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Jury Sides With Cop Allegedly Scapegoated by UCPD's "Old Boys' Club"
By Lee Harris
UCPD officer Janelle Marcellis holds a protest sign and wears protest tape over her mouth at a trauma center protest in 2013. She infiltrated the protest to gather intelligence.
A jury has sided with a former University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) commander, Milton Owens, who filed suit in 2015, alleging he was wrongly fired. The University is now contesting the jury’s decision.
Owens claims he was made a “scapegoat” by the University following a high-profile incident in February 2013 when a plainclothes officer under his command disguised herself as a protester to get intel on the activists who were pushing for a trauma center.
Detective Janelle Marcellis, who is still employed by the UCPD, carried a protest sign and marched alongside activists. Owens, as commander, was found responsible for UCPD’s conduct; Marcellis was let off with a warning for exercising “poor judgment.” She was instructed to be in plain clothes, but she took it upon herself to carry a sign and wear a sticker.
Shortly after the UCPD infiltrated the protest, a source provided photos of Marcellis to The Maroon, including incriminating pictures of her cell phone that showed texts to Owens: “In crowd w[ith] sign. All is well,” one read.
Court documents show the full text exchange between Owens and Marcellis. In 2013, The Maroon published a picture of Marcellis's Blackberry screen showing the text that said "in crowd w sign. All is well."
Helen Chen / The Chicago Maroon
After The Maroon published an article detailing Marcellis’s actions, President Robert Zimmer issued a statement condemning the infiltration of the protest. The University hired a law firm, Schiff Hardin, to review the events. Meanwhile, the UCPD launched its own investigation, led by department official Eric Heath, who is now the University’s Associate Vice President for Safety & Security.
Owens was dismissed from his job in March 2013 under a rule forbidding any action that “brings discredit upon the department.”
Owens sued the University alleging he was wrongfully terminated, claiming higher leadership was actually responsible for the protest infiltration. Owens thinks the blame fell on him because he was not part of an “old boys’ club” of UCPD officials from elite universities, who all knew each other.
Heath’s report and the report published by Schiff Hardin said that Owens defied the UCPD leadership’s plan by giving Marcellis orders to “blend in” with the protesters. His instructions to Marcellis are referred to as a “counter-order.”
Yet, court documents obtained by The Maroon suggest that, rather than acting unilaterally to defy leadership, Owens was following orders of which he was initially skeptical. Before the protest, Owens had questioned why they were using plainclothes officers at all, voicing his doubts to then-Chief of Police Marlon Lynch.
The defense claims that such extreme police measures were taken in part because they had intelligence that gang-affiliated groups who wanted to target Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers might join the protest, which proved not to be true. The UCPD was also on edge because the trauma center protests had brought a new intensity of activism to campus.
Owens’s lawsuit brought charges against the University, Lynch, Zimmer, Assistant Chief Gloria Graham, and Deputy Chief Kevin Booker, with allegations of fraud, breach of contract, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, and intentional and reckless spoliation of evidence.
The suit went to trial in January. In March, the jury found in favor of Owens on his claim of infliction of emotional distress. Following this finding, the University and Booker, who is now Chief of Police at the University of Illinois at Chicago Police Department, jointly owe $150,000 in damages to Owens. The University has filed a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, asking Cook County Circuit Court Judge Joan Powell to overrule the jury’s finding in favor of Owens.
In a statement, a University spokesperson said the administration respects the jury’s verdict, but believes it was unsupported by the facts and the law. The University will challenge the outcome via post-trial motions, and the spokesperson said they could potentially appeal the case.
UCPD’s protest plan: 35 cops
A month before the infiltration incident, the UCPD had come under fire for its handling of another trauma center protest, where four protesters were arrested. A video showed officers forcefully restraining protesters and bringing them to the ground.
There was no investigation of the officers involved, the University said, because it saw no misconduct and there were no complaints.
Owens was off duty during the January 27 protest, but was called in as the situation escalated. Owens would later describe being shocked at the chaotic scene and at officers’ violations of protocols, including neglecting evidence collection standards such as photographing injuries and interviewing witnesses.
“When I arrived there, what I discovered is that there were people under arrest that had not been Mirandized, that juveniles hadn't been processed properly, that [officers] who had arrested people were gone and [we] did not know who arrested this person under arrest,” he told The Maroon.
According to Owens, when he was brought on in 2009, the UCPD was acting more like a “security agency” than a full-fledged police department. Owens was originally recruited from the CPD when the UCPD was making a broad push to develop more consistent standards, including a set of General Orders (the rules governing a police department), as it strived for Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) accreditation, which it got in 2014. He said it felt good, at the time, to be at the “ground floor,” building a robust operation.
This was part of the backdrop to the department’s decision, when command staff learned of another trauma center protest scheduled for February 23, to draw up a comprehensive plan to monitor, videotape, and “gather intelligence” from protesters.
Owens stressed that the UCPD developed its plan for the February 23 protest as a direct response to the negative press in January. Normally, Incident Command System (ICS) plans are reserved for dignitaries’ visits and other high-profile events. But when activists posted flyers advertising the march, command staff decided to use ICS protocols to plan for the event.
Although he was part of senior department leadership, Owens said he was not included in talks about the development of the ICS plan. At the time, Owens was deputy chief of Investigative Services, and he was scheduled for promotion March 1.
At a February 18 command staff meeting, Booker delivered a PowerPoint presentation of the ICS plan. It was at this meeting that Owens first learned the department intended to use plainclothes officers. Owens was assigned to monitor 32–35 people on the day of the trauma center protest. Of those officers, a unit of three detectives—Janelle Marcellis, Eric James, and Carlton Hughes — were instructed to wear plainclothes.
Their tasks were to “gather intelligence” and videotape the protest.
Owens never wanted Marcellis in plainclothes
Court documents from both the plaintiff and defendants agree that when Booker presented the plan at the February 18 meeting, Owens suggested that Marcellis, James, and Hughes be in uniform and act as an “arrest processing team.” However, Graham insisted that the detectives be in plainclothes.
Owens was concerned because, at the time, the UCPD had no policies and procedures regarding the use of undercover operations.
The assignment raised “red flags” for Owens because the detectives had less than two or three years on the job and had never been trained in dealing with protests or demonstrations, Owens testified.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Owens restated his concerns to Booker, in the presence of Lynch, again asking if he could have his officers in uniform rather than in plainclothes.
According to documents, including the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, Booker told Owens to stick with the ICS plan for plainclothes officers, saying, “Gloria [Graham] wants it that way.”
In the same conversation, for which Chief Lynch and Commander Celeste D’Addabbo were also present, Owens asked Booker to clarify what was meant by the vague instruction in the ICS plan to “gather intelligence.” Booker told Owens his officers should “mingle and join in” with the protesters, according to Owens and to the University and Booker’s motion for judgment notwithstanding verdict.
In his statement for the UCPD investigation, Booker told Heath uniformed officers can agitate protesters, whereas “a plainclothes officer doesn’t make the crowd as hyper or aggressive.”
Owens communicated the plainclothes instructions to Marcellis, but she took it a step further by actively participating in the protest with the sign and the tape.
Anonymous Submission
“Based on [Owens’] instruction, Det. Marcellis stated as she entered the protest group, she voluntarily took a sign and stickers in an effort to either “blend in” or “be a protestor” [sic]. Det. Marcellis’ voluntary decision to actively engage in the protest by taking a sign and stickers ultimately resulted in the embarrassment and discredit of the University of Chicago and its Police Department,” Heath’s report reads.
Lynch met personally with protest group leaders on the day before the event to coordinate plans and identify liaisons, but did not inform the activists that there would be plainclothes officers.
In court proceedings, officers cited intelligence that gang-affiliated groups might join the protest as one reason why UCPD took the unusual measure of developing an ICS plan for the protest. In testimony, the defendants said they had thought the date of the protest was selected because it was the anniversary of a CPD shooting of a civilian.
“There was intel out there that they wanted retaliation on CPD,” Booker told Heath in his statement for the internal investigation.
Owens’s attorney, Alexander Vroustouris, doesn’t buy that explanation.
“Booker, when the shit hit the fan, had to justify why they had an ICS plan. The real reason is, they didn’t want to screw up like they did on January 27. But they can’t say that because that sounds terrible. So one of the ways around it is to say ‘we got some intelligence that there might be some violence,’” Owens told The Maroon.
They all thought it was funny
On the day of the protest, which was organized by local activist groups including Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) and Students for Health Equity (SHE), Marcellis entered the crowd and marched alongside activists, carrying a sign and wearing a sticker over her mouth that read “TRAUMA CENTER NOW.” Both were handed to her by an activist who was distributing protest materials.
In Heath’s initial investigation—and while testifying on the stand—Marcellis admitted that she took the sign and sticker on her own accord, but she insisted that she did so because Owens had instructed her to “be with the protesters.” Owens did not dispute that he directed Marcellis to gather intelligence by blending in, but testified that he was merely relaying the ICS plan as it was communicated to him by Booker.
During the protest, Owens texted Marcellis that he copied her updates, and he told her to “keep them coming” in a message sent 17 minutes after she said she was holding a sign.
In testimony, however, Owens claimed that he did not know Marcellis had taken the sign and stickers until after the protest was over. He said he kept his phone in his pocket for most of the time, to keep his battery charged in the extreme cold, and he said he did not read all of Marcellis’s messages due to the weather.
Either way, it appears that Owens was comfortable with the protest infiltration once he had clarity that it was what leadership wanted. In her statement to Heath, Marcellis said that Owens had directed her to participate in the demonstration “as a protester.”
“When I got back into the car with Deputy Chief Owens he said, ‘great job,’” Marcellis’s statement reads. “He knew I had the sign, he knew exactly what I was doing because I told him and he even said that this was how we are going to handle protests from now on. He said, ‘I think this is excellent, this is what we did at CPD.’”
After the protest, Owens received e-mails from Booker, Lynch, and Graham telling him what a great job he did.
“Observing you and your supervisors interacting with our officers was impressive... Nothing like proving the haters wrong,” Lynch’s e-mail reads.
And for a while, no one seemed alarmed at Marcellis’s conduct. At a command staff meeting two days after the protest on February 25, Owens said officers were amused by D'Addabbo’s description of how Marcellis carried a sign and marched alongside the protesters.
That all changed after The Maroon report and Zimmer’s subsequent letter to campus. Owens says that letter caused his life to “spira[l] out of control.”
“Prior to that [letter], the command staff laughed when they were told that Marcellis had stood with a sign and had some sticky mess on her lips,” Owens testified at trial. “Nothing occurred until [Zimmer’s] letter was released.”
On March 1, The Maroon published photos and conversations with protest organizers documenting Marcellis’s actions. Zimmer testified that he first became aware of Marcellis’s conduct from the Maroon article, although he threw some shade at the credibility of The Maroon's reporting.
“I would ordinarily not view The Maroon as a dispositive source of information and consequently would certainly have discussed its veracity with people internally,” Zimmer said at trial.
Following the Maroon report, Zimmer and then-Provost Thomas Rosenbaum sent an e-mail to the University community stating that Marcellis’s conduct was “totally antithetical to our values” and that such activity would “not be tolerated.”
On March 4, the day after Zimmer and Rosenbaum’s letter, Heath initiated an investigation into the February protest, placing Owens and Marcellis on paid administrative leave. The investigation took only 10 days. On March 14, the summary report found Marcellis and Owens guilty of bringing “discredit upon the Department.”
Zimmer and Rosenbaum’s letter had also promised to appoint an independent reviewer to investigate the incident.
The University retained Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin. In May 2013, the firm published a report favorable to UCPD leadership, reviewing UCPD responses to protests on January 27 and February 23. It concluded that no officers had behaved illegally, and blamed Owens for Marcellis’s actions, repeatedly citing Owens’s order for her to “blend in and get intel.” The report said there was no evidence that specific order was sanctioned by any commanding officer besides Owens.
However, Owens sought clarification prior to the protest on the vague instruction to “gather intelligence,” confirming with Booker that the goal was indeed to have Marcellis “mingle” with the protesters, according to testimony, and, eventually, to the defendants’ own court documents.
The most recent documents submitted by the defendants—post-trial motions for judgment notwithstanding verdict by Booker and the University—do not contest that Booker told Owens to have his officers “mingle and join in” with protesters. This is a shift in narrative from the story told in Heath’s report, which characterized Owens as having unilaterally decided that Marcellis should go undercover, while glossing over the reason for Owens’s instruction—direct orders from his superiors.
The Schiff Hardin report stressed the distinction between plainclothes and undercover officers, alleging that Owens was responsible for confusing the two.
Sarah Jane Rhee
“It was the intent of the officer who originated the demonstration plan that the term ‘plain clothes’ would mean detectives in the ordinary course walking alongside the protestors [sic] for safety and concern, but with all identifiers indicating that they were police officials, as had been done with protests in the past,” it read. “However, the commanding officer [Owens] in charge of the detectives’ assignment interpreted the term ‘plain clothes’ to be synonymous with an ‘undercover’ or ‘covert’ operation wherein the detective’s true identity would not be revealed.”
The University told The Maroon that the UCPD developed a protest and demonstration policy in 2013 as a response to the incident, so there were no specific guidelines in place regarding protests at the time.
According to UCPD Records Manager Connie Tsao, the plainclothes and undercover policy falls under General Order 604, Covert Operations/Vice Drug and Organized Crime Investigations, which is not available for citizen review “as it could disclose unique or specialized investigative techniques.”
Unlike the CPD and other departments, the UCPD does not make its General Orders available online.
The “old boys’ club”
The Maroon asked Owens why he thinks his former co-workers fired him and portrayed him as uniquely responsible for Marcellis’s actions. Owens believes it’s in part because he wasn’t “part of the clique.”
“I'm not a part of the good old boys’ club. All of them know each other. All of them came from universities. Lynch and Eric Heath came from Vanderbilt together,” he said. “I didn’t know any of these guys. Gloria Graham also knew them and I truly believe that it made it very easy, because I wasn't part of that, to throw me under the bus.”
Of the senior UCPD officers involved in the Owens case, only D’Addobbo and Heath remain at the University of Chicago. Booker is now Police Chief at University of Illinois at Chicago, while Lynch is Vice President of Safety at New York University.
Graham left the University of Chicago in September 2015, only a few months after Owens filed suit in May, to become assistant vice president and deputy chief of police at Northwestern. Just last week, Graham left Northwestern for University of Virginia.
On October 24, 2017, Judge Moira Johnson granted Zimmer summary judgment on all counts, and granted all defendants summary judgment on fraud, breach of contract, and promissory estoppel, which means violation of a promise enforceable by law. Summary judgment means that the judge thinks that there are no facts at issue and therefore issues a favorable ruling to the motioner, rather than having the claim go before a jury.
The court denied summary judgment to Lynch, Graham, Booker, and the University on the counts of infliction of emotional distress and spoliation of evidence. Johnson subsequently granted the defendants’ motion for directed verdict on spoliation claims, so only Owens’s claim of infliction of emotional distress was left standing for the jury to review at trial in January.
Missing videotapes and phones
In accordance with the ICS plan, officers Hughes and James captured the entire protest on a handheld video camera, filming from a UCPD squad car near the protest. However, the extensive video evidence of the protest was absent at trial.
According to the UCPD, the videotapes, along with the department-issued phones on which Marcellis and Owens communicated, were all misplaced and could not be located to be used as evidence.
Booker testified that at the end of the protest, Hughes and James returned the video camera to him. However, he maintained that he didn’t know what he did with the camera, did not know what happened with the cassette tape, and never looked at the video, inventoried it, or had anyone else watch the video.
Sydney Combs / The Chicago Maroon
Apparently, no video was preserved from any of the numerous security cameras posted throughout campus, either.
UCPD security camera feeds are only stored for 30 days if they are not preserved. Heath launched the internal investigation on March 4, only eight days after the video footage of the February 23 protest was recorded. This investigation alone would seem reason to preserve the tapes as evidence, but on top of that, Vroustouris sent Heath a preservation letter for all video related to the incident, among other materials. That request was sent on March 14, still within the period when the security tapes were available.
Neither the video captured by Hughes and James nor any security camera footage ever made it into the courtroom. Defendants claimed that Vroustouris should have directed his request to the University legal department, rather than directly to Heath, who was conducting the investigation.
The UCPD-issued phones over which Marcellis and Owens communicated on the day of the protest, which were confiscated when the detective and officer were put on administrative leave, also never made it to trial. Defendants testified that they were at some point returned to an evidence locker, but that they were subsequently misplaced or that the evidence locker was purged.
Owens told The Maroon he found command’s unwillingness to preserve or provide video evidence particularly egregious and considers it a violation of his right to a fair and thorough investigation, as codified in section 902 of the UCPD General Order on Complaint Investigation Procedures.
“Not only were the videotapes missing, the phones are gone. Marcellis’s phone and my phone, they're gone. At some point, even someone who just watches CSI knows something’s wrong,” Owens said.
Vroustouris told The Maroon he thinks the UCPD videotaped the protest in case protesters also took video and captured officers misbehaving, as they had in January, so that UCPD would have “their own version” of events.
A photo obtained at trial among documents subpoenaed from Schiff Hardin. Marcellis is center, carrying a sign.
Court document
The court granted the defendants’ motion for directed verdict on spoliation claims. At trial in January, the jury found in favor of Owens on his claim of reckless and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
On February 26, 2018, the defendants (the University and Booker) filed a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, arguing that Owens’s claim of extreme infliction of emotional distress is insufficient as a matter of law. Such motions are rarely granted, but the University told The Maroon it intends to appeal the case, if necessary.
Owens now works in the security department at City Colleges of Chicago. He told The Maroon he regrets not staying at CPD, where he would have risen in the ranks and enjoyed union and pension benefits.
He is grateful to have the job at City Colleges, which has kept him afloat financially and mentally, he said.
Still, word of his firing has followed him, which is one reason it was so important to him to clear his name in court.
“I am not a very emotional person, but I actually lost control on the stand [and cried,] and they had to stop…after being in policing for a length of time, seeing the things that I’ve seen, you just learn to kind of separate your emotions from things,” he said. “But I was really embarrassed, to be honest. It just finally hit me—the betrayal.”
Marcellis, Heath, Booker, Lynch, the lawyers for the defense at Franczek Radelet P.C., and attorneys Patricia Brown Holmes and Kelly M. Warner, who authored the Schiff Hardin report, declined or did not respond to The Maroon’s requests for comment.
Undercover UCPD detective infiltrates protest
By Madhu Srikantha
An on-duty UCPD detective marched with protesters at Saturday's trauma center demonstration and did not identify herself to organizers, according to a Maroon investigation.
The Maroon in your inbox.
Every Tuesday and Friday.
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“Louisa Barnes Pratt,” Church History Topics
Born in 1802 in Massachusetts, Louisa Barnes married Addison Pratt when she was 28. They were introduced to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Louisa’s sister and brother-in-law, Caroline and Jonathan Crosby. The Pratts were baptized in 1838 in Massachusetts. While en route to Missouri to gather with the Saints, they learned about the violence against the Latter-day Saints in Missouri and chose to remain in Indiana until 1841, when they moved to Nauvoo. Louisa joined the Nauvoo Relief Society on May 12, 1842, nursed her children through measles, and donated to the women’s penny fund for the Nauvoo Temple.
Photograph of Louisa Barnes Pratt
Beginning in 1843 Louisa began almost a decade of missionary support when Addison was called to serve a mission in the islands of the Pacific. After Addison departed for his mission, Louisa provided for her family and moved them from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters and later to Salt Lake City. While journeying to Winter Quarters, she met with other women to pray and provide each other mutual support.1 After she arrived, she experienced several trials, including living in a damp dugout, spraining her knee, falling ill with scurvy, and losing her front teeth.
Addison returned from his mission in 1848 and met Louisa in Salt Lake City. The following year, he was called on a second mission to Tahiti. In May 1850 Louisa and their four daughters embarked to join him for two years in Tubuai, where they learned the language, spoke in meetings, and preached the gospel. Jonathan and Caroline Crosby and their son joined them as well. While living among the women of Tubuai in the South Pacific, Louisa instructed them in English and domestic skills. She also taught them the gospel and blessed them when they were sick.2
Louisa and Addison returned from their mission in 1852 and lived for a time in San Bernardino, California. But she felt “bound with cords of love to the church” and was determined to be with the Saints in Utah. In 1858 she left behind her beautiful home in California and separated from Addison, who was becoming disillusioned with the Church.3 She settled in Beaver, Utah, and lived there for the rest of her life, serving as counselor and secretary in the local Relief Society. She remained close to her sister Caroline, and the two lived next door to each other in Beaver. Louisa died on September 8, 1880, of pneumonia.
Louisa’s life experiences helped her develop a keen “spirit of self reliance,” as she lived apart from her husband for half of their married life. She taught school and worked as a seamstress for financial support. Her journal and memoirs often report cycles of fear and discouragement giving way to peace and hope. “My heart felt weak at the first, but I determined to trust in the Lord and stand bravely up before the ills of life,” she wrote while living in Nauvoo. In Tubuai she wrote, “Little do we know what we can do till we make a thorough trial.”4
Brittany Chapman, “Capable of ‘Great Good’: Louisa Barnes Pratt Nurtured Saints in French Polynesia,” Women of Conviction series, June 30, 2012, history.ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
S. George Ellsworth, “Called to Tubuai: Missionary Couples in French Polynesia, 1850,” Ensign, Oct. 1989, 35–39.
Alisha Erin Hillam, “‘Be Still and Know That I Am God’: Louisa Barnes Pratt,” in Richard E. Turley Jr. and Brittany A. Chapman, eds., Women of Faith in the Latter Days: Volume 1, 1775–1820 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011), 246–58.
Kathleen C. Perrin, “Louisa Barnes Pratt: Self-Reliant Missionary Wife,” in Reid L. Nielson and Fred E. Woods, eds., Go Ye into All the World: The Growth and Development of Mormon Missionary Work (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, 2012), 261–88.
The following publication provides further information about this topic. By referring or linking you to this resource, we do not endorse or guarantee the content or the views of the author.
S. George Ellsworth, ed. The History of Louisa Barnes Pratt: Mormon Missionary Widow and Pioneer (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998).
See Louisa Barnes Pratt, Memoirs, Spring 1846 to September 1848, in S. George Ellsworth, ed., The History of Louisa Barnes Pratt: Mormon Missionary Widow and Pioneer (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998), 82.
Kathleen C. Perrin, “Louisa Barnes Pratt: Self-Reliant Missionary Wife,” in Reid L. Nielson and Fred E. Woods, eds., Go Ye into All the World: The Growth and Development of Mormon Missionary Work (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, 2012), 261–88; see Topic: Healing.
S. George Ellsworth, ed., The Journals of Addison Pratt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), 513.
Louisa Barnes Pratt, in Ellsworth, The History of Louisa Barnes Pratt, 65, 78, 150, 222, 360.
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Kevin McCreedy Named Division Manager
Categories: DAI
Degesch America, Inc. is pleased to announce that Kevin McCreedy has been appointed Division Manager for the Gulf Coast region. In his new position Kevin will oversee the day to day operations of the Houston and Gulf Divisions. Kevin is a native of Sacramento, California and over a decade of experience in the fumigation industry. Kevin attended California State University of Sacramento, after which he worked in retail management for 18 years. During this time, he relocated to the Pacific Northwest, eventually changing careers and accepting a position at Dico Pacific Fumigation. When Dico Pacific was acquired by Degesch America, Inc. in 2011, Kevin joined our Columbia River Division (CRD), based in Portland, OR. Prior to his current appointment, Kevin served as the CRD Operations Coordinator.
Kevin has participated in many phosphine, methyl bromide and sulfuryl fluoride fumigations of mills, containers, silos, ships, warehouses, railcars and food plants and will bring this experience to his new position.
Update: Chinese Requirements for Shipments from Zika-Infected Countries
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Member of CZ GROUP
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Pistol with the NATO symbol for General Petr Pavel
On Monday, 19 November, the main shareholder of Česká zbrojovka a.s., René Holeček, and the CZ Group President, Lubomír Kovařík, welcomed Army General Petr Pavel and his team, who worked with him for three years in a mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels, to the company shop of Česká zbrojovka a.s. in Prague.
General Pavel received a CZ P-10 pistol engraved with the NATO symbol from representatives of Česká zbrojovka. The pistol was made according to the specification of General Pavel for him and his team. René Holeček commented: “This great firearm is in the hands of a great man who excellently represented the Czech Republic and its army at the highest military post in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.” The President of CZ Group, Lubomír Kovařík, said: “I respect General Pavel as a soldier who has always shown his qualities. Whether it was on the UNPROFOR peacekeeping mission, as Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic or as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. And at the end of his forty-two-year military career, I would like to wish him a lot of success in the next chapter of his life.” Army General Petr Pavel, in gratitude for being awarded by the top representatives of Česká zbrojovka, pointed out that Zbrojovka firearms had accompanied him for much of his military career. “And I am glad that Česká zbrojovka provides our army with quality weapons,” added General Pavel. “Therefore, when deciding to buy a gun, I did not hesitate at all and chose a product of Česká zbrojovka. I am also glad that Česká zbrojovka will send the money from the sale of my weapon to the Military Solidarity Fund.”
The members of Petr Pavel’s team then received CZ P-10 pistols, which were ordered as a reminder of a joint three-year mission at NATO in Brussels and specially made for them by Česká zbrojovka.
Army General Petr Pavel is a professional soldier, who held numerous command and staff positions in the Czechoslovak and Czech army, as well as in the structures of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. From 2015 to 2018, he served as the first General of the former Eastern Bloc as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee.
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Whicker: Grant Calcaterra leaves football with…
Whicker: Grant Calcaterra leaves football with a purple heart and, so far, a clear head
Former Santa Margarita and Oklahoma star, after big games and concussions, serves as a symbol for increased awareness
Oklahoma tight end Grant Calcaterra, who quit football because of concussions, walks the sidelines on Senior Night before a game against TCU in Norman, Okla., Saturday, Nov. 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
By Mark Whicker | MWhicker@scng.com | Daily News
PUBLISHED: December 7, 2019 at 9:14 a.m. | UPDATED: December 7, 2019 at 10:21 a.m.
COTO DE CAZA – On Nov. 23, Oklahoma honored its football seniors. A junior led them out of the tunnel.
Grant Calcaterra, 21, is a 6-foot-4, 220-pound tight end from Santa Margarita who specialized in the combat-zone catch, who produced an epic one-handed touchdown catch in last year’s Big 12 Championship Game, whose buddy Baker Mayfield was a house guest.
He is a shaggy-haired South County fellow who won over Sooner country, and not just because his first nickname, as a rambunctious kid, was “Boomer.”
Calcaterra was involved in Senior Day because his third concussion in a year has retired him.
He had announced it on Twitter on Nov. 21.
To everybody who's been a part of my football journey, Thank You.
Philippians 1:6 pic.twitter.com/OmOlUsLiMV
— Grant Calcaterra (@grcalcaterra) November 22, 2019
When the 82,421 fans at Owen Field saw him two days later, they rose as one, and his parents Chris and Diane let the tears go.
They sat in their living room on Friday afternoon, looked through the window and down into a canyon, talked about the edge of the abyss.
“I never was comfortable,” Chris said. “I was only comfortable when he scored.
“It’s sad from the standpoint of what might have been. But I asked Grant, how many players get to go out on their own terms. Ten percent, maybe?”
“I still love the game,” Diane said. “We watched football last night. I heard Drew Brees talk about how players feel they got hit by a car every week. But it doesn’t change my love for the game.”
“I may be a little different,” Chris said.
KNOWING THE SCORE
Grant Calcaterra announced his retirement on Twitter, a week after he had told his parents. The final concussion had happened in practice. He leaped for a ball and fell on his head. He doesn’t know how long he was out. When he awakened, teammates were all around him.
The second concussion at Oklahoma came at a spring practice.The first was in a regular-season loss to Texas in 2018, when Calcaterra was drilled as he seemed to catch a 28-yard touchdown. The call was reversed and Calcaterra immediately grabbed his head. He gave coach Lincoln Riley a thumbs-up and re-entered the game, but then left again for good.
“I had told him that if he got three concussions down there he was done,” Chris said, “which, in a way, is how it worked out. But he made the decision himself.”
That is the real story here.
Calcaterra is the beneficiary of football’s Information Age.
No one knows how he’ll function in his golden years, but he and Oklahoma trainer Scott Anderson and team physician Dr. Brock Schnekel all knew the possible consequences, and they weren’t pretty.
He was not blindsided like those martyrs who were never told of the cumulative damage inside a battered head. He had been lit up at Santa Margarita, particularly in a Bishop Amat game when he was slow to rise.
“Are we keeping up with this?” Chris asked Diane.
Grant had to wear sunglasses at his senior prom, and he left early because he couldn’t handle the loud music.
“After this last one, we talked on the phone and he started telling me things he’d just told me,” Diane said. “Then he said he’d gone to class the other day and forgot that class was canceled. I told him to begin writing stuff down. He knew what was happening.”
Calcaterra talked to Joshua Perry, an Ohio State linebacker who quit after two NFL seasons. He visited neurologists in Oklahoma City. Diane flew to Pittsburgh to consult Dr. Micky Collins. The Calcaterras can tell you about the vestibular part of the brain, which passes information that controls equilibrium and awareness of body position.
They give an A-plus to Anderson and Schnebel, who had no problem telling an All-Big 12 tight end that he shouldn’t play in games that could lead Oklahoma to a College Football Playoff.
Tight end Grant Calcaterra of the Oklahoma Sooners catches a pass for a first down against UCLA Bruins in the first half of a NCAA football game at the Rose Bowl on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2019 in Pasadena. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
“Scott and Brock were on top of it,” Chris said. “They kept saying it was something to think about, that they’d be worried if it was their kid.”
“You don’t know which one will do the most damage,” Diane said. “It could be No 3, or No. 8, or No. 12. The first one can be life-changing. But you’re more likely to keep getting them, and each one is tougher to recover from.”
“Grant said he didn’t want to be the 50-year-old guy who can’t remember how to brush his teeth,” Chris said.
Calcaterra was accustomed to the collateral damage. In one Texas Tech game, he broke a finger, bruised his sternum and took a contusion to the chin.
But he knew he couldn’t tape up his brain.
The final concussion was Oct. 8. Calcaterra was out for five weeks. When Grant told his parents he was done, Chris said goodbye, turned off the phone and then looked at the TV. Mayfield and the Browns were beating the Steelers. Three players were removed with head injuries.
Grant graduates in May. He will study to become a firefighter and intends to move back to Orange County. That, too, is a team experience, its dangers well-defined.
“He’s relieved now,” Chris said. “He’s glad to have it in his rear-view mirror. But it’ll be tough Saturday when he’s at the Big 12 championship game. And it’ll be tough on the day of the NFL draft. He was looking forward to that. Several of his buddies will be drafted that day. We had it marked in our calendars.”
“And I really believe that in five to 10 years the technology will be even better,” Diane said. “We’ll have more information about which people are predisposed. People will be healed quicker. But none of that will stop a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) from happening.”
Can a concussion turn into a feel-good story? No, but it doesn’t have to be a calamity. Because of Junior Seau and Mike Webster and even Muhammad Ali, everyone’s antenna is turned up. You no longer play through concussions, no longer walk them off. At the best places, they are a higher priority than touchdowns.
Whicker: Philip Rivers is just trading in his Sundays for Fridays
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Whicker: Darious Williams, the Rams’ ‘other’ cornerback, has been a revelation
Whicker: Former Hart High QB Brady White left no unfinished business at Memphis
Whicker: Nick Saban churns out Steve Sarkisian as another Coach Wash client
Chris says he’s not sure he’d let his next son play football. But if he did, that son would not play unprotected. That is undeniable progress.
Former OU coach Bob Stoops saw the Calcaterras at Senior Day and told them, “Grant has given us more highlights in two and a half years than a lot of guys do in four.”
They thanked him and, when the game started without Grant, they exhaled. Now they face the next decades, eyes wide open, sunglasses off.
Mark Whicker
Mark Whicker | Sports Columnist
Mark Whicker has worked for SCNG newspapers since 1987. He has been a sports columnist for newspapers since 1980 and a professional sportswriter since 1974. He was selected for induction to the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame in 2020. Mark can be reached at mwhicker@scng.com or mwhicker03@gmail.com.
MWhicker@scng.com
Follow Mark Whicker @MWhicker03LANG
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Golden Oldies Juke Box Saturday Night 102
Little Eva Let’s Turkey Trot
Published by Jane Minogue at November 19, 2016
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It’s almost Thanksgiving, and it’s time to relax a little and reminisce with the oldies with the all-request Golden Oldies Juke Box Saturday Night. The songs are on the juke box in our Daily Doo Wop Rec Room. There’s plenty of good music, and it’s always a fun mix of artists and genres, from doo wop to rock and roll to country to pop to R&B. Just click on the juke box and then on the songs you wish to hear. Many thanks to all those who requested songs! Many apologies if we did not get to your request. Please let us know, and we’ll try again next Saturday.
Here are this week’s selections for Golden Oldies Juke Box Saturday Night #102:
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli for Felicia Miller.
“Three Stars” by Eddie Cochran for Bill Kelley.
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones for Annette Florczak.
“The Ballad of Davy Crockett” by The Mellomen for Robert Florczak.
“One by One” by The Jarmels for Susan Poff Wright.
“Oh Happy Day” by The Edwin Hawkins Singers for Pat Pearsall, who wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.
“You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louie” by Allan Sherman for Tim Swank, who writes it’s been a rough couple of weeks, so we need some comedy.
“First Love, First Tears” by Duane Eddy for Eugene M. Forbes.
“Happy Happy Birthday Baby” by The Tune Weavers for Eva Rizzo, whose birthday is this Sunday. Have a happy one!
“Put Your Head on My Shoulder” by Paul Anka for Diana Sainz.
“Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley for Barbara Saylor Siefker.
“Traces of Love” by The Classics IV for Edna Legg Pike.
“In the Still of the Night” by The Five Satins for Darlene Mantzouratos.
“Sixteen Candles” by The Crests for Tamara Mcclung, who dedicates it to the memory of her husband, as today would have been their 56th wedding anniversary. R.I.P.
“Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro for Tezza Jaques.
“This Old Heart of Mine” by The Isley Brothers for Edward Wallace, who dedicates it to mary Anne.
“Stormy Monday Blues” by Bobby “Blue” Bland for Alan Jacobus.
“Cherry Pie” by Skip & Flip for Nellie Brown, who dedicates it to all the marines a Celeste Pizza, so long ago during the Vietnam War.
“It’s Only Make Believe” by Conway Twitty for Dick Moison, who dedicates it to his first girlfriend Gloria.
“(I Wanna) Testify” by The Parliaments for Dorene Erb, who dedicates it to everyone who went to the Gold Coast in St. James, LI, NY.
“Love at First Sight” by The Mello Kings for Paul LeRoy.
“Play Me the Waltz of the Angels” by Owen Mac for Glenda Penney.
“Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” by Perez Prado for Mike Pentzer.
“Sometimes (When I’m All Alone)” by Danny & The Juniors for Donna Armeli.
“When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge for Jane Elliott.
“Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers for Carol Brock Crider and Yolanda Erro. This is also requested by Linda C Williams Markhart, who dedicates it the memory of a special someone she misses. R.I.P.
“This Magic Moment” by Jay & The Americans for Merilyn Walser.
“A Place in the Sun” by Stevie Wonder for Moses Timothy.
“What Does It Take” by Jr. Walker & The All Stars for Candy Thomas Parnell.
“Over the Mountain, Across the Sea” by Johnnie and Joe for Liz Grissom.
“Somewhere Out There” by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram for David Mayes.
“Susie Darlin'” by Robin Luke for John Kraft.
“Money Honey” by Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters for Al Wayne Brundage.
“There’s a Moon Out Tonight” by The Capris for David Kelley.
“At the Hop” by Danny & The Juniors for Denny Larner.
“Little Darlin'” by The Diamonds for Ronald LaPlante.
“Mr. Dieingly Sad” by The Critters for Charles Lentz.
“Ask the Lonely” by The Four Tops for Gary Weinberger.
“Walk Like a Man” by The Four Seasons for Kathy Duncan.
“Don’t Ask About Barbara” by Bobby Vee for Randy Sutton.
“Sixty Minute Man” by Billy Ward & The Dominoes for Thomas E Lee.
“One Night (With You)” by Elvis Presley for Judith Morrison Hillis.
“Always Together” by The Dells for Kathy Levert.
“Oh What a Night” by The Dells for Charles Williams.
“Greenfields” by The Brothers Four for Bob Black.
“God Bless America” by Ethel Merman for Teri Boldt.
“When” by The Kalin Twins for Amy Seiders.
“Dark Moon” by Gale Storm for James Hegarty.
“Have You Heard” by The Duprees for Ada Perez.
“I’m Into Something Good” by Herman’s Hermits for Brian Hartman.
“Image of a Girl” by The Safaris for William Crum.
“Guardian Angel” by The Selections for Bob Nelson.
“Apache” by Jorgen Ingmann for Ken Dusty Havens.
“Blue Velvet” by Bobby Vinton for Linda Mullens.
“Roses are Red (My Love)” by Bobby Vinton for Marcella C. Ball.
“Blanche” by The Three Friends for Fran Chletsos Loffredo.
“Loving You” by Minnie Riperton for Evelyn Crisp.
“Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire for Charles Jones.
“The Pusher” by Steppenwolf for George Denelsbeck.
“To the Aisle” by The Five Satins for Larry Dossat.
“Some Kind of Wonderful” by Grand Funk Railroad for Linda Comer.
“Party Doll” by Buddy Knox and His Rhythm Orchids for Edna Gord.
“Hello Stranger” by Barbara Lewis for Debbie Estrada.
“One is the Loneliest Number” by Three Dog Night for Janelle Jones.
“In the Summertime” by Mungo Jerry for John Konecny.
“Footsteps” by Steve Lawrence for Bonnie Gatlin Hollingsworth.
“Out of Sight, Out of Mind” by The Five Keys for Tommie Rowan Ownby.
“Sea of Love” by Del Shannon for Gary Gwaltney.
“Blue Moon” by The Marcels for Mike Leon.
“I Will” by The Beatles for Sonny Cook, who dedicates it to Sherry.
“Calcutta” by Lawrence Welk for Linda Burtram.
“Close to You” by The Carpenters for Gerri Fitzi and Kathy Parisi.
“A Kiss is a Kiss” by The Rockin’ Chairs for Harold B. Watt.
“I Belong to You” by Ralph Flanagan for Georgia Dishman.
“The Girl from Ipanema” by Astrud Gilberto and Stan Gets for Rita Farone.
“Turn Me Loose” by Fabian for Michael Wollner.
“634-5789” by Wilson Pickett for William Lawton Wells.
“Chicken Dance Song” for Carol Nasca, who dedicates it to Brandi Crowe.
“Little Town Flirt” by Del Shannon for Joel Kane.
“Step by Step” by The Crests for Theresa Bianco.
“The Twist” by Chubby Checker for Arturo Juá
“Home on the Range” by Roy Rogers and The Sons of the Pioneers for Rhonda Reid Butler, who dedicates it to her dear father.
“Good Night Irene” by Nat “King” Cole for Rhonda Reid Butler, who dedicates it to her beloved mother.
“Senza Mamma” by Connie Francis for Danny Kwee, who dedicates it to the memory of his mother. R.I.P.
“Rockin’ Years” by Dolly Parton and Ricky Van Shelton for Suzzanna McDonald, who writes that it was her husband’s favorite song.
For More Golden Oldies Music
The Daily Doo Wop Rec Room has daily featured doo wop music, rock and roll hits, R&B, or rockabilly songs that werewere hits during the first era of rock and roll (that is, from about 1952 until the British invasion in 1964). After a song is featured, it then goes into the juke box. You are welcome to listen to any of the 40+ selections there. Every weekend, there is a Golden Oldies Juke Box Saturday Night, and the juke box is full of song requests from the 1950s and 1960s.
Please click here for the Daily Doo Wop YouTube channel, to which you can subscribe. Thank you for stopping by The Daily Doo Wop.
The Paris Sisters I Love How You Love Me
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Town Without Pity by Gene Pitney
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Home Word of the Day Word of the day: verkiezingen (elections)
Word of the day: verkiezingen (elections)
Have you thrown your voting pass away? Or are you seriously considering using it. Yesterday’s posting was all about the urgency to vote at the municipal elections 19 March. Today I’ll tell you more about the mysterious way the city is managed.
You, wherever you’re from, are a Hagenaar, or a Voorburger or a Rijswijker or …. which means that you take part in the goings on of Dutch city life. Which means that you as a member of Dutch society have the right and the responsibility to vote.
In The Hague over 10% of all Hague voters are expats who have a right to vote in the municipal elections. They stand for 42,000 possible votes. If all of you expats were to form a political party and all of you would vote, you’d be the largest party in The Hague with ten seats of the 45 council seats. This fact was pointed out by alderman and vice-mayor Ingrid van Engelshoven in her speech at the debate last Sunday at the central library.
STEMMEN (to vote) means KIEZEN (choose). Recent polls show that the Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders is likely to become the largest party of The Hague. What a prospect! And this prediction may become true because polls show that only 40% of all Hague potential voters will use their votes. Would you like this city to be run by a party which is anti Moslem, anti- Europe, anti-migrants, anti-everything, anti-you?
KIEZEN (choose) is at the heart of the word VERKIEZING (election). In the ‘verkiezingen’ the Dutch choose a new administration by voting for their favourite political party and representative.
KIES and STEM…. Choose and vote…. But what should you vote for? I’ll come back to that tomorrow.
First I’ll give you the shortest possible introduction to Dutch elections.
What kind of verkiezingen, elections are there in the Netherlands?
1. European elections (on 22nd May of this year -> for all European citizens)
2. National elections (the next elections will be in 2017)
3. Provincial elections (the next elections will be in 2015)
4. Municipal elections (on 19 March 2014)
Each municipality consists of a council of councillors and the bench of mayor and aldermen. In The Hague there are 45 councillors, eight aldermen and a mayor. The 45 members of the council control the work of the aldermen and the mayor. The mayor of The Hague, Jozias van Aartsen, cannot be elected by us. He is appointed by the government on the recommendation of the city council.
In the Netherlands there are many political parties. There are nineteen political parties vying for seats in the Hague council. Many of these parties are also national parties, but The Hague and the other cities each have their own local parties like the Hague City Party (Haagse Stadspartij).
Because none of these parties will ever receive the absolute majority of all votes, they are forced to find partners who are willing to take part in a coalition. The members of the coalition determine who the eight aldermen will be.
In the previous four years the ruling coalition consisted of the PvdA (labour party), the VVD (the liberal party), D66 (the democrats) and CDA (christian democrats). These four parties had 26 out of 45 seats. Their coalition agreement was called: ‘Aan de Slag!’ (Get going!).
This slogan is still as valid as ever. You can make a difference. Vote! STEM! KIES! Aan de slag!
Word of the day: stemmen (vote)
Word of the day: debat (debate)
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Passport to Good Health App
Author: HealthyWomen
Passport to Good Health app for the Apple iPhone iPad and iPod touch helps handle the overwhelming amount of information consumers face.
Mammogram? Colonoscopy? Tetanus Shot? There's an App for that...
When it comes to navigating your health in today's world, do you know where to go? A new iPhone app can help keep you on course.
HealthyWomen, the nation's leading nonprofit health information source for women, announces the launch of the Passport to Good Health app for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The app was developed to help handle the overwhelming amount of information today's consumers face. With modern time constraints, it's a challenge to stay on top of personal health records, reliable information and reminders, but now there's help.
Currently available from the iTunes Store, the Passport to Good Health app provides consumers with easy-to-track preventive health screening schedules; personal health records and screening results; medication and dosage records; and physician contact and appointment information. The secure app is password protected and notification reminders will let patients know when they are due for upcoming appointments, tests, screenings and vaccinations.
"With more and more consumers going online for their health information these days, we saw an opportunity to expand and modernize our educational mission of keeping women informed and empowered in a popular forum and format," explains HealthyWomen executive director Beth Battaglino Cahill, RN.
The app serves two purposes, Battaglino Cahill says. First, it encourages women to take charge of their health and assists those who are acting as caregivers by keeping important health information at the ready and on track.
And second, the app can eliminate costly reminder mailings and conserve staff resources for health care providers and their offices by reducing time spent contacting patients about regular screenings and overdue office visits.
"It's a win-win for consumers and health care providers," says Battaglino Cahill.
A "lite" version of the Passport to Good Health app is available for free to help you track your own health, and a complete version for $1.99 will track the health of your family members and loved ones as well.
In addition to personal records and reminders, the app features links to health resources like the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Covered the Uninsured and others to provide reliable sources of medical information.
The Passport to Good Health app was made possible through a pro bono initiative with consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.
A printed booklet published in partnership with the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) is also available to download or order at www.healthywomen.org/passport. There may be a small charge for shipping and handling.
For more information or to purchase the app, visit www.healthywomen.org/passport-app.
About HealthyWomen -HealthyWomen (HW) is the nation's leading nonprofit health information source for women. For more than 20 years, women have been coming to the HW for answers to their most pressing and personal health care questions. HW provides health information through a wide array of online content and print publications that are original, objective and reviewed and approved by medical experts. Its website, www.HealthyWomen.org®, was recognized by Forbes-Woman as one of the "Top 100 Websites for Women" and was named the top women's health website by Dr. Mehmet Oz in O, The Oprah Magazine and by Good Housekeeping magazine. To learn more, visit www.HealthyWomen.org
Journal: Disabled World. Language: English. Author: HealthyWomen. Electronic Publication Date: 2011-05-12. Last Revised Date: 2011-05-12. Reference Title: "Passport to Good Health App", Source: Passport to Good Health App. Abstract: Passport to Good Health app for the Apple iPhone iPad and iPod touch helps handle the overwhelming amount of information consumers face. Retrieved 2021-01-21, from https://www.disabled-world.com/assistivedevices/apps/health-app.php - Reference Category Number: DW#468-7640.
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France post-elections. Careful with optimism
24 April, 2017 Europe, Global Economy, On the coverDaniel Lacalle
The French presidential elections have shown several evidences .
The second round will again put a moderate candidate, Macron , against a far-right one, LePen. This happened years ago between Chirac and LePen’s father … The big difference is that, then, the combination of extreme-left and the far-right did not add more than 40% of votes.
The euphoria of analysts ahead of a second round that concentrates the moderate vote in Macron cannot make us forget that the French society has reacted to the fierce and interventionist statism of Hollande increasing the support to more ultra-interventionist radicalism.
The disaster of the socialist party – pledging unicorns, making stimulus plan after stimulus plan and raising taxes over and over- has been spectacular. Not only has ultra-left-wing and ultra-right-wing populism not stopped, but Socialists have legitimized and fed it by repeating to citizens that the magic solutions of eternal expenditure and constant imbalances were viable. Between the diluted populism of Hamon and that of the totalitarians Melenchon or LePen, many prefered the original.
The decline of the center-right comes after many years of renouncing to its principles of free market and low taxes, surrendering to copy the Socialist party. This has made Fillon, besides the scandals, appear as not credible in its proposals of reform, among other things because he has been in high positions of responsibility and those same reforms were delayed to perpetuate the interventionism that he now criticizes.
Both Hamon and Fillon have requested their voters support for Macron in the second round, which leads to a high probability of a moderate victory.
What about Melenchon? The far-left candidate lost, but has refused to request the vote for Macron, proving that the extreme left candidate’s calls to defend France from the National Front were just political tactics. Melenchon’s economic policies are very similar to LePen’s.
The inability of traditional parties to respond to the real concerns of the people, including the terrorist threat and immigration, and their historic failure to implement reforms, has taken its toll .
When you make a race to see who is more socialist, it ends up backfiring and benefiting the one that promises unicorns.
The Macron challenge… if he wins
Now the problem of France is to recover the dynamism lost in an economy that Macron himself described as “sclerotic” . There are many doubts about his true reformist agenda, evidenced by his actions when he has been minister. But we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. He faces a radicalized parliament, with traditional parties in disarray.
Reducing corporate tax, cutting labor costs, carrying out a labor reform similar to the Spanish one, and immigrant integration policies are part of Macron’s proposals, but we must wait to see if he wins the second round and if he has the support to implement them.
The challenge is enormous.
Just fifteen years ago, Germany and France had similar deficits and debts. Germany took the road of reforms and France the “ostrich policy”, ignoring its imbalances, attacking its own waterline with confiscatory tax and spending policies to sustain a hypertrophied public sector.
The last time France had a balanced budget was in 1980, and since 1974 it has never generated a surplus, public debt reached 96% of GDP, the economy has been stagnating for two decades, unemployment stands at 10% (with 23.6% youth unemployment ) and in 2017 it still has a current account deficit of 6.5 billion euros while the Eurozone has a surplus. Germany, on the other side, has a budget surplus, growth, much less unemployment (3.9%) and lower debt (71%). The French candidates have blamed the country’s problems on external enemies, from ‘globalization’ to ‘the euro’, however, comparisons with Germany destroy those arguments. It is hilarious to listen to LePen or Melenchon, the Ying and Yang of extremism, blaming France’s problems on “budget cuts” or “austerity . “
In a country where public spending exceeds 57% of GDP, where public administration spending has grown by more than 13% since 2008 and 22% of the active population works for the State, local governments and public entities, talking of austerity is a bad joke. In addition, France has spent tens of billions on ‘stimulus plans’ since 2009 . Specifically, 47 billion euro in 2009, 1.24 billion to the automotive industry and two ‘growth plans’ under the Hollande mandate: 37.6 billion euro (‘investments’) and 16.5 billion (‘technology’).
Blaming the French stagnation on “neoliberalism”, “austerity” or “the euro” is like an obese person blaming his overweight on lack of more donuts.
The problem is economic “dirigisme” -interventionism-, which stifles the potential of a rich nation that should not be satisfied with having better economic data than the periphery of Europe. France should be compared to the world’s leading economies. The problem that the next president of France faces is that, repeating the mistakes of the past, the country will not regain the dynamism of a nation that should not be content with secular stagnation and perpetuating imbalances.
Unfortunately, the results of these elections have shown us that a large part of the electorate thinks that “dirigiste” socialism has not worked because the country needs a lot more of it. A large part of the electorate prefers to believe that two plus two add up to twenty-two and that they will be richer if they take more money from those who produce to give it to those who do not.
Last night the European project may have won, and many will be relieved, but this cannot make us forget the most important thing: Legitimising the populist message is not the way to combat radicalism. It fuels populism.
Daniel Lacalle is a PhD in Economics, fund manager and author of Escape from the Central Bank Trap (BEP), Life In The Financial Markets, and The Energy World Is Flat (Wiley).
Image courtesy Google
← “I am very positive on the US as a nation” (Interview in Vendome Magazine) How CEOs can avoid the central bank trap (CEO World) →
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Coletta Bradley, 92, Kent
DesMoines
Coletta Bradley, 92, of Kent, Iowa, passed away, Saturday, July 9, 2016, at Clearview Home, Clearfield, Iowa. Mass of Christian Burial will be at 10 a.m., Saturday, July 16, 2016, at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Creston, Iowa. Father Kenneth Halbur Jr., celebrant. Interment will be at Calvary Cemetery, Creston. Open visitation will be from 1 to 8 p.m. Friday, July 15, at Pearson Family Funeral Service, 809 W. Montgomery St., Creston. Family will receive friends from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday evening. Rosary and Wake Service will be at 8 p.m. Friday evening. Memorials may be directed to CCW (Council of Catholic Women) at Holy Spirit Parish, Creston and/or St. Malachy School, Creston. Online condolences may be left at www.pearsonfuneralhomes.com.
Coletta Katherine (Baker) Bradley, the daughter of Joseph Lawrence and Katherine Agnes (Britten) Baker, was born March 21, 1924, in rural Union County near Creston, Iowa. Coletta attended Harmony Country School (#4) in Grant Township, Union County. Coletta married Lyman Paul Bradley on Aug. 21, 1945, at St. Malachy Church in Creston, Iowa. She lived in this area all of her life and was a loving wife and mother, neighbor and friend.
Coletta was a member of Holy Spirit Parish and CCW (Council of Catholic Women) in Creston, Iowa. She was an original member and historian of the neighborhood H.O.A Club (Help One Another). Together with her husband Lyman, she was a member of the Lenox Stock and Saddle Club.
Left to cherish Coletta’s memory are her children: Raymond (Peggy) Bradley, Trenton, MO; Norbert (Vera) Bradley, Lenox, IA; Bernita (Ed) Stansberry, Marion, IA; Loretta Hatten, West Des Moines, IA; Marilyn Martin (Tom Wadle), Norwalk, IA; Janet (Steve) Conner, Creston, IA; Joyce (Mark) Woosley, Indianola, IA; and Jolene (Scott) Griffith, Prescott, IA; 19 grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren; and her sister, Mary Jean Gebhardt, Van Meter, IA.
Preceding Coletta in death were her parents; her husband; her mother-in-law, Frances Bradley Shiffer; her step-father-in-law, Ward Shiffer; her five brothers: Urban (Dorothy) Baker; Benno (Pauline) Baker; Edmund (Dorothy Ellen) Baker; Joseph (Catharine) Baker; and Leo (Donna) Baker; two sisters: Theola (Dennis) Bradley; and Bernardine (Hubert) Bradley; her son-in-law: Roger Hatten; her two brothers-in-law: Max Gebhardt; and Rev. Bede James Bradley, OSB.
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The NSW State cultural institutions manage significant cultural heritage collections and provide services and programs throughout the State.
Together, these institutions provide a unique and irreplaceable archive of our history and contemporary culture that was valued at over $7.6 billion in 2011/12. These ‘creativity archives’ provide a unique resource for research and inspiration.
The cultural institutions are the leaders of arts and culture in NSW, in terms of participation (4.8 million people visited in 2011/12), equity of access (loans, travelling exhibitions, digital content), promoting artistic excellence (collections, exhibitions, performances, loans, awards and prizes) and sector development (fellowships and grants, mentoring and internships, programming and engagement).
In 2013-14 the NSW Government provided over $260 million to support our State’s cultural institutions, including $68.5 million in capital funding.
These figures do not include the Historic Houses Trust of NSW which is part of the Environment and Heritage portfolio.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales collects, conserves, interprets and displays works of art, with a special emphasis on[...]More
Sydney Living Museums
Sydney Living Museums cares for 12 of New South Wales’ most important museums and historic houses.[...]More
Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences
The Powerhouse Museum presents exhibitions and programs based on the ideas and technologies that have changed our world, and the[...]More
The World Heritage Listed Sydney Opera House is the symbol of modern Australia, the nation’s premier cultural institution, and the[...]More
State Library of NSW
A world leading library and centre of digital excellence, the State Library of New South Wales informs, educates, inspires and[...]More
The Australian Museum is our leading natural and cultural history museum.[...]More
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Chris Packham joins the Bournemouth Natural Science Society
PUBLISHED: 10:30 07 September 2015 | UPDATED: 10:30 07 September 2015
The Bournemouth Natural Science Society (BNSS) has announced its latest patron
The Bournemouth Natural Science Society (BNSS) has announced that its latest patron is the naturalist, television presenter and author Chris Packham. Chris, who wrote the foreword to the Society’s book The Natural History of Bournemouth and the Surrounding Area, said he is honoured to be their patron.
“The greatest riches of the Society lie not in its impressive collections, but in the extraordinary knowledge, enthusiasm and passion of its members and affiliates. Nowhere else could you find an assemblage of naturalists, geologists, palaeontologists, historians, astronomers and archaeologists all work together in one small building.”
The BNSS, which was founded in 1903, aims to promote the study and enjoyment of the natural sciences and history. From its distinctive building at 39 Christchurch Road it runs an extensive programme of year round events. To learn more or to join as a member visit their website bnss.org.uk.
• Martin Clunes on receiving an OBE, this year’s Buckham Fair and Doc Martin - As filming for the seventh series of Doc Martin comes to an end, Martin Clunes OBE is busy preparing for his next starring role at Buckham Fair. Carol Burns caught up with Martin and his furry co-star on set in Port Isaac
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Visiting museums in China
Vaut le détour
Still the essential guide to pack
Books & artsMay 24th 2014 edition
Chinese Museums Guide. By Miriam Clifford, Cathy Giangrande and Antony White. Yilin Press; 388 pages; $29.95 and £19.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
WHEN the authors wrote their first guide to China’s museums in 2009, it was one of the only books on the subject. It is still the best. Now the official Chinese Museums Association (CMA) has asked them to repackage the work as its own guide to the nation’s treasures.
The authors have dropped some of their original entries, chiefly the odder ones, such as the Beijing museum devoted to eunuch culture, a collection in Shanghai of shoes for women’s bound feet and the ancient Chinese sex-culture museum outside the city.
This is a shame. But they have more than made up for it by adding museums that were left out of the original or have opened since its publication. More than 450 new museums were inaugurated in China in 2012 and about 350 the year before, so an updated version of the guide was necessary. Despite the proliferation of new museums of contemporary art, half the guide’s new entries refer to museums covering archaeology, oriental musical instruments, block-printing, celadon pottery and bronzework, indicating that traditional culture may be undergoing an official revival.
The guide also offers insights into politically important museums, such as the museum commemorating the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95, which ended in ignominious Chinese defeat and the forced ceding of Taiwan to Japan. The memorial to the Korean war will disconcert American visitors, but it is useful for understanding the war from a Chinese point of view.
Not all the entries are so politically didactic. The Jianchuan Museum Cluster in Sichuan is an unusual private collection of 8m artefacts amassed by a businessman and concerned chiefly with the Cultural Revolution and the war against Japan. Its Chinese Heroes Plaza is filled with life-size bronze statues of figures from the civil war, both nationalists and communists. And the Sanxingdui, also in Sichuan and one of the great museum destinations in China, is a reminder that there are grand alternatives to the terracotta warriors in Xi’an. The site, which extends across 26 square kilometres, is known for its impressive display of bronze-age Shu burial artefacts: elephant tusks, heads with almond-shaped eyes, gold, jade and turquoise.
The CMA extends its remit beyond the mainland. The guide includes entries for the Hong Kong Museum of History and the Macao Museum, as well as (perhaps sensitively for some) the National Palace Museum in Taipei. More than 230,000 imperial Chinese treasures were shipped to Taipei from the Forbidden City by Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces during the civil war, a source of continued irritation to the powers in Beijing.
This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Vaut le détour"
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Nationalism is back
Bad news for international co-operation
by Gideon Rachman
In recent years, any writer who predicted that nationalism was the wave of the future would have been regarded as eccentric—at best. All the most powerful forces in business, technology and finance seemed to be pushing towards deeper international integration. New supranational organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, the G20 and the International Criminal Court were set up to handle the cross-border issues that proliferated in a globalised world. Meanwhile the European Union, an organisation in which countries pool sovereignty and forswear nationalism, set itself up as the political model for the 21st century.
In 2015, however, it will become increasingly clear that nationalism is back. From Europe to Asia to America, politicians who base their appeal on the idea that they are standing up for their own countries will grow in power and influence. The result will be an increase in international tensions and an unpromising background for efforts at multilateral co-operation, whether on climate, trade, taxation or development.
The resurgence of the nationalist style in politics became evident in 2014. In India Narendra Modi, who is often referred to as a Hindu nationalist, won a sweeping general-election victory. Nationalist parties made big gains in the elections to the European Parliament, with France’s National Front and Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) topping the polls. Scottish nationalists came unnervingly close to winning a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. Nationalist rhetoric also surged in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as the Kremlin rallied domestic support for the annexation of Crimea by using the Russian media to portray the outside world as hostile, even fascist.
Fuel for the fire
A widespread disillusion with political and business elites, after years of disappointing economic growth, is a common factor that underpins resurgent nationalism across the globe. In western Europe the added ingredient is anger at high levels of immigration. In Russia it is lingering humiliation about the collapse of the Soviet Union and nostalgia for great-power status. In Asia the extra spice is a shifting balance of power that has encouraged nations such as China and South Korea to focus on historical grievances, particularly against Japan. In America outrage at the growth of Islamic State has begun to stoke an appetite for a return to a more assertive and militarised foreign policy.
Many of these forces will strengthen in 2015. So the nationalist tone to global politics will be more marked.
In Europe key gauges of the strength of nationalism will be the general election in Britain and some local elections in Germany. A strong showing by UKIP in Britain will stoke fears that the country may soon leave the European Union. Meanwhile, the Alternative for Germany party, which argues that German interests have been subordinated to the EU’s, will push to establish itself as the country’s third political force. The French political class will nervously watch opinion polls for more evidence of the rise of the National Front’s leader, Marine Le Pen, as a viable candidate for the presidency.
The most serious threat to the stability of Europe, however, remains Russian nationalism. The biggest security question facing Europe—and perhaps the world—will be whether President Putin rides the nationalist wave he has helped to create, and continues to threaten Ukraine and even the Baltic states.
The relationship between nationalist rhetoric and territorial disputes will also be critical to the future of Asia. Mr Modi of India, Shinzo Abe of Japan and Xi Jinping of China are all energetic nation-builders who have used nationalism as a spur to domestic reforms. But their nationalism also has an outward-looking face. Asia’s big question in 2015 is whether the urge to get on with domestic reforms in China, India and Japan will trump international rivalries. There are grounds for optimism. Though tensions remain high over issues such as the dispute between China and Japan over islands, political leaders are likely to try to manage their differences without conceding on basic issues of principle.
Overall, however, the resurgence of nationalist politics will make 2015 a bad year for international co-operation. The EU will struggle to agree on the measures needed to revive Europe’s economy and to deal with Russia. Russia itself will be increasingly marginalised. That will make it hard to achieve agreement at the UN on everything from the Middle East to climate-change negotiations. The globalised economic system will survive the revival of nationalism in 2015, but co-operation between nations will nosedive.
Gideon Rachman: chief foreign-affairs columnist, Financial Times
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Home » Automotive » NTU’s aerogel foam cuts insulation expenses in half
NTU’s aerogel foam cuts insulation expenses in half
Article By : Nanyang Technological University
Nanyang Technological University has unveiled an aerogel foam that insulates better and blocks out 30% noise compared to other foams.
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore has developed the Bronx AeroSil, an aerogel-based foam that insulates two times more than current insulation materials and blocks out 30% external noise than usual.
Made from silica aerogels and additives, the Bronx AeroSil is ideal for use in building and construction, oil and gas, and the automotive industry. Co-developer Sunil Chandrankant Joshi, an NTU associate professor, said the foam is easy to install and use as it is thinner than conventional foam.
The aerogel foam insulates 37% more than conventional foams with 50 percent less material needed compared when using the latter.
Bronx AeroSil also reduces noise by as much as 80% unlike other foams, which reduce sound by only 50%, explained Dr. Mahesh, co-developer of the aerogel composites technology. For example, it can minimise noise by a truck driving by to that of a normal conversation with only 15mm of the material, 10mm less thickness unlike conventional foam.
Apart from being a good thermal and acoustic insulator, it is also non-flammable, crucial for use in high heat environments such as in oil and gas industries.
Bronx AeroSil can also withstand high compression or heavy loads. It only takes a 10cm x 10cm piece of the aerogel composite material weighing 15g to take up to 300kg weight, without being flattened.
The aerogel composites technology, which took four years to develop, had already been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Patent has been filed by NTU Singapore’s innovation and enterprise arm, NTUitive.
Bronx Creative & Design Centre (BDC) has licensed the technology with a S$7 million (US$5.2 million) joint venture, and a production plant that will be operational by 2017. It will produce aerogel composites in various forms such as sheets or panels, in line with current industry sizes.
BDC has various negotiations underway with other companies to expand the production to India and various Southeast Asia countries within the next three years.
In the first quarter of 2017, BDC will begin mass producing the aerogel composites for companies from the automotive, electronics, and oil and gas sectors.
Further research and optimisation would be carried out to improve the aerogel composite material.
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The Myth and Mayhem of ‘Build Back Better’: Human Rights Decision-Making and Human Dignity Imperatives in COVID-19
Written by Diane Desierto
Human rights were already under siege everywhere around the world before COVID-19. But there is also a dawning race now against reaching the ‘twilight of human rights law’, due to: 1) authoritarian regimes’ dismissal of the relevance of human rights while using this pandemic to expand and consolidate their power, such as to silence speech, quash dissent, dismantle media, or execute mass arrests, detentions, or shootings; 2) the growing prevalence of utilitarian reasoning that instrumentalizes human rights as just a set of ‘costs’ that can only be met by a privileged few; and 3) the resurgence of the age-old relativist attacks on ‘universal’ human rights, seeking to recast the latter as mere forms of ‘Western neo-imperialism’ against today’s new hegemonic powers such as China. The latter claims had long been debunked in Steve L.B. Jensen’s excellently researched historical and archival analysis rejecting the putative exclusivity or dominance of ‘Western’ authorship of international human rights instruments, stressing evidence of the crucial role in the 1960s of Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the elaboration, drafting, and interpretation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Crises – natural or man-made – are conducive for normalizing the open, as well as the latent and creeping, lawlessness of ubiquitous human rights violations around the world. They also lay bare a continuum of hard policy choices for most local levels of leadership, parliamentary and presidential systems of government, as well as the array of primarily State-driven international organizations within our multilateral system. What tends to be neglected in the myth and mayhem of public and private decision-making to “build back better” during and after natural or man-made disasters, however, is that none of us can afford to pause testing and justifying any such decision or response against our mutual commitments to respect, protect, and fulfil each person, group, community, and population’s human rights. Neither can we afford to wait to do this ‘after’ the crisis has supposedly passed, and long after reconstruction and rebuilding plans are well underway. There can be no life of actual human dignity – what Paolo Carozza famously defines as the equal moral worth of all human persons – without building human rights into any vision of a post-COVID future. I argue four imperatives below to achieve this end.
First: Internalize Human Rights in Decisions at Every Level and Every Sector
The United Nations reports that millions around the world are at risk, under threat of, or experiencing daily human rights violations. Often what gets depicted is a hard trade-off between different constituencies of rights-holders all seeking to protect their basic human rights, whatever measure or response is taken to address this pandemic. Frontline health workers demand priority provisioning in global supply chains and faster procurement of medical supplies to save both COVID-19 patients and retain capacity to address all other life, death, or health challenges, even as these workers themselves see ongoing erosions in their own human rights to safe working conditions. Businesses seek to reopen as soon as possible notwithstanding the escalating health risks, to stave off spiraling economic consequences and forced layoffs. Colleges and universities are now scrambling to adapt to providing education that fulfills their pedagogical objectives consistent with their institutional rights to academic freedom, while faced with duties to ensure safe working conditions for employees and the due care of students’ welfare, mindful of respondeat superior or vicarious liability doctrines in tort law. Families increasingly suffering from furloughs, unemployment, food shortages, mounting debts, and looming bankruptcy or poverty will press hard for governments’ humanitarian and health assistance to ensure their basic rights to survival and a life of human dignity. Prisoners in mass incarceration facilities around the world are among the most vulnerable to this pandemic, facing increased risks of death sentences from dense, overpopulated, and dire prison conditions and overall governmental neglect. Indigenous populations face greater threats to their existence, with poor health and medical services at the outset already exacerbating their vulnerability to COVID-19. More ‘national security’ laws have been passed to authorize government surveillance and harsher law enforcement sanctions, such as that soon to be imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong.
And yet, under this climate, the World Health Organization (WHO) simply exhorts that there should be “a fine balance between protecting health, minimizing economic and social disruption, and respecting human rights.” But the WHO does not say how that balance is to be struck, who does the balancing, and which of us will be heard, much less get to participate in the daily decisions that leaders at all levels are taking to affect our way of life.
When the full spectrum of our economic, social and cultural rights to health and environmental safety, just and favorable conditions of work, education, an adequate standard of living (including food security, housing and protection against forcible evictions), social security, equality and non-discrimination are besieged daily right alongside our civil and political rights to freedom of movement, expression, assembly, religious worship, privacy, freedom from torture, and rights to fair trial and due process, policymakers bear the duty to ensure that their short and long term decisions will meet the demands for continued respect, protection, and fulfilment of all of these rights, according to States’ resources, abilities, and legal obligations. To this end, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR) issued its 13 May 2020 COVID-19 Guidance, briefly examining all dimensions of the pandemic’s impacts on civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. While this text appears largely framed from the standpoint of State or governmental decision-making, it is equally landmark and important in that it seeks all non-State actors (communities as well as the private sector) to purposely internalize human rights in their decision-making processes and responses during this pandemic. This is a key step, going far beyond the predominantly State-centric focus of the UN OHCHR’s recommendations during the 2008 global financial crisis.
Second: Keep Human Rights Fact-Finding Channels Open
Human rights fact-finding in these times has never been more challenging, if not outright dangerous especially for human rights defenders around the world. States’ decision-makers around the world have invoked necessity and national emergency powers to justify suspensions, limitations, or derogations from human rights obligations owed to their populations, often leaving it to lawyers and courts to determine in the future if a government’s emergency measure is legally justified as an appropriate calibration of human rights and necessity. In the COVID-19 pandemic, around 100 countries from all continents of the world have declared states of emergency to expand governmental powers on all fronts, presumably to deal with all the uncertainties of this pandemic. Independent reporting and open verification of State conduct is difficult, notwithstanding creative new technological tools such as the Human Rights Measurement Initiative Rights Tracker, the COVID 19 Disability Rights Monitor, or even Thailand’s own UNAIDS-funded Crisis Response Monitor. Many tracking and reporting tools depend on the ability of local populations to report human rights violations as they occur, which can be impaired by resource problems such as poor internet access in developing countries under lockdowns (known as the pandemic ‘digital divide’), or governmental restrictions against media (if not the outright closure of independent media as recently occurred in the Philippines, for example) during states of emergency.
The human rights fact-finding attempts are not directed towards State conduct alone. The World Health Organization (WHO) is now the subject of a resolution drafted by more than 100 countries around the world, seeking, among others, an:
“impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation, including using existing mechanisms, as appropriate, to review experience gained and lessons learned from the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19, including (i) the effectiveness of the mechanisms at WHO’s disposal; (ii) the functioning of the IHR and the status of implementation of the relevant recommendations of the previous IHR Review Committees; (iii) WHO’s contribution to United Nations-wide efforts; and (iv) the actions of WHO and their timelines pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic.” (at OP9.10 of the draft resolution)
The violations of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights are as viral, unrelenting, mutating, and unabated around the world as COVID-19. Less than a few months into 2020, reports are surfacing on mass arrests (by China against Hong Kong activists, the Americas, El Salvador, Bangladesh, among others), and law enforcement and security forces’ brutality supposedly clothed with the law and emergency wherewithal to shoot, maim, or otherwise kill persons charged with breaking quarantine regulations (in the Philippines, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya, among others). Individual privacy rights are eroding from digital surveillance and the mass harvesting and mining of personal information and other data, through a myriad of contact tracing applications that may appear initially benign but could ultimately fail data transparency and accountability tests. It is very telling that no less than the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) – usually more focused on immediate delivery of humanitarian relief and institutionally reticent on routine monitoring human rights violations – is now calling for proactive “monitoring [of] anti-democratic trends and human rights abuses in the age of COVID-19”. Precisely because documentary and forensic evidence of human rights violations could be readily destroyed or manipulated, or key witnesses could be threatened or disappeared by human rights violators in these times of vast emergency powers, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass before we begin human rights fact-finding locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally.
Third: ‘Resilience’ needs Remedial and Reparative Human Rights Accountability
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guteres places human rights at the center of the global COVID-19 response, emphasizing the following six interconnected human rights messages:
“1. Protecting people’s lives is the priority, protecting livelihoods helps us do it: dealing with the economic and social impact alongside the public health response
2. The virus does not discriminate, but its impacts do: inclusive responses to a global threat to ensure no one is left behind
3. Involve everyone in your response: participation in open, transparent and accountable response
4. The threat is the virus, not the people: emergency and security measures, if needed, must be temporary, proportional and aimed at protecting people
5. No country can beat this alone: global threats require global response
6. When we recover, we must be better than we were before: The crisis has revealed weaknesses that human rights can help to fix.”
While laudable, one has to note that the Secretary-General’s emphasis appears more on human rights promotion and protection, and not on institutionalizing human rights accountability and human rights reparations. This, in my view, is deeply problematic, because setting aside human rights accountability and human rights reparations in designing COVID-19 responses simply aggravates and marginalizes the inequalities and injustices that existed long before this pandemic. Structural and institutional solutions and prescriptions to merely “build back better” under disaster risk reduction terms – which is what the Secretary-General’s emphasis resonates – will only deepen the cleavages under which human rights violations flourish, grant impunity to perpetrators of human rights violations and shield them from the reach of genuine rule of law, and thus further entrench the abuses against human rights victims for years to come. ‘Resilience’ cannot be truly achieved if we simply keep turning human rights remedies and reparations into policy afterthought, leaving today’s human rights victims by the wayside of flawed thinking on ’emergency first, justice later (or never)’.
Fourth: Rekindle Human Empathy to Reanimate Human Rights
Most importantly, forgetting the human in human rights is what enables human rights violations to normalize. My own experiences hailing from the developing world tend to provoke skepticism about the usually well-meaning – but at times unrealistic or unsustainable – programmatic, institutional, organizational, top-down, State or non-State ‘solutions’ in disaster risk reduction rehabilitation and recovery that focus on achieving ‘resilience’ as a matter of development assistance, rather than constantly and intentionally testing these programs against the systemically impacted civil, political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, and labor rights of the affected local communities involved. When donor fatigue sets in, or international strategies find domestic governance capacities inadequate or corrupt, or when development assistance simply moves on to the next crisis or disaster, it is ultimately local communities themselves that have every stake to stay on and rebuild (often on the backs of remittances from family networks or trusted informal community initiatives with overseas NGO contacts).
If there is one thing humility did teach me from working with colleagues in times of upheavals from natural disasters (frequent hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, food shortages) or man-made catastrophes such as dictatorships and extrajudicial killings in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, it is that it is ultimately our ability to empathize with fellow human beings inside and outside our communities that spurs concrete action. Those kinds of lasting committed actions appear to stem from the consciousness that human rights do pertain to all, regardless of birth or circumstance in life, because people saw their connectedness with others first. It is not always easy to conjure that empathy unless it keenly touches our sense of home. Even as I write, thousands of my compatriots serving around the world as Overseas Filipino Workers are frontline health care workers as nurses, doctors, nursing home caregivers, emergency medics, among others – a reality that makes COVID-19 and its human rights impacts more vivid to me on a daily basis. But how others live through their pandemic may be radically different, and thus impel other actions, plans, or policies. Solidarity only goes as far as one imagines common interests.
In this sense, we might have to start rethinking of global affairs, at its core, as ultimately local, depending on the dimensions and reach of our human empathy. The historian Lynn Hunt argued that it was the pervasiveness of Enlightenment values throughout popular literature and cultural contexts, that decisively ripened the seeds for our collective human imagination to conceptualize and transform ‘rights of man’ into universal ‘human rights’ that glacially, incrementally, and painstakingly extended across races, sexes, groups, and peoples. In this pandemic, how do we rekindle our sense of human empathy to seek human rights for all, beyond the constructed boundaries of Statehood, as well as the literal and figurative walls and political stalemates, within policy-making in the international system that today determine who lives, who dies, who thrives, who is heard, and whose human rights matter? The task ahead for envisioning a ‘new’ international law system beyond its present gridlocks might well be to help us all envision a ‘home’ that authentically includes all – core and periphery, hegemons and the smallest island-States – because of our shared universality through human dignity and human rights. Most, if not all, of us will always fight for home.
Deprivation of Liberty
Economic Social Cultural Rights
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Melinda Janki says
An excellent article. I would add that any recovery must also take into account the intrinsic value of nature....the rest of the earth that should be respected and protected for its own sake, not just ours.
Diane Desierto
Prof. Dr. Diane Desierto (JSD, Yale) is Professor of Law and LLM Faculty Director at Notre Dame Law School, with a joint appointment as tenured Associate Professor of Human Rights…
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On 8 September 2020, the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved a Resolution establishing the World Bank Accountability Mechanism [hereafter, “Accountability Mechanism Resolution”], composed of the…
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Home/Islam/The Place of Woman in Islam
The Place of Woman in Islam
The Place of Woman in Islam – An Overview
The place of women in Islam or according to the Quran is one of the hottest topics related to Islamic teachings. The western opinion or in non-Islamic religion, this topic is handled with a quite wrong conception.
The anti-Muslim so-called scholars usually criticize that women in Islam are treated as labor or slave with less human rights as compared to men. But in reality, their concepts are quite away from authenticity and just a camouflage.
Islam pays more respect to women while mostly in other religion a woman has become a decoration piece or source of entertainment, and they call it women freedom.
Our holy Prophet(PBUH) pointed out the rights of women that were not given to women before.
The baby girls were buried alive, they had no right to have shared in fathers property, a widow had no right to marry again, no right of education, etc, are some extreme examples, which indicates the women place before Islam escalation.
But thanks to Allah who reveals to us the true and most perfect rights of the woman through the Holy Prophet (PBUH).
In Islam women are honored to have the allocation in his father legacy, she has equal right to get the education as compared to men, as a mother she has given highest rank, etc.
Don't miss our Article on What is Ramadan?
Women’s place in Islam according to Quran and Hadith will enlighten on this topic in detail.
The Place of Woman in Islam According to the Holy Quran
“And whoever does righteous deeds, whether male or female, and he/she is a believer – they will enter the Garden, and not the least injustice will be done to them.” (Holy Qur’an, 4:124).
“And one of His signs is that He created for you mates from among yourselves that you may dwell in tranquillity with them, and He put between you love and compassion; most surely there are signs for a people who reflect.”(Holy Qur’an, 30:21).
“…therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient and guard in (the husband’s) absence what God would have them, guard.” (Holy Qur’an, 4:34).
“…and women have rights similar to those against them in a just manner,…” (Holy Qur’an, 2:228).
“O mankind, surely We have created you from a male and a female, and made you nations and tribes, that you may know each other. Surely the noblest of you with Allah is the most righteous. Surely Allah Knowing, Aware.”(Holy Qur’an, 49:13).
“…I will not suffer the work of any worker among you to be lost whether male or female, one of you being from the other…”(Holy Qur’an, 3:195).
“O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they should cast their outer garments over them (when abroad); this is more proper, that they should be known (recognized as such) and not molested. And Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful.” (Holy Qur’an, 33:59)
“Whoever does good, whether male or female, and is a believer, We shall certainly make him live a good life, and We shall certainly give them their reward for the best of what they did.” (Holy Qur’an, 16:97).
The Place of Woman in Islam According to Hadith
The Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) said:
“Guard yourselves against six things and I am your surety for Paradise: when you speak, speak the truth; perform when you promise; discharge your trust, and guard your private parts (except your wives); cast down your eyes; withhold your hand from committing aggression or forbidden things.”
“Any woman who perfumes herself and leaves her home is cursed by the angels and deprived of the blessings of the Almighty Allah until she returns home.”(Imam Husayn (a.s.))
“Every eye shall cry on the Day of Resurrection with the exception of three: an eye which passed the nights guarding Muslims (their wealth, land, etc.) for the sake of Allah; an eye which wept for fear of Allah; and an eye which was cast down against the deeds made forbidden by Allah.” (Imam al-Baqir (a.s.))
Imam al-Sadiq (a.s.) was asked whether it is lawful for a man to look at the face of a woman whom he wants to marry and also to look at her from behind. He said: “Yes, there is no objection for a man to look at a woman whom he wants to marry including her face, and to look at her from behind.”
Imam Husayn (a.s.) says:
“The Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) used to salute women and they used to reply to his salutation. While the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (a.s.), also used to salute women, but he disliked to salute the young among the women and said, ‘I feared that her voice would admire me and thus affect me so I would commit sin more than getting a reward.” (Imam Husayn (a.s.))
“Allah curses those men who make themselves resemble women or those women who make themselves resemble men.”( Imam Ali (a.s.))
Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (a.s.)
“A young man from the Ansar met a woman is Madina. At that time, women used to wear a veil, so he looked at her while she was coming toward him. When she passed by him, he continued looking after her until he entered one of the alleys. He continued looking as he passed along the alley until a bone on a wall slashed his face and the woman passed out of sight. Then, unexpectedly, he saw blood flowing over his clothes and chest. He said, ‘I must go and inform the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) about the incident.’ When the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) saw him in this condition he said, ‘What happened?’ When he informed the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) about the event in detail, the angel Gabriel (a.s.) came down with this verse:‘Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. Truly Allah is Cognizant of what they do.’ (Holy Qur’an, 24:30).
Anas narrates that the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) said:
“Whoever marries a woman for her glory, Allah will not increase his, but will bring him humiliation; whoever marries her for her wealth, Allah will not increase his, but place him in poverty; whoever marries her for ancestral claims, Allah will not increase his, but in meanness; whoever marries a woman for nothing but to cast down his eyes, guard his private parts, and join a relationship, Allah will bless him through her and vice versa.”
Abu Imamah narrated that the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) said:
“A Muslim is he who looks at the beauties of a woman and then casts down his eyes, Allah will give him the reward of worship whose sweetness he will find in his heart.”
The Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.), addressing the Muslims on the occasion of the Farewell Pilgrimage, warned them against the values which he feared would be neglected after him, and referred to a woman as one of the important issues about whom he said:
“Observe your duty to Allah in respect to the women, and treat them well”.
You May Also Read Wife and Husband’s Duties.
What is Purity in Islam?
Hazrat Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Ghotvi (R.A) by محمد نبراس
Islamic Wedding Traditions
Ali Khan says:
I read this article.You give me a lot of information about women.you tell me place of women in beautiful manner.thanks for you give me information about place of women according to islam
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Young Eagles Raffle Winner Announced
August 11, 2016 - Joaquim Lambiza, EAA 862298, of Portugal has been announced as the winner of the 2016 Young Eagles Raffle grand prize, a 2016 Ford Mustang Convertible GT Premium provided by Ford Motor Company and Kocourek Ford of Wausau, Wisconsin.
“I have bought [tickets] every time I was at AirVenture but, although I kept secretly dreaming with the Mustang, I rationally never expected to win,” Lambiza said, adding that he plans to take his new V-8 engine Mustang roaring on a coast-to-coast road trip.
The annual raffle raises money for EAA’s Young Eagles program, which provides youth ages 8-17 with free first flights in general aviation aircraft to support EAA’s mission of growing participation in aviation.
“I have an immense respect for the Young Eagles program and to everyone involved either in the background, in donating, or doing the actual flying,” Lambiza said. “I personally consider it a critical do or die mission for aviation as a whole. We all have to keep the next generation highly involved, and especially us pilots should all share that mission and keep introducing aviation to the young ones.”
This year during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, the Young Eagles program hit a milestone by providing its 2 millionth flight since the program was founded in 1992.
Scott Ross of Whippany, New Jersey, took home the second place $5,000 prize, and David Besterfeldt of Crystal Lake, Illinois, received $2,500.
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Medicaid in Transition
A Progress Report on Reform in New York
by Russell Sykes
A 2012 Empire Center report, Taking Ownership: The Patient Role in Medicaid, recommended that efforts to reform New York’s Medicaid program should place a greater focus on enlisting patients as active, responsible partners in managing and improving their own health.
This paper reviews major elements of the state’s ongoing Medicaid overhaul, putting special focus on efforts to incentivize patient behaviors that can reduce the incidence of chronic disease, improve outcomes and lower costs.
Recognizing that many of the most costly-to-treat conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, are caused or exacerbated by lifestyle choices, the state has begun offering modest financial rewards to patients who cooperate in improving their own health — by, for example, improving their diet, attempting to quit smoking or faithfully following doctors’ instructions.
Research has shown that well-designed programs of this kind can both improve health and lower costs of care over time.
So far, however, New York’s efforts in this direction have been disappointing. Officials have moved slowly in implementing programs, undermined their effectiveness with arbitrary restrictions, and, as of August 2015, reached only a few thousand recipients — less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the state’s Medicaid enrollment.
When it comes to changing the behavior of hospitals, doctors, nursing homes, clinics and other providers, by contrast, the state is making aggressive and effective use of its financial leverage.
Convinced that Medicaid’s traditional “fee-for-service” payment system incentivized quantity over quality of care, state officials are completely overhauling their reimbursement models to reward providers not just for doing procedures, but for producing good outcomes.
They’re also doling out billions in grants that effectively pay providers to form coalitions, collaborate more efficiently, emphasize primary care, modernize record-keeping and make other improvements.
These promising reforms have enabled the Cuomo administration to hold Medicaid spending growth to 5 percent or less per year even as it absorbed a 15 percent spike in enrollment driven by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
But as we wrote in 2012: “Even the best-designed and best-coordinated system of managed care will fail to deliver the desired results if too many patients continue to smoke, or fail to exercise adequately or indulge eating and drinking habits that make their health problems worse.”
Given the disproportionate burden of lifestyle-related illness among the Medicaid population, and the demonstrated effectiveness of incentive programs in other states, the patient-ownership approach deserves more vigorous exploration in New York.
A HISTORY OF HIGH COSTS AND WEAK OUTCOMES
Medicaid is the nation’s principal government-funded health plan for the poor.
Jointly managed and financed by the federal and state governments, it covered 68.9 million individuals in 2015, or about one in five Americans, an increase of nearly 17 percent since 2013.1 The program costs over $474 billion nationwide.2 (Medicaid should not be confused with Medicare, a federal-only program that primarily covers people 65 or older.)
New York’s version of Medicaid, with some of the loosest eligibility rules and broadest benefits of any state, currently covers nearly a third of its population, or 6.4 million people.
New York’s program is also disproportionately costly, with a budget of $54.94 billion for 2013-14, which is projected to rise to just over $62 billion in fiscal year 2015-16.3 With about 6 percent of the nation’s population, New York accounts for 12 percent of its Medicaid spending.
Under the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, which is calculated based on per capita income, Washington covers 50 percent of the costs for most Medicaid patients in New York, the lowest share possible.
The state’s contribution, at about $22 billion a year and rising, is the single largest expense in its annual budget. New York is one of 16 states that also shifts part of the cost onto local government.4 As a result, Medicaid is also a major budget expense for New York City and the 57 other counties.
Despite this massive investment from three levels of government, there are longstanding concerns about the quality of care. No definitive state-by-state comparison of Medicaid quality is available.5 However, in a 2007 analysis by Public Citizen, New York’s Medicaid plan ranked a mediocre 13th on quality-of-care benchmarks, scoring 83.1 out of a possible 200 points.6 A 2009 scorecard from the Commonwealth Fund ranked New York 21st for overall health system quality, and 50th (second to last) on a combined measure of cost and avoidable hospital admissions.7
Critics have argued that a more efficient Medicaid system could both save money and improve care by, for example, better managing chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes to keep patients healthier while avoiding costly emergency room visits and hospital stays.
Almost since the program’s creation by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1966, governors of both parties have tried to overhaul Medicaid. But they have met with limited success, largely because health-care industry groups and labor unions — which are traditionally among the biggest spenders on lobbying and campaign donations in Albany—prevailed on legislative leaders of both parties to resist almost any reforms that slowed spending, framing them as harmful to patients. The most that governors could usually achieve was across-the-board cuts in payments to providers, which strained their finances while doing nothing to improve efficiency or quality of care.
A NEW STRATEGY FOR REFORM
The political dynamic surrounding Medicaid changed dramatically after Governor Andrew Cuomo took office in January 2011.
Having campaigned on a platform of fiscal responsibility and no tax hikes, and facing a Great Recession-induced deficit of $10 billion, Cuomo had a clear mandate to control spending. A constitutional maneuver pioneered by his predecessor, David Paterson, also gave him added muscle in budget negotiations with the Legislature.
Cuomo used that leverage to win key changes in Medicaid:
First, he repealed statutory “inflation factors” that automatically increased fees to providers on a yearly basis unless modified by lawmakers, obliging governors to expend political capital just to hold them steady.
Second, he instituted two-year budgeting for the program, giving the health-care industry more predictability and allowing for longer-term planning.
Third, he imposed a global cap on the state’s Medicaid spending growth. It was set at 4 percent for that first year — a departure from the typically double-digit increases of the recent past — and tied going forward to the 10-year average of medical inflation.
Fourth, he assigned the task of meeting that target to a Medicaid Redesign Team, to which he appointed many of the industry and union representatives who had stymied reform in the past, along with other experts and stakeholders.
Fifth, if that team failed to find enough savings, he empowered his health commissioner to unilaterally make whatever cuts would be necessary to live within the cap.
In effect, Cuomo shifted management control of Medicaid reform from elected legislators to an appointed group of insiders and technocrats — which insulated the process from political pressure to a degree, and set the stage for longer-term planning and consensus decision-making.
Five years later, the Cuomo administration has so far succeeded in keeping Medicaid spending below its global cap — in spite of a sharp increase in Medicaid enrollment, and without the need for the health commissioner to exercise his budget-cutting authority.
The state met that goal while implementing some of the most profound and far-reaching reforms to New York’s Medicaid program in modern memory.
Among them are small experiments with “patient ownership,” in which Medicaid recipients receive financial rewards for healthy behavior, such as quitting smoking, losing weight and keeping medical appointments.
The specifics of those reforms — and what we know about their effect on quality of care — are discussed in the body of this report.
THE NATIONAL CONTEXT
Complicating the task of Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team — and raising the stakes for reform — was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the ACA.
President Obama signed the ACA into law on March 23, 2010. Congress had approved the legislation by a narrow margin of 219-212. No Republicans voted for it, and 34 Democrats voted against it.8 The law was meant to move the country toward universal health insurance coverage.
It requires most citizens to maintain health insurance coverage, except under limited circumstances, with tax penalties for those who fail to enroll. It also calls for establishing purchasing exchanges through which people can shop for insurance plans and, depending on their income, qualify for tax credits to offset premiums.
States could establish their own exchange, form a partnership with the federal government’s insurance exchange or rely solely on the federal exchange.
At the same time, the law expanded eligibility for Medicaid so that it would cover adults and children up to 133 percent of the poverty level.9 Children ages 18 and under are eligible up to the same income level or higher in all states under the Child Health Insurance Program (known as Child Health Plus in New York).
As originally passed, the ACA mandated broader coverage in all states, with the federal government fully absorbing the additional cost in the early years. That mandate was struck down by the Supreme Court in its 2011 decision in National Federation of Independent Business vs. Sebelius.10
Unlike many states, New York was quick to fully embrace the ACA.
An insurance exchange known as the New York State of Health was established by Cuomo’s executive order in 2012.11 Through this site,12 qualifying low-income consumers who enrolled in a health plan could apply for and receive ACA subsidies to reduce their health insurance costs.
New York is among 12 states, along with the District of Columbia, that operate their own insurance exchanges. Eighteen other states rely exclusively on the federal exchange, some because they were worried about cost or technical difficulties, others because they took issue with the ACA itself. In the remaining 20 states, responsibility for exchange management is shared between the state and federal governments.13
New York was one of the first states to take advantage of enhanced federal funding in support of expanded Medicaid eligibility. Thirty other states and the District of Columbia have also opted into Medicaid expansion, and more may do so in the future.14 (See Map 1 below.)
Through 2016, the enhanced federal reimbursement rate on newly-eligible patients is 100 percent (that is, no state match required), dropping to no less than 90 percent on a permanent basis.15
Between the 2013 launch of ACA enrollment and November 2015, Medicaid rolls nationwide have increased by 14.1 million or 25.3 percent, according to data from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). That increase has been driven largely by 34 percent growth in states that have enacted the Medicaid expansion option. In states not taking the expansion option, enrollment has grown by 10 percent.16
More than 2.1 million New Yorkers enrolled in a plan in the open-enrollment period for 2015 coverage, including nearly 1.73 million enrollees in Medicaid and Child Health Plus.17 Those who enrolled in private insurance previously had an 86 percent renewal rate.18
New York opted for the Medicaid expansion because its eligibility levels were already high and the prospect of enhanced federal reimbursement to make up any gap was enticing. The state also anticipated that the overall impact and cost of the expansion would be relatively modest because of its already expansive Medicaid coverage.
However, as a result of publicity surrounding the ACA and the New York State of Health’s outreach efforts, many New Yorkers who were previously eligible but not enrolled have joined Medicaid since 2012. This is known as the “woodwork effect.”19 The State does not receive the enriched federal match rate for individuals who were previously eligible.
According to data from the New York State Department of Health, shown in Table 1, only 29 percent of the recent Medicaid enrollment growth consists of newly eligible individuals, and 71 percent, or more than 587,000 people, were previously eligible.
A COSTLY AUDIT
In July 2014, a federal audit of New York’s Medicaid spending on individuals with disabilities resulted in a “disallowance notice” for $1.26 billion in reimbursements.20 CMS also said it would conduct similar audits in each of the next two years, with comparable amounts of planned reimbursements at risk for those periods as well.
After a failed appeal, the state had no choice but to enter into a costly settlement agreement with CMS, resolving the $1.26 billion in disallowance for FY 2011 and all related payment disputes for state-operated services, including home- and community-based waiver services, prior to April 1, 2013. The settlement also addresses other related audit findings for services delivered by the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities. Under the agreement, the state provided an $850 million payment to the federal government in April 2015, and annual payments of $100 million are planned for each of the next 11 years beginning in FY 2017.21
THE MEDICAID REDESIGN TEAM
The current push for Medicaid reform in New York began with the creation of the Medicaid Redesign Team. Cuomo signed the order to establish the 25-member panel on his fifth day in office, Jan. 5, 2011, which came less than nine months after Obama signed the ACA.22
Cuomo’s appointments to the panel include the commissioners of several health-related
state agencies, four members of the Legislature, the heads of the state’s two largest hospital associations, executives of health workers’ unions, health-care and insurance executives, business officials and consumer representatives.
Its initial charge was to help Cuomo find cuts in the Medicaid budget that would keep spending growth below his 4 percent target. In the years since, the panel has gone on to launch more than 200 initiatives, implemented by the Health Department and other agencies, designed to improve the care delivered to Medicaid recipients while constraining historically high costs.
Among its earliest priorities was a push to end fee-for-service coverage and institute managed care for all groups of Medicaid recipients.
Under the fee-for-service approach, an insurer pays a fee for each office visit, test, operation, nursing home stay, etc. Once the norm for all health insurance, this system can create a perverse incentive for providers: The longer a patient stays sick, the more work providers do and the more revenue they collect.
Under managed care, Medicaid pays providers — or, more likely, an organization of providers — a fixed amount to provide whatever care an individual needs over a period of time. This is meant to give providers an incentive to manage the patient’s health as efficiently as possible, emphasizing low-cost prevention instead of high-cost intervention.
New York’s Medicaid program has enrolled its younger, healthier recipients in managed care plans going back decades. Under the Medicaid Redesign Team’s plan, the state expanded the approach to sicker, costlier groups for whom managed care had previously been voluntary, experimental or nonexistent. These include elderly and disabled candidates for nursing homes, the mentally ill, and people with substance abuse issues.
EASING THE BURDEN ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Since 2006, in an effort to ease the fiscal burden of Medicaid on local government, the state had capped growth in the share paid by New York City and the 57 others counties at 3 percent per year. In Cuomo’s second budget, for FY 2012-2013, the state committed to eliminate all growth in the local contribution over a three-year period. This shifted $2 billion to the state tax base as of 2015-16.23
In his 2016-17 Executive Budget, Cuomo proposed exempting New York City from the cap, which would have saved the state — and cost the city — $180 million in the first year. However, the Legislature rejected that proposal in the adopted budget.24
WINNING A WAIVER FROM WASHINGTON
In 2011, the Cuomo administration applied for a so-called Section 1115 waiver from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Its goal was to seek Medicaid reimbursements for health-related services that were not previously eligible for federal matching funds, such as supportive housing, public health programs and capital construction costs.
In its waiver application, the state estimated that its then-enacted Medicaid reforms would save the federal government $17 billion over five years, and asked that the state be allowed to reclaim $10 billion of that amount for investment in further modernization of its health care system. The savings were to be used to expand and emphasize primary care and to save struggling hospitals in poor communities, among other priorities.
After negotiations, CMS awarded New York a scaled-down waiver in April 2014. The state received $8 billion rather than $10 billion, and payments would be spread over nearly six years, including a planning year, starting in 2015.
The Medicaid waiver is being closely monitored and evaluated by CMS on how well it achieves certain milestones, forcing New York to take very seriously the mutual goals of cost-containment and improved health outcomes. A March 2015 report on Medicaid by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli outlined this reality:
The anticipated increase in federal funding associated with the new waiver amendment increases the State’s fiscal incentive to restrain growth in Medicaid spending in coming years. It comes with performance goals known as “milestones” aimed at both the statewide Medicaid system and the new health care provider systems required by the waiver. If New York fails to improve efficiency and reduce average costs as required by these benchmarks, new federal funding would be reduced by hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially increasing budgetary pressure to reduce services. DOH has already taken steps to achieve cost savings through restrictions in services, setting new limits in recent years in areas such as home care.25
The $8 billion reinvestment was allocated in the following ways:
$6.42 billion for Delivery System Reform Incentive Payments, including planning grants, provider incentive payments and administrative costs. This was subsequently increased to $7.3 billion.
$500 million for the Interim Access Assurance Fund. Temporary, time-limited funding to ensure that trusted and viable Medicaid safety-net providers can fully participate in the reform without disruption.
$1.08 billion for other Medicaid redesign purposes. This funding will support “health home” development as well as investments in long-term care,
expansion of the health-care workforce and enhanced behavioral health services.26
As the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services declared in January 2015:
[The ACA] offers many tools to improve the way providers are paid to reward quality and value instead of quantity, to strengthen care delivery by better integrating and coordinating care for patients, and to make information more readily available to consumers and providers. Doing so will improve the coordination and integration of health care, engage patients more deeply in decision-making, and improve the health of patients — with a priority on prevention and wellness.27
In keeping with this spirit, New York is using $7.3 billion of its Medicaid waiver funding for the Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program, or DSRIP. The program’s goal is to deliver services in a more preventive and cost-effective fashion, emphasizing greatly expanded primary and preventive care, and reductions in unnecessary hospitalization and emergency room use. It calls for a “value-based” payment system that rewards positive health outcomes and healthy behavior among Medicaid recipients (detailed below).
Through a competitive grant process, the program seeks to promote community-level collaborations between hospitals and local providers to achieve a specific goal: a 25 percent reduction in avoidable hospital admissions and readmissions over five years.28,29
That core commitment is highly ambitious. It focuses on diverting frequent Medicaid users with chronic diseases from emergency rooms to alternative community-based settings. DSRIP has several goals: expanding primary care; emphasizing preventive treatment and wellness; reducing emergency room use; and providing bridge funding to safety-net hospitals that serve a high proportion of patients who are homeless, in poverty, or in the country illegally.
To qualify, safety-net providers will have to collaborate in innovative projects focused on, “system transformation, clinical improvement and population health improvement. Single providers will be ineligible to apply.”30 Grantees must commit to achievement of project milestones, and will be subject to evaluation and potential penalties if milestones are not reached.
PERFORMING PROVIDER SYSTEMS
As a key strategy for reducing unnecessary hospitalization, New York is encouraging providers to form partnerships known as “performing provider systems.”
PPS include both major public hospitals and safety-net providers, with a designated lead provider for each funded group. Safety-net partners can include an array of providers: hospitals, health homes, skilled nursing facilities, clinics and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), behavioral health providers, community based organizations and others.31
Through a competitive process, New York has awarded DSRIP grants to 25 performing provider systems at the local and regional level to help it achieve reform goals over the next five implementation years. System members will share data electronically on Medicaid recipients within their networks and offer certain specialized services. Medicaid recipients can opt out of data sharing if they choose, as they can in private coverage, but most will see the benefit of coordinated and non-duplicative care made possible by data sharing.32
All but two of these 25 provider systems operate under hospital leadership. These networks represent a positive start to expanding primary care and focusing on quality outcomes, assuming they are monitored.33,34
HEALTH HOMES
To reshape the medical delivery system and encourage better care coordination, New York is emphasizing the concepts of “patient-centered medical homes” and “health homes.”
The patient-centered medical home concept, originally promoted in the 1960s by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is a care delivery model under which a patient’s treatment is coordinated through his or her primary care physician to ensure that the patient receives care when and where it is needed and in a manner the patient can understand. The objective is to have a centralized setting that facilitates partnerships between patients and their personal physicians and, when appropriate, patients’ families. Care is facilitated by registries, information technology, the exchange of health information, and other means.35
Health homes, as defined by the ACA, are care-management services for high-risk Medicaid recipients who have two or more chronic illnesses, HIV/AIDS or persistent mental illness, and who are at high risk for hospitalization, nursing home stays, or death. A health-home care manager works with the recipient to help organize behavioral and physical health care and to address issues related to the social determinants of health. This intense level of support helps the recipient learn to engage in management of his or her care, thus improving compliance.
VALUE-BASED PAYMENT
Through DSRIP, New York is seeking to address a fundamental problem within Medicaid: a payment system that focuses on inputs rather than outcomes and pays too little attention to prevention and coordination. As part of its waiver, New York over the next five years must implement a tectonic shift in its payment system to one that emphasizes and rewards value. The new value-based payment system is needed because paying providers fees for service incentivizes volume over value, for inputs rather than outcomes. An avoidable readmission is rewarded more than a successful transition to integrated home care. Our current payment system does not adequately incentivize prevention, coordination or integration.
By waiver Year 5, all Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) must employ non-fee-for-service payment systems that reward value over volume for at least 90% of their provider payments. Additionally the waiver requires that realized transformations in the delivery system will be sustainable and that value-destroying care patterns (avoidable admissions, [emergency department] visits, etc.) do not simply return when the DSRIP funding stops in 2020.36
New York is moving toward a better-integrated health delivery system that emphasizes primary and preventive care. Without accompanying changes to its payment system for providers, the new delivery focus will not work. For this reason, New York has secured approval from CMS to move deliberatively over time to a value-based payment system so that providers will be paid for health outcomes rather than the volume of service.
This is leading to new efforts by hospitals to rapidly penetrate the primary care arena in their communities. For instance, Albany Medical Center has played a lead role in affiliations with both Saratoga Hospital and Columbia Memorial Hospital, each of which is a community hospital about 30 minutes away. These affiliations come “as government-led health reforms seek to reduce the need for costly hospitalizations and private insurers are changing the way they pay for care.”37
As it implements the value-based payment system in its Medicaid program, New York is also working on a long-range pilot partnership with CMS to also move Medicare to a value- based payment system. Like Medicaid, Medicare currently focuses payments more on medical procedures than healthy outcomes. In New York, 800,000 Medicaid recipients are dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, while nationally the figure is about 9 million.38 A shift in Medicare payments to align with New York’s value-based reform would help the dual-eligible population and represent a bold step forward for health care delivery in general.39 Time will tell if this potential reform with CMS is successful.
A KEY OPPORTUNITY: INCENTIVES FOR HEALTHY BEHAVIOR
While most people do not ignore their automobile’s ‘check engine light’ — many routinely skip their own body’s preventive maintenance warnings, thus making poor choices about their health. The result is a poor collective health quality in the country that spends much more on health care than anywhere else in the world.40
— National Association of Chronic Disease Directors
While the debate over the ACA and health care policy continues, there is little dissent regarding the need for healthier behavior, expanded capacity in primary preventive care, and the use of incentives as a way to prevent or treat costly chronic disease. CMS has clearly articulated why this should be a priority in health care policy:
A disproportionate share of health care spending in the United States is used to provide care to a relatively small group of patients, with 1 percent of the population accounting for 22 percent of total health care expenditures annually. The distribution of spending is even more uneven within Medicaid, with just 5 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries accounting for 54 percent of total Medicaid expenditures and 1 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries accounting for 25 percent of total Medicaid expenditures. Among this top 1 percent, 83 percent have at least three chronic conditions, and more than 60 percent have five or more chronic conditions.41
A 2013 report and Gallup poll found that adults with health insurance coverage from an employer or union are in significantly better health than those whose primary health insurance is Medicaid. The report found, “more than three in 10 adults on Medicaid are obese, and more than two in 10 say they are being treated for depression (22 percent) and high blood pressure (24 percent). Medicaid recipients also struggle disproportionality with asthma and diabetes.”42
The data in Table 2 (below) are based on more than 28,000 interviews conducted as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index from Jan. 3 to March 1, 2013. The high rates of health problems among the Medicaid respondents indicate that lifestyle choices and treatments could be effective in reducing chronic illness and lowering government Medicaid costs. Given the ACA expansion, the enrollment of lower-income populations in Medicaid is expanding and, with it, the number of recipients with chronic illness.43
In 2012, our paper, Taking Ownership: The Patient Role in Medicaid, scrutinized national efforts to promote healthier behavior among individuals enrolled in publicly funded health insurance programs, particularly Medicaid.
As that paper noted, a small minority of New York’s Medicaid patients, some 10 to 15 percent, account for most of the cost of Medicaid. Successfully reducing the costs of chronic care and unnecessary hospitalizations while improving Medicaid outcomes will require multiple approaches, cultural changes that emphasize patient responsibility, innovation and time.44
New York has been intensifying efforts to incentivize and require healthier behavior. These efforts are essential because costly medical treatments and emergency room spending in Medicaid are still largely caused by smoking, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other factors driving long-term chronic care, all of which may be modifiable through better patient compliance and engagement.
Simply moving patients into a managed care system will not be enough to achieve meaningful savings or better outcomes. Patients themselves must take a leading role by assuming greater responsibility for their health. That means changing certain habits and behaviors that can cause or aggravate illness, such as smoking, poor diet, obesity and lack of exercise. At the same time, patients must agree to respect the healthcare process itself by following treatment plans, taking prescribed medications, keeping doctor appointments, and seeking early preventive care.45
Incentives that encourage and reward healthy behaviors offer a strong long-term opportunity to improve health outcomes, contain costs and ameliorate the disparities between the health of patients that have Medicaid as their primary insurer and the health of patients with other insurers. By broadening the use of incentives, some of the most at-risk people in the system — patients with diabetes or pre-diabetic patients, those with cardiovascular problems, and people with manageable mental disorders — can become significantly healthier. That, in turn, can lead to substantial cost savings.46
Medicaid recipients can face unique obstacles to receiving care that may limit the effectiveness of incentives. Obstacles can include:
lack of transportation and childcare needed to get to appointments;
lack of access to technology to utilize web-based programs or help lines;
language barriers and cultural competencies; and
activities not covered by Medicaid that could help achieve health goals.47
Incentives are also at the center of growing efforts designed to improve access to primary care.
An expansion of primary care capacity is critical if Medicaid patients are to receive care outside of hospital emergency rooms, which are often these patients’ first and sometimes only choice. Emergency room visits may continue to rise nationwide if clients, including those newly insured through Medicaid expansion, have difficulty finding primary care physicians who accept the small payments offered by Medicaid or have ingrained habits of seeking care in the ER.48
Evaluations of incentive and wellness programs remain sparse, but some assessments are under way, including a major independent evaluation of the Medicaid Incentives for the Prevention of Chronic Disease program, which was enacted by Section 4108 of the ACA. However, programs that existed prior to the enactment of MIPCD can provide some insight on what works and what needs rethinking. These programs focused on areas as diverse as weight management, substance abuse, smoking cessation, preventing and treating chronic conditions, and giving individuals more responsibility for their health.
Incentives that reflect the most basic of expectations, such as keeping physician appointments and getting children immunized, have led to modest success in many instances.
However, the long-term value of incentives and requirements remains unclear, and there is not yet a sufficient research base to determine if incentives and requirements can lead to longer-term behavior change. Nevertheless, the push to promote healthier behavior is in full swing.
Since 2012, states have redoubled efforts to incentivize and require healthier behavior in Medicaid and other health care systems. Providers, employers, insurers, and local government entities have all intensified efforts to promote and incentivize wellness. As the incidence of chronic disease continues to grow, states are paying greater attention to managing care at the provider level, creating coordinated provider delivery systems, changing consumers’ behavior and habits, and expanding preventive and primary care capacity.
Some states, including New York, are addressing these questions by participating in Medicaid Incentives for the Prevention of Chronic Disease programs, developing preventive care programs and building incentive programs into their Medicaid waivers.
Taking Ownership offered an analysis of several state incentive and compliance efforts in Medicaid and other areas that predated the Affordable Care Act. The report included analysis of Opportunity NYC, Healthy Indiana, Idaho’s Preventive Health Assistance program, Florida’s Enhanced Benefits Reward$ program and West Virginia’s Mountain Health Choices program.49 A September 2014 Kaiser Family Foundation paper provided further findings on and evaluations of pre-ACA incentives in Medicaid as well as discussions of other private incentive programs in drug treatment, weight control, and workplace-situated health and wellness programs. It noted that some waivers existing prior to the ACA have either been ended by CMS or combined with broader Medicaid waivers.50
As a result of the ACA, states, insurers, and employers are paying increased attention to incentivizing healthy behaviors. Over the last several years, many states have sought new Section 1115 Medicaid waivers for such programs. CMS has developed requirements that must be complied with to receive these waivers.51 Some of these proposals have been approved; others have been denied or are still pending. The Medicaid Incentives for the Prevention of Chronic Disease program, a 10-state pilot, continues to operate, awaiting final evaluation in 2016.
Florida has ended its Enhanced Benefits Reward$ Program, suspending new credits and ending participants’ ability to access credits as of June 30, 2015. But the state’s newly approved Managed Medical Assistance Medicaid waiver requires every county to establish programs through their local managed care organizations to encourage and reward healthy behavior. This mandate applies to weight loss and smoking cessation programs.52
West Virginia’s Mountain Health Choices program required participants to follow healthy behavior outlined in a health improvement plan, including keeping doctor appointments and following drug treatment. If patients complied, they received an enhanced benefit package; if not, they received fewer services than are offered under the state’s traditional Medicaid program. CMS made such programs illegal through 2010 regulations stating that enrollment must be voluntary, forcing West Virginia to end the program in 2014.53
Idaho’s Preventive Health Assistance (PHA) program is still operating and encourages healthy behavior services for Medicaid participants, including immunizations, well-child visits, and weight management programs.54
Under PHA’s Weight Management program, participants receive a $200 annual benefit to help pay for weight management program fees at participating organizations. The program encourages healthier lifestyles through physical fitness, balanced diets and personal health education.
The Wellness Benefit of PHA is targeted to those children that are enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and have a monthly premium, typically $10 or $15, based on family income. Participants can earn a $10 deduction in monthly premiums by keeping well-child checks and immunizations current.55
In January 2015, Indiana received approval for a waiver that expands the use of upfront, required patient premiums that go into health savings accounts:
Indiana will enroll people into health plans with Personal Wellness and Responsibility (POWER) accounts that are similar to high-deductible health plans with health savings accounts (HSAs). But unlike people with employer or other private plans who have HSA accounts that make monthly deposits optional, Medicaid beneficiaries with incomes between 100 percent and 138 percent of the federal poverty level will be required to contribute 2 percent of their income to their POWER accounts.56
This approach forces Medicaid recipients to be responsible for compliance and pursue healthier behavior, as they must manage their HSA effectively in seeking services. State officials believe that compliance will be high and not result, as some contend, in the denial of health services. CMS will rigorously evaluate how well the program promotes patient responsibility without limiting access to necessary care. Under another waiver, Indiana “received approval to charge higher-cost sharing for non-emergency use of the emergency room than otherwise allowed under federal rules.”57
Iowa received approval in 2014 for a waiver allowing it to charge premiums of up to $10 a month for beneficiaries with incomes between 100 percent and 138 percent of the poverty line, and up to $5 a month for those with incomes between 50 percent and 100 percent of the poverty line. To promote healthier behavior, the state will waive premiums in both groups for individuals who complete a health risk assessment and wellness exam or who attest to financial hardship. If the premiums are not waived and beneficiaries do not pay, the unpaid balance becomes a collectible debt to the state. However, individuals cannot be dis-enrolled from Medicaid coverage if they do not pay their premiums, even though the state originally sought such a provision.58
As states weigh whether to expand their Medicaid programs, a few states have considered using Medicaid funds to purchase commercial coverage for newly eligible Medicaid beneficiaries as an alternative to traditional Medicaid. This is allowed under current Medicaid law, and Arkansas has chosen to pursue this avenue.
CMS approved Arkansas’ Section 1115 demonstration in September 2013. The waiver allows Arkansas to use Medicaid funds as “premium assistance,” purchasing coverage for newly eligible adults from commercial health plans. Parents with incomes from 17 percent to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and childless adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level are automatically enrolled in private plans instead of traditional Medicaid, and Medicaid funding is used to pay their health plan premiums.
According to a summary by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Arkansas’ demonstration requires newly eligible adults to enroll in qualified health plans to receive Medicaid services. Certain services outside the standard commercial benefit package, such as family planning and non- emergency medical transportation, are provided through the state’s Medicaid fee-for-service delivery system.59
CMS approved another amendment to Arkansas’ demonstration, based on changes required by state legislation in December 2014. The approved amendment allows Arkansas to establish health savings accounts, to which certain non-medically frail beneficiaries can make monthly income-based contributions, ranging from $5 to $25, to be used for co-payments and co-insurance. Failing to contribute does not terminate Medicaid eligibility. It also imposed co-payments for beneficiaries above 100 percent of the federal poverty level who do not make monthly HSA account contributions.60
Several states sought to build work requirements into Medicaid for certain recipients, not as incentives for healthy behavior, but as an avenue to personal responsibility.
In Pennsylvania, former Governor Tom Corbett asked CMS to approve a requirement that anyone on Medicaid working less than 20 hours a week must register with the state’s unemployment office and report at least 12 job-search contacts each month. Similarly, Indiana Governor Mike Pence wanted Medicaid eligibility for those working fewer than 20 hours a week to be tied to participation in job training or job search efforts. Utah sought a similar work requirement tied to Medicaid eligibility. These three waivers were denied by CMS.
Indiana refers households with employment of fewer than 20 hours a week to a voluntary work program, Gateway to Work. New Hampshire is also pursuing voluntary job training participation for underemployed Medicaid recipients. CMS’ stance is that health benefits under Medicaid should not be tied to work.61
MEDICAID INCENTIVES FOR THE PREVENTION OF CHRONIC DISEASE
To encourage states to experiment with patient incentives, the Affordable Care Act created the Medicaid Incentives for the Prevention of Chronic Disease program (MIPCD). In September 2011, New York, along with California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Texas, and Wisconsin, received demonstration grants to implement chronic disease prevention ideas for their Medicaid enrollees. New York was granted up to $10 million over five years. The goal was to test how well incentives encourage behavior change. The 10 states are required to demonstrate changes in risky behavior and health outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries.62
The federal government also contracted with the Research Triangle Institute, also known as RTI International, to conduct an independent, national evaluation of the 10 state programs. This evaluation is to examine how such programs affect patient utilization; how much participation they get from special populations (such as adults with disabilities and chronic illnesses and children with special needs); how satisfied Medicaid beneficiaries are with accessibility and quality of services; and how much the programs cost states to administer.
Programs supported by MIPCD grants target one or more of five medical conditions or behaviors: smoking, diabetes, obesity, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension. New York has focused on diabetes prevention and control, hypertension prevention and control, and smoking cessation.
RTI International’s interim report on the MIPCD program, which was released in November 2013, tracked results from the program’s inception in September 2011 through June 2013. The interim report concluded that eight of 10 participating states were “significantly below their goal of project participants or have not yet started enrollment in the second year of their grant. However, Texas is close to achieving its enrollment goal of 1,250 participants.”63
The interim report singled out New York for being especially slow in getting started, having enrolled just five participants at the time. New York has made significant progress since then.64
A final report to Congress, expected by July 2016, will recommend whether the MIPCD grants should be extended and brought to scale.
A RESEARCH OVERVIEW
The use of financial incentives as a way to control weight was the subject of a 2012 National Institutes of Health study, reviewing research conducted between 1972 and 2010. The extensive study showed a higher effectiveness of incentives in promoting initial weight loss, but a drop-off in retaining weight loss over the longer term and after incentives were no longer available.
The study noted that results are still inconclusive and “vary widely due to differences in incentive size and schedule.” It also found that existing studies only look at those who volunteer for weight loss programs and that studies are “particularly sparse so that long-term efficacy and thus value in addressing the public health problem of obesity is unclear.” The report reached this conclusion:
Financial incentives clearly increase the effectiveness of weight loss programs in the short- term. Larger and increasing incentives are better, negative reinforcement procedures like deposit contracts (where participants put their own money at risk for failure) are more effective than positive reinforcement, and group contracts are more effective than individual contracts. Weight losses induced by financial incentives are equally vulnerable to regain as are weight losses without use of incentives once treatment is withdrawn, but not more so.
It is not yet clear what financial contingencies might promote long-term maintenance of weight loss.65
In another rigorous NIH study, 20 years of incentive programs for substance abuse treatment showed good success. The 2014 study contended that these substance abuse programs could serve as models for improving the use of incentives and offered examples of how to replicate the approaches in Medicaid:
One recent evaluation of several Medicaid incentive programs concluded that they are producing mixed results, especially with more challenging behaviors such as smoking cessation. This is surprising given the extensive scientific literature supporting the efficacy of incentives to treat complex behavioral disorders such as SUDs and suggests that efforts to apply the lessons learned in scientific evaluations of incentives could improve the implementation and effectiveness of Medicaid incentive programs. Indeed, it would be unfortunate if the potential for wide-scale dissemination of incentive interventions for healthy behavior change is handicapped by preventable errors in design and implementation.66
The most important design changes recommended for other incentive programs are two tactics that have worked in substance abuse treatment: more immediate benefits and bigger benefits. Incentives should be delivered up front and, where possible, daily. This is unlike most Medicaid financial incentives, which often require extensive verification. This slower process undermines the link between the incentive and the desired behavioral change. For instance, Florida’s Enhanced Benefit$ Program required three verification steps and four months before benefits could be delivered, and incentives were relatively small.
Referring to previous research, the 2014 NIH report notes “human decision-making also has a natural bias toward preferring larger over smaller rewards, given equal immediacy.” The report notes that rewards of $5 a day were effective in maintaining ongoing abstinence from drugs, and that $16 daily rewards produced even longer-lasting compliance. The conclusion: timely and ample incentives work better in Medicaid, and additional costs are likely to be more than offset by savings from positive behavioral change.67
One thing all parties seemingly agree upon is that preventing and treating chronic disease among Medicaid recipients is a fertile area for further exploration and evaluation — to study how financial incentive and compliance programs can most effectively promote behavioral changes, better health outcomes and cost efficiency.
Behavioral economics is a method of economic analysis that applies psychological insights into human behavior to explain economic decision-making.68 Increasingly, it is being viewed as a potential tool in the field of human services, as a way to influence and promote positive behaviors among clients receiving public benefit programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (also known as food stamps).
A relatively new construct within the field is “executive functioning,” which refers to efforts to help recipients achieve goals and make their own decisions. Executive functioning is grounded in brain science about how people make decisions and set goals. It focuses on life-management skills and their importance at home, school, and work, and it holds promise as a new service-delivery model somewhat akin to intensive case management. Included among executive functioning skills are: organization, time management, planning and prioritization, response inhibition, flexibility, emotional control, metacognition, task initiation, sustained attention, goal-directed persistence, stress tolerance, and working memory.69
Executive functioning skills are now being explored in the research field of employment for TANF recipients, as a way to help individuals plan, set goals, act upon goals, and be resilient.70
With these same skills, Medicaid recipients could learn to practice healthier behavior, maintain treatment regimens, and take ownership of their care. This is a field worthy of deeper exploration in New York, because transforming the Medicaid delivery and payment systems requires patient cooperation and informed decision-making. A burgeoning field of new literature on the application of executive functioning skills has been developed as an informative way to practically apply these theories in service delivery.71
NEW YORK’S PROGRAM
As previously stated, New York was one of 10 states to receive a competitive federal grant under the Medicaid Incentives for the Prevention of Chronic Disease (MIPCD) program in 2011. The state Department of Health is using the grant for a pilot program that offers cash and non-cash rewards to patients who participate in smoking cessation, exercise and nutrition education, obesity and diabetes prevention, and other programs that seek to prevent chronic disease.
New York uses four incentive schedules that are based on process measures, outcome measures, a combination of both measures, and a comparison group. For those randomized to an incentive schedule, Medicaid recipients have the potential to earn up to $250. All incentive schedules provide direct payments for achievement of milestones.
Prevention of diabetes:
To promote diet and exercise changes among adult Medicaid recipients who are at high risk for diabetes or diagnosed with pre-diabetes, participation in the Diabetes Prevention Program is incentivized. The program is a 16-week lifestyle modification curriculum conducted by trained coaches who teach lessons in three areas: nutrition, physical activity, and behavioral self- management. Enrollment in this program began in January 2014.
Diabetes management:
To improve the blood glucose control of those diagnosed with diabetes, this pilot program incentivizes primary care visits, the use of diabetes-related medications, and efforts to reduce and maintain HbA1c levels. Enrollment for this disease area began in April 2014.
Hypertension:
To lower high blood pressure levels in those diagnosed with hypertension, New York incentivizes primary care visits, the use of antihypertensive medications, and the reduction of blood pressure below targets set by the Joint National Commission on Management of Hypertension. Enrollment in this disease area began in July 2014.
Smoking cessation:
To promote smoking cessation among adult Medicaid recipients, the state is incentivizing individual and group smoking cessation counseling, use of smoking cessation products, and confirmation of quit status. Enrollment in this disease area began in February 2015.
State Health Department data as of 2015, as provided by CMS, show the state’s pilot program has grown since June 2013, when RTI International reported just five enrollees. As of August 2015, New York had 4,026 participants enrolled in the Medicaid Incentives for the Prevention of Chronic Disease Program: 507 in diabetes prevention study, 915 in diabetes management, 809 in hypertension management and 1,795 in smoking cessation.72 That amounts to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the state’s 6.4 million Medicaid beneficiaries.
New York’s initial slow start was at least partly a function of its commitment to relatively modest incentives. In this sense, New York could learn a few lessons from Texas, which has initiated a straightforward approach offering larger incentive bonuses, enrollment assistance, and bonuses to participating providers.
The Texas program is particularly appealing, offering flexible spending of up to $1,150 for wellness activities for up to three years. Texas pays for “patient navigators” to facilitate the process in participating managed care plans. Through this program, Texas has modified how it recruits people into the program to encourage greater patient enrollment. New York does not pay providers to help enroll individuals in its incentive program.73
States participating in the MIPCD program are given the opportunity to share promising approaches. CMS has convened two face-to-face discussions each year among CMS grantees, contractors, and CMS staff. These discussions focused on education, experience sharing, problem- solving, and planning. Additionally, RTI International hosted and facilitated telephone forums in which grantees and CMS shared information. Because states were given flexibility in designing programs, and because these programs target a variety of conditions and behaviors, components of these demonstration pilots are of interest to New York.74
The final report to Congress in 2016 will determine the future of the 10-state pilot based on updated data, a determination as to whether enrollment can be scaled up, and evaluations of program effectiveness in individual states. Even as New York and other states await these results, there is no prohibition against testing the expanded use of incentives in Medicaid beyond the pilot. New York has taken initial steps in this direction by establishing a new Advocacy and Engagement Sub-Committee of its Medicaid Redesign Team to discuss the design and broader use of incentives across the Medicaid population in managed care.75
This subcommittee has proposed providing incentive payments on a more timely basis, so they are more directly linked to the behavior being rewarded. Additionally, New York currently imposes an arbitrary cap of $125 on the amount that managed care organizations are allowed to provide patients as incentives for preventive care. The subcommittee has recommended removal of this $125 cap.76
The Advocacy and Engagement Subcommittee also stressed the need for intensive education and involvement of patients, including the right to know detailed information about incentives available to them and about value-based payments to providers.
Providers are encouraged to utilize “patient-reported outcome” measures in order to assess members’ well-being, feelings, and functioning over time, to engage members in developing their treatment plans, and to facilitate shared decision-making between members and providers. All of this can be done through brief surveys or patient questionnaires.
The subcommittee has urged expansion of patient incentive programs statewide under a set of guiding principles, including the timely provision of rewards to ensure success, assistance with cost and other barriers to accessing incentive programs, and an independent third-party evaluation of existing and new incentive programs.
New York is incorporating some new efforts to involve Medicaid patients in their own health care by requiring that “health homes” be incorporated into each performing provider system and stressing the importance of patient cooperation and compliance.
The state is also employing what is referred to as the Patient Activation Measure, a detailed patient survey licensed by Insignia Health. This instrument has been actively tested as a reliable way to predict such things as future emergency-room visits, hospital admissions and readmissions and patient compliance with medical treatment plans.77
The survey covers motivators, attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes for individual patients. One top official with the state Department of Health has said the use of the survey, in conjunction with health homes, can motivate patient involvement and compliance:
Each [performing provider system] is required to include Health Homes in its provider network to ensure access to care management services. PPSs are required to assess their communities and identify issues related to health disparities and address the same in the implementation of the projects. These will include addressing health literacy, language, cultural, social and ethnic issues that are barriers to compliance with required care and providing solutions congruent with the affected persons. Additionally, for Medicaid recipients who are low utilizers or non-utilizers, some of the PPS are implementing a project using the Patient Activation Measure (PAM) and interventions to improve recipients’ engagement in health care by improving their confidence in managing care and improving their self-actualization. It is our belief that by addressing these fundamental causes of non-compliance, the Medicaid program will improve patients’ ability to be compliant with health care recommendations.78
Policymakers should expand these approaches significantly. Over time, they potentially could be coupled with penalties for failure to comply without good cause.
THE COST PICTURE
Medicaid enrollment and costs are projected to grow annually both nationwide and in New York. The Office of the New York State Comptroller estimates that state costs, although slowing in growth, will increase by $700 million annually between now and FY 2018-19. This represents an aggregate increase of $2.8 billion over the same period, according to estimates in the Executive Budget for New York State fiscal year 2015-16. (See Table 3 below.)
Federal costs for New York’s Medicaid program are projected to rise by $6.9 billion by fiscal year 2018-19; local costs are expected to remain basically flat at $8.6 billion. New York’s overall Medicaid costs to all payers (federal, state, and local governments) are projected to be $68.38 billion by 2018-19, an increase of $13.44 billion or almost 25 percent above the $54.94 billion spent in 2013-14. Because of the waiver, the federal government will absorb the largest share of this projected growth.79
With expanded enrollment and higher income eligibility levels, New York’s Medicaid program now costs more than the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts programs combined.80 Despite the increasing caseload, the state has successfully slowed the rate of cost increases at the state and local level.
In part, this reflects a trend nationally of slower growth in Medicaid. However, California has now edged above New York as the highest-cost Medicaid state.81 This reflects the implementation of New York’s Medicaid Redesign Team goals, which emphasize eventual managed care for all, a shift to value-based payments, and the state’s efforts to shift costs to the federal government under the waiver.82
Going forward, caseload growth may increase the number of New Yorkers on Medicaid who practice unhealthy behavior and have chronic health problems. If this holds true, it could further increase future program costs.
Other potential cost drivers include the state’s newly adopted increases in the minimum wage – which will go from the current $9 to $15 in New York City by 2018, and in Long Island and Westchester County by 2020, with the rest of the state moving to a minimum of $12.50 by 2020.
PITFALLS FOR REFORM
The Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program was designed as a temporary stopgap while hospitals find ways to replace revenue that will be lost by cracking down on emergency-room admissions for non-emergent conditions. How to sustain that behavior, if DSRIP is not renewed, will be a key to the program’s success.
It is unclear if adequate primary care capacity can be achieved over the five-year lifespan of the Medicaid waiver and sustained thereafter. Also unclear is whether community-based care providers and hospital-based primary care facilities can operate effectively as partners.
As noted in a Times Union article: “To survive, hospitals have in recent years sought to become the hub of health care systems that provide all levels of care, acquiring doctor’s practices and building community-based primary care and urgent care offices.”83
Finally, it is uncertain whether the performing provider systems will be sustainable after the waiver expires and the $8 billion in federal funding is gone.
Community health providers can be part of one or more system, but their role could be different in each one depending on how the hospital-led organization defines it. This can create confusion, and how money flows to them will be critical to success. According to an article in POLITICO New York:
Thousands of providers and community-based organizations (CBOs) of varying size and strength are vying for a finite pot of money, a struggle bound to cause lots of internal battles among the very groups needed to make the state’s ambitious reform a success.
The $7.3 billion in DSRIP funding is not awarded unless the goal of reducing avoidable hospitalizations by 25 percent is achieved. And that goal can’t be achieved unless everyone is working together, Jason Helgerson, New York’s Medicaid Director, says. The challenge is that smaller provider groups and community-based organizations will likely need to invest cash and other resources up front to change how they deliver care or integrate with several PPS, and then take it on faith that they’ll receive the money back when the DSRIP funds start flowing. That’s money most don’t have, so they’ll want to be assured they are well compensated for that financial risk.84
Hospitals, seeing new money available for primary and preventive care, have rushed to occupy the field by co-locating clinics near emergency rooms, opening urgent care clinics, and in some cases annexing existing community care providers. Many community-based providers are concerned with this trend, fearing that they may not survive. The predominance of hospital-led systems — which include some community providers while leaving out some other potential partners, such as independent physician associations and retail clinics — sends a cautionary note for Medicaid redesign, because it can stifle healthy competition:
In the wake of the Affordable Care Act, the number of hospital merger and acquisition deals jumped from 52 in 2009 to more than 100 in 2014, according to Irving Levin Associates. But the economic evidence suggests consolidation drives costs up, not down — and may even hurt patient care.
Hospitals are the biggest single share of U.S. health care spending, and often, what’s good for hospital revenues is a lost opportunity to keep someone healthy. True clinical integration that incentivizes cost-efficient, quality care is a laudable goal for hospitals and is already permitted under antitrust guidelines. We just shouldn’t rely on hospitals to compete against their financial interests, any more than we’d expect Best Buy to invent Amazon. Competition remains vital as ever, and the industry’s future belongs to the states willing to lead the way.85
The value-based payment system must not damage the financial sustainability of providers. For instance, the new model must avoid punishing providers’ efforts to prevent avoidable admissions and reduce administrative waste, and it must move closer to a model in which the delivery of high-value care financially benefits providers.
Payment reform, then, is required to ensure that changes in the care-delivery system funded by DSRIP are sustained well beyond the waiver period. In this way, patient-engagement and care coordination activities, including peer-based activities, can be reimbursed, and value-destroying care patterns (avoidable admissions, re-admissions, and ER visits) will not simply return when the DSRIP dollars stop flowing.86
Payment reform must also maintain a stable and well-trained primary care and community-based workforce, and it must ensure that dollars saved are reinvested in the Medicaid delivery system.87
Another danger for Medicaid reform in New York is a dispute with the federal government. CMS aims to hold Medicaid payments to a level no higher than what Medicare would pay for the same service, a policy known as Upper Payment Limits (UPL). As noted by POLITICO New York, “the calculations (around UPL) may be complex but the consequences of delay are not.”88
Until a deal is reached on the issue, the federal government is withholding billions of dollars in Medicaid payments. The providers most affected by this stalemate are hospitals serving the largest number of Medicaid patients and some of the very community-based providers that New York is relying on to expand primary care. For example, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, the state’s largest Medicaid provider, is awaiting $1.2 billion in disputed federal funds. Federal qualified health centers could see a 50 percent reduction in current funding because, until UPL is resolved, they will not be able to access the federal share of the uncompensated care pool, a pot of money available for treating the uninsured. Similarly, safety net hospitals and other providers that are integral parts of the DSRIP program are awaiting $500 million in federal funding.89
UNCERTAINTY ABOUT THE ACA
While New York’s Medicaid redesign and waiver will not be affected, uncertainty and controversy around the ACA could have effects on the New York State of Health exchange, commercial insurance markets and future federal funding for Medicaid.
Both houses of Congress recently passed a bill that would have repealed the ACA. President Obama vetoed the measure but, despite two Supreme Court rulings upholding the law, the ACA is showing signs of possibly collapsing under its own weight.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the ACA in a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion.
The language of the law states that the failure of uninsured individuals to comply with a requirement by buying an insurance plan through health care exchanges would result in a penalty — a provision that was a focus of the assertion that the law was unconstitutional. Roberts’ majority opinion interpreted the penalty as a tax, which was therefore allowable.90
This allowed the individual mandate to stay in place, and it permitted the Internal Revenue Service to assess tax penalties against those who failed to comply. At the same time, the original decision thwarted the Obama administration’s attempt to require that states expand their Medicaid eligibility levels and coverage to certain populations. The court held that this provision was a federal overreach and made Medicaid expansion a state-by-state choice rather than a requirement.91
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court, led once more by Roberts and Kennedy in a 6-3 vote, ruled again in support of the ACA. In King v. Burwell, the Court upheld the provision of tax subsidies to income-eligible enrollees through exchanges. The challenge claimed the law did not allow for subsidies through the federal health exchange, but only through exchanges established by the states. Since New York has its own exchange, a ruling for the plaintiffs would not have directly affected its ability to provide subsidies, but could have disrupted the law nationwide.
Now, states that maintain their own exchanges may have a financial incentive to switch to the federal exchange or to jointly establish regional exchanges.92
Additional challenges to the ACA remain. A lawsuit brought by Congress, U.S. House of Representatives v. Burwell, was adjudicated at the federal district court level in September 2015. The court ruled that Congress has standing to challenge the president for spending funds that were never appropriated, allowing this case to move forward even as the ACA remains in force.93
Another case now on the Supreme Court docket contends that religious organizations should have the right to opt out of the ACA.94
Beyond these legal challenges, the ACA faces numerous problems.
The law remains confusing to many, and exchanges suffer frequent technical problems and are often difficult to navigate.
Although more than 11 million individuals have enrolled in private insurance nationwide through the exchanges, the ACAs long-term success in covering the uninsured and offering affordable policies remains unproven.
The scope of services required of health plans sold on ACA exchanges is broad, requiring services that may be unnecessary for many enrollees and forcing others to lose existing policies. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2021, over 10 million individuals will be forced off their chosen employer-based coverage because of the rigidity of ACA plan requirements.95
The tax penalty on those who do not comply with the mandate to buy health insurance is escalating over time.
Some employers are reducing workers’ hours to avoid the requirement to offer health care coverage for those working 30 hours or more weekly.96 Others are providing a capitated amount of dollars to employees to purchase insurance through exchanges.
Many individuals who seek coverage through the exchanges are ending up on Medicaid, driving up caseloads.
Concerns also remain about the redistributionist effects of the ACA, as insurance premiums for healthier enrollees already in the insurance marketplace rise to offset the higher costs of the newly insured, who are often less healthy.
Many of the 23 large co-op insurance plans that emerged under the ACA are beginning to fail because they grossly underestimated both enrollment and costs. Twelve of them have gone out of business, including Health Republic Insurance of New York.97
An audit of the ACA by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, released in October 2015, revealed a significant number of instances in which beneficiaries were receiving duplicate coverage from both Medicaid and a private insurance policy purchased through an exchange. It also found overpayments to states, because CMS cannot distinguish between newly eligible Medicaid recipients (for whom the federal government pays 100 percent of costs) and recipients who were eligible for Medicaid prior to passage of the ACA (for whom reimbursements should be as low as 50 percent).98
An audit of the New York State of Health insurance exchange by the Office of the State Comptroller showed similar but far smaller problems of duplicate payments and continued Medicaid payments for deceased individuals.99
Nationally, approximately 71 percent of those enrolled under the ACA have not been enrolled in private plans but instead were determined to be eligible for Medicaid. Because there are continued shortages of primary care physicians, New York and other states are attempting to expand primary and preventive care networks. Moreover, health outcomes under Medicaid remain mixed at best, falling short of outcomes for similar patients with private insurance.100
UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest insurer and a major presence in New York, is considering withdrawing completely from the exchanges due to unsustainable costs.101
Open enrollment periods under the ACA have been extended for more than 30 categories of individuals, destabilizing insurance markets and driving up premium costs. Individuals enrolled through these extended open enrollment periods use up to 55 percent more services than their counterparts who enrolled in the standard open period.102
Due to higher-than-expected enrollment in Medicaid, the Congressional Budget Office projects the cost of the ACA will rise to $1.4 trillion by 2026, $136 billion higher than previous estimates.103
Another problem has been the significant underestimation of implementation costs by those states that have accepted the option of taking more federal funding to expand their Medicaid coverage.104
These and other provisions of the ACA will remain subject to debate in Congress and during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
If a Republican president is elected and Republicans retain their majorities in Congress, efforts to repeal and replace provisions of the law likely will strengthen. One option worthy of consideration is the creation of a new Universal Exchange Plan proposed in 2014 by Avik Roy, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The plan “seeks to substantially repair those problems caused by the ACA and those that predate it.”105
To begin to address these continuing challenges in publicly funded health care, New York State policymakers should consider a wide range of policy recommendations:
Expand patient incentives:
The state’s very limited financial incentive program should be offered broadly to all categories of patients who could benefit throughout the Medicaid population, and the $125 cap on incentive payments by managed care organizations should be lifted. This expansion should go forward whether or not federal grant funding continues under the Medicaid Incentive for the Prevention of Chronic Disease program. Existing databases such as the New York State Department of Health’s State and County Indicators106 and the New York All Payer Database107 should be used to monitor and evaluate incentive programs.
Strengthen compliance requirements:
New York, like many other states, places too little emphasis on requiring patients to comply with treatment plans and encouraging patients to take more direct ownership of, and accountability for, their health. A number of states charge modest premiums and/or require copayments for certain services. New York waives most copays for the managed care population and other categories of Medicaid recipients. New York should study baseline compliance rates and the effect of current and future requirements aimed at improving compliance.
Implement Health Savings Accounts:
Implementing pilot HSAs, such as those allowed in Indiana, Iowa and Arkansas, should be a priority to encourage patients to take ownership of and manage their own health care.
Leverage public assistance to incentivize healthy behavior:
Widespread childhood obesity prompted controversial legislation in Puerto Rico that would fine households with obese children between $500 and $800.108 Fines like these, and policies that result in denial of health care, are not good ideas.109 However, since many Medicaid recipients also participate in SNAP or TANF, failure to comply with treatment programs could trigger some form of sanction in those other programs. New York should consider pilot-testing such a policy.
Discourage overuse of emergency rooms:
Policymakers must address the ingrained behaviors of previously uninsured patients and Medicaid patients who traditionally have sought primary care in the costly setting of emergency rooms. Broadened coverage may actually expand rather than constrain such ER use. Preliminary results from an Oregon study reinforce this concern.110 Building increased primary care options is critical, but it cannot happen overnight, and reimbursement rates in Medicaid remain low. Patients will need to be taught — and required to adopt — alternatives to seeking primary care in costly settings. Policies that divert patients from ERs to nearby or co-located primary care facilities for non-emergency treatment will have to be rigorously enforced.
Increase fees for primary care:
A two-year federal expansion of primary-care physician payments for those who see Medicaid patients under the ACA has now expired, and New York opted not to continue higher payments with state funds. If physician reimbursement rates seem to be limiting preventive care access, they should be increased so that primary care physicians more readily accept Medicaid clients.
Expand the Patient Activation Measure:
New York should take better advantage of PAM questionnaires as a tool to anticipate and accurately predict poor outcomes among certain patients.
Embrace retail clinics as providers:
Retail clinics in pharmacies, grocery stores, and large stores continue to grow, as do independent physician associations. These should be utilized as another way Medicaid patients can receive various preventive services, such as immunizations and advice on prevention and wellness. Consideration should be given to allowing them to join performing provider systems.
Improve care coordination:
Providers must aggressively coordinate care to avoid overlapping or duplicative treatment. The growth of shared electronic medical records and the burgeoning health-home movement, in which a patient has a single place for care coordination, are both vital to success. New York must also closely monitor the effectiveness of health homes.
Expand the use of electronic medical records:
The use of shared electronic medical records, which is still being rolled out, must be further expanded as a tool to coordinate care and avoid costly duplicative care.
Reform food stamps:
Programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as the food stamp program, allow the purchase of unhealthy products, particularly sugar-sweetened beverages, with public funds. Since SNAP serves clients who also receive Medicaid, it should not work at cross-purposes with health and wellness efforts. SNAP must be changed federally to align with public health goals by forbidding purchases of food that lead to obesity, diabetes and heart disease. In the short term, if Congress will not take this action, New York should again seek federal authorization for a demonstration project to ban the use of SNAP funds for sugar- sweetened beverages.111
Follow through on value-based payment:
This approach can be vital to changing health care delivery in New York by shifting the focus from the numbers of procedures performed to the achievement of healthy outcomes. However, caution must be taken that providers do not manipulate the system by screening out the sickest patients. New York should expand nascent efforts, in partnership with CMS, to persuade the federal government to align Medicare payments with the same value-based system that the state is implementing in Medicaid.
Convert Medicaid to a block grant:
Congress should seriously consider converting Medicaid into a block grant program in which states would receive a guaranteed level of funding. This would give states more ownership over the cost and design of their program, while allowing them to innovate and quickly launch program reforms. The federal government should establish minimum requirements and assure that funds meant for Medicaid are not diverted to other purposes. But states should have broad flexibility within those parameters. States would receive federal funds at their current aggregate levels plus an annual increase tied to the rate of health care inflation. This approach, which is similar to New York’s current global cap on Medicaid, would allow the federal share to remain adequate over time. It would also enable New York and other states to design the program in a way that best serves their diverse Medicaid populations, pursue innovative reforms that improve care and save money without the cumbersome process of applying for waivers.
After years of political battling and stalemate, the Cuomo administration deserves credit for bringing long-term thinking, thoughtful reform, and fiscal discipline to the management of New York’s Medicaid health plan.
By any measure, however, it remains among the nation’s costliest Medicaid programs, and likely to draw even more on the public purse as enrollment continues to climb.
Patient incentives — and their promise for both improving health and saving money — are an opportunity for further reform that New York cannot afford to miss.
Statista, “Total Medicaid Enrollment from 1966 to 2015 (in millions)”, 2016, http://www.statista.com/ statistics/245347/total-medicaid-enrollment-since-1966/
Kaiser Family Foundation, “Total Medicaid Spending”, June 2014, http://kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/total- medicaid-spending/
Office of the NYS Comptroller, “Medicaid in New York: The Continuing Challenge to Improve Care and Control Costs”, March 2015, www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/health/medicaid_2015.pdf
Bruce Siegel, Margaret Murray & Dan Hawkins, “Time To Take Medicaid Quality Seriously”, Health Affairs Blog,April 2015, healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/04/14/time-to-take-medicaid-quality-seriously/
Annette B. Ramirez de Arellano & Sidney M. Wolfe, “Unsettling Scores: A Ranking Of State Medicaid Programs”,Public Citizen Health Research Group, April 2007, www.citizen.org/documents/2007UnsettlingScores.pdf
The Commonwealth Fund, “Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance, 2009”,October 2009, www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/files/publications/fund-report/2009/oct/state_scorecard_data_tables_2009_complete_v2.pdf
eHealth, “History and Timeline of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)”, October 2014, https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/resource-center/affordable-care-act/history-timeline-affordable-care-act-aca
Because of the way this is calculated, the effective limit is 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
National Federation of Independent Business ET AL. v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, No. 11-393, Jne2012, www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf
Governor Cuomo Issues Executive Order Establishing Statewide Health Exchange, Press Release, Albany NY, April 12, 2012, www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-issues-executive-order-establishing-statewide-health-exchange
New York State of Health, website, January 2015, nystateofhealth.ny.gov/
The Commonwealth Fund, “The Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Marketplaces by Type”, www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives-and-data/maps-and-data/state-exchange-map
FamiliesUSA, “A 50-State Look at Medicaid Expansion, January 2016, familiesusa.org/product/50-state-look-medicaid-expansion
January Angeles, “How Health Reform’s Medicaid Expansion Will Impact State Budgets”, Center on Budget andPolicy Priorities, July 2012, http://www.cbpp.org/research/how-health-reforms-medicaid-expansion-will-impact-state-budgets
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “Medicaid & CHIP: November 2015 Monthly Applications, Eligibility Determinations and Enrollment Report”, January 2016, medicaid.gov/medicaid-chip-program-information/program-information/downloads/november-2015-enrollment-report.pdf
NYS Department of Health, “2015 Open Enrollment Report”, July 2015, info.nystateofhealth.ny.gov/2015OpenEnrollmentReport
NYS Department of Health, “Press Release: Health Insurance Coverage in New York State Surges: Enrollment DataShow More Than 2 Million New Yorkers Have Enrolled Through NY State of Health Marketplace”, July 2015, info. nystateofhealth.ny.gov/news/press-release-health-insurance-coverage-new-york-state-surges
Associated Press, “1.1 million New Yorkers added to roll for Medicaid”, Times Union, July 2015, www.timesunion.com/news/article/1-1-million-New-Yorkers-added-to-roll-for-Medicaid-6394015.php
Daniel R. Levinson, Department of Health and Human Services“New York Claimed Some Unallowable Costs forServices by New York State Providers Under the State’s Developmental Disabilities Waiver Program”, January 2015, oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region2/21001044.pdf
K. Scott, Personal Communication, October 2015
Governor Cuomo Issues Executive Order Creating Medicaid Redesign Team, Press Release, Albany, NY January 5,2011, www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-issues-executive-order-creating-medicaid-redesign-team
FY 2017 Executive Budget Financial Plan, NYS Division of the Budget, February 2016, www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/executive/eBudget1617/financialPlan/FinPlanUpdated.pdf
Kenneth Lovett and Erin Durkin, “Andrew Cuomo backs off budget proposal that would have cost NYC an extra$800M after protest from Bill de Blasio,” January 2016, www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/de-blasio-vows-fight-cuomo-budget-cuts-means-article-1.2497175
NYS Office of Budget and Policy Analysis, “Medicaid in New York: The Continuing Challenge to Improve Care andControl Costs,” New York State Comptroller, March 2015, www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/health/medicaid_2015.pdf
NYS Department of Health, “DSRIP Overview,” September 2014, www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/redesign/dsrip/overview.htm
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “Better Care, Smarter Spending, Healthier People: Improving OurHealth Care Delivery System,” January 2015, http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-sheets/2015-Fact-sheets-items/2015-01-26.html
NYS Department of Health, “DSRIP Overview”
Cristina Boccuti & Giselle Casillas, “Aiming for Fewer Hospital U-turns: The Medicare Hospital ReadmissionReduction Program”, Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2015, kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/aiming-for-fewer-hospital-u-turns-the-medicare-hospital-readmission-reduction-program/
NYS Department of Health, Application for Partnership Plan Waiver Extension, May 2014, www.medicaid.gov/Medicaid-CHIP-Program-Information/By-Topics/Waivers/1115/downloads/ny/ny-partnership-plan-pa.pdf
Boccuti & Casillas, “Aiming for Fewer Hospital U-turns: The Medicare Hospital Readmission Reduction Program”
Crain’s New York, “DSRIP Valuations,” n.d., www.crainsnewyork.com/assets/pdf/CN100145621.PDF
NYS Department of Health, “Performing Provider System Network Lists,” www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/redesign/dsrip/pps_network_partners.htm
Crain’s Health Pulse, “Medicaid reform funding totals $7.4 billion,” June 2015, www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150622/PULSE/150619840/medicaid-reform-funding-totals-7-4-billion
North Central Arizona Accountable Care, Frequently Asked Questions, www.ncazaco.org/faqs
NYS Department of Health, “DSRIP, Shared Savings, and the Path towards Value Based Payment,” web presentation, n.d., www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/redesign/dsrip/docs/dsrip_vbp_webinar_slides.pdf
Claire Hughes, “Hospitals form alliance,” Time Union, October 2015, www.timesunion.com/business/article/Hospitals-form-alliance-6594563.php
Kaiser Family Foundation, “Dual Eligible,” website, http://kff.org/tag/dual-eligible/
NYS Department of Health, “DSRIP, Shared Savings, and the Path towards Value Based Payment,” webpresentation, n.d., www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/redesign/dsrip/docs/vbp_draft_medicare_alignment_paper.pdf
David Hoffman & Amy Souders, “Why We Need Public Health to Improve Healthcare”, National Association ofChronic Disease Directors, n.d., www.chronicdisease.org/?page=WhyWeNeedPH2impHC
Cindy Mann, “Targeting Medicaid Super-Utilizers to Decrease Costs and Improve Quality”, Department of Healthand Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, July 24, 2013, www.medicaid.gov/Federal-Policy-Guidance/Downloads/CIB-07-24-2013.pdf
Elizabeth Mendes, “Preventable Chronic Conditions Plague Medicaid Population”, Gallup, April 4, 2013, www.gallup.com/poll/161615/preventable-chronic-conditions-plague-medicaid-population.aspx
Amanda Van Vleet & Robin Rudowitz, “An Overview of Medicaid Incentives for the Prevention of ChronicDiseases (MIPCD) Grants”, Kaiser Family Foundation, September 2014, kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/an-overview-of-medicaid-incentives-for-the-prevention-of-chronic-diseases-mipcd-grants
Sarah Kliff, “Study: Expanding Medicaid doesn’t reduce ER trips. It increases them.”, The Washington Post,January 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/02/study-expanding-medicaid-doesnt-reduce-er-trips-it-increases-them/
Amanda Van Vleet & Robin Rudowitz, “An Overview of Medicaid Incentives for the Prevention of ChronicDiseases (MIPCD) Grants”, Kaiser Family Foundation, September 2014, kff.org/report-section/an-overview-of-medicaid-incentives-for-the-prevention-of-chronic-diseases-issue-brief-mipcd-grants/
Post-ACA Medicaid Section 1115 waivers come with specific requirements from federal CMS. All state waiverproposals must include three specific elements; 1) Expansion of Medicaid eligibility for all adults whose incomes are at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty rate. 2) Maintenance of Medicaid eligibility, the same package of services, and copayments that are not increased for any Medicaid recipient for whom the state requires enrollment in a Qualified Health Plan (QHP). 3)Articulation of a clear demonstration purpose that promotes Medicaid objectives just as was required prior to the ACA. Van Vleet & Rudowitz.
Doug Trapp, “Federal rule drastically cuts wellness program in West Virginia”, American Medical News,November 2010, www.amednews.com/article/20101112/government/311129997/8/
Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, “Preventive Health Assistance or PHA, is a Benefit for MedicaidParticipants”, n.d., www.healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/Portals/0/Medical/MedicaidCHIP/Medicaid_PHA_Bro_Fnl%2010-07.pdf.
Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, “Preventive Health Assistance”, n.d., healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/Medical/Medicaid/PreventiveHealthAssistance/tabid/221/Default.aspx
Sara Rosenbaum, Devi Mehta & Carla Hurt, “Healthy Indiana Plan: Charging Monthly Fees for Medicaid”, TheCommonwealth Fund, February 2015, http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/blog/2015/feb/healthy-indiana-plan
Robin Rudowitz & MaryBeth Musumuci, “The ACA and Medicaid Expansion Waivers”, Kaiser Family Foundation,November 2015, http://kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/the-aca-and-medicaid-expansion-waivers/
Jesse Cross-Call & Judith Solomon, “Approved Demonstrations Offer Lessons for States Seeking to ExpandMedicaid Through Waivers”, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 2015, http://www.cbpp.org/research/approved-demonstrations-offer-lessons-for-states-seeking-to-expand-medicaid-through-waivers
Kaiser Family Foundation, “Medicaid Expansion in Arkansas”, February 2015, kff.org/medicaid/fact-sheet/medicaid-expansion-in-arkansas/
Michelle L. Price, “Feds: Utah will not get Medicaid work requirement”, The Washington Times, January 2015, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/7/herbert-obama-may-give-more-flexibility-on-medicai/
Kathleen Sebelius, “Initial Report to Congress – Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Disease Evaluation”, November 2013, innovation.cms.gov/Files/reports/MIPCD_RTC.pdf
P. Roohan, Personal Communication, August 2015
Robert W. Jeffery, “Financial Incentives and Weight Control,” December 2009, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3342479/
Dennis J. Hand, Sarah H. Heil, Stacey C. Sigmon, & Stephen T. Higgins, “Improving Medicaid Health Incentives Programs: Lessons from Substance Abuse Treatment Research,” March 2014, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC4043298/
“Behavioral Economics,” Oxford Dictionary, www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/behavioral-economics
PowerPoint presentation by Donna Pavetti, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Michelle Derr, MathematicaPolicy Research, July 2015
By organizations such as Abt Associates, Mathematica Policy Studies and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Department of Health and Human Services, multimedia presentation, February 2015, peerta.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/public/uploaded_files/PPT_execfunction.pdf
Sebelius, “Initial Report to Congress – Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Disease Evaluation”
NYS Department of Health, Advocacy and Engagement, n.d., www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/redesign/dsrip/advocacy_and_engagement.htm
Insignia Health, website, January 2015, www.insigniahealth.com/products/pam-survey
NYS Office of Budget and Policy Analysis, “Medicaid in New York: The Continuing Challenge to Improve Careand Control Costs”, March 2015, www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/health/medicaid_2015.pdf
Kaiser Family Foundaiton, “Total Medicaid Spending,” FY 2014, kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/total-medicaid-spending/
Katherine McLaughlin, “The State Of Medicaid In New York: Progress And The Road To Value-Based Payments”,Health Affairs Blog, October 2015, healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/10/19/the-state-of-medicaid-in-new-york-progress-and-the-road-to-value-based-payments/
Bill Hammond, “Cuomo’s quiet Medicaid miracle: He is succeeding where countless predecessors failed”, NewYork Daily News, April 2015, www.nydailynews.com/opinion/bill-hammond-cuomo-quiet-medicaid-miracle-article-1.2176873
Dan Goldberg, Politico, September 28, 2015, Community Based Groups Have Uncertain Role in Medicaid Reform
Paul Howard and Yevgeniy Feyman, “Commentary: Hospital Competition Is an Oxymoron Today. It Shouldn’tBe.,” Manhattan Institute, December 2015, www.manhattan-institute.org/html/hospital-competition-oxymoron-today-it-shouldn%E2%80%99t-be-8224.html
NYS Department of Health Medicaid Redesign Team, “A Path Toward Value Based Payment,” June 2015, www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/redesign/dsrip/docs/vbp_roadmap_final.pdf
Eliot Fishman, “New York VBP Roadmap SFY 15 Approval Letter,” July 2015, www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/redesign/dsrip/2015-07-15_cms_vbp_roadmap_approval_letter.htm
Dan Goldberg, “Cuomo’s quiet healthcare funding challenged”, Politico New York, March 2, 2015, www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/03/8562780/cuomos-quiet-health-care-funding-challenge.
National Federation of Independent Business ET AL. v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, No. 11-393, Jne 2012, www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf
Kaiser Family Foundation, “Current Status of Medicaid Expansion Decisions,” January 2016, kff.org/health- reform/slide/current-status-of-the-medicaid-expansion-decision/
New York State of Health, website, January 2015, info.nystateofhealth.ny.gov/.
Irvin B. Nathan, “A dangerous Obamacare lawsuit,” The Washington Post, October 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/appeal-house-v-burwell/2015/10/04/d8eec2d6-693f-11e5-9ef3-fde182507eac_story.html
Robert Barnes, “Supreme Court accepts challenge to health law’s contraceptive mandate,” The Washington Post,November 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-accepts-challenge-to-health-laws-contraceptive-mandate/2015/11/06/5556d6da-8400-11e5-8ba6-cec48b74b2a7_story.html
Scott Atlas, “How Obamacare fails the poor and middle class,” CNN, March 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/opinion/atlas-obamacare-poor-middle-class/index.html
Dan Diamond, “Companies are Cutting Part Time Workers’ Hours. Blame Obamacare?,” Forbes, January 2015,www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/01/13/obamacares-impact-companies-cut-hours-for-part-time-workers
Amy Goldstein, “New York health co-op ordered to close down,” The Washington Post, September2015, www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-york-health-co-op-ordered-to-close-down/2015/09/25/5022acde-63b2-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html.
Robert Pear, “Investigation Finds Errors in Coverage and Payments Under Affordable Care Act,” The New YorkTimes, October 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/us/politics/affordable-care-act-health-care-law-fraud.html.
Matthew Hamilton, “State Audit: Health department made Medicaid payments for the dead,” Times Union,October 2015, www.timesunion.com/local/article/State-audit-Health-department-made-Medicaid-6599731.php
Scott Atlas, “How Obamacare fails the poor and middle class,” CNN, March 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/opinion/atlas-obamacare-poor-middle-class/index.html
Anna Matthews and Stephanie Armour, “Biggest Insurer Threatens to Abandon Health Law,” The Wall StreetJournal, November 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/unitedhealth-cuts-guidance-evaluating-its-insurance-exchange-segment-1447933310
The New York Times, “Insurers critical of late applicants” Times Union, January 2016, www.timesunion.com/news/article/Insurers-critical-of-late-applicants-6748139.php
Congressional Budget Office, “Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance Coverage for People Under Age 65: 2016 to2026,” March 2016, www.cbo.gov/publication/51385
Fox News, “Medicaid enrollment under Obamacare soars, raising cost concerns,” June 2015, www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/08/medicaid-expansion-under-obamacare-raising-costs-concerns-for-opt-in-states/
Avik Roy, “Transcending Obama Care,” Manhattan Institute, August 2014, www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mpr_17.htm
NYS Department of Health, “State and County Indicators for Tracking Public Health Priority Areas,” December2010, www.health.ny.gov/prevention/prevention_agenda/indicator_map.htm
APCD Council, “Interactive State Report Map,” www.apcdcouncil.org/state/map
Roberto A. Ferdman, “Puerto Rico’s controversial proposal would fine the parents of obese children,” TheWashington Post, February 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/puerto-ricos-controversial-proposal-would-fine-the-parents-of-obese-children/.
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Citation Oregon Study – http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/02/study-expanding-medicaid-doesnt-reduce-er-trips-it-increases-them/
In 2010, NYS and NYC asked the US Department of Agriculture to fund a demonstration project to ban the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages in SNAP. The project was rejected despite widespread support from the public health community and others (www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/cdp-snap-faq.pdf and www. empirecenter.org/?attachment_id=22591).
Tags: Healthcare Medicaid
Busting the cap
The budget crisis in New York’s Medicaid program stems from the failure of a key cost-control measure adopted during Governor Cuomo’s first term. In 2011, Cuomo and the Legislature imposed a “global cap” on state Medicaid spending that was tied to the medical inflation rate. The measure showed signs of working at first, but lost its effectiveness as circumstances changed, loopholes multiplied and compliance faltered. Read More
Hospital Revenue Surge Creates Haves and Have-Nots
New York’s hospitals are in the throes of two seemingly contradictory trends. Their collective revenues are showing strong growth, yet more and more of them are chronically operating in the red. Read More
The Impact of Single-Payer on New York Hospitals
Analyzing the impact of single-payer health care on New York's hospitals Read More
Shifting Shares
This issue brief explores the financial considerations and policy challenges associated with eliminating the local Medicaid share and reviews the options for implementing a state takeover. Read More
Profit Potential
This report finds no evidence that ownership restrictions have produced a public benefit in terms of the quality, cost or accessibility of hospital care. Read More
Checklist for Change: 2018 Edition
Reforms that would reduce the state’s cost burdens and improve its climate for growth. Read More
Indigent Carelessness
New York State’s “Indigent Care Pool” doles out more than $1 billion a year in grants to hospitals, ostensibly to reimburse them for providing free care to the poor and uninsured. But most of the time, how much money a hospital receives bears no relation to how much charity care it delivers. Read More
‘Block-granting’ Medicaid
Reform in the shape of a block grant would replace the current system of open-ended matching aid, which has been blamed for encouraging overspending and gamesmanship as some states sought to maximize their federal funding. A prime example of the phenomenon is New York, which operates one of the costliest Medicaid programs in the country. Read More
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Nov 23, 2020 SOURCE: BusinessWire
Institut Polytechnique de Paris and Accenture Form Strategic Partnership to Leverage Science and Technology to Address Major Societal, Economic, and Environmental Challenges
Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IP Paris) have entered into a five-year strategic partnership to co-develop solutions in response to the major social, economic, and environmental challenges that humanity faces. A central aspect of the partnership is the creation of an academic and research chair that aims to foster the development of innovative technologies in response to these challenges.
Institut Polytechnique de Paris and Accenture announced a strategic partnership to leverage science and technology to address major societal, economic and environmental challenges, attended virtually by IP Paris president Eric Labaye (right) and CEO of Accenture in Europe Jean-Marc Ollagnier (left). (Photo: Business Wire)
The partnership is being led by Jean-Marc Ollagnier, CEO of Accenture in Europe; Olivier Girard, CEO of Accenture in France and Benelux; Eric Labaye, president of Institut Polytechnique de Paris; and Jean-Paul Cottet, executive director of the École Polytechnique Foundation.
Building on IP Paris Interdisciplinary Research Centers, the academic and research chair — known as the “Chair of Technology for Change” — seeks to promote industry transformation and the emergence of innovative business models to foster environmental and social sustainability. It aims to accelerate and support environment, economic, social, and societal change through technological innovation.
Established initially for a period of five years, the Chair of Technology for Change will be an integral part of the research and education activities carried out at IP Paris. Its educational program will benefit today’s and tomorrow's students and decision makers by addressing a broad range of issues such as inclusive innovation, energy transition, sustainable technology, the circular economy, sustainable business models, and responsible finance. The Chair will strongly contribute to a certificate, the level of which will be based on the students’ degree of commitment toward these critical issues.
Chaired by Thierry Rayna, professor of Innovation Management at École Polytechnique and Research Director at the Innovation Interdisciplinary Institute (i3, a joint CNRS, École Polytechnique, Mines ParisTech, Télécom Paris research lab), the Chair of Technology for Change will build on the expertise of IP Paris’ 30 research laboratories and 950 faculty members. It will act as a platform for rapid responses to the societal and environmental issues outlined in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030.
Eric Labaye, president of IP Paris, said, "Addressing the current global societal, economic, and environmental challenges requires new innovation approaches. This new long-term partnership between IP Paris and Accenture, bringing together science, technology and industry expertise, is a major step in our aspiration to train responsible leaders and develop leading-edge interdisciplinary research on the world’s most pressing issues. The Chair of Technology for Change, linking technology, economics and sustainable development, will create new educational and research opportunities to shape the next wave of innovation with a positive impact for all.”
Jean-Marc Ollagnier, CEO of Accenture in Europe, said, “The combination of Accenture’s technology expertise and deep industry knowledge with the academic excellence of IP Paris will provide the scientific world with a unique opportunity to promote the latest research-based innovation more widely and rapidly and offer businesses easier access to the latest academic breakthroughs. Harnessing the power of technology and human knowledge and inventiveness is essential for addressing the challenges of today and tomorrow, whether demographic, economic, ecological, or societal. The only way for companies to emerge stronger and build a sustainable world is to embrace change and ensure that it benefits all.”
Olivier Girard, CEO of Accenture in France and Benelux, said, "Our collaboration with IP Paris on realizing the potential of technology for change is consistent with Accenture’s commitment to provide cutting-edge expertise and support the development of tomorrow’s talent. Convergence of industry and science is key to developing solutions to address the economic and societal challenges that lie ahead and building a future that benefits all.”
A key goal of the Chair of Technology for Change is to be a global leader — and a major contributor within European universities — in fostering sustainable development and economy through technological innovation. As such, the Chair of Technology for Change will organize annual events — such as a yearly Global Summit on Technology for Change, as well as international technology challenges and hackathons — bringing together representatives of the general public, academics, businesses, and policy-makers to focus on these issues. The Chair will also publish a yearly report on the latest research surrounding these issues in order to assist decision and policy-makers.
About the Institut Polytechnique de Paris
The Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IP Paris) is a public higher education and research institution that brings together five prestigious French engineering schools: École Polytechnique, ENSTA Paris, ENSAE Paris, Télécom Paris and Télécom SudParis. Under the auspices of the Institute, they share their bicentennial combined expertise to fulfil two major ambitions: to develop educational programs of excellence and cutting-edge research in science and technology. Thanks to the academic anchorage of its five founding schools and its alliance with HEC Paris, IP Paris positions itself as a leading academic and research institution in France and internationally. Visit us at www.ip-paris.fr
About the École Polytechnique Foundation
Created in 1987 by twenty leading French companies at the request of Bernard Esambert (Class of 1954), the Chairman of École Polytechnique Board of Directors at the time, and with the support of the Alumni Association, the École Polytechnique Foundation builds bridges between the business world and École Polytechnique, including its students and research professors. The Foundation is a recognized public-benefit organization that works to promote École Polytechnique. This status entitles it to receive gifts and bequests from both individuals and companies. The funds raised are directed to École Polytechnique programs, facilities, students, and research professors. Visit us at www.fondationx.org
Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services—all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 506,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.
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Cant Women chose to Field. CRR: 6.35
Root is ready to branch out
11yDanny Hall
Almost from the moment Yorkshire prodigy Joe Root picked up a cricket bat, comparisons with Michael Vaughan were bestowed upon him
Danny Hall30-Mar-2009
Yorkshire batting prospect, Joe Root © Yorkshire CCC
Almost from the moment Yorkshire prodigy Joe Root picked up a cricket bat, comparisons with Michael Vaughan were bestowed upon him. A calm and composed right-handed top-order batsman much in the mould of the former England captain, Root's cricketing destiny has been mapped out ever since Yorkshire coach Kevin Sharp spotted his potential as a youngster.
The accolades have since flowed; almost as freely as the runs. Root, now 18, first represented Yorkshire Schools at the age of 11, going on to score over 2,000 runs at an average of over 50 and was awarded a prestigious scholarship at Headingley just two years later.
Then, after promotion from scholarship to the club's academy side in 2007, he was named Player of the Tournament as the team triumphed in the Academy Arch Trophy tournament in Abu Dhabi just before Christmas last year, finishing with 276 runs at an average of 69, with a top score of 110.
And, after returning to his Sheffield home from the Middle East, Root declined the opportunity for a well-earned winter break - instead opting to pack his bags for South Africa, where he enjoyed a successful close season in Bloemfontein representing esteemed St. Andrew's Boy's School.
Touching down in England with three centuries and five fifties under his belt, Root immediately set his sights on glory with both Yorkshire and England. Clearly, this is a youngster not prepared to sit back and let fate take its course.
"I now have a massive head-start on the majority of other players around now," Root said. "I'm now mentally confident having found a nice bit of form just coming into the new season. It was a fantastic boost to my game, as well as giving me the chance to experience the different playing conditions and a different cricketing environment."
Whilst a number of other young cricketing hopefuls spent the off-season casually relaxing with an occasional indoor net thrown in, Root has been expanding both his technique and knowledge of the game - an investment he hopes will pay dividends when Yorkshire and England's Under-19s re-assess their personnel ahead of the new season.
"In terms of Yorkshire, I am currently trying to break into the second team and hopefully play some games there, show them what I can do," said Root. "This time next year, I would have liked to have cemented a spot in Yorkshire's second team and made a big score, and I really want to push for the first team as soon as possible."
And although he was he was left out of the England one-day squad which toured South Africa in January, Root is hoping to force his way into the selectors' thinking ahead of a three-Test series against Bangladesh Under-19s in July. "England have currently dropped me," he said, "but with the way I'm currently playing, if I keep going as I am then it will make it really hard for them not to pick me."
The comparisons with Yorkshire team-mate Vaughan were aided by the similarities in their respective rises to prominence. Both are Sheffield-based top order batsmen, with an organised aura at the crease and a classical cover drive.
The pair learned their trade at Sheffield Collegiate Cricket Club before progressing through the ranks at both county and international level - and have both subsequently suffered rejection by their country for winter tours.
The omission of Vaughan's name from the squad for the tour of the Caribbean over the icy months may have been the more notable of the two - but Root issued a glowing testament to his hero, insisting: "Michael is still such a good player, and I think England will definitely need him for the summer's Ashes series.
"Right from the start, he is the player I always most wanted to emulate - even from when he first burst on to the scene. Now, it's nice to be able to catch up with him at training sessions and pick his brains - it gives you a lot of confidence knowing you have these people to talk to."
Root is approaching one of the most important seasons in his career in the form of his life. Whether he emulates, or even surpasses, his hero Vaughan remains to be seen but, as a focused young man determined to realise the most common of cricketing aspirations - "Ultimately, I want to play for England," - the teen has a better chance than most.
Danny Hall is a trainee journalist at Sheffield Hallam University
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Essex Covid: Surge of coronavirus patients having 'significant impact' on hospitals across Essex
"This is the time to act, to follow the guidance and not to give up."
Essex County Council has said that an increasing number of coronavirus patients is having a "significant impact" on hospitals across Essex.
Earlier today (Wednesday, December 23), Secretary of State Matt Hancock announced that the remaining areas of Essex in Tier 2 will join the rest of Essex in Tier 4 at 0.01am on Boxing Day (December 26).
It follows a sharp rise in cases across the county.
Currently, half of Essex's areas have an infection rate above 1000 (cases per 100,000 residents).
This surge in Covid cases is having an effect on the county's hospital.
According to Essex County Council, 762 beds across Essex Hospital Trusts are currently occupied by confirmed Covid patients.
To see coronavirus statistics in your area, type your postcode below.
That's having a "significant impact" on health services on what is already a difficult time of the year.
Cllr David Finch - Leader of Essex County Council - said that now is the time for people to stay vigilant and not to give up.
He said: "The earlier move to Tier 4 for these remaining areas of Essex only serves to highlight the severity of the situation we are currently in and while these latest restrictions will have a significant impact on residents and businesses in those areas, they are unfortunately necessary.
"We continue to work hard to stem rising infection rates across Essex, including increasing our testing capacity and improving our local track and test efforts.
Council leader, David Finch
"We also remain committed to supporting local communities and businesses affected by local restrictions, as well as protecting our local health services.
"However, we also need the help of the people of Essex; for any of our work to be as effective as it can be, everyone must play their part.
"This is the time to act, to follow the guidance and not to give up.
"I urge residents across the county to do so to protect themselves and those they love.
Essex Tier 4: 'Disappointment' as Essex's least infected area Tendring put into Tier 4
Essex Tier 4: Every Essex town and village moving into Tier Four on Boxing Day
"If we all socially distance, wash our hands regularly and wear a face covering when required, we will reduce the rate of infection sooner – the power really is in our hands."
This Christmas, households in Basildon, Brentwood, Braintree, Epping Forest, Harlow, Thurrock, Maldon, Chelmsford, Rochford, Southend-on-Sea and Castle Point won't be able to mix.
Households in Colchester, Tendring and Uttlesford will be able to mix, but only on Christmas Day, as Tier 4 restrictions come into play at 0.01am on Boxing Day.
For the full roundup of today's events as they happened, click here.
Epping Forest
Uttlesford
Tendring
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Kristen Stewart to play Princess Diana in Spencer
Kristen Stewart will play Princess Diana in a new movie titled 'Spencer', which will be directed and produced by Pablo Larraín.
Kristen Stewart will play Princess Diana in a new movie titled 'Spencer'.
The 30-year-old actress is set to take on the role of the late Princess of Wales - who passed away in 1997 in a car crash in Paris, France - in the upcoming movie, which will be directed by Pablo Larraín.
According to Deadline, 'Spencer' - which was Diana's maiden name before she married Prince Charles in 1981 - will tell the story of a "critical weekend" in the early '90s, when Diana "decided her marriage to Prince Charles wasn't working, and that she needed to veer from a path that put her in line to one day be queen".
Larraín will also produce the flick, along with Fabula partner Juan de Dios, Jonas Dornbach, Janine Jackowski and Paul Webster.
Speaking to Deadline about the project, Larraín said: "We all grew up, at least I did in my generation, reading and understanding what a fairy tale is. Usually, the prince comes and finds the princess, invites her to become his wife and eventually she becomes queen. That is the fairy tale. When someone decides not to be the queen, and says, I'd rather go and be myself, it's a big big decision, a fairy tale upside down. I've always been very surprised by that and thought it must have been very hard to do. That is the heart of the movie.
"How and why do you decide to do that? It's a great universal story that can reach millions and millions of people, and that's what we want to do. We want to make a movie that goes wide, connects with a worldwide audience that is interested in such a fascinating life."
And the filmmaker says he chose Stewart for the role of Diana - who is the mother of Prince William and Prince Harry - because she is a "great actor" who can show "different layers" of a character in her work.
He added: "Kristin is one of the great actors around today. To do this well, you need something very important in film, which is mystery. Kristin can be many things, and she can be very mysterious and very fragile and ultimately very strong as well, which is what we need. The combination of those elements made me think of her. The way she responded to the script and how she is approaching the character, it's very beautiful to see. I think she's going to do something stunning and intriguing at the same time. She is this force of nature.
"I've seen movies from Kristin that are so diverse it's incredible, showing different layers and her diversity and strength as an actress. We're very happy to have her, she's very committed. As a filmmaker, when you have someone who can hold such a weight, dramatic and narrative weight just with her eyes, then you have the strong lead who can deliver what we are looking for."
'Spencer' does not yet have a release date, but is set to be marketed at the upcoming virtual Cannes Market.
Tagged in Princess Diana Kristen Stewart
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Preliminary report reveals no engine failure in deadly Kobe Bryant helicopter crash
By Kelli Johnson
FOX 11 Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES - Federal investigators say wreckage from the helicopter that crashed last month and killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others did not show any evidence of engine failure, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board released Friday.
In the report, NTSB chronicled the morning of the crash:
On the morning of Jan. 26, Kobe and Gianna Bryant, along with seven of their friends departed Orange County's John Wayne Airport. Preliminary information released by NTSB revealed the chopper departed at 9:06 a.m. in a northwest direction "at an altitude of about 700 to 800 feet mean sea level (msl) under visual flight rules (VFR)."
RELATED: News related to the life and death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant
After landing in Camarillo, the group was to head to a girls basketball tournament at Mamba Sports Academy in the Thousand Oaks area.
Also aboard were John, Keri and Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah and Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, and pilot Ara Zobayan.
Gianna, Payton and Alyssa were all teammates on the Los Angeles Lady Mambas, which was coached by Lakers legend Kobe Bryant.
At 9:20 a.m., Zobayan asked air traffic control to continue along Highway 101 shortly after entering the Burbank airspace.
NTSB's report said: "In response to the pilot’s request, the air traffic controller advised that cloud tops were reported at 2,400 feet msl and queried the pilot’s intentions; the pilot then requested a special VFR clearance (an ATC authorization to proceed in controlled airspace at less than VFR weather minima). The air traffic controller advised that the pilot would need to hold for a short time due to IFR traffic, which the pilot acknowledged. At 0932, ATC cleared the pilot of N72EX to transition the class C surface area following the I-5 freeway, maintaining special VFR conditions at or below 2,500 feet. The pilot acknowledged with a correct readback and climbed to approximately 1,400 feet msl (600 feet agl). In response to the query, the pilot replied to the Burbank ATC that he would follow Highway 118 and 'loop around VNY [Van Nuys Airport]' to follow Highway 101."
Just before 9:40 a.m. as the aircraft passed west of Van Nuys at 1,500 msl, an air traffic controller said he would not be able to continue radar contact and advised Zobayan to contact the Southern California Terminal Radar Approach Control (SCT).
SCT then took over when Zobayan informed them he was going to Camarillo at an altitude of 1500 feet. That air traffic controller was "immediately relieved by a different controller," the report stated.
Zobayan attempted to reach SCT to inform them he was "climbing above cloud layers and requested advisory services."
The air traffic controller who took over was unaware of the aircraft "as services had previously been terminated," and asked Zobayan to identify flight information. Zobayan then said he climbing to an altitude of 4,000 feet when the two lost contact.
Figure 4. Camera image from 0944 PST (NTSB)
The helicopter crashed into a Calabasas hillside near the intersection of Las Virgenes Road and Willow Glen Street at 9:47 a.m., officials say.
The NTSB recently slammed the Federal Aviation Administration for not implementing their helicopter recommendations.
RELATED: FAA faces criticism from federal investigators over helicopter recommendations
Figure 7. Exemplar photo of N72EX (NTSB)
A key in the investigation focused on the fact that the Sikorsky S-76B helicopter was not equipped with a terrain alarm system, cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders, federal officials said.
According to NTSB: "The helicopter was not equipped with a flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder (CVR) nor was it required to be for the accident flight. The helicopter was equipped with a four-axis automatic flight control system, electronic flight instrument system, radio altimeter, and ADS-B transponder. It was also equipped with a flight management system (FMS). The airworthiness group retained the FMS computer to examine it for any available recorded data stored in memory, and also retained two flight control computers, four gyros, and the standby attitude indicator for further examination. A number of personal electronic devices were recovered from the wreckage and will be examined for any relevant data."
The luxury helicopter was owned by Island Express Helicopters. The Long Beach-based company has since temporarily stopped flying to Catalina for "operational purposes."
RELATED: Island Express Helicopters suspends flights after deadly Calabasas crash killing 9
According to NTSB, the 12-passenger aircraft was built in 1991 with two Pratt & Whitney PT6B-36A turbine engines.
Figure 8. Photo of N72EX cockpit (NTSB)
"The helicopter used a four-blade, fully articulated main rotor system, four-blade anti-torque system, and retractable landing gear," the report stated. "After the sale to Island Express in 2015, the helicopter was converted to an 8-passenger seat configuration with two pilot stations up front and eight passengers in the rear, separated by a bulkhead with sliding acrylic windows. Passenger seating was 2 four occupant divans, one facing forward, the other rearward."
The investigation is being conducted by the NTSB, FAA, Island Express Helicopters, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, and numerous federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
The investigation team includes NTSB meteorologists and data analysts who are studying the weather conditions at the time of the crash.
Investigators were asking anyone who took pictures or videos taken in the general area of the crash site to email them to authorities.
RELATED: Public's help sought in federal investigation of deadly chopper crash that killed all nine onboard
Pictures and videos that were submitted to investigators in the area of the deadly crash showed "fog and low clouds obscuring the hilltops," the NTSB preliminary investigation said.
Figure 5b. Resident photograph. (NTSB)
A mountain biker sent the above image to authorities. It was taken at about 9:50 a.m. the morning of the crash. NTSB included in their report that the "witness stated that the area was surrounded by mist. He said he began to hear the sound of a helicopter, which he described as appropriate for a helicopter flying while in a powered condition. He perceived the sound getting louder and saw a blue and white helicopter emerge from the clouds passing from left to right directly to his left. He judged it to be moving fast, traveling on a forward and descending trajectory. It started to roll to the left such that he caught a glimpse of its belly. He observed it for 1 to 2 seconds, before it impacted terrain about 50 feet below his position."
The plane had accumulated 4716.1 hours, maintenance records indicate.
NTSB adds, "there were no outstanding airworthiness directives or minimum equipment list items, and all inspections were up to date."
Federal authorities revealed last week that Zobayan missed clearing the mountainside by 20 to 30 feet and the wreckage from the luxury helicopter was spread between 500 and 600 feet.
Figure 1b. Google Earth map of wreckage area – northern (NTSB)
“The impact site was on an approximate 34⁰ slope. The impact crater was 24 feet-by-15 feet in diameter and 2 feet deep,” the preliminary report said.
The report also noted that an estimated 95 percent of the helicopter's main rotor blades were recovered from the crash site. “All four blades exhibited similar damage consisting of midspan bending, pocket separation, blade tip separation, and leading-edge indentations and scuffing.”
Figure 1a. Google Earth map of wreckage area – southern (directions reference true north) (NTSB)
All nine victims will be honored at a public memorial at Staples Center, known as "The House that Kobe Built," Feb. 24.
A memorial service will also be held at Angel Stadium for the Altobelli family. John Altobelli, better known as "Coach Alto," worked as a coach and mentor at Orange Coast College for 27 years.
RELATED: Orange Coast College baseball coach among victims of Calabasas chopper crash
The investigation is ongoing.
NJ man wanted for murder of hunter arrested in Bensalem, prosecutors say
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Western Australia's largest and busiest general cargo port operating through two harbours
Operating through two harbours, the port facilitates trade that is vital to WA.
The Port of Fremantle operates through two harbours. The Inner Harbour at Fremantle handles almost all of the container trade for Western Australia. It also provides facilities for livestock exports, motor vehicle imports, other general cargo trades, cruise ships and visiting naval vessels.
The Outer Harbour, about 22km to the south at Kwinana, is one of Australia’s major bulk cargo ports handling grain, petroleum, liquid petroleum gas, alumina, mineral sands, fertilisers, coal, sulphur, iron ore and other bulk commodities.
Three of the jetties in the Outer Harbour are operated by private companies, generally under Special Agreement Acts with the State. They are the Alcoa, BP and CBH Group jetties. Kwinana Bulk Jetty and the Kwinana Bulk Terminal are operated by Fremantle Ports.
The port is a mix of facilities and services managed by Fremantle Ports and private operators. Fremantle Ports provides and maintains shipping channels, navigation aids, cargo wharves at common user areas and leased terminals, the Fremantle Passenger Terminal, road and rail transport infrastructure in the port area, moles and seawalls and other port infrastructure such as storage sheds, water, power and public amenities.
Services such as towage, pilotage (under contract to Fremantle Ports), line boats and bunkering are provided by the private sector.
Fremantle Ports also cooperates with Commonwealth Government agencies responsible for customs, quarantine and maritime safety.
Dynamic Under Keel Clearance
Today Tonight Perth story on the Port of Fremantle
Fremantle Ports is currently operating at MARSEC Security Level 1.
$3.6 m worth of trade handled every hour 24/7
Maps of the Fremantle Inner Harbour and Outer Harbour showing buildings and facilities, berths and jetties, gates and deliveries, and parking.
Fremantle Ports is committed to providing reliable, efficient and commercially viable port services and facilities for our customers.
The Fremantle Inner Harbour was built in 1897 but Fremantle's role as a port and trading area began long before that.
Fremantle Port is recognised as the State’s key trade gateway and a significant driver of Western Australia’s economy.
Australia's nationwide identification card for the maritime industry is the Maritime Security Identification Card (MSIC).
Fremantle Ports' 360-degree webcams provide unique perspectives of the Fremantle Inner Harbour, from Victoria Quay and Cantonment Hill.
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Atualizado: 12 de Dez de 2019
Former public hospital in Manaus, the Santa Casa building is abandoned and an example of neglect in the current political and historical scenario. Photos: Luiz Maudonnet
Text by Tiago Queiroz and Luiz Maudonnet
The Santa Casa de Misericórdia, the historic public hospital of Manaus, in the state of Amazonas, is in ruins. What was once one of the best hospitals in the region, today is a renegade and forgotten space, occupied by rubble and neglected individuals who frequent the area. Between 2015 and 2019, 8 homicides were recorded on the grounds of the old building.
In 2004, the state government, at the time, cut the budget transfers essential for the maintenance of the institution and, for lack of resources, the hospital was forced to close the doors, closing the activities.
Since then, a wave of depredation of the property has spread, in the absence of surveillance. Its roofs, frames, wiring and everything that could be sold, was stolen.
In 2014, the Santa Casa building was declared a national cultural heritage site by the IPHAN (National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute). Instead of helping to maintain the property and prevent its deterioration, there was the opposite effect, since now its preservation was in possession of an omissive government, and private initiative prevented from buying the property and renovating it.
Surrounded by rubble, every sunday a group of Catholics holds a mass in the old chapel of the hospital. The religious carry all the necessary structure, from candles and Christian ornaments to the speakers, and in the end everything is dismantled and taken away. Such an event gives the measure of the historical value that the Santa Casa has for the city population.
The Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Manaus and the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro are examples of neglect within the current scenario, where thousands of historic buildings scattered throughout Brazil are abandoned due to the lack of effective public policies and an efficient regulatory system and, therefore, risk collapsing, disappearing, taking along all its history and importance.
To find out more about Luiz Maudonnet's work:
https://www.instagram.com/luizmaudonnet/
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Info & Updates
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Excel Academy Charter School is authorized under Warner Unified School District and Helendale School District. We are proud of the esteemed and accomplished board members that make decisions in the best interest of our students and our community.
Excel Academy is governed by the Excel Academy Charter Schools Board of Directors. Many of the board members have years of experience in education, having worked at the local, district, and state levels. Board meetings take place regularly, the minutes from which can be found below, beneath the self-profiles of its various members.
William Hall, President
I have worked in education for the past 46 years as teacher, counselor, principal and consultant. I am also a certified core adjunct faculty member at National University, working with aspiring teachers, administrators and counselors. I enjoy serving as a board member of Community Collaborative Charter School. Doing so affords me, as well as all board members, an opportunity to affect policies, procedures, and programs that have a direct, positive impact upon students.
Michael Humphrey, Vice President
My career started in education as a result of a startling realization, while working in juvenile probation, that there must be a way to have a positive impact on children so they might avoid the pitfalls of what I saw them experiencing in this early career work. I developed a vision and a dream that things could be better. Elementary education was a bright path to that end. 45 years later after having been an elementary school teacher, a special educator, a public elementary and private junior high principal, a college professor in my field of psychology and now an active board member on CCVS/Excel Academy has given me a rare opportunity to see that dream realized. CCVS/Excel Academy board membership is an extension of that dream and I am so grateful that it continues to this day and hopefully will as long as I am able to help. I am convinced that we do noble work together.
Susan Houle, Clerk
I spent 31 incredible years in education serving students, parents, and teachers. I taught 7th grade basic education which includes English, reading, writing and social science. At the high school level I taught world history and for ten years I was an administrator. I retired a few years ago and now I’m able to go deep sea fishing more often and travel to go salmon and bass fishing.
Steve Fraire, Board Member
I have been a career educator for over 38 years beginning in the bay area as a Principal, Assistant Principal, Director of Student Activities, SARB/Truancy Intervention Coordinator, Special Education and Juvenile Court School teacher and then with the San Diego County Office of Education as Coordinator of Child Welfare, Attendance, and School Safety. I currently serve on the California Department of Education School Attendance Review Board and Southern California Charter School Boards. I have been Past President of the Southern Section California Association Coordinators of Child Welfare and Attendance and the Marin County Juvenile Justice Commission. I have been awarded Marin County Educator of the Year and have received a State Assembly Resolution for Dedication to Education and Marin County Board of Supervisors Resolution of Commendation for Service to the Educational Community.
Larry Alvarado, Board Member
My experience in the field of education is as follows: National University, 2010 to present, Adjunct Professor Dept of Special Education. University of San Diego, 2006 to 2014, Adjunct Professor Dept of Special Education. Chula Vista Elementary School District, 1991 to Dec. 2010, Chula Vista, California Position: Principal (retired) Chula Vista Elementary School District, March, 1990 to July 1991, Chula Vista, California Program Specialist. San Ysidro School District, September, 1984 to March, 1990 San Ysidro, California Director Special Services. National School District, September, 1979 to June, 1984, National City, California Resource Specialist. Home of Guiding Hands, Summer 1978 and 1979, Lakeside, California Special Education Teacher. I have joined MY Academy as a member of their Board to support their efforts in providing a high-quality educational experience for the students who have enrolled in this program. I have seen firsthand the dedication of the staff for the students in the program. I wanted to be a part of a Charter School Board that puts students first. It has been my pleasure working with my fellow Board Members and the Leadership Team.
Our Executive Services Team
Kurt Madden
kmadden@collaborativecharters.org
Lori Hath
lhath@cccs.education
Use the resources below to explore more about our board, upcoming and past meeting dates, agendas, accountability plans, and more.
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Iran threatens to choke oil flow
By David E. Sanger and Annie Lowrey, New York Times Dec. 28, 2011
WASHINGTON — A senior Iranian official Tuesday delivered a sharp threat in response to economic sanctions being readied by the United States, saying his country would retaliate against any crackdown by blocking all oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for transporting about one-fifth of the world's oil supply.
The declaration by Iran's first vice president, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, came as President Barack Obama prepares to sign legislation that, if fully implemented, could substantially reduce Iran's oil revenue in a bid to deter it from pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
Before the latest move, the administration had been laying the groundwork for cutting off Iran from global energy markets without raising the price of gasoline or alienating close allies.
Apparently fearful of the expanded sanctions' possible impact on the already-stressed economy of Iran, the world's third-largest energy exporter, Rahimi said: “If they impose sanctions on Iran's oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz,” according to Iran's official news agency.
Iran just began a 10-day naval exercise in the area.
By DAVID E. SANGER and ANNIE LOWREY, NEW YORK TIMES
Iran threatens to block oil route over sanctions
Iran says it would block oil shipments
Obama administration officials have recently said the U.S. has a plan to keep the strait open in the event of a crisis.
In Hawaii, where Obama is vacationing, a White House spokesman said there would be no comment on the Iranian threat.
The energy sanctions carry the risk of confrontation, as well as economic disruption, given the unpredictability of the Iranian response.
Some administration officials believe a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States — which Washington alleges received financing from the Quds Force, part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps — was in response to U.S. and other international sanctions.
Making the threat appeared to be part of an Iranian effort to demonstrate its ability to cause a spike in oil prices, thus slowing the U.S. economy, and to warn U.S. trading partners that joining the new sanctions, which the Senate passed by a rare 100-0 vote, would come at a high cost.
Oil prices rose above $100 a barrel in trading after the threat, although it was unclear how much that came from investors' concern that a Persian Gulf confrontation could disrupt oil flows.
The new punitive measures, part of a bill financing the military, would significantly escalate U.S. sanctions against Iran.
They come just a month and a half after the International Atomic Energy Agency published a report that for the first time laid out its evidence that Iran may be secretly working to design a nuclear warhead, despite the country's repeated denials.
The European Union also is contemplating strict sanctions, such as an embargo on Iranian oil.
Some economists question whether reducing Iran's oil exports without moving the price of oil is feasible, even if the market is given signals about alternative supplies.
Analysts at investment banks are warning of the possibility of rising gasoline prices in 2012, due to the new U.S. sanctions and complementary sanctions under consideration by the EU.
Since Obama's first months in office, his aides have been talking to Saudi Arabia and other oil suppliers about increasing their production, and about guaranteeing sales to countries like China, which is among Iran's biggest customers.
But it's unclear the Saudis can fill in the gap left by Iran, even with the help of Libyan oil that's coming back on the market.
The United States also is looking to countries like Iraq and Angola to increase production.
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Todmorden with Walsden
Todmorden with Walsden was in Lancashire prior to 1888, and after that became part of Yorkshire. See also Halifax.
"TODMORDEN, a town, a township, and a chapelry, in Lancashire, and a sub-district and a district partly also in W. R. Yorkshire. The town stands on the river Calder, the Rochdale canal, and the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, 7½ miles NNE of Rochdale; enjoys fine environs, overhung all round by lofty mountains; presents an irregularly-built and straggling appearance; is a seat of petty-sessions and county courts; publishes two monthly newspapers; carries on extensive manufactures of cotton, fustians, velveteens, satteens, iron-work, and machinery; and has a head post-office, a r. station with telegraph, a banking office, three chief inns, a police station, an Odd Fellows' hall, a marble statue of the late John Fielden set up in 1861, a handsome church of 1831, an old church now used only for mortuary services, five dissenting chapels, a mechanics' institute, national schools, a weekly market on Saturday, a cattle market on the first Thursday of every month, and two annual fairs, each of three days' continuance, the one from the Thursday before Easter, the other from 27 Sept. The township includes Walsden chapelry, bears the name of T. and Walsden, and is in Rochdale parish. Acres, not separately returned. Real property, £30,677; of which £2,252 are in mines, and £103 in quarries. Pop. in 1851, 7,699; in 1861, 9,146. Houses, 1,790. Dobroyd Castle, built in 1866-8, T. Hall, Stansfield Hall, Scaitcliffe, Centre Vale, and Ridgefoot are chief residences; and there are many handsome villas. The chapelry comprises all the township except Walsden. Pop., 5,212. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Manchester. Value, £300. Patron, the Vicar of Rochdale. The sub-district includes part of Halifax parish; and had, in 1861, a pop. of 20,287. Houses, 4,031. The district includes also Hebden-Bridge sub-district, and comprises 26,920 acres, besides the area of T. township. Poor rates in 1863, £12,617. Pop. in 1851, 29,727; in 1861, 31,113. Houses, 6,435. Marriages in 1863, 133; births, 949,-of which 66 were illegitimate; deaths, 549,-of which 172 were at ages under 5 years, and 7 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 1,289; births, 9,238; deaths, 6,122. The places of worship, in 1851, were 7 of the Church of England, with 4,950 sittings; 3 of Independents, with 1,120 s.; 13 of Baptists, with 4,092 s.; 1 of Quakers, with 250 s.; 1 of Unitarians, with 400 s.; 11 of Wesleyans, with 3,731 s.; 4 of Primitive Methodists, with 1,090 s.; 8 of the Wesleyan Association, with 1,981 s.; and 1 undefined, with 350 s. The schools were 18 public day-schools, with 1,773 scholars; 45 private day-schools, with 1,550 s.; 46 Sunday schools, with 7,104 s.; and 7 evening schools for adults, with 156 s. There is no workhouse."
The following books contain useful information about the history of Todmorden and the surrounding area.
The LDS FHL have a book on microfilm, written in 1907 entitled 'Ratcliffe of Hazelgreave and Woodfield Farms, Todmorden', which contains information on branches of the Ratcliffe family in and around Todmorden. FHL Film number is 990439 item 7
Christ Church, Todmorden, Church of England
St Mary Church of England, Todmorden
St Peter Church of England, Walsden
Shore, Todmorden, Baptist
Vale, Todmorden, Baptist
Todmorden Edge, Todmorden, Quaker Burial Ground
Hanging Ditch, Todmorden, Unitarian
Honey Hole Unitarian, Todmorden
Society of Friends (Quakers)
Shoebroad, Todmorden, Society of Friends
Details about the census records, and indexes for Todmorden with Walsden.
Lineholme, Todmorden, Baptist
Mount Olivet, Todmorden, Baptist
Roomfield Lane, Todmorden, Baptist
Wellington Road , Todmorden, Baptist
Patmos, Todmorden, Congregational
Bridge St, Todmorden, United Methodist Free Church
Patmos, Todmorden, Methodist New Connexion
Todmorden Salem Primitive Methodist Lancashire
York St, Todmorden, Wesleyan Methodist
St Joseph, Todmorden, Roman Catholic
Honey Hole, Todmorden, Society of Friends
A picture of St Peter's, Walsden.
The Register Office covering the Todmorden area is Calderdale.
You can see pictures of Todmorden with Walsden which are provided by:
Ask for a calculation of the distance from Todmorden with Walsden to another place.
"TODMORDEN, a market and post town in the parish of Rochdale, hundred of Salford, county Lancaster, 9 miles N.E. of Rochdale, and 12 W. of Halifax. It is a station on the eastern section of the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, where the Burnley branch turns off. This place, anciently called Todmaredene, or "the valley of the Foxmere," is situated in the vale of the Calder, near the Halifax and Rochdale canal, and on the Yorkshire border, where it extends into the parish of Halifax. The town is well built and lighted with gas, and is under the local government of a board of magistrates, with a police inspector and two constables. Petty sessions are held once a fortnight, and a county court once a month at the Odd Fellows' Hall. The population of the town in 1861 was 11,797, of which number the township of Todmorden, including the hamlet of Walsden, contained 9,146 against 7,699 in 1851, the remainder were residents within the adjoining townships of Langfield and Stansfield. The gas-works were erected in 1847, at an expense of £10,000, and a savings-bank in 1857; there are also a branch of the Manchester and Liverpool bank, a police station with lock-up, and several hotels. Many of the inhabitants are employed in the cotton mills, which trade includes various branches, as cotton spinning, fustians, velveteens, satteens, dimities, and calicoes; the manufacture also of worsted goods has been introduced, and there are foundries and machine works of great magnitude, these last chiefly engaged in supplying the extensive manufactories in the neighbourhood. Water, stone, timber, and coal are abundant, which add to the advantages of this as a manufacturing district. In addition to the numerous water-mills on the banks of the Calder, there are in the township several factories where the machinery is wholly propelled by steam; but hand-loom weaving is now extinct.
In the adjoining township of Langfield stands a stone column, first erected in 1815, to commemorate the termination of the French war; but having fallen down, was subsequently re-erected by subscription, at an expense of about £800. The principal seats are Scaitcliffe, Todmorden Hall, Stansfield Hall, Centre Vale, and Ridge Foot. The Poor-law Union comprises 6 townships, but there is no union workhouse, the poor being relieved at their respective townships. The board of guardians meet at the Station House inn every Thursday. Two newspapers, the Todmorden Advertiser and Post are published in the town. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Manchester, value £300, in the patronage of the Vicar of Rochdale. The church is dedicated to Christ. The chancel has a painted E. window. It was erected in 1831, and stands by the old one, dedicated to St. Mary, which is used as a chapel-of-ease. There is also a new church at Walsden, which by a recent Act of parliament has been constituted a separate parish for ecclesiastical purposes. There are National schools, partially endowed, for both sexes, and other schools, designated Short-time schools, supported by the principal manufacturers. The Wesleyans, Calvinists, Unitarians, and New Connexion and Association Methodists have chapels. Market day is on Saturday, and on the first Thursday in each month for cattle. Fairs are held on the Thursday before Easter, and on the 27th September for cattle, &c."
"WALSDEN, a hamlet in the parish of Rochdale, hundred of Salford, county Lancaster, 5 miles N.E. of Rochdale, its post town, and 10 from Burnley. It is a station on the Leeds section of the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway. It is joined with Todmorden. There are cotton-mills, collieries, stone-quarries, and chemical works, which afford employment to the chief portion of the inhabitants. The soil is clayey, with a rocky subsoil. A portion of the Roman road from Manchester to York passes through this parish. The living is a perpetual curacy in the diocese of Manchester, value £150, in the patronage of the crown and bishop alternately. The church is dedicated to St. Peter. There is a parochial school for both sexes. J. Dearden, Esq., is lord of the manor."
Genealogical and historical information about Todmorden and Walsden.
In 1835 Todmorden with Walsden was a township in the parish of Rochdale. Prior to 1888 this township and half of the town of Todmorden was in Lancashire, the other half being in the West Riding of Yorkshire. From 1 January 1888 all of Todmorden became part of Yorkshire.
You can see the administrative areas in which Todmorden with Walsden has been placed at times in the past. Select one to see a link to a map of that particular area.
View maps of and places within its boundaries.
You can see maps centred on OS grid reference SD927228 (Lat/Lon: 53.701932, -2.112369), Todmorden with Walsden which are provided by:
For probate purposes prior to 1858, Todmorden with Walsden was in the Archdeaconry of Chester, in the Diocese of Chester. The original Lancashire wills for the Archdeaconry of Chester are held at the Lancashire Record Office.
Calderdale FHS.
Last updated Fri, 23/10/2020 - 14:43 - maintained by Phil Stringer
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Barnesville School Names New Head
The Board of Trustees of Barnesville School of Arts & Sciences unanimously approved the appointment of Susanne Johnson as Head of School. Johnson has been serving as Interim Head since July 2015, and she previously served as the School’s Director of Institutional Advancement.
At Barnesville’s annual Board-Parent gathering, Board Chair, Jeff Donohoe said, “Susanne continues to do a tremendous job leading the School. She has earned the trust, admiration, and confidence of the entire community, and we believe there is no one more qualified and committed to leading Barnesville forward.”
Donohoe credited Johnson and her leadership team with instituting new cross-curricular programs, bolstering advancement and enrollment efforts, and strengthening financial controls, all while leading the day-to-day efforts of Barnesville’s extraordinary faculty and staff.
“The School’s mission of joy, support, and excellence continues to serve as my leadership compass,” said Johnson. “It guides our program, defines our culture, and is the essence of a Barnesville education. It is an honor and privilege to work every day to fulfill that mission.”
With fifteen years of private sector sales and marketing management experience, Johnson has a proven track record of developing and directing top-performing teams. At Barnesville, Johnson progressed from Director of Admissions to Director of Institutional Advancement, where she has led successful Annual Fund campaigns, exceeding fundraising goals and increasing participation rates each year. Prior to her employment at Barnesville, Johnson served as a leader in nearly every volunteer capacity at the School, including Board of Trustees Secretary, Annual Fund Chair, Gala Chair, and Chair of the Jaralyn Hough Fund Campaign that raised $500,000.
She has served as President of LAND (Landscape and Nature Discoveries), which supports environmental education, since its inception in 2006, and previously served as Treasurer of Clarksburg Chamber of Commerce Board. Johnson earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Babson College’s Franklin W. Olin Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College.
Barnesville School of Arts & Sciences offers an innovative preschool through 8th grade education that integrates the humanities, arts, math, and science. Small class settings foster a culture of joy, support, and excellence. Located in the Montgomery County Agricultural Reserve, Barnesville is certified as a Maryland Green School by the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education, demonstrating achievement in curriculum and instruction, community partnerships, and best management practices.
Caption: Barnesville School Board Chair, Jeff Donohoe; Head of School, Susanne Johnson; and new Board Member and Alumnus, Jon Mullen. Photo supplied.
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Seneca Valley Holds Off Clarksburg in Tense Game
It seemed the postseason started early on Friday night as Seneca Valley hosted Clarksburg for a game that felt more like a playoff matchup than the last regular season game of the season. The large crowd with supporters of both teams added to the intensity for the Eagles’ senior night send-off, which saw Seneca Valley’s outstanding senior point guard, Triston Price return to action for the first time in more than a month.
After allowing a 20 point lead to evaporate, Seneca Valley was able to hold off a hard-charging Clarksburg team to win 59-52. The Eagles end the regular season 15-7, and the Coyotes drop to an even 11-11 on the year.
Seneca Valley had 11 fast-break points in the first quarter to help build the lead.
“We looked like ourselves there for a while in the first half and for a bit in the second half,” said Seneca Valley Head Coach Brian Humphrey. The Eagles led 26-7 after the first quarter, and much of that was attributable to Price’s return from an MCL injury suffered Jan. 12 in a game against Northwood. “Triston was on a timer so we could only play him for two minutes and we had to take him out,” said Humphrey. “As a result, we would get into a flow, and he’d come, and we’d get out of that flow, and get back in when he was playing.”
In limited time and playing at about 80 percent of his capacity, Price was able to score 13 points, on five field goal, and a three-pointer.
“I had to keep the injury out of my head and just play for my team,” said Price. “I had to keep my composure. I am just happy I am playing again. This is my last regular season game. It feels good.”
Seneca was led by sophomore Mazae Blake who netted 17 points on three-twos, and three-threes and shot two from the foul line. In all, the Eagles had four players in double-digits, Price, Blake, and seniors Harold Dotson and Manasseh Joaquin. Joaquin added 11 points, and Dotson had 10 points in the game.
Humphrey expects to have Price for the entire postseason run. “That is the goal. It is nice that we have about a week and a half until our first game. It will be up to the trainer how much he can go. His health is the most important thing. Hopefully, he will be well enough that we can extend out that time frame that he plays. When Triston, Harold (Dotson) and Zae (Blake) are on the floor, it makes for a tough combination to stop.”
“I am just trying to put extra work in to get back to the Xfinity Center and the state finals. I have the brace on, and I just have to adjust to playing with it. I am playing for my teammates and my man that is not here anymore,” he said clutching the No. 2 jersey he wears in honor of Andrew Dantzler who died in tragic swimming accident days after graduating in 2016.
When Price was a sophomore, Dantzler was the senior point guard, and the two became close friends as Dantzler took the younger player under his wing. The team continues to stay “True 2 Drew” wearing Dantzler’s No.2 on their warm-up tee shirts.
The Coyotes are a team that has shown throughout the season that they have the ability to be explosive offensively. Clarksburg was down by 25 points at one point in the second quarter but were able to rebound to cut Seneca’s lead to 15 by halftime.
The Coyotes came out of the gate in the third quarter to go on a nine-zero run. Clarksburg outscored Seneca 16-8 in the third, led in large part by Stephen Armstrong’s 11 points in the quarter. He would go on to lead all scorers with 23 points in the game. By the end of the third quarter, the Coyotes were able to cut the lead to 42-36 and set up a wild final quarter.
The Coyotes had two other players in double digits, seniors Kene Okafor and Alex Behzadi each had 10 points.
Clarksburg continued to chip away at the Seneca lead, which would be just five points by the 2:07 mark in the fourth quarter. Armstrong added another 10 points down the stretch, scoring 17 of his 23 points in the second half. He would go on to lead all scorers.
The Eagles defense would bend but not break. With 1:19 remaining Clarksburg cut the lead to three points, 55-52 on a rebound put-back by Armstrong, but the Eagles would pull away in the final minute. Harold Dotson would get a handle on a loose ball in the Seneca defensive zone and race up the court, flip a pass to a streaking Price who finished with an easy layup to put the Eagles up 59-52 with just 8.8 seconds remaining.
In other Germantown boys’ basketball news, the Northwest Jaguars completed the best season in school history with a 78-72 victory at Northwood. The Jags end the regular season 19-3 and will be the top seed in the 4A West Regional Playoffs.
The Jags earned the top seed because of their 71-64 victory over Gaithersburg, which ended the regular season with the same record in the Division, but the head-to-head win gave Northwest the top seed.
The official seeding and matchups for the boy's playoff tournament will be completed on Tuesday, Feb. 20 and games will begin Friday, Feb. 23. However, Seneca Valley and Northwest are expected to get each get a bye in the first round.
Captions:
Top: Seneca Valley sophomore Mazae Blake (5) drives to the basket. He finished with 17 points to lead the Eagles.
Next: Clarksburg senior Stephan Armstrong (23) lead all scorers with 23 points in the game.
Next: In the final seconds Seneca Valley senior Harold Dotson (11) grabbed a steal and raced up the court on a fast break and flipped the ball to fellow senior Triston Price who was streaking up the court.
Next: Triston Price finished the fastbreak and sealed the victory with an easy layup after getting the flip from Dotson.
Video: Northwest senior Adrian Thomas with a basket during the Jags’ victory over Northwood on Friday. Video courtesy Northwest Principal Jimmy D’Andrea.
Photos by Germantown Pulse.
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Officials Urge Hogan Administration Not to Postpone I-270 Study
Montgomery County officials joined with Frederick County officials in urging the Hogan administration to not postpone a study on potential improvements to I-270 in the UpCounty.
In September of 2017, Hogan stood on a hill overlooking I-270 in Gaithersburg and shocked many local Montgomery County government and civic leaders with a massive bombshell about his administration’s plan to ease traffic congestion and widen three major commuter highways in the State of Maryland.
However, last week it was revealed that the plan will fall short of widening the very portion of I-270 which the announcement overlooked. The current study will only include the portion of I-270 from I-495 to I-370 in Gaithersburg. The section of I-270 from I-370 to I-70 in Frederick County line will be part of the next phase of the study which is vaguely scheduled for the “future study” according to a document outlining the details of the Managed Lanes Study provided by the Maryland Department of Transportation.
Earlier this week, County officials from both Frederick and Montgomery counties sent a letter to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Secretary of Transportation Pete K. Rahn urging the State not to postpone a study on potential improvements to the I-270 highway between I-370 and Frederick County. The letter encourages the inclusion of one or more transit elements in the study to reduce automotive traffic and congestion.
A similar study has already been conducted on the southern portion of I-270 as part of the State’s Traffic Relief Plan, announced in 2017, which would add express toll lanes to I-270. Council President Riemer and the Council believe that the plan as currently envisioned would exacerbate congestion on I-270 between Gaithersburg and Frederick.
“While we are gratified that a portion of the I-270 corridor will be analyzed,” said the letter which was signed by Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, Council President Hans Riemer, Frederick County Executive Jan Gardner, and Council President Bud Otis, “we are very concerned about MDOT’s announcement that it intends to postpone — indefinitely — the study of improvements on I-270 between I-370 and the City of Frederick. Without changes to the northern portion of I-270, the major expansion of southern I-270 will only exacerbate the severe congestion between Gaithersburg and Frederick. This congestion results from the significant reduction in existing capacity (from 12 to 4 lanes) that occurs as one travels north along I-270 between I-370 and Frederick.”
“While we are pleased that the Governor has put widening I-270 on the agenda, we are dismayed to learn that he has decided to stop any potential new construction at I-370 in Gaithersburg,” said Hans Riemer in a statement. “Residents north of Gaithersburg need relief as well. Additionally, we are calling on the Governor to make this project multi-modal by including a major transit investment in the infrastructure plan.”
The Montgomery Council also urged MDOT to include addition of transit elements to the Traffic Relief Plan, to provide an efficient, environmentally-friendly alternative to driving and reduce the glut of cars on the highway.
The letter concludes, “We strongly urge you to incorporate in the study one or more transit elements to complement your proposed highway improvements. We have long believed that the solution to mobility in the I-270 Corridor is one that provides more options to travelers. Transit improves commuters for drivers by taking more cars off the road, moving more people per lane, and making the transportation network more efficient. This is an essential component of the long-term solution for this corridor.”
The $9 billion Traffic Relief Plan announced in the fall of 2017 is aimed at reducing congestion for millions of drivers on I-270, I-495, and MD-295. While making the announcement Hogan said, “These three massive, unprecedented projects to widen I-495, I-270, and MD 295 will be absolutely transformative, and they will help Maryland citizens go about their daily lives. These projects will substantially and dramatically improve our state highway system and traffic in the region.”
Photos by Germantown Pulse. Video courtesy Montgomery County Council.
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Tournaments > 2014 > United States > 45th World Series of Poker - WSOP 2014
Tournament: 45th World Series of Poker - WSOP 2014
Date: May 27 - Jul 7, 2014
Event: No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball (Event #36) (Jun 16 - 18, 2014)
Prize: $325,350
May 27 - 28, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Casino Employees Event (Event #1) $500
May 27 - 29, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Mixed Max (Event #2) $25,000
May 28 - 30, 2014 Pot Limit Omaha (Event #3) $1,000
May 29 - 31, 2014 No Limit Hold'em (Event #4) $1,000
May 29 - 31, 2014 Limit 2-7 Triple Draw (Event #5) $10,000
May 30 - Jun 1, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Shootout (Event #6) $1,500
May 30 - Jun 1, 2014 Seven Card Razz (Event #7) $1,500
May 31 - Jun 3, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Millionaire Maker (Event #8) $1,500
Jun 1 - 3, 2014 No Limit Hold'em (Event #9) $1,000
Jun 1 - 3, 2014 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo (Event #10) $10,000
Jun 2 - 4, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Six Handed (Event #11) $1,500
Jun 3 - 5, 2014 Pot Limit Hold'em (Event #12) $1,500
Jun 3 - 5, 2014 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball (Event #13) $10,000
Jun 4 - 6, 2014 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo (Event #14) $1,500
Jun 5 - 7, 2014 Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball (Event #16) $1,500
Jun 6 - 8, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Seniors Championship (Event #17) $1,000
Jun 6 - 8, 2014 Seven Card Razz (Event #18) $10,000
Jun 7 - 9, 2014 No Limit Hold'em (Event #19) $1,500
Jun 7 - 9, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Shootout (Event #20) $3,000
Jun 8 - 10, 2014 No Limit Hold'em (Event #21) $1,000
Jun 8 - 10, 2014 H.O.R.S.E (Event #22) $10,000
Jun 9 - 11, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Turbo (Event #23) $1,000
Jun 10 - 12, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Six Handed (Event #24) $5,000
Jun 10 - 12, 2014 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo (Event #25) $2,500
Jun 11 - 13, 2014 No Limit Hold'em (Event #26) $1,500
Jun 12 - 14, 2014 H.O.R.S.E (Event #27) $1,500
Jun 12 - 14, 2014 Pot Limit Hold'em (Event #28) $10,000
Jun 13 - 15, 2014 Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo (Event #30) $1,500
Jun 14 - 16, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Six Handed (Event #32) $10,000
Jun 15 - 17, 2014 Seven Card Stud (Event #34) $1,500
Jun 16 - 18, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Eight Handed (Event #35) $5,000
Jun 16 - 18, 2014 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball (Event #36) $1,500
Jun 17 - 19, 2014 Pot Limit Omaha (Event #37) $1,500
Jun 17 - 19, 2014 Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo (Event #38) $10,000
Jun 19 - 21, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Heads-Up (Event #40) $10,000
Jun 19 - 21, 2014 Dealers Choice - Six Handed (Event #41) $1,500
Jun 20 - 22, 2014 Pot Limit Omaha - Six Handed (Event #42) $5,000
Jun 20 - 22, 2014 Limit Hold'em (Event #43) $1,500
Jun 22 - 26, 2014 The Poker Players Championship (Event #46) $50,000
Jun 23 - 25, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Ante-Up (Event #47) $1,500
Jun 24 - 26, 2014 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo (Event #48) $1,500
Jun 25 - 27, 2014 Eight Game Mix (Event #50) $1,500
Jun 26 - 28, 2014 Limit Hold'em (Event #52) $10,000
Jun 26 - 29, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Monster Stack (Event #51) $1,500
Jun 27 - 29, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Ladies Championship (Event #53) $1,000
Jun 29 - Jul 1, 2014 No Limit Hold'em (Event #56) $1,000
Jun 29 - Jul 2, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - The Big One for One Drop (Event #57) $1,000,000
Jun 30 - Jul 2, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - Mixed Max (Event #58) $1,500
Jun 30 - Jul 2, 2014 Omaha Hi/Lo (Event #59) $3,000
Jul 1 - 3, 2014 No Limit Hold'em (Event #60) $1,500
Jul 1 - 3, 2014 Seven Card Stud (Event #61) $10,000
Jul 2 - 4, 2014 10-Game Mix (Event #63) $1,500
Jul 2 - 5, 2014 No Limit Hold'em - The Little One for One Drop (Event #62) $1,111
Jul 3 - 5, 2014 Pot Limit Omaha (Event #64) $10,000
Jul 5 - 15, 2014 World Championship - No Limit Hold'em (Event #65) $10,000
1st Steven Wolansky $89,483 — —
2nd Joseph "subiime" Cheong $55,309 — —
3rd Max Kruse $36,494 — —
4th Christopher Mecklin $24,908 — —
5th Orjan Skommo $17,445 — —
6th Samuel Touil $12,529 — —
7th Scott Bohlman $9,223 — —
8th Adam Crawford $6,955 — —
9th Scott Abrams $5,371 — —
10th Rob Rightmire $5,371 — —
11th Ali Eslami $5,371 — —
12th Scott Blackman $4,245 — —
13th Shunjiro Uchida $4,245 — —
14th Markus Garberg $4,245 — —
15th Christopher Viox $3,471 — —
16th Brian Rast $3,471 — —
17th Justin Gardenhire $3,471 — —
18th Phil "The Poker Brat" Hellmuth $3,471 — —
19th Eli Elezra $3,471 — —
20th Thomas Ricketts $3,471 — —
21st John Racener $3,471 — —
22nd Mike "GoLeafsGoEh" Leah $2,837 — —
23rd Robert Williamson $2,837 — —
24th Brian Brubaker $2,837 — —
25th David "Chino" Rheem $2,837 — —
26th Brandon Merril $2,837 — —
27th Max "The Italian Pirate" Pescatori $2,837 — —
28th Bryce Yockey $2,837 — —
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[no-breadcrumb]
Presidenti ta' Malta
Dwar Malta
Valletta - European Capital of Culture 2018
Il-GvernCurrently selected
Dipartiment tal-Informazzjoni
Gazzetta tal-Gvern
Media in Malta
Stqarrijiet
Il-Gvern ta' Malta
il-gvern
Ministeri u Dipartimenti
Parlamenti Maltin
Prim Ministri ta' Malta
Servizzi u Informazzjoni
Dr-George-Abela
Dr George Abela
President of Malta (2009 – 2014)
Dr George Abela was elected President of the Republic of Malta on the 4th April 2009 following a Parliamentary resolution which unanimously approved his nomination as the eighth President of Malta. His nomination marks a historical development in the constitutional history of our Island since, for the first time after thirty four years, the President was elected by the unanimous approval of both political parties represented in Parliament. It is also the first time that the Government of the day nominated a President with different political leanings.
Dr Abela was born in Qormi on the 22nd April 1948 and is the son of a registered port worker. He was educated at the Lyceum and the University of Malta where he first obtained his Bachelor of Arts Degree in English, Maltese and History and later on his Law Degree. He furthered his studies in European Law and obtained his Magister Iuris Degree in 1995. He also holds a Diploma to practise as a lawyer before the Ecclesiastical Tribunals in marriage annulment cases.
Dr Abela worked in private practice for thirty-three years and has been a practising lawyer specialising in Civil, Commercial and Industrial Law. He acted for twenty five years as the legal consultant of the General Workers’ Union and he represented the workers’ interests, affiliated in four separate trade unions, in the negotiations concerning the Air Malta rescue plan in 2002. He also represented port workers in the port reform of June 2007, which reform has been hailed by the European Commission as a model in social dialogue to be followed by other member states. He also served as legal advisor to the Medical Association of Malta and other house unions.
For many years, Dr Abela has been deeply involved in the administration of sports in Malta, particularly in football. He first served as a treasurer in his village football club, Qormi F.C., and later on as its President. In 1982, after serving as Vice-President, he was elected to the post of President of the Malta Football Association, which position he held for ten years. During his presidency, the local football association witnessed major changes at its administrative and technical level. Large infrastructural investments were made in the resurfacing of the turf pitch at the National Stadium Ta’ Qali, which became wholly managed for the first time by the football association; new training grounds with turf pitches were built; floodlights were installed both at the National Stadium and in the adjoining training areas; a physiotherapy clinic and a fully equipped gymnasium were also opened. Foreign full time coaches, assisted by top Maltese coaches, were engaged to take charge of the National teams and courses in coaching and refereeing were held under the auspices of the European and international football bodies. The players of the National team were engaged for the first time on a full-time professional basis and the international matches of the Maltese team started to attract the wide support of the Maltese sporting public once again. Football nurseries all over the island were inaugurated. Dr Abela represented the local Association in many committees of UEFA. He also sat as an arbitrator in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.
Furthermore, Dr Abela was also involved in the Kerygma Movement, where he acted for some years as Chairman for the Campaign – Solidarity Through Sports, in aid of Philanthropic Institutions.
In 1992, after ten years in the top echelons of the Maltese football, Dr Abela was elected as Deputy Leader of the Malta Labour Party in charge of Party Affairs. In 1996, the Malta Labour Party won the general election. Subsequently, he was appointed as the legal consultant to the Prime Minister and invited to attend cabinet meetings.
Dr George Abela served for a number of years as Director of the Central Bank of Malta and as Executive Director for the Bank of Valletta p.l.c. He was also a member of the Electoral Commission responsible for the running of the general elections in 1987. He actively participated in the Malta E.U. Steering and Action Committee (MEUSAC) in pre-accession negotiations for membership in the European Union, where he formed part of the core group focusing on the legal and social aspects of membership. After membership, he sat again on MEUSAC as the Labour Party representative.
Dr Abela is married to Margaret nee’ Cauchi and they have two children, Robert and Maria.
Constitution of Malta
Malta Community Chest Fund
The Palace,
president@gov.mt
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The State Rooms
Wilderness Excursions
History of the Area
Fishing at Lake of the Woods
Corporate Excursions
The Lady of the Lake
In the fall of 1931 a unique birthday gift was delivered to the summer home of Grace Anne and John Forlong on Lake of the Woods.
John’s gift to Grace Anne was an 85-foot mahogany yacht built by the renowned Ditchburn Boat Works of Gravenhurst, Ontario, whose story is one of the grandest tales of the lake. Scroll down for the complete story.
THE FORLONG ERA
The Grace Anne II offers not only a historical design, but also a historical tale that adds further character and depth to this floating work of art. The original Grace Anne, and her husband John Forlong, were the original owners of the Grace Anne II. The Forlong family's connection to Lake of the Woods began in 1893 when Grace Anne's father, Alexander MacDonald, built a summer home on the north shore of Coney Island. MacDonald was one of the wealthy westerners who had discovered the sweet tranquility of the lake in the late 19th century; and became determined to own a piece of the stunning summer paradise for himself. After his passing, MacDonald left his dream summer home to Grace Anne and John.
While enjoying the pleasures of their new summer home, the Forlongs discovered a love for exploring the surrounding lake through leisurely boating. Family folklore has it that in 1913 John Forlong won a 52-foot cruiser in a poker game, and then re-christened his winnings, "Grace Anne". The Forlongs spent the next 18 years enjoying the boat, using it as a pleasure yacht, exploring the lake and entertaining their guests on board during the weekends.
In 1930 John Forlong contacted Ditchburn Boat Works of Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada, and commissioned the building of a second "Grace Anne" as a unique and elegant birthday gift for his wife. Christened "Grace Anne II", the 85-foot mahogany yacht was considered the finest craft to be introduced into Lake of the Woods. After a reported four and a half months of construction, at an estimated cost of $75,000, the Grace Anne II launched in Orillia, Ontario. The yacht was piloted through the Trent-Severn Waterway to Thunder Bay (then Port Arthur), and from there was transported by rail to Lake of the Woods.
The Forlongs entertained many of their guests on afternoon and overnight cruises on the Grace Anne II. Each trip allowed the Forlong family and their guests a chance to enjoy the incredible scenery of the lake and all the outdoor entertainment opportunities the setting promoted. However, wartime gas rationing put a damper on the long leisurely cruises they had come to love. For the next five years the boat spent more time in the boathouse than exploring the waterways.
THE ERWIN ERA
In 1946, the boat was sold to Ralph Erwin, then owner of the Salisbury House restaurant chain. For the first couple of years, Erwin operated the Grace Anne II as a cruise ship under the name Adventures Unlimited, appealing mainly to hunters and fishermen. By 1947, Erwin was promoting cruises to large corporations as part of incentive bonus plans for employees. By 1950 the Grace Anne II was being operated as a private club, with seven shareholders each enjoying three weeks cruising time.
THE 3M ERA
The 3M Company of St. Paul, MN , USA, invested in the idea of the Grace Anne II as a venue for business entertainment and purchased shares in the boat. By 1954, the Granules Department of 3M had purchased all shares and became the sole owner of the Grace Anne II. A few years later the yacht was turned over to the parent company under the name Salisbury Cruises Ltd. It continued operations over the next 40 years serving the marketing needs of a growing number of 3M service and product divisions. During their ownership 3M made strong efforts to maintain and preserve the Grace Anne II and restore the original character of the yacht. In addition to preserving the boat, 3M focused on staff service-training in order to maintain the tradition of classical guest service, such as that found in successful, world-class facilities.
PRIVATE OWNERSHIP
In 1994, 3M repositioned and sold a number of internal services including the Grace Anne II and its related corporate assets.
After this change, the Grace Anne II came under the leadership of former 3M managers Brad Doerksen and Ron Christie, and this permitted client expansion beyond 3M guests to include a number of additional new Fortune 500 client companies.
Following the downturn of the hospitality industry after September 11, 2001, Morris Chia, through one of his companies, became the sole owner of the Grace Anne II, the 40+ acre island lodge, and other former assets of the 3M company for the operation.
Through one of Morris' companies, experience in the travel industry was brought and the Grace Anne II business model was maintained, refined, and expanded to cater to Canadian and worldwide clientele. The product offering was also expanded to include complimentary offerings, including the private island lodge, branded "Turtle Bay Lodge", a one of a kind 38'Tug Yacht, and the original fully restored 1936 Greavette owned by Grace Anne's son, Duncan Forlong.
Throughout its life and into the future the Grace Anne II represents the pinnacle of elegance in the Canadian wilderness. It offers a rare commodity of old-world luxury service complemented by modern amenities expected of the most discerning travelers in the world.
If you are interested in a complete pictoral history of the Grace Anne II, the commemorative book, Grace Anne II, Lady of the Lake, copyright 2008, is available for sale in our giftware section.
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Pricing: Yacht | Lodge
Brad Doerksen, General Manager
Nicole Ginn, Office Manager
Copyright 2019 © Grace Anne II. All Rights Reserved.
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Business Insider Today - Inside the Workshop Making World Class 'Fakes'
'Factum Arte in Madrid uses the latest 3D scanning and printing technology to create copies of some of the world's most famous masterpieces — saving them from the ravages of time and even helping to bring back missing works from the dead.'
Many thanks to Paul Rhys and Emilie Iob
Factum: así es el taller en que se fabrican las piezas de las obras de arte contemporáneo
Based in Madrid, Factum Arte consists of a team of artists, technicians and conservators dedicated to digital mediation - both in the production of works for contemporary artists and in the production of facsimiles as part of a coherent approach to preservation and dissemination.
In this video by El País, Adam Lowe, director of Factum Arte and founder of Factum Foundation, explains the ways in which non-contact methodologies are having a growing impact on the world of conservation and are defining the role facsimiles play in in the protection of our cultural heritage.
New Perspectives on Raphael: an online panel by the Warburg Institute
On 19th November, Michelle O’Malley from the Warburg Institute talked with Ana Debenedetti and Adam Lowe about the recording of Raphael’s Cartoons at the V&A in August 2019. While the discussion focused on Raphael, it also looked more generally at the role of digital recording in light of the museum closures and the restrictions caused by COVID-19. High-resolution recording, display and rematerialisation technologies have serious implications for the study, display and dissemination of works of art - both online and offline access will be increasingly important in providing access to culture.
The Materiality of the Aura: exhibition walk-through with Adam Lowe
The founder of Factum Foundation, guides you through 'The Materiality of the Aura. New Technologies for Preservation', at Palazzo Fava, Bologna until 10th January 2021. Facsimiles of sculptures, paintings and books, digital restorations and physical recreations, 3D renders, 3D models and a variety of objects are presented in the six rooms of the exhibition, focussing on: the surface of paintings, sculptures, cartography, video-mapping and projections, manuscripts and, finally, Factum Foundation's work in the Valley of the Kings. The city of Bologna, where the Foundation has been involved in projects since 2010, is also a unifying factor tying together many of the rooms.
© A film by Óscar Parasiego for Factum Foundation
Il Polittico Griffoni rinasce a Bologna - exhibition walkthrough with Adam Lowe
Curated by Mauro Natale in collaboration with Cecilia Cavalca, the exhibition at Palazzo Fava focuses on the importance and meaning of the Polittico Griffoni by displaying, together with the individual panels coming from nine museums and collections across Europe and North America, a facsimile reuniting the Polittico made by Factum Factum Foundation in Factum Arte's workshop.
Adam Lowe, founder of Factum Foundation and director of Factum Arte, guides you through the exhibition, explaining Factum's role in the recording and reuniting the panels scattered among 9 museums and institutions all over the world.
Recording 'An Old Woman Cooking Eggs' by Diego Velázquez
On the 4th and 5th February 2020, a team from Factum Foundation has carried out the high-resolution digitisation in 3D and colour of 'An Old Woman Cooking Eggs' at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. In this video, Aidan Weston-Lewis, chief curator at National Galleries of Scotland, and Enrique Bocanegra, director of the Casa Natal de Velázquez, talk about the importance and relevance of this collaboration and the potential for digital technologies to recover Velázquez’s legacy, as part of a wider collaboration with CEEH (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica).
Recording the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Niccolò dell'Arca in Bologna
The sculptural group of the Compianto sul Cristo morto (Lamentation over the Dead Christ) by Niccolò dell’Arca is located in the main chapel of the Church of Santa Maria della Vita, Bologna. The fragility of the seven terracotta statues led Factum Foundation, in collaboration with Genus Bononiae, to record the group in December 2019, as part of the exhibition La Materialità dell’Aura at Palazzo Fava (part of La Riscoperta di un Capolavoro).
Digital recording will open up new possibilities for the study and display of the sculptures – certainly within the virtual sphere, but perhaps even in the physical space of the sanctuary.
More on the project
© Óscar Parasiego and Otto Lowe for Factum Foundation
Rematerialising the tomb of Raphael
Factum Arte created the starting point of the exhibition Raffaello (1520 - 1483) at the Scuderie del Quirinale, in Rome: a rematerialisation of the painter's tomb. from the Pantheon, with its 19th-century additions removed. Almost all of Factum's departments were involved in this project, with engineers, architects, sculptors, artists, welders and digital experts working side by side on the various elements making up the tomb. Careful planning and teamwork were the keys that allowed Factum to achieve this ambitious result. Watch the whole behind-the-scenes in this video.
© Óscar Parasiego for Factum Foundation
Malevich’s Black Square - A collaboration with Tretyakov Gallery
The Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow) has produced a short film about how recording Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (1915) with Factum Foundation is helping conservators and researchers find out more about what lies beneath the surface of the most famous painting of the Russian avant-garde. Factum Foundation captured high-resolution 3D and colour data of the painting in 2018. Later, 3D and colour were merged with X-ray and infrared data produced by the Tretyakov to create an online data viewer - the digital facsimile - that allows the user to see the images in relation to one another rather than in isolation. More on this project
© Tretyakov Gallery
Rematerialising Rembrandt's Portrait of an Elderly Man with Canon Production Printing
Factum Foundation is working with Canon Production Printing (previously Océ - A Canon Company) and the Mauritshuis in the recording and reproduction of Rembrandt's Portrait of an Elderly Man (1667). With 2019 marking the 350th anniversary of the Dutch Master's death, we are joining efforts to demonstrate how new technologies for non-contact digitisation and elevated printing can contribute to the preservation, study and dissemination of one of the artist's most notable works. Find out more
ITV News at 10 - Opening of 'Madame de Pompadour in the Frame' at Waddesdon Manor, May 2019
A piece by ITV News at Ten, broadcasted on 22 May 2019.
The exhibition 'Madame de Pompadour in the Frame', open to public from 23 May to 27 October 2019 at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, UK, features the facsimiles of two portraits of Madame de Pompadour by François Boucher. The exhibition allows visitors to examine the facsimiles alongside artefacts of the production process and to watch a video showing the various stages of making. Find out more.
Photogrammetry Training in Al-Ula
Factum Foundation’s Otto Lowe spent two weeks in the town of Al-Ula, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, teaching a group of fifteen locals how to record cultural heritage in 3D using photogrammetry. It was a collaborative pilot project between the Factum Foundation, Art Jameel, and the Royal Commission of Al-Ula (RCU), and generously funded by Jacob Rothschild. The course took place between the 30thSeptember and 11th October at the Shaden Resort, and involved a class of 10 women and 5 men.
Over a period of seven days, the students recorded at three different sites in the vicinity of Al-Ula. More than 74,000 images were recorded in this time period, with the entire project weighing a total of 1.29TB.
Click here to learn more about this project.
Adam Lowe's Talk at Be3D Conference, Toronto
Be3D 3D Printing, Scanning, Software + Design Conference 2015
Session 2: The Future of Design
Adam Lowe, Director of Factum Arte, spoke at the Be3D 3D Printing, Scanning, Software + Design Conference, which took place in late 2015. His talk: The Future of Design, discusses the transformations that are required as bridges are built between traditional craft skills and new technologies, using projects developed at Factum Arte as a basis on which he talks about the importance of high-resolution documentation and digital mediation as a tool for conservation and creation of objects of art and of history.
Check Be3D website here
The Replica 360 Recto/Verso Scanner
The Replica 360 Recto/Verso Scanner is rotary scanning system desgiend by Factum Arte capable of recording 12 A3 sized double-sided images at 400 DPI per minute. The scanner was made to record the Fondazione Giorgio Cini´s photo archive in Venice, which contains roughly 1 million annotated photographs of paintings from the Veneto.
Woodburytype Prints
The woodburytype process was a photo-mechanical process pioneered at the end of the nineteenth century by Walter. B. Woodbury.
As the first and only photographic printing method that renders an image as continuous tone it is unique in its capability to replicate the subtleties and details of a tonal image. The process involves casting warm gelatine mixed with pigment into a relief mould. Under the pressure of the press the excess gelatine is displaced, and once set, the gelatine is peeled off the mould revealing the image. Depth and tone correspond absolutely: the deeper the section of the relief, the deeper the gelatine and the darker the resultant tone.
The Veronica Chorographic Scanner
The Veronica Chorographic Scanner (referred to as the Veronica) is a bespoke 3D scanner designed by Manuel Franquelo Jr. and built in Factum Arte to record faces and objects within a 50 x 50 x 50 cm range. The Veronica is specifically designed to capture the fine surface detail of the human face.
Fulgurite experments
Dwight Perry is currently experimenting with two microwave oven transformers wired in parallel to produce fulgurites from a tank of sand. The aim is to produce simple forms in vitrified sand capable of becoming moulds for casting salt.
Experiment with salt
Casting salt and the application of salt as a building material is an area of research that is of growing importance for a variety of applications.The Video shows the experiment with a block of cast salt that has been submerged in warm water for 30 hours.
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Home/Warning Wire/Shots Fired: 90-Year-Old Woman in UK Gets First Covid Vaccine Outside a Trial
Shots Fired: 90-Year-Old Woman in UK Gets First Covid Vaccine Outside a Trial
By Jessica McKenzie on December 8, 2020
First in line: Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old woman from Coventry, England, received the first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine outside a clinical trial, The New York Times reports. Keenan said she was looking forward to seeing friends and family in the new year, after spending most of this year alone. The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 67.8 million people around the globe, and killed more than 1.5 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. More than 1.7 million people in the United Kingdom have contracted the virus, and more than 61,000 have died.
Also: The Trump administration reportedly passed up the opportunity in the summer to secure up to 500 million more doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine after the initial order of 100 million, which could result in a delay between the first and second batch of vaccine deliveries as the pharmaceutical companies fill other international orders, The Guardian reports. The New York Times and the Associated Press broke the news just a day before President Trump planned to take credit for the speedy development of the vaccines at a White Houses summit today.
Lock it down: Some 85 percent of California residents—33 million people—are under renewed stay-at-home orders this week to prevent the spread of coronavirus from overwhelming hospitals, Dakin Andone reports for CNN. The regions of Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley were forced to adopt stricter restrictions when regional hospital intensive care unit capacity dropped below 15 percent; the Bay Area adopted the stay-at-home restrictions voluntarily, before ICU capacity dropped that low. The orders close bars, hair salons, museums, movie theaters and indoor recreational facilities; restaurants are take-out and delivery-service only, and travel is prohibited except for essential activities. Retail stores are allowed to operate at 20 percent capacity.
Also: Hours after President Trump tweeted that his personal attorney Rudy Guiliani had tested positive for Covid, the Arizona Legislature abruptly announced it was shutting down for a week, Jaclyn Peiser writes for The Washington Post. Guiliani spent more than 10 hours the previous Monday with Republican lawmakers from the state listening to allegations of election fraud, with participants maskless and not social distancing. The 76-year-old former New York mayor was admitted to a hospital on Sunday.
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Winter is coming: With temperatures dropping around the country, making sleeping outside less comfortable and safe, homeless shelters are bracing for increased demand while coronavirus restrictions are still in effect, limiting the number of people they can take in, Daniella Silva reports for NBC News. “Right now in the country, there’s not one city that has enough shelter space for all the homeless people in their community,” said Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. And the number of homeless individuals is rising because of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic downturn.
Rewriting history: Chinese authorities are pushing the theory that the coronavirus originated outside of the country, distorting scientific research to posit that Italy or India was the source, or that the virus could have come in on packaged food, Javier C. Hernández reports for The New York Times. The propaganda campaign is muddying the waters before the World Health Organization can investigate how the virus jumped from animals to humans, and effectively redirects scrutiny and criticism—within China’s borders at least—from how the Communist Party handled the initial outbreak.
Big break: There has been a global increase in break-ups and divorces since the pandemic began, Maddy Savage reports for the BBC, from China to Sweden to the United States. Experts have put forward many possible reasons for this uptick: The increased stress that comes with living in a pandemic; money troubles from unemployment; inequitable distribution of domestic labor and childcare; or simply that the increased time together exacerbated problems that had previously been hidden or suppressed by work and social habits.
Defending the vote: Dozens of armed protestors gathered outside the home of the Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson this weekend as she tried to watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with her four-year-old son, Tim Stelloh reports for NBC News. The protesters blame Benson for her role as the state’s chief election officer, saying she allowed a rigged election. President Trump has refused to accept his loss and has baselessly claimed he won. “Through threats of violence, intimidation and bullying, the armed people outside my home and their political allies seek to undermine and silence the will and voices of every voter in this state, no matter who they voted for,” Benson said in a statement, vowing that she would defend every voter and every vote.
Playing both sides: On Friday, we shared the news that dozens of U.S. companies signed a letter that described action on climate change as a “business imperative” and urged the country to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. But two newsletters, Heated and Popular Information, report that at least six of those companies have contributed to the Republican candidates in the Georgia run-off elections for the U.S. Senate, Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue (who is also a climate change denier). If just one of the candidates wins re-election, the Senate will remain under Republican control, making meaningful action on climate change difficult at best.
Sunset for morning joe?: Warming temperatures in the coffee-growing regions of the world are making it harder to grow one of the world’s favorite stimulants, and making it less tasty at the same time, Adele Peters reports for Fast Company. The flavor of coffee develops best at temperatures between 64° and 70°F. At those temperatures, the fruit ripens slowly, leaving time for the sugars and complex acids we know and love to develop. As temperatures rise, the fruit ripens more quickly—but the resulting bean is less flavorful. The result could be that in the next few decades, the price of coffee will increase while the quality decreases. “It’s not like we’re not going have any coffee in 2050,” explains Hanna Neuschwander, director of strategy and communications at World Coffee Research. “Someone will produce it. But what will it taste like, and how expensive will it be? … I’m not even talking about the $30-a-pound single-origin stuff. I’m talking about the stuff that gets layered into Folgers to make it taste more interesting than just cardboard.”
Soot-stained: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler has declined to change the fine-particle pollution limits for soot pollution even though EPA staff scientists wrote in a draft report last year that key studies would support tougher standards of between 8 and 10 micrograms. The stricter standard could cut mortality risks by more than 20 percent and possibly save more than 12,000 lives a year, Timothy Puko reports for The Wall Street Journal. EPA officials countered that fine particulate pollution levels in the U.S. are already lower than in France, Germany and Great Britain, and are five times below the global average.
Also: A California state board, 40 cities and counties and environmentalists want to ban gas hookups in new construction, arguing that they contribute to climate change and can worsen health problems like asthma from indoor pollution, Sammy Roth reports for the Los Angeles Times. The natural gas industry is pushing back, and Gov. Gavin Newsom is thus far noncommittal.
FairWarning contributor Jessica McKenzie is an independent journalist. Find more of her work at jessicastarmckenzie.com.
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Jessica McKenzie2020-12-08T09:45:29-08:00Categories: Warning Wire|0 Comments
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Larry Johnson » Wiki
Filmography (22)
Lawrence Demetric Johnson (born March 14, 1969) is an American retired basketball player who spent his professional career in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Charlotte Hornets and New York Knicks. He played the power forward position due to his strength.
In his senior year of high school Johnson was a member of the 1987 McDonald's High School All-American Team that also included future NCAA and NBA stars like Marcus Liberty, Elliot Perry, Mark Macon, Rodney Monroe, Dennis Scott, Elmore Spencer, Chris Corchiani, and fellow Texas prep star LaBradford Smith. Johnson originally made a verbal commitment to Southern Methodist University, but began his collegiate career at Odessa College in Texas. He played in the 1987–88 and 1988–89 seasons where he averaged 22.3 points per game as a freshman and over 29 points per game his sophomore year, and became the first—and to this day, only—player ever to win the National Junior College Athletic Association Division 1 Player of the Year award both years he played. There were even some basketball analysts who believed Johnson could have been a first round selection in the 1989 NBA draft (even a possible NBA lottery selection) if he had declared for early entry.
Johnson eventually transferred to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) to play under head coach Jerry Tarkanian. Alongside future NBA players Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony, Johnson faced the Duke Blue Devils in the title game of the 1990 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. UNLV went on to win the contest by a score of 103–73, with Johnson contributing 22 points and 11 rebounds. The Runnin' Rebels set simultaneous NCAA records for the largest margin of victory and highest score in an NCAA Tournament championship game.
In a post-season mired by charges of recruiting violations and misconduct by UNLV, an agreement was reached between the university and the NCAA to allow for the defense of their title for the 1990–91 season, which would be followed by a suspension from post-season play the following season. Johnson and the Runnin' Rebels responded with a perfect regular season record of 27–0, with an average scoring margin of 26.7 points per game; this total included a 112–105 victory over the Arkansas Razorbacks, ranked second in the country at the time.
In the 1991 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, UNLV won the West Regional Tournament only to be upset by eventual champion Duke in the Final Four. Johnson was named a First Team All-American twice, and won the Big West Conference Player of the Year and tournament Most Valuable Player awards in 1990 and 1991. He also won the prestigious John R. Wooden Award and was named Naismith College Player of the Year in 1991. To this day, Johnson is ranked 12th in career scoring and 7th in rebounding at UNLV despite playing only two seasons. He also holds the record for single-season and career field goal percentage. In 2002, Johnson and teammates Augmon and Anthony were inducted into the UNLV Athletic Hall of Fame along with the 1990–91 UNLV men's basketball team. To date they are the only UNLV team to make back-to-back Final Four appearances.
Demetric
Full Name at Birth
Larry Demetric Johnson
228 lbs (103.4 kg)
Brown - Dark
Skyline in Dallas, Texas
Occupation Category
NBA Debut
Drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1st round (27th overall) of the 2003 NFL Draft.
Charlotte Hornets and New York Knicks
kcchiefs.com
Isidro A. T. Savillo
Coral Simanovich
Emily Feld
Harry Joseph Brant
Genevieve Majari
Claudia Molina
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FRIENDS AREA
Baconian History
Secret Bacon
Importance of Francis Bacon
Key Quotations
Baconian Poetry
Shakespeare Authorship
Wisdom of Shakespeare
Baconian Philosophy
Great Instauration
New Atlantis
Mystery Tradition
Myths & Archetypes
Geocosmology
Portraits & Sculptures
Titlepages & Frontispieces
Illustrations & Emblems
“Still therefore it is Nature which governs everything: but under Nature are included these three; the course of Nature, the wanderings of Nature, and Art—which is Nature with man to help.”
Francis Bacon, De Augmentis Scientiarum – 1623
The word ‘geocosmology’ was invented as a combination of two words, ‘geomancy’ and ‘cosmology’, and refers to the science and art of geomancy and cosmology and their interrelationship or interface.
Geomancy literarily means ‘earth divination’ but is, fundamentally, a science of natural energy, form and consciousness in respect of the human being as well as of the planet with its landscape and man-made environment—and, by extension, of nature everywhere.
(Divination is the art of sensing, intuiting, perceiving and being inspired, which, when coupled with the rational faculty, culminates in understanding.)
Cosmology is a science concerning the natural or physical cosmos or universe, and the mind or consciousness behind it. At its highest level it is a science of wisdom and metaphysical truths, including that of the spiritual archetypes and intelligencies (angels) of the universe—in other words, a science of spiritual energy, form and consciousness.
Geocosmology could be summarised as the ability to perceive the divine in nature; that is to say, to see and understand the spiritual design—the wisdom and its archetypal laws, forms or patterns—that underlie the energetic and outer forms of nature, particularly the landscape. Such patterns, which are usually geometric or mathematical, include the zodiac or chakra (‘wheel of life’), the chakra system and the ‘tree of life’. They originate in the cosmic mind but interpenetrate and organise matter, existing at the etheric interface of mind with matter.
An analogy would be the ability to perceive the geometry that underlies the architecture of a classical temple or mediaeval cathedral which the architect used in its design. Such geometry would not necessarily be seen, at least not easily, in the outer form of the building and by the outer senses, but to a trained eye it can be discovered. Moreover, such geometry is a fundamental mathematical expression of the spiritual wisdom underlying the very meaning and purpose of the building; thus, by perceiving the geometry, it is possible to understand better the wisdom that has inspired the architect and is enshrined in the architecture, and how and why the architecture functions as it does.
Traditionally, in the mystery schools, it is said that the wisdom itself is the real architect, and that this wisdom is hidden or buried in the architecture. This has been described metaphorically as the architect being interred in the foundations of the building as the foundation sacrifice—a symbolic teaching that has sometimes been misinterpreted by imitating it all too literally. As the divine wisdom is also known as the Logos or Word, the buried or incarnate Word has come to be known as “the Lost Word”. The purpose of the human soul, as Bacon describes it, is to find this “lost” or hidden truth and thereby play the divine game of hide and seek, as described by Solomon (Proverbs 25:2). 1
Geomancy and cosmology are, respectively, the Hermetic sciences of earth and heaven. They complement each other and go together like twins or lovers. The higher lies behind and is revealed in the lower, and the lower gives the clues to and knowledge of the higher. They affect each other and, ultimately, can be married together.
The principle behind the love-making of these two (heaven and earth) is scripturally described as the spirit moving upon the face of the waters. 2 This is applicable to everything that exists, but in a dramatic worldly way the “face” or interface of the two is symbolised by our planet’s landscape, which forms the interface between the airy atmosphere and space beyond (‘heaven’) and the more watery and solid ground (‘earth’). Because of the symbolic association, in the landscape, on the stage of the world, the love-magic can be performed. As Jaques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It says: “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. 3
It is becoming increasingly clear that Francis Bacon and others associated with him had a good knowledge of the geocosmological energy pattern or zodiac of Britain—a pattern recognised before them by the Celts, Romans and Normans, all of whom utilised this knowledge. The particular siting of Gorhambury, Bacon’s country estate, within the zodiac of Britain, and the geometric or geocosmological pattern laid out and marked by him across its landscape after he had inherited the estate, bear witness to some of this knowledge.
Also significant in the Bacon-Shakespeare-Rosicrucian mystery are the relative locations of Stratford-upon-Avon and Gorhambury, St Albans, within the landscape zodiac of Britain in respect of the celestial phenomena associated with and leading up to 1604—a 3rd-magnitude nova in Cygnus that was first sighted in 1600, unusual planetary conjunctions during 1603-4 and a 1st-magnitude supernova in Ophiuchus in 1604, the latter of which marked the metaphorical opening of the Rosicrucian tomb of Fra CRC and the start of making public the Rosicrucian work that had hitherto been prepared in secret. The “new stars” in Cygnus and Ophiuchus are especially noted in the symbolic illustration depicting the Invisible College of the Rosicrucian Fraternity in Theophilus Schweighardt’s book, Speculum Sophicum Rhodo-stauroticum, published in 1618.
The choice of Gorhambury, St Albans, by Sir Nicholas Bacon, as the place to build his family home and ‘mystery school’ country retreat shortly after Francis Bacon was born, was certainly not by chance. Not only is St Albans an important location on the ancient ‘Bran Route’ from Anglesey to London and home of the British martyr, Saint Alban, the founder of Freemasonry in Britain, but also St Albans lies within Ophiuchus, the Dragon Master or Serpent Bearer. Ophiuchus not only relates to Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, and St George, the Christian Red (or Rosy) Cross Knight, but is known as the 13th Sign of the Zodiac. In the Arthurian myth, this is the 13th Seat of the Round Table, upon which the rightful heir to the throne sits.
Similarly the choice of the actor William Shakspere was not by chance, not only because of the symbolic relevance of his name as "William Shakespeare" but also because his home town, Stratford-upon-Avon, lies within Cygnus, the Swan, which, symbolically speaking, is the constellation of the great poet-creator of the universe. (Corresponding to the Western tradition, in the Vedic tradition the Swan is the vehicle of Brahma and Saraswati.) Moreover, Stratford-upon-Avon is the closest town to the apex point of what is known as the Masonic Compass, which point in the sky is marked by the star Deneb. (The other two points of the Compass are marked by the stars Regulus in Leo and Spica in Virgo.) The Masonic Compass is another name for the Divine Compass—a popular symbol in the Middle Ages for the Creator as the Great Architect of the Universe. Therefore, to set up and promote Stratford-upon-Avon as the focus of worldwide Shakespearean homage and pilgrimage can be seen as an excellent decision by Bacon and the Rosicrucian fraternity, especially because of the great cultural, artistic and educational benefits that can ensue (and have ensued) as a result.
Then there is the much bigger scale of geocosmology—the planetary scale used by the Rosicrucian fraternity and Francis Bacon in which Britain lies within Cassiopeia, the Heavenly Virgin Queen, and Cygnus is associated with Nova Scotia and the mystery of Oak Island. Using Rosicrucian terms, Bacon refers specifically to "navigation" (a Rosicrucian is a "navigator") and to the use of the "compass". This refers primarily to navigating the world of thought and creating in the human understanding "a holy temple after the model of the world”, 4 but it also refers to the navigation of the world in which the magnetic compass and compass rose is used. 5
We all live, work and play on the planetary stage, acting our parts as best we can (or not, as the case might be). Naturally it is helpful to get to know not only our parts but also the whole story. Moreover, it is helpful to get to know the design of the theatre in which the play is being performed, so that we learn what it is capable of and how best to use it for the benefit of all.
The full sense and purpose of geocosmology is the science and art of doing the right thing in the right place at the right time and with the right orientation or purpose. Since the wisdom itself is the creative, organising aspect of the Divine Love, the right thing to do will also be the most loving and appropriate thing to do. This would be the true image or imitation of what Francis Bacon referred to as “the work that God worketh from the beginning to the end” (a biblical quote). 6 This work is none other than love in action, the expression or manifestation of God, the Divine Love or Good, whose nature is Goodness. As Bacon pointed out, to imitate the divine work would be to fulfil the purpose of being human, which, we are told in the Hebrew-Christian Bible, is to be the image or likeness of God.
Charity…is excellently called the bond of perfection, because it comprehendeth and fasteneth all virtues together... 7 For so we see, aspiring to be like God in power, the angels transgressed and fell; ”I will ascend and be like the Most High”: 8 by aspiring to be like God in knowledge, man transgressed and fell: ”Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”: 9 but by aspiring to a similitude of God in goodness or love, neither man nor angel ever transgressed, or shall transgress. For unto that imitation we are called: ”Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate you; that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh His sun to rise on the good and the bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust”. 10
Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk II (1605).
© Peter Dawkins, FBRT
1. Francis Bacon, The Preface, Advancement of Learning (1640):-
"For, of the knowledges which contemplate the works of Nature, the holy philosopher [Solomon] hath said expressly, that the glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out: as if the Divine Nature, according to the innocent and sweet play of children, which hide themselves to the end they may be found, took delight to hide his works to the end they might be found out, and of his indulgence and goodness to mankind had chosen the soul of man to be his play-fellow in this game."
2. Genesis, 1:2.
3. Shakespeare, As You like It, II, vii.
4. See especially the research of Mather Walker: http://www.sirbacon.org/Matherpage.htm.
5. See especially the research of Petter Amundsen: http://shakespearethehiddentruth.com/ ; https://vimeo.com/user27343602/videos.
6. Ecclesiastes, 3:11.
7. Colossians, 3:14.
8. Isaiah 14:14. Initially printed in AoL (1605) in Latin as "Ascendam, et ero similis altissimo."
9. Genesis,3:5. Initially printed in AoL (1605) in Latin as “Eritus sicut Dii, scientes bonum et malum.”
10. Matthew, 5:44-45. Initially printed in AoL (1605) in Latin as “Diligite inimicos vestros, benefacite eis qui oderunt vos, et orate pro persequentibus et calumniantibus vos, ut sitis filii Patris vestri qui in coelis est, qui solem suum oriri facit siuper bonos et malos, et pluit super justos et injustos.”
The British Landscape Zodiac
Swan Secrets
The European Myth and Mystery
The Invisible College of the Rosicrucian Fraternity: illustration from Theophilus Schweighardt’s Speculum Sophicum Rhodo-stauroticum (1618)
Landscape Zodiacs
VIEW MORE ARTWORKS
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Seventh Circuit Rules That FTC Act Does Not Require Placebo-Controlled, Double-Blind Testing for Consumer Products
Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit concluded that the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”) does not require placebo-controlled, double-blind testing for consumer products.
The ruling, issued in Federal Trade Commission v. QT Inc., upheld a decision by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Eastern Division) that the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet, a metal bracelet promoted as a “test-proven” cure for chronic pain, was a fraud. Advertisements claimed that the bracelets were either gold or silver and wearing them enhanced “the flow of bio-energy.” In fact, both courts found that the claims were not test-proven to help reduce pain, and the bracelets were made of brass and did nothing to enhance the flow of bio-energy, a phrase the lower court called “techno-babble.”
The appeals court stated that “a person who promotes a product that contemporary technology does not understand must establish that this ‘magic’ actually works.” The court noted that a placebo-controlled, double-blind test “is the best” way to support product claims, but acknowledged that such tests are expensive and may not be financially feasible for all products. As such, the court held that “something less” than a placebo-controlled, double-blind test “may do.”
The court did not provide any specific criteria that evidence must meet in order to be deemed reliable, other than to note that “a statement that is plausible but has not been tested in the most reliable way cannot be condemned out of hand. The burden is on the [FTC] to prove that the statements are false.” The defendant in the case did have one test that essentially discovered a placebo effect for people wearing the bracelet. Outside of this test, which the court called “bunk,” however, the only support for the bracelet’s effectiveness came from testimonials, which the court held “are not a form of proof.”
The ruling in this case is limited; it only applies to the FTC Act. However, companies that market consumer products may rest easier knowing that one court has ruled that the FTC cannot require them to conduct placebo-controlled, double-blind studies.
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Specs of Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 and Galaxy Ace 3 leak
Samsung Android Rumors
The specifications of the rumored Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, codenamed Santos 10, have leaked along with the specifications of the next generation Galaxy Ace smartphone, according to a report from Hi-Tech Mail.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 is said to sport a 10.1-inch TFT-LCD display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and will be powered by a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor along with 1 GB of RAM. The slate will also feature a 3 megapixel rear camera, 1.3 megapixel front facing camera, 16 or 32 GB inbuilt memory and a 6,800mAh battery.
The Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 measures 243.1 x 176.1 x 7.95mm and weighs 510g. The slate will be available in June and, contrary to previous leaks, is expected to run on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean rather than 4.1.
The report also reveals the specifications of the Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 and according to it, the device will sport a 4-inch TFT-LCD display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. The Ace 3 will be powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor along with 1 GB of RAM and will feature a 5 megapixel rear camera, 0.3 megapixel front-facing camera, 4 GB inbuilt memory and a 1,500mAh battery.
The Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 measures 121.2 x 62.7 x 9.8mm and runs on an as of yet unknown version of Jelly Bean. The device is expected to be priced at 9,900 rubles (about $316).
Thanks Denis, for sending this in!
Source (Russian)
For how amazingly ahead they have been with phones there are not doing as much in tablets.
AnonD-151090
Have Galaxy Ace 3 flash on HTML browser?
How is the tab 3 different from the Tab 2 10.1" LOL~ Come on samsung, stop being so cheap recycling old hardware and only bumps up the #, tsk tsk tsk. Still waiting for a Quad-core, 1080P, 8" sub $300 tablet. I am pretty sure at this...
Total reader comments: 49
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Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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Letter from Israel
Scene Around
B'not Mitzvah
Savvy Seniors
By Israel Kasnett
Could a future US administration undo Trump's new policy on Israeli settlements?
(JNS)—The announcement last month by U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo that Israeli settlements are not illegal was either warmly welcomed or hotly rejected, depending on how you interpret international law.
Indeed, recently 107 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Pompeo expressing “strong disagreement” with the State Department’s new policy and urged Pompeo to “reverse this policy decision immediately.”
Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told JNS that Pompeo did a great service for Israel and for truth by stating that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal.”
“And it is unfortunate,” he added, “that there are some members of Congress who want to second-guess him,” referring to the Democratic lawmaker’s letter. For his part, Gold sent a letter to each of those lawmakers explaining why Pompeo’s decision was correct.
The change in policy was allegedly timed to counter the European Union’s decision to label goods made in Judea and Samaria, as well as to reverse the previous administration’s stance, which viewed the settlements not only as an obstacle to peace but actually illegal.
As such, how subjective is international law and could the decision be reversed by a future president, especially a Democrat?
Gold said that the Trump administration’s view of settlements helped to provide a different interpretation of international law.
“I thought it was very important to put on the table the issue of the improper application of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the case of Israel,” Gold said. “International law is a subject where people do interpret way of norms differently. That is simply the way it works.”
He added that the decision made during President Jimmy Carter’s administration to declare the settlements a violation of international law “was wrong-headed.”
Taking it a few steps further, Gold said the basis of claiming that the settlements are illegal came from the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which said that a state occupying territory in war cannot move the population out of the occupied territory, and, secondly, that it cannot move its own population into the territory in question.
“In Israel’s case,” he said, “both statements are irrelevant.”
What has bothered him in particular was that the idea that an occupying power cannot move its population into occupied territory came from the actions of Nazi Germany, which moved its Jewish population into places like Poland for purposes of extermination.
“So somebody has the nerve to say that Israelis who have voluntarily moved into the West Bank are violating an international law that was based on a completely different situation?” he asked incredulously. “Comparing what Israel does in the West Bank to what Nazi Germany did in Poland to the Jews of Germany is something I find repulsive.”
Gold said he felt it was important to send the letters because “if you don’t say anything, it will continue.”
‘A solution on how to move forward’
Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, senior research associate and head of the Law and National Security program at the Institute for National Security Studies, told JNS that it is necessary to move away from the arguments over who is right or wrong, and instead to “find a solution on how to move forward.”
She said she fears that a future U.S. Democrat administration might not just to go back to the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush kind of ambiguity when they said settlements are “an obstacle to peace.” Instead, it might return to the Obama policy of saying settlements are illegal.
Since international law is often interpreted differently, are people simply propagating their own subjective views?
“Almost any legal question is often the issue of different interpretations,” said Sharvit-Baruch, “and settlements are no different than any other legal question, especially with regard to international law.”
“An argument can be made—and it is not baseless to say—that the settlements are not necessarily illegal,” she said. “The case of why Palestinians have a right to this territory is not a clear-cut question. Even if they have the right of determination, there is still no clear-cut legal answer as to what territory this right applies to because the Green Line of 1967 is not a border.”
She said the main point is that the two sides, and even the wider Arab world, previously agreed that the topic of settlements and borders is an issue that needs to be negotiated, and that it is not supposed to be determined in court.
Sharvit-Baruch said that by declaring the settlements a violation of international law, the Obama and Carter administrations were “very unhelpful.”
“Those who insist on discussing it in legal terms,” she emphasized, “are doing a disservice to any kind of peaceful settlement to the conflict.”
Weekly roundup of world briefs
Orthodox Jewish Trump supporters decry violence but not the movement
Saudi authorities remove anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist content from textbooks
From darkness to light - Rabbi tells his story
Yard displays are a sign of the times
Orthodox Jewish Trump...Shira Hanau
Growing up in a hate-f...Alexa Coultoff
A Jewish bartender's 5...Maddy Albert
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Copper Age
Statues & Props
Home EC Al Feldstein Child of Tomorrow
EC Al Feldstein Child of Tomorrow
EC AL FELDSTEIN CHILD OF TOMORROW HC
(W) Al Feldstein, William M Gaines (A) Al Feldstein & Various (CA) Al Feldstein
SCIENCE FICTION COMICS FROM THE GLORY DAYS OF CLASSIC COMIC BOOKS
Al Feldstein is best known as the main writer/editor of the EC comics line during the first half of the 1950s-and then the editor of Mad Magazine for the first three decades of its existence.
But what many don't know or remember is that Feldstein was also an accomplished and distinctive cartoonist, whose comics (which he both wrote and drew, a relative rarity in those days) adorned the pages of many of those selfsame EC comics. His powerfully composed, meticulously inked pages, often featuring grotesque creatures or scenes of ghastly destruction (and some of the greatest stiffly handsome/beautiful specimens of 1950's humanity ever put to paper), were a vital part of the allure of these classic comics.
Feldstein's contributions to the first year and a half of EC's two SF titles, Weird Science and Weird Fantasy-comprising 16 classic O. Henry-style shock-ending stories with such evocative, vintage title as "'Things' From Outer Space." "The Flying Saucer Invasion," "Spawn of Venus," "Destruction of the Earth," and "Am I Man or Machine?"-will be collected in their integrity in this volume, which will also boast a new interview with Feldstein about his years at EC, focusing in particular in his work on these science fiction titles that were the company's pride and joy (and were killed a few years later by the Comics Code).
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The Chinese Dynasties
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~~The Ming Dynasty ( also called The Great Ming Empire) was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, though claims to the Ming throne (now collectively called the Southern Ming) survived until 1662. The dynasty followed the Yuan Dynasty and preceded the Qing Dynasty. The Ming dynasty emperors were members of the Zhu family. During the rule of Mongols, there were strong feelings against the rule of "the foreigners" among the populace, which finally led to a peasant revolt that pushed the Yuan dynasty back to the Mongolian steppes. The revolt, led by Zhu Yuanzhang, established the Ming Dynasty in 1368. This dynasty began as a time of renewed cultural blossoming, with Chinese merchants exploring all of the Indian Ocean and Chinese art (especially the porcelain industry) reaching unprecedented heights. Under Ming rule, a vast navy and army was built, with four masted ships displacing 1,500 tons and a standing army of one million troops. Over 100,000 tons of iron per year were produced in North China, and many books were printed using movable type. Some historians argue that Early Ming China was the most advanced nation on Earth at the time.
The Mongol Yuan Dynasty ruled before the establishment of the Ming Dynasty. The Mongols' discrimination against Chinese is often considered the primary cause for the end of Yuan rule in China. Other causes include collusion with Tibetan lamas in depriving Chinese of their lands, paper currency over-circulation, which caused inflation to go up ten-fold during Yuan Emperor Shundi's reign, and the flooding of the Yellow River as a result of Mongols' abandonment of irrigation projects. In Late Yuan times, Chinese agriculture was a mess. When hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians were called upon to work on the Yellow River, the prospect of rebellion ripened. After many years of fighting, the rebel group led by Zhu Yuanzhang, the future Hongwu emperor, became the most powerful of the various Han Chinese groups and Zhu declared the foundation of the Ming Dynasty in 1368, establishing his capital at Nanjing and adopting "Hongwu" as his reign title.
Orphaned as a teenager, Zhu had entered a Buddhist monastery to avoid starvation. Sometime during this period, he joined a Buddhist secret society known as the White Lotus. Later, as a strong-willed rebel leader, he came in contact with the well-educated gentry Confucian scholars, from whom he received an education in state affairs. He then positioned himself as defender of Confucianism and neo-Confucian conventions, and not as a popular rebel. Despite his humble origins, he emerged as a national leader against the collapsing Yuan Dynasty. Zhu became one of the only two dynastic founders who emerged from the peasant class, the other being Han Gaozu of the Han Dynasty; Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are the two other peasant revolutionaries to have ruled the world's most populous nation.
Having fought off the calamities of the Mongol invasion, and given the realistic threat to China still posed by the Mongols, Hongwu reassessed the orthodox Confucian view regarding the military as an inferior class to be subordinated by the scholar bureaucracy. Simply put, maintaining a strong military was essential since the Mongols were still a threat. As an aside, the name Hongwu means "Vast Military" and reflects the increased prestige of the military.
With a Confucian aversion to trade, Hongwu also supported the creation of self-supporting agricultural communities. Neo-feudal land-tenure developments of late Song and Yuan times were expropriated with the establishment of the Ming dynasty. Great landed estates were confiscated by the government, fragmented, and rented out; and private slavery was forbidden. Consequently, after the death of Yongle Emperor, independent peasant landholders predominated in Chinese agriculture.
Under Hongwu, the Mongol bureaucrats who had dominated the government for nearly a century under the Yuan dynasty were replaced by the Han Chinese. The traditional Confucian examination system that selected state bureaucrats or civil servants on the basis of merit and knowledge of literature and philosophy was revamped. Candidates for posts in the civil service or the officer corps of the 80,000-man army, once again, had to pass the traditional competitive examinations in the Classics. The Confucian scholar gentry, marginalized under the Yuan for nearly a century once again assumed its predominant role in the Chinese state.
Hongwu attempted to, and largely succeeded in, consolidating control over all aspects of government, so that no other group could gain enough power to overthrow him, and to buttress the country's defenses against the Mongols. As emperor, Hongwu increasingly concentrated power in his own hands and abolished the Imperial Secretariat, which had been the main central administrative body under past dynasties, after suppressing a plot for which he had blamed his chief minister. When the emperorship became hereditary, the Chinese recognized this and established the office of prime or chief minister. While incompetent emperors could come and go, the prime minister could guarantee a level of continuity and competence in the government. Hongwu, wishing to concentrate absolute authority in his own hands, abolished the office of prime minister and so removed the only insurance against incompetent emperors. Hongwu was succeeded by his grandson, but he was soon usurped by his uncle Chengzu, a younger son of Hongwu, who ruled as the Emperor Yongle from 1403 to 1424 and was responsible for moving the capital back to Beijing.
Hongwu noted the destructive role of court eunuchs under the Sung, drastically reducing their numbers, forbidding them to handle documents, insisting that they remained illiterate, and liquidating those who commented on state affairs. Hongwu had a strong aversion to the imperial eunuchs (a castrated court of servants for the emperor), capsized by a tablet in his palace stipulating: "Eunuchs must have nothing to do with the administration." Under his successor, however, they began regaining their old influence.
The emperor's role in this became even more autocratic, although Hongwu necessarily continued to use what he called the Grand Secretaries to assist with the immense paperwork of the bureaucracy, which included memorials (petitions and recommendations to the throne), imperial edicts in reply, reports of various kinds, and tax records.
During Hongwu's reign, the early Ming dynasty was characterized by rapid and dramatic population growth, largely due to the increased food supply and Hongwu's agricultural reforms. The population probably rose by at least 50 percent by the end of the Ming dynasty, stimulated by major improvements in agricultural technology promoted by the pro-agrarian state, which came to power in midst of a pro-Confucian peasant's rebellion.
The Hongwu Emperor increasingly feared rebelions and coups. He even made it a capital offence for any of his advisors to criticize him. A story goes that a Confucian scholar, who was so fed up with Hongwu's policies decided to go to the capital and berate the emperor. When he gained an audience with him, he brought his own coffin. After delivering his speech, he climbed into the coffin, expecting the emperor to execute him. Instead, the Emperor was so impressed by his bravery he spared his life.
Hongwu is also known as Hung-Wu. That name is also applied to the period of years from 1368 to 1398 when Chu Yuan-chang ruled. Other names for him include Tai-tsu, his temple name, and the "Beggar King," in allusion to his early poverty. He had 24 sons, all of whom became princes.
Exploration to isolation
Between 1405 and 1433, Ming emperors sent seven maritime expeditions probing down into the South Seas and across the Indian Ocean. The era's xenophobia and intellectual introspection characteristic of the era's increasingly popular new school of neo-Confucianism, thus did not lead to the physical isolation of China. Contacts with the outside world, particularly with Japan, and foreign trade increased considerably. Yongle Emperor strenuously tried to extend China's influence beyond her borders by encouraging other rulers to send ambassadors to China to present tribute. The Chinese armies reconquered Annam and blocked Mongol expansionism, while the Chinese fleet sailed the China seas and the Indian Ocean, cruising as far as the east coast of Africa. The Chinese gained a certain influence over Turkestan. The maritime Asian nations sent envoys with tribute for the Chinese emperor. Internally, the Grand Canal was expanded to its farthest limits and proved to be a stimulus to domestic trade.
The most extraordinary venture, however, during this stage was the dispatch Zheng He's seven naval expeditions, which traversed the Indian Ocean and the Southeast Asian archipelago. An ambitious Muslim eunuch of Hui descent, a quintessential outsider in the establishment of Confucian scholar elites, Zheng He led seven expeditions from 1405 to 1433 with six of them under the auspices of Yongle. He traversed perhaps as far as the Cape of Good Hope and, according to the controversial 1421 theory, the Americas. Zheng's appointment in 1403 to lead a sea-faring task force was a triumph the commercial lobbies seeking to stimulate conventional trade, not mercantilism.
The interests of the commercial lobbies and those of the religious lobbies were also linked. Both were offensive to the neo-Confucian sensibilities of the scholarly elite: Religious lobbies encouraged commercialism and exploration, which benefited commercial interests, in order to divert state funds from the anti-clerical efforts of the Confucian scholar gentry. The first expedition in 1405 consisted of 62 ships and 28,000 men--then the largest naval expedition in history. Zheng He's multi-decked ships carried up to 500 troops but also cargoes of export goods, mainly silks and porcelains, and brought back foreign luxuries such as spices and tropical woods.
The economic motive for these huge ventures may have been important, and many of the ships had large private cabins for merchants. But the chief aim was probably political, to enroll further states as tributaries and mark the reemergence of the Chinese Empire following nearly a century of barbarian rule. The political character of Zheng He's voyages indicates the primacy of the political elites. Despite their formidable and unprecedented strength, Zheng He's voyages, unlike European voyages of exploration later in the fifteenth century, were not intended to extend Chinese sovereignty overseas. Indicative of the competition among elites, these excursions had also become politically controversial. Zheng He's voyages had been supported by his fellow low eunuchs at court and strongly opposed by the Confucian scholar officials. Their antagonism was in fact so great that they tried to suppress any mention of the naval expeditions in the official imperial record. A compromise interpretation realizes that the Mongol raids tilted the balance in the favor of the Confucian elites.
By the end of the fifteenth century, imperial subjects were forbidden from either building oceangoing ships or leaving the country. Some historians speculate this measure was taken in response to piracy.
Historians of the 1960s, such as John Fairbank and Joseph Levinson have argued that this renovation turned into stagnation, and that science and philosophy were caught in a tight net of traditions smothering any attempt to venture something new. Historians who held to this view argue that in the 15th century, by imperial decree the great navy was decommissioned; construction of seagoing ships was forbidden; the iron industry gradually declined.
Is Ming Dynasty Muslim- Fact or Speculation?
Many people question the identity of the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang or Hongwu Emperor. Some claim that he was a Muslim of Semitic (Semu) Non-Han origin.
Yusuf Chang, a Chinese Muslim from Taiwan, was one of those who made this claim. He claimed that his ancestor had married a Ming princess and thus he was a descendant of Zhu Yuanzhang and knew the secrets of the Islamic religion of the Ming royal family.
He presented many startling evidences to support his claims. They are:
1. When Zhu Yuanzhang was young, his family perished in a famine and he buried them by wrapping them in white clothes. Wrapping the dead in white clothes is a Muslim custom.
2. Zhu Yuanzhang's closest associates were Muslims. Thus, the Ming dynasty was founded by Muslims.
3. Zhu Yuanzhang passed a strict law forbidding 'wine'. Once he had the son of his close associate executed for breaking the law. 'Wine' is strictly forbidden in Islam.
4. Empress Ma (Zhu's consort) was a Muslim. She had personally cook all the meals for Zhu, even after he had become the Emperor.
5. The royal colour of the Ming dynasty was green, the colour which symbolizes Islam.
6. Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the building of a mosque in Nanjing soon after he ascended the throne and he personally wrote a poem praising Islam and Prophet Muhammad. This poem is seen by Muslims as the 'syahada' the testimony of Zhu's faith in Islam.
7. Many Muslims rose to high ranks during the Ming dynasty. One good example was Admiral Zheng He. Admiral Zheng He's fleet sailed to Mecca, Arabia and performed the 'haj'. Yusuf Chang claims that Zheng He was sent by the Ming emperor to perform the 'haj' on his behalf because the emperor was not able to do so as he wanted to keep his religion a secret among the non-Muslim masses. This practice is allowed in Islam.
8. The Ming dynasty established good ties with many Muslim countries. This is because the Ming dynasty is Muslim and the religion of the Ming royal family is Islam.
9. The Islamic Calendar was made the official calendar during the Ming dynasty.
The Sovereigns of Ming Dynasty
Posthumous name1
(short form)
Temple name1
Reign name
Reign years
Name by which
most commonly known
ZhuYunzhang Gaodi Taizhu Hongwu 1368-1398 Hongwu Emperor
Zhuyunwen huidi None given2 jianwen 1398-1402 Jianwen Emperor
Zhudi Wendi Chengzu Yongli 1402-1424 Yongle Emperor
ZhuGaochi Zhaodi Renzong Hongxi 1424-1425 Hongxi Emperor
Zhu Zhanji Zhangdi Xuanzong Xuande 1425-1435 Xuande Emperor
ZhuQizhen Ruidi Yingzong Zhengtong 1435-1449;
1457-14643 Zhengtong Emperor
Zhu Qiyu Jingdi Daizong Jingtai 1449-1457 Jingtai Emperor
Zhu Jianshen Chundi Xianzong Chenghua 1464-1487 Chenghua Emperor
Zhu Youtang Jingdi Xiaozong Hongzhi 1487-1505 Hongzhi Emperor
Zhu Houzhao Yidi Wuzong Zhengde 1505-1521 Zhengde Emperor
Zhu Houcong Sudi Shizong Jiajing 1521-1566 Jiajing Emperor
Zhu Zaihou Zhuangdi Muzong Longqing 1566-1572 Longqing Emperor
Zhu Yijun Xiandi Shenzong Wanli 1572-1620 Wanli Emperor
Zhu Changluo Zhendi Guangzong Taichang 1620 Taichang Emperor
Zhu youjiao Zhedi Xizong Tianqi 1620-1627 Tianqi Emperor
Zhu Youjian Zhuangliemin Sizong Chongzhen 1627-1644 Chonghen Emperor
1 As posthumous and temple names were often shared by emperors of different dynasties, they are usually preceded by the dynastic name, in this case, Ming, to avoid confusion. For example, the Hongwu emperor is frequently referred to as Ming Taizu.
2 The Yongle emperor usurped the throne of his nephew the Jianwen emperor, who was officially said to have died in a palace fire but who was suspected of escaping to live as a recluse. The Yongle emperor wiped out the record of his nephew's reign and no temple name was given him.
3 After listening to the poor advice of his eunuch advisers, the Zhengtong emperor personally led a campaign in 1449 against the Mongols and was captured. His brother, the Jingtai emperor, assumed the throne and, a hostage no longer of any value, the Mongols released the Zhengtong emperor who returned to live in seclusion. However, the Zhengtong emperor was able to reclaim his position upon the death of his brother, choosing the reign name Tianshun.
mperors of the Southern Ming Dynasty
Temple name
Zhu Yousong Anzong Hongguang 1644-1645 Prince of Fu
Zhu Yujian Shaozong Longwu 1645-1646 Prince of Tang
Zhu Changfang None given None given,
but sometimes referred to as the
Regency of the Prince of Lu (Luh)
1645 Prince of Lu
Zhu Yihai None given None given,
Regency of the Prince of Lu (Lou)
1645-1653 Prince of Lu
Zhu Yuyue None given Shaowu 1646 Prince of Tang
Zhu Youlang None given Yongli 1646-1662 Prince of Gui
The two characters are homonyms, both pronounced Lu; to distinguish them, one is usually kept as Lu and the other spelled differently. Luh is from Cambridge History of China; Lou is from A.C. Moule's Rulers of China (1957). When one irregular spelling is used, the other is kept as regular (Lu). The two systems are distinct and not used simultaneously.
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Benefits of the Vernix Caseosa During Pregnancy and Delivery
Medically reviewed by Devan McGuinness — Written by Valencia Higuera on June 16, 2016
Labor and delivery is a time of mixed emotions. You may be scared and nervous. Some women describe birth as the worst imaginable pain. But rest assured, those feelings will be forgotten the moment you lay eyes on your newborn.
The minutes after the birth of a baby can seem like a blur. Mothers and babies enjoy a little cuddle time and skin-to-skin contact, but it isn’t long before a nurse scoops away newborns to check their weight, body temperature, and the circumference of their head.
It’s also not uncommon for newborns to be bathed soon after birth, often within the first two hours. A bath removes amniotic fluid and blood from your baby’s skin, so you may not think twice about your baby receiving its first bath. But there may be benefits to delaying the first bath.
Bathing doesn’t only remove the aforementioned fluids from your newborn’s skin, it also removes the vernix caseosa, which is a white substance found on your baby’s skin.
What is the vernix caseosa?
The vernix caseosa is a protective layer on your baby’s skin. It appears as a white, cheese-like substance. This coating develops on the baby’s skin while in the womb. Traces of the substance may appear on skin after birth. You may wonder, what’s the purpose of this coating?
To understand the role of the vernix caseosa, think of how your skin responds to too much water exposure. After swimming or taking a bath, it doesn’t take long for your fingers and skin to develop wrinkles. Fluids have the same effect on babies-to-be.
Remember, your baby swims in amniotic fluid for 40 weeks. It’s this coating that protects an unborn baby’s skin from the fluid. Without this protection, a baby’s skin would chap or wrinkle in the womb.
The vernix caseosa contributes to babies having soft skin after birth. It also protects your baby’s skin from infections while in the womb.
The amount of vernix caseosa on your baby’s skin decreases the closer you get to your due date. It’s normal for full-term babies to have the substance on their skin.
But if you deliver past your due date, your baby may have less of the coating. Premature babies tend to have more vernix caseosa than full-term babies.
What are the benefits of the vernix caseosa?
The benefits of the vernix caseosa aren’t limited to pregnancy: This coating also benefits your baby during and after the delivery. Regardless of how little or how much of the substance remains on your baby’s skin after birth, consider keeping the vernix caseosa on your newborn’s skin for as long as possible. This means delaying the first bath.
Benefits of this natural protectant include the following.
It has antimicrobial properties
Newborns have a fragile immune system, which means they’re more susceptible to illnesses. Breast-feeding helps boost a baby’s immune system, but this isn’t the only option. The vernix caseosa can also protect a newborn from infections after birth. This is because the coating contains antioxidants, as well as anti-infection and anti-inflammatory properties.
Lubrication through the birth canal
The vernix caseosa doesn’t only provide a protective barrier for fluids in the womb. It can also reduce friction as your baby passes through the birth canal during delivery.
Helps regulate a baby’s body temperature
During pregnancy, your body plays a vital role in regulating your baby’s body temperature. It takes time for a baby to regulate its own body temperature after birth. This is why it’s important to wrap a baby in blankets and maintain a comfortable room temperature. Keeping the vernix caseosa on baby’s skin for as long as possible may naturally stabilize their body temperature.
Moisturizes your baby’s skin
The vernix caseosa also contributes to softer, smoother skin at birth and after delivery. This cheese-like substance is a natural moisturizer for babies, protecting their skin from dryness and cracking.
Should you delay your baby’s first bath?
Once you understand the role of the vernix caseosa, you can choose to delay your baby’s first bath to maximize the health benefits. The length of time you choose to delay the bath is up to you.
Some mothers don’t give babies their first bath for several days or up to a week after birth. But you don’t have to wait this long. Even if you only delay the first bath for 24 to 48 hours, your newborn benefits.
Request that the nurse uses a soft cloth to gently remove any traces of blood and amniotic fluid from the newborn’s skin. But you have the option to tell hospital staff that you don’t want them to remove excess amounts of the vernix caseosa. Over the next one to two days, gently massage the coating into your baby’s skin.
It’s true that babies are born covered in fluid and blood. But babies aren’t born dirty, so there’s no harm in delaying the first bath. The exception is if your baby is covered in meconium, which is stool.
Typically, an unborn baby’s stool stays in the intestines during pregnancy. But sometimes, feces seep into the amniotic fluid during labor. Bathing quickly after birth reduces the risk of babies ingesting the meconium, which can lead to respiratory problems.
Nurses separate newborns from their mothers after delivery for testing and a bath. Testing is necessary, but a bath isn’t. You can decide when and where to bathe your baby for the first time, so don’t be shy about speaking up. Make your wishes known to your doctor and the hospital staff.
What to Expect When You’re in the Latent (Early) Phase of Labor
Pregnancy Snacks for Your Cravings and Challenges
How Do I Become a Surrogate Mother?
Can You Take Ibuprofen While Pregnant?
What Are the Symptoms of Antepartum Depression and How Is It Treated?
Medically reviewed by Valinda Riggins Nwadike, MD, MPH
The latent phase of labor comes before the active labor stage. We'll tell you what to expect, from how long it lasts to how to relieve the pain.
Medically reviewed by Jillian Kubala, MS, RD
Whether you're looking to satisfy your craving for sweets or trying to battle constant nausea or heartburn, we've got you covered with more than 30…
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If you're wondering how to become a surrogate, we applaud you for your desire to help others. Here are some details about the process, including how…
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Taking ibuprofen in pregnancy isn't a good idea. We'll tell you why and offer some alternatives for pain.
Medically reviewed by Debra Rose Wilson, Ph.D., MSN, R.N., IBCLC, AHN-BC, CHT
Antepartum depression is depression while you're pregnant, and it's more common than you may think. Know the symptoms and how to get help.
What Can I Eat If I Have Gestational Diabetes? Food List and More
You may be able to manage gestational diabetes through diet and other lifestyle changes. Here’s a gestational diabetes food list to help you stay…
Can You Eat Calamari During Pregnancy?
Despite what you've heard about seafood and mercury levels, calamari in pregnancy is safe — in moderation. Here's what to know.
Can I Eat Chocolate When Pregnant? Research Says ‘Yes’ — in Moderation
Eating chocolate when pregnant isn't typically a problem — and it may even have some surprising benefits. Here's what you need to know.
Can You Eat Spicy Food While Pregnant?
There are a lot of myths about eating spicy food in pregnancy. Some just aren't true. We'll give you the facts.
Interest in Home Births Rises During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Medically reviewed by Meredith Wallis, MS, CNM, ANP
Many women are considering at-home birth during the coronavirus pandemic. Here's what you need to know about the risks and who may be a candidate.
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HAU to connect
Tim Etchells
Tim Etchells is an artist and a writer based in the UK whose work shifts between performance, visual art and fiction.
Etchells has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group Forced Entertainment. Recent publications include Vacuum Days (Storythings, 2012) and While You Are With Us Here Tonight (LADA, 2013). Etchells’ work has been shown recently at Cubitt, Hayward Gallery and Bloomberg SPACE in London, at Turner Contemporary and Compton Verney in the UK, at Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands Media Art Institute (Amsterdam) and MUHKA (Antwerp).
Currently Professor of Performance & Writing at Lancaster University, he was a Tate / Live Art Development Agency 'Legacy: Thinker In Residence' Award winner in 2008, Artist of the City of Lisbon in 2014 and he received the prestigious Spalding Gray Award in February 2016.
Forced Entertainment has been announced as the winners of the 2016 International Ibsen Award for their groundbreaking contribution to the field of contemporary theatre and performance.
www.internationalibsenaward.com
Dirty Work (The Late Shift)
Seeping Through
Shown and Told
Quizoola!
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The NHL Forum
Atlantic: Devils happy to ‘C’ Elias succeed
panoo
Chuck Gormley | NHL.com correspondent
Feb 5, 2007, 12:00 PM EST
Quick. Name the captain of the New Jersey Devils.
Tick … tick … tick …
After 12 years of seeing the “C” on the chest of Scott Stevens, it’s hard to imagine anyone but the chiseled defenseman wearing a consonant on a Devils’ jersey. In fact, the Devils’ current captain is almost as anonymous as the one who preceded Stevens as captain … defenseman Bruce Driver.
It’s not John Madden or Scott Gomez or Colin White, all of whom would make excellent captains.
It’s Patrik Elias, one of the quietest, most unassuming -- not to mention talented -- players in the Devils locker room.
One look at the Eastern Conference standings tells you Elias must be doing something right. The Devils entered this week 13-5 since Christmas, opening up a 10-point lead in the Atlantic Division and creeping within four points of the conference-leading Buffalo Sabres.
And while the Devils are one of the most balanced teams in the NHL – what else is new? -- they are led by a 30-year-old center from Trebic, Czech Republic.
“Scotty (Stevens) had that presence,” Gomez told Rich Chere of the Newark Star-Ledger. “When he walked around, respect was demanded. Don’t forget, Scotty wasn't around here for a few years. So Patty didn’t have to directly follow him. There are a lot of similarities. Patty leads on the ice like Scotty did.”
The two players lead in entirely different ways on the ice. Stevens would defend teammates with a menacing hit or, on occasion, a heavyweight fight. He had a strong, authoritative voice in the dressing room.
Elias uses his incredible speed and scoring touch around the net to lead the Devils. Through 52 games this season, his 18 goals and 31 assists give him a team-high 49 points.
Elias has shown a dramatic improvement over last season, when he missed the first 44 games of the season with hepatitis A. The Devils decided to go without a captain last season as they tried to recover from the absences of both Stevens and Scott Niedermayer. Somehow, they have filled the leadership void.
“No one is asking Patty to be Scotty or Nieder,” White said. “He has to just be himself and that's what he has done. He’s been one of our leaders the last five or six years. We respect him. He and Marty (Brodeur) are our two guys.”
Having a “C” stitched on your jersey is more than just a symbolic gesture in hockey and Elias admits he felt some of the weight that goes along with succeeding leaders like Stevens and Niedermayer.
“At the beginning there was pressure,” Elias said. “I think that's absolutely normal when someone is put in that position. You don’t know what to do until you do it and experience it.
“Maybe I tried a little too hard and it affected me until I realized all you have to do is work hard and do your job.”
Elias has a lot of company there. It’s hard to find a player on the Devils’ roster who has not contributed in some way to what many believe is a championship worthy team.
Backup goaltender Scott Clemmensen, who is the NHL’s equivalent of the Maytag repairman, may feel otherwise. Brodeur has started all but two games for the Devils this season, leaving Clemmensen with a 0-1-1 record in three appearances totaling just under 150 minutes. Clemmensen hasn’t played in a game for the Devils since Dec. 14 when he was on the wrong end of a 5-3 loss in Boston, his only loss of the season.
“You think about December and January as being the dog days of the year," Clemmensen said. “After that, you start making your playoff push and it’s going to be harder for me to get in there now.”
With the Devils in the midst of a five-game homestand, it might not be until Feb. 24 or 25 that Clemmensen sees his next start.
“I only made three starts in the calendar year of 2006," Clemmensen said. “It wouldn't surprise me if it went either way. They may want to rest Marty near the end of the season to get ready for the playoffs.”
Who’s hot -- As soon as Sidney Crosby cooled off, Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury heated up. Crosby had an eight-game scoring streak snapped on Saturday against Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals and that usually spells trouble for the Pens, who were an amazing 0-30-1 in games Crosby did not score since he entered the league last season. But Fleury picked up his second shutout in three games to blank the Caps, improving to 10-1-2 in his last 13 games.
Rumor mill --
panoo Feb 5, 2007
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Sens look to rebound against the Sabres.
Havlat
The Ottawa Senators were the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference last season, but could not get past the Buffalo Sabres in the playoffs.
Now Buffalo sits atop the standings but can't seem to beat Ottawa.
The Sabres are coming off a perfect four-game homestand as they go back on the road Wednesday looking to avoid falling to the Senators for a fourth straight time.
"I don't like to lose to them," Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff said after his team's 3-1 home loss to Ottawa on Dec. 16 in the most recent meeting.
"It gives them confidence. It's something we have to rectify as a team."
The Sabres (29-7-3) needed only five games to knock out the Senators (21-18-2) in last season's conference semifinals en route to the Stanley Cup finals. Buffalo has performed as if it could end up playing for the championship again this season, taking a big conference lead into the new year, but three of its seven losses in regulation have come against its Northeast Division rival.
Since losing 4-3 in the first meeting this season, the Senators have won the last three as they've scored two power-play goals in each game while killing off all but one of the Sabres' 17 extra-man chances.
"I think I owe them a bit for last year," said Senators goaltender Ray Emery, who allowed 15 goals in four playoff losses to the Sabres in May. "If you're not up to play these guys, they'll come back to bite you."
Emery has faced the Sabres three times this season and won them all, surrendering a total of four goals. He is 7-1-1 with a 2.47 goals-against average in nine career regular-season starts against them.
The Senators have not suffered a regulation loss in a season-high five straight games, though they lost 3-2 in overtime to Atlanta on Monday. They forced the extra period thanks to Tom Preissing's power-play goal with 3:55 left in the third period, during which they outshot the Thrashers 11-6.
"We definitely battled, and played the type of game we wanted to, as well," Emery said. "It's a frustrating one to lose, especially when you come back like that. At least we got a point out of it and there were some positive signs out there."
Emery had back-to-back shutouts before allowing two goals in regulation in each of his last two starts, and had a personal three-game win streak snapped Monday.
Ottawa leading scorer Dany Heatley has two goals and six assists in four meetings with Buffalo this season, though he enters this matchup having failed to score a goal in five consecutive games.
U can catch the game on TSN at 7:30 ET.
^HP7 .o2 designz
Havlat Jan 3, 2007
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Home > Random > Ed Belfour Arrested In Kentucky On Drunk and Disorderly
Ed Belfour Arrested In Kentucky On Drunk and Disorderly
Rich Stile 1/28/2020 Random
NHL Legend and Stanley Cup Champion Ed Belfour was arrested early Tuesday morning at a downtown Bowling Green, Kentucky hotel. Police say he damaged the property and was under the influence of alcohol to a point he was a danger to himself and others.
Belfour, was arrested just before 1:30 a.m. at the Kentucky Grand Hotel and Spa, 635 College St. The charges are third-degree criminal mischief and alcohol intoxication in a public place.
Bowling Green Police Department officers, who were responding to a complaint of a drunk and disorderly subject, found Belfour laying on the floor on the hotel's second level, clutching a curtain rod that had been ripped out of the dry wall above a window next to him and kicking the spa door while laying on the ground, the citation reads.
Locked inside the spa room was the initial caller, who told police Belfour had been drinking downstairs, where he tried to fight another hotel employee and struck a glass window in anger before moving upstairs and trying to force his way into the spa room, according to the report.
Belfour played 18 seasons in the NHL, won an Olympic gold medal in 2002 with Team Canada and is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame. He started his career with the Chicago Blackhawks, winning rookie-of-the-year honors in 1990-91 and back-to-back Vezina trophies as goalie of the year in ’90-91 and ’91-’92.
Belfour had a brief stint with the San Jose Sharks before he joined the Dallas Stars, with whom he won a Stanley Cup in 1999. Belfour later joined the Toronto Maple Leafs for a three-year stint before playing one final year in the NHL with the Florida Panthers.
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Horror DNA TV
28 Days Later: Volume 1 - London Calling
By: James Ferguson
In: Comics
"28 Days Later: Volume 1 - London Calling" Trade Paperback Review
Written by James Ferguson
Published by BOOM! Studios
Written by Michael Alan Nelson
Illustrated by Declan Shalvey
2010, 116 Pages
Trade Paperback released on September 7th, 2010
Despite writing for Horror DNA, I'm far from an expert on all things horror. There are gaps in my slasher moving database and I haven't seen things like Puppet Master. One of the flicks I have seen, though, is 28 Days Later and it's easily one of my favorite horror movies. The 2002 flick directed by Danny Boyle came out of nowhere for me. I wasn't as impressed with the sequel, but I was excited to check out the continuation of the original film in comic book form from BOOM! Studios.
The story picks up with Selena, one of the three survivors from the film. She's hanging out in a refugee camp in Norway when she's approached by Clint, an intrepid reporter who wants to get an inside scoop on what's going on in London. Sure, there have been a bunch of stories about the "Worsley House" survivors, but he wants to get a first hand look at what's going on so he can explain it all to the world. He needs a guide, though, and that's why he turns to Selena.
Of course, it wouldn't be much of a story if she turned down his offer. She joins Clint and a group of travelers as they head into the hot zone. The military has quarantined the island so they encounter some opposition to their air travel, but it's clear that Clint will stop at nothing to get this story. Unfortunately, that includes losing some members of his team.
This book collects the first four issues of the series and it works great as a setup. The tease is that I have no idea what happened to Selena or the other two survivors after the movie ended. You'd think that they'd all be together in the refugee camp, but they're nowhere to be found. So what happened to them? We're given no hints as to their whereabouts, but we are provided with some flashbacks to Selena's life before her world went to hell.
Declan Shalvey delivers on his artwork for 28 Days Later. Remember, the infected here aren't zombies. They're filled with rage and want nothing more than to tear out your throat. That just amplifies the terror as Shalvey's infected run at Selena, Clint, and the others. The gore is here in spades as Selena cuts through these mindless killers. In many ways she's like the pre-cursor to The Walking Dead's Michonne. She takes no shit and looks badass with her gas mask and machete.
Shalvey's art direction is also top notch. He does a great job blending Selena's flashbacks into the present day story. It helps weave them into the story without them seeming like they were just tossed in.
Michael Alan Nelson picked up an odd concept with 28 Days Later. He's continued the plot from a movie that already had a sequel. Rather that starting then, he went back to the between time period to write his story. Fans of the original film will want to check this out. The comic moves so fast that you'll finish it up and immediately want more. That's probably my only real complaint about the book.
Author: James Ferguson
Lord of the Funny Books
James has a 2nd grade reading level and, as a result, only reads books with pictures. Horror is his 5th favorite genre right after romantic comedy and just before silent films. No one knows why he's here, but he won't leave.
Specter Inspectors #1 First Look Preview
The Vain #4
Guardians of the Galaxy #10
Check Out Peach Momoko's Variant for Carnage: Black, White, & Blood #1
OBEY - CONSUME
All content ©HorrorDNA 2002-Present
Horror Features
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Land acquisitions and rightsLawNatural resource management
Legal tools for citizen empowerment
Unpacking regulatory chill: the case of mining in the Santurbán páramo in Colombia
Do international investment treaties put a 'chill' on environmental policy? To answer this question, we need to see the state as a complex web of actors, not a unitary whole.
Anna Sands
@AnnaZofiaSands
Anna Sands is a graduate of the MPhil in development studies at Oxford University
The Santurbán páramo: a unique repository of biodiversity, water and gold (Photo: copyright Anna Sands)
Investment treaties are international agreements through which the host state commits to treating investors according to certain standards. They contain broad clauses, for example requiring “fair and equitable treatment” of investors and investments, and investors can sue states in international arbitral tribunals for alleged violations of such standards.
The amounts claimed can be very high; for instance, Colombia currently faces around US$18 billion in investment claims from five gold mining companies. The legal costs of defending such cases are not small, either. They average at around US$5 million. Especially for countries which, like Colombia, are struggling to find funds to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, these are significant sums.
Policymakers and academics warn that the potentially high cost of losing in investment arbitration can lead to regulatory chill; it can make it more difficult for states, concerned by the risk of claims, to regulate higher environmental or social standards.
The potential legal claims could also affect the balance of negotiations between parties, giving the investor additional leverage: a recent IIED report shows that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) could make the transition away from coal slower and more costly, as investors in coal may demand large compensation for shutting down plants.
The need for empirical testing: the Santurbán páramo case
To see whether regulatory chill occurs, we need to test it empirically. Last year, I spent two months doing fieldwork on the case of mining in the Santurbán páramo in Colombia. This ecosystem unique to the Andes is home to significant biodiversity and a key source of fresh water (to find out more about it, see the IIED long read and documentary).
The Santurbán páramo also lies on gold reserves, excavated for centuries by artisanal miners. The civil war in Colombia and the arrival of multinational companies have both led to conflict over the use of the páramo and surrounding areas.
The Santos governments (2010-18) wished to protect the páramos, but multinational mining companies had already started exploration in those areas. The risk was that if they could not continue, they would sue the Colombian state. This is the type of situation in which regulatory chill can happen – the desire to regulate conflicted with potential investment claims.
In 2011, the government prohibited mining in the páramos but made a significant concession to current miners – anyone who already had a mining licence could continue until it expired. The government decision therefore implied partial regulatory chill. This was reversed after a few years; in 2016, a constitutional case brought by citizen groups declared the law to be unconstitutional, and the court ruled that all mining in the páramos should be prohibited, with immediate effect.
Mining companies did in fact bring investment claims. The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) is currently hearing three claims against Colombia challenging the process leading to the prohibition of mining.
The role of the judiciary in preventing regulatory chill
The decision of the government brought about partial regulatory chill, but the court reversed it. The court based its reasoning on constitutional principles, finding that allowing existing mining to continue did not guarantee the rights to a healthy environment, water and to national heritage.
The judges saw their role as safeguarding the long-term interests of the Colombian people and acting as a counterweight to the more short-term perspective inherent to the executive. They had enough independence from the government at the time to put a check on its power.
This shows that to understand regulatory chill we need to analyse how different state actors respond to the risk of claims; we need to unpack the state. The role of the judiciary emerges as particularly important. Where judiciaries are strong and independent, they can conduct constitutional and fundamental rights review of governmental action, especially when the government is under pressure due to the risk of arbitration.
The need to look deeply into the state
The story of Santurbán continues. The process of fixing the boundaries of the páramo is still ongoing. A new company has started exploratory activities in the vicinity, planning a mega-project which would excavate over nine million tons of gold over 25 years (Spanish language site). But the company’s application for a mining licence has recently been archived by the National Authority of Environmental Licences (ANLA) as it found that the environmental consequences of the project were uncertain.
Recently, the Colombian Senate voted to enshrine the ban on all mining in the páramos enshrined in the constitution (Spanish language site) – the proposal is now with the Chamber of Representatives.
The developing situation reinforces the need for analysing the state as a network of actors with diverse incentives, rather than a unitary whole. The decisions of the Senate, the ANLA, as well as other authorities, show that there is no such thing as a unitary state response to the risk of investment claims.
In international law, the state is treated as a whole, and the central state can be held responsible for local authorities, for example. However, this does not reflect the complex and sometimes conflictual processes of decision-making within a state.
A deeper understanding of regulatory chill requires a deeper dive into this web of state actors.
Anna Sands completed the MPhil in development studies at Oxford University, and this blog is based on her MPhil research, focusing on the impact of ISDS on a state’s policy choices. She is currently trade policy specialist at WWF-UK.
Investment treaties
Investment disputes
Rethinking investment treaties and dispute settlement in the light of sustainable development
International investment treaties are a key part of the legal architecture that underpins the global economy. IIED works with partners to realign these legal documents with sustainable development
A collaborative initiative to strengthen local rights and voices
What happens when the landgrabbers leave? An account from Kilwa, Tanzania
Can promotion groups help strengthen women’s access and control over land?
Blog series probes principles: what works for women’s land rights?
Stopping land and policy grabs in the shadow of COVID-19
Strengthening local rights and voices in natural resource investments. More in this collection
Introduction to legal tools for citizen empowerment
Producer agency in certification schemes: challenges and opportunities
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86 user 207 critic
Not Rated | 1h 28min | Comedy, Drama | 29 September 2017 (USA)
Lucky follows the spiritual journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off the map desert town.
Logan Sparks (screenplay), Drago Sumonja (screenplay)
Harry Dean Stanton, David Lynch, Ron Livingston | See full cast & crew »
86 user | 207 critic
4,666 ( 518)
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On Death
Search for "Lucky" on Amazon.com
Title: Lucky (2017)
Face-Off: Lucky Logan Lucky Logan
Gems That Seem to Be Forgotten
IMDb Poll Board Top 5 Picks for 2017
Harry Dean Stanton ... Lucky
David Lynch ... Howard
Ron Livingston ... Bobby Lawrence
Ed Begley Jr. ... Dr. Christian Kneedler
Tom Skerritt ... Fred
Barry Shabaka Henley ... Joe
James Darren ... Paulie
Beth Grant ... Elaine
Yvonne Huff ... Loretta (as Yvonne Huff Lee)
Hugo Armstrong ... Vincent
Bertila Damas ... Bibi
Pam Sparks ... Pam (as Pamela Sparks)
Mouse ... Mouse
Ulysses Olmedo ... Juan Wayne (as Ulysses Olemdo)
Ana Mercedes ... Victoria
Lucky is an old US Navy veteran of rigid habits and attitudes in a small town. When his routine is interrupted by a sudden collapse at home, Lucky finds himself realizing that his remarkably healthy old age is going to face an inevitable decline and he has to accept it. In that difficult reassessment, Lucky must face up to what he believes in and how much it compares to his neighbors' priorities. In doing so, Lucky finds that his life has its positive side as he searches for some meaning that he can accept. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Plot Summary | Plot Synopsis
senior citizen | retiree | philosophy | desert | mariachi music | See All (233) »
Comedy | Drama
Not Rated | See all certifications »
This marks the third time David Lynch has worked with a cast member from Alien (1979). He previously worked with John Hurt on The Elephant Man (1980). See more »
Lucky: Realism is a thing.
References Deal or No Deal (2005) See more »
Performed by Harry Dean Stanton
A meditation on mortality
25 September 2018 | by Bertaut – See all my reviews
Lucky is the directorial debut of prolific actor John Carroll Lynch, who has worked with everyone from John Woo to David Fincher to Martin Scorsese, and appeared in recurring roles on TV shows such as The Drew Carey Show (1995), Carnivàle (2003), and American Horror Story (2011). However, more noteworthy than this is that Lucky features the last performance from the legendary Harry Dean Stanton, who was 90 at the time of shooting, and who died on September 15, 2017, two weeks prior to the film's North American release. Written specifically for Stanton by Logan Sparks (one of his closest friends) and Drago Sumonja, the film is a meditation on mortality, and is as much about Stanton himself as it is the eponymous character he's playing. Beginning like a quirky comedy full of strange characters with gentle eccentricities (imagine a David Lynch film softened by John Waters), the film later morphs into a more serious meditation on how a nonagenarian atheist with no family faces up to the fact that death is not that far away. Moving entirely at its own measured pace, the film manages to explore a plethora of themes along the way; mortality, routine, impermanence, friendship, love, loss, regret, hope. Laid back and tender, graceful and sedate, Lucky works primarily by way of presenting individual vignettes that very much add up to more than the sum of their parts.
The film tells the story of Lucky (Stanton), a 90-year-old living in an unnamed backwater town on the edge of an Arizonan desert. An atheist who doesn't believe in an afterlife or the soul, never married, and with no children, he is happy to explain to people that he's alone, but he is not lonely. Living his life by way of a rigid routine, Lucky's day begins with yoga exercises, followed by a walk to the local diner, where he chats with owner Joe (Barry Shabaka Henley) and waitress Loretta (Yvonne Huff), and completes the crossword in the paper. Visiting the local shop run by Bibi (Bertila Damas), he buys a pack of cigarettes, and then returns home to spend a few hours watching game shows. At night, he heads to a bar owned by Elaine (Beth Grant) and her husband Paulie (James Darren), where he trades stories with his best friend, Howard (David Lynch; yes, that David Lynch), and barman Vincent (Hugo Armstrong). However, when he falls for no apparent reason one morning, the local doctor, Kneedler (Ed Begley Jr.), tries to explain that at his age, the body simply starts to break down. On the other hand, Kneedler is unable to find anything seriously wrong with him, despite his nicotine addiction, pointing out that trying to get him off cigarettes would probably do him more harm than good. Meanwhile, he continues with his routine, albeit more aware that he doesn't have a huge amount of time left. Over the next few days, he attends Bibi's son's birthday party, encounters life-insurance man Bobby (Ron Livingston), who he feels is exploiting Howard, and trades stories from the Battle of Okinawa with former marine Fred (Tom Skerritt).
And that's about it. That's the plot (if you can even call it that), and it should be obvious that this is a character-driven film, where the vagaries of a well-laid plot simply don't factor into things. That this is the case is signalled in the slow and methodical opening sequence, which depicts Lucky ambling past boarded-up and dust covered shops, as the hot sun beats down. This is an especially well-handled example of form and content mirroring one another, as the lethargic pace playing out on screen (no one ever seems to be in a rush) correlates with the lethargic pace of the editing rhythm (Lynch allows the scenes and the characters plenty of room to breathe, unburdened with trying to race to the next pivotal plot-point).
This sequence also works to set up the style and tone which the film will adopt for the remainder of its runtime. Rather than a standard cause-and-effect narrative, Lucky is instead built upon a series of small, usually idiosyncratic, moments, often with only the barest amount of connective tissue between them. Neither does Lucky, nor any of the other characters, have what you would call a significant character arc. He doesn't encounter something which forces him to go on a metaphorical/spiritual journey, arriving at some kind of universal truth which softens his gruff exterior. Instead, he's essentially the same man when the film ends as he was when it began, which is, of course, the entire point.
Also in the opening sequence, prior to seeing Lucky wandering around town, the film features a series of shots of the barren desert, with a tortoise slowly ambling into view. The film then cuts to Lucky waking up. This could have been a trite metaphor, but in actual fact, this tortoise becomes a plot-point later on; his name is President Roosevelt, and he belongs to Howard. However, he recently escaped from Howard's yard, sending the man into an emotional meltdown, as Roosevelt is his oldest friend. The missing tortoise is one of the few strands which occurs over multiple scenes, and is central to the way the film defines Howard's character, whilst Lucky's incredulity that Howard could be so upset over a tortoise affords him the opportunity for some nihilistic philosophising.
Indeed, in relation to philosophy/theology, Lucky's atheism is an important component of his character; he doesn't believe in God, an afterlife, or the soul, arguing instead that we only get one life, the corporeal one, and when we die, that's it, we turn to dust, and we're gone forever. However, as Lucky starts to become more and more conscious of the imminence of death, his darkly existentialist outlook starts to look less like a grumpy old man's innocent ramblings, and more like something which could genuinely make his last few years miserable. In relation to this, when Lucky goes to see Kneedling, the doctor stresses the fact that he is both blessed and cursed to have gotten as old as he has - blessed in the sense that very few people make it this far, cursed because physically, Lucky's body is beginning to fail him.
One of the major themes in the film is routine; Lucky's day is rigidly mapped out, to the point that if someone is sitting in his favourite diner seat, it throws him off and puts him in a bad mood. In this sense, repetition is a major part of both Lucky's life, and the film's structure (for example, we see him walking his route around town on four different occasions). Another important theme is impermanence, which ties into Lucky's rejection of a never-ending life after death. For example, when he visits a pet shop, he doesn't know what a "forever home" is, and even when it's explained to him, he still seems to be somewhat confused. Tied to this, the issue of mortality is brought up time and again, seen most clearly in Howard's dealings with Bobby, preparing for his own inevitable death. Indeed, it's worth pointing out that the five yoga exercises Lucky performs each morning are the Five Rites of Rejuvenation, so although he knows this life won't last forever, so too is he doing what he can to prolong it as much as possible. With this in mind, after he falls, the film shifts gears, changing from a pseudo-comic examination of a curmudgeonly old man into a subtle analysis of the inescapability of death and the transitory nature of existence.
The film also deals with the importance of small anecdotes and seemingly minor personal connections - scenes which aren't especially dramatic, but which tell us a huge amount about the characters. Working together, the acting, the expressive faces, the seemingly insignificant dialogue, the importance of routine, the crumbling town, the desert, all serve to create the whole, which conveys far more than any one aspect of the film could. However, this is not to say that individual scenes don't work, or are disposable. For example, several scenes contain achingly beautiful anecdotes; Lucky's story of accidentally killing a mockingbird as a child; Howard's narration of what he imagines President Roosevelt's birth must have been like; and, in a scene obviously paying homage to a very similar scene in The Straight Story (1999), Lucky and Fred swap heart-breaking stories of their time in the war (just like Lucky, Stanton was a cook on board the USS LST-970, which participated in the Battle of Okinawa). The film also contains one of the best lines I've heard in a long time - as Paulie is talking about how he used to be a bum worth nothing, but everything changed after he met Beth, he explains, "I'm still nothing, but now I have everything. Isn't that something?"
If I was to find fault, there would be a couple of things worth criticising. Although the film avoids mawkish sentimentality for almost its entire runtime, it does become a little maudlin towards the end. Additionally, by its very nature, the narrative is very episodic, which creates a slight impression of disconnection. For the most part, the tone and design of the film also work to keep the audience at arm's length, preventing us from becoming too emotionally involved with Lucky himself, something which I'm not entirely sure served the film, or the character, very well.
However, these are relatively minor flaws in an otherwise excellent film, and in the end, this is a fitting swan song for an actor of Stanton's calibre. And how many people can say they've appeared in their own filmic obituary?
29 September 2017 (USA) See more »
Lucky See more »
Piru, California, USA See more »
$43,293, 1 October 2017
Superlative Films, Divide/Conquer See more »
Dolby Digital | Stereo
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‘Promised Land’ Officially Starts Production, Oil Drilling Plotline Detailed
'Promised Land' Officially Starts Production, Oil Drilling Plotline Detailed
Apr 24, 2012 3:22 pm
As “Promised Land” has been moving along, gathering up financing, a director and a cast, the actual plot details have been kept mostly under wraps, with only vague allusions to a Capra-esque tale about two rivals in a small town. In the last few weeks, the filmmakers behind the Kickstarter-funded documentary “FrackNation” posited that the film written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski was going to be an anti-fracking movie (fracking is essentially the process by which water and chemicals are blasted to separate rock layers to extract gas and oil). But of course, the documentarians are making a movie that purports to tell the “truth” about the controversial nature of fracking, so they had an agenda of their own to push, and besides their word, there was no indication that “Promised Land” was going to tackle that topic.
But today, Focus Features announced the film was now in production and along with that news, the studio dropped the first official synopsis which reveals that the story does take place in the oil industry, but you won’t see the f-word anywhere and thematically, it seems to be reaching for something more than just a political issue.
The film will find Damon playing Steve Butler, a corporate salesman who arrives in a rural town with his sales partner, Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand). With the town having been hit hard by economic decline in recent years, the two outsiders see the local citizens as likely to accept their company’s offer, for drilling rights to their properties, as much-needed relief. What seems like an easy job for the duo becomes complicated by the objection of a respected schoolteacher (Hal Holbrook) with support from a grassroots campaign led by another man (Krasinski) who counters Steve both personally and professionally.
“Matt and I wanted to write a story about American identity. In all of today’s political and economic rhetoric, I feel people often lose sight of the deeper, core principles of what defines us as a country. We knew we needed to find a contemporary issue that would serve as the backdrop to the story but, more importantly, allow us to fully explore this idea,” Krasinski said in a statement. So while there will be an issue around which the story revolves, it seems it’s all in serving the purpose of something deeper.
Rosemarie Dewitt, Scoot McNairy and Titus Welliver round out the cast, and issues-based drama or not, this one is certainly compelling.
This Article is related to: News and tagged Gus Van Sant, John Krasinski, Matt Damon, Promised Land
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‘Hansel & Gretel 2’ Script Done, Jeremy Renners Says He’s Not Signed But Open To Returning
'Hansel & Gretel 2' Script Done, Jeremy Renners Says He's Not Signed But Open To Returning
The butt of many jokes at the beginning of 2013, “Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters” had the last laugh, earning over $225 million worldwide (thank you, international audiences) and spawning development on a sequel. And writer/director Tommy Wirkola (whose “Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead” just took home a couple of awards at Fantastic Fest) has just provided a update on the status of that sequel.
“I’ve written the script for it. I’ve given it to Paramount and it’s up to them now,” he told Shock Til You Drop. “But I don’t know what’s going to happen. Jeremy [Renner] is so busy these days, I don’t know how they’re going to juggle all of that, but it’s up to [Paramount]. We’ll see. Hopefully, I’ll get to do another film first.”
“They really liked the script I gave them,” he continued. “The first film was a learning curve for me working in the studio system and the script I wrote for the original was so different. We ended up taking a lot out and altering stuff that first time. I’m smarter now. I tried taking what I learned and still delivered a sequel script that’s an R-rated action film.”
So where do things stand with Renner? Already part of the Marvel-verse and the ‘Bourne’ series, his schedule is pretty full, but he’s evidently not yet signed for the ‘Hansel And Gretel’ sequel.
“Not that I’m aware of, no,” he told CinemaBlend when asked. “I know they’re going to make one. I know they’re writing a script. And that’s when they will probably engage with any talent.”
And while Renner concedes that he’s very busy, one should not mistake that for being too good to return for more fairy tale adventures. “I don’t have any problem with it,” he said. “Yeah. It was a lot of fun. It was fun to do that movie, and just have a ball.”
So we’ll see if the script goes anywhere and if Paramount pursues it, but in the age of franchises, we’d reckon they’ll give it an honest shot.
This Article is related to: News and tagged Jeremy Renner, Tommy Wirkola
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IT Leadership // CIO Insights & Innovation
Curtis Franklin Jr.
Agile Not Just For IT Anymore
Many organizations are taking the Agile development discipline beyond IT to every department. What are the key issues to make the transition successful?
Agile Analytics: 11 Ways To Get There
Fans of the Agile discipline are enthusiastic. That enthusiasm is why I'm standing in the middle of a 60-second dance-off on a Tuesday morning in April. It's how a thousand or so scrum coaches, team-leaders, and practitioners started their day at the Scrum Alliance's Global Scrum Gathering in Orlando, Fla., before launching into sessions on the best way to make an organization agile.
Agile enthusiasm is also why I ended up on the phone with the CEO and a vice president of product development from Compuware. A lot of companies like to talk about their products, but Compuware was eager to talk about the processes it has put in place for the entire company. As I learned at the Scrum Gathering, talking about processes might be unusual for the average business, but it's just another day for organizations deeply into Agile.
Change Everything
"When I came in, the intent was to change everything. I wanted to create an agile business by design," Compuware CEO Chris O'Malley said in a phone conversation. "This was part of a larger effort to create a startup culture across Compuware."
Compuware CEO Chris O'Malley
(Image: Compuware)
David Rizzo, Compuware's vice president of product development, said that the company's move to the Agile discipline was part of O'Malley's plan from his first days with Compuware. It wasn't a plan that everyone at the company embraced with enthusiasm. "There were a lot of people who thought he wasn't quite right about what he wanted," Rizzo said. He explained that it wasn't hard to understand employees' antipathy to the plans.
"Eighteen months ago, the average tenure of a developer was around 20 years," he said, adding that the roles had become entrenched and siloed. Developers worked on a specific product and knew precisely what to do -- and were comfortable in the certainty of those roles. "We went in knowing that would be an issue," Rizzo said.
Inertia is as powerful in the enterprise as in physics. That's why strong leadership from the top is crucial in moving an organization to an Agile discipline. That was the message from Marty Garza, a technology executive at Southwest Airlines, when he took part in a keynote panel at the Global Scrum Gathering. "If you don't have Agile leaders in the organization, you'll struggle with bringing Agile into the organization," he said.
Garza went on to provide an example from his experience. "When a team was implementing Agile and went to scrum, their leadership wasn't prepared, and the team ended up drifting back into their old habits," he said.
Leaders have particular roles to play when it comes to moving an organization to Agile. "For me, the biggest thing is to get executives to understand their role in an Agile environment. There's a misconception that you can slap Agile on an IT organization, but nothing has to change above that. It's a mindset more than a methodology," Garza said.
Leading From the Top
Garza pointed out that there is a fundamental difference between leaders and executives. "Leadership is not a title. Everyone has the opportunity to be an Agile leader," he said. "Real leaders are able to move people with them. You have to ask what it is that will help the organization change. That's what you need to do to find the win for the executives."
Leadership from the top was critical to Compuware's shift to Agile, according to Rizzo. "Looking back at the last 18 months, the biggest things have been executive management support. If it doesn't start at the top, it's not going to happen," he said. "Customers ask me how I got the support, so they know that having the support and the vision to know where you want to go is key and helpful."
For O'Malley, the support for Agile came from a deep sense that there was no other choice if the company was going to succeed, or even survive. "Larger enterprises are used to surviving in a world where they're in a state of managed decline. They don't understand what it takes to be a success," he said. He contrasted that mindset to the one that he's worked to establish in his company.
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"April 1st will be our 6th quarterly drop. Before that we hadn't delivered a product since 1995," O'Malley said. The six quarters have come, he said, from a combination of a new discipline and pushing employees to find a new pace. "You'd be naive to think that we're doing that if we're not working hard. It's hard and it's relentless. It just never stops," he said. "Some people ask me if we can take a quarter off. You deliver a drop and the next day you're back in the saddle."
The relentless pace of the Agile discipline is something that O'Malley recognized and made a conscious choice to embrace. "We could certainly take a quarter off. You can take a rest. We could work at a leisurely pace, but then always live under the threat that we'll have to let people go as part of the process of managed decline," he said. "I've said that I'm not going to do that. I'm going to choose hard work and success and not manage the decline."
Leading From IT
Garza said that, even with support and leadership from executives, having a department that can demonstrate Agile success can be critical. "We used IT very liberally as a proof point for taking an Agile approach. I'd have someone from another department and the first thing I'd do is bring them down to the scrum."
Compuware vice president of product development David Rizzo
Justin Segal, founder of Stemmons Enterprise, a platform for real estate investment and management systems, spoke on the panel with Garza. He agreed that starting in one department and growing through its success can be critical. "It started with the invitation. I started treating it like an open party and going to everyone who exhibited any interest and inviting them to the scrum. You get into the conscious creation of culture and evangelists," he said, pointing out that individuals who accepted the invitation and became evangelists have seen their careers expand and grow in the company.
Segal said that there are very pragmatic reasons for IT to embrace the role of Agile pioneers and evangelists. "IT pros are standing on top of a $100 bill. The opportunity is there to pick it up and carry it into the organization," he said. "The conversation is changing quickly. If someone from marketing or sales, someone who wants to focus on self-promotion, finds that bill, they'll be the ones carrying it into the board room."
Regardless of who helps executives lead the company in an Agile direction, the journey is going to require work, said O'Malley. "I'm trying to get people used to what success looks like," he said. "We're nearly through that process, but even now it's hard. I'd love for someone to show me the pixie dust that lets us succeed without the hard work."
(Cover Image: joreks/iStockphoto)
Curtis Franklin Jr. is Senior Editor at Dark Reading. In this role he focuses on product and technology coverage for the publication. In addition he works on audio and video programming for Dark Reading and contributes to activities at Interop ITX, Black Hat, INsecurity, and ... View Full Bio
Oldest First | Newest First | Threaded View
This is an interesting article. And Yes I agree that it is not limited to IT any more. In my organization even the HR uses the same concept with certain changes. However it has the concept.
Susan Fourtané,
Business agility and leadership
Buisness agillity is becoming a pillar in today's businesses. Innovation and agility are two fundamental things that go hand in hand with leadership. I liked what was noted about the difference between being a leader and being an executive. Not every executive has what it's needed to be a leader. Very nice article, Curt. -Susan
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Victoria launches $250m growth fund
Denham Sadler
The Victorian government will make equity investments in local companies through a new $250 million growth fund which closely mirrors a similar initiative to be launched soon by the federal government.
The Victorian Business Growth Fund marks a significant shift in policy from the state government, which has mostly steered clear from direct investments in companies, instead funding the surrounding infrastructure and organisations, mainly through LaunchVic.
The fund will be managed independently by Roc Partners, with the state government not involved in any of the investment decisions. The Victorian government will be contributing $50 million to the fund, with First State Super stumping up $200 million.
It will take equity or debt in each company rather than providing grants, with a focus on “long-term growth opportunities”.
Spring Street: Creating a new equity investment fund
“This is a Victorian-first program that finds a new way of backing our local businesses to become bigger and better. We know access to capital is often a handbrake on growth – we’re fixing that,” Victorian treasurer Tim Pallas said.
“As we continue to recover from this crisis, we’ll continue to pursue more opportunities to work closely with the private sector to grow the economy.”
The fund is very similar to an initiative by the federal government. The $540 million Australian Business Growth Fund will provide “patient capital” to SMEs around the country, with $100 million in Commonwealth funds, $100 million from each of the big four banks and $20 million each from HSBC and Macquarie Group.
The Victorian version of the fund is ready to invest now, while the federal growth fund is still before Parliament and not in operation yet. It is understood that once both funds are up and running and making investments, efforts will be made to ensure they complement each other rather than compete for companies.
The Victorian fund will invest in companies with a “compelling growth opportunity to Victoria”, whether through being based in the state, expanding to Victoria or creating jobs or capital locally.
To be eligible for the fund, companies will need to have annual revenue of between $5 million and $100 million, no more than $250 million in assets and have, or expected to soon have, positive cash flow.
Similarly, the Commonwealth business growth fund will target companies with annual revenue of between $2 million and $100 million, with three years of revenue growth and profitability. It will take equity stakes of 10 to 40 per cent in each company through investments of between $5 and $15 million.
Legislation facilitating the Commonwealth’s investment in the fund is still yet to pass Parliament, despite plans for it to be up and running next month. Former Tasmanian premier Will Hodgman has been appointed to lead the new fund.
The federal government has not made this legislation a priority during the last sitting fortnight, with the bill needing to pass for the $100 million in Commonwealth funds to be made available. The federal fund was first announced during last year’s election campaign.
The Victorian government’s fund will be governed by an investment mandate decided by it and First State Super, while Roc Partners will be responsible for all the investment decisions. It will look for a commercial return, and provide “strategic insights, expertise and commercial experience” to its portfolio companies.
First State Super ran a competitive process to select the fund manager, with Roc Partners to now significantly expand its presence in Melbourne, with a permanent office in the city and a number of new hires.
Roc Partners was bought out from Macquarie Funds Group in 2014 after previously being known as Macquarie Investment Management Private Markets. The firm has offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Both business growth funds are being spun as key elements to help businesses emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Victorian government has previously opted to not directly fund companies and take equity in them, instead looking to provide cash for the infrastructure around these companies, mainly through LaunchVic, which was created in 2016.
The independent agency’s initial $60 million in funding came to an end last year. It was provided a further $10 million for this financial year to continue operations, with discussions underway into its long-term operations.
This $10 million in funding is set to run dry at the end of this financial year, but the state budget has been pushed back to later this year due to the ongoing pandemic.
LaunchVic will work with the Victorian Business Growth Fund and will refer its stakeholders and businesses to register interest with it.
Related: Australian Business Growth Fund | LaunchVic | Roc Partners | Victorian Business Growth Fund
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The Victorian government will make equity investments in local companies through a new $250 million growth fund which closely mirrors a similar initiative to be launched soon by the...
Mergers changes to hit startups
Matt Barrie on the Aussie scene
Posted on 28 November 2016 | by James Riley
Welcome to The Establishment
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Gerald French
The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band & Dixie Cups
From the birthplace of Jazz and the city of family Music Traditions. Gerald French is from one of the pioneering families of New Orleans Traditional Jazz. For the passed 15 years, he has been the drummer for Ms. Charmaine Neville, the Darlin of New Orleans and has been the drummer for the Dixie Cups for the pass two years and counting. In November of 2004, he was given the opportunity to joint Harry Connick Jr. Big Band. Mr. French is a graduate of Alcee Foriter Senior High School, Delgado Community College of New Orleans and attended Southern University of Baton Rouge where he played in the band. He was the percussion teacher at St. Mary's Academy and serviced as the Assistant Band Director.
Mr. French has traveled and performed with several musicians such as: Leroy Jones, Harry Connick Jr., Dr. John, Dr. Michael White, Lillan Boutte, Jermy Davenport, Big Chief Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias, Preservation Hall Jazz Band just to name a few. He has appeared on several recordings and television shows such as: Fulton Street Live with Ingrid Lucia and George French, Leroy Jones; Prop's for Pop's, Ingrid Lucia; Fortune, Almost Blue and Don't Stop, Big Al Carson; Bring Your Drinking Ass Home, Craig Klein; Trombonism, Cubamismo's; Mardi Gras Mambo, and Leroy Jones; The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Today Show with Harry Connick Jr.. For the passed twenty years, he has traveled to Japan with the New Orleans All-stars in the month of August.
Mr. French is known as "The Giant" for his own original style of drumming and because of that, he has traveled around the world playing all types of music. He has appeared in Modern Drummer Magazine in the October 1996 issue. French has performed at several festivals including New Orleans French Quarter Festival, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival , Ascona New Orleans and Classics Jazz Festival in Ascona, Switzerland, North Sea Jazz Festival, Festival International De Jazz De Montreal, Edinburgh International Jazz & Blues Festival, Pori Jazz Festival, Montana Jazz; Waiheke Island in New Zealand and Montroux Jazz Festival. Mr. French as been an endorsee of Sabian Cymbals for the passed five years. On September 19, 2008, Gerald was given an endorsement from Taye Drums. He is currently working with The Joe Ashlar Organ Trio, Fritzel’s Jazz Band, his own original bands Abstract and Déjà vu. In December 2011 Gerald was passed the touché of band leader of the oldest jazz band The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band.
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Blachill History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms
Blachill is a name of ancient Anglo-Saxon origin and comes from a family once having lived in the village of Blackall in Devon, or one of numerous other minor locations of the same name. The place-name is derived from black hall, which indicated a manor, which was dark in color or in a dark area.
Early Origins of the Blachill family
The surname Blachill was first found in Devon, where they held a family seat from ancient times, long before the Norman Conquest in 1066.
Blackhall can be found "in the regality of Garioch, Aberdeenshire. William de Blackhall who appears on a jury of inquest retouring William de Tullidaff of Lentush and Rothmaise heir of his father in 1398 is apparently the first of the name recorded. " [1]
Early History of the Blachill family
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Blachill research. Another 193 words (14 lines of text) covering the years 1420, 1420, 1499, 1547, 1655, 1716, 1708, 1716, 1690, 1694, 1792, 1760, 1763, 1770 and 1667 are included under the topic Early Blachill History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Blachill Spelling Variations
The English language only became standardized in the last few centuries; therefore, spelling variations are common among early Anglo-Saxon names. As the form of the English language changed, even the spelling of literate people's names evolved. Blachill has been recorded under many different variations, including Blackhall, Blackall, Blakhall, Blaikhall and many more.
Early Notables of the Blachill family (pre 1700)
Notables of this surname at this time include: Offspring Blackall (bap. 1655-1716), Bishop of Exeter (1708-1716.) He "did not come into public notice until he was a middle-aged man, and of his early years little is known. He was born in London, and in due time became a member of St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge, where, it may be presumed, he lived a strictly religious life, for he is mentioned as one of the intimate college friends of the saintly James Bonnell,who chose none but the godly for his companions. In 1690...
Another 91 words (6 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Blachill Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Migration of the Blachill family to Ireland
Some of the Blachill family moved to Ireland, but this topic is not covered in this excerpt.
Migration of the Blachill family
For many English families, the political and religious disarray that shrouded England made the far away New World an attractive prospect. On cramped disease-ridden ships, thousands migrated to those British colonies that would eventually become Canada and the United States. Those hardy settlers that survived the journey often went on to make important contributions to the emerging nations in which they landed. Analysis of immigration records indicates that some of the first North American immigrants bore the name Blachill or a variant listed above: Agnes Blackhall, aged 26; who settled in New York in 1774.
Norman Conquest
Blachill (English)
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Losch History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms
The Losch surname is thought to have derived from the Slavic word "litsch," which meant "wild;" as such, it may have originally been a nickname for a wild or unruly person. The surname many also have evolved from any of several places, such as Lisch in Holstein; or Lischau in East Prussia.
Early Origins of the Losch family
The surname Losch was first found in Austria, where the name became noted for its many branches within the region, each house acquiring a status and influence which was enrolled by the princes of the region. In their later history the family became a power unto themselves and were elevated to the ranks of nobility as they grew into this most influential name.
Early History of the Losch family
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Losch research. Another 133 words (10 lines of text) covering the years 1662, 1701, 1736, 1740, 1749, 1760, and 1780 are included under the topic Early Losch History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Losch Spelling Variations
Spelling variations of this family name include: Lischer, Lisch, Lischke, Lischka, Lischeid, Lissek, Lissak, Litsch, Litscher, Litschke, Litschka, Litschko, Lischy, Liske, Lisko, Liskov, Liskow and many more.
Early Notables of the Losch family (pre 1700)
During this period prominent bearers of the name Losch were Christian Liscow (1701-1760) from Mecklenburg, who was a prominent writer of satires. In 1736 he entered the service...
Another 28 words (2 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Losch Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Losch migration to the United States +
Some of the first settlers of this family name were:
Losch Settlers in United States in the 18th Century
Mattys Losch, who arrived in New York in 1709 [1]
Joh Daniel Losch, who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1750 [1]
Johan Jacob Losch, who landed in Pennsylvania in 1750 [1]
Johann Georg Losch, who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1751 [1]
Casimer Losch, who arrived in New England in 1752 [1]
... (More are available in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.)
Ph Losch, aged 43, who landed in North America in 1854 [1]
Peter Losch, who landed in Iowa in 1872 [1]
Frederick Losch, who landed in Allegany (Allegheny) County, Pennsylvania in 1873 [1]
Contemporary Notables of the name Losch (post 1700) +
Samuel Alfred Losch (d. 1900), American Republican politician, Member of Pennsylvania State House of Representatives from Schuylkill County, 1875-76, 1893-94; Member of Pennsylvania State Senate 29th District, 1897-1900 [2]
^ Filby, P. William, Meyer, Mary K., Passenger and immigration lists index : a guide to published arrival records of about 500,000 passengers who came to the United States and Canada in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. 1982-1985 Cumulated Supplements in Four Volumes Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research Co., 1985, Print (ISBN 0-8103-1795-8)
^ The Political Graveyard: Alphabetical Name Index. (Retrieved 2015, October 8) . Retrieved from http://politicalgraveyard.com/alpha/index.html
Losch (German)
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Published by Adrian Saville on 28 May 2013
It’s not about the state of the world, but the state of sub-Saharan Africa
One of the key structural drivers of economic performance is economic openness which measures the connectedness and mobility of economies that comes about through international trade, capital flows and the movement of information and people. Achieving higher economic openness is a positive force in play that holds great promise for the sub-Saharan Africa.
Adrian Saville
From lagging developed markets, sub-Saharan Africa has played catch-up over the past 15 years. The region has shown annual real GDP growth some 2% per annum ahead of global growth. This, combined with structural reforms taking place in the sub-continent – which include governance and policy improvements, debt retirement and material political reforms – has yielded a region rich with opportunity. That this coincides with an era of advanced world structural decay only serves to highlight the potential of Africa. By contrast, the historically economically advanced Western world has succumbed to the four macroeconomic demons of excessive debt, demographic decay, deep-rooted unemployment and deficient policy.
As intimated, at least four clear drivers can be identified as having contributed to sub-Saharan Africa’s surge, including:
higher demand for commodities associated with the dynamic rise of new markets which, in turn, supports substantial price increases that remain elevated;
debt relief and sustained fiscal improvement, evidenced by Africa’s debt-to-GDP ratio having more than halved from around 70% in 1990 to 30% today (amongst the lowest in the world);
better economic management and policy platforms – for example Africa’s institutional strength and competitiveness scores in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report have steadily improved since 2006; and
Africa’s demographic dividend, represented by the world’s fastest growing, urbanising population, with access to ever-improving healthcare, education and technology.
The impact on economic growth has been significant and tangible which, in turn, has given birth to great business opportunities and wealth creation. Notably, in the last decade sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth has become of increasingly higher quality. For instance, whilst resources continue to matter to the region’s economies, their importance has diminished as a gradual but persistent shift towards the secondary and tertiary sectors has taken place on the continent, and this is where the greatest opportunity arguably resides in mobility and connectedness. On a macroeconomic level, we refer to the mobility of goods, services and capital which facilitates the production process. On the microeconomic level, the mobility of information, knowledge, technology and people contribute to the rising productivity of those factors.
We can plot these two metrics on a matrix, as shown below.
Macroeconomic Mobility (Trade & Capital) vs Microeconomic Mobility (Information & People)
Against this backdrop, and drawing on a large body of international evidence, Cannon Asset Manager’s research team has developed a framework for modelling connectedness. The model recognises four forms of connectedness, namely:
“Poverty Trapped” economies, such as North Korea today or former Soviet economies, with low macroeconomic and macroeconomic mobility. This is where sub-Saharan Africa has been located historically.
“Lost Opportunity” economies, where the macroeconomic factors of goods, services and capital enjoy increasing mobility but microeconomic factors battle to get across borders. Brazil in the 1980s is an example of such an economy.
“Flight Risk” economies, where people and information can move across borders, but goods, services and capital are trapped. In such settings, people tend to “get up and go” following trade and investment opportunities. South Africa in the 1980s is an example of such an economy.
“Trail Blazer” economies have high mobility in macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. Examples of this type of economy are the Asian tigers such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, as well as other “miracle” economies such as Estonia, Chile and the Czech Republic.
Notably, Africa has spent most of its modern economic history locked in the “poverty trapped” zone, with low mobility in macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. However, this is changing rapidly, albeit from a low base. By way of example, since 2000, 316 million new mobile connections have been made while 31 countries (out of 54) now boast 3G services compared to zero in 2004. Trade with Brazil, Russia, India and China has grown from $10 billion in 2000 to more than $200 billion today, and foreign direct investment flows to sub-Saharan Africa economies have grown by a factor of ten times over the same period.
Seen in this light, there is spectacular potential to be derived for Africa from the growing intra-regional links. In addition, inside of economies, connectedness and mobility afford new opportunities. Kenya’s M-Pesa is a great case in point. One study estimates that mobile technology has the capacity to add another 10% to sub-Saharan Africa’s economy as a once-off upward adjustment through applications such as mobile payment, micro insurance and micro lending; smart logistics; traceability and tracking; and agricultural trading, tendering and bartering platforms.
Arguably, the leverage is remarkable. Our research shows that raising mobility (measured as the average of macroeconomic and microeconomic scores highlighted in the above framework) by just 5% has the potential to add some 40% to the region’s GDP.
South Korea offers a superb illustration of the possibilities created by rising mobility and connectedness – and indeed what to anticipate. Per capita income in the Asian state soared from $80 in 1960 to $23,000 in 2012. Notably, these gains were driven more by connecting to neighbours, such as Japan, Taiwan and China, than to the world at large. Perhaps economies such as Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ghana find themselves at the same point as South Korea 40 years ago. This potential, where a huge opportunity for economic advancement resides in connectedness, competitive growth, increasing sophistication and innovation – enhanced by embracing neighbours – sets up a cycle of growth and prosperity.
As investors, it is always important to bear in mind that, whilst the African economy is poised to benefit from the influence of connectedness and openness, this will not mean that all companies will benefit equally. Investing is not the result of buying businesses exposed to fast growth, but rather paying a good price for a good business, ideally resident in an enabling environment. Seen in this light, we are of the view that an exceptional opportunity resides in investing in companies that are engaged in enabling, facilitating and enhancing economic connectedness and mobility in sub-Saharan Africa.
Adrian Saville is CIO and founder of Cannon Asset Managers, a niche investment management company that applies the philosophy and principles of value investing, an investment management approach. Saville holds a visiting professorship in economics and finance at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
Tags: Adrian Saville, Cannon Asset Managers
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Langer to Miss Two Months After Thumb Surgery
PGATour.com—March 25, 2011
Bernhard Langer underwent successful surgery on his left thumb on Wednesday and will be out approximately two months.
The surgery was performed by Dr. Andrew Weiland, who performed thumb surgery on Anthony Kim, among others on the PGA TOUR, at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
Langer required surgical repair of the ulnar collateral ligament of the metacarpal joint on the left thumb for an injury suffered from a bicycle accident. The surgical procedure is also known as 'skier's thumb repair.'
"Bernhard underwent a successful surgical repair and has recovered well from the procedure," said Dr. Weiland in a release. "He will remain immobilized in a splint for five weeks, and will begin range of motion exercises afterwards. It is anticipated that he will return to golfing activities in approximately eight weeks. A full recovery is expected."
"I'm obviously disappointed that the injury occurred, but especially disappointed with such an important part of my schedule coming up, including the Masters," Langer said. "I do, however, appreciate the fine care of Dr. Weiland and his team, and will work hard to recover to allow me to resume play on the Champions Tour this summer."
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Eric Bolling Accused Of 'Revolting Racism' For Obama 'Hizzouse' Comments (VIDEO)
UPDATE: On his Monday show, Fox Business host Eric Bolling apologized for his comments about President Obama.
"On Friday, we did a story about the president meeting with the president of Gabon," Bolling said. "We got a little fast and loose with the language, and we know it's been interpreted as being disrespectful, and for that, I'm sorry. We did go a bit too far."
ORIGINAL POST: Fox Business host Eric Bolling is drawing fire for comments he made about President Obama on Friday.
On his show "Follow The Money," Bolling criticized Obama's visit with Ali Bongo, the president of Gabon, by saying, "Guess who's coming to dinner? A dictator. Mr. Obama shares a laugh with one of Africa's kleptocrats. It's not the first time he's had a hoodlum in the hizzouse."
As he said "hizzouse," a picture of rapper Common appeared on the screen. Common's appearance at a White House poetry event drew loud complaints from conservatives.
Later, Bolling made similar comments. "What's with all the hoods in the hizzy?" he asked, saying that Bongo has been "accused of human rights violations and plundering billions of his country's dollars."
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg called the comments "open, and revolting, anti-Obama racism" in a blog post on Sunday.
Bolling defended himself on Twitter and Facebook, saying that he was merely criticizing the visit and linking to other outlets that had done so as well.
Fox News Media Eric Bolling
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Welcome to the Junior League of Roanoke Valley’s website! I am both honored and excited to serve as the President for the 2020-2021
League year. We are on the road to 100 years of JLRV and looking forward to celebrating that milestone!
The Junior League of Roanoke Valley is a non-profit organization of more than 400 members committed to our mission statement of promoting voluntarism, developing the potential of women, and improving our community through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers. Our organization welcomes all women who value our mission statement. Furthermore, we are committed to inclusive environments of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Founded in 1926, the Junior League of Roanoke Valley is one of 291 Leagues from four different countries that compose the Association of Junior Leagues International. All Junior Leagues share a common goal of training volunteers and developing civic and community leaders. Junior Leagues throughout the world are also united in their shared desire to bring about lasting and meaningful change in their communities
This is a challenging time for all of us as we navigate the uncharted waters of the Covid-19 Global Pandemic. Despite this situation, our priorities haven’t changed: now, more than ever, we are dedicated to our mission and making an impactful difference in our community. We immediately jumped in when food bank shelves were empty and organizations needed money. We also helped feed healthcare workers taking care of Coronavirus patients at the hospital during their grueling shifts.
We are able to help during times of need through our Community Focus of:
Addressing poverty by connecting the community to existing resources and removing barriers to healthcare and food.
The JLRV offers community volunteer opportunities to our members with other non-profit organizations and partners relating to our community focus area. This year marks the kickoff year for the League’s new Community Focus Grants, which provide grant funding to local community organizations to fund projects that align with the JLRV focus. Each November, the JLRV raises money to support our organization and community programs through our signature fundraising event, The Stocked Market.
Our organization is a premier source of leadership training and development opportunities for women in the Roanoke Valley and surrounding areas. If you are interested in becoming a member of the JLRV, you can read more about our process in the About section of this website.
I joined the Junior League of Shreveport-Bossier in Louisiana in 2010 because I wanted to further grow my leadership skills, volunteer, and develop friendships with like-minded women. I transferred into JLRV in 2011 when I moved to Virginia. I can truly say that my membership in this organization has given many opportunities to do each of these things.
Thank you for interest in the Junior League of Roanoke Valley. I encourage you to take the opportunity to explore this website and learn more!
Jenna Zibton
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Catalogue & Film Sales
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Stream - One week's rental Buy $8.50
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United StatesCountry
75:00Running Time
1 May, 2011Date
State of Crisis Productions, Inc Producer
HDOriginal
6665Ref No
Feature - 75 min
The story of the Third Wave experiment as told by the students and their teacher, Ron Jones
A documentary about the 1967 Third Wave experiment in fascism that took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California. The charismatic teacher, Ron Jones, created a classroom setting wherein students subjugated personal freedom for the good of the community. Within one week, 30 students grew to 200. Taking on a life of its own, the Third Wave students unwittingly re-enacted the roots of the Third Reich. Replete with salutes and Gestapo-like informants, the experiment soon attracted scores of students throughout Cubberley as well as neighboring schools, spiraling the exercise not only out of Jones' control but the students' as well. Original students, Ron Jones, school administrators and Dr. Philip Zimbardo (creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment) have been interviewed for this film. What makes the film so unique is that the director was a member of the original Third Wave class.
Reviews and More
Lesson Plan has inspired 'We Are The Wave' on Netflix featured by Esquire Magazine here
Spring, 1967: Disillusionment, anger and confusion bubble to the surface of the nation's psyche. American youth are on the precipice of a social revolution and, for a few tumultuous days Ron Jones, a young, gifted, high school history teacher attempts a startling social experiment that will inspire comment and analysis to this. In 1967, Ron Jones was in his first year teaching at progressive, upper-middle class Cubberley High Schoo, responsible for instructing World History to 10th grade students. He had a dynamic connection with his students who recall him being "one of us". Eager to shake up the political consciousness of his pupils, Jones launched an experiment over the course of two weeks, igniting a firestorm.
To explain the appeal of fascism in Nazi Germany, he created a classroom setting wherein students subjugated personal freedom to the good of the community, following almost without question. Replete with salutes and Gestapo-like informants, the so-called Third Wave soon attracted scores of students throughout Cubberley and neighboring schools, spiraling out of Jones' control. This moving recounting by Jones, school administrators, former students, and many others enthralls with the force of inescapable conclusions, and demonstrates how its theme has only grown in relevance.
State Of Crisis Productions Inc
Running Time75:00
Date1 May, 2011
ProducerState of Crisis Productions, Inc
OriginalHD
Ref No6665
Philip Neel graduated from UCLA in 1973 with a B.A. in Motion Picture/Television production. He started working at the CBS Television Network in various capacities. He eventually landed a position as an editor on the detective series Remington Steele. During this time, Neel met Glenn Gordon Caron, who hired him as the Associate Producer on the television series Moonlighting, an experience that honed Neels producing abilities. Neel has taught advanced editing for the Cinematic Arts Department at USC. He has three Emmy nominations for editing, five A.C.E. nominations, two A.C.E. Eddy awards, one CINE Golden Eagle Award, a Telly Award, as well as one Peabody Award. Neel is a member of American Cinema Editors, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Producers Guild of America and the International Documentary Association.
An honor scholar graduate of NYUs famed film school, Mr. Jeffery is currently the Producer of the hit series BONES for Fox Broadcasting Company. A veteran post producer and post supervisor, some of his other credits include AMERICAN FAMILY: JOURNEY OF DREAMS, WALKER, TEXAS RANGER, MILLENNIUM, VIP as well as countless television movies and miniseries. In addition, Mr. Jeffery is an award winning Writer/Producer/Director, most recently having made THE LAST STOP CAFE, a short that garnered several prestigious awards on the festival circuit, including four Tellys, three Aurora Awards, and a CINE Golden Eagle. In 2003, he post produced Tap Heat for famed Producer/Director Dean Hargrove. Mr. Jeffery is a proud member of the Producers Guild of America, having served as a member of the qualifications committee.
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The Truth About Latex Allergies
By Hygenic 5 years ago 20318 Views No comments
Allergy season is here. June is peak pollen season for many plants, meaning those who suffer from allergic rhinitis are left sneezing with itchy eyes.
In the elastomer industry, allergy season never ends. Latex allergies are active all year round, and while they are well-known, they are still often misunderstood.
Many substances, like some household paints or types of gloves, require latex labeling but may not incite an allergic reaction at all. On the other hand, sometimes products labelled “latex-free” can result in latex allergic reactions. The true source of latex allergic reactions is the presence of a protein found in latex extracted from certain plants. The protein acts as an antigen, resulting in an immunological response that varies by individual. For some people this response can be as serious as anaphylactic shock, which could be fatal. For others, latex exposure results in varying severity levels of dermatitis (ex: hives, rash, itchy skin). The American Latex Association states less than one percent of the U.S. general population is sensitive to latex proteins.
The type of latex that provokes reactions is most often collected from the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, but can also be harvested from other plants, including dandelions. The plants produce specific proteins as a defense against microbial threats. Other plants have similar defenses; many of those sensitive to Hevea proteins find they are also sensitive to certain foods such as avocado, banana, chestnut and kiwi. Those with latex allergies typically do their best to avoid Hevea latex, and sometimes barriers such as cloth liners or creams are enough to stifle latex allergy reactions.
Since the risk of unexpected exposure to latex has been reduced through labeling requirements, harvested natural rubber latex remains an important industrial material. Natural latex rubber is an inexpensive yet durable elastomer that resists tears and abrasions. It has a long service life as it has low internal friction and consistent elongation. It is also environmentally sustainable, as rubber trees can be tapped for latex for up to 30 years and natural rubber latex is biodegradable. Natural rubber latex is common in many commercial products and applications
For situations where extremely sensitive individuals may be exposed to latex, such as medical procedures, synthetic rubber and styrenic-based thermoplastic elastomer can be suitable alternatives. It’s important to note that individuals can be allergic to compounds in synthetic elastomers as well, such as thiuram disulfide, an additive that speeds polymerization. Those who have had consistent exposure to an allergen tend to be more susceptible to allergic reactions. This is why healthcare workers and patients in poor health tend to be most susceptible to latex allergies.
Thorough knowledge of elastomer manufacturing and diligent labeling are the easiest ways to prevent latex allergy complications. Enlisting the help of Hygenic to help address latex concerns early in the material selection process can reduce the risks associated with latex products.
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International Commission on Missing Persons
Inquiry Center
Report a Missing Person
ICMP to assist Chile with Missing Persons
Filed under Press Releases
16 June 2008: The International Commission on Missing Persons is delighted to announce the signing of an agreement with the Government of the Republic of Chile to provide technical assistance in identifying victims of enforced disappearance from the 1970’s.
“ICMP is pleased to assist Chile in helping to identify those missing,” said Director-General Kathryne Bomberger. “It not only achieves the primary human rights task of helping families and relatives find their loved ones, it’s also a good example of the kind of international professional cooperation that ICMP, as it expands operationally, is prepared to offer worldwide.”
Switzerland and United Kingdom Support ICMP’s Contribution to Justice
11 June 2008: The governments of Switzerland and United Kingdom announced today that they will provide further funds to the work of the International Commission on Missing Persons for the 2008 and 2009. The joint contribution amounting to 400,000 Euros will help ICMP continue to provide assistance to judicial institutions.”ICMP recognizes that aspects of its work can be relevant to bringing war criminals to justice. Without effective criminal justice to end impunity for these most serious of crimes there cannot be lasting peace, nor can such crimes be prevented in the future,” said ICMP Director General, Ms. Kathryne Bomberger.
Since 2000 the Government of United Kingdom has donated over 3.35 Million Euros including this donation to the work of ICMP, and the Government of Switzerland has been a supporter of ICMP’s work since 2001, with a total amount of around 630,000 EUR including this donation. The valuable support of the…
Czech Republic contributes to search for the missing
9 June 2008: The Government of the Czech Republic has announced that it will provide funds for the work of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) for the year 2008. The donation totals 600,000 Czech Koruna, or 24,000 Euros.
“We are pleased to expand our donor contribution to include assistance to ICMP and its important efforts to help the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina account for persons missing from the conflicts of the 1990’s,” said H. E. Jiří Kuděla Ambassador of the Czech Republic. “Their work is not only helping BiH deal with a difficult past, but is contributing to addressing the future in an open, accountable and transparent manner,” he added.
About ICMP
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In Memoriam: Walter Terrell Jones, 1949-2014
Filed in In Memoriam on August 22, 2014
W. Terrell Jones, vice provost for educational equity at Pennsylvania State University, died on August 19 at the Mount Nittany Medical Center in State College, Pennsylvania, after an extended illness. He was 64 years old.
Tom Poole, vice president for administration, said, “The passing of Terrell Jones is an immeasurable loss for Penn State, the Centre region and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. His advocacy for low-income, first-generation college students and those who experience discrimination set him apart as a champion for justice.”
Dr. Jones began his career at Penn State in 1980 as a residence hall coordinator. In 1984, he was named director of the Division of Campus Life. In 1990, Dr. Jones was promoted to deputy vice provost for educational equity.
After a one-year stint as acting provost and vice president for academic affairs at Loch Haven University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Jones returned to Penn State in 1997 as associate vice provost for educational equity. He was promoted to vice provost a year later.
A native of Harrisburg, Dr. Jones was a graduate of Loch Haven University, where he majored in sociology and played football. He held a master’s degree and a doctorate in counselor education and student personnel services from Penn State.
Related: Loch Haven University • Pennsylvania State University
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Rushdi Siddiqui
Rushdi Siddiqui has dedicated his professional life to Islamic finance, halal food industry, startups, sustainability and Blockchain. He lead a team at Dow Jones Indexes to create world’s first Islamic equity index, Dow Jones Islamic Market Index (1999), world’s first Islamic Sustainability Index (2006), world’s first sukuk index, CitiGroup-DJI Sukuk Index (2006), first halal food index, Sami Halal Food Index (2011), first Islamic alternative to LIBOR (Thomson Reuters IBOR, 2010), first global ecomm platform for halal food, Zilzar (2014), world’s first global ecomm platform for sustainability products (Global Eco-Mall, 2016), etc. Linkedin profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/rushdisiddiqui/
He has been recognized as top 50 global Islamic finance personalities for three straight years, 2015/16/17 (http://islamica500.com/), featured in a book called Leaders in Islamic Finance, has over 25 international awards, was on the Islamic Finance advisory Board of Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC, 2007-2011), was on Malaysia’s Securities Commission International Islamic Advisory Committee (2011-2013), was Mentor at McKinsey YLA in Malaysia (2015-16), Mentor at Singapore based VC firm, www.questventures.com, for Islamic economy startups (2017), Advisory Board at Wall Street Blockchain Alliance (2017), Advisory Board member at Malaysia based IFN Fintech, 2018, etc.
Mr. Siddiqui is also an avid and keen writer. He was a columnist in Malaysia’s Malaysian Reserve, Malaysia Insider and The Edge, and Dubai’s Khaleej Times, Dubai’s monthly magazine CPI, and others, and previously had column for Malaysia’s NST and Dubai’s Gulf News. His years in an industry that spans from the West to the East, allows him an insight and provides him expertise in excelling in an unstructured global environment.
Towards Eco-Friendly Socio-Economic Mosques
Is Halal on Trial?
Is Islamic finance a 'huge flop'?
Upgrading to Islamic finance 2.0
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Understanding the Michael Flynn Case: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff, and the Proper from the Improper
Updated with analysis of declassified Flynn-Kislyak transcripts
by Marty Lederman
There’s been a great deal of discussion over the past couple of weeks about whether Judge Emmet Sullivan should, must, or cannot grant the Department of Justice’s recent motion to dismiss the single-count criminal information against Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty—twice—for knowingly and willfully making materially false statements to the FBI in a January 24, 2017 interview, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). All that remains of the case before judgment is entered against Flynn is for the judge to impose a sentence.
Judge Sullivan is scheduled to hear argument on DOJ’s motion to dismiss on July 16. In the meantime, Flynn himself has filed a writ of mandamus in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, asking that court to order Judge Sullivan to “immediately” grant DOJ’s motion to dismiss. The D.C. Circuit panel (Judges Henderson, Wilkins and Rao) has ordered Judge Sullivan himself to file a response addressing that request by next Monday, June 1. [UPDATE: Here is Judge Sullivan’s brief.]
At the end of this article, I’ll offer a few thoughts about the merits of DOJ’s submission and about the options Judge Sullivan has for dealing with it. But that’s not the primary reason I’m writing. Whatever the right answer might be as to whether Judge Sullivan should or shouldn’t grant the motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn, the principal purpose of this article is to stress the relative insignificance of that question in the grander scheme of things.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI in his January 24, 2017 interview were indefensible. In the course of the Flynn “affair,” however, several officials—including but hardly limited to Flynn himself—have done far more disturbing and damaging things. Many other actors, by contrast, have acted appropriately and in the national interest. Unfortunately, just as with the public’s anticipation of and reaction to the Mueller investigation, the inordinate focus on whether a particular individual committed one or another offense under the U.S. criminal code is diverting attention from where it ought to be, on much more significant matters of constitutional governance.
Most importantly, as I’ll explain, what’s most alarming and troubling about the DOJ brief itself is not that it asks the court for leave to dismiss the charge against Flynn, but that it depends upon the rather shocking view of the Attorney General and the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia that Flynn’s underlying conduct in 2016 and 2017 was unobjectionable and that therefore there wasn’t a “legitimate” basis for the FBI to be investigating Flynn’s secret communications with the Russian Ambassador at all, even though Russia had just completed an elaborate effort to manipulate the American electoral process in order to help elect Donald Trump.
What follows is an effort to identify and evaluate many of the most important aspects of the Flynn affair, roughly in chronological order from the Summer of 2016 to today.
Flynn’s Unsuitability to be National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn first came to the attention of many Americans in July 2016 when he encouraged and led the appalling “Lock Her Up” chants at the Republican National Convention. Unfortunately, that was hardly out of character for Flynn in recent years. He had, for instance, retweeted accusations that Hillary Clinton was involved with child sex trafficking and that Barack Obama was a “jihadi” who had laundered money for terrorists. He accused the states of Florida and Texas of enacting “sharia law.” It was widely reported that as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Obama Administration, Flynn was prone to adopting conspiratorial theories that were unsupported by the intelligence and refused to brook dissent. He was paid to work on behalf of a project to promote the prospects of Russian companies to build a series of nuclear reactors in the Middle East, and allegedly failed to disclose required details of those arrangements in security clearance applications. Right up to the presidential transition period in 2016-2017, Flynn was secretly working on a project directed by the Turkish government that included efforts to discredit a dissident Turkish cleric living in the U.S. (Fethullah Gulen). On Election Day itself, Flynn published a column criticizing Gulen and praising Turkey, without disclosing that Turkey was behind the effort (something that would later lead to his violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as noted in Point 16, below). (Paul Waldman has collected many of these and other Flynn issues here. Nicholas Schmidle offered a very thorough profile in the New Yorker, just after Flynn was fired as National Security Advisor, that describes both his considerable military accomplishments and skills and the ways in which his “easygoing pragmatism” had in recent years given way to some “very hard-edged ideas,” in Daniel Benjamin’s words.)
President Obama’s advice to incoming President Trump was therefore well-taken: It was a bad idea for Trump to appoint Flynn to be National Security Advisor in the first place. Trump himself soon came to the same conclusion, prompted by warnings from Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and then by White House Counsel Don McGahn (see Point 12, below): Flynn lasted only 24 days in the job.
The FBI’s Decision to Open an Investigation on Flynn (“Crossfire Razor”) in August 2016—and the Proposal to Close it Early in 2017
As part of the larger “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign and possible involvement by persons in the Trump campaign (see pages 50-59 of Inspector General Horowitz’s Report for a detailed account of the basis for “Crossfire Hurricane”), the FBI opened a specific counterintelligence investigation concerning Flynn (“Crossfire Razor”) on August 16, 2016. The Flynn investigation was based upon “an articulable factual basis that [he] may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security.” That, in turn, was predicated upon an assessment of “reliable” lead information, including that Flynn had been a foreign policy adviser to Trump since February 2016; that he “had ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation”; that he traveled to Russia in December 2015; and that he had an active TS/SCI security clearance.
There was nothing suspect or unreasonable about opening this counterintelligence investigation of Flynn. And as the DOJ Inspector General later concluded, the FBI’s “predication” to open that investigation was more than sufficient to satisfy the modest threshold prescribed by DOJ and FBI policies.
A draft memorandum dated January 4, 2017, apparently prepared for approval by FBI agent Joe Pientka, would have closed the Flynn investigation because it “did not yield any information on which to predicate further investigative efforts.” The memo added that the investigation would be subject to possible reopening if “new information” came to light.
Assuming this reflected a decision, or at least a recommendation, to close the Flynn investigation before the Bureau discovered his calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, there’s no contested issue about the reasonableness of this proposed action, either.
The Kislyak Calls
By the first week of 2017, the FBI had discovered the content of calls Flynn had made with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the final ten days of 2016, which are described in detail at pages 167-173 of Volume I of the Mueller Report and at pages 24-26 of Volume II. [UPDATE: One day after I published this article, the government made most of the transcripts publicly available. They speak for themselves, but my thoughts on their importance–and the importance of how the President and Attorney General are characterizing them–appear in this section and in the final four paragraphs of this article.]
The first calls occurred on December 22 and 23, 2016. Egypt had submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security Council calling on Israel to cease settlement activities in Palestinian territory. There were press reports that the Obama Administration had decided the United States would abstain on the vote. Led by Jared Kushner, multiple members of the Trump transition team, including President-Elect Trump himself, tried to rally support among foreign government officials to delay the vote, or to have their nations vote to defeat the resolution (a course of action that the Obama Administration itself did not undertake and presumably wouldn’t have approved). Under instructions from Kushner, Flynn contacted Kislyak on December 22 to request that Russia vote against or delay the resolution. At that point, Egypt postponed the vote, but the next day, Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal, and Venezuela resubmitted the resolution, and Flynn again lobbied Kislyak to have Russia intervene to stymie the resolution. Russia did not do so, and on the 23d the Security Council adopted Resolution 2334 by a vote of 14-0 (including Russia), with the U.S. alone abstaining.
The second series of calls between Flynn and Kislyak commenced less than one week later, on December 29, just hours after the United States had imposed sanctions on nine Russian individuals and entities, expelled 35 Russian government officials, and closed two Russian government-owned compounds in the United States, all in response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. President-Elect Trump expressed a lack of concern about Russia’s election interference. When asked about the sanctions, he responded: “I think we ought to get on with our lives.”
After discussing the matter with members of the transition team, including Michael Ledeen and K.T. McFarland, Flynn called Kislyak to urge Russia not to escalate the situation in the manner the U.S. expected it to do. Flynn at the very least implied to Kislyak that the Trump Administration would be more conciliatory to Russia, notwithstanding its election interference, and he may even have suggested that Trump might alleviate the sanctions Obama had imposed that very morning. [UPDATE: Flynn implored Kislyak to convey to Moscow that it should “not allow this [Obama] administration to box us in right now.” Flynn also said to Kislyak, “Let’s keep this at a level that uh is, is even-keeled, okay? ls even-keeled. And then what we can do is, when we come in, we can then have a better conversation about where … we’re gonna go … regarding our relationship.” He also criticized the Obama administration’s “position on the Middle East,” saying that it “doesn’t do anybody any good.”] Unlike with respect to the first call (about the UNSC resolution), in this case Russia did as Flynn asked: Vladimir Putin decided not to escalate the conflict, presumably assured that Trump would ease up on the U.S.’s objections to Russia’s election interference. [On December 31, Kislyak conveyed the news to Flynn, adding that “We are hoping within two weeks we will be able to start working in [a] more constructive way.”]
To hear DOJ now tell it, those late-December calls were of no moment, and shouldn’t have affected the FBI’s decision to close the Flynn investigation. The most alarming and revealing passage in the DOJ motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn is this one—in particular the bolded sentence:
With its counterintelligence investigation no longer justifiably predicated, the communications between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak—the FBI’s sole basis for resurrecting the investigation on January 4, 2017—did not warrant either continuing that existing investigation or opening a new criminal investigation. The calls were entirely appropriate on their face. . . . Mr. Flynn, as the incumbent [sic] National Security Advisor and senior member of the transition team, was reaching out to the Russian ambassador in that capacity. In the words of one senior DOJ official [Mary McCord]: “It seemed logical . . . that there may be some communications between an incoming administration and their foreign partners.” Such calls are not uncommon when incumbent [sic] public officials preparing for their oncoming duties seek to begin and build relationships with soon-to-be counterparts.
This is absurd—akin to Trump’s assertions in 2019 that his communications with the Ukraine, urging officials of that nation to announce an investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden, were “pitch perfect.” It’s shocking the Executive branch would write such a thing in a brief to a court. The Flynn/Kislyak calls were the furthest thing from “appropriate.”
For one thing, the apparent substance of the call on December 29 was, at a minimum, deeply disturbing. Flynn apparently was signaling to Kislyak that the Trump Administration would be more conciliatory to Russia, notwithstanding its election interference, than the Obama Administration had been—up to and including an implication that Trump might well alleviate the sanctions Obama had imposed that very morning. (Putin presumably wouldn’t have done if he didn’t have reason to believe the Trump Administration would be more conciliatory with respect to the election interference matter.)
The question of why Trump, Flynn, et al., were—and continue to be—so in thrall to Vladimir Putin, or at the very least indifferent to Russia’s threat to our electoral system, continues to be perhaps the most consequential question of the Trump Presidency.
Even apart from the merits of what Flynn said, however—that is to say, even if you happen to agree with Trump’s views on Russian sanctions and/or on the U.N. vote regarding Israeli settlements—it’s inappropriate for a member of a presidential transition team to communicate with foreign officials secretly about current U.S. national security or foreign policy matters (i.e., without the knowledge of the State Department or some other process for informing the current Administration), and far worse still to do so in an effort to undermine the national security or foreign policy objectives of the United States as determined by the President then in office.
According to the New York Times, the Obama Administration had made a “pointed request” to the Trump transition team to avoid sending conflicting signals to foreign officials before the inauguration and to include State Department personnel when contacting such officials. That’s fairly standard-issue stuff, as reflected in the Partnership for Public Service’s widely consulted Presidential Transition Guide. It was wrong for Flynn to disregard the administration’s request and the longstanding norm—and particularly to do so in the way he did here. Contrary to the two Freudian slips in the DOJ brief, Flynn was not the “incumbent National Security Advisor” at the time—Susan Rice was. DOJ is right that incoming officers commonly communicate during the presidential transition with their future foreign partners so that they can “begin and build relationships with soon-to-be counterparts.” Friendly congratulatory calls and innocuous, generic “I look forward to working together” communications are commonplace. It’s another thing entirely, however, to signal a subversion of the sitting President’s foreign policy objectives—let alone to do so secretly, so that the U.S. government is unaware of what’s being said and done. (To be sure, the government in this case eventually discovered what Flynn and Kislyak discussed, but not for several days, during which time the State Department and other agencies were in the dark about what Putin was up to and why.)
Moreover, this wasn’t just any foreign counterpart or an ordinary transition context—Flynn was speaking to a representative of the nation that had just hacked the American election campaign in an effort to have Trump elected, and doing so mere hours after the President of the United States had responded decisively. As Director of National Intelligence James Clapper saw it, Flynn had “essentially neuter[ed]” the just-imposed sanctions.*
Indeed, the wrongfulness of Flynn’s actions was so manifest that when word of the conversation with Kislyak became public (see Point 8, below), it infuriated President-Elect Trump, who instructed Reince Priebus to direct Flynn that he had to “kill the story.” Flynn then told K.T. McFarland that “I want to kill the story,” and asked her to call the Washington Post and deny that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak. As the Mueller Report recounts, “McFarland made the call as Flynn had requested although she knew she was providing false information, and the Washington Post updated the column to reflect that a ‘Trump official’ had denied that Flynn and Kislyak discussed sanctions.” As noted in Point 7, below, Flynn himself made the same denials to Priebus, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, and incoming press secretary Sean Spicer. (Flynn also omitted the discussion of sanctions from his written documentation of the December 29 Kislyak call, later acknowledging to Robert Mueller’s Office that he did so “because it could be perceived as getting in the way of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy.” (The quotation is the Mueller Report’s characterization of what Flynn told the Mueller investigators.))
If the December 29 calls had truly been “entirely appropriate,” as DOJ now insists, surely Trump wouldn’t have been so angered, Flynn wouldn’t have dissembled to all of these people, including even the incoming Vice President, and incoming members of the Trump White House wouldn’t have been so adamant about denying the allegation that the U.S. sanctions were discussed.
[UPDATE: The reactions of many Trump/Barr/Flynn defenders to the transcripts of the December 29 call–in effect, that Barr’s right that it’s a big nothingburger at worst, if not “laudable” (see below)–prompts me to add the following about the source of the huge disconnect respecting how various observers have viewed the substance of the Flynn/Kislyak call:
We know now that Trump (at best) didn’t care about Russia’s election interference—after all, he’s said so repeatedly for three-plus years. And if that’s your baseline understanding–that of course Trump wasn’t troubled by the cyber-operations and therefore would naturally have been trying to stymie the effects of Obama’s sanctions–then your reaction to the Kislyak call is likely to be one of nonchalance, e.g., “That’s Trump: What’d you expect?”
But consider how this call looked to intelligence and diplomatic officials on December 29, 2016, just after they had learned of Russia’s interference in the election and just hours after President Obama had imposed dramatic sanctions on Russia in response. It was unlike anything they’d ever seen before and was deeply alarming. As David Corn writes:
At no point does Flynn castigate Kislyak for Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election. He does not confront the Russian ambassador for Putin’s covert operation to subvert American democracy. He does not tell Kislyak that Moscow will have to pay a price for hacking the Democrats and using the stolen information to influence the election for Trump’s benefit. Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, does not warn Kislyak against any further Russian information warfare targeting the United States. As the Obama administration was trying to impose a punishment on Putin for that attack, Flynn, on behalf of the Trump gang, was sending an utterly different message: We don’t care about that.
Think about this perverse set of interactions: the incoming national security adviser was essentially telling a foreign adversary that the new president wasn’t concerned about an attack on the United States and, moreover, indicating that Trump didn’t intend to do anything about it. In fact, Flynn was signaling to Putin that once Trump took office, Trump wouldn’t be pursuing the matter and, instead, would be reaching out to Russia as a partner. (A few months later, Trump, in the Oval Office, would tell Kislyak that directly.) . . .
He was dealing with the Russians as if there had been no attack.
(Mark Mazzetti’s analysis of the Kislyak call is also must-reading.)
The idea that the incoming President of the United States and/or his National Security Advisor would be (at best) so indifferent to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—in secret, with the Russian Ambassador—might be old news now, but back then it was virtually unthinkable. That’s why Flynn’s calls were so shocking, and easily justified DOJ’s and the FBI’s concerns and the latter’s decision not to close its Flynn investigation. Quite simply, it was imperative to figure out why an incoming National Security Advisor would do such a thing and whether, in particular, he or the President were in any way compromised by Russia. (And then the concerns only became more acute when, several days later, incoming officials, including Vice-President-Elect Pence, began to offer false public denials that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed sanctions—something they presumably wouldn’t have done if those conversations were as benign and unexceptional as the Attorney General would now have it.)
If, like Trump and Barr, you think that the Russian interference was no big deal—business as usual—and that the real threat to the Republic was the government’s response to Russia’s efforts and to the Trump campaign’s pervasive interactions with, and encouragement of, those efforts, then of course the Kislyak calls will seem appropriate or laudable. But if, on the other hand, you agree with the uniform conclusions of, e.g., the Intelligence Community, the Mueller Report, and the Senate Intelligence Committee, that Russia’s involvement in our election was a profound threat, then the Kislyak calls will look rather different.]
Flynn’s Coordination With the Trump Transition Team, and the Role of President-Elect Trump Himself
As the Mueller investigation later discovered, Flynn wasn’t acting alone in making either set of phone calls with Kislyak in December 2016. (What follows is derived primarily from the Mueller Report, but Flynn himself also attested to the gist of it on November 30, 2017.)
As noted above, the December 22/23 calls to Kislyak about the UNSC Resolution were coordinated with the President-Elect and directed by Jared Kushner.
Flynn also carefully coordinated with the transition team his December 29 calls about Obama’s sanctions on Russia. As soon as the press reported the sanctions, the highest-level members of the team staying at the Mara-Lago club in Palm Beach, including McFarland, Steve Bannon, and Priebus, began discussing how they might respond, including possibly by having Flynn discuss the sanctions in a call he was planning to have with Kislyak that day. Flynn, who was vacationing in the Dominican Republic, held off on communicating with Kislyak until he had spoken with the team at Mar-a-Lago, which he did: He had extensive discussions with McFarland and Michael Ledeen about what he should say to Kislyak.
Just after sending an email to transition team members about the sanctions in which she informed the group that Flynn would be talking to Kislyak that evening, McFarland briefed President-Elect Trump about the issue, in the presence of Bannon, Priebus, Sean Spicer, and other Transition Team members. McFarland later recalled to the Mueller investigators that at the end of the meeting someone may have mentioned to President-Elect Trump that Flynn was speaking to the Russian ambassador that evening. Although it’s therefore almost certain Trump knew at least roughly what Flynn planned to say to Kislyak, the Mueller investigation did not find any evidence that Trump directed Flynn to say anything about sanctions. (Mueller asked Trump specifically about these incidents (see Questions V(b)-(e)), but in his written responses the President … simply ignored those questions, as though they hadn’t even been asked.) Several weeks later, then-President Trump said in a press conference that although he didn’t direct Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak, “it certainly would have been okay with me if he did. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn’t doing it. I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed him because that’s his job.” Trump, and the rest of his team, did not appreciate how inappropriate this course of action was—a view now alarmingly blessed by the Department of Justice.
After his discussion with Kislyak, Flynn reported to McFarland the substance of his call, including the discussion of sanctions, and McFarland summarized to Flynn her recent briefing with President-Elect Trump. After Russia failed to take the expected steps to escalate, Flynn told McFarland that he believed his phone call had made a difference, and McFarland congratulated him. Flynn also discussed the sanctions with Bannon the next day and Bannon appeared to know about Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak.
The FBI’s Decision to Keep its Counterintelligence Investigation of Flynn Open in Light of the Kislyak Calls—and Flynn’s Subsequent Lies to Pence and Others About the December 29 Call
As noted in Point 2, above, at the beginning of January the FBI apparently was planning to wrap up its counterintelligence investigation of Flynn (“Crossfire Razor”). It decided not to do so when it learned of the Kislyak calls.
A linchpin of DOJ’s motion to dismiss the Flynn charge is its contention that the Kislyak calls didn’t warrant continuation of the Flynn counterintelligence investigation. As Bob Litt (who was then the General Counsel for the Director of National Intelligence) recently wrote, that assertion “cannot be right”:
The attorney general and his minions are making the astounding argument that when the FBI—aware of extensive Russian interference in U.S. politics in order to benefit the Trump campaign—learned that the incoming national security adviser requested that Russia not respond to the sanctions that were imposed in response to that interference and then lied to other government officials about that, it could not even “collect information or facts to determine” whether this created a counterintelligence threat. This cannot be right. Even if the prior investigation into Flynn had been closed, which it had not, these circumstances at a minimum justified an assessment under standard FBI policy.
The December 29 Kislyak call itself would have been more than enough to warrant further investigation, in light of what it suggested about the Trump team’s apparent, startling indifference to Russia’s election interference on its behalf. But the predicate to continue the counterintelligence investigation of Flynn—indeed, the urgent need to do so—was then exacerbated when, between January 12 and 15, the incoming Deputy National Security Advisor (McFarland), the incoming White House Press Secretary (Spicer), the incoming Chief of Staff (Priebus), and the Vice-President-Elect (Pence) all insisted to the press that Flynn and Kislyak hadn’t discussed sanctions—something the Bureau knew to be a false narrative.
This extraordinary misinformation campaign continued even after Trump became President and Flynn became National Security Advisor. On January 23, 2017, Press Secretary Spicer delivered his first press briefing, during which he stated that he had spoken with Flynn the night before, and that Flynn confirmed that his calls with Kislyak were about topics unrelated to sanctions. As the Mueller Report explains, “Spicer’s statements added to the Department of Justice’s concerns that Russia had leverage over Flynn based on his lies and could use that derogatory information to compromise him.” Either all of these Administration officials were deliberately lying, or Flynn had lied to them and therefore had something to hide from even some of the highest officers in the government. That was plenty disturbing in and of itself, but it also exposed Flynn to possibly being compromised by Russia. As Mary McCord—then the Acting head of the DOJ National Security Division—recently wrote:
[T]he Russians would have known what Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak discussed. They would have known that, despite Mr. Pence’s and others’ denials, Mr. Flynn had in fact asked Russia not to escalate its response to the sanctions. Mr. Pence’s denial of this on national television, and his attribution of the denial to Mr. Flynn, put Mr. Flynn in a potentially compromised situation that the Russians could use against him.
The potential for blackmail of Mr. Flynn by the Russians is what the former Justice Department leadership, including me, thought needed to be conveyed to the incoming White House. After all, Mr. Flynn was set to become the national security adviser, and it was untenable that Russia—which the intelligence community had just assessed had sought to interfere in the U.S. presidential election—might have leverage over him.
Under these circumstances, the FBI obviously had ample justification for continuing to investigate Michael Flynn–indeed, it would have been derelict not to do so. The only real questions, which I discuss below, were how it should do so and whether and when it should inform the incoming President about what it knew concerning his National Security Advisor.
President Obama’s Reaction
In late December and in early January 2017, the Obama Administration was surprised that Russia did not respond as expected, with harsh countermeasures, to the U.S.’s sanctions and the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats. President Obama asked the intelligence agencies to search their resources for a possible explanation, and it was then that the FBI discovered the Flynn/Kislyak conversation from December 29. The President and his administration were, for very good reason, deeply concerned about the Flynn/Kislyak calls, particularly given that the Intelligence Community was then reading Flynn into many highly classified matters. Obama explained to National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Biden, FBI Director Comey and Deputy Attorney General Yates that he needed to know whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, in terms of information-sharing regarding Russia. He stressed, however, that he was not “asking about, intimating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective”—in sharp contrast to the way in which President Trump would later brazenly violate the longstanding norms precluding presidential involvement in law enforcement decision-making. Obama told the gathered officials that “our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would—by the book.”
That was proper way of dealing with the matter.
What About “Unmasking” Flynn’s Identity?
The “unmasking” issue is a red herring. The FBI reportedly didn’t “mask” Flynn’s name to begin with in the transcript of the December 29 Kislyak conversations, presumably because those calls were discovered during an effort by the Intelligence Community to find an explanation for what might have caused Russia not to retaliate. (In any event, even if the FBI had originally redacted Flynn’s name from the transcript and then disclosed his involvement to officials in the Intelligence Community so that they understood what had happened and what the possible continuing threats were—that’s what “unmasking” is—there’d have been nothing remotely wrong with doing so. That would have been the sort of entirely appropriate and uncontroversial unmasking that happens every day within the executive branch.)
The Leak to David Ignatius
On January 12, 2017, David Ignatius reported in the Washington Post that “[a]ccording to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the [Russian election] hacking.” (Ignatius also reported that a “Trump official” confirmed that Flynn had spoken with Kislyak by phone, “but said the calls were before sanctions were announced and didn’t cover that topic.” That was, of course, incorrect. The Trump official in question was K.T. McFarland. Flynn himself asked McFarland to contact the Washington Post to convey false information about his communications with Kislyak, and she did so, insisting that Flynn and Kislyak had never discussed sanctions and that they had actually spoken before the administration’s sanctions announcement—all of which she knew to be untrue.)
Ignatius’s story didn’t reveal any of the contents of the December 29 conversations, and it almost certainly didn’t tell the Russians anything they didn’t already know: they undoubtedly assumed the United States was monitoring the Ambassador’s calls. The national security damage therefore was probably negligible (although it’s possible it was more problematic for reasons to which I’m not privy). Even so, there are diplomatic reasons not to publicly confirm the fact that was implicit in this leak—namely, that the U.S. and Russia try to surveil one another’s diplomats. And even if it didn’t cause much harm, the leak was at a minimum a violation of the conditions of the official’s access to classified information, and it might have violated a criminal law, too (unless the official was the classifying authority or obtained permission from that authority, which I suppose is possible). Moreover, I can’t think of any compelling justification for this improper leak, which occurred while the Obama Administration was considering how to deal with the Kislyak calls, and just a few days before Trump’s inauguration.
Jim Comey’s Authorization for the FBI to Interview Flynn Before DOJ Informed the Trump White House Counsel About the Kislyak Calls
During the 2016 election campaign, Jim Comey’s unilateral, unjustifiable actions regarding the Clinton email investigation, in violation of important DOJ practices and protocols, might well have had a decisive impact on the election. Yet less than three months after the election, Comey once again took it upon himself to breach relevant protocols and, in effect, to circumvent the wishes of the Acting Attorney General, Sally Yates.
The details can be found at pages 2-6 of the FBI’s “302” report of Yates’ interview with the Mueller investigators and at pages 3-6 of Mary McCord’s 302 report. In sum, Yates, Director of National Intelligence Clapper, and CIA Director Brennan all agreed that because Flynn was about to become the President’s National Security Advisor, the FBI should notify the incoming Trump administration of the substance of the Flynn/Kislyak calls, particularly after White House Spokesperson Sean Spicer and Vice President-Elect Pence publicly insisted that Flynn had not discussed sanctions with Kislyak. But Comey refused to do so, for reasons that remain somewhat obscure.
Once Trump was inaugurated on January 20, and Flynn took office on January 22, Yates, who by then was the Acting Attorney General, decided not to wait for Comey any longer and to inform White House Counsel Don McGahn of the Kislyak calls. When she called to inform Comey of that decision, however, he told her he had already sent two FBI agents to the White House to interview Flynn. Remarkably, Comey later said in an interview that in an ordinary administration such as the Bush 43 and Obama administrations, the protocol would have been for the Bureau to notify the White House Counsel before sending FBI agents to the White House to interview a senior official, but that he decided to take advantage of the fact that the new Trump Administration wasn’t “organized.” (Comey apparently thought this explanation somehow justified what he did.)
When Comey told Yates of the impending interview, she was “dumbfounded” and the team of senior DOJ officials dealing with the issue were “flabbergasted”; they “hit the roof.” As Mary McCord recently wrote, “[w]e objected to the rogueness of the decision by the F.B.I. director, Jim Comey, made without notice or opportunity to weigh in.”
“Rogueness” is a polite way of putting it. Comey’s sanctimony, his belief that he alone understood the best interests of the Department and the Nation, and his willingness to repeatedly disregard important and longstanding DOJ norms and the chain of command, bordering on insubordination, were his modus operandi throughout (at least) the last year of his tenure. It was a lethal combination.
The FBI’s Strategy and Objectives in its January 24 FBI Interview with Flynn
In a sentencing memorandum it filed in January 2020, the Department of Justice explained that after Flynn’s calls with Kislyak and the false stories that Pence and others were purveying, the FBI “did not know the totality of what had occurred between the defendant and the Russians,” and that “determining the extent of [Flynn’s] actions, why [he] took such actions, and at whose direction he took those actions, were critical to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.” This was particularly true because “[a]ny effort to undermine the recently imposed sanctions, which were enacted to punish the Russian government for interfering in the 2016 election, could have been evidence of links or coordination between the Trump Campaign and Russia.”
As I hoped I’ve shown above, that was precisely correct—the principal objective of any interview with Flynn should have been to get to the bottom of the potential counterintelligence threat. FBI Director Comey himself later testified that he sent his agents to interview Flynn on January 24, 2017 at least in part because there was a “disconnect” between what the Vice President was saying in public and what Flynn had in fact said to Kislyak, and Comey wanted his agents “to sit before [Flynn] and say ‘what is the deal?’” And FBI Counterintelligence Chief Bill Priestap apparently agreed. His notes from that morning state his view that “if [Flynn] initially lies, then we present him [redacted] and he admits it, document for DOJ, and let them decide how to address it.”
As far as the available public record shows, however, the agents who interviewed Flynn didn’t take that route. Instead, it appears that Bureau leadership apparently decided before the interview that if Flynn didn’t confirm to the agents what they knew he had said to Kislyak, “they would not confront him or talk him through it.” (The quote is from a later 302 report of an interview with one of the agents, Peter Strzok. Unfortunately, the reasons for that decision appear to be redacted from Strzok’s 302 Report. Nor is it clear who made this tactical decision.) In the interview itself, Flynn said he couldn’t recall any discussion with Kislyak of the sanctions and expulsions, even after the agents used his own words from those conversations in order to jog his memory (and/or to subtly signal to him that they had a recording). And then the agents left it at that. They didn’t confront Flynn with evidence of what he had said to Kislyak; didn’t ask him why he said such things; about who else, if anyone, he discussed the call with, before or after; why he had disregarded the Obama administration’s pointed request that he not have such conversations; why he had lied to Pence, et al.; etc. In other words, they didn’t do any of the things one might expect investigators to do if their goal was to get to the bottom of the case, and assess the scope and degree of any possible counterintelligence threat, during that interview. Instead, all they appeared to accomplish was to confirm that Flynn was committed to lying about his calls with Kislyak.
This isn’t my area of expertise—not by a longshot. I’ve never been involved in a counterintelligence investigation nor an FBI witness interview. So I inquired with several people much more experienced in these matters than I am. They’ve mostly shared my bafflement about the apparent interview strategy, and view the interview itself–at least based upon what is publicly known about it–as having been ineffective at figuring out what Flynn was up to and why.
The new DOJ motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn insinuates that the FBI undertook the interview primarily as a perjury trap. The interview, it asserts, “seems to have been undertaken only to elicit those very false statements and thereby criminalize Mr. Flynn.” And in an interview on May 7, Attorney General Barr stated unequivocally that the FBI continued the investigation of Flynn for the “express” purpose of “lay[ing] a perjury trap for General Flynn.”
If that were what happened—if the agents were simply trying to set a “perjury trap”—that wouldn’t have been unlawful or especially unusual, nor would it justify or exculpate Flynn’s lies during the interview. For what it’s worth, however, the experienced prosecutors with whom I’ve consulted are uniformly certain it wasn’t such a trap—at least, not a trap designed to successfully prosecute Flynn for a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). If it had been, the agents probably would have warned Flynn about § 1001 in advance, which makes it much easier to prove “willfulness” in the case of a § 1001 trial given the federal government’s current view that that element requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant made a false statement with knowledge that his conduct was unlawful. Most importantly, it’s unlikely the Bureau was trying to trick Flynn into violating § 1001 because it almost certainly didn’t expect him to continue his false denials—especially not when the agents used his own statements in forming their questions—given that Flynn had already acknowledged to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that he assumed the FBI “probably knew what was said in these calls because [you] listen to everything they [i.e., Russian diplomats in the U.S.] say.”
But if the Bureau wasn’t trying to induce Flynn to make false statements, then the question remains: Why did the FBI conduct the interview as it did—especially after it had ignored the Acting Attorney General and refused to coordinate with the Justice Department?
Quite honestly, I’m not sure of the answer to this question. The best I’ve come up with is this, but concededly it’s speculative: The two agents and others in the Bureau expected Flynn to come clean and, in part for that reason, the agents hadn’t been authorized to acknowledge to Flynn that they had a recording or transcript of his conversations with Kislyak. They also didn’t know for certain that Sally Yates was about to reveal that information to the President through White House Counsel McGahn. Therefore, when Flynn continued his denials, even after being prompted with his own words, the agents had little option but to return to FBI headquarters and report the somewhat surprising results of the interview, which would allow officials at the Bureau and DOJ to discuss and agree upon the next steps, which might include, e.g., a follow-up interview with Flynn; interviewing others; searching for further evidence of communications with Kislyak; disclosing to McGahn and Trump what the FBI already knew: etc. Perhaps, in other words, the agents thought their best (or only) course of action was to leave all the options on the table until their superiors reached a view on which course to take, given the curve ball Flynn had thrown them.
Flynn’s Knowing and Willful False Statements During the January 24 Interview
Did Flynn knowingly and willfully lie in his interview with the FBI agents? As noted below, the new DOJ motion to dismiss shockingly suggests that this is a close question.
It’s not.
For one thing, less than a year later Flynn admitted that he did so, under penalty of perjury.
Even if Flynn hadn’t attested to it, however, the evidence is overwhelming that Flynn was deliberately lying to the agents–that he hadn’t forgotten the very reasons that he had called Kislyak and what they had discussed.
Recall, for example, that in mid-January President Trump had Reince Priebus direct Flynn to “kill the story.” Flynn then instructed K.T. McFarland to call the Washington Post and deny that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak, and Flynn made the same denials to Priebus, Pence, and Spicer. Flynn was obviously committed, in other words, to doing what Trump wanted of him, perhaps fearing that his job depended upon it. (Flynn told the Mueller investigators that “he felt a lot of pressure because Priebus had spoken to the ‘boss’ and said Flynn needed to ‘kill the story.'”) In other words, this was something Flynn had been thinking a great deal about over the course of the preceding weeks.
Trump’s pressure on him to “kill the story” also likely explains why Flynn repeatedly made false statements about his communications with Kislyak during the January 24 FBI interview, even though he suspected (as he told McCabe) that the FBI had the goods on the calls. In particular: Flynn stated that he didn’t request that any countries take any particular action on the UNSC Resolution. But on December 22, 2016, Flynn called Kislyak, informed him of the incoming Trump Administration’s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution. Flynn also stated that Kislyak never relayed to Flynn Russia’s response to his December 22 request regarding the resolution. That was false, too. Kislyak in fact told Flynn in a conversation on December 23, 2016, that Russia would not vote against the resolution if it came to a vote. Flynn stated to the agents that he didn’t ask Kislyak on December 29 to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions the United States had imposed against Russia. But that is exactly what he asked Kislyak to do. (Flynn even said to the agents that he spoke to Kislyak before he was aware that Obama had imposed sanctions, which was obviously fabricated.) And Flynn told the agents that he didn’t recall a follow-up conversation in which Kislyak told him that Russia had decided to temper its response as a result of Flynn’s request—but that, too, was untrue.
These falsehoods were certainly willful and knowing. Flynn couldn’t possibly have forgotten about these things that had occurred less than a month previously: They were a very big deal for him and the other transition team members at the time; he had even boasted about his responsibility for Russia’s response; the President had sent word that he had to “kill the story”; he had specifically instructed McFarland to deny to the press that he had discussed sanctions; and when the issue had become a public controversy, he had told Pence, Priebus and others that he hadn’t discussed the sanctions. This wasn’t something that had slipped his mind in the first three weeks of January. Flynn also knew it was unlawful to lie to the Bureau in this setting.
All of which explains why White House Counsel McGahn and Chief of Staff Priebus, upon learning of the content of Flynn’s calls with Kislyak, “concluded that Flynn could not have forgotten the details of the discussions of sanctions and had instead been lying about what he discussed with Kislyak.” Indeed, no reasonable observer could conclude otherwise. And Flynn’s own sworn declaration confirms it.
What Acting Attorney General Yates and White House Counsel McGahn Did After the January 24 Interview
In contrast to Comey and the FBI, Acting Attorney General Yates did exactly the right thing, given that Flynn had just become the National Security Advisor. She realized that the possible counterintelligence threat wasn’t something that could or should be kept secret from the President, so she informed White House Counsel Don McGahn of the Kislyak calls and the fact that Pence’s and Spicer’s account of them was untrue.
One of McGahn’s Deputies, Jon Eisenberg, reviewed the evidence of the Kislyak calls on February 2, and told McGahn what they revealed. McGahn, in turn, concluded that Flynn had been lying, and recommended that the President remove him. (This wasn’t necessarily the only precipitating event. Back on January 4, Flynn disclosed to McGahn that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign.)
President Trump requested Flynn’s resignation, and Flynn resigned on Monday, February 13, 2017.
All of this was the system working just as it should have.
This can’t be stressed enough. The most important part of the story here—far more significant than the FBI interview; the leaks; the question of “materiality”; and whether Michael Flynn is ever convicted of a federal offense—is that Flynn was a man of very questionable judgment and temperament, something he demonstrated repeatedly in just the seven months or so between the Republican Convention and his few weeks in office. He would have posed a risk of significant danger as National Security Advisor. Thankfully, Barack Obama, Sally Yates, Don McGahn, Reince Priebus, and others—perhaps even Donald Trump—realized as much, and took steps that led to his removal from office after only 24 days.
The February Leak(s) to the Washington Post
On February 9, 2017, one week after the White House Counsel’s Office reviewed the Flynn/Kislyak transcripts, the Washington Post published a story (written by Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima) reporting that, contrary to the public assertions of Pence, et al., Flynn and Kislyak had discussed the U.S. sanctions on December 29, and that some U.S. officials interpreted Flynn’s statements “as an inappropriate and potentially illegal signal to the Kremlin that it could expect a reprieve from sanctions that were being imposed by the Obama administration in late December to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election.” The story also reported that the previous day, February 8, Flynn had continued to (falsely) deny he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak.
The Post story stated that “[n]ine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters”; that all nine officials “said Flynn’s references to the election-related sanctions were explicit”; and that two of them “went further, saying that Flynn urged Russia not to overreact to the penalties being imposed by President Barack Obama, making clear that the two sides would be in position to review the matter after Trump was sworn in as president.”
As Ryan Goodman wrote, we don’t know whether all nine of those officials actually revealed to the reporters any new classified information. Some of them, for example, might have discussed information the reporters told the officials they already had, in order to provide context or warn the reporters about possible mistakes. Recall also that these officials spoke to the Post only after the Trump administration itself had already publicly acknowledged the December 29 Kislyak call and had made false public representations about its content—denying that sanctions were discussed. It’d certainly be understandable if these former and current officials were deeply concerned that the administration was offering the public a bogus account of the Kislyak communications, and that President Trump appeared not to be doing anything about Flynn, even after his disinformation was spread widely. To the extent the officials’ discussions with the Post prevented the government from continuing to provide the public with false information about an alarming exchange between the incoming National Security Advisor and the nation that had just manipulated the U.S. election, and/or prompted Trump to do something about Flynn (which he did just four days later), they may have served a very valuable function. Moreover, the information discussed with the Post did not involve the actions of persons who were U.S. officials on December 29, and therefore the tangible harm to national security was probably negligible.
Nevertheless, to the extent any of the officials in question revealed classified information from intercepted communications, that was at a minimum a violation of obligations imposed upon them as a condition of their access to such information, and very possibly a violation of criminal law, as well. Of course it’s hazardous to make any general or categorical assessments: I’m completely in the dark about the circumstances and specifics of the officials’ communications with the Post reporters, and for all I know this might have been one of those very rare cases in which such civil disobedience was morally justified. But from what’s in the public record, it’s not obvious why that would be so and, in any event, even if such discussions could be morally justified, that wouldn’t affect the fact that they were a breach of legal obligations.
Trump’s Effort to Shake Down Comey
White House Counsel McGahn had advised President Trump that he should refrain from communicating directly with the Department of Justice on open investigations in order “to avoid the perception or reality of political interference in law enforcement.” Yet on February 14, the day after Flynn’s resignation, Trump pulled FBI Director Comey aside and said to him “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” The Mueller Report rightly concluded that “the circumstances of the conversation show that the President was asking Comey to close the FBI’s investigation into Flynn.”
This was merely the first of many times that President Trump has publicly or privately tried to influence particular law enforcement (or military) investigations and prosecutions. (Volume II of the Mueller Report extensively describes many such examples.) It’s a grave breach of the longstanding norm that McGahn implored Trump to honor. And because it was manifestly done—here and in virtually all of the subsequent cases—primarily or exclusively to advance Trump’s own interests, it was also a violation of his oath of office and of his constitutional duty to take care the laws are faithfully executed. As Ben Wittes wrote:
[Trump] isolated Comey in order to ask that he drop a sensitive FBI investigation in which he had a personal interest. He did this knowingly and intending to interfere with the investigation of Russian interference in the election and contacts between his transition team and Russian officials. It is a quintessential abuse of power, and while there may be viable technical defenses against a criminal charge, there simply is no plausible way to understand it as a good-faith exercise of presidential power.
Trump’s Effort to Induce McFarland to Exonerate Him
Five days after his attempted shakedown of Comey, President Trump (through Priebus and Bannon) told K.T. McFarland, Flynn’s Deputy at the NSC, that he wanted her to resign, too, and suggested he might appoint her to be Ambassador to Singapore. Trump asked Priebus to have McFarland draft an internal email that would “confirm” that Trump had not directed Flynn to call Kislyak about sanctions in December. McFarland told Priebus that because she didn’t know whether or not Trump had directed Flynn to speak with Kislyak about sanctions, she wouldn’t draft such an email. According to the Mueller Report, “[t]he President’s request … was sufficiently irregular that McFarland … felt the need to draft an internal memorandum documenting the President’s request, and [Jon] Eisenberg was concerned that the request would look like a quid pro quo in exchange for an ambassadorship.”
Unless Trump did not direct Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak (something that remains uncertain) and believed that McFarland knew of that fact, his request that she draft an exonerating email was not only very irregular but very troubling, too.
The Mueller Team’s Treatment of the Flynn Case (Including Flynn’s FARA Violations)—and Its Decision to Charge Him with a Violation of Section 1001
In May 2017, after Flynn and Comey were no longer in office, Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to oversee the Russia investigations. On August 2, 2017, Rosenstein specifically authorized Mueller to investigate allegations that Flynn (i) committed a crime or crimes by engaging in conversations with Russian government officials during the period of the Trump transition; (ii) committed a crime or crimes by making false statements to the FBI when interviewed about his contacts with the Russian government; (iii) committed a crime or crimes by failing to report foreign contacts and income on a Form SF-86 that he completed in anticipation of his being selected to serve as the National Security Adviser to President Trump; and (iv) committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Turkey.
Using further, more probing interviews with Flynn—at least 19 in all—and with other Trump transition team officials (such as McFarland and Kushner), and an examination of numerous emails, Mueller’s team was able to discover much of the information about the Kislyak calls that the FBI agents didn’t follow up on during their January 24 interview with Flynn. The results appear at pages 167-173 of Volume I of the Mueller Report and at pages 24-26 of Volume II. During this 2017 investigation, Flynn admitted that he had knowingly and willfully lied to the FBI, and on November 30, he declared under penalty of perjury the details of his acknowledged, deliberate falsehoods.
Importantly, apart from the Kislyak calls, Flynn also attested that he made several false statements and omissions on March 7, 2017, when he filed multiple documents with the Department of Justice pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) pertaining to a project performed by him and his company, the Flynn Intel Group, Inc. (“FIG”), for the principal benefit of the Republic of Turkey: (a) Flynn falsely stated that FIG did not know whether or the extent to which the Republic of Turkey was involved in the Turkey project; (b) he falsely stated that the Turkey project was focused on improving U.S. business organizations’ confidence regarding doing business in Turkey; (c) he falsely stated that he initiated the writing of an op-ed he published in The Hill on November 8, 2016; and, most significantly, (d) he confessed to omitting from his FARA reports the material fact “that officials from the Republic of Turkey provided supervision and direction over the Turkey project.”
Flynn thus effectively admitted, under oath, to violating FARA, a statute that generally makes it illegal to act as an agent of a foreign principal by engaging in certain (largely political) activities in the United States without registering with the Attorney General, and that also makes it a crime to willfully make false statements or omissions of material facts in FARA registration statements or supplements. As DOJ wrote in a recent sentencing memo about Flynn:
FARA ensures that the public and our government know when foreign actors are behind activity intended to influence policy or opinion, so that policymakers and the public can properly evaluate the activity. Here, [Flynn] was working under the “supervision and direction” of the Government of Turkey, but never made such disclosures. During the entirety of the defendant’s time as the National Security Advisor and a senior advisor to the Presidential Transition Team, the public and our government did not know about his relationship with the Government of Turkey. When he published an op-ed seeking to remove a U.S. resident from the United States, the public was not informed that he and his company had been paid to do so at the behest of the Government of Turkey. Instead, he falsely represented in his FARA filings that the op-ed was written at his own initiative. And when individuals hired by his company lobbied federal and state officials, those individuals never disclosed that their activity was all being done under the “supervision and direction” of the Government of Turkey.
As the former DOJ prosecutors recently told Judge Sullivan, they could have indicted Flynn for FARA violations, which are just as serious as, if not more serious than, a § 1001 offense, subject to maximum penalties of up to five or ten years in prison plus hefty fines. Yet the Government didn’t do so, presumably because (i) Flynn was willing to cooperate with the Mueller investigation in many important respects; (ii) he was willing to attest to facts constituting FARA violations; (iii) he was willing to plead guilty to his § 1001 offense involving the lies he told the FBI agents in the January 24 interview; and, perhaps, (iv) Mueller didn’t think it was very important for Flynn to spend any considerable time in prison, at least as long as he cooperated fully.
The § 1001 offense to which Flynn pleaded guilty, in other words, is not a slim reed on which Flynn’s culpability depends—it is, instead, a more lenient fallback resolution of the sort that’s very common when prosecutors negotiate with cooperative targets of investigations. Accordingly, the prosecution here didn’t come anywhere close to “railroading” Michael Flynn. Quite the opposite: It offered him a very generous deal, primarily because Robert Mueller was (appropriately) much more concerned with getting to the bottom of the Russia investigation than with harshly punishing Flynn for his concededly criminal conduct.
DOJ’s New Arguments for Dismissing the Charge Against Flynn
And so we come, finally, to DOJ’s recent motion to dismiss the single charge to which Flynn has twice pleaded guilty. I’ll explain below why I think that motion is groundless. But before I do, I should stress again that whether Judge Sullivan ultimately grants this motion—and whether Flynn is convicted—is truly the tail wagging the dog. The matters I’ve already discussed are, in many respects, far more important—as is what the motion itself reveals about the current Attorney General.
Flynn pleaded guilty to 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), which makes it unlawful to “knowingly and willfully … make[] any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” in a “matter within the jurisdiction of the executive … branch of the Government of the United States.” DOJ’s argument that this charge should be dismissed rests on three primary contentions:
(i) that as of January 24, 2017, the FBI had no “legitimate” basis for investigating Flynn at all;
(ii) that because the FBI “had in its possession word-for-word transcripts of the actual communications between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak,” there was “[no] justification or need to interview Mr. Flynn as to his own personal recollections of what had been said”;
(iii) that even if Flynn’s statements “could be material, the Government does not believe it could prove that Mr. Flynn knowingly and willfully made a false statement beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Each of these three legs of the DOJ argument is flimsy, to say the least.
(i) The contention that there’s insufficient evidence that Flynn willfully lied
Let’s start with the third and final proposition—the notion that DOJ couldn’t prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Flynn knowingly and willfully made any false statements in the January 24 interview. First of all, DOJ wouldn’t have to prove it to a jury—Flynn attested to the knowing and willful falsehoods as part of a guilty plea. But even if DOJ did have to present the case to a jury, Flynn’s own acknowledgements that he lied—both in his interview with the Mueller investigators and in his plea agreement—would itself make this just about the easiest case imaginable to prove that fact. And, in any event, as I explain in Point No. 11, above (see also Bob Litt here), the evidence is overwhelming—indeed, incontrovertible—that Flynn knew he was lying to the FBI about both sets of Kislyak calls.
This aspect of the DOJ argument is virtually frivolous.
(ii) DOJ’s insistence that there wasn’t any justification for the FBI’s investigation of Flynn at all in January 2017
The first leg of DOJ’s argument fares no better. Of course the FBI had a compelling—indeed, an imperative—counterintelligence basis to investigate Flynn when it learned what he said to Kislyak on December 29, and especially after he induced McFarland, Spicer, Preibus and Vice-President-Elect Pence to publicly deny that he had discussed the sanctions with Kislyak. DOJ’s argument to the contrary depends crucially on its assertion that the Kislyak calls “were entirely appropriate on their face.” As I discuss in Point 3, above, that assertion simply blinks reality. (See also Bob Litt, on why the Kislyak calls and Flynn’s dissembling about them were far more than necessary to constitute a sufficient “predicate” for continued investigation.)
(iii) The claim that Flynn’s lies couldn’t have affected the FBI’s investigation
That leaves, finally, DOJ’s second contention, which I understand to be, in effect, an assertion that Flynn’s lies to the FBI were harmless, and thus couldn’t have been “material” to the FBI investigation for purposes of § 1001, because the FBI “had in its possession word-for-word transcripts of the actual communications between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak.” That is to say: The FBI knew the statements were untrue, so Flynn’s lies couldn’t have had any detrimental impact on the investigation. Indeed, according to the DOJ brief there was “[no] justification or need to interview Mr. Flynn as to his own personal recollections of what had been said.”
This theme of DOJ’s argument does, at first glance, have some intuitive appeal: After all, Flynn’s lies simply confirmed what the investigators and other officials were worried about, namely, that Flynn was committed to trying to convince everyone in the Government and the public that he hadn’t discussed sanctions with Kislyak when in fact he had done so.
But insofar as DOJ is relying on this sort of a claim, it’s faulty on the facts and on the law. As for the facts, Flynn’s lies did have an impact on even the FBI interviewers themselves. Imagine if Flynn had told them the truth: “Yes, I asked Russia to delay the U.N. vote, and I asked Russia not to escalate the sanctions situation, suggesting to them that the Trump Administration would be more forgiving of the election interference.” In that instance, of course, the agents would have followed up in the January 24 interview itself with obvious questions about why Flynn did so; about who, if anyone, asked him to do so; about why they disregarded the Obama Administration’s admonitions not to do so; about why they were relatively indifferent to Russia’s election hacking; about why Flynn lied to Pence, Priebus and Spicer; about why Flynn directed McFarland to lie to the Washington Post; etc. To be sure, and as I discuss in Point No. 10, above, the agents could have laid the predicate for such questions even after Flynn lied to them, by confronting him with the transcripts of his calls. But, for whatever reason, the FBI had decided not to disclose to Flynn in that interview that it had intercepted the communications, and therefore his lies effectively prevented the interview from proceeding to those key questions.
More importantly, the law doesn’t require proof that the lies had an actual impact on the investigation. You might not appreciate that from reading the DOJ brief, the very first page of which includes this (seemingly) very powerful citation of authority:
Materiality is an essential element of the offense. Materiality, moreover, requires more than mere “relevance” or relatedness to the matter being investigated; it requires “probative weight,” whereby the statement is “reasonably likely to influence the tribunal in making a determination required to be made.” United States v. Weinstock, 231 F.2d 699, 701 (D.C. Cir. 1956) (italics in DOJ brief).
If that’s all you knew of the law, you might think: well, gosh, Flynn’s lies didn’t turn out to have any “probative weight”; because the FBI already knew what Flynn said to Kislyak, Flynn’s denials weren’t “reasonably likely”—indeed, not likely at all—to influence any “determination” by the FBI, let alone a determination the FBI was “required” to make.
But DOJ here has egregiously and deliberately misstated the law. The sole authority it cites is an introductory paragraph from a 64-year-old decision (reversing a red-baiting conviction) regarding the role of “materiality” in the law generally. The very next paragraph of that opinion more accurately acknowledges that “[t]he test” under § 1001 is, in fact, whether the false statement “has a natural tendency to influence, or was capable of influencing,” an agency’s actions—not that it was “reasonably likely” to do so. Weinstock, 231 F.2d at 701 (emphasis added); see, e.g., United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 509 (1995). And the suggestion in DOJ’s Weinstock quotation that the determination in question must be one that the agency is “required” to make is obviously mistaken, as the D.C. Circuit has already held, see United States v. Stadd, 638 F.3d 630, 638 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (Henderson, J.).
It’s worth noting that Flynn himself made this same argument (i.e., that because the FBI “knew exactly what was said,” nothing in Flynn’s answers to the agents “impeded [the FBI’s] purported investigation”) just a few months ago, also “without citation to any legal authority.” United States v. Flynn, 411 F. Supp. 3d 15, 41 (D.D.C. 2019). Judge Sullivan unceremoniously and correctly rejected the argument then because it’s “foreclosed by D.C. Circuit precedent.” Id. (citing United States v. Moore, 612 F.3d 698, 701 (D.C. Cir. 2010)). The Judge’s analysis then, id. at 41-42, explains why DOJ’s resuscitation of that argument now is frivolous:
Mr. Flynn has a fundamental misunderstanding of the law of materiality under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), which requires a false statement to be “material.” . . . The Supreme Court has instructed that “[t]he statement must have ‘a natural tendency to influence, or [be] capable of influencing, the decision of the decisionmaking body to which it was addressed.’” United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 509 (1995) (quoting Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759, 770 (1988)); accord United States v. Diggs, 613 F.2d 988, 999 (D.C. Cir. 1979) (“Proof of actual reliance on the statement is not required; the Government need only make a reasonable showing of its potential effects.”). But “a statement need not actually influence an agency in order to be material.” Moore, 612 F.3d at 701.
As a matter of law, the government need not prove that Mr. Flynn’s false statements impeded the FBI’s investigation in order to establish the materiality element. See id. at 702 (holding that defendant’s false statement “was capable of affecting the Postal Service’s general function of tracking packages and identifying the recipients of packages entrusted to it” and defendant’s false information “could have impeded the ability of the Postal Service to investigate the trafficking of narcotics through the mails”). And Mr. Flynn’s multiple false statements were material regardless of the interviewing FBI agents’ knowledge of any recordings and transcripts of his conversations with the Russian Ambassador—the existence or non-existence of which have neither been confirmed nor denied by the government, see Gov’t’s App. A, ECF No. 122-1 at 5—and whether the FBI had knowledge of Mr. Flynn’s exact words during those conversations. See United States v. Safavian, 649 F.3d 688, 691 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (rejecting defendant’s argument that his false statements were not material where the interviewing FBI agent “knew, based upon his knowledge of the case file, that the incriminating statements were false when [the defendant] uttered them”).
DOJ knows all of this law, of course. Indeed, for many years the Department has consistently insisted that the argument Flynn made, and that DOJ now apparently adopts, fundamentally misunderstands the meaning of “materiality” under § 1001. This is what the Department argued, for example, in a brief it filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit just three days before it filed its motion in the Flynn case:
“It has never been the test of materiality that the misrepresentation or concealment would more likely than not have produced an erroneous decision.” Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759, 771 (1988). Indeed, “the phrase ‘natural tendency’ connotes qualities of the statement in question that transcend the immediate circumstances in which it is offered and inhere in the statement itself.’” United States v. McBane, 433 F.3d 344, 351 (3d Cir. 2005) (quoting United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 512 (1995)) . . . . In other words, the inquiry is entirely objective. . . . Thus, where the “point” of a false statement was to influence an agency’s decision and the statement had “in the ordinary course … an intrinsic capability” to do so, the materiality standard is met. [United States v.] Turner, 551 F.3d [657,] 664 [7th Cir. 2008].
This longstanding DOJ and judicial view undoubtedly explains why, later in its brief in support of its motion to dismiss the Flynn charge (p.17), DOJ acknowledges in passing that “it does not matter that the FBI knew the truth and therefore was not deceived by Mr. Flynn’s statements” (citing Safavian and Moore). That’s right. And it also explains why DOJ’s highlighted reliance on the quotation from Weinstock to suggest just the opposite is so disingenuous.
In sum, each of the three predicates for DOJ’s motion is shockingly threadbare. There’s no “there” there.
What Can and Should Judge Sullivan Do Now?
Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides that “[t]he government may, with leave of court, dismiss an . . . information.” The DOJ motion asks Judge Sullivan for the required “leave of court.”
Judge Sullivan’s power to deny such leave is fairly narrow—which is a good thing. A prosecutor’s motion to dismiss pending charges protects individuals from punishment that might be unwarranted or unduly severe. And ordinarily it’d be very troubling for a court to effectively require the Executive branch to take affirmative steps to prosecute a case where the officials in charge have concluded that it wouldn’t be just (or in some cases that it wouldn’t be lawful) to do so.
Of course, this isn’t the usual case. A denial of DOJ’s Rule 48(a) motion here would not require the Executive branch to take any affirmative steps to continue prosecuting the case: That job is finished, and all that remains before entry of judgment is the judge’s own sentencing.
Even so, however, Rule 48(a) doesn’t afford a court the power to deny leave to dismiss a charge based simply on the judge’s personal view “that the defendant should stand trial notwithstanding the prosecution’s desire to dismiss the charges,” United States v. Fokker Servs. B.V., 818 F.3d 733, 742 (D.C. Cir. 2016), or “on the ground that the prosecution has been too lenient,” id. at 746. But cf. Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S. 22, 34 (1977) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (“This proviso [“leave of court”] was specifically added as an amendment to the original draft, which had provided for automatic dismissal upon the motion of the United States, and would seem clearly directed toward an independent judicial assessment of the public interest in dismissing the indictment.”).
In its only brief discussion of the Rule 48(a) standard, the Supreme Court indicated that a district court can deny leave to dismiss a charge where the prosecution is acting in “bad faith” or was “motivated by considerations” that were “‘clearly contrary to manifest public interest.’” Rinaldi, 434 U.S. at 30 (majority opinion) (quoting United States v. Cowan, 524 F.2d 504, 513 (5th Cir. 1975)) (emphasis added). That’s a demanding standard, as it ought to be. Is it satisfied here?
Perhaps. As I explained in Point 17, above, the DOJ motion to dismiss the Flynn charge is predicated on a series of propositions, legal and factual, that border on the preposterous. In an amicus brief filed (but apparently not yet docketed) in the Flynn case, more than a thousand former prosecutors and DOJ officials argue that the DOJ brief is “so clearly and unequivocally wrong” that it “bears the hallmarks of a brazen attempt to protect an ally of the President,” and “appears to serve President Trump’s personal political interests, rather than the interests of the public whom the President and Attorney General Barr serve.” [UPDATE: In his brief filed on June 10, the court-appointed amicus, John Gleeson, likewise argues that “[t]he reasons offered by the Government are so irregular, and so obviously pretextual,” that they must be understood as “an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.” Gleeson further notes that Trump has, inappropriately, tweeted or retweeted about Flynn at least 100 times from March 2017 to present; and that a week before the Government filed its motion to dismiss, Trump opined that Flynn’s case is a “scam[].”]
That might, indeed, explain why Barr (and then-Acting U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea) filed the motion. And if Judge Sullivan were certain that such “bad faith” is the reason for DOJ’s Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss, perhaps it would then be appropriate for him to deny the motion, to sentence Flynn, and to enter a judgment of conviction.
There is, however, at least one other possibility—one that’s much more troubling but that doesn’t involve prosecutorial “bad faith,” as such: It could be, as Charlie Savage recently put it, that Attorney General Barr sincerely “considers to be illegitimate the government’s counterintelligence effort to understand the scope of Russian election interference in 2016 and any links to the Trump campaign.” That would explain the astounding assertions in the DOJ motion that Flynn’s calls with Kislyak “were entirely appropriate on their face” and that there wasn’t any “legitimate” basis for a counterintelligence investigation, even after Flynn lied to the Vice-President-Elect about the content of the calls. Indeed, in a recent interview, Attorney General Barr asserted that the FBI investigation was “based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call [Flynn] made as a member of the transition.” According to Barr, there “was nothing wrong with it whatever. In fact, it was laudable.”
If that’s the reason Barr insisted on moving to dismiss the Flynn charge, it raises a far, far greater problem than whether Michael Flynn is or isn’t convicted of a criminal offense. Such a view reflects an alarming disregard for the constitutional difference between an incumbent President and the incoming administration. It ignores the harms of engaging in such private diplomacy in secret, without the knowledge of the State Department. It treats as “laudable” an effort to undermine the incumbent President’s conduct of foreign affairs in real time—and to do so in order to accommodate a hostile nation that had just engaged in a concerted effort to distort the U.S. presidential campaign in order to secure the election of the very President whose agent is engaged in the stealth diplomacy, and where that very President (and/or his agent engaged in the shadow communications) might possibly be in debt to that nation, and/or compromised by it. It also assumes that the FBI should have turned a blind eye to all this even after several top officials of the new administration made repeated false representations to the public about the new National Security Advisor’s communications with that foreign power, either knowing that the statements were false or, more troubling still, having been assured by Flynn that the communications were very different from what the Bureau knew them to be. If the Attorney General of the United States believes all of that conduct was “legitimate,” “appropriate” and “laudable,” and that there wasn’t any “legitimate” basis for investigating it, then how can anyone be confident that the Department of Justice under his stewardship will faithfully fulfill its constitutional responsibilities?
In the end, I don’t have a strong, considered view of whether Judge Sullivan should grant the DOJ motion or not, in part because I don’t think it’s terribly important, in the grand scheme of things, whether Michael Flynn is actually convicted or is, as he might put it, “locked up.” And anyway, President Trump will probably pardon him.
I do hope, however, that no matter what Judge Sullivan does with the DOJ motion, he will carefully and persuasively explain why DOJ’s rationales are so meritless; why, in particular, Flynn’s conduct was so inimical to the national interest; and why that conduct fully justified the profound concerns of the law enforcement and national security communities within the government, and the altogether proper responses of officials such as Barack Obama, Sally Yates and Don McGahn when they discovered what Flynn had done.
* What’s more, Flynn’s communications with Kislyak also violated the Logan Act, which makes it unlawful for a U.S. citizen to commence or carry on any correspondence or intercourse with any officer of a foreign government with the intent to influence the measures or conduct of that government “in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States.” I think the Logan Act is constitutional, at least in most applications, including where, as here, the citizen acts secretly, without knowledge of the State Department. That said, there was no serious prospect of criminal culpability for Flynn under that law because it’s become, in effect, a dead letter via desuetude—there hasn’t been a Logan Act indictment in almost 170 years—and therefore any prosecution would raise serious fair notice problems unless the government were to clearly announce in advance that it was dusting off the statute and would begin to enforce it.
Images – Drew Angerer/Getty; Zach Gibson/Getty; Alex Wong/Getty; SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty
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Marty Lederman
Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He was Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel from 2009-2010, and Attorney Advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel from 1994-2002. Member of the editorial board of Just Security. You can follow him on Twitter (@marty_lederman).
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Kayleigh L. Stewart
Kayleigh was born in Boston and raised in rural Connecticut. Her parents met while in a production of HMS Pinafore, so falling in love with the theater was inevitable! Her home was filled with music, and she took every opportunity to act, sing, and dance throughout her childhood.
At the age of 18, Kayleigh moved to New York City to pursue her BFA in Drama at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She began her training at the Playwrights Horizons Theater School, diving into the beautiful world of collaboration, the well-rounded theater artist, and creating original work. Kayleigh then traveled to London to study Shakespeare in Performance at the renowned Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts during her junior year. She then spent her last year at NYU returning to her musical theater roots at the New Studio on Broadway.
Kayleigh now lives in New York, and hopes to continue to make challenging, meaningful theater while riding her bike, reading books, and petting small dogs.
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from part four of WILD METRICS
Every day the future comes nearer; every single day that passes, and they pass much more quickly now, it approaches; but it gets no clearer, no more decipherable than at the beginning – the beginning? – what I mean to say is, at the time when I was closer to the beginning, when my senses were more rudimentary. And now as I bring myself to write this, in many ways it gets more difficult, because I am no longer relying on those long-ago set-down accounts of what happened, and when, and wherefore, etc etc; no longer building on those familiar narratives but on the thin air of now. You know, like the cartoon character running from some assailant towards the cliff edge and continuing to run beyond, without noticing for a short while thereafter that there is nothing to support his pattering little feet until he looks down and then of course the shock of awareness, of seeing for the first time the yawning space beneath him, provokes his belated downfall. It’s a familiar trope, perhaps rather hackneyed by now, but an apt one I think. So anyway the awful thought comes that the future, outside the frame, is actually down there. And looking back, well, all of that seemed solid at the time, more or less in focus, and there was a lot of it to build on, but still, it’s now slipping out of reach. Not forgetting that the time to come is far less capacious, I mean there is less of it. So I’d better hurry, or it will be used up.
Not forgetting. That’s the thing. That would be good. How can we imagine the future if we have no access to the past?
The future can only ever be imagined. It never arrives. It can be brought to mind by being out of mind, by stepping off the clifftop of memory. Oh, such tedious metaphors – enough. I only have, as my resource, autobiographical memory, which is telling a story, which is in essence a pattern-making activity, a creative response to events that have occurred, or may have occurred. The neurologists tell us that memories are not records stored in the filing cabinet of the brain, waiting over the years to be retrieved. They are built anew each time we try to retrieve them, when we create a mental representation on the fly of something that may or may not have happened, but somehow has left its mark. A trigger can activate the representation by firing a node in the network in which the sources are encoded and which connects them together. Memories are, say the neurologists, about optimising decision-making in the future. But there is no guarantee they represent verifiable facts. They are distributed widely in the brain across interconnections, with immense potential for interference. When they lapse, it is not because storage space is at a premium. They fade when the connections degrade. I am reminded of the difficult last years experienced by my wife’s father, who struggled as he entered his nineties to piece together the remnants of his memories while coping with the frayed interconnections in his brain that would have assisted the pattern-making; and how he tried to create new patterns that didn’t make any sense but at least enabled some kind of temporary stringing-together that would hold for now. It was especially poignant as he had the reputation of being a storyteller, in his prime holding audiences fascinated with his tales of life in rural Norfolk before the Second World War, an activity he called “yarning” that had a tradition in the annals of the family, for one of his uncles had been a raconteur, with a fund of texts he had written that, when performed for entertainment in the evenings, he had called “recitations”, texts that after he died his widow had burned, for reasons never explained; and another uncle had actually written books about life as a mole-catcher and a railway signalman in the Fens which had become popular, and he had appeared on regional television in the 1970s in a regular series of programmes on rural life, being interviewed wearing collarless shirt and neckerchief, a faux-rural garb foisted upon him by the programme makers which he would never have worn in real life. And so my wife’s father had carried on the tradition, keeping family and friends entertained and amused with his yarning, until his brain cells started to die and the pattern-making began to strain credulity. He would ring us up, worried that his wife’s (my wife’s mother’s) bicycle was not to be found in the garden shed, deducing from this that she had been held up at work for some inexplicable reason, what could it possibly be? and had to be gently reminded that the bicycle had gone very many years ago and that his beloved wife had died almost as many years ago, and the world he was attempting to re-create had not existed in reality in all that time.
In memory, the world is created – re-created – every day, every single moment, becoming new again, bringing into existence the possibilities of new futures, in a fluid state, enhancing survival. Memory is a catastrophic breaking-free, a benign catastrophe, if you will. As suggested by the poet and artist Allen Fisher, who makes an appearance in the pages you have just been reading, and who remains to this day a friend of mine, it is a vital component of the pattern-making we need to do each day as a means of surviving – knowing about it and knowing how we know. With its loss or degradation, all the principalities and echelons of existence are obliterated, their hierarchies flattened, their glitter dispersed, and time shatters to its atoms, its instances separated out so that they can no longer be inspected from front to back and back to front again and be seen as cohesive, as elements in a system that can be worked with and worked through.
But what of those many pages that bring us up to this point? Where are these vaulted spaces they try to conjure? What is the time that is being evoked? I seem to remember it, anyway, whether through inventive or consistent memory. It is a good forty years since the events that inspired this narrative actually occurred, and the evidence for them is naturally incomplete. So I have laboured to complete the narrative by discovering or inventing connections, trying to fill the gaps with consistent or invented memories, vainly as it happens, because the more you fill in the more new gaps appear, triggering new memory-connections, fractally self-similar, a process, as I have already surmised, that could extend infinitely – within the unknown constraints of the capacity of the human mind anyway – so when might you call a halt and say this is ridiculous, what is the point? Has the point, if there is one, been made? Has it even been reached?
But then of course the realisation becomes apparent: that the gaps that appear, and keep on appearing in new places however much you toil to fill them, are inevitable and necessary. As Edwin Muir has written of Kafka: “We know the end he had in mind for all his stories; but the road to it could have gone on forever, for life as he saw it was endlessly ambiguous; so that there seems to be a necessity in the gaps which are left in his three stories [The Trial, The Castle and America]; if he had filled up these gaps, others would have appeared.” The process is inexhaustible, that is why it is called process; the framing is arbitrary, the decision to allow ellipses, and in particular the big ellipsis that occurs at the very end of the narrative, to be themselves, has to be made at some point decided by the author because there is no objective point of completion, not ever, no closure, to use a now fashionable word. And then the story can breathe, and live on, live with its indeterminacies, transferred from the imagination of the author to the imagination of the reader and left in safe-keeping there to be done with as the reader may wish.
And the obvious corollary to all this is the medium itself of the narrative, the question of the language with which it is conveyed, for it needs a conveyance of some kind and I’m doing the best I can here. All I have at my disposal to render these events or my take on these events, which may or may not have happened, is the words you are reading right now, but what are these double entities of moving air and reposing ink? They are slippery and elusive, they do not always mean what you think they mean, their relation to those long gone or imagined events is not simple, their relation to you, reader, is not simple. Their tendency to take over and obscure some imagined truth vies with their purported aim of rendering that truth plain and simple. Poetry is involved in that business, of course, but I’m not going into that here; perhaps I’ll return to it later. At any rate, language, like that other system known as the scientific method, is a different world from the world of the real, it’s a code that enables glimpses of how someone might imagine the real, and thereby have some dealing with or accounting for it, but the real is not really here, and maybe it’s the place I now only dimly remember, where the talking dead are – or is it the place where I am now as I write or where you are now as you read these words, as you turn the page, either physically taking up the edge of the paper and flicking it over or else commanding this movement electronically with a sweep or tap of your finger?
Another extract can be read at Molly Bloom 18
WILD METRICS is published by Grand Iota, April 2019
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Woody Allen chooses Rhode Island
It would appear that Woody Allen may finally have got Manhattan out of his system, according to a report in the Boston Globe.
It seems that the director’s next film – set to star Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone – is shooting in Rhode Island, with principal photography starting in July.
Steven Feinberg, executive director of Rhode Island Film and Television Office, also confirmed the news to another local paper, the Providence Journal, stating that the production would qualify for the state’s film tax credit.
As with all Allen’s projects, a veil of secrecy hangs over this feature; he doesn’t normally even reveal his films’ titles until the eleventh hour, and certainly not the plots. Local castings are being held in the New England state.
For decades, Allen had been synonymous with his beloved NYC, until he got the Europe bug with Match Point (England); Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Spain), and Midnight in Paris and Magic in the Moonlight both filmed in France.
Take a look at our production guides for more on filming in the UK, Spain and France.
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Bruno Mars donates $1 million to victims of Flint water crisis
Updated: 4:08 AM CDT Aug 13, 2017
By MESFIN FEKADU
Bruno Mars said Saturday he is donating $1 million from his Michigan concert to aid those affected by the Flint water crisis.The Grammy-winning star told the audience at his show in Auburn Hills, about 30 miles from Detroit, that he and tour promoter Live Nation are redirecting funds from the show to the charity The Community Foundation of Greater Flint.In 2014, Flint switched water sources and failed to add corrosion-reducing phosphates, allowing lead from old pipes to leach into the water. Elevated levels of lead, a neurotoxin, were detected in children, and 12 people died in a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that experts suspect was linked to the improperly treated water.“I’m very thankful to the Michigan audience for joining me in supporting this cause,” Mars said in a statement. “Ongoing challenges remain years later for Flint residents, and it’s important that we don’t forget our brothers and sisters affected by this disaster.”Mars, who was born and raised in Hawaii, performed at the Palace of Auburn Hills during his sold-out 24K Magic World Tour. His latest album, “24K Magic,” recently achieved double platinum status.
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. —
Bruno Mars said Saturday he is donating $1 million from his Michigan concert to aid those affected by the Flint water crisis.
The Grammy-winning star told the audience at his show in Auburn Hills, about 30 miles from Detroit, that he and tour promoter Live Nation are redirecting funds from the show to the charity The Community Foundation of Greater Flint.
In 2014, Flint switched water sources and failed to add corrosion-reducing phosphates, allowing lead from old pipes to leach into the water. Elevated levels of lead, a neurotoxin, were detected in children, and 12 people died in a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that experts suspect was linked to the improperly treated water.
“I’m very thankful to the Michigan audience for joining me in supporting this cause,” Mars said in a statement. “Ongoing challenges remain years later for Flint residents, and it’s important that we don’t forget our brothers and sisters affected by this disaster.”
Mars, who was born and raised in Hawaii, performed at the Palace of Auburn Hills during his sold-out 24K Magic World Tour. His latest album, “24K Magic,” recently achieved double platinum status.
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LHS-BoV
La Follette High School sophomore part of national youth group documenting COVID-19 experience
By Scott Girard | The Cap Times
A La Follette High School sophomore is one of 22 high school students around the United States documenting her COVID-19 experience and trying to connect youth in the community with resources they need.
Lilyana Sims began working with the Mikva Challenge, a nonprofit organization focused on uplifting youth voice, about three-and-a-half years ago. Organizers contacted her about being part of the new National Youth Response Movement team in March, and after looking at who else had been invited, she knew she was going to take part.
“I was very in awe of the other people they had chosen because it’s a bunch of really powerful, intelligent students around the United States,” she said. “I was like, ‘Woh, this is where I want to be.’”
Over the last four weeks, Lilyana said, the group has developed three priority issues for its work: access to education, access to mental health and health care, and helping to create a sense of community in their neighborhoods while following public health guidelines. For now, they’re using hashtags like #GetupSpeakUp and #MikvaQuaranteenChallenge to connect with other teens beyond the group’s members.
A press release from the Mikva Foundation announcing the group’s creation states the council will “elevate youth voice and inform policy decisions during the COVID-19 outbreak.”
“Council members are sharing their personal stories on the myriad of issues that they and their peers are facing during the COVID-19 outbreak — ranging from the loss of their family’s income, to health care challenges, to making the transition to distance learning,” the release states. “The stories will help inform the decision-making processes and public policy that will impact the lives of youth during and beyond the outbreak.”
Cristina Perez, who is one of three advisers for the group and the Mikva Challenge NYC program director, said it’s been great to see the students interacting with each other and on social media so far, and she hopes soon they’ll be able to expand to talking with decision-makers.
“They’ve been pretty forthright with us, some of them are experiencing some hard times, whether stress from their parents not currently having jobs and just being distracted and not able to focus on their work to grieving for the experiences they were planning on having,” Perez said. “(They have) an immense amount of motivation to engage deeply with what’s happening and wanting to be part of the conversation and wanting to make sure other young people have the support and resources that they need to survive this time.”
It’s also allowed Lilyana to gain perspective on how Madison is responding to the pandemic compared to other places around the country.
“It’s vastly different but also the same. It’s really weird,” she said. “Nationally we have the same leadership, so we hear the same things on the TV in the press conferences and we get the same things through the media. But the actual experience of what’s happening in our cities, respectively, is not the same.”
Group members include a couple of students in Georgia, where many restrictions were recently loosened by the governor, and some on the west coast, in Oregon, California and Washington.
“Different people having different experiences, and being able to share them, makes us all more educated and makes us all more culturally competent,” Lilyana said.
Perez said that geographic diversity was something they specifically sought out in creating the group, having students apply through a “pretty simple form” from various areas of the country where the Mikva Challenge is headquartered or partners with districts like Madison.
“We selected students based on some of the things that they shared in their application,” Perez said. “We wanted it to be geographically diverse and diverse in their experiences.”
Lilyana called the group members “very resilient,” and said it’s “so uplifting and inspiring” to be among “some of the most creative people ever.”
“We have been the most resilient age group in terms of wanting change and wanting to create movements and wanting rapid movement and wanting to see the world in a better place,” she said. “I’m really proud that I get to be part of it.”
This article was originally publicshed by the Cap Times on May 4, 2020. To view the full story on their website, please visit: https://madison.com/ct/news/local/education/local_schools/la-follette-high-school-sophomore-part-of-national-youth-group-documenting-covid-19-experience/article_41fc36fb-c541-5b76-84ca-1642ca2bc903.html
La Follette Board of Visitors Year in Review 2020
La Follette Alum Nathan Fosbinder Among Creators of Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical
La Follette Featured in The New York Times -- Make Schools More Human
LaFolletteBOV@gmail.com
© 2020 by LHS Board of Visitors.
LHS Board of Visitors
Empowering Lancers
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L.A. school board asks property owners to show support with more tax money
Polling showed widespread sympathy for striking teachers like Westminster Elementary’s Beth Clark. The school board hopes to capitalize by putting a tax measure on the ballot.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
By Howard BlumeStaff Writer
Los Angeles school officials once saw the January teachers’ strike as a calamity. Now they realize it created an opportunity.
Angelenos opened their hearts to teachers who talked of poor conditions at schools — and now they will have the chance to open their wallets in a June 4 special election.
The Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to ask voters to raise their taxes in support of schools — the same voters who backed striking teachers by honking horns, handing out tamales, walking picket lines and keeping kids at home.
The tax measure, if approved, is projected to raise about $500 million a year, enough to close all or most of the gap between what the district already is spending and the revenue it receives from state and federal sources.
The tax would be calculated at 16 cents per square foot on a property owner’s habitable indoor space. It would apply to commercial buildings as well as single-family homes and apartments. There would be exemptions for senior citizens and those relying on disability payments to get by.
The levy, called parcel tax, will go before all voters living within the L.A. Unified School District and would require a two-thirds majority. It would be in effect for 12 years.
To sell the tax, the nation’s second-largest school system will assert that the money would do more than merely preserve the status quo.
The approved wording of the tax measure hits on themes teachers raised during the strike, promising that the additional funding would retain and attract quality teachers, reduce class sizes and provide more counseling, nursing and library services as well as support coursework in science, math, preschool, career education and the arts, while also ensuring safe and well-maintained schools. In other words, L.A. Unified wants more resources — on top of a $7.5-billion budget — to carry out the essence of its work.
Officials said they are ready to make the pitch.
“Education continues to be at the forefront of what working people want to invest in,” said school board President Monica Garcia. “Our job is to figure out: Can we play offense?”
“Many people judge our schools: ‘You waste money and the kids are loud,’” said board member Richard Vladovic. “You don’t know about the million miracles that occur in our schools every day.”
“The one thing we don’t want to do is fail,” said board member George McKenna. The district, he said, must go “all out” in its campaign.
An analysis provided by the office of L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti says half of L.A. Unified homeowners would pay less than $235 a year. Most L.A. Unified homeowners would pay $100 to $450 a year. Garcetti supports the tax.
“There’s no higher priority for me and for this region than improving the quality of public education,” the mayor said Thursday. “We need to do it for our kids. We need to do it for our economy. We need to do it for our future.”
He emphasized the power of the walkout: “We start from a very strong base because there is the highest awareness of the needs of our schools that I’ve experienced in my adult life as a result of the strike and an increased focus nationally on public education.”
The tax measure came together quickly after results were compiled from a poll commissioned by L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner in the wake of the six-day action by members of United Teachers Los Angeles. The poll indicated growth in support for increased funding of public education.
But pollsters also warned that the strike effect could fade, which prompted officials to place the tax increase on the June ballot rather than wait for November or even next year. The sooner the money could be approved, officials said, the sooner it could flow to the schools. The deadline for getting on the June ballot is the end of next week.
At a special board meeting Thursday, speakers raised various concerns.
Advocates of charter schools want a proportionate share of proceeds for these privately operated, publicly funded campuses.
“Public charter school students are entitled to the same level and quality of educational services,” said Roxann Nazario, who has a child at a charter in the San Fernando Valley. “I ask that you stand for all kids.”
Cassy Horton, an official with the California Charter Schools Assn., objected to vague draft language that said money would be distributed to charters “fairly.” Charters serve nearly 20% of district students and should expect about $100 million of an annual $500-million levy, she said.
The final version struck out “fairly.”
But downtown resident Isaac Abdul Haqq took the opposite view.
“We don’t want our tax dollars going to the charter industry,” he said. “This has just been thrust upon us without any real community input.”
The teachers union during the strike spoke out for a cap on new charters, which compete with L.A. Unified for students.
Other speakers wanted the tax to end sooner or called for stronger accountability. A hospital industry representative said hospitals should be exempted. The Chamber of Commerce wanted a flat tax per property.
Board members listened but made no further changes, saying that that the measure already incorporated various compromises and that time was of the essence.
“This will make things better and I’ll take better,” board member Nick Melvoin said.
howard.blume@latimes.com
Twitter: @howardblume
CaliforniaEducation
Howard Blume
Howard Blume covers education for the Los Angeles Times. He’s won the top investigative reporting prize from the L.A. Press Club and print Journalist of the Year from the L.A. Society of Professional Journalists chapter. He co-hosts “Deadline L.A.” on KPFK, which the press club named best radio public affairs show in 2010. He teaches tap dancing and has two superior daughters.
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Local Government Finance Act (Northern Ireland) 2011
Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly
2011 c. 10
Local Government Act (Northern...
Changes over time for: Paragraph 4
There are currently no known outstanding effects for the Local Government Finance Act (Northern Ireland) 2011, Paragraph 4.
4 In Schedule 3 (The Staff Commission), in paragraph 2A for “specified in or determined under the regulations under section 36(1)” substitute “ determined by the Department under section 31(2) of the Local Government Finance Act (Northern Ireland) 2011 ”.N.I.
I1Sch. 1 para. 4 in operation at 1.4.2012 by S.R. 2011/306, art. 2(3)
Text created by the Northern Ireland Assembly department responsible for the subject matter of the Act to explain what the Act sets out to achieve and to make the Act accessible to readers who are not legally qualified. Explanatory Notes accompany all Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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Search Results: TCPA
Supreme Court Debates Grammar, Syntax In Case That Will Define the Limits of TCPA Litigation
Benjamin R. Cox
TCPA, What You Need To Know - Background Info On Current Issues
On December 8, 2020, the United States Supreme Court held oral argument in the case of Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, No. 19-511, concerning the circuit split over what type of equipment qualifies as an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) within the statutory definition of that term set forth in Telephone…
Louisiana District Court Finds TCPA Robocall Prohibition Unconstitutional Prior to July 2020
Class Actions, Litigation, TCPA
On September 28, 2020, Judge Martin C. Feldman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana issued an important decision that could impact Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation involving alleged robocalls across the United States. See Creasy v. Charter Commc’ns, Inc., No. 20-cv-1199, 2020 WL…
11th Circuit Overrules Incentive Award in Class Action Settlement
Angelica Rankins
Class Actions, TCPA, Uncategorized
On September 17, 2020, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (Eleventh Circuit) issued an important decision regarding incentive payments in class-action settlements in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) cases. In Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC, Case No. 9:17-cv-80393 (11th Cir. 2020) (Johnson), a TCPA case, the Eleventh Circuit held that…
FCC to Stop Warning Illegal Robocallers Before Issuing Penalties
FCC, TCPA
To enhance consumer protections against illegal robocalls, on May 1, 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an Order (Order) amending 47 CFR § 1.80 (Section 1.80) of its Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) rules. The Order: (i) removes the TCPA’s initial warning requirement prior to issuing penalties for illegal…
Eleventh Circuit Narrows TCPA's Autodialer Definition
Jessie Rabinowitz
Litigation, TCPA
The Eleventh Circuit joined the growing majority of courts in issuing an opinion that significantly narrows the scope of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and delivers a blow to the plaintiffs’ bar and proponents for an expansive reading of the statue. In addressing a pair of consolidated appeals, Glasser…
TCPA's Constitutionality Under the First Amendment Poised For Supreme Court Intervention
Chris Herbert
On December 2, 2019, the United States government submitted a brief to the Supreme Court urging it to deny review of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling holding a provision of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) unconstitutional under the First Amendment. In the case in question, Gallion v….
Eleventh Circuit Decertifies TCPA Class on Traceability and Predominance Grounds
George R. Schneider
On November 15, 2019, the Eleventh Circuit decertified a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class in Cordoba v. DIRECTV, LLC (No. 18-12077, 2019 WL 6044305), finding that the plaintiff could not adequately identify potential class members without resorting to individualized inquiries. The plaintiff alleged that DIRECTV failed to maintain an…
Court Denies Class Cert in TCPA Case
On October 23, 2019, the District of Massachusetts denied class certification in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case in Sandoe v. Boston Scientific Corp. (No. 18-11826). The court held that the plaintiff could not identify class members sufficiently to satisfy the ascertainability and predominance requirements of Fed. R. Civ….
4th Circuit Upholds $61 Million TCPA Verdict, Finding Standing Under Spokeo
On May 30, 2019, the Fourth Circuit upheld a $61 million Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) judgment in Krakauer v. Dish Network, L.L.C., No. 1518. The plaintiff, Dr. Thomas Krakauer (Plaintiff), placed his name on the Do-Not-Call registry in 2003. In 2009, he received calls from Satellite Systems Network (SSN),…
Northern District of California Refuses to Certify Class
On April 28, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied certification of a putative Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class. Revitch v. Citibank, NA., No. 14-06907 WHA (N.D. Cal. Apr. 28, 2019). The court reasoned that the case would involve “individualized inquires [of prior express…
Ninth Circuit Holds Lender Could Be Vicariously Liable for Debt Collector's Misconduct
Class Actions, Debt Collection, TCPA
On March 22, 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment in Henderson v. United Student Aid Funds, Inc., 2017 WL 766548 (S.D. Cal. Feb. 28, 2017), and remanded the matter back to the Southern District of California to determine if a student loan lender could be vicariously liable for…
Repeated Pleading Defects Leads to TCPA Class Action Dismissal
Lender Law
Class Actions, TCPA
On March 12, 2019, the Southern District of Florida dismissed a putative Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case for a second time because of repeated pleading defects. In Settle v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., Judge Ursula Ungaro granted State Farm’s dismissal request because plaintiff’s efforts to fix defects…
Southern District of California Dismisses TCPA Case For Failure to Plead ATDS Element
On January 16, 2019, the Southern District of California dismissed a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) claim against Lyft because the plaintiff failed to support the automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) element of his claim. Like many similar TCPA plaintiffs, the plaintiff in Bodie v. Lyft, No. 3:16-cv-02558-L-NLS (S.D. Cal.) sought…
FCC Establishes Reassigned Number Database and TCPA Safe Harbor
FCC, TCPA, What You Need To Know - Background Info On Current Issues
On December 13, 2018, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a Second Report and Order addressing issues with reassigned phone numbers and potential Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) liability, and establishing a safe harbor for business callers. Currently, there is no comprehensive database which allows businesses to determine whether a phone number…
Northern District of California Kicks TCPA Case Challenging Confirmatory Text Messages
On December 13, 2018, the Northern District of California granted summary judgment to a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) defendant in a case involving confirmatory text messages. In Phan v. Agoda Company, No. 5:16-cv-07243 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 13, 2018), the plaintiff alleged that text messages he received from the defendant…
District of Minnesota Rejects Marks, Grants Defendant Summary Judgment in TCPA Case
On November 13, 2018, the District of Minnesota rejected the Ninth Circuit’s expansive interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA’s) automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) provision in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC. In Roark v. Credit One Bank, N.A., No. 16-cv-00173 (D. Minn. Nov. 13, 2018), the court…
Supreme Court Grants Cert in TCPA Junk Fax Case to Determine Whether the Hobbs Act Trumps the Chevron Doctrine
Litigation, Regulation, TCPA
On November 13, 2018, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in PDR Network, LLC v. Carlton & Harris Chiropractic (No. 17-1705), to answer the question whether the Hobbs Act required the district court to accept the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC’s) legal interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). At issue…
Ninth Circuit's Mandate on ATDS Definition Stayed Pending Petition for Writ of Certiorari
On November 7, 2018, in the closely-followed case Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, No. 14-56834 (9th Cir.), the Ninth Circuit granted a stay of its ruling on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA) definition of an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) while appellee Crunch San Diego, LLC files a petition for writ of…
Northern District of Georgia Refuses to Strike TCPA Class Allegations Based on Supreme Court Ruling
On October 18, 2018, the Northern District of Georgia declined to extend the Supreme Court’s holding in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of Cal., S.F. Cty., 137 U.S. 1773 (2017) to dismiss or to strike the class allegations in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) case. In Dennis v….
Ninth Circuit Issues Opinion on TCPA ATDS Definition
FCC, Litigation, TCPA
On September 20, 2018, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion finding that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA’s) “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) definition is vague and ambiguous, and interpreting the statutory definition anew. More specifically, in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, the court interpreted the TCPA’s ATDS definition…
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Radio Panel: Malingering
by Len Fisher | 2 Sep 2004 | Think Like a Scientist: Media and Writing | 0 comments
BBC Radio 4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076n97 (until June 27, 2015)
Let me say straight away that I never malinger. It’s just that the thought of work makes me ill. The very notion of physical work, such as helping my wife in the garden, brings on excruciating knee pains that go back to the damage that my knees suffered during my days as a runner, while the prospect of vacuuming the house induces such an attack of hay fever that I would be foolish to expose myself to the dust that the vacuum cleaner stirs up.
I am not the only person to suffer in this unfortunate way. The Victorian writer Jerome K. Jerome was convinced that he suffered from liver disease, because he had discovered that one of its major symptoms was “a general disinclination to work of any kind”, a problem to which he claimed to have been a martyr since infancy. Many of my friends, especially the male ones, suffer from a similar complaint, which manifests itself most strongly on Mondays.
The problem of feeling ill on Mondays, after a weekend where the sufferer appears to have been in the rudest of health, is so prevalent that it has its own special name – “Mondayitis”. Ignorant people put the condition down to malingering, but to workers in the American textile industry last century it was a real, and even life-threatening, condition, technically called byssinosis, which produced headaches and severe breathing difficulties in the unfortunate sufferers. The problem was that they had become allergic to the textile fibres that they breathed in as they worked. Weekends gave them a respite, but the sensitization meant that the symptoms came on with renewed severity (as is often the case with allergic reactions) when they returned to work on Mondays.
Even people who don’t suffer from byssinosis can experience real physical illness on Mondays. Middle-aged men, for example, die more frequently from strokes and heart attacks on Mondays than on any other day of the week. This sad statistic is reflected in the behaviour of their cars, which break down most frequently on Mondays. So do computers. Even the stock market appears to regard Monday as a day that we would be better off without, and stocks and shares world-wide consistently perform worse on Mondays than on any other day of the week. You can hardly put these problems down to malingering. No, you can say what you like, but Mondayitis is real, for machines and institutions as well as for people, and I intend to advance its reality as evidence in my defence when I suddenly feel ill the next time my wife asks me to do the vacuuming or help in the garden. After all, I couldn’t possibly be malingering – could I?
three × four =
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Lawyer Surbhi Kapoor talks about Intellectual Property Rights course, what is Intellectual Property Rights and other details about a Career in Intellectual Property Rights.
Surbhi Kapoor | Lawyer | Delhi High Court
What is Intellectual Property Rights?
A Career in Intellectual Property Rights is very intriguing. Almost everyone seems to be talking about How to start a Career in Intellectual Property Rights, while one should first develop an understanding of What is a Career in Intellectual Property Rights. While anyone can have an opinion on what Intellectual Property Rights entails; only a real professional can really explain it.
Lawyer Surbhi Kapoor is an experienced professional with 4 years & 4 months in Intellectual Property Rights. Lawyer Surbhi Kapoor describes Intellectual Property Rights as:
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect, and primarily encompasses copyrights, patents, and trademarks. It also includes other types of rights, such as trade secrets, publicity rights, moral rights, and rights against unfair competition.
How Lawyer Surbhi Kapoor got into Intellectual Property Rights?
I graduated in Geography Honours and did masters in English Literature. I decided to pursue Law and did LLB from HNB Garhwal University followed by an LLM from UTU, Dehradun. I have been practising law since 2014 and am a Lawyer with Delhi High Court.
Lawyer Surbhi Kapoor's Talk on Intellectual Property Rights
1) Intellectual Property Rights
Next, it covers Education. This Talk is unique because it talks about Education in terms of things which can be learnt from books, to excel at a Career in Intellectual Property Rights and not as a list of Qualifications, which one needs to get into Intellectual Property Rights. It details these topics within Education for Intellectual Property Rights:
2) Trademark
3) Copyright
4) Design
5) Patents
6) Geographical Indications
Then, the Talk focuses on the most important component that is Skills. Skills are the most important factor determining success in a Intellectual Property Rights. It details these topics within Skills for Intellectual Property Rights:
7) Bold Attitude
8) Communication Skills
9) Convincing Skills
10) Client Handling
Intellectual Property Rights has an interesting list of Positives. This Talk defines Positives in terms of following items for Intellectual Property Rights:
12) Become Confident
13) Name & Fame
14) Social Connections
15) Work Flexibility
It is important that one develops a fair understanding of the Challenges of Intellectual Property Rights:
16) Initial Struggle
17) Influential People
18) Constant Up-gradation
In the final section of the Talk, Surbhi Kapoor talks about How a day goes in a Career in:
19) Intellectual Property Rights
(for Free) Watch Lawyer Surbhi Kapoor’s full Intellectual Property Rights Career Talk
(for ₹ 100 or ₹ $ 1.4) Do a Self Assessment on Intellectual Property Rights to calculate your Dream Index, which is defined as:
According to Surbhi Kapoor your chances of success in Intellectual Property Rights is __%
Intellectual Property Rights?
If you are want to get into Intellectual Property Rights, start by investing in a Career Plan.
The 14 hour process, guided by a LifePage Career Advisor, will help you introspect and check whether your interest in Intellectual Property Rights is merely an infatuation or is it truly something you wish to do for the rest of your life.
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Finally, you will get a Career Plan stating which Courses, Certifications, Trainings and other Items you need to do in the next 7 years to become world’s best in Intellectual Property Rights.
Lawyer Surbhi Kapoor's LifePage:
https://www.lifepage.in/page/surbhikapoor
LifePage Career Talk on Intellectual Property Rights
https://www.lifepage.in/careers/intellectual-property-rights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7On879KSGAk
(Intellectual Property Rights, Surbhi Kapoor, Delhi High Court, Lawyer, Advocate, Law, High Court, Publicity Rights, Copy Right, Trademarks, Patents)
Atul Singh Pundir
Advocate | District Court, Dehradun
[ 14 years & 1 month Experience ]
Criminal Law is a system of law concerned with the punishment of offenders. In other words we can say Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime.
"After running my business for 4 years I decided to practice law because my entire family is practicing law so as I also decided to do and I have been practicing law since 2002."
Simar Pannu
Corporate Lawyer | Clifford Chance OSC Services
[ 0 years & 11 months Experience ]
Corporate law (also known as business law or enterprise law or company law) is the body of law that applies to the rights, relations, and conduct of persons, companies, organizations and businesses.
"I am a professionally qualified corporate lawyer. I went to the Army Institute of Law and did BA LLB from there. After that, I worked with an international law firm called Clifford Chance OSC Services which is based out of London and worked there for a year."
Ashish Chakravarty
Advocate and Consultant | District Court, Dehradun
[ 11 years Experience ]
Civil Law is the system of law concerned with private relations between members of a community rather than criminal, military, or religious affairs.
"After completing LLM from Kurukshetra University, I started practicing at District Court, Dehradun since 2006."
Ajay Majithia
Advocate | Supreme Court of India
Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law is a system that regulates and ensures that individuals or a community adhere to the will of the state. State-enforced laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or established by judges through precedent, normally in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the normal court process. The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. A lawyer's responsibilities as a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen are usually harmonious. Thus, when an opposing party is well represented, a lawyer can be a zealous advocate on behalf of a client and at the same time assume that justice is being done.
"After doing my schooling from Govt Model School Chandigarh, I did my LLB from Symbiosis Law School, Pune. I started my practice at the Trial Port of Gurugram & Faridabad and later, started practicing at Supreme Court & Delhi High court, New Delhi. My core interest took me to Civil & Commercial Litigation along with other areas of Law. I was a Central Government Counsel for the High Court of Delhi from 1997 to 2002."
Minakshi Singh
Advocate | Delhi High Court
[ 32 years & 9 months Experience ]
Civil law is a body of rules that defines and protects the private rights of citizens, offers legal remedies that may be sought in a dispute, and covers areas of law such as contracts, torts, property and family law. It is the system of law concerned with private relations between members of community rather than criminal, military or religious affairs.
"After doing my schooling from Presentation Convent Delhi, I did my BA in Political science from IP College and LLB from Faculty of Law, Delhi University. I am practicing as a Lawyer at Delhi High Court since 1985."
Dr Kiran Purohit
Juvenile Judge | Janpad, Chamoli
Juvenile justice is the area of criminal law applicable to persons not old enough to be held responsible for criminal acts. In most states, the age for criminal culpability is set at 18 years. Juvenile law is mainly governed by state law and most states have enacted a juvenile code.
"I did my MSC, Mass Communication and LLB from HNGBU. After which I established my own NGO called SNDMS. I have been a Juvenile Judge in Chamoli District since 2011"
Mara Teresa Torres
Civil Judge | Judiciary Power, Concepción, Tucumán
Being a judge is one of the most important functions that human beings can have, why? Because being a judge implies giving each person his own, as the Romans used to say, specifically Ulpiano. The judge is the director of the process, modernly is no longer an arbitrator and neither has a neutral position, is no longer the stone judge who was in antiquity but instead the judge has to have empathy, has to put him or herself in place of each part and try to solve their problems. The solution of the problems is the first function of the judge because we take into account that justice is the last step to which citizens arrive to solve their problems, then the importance of the function of the judge.
"I graduated from the University Santo Tomas de Aquino, a catholic university in Tucumn. I practiced law for 19 years, as an independent consultant. I also worked as an advisor for diferent companies and state agencies. This is one of the posibilities one gets by having a law degree. I also practiced teaching for 30 years. After 17 years of practicing law i was designated judge of Collections and constraints in the Judiciary Power of Tucumn, especificly in the Judial Center in Concepcin. In my profession as a lawyer and then as a Judge i was able to represent the Magistracy, by being a member of the advisory council of the Magistracy, which is the agency whose main function is to select the judges who are going to join the judiciary. I was also a member of the judicial school that allows lawyers to prepare for the judicial function. I have integrated the association of magistrates among other functions that I have had."
Akhil Prasad
Director, Country Counsil India & Company Secretary | Boeing India
[ 25 years & 10 months Experience ]
Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law is a system that regulates and ensures that individuals or a community adhere to the will of the state. State-enforced laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or established by judges through precedent, normally in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the normal court process. The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people.
"I did Company Secretary Course in India and UK and Certification in Business Administration from IE University, Madrid. I started my career as a Company Secretary with Modi Xerox in 1995 and later I have worked with several organizations Walt Disney, General Motors, Fidelity, Electrolux Kelvinator Limited and International Bar Association. I am also a qualified Solicitor in England & Wales. I have two Ph Ds one in Investor Protection and other in Media Piracy. I have been working with Boeing India as Director, Country Council India and Company Secretary since 2013. . I have joined Boeing to provide legal, regulatory, compliance and corporate affairs services to Boeing and its subsidiaries in India."
Criminal & Immigration Law
Sohrab Inder Singh
CEO | Majha Legal Services
Criminal Law is a system of law concerned with the punishment of offenders. Immigration law refers to the rules established by the federal government for determining who is allowed to enter the country, and for how long. It also governs the naturalization process for those who desire to become U.S. citizens.
"I did my schooling from SRA Public School. After that did my BA in LLB from GNDU, Jalandhar. After graduation I started working as a CEO in Majha Legal Services. I have been working there since 2013 and have been practicing Criminal & Immigration law in Amritsar, Chandigarh and Delhi."
Prasouk Jain
Founder & Managing Partner | LPJ & Partners
Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law as a system helps regulate and ensure that a community show respect, and equality amongst themselves.
"After completing my Schooling from DPS Noida, I did my BBA from Symbiosis and did my LLB from there as well. I am the Founding and Managing Partner at LPJ & Partners."
Pranav Khanna
Patent Attorney | K & S Partners
Intellectual property refers to creations of the intellect for which a monopoly is assigned to designated owners by law. Intellectual property rights are the rights granted to the creators of IP, and include trademarks, copyright, patents, industrial design rights, and in some jurisdictions trade secrets.
"I have done my schooling from St Josephs Academy, Dehradun. I then did B Tech in Mechanical from College of Engineering, Roorkee. I have qualified Indian Patent Agent examination and I am a registered Patent Agent. I am Patent Attorney at K & S Partners."
Pablo Macias
Lawyer | Various Assignments
Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior.
"My name is Pedro Macias, I am a lawyer, I am 36 years old. I graduated from law school in 2007, I practice the profession as a free lancer working in a studio and I also teach in an institution as a professor. As a lawyer, I work in different branches of law, but what I especially like is the right for the consumer, which is a branch that is growing and it is innovating to put into practice and apply the new legislation to protect consumers and users of goods and services. They can be very vulnerable and for that it is necessary to defend them."
Rakesh Badhwar
Advocate | Chaman Lal & Associates
Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law is a system that regulates and ensures that individuals or a community adhere to the will of the state.
"I have done LLB from Symbiosis Law School, Pune. I started practicing in Pune itself. I also used to practice in vacations with my father who is also a Lawyer in Patiala. I am practising law since 2000. I am an Advocate with Chaman Lal & Associates."
Nishant Chaturvedi
Advocate | Droiet Law Chamber
Banking law is the broad term for laws that govern how banks and other financial institutions conduct business. Lawyers perform a wide variety of functions that relate to creating, following and enforcing regulations.
"I did BA LLB from Amity Law College after which I started working at High Court, Delhi. After working for 2 years I came to Dehradun and since 2012, I am working as an advocate in Dehradun Court"
Richa Tyagi
Senior Program Officer | WWF, India
Environmental law, also known as environmental and natural resources law, is a collective term describing the network of treaties, statutes, regulations, common and customary laws addressing the effects of human activity on the natural environment. The core environmental law regimes address environmental pollution. A related but distinct set of regulatory regimes, now strongly influenced by environmental legal principles, focus on the management of specific natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries.
"After completing a degree in Law, I interned with WWF India for two months. While working with them, I realised this was a field where I wanted to work for the rest of my life. Even since I have been working with WWF India as an Environmental Lawyer."
Penal Judging
Elena Grellet
Penal Judge | Judicial Power of Tucumán
The Penal Judge is the one who has to make decisions in order to pacify a society that has been injured by a crime. What is being pursued by the penalty or the sanction is precisely to pacify the society. After the commission of a crime are always injured parts and the decision of a judge tends to resolve this conflict.
"I am Argentine, I studied and graduated a lawyer in the National University of Tucumán (UNT) in my native province and I have a specialization in criminal law, among other specialization. I practiced the profession independently, later I entered the Judicial Power of my province, the Judicial Power of Tucumán, and since entering, more than 20 years ago, I have occupied different positions. I have been a criminal prosecutor, always in the criminal forum, and for many years I was a correctional judge, the judge who judges misdemeanors (traffic accidents, robberies, etc) and for more than ten years I have held a position in a criminal chamber as judge of criminal chamber to judge serious crimes."
Litigation Law
Karan Lamba
Lawyer | Various Legal Assignments
Litigation law refers to the rules and practices involved in resolving disputes in the court system. The term is often associated with tort cases, but litigation can come about in all kinds of cases, from contested divorces, to eviction proceedings.
"After completing my Schooling from St Joseph's Academy, Dehradun, I did my Graduation in BMS from Mithibai College, Mumbai. I did Law from Faculty of Law, Delhi. I have been working as a Freelance Lawyer since 2013."
Ritu Jhingan
Legal Secretary | R S Gill & Associates
A paralegal is an individual, qualified by education, training or work experience, who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency, or other entity and who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible.
"I did BA in Humanities from Delhi University. I worked with UN for 3 years. I am working as a Legal Secretary with R S Gill & Associates since last 17 years."
Noopur Gupta
Senior Advocate | District Consumer Forum & State Commission for Consumer Disputes
Consumer protection law or consumer law is considered as an area of law that regulates private law relationships between individual consumers and the businesses that sell those goods and services. It is a way of preventing frauds and scams from service and sales contracts, eligible fraud, bill collector regulation, pricing, utility turnoffs, consolidation, personal loans that may lead to bankruptcy.
"After doing BA from AMU, I did LLB from HNB Garhwal University. I am a writer & poet. I am the Director of Noopur Dance Academy and teach dance. I am a Senior Advocate with District Consumer Form and State Commission for Consumer Disputes."
Avnish Bhatt
Assistant Professor | ICFAI University
General law means territorial law of a country. It consists of all persons, things, acts and events within the territory of a country which are governed by it.
"After graduating in Law, I went on to do Masters in Law from Hidayatullah National Law University. I am a Judo Player and also teach Judo. I am a Member of Amity University Sports Selection Board. I have worked as an Advocate at District Bar Association, Dehradun. I am Assistant Professor at ICFAI University."
Dev Aditya
Legal Consultant | Various London Law Firms
Corporate law (also known as business law or enterprise law or sometimes company law) is the body of law governing the rights, relations, and conduct of persons, companies, organizations and businesses. The term refers to the legal practice of law relating to corporations, or to the theory of corporations. Corporate law often describes the law relating to matters which derive directly from the life-cycle of a corporation. It thus encompasses the formation, funding, governance, and death of a corporation.
"I have worked for two magic circle firms the highest law firms in UK namely Mayer Brown LLP and BLP LLP before I joined University and continued working in my early University days. At that time Mayer Brown LLP was also the seventh largest law firm in the world. Following this I also worked for Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP. a golden circle firm. I then completed my law degrees and worked for Solacexis now CHESS solicitors and continue to consult for them today on a selective case by case basis. My main areas of proficiency are in corporate and immigration laws of the United Kingdom."
In-House Counselling
Amitesh Giroti
In-House Counsel | DHFL
In-House Counsel are hired by a corporation's law department to handle a range of legal issues affecting the company, among them employment, policy, tax and regulatory matters. More prevalently, they play a managerial role, overseeing work that's been outsourced to attorneys at independent firms. Depending on the size of the corporation and the nature of its work, in-house attorneys may be either specialists in a certain field or general commercial practitioners.
"I did my schooling from St Joseph Academy, Dehradun. After that, I did my BA LLB (Hons) from Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, IP University, New Delhi. I started my Career at Jus Juris Law Firm in Delhi as a Junior Associate Lawyer. I spent about two years there and learnt the basics of litigation from drafting briefs, appearing in courts to dealing with clients. Post that, I worked with Sanjeev Goyal and Associates in Delhi for 7 months. Presently, I m working as an In-House Counsel for DHFL since 2019."
Museum Creation
Chartered Accountancy
Shivani Trehan
Founder | Social Cravings
Sanya Vij
Anchor | Independent Practice
Jilamiga Chalermsuk
Owner | To The Nine Co. Ltd
Most important innovation in Career Choice
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McCormick Taylor
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ALTERNATIVE DELIVERY
PLANNING & COMMUNICATIONS
EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHTS
LIFE AT McCORMICK TAYLOR
PINEY GROVE TO WATTSVILLE TRANSMISSION LINE REBUILD
MULTIPLE COUNTIES
McCormick Taylor supported Delmarva Power & Light (DPL) with the rebuild of their existing 69 kV line and with the installation of a new 138 kV transmission line from Piney Grove Substation in Wicomico County, MD to the Wattsville Substation in Accomack County, VA.
Stretching nearly 30 miles in length—21 miles in Maryland and 9 miles in Virginia—the Piney Grove to Wattsville Transmission Line Rebuild project required licensing from the Virginia State Corporate Commission and a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) from the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC).
The project was challenging from a transmission engineering and environmental permitting perspective as it consisted of the rebuild of an existing 69 kV transmission line along with the installation of a new 138 kV transmission line. Because of these variables, the CPCN and Alternative Routing Analysis (ARA) required extensive coordination between the different disciplines involved to develop the project alternative and design that met the needs of the project, while also meeting the requirements of the CPCN process.
As part of this coordination, McCormick Taylor worked with DPL to implement and utilize electronic Environmental Review Documents (eERDs), which helped facilitate the streamlined review process with the agencies for the project. Providing a permittable, constructible design for the project allowed for the safe and reliable transmission of electricity to the lower Delmarva peninsula. The approach and lessons learned, including the development of the streamlined review process with the agencies, can be applied to future projects in the region and industry.
HOW WE HELPED
McCormick Taylor was responsible for preparing the Environmental Review Documents (ERD) in support of the CPCN application and Virginia State Corporate Commission submission, preparing the Section 404 permit applications and mitigation plan, and conducting environmental compliance inspections during construction. In support of these efforts, this project also required McCormick Taylor to conduct several environmental studies and extensive coordination with federal and state regulatory agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers – Baltimore and Norfolk Districts, the Maryland Department of the Environment, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area. The studies included, but were not limited to: Alternative Route Analysis, wetland delineation, Threatened and Endangered Species Surveys, Joint Permit Application(s), Class I cultural Resource Survey, and Visual Quality analysis.
The project crossed several unique and valuable environmental resources, including the wild and scenic Pocomoke River, Chesapeake Bay Critical Areas, tidal wetlands, and threatened and endangered species’ habitats. The presence of these resources within and adjacent to the project area required extensive coordination with the regulatory agencies, including the DNR. McCormick Taylor, in conjunction with DPL, worked extensively with the DNR to ensure that the most feasible route was selected for the project to minimize or avoid impacts to the valuable resources in the area.
The project spanned substantial non-tidal and tidal wetlands including the Pocomoke River, but construction methods minimized environmental impacts to these sensitive locations.
In addition to the elements of the project directly associated with the design and construction of the transmission line, McCormick Taylor worked with DPL to design the Wetland Mitigation site which was required as a result of the wetland impacts associated with the project. McCormick Taylor developed the wetland mitigation design after a comprehensive mitigation site search. Our engineers worked with our scientists to develop the proposed design, which was approved by the agencies and is currently under construction. McCormick Taylor is currently providing designated specialist construction oversight support during the construction project to provide design guidance.
2020 Honor Award - ACEC/MD Engineering Excellence Awards
2020 National Recognition Award - ACEC National
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(Winnie Lin / The McGill Tribune)
Legal Information Column, Student Life
How to survive in the McGill ghetto: Noise complaints and neighbourly troubles
Written by Legal Information Clinic at McGill on October 4, 2016
More in Legal Information Column:
How to stay out of trouble while drinking: A rundown of the rules September 12, 2017
University vs. Freedom of Speech: The case of Pridgen v University of Calgary March 14, 2017
A Little Look at Small Claims Court February 7, 2017
As the semester unfolds, problems with noise and neighbours emerge. The downstairs neighbour may be excited to have moved away from their parents’ place, and has decided to put together a band. While this in itself may not be so bad, they decide to practice during ideal study moments. To top it all off, the upstairs neighbour is hosting nightly parties. The noise is nearly as unbearable as trying to navigate construction on McTavish Street. While earplugs might work in a pinch, the following are ideas for a more long-term solution to noisy apartments based on what Quebec law says about the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords.
What can a tenant do when they are faced with noise problems?
Landlords are legally obliged to provide tenants with peaceable enjoyment of the dwelling. This means that, in certain situations, the landlord may be called upon to correct disruptive situations. For example, noise that is beyond the normal level of neighbourhood annoyance may be considered a violation of the tenant’s right to the peaceable enjoyment of the apartment
According to the Régie du logement, Quebec’s rental board in charge of overseeing residential lease disputes, tenants should initially try to speak with their neighbours and request that they lower their noise levels. That said, the landlord is responsible for trying to remedy conflicts between tenants, and, as a result, may be responsible for the inconveniences and damages suffered by a tenant due to the disruptive behaviour of others. However, because landlords often live elsewhere, they won’t know about noise issues unless informed by an occupant. Therefore, if speaking with the neighbours doesn’t work, a tenant can complain to the landlord, either verbally or through a formal notice by registered mail.
This notice would lay out all the facts relevant to the dispute and formally demand that the landlord take action within a reasonable period of time. It is useful for the tenant to keep a record of when the disturbance occurs and to gather any relevant evidence, such as sound recordings or even police reports. If necessary, the landlord could ask the Régie to cancel the remaining time on the troublesome party’s lease, thereby requiring the noisy individual to move out.
If all else fails
If, after notifying the landlord, the problem persists, a tenant can ask the Régie du logement for a reduction in their rent. The tenant could even ask for their own lease to be cancelled. If the landlord fails to act with prudence and diligence, the tenant may also ask the Régie to order the landlord to pay money to compensate for any injury the tenant suffered, such as emotional stress and expenses incurred in trying to fix the problem that the landlord was ignoring. Finally, when a noisy tenant disturbs other tenants’ enjoyment of their dwelling, a court may find the troublesome tenant liable for damages that result from the disturbance created for other tenants. If a landlord or noisy tenant won’t pay under a court order, the person entitled to the money can follow legal procedures to enforce the court judgement. While taking people to court is possible, tenants must bear in mind that they are required to formally advise the landlord of the disturbance before pursuing legal action.
Each borough in Montreal has adopted its own regulations that define the types of noises that are forbidden and the options that are available to assert one’s rights. To inquire about these, or to ask your own legal question, contact the Legal Information Clinic at McGill (LICM) with the directions found on our website. According to the Act respecting the Barreau du Québec, only lawyers and notaries can provide legal advice or counsel. The LICM, therefore, only provides legal information. For legal advice, please contact a lawyer.
legal information clinic
McGill Ghetto
noise complaints
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FLY FM
Fly FM targets urban listeners aged between 15 and 29 years old. Airing for more than a decade to date, Fly FM captures almost 1 million listeners. Being a youthful brand, Fly FM is immersed in delivering today’s hottest music, entertainment and events, as well as providing engaging viewpoints through conversations and content on multiplatform.
Focusing on a mass Malay audience ranging from 15 to 29 years old, Hot FM started its operation back in February 2006 and has become one of the largest following radio stations in the country with its 8.8 million digital followers across all digital platforms. By definition, Hot FM is a well established, fun and youthful broadcast station focusing on music and entertainment on all interactive and social platforms.
One FM is a fun, youthful and engaging brand that aims to bring the community together through hit music, entertainment and experiences through on air and digital for the 15 to 29 years old Chinese speaking audience. With almost 800,000 listeners, One FM operates in both Mandarin and Cantonese and became the first Chinese radio station that airs English music among the Chinese radio industry.
Kool FM, “Suara Semasa” is the home to your daily current issues, social and community news fix. Bringing the best of sing-along tunes from the 80s to current hits, Kool FM targets mass Malay, ages ranging from 25 years and above. Starting its operation on national airwaves in March 2016, Kool FM has a weekly listenership of almost 400,000 per week. Kool FM can be accessed either through on air or digital; YouTube, website and mobile application.
AIS KACANG
Ais Kacang podcast is a digital media format consisting of a series of talk shows with specific themes that listeners can stream digitally. Presenting a variety of topics in three major languages namely English, Malay and Chinese, each topic is designed based on lifestyle, current issues and interests of Malaysians, in general. Ais Kacang also welcomes brands to be on board of its platform to showcase their products and services.
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Meeting Coverage > ACC
ACC: SYMPLICITY Failure -- No Surprises
by Todd Neale, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today March 29, 2014
WASHINGTON -- Although renal denervation with Medtronic's Symplicity catheter was safe, it did not provide a significant advantage over a sham procedure for reducing office blood pressure in the SYMPLICITY HTN-3 trial, full results showed.
Through 6 months, office systolic blood pressure dropped by 14.13 mm Hg in the denervation group and by 11.74 mm Hg in the sham-control group, which received renal angiography alone (P<0.001 for both from baseline), yielding a between-group difference of only 2.39 mm Hg (P=0.26 with a superiority margin of 5 mm Hg), according to Deepak Bhatt, MD, MPH, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Likewise, the reduction in average 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure in the denervation versus the sham-control group yielded a nonsignificant difference of only 1.96 mm Hg (6.75 versus 4.79 mm Hg, P=0.98 with a superiority margin of 2 mm Hg), he reported at the American College of Cardiology meeting here.
The findings -- which were published simultaneously online in the New England Journal of Medicine -- also revealed no differences between the groups in the occurrence of major adverse events.
The failure of the trial -- which was initially reported with little data in January -- was not surprising to some, as Bhatt and colleagues acknowledged in their paper by pointing to a meta-analysis published last year that predicted that carefully conducted, randomized studies of renal denervation would fail to show the dramatic reductions in blood pressure observed in unblinded and uncontrolled studies. Those studies have led to widespread use of the technology around the world, although it has not been approved in the U.S.
"These results underscore the importance of blinding and sham controls in evaluations of new devices and have ramifications that go beyond interventional cardiology," Bhatt said during his presentation. "Further study in rigorously design clinical trials will be necessary -- and indeed, such studies are warranted -- to confirm previously reported benefits of renal denervation in patients with resistant hypertension or to validate alternate methods of renal artery denervation."
SYMPLICITY HTN-3 differed from prior studies of renal denervation in that it had a sham-control group. The trial randomized 535 patients with resistant hypertension -- all had a systolic blood pressure of 160 mm Hg or higher in the office despite taking maximally tolerated doses of at least three antihypertensives, including a diuretic -- in a 2:1 fashion to denervation with the Symplicity catheter (which applies radiofrequency energy) or renal angiography only (the sham-control). Patients were taking an average of five antihypertensives.
Although renal denervation did not have an advantage for blood pressure reduction over the sham procedure, it was shown to be safe. The primary safety endpoint -- a composite of all-cause death, end-stage renal disease, embolic events resulting in end-organ damage, renovascular complications, or hypertensive crisis at 1 month or new renal-artery stenosis of more than 70% at 6 months -- occurred at similar rates in the denervation and control groups (1.4% versus 0.6%, P=0.67). There were no differences in kidney function at any point in the study.
Although the trial addressed some of the limitations of prior studies, it had some of its own shortcomings, according to Bhatt, including the fact that drug adherence was not confirmed through blood testing, the relatively short follow-up, the possible influence of operators who were inexperienced with renal denervation, and the lack of a direct measurement of whether the renal arteries were actually denervated.
Cardiologists who commented on the study had various explanations -- some related to those shortcomings, particularly the inability to assess the quality of the denervation -- for why the study failed to show a benefit of the intervention.
"It may not be that the procedure doesn't work, but that the technique was not adequate," according to Michael Rinaldi, MD, medical director of research at Carolinas HealthCare System's Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute. "This could suggest that we need better devices, which are more complete in their denervation and in a more targeted way."
Other potential explanations for the failure to show a difference between the two groups included the placebo effect, the Hawthorne effect (where behavior -- adherence to treatment, in this case -- improves when someone is paying close attention), patient selection, the lack of experience for many of the operators, or some problem with the Symplicity device itself.
"But we don't really know these things for sure and I don't think we're ever going to come up with one smoking gun per se," said Ajay Kirtane, MD, an interventional cardiologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. "I think it's likely multifactorial, but I don't think the field is dead."
Nobody else was ready to kick the technology into the grave either.
"A single trial showing negative results shouldn't end our efforts and we need to try harder to figure out which patients respond positively and which patients do not," Rinaldi said.
Despite having a front row seat for the trial's failure, Bhatt said he still remains "cautiously optimistic" about renal denervation's chances.
"I don't think the field should end," he said. "Future investigations should occur, but in a careful way. And the first step has got to be to make sure we are actually denervating on a biological level."
The trial was supported by Medtronic.
Bhatt disclosed relevant relationships with Medtronic, Amarin, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eisai, Ethicon, Sanofi-Aventis, The Medicines Company, FlowCo, Plx Pharma, Takeda, Duke Clinical Research Institute, Mayo Clinic, Population Health Research Institute, American College of Cardiology, Belvoir Publications, Slack Publications, WebMD, Elsevier Practice Update Cardiology, Medscape Cardiology, Regado Biosciences, Boston VA Research Institute, Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care, the American Heart Association, HMP Communications, Roche, Harvard Clinical Research Institute, Clinical Cardiology, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. His co-authors reported numerous relevant relationships with industry.
Messerli disclosed relevant relationships with Daiichi Sankyo, Pfizer, Takeda, Abbott, Servier, Medtronic, Ipca Laboratories, AbbVie, and Centrix Healthcare. Bangalore disclosed relevant relationships with the National, Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Abbott Vascular, Boehringer Ingelheim, Daiichi Sankyo, Pfizer, and Abbott.
Source Reference: Bhatt D, et al "A controlled trial of renal denervation for resistant hypertension" N Engl J Med 2014; 370: 1393-1401.
Source Reference: Messerli F, Bangalore S "Renal denervation for resistant hypertension?" N Engl J Med 2014; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1402388.
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by Carlos Tello
photos: Michelle Furbacher is opening Vancouver's first cat cafe for cats (and humans) this spring. Photo: Carlos Tello.
On the prowl for Vancouver's first Catfé
It's poised to open this spring, but where will it land?
Big ideas often arrive when we least expect them. The ancient Greek physicist Archimedes, for example, discovered how to measure the volume of irregular objects while taking a bath.
Vancouver graphic designer Michelle Furbacher’s big idea didn’t strike in the bathtub. She was online when she stumbled upon
a YouTube video of a cat café in Japan, where coffee shop patrons socialize with feline friends while sipping cappuccinos. A lover of both cats and coffee, Furbacher
was inspired by the twinning of the two worlds in the video. She set to work investigating how she could make it happen closer to home.
“I wanted to be able to go to a cat café,” she says. “But no one else seemed to be doing it. So, I just declared that I was going to do it.”
Furbacher has loved cats for
almost as long as she can remember. Feline companions have featured strongly in her life ever since her parents brought one home when she was a child. But when her last cat passed away, she felt she was not emotionally ready to care for another one. So she started a cat-sitting business to enjoy the companionship of cats without having to commit to one full-time.
And that led to the realization that a cat café would provide a great service for Vancouver residents like her. There are hundreds of people who love animals but aren’t ready to own pets, or can’t have one in their homes. Many local rental apartment buildings, for example, don’t allow pets.
Furbacher plans to call her cat café the “Catfé.” She envisions it as an extension of a living room —a place so cozy that costumers will feel like they haven’t left their own homes. Catfé will feature eight to 10 cats for companionship. It will also offer Wi-Fi and a small library.
“I am trying to create a different, unique, social experience for Vancouverites,” Furbacher explains. “It’s like a casual space where you could go and hang out with cats.”
Furbacher also wants to raise awareness of all the homeless cats that roam
around the Lower Mainland. In 2013,
the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association (VOKRA) saved over 1,800 cats from being euthanized. And the CBC reported last August that there are 20,000 homeless cats in Surrey alone.
Catfé will work in association with VOKRA, which will provide the café with cats. Starting a new business from the
ground up has been an enormous learning experience for Furbacher, who has been working on the Catfé concept for just a year. Going into it, she didn’t precisely know how much work that would entail, she confesses. Complex regulations around mixing food and animals have forced her to tweak the original idea more than once.
Now, the plans are solid, and the last big obstacle before opening the doors is securing a Catfé location. When a location is confirmed and Catfé opens, she will quit her current job to become the café’s administrator.
“I’ve been at my [current] job for almost nine years, so I’m kind of ready to move on and do something different,” Furbacher says.
Despite her professional motivations, Furbacher’s main objective with Catfé is to be of service to her community, she says.
“I know there’s a large community of people who are really interested in cats. I want to do it for them.”
Catfé is expected to open its doors— location still pending—late this spring.
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How the FA banned women's football - and Lincoln Ladies refused to stop playing
Playwright Stephen Gillard has been looking at how football was once branded 'quite unsuitable for females' - and the women in Lincoln who defied the ban
Dawn Hinsley
Women's football back in 1918 was incredibly popular (Image: NewsDogMedia)
They might have played in front of crowds of more than 50,000, but not everyone was happy about the rise in popularity of women’s football during the First World War.
Women’s football was already established before 1914 but it was during the war it really took off.
Men were sent to fight on the front line and back home women took on their jobs and their positions on the football pitch … and the public loved it.
In Lincoln, teams were formed from the factories where they were taking on traditional male roles previously considered too dangerous for women.
“During the First World War the women in the factories were encouraged to form football teams and sporting teams as a way of boosting morale, fitness and team work because the First World War was really the first time women got the chance to work for themselves," explains Lincoln playwright Stephen Gillard, who is researching the team for a play titled The World at Her Feet to be performed in Lincoln over Armistice Week from November 11 this year.
“Here in Lincoln you had Ruston Aircraft Girls and Foster Tank Girls, all the factories had a football team.
"Then after the First World War from 1918 onwards those women here in Lincoln came together and formed Lincoln Ladies Football Team from a desire to keep that going.”
Ruston's women's football team
“They lost their jobs very quickly once the war finished, when the men returned and were given their jobs back, but the women didn’t want to lose what they had.
“Lincoln Ladies was formed and various others. There was still some that existed from before the war - Doncaster Belles for example had been a big team. They formed the first leagues. There were lots around.
"Some were very well organised some of them less well organised but they really wanted to create a national league and just before the ban came into effect in 1921 they were just in the process of forming the first major national leagues.”
Lincoln Ladies (sometimes referred to simply as Lincoln, and at other times the Lincoln Munition Girls) was so successful, Stephen has found evidence they were playing games at Sincil Bank.
This copy of Lincolnshire Echo from 1917 features a match report from Lincoln Munition Girls V Derby Munition Girls:
The Lincolnshire Echo from Monday, March 26; 1917 features a match report including a team from Lincoln Munition Girls playing the Derby Munition Girls.
“These women’s teams became incredibly popular. For Lincoln Ladies there is anecdotal evidence that they would have 10,000 come to watch them play.
"Preston had 50,000 watch them. Preston actually ended up getting invited across to America and played in front of an American crowd against men’s teams and beat some of them. So women’s football wasn’t just a side show it was the real deal.”
Dick, Kerr Ladies FC from Preston, founded in 1917, was one of the most famous of the time.
In 1920 a Boxing Day match against St Helen's Ladies was watched by a crowd of 53,000 at Goodison Park with 10-14,000 outside trying to get in – it was a record turnout for a women’s match, and the record stood for 92 years. They were also the first women's team to play in an organised match wearing shorts.
But women's football was effectively banned when the FA called on its clubs to refuse the use of their grounds for women's matches in 1921.
The FA's objections, 5 December 1921:
"Complaints have been made as to football being played by women, the Council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and out [ought] not be encouraged. Complaints have also been made as to the conditions under which some of these matches have been arranged and played, and the appropriation of the receipts to other than charitable objects. The Council are further of opinion that an excessive proportion of the receipts are absorbed in expenses and an inadequate percentage devoted to charitable objects. For these reasons the Council request clubs belonging to the Association to refuse the use of their grounds for such matches.”
“It was only after the First World War when the FA wanted to re-establish the men’s game that they killed the women’s game dead in one day basically.”
Stephen’s research suggests there were several reasons for this, including wanting to clear the way for men’s football to rise in fame for financial reasons.
“The women’s game tended to be played for charitable purposes. Although the players were paid, a lot of the gate receipts would go to benevolent funds.
“After the First World War there was also a concerted effort to put women back into the home. Laws were made to give jobs back to men [the 1919 Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act ordered women to leave their wartime jobs for returning men].
"There was this sense that 'right the war’s done, let’s get the women back into the home and let’s re-establish the world as we knew it before 1914'."
Lincolnshire Echo, Monday, March 26; 1917 football match report extracts:
"But the novelty of the occasion was added to by the appearance of two other contending teams, who played a match immediately afterwards - a team representing the Lincoln Munition Girls playing the Derby Munition Girls. Now the Derby Girls have played four or five matches, and thus have had considerable experience. When the challenge was accepted by the Aircraft FC on behalf the girls employed in the shops there, it was a matter that was entirely 'in the air'.
"But the first question, as to whether enough girls would come forward was speedily resolved, and since then they have been training on, and it was possible to select a very representative team.
"There should be the highest commendation for these girls, talking on an experienced team like Derby, whereas they themselves were, of course, making their very first appearance in competitive football.
"The Derby girls ought to have won easily, the actual result was that Lincoln triumphed by the only goal of the game.
"The first half was, naturally, somewhat uncertain in character but gradually the girls gained more confidence, and there was any amount of enterprise on both sides. Derby's pressure towards the end of the first half was finely resisted in front of goal, and when they had missed a penalty the visitors' best chance was gone.
"The second half was extended to about 22 minutes - the girls themselves asked for longer than the 15 minutes of the first half - and it was a very open game all the way through. It was after 17 minutes in this portion that, in a really well worked up Lincoln attack, Miss Elleary dispatched a smart cross shot which passed between friends and foes, struck the foot of the further upright and cannoned over the line. The result was never in doubt after that.
“Of course, the suffragettes re-emerged after the war strengthened hugely and emboldened by an influx of millions of women who’d had their first taste of working freedom and weren’t really willing to just give that up.”
Lincoln Ladies weren’t willing to go quietly either. In fact, they weren’t willing to give up the beautiful game at all.
The ladies even took part in the English Ladies' Football Association Cup in 1922, playing Boston in the first round draw (referred to simply as Lincoln).
“Lincoln Ladies compared to say Doncaster or Preston were not as established.
"There’s a lot of evidence and research that says women of the time would often, if they were relatively new teams, be playing in just their normal clothes.
"There’s a number of reports of a lot of snapped ankles for example from women who were playing in their high heels in the mud.
"A lot of them didn’t have proper kits or football boots, all this kind of stuff unless it was given to them. Some teams had things provided to them by men’s teams that were supportive of the women’s teams. Some had it from backers.
“We don’t know what Lincoln’s kit was exactly, but evidence suggests they were playing in a hodgepodge of whatever they could get their hands on.
“But they did keep playing, they didn’t stop.”
The British Ladies Football Club North Team, believed to be the first official women's football team in the UK, were also the first women's team to play at Sincil Bank in 1896
They played 'Anywhere they could. In some ways that was the middle finger to the establishment'.
When Lincoln Ladies lost Sincil Bank, it was a case of playing wherever they could.
“We think it’s the rugby fields where they were allowed to play and practice.
“Teams that could survive tended to find places like testing fields. And the rugby fields. Anywhere they could.
“In some ways that was the middle finger to the establishment saying ‘you may take the grounds away but we are going to find a way to practice, we’ll play in the streets, we’ll play on rugby fields, we’ll play wherever we can - we just want to keep playing'.
“They kept going in one form or another all the way through to very recent times when they switched and became Notts County.”
Notts County Ladies were created in 2014 when the modern day Lincoln Ladies FC were controversially relocated from Lincoln but the club folded in 2017 because of debts. However, the club has been relaunched this May as Notts County Women.
It’s not overstating matters to say the ladies of 1918 trail blazed a path for the modern day female footballers to follow.
In 1971 the FA finally lifted the ban on women's football, fifty long years later.
But it has taken one hundred years for the women’s game to start attracting the crowds of its forerunners, such was the damage done.
Despite their labours, Stephen says the history books have not paid tribute to Lincoln Ladies' struggles.
“Mostly it’s the odd mention here, the odd bit here. This has been incredibly difficult to research.”
And that's where Stephen is hoping you'll be able to help.
Can you help? Lincoln playwright Stephen Gillard is writing a play titled The World at Her Feet to be performed in Lincoln over Armistice Week from November 11 this year, and would love to hear from anyone who has memorabilia, diaries or journals, or relatives who have shared memories about Lincoln Ladies Football Team between 1914 to the 1920s. He would also like to hear from female footballers playing today.
Please contact dawn.hinsley@lincolnshireecho.co.uk in the first instance.
Keep up to date with all the latest entertainment news here.
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Home >Companies >Packaging firm Huhtamaki PPL raises Rs385 crore through NCDs
On 29 November, the company’s board had approved the issue of NCDs aggregating up to Rs550 crore on a private placement basis to Huhtalux Sarl, a related party, in one or more tranches.
Packaging firm Huhtamaki PPL raises Rs385 crore through NCDs
1 min read . Updated: 30 Jan 2015, 02:15 PM IST Swaraj Singh Dhanjal
The firm has allotted 3,850 NCDs of face value of Rs10 lakh each with an interest rate of 7% and due for redemption in 2020
Mumbai: Finland-based packaging firm Huhtamaki PPL Ltd, formerly known as the Paper Products Ltd, on Friday said it had raised ₹ 385 crore through allotment of non-convertible debentures (NCD).
The firm has allotted 3,850 NCDs of face value of ₹ 10 lakh each with an interest rate of 7% and due for redemption in 2020.
On 29 November, the company’s board had approved the issue of NCDs aggregating up to ₹ 550 crore on a private placement basis to Huhtalux Sarl, a related party, in one or more tranches. The funds were to be used primarily for the acquisition of shares and securities of Positive Packaging Industries Ltd.
The firm had agreed to buy 100% equity stake in Positive Packaging Industries for ₹ 2,015 crore, Mint had reported in May last year.
Positive Packaging is part of Nigeria-based Enpee Group headed by N.P. Kirpalani. It is present in nine countries including India, the United arab Emirates, Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, the UK and the US. The Indian business will be acquired for 818 crore, the firm said in a filing to BSE.
Positive Packaging Industries offers packaging solutions like flexible packaging, labelling, high-quality printing and metalizing across sectors including food and beverages, fast-moving consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and industrial and farm products.
Huhtamaki serves clients like Hindustan Unilever Ltd and Coca-Cola Co. Huhtamaki Oyj, headquartered in Finland, is one of the top 10 consumer packaging companies in the world.
At 11.26am, shares of Huhtamaki PPL Ltd were trading at ₹ 210.50, down by 0.82%, on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex was trading at 29,421.21 points, down by 0.88%.
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DR. CHAD MENEFEE NAMED TO SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL’S FORTY UNDER 40
Raleigh, NC, USA – February 14, 2019: Chad Menefee, Ph.D., Senior Partner, co-founder of Luker on Trends and Executive Director of the national Luker on Trends Sports Poll, received recognition as one of the Nation's most promising young executives by the Sports Business Journal as he joined the 2019 class of Forty Under 40.
The Sports Business Journal announces an annual list of 40 executives recognized for excellence and innovation in their careers, all before the age of 40. The Class of 2019 will be featured in the March 25 issue of the Sports Business Journal and honored at the formal gala, April 4, at the Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, Calif.
Menefee’s work as Executive Director of the Luker on Trends-Sports Poll has contributed critical intelligence to the sports industry and the impact of technology on all of free time. He has also led the Luker on Trends consulting efforts for industry leaders such as the NFL and ESPN.
A Hoffman Fellowship scholar, Menefee earned a Ph.D., MBA and M.S. from North Carolina State University. He received his undergraduate degree in Business from Wake Forest University. His previous work experience included sports marketing positions at the collegiate and professional levels.
About Luker on Trends
Luker on Trends provides intelligence on sports, technology, the economy, and free time use so that leagues, teams, and brands can better engage with their customers. The company's Managing Partner, Rich Luker, Ph.D., founded the ESPN Sports Poll in 1994 (now the Luker on Trends Sports Poll) and it is the first and longest-running national syndicated study on sports fans in America. Interviews are conducted by SSRS with a nationally representative monthly sample of 1,500 Americans age 12 and older. Interviews are offered in both English and Spanish, and data is collected 350 days per year. For the newest insights, please follow @LukerOnTrends on Twitter, LinkedIn or visit www.LukerOnTrends.com.
Lydia Dubuisson Luker on Trends Telephone: 818-486-8312 Email: lydia@lukerontrends.com Web: http://www.LukerOnTrends.com
#ChadMenefee #SeniorPartner #SportsPoll #ESPN #NFL #SportsBusinessJournal
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Post-game notes courtesy of the NYR:
Rangers 4, Blackhawks 1.
Click here for boxscore.
- Special (Teams) Performance … The Rangers were 1-for-3 (33.3%) on the power play in the contest. New York has tallied a power play goal in each of its two preseason games this year (2-for-9; 22.2%). The Blueshirts killed off all three Blackhawks power plays in the game. The Rangers are 9-for-10 (90%) on the penalty kill through two preseason games this year.
- Hot at the Dot … New York won 36 of 59 faceoffs (61%) in the game. Three of the four Rangers who took a faceoff in the game won at least 60% of their respective draws.
- Team Effort … Ten different Rangers tallied a point for the second straight contest. Through two preseason games, 19 different Rangers have recorded at least one point.
- Hitting Machine … The Rangers were credited with 27 hits in the contest. Fourteen of 18 Rangers skaters had at least one hit and eight were credited with at least two.
Player notes:
3 Stars on Broadway
- Duc of New York … Anthony Duclair registered the game-winning goal, added an assist, and tied for the game-high with five shots on goal in 13:55 of ice time. In 2013-14, the 19-year-old ranked third in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) in goals (50), sixth in the league in points (99), seventh in the league in power play goals (15), and tied for seventh in the league in game-winning goals (seven) while playing with the Quebec Remparts.
- Rick Rolling … Rick Nash tallied an assist, tied for the game-high with five shots on goal, and was credited with three hits in 16:16 of ice time. Last season, Nash tied a single-season Rangers record by registering nine game-winning goals. He tied for third in the NHL in game-winning goals, and led the Blueshirts in goals (26) in 2013-14.
- King Henrik … Henrik Lundqvist stopped 15 of 16 shots he faced while playing in the first half of the contest to record his first victory of the preseason. Lundqvist established records for all-time wins by a Rangers goalie (309), all-time shutouts by a Rangers goalie (50), consecutive Game 7 victories by an NHL goalie (five), all-time playoff appearances by a Rangers goalie (92), and all-time playoff wins by a Rangers goalie (43), and tied the record for all-time playoff shutouts by a Rangers goalie (nine) in 2013-14.
Blueshirt Breakdown
- Cedrick Desjardins stopped all 15 shots he faced while playing in the second half of the contest. Desjardins, who signed with the Rangers as a free agent on July 1, 2014, won his 100th career AHL game during the 2013-14 season.
- Oscar Lindberg tallied a goal 50 seconds into the contest, recorded three shots on goal, and was credited with two hits in 12:04 of ice time. In his first season of professional hockey in North America in 2013-14, Lindberg led the Hartford Wolf Pack (AHL) in shots on goal (183), tied for the team lead in game-winning goals (six) and shorthanded goals (two), ranked second in points (44) and power play assists (12), tied for second in games played (75), ranked third in goals (18), and finished fourth in assists (26).
- J.T. Miller recorded a power play goal, led all skaters in faceoff wins (13), and led the Rangers in faceoff win percentage (72%; 13-for-18) in 15:54 of ice time. He leads the Rangers in points (three) during the preseason. Miller split last season between the Rangers and Hartford (AHL), and established AHL career-highs in goals (15), assists (27), points (42), plus/minus rating (plus-10), and shots on goal (128) in 41 contests with the Wolf Pack.
- Marek Hrivik registered a goal, recorded three shots on goal, and posted a plus-one rating in 14:14 of ice time. Hrivik established AHL career-highs in games played (74), goals (13), points (27), plus/minus rating (plus-two), and shots on goal (119) with the Wolf Pack last season.
- Lee Stempniak tallied an assist and posted a plus-one rating in 19:26 of ice time. Stempniak, who signed with the Rangers as a free agent on July 19, 2014, leads the NHL in shorthanded assists (seven) and shorthanded points (nine) since the start of the 2012-13 season.
- Conor Allen recorded an assist and tied for the game-high with a plus-two rating in 18:11 of ice time. He ranked fifth on Hartford (AHL) in assists (25), tied for second among defensemen on the team in goals (six), and ranked third among defensemen on the team in points (31) during his first season on professional hockey in 2013-14.
- Derick Brassard registered an assist and won 12 of 20 faceoffs (60%) in 17:11 of ice time. Brassard established career-highs in games played (81), goals (18), power play goals (seven), power play assists (11), power play points (18), and game-winning goals (four) last season.
- John Moore recorded an assist and led the Rangers with three blocked shots in 19:28 of ice time. He leads the Rangers in blocked shots (six) during the preseason. In 2013-14, Moore ranked third among Rangers defensemen in goals (four), points (15), and plus/minus rating (plus-seven), tied for fourth among Rangers defensemen in assists (11), and ranked second among defensemen on the team in game-winning goals (two).
- Ryan McDonagh tallied an assist and led all skaters with 23:24 of ice time. The Rangers MVP and Players’ Player Award Recipient in 2013-14 established career-highs in goals (14), assists (29), points (43), power play goals (two), power play assists (11), power play points (13), shorthanded goals (three), shorthanded points (four), game-winning goals (four), shots on goal (177), and average ice time (24:49) last season.
Twitter: @RangersReport.
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Modern-day abolitionist
How life experiences brought Jason Sole to where he is today
By MARGIE O’LOUGHLIN
Hamline University adjunct criminal justice professor Jason Sole calls himself a survivor of the War on Drugs. He went from being a soldier on the streets to being a scholar. (Photo by Margie O’Loughlin)[/caption]
Jason Sole is feeling peaceful these days. The former drug dealer, street gang member, and three-time convicted felon has succeeded in turning his life around. With criminal justice degrees under his belt, he is focused on creating a radical new definition of criminality – and policing – so there can be justice for all.
In his 42 years, Sole has done some bad things, and taken some hard knocks for them.
Raised on Chicago’s South Side, Sole was born into poverty in 1978. His father was (and still is) a heroin addict, and his mother struggled to raise their three young children on her own.
Tired of being poor, Sole joined a local gang at 14 and quickly moved up through the ranks selling drugs. He came of age in the early years of the War on Drugs, introduced by then President Richard Nixon.
Sole said, “We’d never heard of ‘mass incarceration’ back then, it was just our world. I could see that something wasn’t right, but I didn’t have the language for it yet. Police officers pulled me over where ever I went, constantly asking me for ID since I was a kid. I didn’t have any ID yet, and this happened to every Black guy I knew. I was upset at the world, upset at the police, upset that my gang friends were dying before they were old enough to go to high school.”
Black in a mostly-White school
When he turned 16, Sole’s mother shipped him off to relatives in Waterloo, Iowa – hoping to save his life. He was on the all too familiar trajectory of a Black man likely to die young.
Sole said, “You have to understand that a gang is not a play thing. It has structure; there were leaders and soldiers 500 deep in my South Side neighborhood. If I was going to survive, I had to make a plan because there were no outlets.”
Sole went from the nearly all-Black public school system on the South Side of Chicago to the nearly all-White Waterloo school district. He became captain of the basketball team in his new high school, and set a track and field record while maintaining good grades. He’s a tall guy, a really tall guy, and a naturally gifted athlete. Sole said, “I was smart and good at sports, but I was stigmatized for being a gang banger from Chicago. That label limited my opportunities.”
When he graduated from high school, Sole went home to his family in Chicago. He had enlisted in the Air Force, passed all of their admissions exams, but ultimately was rejected for having had childhood asthma. According to Sole, “Most of the kids in my neighborhood had childhood asthma; I hadn’t used an inhaler since eighth grade.”
Sometimes Sole wonders how things could have played out differently. He said, “I tried to join the Air Force, but I became a soldier on the streets instead.”
Vacation turns to probation
He worked a few low-paying jobs in Chicago, before deciding to get a fresh start in St. Paul. He had a friend he could stay with here, but conceded, “My friend wasn’t exactly living his best life.”
Soon Sole wasn’t either. At 19, he was caught with an unregistered firearm. The legal age for carrying a weapon in Minnesota is 21. He said, “I came to St. Paul on vacation, and got stuck here on probation.” Jason Sole’s long journey through the criminal justice system had begun.
At 21, he was convicted of second-degree possession of a controlled substance. By the time Sole was granted early release, he knew the only way he would ever succeed was to get an education.
Redemption through education
In December 2006, Sole received his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice while serving time for his third felony offense. The prison allowed him two hours to attend his commencement ceremony. When he walked across the stage at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Sole said, “The place exploded in cheers. I got my redemption in that moment.”
He continued to study the criminal justice system in graduate school.
Sole said, “I endured years of imprisonment, and a lot of trauma (including being shot) before I figured out how I wanted to live my life. I’m grateful for the perspective I have, grateful for the grace, grateful for my wife and daughters, grateful to be alive. Most people in my old neighborhood ended up dead or in jail for a very long time. I was one of the lucky ones.”
Better solution than police and prison
Dr. Jason Sole is now an adjunct professor in criminal justice at Hamline University, and a national keynote speaker and trainer. He has served as president of the Minneapolis NAACP, been a faculty member at Metropolitan State University, and is creating liberation programs for people of color across this community. He believes there is a much better solution to crime prevention than the present-day system of policing.
In 2013, he received a Bush Fellowship and focused on reducing recidivism rates among juveniles in Minnesota. In 2016, he published, “From Prison to Ph.D: A Memoir of Hope, Resilience, and Second Chances.”
In 2018, he was recruited by Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter to be director of the newly created Community-First Public Safety Initiatives. After the mayor spent $900,000 hiring additional police officers in 2019, Sole resigned on Martin Luther King Day.
He does not regret his decision, saying, “Look what happened! There was more gun violence in Saint Paul last year than ever before. Adding to the police force didn’t make anybody safer; it actually made us less safe. We can hold people accountable without putting them in cages.”
Sole continued, “Abolishing the police doesn’t mean there won’t be accountability for people who harm others. Divesting from police means that money can be used to house the unhoused. Divesting from police means that we can provide culturally specific drug treatment for those struggling with addiction. Divesting from police means that we can provide more jobs and better training to youth. We need to invest in people on the bottom rungs of society. That’s where real change will come.”
Humanize My Hoodie
There are many ways that Sole stands up to the system, and challenges the status quo. Not long after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot while wearing a hoodie, Sole started teaching his college classes wearing one. The goal was to help his criminal justice students get more comfortable with a black man dressed that way.
Sole’s ongoing “Humanize My Hoodie” Project is designed to end the senseless police killings of Black and Indigenous People of Color; to reinforce the truth that Black men in hoodies are valuable human beings not meant for target practice. Along with his high school friend, fashion designer Andre Wright, Sole turned the “Humanize My Hoodie” project into a movement with their custom designed sweatshirts, art installations, and workshops.
For more information on Jason Sole’s work and the “Humanize My Hoodie” movement, visit: www.humanizemyhoodie.com
Writer’s note: This piece neither reflects nor contradicts the editorial position of this newspaper. It is offered as a conversation starter on the subject of policing, and a reminder that each of us is the product of our experiences. What experiences have shaped your attitude toward the police in this city? What kind of changes do you hope to see and why? Direct your comments to the editor at tesha@LongfellowNokomisMessenger.com.
Brandt seeks Board of Estimate and Taxation seat
Origin of Racism
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Standard Mileage Rates for 2021
Understanding the Excise Tax
Protecting Business Taxpayers From Identity Theft
Employee Business Expense Deductions: Who Qualifies?
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Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, we would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services.
Every year, it's a sure bet that there will be changes to current tax law and this year is no different. From standard deductions to health savings accounts and tax rate schedules, here's a checklist of tax changes to help you plan the year ahead.
In 2021, a number of tax provisions are affected by inflation adjustments, including Health Savings Accounts, retirement contribution limits, and the foreign earned income exclusion. The tax rate structure, which ranges from 10 to 37 percent, remains similar to 2020; however, the tax-bracket thresholds increase for each filing status. Standard deductions also rise, and as a reminder, personal exemptions have been eliminated through tax year 2025.
In 2021, the standard deduction increases to $12,550 for individuals (up from $12,400 in 2020) and to $25,100 for married couples (up from $24,800 in 2020).
Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
In 2021, AMT exemption amounts increase to $73,600 for individuals (up from $72,900 in 2020) and $114,600 for married couples filing jointly (up from $113,400 in 2020). Also, the phaseout threshold increases to $523,600 ($1,047,200 for married filing jointly). Both the exemption and threshold amounts are indexed annually for inflation.
"Kiddie Tax"
For taxable years beginning in 2021, the amount that can be used to reduce the net unearned income reported on the child's return that is subject to the "kiddie tax," is $1,100. The same $1,100 amount is used to determine whether a parent may elect to include a child's gross income in the parent's gross income and to calculate the "kiddie tax." For example, one of the requirements for the parental election is that a child's gross income for 2021 must be more than $1,100 but less than $11,000.
Contributions to a Health Savings Account (HSA) are used to pay current or future medical expenses of the account owner, his or her spouse, and any qualified dependent. Medical expenses must not be reimbursable by insurance or other sources and do not qualify for the medical expense deduction on a federal income tax return.
A qualified individual must be covered by a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) and not be covered by other health insurance with the exception of insurance for accidents, disability, dental care, vision care, or long-term care.
For calendar year 2021, a qualifying HDHP must have a deductible of at least $1,400 for self-only coverage or $2,800 for family coverage and must limit annual out-of-pocket expenses of the beneficiary to $7,000 for self-only coverage and $14,000 for family coverage.
Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs)
There are two types of Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs): The Archer MSA created to help self-employed individuals and employees of certain small employers, and the Medicare Advantage MSA, which is also an Archer MSA, and is designated by Medicare to be used solely to pay the qualified medical expenses of the account holder. To be eligible for a Medicare Advantage MSA, you must be enrolled in Medicare. Both MSAs require that you are enrolled in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP).
Self-only coverage. For taxable years beginning in 2021, the term "high deductible health plan" means, for self-only coverage, a health plan that has an annual deductible that is not less than $2,400 ($2,350 in 2020) and not more than $3,600 (up $50 from 2020), and under which the annual out-of-pocket expenses required to be paid (other than for premiums) for covered benefits do not exceed $4,800 (up $50 from 2020).
Family coverage. For taxable years beginning in 2021, the term "high deductible health plan" means, for family coverage, a health plan that has an annual deductible that is not less than $4,800 and not more than $7,150, and under which the annual out-of-pocket expenses required to be paid (other than for premiums) for covered benefits do not exceed $8,750.
AGI Limit for Deductible Medical Expenses
In 2021, the deduction threshold for deductible medical expenses is 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI), made permanent by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021.
Eligible Long-Term Care Premiums
Premiums for long-term care are treated the same as health care premiums and are deductible on your taxes subject to certain limitations. For individuals age 40 or younger at the end of 2021, the limitation is $450. Persons more than 40 but not more than 50 can deduct $850. Those more than 50 but not more than 60 can deduct $1,690 while individuals more than 60 but not more than 70 can deduct $4,520. The maximum deduction is $5,640 and applies to anyone more than 70 years of age.
The additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax on wages above $200,000 for individuals ($250,000 married filing jointly) remains in effect for 2021, as does the Medicare tax of 3.8 percent on investment (unearned) income for single taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income (AGI) more than $200,000 ($250,000 joint filers). Investment income includes dividends, interest, rents, royalties, gains from the disposition of property, and certain passive activity income. Estates, trusts, and self-employed individuals are all liable for the tax.
For 2021, the foreign earned income exclusion amount is $108,700 up from $107,600 in 2020.
Long-Term Capital Gains and Dividends
In 2021 tax rates on capital gains and dividends remain the same as 2020 rates (0%, 15%, and a top rate of 20%); however, threshold amounts have increased: the maximum zero percent rate amounts are $40,400 for individuals and $80,800 for married filing jointly. For an individual taxpayer whose income is at or above $445,850 ($501,600 married filing jointly), the rate for both capital gains and dividends is capped at 20 percent. All other taxpayers fall into the 15 percent rate amount (i.e., above $40,400 and below $445,850 for single filers).
Estate and Gift Taxes
For an estate of any decedent during calendar year 2021, the basic exclusion amount is $11.70 million, indexed for inflation (up from $11.58 million in 2020). The maximum tax rate remains at 40 percent. The annual exclusion for gifts remains at $15,000.
Individuals - Tax Credits
Adoption Credit
In 2021, a non-refundable (only those individuals with tax liability will benefit) credit of up to $14,440 is available for qualified adoption expenses for each eligible child.
Earned Income Tax Credit
For tax year 2021, the maximum Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low and moderate-income workers and working families rises to $6,728 up from $6,660 in 2020. The credit varies by family size, filing status, and other factors, with the maximum credit going to joint filers with three or more qualifying children.
For tax years 2020 through 2025, the child tax credit is $2,000 per child. The refundable portion of the credit is $1,400 so that even if taxpayers do not owe any tax, they can still claim the credit. A $500 nonrefundable credit is also available for dependents who do not qualify for the Child Tax Credit (e.g., dependents age 17 and older).
Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit also remained under tax reform. If you pay someone to take care of your dependent (defined as being under the age of 13 at the end of the tax year or incapable of self-care) to work or look for work, you may qualify for a credit of up to $1,050 or 35 percent of $3,000 of eligible expenses in 2021. For two or more qualifying dependents, you can claim up to 35 percent of $6,000 (or $2,100) of eligible expenses. For higher-income earners, the credit percentage is reduced, but not below 20 percent, regardless of the amount of adjusted gross income. This tax credit is nonrefundable.
Individuals - Education
American Opportunity Tax Credit and Lifetime Learning Credit
The maximum credit is $2,500 per student for the American Opportunity Tax Credit. The Lifetime Learning Credit remains at $2,000 per return. To claim the full credit for either, your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) must be $80,000 or less ($160,000 or less for married filing jointly). Prior to the passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, taxpayers with MAGI of $139,000 (joint filers) or $69,500 (single filers) were not able to claim the Lifetime Learning Credit.
While the phaseout limits for Lifetime Learning Credit increased, taxpayers should note that the qualified tuition and expenses deduction has been repealed starting in 2021.
Interest on Educational Loans
In 2021, the maximum deduction for interest paid on student loans is $2,500. The deduction begins to be phased out for higher-income taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income of more than $70,000 ($140,000 for joint filers) and is completely eliminated for taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income of $85,000 ($170,000 joint filers).
Individuals - Retirement
The elective deferral (contribution) limit for employees who participate in 401(k), 403(b), most 457 plans, and the federal government's Thrift Savings Plan remains at $19,500. Contribution limits for SIMPLE plans also remain at $13,500. The maximum compensation used to determine contributions increases to $290,000 (up from $285,000 in 2020).
Income Phase-out Ranges
The deduction for taxpayers making contributions to a traditional IRA is phased out for singles and heads of household who are covered by an employer-sponsored retirement plan and have modified AGI between $66,000 and $76,000.
For married couples filing jointly, in which the spouse who makes the IRA contribution is covered by an employer-sponsored retirement plan, the phase-out range increases to $105,000 to $125,000. For an IRA contributor who is not covered by an employer-sponsored retirement plan and is married to someone who is covered, the deduction is phased out if the couple's modified AGI is between $198,000 and $208,000.
The modified AGI phase-out range for taxpayers making contributions to a Roth IRA is $125,000 to $140,000 for singles and heads of household, up from $124,000 to $13999,000. For married couples filing jointly, the income phase-out range is $198,000 to $208,000, up from $196,000 to $206,000. The phase-out range for a married individual filing a separate return who makes contributions to a Roth IRA is not subject to an annual cost-of-living adjustment and remains $0 to $10,000.
Saver's Credit
In 2021, the AGI limit for the Saver's Credit (also known as the Retirement Savings Contribution Credit) for low and moderate-income workers is $66,000 for married couples filing jointly, up from $65,000 in 2020; $49,500 for heads of household, up from $48,750; and $33,000 for singles and married individuals filing separately, up from $32,500 in 2020.
Standard Mileage Rates
In 2021, the rate for business miles driven is 56 cents per mile, down one half of a cent from the rate for 2020.
Section 179 Expensing
In 2021, the Section 179 expense deduction increases to a maximum deduction of $1,050,000 of the first $2,620,000 of qualifying equipment placed in service during the current tax year. This amount is indexed to inflation for tax years after 2018. The deduction was enhanced under the TCJA to include improvements to nonresidential qualified real property such as roofs, fire protection, and alarm systems and security systems, and heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. Also, of note is that costs associated with the purchase of any sport utility vehicle, treated as a Section 179 expense, cannot exceed $26,200.
Bonus Depreciation
Businesses are allowed to immediately deduct 100% of the cost of eligible property placed in service after September 27, 2017, and before January 1, 2023, after which it will be phased downward over a four-year period: 80% in 2023, 60% in 2024, 40% in 2025, 20% in 2026, and 0% in 2027 and years beyond.
Qualified Business Income Deduction
Eligible taxpayers are able to deduct up to 20 percent of certain business income from qualified domestic businesses, as well as certain dividends. To qualify for the deduction business income must not exceed a certain dollar amount. In 2021, these threshold amounts are $164,900 for single and head of household filers and $329,800 for married taxpayers filing joint returns.
Research & Development Tax Credit
Starting in 2018, businesses with less than $50 million in gross receipts can use this credit to offset alternative minimum tax. Certain start-up businesses that might not have any income tax liability will be able to offset payroll taxes with the credit as well.
Extended through 2025 (The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021), the Work Opportunity Tax Credit is available for employers who hire long-term unemployed individuals (unemployed for 27 weeks or more) and is generally equal to 40 percent of the first $6,000 of wages paid to a new hire.
Employee Health Insurance Expenses
For taxable years beginning in 2021, the dollar amount of average wages is $27,800 ($27,600 in 2020). This amount is used for limiting the small employer health insurance credit and for determining who is an eligible small employer for purposes of the credit.
Business Meals and Entertainment Expenses
Taxpayers who incur food and beverage expenses associated with operating a trade or business are able to deduct 100 percent (50 percent for tax years 2018-2020) of these expenses for tax years 2021 and 2022 (The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021) as long as the meal is provided by a restaurant.
Employer-provided Transportation Fringe Benefits
If you provide transportation fringe benefits to your employees in 2021, the maximum monthly limitation for transportation in a commuter highway vehicle as well as any transit pass is $270. The monthly limitation for qualified parking is $270.
While this checklist outlines important tax changes for 2021, additional changes in tax law are likely to arise during the year ahead. Don't hesitate to call if you have any questions or want to get a head start on tax planning for the year ahead.
Starting in January 2021, the IRS Identity Protection PIN Opt-In Program will be expanded to all taxpayers who can properly verify their identity. Previously, IP PINs were only available to identity theft victims.
What is an Identity Protection PIN?
An identity protection personal identification number (IP PIN) is a six-digit number assigned to eligible taxpayers to help prevent their Social Security number from being used to file fraudulent federal income tax returns. This number helps the IRS verify a taxpayer's identity and accept their tax return. Taxpayers with either a Social Security Number or Individual Tax Identification Number who can verify their identity are eligible for the program and the number is valid for one year. Each January, the taxpayer must get a new one.
How to get an IP PIN
The preferred method of obtaining an IP PIN - and the only one that immediately reveals the PIN to the taxpayer - is the Get an IP PIN tool located on the IRS website. The tool is available starting mid-January 2021 and uses Secure Access authentication to verify a person's identity. If someone is unable to pass the Secure Access authentication, there are two alternate ways to get an IP PIN.
Taxpayers with income of $72,000 or less should complete Form 15227,Application for an Identity Protection Personal Identification Number, and mail or fax it to the IRS. An IRS employee will call the taxpayer to verify their identity using a series of questions. Those who pass authentication will receive an IP PIN the following tax year.
Taxpayers who cannot verify their identities remotely or who are ineligible to file Form 15277 should make an appointment for in-person identity verification at an IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center and bring two forms of picture identification. After the taxpayer passes authentication, an IP PIN will be mailed to them within three weeks.
What else taxpayers need to know before applying:
The IP PIN must be entered correctly on electronic and paper tax returns to avoid rejections and delays.
Any primary or secondary taxpayer or dependent can get an IP PIN if they can prove their identity.
Taxpayers who want to voluntarily opt into the IP PIN program don't need to file a Form 14039, Identity Theft Affidavit.
The IRS plans to offer an opt-out feature to the IP PIN program in 2022.
Confirmed victims of tax-related identity theft
For confirmed victims of tax-related identity theft, there is no change in the IP PIN Program. These taxpayers should still file a Form 14039,Identity Theft Affidavit if their e-filed tax return is rejected because of a duplicate SSN filing. The IRS will investigate their case and once the fraudulent tax return is removed from their account, they will automatically receive an IP PIN by mail at the start of the next calendar year.
IP PINs will be mailed annually to confirmed victims and participants enrolled before 2019. For security reasons, confirmed identity theft victims can't opt-out of the IP PIN program. Confirmed victims also can use the IRS Get an IP PIN tool to retrieve lost IP PINs assigned to them.
As a reminder, taxpayers should never share their IP PIN with anyone but their tax provider. The IRS will never call to request the taxpayer's IP PIN, and taxpayers must be alert to potential IP PIN scams. If you have any questions about the IP PIN, don't hesitate to call.
Creditors keep their evaluation standards secret, making it difficult to know just how to improve your credit rating. Nonetheless, it is still important to understand the factors that determine creditworthiness. Periodically reviewing your credit report can also help you protect your credit rating from fraud - and you from identity theft.
Credit Evaluation Factors
Many factors are used in determining credit decisions. Here are some of them:
Payment history/late payments
Charge-offs (Forgiven debt)
Closed accounts and inactive accounts
Cosigning an account
Debt/income ratios
Obtaining Your Credit Reports
Credit reports are records of consumers' bill-paying habits but do not include FICO credit scores. Also referred to as credit records, credit files, and credit histories, they are collected, stored, and sold by three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires that each of the three credit bureaus provides you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, every 12 months. If you have been denied credit or believe you've been denied employment or insurance because of your credit report, you can request that the credit bureau involved provide you with a free copy of your credit report - but you must request it within 60 days of receiving the notification.
You can check your credit report three times a year for free by requesting a credit report from a different agency every four months.
This federal law was passed in 1970 to give consumers easier access to, and more information about, their credit files. The FCRA gives you the right to find out the information in your credit file, to dispute information you believe inaccurate or incomplete, and to find out who has seen your credit report in the past six months.
Credit reports contain symbols and codes that are abstract to the average consumer. Every credit bureau report also includes a key that explains each code. Some of these keys decipher the information, but others just cause more confusion.
Read your report carefully, making a note of anything you do not understand. The credit bureau is required by law to provide trained personnel to explain it to you. If accounts are identified by code number, or if there is a creditor listed on the report that you do not recognize, ask the credit bureau to supply you with the name and location of the creditor so you can ascertain if you do indeed hold an account with that creditor.
If the report includes accounts that you do not believe are yours, it is extremely important to find out why they are listed on your report. It is possible they are the accounts of a relative or someone with a name similar to yours. Less likely, but more importantly, someone may have used your credit information to apply for credit in your name. This type of fraud can cause a great deal of damage to your credit report, so investigate the unknown account as thoroughly as possible.
In light of numerous credit card and other breaches, it is recommended that you conduct an annual review of your credit report. You must understand every piece of information on your credit report so that you can identify possible errors or omissions.
Disputing Errors
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) protects consumers in the case of inaccurate or incomplete information in credit files. The FCRA requires credit bureaus to investigate and correct any errors in your file.
If you find any incorrect or incomplete information in your file, write to the credit bureau and ask them to investigate the information. Under the FCRA, they have about thirty days to contact the creditor and find out whether the information is correct. If not, it will be deleted.
Be aware that credit bureaus are not obligated to include all of your credit accounts in your report. If, for example, the credit union that holds your credit card account is not a paying subscriber of the credit bureau, the bureau is not obligated to add that reference to your file. Some may do so, however, for a small fee.
If you need help obtaining your credit reports or need assistance in understanding what your credit report means, don't hesitate to call.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, H.R. 133 included funding for the government, extensions for expiring tax extenders, tax relief under the COVID-related Tax Relief Act of 2020, and many more items. Passed by both the House and Senate, it was signed into law by President Trump on December 27, 2020.
Let's take a look at a few of the highlights related to pandemic taxpayer relief under the COVID-Related Tax Relief Act of 2020:
Economic impact payments. $600 per taxpayer ($1,200 for married taxpayers filing jointly) and an additional $600 per qualifying child (under age 17). The recovery rebate payment begins to phase out starting at $75,000 of modified adjusted gross income for single filers, $112,500 for heads of household, and $150,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly. These payments are similar to the ones many taxpayers received earlier this year under the CARES Act.
Unemployment benefits. Additional unemployment insurance in the amount of $300 has been extended for an 11-week period beginning from December 26, 2020.
Educator expenses. Clarification that Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) used for the prevention and spread of COVID-19 will be treated as a deductible expense, retroactive to March 12, 2020.
Charitable contributions - Nonitemizers. The $300 above-the-line deduction for cash contributions given to a qualified charitable organization is extended through 2021 and increases to $600 for married taxpayers filing joint returns. In 2020, the maximum amount was $300.
Charitable contributions - Itemizers. The increased contribution limit to qualified charities that was specified in the CARES Act is extended through 2021 and applies to individuals and corporations. Amounts of up to 100 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) are allowed as deductions (same as 2020). In 2019, the limit for the deduction for cash contributions was 60% of AGI.
Earned Income. For the 2020 tax year, taxpayers may use earned income amounts from the immediately preceding tax year when figuring the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit.
Flexible spending arrangements. Taxpayers can rollover unused amounts from 2020 to 2021 and from 2021 to 2022 and employers may allow employees to make a contribution change mid-year in 2021.
Money purchase pension plans. The COVID-related Tax Relief Act of 2020 also allows money purchase pension plans to be included as a qualified retirement plan, retroactive to the CARES Act. The CARES Act allowed taxpayers to make penalty-free withdrawals of up to $100,000 from certain retirement plans for coronavirus-related expenses, with the option to pay tax on that income over a three-year period or recontribute withdrawn funds.
Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Loans. Retroactive to the effective date of the CARES Act, PPP loans that are forgiven will be treated as tax-exempt income. Gross income does not include loan forgiveness for Economic Injury Recovery Loans (EIDLs) and certain other loans or loan repayment assistance. Under the CARES Act, taxpayers receiving an EIDL were required to reduce any PPP loan forgiveness by the amount of the EIDL.
In addition, businesses with 300 or fewer employees with a gross revenue loss of 25 percent in any quarter of 2020 compared to the same quarter in 2019 are eligible for a second round of PPP loans.
Deductible expenses. Deductions are also allowed for deductible expenses (that would otherwise be deductible) paid for with the proceeds of a forgiven PPP loan. This reverses earlier IRS guidance that stated no deduction would be allowed. This tax provision applies to the second round of PPP loans as well.
Payroll tax credits. Refundable payroll tax credits for paid sick and family (Families First Coronavirus Response Act) leave are extended through March 2021. Employers are not required to provide paid leave after December 31, 2020; however, employers may still claim the credit if the employee would have qualified for paid leave if the mandate had been extended beyond December 31, 2020, and the employer provides paid leave.
Employee retention tax credits. Implemented as a refundable credit under the CARES Act, the employee retention tax credit (ERTC) is extended through June 30, 2021. The following also applies for calendar quarters beginning after December 31, 2020:
The credit rate is increased from 50 to 70 percent of qualified wages.
The limit on per-employee creditable wages is increased from $10,000 for the year to $10,000 for each quarter.
The required reduction in a year-over-year decline in gross receipts on a quarterly basis is reduced from 50 to 20 percent.
When determining the relevant wage base, the definition of a "large employer" that can only claim the credit for employees that are not working because of the COVID pandemic increases from more than 100 to more than 500 employees.
Certain government employers are now allowed to claim the ERTC.
Safe harbor allowing employers to use prior-quarter gross receipts to figure eligibility.
New employers in 2020 (i.e., those not in existence in 2019) can claim the credit.
Furthermore and retroactive to the date of the CARES Act, the ERTC is expanded to allow employers who receive PPP loans to qualify for the credit with respect to wages that are not paid with forgiven PPP proceeds. It also clarifies that group health plan expenses can be considered qualified wages even if no other wages are paid to an employee.
Employee portion of payroll tax deferral. The repayment period for deferral of payroll tax is extended through December 31, 2021.
Starting January 1, 2021, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car, van, pickup, or panel truck are as follows:
56 cents per mile driven for business use, down 1.5 cents from the rate for 2020
16 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes for qualified active-duty members of the Armed Forces, down 1 cent from the rate for 2020, and
14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations. The charitable rate is set by statute and remains unchanged.
The standard mileage rate for business is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile, including depreciation, insurance, repairs, tires, maintenance, gas, and oil. The rate for medical and moving purposes is based on the variable costs, such as gas and oil. The charitable rate is set by law.
Taxpayers always have the option of claiming deductions based on the actual costs of using a vehicle rather than the standard mileage rates.
Before tax reform, these optional standard mileage rates were used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical, or moving purposes. However, it is important to note that under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, taxpayers cannot claim a miscellaneous itemized deduction for unreimbursed employee travel expenses. Taxpayers also cannot claim a deduction for moving expenses, except members of the Armed Forces on active duty moving under orders to a permanent change of station.
Taxpayers can use the standard mileage rate but must opt to use it in the first year the car is available for business use. Then, in later years, they can choose either the standard mileage rate or actual expenses.
Leased vehicles. Typically, if the standard mileage rate is chosen, then leased vehicles must use the standard mileage rate method for the entire lease period (including renewals). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the IRS is allowing employers to switch from the vehicle lease valuation method to the cents-per-mile method (56 cents for 2021 and 57.5 cents for 2020) when determining the value of an employee's personal use of a vehicle during the pandemic, and is effective as of March 13, 2020.
If you have any questions about standard mileage rates or which driving activities you should keep track of as the new tax year begins, do not hesitate to contact the office.
An excise tax is a tax that is generally imposed on the sale of specific goods or services, or on certain uses. Examples of things a federal excise tax is usually imposed on include the sale of fuel, airline tickets, heavy trucks and highway tractors, indoor tanning, tires, and tobacco, as well as other goods and services. Excise taxes are imposed on a wide variety of goods, services and activities and may be imposed at the time of:
Sale by the manufacturer
Sale by the retailer
Use by the manufacturer or consumer
Many excise taxes go into trust funds for projects related to the taxed product or service, such as highway and airport improvements. Excise taxes are independent of income taxes. Often, the retailer, manufacturer or importer must pay the excise tax to the IRS and file the Form 720. They may pass the cost of the excise tax on to the buyer.
Some excise taxes are collected by a third party. The third party then sends the tax to the IRS and files the Form 720. For example, the tax on an airline ticket generally is paid by the purchaser and collected by the airline.
Businesses must file the form for each quarter of the calendar year. Here are the due dates:
Quarter 1 – January, February, March: deadline, April 30
Quarter 2 – April, May, June: deadline, July 31
Quarter 3 – July, August, September: deadline, Oct. 31
Quarter 4 – October, November, December: deadline, Jan. 31
If the due date for filing a return falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the due date is the next business day.
Businesses that are subject to excise tax generally must file a Form 720, Quarterly Federal Excise Tax Return to report this tax to the IRS. The IRS does accept paper excise tax returns; however, electronic filing is strongly encouraged, when possible.
To make this process easier for taxpayers, the contact information for all approved e-file transmitters of excise forms is listed on IRS.gov. Businesses can submit forms online 24 hours a day. When businesses e-file, they get confirmation that the IRS received their form. Also, e-filing reduces processing time and errors. To electronically file, business taxpayers will have to pay the provider's fee for online submission.
Excise tax forms available for electronic filing are:
Form 720, Quarterly Federal Excise Tax.
Form 2290, Heavy Highway Vehicle Use Tax.
Form 8849, Claim for Refund of Excise Taxes, Schedules 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8.
Please call the office if you have any questions or would like more information about federal or state excise taxes.
Starting December 13, 2020, the IRS began masking sensitive data on business tax transcripts. Previously, only sensitive data on individual tax transcripts was masked.
Here's what you need to know about this new initiative to protect business taxpayers from identity theft:
What is a tax transcript?
A tax transcript is a summary of a tax return and is often used by tax professionals to prepare prior year tax returns or when representing a client before the IRS. Lenders and others use tax transcripts for income verification purposes.
What is visible on the new tax transcript?
Last four digits of any Employer Identification Number listed on the transcript: XX-XXX1234
Last four digits of any Social Security number or Individual Tax Identification Number listed on the transcript: XXX-XX-1234
Last four digits of any account or telephone number
First four characters of the first, and last name for any individual (first three characters if the name has only four letters)
First four characters of any name on the business name line
First six characters of the street address, including spaces
All money amounts, including wage and income, balance due, interest and penalties
Customer File Number
For both the individual and business tax transcript, there is space for a Customer File Number. The Customer File Number is an optional 10-digit number that can be created usually by third parties that allow them to match a transcript to a taxpayer. The Customer File Number field will appear on the transcript when that number is entered on Line 5 of Form 4506-T, Request for Transcript of Tax Return, and Form 4506T-EZ.
What happens when a taxpayer seeks to verify income for a lender?
The lender will assign a 10-digit number, for example, a loan number, to Form 4506-T. The Form 4506-T may be signed and submitted by the taxpayer or signed by the taxpayer and submitted by the lender.
The Customer File Number assigned by the requestor on Form 4506-T will populate on the transcript. The requestor may assign any number except the taxpayer's Social Security number or Employer Identification Number.
Once received by the requester, the transcript's Customer File Number serves as the tracking number to match it to the taxpayer.
If you have any questions or need more information about this topic, please contact the office.
Prior to tax reform, an employee was able to deduct unreimbursed job expenses, along with certain other miscellaneous expenses, that was more than two percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) as long as they itemized instead of taking the standard deduction. Starting in 2018, however, most taxpayers can no longer claim unreimbursed employee expenses as miscellaneous itemized deductions unless they are a qualified employee or an eligible educator.
No other type of employee is eligible to claim a deduction for unreimbursed employee expenses. In other words, employee business expenses can be deducted as an adjustment to income only for eligible educators and specific employment categories such as:
Armed Forces reservists
Qualified performing artists
Fee-basis state or local government officials
Employees with impairment-related work expenses
Qualified Expenses
A qualified expense is one that is:
Paid or billed during the tax year
Used for carrying on a trade or business of being an employee, and
Ordinary and necessary
Nondeductible Expenses
Taxpayers should also know there are nondeductible expenses as well. Examples of nondeductible expenses include club dues, commuting expenses, fees and licenses, such as car licenses, lunches with co-workers, meals while working late, expenses to improve professional reputation, and capital expenses. A full list of nondeductible expenses can be found in Publication 529, Miscellaneous Deductions.
Please call if you have any questions.
Tax Due Dates for January 2021
During January
All employers - Give your employees their copies of Form W-2 for 2020 by February 1, 2021. If an employee agreed to receive Form W-2 electronically, post it on a website accessible to the employee and notify the employee of the posting.
Employees - who work for tips. If you received $20 or more in tips during December 2020, report them to your employer. You can use Form 4070, Employee's Report of Tips to Employer.
Employers - Social Security, Medicare, and withheld income tax. If the monthly deposit rule applies, deposit the tax for payments in December 2020.
Individuals - Make a payment of your estimated tax for 2020 if you did not pay your income tax for the year through withholding (or did not pay in enough tax that way). Use Form 1040-ES. This is the final installment date for 2020 estimated tax. However, you do not have to make this payment if you file your 2020 return (Form 1040 or Form 1040-SR) and pay any tax due by February 1, 2021.
Employers - Nonpayroll Withholding. If the monthly deposit rule applies, deposit the tax for payments in December 2020.
Farmers and Fisherman - Pay your estimated tax for 2020 using Form 1040-ES. You have until April 15 to file your 2020 income tax return (Form 1040 or Form 1040-SR). If you do not pay your estimated tax by January 15, you must file your 2020 return and pay any tax due by March 1, 2021, to avoid an estimated tax penalty.
Employers - Give your employees their copies of Form W-2 for 2020. If an employee agreed to receive Form W-2 electronically, have it posted on a website and notify the employee of the posting. File Form W-3, Transmittal of Wage and Tax Statements, along with Copy A of all the Forms W-2 you issued for 2020.
Employers - Federal unemployment tax. File Form 940 for 2020. If your undeposited tax is $500 or less, you can either pay it with your return or deposit it. If it is more than $500, you must deposit it. However, if you already deposited the tax for the year in full and on time, you have until February 10 to file the return.
Farm Employers - File Form 943 to report social security and Medicare taxes and withheld income tax for 2020. Deposit or pay any undeposited tax under the accuracy of deposit rules. If your tax liability is less than $2,500, you can pay it in full with a timely filed return. If you deposited the tax for the year in full and on time, you have until February 10 to file the return.
Certain Small Employers - File Form 944 to report Social Security and Medicare taxes and withheld income tax for 2020. Deposit or pay any undeposited tax under the accuracy of deposit rules. If your tax liability is $2,500 or more from 2020 but less than $2,500 for the fourth quarter, deposit any undeposited tax or pay it in full with a timely filed return. If you deposited the tax for the year timely, properly, and in full, you have until February 10 to file the return.
Employers - Social Security, Medicare, and withheld income tax. File Form 941 for the fourth quarter of 2020. Deposit any undeposited tax. If your tax liability is less than $2,500, you can pay it in full with a timely filed return. If you deposited the tax for the quarter in full and on time, you have until February 10 to file the return.
Employers - Nonpayroll taxes. File Form 945 to report income tax withheld for 2020 on all nonpayroll items, including backup withholding and withholding on pensions, annuities, IRAs, gambling winnings, and payments of Indian gaming profits to tribal members. Deposit any undeposited tax. If your tax liability is less than $2,500, you can pay it in full with a timely filed return. If you deposited the tax for the year in full and on time, you have until February 10 to file the return.
Payers of Gambling Winnings - If you either paid reportable gambling winnings or withheld income tax from gambling winnings, give the winners their copies of Form W-2G.
Payers of nonemployee compensation - File Form 1099-NEC for nonemployee compensation paid in 2020.
Businesses - Give annual information statements to recipients of certain payments made during 2020. You can use the appropriate version of Form 1099 or other information return. Form 1099 can be issued electronically with the consent of the recipient. This due date only applies to certain types of payments.
Individuals - who must make estimated tax payments. If you did not pay your last installment of estimated tax by January 15, you may choose (but are not required) to file your income tax return (Form 1040 or Form 1040-SR) for 2020 by February 1. Filing your return and paying any tax due by February 1, 2021, prevents any penalty for late payment of the last installment. If you cannot file and pay your tax by February 1, file and pay your tax by April 15.
Copyright © 2021 All materials contained in this document are protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. All other trade names, trademarks, registeredtrademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.
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‘Wolverine: The Long Night’ Podcast Trailer Released
Brought to you by Marvel and Stitcher!
by Tucker Chet Markus
Snikt!
Prepare to enter the world of The Wolverine.
Today, Marvel New Media and audio content network Stitcher present the trailer for “Wolverine: The Long Night,” Marvel’s highly anticipated first-ever scripted podcast. The 10-episode series airs weekly beginning March 12, 2018 exclusively on Stitcher Premium. It will see a wide release across all podcast platforms in fall 2018.
To receive updates and be notified of the release, listeners can sign up at wolverinepodcast.com
The “Wolverine: The Long Night” story is a captivating hybrid of mystery and the larger-scale fantasy of the Marvel Universe. It follows agents Sally Pierce (Celia Keenan-Bolger) and Tad Marshall (Ato Essandoh) as they arrive in the fictional town of Burns, Alaska, to investigate a series of murders and quickly discover the town lives in fear of a serial killer. The agents team up with deputy Bobby Reid (Andrew Keenan-Bolger) to investigate their main suspect, Logan (Richard Armitage). Their search leads them on a fox hunt through the mysterious and corrupt town.
In addition to Armitage, the show’s cast includes notable actors Scott Adsit, Bob Balaban, and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Also cast in the series are actors Zoe Chao, Chaske Spencer, Jordan Bridges, David Call, Michael J. Burg, and Lannon Killea. Chris Gethard will also make a cameo appearance.
Stitcher and Marvel have assembled a writing and production team of veterans from both the comic book world and the podcasting industry. “Wolverine: The Long Night” is written by award-winning comic book author Ben Percy (“The Wilding,” “Red Moon”) and directed by Brendan Baker (formerly a producer for Radiotopia’s “Love & Radio”). Chloe Prasinos (formerly a producer for Gimlet’s “Reply All”) oversees sound design. The series is produced by Daniel Fink of Marvel and Jenny Radelet of Stitcher.
In this article: Wolverine: The Long Night
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MPR News
2nd study testing a COVID-19 antibody drug has a setback
AP: Use of slurs not 'isolated' at Louisiana State Police
Foxconn objects to Wisconsin's denial of tax credits
MADISON, Wis. — Foxconn Technology Group notified the state of Wisconsin on Friday that it objects to the state’s denial of job-creation tax credits.
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. earlier this month said Foxconn did not qualify for tax breaks based on capital investments and hiring done in 2019. The state economic development agency determined that Foxconn, the world’s leading electronics manufacturer, only hired 281 full-time employees who are eligible to count toward tax credits at its facility in southeastern Wisconsin and made just $300 million in capital expenditures.
Foxconn argues that it has hired more than 520 full-time workers at its Mount Pleasant facility, which is the minimum number to make it eligible for tax credits, and has invested $750 million in the project.
Foxconn attorney Robert Berry said in Friday’s letter that the state’s decision not to award the tax credits “not only deviates from that understanding, but also deviates from contractual timelines.” Berry said he hoped to resolve the dispute within 30 days.
In rejecting the tax credits, the state told Foxconn on Oct. 12 that it would have to rewrite its original 2017 deal with Wisconsin to reflect the company’s scaled-back plans for the facility if it hopes to qualify for tax breaks.
Foxconn signed a contract with Wisconsin under then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2017 to earn nearly $4 billion in state and local tax incentives for a $10 billion display screen manufacturing campus and plant that would employ up to 13,000 people. But Foxconn has greatly reduced the size of the project since then, leading Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration to argue it must revise the contract to qualify for tax credits.
Winona-based Fastenal continues to benefit from increased sales of safety products
Minnesota Business Insights is the premiere business web, digital and print media publication, built for entrepreneurs, visionaries, builders, and doers who are committed to growing the economy of the great state of Minnesota.
How Biden plans to fight the pandemic: 100 million shots, large-scale vaccination sites, and the reopening of K-8 schools
© 2020 Minnesota Business Insights. All Rights Reserved.
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As parents planning for our first child and coming from fairly mundane family histories of good health, how little were we aware of the MELAS mutation lurking in the depths of my own mitochondrial DNA.
Kara, our daughter and eldest of 3 children, was very sadly the first to bring this knowledge to the surface and MELAS into the light.... at the tender age of 8, with her life still ahead of her, or so it seemed.
Kara had always seemed "unique and hard work” with her quirky ways, the poor concentration and slowness of a day dreamer, and the coordination and sporting prowess much less than your average child. However, days after celebrating her 8th birthday, Kara had her first MELAS event... essentially a "stroke". The diagnosis was quick and her past history now obvious, but devastatingly the “strokes” (or events) were all too frequent, with 13 in the next 3 years. An internet search revealed the incredible list of what she and us as a family were to face…little was left untouched by the relentless progression of the illness, but she still had her loving smile and adoring ways, always eager to help, as she silently accepted the loss of her eyesight, hearing, speech, eating, swallowing, both fine and gross motor skills, mobility, coordination, strength, memory, knowledge and understanding, topped off with the final indignity of loss of bodily functions and the onslaught of diabetic needles.
However, she was still a happy girl, eager to love and care for others. In 2009, “worried about the sick kids with broken legs,” she won and donated a $1,000 worth of toys to the kids ward she frequented. Despite receiving the full effects of MELAS, Kara thankfully had little insight into what it all meant as she passed away in 2017 at the age of 18. However, we as a family know all too well now what devastation it reeks, especially as symptoms progress in her brother and begin in myself, our journey still has a long path ahead. Whilst our youngest daughter ponders her future health as she has the same mutation, and already by the age of 11 years, she’d decided not to have her own children as they too would inherit MELAS.
At the time she was diagnosed, Kara was working hard to learn as much as possible, keen to experience all in life, she dreamt of being a nurse or a doctor to simply help people and talked about marrying her boyfriend Nick.
The paths of mitochondrial diseases are difficult to predict, but children often don’t live past 20, with Kara being no exception. Despite all the damage the relentless onslaught of Kara’s MELAS did to her brain, we were extremely blessed that she looked as well as she did, as her own determination drove her on to be as good as she was. However, every now and then we saw glimpses of what could have been, and so we couldn’t help but think of a lost future and potential. School became an outlet for socialising, her dementia increasingly stole her motivation to learn, as our gorgeous girl slowly slipped away.
Mitochondrial disease isolates families, not just because of its long tough journey and progressive disabilities, but the fatigue of the sufferer becomes a barrier to experiencing life. Most struggle to say the word "mitochondrial", let alone understand it, and to say your child has MELAS or mito, seems to only provide further confusion. Instead, to say your child has leukaemia, cerebral palsy or asthma, immediately provides some clarity to the image of what you understand. Although MELAS itself may not provide hope, we fight on raising awareness, understanding, and funds whilst providing hope to our other children through our love and that of God’s.
Dr Karen Crawley MBBS, FRACGP
Sadly, Kara passed away in March 2017.
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Types of Hybrid
Driving a Hybrid
Our Hybrid Range
Getting the best from a plug-in hybrid
Hybrid Cars home
What are the different types of hybrid car?
There are three main types of hybrid car and the main difference between them is how far they can travel on electric power.
Mild Hybrids
Typically, a mild hybrid does not use its electric motor to move the car and has a very small battery. The hybrid system is used for coasting, braking and to assist with pulling away, providing small efficiency improvements.
Short electric range
A hybrid (also called a full hybrid, strong hybrid or standard hybrid) primarily uses its petrol engine, with the electric motor taking over when it's more efficient such as at very low speeds.
Extended electric range
A plug-in hybrid truly bridges the gap between a petrol and electric car, with a larger capacity battery able to take the car significant distances. As the name suggests, a plug-in hybrid can be plugged in to charge the battery, allowing it to achieve far greater fuel economy than other types of hybrid.
Explore Plug-in Hybrids
How far can each type of hybrid travel on electric power?
EV drive range is the main difference between the three types of hybrid cars. It's a common misconception that a standard or mild hybrid offers the same efficiency as a plug-in hybrid. In reality they're very different.
Electric range: 0 miles
Fuel engine is the main source of power. Electric motor supports the engine and is typically used for coasting, braking and to assist in pulling away. The battery is charged by the engine and the car cannot be plugged in. Mild hybrids cannot really drive on electric power alone.
Models include: Honda Accord Hybrid
Electric range: 1 - 2 miles
A standard hybrid (HEV) runs mostly on its engine (i.e. diesel/petrol), but can run on just the electric motor or a combination of both. A hybrid's battery is charged from the engine and cannot be plugged in.
Models include: Toyota Prius
Electric range: 28 miles
A plug-in hybrid has a larger battery that can let it run for multiple miles, allowing whole journeys to be done just on electric power. It has the same abilities you get from mild and standard hybrids but with the added benefit of being able to run for miles on electric power alone.
Models include: Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV
Is it worth buying a hybrid?
Hybrid cars can be cheaper to maintain, because normal motoring creates less wear and tear on the engine. A plug-in hybrid can run on electric power further and for longer – so there’s even less demand on the engine. So for both hybrids and plug-in hybrids, you can expect to see a dramatic reduction on your running costs.
Outlander Plug-in hybrid
What’s the best hybrid car to buy?
We’re biased of course, but we do believe that the Outlander PHEV is the best hybrid available in the UK… it’s certainly the best-selling.
With legendary Mitsubishi reliability, an EV range of 28 miles, and an all-terrain 4WD system to handle any weather, you might just think it’s the best too.
Explore Outlander PHEV
Learn when the engine takes over from the motor in a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid
ENGINE AND MOTOR
A hybrid engine
A standard hybrid uses an electric motor to start off and up to speeds of around 25mph. At that point, the petrol engine takes over. The battery automatically charges as you drive, through a process called regenerative braking.
A plug-in hybrid engine
A plug-in hybrid has a motor and engine which work together in harmony to deliver the most fuel-efficient journey. On a short commute, or at lower speeds, the electric motor is doing all the work. When you need extra power, (on a steep hill or motorway) the petrol engine takes over.
More information on Hybrid Cars that you might like…
Environmental BenefitsCost SavingsDriving A Hybrid
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Home › Mississippi Writers › Phil Hardwick
Phil Hardwick
Phil Hardwick. Photo by Nancy Jacobs 2007
Letters from Lexington (2007)
Sixth Inning in Southaven (2002)
Cover-Up in Columbus (2001)
Found in Flora (1999)
Justice in Jackson (1999)
Captured in Canton (1999)
Newcomer in New Albany (1999)
Vengeance in Vicksburg (1999)
Conspiracy in Corinth (1999)
Collision in Columbia (1998)
Two Hours of Real Estate One Minute at a Time (1993)
Biography of Phil Hardwick
by Walt Goree (SHS)
Phil Hardwick was born on June 20, 1948. Early in life, Hardwick realized the power of literature as he read from the Progressive Farmer and the Readers’ Digest to his illiterate grandfather. This was the first step in Hardwick’s journey to becoming a writer. Later, when Hardwick was in the eleventh grade, he hurt his knee. Seemingly a setback because now he couldn’t play football, he took up journalism. His journalism teacher said that he was a born writer (Hardwick).
Walt Goree, SHS researcher
Hardwick harbored dreams of law enforcement so after high school he worked with the FBI while attending night school at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. In my interview with him, Hardwick said that nothing much related to writing happened while he was in college. Over the next several years, little happened to suggest that one day Hardwick would be an author. He joined the armed forces during which time he served as head of security for the presidential helicopter. Little by little, he began to gain attention as an investigator on the Mississippi Real Estate Commission (Hardwick). Then, in 1985, he was contacted by the Mississippi Business Journal and asked to write an article. Today he still writes regularly for that magazine. Now the time was right, Hardwick’s expertise in the fields of law enforcement, real estate, and writing, were all about to come together in a small Mississippi town called Flora.
Hardwick and others were attempting to come up with a way to promote the town of Flora’s tourism in a manner other than the usual boring pamphlets, billboards, and the like when they struck upon the idea of a book (promotional fiction), as Hardwick calls it (Frasier). The book set in the town of Flora not only gave information about the town, but it was also a book that had a great story as well. Thus was born Found in Flora. Well, the idea worked. Hardwick wrote a great mystery that promoted a great town. His work did not go unnoticed, and he was later approached by representatives from other towns, asking him to do for them what he had done for Flora. Out came the Mississippi Mysteries Series, a beautiful set of books, each set in and promoting a Mississippi town. To date (2000) he has written seven mystery books about towns in Mississippi. Hardwick is not just getting calls from towns in Mississippi any more. In an interview for the Daily Corinthian, Hardwick said, “…I’ve got some very large towns outside of Mississippi that have expressed an interest.
Author Phil Hardwick, photo by N. Jacobs
In addition to authoring books, as of this writing, Hardwick is vice president of Community and Economic Development for the Mississippi Valley Gas Company. He also teaches real estate as an adjunct faculty member at Millsaps College. That’s pretty much it for now, so what’s to come from Mr. Hardwick in the future? Only time will tell. (See UPDATE below).
Phil Hardwick was Coordinator of Capacity Development at the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. He is president of The Hardwick Company, which provides strategic planning, goal-setting, and related services to corporate and nonprofit clients. His last three novels (making a total of ten) are Cover-Up in Columbus, Sixth Inning in Southaven, and Letters from Lexington. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America.
A Review of Conspiracy in Corinth
In Conspiracy in Corinth, Phil Hardwick paints a vivid picture of a homey little town nestled in the northeast corner of Mississippi, a town filled with controversy. Jack Boulder, the best P.I. in the state, gets a troubling phone message. It’s from Pace McHatten Sr., the father of Boulder’s best friend in Vietnam, the man Boulder let die in his arms. Pace never forgave Boulder for this, but now as a prominent attorney, Pace needed the best P.I. there was to help clear one of his clients of murder. The relationship between Boulder and McHatten makes for an interesting subplot to this riveting mystery/thriller.
The plot thickens as Boulder smells a cover-up. Was this death a suicidal overdose of acetaminophen, as everyone seemed to think, was it a poisoning by a distraught and over controlled husband, or was it even acetaminophen that killed this woman at all? All this, coupled with great historical information on some of the local buildings and sights, and an addiction to banana pudding, makes for the best novella I’ve read in recent memory.
Author Phil Hardwick’s home page.
Mississippi State announces Phil Hardwick’s position with Stennis Institute.
Phil Hardwick’s blog
Hardwick, Phil. Telephone interview. April 17, 2000.
Johnston, Jebb. “Murder Mystery Novella set in Corinth.” Daily Corinthian Apr. 11. 1999, late ed.: 1A-2A.
Frasier, Jim. “Hardwick Writes a New Type of Thriller.”
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Kennzahlen zur Sozietät
European IP Bulletin – Issue 67
February, 2010 | Dr. Boris Uphoff | Dr. Thomas Hauss |
Passende Dienstleistungen und Branchen
IPO Drops Proposals for Format Shifting and Parody Exceptions
As part of a consultation process, the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office has published Taking forward the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property: Second stage consultation on copyright exceptions. The document is notable more for what it does not take forward than for what it does.
European and EU Patents Court and The EU Patent
The Council of the European Union has released its Conclusions on an enhanced patent system in Europe as part of ongoing efforts towards a unified European patent system. A number of obstacles to the establishment of such a system still remain.
Allegedly Libellous Comments on Bulletin Boards: The Hosting Defence
In Imran Karim v Newsquest Media Group Ltd [2009] EWHC 3205 (QB) Mr Justice Eady granted an application to strike out a libel claim brought by an ex-solicitor against Newsquest. He held that an article published online was absolutely privileged as a fair, accurate and contemporaneous report of legal proceedings and that Newsquest also had a defence based on the hosting safe harbour in the E-commerce Regulations in relation to user comments posted to bulletin boards on the website.
Ainsworth Strikes Back: U.S. Copyright Not Directly Enforceable in the United Kingdom
In Lucasfilm Ltd v Ainsworth [2009] EWCA Civ 1328, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales ruled that claims under U.S. copyright law cannot be determined by an English court, thereby reversing a decision of the High Court.
Colour Marks: Evidence of Acquired Distinctiveness
In Andreas Stihl AG & Co KG R 355/2007-4, the Board of Appeal at The Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market confirmed the examiner’s decision that the colour mark was not inherently distinctive but held that the mark had acquired distinctive character under Article 7(3), taking into account the Applicant’s evidence, including two market surveys.
Identical Goods but Low Degree of Similarity Between Signs
In Peek & Cloppenburg v OHIM [2009] T-386/07, the Court of First Instance (renamed the General Court when the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force on 1 December 2009) has overturned a decision of the Second Board of Appeal of The Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market that rejected an opposition finding no likelihood of confusion between the stylised mark AGILE and the earlier Community trade mark, AYGILL’S, registered for the same goods.
CANNABIS Descriptive of Beer?
In Giampietro Torresan v OHIM [2009] T 234/06 (unreported), the Court of First Instance (renamed the General Court when the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force on 1 December 2009) upheld a declaration made by the Second Board of Appeal of The Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market that the registration of CANNABIS as a Community trade mark for beer was descriptive.
Pending Opposition and Admissibility of Revocation Proceedings
In Stella Kunstofftechnik GmbH v OHIM [2009] T-27/09 (unreported), the General Court (formerly the Court of First Instance) held that the revocation proceedings of The Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market, which were based on an earlier mark, were not inadmissible simply because the earlier mark was being opposed.
PARALLEL IMPORTS
Failure to Prove Exhaustion of Trade Mark Rights
In Sun Microsystems Inc v M-Tech Data Ltd [2009] EWHC 2992 (Pat), Mr Justice Kitchin held that Sun Microsystems Inc was entitled to summary judgment in respect of the parallel import of computer equipment by M-Tech Data Ltd, rejecting M-Tech’s defences that the products were first put on the market within the European Economic Area by Sun and that Sun’s exploitation of its marks were contrary to European Community competition law.
Employee Compensation: The Hypothetical Transaction
In Ian Alexander Shanks v Unilever plc [2009] EWHC 3164 (Ch), Mr Justice Mann held that the hypothetical transaction contemplated in Section 41(2) of the Patents Act 1977 in calculating compensation due to an employee to compensate him for making an invention of outstanding benefit to his employer, should be between the employer and an arm’s length buyer and not a party with all the same attributes as the actual buyer, minus its connection to the inventor’s employer.
Broadcast Sponsorship: The Distinction from Advertising
Issue 146 of the Ofcom Broadcast Bulletin (23 November 2009) published findings from the Office of Communications’ monitoring of sponsorship credits. The monitoring was conducted following an apparent increase in the amount of information about sponsors’ products/services included in some sponsorship credits.
Vulnerability of Insufficiently Well Known Trade Marks
In Office Holdings Ltd v Hocu To d.o.o. and Office Shoes d.o.o. [2009] D2009-1277 WIPO, it was concluded that a proprietor of trade marks in central and eastern Europe had a legitimate interest in a corresponding domain name, even though it was apparent that the trade marks and domain name had been chosen in order to mimic an earlier trade mark registered elsewhere in Europe.
The Alcohol Industry Advertising and Sponsorship
On 8 January 2010, the House of Commons Health Committeepublished a cross party Report on alcohol, addressing concerns over the rising level in recent years of alcohol consumption and its consequences. The overall position of the Report is that the current system of controls on alcohol advertising and promotion is failing the young people it is intended to protect.
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Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research (1999)
Chapter: 3 Federal Support for Research Infrastructure
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Suggested Citation:"3 Federal Support for Research Infrastructure." National Research Council. 1999. Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6323.
Federal Support for Research Infrastructure
Research infrastructure consists of many elements. Primary among them are research funding, human resources, and physical facilities for conducting research. Historically, the U.S. government has been a partner with industry and universities in creating the infrastructure for many critical new industries, ranging from agriculture to aircraft to biotechnology.1 Computing is no exception. Government, industry, and universities have all contributed to the research infrastructure that underlies the innovative capacity of the nation's computing industry. Funding for the research infrastructure in computing comes largely from industry and government sources, with small contributions from universities and nonprofit organizations. Private industry invests in research, develops human resources, and builds physical infrastructure for research and development (R&D) primarily to serve commercial purposes. Public support for research infrastructure is, in contrast, intended to create a pool of resources that can be drawn upon by a variety of users in the private and public sectors. For example, substantial public investment is made in universities that train students, conduct research, and build research laboratories.
This chapter explores the federal government's contributions to the research infrastructure, examining the government's support for research, human resources, and research equipment. Although computing technology draws on research in a number of academic disciplines—from computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, materials science and engineering, and cognitive science and psychology—this chapter ex-
amines federal contributions in the areas of computer science and electrical engineering, which are the most directly relevant. Computer science includes work on the theory of computing; design, development, and application of computer capabilities to data storage and manipulation; information science and systems; programming languages; and systems analysis. Research in electrical engineering includes work in communications, semiconductor technology, and electronic circuits, which is relevant to computing, as well as work in electric power, which is not.2 Data on research funding is categorized according to the National Science Foundation's definitions of basic research, applied research, and development uses. Although the distinctions among these categories are increasingly difficult to make in the computing industry, they reflect the manner in which federal statistics are currently collected (see Chapter 1).3
Federal Research Funding4
Levels of Federal Support
Since the end of World War II, the federal government has been a strong supporter of computing research. Between 1976 and 1995 (the earliest and latest years for which consistent data are available), federal funding for research in computer science increased by a factor of five, from $180 million to $960 million in constant 1995 dollars (Figure 3.1). Growth has occurred in both basic and applied research, with basic research jumping from $65 million to $265 million and applied research rising from $116 million to almost $700 million over the 19-year period. Roughly 35 to 45 percent of total federal research funding for computer science has gone to universities, with industry and government laboratories garnering the remaining 55 to 65 percent; about 70 percent of the basic research funding went to universities during this period.5
In contrast to computer science, federal funding for research in electrical engineering remained essentially flat between 1972 and 1995. From a peak of $1.1 billion (in constant 1995 dollars) in 1972, the real dollar level of federal funding for research in electrical engineering dropped below $800 million in 1976 and, after exceeding the $1 billion mark again in 1987 and 1989, dipped back below $800 million in 1995. Despite the overall decline, obligations for basic research in electrical engineering grew during this time frame, from about $130 million in the 1970s and early 1980s to about $200 million after 1985 (Figure 3.2). As a result, the share of total research funding in electrical engineering going to basic research increased from 12 to 25 percent, and the share of total research funding going to universities rose from 10 to 23 percent.
Federal expenditures on computing research represent just a portion
of the federal budget for scientific and technological research. Combined federal obligations for computer science and electrical engineering research climbed from just under $1 billion to $1.7 billion between 1976 and 1995, growing from 5 percent to almost 7 percent of the federal research budget. Several other fields, such as biology and physics, have historically maintained higher levels of federal investment than computer science and electrical engineering, although growth in physics research funding slowed after the mid-1980s (Figure 3.3).
Figure 3.1
Federal funding for research in computer science, 1976-1995.
Source: NSF (1998b), Tables 25 and 35.
Sources of Federal Support
Federal funding for research in computer science and electrical engineering has come through several federal agencies whose roles and levels of support have shifted over time. Because of the emphasis it placed on computing as a means of enhancing U.S. military capabilities during the Cold War, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has long been the largest funder of computing and communications research. Early funding
Federal funding for research in electrical engineering, 1971-1995.
came from the Army and Office of Naval Research, but within 2 years of establishing its Information Processing Techniques Office in 1962, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) became the dominant source of funding, providing more support for computer science research than all other federal agencies combined. Between 1976 and 1995, DOD provided some 60 percent of total federal research funding in computer science and over 75 percent of total research funding in electrical engineering (Figures 3.4, 3.5).
Federal funding for scientific research, 1974-1995.
Federal funding for research in computer science by agency, 1976-1995.
Source: NSF (1998c), Table 1.
Federal funding for research in electrical engineering by agency, 1972-1995.
Federal funding for basic research in computer science by agency, 1976-1995.
By the 1970s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) emerged as the second largest supporter of research in computing and communications, providing 20 percent of all federal support for computer science research and 5 percent of federal support for electrical engineering research between 1976 and 1994. In contrast to DOD, NSF has concentrated its efforts on funding basic and university research in computer science, for which its research expenditures have generally equaled or exceeded those of DOD (Figure 3.6).6 With the exception of a 4-year period between 1983 and 1987, NSF has provided between 40 and 45 percent of all basic research funding in computer science, and it has consistently provided about 40 percent of university research funding in computer science. In electrical engineering, NSF contributed just under 30 percent of the funding for basic research and 30 to 40 percent of the funding for university research, but it lagged behind DOD by a wide margin (Figure 3.7).
Federal funding for basic research in electrical engineering by agency, 1972-1995.
Comparisons to Industrial Research Funding
Federal funding has supported a substantial fraction of all research conducted in computing. In 1950, government funding for research and development dominated the computer world: it exceeded all industrial R&D spending on computing by a factor of three. As late as 1963, government still funded 35 percent of IBM's R&D in computing, 50 percent at Burroughs, and 40 percent at Control Data. But even by the 1960s the distribution was uneven, and several commercial suppliers, notably Honeywell and RCA, financed most of their R&D internally. Thus, the overall percentage of computer R&D supported by government declined dramatically from the late 1960s, both because of an absolute decline in government support and because of the rapid growth of the industry. In the mid-1970s, federal support represented only about 25 percent of computer R&D, and then shrank to a postwar low of 15 percent in 1979. With new programs and the Reagan administration's defense buildup, the level was restored to about 20 percent by 1983 (Flamm, 1987, p. 102).
These numbers alone, however, can be deceiving. Very little R&D performed in industry is research; most, in fact, counts as development. Even applied research accounts for only about 10 to 15 percent of indus-
trial R&D in computing. Flamm estimates that the ratio of development to research in the computer industry was about seven to one in the early 1980s, and within the research category it was about seven to one of applied to basic (that is, basic research in industry is only about 2 percent of total R&D). Thus, when one excludes development from consideration, government support represented about 40 percent of all computer research, and half of that was basic research (Flamm, 1987, pp. 104-105).
Direct comparisons between federal and industrial research funding are hard to make because of differences in the way data are collected from federal and industry sources.7 Nevertheless, a rough estimate of the federal share can be made by comparing federal funding for research in computer science to company funding for research in the office, computing, and accounting machinery industry.8 This comparison shows that federal funding constituted roughly one-third of total computer-related research funding in the late 1970s (Figure 3.8). The federal share dipped
Federal and industrial funding for computing research, 1977-1996. Industry research, as shown, consists of company-funded research in computing and office equipment industry; it does not include company-funded research in other computing-related industries such as communications equipment, semiconductors, or computing and communications services. Government-funded research, as shown, consists of total federal funding for research in computer science. Industrial research data for 1978, 1980, 1982, 1985-1987, and 1989 were estimated from data on industry research and development expenditures and from the ratio of research to research and development in expenditures in years for which actual data were available.
Source: Federal research funding from NSF (1998b), Table 25; industry research funding compiled from the 1979-1998 editions of the annual National Science Foundation report Research and Development in Industry.
to 15 percent in the early 1980s as industrial research funding expanded and federal funding stagnated, but by 1992 federal funding again constituted one-third of the total, owing to rapid growth in federal funding and restructuring and cutbacks in industry support.9 Not included in this estimate are research expenditures financed by universities and nonprofit organizations, which tend to be much smaller than the amounts provided by federal agencies or industry.
Government also directed significant research funding to industry—even as the computer industry grew during the late 1970s. While the share of the computer industry's total R&D funds coming from government sources declined dramatically between 1975 and 1979, the share of the industry's research funding coming from the federal government remained high, declining only from 47 percent to 37 percent (Table 3.1). Flamm estimates that federal funding accounted for 40 percent of total computer industry research funding through the mid-1980s (Flamm, 1987, p. 104, Table 4-5). In the communications equipment industry, the federal role has been even larger and more pervasive.10 In 1965, federal funds accounted for 66 percent of the industry's total R&D funding, a figure that declined to 40 percent by 1990. As a percentage of total industry research, federal funds declined steadily from 49 percent in 1965 to 19 percent in 1980, but then rebounded to account for half of all industry research funding in 1990 (Table 3.2). In contrast, federal funding has played a declining role in industrial R&D in the electronic components industry.11 The percentage of industry R&D funding provided by government de-
TABLE 3.1 Funding for Industrial R&D and Research in Office and Computing Equipment, 1975-1979
(in millions of dollars)
Percent Federal
NOTE: Funding levels indicate total support for R&D and research conducted by industry; expenditures for research conducted by universities are excluded; n.a., data not available.
SOURCE: Data compiled from the National Science Foundation's biennial reports, Research and Development in Industry, issued between 1979 and 1992.
TABLE 3.2 Funding for Industrial R&D and Research in Communications Equipment, 1965-1990
Funding (in millions of dollars)
1965a,b
NOTE: Funding levels indicate total support for R&D and research conducted by industry; expenditures for research conducted by universities are excluded.
a Includes funding for electronic components, which had $330 million in R&D funding in 1972.
bIncludes funding from the communications services industry.
c Data for 1979 are shown because complete are not available for 1980.
clined from 38 percent in 1972 to 11 percent in 1990 as total R&D funding grew from $330 million to $4 billion.
These figures suggest that federal funding continued to play an important role in the expanding computing industry. It created economic opportunities for industry to exploit and, as such, expanded the private investments made to seize these opportunities. As new ideas emerged from federally funded research, companies capitalized on them. Indeed, firms in computing-related industries tend to spend a greater percentage of their sales revenues on R&D than do firms in most other industries (Figure 3.9). Roughly 10 to 20 percent of corporate R&D funds is spent on research as opposed to development.12 Such expenditures tend to derive from, and result in, the fast pace of innovation characteristic of the field.
Human resources are essential to innovation, especially in knowledge-intensive fields like computing and communications. Attracting and educating students to new areas of research opportunity (especially, but by no means exclusively, at the graduate level) is a vital task—both in maintaining progress at the research frontier and in transferring new knowledge to industry by providing trained scientific and engineering
R&D intensity in computer-related industries, 1975-1996. Data for computing and office equipment between 1992 and 1996 reflect the reclassification of firms considered to be part of the industry. Source: NSF (1998a), Table A-18
personnel. In the United States, graduate education is tightly connected with university research, and university research budgets are an important driving force for graduate enrollment. The federal government has played an important role by supporting university research in computing and communications, which has directly and indirectly supported the
education of graduate students and the creation of university departments in computer science.
Since 1965, the number of college and university departments in computer science and computer engineering has grown rapidly. The Taulbee surveys of U.S. and Canadian computer science and computer engineering departments show a steady growth in Ph.D.-granting departments, increasing linearly from 6 in 1965 to 56 in 1975 and to 148 in 1995 (Andrews, 1997).13 Along with the expansion of academic computer science departments has been growth in enrollments at all levels, from undergraduate through doctorate. Between 1966 and 1986, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in computer science skyrocketed from 89 to 42,000, surpassing the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in mathematics and electrical engineering (the largest engineering subdiscipline) in 1981 and in physics in 1982 (Figure 3.10). Electrical engineering also experienced significant growth, expanding at an average annual rate of 4 percent, from 11,000 to 27,000 during this period, while the total number of bachelor's degrees awarded in all academic fields rose at a 1 percent annual rate. Between 1987 and 1995, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in both these fields declined precipitously, reflecting changing student preferences and shifts in the job market, as well as attempts by some universities to relieve the burden on electrical engineering and computer science departments by shifting students to other academic departments.14 By 1995, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in computer science and electrical engineering had declined to 25,000 and 18,000, respectively, although the decline showed evidence of leveling off.
Graduate student production also blossomed after 1965. In computer science, the number of master's degrees awarded climbed steadily at a rate of 14.5 percent a year between 1966 and 1995 (Figure 3.11). In electrical engineering, the number of master's degrees remained relatively constant at 4,000 per year from 1966 to 1980, and then began growing at a 6 percent annual rate. Such growth occurred despite the fact that the number of master's degrees awarded in all fields of science and engineering began to decline after 1977 and did not return to the 1977 level until 1990. At the Ph.D. level, the number of degrees awarded by U.S. universities in computer science grew from 19 in 1966 to over 900 in 1995, despite leveling off between 1976 and 1982 (Figure 3.12).15 By comparison, the number of Ph.D.s awarded in electrical engineering and mathematics declined during the 1970s, although both fields began growing again in the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless, computer science has continued to lag behind both electrical engineering and mathematics in the total number of Ph.D.s awarded each year—despite leading in the number of bachelor and master degrees awarded. The percentage of Ph.D. recipients choosing a first job in industry (as opposed to academia) grew steadily between 1975 and
Figure 3.10
Bachelor's degrees awarded by field, 1966-1995.
Source: NSF (1997b), Tables 30, 45, and 46.
1995, reflecting strong industrial demand for skilled computer scientists, and causing concern among universities about their ability to train the next generation of computer scientists (Table 3.3).
Foreign students have also played a large role in the growth of U.S. Ph.D. programs. The Taulbee surveys show that the percentage of Ph.D. recipients in computer science who are nonresident aliens increased from
Master's degrees awarded by field, 1966-1995.
20 percent in the early 1970s to 40 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. In computer engineering the percentage reached as high as 64 percent. The United States has attracted a large number of foreign nationals, most of whom were first trained abroad before they entered graduate education in this country. These scientists and engineers have formed an important part of the nation's workforce in computing. It is reasonable to expect
Doctoral degrees awarded by field, 1966-1995.
that fewer foreign students will decide to remain in the United States in the future as opportunities for employment in their home countries increase. By 1997, U.S. industry was already seeing shortages of qualified information technology personnel to fill job market vacancies, raising questions about the need for policies to expand the proportion of the labor force entrants who possess computing and related skills.16
TABLE 3.3 Employment, by Sector, for New Ph.D. Recipients in Computer Science and Engineering, 1970-1995
Number Employed (and percentage)
NOTE: Years refer to the start of the academic year for 1985, 1990, and 1995 and to the calendar year for 1970 and 1975. Totals do not include unknown employment, which totaled 9 in 1970, 12 in 1975, 15 in 1985, 217 in 1990, and 139 in 1995. Percentages may not add to 100 because of rounding.
SOURCE: Data compiled from annual Taulbee Surveys conducted between 1971 and 1996. See Note 12.
The federal government has directly and indirectly supported the creation of human resources in computing and communications. As early as the 1960s, federal agencies conducted or sponsored studies that identified human resource issues as matters of national concern.17 Federal agencies have provided a number of fellowships for graduate students in computer science, and NSF has worked to develop curricula for university programs.18 But the most important contribution has come indirectly through federal support of university research. Between 1976 and 1994, federal obligations for university research in computer science expanded from roughly $65 million to $360 million (Figure 3.13), and federal obligations for university research in electrical engineering more than doubled in real terms from $74 million to $161 million (Figure 3.14). Most of this funding has come from two sources, DARPA and NSF. Altogether, federal funding accounted for 70 percent of university research funding for computer science and between 65 and 75 percent of university research funding for electrical engineering from the mid 1970s through 1995 (Figure 3.15). The balance has come from a combination of industry, private foundations, state governments, and universities' own resources.
Federal funds play a significant role in supporting graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science. Data from the National Science Foundation indicate that between 1985 and 1996, the percentage
Federal funding for university research in computer science, 1976-1995.
Source: NSF (1998d), Table 1.
Federal funding for university research in electrical engineering, 1975-1995.
Portion of university research funding provided by the federal government, 1973-1995.
of graduate students in U.S. computer science and electrical engineering departments supported by federal funds (i.e., research assistantships, teaching assistantships, and fellowships) grew from 14 percent to 20 percent.19 Over 75 percent of this support came in the form of research assistanships; over half of all research assistants in U.S. graduate programs between 1985 and 1996 received federal support.20 In the nation's
Computer science and electrical engineering graduate students supported by the federal government, 1985-1996.
Source: Compiled from data in the National Science Foundation's online database of sources of support for science and engineering graduate students. The database is available via WebCASPAR at <http://caspar.qrc.com>.
top computer science departments, federal funding plays an even greater role (Figure 3.16). Between 1985 and 1995, approximately 56 percent of the graduate students in computer science and electrical engineering departments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of California at Berkeley received federal funding, with research assistantships alone supporting 46 percent of them. At Stanford University, 27 percent of graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science received support from the federal government in 1997;21 it is estimated that 50 to 60 percent of Stanford Ph.D. students in these departments receive federal funds.22
Researchers need equipment and facilities with which to conduct their work. Acquiring and maintaining such equipment is especially challenging in computing and communications research because of the rapid growth of the field since the 1950s, the concomitant rise in the number of graduate students and faculty conducting research, and the rapid rate at which computing equipment becomes obsolete.23 In industry, support
for research infrastructure is provided internally: corporate funds are used to build new facilities and to equip them with computers, networking equipment, and other research equipment, as needed. University infrastructure, on the other hand, relies on a mix of support from federal and state governments, university funds, and donations of equipment from industry. Since the 1960s, the federal government has been the dominant source of support for computing and communications research equipment.
Providing and supporting research infrastructure are expensive tasks. In 1988, for example, U.S. universities spent $187 million on equipment for academic computer centers and supercomputer centers, and an additional $334 million for maintenance, repair, and operations (Table 3.4). Computer science departments spent another $77 million on equipment purchases for research purposes and related maintenance, repair, and operational costs. Such expenditures are increasing faster than inflation as universities attempt to maintain state-of-the-art research centers and meet the demands of a growing pool of researchers. Between 1981 and 1995, expenditures for computer science research equipment alone (not including maintenance and operations) tripled in real terms from $25 million to $75 million. In electrical engineering, research equipment expenditures doubled during this same period to $68 million.
The federal government's support for financing the purchase of computing equipment by universities has taken a variety of forms, ranging from funding for general computing resources for universities, to financing of research-grant-related equipment in computer science departments, to establishing large supercomputer centers. While the first two of these missions required scientific or engineering computers of modest capabilities, the third required specialized computers to address large, complex
TABLE 3.4 University Expenditures for Computing Equipment, Maintenance, and Operations (in millions of dollars), 1988
Computer Science Departments
Other (e.g., salaries, tools)
Technician salaries
Other (e.g., supplies)
SOURCE: NSF (1991), Tables 1 and 8.
problems of interest to DOD, other federal agencies (e.g., U.S. Meteorological Service), and academic research communities. All three required development of a networking infrastructure capable of linking researchers with resources that were geographically separated.
University Computing Centers
Among the first federal efforts to provide computing resources for universities was NSF's Institutional Computing Services program, established in 1956 to provide universities with computers for general educational use. Annual obligations expanded rapidly, and, between 1958 and 1970, NSF provided $66 million for such centers (Table 3.5). Other agencies also supported computing facilities on campuses during the 1960s. In fact, virtually all government-funded computer research included significant monies for equipment; one study estimated that in 1963 federal agencies were supplying about half the support for campus computing in the country. NSF support for computing facilities differed from that provided by other federal agencies because it was spread among a large number of universities and because it was not provided for use in any particular project sponsored by the government; rather, it supported general educational and scientific applications of computing. For example, NSF supported Philip Morse at MIT in his early work on time-sharing—a technology intended to improve the efficiency of facilities that NSF was already supporting at academic centers, by making them available to more users. DARPA support, in contrast, was aimed at a limited number
TABLE 3.5 National Science Foundation Obligations for Institutional Computing Services (in thousands of dollars)
SOURCE: Data for 1960-1967 compiled from the National Science Foundation's annual Budget Request to Congress; data for 1968-1970 compiled from the National Science Foundation's annual reports, Grants and Awards.
of select computer science departments (such as those at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and Stanford University) and was intended for use on DARPA projects, such as Project MAC and the ARPANET.
Departmental Computing
Other initiatives were targeted more specifically to computer science departments. Between 1981 and 1995, the federal government funded roughly 65 percent of the purchases of research equipment in computer science departments—providing 83 percent of such funding in 1985 (Figure 3.17). In electrical engineering, the share of equipment funds coming from the federal government declined from its 75 percent level in 1982, but remained at 60 percent in 1995 (Figure 3.18). Many government agencies provided funds for equipment in research contracts with universities, but NSF established two programs specifically designed to provide infrastructure for computer science departments: the Computer Research Equipment (CRE) program and the much larger Coordinated Experimental Research (CER) program.
The CRE program, initiated in the 1970s, provided basic computer support for computer science departments. Annual expenditures on the CRE between 1977 and 1985 grew to $1.4 million (Table 3.6). With the
Expenditures for research equipment in computer science, 1981-1995.
Source: Compiled from data in the National Science Foundation's online database of current fund research equipment expenditures for computer science between fiscal years 1981 and 1995. The database is available via WebCASPAR at <http://caspar.qrc.com>.
Expenditures for research equipment in electrical engineering, 1981-1995.
Source: Compiled from data in the National Science Foundation's online database of current fund research equipment expenditures for electrical engineering between fiscal years 1981 and 1995. The database is available via WebCASPAR at <http://caspar.qrc.com>.
formation of the Computing and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate in 1986, CRE became the CISE Research Instrumentation Program. Program funding grew from $2 million to $3.8 million between 1987 and 1996.
The CER, started in 1981, was a response to growing concerns that computer science departments were not producing enough Ph.D.s in part because they lacked funds to pursue large-scale experimental computer research (NSF, 1981a). The majority of CER funds was allocated to the Experimental Computer Research Program, which provided ''support of special purpose equipment needed by more than one computer research project and difficult to justify on a single project'' (NSF, 1981b). This program also paid for recruitment and retention of quality faculty and technicians for the new computer science centers.24 Another portion of the CER, the CSNET program (described in more detail below), although constituting less than 10 percent of the CER budget, made major strides in networking by linking computer science departments together to expedite research through a more open forum for ideas. The CER was renamed the CISE Institutional Infrastructure Program in 1986, and funding grew from $14 million to $23 million.
TABLE 3.6 National Science Foundation Expenditures on the Coordinated Experimental Research and Computing Research Equipment Programs (in millions of dollars), 1977-1985
Experimental Computer Researcha
Total Budget of Computer Sciences Section (1977-1983) and Division of Computer Research (1984-1985)
a Experimental Computer Research was the predominant source of infrastructure support within the Coordinated Experimental Research Program. It does not include support for faculty or CSNET.
SOURCE: Data for 1977-1993 compiled from the annual Summary of Awards for the National Science Foundation’s Mathematical Sciences Section. Data for 1984-1985 compiled from the annual Summary of Awards of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Computer Sciences.
The government has been the largest supporter of access to high-performance computers for researchers, especially those in universities. Through the mid-1980s, government funding of the IBM 701, UNIVAC LARC (Livermore Automatic Research Computer), Stretch, and later both the CDC and the Cray series of computers created large systems that were used for a variety of applications by researchers. In 1985, NSF launched a program of supercomputer centers to provide access to high-performance machines and to encourage development of useful technology and applications. Annual expenditures increased from $29 million to $71 million in 1996. This funding originally created five centers nationwide that provide researchers in many disciplines with access to supercomputer time.25 The centers were intended to allow for advanced computationally complex research that cannot be carried out on regular computers. Over time, the centers became the early proving grounds of a long-developing new
architecture for high-performance computing—parallel computing. The centers also play an important educational role for some computer science departments teaching parallel computing (CSTB, 1992, p. 225), and they became the spur for additional supercomputer centers, paid for by state and private sources, to be established in other universities. Some computer scientists contend, however, that the supercomputers offered little value to researchers in computer science and that their primary use was by scientists in other disciplines. There has been a long-standing tension in the computer programs about support for computer research and provision of computer facilities to support research in other scientific and engineering disciplines.
Nevertheless, numerous innovations emanated from these centers. They catalyzed work leading to modeling and visualization tools, motivated development of the browser technology for the World Wide Web, and introduced industry to large-scale scientific and engineering calculation on an impressive scale. Both university and government laboratory computer centers were in the forefront of availing themselves of new communications technology to link users and providers and to make more efficient use of computer power on a national level. Many of the centers were used by researchers in the oil, automotive, and pharmaceutical industries whose companies had joined the centers as industrial partners so that they might explore the benefits of supercomputers in their research, development, and manufacturing efforts. As such, the supercomputer sites brought together academic and industry researchers to work on problems of mutual benefit and filled a much-needed gap for computing resources. In doing so, the centers generated scientific and technical benefits as well as economic ones.
Federal agencies have long supported development and deployment of networking infrastructure to assist the research communities in computing and communications. As early as 1973, NSF initiated a program called Networking for Science, which provided between $600,000 and $750,000 per year to create computer networks for university researchers. More significant support for network infrastructure followed upon the development of packet-switched networking technologies by DARPA in the late 1960s and 1970s. This technology formed the basis of the ARPANET, which connected researchers at universities supported by DARPA research funding (see Chapter 7).
Use of the ARPANET expanded to the computer science research community and other scientific research communities starting in the 1970s. After management of the ARPANET was transferred to the De-
fense Communications Agency (now the Defense Information Systems Agency) in 1975, a number of federally supported, discipline-specific networks were established. These included (1) MFEnet, funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) to give academic physicists working on nuclear fusion access to supercomputers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; (2) HEPnet, also funded by DOE to support research in high-energy physics; and (3) Space Physics Analysis Network, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In the early 1980s, NSF established the CSNET to link computer science researchers at different universities who were not attached to the ARPANET. CSNET combined access to ARPANET, TELENET (a commercial packet-switched system run by a subsidiary of Bolt, Beranek, and Newman), and PhoneNet (an e-mail-only system for other academic departments). By 1985, CSNET had links to over 170 university, industrial, and government research organizations. In 1987, it merged with BITNET, another network serving users from academic institutions. CSNET operations were continued under the Corporation for Research and Education Networking until the fall of 1991 (CSTB, 1994, p. 238). The success of the CSNET convinced researchers of the value of a national computer network and therefore provided the impetus for NSF's more notable networking project, the NSFNET (Hafner and Lyon, 1996, pp. 241-245).
In 1986, NSF launched NSFNET, the backbone of a network that connected hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States with high-speed links and was used by departments of all varieties, including computer science and engineering. NSFNET linked NSF's five supercomputing centers and, in coordination with the connections programs of the late 1980s, provided seed funding to allow regional networks (such as the New York State Education and Research Network, or NYSERNet) and universities to interconnect. The connections program provided 2 years of financial support, after which participants were expected to assume financial responsibility. Under the federal government's National Research and Education Network program, different federal agencies, including NSF, NASA, DOE, DARPA, and the National Library of Medicine, launched or expanded separate, interconnected networking efforts that served specific communities. NSF's funding for NSFNET grew from $6.5 million in 1987 to $25 million in 1992, during which time the capacity of the backbone was upgraded several times. With the commercialization of the Internet in 1993, NSF's responsibility for managing the network declined, but it continued to fund development and deployment of high-speed network infrastructure, including the very high speed backbone networking system and the Next-Generation Internet. Expenditures on such network infrastructure reached $42 million in 1996.
Effects of Federal Investments in Research Infrastructure
The effects of federal investments in research infrastructure have been felt throughout the computing industry. Many concepts that were developed by industry and designed into products received their initial impetus from government-sponsored research and large-scale government development programs. Examples include core memories, computer time-sharing, the mouse, packet switching, computer graphics and virtual reality, speech recognition software, and relational databases. Chapter 4 and Chapters 6 through 10 of this report trace the influences of federal research funding upon the development of the particular technologies described above.
A more general sense of the broader linkages between federally funded research and innovation in computing can be derived from patent statistics. Although not an entirely satisfactory measure of innovation, patents can provide a rough measure of invention and, through the references cited within them, they can help in tracing the intellectual inputs to inventions.26 Recent studies by CHI Research, Inc., suggest a significant—and growing—linkage between publicly funded research and patents (and by extension, innovation). Between 1985 and 1994, the number of scientific or technical papers cited in individual patents rose from 0.4 to 1.4 in the United States.27 Of these papers, almost 75 percent were written by public-sector researchers in the United States or abroad (the public sector includes government laboratories, universities, and federally funded research and development centers). For the specific industries analyzed, reliance on public science was highest in drugs and medicines (79 percent of referenced papers) and lowest in electrical components (49 percent of referenced papers). Data for IBM indicate that only 21 percent of the papers referenced in its patents in 1993-1994 were written by IBM employees; 25 percent referenced papers by researchers at U.S. universities (Narin et al., 1997).
Similar figures hold for the computer industry. Between 1993 and 1994, 1,619 patents were issued in the United States containing references to papers published in computing-related journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Computers, the IBM Journal of Research and Development, Communications of the ACM, and Computer. Despite the fact that 75 percent of these patents were issued to U.S. companies, the majority of the papers cited by these patents were written by university or government researchers (Table 3.7). Moreover, of the papers for which funding information is available, 51 percent acknowledged funding from the federal government, whereas 37 percent acknowledged industry funding. NSF support was acknowledged in 22 percent of the papers, DARPA support in 6 percent.28 These
TABLE 3.7 Authorship and Source of Financial Support for Computer-related Papers Cited in U.S. Patents Granted in 1993-1994
Number of Acknowledgments per Source of Funding
Sector of Author(s)
Number of Papers Cited
NSFa
DARPAa
Industry and university
Government and university
a As a subset of the number acknowledging funding by the federal government.
SOURCE: Based on patent citation, authorship, and funding data provided by Francis Narin and Anthony Breitzman, CHI Research, Inc., Haddon Heights, N.J.
data are limited in that they reflect patenting behavior only during a recent 2-year period. Nevertheless, they suggest that federally sponsored research—especially that conducted at universities—continues to contribute to innovation in computing even as the computer industry has grown.
As this chapter demonstrates, the federal government has played an important role in helping to create the research infrastructure needed to support the nation's computing industry. The federal government became the primary source of funding for university research in computer science and electrical engineering and for research equipment in these disciplines. It also became the primary supporter of graduate students studying—and conducting research—in these fields. Such support complemented industry's efforts to build the much larger industrial infrastructure needed for successful innovation in computing and industry's contributions to public infrastructure (through equipment grants, tuition reimbursement, and sponsored research). Together, these investments created a publicly available pool of resources for others to draw upon. As subsequent chapters of this report describe in more detail, people with ideas and training made possible by public investments in research infrastructure helped staff the information revolution, disseminate its ideas, and chart its course. As part of the larger innovation process, they helped the nation to establish a dominant position in the international market for computing technology and to enjoy resulting social and economic benefits.
In aircraft, the government established the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics in 1915 to address both instrumentation and generic design in the form of a wind tunnel and the design of an aerodynamic foil or wing. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration continues to play a role in aeronautics research. The former U.S. Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has undertaken much research in developing scientific and technical standards in the fields of metallurgy, optics, and electronics, as well as in computing hardware and software.
The definitions of computer science and electrical engineering used in this report derive from those used by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in its surveys of federal research expenditures. See NSF (1997a).
NSF defines basic research as research in which "the objective of the sponsoring agency is to gain more complete knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and of observable facts, without specific applications toward processes or products in mind." It defines applied research as work
in which "the objective of the sponsoring agency is to gain knowledge or understanding necessary for determining the means by which a recognized need may be met." See NSF (1997a).
Several shortcomings also exist in the data and statistics that follow. They are somewhat incomplete as data for the early years of computing are either poorly documented or intermixed with data from mathematics, electrical engineering, or other disciplines. Some data are not generally available. For example, data on the National Security Agency's expenditures on computer-related research, although early and extensive, are not publicly available.
All data contained in this section derive from NSF (1997a) unless otherwise noted.
It is notoriously difficult to distinguish among basic and applied research in DOD. While DOD divides its R&D expenditures into several categories, with 6.1 designating basic research, 6.2 designating applied research, and 6.3 designating advanced development, the classifications are often used in incompatible ways. Some of the work classified as 6.2 is often claimed to result in fundamental breakthroughs. Hence, comparisons among federal agencies are somewhat ambiguous.
Statistics on federal and industry research spending are difficult to compare because they are compiled through different surveys (both administered by NSF), and because relevant spending is classified differently. Whereas federal research funding is classified by academic discipline (such as computer science or electrical engineering), industry research funding is classified by industry (computing and office equipment versus communications equipment). The comparison shown herein does not include industry-funded research for communications, electronic components, or related services, nor does it include the portion of federal funding of research in electrical engineering that might be relevant to those areas.
Office, Computing, and Accounting Machinery is the industry defined in the standardized industrial classification (SIC) codes (used for classifying government statistics on industrial production, employment, trade, and so on) that is most closely aligned with computing. It includes electronic computers, computer storage devices, computer terminals, other computer peripheral equipment, calculating and accounting machines (except electronic computers), and other office machines. It does not include communications equipment, electronic components, or software, which are classified as part of other industries.
The sharp decline in reported industry research expenditures in 1992-1994 resulted, in large part, from a reclassification of several companies into other industries (typically in the service sector). The reported rise in research spending between 1994 and 1996 reflects a combination of growing industry expenditures on research and the inclusion of several additional firms within the office and computing equipment industry category.
The communications equipment industry, SIC code 366, includes manufacturers of telephone, networking, radio, and television broadcasting equipment. It does not include communications service providers, such as telephone companies, radio and television broadcasting stations, and cable television companies, which are separately classified under SIC code 48. Historical data on R&D ex-
penditures by communications service firms are not generally available, although they are included in the communications equipment totals prior to 1976.
The electronic components industry includes integrated circuits as well as discrete components, such as transistors, diodes, resistors, and capacitors. Statistics on federal and industrial support for research (as opposed to R&D) in this sector are not available.
This estimate is based on annual data compiled by the National Science Foundation and contained in its series of publications, Research and Development in Industry, between 1956 and 1998.
The Taulbee surveys of Ph.D.-granting departments were initiated and administered by Orin Taulbee at the University of Pittsburgh from 1970 through 1984. They were administered subsequently by David Gries and Dorothy Marsh at Cornell University through 1991 and are now administered by the Computing Research Association with assistance from David Gries. Results were originally presented in Communications of the ACM and now appear in Computing Research News.
For example, in the late 1980s, MIT established a program in mathematics with a focus on computer science and another program in physics with a concentration in semiconductor devices and electronics as a means of reducing enrollments in its departments of electrical engineering and computer science.
The leveling off of Ph.D. production around 1980 caused considerable concern in the computer science community.
See, for example, U.S. Department of Commerce (1997).
See, for example, NSF (1988).
Professional societies also played a role in developing curricula for computer science education. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), sponsored the first major work on curricula for computer science, Curriculum 68, which influenced the undergraduate curriculum in many departments formed in the 1970s. Later, the ACM and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society worked together on curriculum efforts and jointly created the Computer Science Accreditation Board, which accredits undergraduate departments of computer science.
Data compiled from the National Science Foundation's database of sources of support for full-time science and engineering students, by academic discipline for fiscal years 1972-1996. The database is available online at
Between 20 and 23 percent of all graduate students in U.S. computer science and electrical engineering departments were supported by research assistantships during the time frame indicated.
Personal communication from Susan Clement, Stanford University, July 9, 1998. Statistics reported to NSF by Stanford University tend to underestimate the role of federal funding in supporting graduate students because they count only students supported by fellowships, not research assistantships. The Stanford figures cited in this chapter were provided directly by the university and count all forms of federal support.
Personal communication from John Hennessy, Dean of Engineering, Stanford University, June 22, 1998.
See Van Dam et al. (1991).
Personal communication with John R. Lehmann, Deputy Division Director for Computer-Communications Research, National Science Foundation, July 31, 1997.
In 1997, NSF restructured the Advanced Scientific Computing Centers program into the Partnership for Advanced Computation Infrastructure (PACI). Under the PACI program, each partnership operates a leading-edge site that maintains high-end hardware systems that are one or two orders of magnitude more capable than those typically available at a major research university. Nonleading-edge partners are expected to contribute to access, outreach, training, and software development. Two partnerships support two leading-edge centers and over 60 partners. These are the the National Computational Science Alliance, which is anchored by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, and the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, anchored by the San Diego Supercomputing Center in California.
Invention refers to the creation of new products or processes that meet the test of novelty and utility and are not obvious to experts in the field. Innovation generally refers to the development and application of a new product, process, or service. As a result, patent statistics suffer from a number of shortcomings as a measure of innovation. Patents register new inventions, not innovation. Many inventions are never commercialized, and many innovations are never patented. For example, a firm may decide to keep its innovation a trade secret rather than filing a patent, which requires a disclosure of the operation of the new product, process, or service. Much technological progress emerges from incremental innovation, learning by doing, and adaptation of existing technologies. Patent statistics do not provide any indication of the economic value of the invention patented.
The vast majority of patents do not cite scientific or technical literature; they tend to cite previous patents, demonstrating the degree to which they represent incremental improvements to the state of the art.
The estimates of patents and cited papers contained in this paragraph derive from data provided by Francis Narin and Anthony Breitzman at CHI Research, Inc., in Haddon Heights, N.J.
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The past 50 years have witnessed a revolution in computing and related communications technologies. The contributions of industry and university researchers to this revolution are manifest; less widely recognized is the major role the federal government played in launching the computing revolution and sustaining its momentum. Funding a Revolution examines the history of computing since World War II to elucidate the federal government's role in funding computing research, supporting the education of computer scientists and engineers, and equipping university research labs. It reviews the economic rationale for government support of research, characterizes federal support for computing research, and summarizes key historical advances in which government-sponsored research played an important role.
Funding a Revolution contains a series of case studies in relational databases, the Internet, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality that demonstrate the complex interactions among government, universities, and industry that have driven the field. It offers a series of lessons that identify factors contributing to the success of the nation's computing enterprise and the government's role within it.
Front Matter i–xxvi
Executive Summary 1–14
1 Introduction 15–39
2 Economic Perspectives on Public Support for Research 40–51
3 Federal Support for Research Infrastructure 52–84
4 The Organization of Federal Support: A Historical Review 85–135
5 Lessons From History 136–156
6 The Rise of Relational Databases 157–168
7 Development of the Internet and the World Wide Web 169–183
8 Theoretical Research: Intangible Cornerstone of Computer Science 184–197
9 Development in Artificial Intelligence 198–225
10 Virtual Reality Comes of Age 226–249
Bibliography 250–266
Appendix: Committee Biographies 267–273
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Pazzani, Martin
CEO In Residence, Bluestone Partners
Martin Pazzani is a CEO in Residence with Bluestone Partners in Beverly Hills, CA where he is pursuing capital investments in music, branded entertainment and media space and building an innovative worldwide alliance of best-in-class companies to capitalize on the growing applications for commercial music and sound, the growing importance of audio as a global communications tool, and the morphing of the music business into a new format that is part entertainment, part advertising, and part technology.
He is a seasoned global business executive and marketing decathlete with a 28-year tenure in management, brand building, integrated marketing and strategic development that spans the ad agency, corporate and entrepreneurial worlds, who until recently was Chairman/CEO of Elias Arts, the world’s most awarded music, sound and audio identity copy where they transformed the company into a diversified music agency.
Elias Arts, the most awarded commercial music and sound company in history, creates original music and sound design for television, advertising, cinema, and products/environments, and is the pioneer in the new field of audio branding. With clients that have included over 700 of the Fortune 1000, Elias Arts’ music, scoring, and audio logos have been used by the most well known brands in the world, including Nike, Adidas, Coke, Pepsi, Infiniti, Lexus, Chrysler, Cadillac, Audi, Anheuser Busch, Cisco, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, American Express, Visa, and many others.
During his eclectic career, Martin has done business on six continents and held senior positions in major corporations and agencies alike, including Foote Cone & Belding, the Interpublic Group, DDB Needham, Bally Total Fitness, and Heublein (now Diageo). In all these roles, Martin has been a strong proponent of using music and sound as a key element in the marketing mix, and he believes that the applications of audio have unlimited potential in the fragmented multi-media marketplace of today, and tomorrow.
When not commuting between NYC and Los Angeles, Martin has a passion for international adventure and travel. As an avid mountaineer, he has climbed major peaks on all seven continents and explored Antarctica, Easter Island, Ngorongoro Crater, the Equatorial Rainforests and more. And as a former F2000 racing driver, he has a keen appreciation for the value of speed, competition, and high performance. He resides in New York City and Hollywood, CA.
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