and utility, language has its limits. There are times when words are not enough, when what seems inexpressible in words alone can only be expressed in song. That’s a very humbling thing for a writer to admit. You might think Andersen would privilege the written word above all else. But you don’t have to call yourself a musician to understand the truth in his statement.
We know that we need music. I once heard a public talk about pseudoscience and mental health from a psychiatrist at university. His whole lecture was basically an attack on things like anti-stress colouring books, fidget spinners, and other products that people push while claiming they have mental health benefits, even if there is little evidence to back up their claims. Having thrown out nearly everything under the sun, the psychiatrist concluded that science does back the importance of at least two activities which contribute to our mental well-being. Exercise was one of them. The other was hearing music. (Personally, I would add a few things to that list, like reading, writing, community, and service, but then again I’m not an intensely skeptical psychiatrist, so what do I know?)
When I first watched The Fellowship of the Ring movie and heard the opening seven notes of the Shire theme, composed by Howard Shore, I was transported. It wasn’t the visual effects that brought me to director Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle-earth. It was that score. I was there with Sam as he lamented the departure of the elves into the far west, with Arwen and Frodo on the desperate gallop to escape the hooded Ringwraiths, and with the nine members of the Fellowship as they rested in the hallowed woodland of Lothlórien. The Lord of the Rings movies are indeed wonderful adaptations, though they don’t measure up to J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. And yet I’ve often thought that for all the changes the filmmakers made, it was worth it to have these films made if only because we got that musical score.
A Short Reflection on Sharing Stories
We read about conflict all the time, whether we pick up a biography to learn the true story of Corrie ten Boom resisting the Nazis, or pore over a biology textbook to find out how white blood cells combat infection. Conflict seems to be an inescapable part of life.
At a fundamental level stories are all about conflict. There's some challenge our characters face, some obstacle they need to overcome. We know what that's like. We experience conflict in our own lives, whether that's conflict with others or even within ourselves. We know what it's like to go through pain and heartache. Li-Young Lee's poem "The Gift" is about a boy who suffers a small yet familiar hardship. He gets a splinter in his hand. But thankfully for him, he has someone by his side to get him through. Here are the opening lines of the poem:
To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.
I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
The love and care with which the father treats the boy stays with him. The poem goes on to describe the same boy as an adult, holding his wife's hand tenderly. He cares for her the way he's been taught, with gentleness and understanding.
But let's think back to what exactly the father does. As he removes the splinter, the father tells the boy a story. Maybe this is only meant to be a distraction. Something to take the boy's mind off the pain. The poet might have included any number of things here to distract the boy, so why include a storytelling? Perhaps it points to the fact that just as stories are about conflict, they're also about resolution. Another word we could use for that is healing. Stories meet us where we are, in our conflict and pain, and show us where we can go. Heartache doesn't have to be the end of our story. There's reason to hope.
The boy in the poem doesn't remember the specifics of the story. What he does remember is his father's calming voice. He remembers the bond of love between them. To tell a story is to share an experience with someone else. A storyteller creates a world out of thoughts and feelings and invites another person to enter in. Author and reader live the story together, sharing in the good times and the bad, experiencing hardship and relief. As readers we get the sense that someone else is with us, that someone else understands. The best stories reach out to us like a parent comforting a child. They let us know that whatever struggles we face, we don't have to face them alone.
Tangled: Seeing the Light
Have you ever had an epiphany? Maybe you suddenly realized that it really does hurt when you put your hand on the hotplate, or that leaning too far to one side in a canoe is likely to end in disaster. Or perhaps you've had an epiphany like Ebenezer Scrooge, who had a harrowing nightmare in which he was visited by a number of ghosts and woke up with not only a deep understanding of the meaning of Christmas but with a whole new lease on life. Epiphanies come in all shapes and sizes. What they have in common is this: an epiphany is a moment of clarity when we see things as they really are. Something clicks and we wonder how we didn’t see it before.
The 2010 film Tangled presents us with a character very much in need of an epiphany. Based off the classic fairy tale Rapunzel, this version has the princess Rapunzel kidnapped as a young child and imprisoned in a tower by the old woman Gothel. Rapunzel grows up there, all the while totally unaware that she’s a princess. She believes Gothel is her mother. She trusts her captor wholeheartedly, never suspecting her sinister motives. Meanwhile Rapunzel's real parents, the king and queen, continue to mourn her disappearance. It’s only after a trip out of the tower that Rapunzel finally sees the light.
Which brings us to Flynn Rider. While Rapunzel is unaware of her origins and is largely oblivious to what goes on in the world beyond her tower, Flynn seems to understand the world pretty well and his place in it. Flynn’s escapades as a thief take him anywhere and everywhere, including over palace rooftops. When we first meet him at the beginning of the film it seems Flynn may have found his ticket to a life of ease and comfort. Rapunzel’s crown sits on a pedestal in the palace surrounded by armed guards. The crown is covered in jewels and has remained long untouched these many years. So naturally Flynn takes it for himself, with no concern about how the loss of the last remaining token of Rapunzel's memory might affect the king and queen. Nor does he bat an eye when he betrays his partners in crime, the Stabbington brothers, leaving them to the palace guards while he makes off with the crown. Flynn clearly prefers working alone. And better to betray others first before they have the chance to do it to you.
A young princess finds herself in a kingdom beset by creeping shadows—monsters which lurk far underground. In the darkness below they tunnel endlessly, plotting to one day rise up and take over. Who from the kingdom will challenge this dark foe? Who is worthy to lead the forces of good to beat back the enemy once and for all? This is what fairy tales are made of. We know what's supposed to happen next. A prince will arise, seeking to win the heart of the princess. And what better way to do that than to fashion himself into a fearless, conquering hero who can do anything simply because he believes in himself? It makes perfect sense to our modern ears. As the great philosopher and poet of our age Miley Cyrus once said, “If you believe in yourself anything is possible.” (It’s impossible to find the source of this quote, but I'm sure we will eventually if only we believe in ourselves enough.) But while the prince is off on his own saving the day, one question remains. What's a princess to do in the meantime?
Perhaps Princess Irene can help us out with this question. In the children’s novel The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, Princess Irene is an eight-year-old girl with a penchant for exploring. Her curiosity takes her to all kinds of exciting places, whether that’s getting lost on the rocky slopes of the nearby mountain as daylight begins to fade, or getting lost wandering the endless hallways and staircases of her father’s castle. Her poor nursemaid Lootie. She looks away for one moment and little Princess Irene is gone again, probably getting captured by goblins for all she knows. When Irene comes back one day with a tale about meeting her great-great-grandmother in the attic, Lootie will have none of it and notes that “princesses are in the habit of telling make-believes.”
How should a princess act? Lootie has some pretty low expectations. If young princesses are indeed so prone to spreading lies then we can’t really expect better of them. No wonder the prince gets the responsibility of saving the day. Princess Irene, however, continues to defy expectations. She has some very different ideas for how a princess should behave. As she tells Lootie at one point, “Nurse, a princess must not break her word.” You see, Irene has standards. But it's also possible to take her statement the wrong way. Maybe she's saying that it’s perfectly all right for you vulgar peasants to engage in petty trickery and deceit, but as for us royals, we will not stoop to that level. Irene's standards show up again when she gets rather annoyed at Lootie for dismissing her strange story about talking to her great-great-grandmother. MacDonald writes, “Not to be believed does not at all agree with princesses: for a real princess cannot tell a lie.” Well, I guess that settles it. A true royal simply comes from better stock than the rest of us and is therefore naturally virtuous and morally superior. No wonder they’re granted the divine right to rule. No one else is qualified.
Aladdin: A Whole New World
Freedom is a great thing. It’s a fundamental building block of modern society. We take for granted our right to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and, for my American friends, freedom to organize a militia and revolt against the imperial overlords at the slightest hint of taxation without representation. The right to elect representatives to decide the right tax for loose leaf chamomile tea shall not be infringed. The world we live in today really is a new world. It’s less hierarchical and more socially mobile than the old world. Despite starting out in poverty, people like J.K. Rowling can make millions of dollars a year writing stories about little wizards going off to boarding school. Meanwhile, the spread of technology has democratized knowledge, giving us access to all the true crime podcasts and cat videos we want. We like our freedoms, and we’d rather nobody put restrictions on them.
If we don’t have freedom, we fight for it. The 1992 animated classic Aladdin includes a number of characters searching for freedom. They want to leave the old world behind and find their way into a new world. The princess Jasmine, for instance, feels trapped by rules and palace walls. It turns out being a royal isn’t all just wealth, privilege, and pet tigers who strike fear in the hearts of your enemies. It brings with it certain restrictions. Jasmine’s marriage prospects are limited to wealthy princes who happen to impress her father, the sultan. Commoners are excluded from the running. Though, it’s not like Jasmine has many opportunities for meeting commoners. She doesn’t even get to leave the house. In an unmistakeably symbolic moment, Jasmine flings open the door to a bird cage and lets loose a flock of doves. She watches them with longing as they soar up into the atmosphere. Here’s to hoping the doves had long, fulfilling lives and didn’t end up being served on a plate with a side of mashed potatoes the moment after they were freed.
Aladdin is at the opposite end of society. As Agrabah’s most successful thief, Aladdin seems like he’s doing pretty well. He easily weaves his way through crowds and over rooftops, outwitting the authorities at every turn. With a smile on his face he sends his trusted monkey Abu to distract the merchants while he gets the goods. Breaking the rules all day long, you’d think Aladdin would feel like a free man. He can get anything for himself at no cost. Plus, he has that cool little fez he wears. What more could he want? Yet Aladdin feels just as trapped as Jasmine. Prince Achmed, one of Jasmine’s many suitors, calls Aladdin “a worthless street rat,” saying, “You were born a street rat, you'll die a street rat, and only your fleas will mourn you.” That’s a little unfair. I’m sure the rodents of Agrabah would show their solidarity as well. But maybe that’s a small consolation when you’re constantly on the run, with guards pointing their swords at you on every corner.
Spirited Away: Remembering What Matters
Adventure is an exciting word. We think of journeys across windswept seas to find buried treasure and battles with gnarled monsters from subterranean depths. Adventure is about excitement and new experiences. It’s about entering boldly into the unknown. In my last post I wrote about the need to say yes to the call to adventure. I said that it’s only when we enter into the unfamiliar and uncomfortable that we make room for growth. But sometimes we’re led in the wrong direction. There are times when adventure can bring us to a dark place where the only way out is to find the way back. As C.S. Lewis says, sometimes progress doesn’t mean going forward, but rather turning right around and going in the opposite direction. Adventurers should take note. Openness gets you started on the journey, but discernment tells you which way you’re going.
If an adventurer isn’t careful they might be swept away by their circumstances. That’s what happens in the 2001 animated film Spirited Away, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It begins with a journey. The girl named Chihiro is moving to a new home with her parents. But the story really gets going when something happens on the car ride. One moment they’re cruising through the suburbs and the next they’re on a dirt road surrounded by forest. Chihiro doesn’t like the looks of the swaying trees, but her father welcomes the situation and plows eagerly ahead. He claims he’s not worried because he has four-wheel drive. And this is where our characters start to go wrong. They don’t understand that they’ve been sidetracked from their destination and brought to the doorstep of another world. Chihiro’s father sees himself as capable of conquering everything he sees. He hasn’t learned yet that not every situation can be approached boldly with an impatient stride and an upright posture. Sometimes having your knees knocking together and your head stooped humbly is the appropriate response. And sometimes it’s better to keep your footing and run the other way.
Chihiro and her parents find themselves in another world, a world of spirits where Japanese mythology comes to life. They pass by a shrine on the road but don’t pay too much attention. Chihiro is the only one of the three who gives it a second thought. Most of us don’t expect to encounter a whole magical world around the next corner. And even if we did, these days the word magical has mainly positive connotations. A magical day is a great day. Disneyland is called the Magic Kingdom. Chihiro’s father even says that the town they come across looks like an abandoned theme park. To us a little magic sounds like entertainment. It’s a welcome escape from the modern inconveniences of commuter traffic, hackers, and the threat of nuclear war. But people haven’t always thought that way. In the past magic had real power over people. It was a world with a spirit behind every tree and at the bottom of every well. Our ancestors had greater respect, you might even say fear, of magical powers. While I'm not advocating a return to a world held in bondage by those superstitions, I think we can still remember to have a healthy respect for what we don’t fully understand. And we should watch out the moment we find ourselves being pulled towards whatever promises to be the primrose path.
Answering the Call to Adventure
Life is a series of choices. Some are big choices, like who to get married to. Others seem small, like what to have for breakfast. Porridge? Or perhaps an egg-free tofu omelette. All these choices, big and small, have led you to this moment. They’ve had on impact on your education, career, health, and relationships. One choice leads to opportunities for more choices and pretty soon you can look back on your life as a long string of decisions. This is your story, almost as if you were a character in a book. And it all starts somewhere. But before each stage of your story can really begin, you must make an important choice. It's the choice of how to respond to what Joseph Campbell entitles "the call to adventure."
In Campbell’s description of the hero’s journey, the call to adventure is where everything takes off. Our main character receives a revelation. Perhaps they discover that a whole other world exists, an unknown world "of both treasure and danger." It’s an exciting place, but also unpredictable. And so like Neo in The Matrix, they come to a crossroads. The blue pill or the red pill. It is the choice of whether to continue being comfortable with what they know, or to take a chance and step out into the unknown.
Why would anyone ever leave what they know in order to be uncomfortable? That doesn’t sound very relaxing. Or safe. And more importantly, what would the neighbours think? Bilbo Baggins deals with those exact concerns in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The Bagginses are seen as "very respectable" in large part "because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected." But when Gandalf and his throng of dwarves show up on the doorstep for an evening of telling tales about the battles and treasures of faraway lands, something awakens inside Bilbo’s heart. He realizes there’s more to life than tea, buttered scones, and seed-cakes at Bag End. There’s a whole other world out there, and it starts at the little road just outside his front door.
Shrek: When Your Dreams Don't Come True
Fantasy worlds are where dreams come true, especially when it comes to Disney-style fairy tales. Sleeping Beauty, for example, is a princess expecting a handsome prince to rescue her, and that’s exactly what happens. In the end everybody gets what they wanted all along. That was 1950s Disney. But then in 2001 DreamWorks Animation came along with their little film Shrek and shattered what we think of as the traditional fairy tale.
Inspired by the picture book by William Steig, the film Shrek starts with the reading of a story about a princess locked in a tower being guarded by a ferocious dragon, awaiting true love’s first kiss. At that moment Shrek laughs and says, “Like that’s ever going to happen!” He rips off a page from the storybook and presumably uses it as toilet paper. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more irreverent opening if you tried. And with that, Walt Disney’s work gets flushed down the drain.
Over and over the film reminds us of our fairy tale expectations, only to dash them to pieces in front of our eyes. We watch as Geppetto sells Pinocchio for “twenty pieces of silver” and Peter Pan betrays Tinkerbell. Lord Farquaad wants to marry a princess, not out of love but to make himself king. When the Magic Mirror runs through three eligible candidates, describing Cinderella as “a mentally abused shut-in,” Farquaad can’t decide on which lucky lady to make his bride and seems to choose Fiona only by random selection. Being too cowardly to free her himself, Farquaad sends off Shrek the ogre to do his dirty work.
Lord of the Rings: Sauron's Master Plan
Fiction has given us some memorable bad guys over the years. Where would Harry Potter be without Voldemort, or Sherlock Holmes without Professor Moriarty? Villains fascinate and challenge us. And they’re usually ten steps ahead of our heroes. The sci-fi villain has a high-tech surveillance system and the fantasy villain has a crystal ball. Somehow or other they find out what’s going on and plan accordingly.
Sometimes a villain can come across as a mastermind. The Dark Lord Sauron, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, is a real schemer. As the fires burn in the depths of Mount Doom and the billowing shadow stretches across the sky from the land of Mordor, Sauron broods over his plans. He has but one goal. His whole will is bent on seeking his lost treasure: the One Ring to rule them all. With it he can subdue the world. If the Ring is destroyed, so is he. Conveniently, Sauron is in possession of Mount Doom, the only place where the Ring could be destroyed. And yet this so-called mastermind fails to take a few simple measures to protect himself, such as sealing the giant door on the side of the mountain or placing a few monstrous creatures to stand guard. How does Sauron make such a fantastic blunder? And how is he distracted by a puny army knocking at his front gate? Let’s find out.
Tolkien’s book The Silmarillion covers the history of Middle-earth before The Lord of Rings, including Sauron’s origins. It turns out there was another dark lord before Sauron named Melkor, a heavenly being who sought to corrupt and wage war against creation, especially elves and humans. When his malice was revealed, Melkor came to be called Morgoth, a name you’ll remember if you, like me, have watched The Fellowship of the Ring movie more times than you care to admit. After Gandalf falls to a fiery Balrog in the Mines of Moria, Legolas calls the creature "a Balrog of Morgoth." A servant corrupted by the first dark lord. The new dark lord, Sauron, was also a servant of Morgoth at one time.
David Raphael Hilder
Join the conversation as we explore the best of classic fantasy literature and beyond.
Li-Young Lee
Mark St. Germain
Ursula Le Guin
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PM remains defiant over foreign debt stress
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) addressing the House of People’s Representatives (HPR) on Monday
By Yonas Abiye
Plans to add three mln new jobs
The House of People’s Representatives (HPR) ended its fourth year of the current parliamentary term by endorsing the proposed federal government’s budget worth 386,954,965,289 birr (over USD 13.8 billion) for the fiscal year 2012 E.C (2019/20 GC).
However, despite the growing concerns from various sides, the Prime Minister insisted that the country is not in a dangerous situation regarding the accumulation of external debts amounting to USD 27 billion.
In the same session, the House has also heard the House Speaker’s report before MPs went on a three-month long recess.
Accordingly, the House has approved unanimously over 386.954 billion Birr for the upcoming Ethiopian fiscal year. This year’s budget was raised by 12 percent than the preceding year amounting to 40 billion birr.
Based on the endorsed budget, over 109.468 billion Birr is allocated for regular budget, while more than 130.710 billion Birr will be used for capital disbursement.
More than 140.775 billion Birr will be used to subsidize regional states, and some six billion Birr will go to the execution of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In the morning session of the final day, PM Abiy who appeared before MPs for the second time in one week, addressed queries raised by MPs mainly related to issues incorporated in the draft annual federal government budget.
During his appearance, the PM highlighted the objectives and targets of the proposed draft budget with its ultimate focus on economic measures, addressing the surging inflation as well as creating youth–centered employment opportunities.
The PM addressed the specific questions raised by MPs regarding the country’s external debt. In his reaction, PM Abiy told the House that “a new borrowing scheme, which shifted from commercial to concessional loans, has brought opportunities that helped the country emerge from an economic crisis.”
He further went on to explain that by correcting the approach to external borrowing, the country has already changed 47 percent of the commercial loan into concessional loan from China alone.
“This is a big step that should be counted as a great achievement,” he told the legislators.
“Because of this successful debt restructuring negotiation that we have had during the previous fiscal year, we have saved around USD 400 million, which was expected to be paid every year.”
Abiy stated that the external accumulated debt has reached 30 percent. He, however, argued that the sated debt accumulation “is very little, even when compared to developed countries that are 100 percent in debt.”
In the meantime, he confessed that the country’s export performance has, however, become a challenge to repay its loan in a given time. As a result, the country has prioritized on the productive sector in order to stimulate the export sector.
The low export annual performance, which amounted to USD 2.1 billion, has created hard currency shortages. Similarly, he also indicated that the country’s current foreign exchange reserve has increased by USD 1 billion compared to the preceding year.
Besides that, the PM was also speaking on the country’s pressing challenges in connection with the outstanding concerns of unemployment in the country.
He announced that a plan is already set for the upcoming fiscal year to create around three million jobs in a bid to address the critical problem of unemployment.
He further underlined that considerable size of funds will be allotted for agriculture mining projects and related sectors which are able to generate more employment opportunities. He pledged his government’s commitment to handle unemployment rate through holistic approach which includes a plan to aggressively enhance the investments on agriculture, energy, and mining and attracting more FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), which he underlined “Would help reduce unemployment.”
The overall unemployment rate in Ethiopia has reached 11 million, PM Abiy disclosed, adding his government is foreseeing to create three million new jobs next year to curtail the increasing trend.
As part of the holistic approach, the government plans to send some people overseas, particularly to the Middle East. He pointed out that Ethiopia has recently reached an agreement with the government of United Arab Emirates (UAE) to dispatch some 50,000 Ethiopian professionals to Dubai next year.
PM Abiy
Abiy’s trip to the two Guineas and the Rainbow Nation
The Horn between a rock and a hard place
Dam talks at an impasse
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Bands or Solo Artists People Should Stop Saying Are Rock
1 One Direction One Direction (commonly abbreviated as 1D) were a British-Irish pop boy band based in London, composed of Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, and previously, Zayn Malik until his departure from the band on 25 March 2015. The group signed with Simon Cowell's record label Syco Records ...read more.
This is considered rock? THIS SHALL NOT STAND! 1D is overly generic pop NOT rock! - RiverClanRocks
It is a disgrace to call them a rock band.
They throw some shiny riffs in here and there, but overall I agree. - WonkeyDude98
2 5 Seconds of Summer 5 Seconds of Summer are an Australian pop-rock band from Sydney, Australia, that formed in 2011. The group were originally YouTube celebrities, posting videos of themselves covering songs from various artists during 2011 and early 2012. They rose to international fame while touring with One Direction ...read more.
Just because they are influenced by pop punk bands like Green Day and Blink-182, it doesn't mean they are rock. 5 Seconds of Summer are the biggest posers of rock today. They try too hard to be "punk". Who cares if they play their instruments. They are still not rock. They do not even write all of their songs and have too many producers for one album.
5 Seconds of Summer is just another commercial product for tween girls who like One Direction. If they want punk, listen to Ramones or Misfits.
They do throw some insane riffs in there, but they are so shrill and polished it isn't enough to make them rock. - WonkeyDude98
3 Maroon 5 Maroon 5 is an American pop rock band that originated in Los Angeles, California. Before the current group was established, the original four members, Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick, formed a band known as Kara's Flowers in 1994, while they were still in high school.
Maroon 5 is pure pop. In their modern songs, there is no sound of rock - BlueDiamondFromNowhere
Ahem, Songs About Jane. - WonkeyDude98
4 Coldplay Coldplay are a British rock band formed in 1996. The band consists of Chris Martin (lead vocalist and pianist), Jonny Buckland (lead guitarist), Guy Berryman (bassist) and Will Champion (drummer and backing vocalist). Manager Phil Harvey is often considered an unofficial fifth member. The band renamed ...read more.
5 TwentyOnePilots
They are too pop/rap to be considered rock. All their music sounds like Eminem trying to be rock.
One word: Posers.
They're still good. - WonkeyDude98
6 Imagine Dragons Imagine Dragons is an American pop rock band from Las Vegas, Nevada. Imagine Dragons' lineup consists of lead vocalist Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee, and drummer Daniel Platzman.
They are indie rock and alternative they don't deserve to be on here.
7 Avril Lavigne Avril Ramona Lavigne is a Canadian–French singer-songwriter and actress. By the age of 15, she had appeared on stage with Shania Twain; by 16, she had signed a two-album recording contract with Arista Records worth more than $2 million.
8 Blood on the Dance Floor Blood on the Dance Floor is an American scene duo currently consisting of Dahvie Vanity and Fallon Vendetta that formed in 2006. Former members include Jayy von Monroe (2009-2016) and Garrett Ecstasy (2009). All of them provided vocals to the project. ...read more.
9 Paramore Paramore is an American rock band from Franklin, Tennessee, formed in 2004. The band currently consists of lead vocalist Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York, and drummer Zac Farro.
It is emo rock music. Get over it. - DynastiSugarPop
They're a bit more 'pop' now than rock. - Stormver101
10 Brokencyde Brokencyde is an American crunkcore musical group from Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded in 2006. The group's lineup consists of David "Se7en" Gallegos and Michael "Mikl" Shea, and musically are one of the founding groups in the crunkcore genre, which is crunk hip-hop with screamed vocals.
11 Lorde Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, better known by her stage name Lorde, is a New Zealand singer-songwriter. She is known for songs such Royals and Team, and has released 2 albums; Pure Heroine (2013) and Melodrama (2017).
12 OneRepublic OneRepublic is an American pop rock band. Formed in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2002 by lead singer Ryan Tedder and guitarist Zach Filkins, the band achieved commercial success on Myspace as an unsigned act.
13 R5 R5 is an American pop rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 2009. The band consists of lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist Ross Lynch, Riker Lynch, Rocky Lynch, Rydel Lynch, and Ellington Ratliff.
14 Fall Out Boy Fall Out Boy is an American pop rock band formed in Wilmette, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, in 2001. The band consists of vocalist and guitarist Patrick Stump, bassist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer Andy Hurley.
No, they are rock. They are as mainstream as rock can get, but they are rock.
That's probably a good thing. They have just enough of a rock edge that people won't look at you funny for listening to them. - WonkeyDude98
True, their music might be poppy, but they are indeed rock.
Back in the 2000s, Fall Out Boy is considered as "emo rock". - DynastiSugarPop
15 Fun. Fun is an American indie pop band based in New York City. It was formed by Nate Ruess, former lead singer of The Format, with Andrew Dost of Anathallo and Jack Antonoff of Steel Train.
16 Thirty Seconds to Mars Thirty Seconds to Mars (commonly stylized as 30 Seconds to Mars) is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1998. The band currently consists of brothers Jared and Shannon Leto.
Well they are actually mainly a rock band deal with it! - Soulstealer
17 Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone, known professionally as Madonna, is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman. She influenced a lot of singers such as: Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna, Beyonce Knowles and Britney Spears. She is known as Queen of Pop and at modern pop culture specifically ...read more.
18 CHVRCHES CHVRCHES is a Scottish synthpop band from Glasgow, formed in 2011. The band consists of Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty. The band, before formation, practiced playing with demo songs written mostly by Doherty.
19 Kanye West Kanye Omari West is an American rapper, songwriter, and fashion designer. He was born on June 8, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia. After West's parents divorced, him and his single mother moved to Chicago, Illinois. At the age of 10, West temporarily moved to Nanjing, China, because his mother was teaching ...read more.
He called himself a "rockstar". That is the most embarrassing thing I ever heard. He is not rock. He is just a rapper who is doing it for the money.
Corey Taylor even said in a video Kanye isn't a rockstar. - Fretto
20 Justin Bieber Justin Drew Bieber (born March 1, 1994) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer. He currently resides in Ontario, Canada and is Christian. He is the son of author Pattie Mallette. ...read more.
It's really annoying seeing Justin Bieber on every list. No one says that Justin Bieber is rock, so why is he on this list? - Imreallyboredrightnow
Nah, some idiots could really call him rock. Look at Kanye West. It's kind of logical to put him here.
Laugh out loud he shouldn't even be on this list.
21 Rihanna Robyn Rihanna Fenty is a Barbadian-American pop singer. Born in Saint Michael and raised in Bridgetown, she first entered the music industry by recording demo tapes under the direction of record producer Evan Rogers in 2003. She ultimately signed a recording contract with Def Jam Recordings after auditioning ...read more.
Seriously? How is she not on here?
22 Daughtry Daughtry is an American rock band formed and fronted by namesake Chris Daughtry, who was a finalist on the fifth season of American Idol. Their self-titled debut album was released in November 2006.
23 Mumford & Sons Mumford & Sons are a British rock band from London, formed in 2007. The band consists of Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall and Ted Dwane.
24 Of Monsters and Men Of Monsters and Men is a five-member, English-language, indie folk-pop band from Reykjavík, Iceland, formed in 2010.
25 Tove Lo
LOL, people call her rock?
26 Milky Chance
27 Meg Myers
28 Kelly Clarkson Kelly Brianne Clarkson is an American singer, songwriter and children's book author. She rose to fame in 2002 after winning the inaugural season of the television series American Idol, which earned her a record deal with RCA Records. Clarkson's debut single, "A Moment Like This", topped the US Billboard ...read more.
29 Lana Del Rey Lana Del Rey is a California based singer, songwriter, and model who currently resides in Malibu, California. She was born under the name Elizabeth Woolridge Grant to entrepreneur Robert England Jr. and Patricia Ann Hill in rural Lake Placid, New York on June 21, 1985. She has two siblings, Chuck and ...read more.
30 Gotye Wouter Andre "Wally" De Backer, better known as Gotye, is an Australian-Belgian multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter. The name "Gotye" is a pronunciation respelling of "Gauthier", the French cognate of Gotye's given Dutch name "Wouter".
31 Sleeper Agent
32 Ellie Goulding Elena Jane "Ellie" Goulding is an British singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, born on December 30th, 1986 in Hereford, England . She is most well-known in the U .S. for her singles "Lights," "Love Me Like You Do," "Burn," and has been featured in other songs with Calvin Harris and others . ...read more.
33 Icona Pop Icona Pop is a Swedish electropop duo that formed in 2009, with electro house, punk and indie pop music influences.
34 Bruno Mars Peter Gene Hernandez, professionally known by his stage name Bruno Mars, is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and choreographer. ...read more.
35 Katy Perry Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, professionally known by her stage name Katy Perry, was born on October 25, 1984 in Santa Barbara, California. She is a singer, songwriter, actress and an ambassador on one of the most popular companies of now, UNICEF. ...read more.
36 Bastille Bastille are an English indie pop band formed in 2010. The group began as a solo project by singer Dan Smith, who later decided to form a band. Beside Smith, the four-piece consists of Chris Wood, Will Farquarson, and Kyle Simmons.
37 Hozier
Hozier doesn't really follow much of a genre.
Speaking of Hozier, of all the songs to chart from his debut album, why Take Me To Church? Why the worst song on the album? WHY NOT JACKIE AND WILSON?! It's like when Stressed Out, the worst song on twenty one pilots' blurryface, had the most success on the album, but at least that song was good. - WonkeyDude98
38 Ke$ha Kesha Rose Sebert (formerly known as Ke$ha) was born on March 1st, 1987 in Los Angeles, United States. She is best known for her hits like Timber, Tik Tok, and We R Who We R. ...read more.
I haven't heard anyone say she is rock
39 Lil Wayne Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. is an American hip hop artist and is often referred to as one of the worst rappers of all time. He was signed to Cash Money Records by Birdman at a young age. Before he became a household name and the artist he is today, he was 1 quarter of the southern rap group The Hot Boys, ...read more.
He can't even play the guitar. Want proof? Check out his guitar performance of Lollipop.
Why is he here on every list? - DynastiSugarPop
40 Relient K
41 Eminem Eminem, born Marshall Bruce Mathers III, is an American rapper, actor and music producer born on October 17, 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri. Eminem has sold over 300 million records making him the bestselling hip-hop artist of all time. In addition to his solo career, he is a member of D12 and (with Royce ...read more.
42 Magic! Magic!, originally stylized as MAGIC!, is a Canadian reggae fusion band based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
43 Elle King Elle King is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Her musical style encompasses country, soul, rock and blues.
She is terrible. Her dad is Rob Schneider.
44 Black Veil Brides Black Veil Brides is an American rock band currently consisting of Andy Biersack (vocals), Jinxx (guitar), Jake Pitts (guitar), Christian Coma (drums) and Ashley Purdy (bass), that formed in 2006 in Ohio. ...read more.
45 All Time Low All Time Low is an American pop punk band from Towson, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, formed in 2003. The band currently consists of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Alex Gaskarth, lead guitarist and backing vocalist Jack Barakat, bassist and backing vocalist Zack Merrick and drummer Rian Dawson. ...read more.
46 The Beatles The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The members consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They were soon known as the foremost and most influential act of rock era. Rooted in skiffle, beat, and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented ...read more.
Top Ten Things People Should Stop Saying Instead of the F-Word Things Frozen Fans Can't Stop Saying or Singing Top Ten Words/Phrases that People Use Instead Saying the Word "Balls" Comebacks to People Saying You Have a Horrible Taste in Movies. Top 10 Sayings About Fake People
List StatsUpdated 25 May 2019
4 years, 289 days old
1. Blood on the Dance Floor
2. Brokencyde
3. One Direction
christangrant
1. 5 Seconds of Summer
2. OneRepublic
3. Maroon 5
gemcloben
3. Coldplay
Most Iconic 90s Songstruckturner Best Songs of All Time Best Singers of All Time Best Albums of All Time Greatest Music Artists of All Timecamp0112 Top 10 Best Guitarists of All Time Best Beatles Songs Best Bassists Ever Greatest Drummers of All TimeAKPickin Best Kygo SongsArk-M Top Ten Best Shawn Mendes Songs Top Ten Phildel Songskeycha1n Top Ten Best Songs from Love Live: School Idol Project Top Ten Music Artists With the Strangest Ideas for Song TitlesPositronWildhawk Top Worst Music ProducersMumbizz01
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Midsummer’s day takes hold of our mid-March metropolis
By Alex Wright, National Post
Except for the fact that the trees were still naked and the people were still mostly clothed, you could mistake yesterday’s mid-March thaw for a midsummer’s day on Toronto’s beaches. Under clear blue skies with the thermometer pushing 18C — while the average for today is closer to 10C — people flocked by the hundreds to enjoy the weather at Balmy Beach and Kew Beach off Queen Street East.
There were seniors and sailors, bikers and boarders, dog-walkers and sun-blockers. There were March breakers and photo-takers, kids and kites, water-waders and rollerbladers. A man in a fiery orange shirt and blue sunglasses who only identified himself as James was balancing rocks into impossible-looking columns beside the boardwalk. He said he’s been doing it on beaches all over the world since he first saw someone stacking stones in Vancouver years ago.
“I’m just having fun today,” he said. “It’s gorgeous, I can’t believe it’s the middle of March. Everyone’s so polite, it’s great to see.”
Although he’s unemployed, James said that, “When it’s a beautiful day like this I don’t want to sit in front of a computer all day and look for jobs, I can do that at night or when the weather isn’t good.”
An older man read the paper topless with a diamond-studded cross hanging from his neck. Down the beach, Ron Arsenault, 53, who drives school buses, was flying three gigantic parachute-like kites. The Toronto District School Board had him doing odd jobs during March Break, but he finished work early and came to the beach.
“First time out this year,” he said, adding that the weather was beautiful and people were friendly. He was, however, wishing for more wind. Out at the end of a rocky breakwater a couple embraced and swayed side to side.
Semi-retired construction worker Richard Busch, 51, came to the beach with his camera and its long lens to take pictures and gather his thoughts. He snapped photos of birds off the pier and a raccoon up a tree.
“It’s a perfect day for it,” he said, and he wasn’t just there to observe the animal wildlife.
“I love just coming down here and people watching,” he said. “Sitting on a bench and watching is a great sport.”
Grade 3 teacher Nadine Bobbett, 29, sat on a driftwood log and read while her husky pawed at the sand. “It’s fantastic, it’s nice to be outside,” she said. “My dog loves the sun, so I took my book and came here to get some vitamin D."
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[ January 21, 2020 ] Don’t blame Mnangagwa for soldiers criminal behaviour – Charamba Zimbabwe
HomeLaw & CrimeNo one is above the law- Mnangagwa
No one is above the law- Mnangagwa
February 28, 2018 Staff Reporter Law & Crime, Main 0
Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe's president, center, arrives for a meeting of the Zimbabwe Business Club in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Thursday Jan. 18, 2018. Mnangagwa shows no bitterness toward Robert Mugabe, who he served as a right-hand man through the liberation war against Rhodesia and since independence in 1980, and still calls an icon. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg
HARARE – President Emmerson Mnangagwa says government will not consider friendship in its fight against corruption as no one is above the law.
Addressing Zimbabweans based in DRC on Tuesday evening, President Mnangagwa said the vision of his administration is to ensure adherence to the rule of law.
The President’s sentiments came on the eve of the elapse of the three month grace period he gave to those who externalised funds to repatriate the cash.
He said it is the vision of his government to turn Zimbabwe into a middle income country, that can be achieved through growing the economy, modernising industry and agriculture to catch up with other countries.
President said as part of government’s re-engagement initiative, Britain has pledged to assist in efforts to reduce the country’s international debt.
He took time to explain the transitional period that led to the resignation of the former president Cde Robert Mugabe.
He said the toxic politics of the G40 cabal violated the operations of the three arms of government and the ruling ZANU-PF resulting in the party recalling Cde Mugabe.
He said army generals convinced him that the evidence for impeachment was overwhelming and had it sailed through, Cde Mugabe would have lost his legacy and possibly been imprisoned.
He however assured Zimbabweans that while the country had gone through political instability in the days leading to Cde Mugabe’s resignation, the contestations were mainly at the top and did not affect the rest of the country or the economy.
President Mnangagwa said the stabilization of the country’s politics has seen the government seeking partners who want to invest in Zimbabwe on a mutual benefit basis.
He said his government has removed some barriers that repelled investors like the amendment of the indigenisation law.
President Mnangagwa said as the economy is modernised, there will be need for investors to partner government in a number of projects.
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New album of rare David Bowie demos to be released
TV news footage of David Bowie’s 1976 arrest in Rochester,…
David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’ demo released
Lost David Bowie tapes discovered
David Bowie photographed by Stefan Almers
David Bowie photographed by Masayoshi Sukita
Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy
Crystal Japan
David Bowie performs “Heroes” at the Hurricane Festival
‘All The Young Dudes’ live at the Isle of Wight…
David Bowie performs stripped-back version of ‘Loving The Alien’
David Bowie live in Berlin in 2002
David Bowie performs the entire ‘Low’ album at Meltdown Festival
Friday Night with Ross and Bowie
New version of ‘Life On Mars?’ promo video
Promo video for ‘Right’ by David Bowie
David Bowie – ‘Lazarus’ music video
David Bowie – ‘Blackstar’ music video
‘Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)’ promo video
David Bowie – ‘I’d Rather Be High’ promo video
Denis O’Regan talking about his book ‘Ricochet : David Bowie…
David Bowie is… The Man Who Fell To Earth
The HD Projects: Volume 1 with Sterling Campbell
Woody Woodmansey recalls life with David Bowie
Mick Rock tells the story behind iconic Bowie photographs
Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo
David Bowie: 1969 – 1973
‘The Jean Genie’ – Outtake from the 1980 Floor Show
The 1980 Floor Show / Midnight Special
‘Space Oddity’ – Outtake from the 1980 Floor Show
‘1984 / Dodo’ – Outtake from the 1980 Floor Show
‘Space Oddity’ live at the Hammersmith Odeon 1973
‘Life On Mars?’ performed live in 1976
David Bowie performs ‘Five Years’ on Dinah!
David Bowie performs ‘Station To Station’ in Montreal 1976
‘Space Oddity’ performed on Dick Clark’s Salute To The Seventies
‘Space Oddity’ performed on the Kenny Everett Show
David Bowie on Saturday Night Live in 1979
Promo video for David Bowie’s ‘Look Back In Anger’
David Bowie – ‘Wild Is The Wind’ promo video
David Bowie at the British Rock & Pop Awards 1980
David Bowie – ‘Fashion’ promo video
‘Dancing In The Street’ live with Bowie & Jagger
David Bowie performs ‘That’s Motivation’ from Absolute Beginners
David Bowie – Absolute Beginners promo video
David Bowie impersonates Bruce Springsteen, Iggy Pop & Lou Reed
‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide’ live in Tokyo
Sound & Vision tour press conference
David Bowie uncut interview from 1987
‘Young Americans’ live at Sydney’s Tivoli Club in 1987
David Bowie – ‘Never Let Me Down’ music video
David Bowie at the VH1 Fashion Awards
‘Moonage Daydream’ live at the Phoenix Festival
David Bowie live at the Phoenix Festival in 1996
David Bowie live at the Loreley Festival in 1996
David Bowie – ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ music video
‘Life On Mars’ at the Yahoo Awards
‘Wild Is The Wind’ at the Yahoo! Awards
David Bowie headlines Glastonbury in 2000
‘Something In The Air’ & ‘Seven’ live on Nulle Part…
‘Thursday’s Child’ & ‘China Girl’ live on Nulle Part Ailleurs
David Bowie ‘Slow Burn’ – promo video
David Bowie: 2005 – Present
On 31 July 2000 David Bowie’s website www.davidbowie.com was awarded Best Artist Site of the year at the Yahoo! Internet Music Awards. Bowie accepted the award on behalf of BowieNet from Sandra Bernhard at a ceremony at Studio 54 in New York. He also accepted the gong for 2000 Online...
Some 29 years after his first appearance at Glastonbury, David Bowie and his band, which included Earl Slick after an absence of 17 years from the Bowie camp, returned on 25 June 2000 to headline the festival. Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis, paying tribute, hailed Bowie as one of the “world’s...
‘Something In The Air’ & ‘Seven’ live on Nulle Part Ailleurs
David Bowie performs ‘Something In The Air’ & ‘Seven’ live on the French TV show Nulle Part Ailleurs. The show was broadcast on 20 October 1999. Bowie also performed ‘Thursday’s Child’ and ‘China Girl’ on the same show....
David Bowie performs ‘Thursday’s Child’ & ‘China Girl’ live on the French TV show Nulle Part Ailleurs. The show was broadcast on 20 October 1999. Bowie also performed ‘Something In The Air’ and ‘Seven’ during the same show....
‘Repetition’ live in Paris
David Bowie performs 'Repetition' from the Lodger album at Elysee Montmartre in Paris on 14 October 1999....
David Bowie performs ‘I Can’t Read’ live in Paris
David Bowie performs ‘I Can’t Read’ at Elysee Montmartre in Paris on 14 October 1999 during the Hours tour. ‘I Can’t Read’ was co-written with Reeves Gabrels during their incarnation as Tin Machine....
David Bowie live at NetAid 1999
On 9 October 1999 there were three simultaneous concerts in support of the anti-poverty initiative NetAid. The concerts were meant to harness the Internet to raise money and awareness for their Jubilee 2000 campaign. The three converts took place at Wembley Stadium in London, Giants Stadium in New Jersey and the Palais...
‘Under Pressure’ live at the GQ Awards
Bowie performs ‘Under Pressure’ at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall for the GQ Awards during the Earthling tour. Gail Ann Dorsey undertakes vocal duties for the parts sung by Freddie Mercury on the original....
‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ live at the GQ Awards
Bowie performs a cover of The Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall for the GQ Awards during the Earthling tour....
‘Always Crashing In The Same Car’ live at the GQ Awards
Bowie performs ‘Always Crashing In The Same Car’ at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall for the GQ Awards during the Earthling tour....
David Bowie at the Go Bang Festival, Munich in 1997
Watch David Bowie perform at the Go Bang Festival in Munich on 1997's Earthling tour...
‘Dead Man Walking’ performed on Top of the Pops
'Dead Man Walking', from David Bowie's album Earthling, was released a single in April 1997. David Bowie and band performed the song on the 25 April 1997 airing of BBC's Top Of The Pops....
David Bowie live on Nulle Part Ailleurs
On 17 February 1997 David Bowie appeared on the French TV show Nulle part ailleurs (NPA), which translated means “Nowhere”. He performs ‘Little Wonder’, ‘Telling Lies’ and ‘Scary Monsters’....
David Bowie’s 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden
David Bowie is joined onstage by Frank Black, Billy Corgan, Dave Grohl, Lou Reed, Robert Smith and Sonic Youth to celebrate his 50th birthday....
David Bowie's Songs
Wild Is The Wind
David Bowie News
The story behind Lodger’s cover artwork
David Bowie photographed by Steve Schapiro
David Bowie Performances
“Heroes” performed live on Marc Bolan’s TV show
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Why Argentina Accepted Nazi War Criminals After World War II
History Before Columbus
Central American History
South American History
Mexican History
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann's Argentinian identity card.
Bettmann/Getty Images
Important Argentines Were Sympathetic
Connection to Europe
Financial Incentive
The Nazi Role in Perón's "Third Way"
Americans and British Didn't Want to Give Them to Communist Countries
Legacy of Argentina's Nazis
by Christopher Minster
Christopher Minster, Ph.D., is a professor at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. He is a former head writer at VIVA Travel Guides.
After World War Two, thousands of Nazis and wartime collaborators from France, Croatia, Belgium and other parts of Europe were looking for a new home: preferably as far away from the Nuremberg Trials as possible. Argentina welcomed hundreds if not thousands of them: the Juan Domingo Perón regime went to great lengths to get them there, sending agents to Europe to ease their passage, providing travel documents, and in many cases covering expenses.
Even those accused of the most heinous crimes, such as Ante Pavelic (whose Croatian regime murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies), Dr. Josef Mengele (whose cruel experiments are the stuff of nightmares) and Adolf Eichmann (Adolf Hitler's architect of the Holocaust) were welcomed with open arms. It begs the question: Why on Earth would Argentina want these men? The answers may surprise you.
Argentine President Juan Peron. Hulton Deutsch/Getty Images
During World War Two, Argentina clearly favored the Axis because of close cultural ties with Germany, Spain, and Italy. This is not surprising, as most Argentines were of Spanish, Italian, or German descent.
Nazi Germany nurtured this sympathy, promising important trade concessions after the war. Argentina was full of Nazi spies and Argentine officers and diplomats held important positions in Axis Europe. Perón's government was a big fan of the fascist trappings of Nazi Germany: spiffy uniforms, parades, rallies, and vicious anti-Semitism.
Many influential Argentines, including wealthy businessmen and members of the government, were openly supportive of the Axis cause, none more so than Perón himself, who had served as military attaché to Benito Mussolini's Italian army in the late 1930s. Although Argentina would eventually declare war on the Axis powers (a month before the war ended), it was partly a ploy to get Argentine agents in place to help defeated Nazis escape after the war.
It's not like World War II ended one day in 1945 and suddenly everyone realized how horrible the Nazis had been. Even after Germany was defeated, there were many powerful men in Europe who had favored the Nazi cause and continued to do so.
Spain was still ruled by the fascist Francisco Franco and had been a de facto member of the Axis alliance; many Nazis would find safe if temporary, haven there. Switzerland had remained neutral during the war, but many important leaders had been outspoken in their support of Germany. These men retained their positions after the war and were in a position to help out. Swiss bankers, out of greed or sympathy, helped the former Nazis move and launder funds. The Catholic Church was extremely helpful as several high-ranking church officials (including Pope Pius XII) actively aided in the Nazis' escape.
There was a financial incentive for Argentina to accept these men. Wealthy Germans and Argentine businessmen of German descent were willing to pay the way for escaping Nazis. Nazi leaders plundered untold millions from the Jews they murdered and some of that money accompanied them to Argentina. Some of the smarter Nazi officers and collaborators saw the writing on the wall as early as 1943 and began squirreling away gold, money, valuables, paintings and more, often in Switzerland. Ante Pavelic and his cabal of close advisors were in possession of several chests full of gold, jewelry and art they had stolen from their Jewish and Serbian victims: this eased their passage to Argentina considerably. They even paid off British officers to let them through Allied lines.
By 1945, as the Allies were mopping up the last remnants of the Axis, it was clear that the next great conflict would come between the capitalist USA and the communist USSR. Some people, including Perón and some of his advisors, predicted that World War III would break out as soon as 1948.
In this upcoming "inevitable" conflict, third parties such as Argentina could tip the balance one way or the other. Perón envisioned nothing less than Argentina taking its place as a crucially important diplomatic third party in the war, emerging as a superpower and leader of a new world order. The Nazi war criminals and collaborators may have been butchers, but there is no doubt that they were rabidly anti-communist. Perón thought these men would come in useful in the "upcoming" conflict between the USA and the USSR. As time passed and the Cold War dragged on, these Nazis would eventually be seen as the bloodthirsty dinosaurs they were.
After the war, communist regimes were created in Poland, Yugoslavia, and other parts of Eastern Europe. These new nations requested the extradition of many war criminals in allied prisons. A handful of them, such as the Ustashi General Vladimir Kren, were eventually sent back, tried, and executed. Many more were allowed to go to Argentina instead because the Allies were reluctant to hand them over to their new communist rivals where the outcome of their war trials would inevitably result in their executions.
The Catholic Church also lobbied heavily in favor of these individuals not being repatriated. The allies did not want to try these men themselves (only 22 defendants were tried at the first of the infamous Nuremberg Trials and all told, 199 defendants were tried of which 161 were convicted and 37 were sentenced to death), nor did they want to send them to the communist nations that were requesting them, so they turned a blind eye to the ratlines carrying them by the boatload to Argentina.
In the end, these Nazis had little lasting impact on Argentina. Argentina was not the only place in South America that accepted Nazis and collaborators as many eventually found their way to Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and other parts of the continent. Many Nazis scattered after Peron's government fell in 1955, fearing that the new administration, hostile as it was to Peron and all of his policies, might send them back to Europe.
Most of the Nazis who went to Argentina lived out their lives quietly, fearing repercussions if they were too vocal or visible. This was particularly true after 1960, when Adolf Eichmann, architect of the program of Jewish genocide, was snatched off a street in Buenos Aires by a team of Mossad agents and whisked off to Israel where he was tried and executed. Other wanted war criminals were too cautious to be found: Josef Mengele drowned in Brazil in 1979 after having been the object of a massive manhunt for decades.
Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann stands in a protective glass booth flanked by Israeli police during his trial June 22, 1961 in Jerusalem. Handout/Getty Images
Over time, the presence of so many World War II criminals became something of an embarrassment for Argentina. By the 1990s, most of these aging men were living openly under their own names. A handful of them was eventually tracked down and sent back to Europe for trials, such as Josef Schwammberger and Franz Stangl. Others, such as Dinko Sakic and Erich Priebke, gave ill-advised interviews, which brought them to the attention of the public. Both were extradited (to Croatia and Italy respectively), tried, and convicted.
As for the rest of the Argentine Nazis, most assimilated into Argentina's sizable German community and were smart enough to never talk about their past. Some of these men were even quite successful financially, such as Herbert Kuhlmann, a former commander of the Hitler youth who became a prominent businessman.
Bascomb, Neil. Hunting Eichmann. New York: Mariner Books, 2009
Goñi, Uki. The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina. London: Granta, 2002.
"Jasenovac." The Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C.
Alexander, Robert J. "Juan Domingo Peron: A History." Taylor & Francis, United States, 2019.
“German Nationalist and Neo-Nazi Activities in Argentina.” Prepared for WH Division. July 28, 1953. Central Intelligence Agency Library.
"The Nuremberg Trials." Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
Turner, Frederick C. and Miguens, José Enrique. “Juan Perón and the Reshaping of Argentina.” University of Pittsburgh Press. 1983.
Perlman, Moshe. "The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann." Original publication: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, United Kingdom, 1961; Simon and Schuster, New York, First Edition, 1, Jan., 1963.
Klar, Jeremy and Lily, Henrietta M. "Josef Mengele." p. 99. Rosen Publishing Group. 15, Dec., 2015.
Ante Pavelic, Croatian War Criminal
Nazi War Criminals Who Hid Out in South America
Who Was Dr. Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz "Angel of Death"?
Josef Mengele and His Nazi War Crimes
The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution
The Gestapo: Definition and History of the Nazi Secret Police
Rise and Fall of Nazi Officer Franz Stangl
Why Did President Peron Bring Former Nazis Into Argentina?
Biography of Juan Perón, Argentina's Populist President
Overview of the Holocaust During World War 2
What Should Everyone Know About the History of Buenos Aires?
What Was the Anschluss and Why Was It Feared?
The Cold War: The Definitive Struggle Between Capitalism and Communism
The War Years: A Timeline of the 1940s
Eichmann Trial: The Trial That Taught the World About the Holocaust
The Nazi Plan to Move Jews to Madagascar
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The unique and painterly printmaking with master printer Jillian Ross, Printers Kim-Lee Loggenberg and Roxy Kaczmarek
11am - 2pm (first floor)
Places are limited and tickets will be avaiable for pre-purchase on Webtickets HERE
During this workshop the David Krut Workshop team will provide an introduction to different water-based monotype techniques.We will start by explaining what a monotype is, how it differs to the mono-print and show examples made by local artists at the David Krut Workshop. The team will then demonstrate mark making and masking with water-based inks, water-based drawing materials used for line work and pieces of paper used for chine-collé.
Each participant will walk away with two or three (38 x 26cm) of their own monotype prints.
We supply: ink, brushes, rollers, papers and the press
You bring: reference material, an apron and enthusiasm!
Relief printmaking workshop with master printer Jillian Ross, Printers Chad Cordeiro and Sarah Hunkin
During this workshop the David Krut Workshop team will provide an introduction to linocut carving and printing techniques. We will start by explaining what a linocut is and how relief printing works in comparison to intaglio printing. We will show examples made by local artists at the David Krut Workshop. The team will then demonstrate how to get your image onto the plate, different mark making and carving techniques into the linoleum and how to print using the printing press. A demo will also be given on how to print by hand at home without a press.
Each participant will walk away with a small edition of four (26cm x 19cm) prints
We supply: lino plates, ink, rollers, paper and the press
Jillian Ross
Ross is a Canadian-born collaborative Master Printer currently directing the David Krut Workshop. Specialising in intaglio techniques, Ross has collaborated with over 60 South African and international artists, including Deborah Bell William Kentridge Jürgan Partenheimer, Diane Victor Mongezi Ncaphayi, Faith47, Stephen Hobbs, and Senzo Shabangu.
Since 2003, Ross has taken up a number of apprenticeships with highly regarded Master Printers in the United States, Europe and South Africa, including Phil Sanders (Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York), Jack Shirreff (107 Workshop, United Kingdom), Randy Hemminghaus (Galamander Press and Judith Brodsky Center, New York), and Doug Benett and James Miller (Lower Eastside Printshop, New York). This has placed her well for the development of younger artists careers through printmaking, for working with artists with strong international careers, and for pushing her practice beyond the conventional through cross-disciplinary projects.
Ross has lectured at the Southern Graphics Printmaking Conference (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and the Highpoint Centre for Printmaking (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Her collaborations are documented in various publications including Art in South Africa, Art in Print, Printmaking Today and Art on Paper.
Roxy Kaczmarek
Kaczmarek was born in the United Kingdom and grew up in Cape Town. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Art (Hons), majoring in printmaking, at the University of Cape Town in 2012. She worked at Warren Editions Print Studio as a printer and the studio manager until 2016. She is currently the assistant to the workshop manager Jillian Ross at the David Krut Workshop.
Kaczmarek recently completed her Masters in Technology at the University of Johannesburg graduating cum laude. Her paintings and prints for the exhibition ‘Third Landscapes’ (2019) interrogates the intersection of plants and people within liminal spaces of the city. Attempting to break from traditional forms of printmaking, the work experiments with a combination of print and cement. By bringing attention to marginalised urban greenery in between the spaces controlled by humans as well as undisturbed natural areas, Kaczmarek brings into focus how city dwellers are informed by and in turn inform the urban landscape.
Kim-Lee Loggenberg
Loggenberg was born in Port Elizabeth in 1987. She received her Bachelor of Technology (Btech) in Fine and Applied Arts, majoring in printmaking, from the Tshwane University of Technology in 2010. She is currently a printer at David Krut Workshop, where she has worked since 2013. Loggenberg specialises in intaglio printing and takes a special interest in the application of chine collé and the creation and printing of water- and oil-based monotypes.
Chad Cordeiro
Cordeiro was born in Johannesburg in 1993. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BAFA) in Fine and Applied Arts, majoring in printmaking, from the University of the Witswatersrand. He is currently a printer at David Krut Workshop, where he has worked since 2013. Cordeiro specialises in relief printing. He is also one of the three founding members of the print workshop Danger Gevaar Ingozi.
Sarah Hunkin
Hunkin is an emerging artist/printmaker, born and resides in Johannesburg, South Africa. She recently finished her 4th year of a BA Fine Arts degree at the University of Witwatersrand and is majoring in Linocut Printmaking and currently works as a studio assistant and archivist at the David Krut Workshop. Her interests lie in the broader city of Johannesburg, interrogating her positionality in and around the city as well as different aspects of the city including its buildings and the surroundings. Linocut printmaking, her preferred medium allows for a particular type of mark making, her prints challenge the mundane style of carving and explore more fluid mark making. Her process is also an integral part to her practice.
RMB Turbine Art Fair
Address: 10 Fricker Road Illovo Sandton Johannesburg, South Africa
Site by ArtFundicopyright © 2020 TAF All Rights Reserved
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Will St. Paul’s $50-a-baby college savings…
Will St. Paul’s $50-a-baby college savings program work? Here’s some early research.
By Josh Verges | jverges@pioneerpress.com | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: December 22, 2019 at 5:22 am | UPDATED: January 3, 2020 at 12:58 pm
Editor’s note: This was the first in a two-part series examining St. Paul’s plan to start a college-savings fund for every newborn in the city. The second story was published Sunday, Dec. 29.
St. Paul has secured $2 million from philanthropists, businesses and the state to start a college-savings fund for every newborn in the city, but it’s not yet clear whether such asset-building programs actually meet their goals.
There are more than 60 child-savings programs in the U.S., most of which aim to get more children, especially those from low-income families, to pursue higher education.
Although researchers have found a positive correlation between childhood savings and college enrollment, there have been few randomized trials to support the case for public investment, and the programs are too new to see if they’re working.
“We’re still a couple years away,” said Shira Markoff, children’s savings director with Prosperity Now, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that promotes children’s savings accounts and helped St. Paul design its program, College Bound St. Paul.
Starting Jan. 1, St. Paul will deposit $50 for every newborn resident in a custodial savings account at Bremer Bank. The city also is considering various bonus deposits, such as for logging in and viewing the account online, making a well-baby visit to a doctor or for milestones like a first birthday.
“Children with a college savings account that has between $1 and $500 are three times more likely to enroll in college,” the city states on its website for College Bound St. Paul.
That claim — which actually pertains only to lower-income families — comes from a widely cited 2013 paper by William Elliott, now a professor at the University of Michigan and the leading researcher on child savings accounts.
The paper, however, was not describing a program like College Bound St. Paul. Rather, it was based on wide-ranging surveys that happened to touch on both child savings and college attainment. Among low-income teenagers in 2002, those who reported having money saved for school were more likely to have attended and completed college by 2009.
Whether a universal, city-run savings program can accomplish what college-minded families did on their own remains to be seen.
The study also reached conclusions that cast doubt on the central theory about savings and college.
For example, families just under $50,000 in annual income were less likely to have a child go to college compared with those making even less money.
And no amount of school savings among higher-income families — those making over $50,000 a year — was a significant predictor of college enrollment.
“It does raise some doubt about whether or not designating savings for school might (have) positive effects for … children regarding college enrollment and graduation,” the authors wrote.
The authors also urged caution with their results given that so few lower-income participants in the study actually graduated from college — just 10 percent of the 512-person sample.
STUDIES SHOW PROMISE
Elliott declined an interview because he is under a multi-year contract to evaluate College Bound St. Paul.
But he pointed to a recent experiment in Italy that he said stands as the only randomized controlled trial on children’s savings accounts and college attendance.
In it, 770 low-income students in their last two years of high school were sorted at random into treatment and control groups between 2014 and 2017.
The first group received matching contributions of 2:1 and 4:1 as long as they contributed between 5 and 50 euros a month into a savings account for college expenses. They also had to attend financial education classes with their families.
Researchers found college enrollment increased considerably within the treatment group, especially among students who were on the vocational track and least likely to pursue higher education.
The authors recommended targeted interventions for that low-ambition group, as opposed to a program likes St. Paul’s, which will set aside money for all children.
“Targeting the intervention to this subgroup of students could improve the cost-effectiveness of the intervention, as the ‘deadweight’ (i.e. the share of students that would enroll at the university even in the absence of the monetary benefit) is smaller,” they wrote.
Minneapolis now is developing its own child savings program that would include all newborns but provide double the seed money for low-income children.
Another rare experiment began in Oklahoma in 2007. It’ll take several more years to evaluate college outcomes, but researchers are seeing positive early returns in other ways.
In it, 2,700 children were sorted into treatment and control groups, with the first half receiving $1,000 in a state-sponsored 529 college savings plan at birth, plus matching contributions.
At age 4, the treatment group showed better social-emotional development. And those children’s mothers were less likely to be depressed and more likely to say they expected their children to go on to college.
BIGGER PURPOSE
For St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and his Office of Financial Empowerment, the college-savings initiative is part of a larger mission to lift up residents who struggle with money.
As the city pursues equity in housing and fines and fees, it aims to equip residents with tools to improve their personal finances. That’s one reason they’re working with the local Bremer Bank instead of the state-sponsored 529 college savings plan — to encourage low-income residents to establish a banking relationship.
“Opening accounts for participants and making initial deposits are only part of College Bound Saint Paul. Equally important is continually engaging children and their families in the program and leveraging the program as an opportunity to connect families with other services that improve their financial security,” the empowerment office said in preparation for a May meeting.
Ann Mulholland, who co-chaired the 50-person task force that designed College Bound St. Paul, said it’s about more than college.
“The purpose of these accounts is bigger. It is college and building hope. It’s also building wealth and building a relationship with saving and planning for the future,” said Mulholland, who is executive vice president of the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation.
ST. PAUL LAGS IN COLLEGE GOING
Where college enrollment is concerned, there’s plenty of room to grow.
Just 60 percent of St. Paul Public Schools graduates enroll in college right after high school, compared with 68 percent of public school graduates statewide.
Trina Shanks, Elliott’s colleague at Michigan, expects the impact of College Bound St. Paul will be seen in those teens on the fence between enrolling in college and not.
“It makes a huge difference for that 40 percent … for those kids that are low-income that don’t think college is for them,” she said.
Shanks said it will be important for the city to communicate regularly with families that money has been set aside for college.
She has studied a short-lived Michigan experiment that awarded randomly selected low-income families $800 in the state’s 529 college savings plan, plus matching deposits.
Years later, after the program stopped enrolling new participants, she interviewed 20 families who had MI-SEED accounts. Nine hadn’t even spoken with their children about the accounts.
Despite having college money waiting for them, those “children’s responses to college aspiration questions and college funding questions were essentially the same as the children without SEED accounts,” Shanks found.
$2 MILLION CONTRIBUTED
St. Paul intends to spend $205,000 on the program next year for software, a program manager and an outreach coordinator. More of the initial funding will come from the state government and donors.
The Legislature and state Department of Human Services have contributed $1.05 million to establish College Bound St. Paul and seed the early deposits, according to the city.
Local nonprofits and businesses have put up another $1.06 million, according to the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation, which is holding the donations.
By 2022, the city will need to find some $500,000 a year for initial and bonus deposits, assuming around 5,000 children are born in the city each year.
Recipients must spend their savings accounts on college, vocational training or trade schools by age 25 or it will go back into the program; however, any family contributions will be returned at age 25 — or sooner in case of an emergency.
American Indian Magnet School wins zoning approval to expand
Shanks, the Michigan researcher, said few families contribute to such programs, and the seed funding typically makes only a small dent in the cost of college. But the purpose of the programs is more about creating a “college-saver identity,” she said. “It can spark their imaginations.”
Jay Benanav, a former St. Paul City Council member and founder of the family college consulting firm College Inside Track, has seen in clients how a relatively small amount of money can push a teenager to enroll in college.
“If they have any money saved up, it changes their psychology,” he said. “Even a couple thousand dollars when you’re 18 gives you a little incentive — ‘OK, maybe I can make this happen.’ ”
Melvin Carter
St. Paul Public Schools
Josh Verges
Josh has written about St. Paul public schools and higher education for the Pioneer Press since 2014, 11 years after the paper first published his byline as a University of Minnesota intern. He did a two-year stint on city government and crime in Austin, Minn., and spent seven years in Sioux Falls, S.D. covering crime and education, as well as editing. Josh was good at baseball once. Now he plays tennis against old men.
Follow Josh Verges https://www.facebook.com/joshverges Follow Josh Verges @ua14
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January is Cervical Cancer Awareness Month.
Cervical Cancer Screening/Prevention
Precancerous Changes to the Cervix
Radiation Therapy for Cervical Cancer
Stage I Cervical Cancer
Recurrent Cervical Cancer
Stage II Cervical Cancer
Stage IV Cervical Cancer
Stage III Cervical Cancer
Cervical Cancer Fact Sheet
Cervical cancer occurs when cancer cells form in the cervix or the lower part of a woman’s uterus. Cervical cancer is primarily caused by HPV (Human Papillomavirus) infections.
The cervix is a female reproductive organ that forms the lower portion of the uterus or womb. The uterus and cervix lie in the pelvis, on top of the vagina, in between the rectum and bladder. The cervix forms the part of the birth canal that opens to the vagina.
The surface layer of the cervix is mostly composed of squamous cells. The squamous cells of the cervix merge with the glandular cells lining the cervical canal of the uterus. The area of merging is called the squamo-columnar junction and the area on the cervix outside of this junction is called the transformation zone. Cervical cancer occurs when cervical cells grow out of control, typically in the transformation zone. When cells grow out of control, they spread and grow throughout the cervix and may invade and destroy neighboring organs or break away and spread through the bloodstream and lymphatic system to other parts of the body.
Doctors who care for women routinely perform pelvic examinations and a Papanicolaou (Pap) smear to screen for cancer in the cells on the surface of the cervix. During a Pap smear, a sample of cells from the cervix is taken with a small wooden spatula or brush and examined under the microscope. Women may first become aware that they have cervical cancer when a suspicious area is identified during a pelvic examination or an abnormal Pap smear. If a suspicious or a precancerous lesion is found, additional tests will be recommended to determine whether a precancerous lesion or invasive cancer exists.
Cells taken from the surface of the cervix can appear abnormal, but may not be cancer. These abnormal cells, however, may be the first step in a series of changes that lead to cancer. Doctors refer to the abnormal cells as “precancerous” and have used different terms to refer to them, such as squamous intraepithelial lesions, dysplasia, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia or carcinoma in situ. Precancerous disease involves only the surface of the cervix. When the abnormal cells begin to spread deeper into the cervix, they are referred to as invasive cancer of the cervix.
If physicians feel they need more information following an abnormal Pap smear, they may use a colposcope (lighted microscope) to better visualize the cervix or to perform a biopsy, which is the removal of a sample of tissue from the cervix in order to evaluate cervical cells under a microscope. If the doctor cannot determine whether the abnormal cells are only on the surface of the cervix, an endocervical curettage or conization may be recommended. During an endocervical curettage, a small spoon-shaped instrument called a curette is used to scrape cells away from inside the cervical opening. A conization or cone biopsy removes a cone-shaped sample of tissue from the cervical canal. Conization can also serve as the primary treatment of precancerous cervical cancer.
Infrequently, it may still remain unclear whether the abnormal cells are confined to the cervix or arise from inside the uterus. In this situation, a dilatation and curettage (D and C) may be recommended. During a D and C, the cervical opening is stretched (dilated) and a curette is inserted to remove cells from the lining of the uterus and cervical canal. In order to learn more about the most recent information available concerning the treatment of cervical cancer, click on the appropriate stage.
Stage 0: Precancerous lesion involves only the cells on the surface of the cervix.
Stage I: Cancer is confined to the cervix, and may be evident only under microscopic evaluation (stage IA) or apparent by visible or physical examination (stage IB).
Stage II: Cancer has spread beyond the cervix to involve the tissues surrounding the cervix (parametria) or the upper portion of the vagina.
Stage III: Cancer spreads beyond the cervix to the lower vagina or to the sides of the pelvis, or causes a blockage of drainage from the kidney, a condition called hydronephrosis.
Stage IV: Cancer invades structures adjacent to the cervix such as the bladder or rectum or has spread to other parts of the body such as the liver or lungs.
Recurrent/Relapsed: Cervical cancer is still detected or has returned (recurred/relapsed) following an initial treatment with surgery, radiation therapy, and/or chemotherapy.
Copyright ©; 2019 CancerConsultants. All Rights Reserved.
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'Enough's enough': O'Neill tried to stop Cooper abuse at RWC 2011
By Georgina Robinson
December 6, 2019 — 1.00am
Former rugby boss John O'Neill has revealed he personally intervened to try to stop the crowd's persecution of Quade Cooper at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
Cooper this week opened up about the split-second decision to knee All Blacks captain Richie McCaw in the head in the 2011 Tri Nations, a cheap act that cast him as New Zealand's public enemy No.1 and took a heavy toll on Australia's World Cup campaign two months later.
"The intent of what he was trying to do pissed me off more than the execution:" Richie McCaw on Quade Cooper.
He admitted he wasn't ready for the backlash that followed, and said he felt abandoned by coach Robbie Deans and the support staff and management at the then-Australian Rugby Union.
"I look back at it now and I wasn't ready for it," Cooper, 31, told former NRL player Isaac John's podcast The Ice Project.
"I had the expectation of 2011 [when the Reds won the Super Rugby title] of playing good football but now I had the pressure of all these guys hating me as well, and a whole country, not just the rugby public. I couldn't go anywhere. I was on the team bus and there were signs, 'I hope you break your leg, I hope you die in this game'.
O'Neill, who was ARU chief executive at the time, said he believed the organisation did as much as it could to support Cooper.
John O'Neill was at the helm of the then-Australian Rugby Union in 2011. Credit:Getty
"From the ARU's perspective, we were working very hard behind the scenes to help and I personally had many conversations with the New Zealand Rugby hierarchy saying, 'Enough's enough'," he said.
Cooper also revealed why he wouldn't own up to the incident as well as why, eventually, he had to confront McCaw about it for his own sake.
"If I had my time again, [because] I know how to handle it now, I'd just say, 'Yeah I did it, so what?'. Not 'So what?', but 'It's part of footy, it was a bad play but I did it', so what could people say?".
"A few years later I've seen Richie in the airport and I went up to him and said, 'Sorry about that'," he said.
"It's not that he didn't care or he did care but, when I said sorry to him, I confronted it and said, 'I really looked up to you as a kid, you were my idol, everyone in New Zealand loves you and I loved you, so when I played against you it was just emotion, passion took over, you were playing dirty on me and I kneed you. He's one of the best at [dirty play]."
The comments came as part of an epic debrief on the twists and turns in Cooper's career. A 70-Test five-eighth, he has just started his first season in Japan's second division rugby competition with the Kintetsu Liners.
Cooper also opened up on the dressing-room tensions between the old and new Wallabies guard that boiled over in 2012, after the Wallabies bowed out of the 2011 World Cup in the semi-finals and Cooper suffered an ACL (knee) injury in the bronze medal match against Wales.
"It was a battle of power really, the locker room was really unsettled," he said.
Quade Cooper played 70 Tests for Australia. Credit:Chris Hyde
"There was always disagreements, it was a nightmare, and that's when I said the environment was toxic, because I didn't like how it was making me feel because everyone was just arguing."
The tensions came to the surface, Cooper claimed, after he was forced to play injured against Argentina in the Rugby Championship. He helped steer the team to a 23-19 fight back win but felt let down when coach Robbie Deans admitted he would have benched his No.10 if he'd had that option.
"I hurt my knee in one of the training sessions and told the management I had a bit of floating cartilege. I said, 'I don't know if I can play', they said, 'No you're sweet, you can get surgery next week in the week off, this is the last week and we need to win it'," Cooper said.
"I went into the game and I couldn't really kick because every time I kicked that bit of cartilege would get stuck in my joint. Willy [Genia], off the kick-off, threw the ball to me, I hesitated to kick and it and ended up getting charged down.
"We won the game and in the media [conference, post-match] Robbie said to the media, 'If we had a reserve to bring on' - all our boys got injured - 'I would have hooked Quade'.
"So we won the game, I'd just played through an injury he knew about, so I felt really let down and embarrassed.
"I took that, and I ended up saying,' F--- you, you've just thrown me out to dry', I said, 'You're a s--- coach'. Not in those words but I basically said that. We ended up getting in a bit of an argument and that's when I got fined from the ARU, like $70,000 or something (Cooper was fined a total of $60,000, $20,000 of which was suspended)."
O'Neill, who resigned as CEO after the disciplinary process but before Cooper signed a new contract, said the ugly incidents were common after disappointing campaigns.
"It often happens after a World Cup, when hopes are so high. Queensland had won Super Rugby, we'd won the Tri Nations and we went in as pretty warm favourites," he recalled.
Quade Cooper speaks after accepting a fine and reprimand for his "toxic" comments. Credit:Anthony Johnson
"There's usually quite a purge and a blame game after a disappointing World Cup."
Cooper also gave an extraordinary insight into some of the goings-on after O'Neill's departure, including the allegation a senior executive had tried to "embarrass" him in front of other ARU staff.
Cooper was not offered a national "top-up" on top of his Reds offer, and the chairmans of the Queensland and Australian rugby unions were called in to intervene and resolve the impasse.
"Just before I paid the fine, I went in to do a negotiation (with the ARU) and they offered me zero," he said.
"They called me in for this meeting to discuss my [contract] and basically he (an unnamed executive) just did it to embarrass me. A big board room, everyone in there, slid me the piece of paper, 'here's your top up mate', it had a big zero on it.
"[Cooper's manager Khoder Nasser] just said 'thanks mate, appreciate it, thank you'. Took that contract and we walked out of there.
"I was like 'what's happening now?' and a few days later I was speaking to the president and stuff like that and the bloke that did that got sacked."
Cooper re-signed for two years on December 7. He featured heavily in the Wallabies set up under Ewen McKenzie and made the 2015 World Cup squad under Michael Cheika, before joining Toulon for a season in 2016, before returning to the Reds at Ballymore.
Things turned frosty when Brad Thorn, All Blacks and Broncos legend, was elevated to head coach ahead of the 2018 season.
"I was just on too much money. Thorny had just took over as coach and he wanted the guys that he wanted. But you're not able to do that when he's paying me," he said. "The easiest way for them was to force me out."
The manner in which that happened appeared to hurt Cooper, but he revealed that he was able to flip his perspective with the help of good friend Sonny Bill Williams and manager Khoder Nasser.
Cooper enjoyed a rebirth in Melbourne but the season ended poorly. Credit:AAP
"I felt really lost because I thought what do I do now? Is this the end of my career?" he said.
"I sat down with Khoder, Sonny, they said, 'It's not actually a bad situation'. I have to strip it back, understand it, instead of just letting your ego take over.
"That's what we were able to pick them up on. They thought my ego would take over and I'd say I'm too good to be playing club football, you can't treat me like this, and bit back."
The stand-off was lapped up by fans and commentators, as Cooper played in the Brisbane club comp with Souths while he was still being paid by Queensland and Rugby Australia.
He eventually signed a deal with the Rebels, who picked up him up at a bargain price. Cooper and Will Genia lit up the first half of Super Rugby this year before the Rebels' campaign derailed. He missed World Cup selection and signed with Kintetsu.
Cooper said he wasn't sure where his relationship with Cheika broke down but he felt the then-Wallabies coach did not enjoy being challenged.
"I know for a fact that I'll speak my mind and maybe for him, if I wasn't saying yes in agreeance with him, then I was a bad team guy from his perspective," Cooper said.
"There were a lot of things going on in that locker room that weren't running smoothly and when we'd have a team meeting they'd say, 'Does anyone have a different point of view?' and I'd say, 'Yeah I see it this way' and he'd get really offended by that.
"I'm not sure what it's from but he's definitely successful off [the field] and that's why he wanted to do it a certain way. Not that that's right or wrong, but we were seeing it as players, there were certain things that were happening that we couldn't put up with so when we'd speak up about it...''
Cooper said he worked hard on the points Cheika raised with him but knew it was for nought.
"We had a conversation on the phone about selection and I just said, 'Mate, the things you're telling me to go work on, I'm doing those things, so if you're just not going to pick me, you just don't like the way I play, then that's fine, tell me that and be up front," Cooper said.
"So you're not just going, 'Go work on your passing'. I know I'm the best passer in the team. You want me to go work on my kicking? I'll working on my kicking. But don't feed me bulls---. I said that to him on the phone, and I remember he got the s---- with that, we ended up having a big argument.
"Same thing with [back rower] Scott Higginbotham, had the same conversations. Two guys never to play with him again."
On what happened after the Reds won the title
"We started winning and we just thought we were going to win everything. Even saying things, I started to realise when you've got a little bit of power, you think, 'I'm not going to get pushed around anymore'. 'When I'm feeling a certain way I'm going to say it', and when I started to do that, I started getting some backlash. You've got fans and people that hate you, but when you start speaking out, that's magnified again. That Richie McCaw stuff, that just turned a whole nation against me."
Quade Cooper during the Reds' victorious Super Rugby semi-final in 2011. They went on to win the title. Credit:Getty
On Richie McCaw
(Question) Did you knee him in the head on purpose? "Yeah. The thing is, the stuff that happens on a footy field, that's so small. I've been punched in the head, kneed in the head, all that stuff, but it was who you did it to. Already, I was a Kiwi boy playing for Australia, so they [were] already hating on me to start with and then I go and knee the captain of the All Blacks, untouchable, in the head. That's even worse.
"I walked into New Zealand for the World Cup and I've never been involved in anything like it. I couldn't walk (anywhere), I couldn't go anywhere. I was on the team bus and there were signs 'I hope you break your leg, I hope you die in this game'. Things like that. I went from being well known to the most well known and the most hated. It was crazy.
On his ACL injury at the 2011 World Cup
"I didn't [handle it] and that was the thing, I had no help. I was basically ... I had no protection from the ARU, from the coaches, no one came out and protected me, except for my nanna.
"I was a little bit lost, but the mental aspect is tough. To come back to that same level ... and I did everything I could to get back there but my first season ... (I was brought back too early).
"I was way off. I was limping around on one leg, my leg was like a toothpick, there was no muscle on it so there's no control on it, and I had no confidence. I didn't step off it for two years. Now I've got no issues with it but going back then I shouldn't have been playing."
On the man in the mirror
"I was trying my hardest to lie to myself (about being fit). Same with the Richie, I was trying so hard to block it out. People say 'do you just block it out, the boos and things like that' and you say 'yeah I can't even hear it'. F*cken oath you can hear it. When you're on the field, that stuff is so clear, people don't realise it. If someone yells out something in the crowd, they might be in row 108 and you hear it dead clear. 'Quade you're a f*ckwhit, I hope you die'.
On the 'toxic' Wallabies in 2012
"The team was pretty much divided 50/50 between al the young guys and all the old guys, so the locker room was pretty up and down. You think about myself, Kurtley [Beale], [James] O'Connor, [David] Pocock, [Will] Genia, all starters, all 21, 22, and then you had the older guys. A lot of these guys were not playing or on the bench, or they were still playing and they wanted the say, but the majority of the guys were our age and we'd come through winning the comp.
"It was a battle of power really, the locker room was really unsettled. There was always disagreements, it was a nightmare, and that's when I said the environment was toxic, because I didn't like how it was making me feel because everyone was just arguing.
"I hurt my knee in one of the training sessions and I told the management beforehand I had a bit of floating cartilege. I said, 'I don't know if I can play', they said, 'No you're sweet, you can get surgery next week in the week off, this is the last game and we need to win it. I went into the game and I couldn't really kick becuase every time I kicked that bit of cartilege would get stuck in my joint.
"Willy [Genia], off the kick off threw the ball to me, I hesitated to kick and it and ended up getting charged down. At the end of the game, we won the game, and in the media announcement Robbie said to the media 'If we had a reserve to bring on (all our boys got injured), I would have hooked Quade.
"So we won the game, I'd just played through an injury he knew about, so I felt really let down and embarrassed, him saying that to the media. I took that, and I ended up saying f*ck you, you've just thrown me out to dry, I said 'you're a shit coach'. Not in those words but I basically said that. We ended up getting in a bit of an argument and that's when I got fined from the ARU, like $70,000 or something."
On being told the Reds didn't want him
"I was just on too much money. Thorny had just took over as coach and he wanted the guys that he wanted. But you're not able to do that when he's paying me. The easiest way for them was to force me out.
"It was all weird bro. What [Thorn's] achieved on the field, he's achieved everything you can. But the thing for me was I got a message - I'd just done three days of pre-season training camp, I'd been flogged for three days, I get a message on our day off at 9.30/10 at night from our team manager: 'Quade you don't have to do the promo tomorrow', you don't have to do the training in the morning, just come in for the meeting this afternoon'.
"I thought 'that's a bit weird, why don't I have to do that stuff'. I was thinking 'maybe they're looking after me, I'm getting a bit old'. Came in there, I had a weird feeling, I rung Khoder and said 'I don't have a good feeling about this, something happened to one of the other boys two days ago and maybe I'm on the same chopping block'. Off the back of that, he said, 'Whatever they say to you, go in there with your head high, say sweet, thank them and walk out'.
"I sat down and the conversation started weird. I was me, Thorny and the GM (general manager). The way they were speaking to me was really speaking down to me. They said, 'Quade you're the fifth choice flyhalf'. I giggled because I thought 'what you're saying has no merit now, you're taking the piss'. I'd understand if you said you'd prefer this guy over me, but saying I'm the fifth - so there's two guys here better than me and two guys in club footy better than me - that's just trying to make me pissed off. I said 'okay, I understand that's your opinion, I appreciate it, I got up, shook their hands and left'.
On club rugby
"It wasn't very hard to adjust to. There were more eyes on me because of what I was doing, I was sort of making a stand. It had happened to two younger guys beore me but no one heard about that beause they weren't really a name.
"When I went back ... [I said to myself] If I go back to club football and I'm not the best on the field every game then this backs up what just happened to me. So this is a challenge for me to be able to stay in good shape and be the best on field athletically, physically, in rugby smarts."
Australian rugby
Quade Cooper
Georgina Robinson
Georgina Robinson is the chief rugby reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.
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Black Men Need More Education Than White Men to Get Jobs
A new report shows yet another way African Americans face systematic disadvantage on the job market.
Margaret Barthel
Quick Shot/Shutterstock
Meet Steve and Kwame, two fictional guys who just graduated from the University of Maryland. Almost everything about them is weirdly identical—they majored in the same subject, they got the same grades in college, they have the same bullet points on their resumes—but Kwame is African American and Steve is white. Now, they’re both spending their post-pomp-and-circumstance summer looking for jobs. Do they have the same employment prospects?
A recent report from the advocacy group Young Invincibles suggests not: African American millennial men need two or more levels of education to have the same employment prospects as their white peers. White male college graduates have a 97.6% employment rate. Black male college graduates have a 92.8% employment rate—which correlates more closely with the job prospects for white men who have some college education but no degree (92.5%).
The 19th century reformer Horace Mann may have called education the great equalizer, but 150 years later, the numbers suggest otherwise. The reason for this is obvious—as the report points out, “the legacy of racial discrimination across centuries continues to impact economic disparities, and so young African Americans start on an uneven playing field.”
The study reports one (somewhat) hopeful finding: “Increased educational attainment clearly closes the gap, and closes it dramatically.” That means that each level of education an African American student achieves makes a steadily bigger difference in his employment prospects. Earning a high school diploma has a 50 percent larger impact on a black man’s employment likelihood than it does on a white man’s. By the time those two men arrive at the professional degree level, the 50 percent has become 146 percent: the African American man is much, much more likely to be employed now than he was with just a bachelor’s degree—even though a white man with a bachelor’s degree still has slightly better employment prospects than a black man who has gone to graduate school.
The outlook might change for African American students who gain entry to the nation’s top colleges—like Kwasi Enin, Akintunde Ahmad, and Avery Coffey, all young black men who made news this spring after receiving impressive numbers of acceptances from the Ivy League. Since they’re on their way to very prestigious institutions and will stand to benefit from extensive support networks, it’s reasonable to assume that the gap may shrink even further for them.
But it’s possible that it won’t disappear entirely, Ivy League pedigrees notwithstanding: inadvertent or not, discrimination still pervades the hiring process. In another study, fictitious job applicants with white-sounding names got 50 percent more callbacks than those whose names sounded African American, even when the resumes were otherwise the same.
Finding ways to increase the number of African American students at American colleges and graduate schools is certainly a worthwhile aim. But it's equally important to make sure they're getting the same advantages as their white peers after graduation day: the support networks and internship programs that can lead to stable careers. Otherwise, as The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates often points out, even the brightest African Americans may find it hard to succeed without being “twice as good and half as black.”
Margaret Barthel is a producer-reporter at WAMU-88.5 and a former producer at AtlanticLIVE.
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Debt Rattle March 25 2017
March 25, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:07 am Finance Tagged with: despair, earnings, Flynn, foreclosures, Greece, health care, MMT, pensions, pound, Trump 5 Responses »
Dorothea Lange Drought hit OK farm family on way to CA 1936
• With Health Bill Down, Trump Can Still Unleash HHS To Bedevil Obamacare (MW)
• The Heart Of The American Dream Has Stopped Beating (DiMartino Booth)
• Pension Crisis Too Big for Markets to Ignore (Danielle DiMartino Booth)
• The Swamp Drains Trump (Jim Kunstler)
• It Was A Very Bad Earnings Season (Snider)
• Flynn and Turkish Officials Discussed Kidnapping Erdogan Foe From US (WSJ)
• A ‘Deaths Of Despair’ Crisis Is Gripping America (BI)
• New Canadian Budget Drops Obsession With Balanced Budgets (Star)
• US Debt of $20 Trillion Visualized in Stacks of Physical Cash (Demonocracy)
• The Pound Is Going To Take A Huge Hit, According To Deutsche Bank (Ind.)
• Leaving Euro Would Not Help France And Italy – ECB Chief Economist (Ind.)
• Greece to Break Off Face-to-Face Talks With Creditors (BBG)
• Where Next For Greece? (Makropolis)
Big defeat. But not a knock-out. Trump needs better advisers.
In a spectacular turn of events, a shortage of support prompted Republican leadership to pull their health-care plan from a House of Representatives vote on Friday. The move means that the Affordable Care Act, also know as Obamacare, will remain in place “for the foreseeable future,” according to House Speaker Paul Ryan. Democrats, ACA supporters and opponents of the Republican American Health Care Act quickly hailed the development as a victory. But what was a legislative battle now is likely to move into the executive realm and the Department of Health and Human Services, led by longtime ACA opponent Dr. Tom Price. Experts say there is plenty that President Donald Trump’s administration can do to undermine the ACA. And any poor deterioration in the performance of the ACA could give Republicans a new opening: Trump indicated Friday that he might re-visit health care after Obamacare “explodes.”
“It’s going to be interesting to see how they balance the responsibility for ensuring the government functions with their hatred for the law,” said Spencer Perlman, director of health-care research at Veda Partners. “If they want to completely sabotage it they probably could, and call it a self-fulfilling prophecy.” The latter is all the more likely because the ACA works best with the help of administrative support and resources. Think of the ACA as a plant, one that requires light and tending-to, that gets inherited by a downright hostile owner. The best example of this occurred during enrollment for 2017 exchange plans. The months-long enrollment period began under former President Barack Obama’s administration, which passed the ACA, and ended under President Trump’s administration.
Enrollment, which had looked like it was on track to surpass previous years, dropped off following the transition, which many attributed to a dearth of marketing and promotional activity under Trump. Plus, the ACA’s problems — which may have helped elect Trump — still exist. Many insurers, including UnitedHealth, Humana and Aetna have exited the exchanges on which many participants purchase health insurance, contributing to a 25% on average increase in premiums. “The biggest thing that needs to be done is figuring out some way to attract young, healthy people” to exchange plans, Perlman said. But HHS, under Price’s leadership, seems unlikely to try to improve the law. And “purposefully sabotaging the exchanges and the ACA probably isn’t difficult,” said Perlman. And for that matter, HHS is “probably the only game in town right now” that can do it.
“..55% of mortgages in active foreclosure were originated between 2004 and 2008..”
According to ATTOM Data Solutions, the new parent company of RealtyTrac, default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions slid to 933,045 last year, the lowest tally since the 717,522 reported in 2006. Is the final chapter written? Not if you live in judicial foreclosure states such as New York, New Jersey and Florida where ‘legacy’ foreclosures take years to clear. At the end of last year, 55% of mortgages in active foreclosure were originated between 2004 and 2008. Factor in what’s still in the pipeline and one in ten circa 2006 homeowners will have lost their homes before it is all said and done. That helps explain one part of the chart below which was generously shared with me by one Dr. Gates. Longtime readers of these missives will recognize the nom de plume of my inside-industry economic sleuth. His first take on this sad visual, was that, “The heart of the American Dream has stopped beating.” Did that stop your heart as it did my own?
As you can see, after a steady 40-year build, owner-occupied housing has stagnated and sits at the lowest level since 2004. This has sent the homeownership rate crashing to 63.4%, the lowest since 1967. It would be nice to think that things were looking up for would-be homeowners. But it’s difficult to be overly optimistic when the local newspaper reports that house flipping in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area rose 21% in 2016, seven times the national rate. In all, 193,000 properties nationwide were flipped for a quick inside-12-months profit last year, a 3.1 increase to a nine-year high. Moreover, the median age of a flipped home rose to a two-decade high of 37 years, about double the median age of homes flipped before the crisis hit. That translated into a median gross profit of $69,624 on a median selling price of $189,900 in 2016, a neat 49.2% margin, the highest on record. Awesome!
Very good -and scary- from Danielle DiMartino Booth. I’ve often asked: what happened to pension funds investing in AAA paper? But there’s more: without accounting tricks dominoes would already be falling. This is not some coincidence, it’s actual policy as conducted by The American Academy of Actuaries.
The question is why haven’t the headlines presaged pension implosions? As was the case with the subprime crisis, the writing appears to be on the wall. And yet calamity has yet to strike. How so? Call it the triumvirate of conspirators – the actuaries, accountants and their accomplices in office. Throw in the law of big numbers, very big numbers, and you get to a disaster in a seemingly permanent state of making. Unfunded pension obligations have risen to $1.9 trillion from $292 billion since 2007. Credit rating firms have begun downgrading states and municipalities whose pensions risk overwhelming their budgets. New Jersey and the cities of Chicago, Houston and Dallas are some of the issuers in the crosshairs.
Morgan Stanley says municipal bond issuance is down this year in part because of borrowers are wary of running up new debts to effectively service pensions. Federal Reserve data show that in 1952, the average public pension had 96% of its portfolio invested in bonds and cash equivalents. Assets matched future liabilities. But a loosening of state laws in the 1980s opened the door to riskier investments. In 1992, fixed income and cash had fallen to an average of 47% of holdings. By 2016, these safe investments had declined to 27%. It’s no coincidence that pensions’ flight from safety has coincided with the drop in interest rates. That said, unlike their private peers, public pensions discount their liabilities using the rate of returns they assume their overall portfolio will generate.
In fiscal 2016, which ended June 30th, the average return for public pensions was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5%. Corporations’ accounting rules dictate the use of more realistic bond yields to discount their pensions’ future liabilities. Put differently, companies have been forced to set aside something closer to what it will really cost to service their obligations as opposed to the fantasy figures allowed among public pensions. So why not just flip the switch and require truth and honesty in public pension math? Too many cities and potentially states would buckle under the weight of more realistic assumed rates of return. By some estimates, unfunded liabilities would triple to upwards of $6 trillion if the prevailing yields on Treasuries were used.
That would translate into much steeper funding requirements at a time when budgets are already severely constrained. Pockets of the country would face essential public service budgets being slashed to dangerous levels. What’s a pension to do? Increasingly, the answer is swing for the fences. Forget the fact that just under half of pension assets are in the second-most overvalued stock market in history. Even as Fed officials publicly fret about commercial real estate valuations, pensions have socked away 8% of their portfolios into this less than liquid asset class. Even further out on the risk and liquidity spectrum is the 10% that pensions have allocated to private equity and limited partnerships.
“While the nation remains entertained by all this, the Potemkin financial system will wobble, crash, and burn and the humiliation of Donald Trump will be complete.”
One can’t help marveling at the way the “Russian interference” motif has shifted the spotlight off the substance of what Wikileaks revealed about Clinton Foundation and DNC misdeeds onto Trump campaign officials “colluding” with Russians, supposedly to support their interference in the election. It’s true that the election is way over and the public is no longer concerned with Hillary or her foundation (which is closing shop anyway). But the switcheroo is impressive, and quite confusing, considering recently retired NSA James Clapper just two weeks ago said on NBC’s Meet the Press that there was “no evidence” of collusion Between Trump and Russia. Okay… uh, say what? On Monday, FBI Director James Comey revealed that his agency had been investigating the Trump Campaign since at least last August. Is that so…? Investigating how? Some sort of electronic surveillance?
Well, what else would they do nowadays? Send a gumshoe to a hotel room where he could press his ear on a drinking glass against the wall to eavesdrop on Paul Manafort? I don’t think so. Of course they were sifting through emails, phone calls, and every other sort of electronic communication. Trump’s big blunder was to tweet that he’d been “wiretapped.” Like the FBI patched into a bunch of cables with alligator clips in the basement of Trump Tower … or planted a “bug” in the earpiece of his bedside phone. How quaint. We also don’t have ice boxes anymore, though plenty of struggling weight-watchers across the land speak guiltily of “raiding the icebox.” But if it’s true, as Mr. Comey said, that the FBI had been investigating Trump’s campaign, the people around him, and Trump himself, since August, how could they not have captured some of Trump’s conversations?
[..] So, the long and the short of it is that the RussiaGate story is spinning out of control, and Trump’s adversaries — who go well beyond Congress into the Deep State — might be getting enough leverage to dump Trump. Either they will maneuver him and his people into some kind of perjury rap, or they will tie up the government in such a web of investigative procedural rigmarole that all the country lawyers who ever snapped their galluses will never be able to unravel it. While the nation remains entertained by all this, the Potemkin financial system will wobble, crash, and burn and the humiliation of Donald Trump will be complete. Abandoned by the Republican Party, isolated and crazed in the White House, tweeting out mad appeals to heaven, he’ll either voluntarily pass the baton to Mike Pence or he will be declared unfit to serve and removed under the 25th amendment.
The after-effects of that will be something to behold: a “lose-lose” for both old-line political parties. The Trumpists will never forgive the Republican Party, and the Democrats will have gained nothing. Don’t let the door bang you on the butt on your way out.
What a surprise.
With nearly all of the S&P 500 companies having reported their Q4 numbers, we can safely claim that it was a very bad earnings season. It may seem incredulous to categorize the quarter that way given that EPS growth (as reported) was +29%, but even that rate tells us something significant about how there is, actually, a relationship between economy and at least corporate profits. Keynes famously said that we should never worry about the long run for there we will all be dead, but EPS has arrived at the long run and there is still quite a lot of living to do. As late as October, analysts were projecting $29 in earnings for the S&P 500 in Q4 2016. As of the middle of the earnings reports last month, that estimate suddenly dropped to just $26.37. In the month since that time, with the almost all of the rest having now reported, the current figure is just $24.15 – a decline of over $2 in four weeks. Therefore, 29% growth is hugely disappointing because it wasn’t 55% growth as was projected when the quarter began.
It is also the timing of the downgrades that is important as it relates to both “reflation” and the economy meant to support it. All throughout last year, in the aftermath of the near-recession to start 2016, EPS estimates for Q4 (and beyond) were very stable, unusually so given the recent past. That shows us how analysts, at least, were expecting the economy to go once it got past “global turmoil.” It was the “V” shaped rebound typical for past cyclical behavior. But it wasn’t until companies actually started reporting earnings that the belief was tested and then found severely lacking. With just $24.15 for Q4, total EPS was for the calendar year less than $95, the ninth straight quarter below the $100 level. More importantly, on a trailing-twelve month basis, EPS don’t appear to be in any hurry (except in future estimates) to revisit the prior peak of $106 all the way back in Q3 2014.
Like a cheap crime novel: Flynn gets paid $530,000 “on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey”, and ends up discussing kidnapping Erdogan’s enemy. Oh, and Biden knew about this conversation. So Obama knew too.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, while serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign, met with top Turkish government ministers and discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey, according to former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey, who attended, and others who were briefed on the meeting. The discussion late last summer involved ideas about how to get Fethullah Gulen, a cleric whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed military coup, to Turkey without going through the U.S. extradition legal process, according to Mr. Woolsey and those who were briefed. Mr. Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal he arrived at the meeting in New York on Sept. 19 in the middle of the discussion and found the topic startling and the actions being discussed possibly illegal.
The Turkish ministers were interested in open-ended thinking on the subject, and the ideas were raised hypothetically, said the people who were briefed. The ministers in attendance included the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the country’s foreign minister, foreign-lobbying disclosure documents show. Mr. Woolsey said the idea was “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.” The discussion, he said, didn’t include actual tactics for removing Mr. Gulen from his U.S. home. If specific plans had been discussed, Mr. Woolsey said, he would have spoken up and questioned their legality. It isn’t known who raised the idea or what Mr. Flynn concluded about it. Price Floyd, a spokesman for Mr. Flynn, who was advising the Trump campaign on national security at the time of the meeting, disputed the account, saying “at no time did Gen. Flynn discuss any illegal actions, nonjudicial physical removal or any other such activities.”
[..] On March 2, weeks after Mr. Flynn’s departure from the Trump administration, the Flynn Intel Group, his consulting firm, filed with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for the government of Turkey. Mr. Trump was unaware Mr. Flynn had been consulting on behalf of the Turkish government when he named him national security adviser, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said this month. In its filing, Mr. Flynn’s firm said its work from August to November “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn’t paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.
[..] Mr. Woolsey said he didn’t say anything during the discussion, but later cautioned some attendees that trying to remove Mr. Gulen was a bad idea that might violate U.S. law. Mr. Woolsey said he also informed the U.S. government by notifying Vice President Joe Biden through a mutual friend. [..] Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments.
“.. he identified three kinds of suicide: altruistic, anomic, and egoistic. Of the three, the most complicated is anomic suicide. Anomie essentially means the breakdown of social values and norms, and Durkheim closely associated anomic suicide with economic catastrophe.”
[..] this isn’t the first time that social change has caused self-destructiveness on a mass scale. Indeed, 19th-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote about similar problems in his time, and might refer to the plague of white middle-class mortality we see today as “a state of upheaval.” Of course, the lesson of the 2016 presidential election was that working- and middle-class whites are suffering. What Durkheim offers, though, is the argument for why the newly elected government in Washington — voted in by this very constituency — is getting the solution all wrong. The way to fix this problem is not through less government — but through more. Durkheim’s seminal work, the 1897 book “Suicide,” remains one of the most in-depth examinations of why these situations occur in society, and it is as relevant as ever. Its lessons are an indication that as a country, we are moving swiftly, carelessly in the wrong direction.
The Americans we are talking about are white and middle class. They are aged 45-55. They are losing the battle against heart disease and cancer, and they are succumbing to drugs, alcohol and suicide at rates unseen in modern history or in other developed countries. “The combined effect means that mortality rates of whites with no more than a high school degree, which were around 30% lower than mortality rates of blacks in 1999, grew to be 30% higher than blacks by 2015,” Case and Deaton wrote. The easy thing to say is that these people are suffering from economic and social anxiety and leave it at that. What’s harder to pinpoint is what exactly that means and how to fix it. Economic conditions for minorities in the same social class and in the same communities are as hard, if not harder, than they are for middle class whites. But death rates aren’t increasing for them.
This is where Durkheim comes in. He wrote his work in the midst of another state of upheaval, as industrialization was taking over the world and old economic patterns were falling away. This was the beginning of modern life as we now know it. And it was killing people. Durkheim found that the degree to which a person is integrated in society is inversely correlated to their likelihood to engage in life-threatening behaviors and suicide. In his work, he identified three kinds of suicide: altruistic, anomic, and egoistic. Of the three, the most complicated is anomic suicide. Anomie essentially means the breakdown of social values and norms, and Durkheim closely associated anomic suicide with economic catastrophe. [..] One of the big factors, then, in the increase in substance abuse and suicide among the white middle class could be a decline in the social framework as a result of the rapid economic changes seen over the last few decades.
We’re getting into Steve Keen territory. At last.
I’m intrigued by Modern Monetary Theory, which maintains governments can create (or ‘print’) money to fill public needs and can’t go into debt to themselves, though they should keep an eye on inflation.
Sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t agree that Wednesday’s federal budget was a non-event: “cynical,” a “placeholder,” “bafflegab and buzzwords” — as others wrote. I think this budget rocked, in one sense: it did a 180 on the stifling monomania of the last 30 years. I’m referring to the obsession with deficits. As recently as last election, the Liberals promised a balanced budget by the end of their first term. Now their projected deficits are even higher but that promise is gone and the thought process, transformed. Finance minister Bill Morneau blandly says, they’ll “be responsible every step along the way” and “show a decline in net debt to GDP,” which totally shifts the metric. He might as well have trilled, “Tra-la-la, we really don’t care.” It’s a damn earthquake.
For proof, look not at the opposition – Rona Ambrose predictably called it “spending out of control”- but at the journalists, who were left sputtering. It’s so radical they struggled for words. Peter Mansbridge began interviewing Morneau with: “How does it feel to know you’ll likely never have a balanced budget?” I wish Morneau had said, “I’m fine, but is there anything I can do to help you through this?” Mansbridge couldn’t stop, turning plaintively to his panel: “I tried to get him on the deficit … Is there a right and wrong any more?” Jennifer Ditchburn tried to soothe him with, “Deficit is a word they just don’t use any more.”
If I’m hyperventilating, it’s because I’ve led a cramped existence all these years, bowed under the weight of deficitism since I first heard the phrase, “Yeah, but how ya gonna pay for that?” during the 1988 election. No one knew where it came from or how it usurped all other political concerns, like a missive from heaven, or the Fraser Institute. Paul Martin adopted it, using it to sink the Canada we knew, and his own career. Yet, there’s apparently an ebb and flow to these things: a Nanos poll says Canadians now want Ottawa to run deficits as long as overall debt declines relative to GDP. That’s a pretty sophisticated alteration for ordinary folks to make intuitively; it makes you wonder if someone isn’t pulling strings somewhere and decided to drop a new backdrop (to public discourse) over the previous one.
Nicely done. Like the music.
Showing stacks of physical cash in following sequence: $100, $10,000, $1 Million, $2 Billion, $1 Trillion, $20 Trillion The faith and value of the US Dollar rests on the Government’s ability to repay its debt. “The money in the video has already been spent”
Sounds reasonable.
When it comes to the pound, currency analysts at Deutsche Bank have for months proved to be some of the most bearish across the City, but they’ve just turned even more pessimistic in their outlook for the battered currency. In its latest special report on Brexit released this week, the German lender said the pound could fall as a low as $1.06 against the dollar by the end of 2017, or another 15%. “We do not see sterling (currently) fully pricing a hard Brexit outcome,” the bank wrote. “Combined with limited adjustment in the UK’s current account deficit and slowing growth, we see further downside, and forecast $1.06 in by year-end,” it added.
In an interview with Bloomberg in February, George Saravelos, the German lender’s global co-head of foreign exchange, hinted that the bank could cut its official forecast. He said at the time that sterling could still slip by 16% against the dollar to $1.05 cent as the “incredibly complicated” nature of Brexit becomes ever more clear. Most economists’ forecasts are still more optimistic than Deutsche Bank’s, but few expect the currency to recover from its post-referendum lows any time soon. According to poll of more than 60 banks and research institutions conducted by Reuters that was released earlier this month, forecasters on average expect the currency to trade at $1.23 against the dollar by the end of June, and drop to $1.21 in the subsequent three to six months.
Praet is a true believer.
The chief economist of the ECB has warned Italy and France that their economic problems would not be solved by breaking up the single currency. In an interview with Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper, Peter Praet, an executive board member of the ECB, said the idea that the euro was the root cause of high unemployment and low growth in certain European countries was a populist “deception”. “What I do worry about is the populist narrative that things were better before the euro,” he said. “This is a deception. We arrived at monetary union after disastrous experiences with floating exchange rates and some unsuccessful attempts of orderly floating. “The devaluations that populists claim is a free lunch and allows to regain competitiveness by miracle proved extremely expensive.”
With specific reference to Italy, he said: “The nostalgic alternative that everything will be all right just by returning to the lira amounts to fooling the people. The cost of a regime change would be huge and the poor would be the ones that suffer the most.” Mr Praet acknowledged that the euro had lost popularity in many European countries, but said that it had been made a “scapegoat” for other economic policy failures by politicians. However, many credible economists argue that in the absence of fiscal stimulus by core countries in Europe that run current account surpluses, the monetary restrictions of the single currency are indeed driving the economic distress of the likes of France, Italy, Portugal and Greece.
Italy’s Five Star movement, currently leading in national opinion polls, has proposed a referendum on Italy’s membership of the single currency. Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France has previously called for the reinstatement of the franc, although she did not reiterate this in the national debate among presidential candidates earlier this week ahead of April’s national elections. The level of Italy’s GDP is barely higher than when the single currency was formed in 2000 and its working age unemployment rate currently stands at 12 per cent. The French unemployment rate is just below 10% and for young people it is double that.
An outright lie: “Greece can only do that if Greece has a competitive economy. To that end, it needs to carry out reforms, and we’re giving Greece time to do that.”
Greece and the institutions managing its bailout review will break off negotiations in Brussels without having cleared a path to conclude the deliberations that would release needed rescue funds. Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, who was meeting with officials from the euro area and the IMF will return to Athens by Saturday. The two sides still have issues to work out, said the official, who asked not to be named in line with policy. Some progress was made and discussions will continue from their respective headquarters, according to a spokesman from the European Stability Mechanism, the euro-area’s bailout monitor. Greece is edging closer to a repeat of the 2015 drama that pushed Europe’s most indebted state to the edge of economic collapse, as the government in Athens and its creditors disagree over reforms to the pension system and the labor and energy markets.
Greece needs to complete the review in order to get the next portion of its aid payment before it has more than €7 billion of bonds come due in July. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble increased the pressure on Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to accede to creditor demands. “Greece has said it wants to stay in the euro,” Schaeuble said in an interview on Deutschlandfunk radio on Friday. “Greece can only do that if Greece has a competitive economy. To that end, it needs to carry out reforms, and we’re giving Greece time to do that.” [..] European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker urged Greece and its creditors in an emailed statement to reach a deal that respects commitments made on all sides. In response to Tsipras’s letter, Juncker called on the Greeks not to reverse reforms and creditors “to give Greece the desired and necessary room for maneuver to build its own future.”
Reasonable overview, but any talk of agreements that could lead Greece back to growth is nonsense. The EU would never sign such an agreement. Theie attitude to date has made that abundantly clear.
In September last year, when Alexis Tsipras visited New York to speak at the UN Assembly, he held a meeting with some heavyweights of the international investment community. The Greek prime minister was reportedly advised by the participants that if he wanted to build trust in Greece as an attractive investment destination, he should shift focus from his main objective of debt relief towards ensuring Greece’s participation in the ECB’s QE programme. The investors apparently pointed out to the SYRIZA leader that such a development would have a wide range of benefits for Greece and provide the steadiest path towards regaining market access and the successful completion of the current programme, without the need to follow it up with a fourth memorandum of understanding (MoU).
Tsipras seemingly heeded the advice and, just as the second review was about to start, he charted a path out of the crisis. He set out his intention to close the review by December 2016, secure QE at the start of 2017 and dip his toe back into the markets with a small issue or two early this summer when Greece has to roll over the bond that it issued in 2014, when Antonis Samaras was prime minister. However, the timetable Tsipras identified last autumn has gone up in smoke.
March 24, 2017 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:59 am Finance Tagged with: Apple, bubble, CIA, despair, drowning, EU, healthcare, M5S, refugees, retail, Trump, Wikileaks 4 Responses »
DPC “Broad Street and curb market, New York” 1906
• Trump Ultimatum: Pass Health Bill Now Or Live With Obamacare (MW)
• The US Has the Most Expensive Healthcare System in the World (Statista)
• ‘Deaths of Despair’ Surge in White US Middle Class (Vox)
• The Retail Apocalypse Has Officially Descended On America (BI)
• WikiLeaks Releases Vault 7 “Dark Matter”: CIA Bugs “Factory Fresh” iPhones (WL)
• China’s Property Bubble Risks Youth Revolt (CNBC)
• China’s Largest Dairy Operator Crashes Over 90% In Minutes (ZH)
• Eurozone Whistles Past its Biggest Threat: Italy’s Multi-Headed Hydra (ZH)
• Schäuble Annoyed By Foreign Minister Saying Germany Should Pay More To EU (R.)
• Greek Objections Mar Preparations For EU’s 60th Birthday (R.)
• Greece Says To Support Rome Declaration, Calls For EU Backing On Reforms (R.)
• 40% Of Greek Businesses Say Likely To Close Shop Within The Year (K.)
• EU Envoy: Three Million Migrants Waiting To Cross Into Greece (K.)
• Over 250 Migrants Feared Drowned On ‘Black Day’ In Mediterranean (AFP)
This will attract some media attention. Better do it after the markets close.
President Donald Trump reportedly laid down an ultimatum to House Republicans on Thursday night: Pass the health-care bill, as is, on Friday, or live with Obamacare. The hard line came after more than a day of frantic negotiations to win the support of conservative Republicans who oppose the bill, and could block its passage. A vote on the bill had been scheduled for Thursday night, but was postponed earlier in the day after the GOP couldn’t win over holdout lawmakers. White House budget director Mitch Mulvaney dropped Trump’s demand in a meeting with rank-and-file House Republicans, and said the administration and House Speaker Paul Ryan were done with negotiations, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. If Friday’s bill fails, Trump is resigned to live with Obamacare and move on, he said.
CNN similarly reported that the closed-door meeting ended with an ultimatum, and Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) told the network that the vote is expected to be held Friday afternoon. The move is a gamble by the Trump administration, which has placed much political capital in its promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. “They’re going to bring it up, pass or fail,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) told the Washington Post. The GOP can’t afford more than 21 dissenting votes, but CNN counted 26 “no” votes and four more “likely” no votes. Every House Democrat is expected to oppose the bill.
And what’s worse, no way out.
If the American Healthcare Act, President Trump’s first major legislative effort, is going to a vote in the House of Representatives as scheduled on Thursday, it is by no means clear that it will receive the 215 votes it needs for passage. When the Republican healthcare plan was first presented to the public on March 6, it left people from both sides of the political spectrum dissatisfied. While Democrats fear that the suggested bill, which would repeal large portions of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, would leave millions of Americans uninsured and hurt the poor and vulnerable, many Republicans think it doesn’t go far enough in erasing all traces of Obamacare.
For many years now, the American healthcare system has been flawed. As our chart illustrates, U.S. health spending per capita (including public and private spending) is higher than it is anywhere else in the world, and yet, the country lags behind other nations in several aspects such as life expectancy and health insurance coverage. This chart shows health spending (public and private) per capita in selected countries.
Not my original observation, but true: it looks a lot like Russia in the 1990s.
In 2015, a blockbuster study came to a surprising conclusion: Middle-aged white Americans are dying younger for the first time in decades, despite positive life expectancy trends in other wealthy countries and other segments of the US population. The research, by Princeton University’s Anne Case and Angus Deaton, highlighted the links between economic struggles, suicides, and alcohol and drug overdoses. Since then, Case and Deaton have been working to more fully explain their findings. They’ve now come to a compelling conclusion: It’s complicated. There’s no single reason for this disturbing increase in the mortality rate, but a toxic cocktail of factors. In a new 60-page paper, “Mortality and morbidity in the 21st Century,” out in draft form in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Thursday, the researchers weave a narrative of “cumulative disadvantage” over a lifetime for white people ages 45 through 54, particularly those with low levels of education.
[..] The US, particularly middle-aged white Americans, is an outlier in the developed world when it comes to this mid-life mortality uptick. “Mortality rates in comparable rich countries have continued their pre-millennial fall at the rates that used to characterize the US,” Case and Deaton write. “In contrast to the US, mortality rates in Europe are falling for those with low levels of educational attainment, and are doing so more rapidly than mortality rates for those with higher levels of education.” If American wants to turn the trend around, then it has to become a little more like other countries with more generous safety nets and more accessible health care, the researchers said.
Introducing a single-payer health system, for example, or value-added or goods and services taxes that support a stronger safety net would be top of their policy wish list. (America right now is, of course, moving in the opposite direction under Trump, and shredding the safety net.) They also admit, though, that it’s taken decades to reverse the mortality progress in America, and it won’t be turned around quickly or easily. But there is one “no-brainer” change that could help, Case added. “The easy thing would be close the tap on prescription opioids for chronic pain.” Unlike health care and increasing taxes, opioids are actually a public health issue with bipartisan support. Deaton, for his part, was hopeful. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, he said, “All policy seems impossible until it suddenly becomes inevitable.”
“Visits declined by 50% between 2010 and 2013..” “What’s going on is the customers don’t have the fucking money. That’s it. This isn’t rocket science.”
Thousands of mall-based stores are shutting down in what’s fast becoming one of the biggest waves of retail closures in decades. More than 3,500 stores are expected to close in the next couple of months. Department stores like JCPenney, Macy’s, Sears, and Kmart are among the companies shutting down stores, along with middle-of-the-mall chains like Crocs, BCBG, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Guess. Some retailers are exiting the brick-and-mortar business altogether and trying to shift to an all-online model. For example, Bebe is closing all its stores — about 170 — to focus on increasing its online sales, according to a Bloomberg report. The Limited also recently shut down all 250 of its stores, but it still sells merchandise online.
Others, such as Sears and JCPenney, are aggressively paring down their store counts to unload unprofitable locations and try to staunch losses. Sears is shutting down about 10% of its Sears and Kmart locations, or 150 stores, and JCPenney is shutting down about 14% of its locations, or 138 stores. According to many analysts, the retail apocalypse has been a long time coming in the US, where stores per capita far outnumber that of any other country. The US has 23.5 square feet of retail space per person, compared with 16.4 square feet in Canada and 11.1 square feet in Australia, the next two countries with the most retail space per capita, according to a Morningstar Credit Ratings report from October. Visits to shopping malls have been declining for years with the rise of e-commerce and titanic shifts in how shoppers spend their money. Visits declined by 50% between 2010 and 2013, according to the real-estate research firm Cushman & Wakefield.
[..] as longtime retail analyst Howard Davidowitz observed in 2014, “What’s going on is the customers don’t have the fucking money. That’s it. This isn’t rocket science.”
This could be a huge blow to Apple. Who wants to buy something the CIA has already tinkered with in the factory? Expect giant lawsuits too. Apple knew.
Today, March 23rd 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 “Dark Matter”, which contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac Computer firmware (meaning the infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the CIA’s Embedded Development Branch (EDB). These documents explain the techniques used by CIA to gain ‘persistence’ on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones and demonstrate their use of EFI/UEFI and firmware malware. Among others, these documents reveal the “Sonic Screwdriver” project which, as explained by the CIA, is a “mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop is booting” allowing an attacker to boot its attack software for example from a USB stick “even when a firmware password is enabled”. The CIA’s “Sonic Screwdriver” infector is stored on the modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.
“DarkSeaSkies” is “an implant that persists in the EFI firmware of an Apple MacBook Air computer” and consists of “DarkMatter”, “SeaPea” and “NightSkies”, respectively EFI, kernel-space and user-space implants. Documents on the “Triton” MacOSX malware, its infector “Dark Mallet” and its EFI-persistent version “DerStake” are also included in this release. While the DerStake1.4 manual released today dates to 2013, other Vault 7 documents show that as of 2016 the CIA continues to rely on and update these systems and is working on the production of DerStarke2.0.
Also included in this release is the manual for the CIA’s “NightSkies 1.2” a “beacon/loader/implant tool” for the Apple iPhone. Noteworthy is that NightSkies had reached 1.2 by 2008, and is expressly designed to be physically installed onto factory fresh iPhones. i.e the CIA has been infecting the iPhone supply chain of its targets since at least 2008. While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization’s supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and resending) leaving the United States or otherwise.
A lot of cities around the world share that risk.
China faces the risk of youth disenchantment as property prices rise beyond their reach, a renowned Chinese economist said Friday. “In a regular country, wealth should be concentrated in the financial markets, not fixed assets,” said Renmin University of China Vice President Wu Xiaoqiu at a media interview at the Boao Forum in the province of Hainan. He highlighted the risks from the current property bubble in China, such as negative asset values if prices tank. More importantly, the social risks that come from the property bubble in the form of youth disenchantment with not being to afford a home will be damaging, he said. “If young people lose hope, the economy will suffer, as housing is a necessity,” he said.
Wu said he was hopeful the authorities would find a solution to constrain the froth in Chinese real estate, but admitted that repeated measures to curb speculation have so far only met with short-term success. Wu’s comments follow a People’s Bank of China survey published on Tuesday, which found that 52.2% of urban households perceived housing prices to be “unacceptably high” in the first quarter of the year, Reuters reported. In February, gains in Chinese home prices picked up pace after they slowed in the previous four months despite government efforts to curb speculation, Reuters reported on Sunday. Prices in the big cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen rose 22.1%, 21.1% and 13.5%, respectively, from a year ago.
In December 2016, Muddy Waters’ Carson Block said China’s largest dairy farm operator, Hong-Kong listed China Huishan Dairy, is “worth close to zero” and questioned its profitability in a report. Today, with no catalyst, it suddenly almost is. The stock collapsed over 90% in minutes to a record low. The sudden crash wiped out about $4.2 billion in market value in the stock, which is a member of the MSCI China Index.
In December, Muddy Waters alleged that Huishan had been overstating its spending on its cow farms by as much as 1.6 billion yuan to “support the company’s income statement.” The report also alleged that the company made an unannounced transfer of a subsidiary that owned at least four cow farms to an undisclosed related party and Muddy Waters concluded that Chairman Yang Kai controls the subsidiary and farms. Those findings came from several months of research including visits to 35 farms and five production facilities, drone flyovers of Huishan sites and interviews with alfalfa suppliers, according to the report. Muddy Waters said it has shorted Huishan’s stock.
“It will be even harder for Huishan to get funded in the capital market after the report, amid a couple of earlier allegations that have raised some red flags to investors,” said Robin Yuen at RHB OSK Securities Hong Kong. Still, Huishan’s shares and operations are unlikely to “collapse” due to its high share concentration and sufficient cash flow generated by its dairy business, he said by telephone. About 73% of Huishan’s shares are held by Champ Harvest Ltd., a company that’s in turn 90% owned by Yang. A buying spree by Yang had supported the shares last year, making it a painful trade for short sellers. A one-year rally of about 80% through a peak in June had made the shares expensive.
“If roughly half of all Italians are against the single currency today, imagine what it will be like when austerity begins really biting.”
For the last three years, the political establishment in Italy and beyond have had a field day attacking, ridiculing, and vilifying Beppe Grillo’s 5-star movement. Europe’s media have tarred him with the brush of populism. In 2013 The Economist labelled him a clown on its front cover. Yet his party still leads the polls. And that lead is growing. A new Ipsos poll in Corriere della Sera newspaper has put Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star Movement on 32.3% – its highest ever reading. It placed 5.5 points ahead of the governing PD, on 26.8%, after the PD dropped more than three%age points in a month, as former prime minister Matteo Renzi battles to reassert his authority following a walkout by a left-wing faction. Internal political battles are nothing new in Italy. The country enjoys a hard-earned reputation for political instability and paralysis, having seen 63 governments come and go since 1945.
The problem this time around is that internal weakness and strife in Italy’s traditional center-left and center-right parties could end up gifting the next election to a party that refuses to play by the book. If it wins the next elections, which could be brought forward to as early as June this year, 5-Star Movement has pledged to hold a referendum of its own – albeit a non-binding one – on Italy’s membership of the euro. As polls have shown, there is much broader public apathy toward the single currency than in just about any other euro zone nation. Grillo’s plan could also receive the backing of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who is determined to pull off a political comeback and is talking of restoring the Italian Lira.
As Reuters reports, such a scenario could spook financial markets “wary of both the 5-Star’s euroskepticism and the threat of prolonged political instability in Italy,” which boasts a public debt burden of over €2 trillion (133% of GDP). In any normal situation that would be a problem. But Italy is not in a normal situation; it is on the cusp of a potentially very large financial crisis that, if mishandled, could bring down Europe’s entire financial system. Unlike many other Eurozone economies like Spain, Ireland Portugal, Italy did not experience a real estate or stock market bubble in the 2000s; nor were its banks heavily exposed to the financial derivatives that helped spread the fallout from the U.S. subprime crisis all around the world. As such, Italy has not had cause to bail out its financial system — until now.
[..] Italy’s current predicament is a multi-headed hydra: a banking crisis, an economic crisis, a debt crisis, and a political crisis all rolled into one, and all coming to a head at the same time. It’s the reason why economists including Deutsche Bank’s Marco Stringa are calling Italy, not France or Greece, the “main risk” to euro-area stability. From a Eurozone-stability point of view, and from a bondholder point of view, the best-case scenario would be the rescue of Italy’s banks, with taxpayers bearing most of the brunt. That should help steady investor nerves and put an end to the gathering exodus of funds out of Italian assets. But even then, the social, political and economic price to be paid in a country already with public debt of over €2 trillion, youth unemployment of almost 40%, and an economy that is 12% smaller than it was 10 years ago, will almost certainly be way too high. If roughly half of all Italians are against the single currency today, imagine what it will be like when austerity begins really biting.
He’s blowing up the EU without noticing a thing.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Friday criticised Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel for saying Germany should provide more money for Greece and the European Union overall. Schaueble told Deutschlandfunk radio he was annoyed by Gabriel’s suggestion because it “goes in the wrong direction completely” and sent the wrong message. He added that Europe’s problem was not primarily money but that its money needed to be used in the right way. On whether Greece can stay in the euro zone, Schaeuble said: “Greece can only do that if it has a competitive economy.” He said the country needed to carry out reforms and that would take time, adding: “But if the time is not used to carry out reforms because that’s uncomfortable, then that’s the wrong path.”
Feels like a funeral party.
Greece has stuck to its objections to a declaration to mark the European Union’s 60th anniversary, officials in Brussels and Athens said on Thursday, a potentially embarrassing setback for the bloc as it seeks to rebuild unity ahead of Brexit. The leaders of the EU’s 27 remaining states will mark the anniversary on Saturday at a gathering in Rome overshadowed by Britain’s unprecedented decision to leave. London is due to formally trigger the divorce negotiations next week. Athens has threatened not to sign the Rome declaration charting the future of the post-Brexit EU, making a link between agreeing to the text and separate talks on reforms that lenders are seeking from Greece in exchange for new loans. “The negotiations on the draft Rome Declaration have ended as the text was finalized by the EU27,” an EU source said. “Only Greece has a general reservation on the text.”
Greece has said it wants the Rome text to spell out more clearly the protection of labor rights. Greece’s separate debt talks with international lenders are now stuck over this specific issue. One diplomat in Brussels said the issue may now only be resolved at the highest level with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Another EU diplomat said any attempt by Athens to win leverage on the international debt talks by holding off in Rome should not succeed: “We won’t be blackmailed by one member state which is linking one EU issue with a totally different one.” As well as Greece, Poland indicated on Thursday it might also refuse to endorse the declaration, though diplomats played down the threat. Warsaw is particularly opposed to a ‘multi-speed Europe,’ an idea promoted by Germany, France and Brussels, among others, to help improve decision-making in the post-Brexit EU.
“Whether, in other words, the European acquis is valid for all member states without exception, or for all except Greece.”
Greece will support a declaration marking the EU’s 60th birthday but needs the bloc’s backing against IMF demands on labour reforms, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said ahead of a Summit in Rome on Friday. In a letter addressed to EU Council President Donald Tusk and Commission President Jean Claude Juncker, Tsipras called for a clear statement on whether the declaration would apply to Greece, as talks over a key bailout review hit a snag again. “We intend to support the Rome Declaration, a document which moves in a positive direction,” Tsipras said. “Nevertheless, in order to be able to celebrate these achievements, it has to be made clear, on an official level, whether they apply also to Greece. Whether, in other words, the European acquis is valid for all member states without exception, or for all except Greece.”
Earlier this week, Greece threatened not to sign the Rome declaration, demanding a clearer commitment protecting workers’ rights – an issue on which it is at odds with its international lenders who demand more reforms in return for new loans. The disagreements among Athens, the EU and the IMF – which has yet to decide whether it will participate in the country’s current bailout – have delayed a crucial bailout review. As leaders prepared for the summit, Greek ministers were negotiating with lenders’ representatives in Brussels pension cuts and labour reforms, including freeing up mass layoffs and on collective bargaining. The latest round of talks ended inconclusively late on Thursday, according to Greek officials. [..] Greece has cut pensions 12 times since it signed up to its first bailout in 2010. It has also reduced wages and implemented labour reforms to make its market more flexible and competitive.
Just imagine that. And then talk about recovery. No, all you need to do is reform!
Four in 10 Greek businesses (40.3%) consider it likely that they will have to close shop within the year, according to a survey by the Hellenic Confederation of Professionals, Craftsmen and Merchants (GSEVEE), presented by the ANA-MPA news agency on Thursday. According to the survey, around 18,700 businesses will close in the first six months of the year, forcing thousands to join growing unemployment lines in the crisis-hit country. The majority of shutdowns, according to GSEVEE, will be in and around the capital and will concern the manufacturing sector, while some 34,000 jobs will be lost by the closure of companies that are currently considered high risk. 7 in 10 businesses have reported increasing liquidity problems and a shortage of capital from the market, with the number of firms indebted to the state and their suppliers growing by 10% compared to last year.
Over four in five small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) admit to being exposed to credit risks, seeing a slump in economic activity and operating with the prospect of shrinking rather than expanding in the near future. In terms of employment, the forecasts for the first half of the year do not bode well, as for every two businesses (8.1% of the total) that plan to hire new staff, another three will be letting people go. GSEVEE estimates that 2,000 salaried jobs will be lost by June, without accounting for the impact on employment of the projected shutdowns. Moreover, 40% of those businesses that do plan to hire staff in the first half of 2017 said they won’t be offering payroll positions, but part-time or outsourced work.
Sentiment is also bleak, with 58.8% of respondents expecting conditions to deteriorate and just 11% seeing a possible improvement through June. As such, just 3.6% of businesses plan to make new investments and 6.4% have applied to investment funding programs for that period. “There needs to be a national plan for the country irrespective of who is in power, and politicians need to learn how to make decisions and give orders,” GSEVEE President Giorgos Kavvathas was quoted by the ANA-MPA news agency as saying. “Moreover, the uncertainty of the situation concerning the outcome of the negotiation [with foreign creditors] exacerbates fears and risks, which in turn make small businesses and the self-employed more vulnerable.”
Could be another scary spring and summer.
European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos on Thursday underlined the need to safeguard a deal between Brussels and Ankara to curb human smuggling in the Aegean, noting that some 3 million refugees were in Turkey waiting to cross into Greece in a bid to reach Western and Northern Europe. In comments during a visit to Athens, Avramopoulos said the deal signed last year between Turkey and the EU had reduced an influx of migrants toward Europe and curbed deaths at sea. Reception centers on the islands of the eastern Aegean, the first point of arrival for most migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey, are already overcrowded. A woman and a child were injured in clashes between Afghan and Algerian migrants on Chios on Wednesday night.
We’re on track for multiple records.
More than 250 African migrants were feared drowned in the Mediterranean Thursday after a charity’s rescue boat found five corpses close to two sinking rubber dinghies off Libya. The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said it was “deeply alarmed” after the Golfo Azzuro, a boat operated by Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, reported the recovery of the bodies close to the drifting, partially-submerged dinghies, 15 miles off the Libyan coast. “We don’t think there can be any other explanation than that these dinghies would have been full of people,” Proactiva spokeswoman Laura Lanuza told AFP. “It seems clear that they sunk.” She added that the inflatables, of a kind usually used by people traffickers, would typically have been carrying 120-140 migrants each.
“In over a year we have never seen any of these dinghies that were anything other than packed.” Lanuza said the bodies recovered were African men with estimated ages of between 16 and 25. They had drowned in the 24 hours prior to them being discovered shortly after dawn on Thursday in waters directly north of the Libyan port of Sabrata, according to the rescue boat’s medical staff. Vincent Cochetel, director of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR)’s Europe bureau, said NGO boats patrolling the area had been called to the aid of a third stricken boat on Thursday afternoon, raising fears others may have perished on what Proactiva called “a black day in the Mediterranean.”
Despite rough winter seas, migrant departures from Libya on boats chartered by people traffickers have accelerated in recent months from already-record levels. Nearly 6,000 people have been picked up by Italian-coordinated rescue boats since the end of last week, bringing the number brought to Italy since the start of 2017 to nearly 22,000, a significant rise on the same period in previous years. Aid groups say the accelerating exodus is being driven by worsening living conditions for migrants in Libya and by fears the sea route to Europe could soon be closed to traffickers. Prior to the latest fatal incident, the UN had estimated that at least 440 migrants had died trying to make the crossing from Libya to Italy since the start of 2017. Its refugee agency estimates total deaths crossing the Mediterranean at nearly 600.
Debt Rattle June 24 2015
June 24, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:02 am Finance Tagged with: contagion, despair, ethanol, EU, Greece, misery, poverty, ruin, Troika, TTIP 3 Responses »
NPC KKK services, Capital Horse Show grounds, Arlington 1938
• 70 Million Americans Are Teetering On The Edge Of Financial Ruin (MarketWatch)
• Marine Le Pen: Just Call Me Madame Frexit (Bloomberg)
• The Delphi Declaration On Greece And Europe (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Berlin Insists Greek Parliament Approves All Reforms By Monday (FT)
• Europe Is Destroying Greece’s Economy For No Reason At All (WaPo)
• Greek Public Stops Paying Off Personal Debts As Uncertainty Grows (FT)
• A -Last- Shield Against Poverty, Pensions Are Greece’s Top Priority (AP)
• This Is A Deal That Heaps More Misery On Greeks (Guardian)
• Creditors’ Economic Plan For Greece Is Illiterate And Doomed To Fail (Guardian)
• Whatever Happens To Greece, It Will End In Contagion (MarketWatch)
• Tsipras: Angel Of Mercy Or Trusty Of Central Bankers’ Debt Prison? (Stockman)
• Debt Default Risk Not Just A Greece Story (FT)
• A Derivatives Bomb Exploded In The First Week Of June (IRD)
• Beware Bond-Liquidity Traps When Hunting Yield, Pimco Says (Bloomberg)
• TTIP Is A Corporatist Scam And Not A Real Free Trade Deal: Ukip (Independent)
• Will Seizure of Russian Assets Hasten Dollar Decline? (Ron Paul)
• Espionnage Élysée – NSA Spied On French Governments, Presidents (Wikileaks)
• Hollande Calls Emergency Meeting After U.S. Spying Reports (Bloomberg)
• World’s Big Economies Are About to Feel the Impact of China Slowdown (Bloomberg)
• Shell Fights To Prevent The Release Of Arctic Drilling Audit (Greenpeace)
• Russia Surpasses Saudi Arabia as China’s Biggest Oil Supplier (Bloomberg)
• Cellulosic Ethanol is Going Backwards (Robert Rapier)
Spell ‘recovery’.
In the past few years, the job market has vastly improved and home prices have rebounded — yet Americans are becoming even more irresponsible when it comes to saving for emergencies. According to a survey of 1,000 adults released by Bankrate.com on Tuesday, nearly one in three (29%) American adults (that’s roughly 70 million) have no emergency savings at all – the highest percentage since Bankrate began doing this survey five years ago. What’s more, only 22% of Americans have at least six months of emergency savings (that’s what advisers recommend) – the lowest level since Bankrate began doing the survey. These findings mirror others – all of which paint an abysmal picture of Americans’ ability to withstand an emergency. For example, a survey released in March by national nonprofit NeighborWorks America also found that roughly one third (34%) of Americans don’t have emergency savings.
Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com, says these low savings reflect that households haven’t seen their incomes ramp up and thus “household budgets are tight.” Plus, he adds “people don’t pay themselves first – they wait until the end of the month to save what’s left over and then nothing is left over.” The problem with this lack of savings is that emergencies can and do happen, and when they do, you may be forced into an expensive solution like credit cards or personal loans – and in extreme cases having to declare bankruptcy. Indeed, half of Americans had experienced an unforeseen expense in the past year, according to a 2014 survey by American Express; of those, 44% had a health care-related unforeseen expense and 46% had one related to their car – both of which tend to be things you can’t avoid paying.
Thus, advisers recommend that most Americans have at least six months worth of income in their emergency fund — and more if they have children or other dependents. To build this up, “start an automatic transfer to a savings account and set a task to revisit and increase the amount in a month,” says Robert Schmansky, the founder and a financial adviser at Clear Financial Advisors. “See how much you can increase the amount until it becomes noticeable and then stop.” Scott Cole, the founder of Cole Financial Planning, says to put the money in an FDIC-insured, high-yield savings account. Schmansky says that you want this account to be separate from your checking account “to prevent frivolous withdrawals.” He adds that while it’s important to find a good rate, it’s “equally important” that the money is accessible and the bank has “a long history of paying higher than market rates” as “too many banks in the past that started out as high yield payers dropped those rates after some time.”
She’s going to blow up the whole thing. Unless someone else is first.
Marine Le Pen, a frontrunner in France’s 2017 presidential election, says a Greek exit from the euro is inevitable. And if it’s up to her, France won’t be far behind. “We’ve won a few months’ respite but the problem will come back,” Le Pen said of Greece in an interview at her National Front party headquarters in Nanterre, near Paris, on Tuesday. “Today we’re talking about Grexit, tomorrow it will be Brexit, and the day after tomorrow it will be Frexit.” Le Pen, 46, is leading first-round presidential election polls in France, ahead of President Francois Hollande, ex-leader Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Manuel Valls. She’s the only one of the four calling for France to exit the euro, banking on people’s exasperation with the Greek crisis and Britain’s proposed referendum on the European Union to win over voters.
“I’ll be Madame Frexit if the European Union doesn’t give us back our monetary, legislative, territorial and budget sovereignty,” Le Pen said. She’s calling for an orderly breakup of the common currency, with France and Germany sitting around the table to dismantle the 15-year-old monetary union. Since she took over from her father as head of the National Front in 2011, Marine Le Pen has done her best to push the anti-immigration party into the French political mainstream. She came third in the 2012 presidential race and currently has two members in the country’s National Assembly for the first time since 1997. The combination of tepid economic growth and high unemployment at home, together with hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern immigrants seeking jobs or asylum in Europe, has given Le Pen increased traction.
Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed concern about the level of support Le Pen will receive in 2017 and how that power might weigh on French economic policy. “She knows perfectly well that if France leaves, there’s no more euro,” Le Pen said. Although Le Pen hasn’t given a full, detailed plan of how she would lead her country out of the euro, she says she doesn’t believe France would be shut out of the borrowing market or rejected by investors as a result.
Good to see that there are still some people awake.
The Delphi Conference on the European/Russian crisis created by Washington issued a declaration repudiating the EU attack on the Greek nation. The Delphi Declaration asks the European peoples, especially the Germans, to do the right thing and object to the plunder of Greece by the One%. This appeal to good will is likely to fall on deaf ears even though the pillage of Greece will create a precedent that can then be applied to Italy, Spain, France, and even Germany.
THE DELPHI DECLARATION: European governments, European institutions and the IMF, acting in close alliance, if not under direct control of big international banks and other financial institutions, are now exercising a maximum of pressure, including open threats, blackmailing and a slander and terror communication campaign against the recently elected Greek government and against the Greek people. They are asking from the elected government of Greece to continue the “bail-out” program and the supposed “reforms” imposed on this country in May 2010, in theory to “help” and “save” it.
As a result of this program, Greece has experienced by far the biggest economic, social and political catastrophe in the history of Western Europe since 1945.It has lost 27% of its GDP, more than the material losses of France or Germany during the 1st World War. The living standards have fallen sharply, the social welfare system all but destroyed, Greeks have seen social rights won during one century of struggles taken back. Whole social strata were completely destroyed, more and more Greeks are falling from their balconies to end a life of misery and desperation, every talented person who can leaves from the country. Democracy, under the rule of a “Troika”, acting as collective economic assassin, a kind of Kafka’s “Court”, has been transformed into a sheer formality in the very same country where it was born!
Greeks are experiencing now the same feeling of insecurity about all basic conditions of its life, that French have experienced in 1940, Germans in 1945, Soviets in 1991. In the same time, the two problems which this program was supposed to address, the Greek sovereign debt and competitiveness of the Greek economy have, both, sharply deteriorated. Now, European institutions and governments are refusing even the most reasonable, elementary, minor concession to the Athens government, they refuse even the slightest face-saving formula, if it could be. They want a total surrender of SYRIZA, they want its humiliation, its destruction. By denying to the Greek people any peaceful and democratic way out of its social and national tragedy, they are pushing Greece into chaos, if not civil war.
By the way, even now, an undeclared social civil war of “low intensity” is waged inside this country, especially against the unprotected, the ill, the young and the very old, the weaker and the unlucky. Is this the Europe we want our children to live? We want to express our total, unconditional solidarity with the struggle of the Greek people for its dignity, its national and social salvation, for its liberation from the unacceptable neocolonial rule “Troika” is trying to impose on a European country. We denounce the illegal and unacceptable agreements successive Greek governments have been obliged, under threat and blackmail, to sign, in violation of all European treaties, of the Charter of UN and of the Greek constitution.
IMF has already said no.
Greece’s parliament will have only a few days to pass all the economic reforms Athens promises its creditors to unlock desperately need bailout aid, putting intense pressue on prime minister Alexis Tsipras to build domestic political support for controversial concessions. Berlin has insisted on full and immediate legislative approval of measures that may be agreed at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Wednesday even though officials now concede a deal may come too late for Athens to meet a €1.5bn debt repayment to the IMF due on June 30. People briefed on Berlin’s thinking said months of fraught negotiations since the radical anti-austerity government came to power have undermined trust in Greece’s ability to fuflill its promises.
German officials want Greek parliamentary approval before an extension of its bailout programme is presented to the Bundestag before it expires on Tuesday. Greek authorities have already begun preparations for a hasty and potentially rancorous parliamentary debate over the weekend amidst growing signs Mr Tsipras’ new reform plan – which would be presented to eurozone leaders on Thursday — faces fierce resistance at home. A handful of more radical members of Mr Tsipras’ governing Syriza party have already vowed to mutiny over the proposal, and thousands of Greek pensioners took to the streets of Athens on Tuesday evening to decry the plans. “We have nothing, no money, we cannot live like this anymore,” shouted Thomas Yanakakis, 63, with tears in his eyes. “Enough is enough. Everyone must take to the streets now to stop this.”
Well, unless you’re into SM.
The real question is why Europe is forcing Greece to do any more austerity at all. It’s already done so much that, before this latest showdown, it actually had a budget surplus before interest payments. And that’s all it should shoot for, really: the point at which it doesn’t need any more bailouts from Europe. Anything more than that, though, would just inflict unnecessary — and self-defeating! — harm to the economy. When interest rates are zero, like they are now, budget cuts of 3% of GDP would, by Paul Krugman’s calculation, make the economy shrink something like 7.5%. So even though you have less debt, your debt burden isn’t much better since you have less money to pay it back.
There’s only one reason to make Greece do more austerity, and it makes no sense at all. That’s to try to make it pay back what it owes. Indeed, one European official said that the entire point of this was that they “want to get our money back some day.” The problem, though, is everybody knows Greece will never do that. Its debt should have been written down in 2010, but it wasn’t because it was “bailed out” to the extent that it was given money to then give to French and German banks. The longer Europe pretends this new debt will be paid back, the longer Greece’s depression will go on. Now, it’s true that Europe has lowered the interest rates and extended the maturities on Greece’s debt so far out that, for now at least, it’s like a lot of it doesn’t exist.
But eventually it will, and at that point they’ll either need to extend-and-pretend some more or hope that Greece has returned to growth. Until then, Greece will be stuck in its economic Groundhog Day. It keeps trying to resist these pointless budget cuts that just keep it in a perpetual state of high unemployment, but then gives in at the last minute. On second thought, history is just repeating itself as tragedy over and over again.
What I hear from Athens is that this is not quite accurate, it’s what happened 3 years ago.
Margarita sits cross-legged on a shiny parquet floor in a small Athens apartment, surrounded by piles of cardboard boxes. Within them are her family’s possessions. “I never expected to set up house in my late parents’ place,” the 42-year-old says. Her husband George, a banker made redundant three years ago, is overseeing workers installing security shutters in the two-bedroom, one-balcony space, while her 16-year-old daughter Christina brews coffee in a cramped kitchen. The Athenian family, who asked for their surname not to be used, moved to a downtown residential district from a villa in the northern suburbs to avoid defaulting on their mortgage. “We restructured it twice, thanks to my old colleagues at the bank but we still couldn’t keep up with the payments,” says George, now a struggling investment consultant.
“Things were looking pretty bleak but then we found a tenant so we could move out.” The family still owes a year’s worth of school fees at the private international school their daughter attended, which George admits is not a priority. He is no longer embarrassed by his inability to pay, he says, because so many other parents are in the same situation. Such strategic defaults have become a way of life among Greece’s formerly affluent middle-class. Many borrowed heavily as local banks competed to offer consumer loans at accessible interest rates after Greece joined the euro in 2001. When the crisis struck they resisted changes to their lifestyle, convinced that it was only a blip on a continuous upward path to income levels matching those of Italy and Spain.
But they have since been forced to make harsh adjustments. With their own savings depleted and the country’s immediate future so uncertain — will Greece default on its debts and leave the euro? — many have simply stopped making payments altogether, virtually freezing economic activity. Tax revenues for May, for example, fell €1bn short of the budget target, with so many Greek citizens balking at filing returns. That has put more pressure on the country’s leftwing government as it desperately scrapes up cash to pay wages and salaries and foreign creditors. The government, itself, has contributed to the chain of non-payment by freezing payments due to suppliers. That has had a knock-on effect, stifling the small businesses that dominate the economy and building up a mountain of arrears that will take months, if not years, to settle.
Business-to-business payments have almost been paused, one Athens businessman says. “They are just rolling over postdated cheques”. For Greek banks, mortgage loans left unserviced by strategic defaulters have become a particular headache, especially since the Syriza-led government says it is committed to protecting low-income homeowners from foreclosures on their properties “There’s a real issue of moral hazard… Around 70% of restructured mortgage loans aren’t being serviced because people think foreclosures will only be applied to big villa owners”, one banker said.
When you cut an economy by 25%, pensions automatically weigh heavier.
Unlike most eurozone members, Greece’s welfare system is relatively weak, with effectively no social housing or rent assistance programs, while the jobless only receive benefits and state health coverage for up to one year. Families are left to provide the safety net. Pensioner Assimina Griva, who helps run a community center for the retired in a hillside suburb of Athens, illustrates what many Greeks live. With her monthly pension of €600 she gives financial assistance to her son, who was laid off from the steel industry and otherwise depends on his wife’s salary of €400. “I help my child, and I keep €100 for the whole month,” says Griva. The problem, experts agree, is that the system is speeding toward insolvency.
State spending on pensions has risen from 11.7% of GDP before the financial crisis to 16.2% as the economy shrank. The average in the European Union is about 12%. The burden on the state is set to grow dramatically as the number of pensioners — currently 2.6 million out of a total population of 11 million — is set to keep rising. Greece has the sixth oldest population in the world, according to United Nations data. Over 20% of Greeks are aged 65 and over, a share the EU statistics agency expects to jump to 33% in 2060. Added to that is the impact of the financial crisis. High unemployment, undeclared labor, and arrears from struggling businesses have hammered state revenues.
A 2012 write-down of Greece’s privately-held national debt saw pension funds’ reserves lose more than half their value, as they were required by law to buy government bonds. “The pension system in Greece is not sustainable. But how could it be?” Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said at a business conference in Berlin this month. “We want to reform it … (But) pensions have already been cut by 40%. Forty%! Is cutting further a reform? I don’t think it is a reform. Any butcher can take a clever and start chopping things down. We need surgery.”
At last, the world press shows some signs of working neurons.
For Greece, the small concessions the creditors now seem prepared to make on pensions and tax increases on the poor will at least allow Alexis Tsipras to save face with his electorate and overcome the difficulty of getting the proposals through his parliament. But he will also have seen off the threat of capital controls being imposed to stop any further outflow of money from Greece and a humiliating take-it-or-leave-it message from the creditors should the ECB have pulled the plug and stopped providing emergency liquidity assistance to the beleaguered Greek banking system. Yet the reality is also that the extra austerity will now be tougher for Greece to bear and the cost of restoring the economy will be much greater.
Just as the rest of the eurozone is showing small signs of recovery the Greek economy has gone back into recession, with GDP falling by 0.4% in the last three months of 2014 and by 0.2% in the first three months of 2015. The signs are that the decline has continued, with unemployment rising again to 26%. Many companies have gone out of business as activity stalled during the uncertainty surrounding the negotiations and banks’ non-performing loans now account for some 35% of their total lending. As a result, the effort required to restore health to the economy will be much greater. It is hard to imagine it now, but strong tourist receipts last year brought the first rise in Greek GDP after a five-year decline in which the economy had slid by 25% under the IMF-inspired austerity programme.
The recent reversal has wiped out much of that progress. Years of austerity loom. More bailout money, but also more hardship and no – or very slow – growth. In itself that is not a recipe for social and political tranquillity. The creditor institutions, the old troika of the IMF, the ECB and the European commission, will be as visible as ever. So actually, not much advance on the status quo of the last few years. This gets us back to the perennial elephant in the room whenever Greece is discussed. The truth is, there won’t be sustainable growth again until the huge debt overhang (180% of GDP) is dealt with decisively. Greece would need to grow by at least 4% a year to service its current debt. If forced down that road, nothing can be seen ahead for the Greek people but continuous belt-tightening and misery.
“Einstein had a definition for this – insanity..”
One of the insights gleaned during the Great Depression was that it does not make a lot of sense for governments to try to balance budgets during a severe downturn, because tax increases and spending cuts reduce demand. That deepens the slump, leaving an even bigger hole in the public finances. In Greece, though, it as if the clock has been turned back to the pre-FDR days when Herbert Hoover was US president. Weak growth means that Athens continues to miss the deficit targets the troika sets for it. The troika responds by insisting on additional savings to put the budget back on track. Paul Krugman posted a chart last week based on IMF data that illustrates what happened to the underlying public finances of the eurozone members in 2014.
This measure of budgetary discipline looks at the primary budget surplus – the gap between revenues and spending excluding debt interest payments – adjusted for the state of the economic cycle. Measured in this way, Greece ran a surplus of more than 5% of GDP last year, comfortably higher than any other eurozone country. It is, however, not enough for the troika. In order to avoid a debt default and a run on its banks that would threaten its continued membership of the single currency, Greece has now had to table proposals that will suck an additional €8bn out of the economy in the next 18 months. Consumer spending will be hit by an increase in VAT and higher pension contributions, while investment will be dampened by a one-off levy and an increase in corporation tax.
Greece has a number of severe economic problems. It suffers from a lack of demand, and a five-year slump has pushed it into deflation. Falling prices have added to the real, inflation-adjusted burden of the government’s debt, which currently stands at 175% of GDP. A fresh dose of austerity will make all these problems worse. One way for Greece to get out of its mess would be for it to leave the euro, devalue its currency and renege on all or part of its debt. That is not an option if it stays in the single currency, which the public wants. Another way out would be for the creditors to cut Greece some slack. That would involve immediate debt relief and more realistic targets. The troika, though, will continue with policies that have failed before in the hope that they will succeed this time. Einstein had a definition for this – insanity.
“..the single currency’s most troublesome state will remain inside the euro as long as Greek nuisance value (GNV), both political and economic, is held to be lower inside the system (I) than it would be outside (O)..”
Acres of column inches have been expended on Greece and the future. Here are eight succinct truths to guide observers through the next few days.
1. There will be no quick and easy end to the Greek affair. Unstable disequilibria can last a long time. For four centuries, Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire. Tonight’s unhappy meeting of eurozone leaders will not be the last time they gather to consider an intractable imbroglio.
2. Greece holds a lot of the cards. No doubt some kind of deal will be done to prevent — for the moment at least — full-scale ejection from the euro EURUSD, +0.3761% bloc.
As I wrote four months ago, the single currency’s most troublesome state will remain inside the euro as long as Greek nuisance value (GNV), both political and economic, is held to be lower inside the system (I) than it would be outside (O). For the time being, GNV-I is — just — less than GNV-O. All sorts of Greek maneuvering — whether talks with President Vladimir Putin or speculation about a Greek exit bringing down the euro “house of cards” — are useful ploys to stoke up European fears of GNV-O.
3. The funds that are now leaving Greek banks to the tune of €1 billion a day, whether being taken abroad or simply kept under the mattress, are all effectively liabilities of the European Central Bank, to be paid ultimately (if things go wrong) by European taxpayers. The ECB, as an unelected body run by technocrats, cannot by itself pull the plug on Greece and declare the banks insolvent. The Greek government has no great wish to bring in exchange controls (although soon it may be forced to) since withdrawn euros represent a negotiating tool against its creditors and a store of value that many Greeks can use to hedge against a return of the drachma.
4. The IMF is unlikely to get its money back on time. An internal IMF assessment two years ago ruled that the Fund’s exceptional loan to Greece in 2010 was made on far-too-optimistic assumptions about the country’s debt sustainability and ability to carry out adjustment, breaching the IMF’s own rules. U.S. taxpayers will lose money. So please forget any idea that Congress will agree on IMF governance and voting reforms any time in the next few years.
5. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will be a big loser. The pressure is on her to hold the euro area together and maintain Germany’s European credentials without damaging the pocketbooks of German taxpayers and turning the euro into an overt transfer union. This is an impossible task. Her biggest adversaries are likely to be within her own coalition with the Social Democratic Party, which, however unfairly, will publicly blame her for any unsavory outcome. Shaming Merkel over Greek debt may be unscrupulous, but if it delivers the SPD a chance of winning the 2017 election, then the party will seize it.
6. Karl Otto Pöhl, the former Bundesbank president who died in December, was right when he said, a few days after the May 2010 bailout, that it was decided to save (roughly in that order) rich Greeks, and French and German banks. The Bundesbank’s qualms over the ECB’s purchases of the bonds of Greece and other peripheral countries, publicly though impotently voiced at the time, were never likely to derail the action. But we will hear more of them now that taxpayers in Germany and other creditor countries start to weigh up the bill.
Behind the curtains.
Draghi and his posse of financial dimwits have created what amounts to a hideous financial scam – a disgrace to any notion of central banking which existed before 2008. Had he not announced he would massively monetize euro sovereign debt in July 2012, Greece would have been bankrupt long ago, and the peripheral borrowers like Italy, Spain and Portugal would have had their day of fiscal reckoning, too. The eurozone would have blown sky high, and the ECB would be no more. Likewise, were not the ECB now supplying $125 billion of funding to the Greek banking system—or actually more than its current level of fast vanishing deposits – the latter would have crashed and burned months ago, thereby triggering a crisis which would have eventually destroyed the euro.
Ironically, the angel of mercy now hovers in the form of Greece’s intrepid prime minister, Alexis Tsipras. Too be sure, his left-wing statist economics is a complete abomination that would cause the Greek people catastrophic suffering if were ever to be implemented. But he is absolutely correct on the matter of political self-governance: “We have no right to bury the European democracy in the land where it was born.” That’s the essence of the issue. If Greece’s democracy is to survive, it must be cut loose from the destructive regime of superstate dictation from Brussels and monetary falsification from Frankfurt. Ironically, going back to the Drachma would put Greece’s politicians right were they were before they were betrayed by the false monetary regime of eurozone central banking.
They would be forced to run a primary surplus because they would not be able to borrow on world markets after a massive default on the debt forced upon them by the eurozone, ECB and IMF. But the mix of taxing the rich, cutting the pensioners, catching the tax cheats, selling state assets, shrinking the bureaucracy and squeezing the crony capitalist leeches which feed on the Greek state would be up to them, not the inspectors and pompous bureaucrats from the IMF and European superstate. More importantly, faced with a honest bond market and real bond vigilantes, the Greek state would rediscover the requisites of sustainable fiscal governance. If they should ever again choose to run large fiscal deficits in the future, they would have to deal with an altogether different kind of committee. Namely, the pricing committee of their bond underwriters syndicate.
If the bond vigilantes needed a 15% yield to buy the state’s debt based on the facts and fiscal prospects at hand, there would not ensue months and years of can-kicking, phony restructuring plans and promises and endless PR maneuvers and leaks to the financial press. Greece’s politicians would be required to either hit the bid or cut the pension checks the very next day. Tsipras is now confronted with this kind of hard choice in an altogether different venue. If he sells out Greece one more time to the paymasters of his country’s crushing debt, it will be only a matter of time before another Greek prime minister will be forced to walk the same plank on which he now totters. By doing what’s right for Greek democracy, by contrast, he would prove to be an angel of mercy. There is no way that the euro and ECB could survive a Greexit, nor could worlwide Keynesian central banking survive the blow of their demise.
Emerging markets.
Gripped by the prospect of default in Greece? You may be looking in the wrong direction. The southern European nation may have the world’s highest debt burden, equal to 175% of its economy or gross domestic product, but according to credit rating agencies that does not make Greece the riskiest borrower for bond investors. That title is held by Ukraine, presently engaged in fighting a war with pro-Russian separatists as well as battling creditors over $15bn of debt the country says it cannot afford to service. The difference between Greece and Ukraine is reflected in the prices at which the sovereign debt of the two countries trades. Prices for Greek bonds have crashed over the past year as investors took fright at the political success of the anti-austerity Syriza party, yet they remain above 50 cents in the euro – considered a benchmark default level.
Ukraine’s equivalent bonds trade below 50 cents in the dollar, suggesting a far higher risk of a default. Indeed, this week, Ukraine was declared a “credit event”, triggering insurance payouts in the credit derivatives market. According to credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s, default is all but certain. All told, 11 countries, including Greece, are currently at serious risk of defaulting according to global credit rating agency Moody’s. Around the world the euphoric credit boom in emerging markets driven by low interest rates in the US, Europe and Japan now appears vulnerable, piling on the pressure for borrowers. A weakening trend in EM sovereign credit that began in 2013 has continued this year thanks to the slowdown in Chinese economic growth, weakness in commodity prices and higher US dollar borrowing costs, according to UBS.
Interesting two-week old piece.
(June 9): I believe the illogical movement in 10yr Treasury yields reflects the fact the Fed is losing control of its tight grip on the bond market and longer term interest rates. Note that German bunds have also experienced a similar spike up in interest rates and volatilty. In the context of my view that there was a derivatives accident somewhere in the global banking system in the last two weeks, it could well have been an OTC interest rate swap bomb that detonated. As of the latest OCC quarterly report on bank derivatives activity (Q4 2014), JP Morgan held $63.7 trillion notional amount of derivatives, $40 trillion of which were various interest rate derivatives.
If you look at the ratio of interest rate derivatives to total holdings for the top 4 U.S. banks, they all own roughly same proportion of interest rate derivatives as % of total holdings. Deutsche Bank is reported to have about a $73 trillion derivatives book. If we assume that ratio of interest rate derivatives is likely similar to JP Morgan’s, it means that DB’s potential derivatives exposure to interest rates is around $46 trillion. Interestingly, the price of the 10yr moved abruptly higher after the Fed ended QE. This is the opposite of what many of us would have expected. It wasn’t until early February that 10yr bond price began to decline (yields move higher). The 10yr bond price also crashed through its 200 day moving average – an ominous technical signal. Both of these events happened within the last week.
Again, I believe that this action in the bond market is pointing to the fact that the Fed is losing control of the markets. I also believe that the catalyst for this loss of control is a big derivatives accident of some sort in the last two weeks. Another clear indication that something has melted down “behind the scenes” recently is an ominous market call by self-made hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, founder and CEO of Elliott Management. In his latest letter to investors, released the last week of May, he stated that the best trade in a generation is to short “long term claims on paper money.
Investors risk falling into liquidity traps as they seek to boost yields depressed by the ECB’s €1.1 trillion bond-buying program, according to Pimco. The search for yield has caused investors to buy riskier and less frequently traded bonds, which may be hard to sell quickly, said Mike Amey at Pimco, which oversees about $1.59 trillion of assets. Overall bond trading has slumped since the global financial crisis because banks have cut inventories to preserve capital in response to tighter regulations. “If you want to find some yield-enhancing assets, then make sure you’re paid for tighter liquidity,” said Amey, a speaker at Euromoney’s Global Borrowers & Investors Forum in London, which starts Tuesday. “If you’re going to take a liquidity premium, be prepared to hold the asset for years.”
One measure of bond-market liquidity is down 10% in the past year and 90% since 2006, RBS said in March. In the U.S., less than 5% of the market changes hands each month, down from about 20% in 2007, according to a November report by the Bank for International Settlements. “My biggest worry for the market going forward is liquidity,” said Kris Kowal at DuPont Capital Management, which oversees $30.8 billion of assets. Investors are “trading illiquidity for a bit more yield, and I don’t think that’s the right approach at this stage in Europe’s economic cycle.”
Structured securities and loans are among the most illiquid assets, said Wilmington, Delaware-based Kowal, who is also speaking at the Euromoney conference. Investors who need liquidity should hold cash or highly traded government bonds, Amey said. The ECB’s quantitative easing will continue to provide liquidity for the time being, said David Zahn, head of European fixed income at Franklin Templeton Investments, which manages about $890 billion of assets. Still, he is ensuring that his funds have enough liquidity to meet redemptions and to act on new opportunities.
Why does the right have to be the only side that gets it right?
A proposed deal between the United States and European Union is a “corporatist scam”, Ukip’s MP has said. Douglas Carswell said that TTIP, which stands for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, was not what its proponents made it out to be. “Ukip [is] making clear we are the most staunchly free trade party in the UK,” he tweeted. “TTIP is not free trade. It’s a corporatist scam.” Tellingly, the message was retweeted by Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, a leading contender for his party’s nomination for Mayor of London. TTIP’s proponents say it is a free trade deal that would benefit both the United States and European Union.
One controversial aspect of drafts of the deal would be to establish a quasi-judicial trade court to which the two blocs would be subject. This could allow large corporations to ‘sue’ national governments for enacting any policy that potentially harmed their profits. Critics say that this would erode democracy and increase corporate power. The deal is also controversial because of the secret way in which it is been negotiated, with press and campaigners relying heavily on leaks to determine its direction. A Ukip spokesperson told the Independent that the party feared the destruction of public services by the deal.
“Ukip is a party that believes that free trade between people is the surest way to greater prosperity,” he said. “However the TTIP agreement is not a free trade deal, but one that favours big multinational corporates over the interests of smaller businesses, and most importantly the democratic right of people to set policy through elections. “TTIP as it currently stands could hand the NHS lock, stock, and barrel to huge corporations against the wishes of the British people.”
Long term risk.
While much of the world focused last week on whether or not the Federal Reserve was going to raise interest rates, or whether the Greek debt crisis would bring Europe to a crisis, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague awarded a $50 billion judgment to shareholders of the former oil company Yukos in their case against the Russian government. The governments of Belgium and France moved immediately to freeze Russian state assets in their countries, naturally provoking the anger of the Russian government.[..] The US government is desperately trying to cling to the notion of a unipolar world, with the United States at its center dictating foreign affairs and monetary policy while its client states dutifully carry out instructions.
But the world order is not unipolar, and the existence of Russia and China is a stark reminder of that. For decades, the United States has benefited as the creator and defender of the world’s reserve currency, the dollar. This has enabled Americans to live beyond their means as foreign goods are imported to the US while increasingly-worthless dollars are sent abroad. But is it any wonder after 70-plus years of a depreciating dollar that the rest of the world is rebelling against this massive transfer of wealth? The Europeans tried to form their own competitor to the dollar, and the resulting euro is collapsing around them as you read this.
But the European Union was never considered much of a threat by the United States, existing as it does within Washington’s orbit. Russia and China, on the other hand, pose a far more credible threat to the dollar, as they have both the means and the motivation to form a gold-backed alternative monetary system to compete against the dollar. That is what the US government fears, and that is why President Obama and his Western allies are risking a cataclysmic war by goading Russia with these politically-motivated asset seizures. Having run out of carrots, the US is resorting to the stick. The US government knows that Russia will not blithely accept Washington’s dictates, yet it still reacts like a petulant child flying into a tantrum whenever Russia dares to exert its sovereignty.
The existence of a country that won’t kowtow to Washington’s demands is an unforgivable sin, to be punished with economic sanctions, attempting to freeze Russia out of world financial markets; veiled threats to strip Russia’s hosting of the 2018 World Cup; and now the seizure of Russian state assets. Thus far the Russian response has been incredibly restrained, but that may not last forever. Continued economic pressure from the West may very well necessitate a Sino-Russian monetary arrangement that will eventually dethrone the dollar. The end result of this needless bullying by the United States will hasten the one thing Washington fears the most: a world monetary system in which the US has no say and the dollar is relegated to playing second fiddle.
Golden rule: If they can do it, they will.
Today, 23 June 2015, WikiLeaks began publishing “Espionnage Élysée”, a collection of TOP SECRET intelligence reports and technical documents from the US National Security Agency (NSA) concerning targeting and signals intelligence intercepts of the communications of high-level officials from successive French governments over the last ten years. The top secret documents derive from directly targeted NSA surveillance of the communications of French Presidents Francois Hollande (2012–present), Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012), and Jacques Chirac (1995–2007), as well as French cabinet ministers and the French Ambassador to the United States.
The documents also contain the “selectors” from the target list, detailing the cell phone numbers of numerous officials in the Elysee up to and including the direct cell phone of the President. Prominent within the top secret cache of documents are intelligence summaries of conversations between French government officials concerning some of the most pressing issues facing France and the international community, including the global financial crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the leadership and future of the European Union, the relationship between the Hollande administration and the German government of Angela Merkel, French efforts to determine the make-up of the executive staff of the United Nations, French involvement in the conflict in Palestine and a dispute between the French and US governments over US spying on France.
A founding member state of the European Union and one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, France is formally a close ally of the United States, and plays a key role in a number of US-associated international institutions, including the Group of 7 (G7), NATO and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The revelation of the extent of US spying against French leaders and diplomats echoes a previous disclosure in the German press concerning US spying on the communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German officials. That disclosure provoked a political scandal in Germany, eventuating in an official inquiry into German intelligence co-operation with the United States, which is still ongoing.
And nothing will be done. Or they risk exposure of what France itself does.
French President Francois Hollande has called a high-level emergency meeting for 9 a.m. on Wednesday after WikiLeaks reported that the U.S. had spied on him and two of his predecessors. The meeting with the defense, interior, foreign and justice ministers will “evaluate the nature” of the report posted on the WikiLeaks website, said an official in Hollande’s office who asked not to be identified. WikiLeaks, which has published unauthorized documents since it started in 2006, reported that the NSA spied on Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac from 2006 to 2012, listening in on discussions about the euro debt crisis and French relations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, including secret meetings of French government ministers about the possibility of Greece leaving the euro area.
The NSA also eavesdropped on French complaints about U.S. spying, WikiLeaks said. “We are not targeting and will not target the communications of President Hollande,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, which advises the White House on its foreign policy. “We do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose.” Sarkozy’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment. Agence France-Presse reported that his office had said the spying as reported was “unacceptable in general, and certainly between allies.” WikiLeaks has been releasing documents about U.S. wiretapping since 2010, detailing how the NSA spied on world leaders including Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
Emerging markets and commodity suppliers have grappled with reduced demand from China as a property downturn weighed on the world’s second-largest economy. U.S., Japanese and German exporters did better, supplying capital goods like machines that China still demanded. That may soon change, according to a study of global exposure to China by UBS Group AG economists Donna Kwok, Wang Tao and Jennifer Zhong. “As the multiyear Chinese property downshift continues to unfold beyond this year, we may see a longer-term decline in China’s appetite for foreign industrial imports,” the analysts wrote in a report June 22. “Commodity, reprocessing, and developed country exporters alike should brace themselves for the impact of weakening China demand this year, irrespective of whether U.S. or EU imports pick up.”
That’s not good news for a world economy increasingly reliant on China. China quadrupled the number of countries to which it was the biggest export market in the decade to 2014, the UBS analysts wrote. In the same period, the U.S. almost halved the number of countries for which it held the same title. In terms of exports as a share of GDP, nearly all countries UBS covers saw their China exposure rise; some doubled – Japan, South Korea, U.S., Brazil, Canada, Chile – while some tripled – Germany, the EU – and some even quadrupled, like Australia. For commodity exporters including South Africa, Australia, Indonesia and Brazil, the impact of a slowing China has been predictably negative.
Just to show you who’s really in power.
Shell is fighting to prevent the public release of an audit of their Arctic drilling operations. Last week, in response to Greenpeace’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Shell argued to government regulators that the entire document is “confidential business information” and should be kept from public disclosure. The problem is that – in order to comment on Shell’s Exploration Plan – the public should have had access to this document months ago. The deadline for that passed on 1 May yet the government department in charge – Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) – has had the first part of Shell’s audit since November 2014. With Shell’s fleet already heading north to Alaska the failure to disclose is becoming more serious every day.
After Shell’s disastrous 2012 attempt at drilling in the Arctic Ocean — which ended with one of their drilling rigs beached on an Alaskan island and eight felony charges related to violations on the other rig — Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar ordered a review of Shell’s operations to find out what went wrong, including an audit of Shell’s Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS). The audit was designed to ensure “that the management and oversight shortcomings identified with respect to all aspects of the company’s 2012 operation have been addressed and that the company’s management structure and systems are appropriately tailored to Shell’s Arctic exploration program” – before the firm was to drill again in the Arctic.
The audit was meant to be a full third party assessment – but Shell paid for the audit and was allowed to handpick the auditor (Houston-based Endeavor Management). A SEMS audit assesses the management and operational systems put in place on offshore oil rigs to protect worker safety and the environment, such as analysing potential hazards and operating procedures. The auditor will typically review documents and systems as well as conduct interviews and site visits. It was also disclosed that the audit would be split into two parts. Stage 1 would take place in Shell’s Anchorage, AK office, and Stage 2 would take place on board the drillship Noble Discoverer once it was operating in the waters of the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf.
The in-office portion of the audit was completed in 2014 and the audit report was provided to BSEE towards the end of that year. However, this document has never been made public and Greenpeace submitted a FOIA request for its release. Despite the promise that the audit would be a requirement “before” Shell was allowed to return to the Arctic, Stage 2 has yet to be completed and will presumably happen this summer while Shell is drilling.
Sanctions?
Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia to become China’s top crude supplier as the fight for market share in the world’s second-largest oil consumer intensifies. China imported a record 3.92 million metric tons from its northern neighbor in May, according to data emailed by the Beijing-based General Administration of Customs. That’s equivalent to 927,000 barrels a day, a 20% increase from the previous month. Saudi sales slumped 42% from April to 3.05 million tons. China is becoming a key market for global oil exporters as surging output from shale fields from Texas to North Dakota allows the U.S., the biggest crude consumer, to rely less on overseas supplies. The Asian nation will account for more than 11% of world demand this year, the Paris-based International Energy Agency predicted this month.
“This is a clear sign of how spoilt Asia is for choice these days, with Middle Eastern crude now having to compete with oil from other regions,” Amrita Sen at Energy Aspects said in an e-mail. “Russia is increasingly looking east and the various deals made between Rosneft and China are likely to see more Russian crude head to China permanently.” Russia is China’s top crude supplier for the first time since October 2005 as it seeks new markets for its crude amid western sanctions over its dispute with Ukraine. Rosneft in 2013 agreed to supply 365 million tons over 25 years to China National under a $270 billion deal. The same year, the company agreed an $85 billion, 10-year deal with China Petrochemical. Russia isn’t the only crude shipper to overtake Saudi Arabia last month. Angola sold 3.26 million tons to China, 14% more from April, rising two places to take second spot.
As we always predicted.
In last month’s article Where are the Unicorns?, I discussed the fact that the commercial cellulosic ethanol plants that were announced with great fanfare over the past couple of years are obviously running at a small fraction of their nameplate capacity. In fact, April was a record month for cellulosic ethanol production according to the EPA’s database that tracks this information, but that meant that at least 8 months into the learning curves for these plants actual production for that month was only about 6% of nameplate capacity. May’s numbers are now in, and the situation has gotten worse. After reporting 288,685 gallons of cellulosic ethanol in April, May’s numbers only amounted to 114,018 gallons.
This is only about 2.4% of the nameplate capacity of the announced commercial cellulosic ethanol plants. If we use year-to-date numbers, the annualized capacity is still less than 3% of nameplate capacity for facilities that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Let that soak in. POET alone spent $275 million, with U.S. taxpayers footing more than $100 million of that bill. Abengoa reportedly received $229 million from taxpayers for its project. For this (plus however much that was spent by INEOS), the combined plants are running at an annualized capacity of 1.7 million gallons of ethanol, which would sell on the spot market today for $2.6 million.
We can conclude from this that the three companies with announced commercial cellulosic ethanol facilities – INEOS, POET, and Abengoa – are finding the going much tougher than expected. I believe that the costs to produce their cellulosic ethanol are higher than the price they will receive for the ethanol. This is the sort of monthly cash drain that led to the shutdown of everyone else that ever tried to produce cellulosic ethanol commercially.
June 21, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:21 am Finance Tagged with: child poverty, deficit, depression, despair, extinction, Greece, Hollande, Putin, Trump, Ukraine 2 Responses »
Unknown Army of the James at completed Dutch Gap canal, James River, Virginia 1864
• Hollande Is Implored to End ‘Financial Blackmail’ of Greece (Bloomberg)
• The Fight To End Greece’s Great Euro Depression (Telegraph)
• Greek Episodes Of Despair And Drama As Moment Of Truth Nears (Helena Smith)
• Greece, The Euro and Gunboat Diplomacy (Karl Whelan)
• As Greece Stares Into The Abyss, Has Spain Escaped From Crisis? (Observer)
• Greek PM Prepares Last-Ditch Offer To Avoid Default On Debts (Observer)
• The Greek Crisis Reveals The EU’s Democratic Deficit (Coppola)
• Rising Child Poverty Across Britain ‘Halts Progress Made Since 1990s’ (Observer)
• ‘It’s Time To Hold Physical Cash’: Senior UK Fund Manager (Telegraph)
• Steal from Taxpayers, Blame the Poor (Paul Buchheit)
• Russia Slams Renewed EU Sanctions, Says Measure Is ‘Hopeless’ (RT)
• Ukraine is a ‘Black Hole’ for European Taxpayers’ Money: German Media (Sputnik)
• Powerful People In The West And In Kiev Do Not Want Peace – Stephen Cohen (RT)
• Nomi Prins: There Is No Saving This Global Financial System (KWN)
• Liars, Cowards, Freaks & Fools: Trump for President? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Why the Pope’s Environment Encyclical Is a Big Deal (Newsweek)
• All Kangaroos Are Left-Handed (Discovery)
• The Latest Global Temperature Data Are Literally Off The Chart (Guardian)
• The Sixth Mass Extinction Is Here (Stanford.edu)
Potential big deal. Hollande’s chance to show -independent- leadership. France is pivotal to Europe, but it must speak up to make that count.
French President Francois Hollande received an appeal from a group of lawmakers including some from the ruling Socialist Party and other political figures to end the “financial blackmail” of Greece by its European creditors. The message of France “cannot be a docile reminder of the rules at a time when the house is burning,” the lawmakers said in an open letter to Hollande published on the website of France’s Communist Party. “We are asking you to take the initiative to unblock the talks between the euro group and the Greek political authorities.” The letter highlights the domestic political pressure Hollande faces to help broker a deal between Greece and its creditors as the region’s most indebted nation is on the brink of a default.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hollande spoke by phone on Friday after a meeting of euro area finance ministers failed to advance toward an agreement with Greece. So far the two biggest economies in the 19-nation euro bloc have presented a united front against Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has spent his five months in power trying to roll back the austerity policies underpinning the country’s bailout. At the finance minister’s meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin pressed hardest for a compromise, while his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble stayed largely silent and ministers from other countries stepped up the pressure on Greece, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The French lawmakers, including Socialists such as Pouria Amirshahi and Fanelie Carrey-Conte, told Hollande to place France “at the side of the people of Greece.” “Bring explicit support to the healthy measures taken by the Greek authorities, notably those addressing the humanitarian crisis in the country” they said. “Accept the principle of a restructuring of Greek debt, of which a large part is notoriously illegitimate.”
“There Is No Europe Without Greece.”
Nikos Athanassiou, a 61-year-old Athenian pensioner, is at the heart of Greece’s struggle to maintain its fragile 14-year membership of the euro. Like many of his compatriots, Nikos took early retirement having worked most of his life labouring in the country’s now defunct construction industry, aged 58. He is one of the 2.6m pensioners in Greece who have become the unlikely battleground in the latest game of brinkmanship between the radical Left government and its paymasters. A member of Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Nikos spends his retirement resisting Troika-imposed cuts to public services as a union representative for his local district in northern Athens “It is my duty to demand dignity for Greeks. We are collapsing as a country,” says Nikos.
His resolve is not unusual in a society where the bulk of proposed cuts will hit the elderly and newly retired. The IMF is demanding the Greek government slash €1.8bn in pensions spending in 2016. At 16.2pc of GDP, Greece’s outlay is highest in the eurozone. Even with overhauls to the retirement age and spending cuts, this will still only fall to 14.3pc in 45 years time – the third highest in the EU. Nikos’s pension is €750 a month. He is among nearly half of all Greek pensioners who provide the sole source of income to support three generations of one family. But his pension is barely enough to provide for his seven-year old granddaughter and her parents. “When I think about my granddaughter’s future, I panic. I want her to live in an independent Greece – not a protectorate.”
Resentment against creditors’ determination to suck more funds from the country’s pension system is rife. Greeks have already seen a 40pc fall in their pension provision over five years – a shrinkage that has been ruled unconstitutional by the country’s highest administrative court. One of the reasons the spending ranks so highly is due less to generosity of individual pensions than it is the extreme recession that has shrunk GDP to almost pre-euro levels. Greece’s radical Left government has vociferously defended pensions as one of the last remaining safety nets in a country where 45pc of the elderly live below the poverty line. The issue has become the immovable “red line” in Greece’s struggle to finally end what the ruling Syriza party have dubbed a “ritual humiliation.”
One week in the life of a shattered society.
Sunday: Five years is a long time to be in crisis. It’s freefall by a thousand cuts; loss in myriad ways, hard choices that never get easier. Last week, as Greece descended into drama, a young man appeared on the marble steps of the neoclassical building opposite my home. Head in hand, he sat there from Sunday to Wednesday, in the beating sun, a wheelie bag in front of him, a slice of cardboard perched on top that read: “I am homeless. Help please!”
When you live in Athens you do not flinch at the signs of decay: to do so would be to give in. But somehow the sight of this forlorn figure – a waif of a man, eyes fixed only at his feet, the embodiment of wounded pride, brought home as never before that Greeks are in crisis. Was he giving up or making a hard choice? If he was 22, and he barely seemed that, his entire adult life had been spent in crisis. This is the great tragedy of Greece. It has not only been needlessly impoverished – it now eats up its own. The elderly woman who occasionally rifles through the rubbish bins on the corner of the square my office overlooks – often carrying a Louis Vuitton bag – is so glad she was born at the end of the 1946-49 civil war. “At least then it could get better. Today it can only get worse.”
Monday: For five years we have all felt as if we are on a runaway train, hurtling into the unknown. Sometimes the train picks up speed, sometimes it slows down, but never enough to stop. This week, as the drumbeat of default, impending bankruptcy and disastrous euro exit thudded ever louder, the train felt as if it might derail altogether. Had a lunatic got hold of the controls? On Monday morning it began to feel like it. For me, the day started at 2am when I received a text from Euclid Tsakalotos, the point-man in negotiations between Athens and the troika.
“We made huge efforts to meet them halfway,” he wrote hours after talks reached an impasse over a reform-for-cash deal that could save Greece. “But they insisted on pension and wage cuts.” By mid-morning, global stock markets were tumbling. By midday, the world had learned that, without an agreement, Greece might not be able to honour an end-of-month debt repayment to the IMF worth €1.6bn. By midnight, newscasters, looking decidedly nervous, had broken their own taboo: many were talking openly of euro exit.
“..unnecessary cowardice, confusion and hubris..”
Original decision to provide a bail out is the source of the current crisis. Time for Europe to share the blame and financial consequences.
With everyone talking about Greece being on the verge of exiting the euro after Monday’s summit meeting, it seems to be forgotten that the current crisis is not really about Greece’s currency arrangements at all. The Greek people are not demanding a return to the drachma and few within the country are arguing for the competitive benefits a currency devaluation would entail. And there are no formal rules that Greece is breaking that must lead to an exit from the euro because, legally, the euro is a fixed and irrevocable currency union. This crisis is about more basic things: Debt and power. Indeed, the current stand-off looks a lot more like the classic gunboat diplomacy conflicts of the 19th century than it does the currency crises of the 20th century.
Europe’s governments and the IMF made an enormous mistake in bailing out Greece’s private creditors in 2010 and then overseeing a botched debt restructuring in 2012. In turn, the Greek governments of this era made the mistake of accepting official loans to pay off private creditors, perhaps not realising they were jumping out the frying pan straight into the fire. Now the Greeks are learning that defaulting on private creditors is one thing (not so hard it turns out, once you’ve got Lee Buchheit in your corner) but defaulting on governments of rich European countries is quite something else. Blaming the euro for the current impasse is actually pretty strange because the euro’s founding fathers explicitly warned member states to not to get themselves into this situation.
The story of the demise of Europe’s “no bailout clause” is an interesting one. Rather than an inevitable crisis, one can credibly argue that the decisions that landed us in the current situation did not need to be taken and were taken as a result of unnecessary cowardice, confusion and hubris. I reviewed many papers on prospects for the euro written by economists in the 1990s. I was struck by the consensus that the fiscal limitations of the Stability and Growth Pact would generally be honoured, that euro members that got into fiscal troubles would not be bailed out by other countries and this would lead to sovereign defaults when countries did get into fiscal problems.
By and large, the policy heavyweights of the day, such as Rudi Dornbusch, believed there was a “categorical no-bailout injunction.” As such, it was expected that markets would understand that European governments were more likely to default once their devaluation option was taken away and that financial markets would price the sovereign debt of countries differently depending on the health of their public finances.
Note the pattern: Spain ‘recovers’ through increasing inequality.
While the big picture is undoubtedly improving – big investors are returning to a country that barely three years ago was widely expected to need a Greece-style sovereign bailout – Spain is still mired in a period of transition. Even the IMF report that welcomed Spain’s impressive growth rate – one of the strongest in Europe – also stressed the shaky jobs outlook, noting that unemployment was “still painfully high” and that “vulnerabilities remain”. “Spain has returned to about 95% of where it was in 2008,” says Professor Javier Diaz-Giménez of the IESE business school in Madrid. “That means 2008 is still a benchmark people look back at with nostalgia. At current growth rates, the economy will get back to where it was in 2008 at the end of next year. It’s a very late recovery.”
One of the biggest worries for those yet to see any improvements in their lives is whether even a sustained recovery will be enough to repair the damage. Jobs are starting to return, currently at a rate of 400,000-500,000 a year, but more than three million were lost during the downturn, so the new jobs represent only a small improvement in an unemployment rate, which is still running at almost 24%. In Greece, which now finds itself on the edge of the economic precipice, the rate is 26%. Inequalities, meanwhile, are deepening, leaving some to wonder whether the crisis is even over at all. “The economy is certainly not improving for those without a job or a home,” says Lotta Tenhunen, a social activist in Madrid. The group she works with, PAH, campaigns on behalf of those evicted after falling into arrears on their mortgage payments, and became especially prominent at the height of the recession. In Vallecas, it still meets every week: “People and families are still being driven out of their homes – and the rate is still rising.”
Prospects for the young are particularly bleak. About half of under-25-year-olds in the labour force are without a job, and this threatens to leave the country with a listless lost generation for whom unemployment is the norm. The ranks of the long-term jobless are also swelling. “It is not just the headline unemployment figure that is worrying; it is also the type of unemployment,” says Antonio Barroso of consultancy Teneo Intelligence. “40% of unemployed people are over the age of 45, so difficult to retrain and bring back into the labour market. You also have to look at the types of jobs being created. Most new positions are temporary contracts, where people are left in a precarious position with very few rights – this does not breed confidence.”
“Speculation is rife that Greece’s creditors at the EU, ECB and IMF would offer a six-month extension of the bailout programme..”
The race to save Greece from economic collapse intensified on Saturday night as its beleaguered leader conducted a flurry of behind-the-scenes negotiations before an EU summit on Monday that is expected to decide the country’s fate. Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister, met senior officials in an attempt to devise a package of reforms that would secure emergency funds and avoid the nation defaulting on its massive debts. It will be the third such proposal that Athens has made to its creditors in as many weeks. “We will try to supplement our proposal so that we get closer to a solution,” Greece’s minister of state, Alekos Flabouraris, told broadcaster Mega TV. “We are not going [to the summit] with the old proposal. Some work is being done to see where we can converge, so that we achieve a mutually beneficial solution.”
Flabouraris, widely seen as a mentor to the young prime minister, said Tsipras would hold crucial talks with the head of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. The Greek cabinet will meet in an emergency session on Sunday with Tsipras also dispatching senior officials to Brussels. The frantic diplomacy came as Greece’s eurozone partners warned that, after five months of fruitless talks, the game was up for Tsipras’s radical leftwing government. The country, which has been thrown two lifelines since 2010, has until 30 June to secure €7.2bn (£5.1bn) in bailout funds. Failure to release the loans will result in default, as Greece owes €1.6bn to the IMF at the end of the month. Among the measures that the Syriza-led coalition was reportedly working on on Saturday were reductions in early retirement schemes.
Pension and VAT reforms, along with labour deregulation, remain sources of friction between the two sides. Speculation is rife that Greece’s creditors at the EU, ECB and IMF would offer a six-month extension of the bailout programme – disbursing more than €10bn in aid to tide the country over the summer – if agreement was reached. Discussions over a third bailout Athens will inevitably also require would be kicked down the road. Speaking to the Observer, Athens’s chief negotiator, Euclid Tsakalotos, described the prospect of a short-term deal as perhaps the worst possible outcome. Prolongation of the political uncertainty – and scenarios of Greece’s enforced exit from the euro – would, he said, do nothing for the country’s economic recovery.
Coppola still leaves me with a host of questions. Yanis wrote yesterday that his proposals were never even read because that would mean they’d need to be sent to Bundestag. Whether that automatically implies a vote, I don’t know.
The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has stirred up something of a hornet’s nest. He has spilled the beans on the less-than-transparent negotiating tactics of the EU institutions – the European Commission and the ECB. The Irish finance minister, Michael Noonan, complained that he had not seen the proposals put forward by the EU institutions for consideration by the Greek government. This is a serious criticism. Failure to brief finance ministers adequately before a Eurogroup meeting is negligent, although perhaps understandable in a rapidly-changing situation. It means that the ministers are unable to make informed decisions, so they must either rubber-stamp proposals without considering then properly, or defer everything.
Kicking cans down the road is of course a Eurogroup specialty, but it really shouldn’t be forced on finance ministers through inadequate briefing. Exactly why Mr. Noonan was not briefed is unclear. Did he miss the briefing? Was it an oversight by hard-pressed bureaucrats? Were other ministers briefed? We don’t know. But it is worrying that a mistake like this can be made in such finely balanced negotiations. One false move could spell disaster. The EU negotiators must be more careful. But Mr. Varoufakis added another complaint to Mr. Noonan’s. He said that he had been prevented from briefing EU finance ministers on his own proposal ahead of the meeting. And he blamed the Germans:
In fact, as our German counterpart was later to confirm, any written submission to a finance minister by either Greece or the institutions was “unacceptable”, as he would then need to table it at the Bundestag, thus negating its utility as a negotiating bid.
I find this hard to believe. In effect, it means that anything presented to the Eurogroup in writing is deemed by the Germans to be a firm recommendation requiring a vote by the German Parliament. If this is true, then it makes negotiations far more difficult. Complex proposals have to be written down, even if they are not the final word, because otherwise there is a significant risk of misunderstanding. Even more importantly, it raises serious questions about the role of the Eurogroup. If all the Eurogroup can ever see is a finished product, they can never do more than rubber-stamp decisions made by unelected bureaucrats behind the scenes. This is not a good way of running a supposedly democratic polity. Mr. Varoufakis makes a very similar criticism:
The euro zone moves in a mysterious way. Momentous decisions are rubber- stamped by finance ministers who remain in the dark on the details, while unelected officials of mighty institutions are locked into one-sided negotiations with a solitary government-in-distress. It is as if Europe has determined that elected finance ministers are not up to the task of mastering the technical details; a task best left to “experts” representing not voters but the institutions. One can only wonder to what extent such an arrangement is efficient, let alone remotely democratic.
And in his final paragraphs, he accuses the Eurogroup of being not fit for purpose. Hmm. Whether or not this criticism is justified, I can’t for the life of me see how saying it publicly is helpful to the Greek cause. It’s only going to annoy people.
Child poverty is on course for the biggest rise in a generation, reversing years of progress that began in the late 1990s, leading charities and independent experts claimed on Saturday. The stark prognosis comes before the release of government figures which experts believe will show a clear increase for the first time since the start of the decade. It also comes as the chancellor George Osborne and work and pensions minister Iain Duncan Smith announced they had agreed a plan to slash a further £12bn a year from benefits spending. In a joint letter they pledged to attack the “damaging culture of welfare dependency”, and said it would take “a decade” or more to return the welfare budget to what they called “sanity”.
The introduction of the bedroom tax and cuts in benefits between 2013 and last year are blamed for fuelling the rise in the number of families whose income is below 60% of the UK average – the definition of relative poverty. Calculations from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have suggested that progress between the late 1990s and 2010 has been reversed and that the number of children living in relative poverty rose from 2.3 million in 2013 to 2.6 million in 2014. The Child Poverty Action Group says that with the government committed to implementing another £12bn of cuts in a new round of austerity, the problem will grow.
As tens of thousands of people joined an anti-austerity march through London on Saturday, Alison Garnham, the charity’s chief executive, said ministers were failing too many children. “The government can no longer claim that deficit reduction is about protecting children’s futures now that it’s being made to confront a child poverty crisis, with the biggest rise in a generation now expected of its own making,” she said. “With child poverty expected to rise by nearly a third in the decade to 2020 as a result of its policies, it’s clear the government’s approach is failing.”
Pretty soon, we’ll all be Greeks.
The manager of one of Britain’s biggest bond funds has urged investors to keep cash under the mattress. Ian Spreadbury, who invests more than £4bn of investors’ money across a handful of bond funds for Fidelity, including the flagship Moneybuilder Income fund, is concerned that a “systemic event” could rock markets, possibly similar in magnitude to the financial crisis of 2008, which began in Britain with a run on Northern Rock. “Systemic risk is in the system and as an investor you have to be aware of that,” he told Telegraph Money. The best strategy to deal with this, he said, was for investors to spread their money widely into different assets, including gold and silver, as well as cash in savings accounts.
But he went further, suggesting it was wise to hold some “physical cash”, an unusual suggestion from a mainstream fund manager. His concern is that global debt – particularly mortgage debt – has been pumped up to record levels, made possible by exceptionally low interest rates that could soon end, and he is unsure how well banks could cope with the shocks that may await. He pointed out that a saver was covered only up to £85,000 per bank under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme – which is effectively unfunded – and that the Government has said it will not rescue banks in future, hence his suggestion that some money should be held in physical cash. He declined to predict the exact trigger but said it was more likely to happen in the next five years rather than 10.
The current woes of Greece, which may crash out of the euro, already has many market watchers concerned. Mr Spreadbury’s views are timely, aside from Greece. A growing number of professional investors (see comment, right) and commentators are expressing unease about what happens next. The prices of nearly all assets – property, shares, bonds – have been rising for years. House prices have risen by 26pc since the start of 2009, and by 68pc in London. The FTSE 100 is up by 75pc. Although it feels counter-intuitive, this trend of rising prices should continue if economies remain weak, because it gives central banks licence to keep rates low and to carry on with their “quantitative easing” programmes.
The MO.
It’s a vicious circle of hypocrisy: Americans dependent on the safety net are urged to “get a job” by the same free-market system that pays them too little to avoid being dependent on the safety net. According to the Economic Policy Institute, $45 billion per year in federal, state, and other safety net support is paid to workers in the bottom 20% of wage earners. Thus the average U.S. household is paying almost $400 to employees in low-wage industries such as food service, retail, and personal care. Paul Ryan said that social programs “turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” But 63% of eligible working-age poor Americans are employed, and 73% are members of working families.
Yet in a show of hypocrisy by some of the leading safety net critics, Congress has killed or blocked or ignored numerous attempts to create better jobs for underemployed Americans. A Demos study found that raising wages to $25,000 per year (about $12.50 per hour) for full-time retail workers would lift 734,075 people out of poverty. It would probably help a lot more. An analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveals that about 22 million workers are underpaid (about a sixth of the total), over half of them in food service, cashiering, personal care, and housekeeping. Paying everyone $12.50 (assuming full-time) would cost an extra $80 billion. That’s about 3% of total 2014 corporate profits. Three%, compared to the 95% spent by S&P 500 companies on investor-enriching stock buybacks and dividend payouts.
About two-thirds of low-wage workers are employed by large corporations with over 100 employees. The very worst offender is probably Walmart, which pays its estimated 1.4 million U.S. employees so little that the average Walmart worker depends on about $4,400 per year in taxpayer assistance, for food stamps and other safety net programs. As Walmart was depending on us, the taxpayers, to pay $4,400 a year to each of its employees, the company was spending the equivalent of $5,000 per U.S. employee for price-boosting stock buybacks.
The EU will split on this soon enough.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has slammed the EU’s “pushy sanctions strategy” as “political blackmail,” and said it is “absolutely hopeless” as it won’t make Russia give up its “national interests and principled position.” Coming in response to the EU’s extension of sanctions over what Brussels called “the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol,” the Russian statement said “it was time” to accept that those territories are an “integral part of the Russian Federation” and that the situation “can’t be changed by methods of economic and political blackmail.” Sanctions against Russia are “absolutely hopeless,” the ministry said, adding that “it is a mistake to expect that [the sanctions strategy] will make us sacrifice national interests and [our] principled position on key issues.”
As the prolonged restrictions target Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, the Foreign Ministry sees the sanctions as unacceptable “discrimination” against people in Crimea “on a political and territorial basis.” Recalling “historical examples,” the ministry condemned the move as “a collective punishment” of “the residents of the [Crimean] peninsula who made a free choice” for reunification with Russia. “It was hard to imagine that Europe would face this in the 21st century,” the Foreign Ministry’s statement said. On Friday, the EU extended economic sanctions against Crimea until June 23, 2016, and said it still doesn’t recognize Crimea’s reunification with Russia, calling it an “illegal annexation.”
The restrictions include a ban on imports from Crimea or Sevastopol into the EU, investment and tourism services, as well as the export of certain products and technology to Crimean companies. The EU sanctions against Russia were imposed over the Ukrainian crisis. They targeted access to foreign loans and the oil and gas industry. Moscow responded with countersanctions that hit European food producers. However, the toll the conflict is taking on the EU economy is higher than Brussels initially anticipated.
German media should be way more vocal on this. And the rest of Europe too.
In the coming weeks, Kiev will receive the €600 million tranche of the third EU loan package for Ukraine. It will be a new financial burden for ordinary EU taxpayers because there is no hope that the debt will be paid off, a German business newspaper reports. The €600 million euro tranche of financial aid for Ukraine is taking money from ordinary European taxpayers with no chance to return, the German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reports. Earlier, Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, said the EU completed all the procedures for the new tranche. “I’m very glad that the Verkhovna Rada [the Ukrainian Parliament] ratified the memorandum on the third package of financial aid of €1.8 billion.
I’m sure that within several weeks Kiev will receive the first tranche of €600 million,” Hahn said. “Thus, there is a new financial burden for our taxpayers. There is no hope that the money will return,” the newspaper claims. In May, Ukraine’s National Railroad Company declared bankruptcy. Part of its debt is due to be restructured. In total, its debt has reached $500 million. During the last year only, European taxpayers lost €200 million to save the company, the article reads. The Ukrainian protective wall along the border with Russia is also funded by EU taxpayers. The electrified barrier with mines and barbed wire is planned to be 2,000-kilometer-long and will cost nearly €100 million, DWN points out.
“..there is a war party in every capital and even in the White House itself.”
RT: A few weeks ago US Vice President Joe Biden said that “everybody wants an end to this conflict in Ukraine, but the question is on whose terms and how will it end.” Are the terms to end this conflict are still being negotiated and if so what options are on offer?
Stephen Cohen: My perspective is different from that of Vice President Biden. We are now after all in almost two years – a year and a half – of a new Cold War between the US and Russia – an exceedingly dangerous confrontation over Ukraine, which I think and I’ve said this for months could easily become as dangerous as the Cuban missile crisis was. The politics of this have now spread far and wide including in Europe. It seems to me, and this is my fundamental analysis, that in almost every capital – Washington, Brussels and certainly in Kiev, and even to some degree in Moscow – there is what I call a peace and a war party.
The Minsk agreements, which were agreed upon by the Chancellor of Germany, the President of France, the President of Ukraine and of course President Putin of Russia represented then a peace party. It set out in addition to a ceasefire in Ukraine very far reaching, fundamental terms of negotiation to end the civil war in Ukraine, to end the proxy war between the West and Russia. It’s clear to me that there are powerful people in the West and in Kiev who do not want a negotiated settlement.
RT: Vice President Biden, who recently said that he talks to either PM Yatsenyuk or President Poroshenko on almost a weekly basis – that’s what he said – do you think that Biden belongs to the peace or war camp when he is on the phone with them? Does he preach reconciliation?
SC: He says he talks to them three times per week not once a week. But we have evidence, something very dramatic just happened. As you know, in late May Secretary of State John Kerry went to Sochi. First he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then, remarkably, he met for four hours with President Putin. It was absolutely clear from what was said in Sochi at the press conferences afterwards that Kerry’s mission had been to say that the US, the Obama administration, now fully backed the Minsk agreement. That would put Kerry in the peace party.
It was kind of a surprise because he had been taking a very hard line. However, look what then happened. Kerry was attacked, literally criticized, for having gone to Sochi by members of the Obama administration. The most vivid example reported in the New York Times last Sunday I think was that a former very close policy aide to Vice President Biden told the reporter they didn’t know why Kerry had gone to Sochi, and that he had sent bad messages and that his trip had been counterproductive. So you conclude from this – and it confirms my thesis – that there is a war party in every capital and even in the White House itself.
For those who still needed confirmation.
Eric King: “You mentioned that we are in unprecedented times. And the concern is that when the 2008 collapse unfolded there was all this money printing and the banks were bailed out. It really fell on the shoulders of the taxpayers, but the concern as you said is that this leverage is growing. There are over one quadrillion dollars of derivatives. With the leverage totally ramped up in (terms of) the central banks’ (balance sheets), who will save the financial system (this time around)? Who will save the banks? There are all these bail-ins that have been written into law in the West and it seems like the next move is just to steal money from the public. Who will save the system this time when it implodes?
Nomi Prins: “When it implodes it will implode more dangerously. The IMF and the Fed have different ideas about whether rates should stay low or go up. In this particular round the IMF won. They want rates to stay low because they don’t know what’s going to happen to the global financial system if the availability of cheap money goes away…. “Right now everyone knows, whether they admit it or not, that (cheap money) is the only thing that’s keeping this (global financial) system afloat. It isn’t production. It isn’t savings of individuals because nobody has any money to save. So there is no there, there.
The only policy that these central banks have is to continue to do more of the same. And the only thing that does is continue to push this next crisis, or the second leg of the current crisis as I look at it, down the road. There is no saving this (global financial) system. All they can do is continue to push the current policies to make it look as if things are operating functionally — as if these banks are solvent and as if these markets are somehow elevated on the basis of value and not on the basis of the cheap money that they are infusing into the system. That’s all they can do. They just hope that somewhere along the line this will work out.”
That’s right, might as well elect the biggest dunce.
Perhaps it has occurred to you as it has to me that the United States is no longer capable of producing political leadership. In the current issue of Trends Journal, Gerald Celente describes the eight candidates (at the time he went to press) for the US presidential nomination as “Liars, cowards, freaks & fools.” Celente put it well. If you look at the sorry collection that aspires to be the CEO of what continues to be described as the “exceptional, indispensable, most important country with the largest economy and military, the world’s only Superpower, the Uni-power,” you see a collection of nobodies. America is like the last days of Rome when contenting factions fought to put their puppet on the throne.
There is no known politician in America who measures up to Vladimir Putin’s ankle, or to the knee of China’s leaders, or to the waist of Ecuador’s, Bolivia’s, Venezuela’s, Argentina’s, Brazil’s, or to the chests of India’s and South Africa’s. In Europe, the UK, Australia, and Canada, the natural leaders are also frozen out of the corrupt system. In the US, “leadership” positions depend on financial support from the ruling economic interests. American presidents and politicians represent about six powerful private interest groups and no one else. After Celente went to press, Donald Trump announced to much mirth. A “con man” they say, but what else is the President of the United States? Do you think you weren’t conned by Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama? What universe do you live in?
In actual fact, Trump might be our best candidate to date. By all accounts, he is very rich. Thus, he doesn’t need the office in order to become rich by selling out America to interest groups. By all accounts, Trump has a healthy ego. Thus, he could be capable of standing up to the powerful interest groups that generally determine the governance of the American serfs. Trump’s ego might even be strong enough for him to stand up to the Israel Lobby, something my former colleague, Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said publicly that no American President was capable of doing. As Celente makes clear in the current Trends Journal, all politicians are con men or con women.
We are going to have them regardless, so why not try a rich one who might decide to break with tradition and serve the interests of the citizenry. This would be a unique accomplishment, affording Trump the elevation in history books that would satisfy his ego. When a person reaches Trump’s state, does he need another couple of billion dollars or is historical recognition as the savior, however temporary, more valuable? This is not my endorsement of Trump for President. It is merely my speculations on how we might think of how large egos might be brought into our service. When we put the Clintons in office, they decided to make money so that they could outdo Hollywood and show their arrival with the $3 million they spent on their daughter’s wedding. For Trump, $3 million is pocket change.
Let’s first see where it goes.
The pope’s encyclical on climate change is a big deal. Sure, past popes have written on the importance of protecting the environment, on favoring the poorest and on rethinking our direction as a species. But this is a major piece of work, and an ardent call from one of our world’s major leaders for us to work together to address this existential problem. Most interesting and heartening to me is Francis’s linking of the fate of the poor and the future of climate change. This point is well documented in research on the injustice of climate change. For example, Bradley Parks and I found that the poorest nations of the world are far more likely to suffer the impacts of climate-related disasters, and are also far less responsible for the problem.
The timing of the pope’s remarks is also very important. This year countries are both negotiating to reach a global agreement in Paris in December and also individually putting forward their own pledges on what they will do, called INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) in the cumbersome U.N. lingo. The pope’s statement puts it very plainly to those leaders of nations who might be laggards: It’s time to face climate change very thoughtfully, justly and aggressively. Finally, having this strong and very considered statement about the urgency and moral imperative of addressing climate change coming from a religious leader is very proper, and part of an important larger movement.
Just to put you on the wrong paw (do skippys have paws?).
All kangaroos are left-handed, according to new research. Previously it was thought that “true”-handedness, meaning predictably using one hand over the other, was a feature unique to primates. The new research, published in the journal Current Biology, not only negates that but also goes one step further: kangaroos are even more true-handed than we are. “According to a special-assessment scale of handedness adopted for primates, kangaroos pulled down the highest grades,” said project leader Yegor Malashichev in a press release. “We observed a remarkable consistency in responses across bipedal species in that they all prefer to use the left, not the right, hand.”
Malashichev, a researcher from Saint Petersburg State University in Russia, and his team observed that wild kangaroos show a natural preference for their left hands when performing particular actions, such as grooming their noses, picking leaves, or bending tree branches. Left-handedness was particularly apparent in eastern grey and red kangaroos. The kangaroos that they studied were at various locations in the wild at Tasmania and Australia. The term “hand” really does apply here, because kangaroos have five-fingered hands that somewhat resemble human hands, save for the kangaroos’ long claws in place of fingernails. Not all marsupials were found to exhibit such handedness. The researchers determined that red-necked wallabies, for example, prefer their left hand for some tasks and their right for others.
Generally speaking, these wallabies use their left forelimb for tasks that involve fine manipulation and the right for tasks that require more physical strength. The researchers also found less evidence for handedness in species that spend their days in the trees. The discovery about kangaroos was unexpected because, unlike other mammals, kangaroos lack the same neural circuitry that bridges the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Now the researchers are very curious about marsupial brains, which differ from those of other mammals in additional respects too. Such studies could yield important insight into neuropsychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia and autism, the researchers said, noting links between those disorders and handedness.
Doesn’t leave much space for ‘interpretation’.
Just today, NASA released its global temperature data for the month of May 2015. It was a scorching 0.71°C (1.3°F) above the long-term average. It is also the hottest first five months of any year ever recorded. As we look at climate patterns over the next year or so, it is likely that this year will set a new all-time record. In fact, as of now, 2015 is a whopping 0.1°C (0.17°F) hotter than last year, which itself was the hottest year on record. Below, NASA’s annual temperatures are shown. Each year’s results are shown as black dots. Some years are warmer, some are cooler and we never want to put too much emphasis on any single year’s temperature. I have added a star to show where 2015 is so far this year, simply off the chart. The last 12 months are at record levels as well. So far June has been very hot as well, likely to end up warmer than May.
So why talk about month temperatures or even annual temperatures? Isn’t climate about long-term trends? First, there has been a lot of discussion of the so-called ‘pause.’ As I have pointed out many times here and in my own research, there has been no pause at all. We know this first by looking at the rate of energy gain within the oceans. But other recent publications, like ones I’ve written about have taken account of instrument and measurement quality and they too find no pause. Second, there has been a lot of discussion of why models were running hotter than surface air temperatures. There was a real divergence for a while with most models suggesting more warming. Well with 2014 and 2015, we see that the models and actual surface temperatures are in very close agreement.
When we combine surface temperatures with ocean heat content, as seen below, a clear picture emerges. Warming is continuing at a rapid rate.
What we do best.
Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich calls for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat before the window of opportunity closes. There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity’s existence. That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing. “[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,” Ehrlich said.
Although most well known for his positions on human population, Ehrlich has done extensive work on extinctions going back to his 1981 book, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. He has long tied his work on coevolution, on racial, gender and economic justice, and on nuclear winter with the issue of wildlife populations and species loss. There is general agreement among scientists that extinction rates have reached levels unparalleled since the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago.
However, some have challenged the theory, believing earlier estimates rested on assumptions that overestimated the crisis. The new study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that even with extremely conservative estimates, species are disappearing up to about 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions, known as the background rate. “If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on,” said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México.
Using fossil records and extinction counts from a range of records, the researchers compared a highly conservative estimate of current extinctions with a background rate estimate twice as high as those widely used in previous analyses. This way, they brought the two estimates – current extinction rate and average background or going-on-all-the-time extinction rate – as close to each other as possible. Focusing on vertebrates, the group for which the most reliable modern and fossil data exist, the researchers asked whether even the lowest estimates of the difference between background and contemporary extinction rates still justify the conclusion that people are precipitating “a global spasm of biodiversity loss.” The answer: a definitive yes.
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. "Vancouver Asahi: In conversation with Kaye Kaminishi". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 17 September 2018, Historica Canada. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver-asahi-editorial. Accessed 21 January 2020.
Vancouver Asahi: In conversation with Kaye Kaminishi (2018). In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver-asahi-editorial
"Vancouver Asahi: In conversation with Kaye Kaminishi". In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published March 29, 2016; Last Edited September 17, 2018. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver-asahi-editorial
. The Canadian Encyclopedia, s.v. "Vancouver Asahi: In conversation with Kaye Kaminishi", Last Edited September 17, 2018, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver-asahi-editorial
Vancouver Asahi: In conversation with Kaye Kaminishi
Published Online December 7, 2016
Last Edited March 29, 2016
This entry was made possible with support from
Kaye Kaminishi is the last surviving member of the Vancouver Asahi, a Japanese Canadian baseball club. The team was disbanded in 1942, when the Canadian government interned 21,000 Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, including every member of the Asahi.
This is Kaye’s story.
What people love most is a tragedy with a happy ending
There’s a book called A Tragedy of Democracy about the history of Japanese internment in Canada. It’s written by a historian named Greg Robinson, who is a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Professor Robinson concludes the book with this really interesting quote.
SAM FENN (narrator): Do you remember that off by heart?
GREG ROBINSON: Yes. It’s William Dean Howells, the famous novelist and American social critic, who said what Americans love most is a tragedy with a happy ending.
SF: What did you take that to mean when you first read it?
GR: That means that Americans feel deeply about things — and Canadians the same — but that they like their stories wrapped up neatly. And if you think that things work well in the end, that people will be able to understand them better.
We want tragedies with happy endings. Like a classic sports movie where the underdog faces adversity but then they win it all with a walk-off home run. In real life, things rarely work out that way.
SAM FENN: I need to be kind of close. Is this okay, like this?
KAYE KAMINISHI: Oh yeah sure.
SF: Kaye, can I have you introduce yourself?
KAYE: My name Kaye Koishi Kaminishi and I was born in Vancouver, 1922, January 11th.
Kaye is 94 years old. He’s friendly. Delicate looking. In the 1920s and 30s, when Kaye was a kid, he lived right across the street from a ballpark called the Powell Street Grounds. This is home to Kaye’s heroes, an amateur baseball team called the Vancouver Asahi.
KAYE: Asahi plays, you know, some weeknights or Sundays… I go right away to watch. You know? Every Asahi game, I never missed it. Yeah.
SF: Were there quite big crowds for those games?
KAYE: You bet there were. Oh, when Asahi plays Japanese Town is empty.
Picture a white jersey, a red sun on the sleeve and the word Asahi swooped across the chest. This team is entirely Japanese Canadian, and when the Asahi first start to play against white teams, they’re reviled. People shout slurs at the team from the field, the stands and the press box. But by the 1930s, the Asahi are the most popular team in the city. Kaye remembers Japanese people and white people watching the games.
KAYE: You know there’s only, like, the grandstand accommodates maybe 200 people. That’s about it, eh? So everybody right up on all the four corners of the street. Six deep. So, you know, a good two, three thousand people were watching the game — every game at that time.
Uniform worn by Kaye Kaminishi when he played for the Vancouver Asahi baseball team. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/1998.6.1)
Image: Stuart Thomson/Vancouver Public Library/11750.
Asahi All-Stars baseball team portrait, 1921. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum, 2010.30.3)
Asahi player with catcher's mitt. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/2010.17.1.33)
Vancouver Asahi junior team, 1933. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum, 2010.17.1.60)
The Asahi were heroes in their Powell Street neighbourhood, and their exciting brand of baseball attracted many fans from outside the Vancouver Japanese community. (Ken and Rose Kutsukake Collection, Japanese Canadian National Museum.)
The 1930 Vancouver Asahi, posing with the Vancouver Terminal League championship trophy. (courtesy of the Kitagawa Family, Nikkei National Museum)
KAYE: Of course Powell Street — Japanese town — was really quite a town. You’ve got everything up there. So you don’t have to go outside of Powell Street to go shopping or do anything.
Kaye’s father owns a profitable sawmill. His mother runs a boarding house. The Kaminishis are a wealthy family in a poor but vibrant part of town.
Image: Dominion Photo Company/Vancouver Public Library/21774.
Bunka Shokai store at 250 Powell St. in Japantown, Vancouver, 1928. (Dominion Photo Company/Vancouver Public Library/21773)
Japanese Hall at 475 Alexander Street in Vancouver, 1937. (Vancouver Public Library/85995)
SF: What’s your earliest memory of baseball?
KAYE: I was in the school baseball club, and wasn’t real good team, but we used to go [to] school-to-school tournament quite often.
Kaye Kaminishi (on right) and two Asahi Players, c. 1940. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/2010-26-31)
Kaye Kaminishi (middle) and two Asahi Players, c. 1940. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/2010.26.29)
SF: They called you the vacuum cleaner, is that right?
KAYE: [Laughs] Yeah well, that’s uh… I usually don’t miss. That’s why they give me a nickname for a while, you know.
Kaye plays third base. He’s quick and sure-handed. He goes to school in Japan as a child and plays in a school league — then in a church league in Vancouver. And finally, in 1939, when Kaye is 17 years old, the Vancouver Asahi make an announcement.
KAYE: They pick up five rookies, and I was one of the rookies.
SF: Was it important to you to get picked up by Asahi? Was that something you wanted?
KAYE: Oh, that’s a proud moment, you know. If you get into the Asahi team and put the uniform on — oh, everybody thought you were king or something, you know? Real happy time. Yeah. Except I was nervous for a while, you know.
SF: What were you nervous about?
KAYE: Because, we were representing the Japanese community. So you know, if you miss something there’s not good rumours coming up, you see? So, you gotta be careful, you know?
You gotta be careful because there’s a spotlight on you. If you miss a groundball it might reflect poorly on the whole community. The Asahi are a real dynasty by the time Kaye makes the team. They had won a Japanese Baseball Championship in back-to-back years. But the Asahi don’t look like a good team. At this time, the best baseball player in the world is a six-foot-two slugger named Joe DiMaggio.
Vancouver Asahi baseball team in Woodfibre, BC, 14 July 1940. Front row: (left to right) Tommy Sawayama, Frank Shiraishi, George Shishido, Kaz Suga, Mike Maruno, Ken Kutsukake. Back row: (left to right) Koei Mitsui, Kaye Kaminishi, George Yoshinaka, Roy Yamamura, Nagy Nishihara. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/1996.180.1)
Roy Yamamura and Collingwood Collies player, c 1939. (courtesy Pat Adachi/Nikkei National Museum.)
Many of Vancouver’s white players are the off-brand version of DiMaggio. They’re big, burly guys who aren’t so fast but are strong enough to hit home runs. The Asahi are different.
KAYE: We were kind of small. We can’t hit too many homers or big hits. So only thing we have to win is stealing bases, and bunts, and squeeze play.
The Vancouver press call this brainball. It’s really all about bunting. Imagine you’re standing in the batter’s box, and the pitcher throws the ball to the plate. Instead of swinging as hard as you can, you just sort of stick the bat out. The ball bounces across the infield. If you do it right, it will take the fielders just a little too long to pick it up and throw you out.
SF: Do you know who was the best bunter on the team?
KAYE: Well, actually, everybody good bunter.
SF: Were you quite good?
KAYE: Oh, I was quite good. Yeah.
Kaye spends most of his first season riding the bench as the team wins the Pacific Northwest Championship. He’s a proud benchwarmer, honoured just to be on such a talented team. At only 17, his best playing years are all ahead of him.
Seattle player at bat at the Powell Street Grounds and Asahi player Ken Kutsukake as catcher, 1939. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/2010.26.24)
Asahi player, Mike Maruno, at bat at the Powell Street Grounds and about to bunt. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/2010.26.20)
Vancouver Asahi's Roy Yamamura fielding (middle) as a Fife player slides into third base, Powell Street Ground, ca. 1939. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/2010.26.23)
Internment
(courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-057250)
An illustration from the Canadian Illustrated News, entitled The Heathen Chinese in British Columbia. It depicts Amor de Cosmos forcing a Chinese immigrant to leave British Columbia because he refuses to assimilate. 26 April 1879.
After the riot in Japantown, Vancouver, 1907. (Library and Archives/C023555.)
SAM FENN: We hear that Vancouver was quite a racist place at this time. Was that true in your experience?
KAYE KAMINISHI: Yes. You know, uh, people graduate university [and] can’t get no government job, no engineering jobs. And no voting rights. If you work in a place, you only get half the wages. So our parents really have a tough time.
SF: Japanese people can’t vote in BC. They can’t sit with white people at the movie theatres. And, for the most part, they live in racially segregated enclaves.
GREG ROBINSON: Uh, you know. It’s not called British Columbia for nothing.
SF: This is Greg Robinson again. He studies the history of Japanese Canadians.
GR: There’s a kind of rawness to the racism that you don’t get in the East. There are all of these whites that have gone all of this way to settle this new land — take it from the First Nations and from the Black settlers and the others who have been there before. And they want to build a white man’s country.
Japanese Canadian fishermen having their boat confiscated by a Royal Canadian Navy Officer, 1941. (Library and Archives Canada/PA-112539)
Kaye’s second season is set against an ominous backdrop. In 1940, Japan allies with Nazi Germany. White Vancouverites worry that their Japanese neighbours will be loyal to Japan, not Canada. So Prime Minister Mackenzie King takes action. He requires that Japanese nationals and Japanese Canadians register with the government. Everyone over 16 is fingerprinted, photographed and required to carry a registration card.
GR: I think that there was no special reason to suspect Japanese disloyalty. The buildup of racism, the buildup of suspicion, had very little to do with the facts on the ground.
ARCHIVAL CLIP: We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, by air, President Roosevelt has just announced. The attack also was made on all naval and military activities on the principal island of Oahu. We take you now to Washington. The details are not available...
SF: Do you remember that day?
KAYE: I can’t even remember, you know. I heard that, you know, Pearl Harbor bombing on the radio. That was so… not scared… but you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen. I can think anything, you know? Whole lot of rumours going on, you know. They come and pick you up, and you know… and uh, curfews and so on.
ARCHIVAL CLIP: A Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbour naturally would mean war. Such an attack would naturally bring a counter attack.
GR: I’ve heard various people’s stories about the word filtering through of the attacks. Some people got word as they were leaving church. Some people heard it on the radio while they were at home. A lot of people I know went home and were wondering what this is going to mean. And also were, I think, taken over by a mixture of emotions: shame, anger at Japan, worry for their loved ones.
ARCHIVAL CLIP: ... Their appearance at the State Department on this Sunday afternoon emphasizes the gravity of the Far Eastern situation, where hostilities now seem to be actually opening over the whole South Pacific.
Vehicle being seized by the RCMP in 1942 during the internment of Japanese Canadians. (Province Newspaper/Vancouver Public Library/1362)
On 23 February 1942, Mackenzie King signs order-in-council 1486. The government of Canada now considers everyone of Japanese ancestry an enemy alien. It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen, if you fought for Canada in the First World War, or if you are a star baseball player: you’re the enemy. You have to evacuate the west coast.
KAYE: We have to get away from Vancouver: 100-mile radius. Gotta go out. I was hiding two months in my mom’s rooming house, eh.
SF: When you say you were hiding inside, do you mean you didn’t leave the house?
KAYE: That’s for sure. I couldn’t leave it. You don’t know who is, you know, detective or police or I don’t know. Meantime, if I get caught by RCMP I have to go to Ontario — prisoner’s camp up there.
Eventually Kaye and his mom flee to a small town in northern BC called Lillooet. It’s a small Japanese collective overseen by the RCMP [and called East Lillooet]. The government calls this a “self-supporting community” because Japanese Canadians are required to buy their own land. When Kaye arrives, it’s a completely different world.
KAYE: Living in Vancouver, you’ve got everything. But up there… nothing there. Nothing there! No electricity. No water. We all get the buckets and go down to Fraser River, you know. Water just so muddy. Yellow, you know. So — really tough time.
Orders from the BC Security Commission, which appeared 29 April 1942 (courtesy Ken Mori/"The New Canadian").
Japanese Canadian men reading the evacuation notice in British Columbia, 1942. (Province Newspaper/Vancouver Public Library/1343)
In 1942 the Canadian government moved to relocate all Japanese in British Columbia, seizing any property that the people could not carry (courtesy Erindale College Photo Collection).
Even those Japanese who were Canadian citizens were relocated in 1942 (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-46350).
Relocation of Japanese Canadians to internment camps in the interior of British Columbia, 1942. (Library and Archives Canada/C-047397)
A family of Japanese Canadians being relocated in British Columbia, 1942. (Library and Archives Canada/C-046355)
Image: Library and Archives Canada/C-057251.
Japanese Canadian men being relocated in British Columbia, 1942. (Province Newspaper/Vancouver Public Library)
Image: Jack Long / National Film Board of Canada/Library and Archives Canada/PA-142853.
When Kaye says there’s nothing there, he means nothing. It’s just a plot of dirt at the foot of a mountain. Just imagine that for a second: imagine your government passes a law forcing you to leave your city. You have to lease land somewhere else. You have to build a new house. And you have to fetch the dirty yellow water. And the most insulting thing is that there’s a bridge at the edge of the East Lillooet, and on the other side of the bridge is a proper town with grocery stores, a theatre, running water.
View of a row of shacks in East Lillooet, British Columbia, c. 1943. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/2014.14.2.4.183)
KAYE: We can’t go across the bridge to go to shopping or anything. Store keepers come get the order and they bring us next day you know… things like that… you know...
SF: So it’s like paying to be in a kind of prison?
KAYE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s right.
In 1943, the government starts to sell the property it confiscated from Japanese Canadians. This includes the Kaminishi sawmill, which is supposed to be Kaye’s inheritance.
KAYE: See, my dad start 1917, you know? So we had quite a big business up there. Custodian took over [and] sold for little over $200,000. You know… And this fellow sold next year for $1,000,000. Million dollars! What a difference between only one years!
SF: It’s not fair.
KAYE: Really not fair. You know, they call us enemies anyway first of all. Why is that? We were born in Canada and we don’t do anything. I was getting mad for a while. All the people said, “Well, it’s a war. That’s why can’t help it.” You know, but to me, I was born in Canada and went to a Canadian school. Why our government do things like that?
East Lillooet softball team, East Lillooet, BC, c. 1943. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/1994.71.13.a-b)
Softball game in East Lillooet, BC, c. 1943. (courtesy Nikkei National Museum/1994.71.5.a-b)
Kaye is in his early 20s. And he’s stuck on the wrong side of the bridge with no end to the war in sight. He misses his home and friends — and he misses baseball. So he decides to teach the kids in East Lillooet how to play. It’s a way to pass the time, and the RCMP seem to like watching them run drills. One day Kaye talks to one of the officers.
KAYE: And this policeman was a real sportsman. So I tell him that we have a softball team and, “Why don’t you guys make one in town, eh? Let’s play each other, you know?” “Oh,” he says. “That’s a really good idea.” So he made one team in town. I told him, “Let us go one time to play the game up there. And you guys come east side next week.” You know, things like that. “Let’s go back and forth, you know.” We start doing this. Going back and forth.
SF: That was the first time you crossed the bridge?
KAYE: That was the first time crossed the bridge with the half-ton truck. You know, go to town.
SF: How did it feel?
KAYE: It felt really — oh! Now freedom comes, you know. That’s the reason town people start trusting us. And we could go to town and shop. There’s the one theatre there, you see. We used to go watch the show on Friday night and so on, you know.
SF: So you desegregated Lillooet!
KAYE: Yeah, sort of you know. Break the barrier anyway.
SF: Yeah, you’re the Jackie Robinson of…
KAYE: [Laughs] No, no, no! That’s a really — that’s… sports did that.
Tragedies With Happy Endings
A Proud Benchwarmer was written and produced by Sam Fenn, Gordon Katic, Alexander Kim and Eli Yarhi. Fact checking by Lawrence Pinsky. Thanks to David Gutnick for his tape-sync. This documentary was produced by Cited and The Canadian Encyclopedia, which is a division of Historica Canada. It is broadcast with both groups’ permission. If you’d like to hear more of Sam's work, visit citedpodcast.com.
Internment in Canada
Japanese Canadians
Vancouver Asahi
Visual Arts in Canada
Acadian Heritage
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menswear Jan. 20, 2012
The British Fashion Council Gets Territorial Over Its Rising Menswear Designers
By Alex Rees
A look from British designer Kim Jones’s fall 2012 men’s Louis Vuitton collection. Photo: Imaxtree
This week the British Fashion Council launched a new initiative and advisory board aimed at promoting the country’s rising menswear talents. Longtime editor of British GQ Dylan Jones will serve as the chairman of this board, which has scheduled events throughout the year meant to raise the profile of emerging designers and better foster their talent. (The first event takes place this Sunday in Paris, as fall’s menswear season comes to a close.)
As a fashion capital, London is known for breakout design talent, but less so as a viable base for those burgeoning careers to flourish. Instead, designers often take jobs at European design houses and build their reputations on the Continent. In recent years, though, the city’s scholarship programs and mentoring schemes have helped a growing number of strong womenswear designers establish themselves on the international scene without needing to move their operations abroad.
A number of menswear designers in London are riding a wave of popularity and recognition — from Jonathan Saunders, who made his menswear debut in Milan earlier this week, to James Long, recent winner of a 2012 Fashion Forward scholarship. J. W. Anderson, Christopher Shannon, and Christopher Raeburn are also among the pool of menswear designers receiving assistance from (and/or being nominated for) funding schemes and BFC-sponsored programs. Raeburn says the push is necessary, and that more could be done to help them at home: “We need to improve the visibility of menswear in comparison to womenswear … there are [currently] five days devoted to womenswear in the London Fashion Week schedule compared to one for men.” Dylan Jones noted that part of his committee’s plans include “strategic changes to the menswear element” during LFW, though an immediate expansion seems unlikely.
Independent UK
BFC’s Territorial Plans Over Menswear Designers
media 16 mins ago
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U.S. Power Companies Warned ‘Nightmare’ Cyber Weapon Already Causing Blackouts
‘Time Is Running Out’
The first hack was small, cutting power to part of Kiev. But security experts now warn that was just the start—the malware is a genuine cyber weapon that threatens the U.S.
Kevin Poulsen
Sr. National Security Correspondent
Updated Jun. 12, 2017 2:29PM ET / Published Jun. 12, 2017 9:00AM ET
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
Seven minutes before midnight last Dec. 17, a bomb of sorts went off in a high-voltage substation north of Kiev.
But if you were standing outside the 20 acres of gleaming metal transformers and coils, you wouldn’t have heard a bang or seen a flash. It wasn’t that kind of bomb. It was a piece of malicious software that had been hiding in a control-room computer miles away, waiting for the right time to reveal itself. At 11:53 p.m., the logic bomb transmitted a staccato burst of pre-programmed commands to the substation, popping one circuit breaker after another until a strip of houses in and around western Kiev were plunged into darkness.
Technicians responded to the Pivnichna substation and took the circuit breakers off computer control, restoring power a little after 1 a.m. It was only the second confirmed case of a computer attack triggering an electrical blackout, and compared to the first, 12 months earlier—also in Ukraine—it was a fizzle, affecting far fewer customers and for a fraction of the time. In the six months since the Kiev attack, security researchers have wondered why the hackers even bothered with such a fleeting disruption and speculated that someone was using Ukraine as a testing ground for a more serious attack.
Now that dark assessment seems to be confirmed. Researchers at two security companies on Monday announced they’ve finally found and analyzed the malware that triggered the Kiev blackout, and it’s far worse than imagined. The computer code, dubbed “CrashOverride” by Maryland-based Dragos, and “Industroyer” by ESET in Slovakia, is a genuine cyber weapon that can map out a power station’s control network and, with minimal human guidance, issue malicious commands directly to critical equipment. Only once before has the world seen malware designed for such sabotage, with the 2010 Stuxnet virus used against Iran’s nuclear program. CrashOverride is the first to target civilians and the first such malware built to target a nation’s power supply.
It’s unclear who created CrashOverrride. Both ESET and Dragos say it was built from scratch, leaving none of the usual fingerprints that allow analysts to link one hacking campaign to another. Ukraine has faced a near-biblical plague of cyberattacks since entering into hostilities with Russia three years ago, and many have led unequivocally to Moscow. But not so with CrashOverride.
The only thing that’s certain, says security researcher Robert Lee, CEO of Dragos, is that the malware wasn’t built as a one-time weapon. It’s designed from the ground up to be easily reconfigured for a variety of targets and contains some payloads that weren’t even fired off in the Kiev attack.
“It’s a nightmare,” Lee said. “The malware in its current state would be usable for every power plant in Europe. This is a framework designed to target other places.”
ESET was first to find samples of the malware, and the company shared its initial analysis with Dragos, which went on to find additional samples and new components of the code. Electric utilities throughout the United States and Canada were alerted to the new malware last week by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the industry group responsible for power-grid security.
“We believe that our current protective measures provide an initial barrier,” said Marcus Sachs, NERC’s chief security officer, “and we are providing additional technical information to North American utilities specific to this malware.”
CrashOverride marks a significant escalation in the electronic arms race, at a time of overt saber cyber-rattling from U.S. adversaries like Russia and North Korea, and increasingly loud warnings about the vulnerability of the power grid. Last January, the Department of Energy assessed that the U.S. now faces “imminent danger” of a cyberattack that would trigger a prolonged cascading outage that would “undermine U.S. lifeline networks, critical defense infrastructure, and much of the economy; it could also endanger the health and safety of millions of citizens.”
Lee says CrashOverride is built to cause regional outages and in its current form doesn’t have the capability to start a cascade on the order of the 2003 Northeast U.S. blackout, nor to be easily repurposed to target other industrial control systems like water-treatment plants or gas pipelines. But the amount of expertise and resources that went into creating the program augurs even more dangerous malware to come. “What makes this thing a holy-crap moment is the understanding of grid operations encoded within it,” he said.
That’s because the code targets a crucial technology called SCADA, for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. A SCADA network is essentially a electronic nervous system that allows operators to remotely monitor and control all the pumps, motors, relays, and valves that undergird society’s infrastructure. The technology grew out of the electric industry beginning in the 1940s as a solution to the growing complexity of power distribution, which requires constant monitoring and adjustment of equipment at thousands of substations scattered around the country. Rather than keep technicians at every site, utilities began connecting the substation equipment to meters and knobs at centralized control centers, first by wire, later by radio, and today over serial ports and digital networks, with graphical computer controls replacing the meters and knobs.
As products of a more innocent time, the major SCADA protocols were never designed for security. “We use the term ‘insecure by design,’” said veteran SCADA security guru Dale Peterson. “You can switch relays on and off without any authentication. Everything an attacker would want is a documented feature of the device.”
By the 1990s, the U.S. was eyeing SCADA as a potentially critical vulnerability. In 1997, President Bill Clinton ordered a risk assessment of the power grid, and his advisers found it riddled with holes, including equipment reachable through corporate networks and open dial-up modems.
The electric industry has been developing and enforcing stricter security standards ever since. But with the entry of nation-state cyberattackers the risks have only grown, and the industry now regards cyber blackouts as something to plan for, like the inevitable outages triggered by extreme weather. The key, said NERC’s Sachs, is to “ensure rapid restoration should an outage occur, regardless of the cause.”
That gloomy outlook owes much to the first Ukrainian power hack in December 2015. In that attack, intruders used conventional hacking tools and techniques to seize the Windows machines in a utility control room, where they dragged the mouse cursor across the screen and clicked on the controls for a trio of local substations. The resulting blackout left 225,000 people without power. Ukrainian security services attributed the attack to Russia.
While successful, that attack suffered from a critical weakness from a cyberwarfare perspective: It didn’t scale. The hack required manual effort by a control-system expert sitting at a keyboard. That limitation is obliterated by CrashOverride, which, once it is configured and deployed, operates invisibly and automatically at the lowest levels of a plant network.
The code used in Kiev included swappable modules for four SCADA protocols prevalent in Europe. When the proper module is activated, it runs under the name of the legitimate Windows process controlling equipment at the remote substation. CrashOverride kills the original program and starts issuing its own commands over the SCADA link, cycling through a range of circuit-breaker addresses and systematically tripping each of them, then starting again at the top. Even if the control center is able to send its own commands to restore the circuit, CrashOverride will just hit the breaker again, running continuously in an infinite loop. “It’s like a popup on a website where you close it, and it just keeps opening again,” said Lee. “That’s what they’re doing to circuit breakers.”
Peterson said he expects CrashOverride to inspire copycat efforts, particularly among nation-state attackers. “To see something that’s been predicted for so long actually happen… More people will think they should be doing it.”
“If we haven’t had enough of a wakeup call already, this is it,” said Dragos’ Joe Slowik, who helped analyze the code. “The time is running out until someone either gets lucky or deliberately targets a network that all U.S. citizens care about, instead of saying, ‘Oh, it’s Ukraine. Who cares?’”
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Across Europe on the 38th Parallel
Last year, David and Janet Carle traveled the United States along the 38th parallel, investigating water issues from the Chesapeake to California for their upcoming book.
Yesterday, the Carles embarked on the European leg of their worldwide journey, beginning at Sao Miguel Island in the Azores archipelago, then on to the wetlands of Portugal. They’ll look at Spain’s efforts to use renewable energy to power desalination plants, help with the annual survey of migrating raptors in Sicily, visit sea turtle habitats and Lake Trichonis in Greece, and explore Turkey’s salt lakes and dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They’ll chronicle their travels on their blog, Parallel Universe: 38° North, and we’ll be cross-posting their updates here.
From Janet and David Carle’s blog, Parallel Universe: 38° North:
Itinerary for Europe in the Spring
On April 13, 2010, we fly from San Francisco, via Boston, then direct to Sao Miguel Island in the Azores, to continue exploring the “water line” along the 38th parallel…Read More
Preparing to cross Europe; News about Korea
With less than a month until we leave for Europe, we have been finalizing flight plans between countries, making rental car arrangements, and are very pleased that experts on water and environmental issues have agreed to meet with us in Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey…Read More
TAGS: 38 degrees north, 38th parallel, Conservation, David Carle, Europe, Janet Carle, water issues
CATEGORIES: Environmental Studies, From Our Authors, Natural Sciences
The Media's Biggest Myths
Romantic Poetry and Self-Consciousness
Volcanic Islands and Solar Panels on the 38th Parallel Glimpses of the Past on the 38th Parallel Korea on the 38th Parallel Spain and Sicily on the 38th Parallel
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Selena Gomez, Solange, and Mary J. Blige Are Honored at Billboard’s Women in Music Awards in Los Angeles
By Rachel Marlowe
Selena Gomez in Versace and Francia Raisa
It has been a turbulent couple of weeks for women in the entertainment industry, so it came as little surprise that the focus at the Billboard Women in Music Awards in Los Angeles last night remained solidly on the issue of female empowerment. “We can do anything if we surround ourselves with people who not only love but respect us,” said singer Ciara, who wore a custom Vera Wang white gown to kick off the proceedings. “Tonight, I ask all of us as daughters, mothers, and sisters to rededicate ourselves to speaking up and speaking out on the issues that unite us as women. We must use our voices so that the next generation faces less sexism, less body-shaming, and let it be said loud and clear, less harassment.”
Guests at the glittering event included Kelly Rowland—who presented an award to Kelly Clarkson—Pharrell Williams, Heidi Klum, Tori Kelly, and Ed Sheeran, who alternately sipped on Fiji Water and Champagne. Actress Taraji P. Henson, wearing Schiaparelli Couture, paid tribute to her friend and Icon Award recipient Mary J. Blige, who also spoke to the responsibility women have to each other. “This has not been an easy fight but I’m a fighter,” she said tearfully. “I’m here and I’m going to keep on fighting for every woman out there who does not know how to get out.” The evening also featured performances by Camila Cabello, who was named Breakthrough Artist, Kehlani, and Grace VanderWaal.
Solange Knowles, sporting a bleached blonde Afro, was given an Impact Award for her continued work on issues of racism and cultural appropriation. “I grew up in this industry and I have heard women being told they were not talented enough, or smart enough, or sexy enough, or cool enough, and just not good enough and that became the industry standard,” she said. “I’m so proud and excited to see artists rejecting those standards and tearing those walls down. It’s a new goddamn day and I’m loving it.”
Finally, Woman of the Year recipient Selena Gomez, wearing a black Versace bustier and cut-out leather pants with her newly platinum locks, could not have been more deserving of the award. This year, the 25-year-old not only received a kidney transplant but also managed to rack up four top 40 hits. “The whole experience has made me look at life very differently and made me a lot more grounded,” she admitted earlier in the evening on the red carpet. After a gushing introduction from fellow actress Elle Fanning, an emotional Gomez accepted the award from her close friend and kidney donor, actress Francia Raisa. “It’s an honor to receive this,” she said. “And especially right now with the voice that women have and the big movement that is happening.”
TopicsSelena Gomez
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One of the Smallest Schools in Vermont is 'the best' School in Vermont
Read on U.S. News www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/vermont
Cabot School School was recognized as the best school in Vermont by U.S. News.
High school students in Vermont are tested via the Smarter Balanced Assessments, according to the Vermont Agency of Education. Students in Vermont may be able to receive discounted tuition at out-of-state public colleges in New England through the Regional Student Program Tuition Break.
In the 2016 U.S. News Best High Schools rankings, there are seven silver medal schools and six bronze medals schools in Vermont. The state also has two schools that earned gold medals.
Vermonters for Schools and Communities
vtschoolsrock@gmail.com
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What Katy Did
by What Katy Did
‘One of my all-time favourite books. It’s a very lively, funny story’ Jacqueline Wilson
Katy has grand plans to be beautiful, graceful and ladylike … one day! But for now she has hair that is always tangled, bootlaces undone, a torn dress and she doesn’t care about being ‘good’. With a wild imagination and high spirits, she is always up to mischief, but there never has been a heroine as lovable as Katy. Then a terrible accident happens and it takes all her courage – and hard-learned patience – to keep her dreams alive.
‘Katy speaks with a charm and directness that remains as fresh as when it was written’ Amanda Craig
‘This was one of my favourite books as a child. The children felt real enough to touch, and I fell head over heels in love with Katy. It’s a book with an unstoppable heart’ Katherine Rundell
This collection of the best in children’s literature, curated by Virago, will be coveted by children and adults alike. These are timeless tales with beautiful covers, that will be treasured and shared across the generations. Some titles you will already know; some will be new to you, but there are stories for everyone to love, whatever your age. Our list includes Nina Bawden (Carrie’s War, The Peppermint Pig), Rumer Godden (The Dark Horse, An Episode of Sparrows), Joan Aiken (The Serial Garden, The Gift Giving) E. Nesbit (The Psammead Trilogy, The Bastable Trilogy, The Railway Children), Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Little Princess,The Secret Garden) and Susan Coolidge (The What Katy Did Trilogy). Discover Virago Children’s Classics.
This was one of my favourite books as a child. The children felt real enough to touch, and I fell head over heels in love with Katy. It's a book with an unstoppable heart
One of my all-time favourite books . . . It's a wonderful book, very easy to read, even though it was published in the 19th century. It's a very lively funny story
Katy speaks with a charm and directness that remains as fresh as when it was written
Amanda Craig
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Sweden’s Pop Sensations Celebrated in “Abba The Concert” Returning to Shippensburg
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 3:00 AM
SHIPPENSBURG, PA (March 27, 2013) - The H. Ric Luhrs Performing Arts Center at Shippensburg University presents ABBA THE CONCERT, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 8 p.m. Reserved tickets are $45, $39, $34 & $29 and are now on sale. A group discount is available for groups of 20 or more. Tickets can be purchased by calling the Luhrs Center Box Office at 717.477.SHOW (7469) or online at luhrscenter.com.
ABBA The Concert, a show celebrating Sweden's most famous band, is a musical extravaganza showcasing the group that has sold more than 370 million records worldwide and inspired the
phenomenally popular Broadway musical, Mamma Mia! ABBA The Concert follows the quartet from their Eurovision beginnings in 1974 to major success with hits such as "Dancing Queen," "Name of the Game," "Knowing Me, Knowing You," and "S.O.S."
ABBA The Concert was founded by Katja Nord and Camilla Hedren, members of the Swedish ABBA cover band Waterloo. The group has performed with members of the National Symphony Orchestra of London and original band members of ABBA. Its world premiere in Norway in 2001 as ABBA The Concert led to tours throughout Europe showcasing the legendary singing group's classic music and eccentric costumes. The North American version of ABBA The Concert premiered in 2002.
The original ABBA was a smash Dance and Pop sensation that proved to be one of the most enduring and successful groups of all time, having dominated the record charts for nearly eight years. The music of ABBA was re-arranged into the musical Mamma Mia! in 1999, a worldwide favorite that continues to tour internationally and was adapted into a feature film starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan in 2008. Although the original members of ABBA have not performed together since 1983, their recognizable sound and alluring stage performance can be experienced through ABBA The Concert.
ABBA The Concert takes audiences back to an unforgettable time in Pop history when glittering clothes and platform shoes dominated the music scene. The audience and press agreed, "This is the closest to ABBA you'll ever get." The band will guide audiences through ABBA's musical history with all the classic hits and with a sound and look that bring back memories and the nostalgia of that era. Audiences will be amazed by the period instruments, vintage costumes, hairstyles, on-stage mannerisms, speaking voices, and unmistakable harmonies which capture the essence of ABBA.
ABBA The Concert last performed at the Luhrs Center for an ecstatic crowd on Feb. 4, 2011. Discover more about ABBA The Concert at www.theconcert.se.
For additional information about the ABBA The Concert performance, or other performances within the 2012-2013 Luhrs Center series, please call the Luhrs Center Box Office at 717.477.SHOW (7469) or visit the Luhrs Center website at luhrscenter.com.
About the H. Ric Luhrs Performing Arts Center at Shippensburg University
The mission of the H. Ric Luhrs Performing Arts Center at Shippensburg University is to support and enhance the University's role in academic and cultural enrichment for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Luhrs Center's 1,500-seat state-of-the-art Grove Theatre is where programs to educate, enlighten and entertain are presented. Benefits of the Center to the region include expanding opportunities to participate in a wide range of cultural programming including full-scale Broadway companies, musical groups, symphonies, dance troupes and internationally known speakers. In addition, it adds options for professional training programs, youth programs and senior citizen programs; attracts regional and national business conferences, professional meetings and planning sessions; and additional visitors to the area which will result in a positive impact on the local and regional economy.
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« Back to previous page
Walkable Harrisburg Feature
Story by Judith Fein
HARRISBURG, PA (Jan. 3, 2013) - Harrisburg is a city that’s good for the head, the heart, the stomach and the feet.
It’s the perfect destination for learning, having feel-good experiences, wining, dining and, especially, walking. In fact, if you book a room at a downtown hotel like the Harrisburg Hilton, you can explore Pennsylvania’s capitol without ever getting in your car.
The second floor of the Hilton Harrisburg connects directly to the indoor Strawberry Arcade, which features a food court, shops, and, the family-friendly Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts. Kids can experience more than 200 interactive exhibits and teens actually look up from their smartphones to walk into a hurricane chamber where they are buffeted by strong gale winds and hurricanes.
Afterwards, the whole family can try tagging on a digital graffiti wall, creating a stop motion film, adding sound effects to a film clip, or moving a ball by activating brain waves.
And before you chow down on a hot dog, the Carnival of Health section will inform you that it takes one hour of bike pedaling to burn off the calories. See more Family Fun ideas in the Hershey Harrisburg Region.
It’s a two-minute walk to the main westerly entrance of the majestic State Capitol Complex where two groups of naked men and women, sculpted in marble, amuse, offend or intrigue visitors.
The sculptor, George Grey Barnard, completed the statues in 1911, and, to appease the outrage of some Harrisburg residents, he created marble sheaths to cover offending body parts.
According to Barnard, the figures represent those who follow the laws of nature, and those who don’t.
Tourists point to intimate contact between men and women, men and men, and speculate about what the artist may have intended. Barnard is either cringing or smiling in his grave.
It’s a short walk to the State Museum of Pennsylvania, which is part of the Capitol complex.
The Mammal Hall is a delightful throwback to the age of museum dioramas.
Each exhibit is set in a specific geographical area of Pennsylvania, and highlights a dramatic moment, like a cougar attacking a fawn in a snowy landscape. It’s easy to see which are the most popular dioramas, because visitors press their hands and noses against the glass, and leave visible prints.
One of the museum’s highlights is a full-mount, articulated mastodon skeleton; it’s one of the best preserved in the country.
Another is the new Objects of Valor exhibit, which includes P.F. Rothermel’s famous painting, executed in 1870, of Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg during the Civil War.
The huge canvas measures 16 by 32 feet, and, executed shortly after the end of the war, it stunned its viewers with a graphic description of dead and wounded soldiers.
In a glass case is the drum that Rothermel used as a model for the painting.
The intimacy of the exhibit makes it appealing, and the objects come with personal stories.
A kepi (hat) was penetrated by a bullet which whizzed out the other side and didn’t kill the lucky soldier who wore it.
Another Pennsylvania man was caught up in the frenzy of the war, and he grabbed his gun and went to join the Union forces; his gun is on display.
General Geary, in full military regalia, is preserved forever in a painting, and nearby are all the items he wore in the painting, right down to his black boots.
After art and history, food. Across from the State Museum is Mangia Qui Ristorante & Suba Tapas Bar, which serves one of the best gourmet lunches in town.
Even if you’re too full or carbconscious to order dessert, it’s hard to resist the multi-colored, chocolate pebbles that are placed in front of you, compliments of the chef.
One of the owners does the cooking, and another executed all of the vibrant contemporary paintings that adorn the restaurant walls.
It’s a three-block walk from the Capitol complex to the Broad Street Market. Founded in 1860, it’s one of the oldest continuously operating markets in the U.S., and offers everything from Balkan fare to seafood to smoked meats and cheeses to Jamaican cuisine.
Amish women make and sell fresh pretzels, and you can buy candles that look like apple or peach pie.
Across the street is Midtown Scholar Bookstore & Cafe, which was once the first desegregated movie theatre in central Pennsylvania.
It houses the largest collection of used books between New York and Chicago; they number in the millions.
The 15,000- square-foot store is furnished with architectural salvage treasures like a bell, antique railings and stained glass panels.
And while you browse and read, you can sample pastries from the bakery, entertain your kids in the children’s space, or contemplate a special purchase in the new Robinson’s Rare Books and Fine Print Room.
By this time, it will be mid-afternoon, and time to head back to the Capitol for a free tour.
If you’ve visited Rome and the Capitol dome looks familiar, it’s because it was inspired by St. Peter’s Basilica. The architectural style of the building is Renaissance revival, and many tourists consider it the most beautiful Capitol building in the United States.
The grand staircase is modeled after the steps in the Paris Opera House.
The Senate room is a dazzling work of art in green and golden hues with marble from Ireland, velvet drapery from France, stained glass in the style of Tiffany, and paintings by a woman ahead of her time named Violet Oakley.
During a period in our history when she wasn’t even allowed to vote, she depicted the end of wars, slavery, and the enslavement of women.
In the State Supreme and Superior Court room, which is in the Greco-Roman style, 43 of Oakley’s paintings adorn the walls.
The guide may tell you to look carefully at the painting of Penn the lawgiver; hidden in it is a self-portrait by the remarkable artist.
The House of Representatives is the largest room in the building, and everything is on a grand scale. The smallest of the chandeliers weighs as much as a small hippo and the large ones equal the poundage of a good-sized African elephant.
For dinner, expect to be wowed by the food at the spanking new Café 1500. This new Mediterranean-inspired venture is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The design concept of Café 1500 is a modern American bistro that is trendy and chic, with gray cement floors, exposed ducts, Art Deco elements and surprising striped columns.
If Café 1500 offers a wine-pairing dinner with local wines, sign up at once. You’ll be surprised by the quality of the Chambourcin (it’s like Harrisburg’s Zinfandel) or the sweet Reisling by the Vineyard at Hershey. See more Breweries & Wineries in the Hershey Harrisburg Region.
Another fine Mediterranean restaurant is Bricco, a collaboration between the Olewine School of Culinary Arts at Harrisburg Area Community College and the Harrisburg Hotel Corporation.
Bricco is open for lunch and dinner, and the waitperson who comes to your table may have started out washing dishes in the kitchen and may end up as a celebrated chef.
If you are looking for a restaurant where you can express your Inner Romantic, this is the place.
After dinner, take a relaxing stroll to Harrisburg City Island by crossing over the illuminated walking bridge, once a railroad bridge that spans the Susquehanna River.
The bridge makes a perfect location for a photo-op or to grab a shot of the city skyline at night.
During the spring and summer seasons, visit Susquehanna Outfitters on the island for bike, boat & kayak rentals; catch a Harrisburg Senators minor league baseball game at Metro Bank Park; see the entire 63-acre island on a small-gauge Civil War-era steam train, or cruise the scenic city skyline from the water aboard the historic Pride of the Susquehanna riverboat.
Sunday brunch at Char’s Restaurant at Tracy Mansion is not to be missed . It’s a 20-minute walk to the remodeled art nouveau Tracy mansion, which is situated on the scenic banks of the Susquehanna River.
Char, a restaurateur who was beloved by locals, recently relocated to the mansion, where her expanded, gorgeous restaurant immediately attracted every foodie in the region.
The restaurant is 100 percent wind powered, and a geothermal system is designed to consume less energy.
For design enthusiasts, one of the rooms is the Galley, where all the art glass and sculptures are for sale. Eating at Char’s is not just a meal; it’s an experience.
Whether or not you are a Civil War buff, it’s worth a visit to The National Civil War Museum in Reservoir Park, the highest point in Harrisburg.
It’s too far to walk, but the Hilton provides a free shuttle to get there. Besides some highly evocative artifacts—like wooden slave shoes, collars, bracelets and a replica of the life mask of Lincoln, which was made a few months before his death–– the most unusual exhibit is “Meet Mr. Lincoln.”
An actor who portrays Lincoln is projected in front of you, and you can touch a screen and ask questions of the President.
The actor gives reflective answers, and also adds a dollop of colorful Lincolnesque stories.
Just before exiting the museum, stop to watch the film of the last bivouac; a final reunion of the Blues and Grays 75 years after they shot at each other on the battlefield at Gettysburg.
Only a few thousand of them were still alive, and they shook hands, broke bread together, and cupped their ears to hear the address by FDR.
If history or architecture is your thing, Sheldon Munn, owner of Harrisburg Tours, Talks and Walks does walking tours of Harrisburg highlights.
In the event that your tootsies are tired, he can drive with you in your car. For about $25 an hour, he’ll point out the Second Empire French influence on local buildings (check out the turrets on the three-story houses), teach you about ribbon bricking (finely done brickwork), or take you to Shipoke, also called Gritty Town, to learn about the floods and comebacks of the charming, historic area.
Harrisburg also prides itself on its growing art scene.
Along the river is the Art Association of Harrisburg located in a former governor’s mansion. It’s the city’s oldest art school and gallery where you can buy art at very reasonable prices, attend lectures, and pick up a flier that will guide you through a walking tour of the Harrisburg galleries.
The staff members are like cultural concierges, and they’ll happily tell you which galleries are open, and where you would most likely find your taste in art.
Wondering where the watering holes are? If you walk out of the Hilton and turn right, you’ll embark on four blocks of bars, clubs and eateries referred to as Restaurant Row, where you can compare notes with locals about Harrisburg highlights.
Author: Judith Fein
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Benjamin Levi MD
Plastic Surgery, Surgical Critical Care, Surgery
Area of Practice:
Plastic Surgery, Surgery; Assistant Professor, Plastic Surgery; Director, Burn, Wound and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory
Physician Information
Michigan Medicine Plastic Surgery Clinic | Domino's Farms
DOMINO'S FARMS
Lobby A
24 Frank Lloyd Wright Dr Ste A1200
To better locate our office when using a GPS, please use 4029 Ave Maria Dr Ann Arbor, MI 48105. Take Ave Maria Dr to the back of the building following the signs for parking and entering into Lobby A.
Medical School or Training
Northwestern University Medical School, 2005
University of Michigan Health System, Surgery, MI, 2006
University of Michigan Health System, Plastic Surgery, MI, 2013
Association for Academic Surgery
Plastic Surgery Research Council
Dr. Levi’s major research interests include stem cell biology, heterotopic ossification, tissue engineering, wound healing and repair, and burn reconstruction outcomes. He also leads the Burn Wound and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory. The goal of the laboratory is to further elucidate the mechanistic pathways involved in heterotopic ossification and to develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to improve the current treatment paradigm of this destructive process.
The lab sees and treats the problems of heterotopic ossification first-hand and believe current diagnostic and treatment strategies are inadequate. It currently collaborates extensively with investigators across campus at the University of Michigan, particularly in the Departments of Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery, Biologic and Material Sciences, Pathology and Chemistry with the goal of improving the care of patients who suffer from this challenging disease process. Additionally it collaborates with laboratories at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Dental School and Naval Medical Research Laboratory. The lab hopes to result in research that will allow it to improve treatment of burn and trauma induced heterotopic ossification. Furthermore, it hopes to be able to translate these findings to other causes of heterotopic ossification such as fibrodysplasia ossificans progressive, progressive osseous hyperplasia and spinal cord injury induced disease.
In addition to heterotopic ossification, the laboratory also focuses on bone tissue engineering. Alloplastic bone substitutes are prone to infection and inflammation, while autogenous bone grafts are limited in availability and create a donor-site defect. Thus, there is a significant need for readily available autogenous tissue which can aid in bone regeneration without resulting in a donor-site defect. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the role of ALK2, a BMP type I receptor, as a novel target to 1) improve in vitro mesenchymal stem cell osteogenic differentiation and 2) enhance in vivo bone regeneration and calvarial healing.
Dr. Levi completed his undergraduate education at Washington University, medical school at Northwestern University and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery residency at the University of Michigan.
During this time he completed a 2-year post-doctoral research fellowship at Stanford University. He recently completed a fellowship in Burn and Surgical Critical Care at Massachusetts General Hospital. Benjamin has been involved in Burn research since High School when given the opportunity to work in the Burn Laboratory of Richard Gamelli MD and Luisa DiPietro DDS, PhD. Subsequently, and for three consecutive summers, he worked in the Burn and Shock Trauma laboratory of Dr. Gamelli and Dr. Luisa DiPietro with a focus on wound healing and inflammation. Inspired by this experience, he remained active in research throughout medical school and residency and he dedicated two years of additional training to do a basic science research fellowship in stem cell biology and bone tissue engineering at Stanford University under Dr. Michael Longaker. During this time, he focused on basic stem cell biology, mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) osteogenesis, and bone tissue engineering.
Since returning to the University of Michigan, Dr. Levi has developed the Burn/Wound and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory. This lab has focused on the significant clinical problem of heterotopic ossification. Specifically, Dr. Levi has developed new animal models to study this complex process and is working to improve early diagnostic and treatment modalities. He is a member of the American Burn Association, Plastic Surgery Research Council, Association for Academic Surgery, American Society of Bone and Mineral Research.
Clinical Specialization: Clinically Dr. Levi has trained in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery as well as Acute and Reconstructive Burn Surgery and Surgical Critical Care. His clinical focus is on the acute treatment of burn patients and their critical care needs. Additionally, he specializes in burn reconstruction to address burn contractures as well as burn scars from donor and burn sites. This will include the use of fractional CO2 laser to help in scar rehabilitation for burn scars and other hypertrophic scars. Beyond burn surgery, Dr. Levi also cares for general reconstructive surgery patients including traumatic wounds, keloid and hypertrophic scars and body contouring.
Plastic Surgery Academic Website
Burn/Wound and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory
Trauma Burn Center
Benjamin Levi, M.D., Publications
Michigan Research Experts Website
Benjamin Levi, M.D.
Related Medical Services
Reconstructive Burn Surgery
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If You Could Write A Letter To The CEO Of A Horrible Company, What Would You Say? Here's One Take.
In high school, we learned about the forceful relocation of Native Americans in U.S. history. But that's all in the past, right? Unfortunately not. In the 1970s, Peabody Energy played a hand in the relocation of hundreds of families, and they're trying to do it again. Below, a young man reads a letter he wrote to the CEO of that company.The video starts off slow with a clip of a speech from a resident of the area in question, but it picks up around 0:30 — so stick around at least till then!
Megan Kelley
Looking for a bit more context? Here's some (it's fact-checked!):
In 1974, the U.S. government partitioned Hopi and Navajo reservation lands. Private mining companies, including Peabody Energy, were granted access to resources on or near those lands. Hundreds of families were forcefully relocated.
The area was mined for coal throughout subsequent decades, resulting in extreme environmental devastation.
Peabody Energy is currently looking to expand its mining practices, which would result in further relocations.
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U.S. Paralympic Basketball Athlete, Fischbach, Receives Disqualification of Results For Violating Period Of Ineligibility
Paralympic Basketball, Sanction / April 11, 2016 November 25, 2019
USADA announced today that Dylan Fischbach, of Vermillion, South Dakota, an athlete in the sport of Paralympic basketball, has had his results disqualified for competing while ineligible.
Fischbach, 20, initially accepted a two-year period of ineligibility and loss of results in October of 2015 after failing to provide a sample as requested by a doping control officer during an out-of-competition test. Nevertheless, it has since been determined that Mr. Fischbach continued to compete in National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA) competition at the collegiate level, violating the terms of his sanction. However, through its investigation USADA established that both the NWBA and Fischbach were operating under the mistaken belief that his sanction did not prohibit him from such competition. Accordingly, USADA considers Fischbach’s level of fault in this matter to be negligible. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, athletes who violate the terms of their period of ineligibility can be subject to disqualification of individual results.
Fischbach’s original sanction announcement can be found at: https://www.usada.org/sanction/dylan-fischbach-accepts-doping-sanction/
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Physics Program Graduates First Ph.D. Student in South Dakota
Wenzhao Wei is the first Ph.D. graduate from USD's new physics doctorate program.
VERMILLION, S.D. – The University of South Dakota Department of Physics has conferred the first Ph.D. in physics in the state of South Dakota to Wenzhao Wei. The USD graduate physics program is a joint program with the SDSM&T.
Wei worked with USD professor Dongming Mei on her thesis titled “Advanced Germanium Detectors for Rare Event Physics Searches.” Her work will provide critical knowledge in developing the next generation of ultra-sensitive germanium detectors for the planned experiments at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota.
Wei completed her Bachelors in Computer Science from Central China Normal University and obtained a Masters degree in Physics from USD in 2014. According to Wei, “The Ph.D. in Physics at USD is very rewarding and it provides not only a unique crystal germanium crystal growth facility and broad connections with world-class research collaborators, but also educates and trains students with all critical skills including initiative, tenacity, flexibility, interpersonal skills, organization, and communication.”
“Dr. Wei was able to publish five papers as the first author and a few papers in the authorship with collaborators in pursuing her degree at USD. Her achievements have warranted her a couple job offers," said Mei, director of USD’s Center for Ultra-low Background Experiments at Dakota (CUBED), and the principal investigator of a recent $4.35 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation.
Wei’s Ph.D. represents the beginning of a new era of physics higher education in South Dakota, strengthening the South Dakota workforce in science and technology.
USD’s physics department is a global leader in dark matter and germanium research, collaborating with scientists all over the world on experiments at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota.
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