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A movie version of William Gibson's hugely influential sci-fi novel Neuromancer has been in development many times over the years, but has yet to make it to the screen. It has now been reported that another attempt is being made to adapt the classic book, with Deadpool's Tim Miller tapped to direct. According to Deadline, Miller and his VFX studio Blur will develop the movie at Fox. Miller was initially set to direct Deadpool 2 for the studio, but disagreements with star and producer Ryan Reynolds led to his departure in October last year. The site reports that Fox has been looking for a major project for Miller since then. X-Men producer Simon Kinberg is set to produce. Miller is the latest filmmaker to be attached to a potential Neuromancer movie. Directors Chris Cunningham and Chuck Russell previously worked on different versions of a script, while music video director Joseph Kahn was attached to the project in 2007. The film got closer in 2010 when Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice) was hired to work on it. His version was still in development as late as 2013, with a script co-written by Gibson. Neuromancer was first published in 1984. It tells the story of a veteran computer hacker who is hired by a mysterious employer to perform a dangerous, almost-impossible hack. The novel is now considered one of the most important works of the cyberpunk genre and is also notable for popularizing the term "cyberspace."
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE predicted on Wednesday that there would be "riots" if he does not secure the GOP nomination, given his lead among delegates. "Once the battle is over, once the war is over, I think there really is a natural healing process," Trump said on CNN's "New Day," pointing to his business record. "I've gotten along very well with people." "I think we'll win before getting to the convention. And if we're 20 votes short or if we're 100 short and we're at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400 ... I don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically." "I think you'd have riots," Trump continued. "I'm representing ... many, many millions of people, in many cases first-time voters." "I wouldn't lead it, but I think bad things would happen," Trump predicted, adding later, "After we win, I think a lot of feelings will be soothed." Despite a strong performance Tuesday night in which he won several states and extended his delegate count, Trump is unlikely to finish with enough delegates to reach the 1,237 threshold before the party's convention in July. If Trump continues to win at the pace he is now, he'd fall more than 100 delegates short, allowing rivals Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE and John Kasich to make a play for the nomination at a contested convention. Cruz has predicted that he'd win the 1,237 delegates needed before the convention, and he currently places second in the overall delegate count, hoping to benefit from Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid \| Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration \| New malicious cyber tool found \| Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE's exit from the race Tuesday night.
Google has acquired what’s left of Cuil, a once-promising search startup that closed up shop about a year and a half ago. The startup, which was founded by two former Googlers and an IBM employee, has relinquished control of its pending patents to Google. As blogger Bill Slawski uncovered today in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database, Google has acquired seven of the patents of its onetime rival. Most of the IP revolves around user interfaces and how to better present search results when multiple meanings are possible for a single keyword or phrase. The patents do not contain any intellectual property about search algorithms; rather, these innovations are about UI only, not what’s under the hood. Google has been playing around quite a bit over the past few years with its KISS approach to search UI. After adding images, shopping results, and news results in with indexed web pages, the company recently unveiled the addition of people-powered social data via Google+. Former Googler and Cuil founder Anna Patterson now works at Google again; she’s been a director at the search giant since Cuil shut its website down in September 2010. Cuil raised a total of $33 million from prominent venture capital firms between its founding in 2008 and its shutdown. The startup claimed to have indexed 120 billion web pages, larger than Google’s index at the time. Here’s a look at the Cuil navigation and tabs UI for which Google has acquired patents:
Earth is often struck by solar eruptions. These eruptions consist of energetic particles that are hurled away from the Sun into space, where those directed towards Earth encounter the magnetic field around our planet. When these eruptions interact with Earth's magnetic field they cause beautiful auroras. A poetic phenomenon that reminds us, that our closest star is an unpredictable neighbor. When the Sun pours out gigantic amounts of hot plasma during the large solar eruptions, it may have severe consequences on Earth. Solar eruptions are, however, nothing compared to the eruption we see on other stars, the so-called 'superflares'. Superflares have been a mystery since the Kepler mission discovered them in larger numbers four years ago. Questions arose: Are superflares formed by the same mechanism as solar flares? If so, does that mean that the Sun is also capable of producing a superflare? An international research team led by Christoffer Karoff from Aarhus University, Denmark, has now provided answers to some of these questions. These alarming answers are published in Nature Communications. The dangerous neighbor The Sun is capable of producing monstrous eruptions that can break down radio communication and power supplies here on Earth. The largest observed eruption took place in September 1859, where gigantic amounts of hot plasma from our neighboring star struck Earth. On 1 September 1859, astronomers observed how one of the dark spots on the surface of the Sun suddenly lit up and shone brilliantly over the solar surface. This phenomenon had never been observed before and nobody knew what was to come. On the morning of September 2, the first particles from, what we now know was an enormous eruption on the Sun, reached Earth. The 1859 solar storm is also known as the "Carrington Event." Auroras associated with this event could be seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii, telegraph system worldwide went haywire, and ice core records from Greenland indicate that Earth's protective ozone layer was damaged by the energetic particles from the solar storm. The cosmos, however, contains other stars and some of these regularly experience eruptions that can be up to 10,000 times larger than the Carrington event. Solar flares occur when large magnetic fields on the surface of the Sun collapse. When that happens, huge amounts of magnetic energy are released. Christoffer Karoff and his team have use observations of magnetic fields on the surface of almost 100,000 stars made with the new Guo Shou Jing telescope in China to show that these superflares are likely formed via the same mechanism as solar flares. "The magnetic fields on the surface of stars with superflares are generally stronger than the magnetic fields on the surface of the Sun. This is exactly what we would expect, if superflares are formed in the same way as solar flares" explains Christoffer Karoff. Can the Sun create a superflare? It does therefore not seem likely that the Sun should be able to create a superflare, its magnetic field is simply to weak. However... Out of all the stars with superflares that Christoffer Karoff and his team analyzed, around 10% had a magnetic field with a strength similar to or weaker than the Sun's magnetic field. Therefore, even though it is not very likely, it is not impossible that the Sun could produce a superflare. "We certainly did not expect to find superflare stars with magnetic fields as week as the magnetic fields on the Sun. This opens the possibility that the Sun could generate a superflare -- a very frightening thought" elaborates Christoffer Karoff. If an eruption of this size was to strike Earth today, it would have devastating consequences. Not just for all electronic equipment on Earth, but also for our atmosphere and thus our planet's ability to support life. Trees hid a secret Evidence from geological archives has shown that the Sun might have produced a small superflare in AD 775. Here, tree rings show that anomalously large amounts of the radioactive isotope 14C were formed in Earth's atmosphere. 14C is formed when cosmic-ray particles from our galaxy, the Milky Way, or especially energetic protons from the Sun, formed in connection with large solar eruptions, enter Earth's atmosphere. The studies from the Guo Shou Jing telescope support the notion that the event in AD 775 was indeed a small superflare, i.e. a solar eruption 10-100 times larger that the largest solar eruption observed during the space age. "One of the strengths of our study is that we can show how astronomical observations of superflares agree with Earth-based studies of radioactive isotopes in tree rings." Explains Christoffer Karoff. In this way, the observations from the Guo Shou Jing telescope can be used to evaluate how often a star with a magnetic field similar to the Sun would experience a superflare. The new study shows that the Sun, statistically speaking, should experience a small superflare every millennium. This is in agreement with idea that the event in AD 775 and a similar event in AD 993 were indeed caused by small superflares on the Sun. It is no coincidence that the new Guo Shou Jing telescope in China was used for this study. In order to measure the magnetic fields, Christoffer Karoff and his team used a spectrum for every star of the 100,000 stars available for this analysis. A spectrum shows the colors, or wavelengths, of the light from the stars. Here, certain short ultraviolet wavelengths can be used to measure the magnetic fields around the stars. The problem is, however, that conventional telescopes are only capable of obtaining one spectrum of a single star at a time. Therefore, if the observations were to be made with another telescope, such as the Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma -- a telescope the research group has used before -- it would require 15-20 years of continuous observations. The Guo Shou Jing telescope, or LAMOST as it is also called, is optimized for obtaining spectra of up to 4,000 stars simultaneously, as 4,000 optical fibers are connected to the telescope. This makes it possible to observe 100,000 stars in only a few weeks and it is this special capability that has made it possible to generate the new results.
Sam Barlow’s Her Story claims most awards, with Life is Strange, Ori and the Blind Forest and Crypt of the NecroDancer also praised This year’s GDC Awards have proclaimed CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher III: Wild Hunt as the best game released in 2015. The epic fantasy RPG picked up the top honour of Game of the Year at this year’s Game Developer Choice Awards. It also swiped the prize for Best Technology, recognising its visually impressive game engine and expansive environments. Hot on its heels was Sam Barlow’s indie smash hit Her Story, which received more awards than any other game on the evening. The FMV crime fiction title went home with the awards for Innovation, Best Narrative and Best handheld/Mobile Game, having launched on iOS and Android as well as PC. Barlow’s success at the GDC Awards closely followed its winning run at the preceding IGF Awards, where it won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Narrative trophies. Moon Studios picked up two prizes, Best Debut and Best Visual Art, for its PC and Xbox One platformer Ori and the Blind Forest. Best Design went to Psyonix’s wildly popular car-football title Rocket League. DontNod’s teenage time-bending episodic release Life is Strange was heralded as the best game in the Audience Award, which is decided by online voters. Best Audio went to funky dungeon-crawler Crypt of the NecroDancer from Brace Yourself Games. Three special prizes were handed out to major figures in the games development industry. The Pioneer Award went to Minecraft creator and Mojang founder Markuss ‘Notch’ Persson for his efforts in establishing games as a creative tool. University of Southern California games programme director and Game Innovation Lab leader Tracey Fullerton was the recipient of the Ambassador Award, which recognises those who have helped games “advance to a better place”. Bethesda Game Studios creative director, designer and executive producer Todd Howard was bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement trophy, reflecting his work helming franchises including Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.
In terms of health care, your pharmacist is your last stop between your doctor and any prescription drugs you take. Subsequently, they're trained to answer all kinds of questions about drug interactions, types of drugs, and plenty more. With that in mind, here are five questions every should ask their pharmacist before picking up medications. Prescription drugs are a complicated business, and drugs interact with you, each other, and even your diet in all sorts of ways. So, it's important to have a firm grasp on what's really going on with those medications. I spoke with Stan Katz, RPh to figure out the best questions to ask your pharmacist to get the treatment you need. Advertisement First: Get to Know Your Pharmacist You and your pharmacist are going to have a longstanding relationship, so it's good to take the time to get to know them before you choose your pharmacist. Just like you would with a doctor, Katz recommends spending a few minutes chatting your pharmacist up to get a feel for how useful they'll be: I'd recommend that when you go into a pharmacy for the first time you spend two minutes talking to them just to get a feel of if you're comfortable with them. All pharmacists have to pass the same state boards, and took the same courses, but it's still a good idea to talk with them. Make sure you feel comfortable with them just like you would a doctor, lawyer, or anyone else. Advertisement Your pharmacist has a lot of power, and when they're doing their job properly they're going to help you through using your prescriptions properly, so ensuring they're on the same page as you is a worthwhile way to spend a couple minutes. If they're not really forthcoming, then they're probably not the pharmacist you want. They Can Tell You About Your Prescriptions and How They Interact Advertisement Anytime you get a new prescription you need to talk to your pharmacist about it. You should have already done this with your doctor, but your pharmacist is trained to really understand what exactly a drug does, how it interacts with other drugs, and potential problems you might come across. This might include information your doctor doesn't know, and Katz points out that it's not always just about interactions with other drugs: The first thing you should do is discuss with the pharmacist about that particular drug if they haven't taken it previously to make sure it's not going to interfere with anything else they're going to take. That includes prescription items, or over-the-counter, or in some cases food. Certain prescription drugs can interact with the food you eat, or even any holistic or herbal supplements you might take. So, even if you've talked with your doctor about what a prescription drug is, it's still worth speaking with your pharmacist as well. Doctors aren't always aware of every single possible drug interaction. So, if you have a lot of prescriptions, especially if they're from different doctors, it's worth discussing the issue with your pharmacist because they have a lot more information than your doctor does: We have computer programs that highlight drug interactions and incompatibilities, but it's still up to the pharmacist to discuss that with the patient and make a judgement on it. Very often that results in a call to physician to ask if they really want the prescription. Advertisement In general, your pharmacist should notice right away that a prescription could potentially interact badly with another one, but if you're worried about it then it's always worth the couple of seconds to make sure that you, your doctor, and your pharmacist are all on the same page. Finally, it might seem like common sense, but when you pick up your prescription it's good to take a look in the bottle to make sure everything's the same. Your pharmacist can tell you why: If you've been taking a drug for a while and notice a difference in appearance, you should definitely ask if it's the right medication. Advertisement Sometimes, a prescription drug manufacturer might simply change the shape of a pill, but it's also entirely possible your prescription may be been mixed up with something else. So, before you leave, take a look inside the pill bottle and make sure you recognize what you're walking out with. They Can Give You Information About (Cheaper) Generic Options Advertisement Generic prescription drugs are usually significantly cheaper than name brand drugs. In most cases, you can supplement a generic for name brand prescription and never know the difference. However, as Katz points out, they're often not produced under the same kinds of conditions as name brand pills, so it's good to also ask your pharmacist a little about their history: In general, generics are required to be equivalent to name brand drugs by having a certain blood level within a given length of time. That level has to last approximately the same length as the name brand drug. Personally, I prefer to use generics for myself that are made in places where I know. There are a lot of drugs made in countries that are questionable, and I'd avoid those. When I was working, I'd direct people to generics I would use myself, but now that I'm retired I do it for myself. As Fortune points out, all sorts of different issues can arise from generics: With an estimated 80% of active drug ingredients and 40% of finished medications coming from overseas—in some cases from manufacturing plants that the FDA has not yet inspected—quality can be significantly compromised. In November the maker of generic Lipitor, Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals, recalled 480,000 bottles after tiny shards of glass were found inside pills. (The FDA granted Ranbaxy, India's largest generics company, permission to produce a version of the anticholesterol medication, a process Fortune chronicled in a 2011 article titled "The War Over Lipitor." The approval came after a seven-year investigation in which the Justice Department concluded that, among other misbehavior, Ranbaxy had fabricated drug-approval data. The company agreed to pay $500 million and entered into a consent decree.) Advertisement Your pharmacist should have a pretty good idea of where generics come from and how they're made. So, ask them for a recommendation, and if they'd take it themselves. Generics are supposed to be of the same quality as the name brand, but that's simply not always the case, and your pharmacist should be able to help you navigate the pros and cons of a particular generic.
Rick Gates has tried without success before to change the terms of his bail arrangement. \| Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Judge denies Rick Gates’ bid for Thanksgiving break from house arrest Former Donald Trump campaign staffer Rick Gates, who’s facing charges in Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, lost his bid Thursday to get out of strict home confinement rules so he can travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas and drive his four children to school and extracurricular activities, as well as continue his lobbying work. U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied Gates’ request and instead urged his attorneys to finish negotiating a bail package with prosecutors, who last month charged the former Trump campaign aide and his longtime boss, Paul Manafort, with money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent. Both Gates and Manafort have pleaded not guilty. Story Continued Below “The court is well aware that a house full of busy children comes with constant and competing transportation demands, and that the burden shouldered by many mothers is exacerbated in this case by defendant’s current bond conditions,” Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote in a two-page opinion Thursday. Jackson noted that any request to change Gates’ current house arrest arrangement can’t happen until a formal agreement is reached to guarantee the defendant’s $5 million bond would be paid if he didn’t appear in court as the case proceeds toward a potential criminal trial next spring. Gates’s original request filed Wednesday took issue with his current home confinement set-up, saying it had become a “great burden on his family and hardship to his wife” who had become solely responsible for taking their four children to and from school, to extracurricular activities and during weekend outings to birthday parties and other events. Playbook PM Sign up for our must-read newsletter on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. “His wife is physically not able to keep up with these transportation demands,” wrote Gates’ attorney, Shanlon Wu, who also noted that Gates would like permission to leave his home for 18 hours over two days around Thanksgiving and for yet-to-be-determined Christmas plans. Gates also requested the court’s permission to meet with clients and potential clients around Richmond, Virginia, and in Washington “in order to continue to earn an income so that he may support his family.” That request didn’t go over well with Mueller’s office, which quickly filed its own three-page response brief Wednesday arguing that Gates should first reach a bail agreement before trying to tinker with the home arrest rules that over the past two weeks have allowed him to leave only for visits with his attorneys, court appearances, and for medical and religious reasons. Andrew Weissmann, a senior Mueller prosecutor, said Gates hadn’t completed the paperwork to post his house or any other property for bail and had “failed to answer a series of questions about his assets.” The special counsel official also argued that the court should not grant Gates’ pre-emptive request for a reprieve over Christmas — still more than a month away — noting that “undermines the notion that counsel is diligently working to secure a bail package.” The brief from Mueller’s team did confirm that it had gotten some materials from Gates, though it complained that even those details were problematic. For example, Gates delivered information about two nonrelatives who could sponsor his bail package. But Mueller’s office noted that one of them is already a sponsor for another relative facing charges in U.S. District Court in New York. “A circumstance that, at least at first blush, raises certain concerns,” Weissmann wrote. Before Jackson had issued her Thursday ruling, Gates’ attorneys swung back at Mueller in a second court filing that said the special counsel had been “dismayingly disingenuous” about the status of the bail negotiations. Mueller’s office, Wu wrote, had “entirely caused” the delay. In a four-page brief, Wu argued Mueller’s office had been given names and other critical information on Nov. 6 for three of five guarantors who could secure Gates’ $5 million bail package. Mueller’s prosecutor, Greg Andres, also got permission on Nov. 8 to speak with the bank representative holding Gates’ mortgage. Mueller’s office since this Tuesday was also holding a new appraisal of Gates’ house — at $2.9 million, with $1.6 million in net equity. Wu also took issue with the characterization by Mueller’s office that Gates wanted out of home confinement altogether. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” the Gates attorney wrote, explaining that the defendant was proposing to continue checking in with the court and to have his location monitored by an electronic GPS ankle bracelet. “Granting this limited modification in no way increases the risk of Mr. Gates fleeing,” Wu wrote. “To the contrary, with each passing day, Mr. Gates’ perfect compliance with his release conditions demonstrates a growing foundation of good faith and reliability. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for [Mueller’s] position on bail.” The early flare-up over the rules surrounding Gates’ house arrest is the latest in a series of court skirmishes that are expected to continue as the case against the two Trump aides heads to a trial. Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing, earlier this month told the court he planned to file pretrial motions questioning “the legal basis for and sufficiency of the charges, the suppression of evidence improperly obtained by search warrant, subpoena or otherwise.” He also said he might try to stop Mueller’s prosecutors from presenting some evidence during the trial. Gates has tried without success before to change the terms of his bail arrangement. Last Saturday, Berman rejected his request to shuttle his children around for a few hours over the weekend, noting for starters that the ask had been delivered to the court after business hours on a Friday.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images There are widespread reports of internet outages Monday as Level 3, the Colorado-based company that builds and operates the infrastructure of fiber lines making up the internet’s backbone, appeared to be experiencing failures across the country. The reports started around 1 p.m. EST. Comcast confirmed in a tweet that customers of its Xfinity service, which relies on Level 3, are having issues with their internet. There have been thousands of reports of Comcast internet problems throughout the day, according to the outage notification service Down Detector. Some customers are having issues with their XFINITY Internet service. We apologize & appreciate your patience while we work to fix. — ComcastCares (@comcastcares) November 6, 2017 Advertisement Spectrum, AT&T, and Verizon customers are also reporting internet troubles, though in lower volumes. Television and phone services appear to be largely unaffected. Maps of the Level 3 outages and Comcast outages are roughly identical as of 3 p.m. The hardest-hit areas are primarily in the Northeast and West Coast, though there were outages throughout the country, particularly in large cities. Update, Nov. 6, 5:00 p.m.: A representative from Level 3 sent us the following statement:
In what will only continue the endless stream of iPhone 6 leaks, MacRumors brings attention to a couple of new photos and videos of the supposed iPhone 6 back. Interestingly, a new dark black piece has been seen for the first time, featuring a shade much darker than the current Space Gray iPhone 5s. Until today, only gray pieces have been spotted, which does make the legitimacy of the part somewhat questionable. The post also highlights some new images and videos from Fed & Volk, who ostensibly possess mid-production units of the iPhone 6 rear. This case is the standard light gray variant, however, and matches the component leaks we have been seeing from other sources for many months now. See a video of the part after the break … Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial These pieces do not feature speaker grilles, although the company says that this is because the part is incomplete and missing some details present in the final unit. The images clearly show how the internals of the iPhone 6 will be laid out, although specifics on these components cannot be inferred from the case alone. The nano-sim slot is visible however, on the right hand side. As noted previously, the Apple logo is cutout from the shell which has prompted some speculation about whether Apple will backlight this element inline with the Mac lineup. There has not been any concrete evidence for this however. It should be noted that iPads use the cutout style, allowing radio signals to pass through a plastic covering. Regardless of its purpose, this is the most notable change visible in these images.
Lawrence J. Joyce, an attorney and practicing pharmacist from Poplar Grove, says Cruz is not a natural born citizen as the Constitution requires, but is instead "naturalized" citizen born in the Canadian province of Alberta in 1970. That disqualifies him from running for president. SPRINGFIELD - Donald Trump has threatened to initiate such a lawsuit, but he may have been beat to the punch - right here in Illinois. An objection to U.S. Senator Ted Cruz's qualifications to run for president on the Illinois Republican ballot could send shockwaves nationwide if it is sustained by the Illinois State Board of Elections next week. Joyce said in a statement published Friday in WorldNetDaily: “Sen. Ted Cruz was born in Canada. He has been a U.S. citizen since birth, but that was by statute. The Constitution requires one to be a ‘natural born’ citizen in order to be president. And the governing case law of the U.S. Supreme Court and the whole history of the law points to the conclusion that Ted Cruz is not a natural born citizen. What is worse, is that Sen. Cruz has known about this problem for a long time now. Yet he has not even made any effort to clarify this in any formal setting, though he could have at least done that. Sen. Cruz has been whistling past the graveyard all along. That he should happen to do so within the thoughts of his own mind would be one thing, but that he should now drag the entire Republican Party through a potential nightmare simply because of his negligence, his own private, wishful thinking and his lack of due diligence is inexcusable. Joyce’s motion was filed on Friday with James Tenuto, assistant executive director of the Illinois State Board of Elections. Joyce says he believes Dr. Ben Carson would be a better Republican nominee and president. He also is concerned that a lawsuit filed by the Democrats against Cruz could result in a Republican establishment takeover of the nomination process. Cruz' attorney from Illinois - Sharee Langenstein - will have until January 25th to respond to Joyce's complaint. At that time, the State Board of Elections will need to decide whether to allow Cruz on Illinois March 15th Republican primary ballot. Several other presidential candidates - from both Democrat and Republican parties - have outstanding objections that must be decided by the Board next week. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2016/01/democrat-gop-presidential-candidates-challenged-for-march-15th-primary.html
Story highlights Authorities say they discovered thousands of cannabis plants at various stages of growth Bunker was built in the 1980s and meant to be used in case of a nuclear attack (CNN) Police in the United Kingdom discovered a large cannabis factory after raiding a nuclear bunker on Thursday. The value of the crop they recovered was estimated at over £1 million ($1.2 million). Police in the county of Wiltshire say they arrested six people during a midnight raid on RGHQ Chilmark, an underground nuclear bunker built in the 1980s to protect government officials and local dignitaries in case of a nuclear attack. While the site is no longer owned by the UK's Ministry of Defense, the bunker is intact and the nuclear blast doors remain in place. After receiving intelligence about the operation going on in the nearly impenetrable bunker, police said they waited outside for three people to leave and then detained them, using their keys to gain entry. Inside, police said they found three more people, believed to be operating as gardeners along with several thousand cannabis plants at various stages of growth. Read More
Mayor Bill de Blasio was projected as the winner Tuesday night for a second term as the chief executive of New York City. “You wanted four more years? You got four more years,” de Blasio told supporters in his victory speech Tuesday night. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, de Blasio had 66 percent of the vote, compared with 28 percent for his Republican challenger, state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis. De Blasio took the stage to the pounding John Legend song, “Our Generation.” He said when he first ran for mayor four years ago, he called for “fundamental change in this city.” But he said he and his supporters faced what he called “a cacophony of doubt and cynicism” – and some were even concerned that the city would go to the “bad old days” and there would be “chaos.” “Well, they were wrong,” the mayor said. “We proved that we could make our city safer. We proved that we could make our schools better. We proved that we could make our economy stronger. We did this together, and we took on some very powerful forces when we did it.” De Blasio said there is still a lot of work to be done, and his mission in his second term would be to make sure New Yorkers no longer feel the deck is stacked against them. “We’ve got to become a fairer city, and we’ve got to do it soon. We’ve got to do it fast,” he said. He added, “You saw some important changes in the last four years, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Noting his achievement on securing pre-kindergarten for New Yorkers, de Blasio touted his plan for 3-K – in which every 3-year-old would get early childhood education for free. “It’s never been done before, but it’s going to be done here,” de Blasio said. He said the goal is to make sure every child reads on grade level by the third grade. The mayor also touted his call instead for a millionaires’ tax to fund improvements in the struggling subway system and his plan to create 100,000 good-paying jobs for residents of the five boroughs. He also noted a plan for all NYPD patrol officers to begin wearing body cameras in the next two years. De Blasio also said New York City would stand up to the policies of the Trump administration in Washington, as he celebrated other Democratic victories Tuesday night. “I bring you glad tidings of joy this evening, because America got a little fairer tonight. America got a little bluer tonight,” de Blasio said. Democrat Phil Murphy won the race for governor in New Jersey Tuesday, while Democrat Ralph Northam won the gubernatorial race in Virginia. “Let’s cheer so they can hear us in New Jersey. Let’s cheer so they can hear us in Virginia,” de Blasio said. “And tonight, New York City sent a message to the White House as well. The message was this – you can’t take on New York values and win, Mr. President.” ELECTION RESULTS: New York \| New Jersey PHOTOS: Election Day 2017 De Blasio also noted the significance of being the first Democrat to win re-election as mayor of New York City since Ed Koch – who served from 1978 to 1989 and was last reelected 32 years ago. “This is the beginning of a new era for progressive Democratic leadership in New York City for years and years to come,” de Blasio said. For the four years to come, the mayor said his focus would be making New York City into the fairest city in America. A major component of the plan, he said, is to make sure people can afford the city – with “the biggest affordable housing plan anywhere in the country,” the strongest laws to require affordable housing, and free lawyers to anyone faced with eviction.” He also said he wanted to see “everyone’s paycheck get a little bigger, and then a little bigger and then a little bigger.” Making it easier for New Yorkers to register and vote was also among de Blasio’s agenda items. “How can we be proud as New Yorkers when it’s just so damn hard to vote here?” he said. And with regard to police-community relations, de Blasio said, he wanted “every police officer to know the name of the resident they serve in the community, and I want those residents to know the name of their officer. I want everyone on the same side.” “We can make this the city it was mean to be,” de Blasio said. “We are only just getting started.” Meanwhile, Malliotakis conceded the race early. Joined onstage by surrogates and her parents, Malliotakis said she ran because she thought that not all voters were being represented in City Hall and she saw the quality of life going downhill. “This race was about trash, about transit, about the deteriorating quality of life that we’re experiencing,” Malliotakis said. “It was about the 28 percent increase in property tax levy while the quality of life deteriorated.” As 1010 WINS’ Samantha Liebman reported, Malliotakis’ speech was punctuated by the song “I Won’t Back Down” by the late Tom Petty. She said that is just what she will continue to do. “This is when you take a step back and reflect,” Malliotakis said. “I’m just going to keep on fighting for my constituents as a member of the state Assembly for now.” Coming in third in the mayoral race was Sal Albanese with 2 percent. Albanese lost to de Blasio in the Democratic primary, but appeared in the general election ballot on the Reform Party ticket. Bo Dietl, a businessman and former detective, appeared in both debates with de Blasio and Malliotakis. But he ended up with just 1 percent of the vote, coming in slightly behind Green Party candidate Akeem Browder and Smart Cities Party candidate Mike Tolkin. Dietl said he will never seek office again. Coming in last in the polls was Libertarian Party candidate Aaron Commey, who captured less than 1 percent of the vote. In other city races, Letitia James handily won a second term as city public advocate, with about 72 percent of the vote. Her next closest challenger, Republican Juan Carlos Polanco, had 17 percent. Scott Stringer also coasted to an easy victory for a second term as city comptroller. With 80 percent of the precincts reporting, he had 76 percent of the vote compared with 21 percent for his next closest challenger, Republican Michel Faulkner. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Brooklyn Borough Prsident Eric Adams, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, and Staten Island Borough President James Oddo also easily won reelection in their races. In the race for Brooklyn District Attorney, Democrat Eric Gonzalez was on the path to being elected to a full term, with 89 percent of the vote compared with 11 percent for Republican Vincent Gentile. Gonzalez took over as acting district attorney last year after DA Kenneth Thompson, who died following a battle with cancer. Most incumbent members of the New York City Council also won reelection, although a few races were too close to call late Tuesday night. (© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
When I joined the convent, I informed my coworkers at the hip, tech company I worked for in San Francisco by sending them a link to the theme song for the TV show The Flying Nun. After I sent out the email, a coworker gleefully asked me if I was leaving to become “one of those rad women priests.” I told her frankly that I was not and that I actually was (and am) fine with the Church’s stance on women’s ordination. Shocked that I could actually buy into the archaic, patriarchal norms of the Catholic Church the coworker ceased talking to me for the remaining two weeks I was there. I don’t know about any other Catholic women out there but I am getting really tired of being pitied or thought a fool because I have no problem with the fact that I can’t be a priest. I’m especially getting tired of men telling me that I should feel oppressed and discriminated against because I belong to a Church in which there is a role that I cannot fulfill as a woman. Talk about paternalism. The thing is, I did not have a problem with women being barred from ordination when I was an atheist either. Even then, I could logically see that religion is an entirely different animal than the other institutions in modern society. If one truly believes that there are divinely revealed truths, then it is possible to believe that, for reasons one may not entirely understand at a certain point in history, God will ordain or design something that goes against the grain of the reigning tastes or ideals. I thought this was obvious even when, from the outside, it seemed clear to me that women should be able to be ordained and that God did not exist at all. Now, from the inside, I see many new things. For one, I see that women do things differently. Even if we do the same things, we do them differently because we bring to them the feminine genius of womanhood. In other words, men and women can and should do many of the same things. But they will always do them differently. Just watch Taylor Swift’s new video “Bad Blood” and you’ll see what I mean. Women can be action heroes, just like men. We just do it differently (and with more style): And perhaps God, realizing that, had it in his plan for women to act in our baptismal role as priests in a way that would be different from men. We, of course, can do many of the same things that priests do. But we do it differently. And this is what God has asked us to do in his Church. The male priesthood is just one thread in a beautiful, intricate puzzle of salvation designed by the greatest artist of all, God. Remove one thread and it affects the entire work of art. Outwardly, male priests may look like an inequality, but inwardly it is simply in keeping with God’s artistic preferences as the just Creator of the Universe. As a religious sister, I see this even more clearly now because I see my own role in salvation, and I know that it is different than the role of an ordained priest. There are both men and women religious in the Church, and we all are threads in the tapestry, but women religious have a beautiful role in the Church that cannot be replaced by anything a man could ever do. We are women religious, and our distinctly feminine way of relating to the world and to God’s people is irreplaceable. The thing is, no one seems to have a problem with me saying this. But if I said, “We are men and we are priests, and our distinctly masculine way of relating to the world and to God’s people is irreplaceable” then people would most likely object. Why? Because in the view of the world, priests have power and women religious do not. The hierarchy of the Church is male. Dogma is determined by males. No females allowed. This looks, on its face, unjust. But from the inside, we know that in reality, no man is determining dogma. The Magisterium of the Church has a boss and it is the Holy Spirit. Priests are not holding the reins, they are just on the ride of salvation like everyone else. Their roles may differ from ours, but their degree of power should not. I say should not, because we all know that we are human and the fact is that women have been oppressed and discriminated against since the beginning of time. The Church has not been miraculously immune to sexism. I still, at times, experience sexism as a woman religious. There are people in the Church who see the hierarchical structure of the Church and mistake the God-given design as an indication that men are somehow more valuable, more needed, and more deserving of respect than women. These sexist attitudes can be seen in the kind of “clericalism” that Pope Francis condemns outright. He once prayed: Lord, free your people from a spirit of clericalism and aid them with a spirit of prophecy. Why is clericalism linked to stifling prophecy? Because men and women are all called, in our own unique ways, to be priests, prophets and kings. When we give too much power to one group in the Church through, for instance, misguided attitudes of clericalism, it stifles the rest of God’s people who are unable to play their role in the Church as they should. That is why, when Pope Francis calls for more feminine participation in the Church on all levels, I am enthusiastically behind this sentiment. There is work to be done in the Church to expand the role of women and I believe this is firmly in keeping with Jesus’ original intent. So, in the end, the outside world’s changing ideals, insofar as they reflect truth, can help the Church to question and work to align Herself with the equality that God had in mind when he designed the work of salvation. But this will only take us to a point. We cannot transgress the directives received in Scripture, Tradition and through the Magisterium, that the role of the priesthood is a role reserved for males, just as the role of a woman religious, (which is just as valuable, powerful, and needed as the role of the priest!), is reserved to women. So, sorry guys, no veils for you.
Passion is everywhere and Inspiration can strike at any moment. Atlanta's buzzing Streetwear culture is on the rise, as Full Clip Global ®, sets the tone with 13 partenering clothing brands to present to you the Atlanta Streetwear Market. On April 22nd, Twelve Atlanta brands set the stage in the heart of the city to provide consumers, taste makers, and fashion enthusiasts the platform and experience never before seen in Atlanta. From the German imported brand, Ballrom, to the gritty and eye-catching appeal of Fishscale, the ASWM will have a diverse range of brands to get familiar with, learn, and shop with, as well as live DJ sets, free giveaways, and food. What's your aesthetic? Clean cut? Gritty? Graphic heavy? Simplistic? The ASWM offers a wide range of style in a one of a kind atmosphere. The atmosphere is for those from all backgrounds. The World Is Yours. The Atlanta Streetwear Market is here to make a statement. Aim High, Never Compromise - Full Clip Global ® Address: 565 North Side Drive SW Unit #7 , Atlanta Abram creative space Brands: Full Clip Gloal (Hosting) Fishscale Complete ATL Fewless Dante's Closet YugenCreations ™ Ballroom Fishscale Amoure Co. Art.is.Currency Dry Clean Only Flair Visions Bonsoir/ Southern Flair MBF (Man's Best Friend) GUIDELINES: - No Outside Food, Drink, or Alcohol. - This is NOT a personal trading event, clothing from outside brands or personal projects are not prohibited.
Credit: Mustafa Bag/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images An Afghan soldier is seen in a helicopter during a military operation from Sar-e Pol, Afghanistan, on Aug. 29, 2015, as part of the operations which have been launched against the Islamic State in Afghanistan. KABUL -- As the United States ramps up its offensive against the Afghanistan branch of the Islamic State, the Taliban -- a self-declared enemy of ISIS -- says the American people are being fed lies. The Islamic State isn't a major issue in the country, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told the The WorldPost in an email. “The existence of the ISIS rumor in Afghanistan is an advertisement issue and is used to invade Afghanistan,” he said, adding that the American government and the CIA, in particular, are betraying Americans in order to keep troops in Afghanistan. The Taliban brutally ruled the country between 1996 and 2001, when the U.S. and its allies invaded to target Al Qaeda camps there following the Sept. 11 attacks. The group has led an insurgency against the Western presence in the country ever since, and hopes to eventually re-establish control over Afghanistan now that the U.S.-led coalition is slowly pulling out. The Obama administration has allowed American troops in Afghanistan to train the nation's army for battle against the Taliban and to target what's left of Al Qaeda there. But now the U.S. says its forces are going to target a new threat: In January, the White House cleared the way for Americans to target the Islamic State in Afghanistan, a branch of the group formally known as ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K. It was the first legal action of its kind meant to curb the extremist organization's growth outside of Iraq and Syria, where Islamic State fighters have raped, pillaged and enforced a violent interpretation of Islam. While the Taliban’s distaste for the Islamic State is no secret, the powerful militant group has reacted to U.S. strikes against its newly emerged enemy with fury -- and tried to turn anyone who'll listen against the new action by referencing bad memories of high-level deception by war-mongers in Washington. “[This] happened in Iraq, where the CIA betrayed the people of America [saying] that Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons,” Mujahid said. “The CIA has been spreading such rumors to draw the attention of the American people to the Afghanistan invasion, which is a useless economic and human resource loss for the American people.” Credit: Zabiullah Ghazi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Soldiers belonging to a special forces unit created to fight the Islamic State in Afghanistan are seen in the country on Jan. 6, 2016. Such arguments, designed deliberately to play on "the people of America," are strategically important to Mujahid's group. While the Taliban and the Islamic State share a hatred of the U.S. as well as some hardline interpretations of Islam, ISIS-K is a threat to the Afghan movement. The Taliban has been furious over Taliban fighters being bribed and pulled from its ranks to join this new rival, analysts say. Experts also note that for the Taliban to admit that another militant group has sway in Afghanistan would be to admit weakness. “The Taliban, of course, have no interest in saying there is reality behind [the claims of ISIS in Afghanistan],” said Frederic Grare, an Afghanistan expert and nonresident senior associate in the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “What we see are basically facets of groups from the Taliban rebelling against the movement.” Concerns over ISIS-K are emerging just at what looked like the perfect moment for the Taliban to take more ground in the country, bringing back policies like a ban on women's education and mass public executions. Attempts at negotiations between the government and the Taliban have faltered. Meanwhile, the extremist group's sphere of influence has crept up once again to become greater than it's been at any time since the U.S.-led invasion, and the Afghan armed forces remain relatively weak, corrupt and plagued with controversy, the latest being the revelation that U.S. advisers ignored Afghan officers' rape of young boys. Now that the Taliban must spend time battling the Islamic State, the group has less time, money and manpower available to attack Afghan forces, foreigners, and civilians deemed to violate their strict beliefs. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, refused to say that the Islamic State posed a threat to Afghanistan. “Very soon, we will clean all the areas from their dirtiness,” he said by email. “ISIS is neither welcomed in Afghanistan nor the ISIS thoughts are accepted by our nation here. So, it is not possible to count ISIS as a threat to us and our people.” There are currently some 9,800 American troops in Afghanistan. Their primary job is to train, advise and assist Afghan forces, though the primarily non-combat nature of this role has been called into question. While President Barack Obama previously vowed to reduce the number of troops to 5,500 by 2017, leading military commanders have called for an increased longer-term troop presence amid strategic gains made by the Taliban. The emergence of fighters who are aligned with the Islamic State poses yet another challenge to the U.S. plan. Gen. John F. Campbell, the outgoing commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has estimated there are somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 Islamic State fighters in the country, mostly consolidated in the east. Credit: Zabiullah Ghazi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Four suspected members of the Islamic State are blindfolded by Afghan forces in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, on Jan. 20. The extremist fighters recently claimed responsibility for a deadly attack near the Pakistani consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. The group has broadcast violent rhetoric urging Afghans to join their cause by radio since 2015. Two U.S. airstrikes destroyed a radio station in the eastern Nangarhar province in early February, reportedly killing 29 people described as Islamic State members. “President [Ashraf] Ghani [of Afghanistan] takes them very seriously and considers Daesh to be a potential threat to national security,” U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner told The WorldPost during an interview at the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul, using another term for the group. “We are actively sharing information and intelligence with the Afghans.” Shoffner said many of the Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan are former members of the Pakistani or Afghan Taliban, a sort of rebranding he says is like “changing your T-shirt” to fight under a different name. The U.S. military categorizes the Islamic State in Afghanistan as “operationally emergent,” one step above "nascent." Still, it urges caution about overestimating the group's ability to rival the Taliban or link itself to the so-called Islamic State's other branches around the Muslim world. “Based on what we’ve seen, we’re not seeing a lot of deep-seated ideological support for Daesh,” Shoffner said. “We’re not seeing them having the ability of coordinating operations in more than one part of Afghanistan at a time. We’re not seeing Daesh elements in Syria or Iraq being able to orchestrate operations here in Afghanistan.” And just as the Taliban has an interest in downplaying the Islamic State's presence, it's key to remember that the Afghan government and some parts of the U.S. military have an interest in exaggerating it to keep American soldiers and funds flowing. Grare called U.S. claims of the Islamic State threat in Afghanistan “overblown.” “This is one way for the Afghan government to keep whatever is left of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan,” the analyst said. While he believes the Islamic State's threat to Afghanistan’s national security is likely inflated, Grare added that fighting between the group and the Taliban could reduce the already low chance of the Taliban investing in peace talks with the government. And in terms of armed attacks, the Taliban is still the issue in Afghanistan. Civilian casualties in the country, nearly three-quarters of which have been linked to the Taliban, are now at record highs.
The worst thing about Windows 8 and 8.1 by far was the fact that neither operating system included any built-in games. Sure, you could download them from the Windows Store, but you had to go out and actively look for them. Given that the built-in games are there for slacking off at work, being forced to hunt down new games to play was a huge step in the wrong direction. The built-in Windows games are a cultural phenomenon, and while the lineup has varied over the years, one game above all has come to define workplace boredom and Windows' ability to be there for you when you have nothing better to do: Solitaire. sol.exe was first included with Windows in 1990's release of Windows 3.0. Since its introduction, its distinctive green baize has been the hallmark of the bored white-collar employee. Gaze across a sea of cubicles, and the presence of Solitaire, immediately visible even at a distance, will instantly reveal workspace slacking. The distracting time waster has probably single-handedly offset all the productivity gains that computers have enabled. May 22 will be Windows 3.0's 25th birthday, and to celebrate Microsoft is running a Solitaire tournament. It's not immediately clear to me how you run a tournament for a single-player, non-competitive, randomized game where only around 80 percent of games are even theoretically winnable, but why not. Currently Redmond is running an internal competition, and on June 5 it'll be made public. The company promises that its best Solitaire experts will go "head-to-head" with the public. Solitaire has long been important to Microsoft. It's often forgotten now, but the company's MCSE certification program originally focused on mastering the built-in games: being a certificated Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert (MCSE) was for many people the entry point into an IT career.
Takele Gobena, 26, drives anywhere between 55 and 80 hours a week for Uber and Lyft in Seattle. He began more than a year and a half ago, quitting his minimum-wage job at the city’s airport after seeing ads for the companies that promised $25 hourly pay. “I thought, ‘This is good news, this is what I’m waiting for,’ ” he says. An immigrant from Ethiopia, Gobena spent $14,000 on a car that met the ride-hailing firms’ criteria: a 2007 Nissan Sentra. Then, other expenses started piling up. “You pay for the gas, the insurance, you clean your car at least twice a week. All the expenses are on you.” Because Gobena is classified as an independent contractor -- as opposed to an employee of Uber or Lyft -- the companies aren’t required to reimburse him for these business expenses. When he calculated his hourly pay for last year, factoring in the out-of-pocket costs, he says it came out to $2.64, nearly $7 less than Washington state’s minimum wage. Independent contractors such as Gobena aren’t just exempt from coverage under wage and overtime laws. They’re also exempt from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act, the cornerstone of American labor law that protects workers’ rights to form unions, speak out on their jobs and bargain with their employers. If a group of independent contractors complains about their treatment, the business can just terminate the contract, leaving the workers with little to no recourse. For example, Uber can simply deactivate its drivers’ accounts. In other words, whatever the company says, goes. An audacious new proposal in Seattle would change all that. ‘A Piece Of Innovation’ City legislators are considering a bill that would, for the first time, extend collective-bargaining rights to independent contractors such as Gobena -- a member of a growing slice of the U.S. workforce that is excluded from coverage under major labor laws. The legislation in Seattle would apply to all “for-hire drivers” who have clocked a certain number of hours, ranging from workers at traditional cab companies to those at Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Here’s how it would work: After the law took effect, the companies would have to provide the city with the names and contact information for their drivers. Authorities would then hand over the lists to labor organizations wishing to represent the drivers. If a majority of drivers for a particular company say they want representation, then that group becomes the “exclusive driver representative” for that entity, a sort of miniunion. If Uber and Lyft drivers were to give the green light to such groups, then the firms would be forced to sit down and hammer out contracts with them -- or be in violation of city law. “It’s a piece of innovation in an innovative industry,” says the bill’s sponsor, Councilmember Mike O’Brien. “From what I can tell, this hasn’t been tried before.” A labor organization called the App-Based Drivers Association, which receives support from a local affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, is widely expected to win any chase to represent drivers. The group worked closely with O’Brien on the bill. Last week, O’Brien’s proposal breezed through a committee hearing by a 7-0 vote, and is soon headed for a vote by the full council. If it passes, Seattle would set a bold precedent, tackling the contentious question of labor rights in the on-demand economy by enacting public policy instead of leaving it to the courts. The proposal basically sidesteps the core question of high-profile class-action lawsuits against Uber and others: whether drivers are employees or independent contractors. Miriam Cherry, a professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law who has written about labor in the sharing economy, applauds the effort. “Amid this controversy of ‘who is an employee, who is an independent contractor,’ this is saying, ‘Let’s get away from the labels and start protecting workers,’” she says. “I think that’s moving in the right direction.” Drivers today are essentially at the whim of the ride-hailing company apps, with little input into pay or working conditions, Cherry says. A firm such as Uber controls everything from the type of vehicles that drivers need to gain access to the apps to the rates they charge customers. It also retains the power to deactivate workers’ accounts. And because drivers are classified as independent contractors, they’re deprived of a robust safety net, having to make all their Social Security contributions themselves and lacking access to employer-paid health insurance and unemployment insurance. Collective bargaining would add some much-needed balance to the business relationship, Cherry says. Leonard Smith, a Teamsters' official who works closely with the App-Based Drivers’ Association, says a potential contract with Uber and Lyft could cover things such as the per-mile rates charged by the companies and a grievance process for deactivation. “I believe the drivers can work out what’s best for them,” Councilmember O’Brien says. “What if you just gave drivers the power to balance the playing field and figure out what’s most important for them?” Uncharted Legal Waters Uber and Lyft oppose the bill. Uber representative Kate Downen declined to speak about the measure on the record. Lyft representative Chelsea Wilson says, “We believe the proposed ordinance threatens the privacy of drivers, imposes substantial costs on passengers and the city, and conflicts with longstanding federal law.” Observers on both sides agree the legislation will face legal challenges. Groups such as the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation specialize in this sort of work and would likely flock to Seattle to wage their fight against “compulsory unionism.” Opponents charge that the bill -- no matter how well-intentioned -- violates federal labor law. They point out the National Labor Relations Act applies to employees, not to independent contractors. Proponents say that’s not a problem. The NLRA doesn’t cover farm workers or public employees, either, but that hasn’t stopped states from granting similar protections to these groups of workers. Excluding certain workers from coverage under the NLRA doesn’t preclude them from earning the right to collective bargaining under state or local law, the argument goes. “Uber has signaled that it would argue that the ordinance is preempted by the NLRA,” says Charlotte Garden, an associate professor at the Seattle University School of Law. “I think that argument would fail because the whole point of the ordinance is to cover drivers who wouldn’t otherwise be covered by the NLRA.” Photo: Stephen Lam/Reuters But that likely wouldn’t be the only challenge. Antitrust law generally bars independent contractors from joining together to fix the costs of their services, Garden says. Still, she indicates she believes the novel plan could survive under what’s known as the “state action defense.” “The general idea is that sovereign states, and then by extension, municipalities, should be able to pursue a range of policies in the public interest -- including policies that might be otherwise be anticompetitive,” Garden says. “There are certain requirements that have to be met in order for the state action defense to apply in a case like this, including that the ordinance be drafted pursuant to a clearly articulated state policy, and that there be governmental oversight of the process and final result.” According to Garden, “It looks to me like the drafters are aware of this issue, and have made an effort to be responsive to it.” A Problem That’s Not There? Besides the proposal’s possibly sparking costly legal battles, critics contend it is simply unnecessary. Both Uber and Lyft say its drivers are doing just fine. At the very least, it’s clear not everybody is in the same position as Takele Gobena. Michael Stephens, 46, says he makes $25 to $30 an hour driving for Lyft in Seattle. That figure doesn’t count the roughly $1.50 worth of gasoline he says he burns through every hour or other costs such as car washes and insurance. Stephens didn’t buy a car specifically for the job, either. He works just eight hours a week. “The best thing about it is we’re not beholden to any schedule. It’s more of a freelance thing to me,” says Stephens, who also works full-time as a broadband technician. “I would tend to lean against the proposal,” he says. “I kinda like it how it is. I don’t need to be paying union dues.” Rebecca Smith, the Seattle-based deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, says whether someone’s working part-time or full-time is “irrelevant to what their rights ought to be as a worker.” Her organization recently released a report calling for policymakers to extend labor rights to independent contractors. “This idea that the business model is so different, this complaint is one that we’ve heard over and over again,” she says. Saint Louis University School of Law’s Cherry says the notion that “ride-sharing” marks an alternative business model appeared more plausible when the companies were first launched. For instance, Lyft was initially marketed as a tool that could connect people who happened to be heading in the same direction. Uber and Lyft have since evolved into highly profitable enterprises that attract workers on a full-time basis. That professionalization is a “problem of their own making, a byproduct of their own success,” Cherry says. Instead of trying to evade the sorts of legal responsibilities that employers face, the companies should “compete on the basis of their technology being great,” she says. “If this technology is so innovative, so great, then you can give people the wages and benefits they’re supposed to get.”
Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE’s inauguration team wanted to show off the U.S. military during inauguration weekend and even suggested including tanks and missile launchers in his inaugural parade, The Huffington Post reported Thursday. “They were legit thinking Red Square/North Korea-style parade,” an inauguration team source told The Huffington Post, referring to massive military parades in Moscow and Pyongyang that are often interpreted as displays of aggression. ADVERTISEMENT According to the report, the military shot down the request because of concerns about how it would look to have tanks and missile launchers in the parade, as well as the possible damage the tanks, which can weigh over 100,000 pounds, would do to the roads. “I could absolutely see structural support being a reason [not to use tanks],” a Department of Defense official told The Huffington Post. “D.C. is built on a swamp to begin with.” There will still be some military presence at the inauguration. There are five military flyovers planned ― one for each branch of the armed services ― for Friday’s inaugural parade. The Air Force plans to fly four fighter jets: an F-35, an F-16, an F-22 and an F-15E. The Navy will fly four F/A-18 combat jets. The Army will fly four UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. The Marines will fly four V-22 Ospreys. And the Coast Guard is expected to fly four MH-65 rescue helicopters, according to a Pentagon official. The number and type of planes used could change, depending on Friday’s weather. It is not unusual to feature some display of the military, such as flyovers, during the inauguration.
Fuse / Getty Images A study of 229 Israeli women undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to treat infertility found that a 15-minute visit from a trained “medical clown” immediately after the embryos were placed in the womb increased the chance of pregnancy to 36%, compared with 20% for women whose embryo transfer was comedy-free. After controlling for factors such as the women’s age, the nature and duration of their infertility, the number of embryos used and the day on which they were transferred into the uterus, researchers found an even greater effect of therapeutic laughter: the women who were entertained by a clown were 2.67 times more likely to get pregnant than those in the control group. (More on Time.com: 5 Pregnancy Taboos Explained (or Debunked)) The quasi-randomized controlled study was published in one of the leading journals on infertility research, Fertility and Sterility, and led by Israeli researcher Shevach Friedler. It is considered only quasi-randomized because the timing of the recruitment of the control group was slightly different from that of the clown group. In the trial, the professional medical clown — who was dressed as a chef and performed the same light routine each time — visited patients during the half-hour after embryo transfer, when women typically stay lying down and allow the embryos to settle in. The idea was to help reduce women’s stress, which laughter has been shown to do, and, hopefully, reap the physiological benefits. Researchers have long known that stress can sometimes play a role in infertility. The condition not only creates stress by itself, but treatments for it can often add to the burden: during IVF, women’s ovaries must be artificially stimulated to produce multiple eggs — a process that requires several drugs delivered by injection. Then, the eggs are retrieved and inseminated outside the body. After the embryos grow for three to five days, the most viable ones are placed back into the uterus. (More on Time.com: Can You Really Be Allergic to Your Own Semen?) It’s possible that the more relaxed a woman is when the embryos first enter the womb, the more likely they are to nestle in and grow successfully. In previous research, a Cochrane review of studies found, potentially stress-relieving acupuncture treatments done at the time of embryo transfer have nearly doubled pregnancy rates. Of course, with any study, there’s always the possibility that the results happened just by chance. Statistically speaking, a result is accepted as significant if the probability of it occurring by chance is less than 1 in 20. The findings in the clown study were significant to the .008 level, meaning that the chances that the clown had no effect were 8 in 1,000. Nonetheless, until the study is replicated, I remain skeptical. Either way, though, as far as treatments go, at least a clown is noninvasive, cheap and unlikely to do harm. And if it works, a lot more people struggling with infertility will have something to smile about. Related Links: 5 Ways to Stop Stressing Customized Kids: Parents Abort Twin Boys in Quest for Daughter Afghan Moms Using Opium to Lull Kids to Sleep
In case you missed it, Paul Meltzer has challenged to Don Duff to three different debates in District 3 before early voting begins on May 30. As of May 15, Duff has declined all three debates proposed by Meltzer but will be present at the NAACP & LULAC joint forum on Saturday, May 27 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Meltzer will be holding a meet-and-greet this Saturday, May 20 at 6:30 p.m. at Lucky Lou’s on Hickory Street, in the business center of District 3. At 7:00 p.m., Meltzer will address council issues from this current week, address citizen issues, and leave an open invitation for Duff to join him. “I have agreed to go to the NAACP & LULAC Panel,” Duff. "We’re getting too late [in this election], and I’ve got too many things going on.” His concern seems focused on the location, with this being one of many debates at a local watering hole. "We’re not going to get that many people out [to the panels] anyways,” Duff said. With Backyard on Bell drawing close to 150 people for The Dentonite's forum and close to 100 at the We Denton Do It debate at Dan’s Silverleaf, maybe these local bars are serving up more than cold drinks and actually creating a space where the younger members of the community feel comfortable going and being heard. Duff's lack of participation won't deter Meltzer from still holding his proposed three debates. “I Invited Duff to participate in three debates — one at Robson Ranch, one in the Fry Street area, and a mock city council meeting,” said Meltzer. “I feel it is important to respond directly to District 3 citizen concerns and to show we can deal in real time with issues before the city council. [Duff] remains invited to participate, even at the last minute, on equal footing.” Duff suggested that Robson Ranch was not interested in holding a panel and locking down a location for a proposed date by Meltzer may prove more difficult than anticipated. After a flurry of panels during the regular election season, three more before early voting seems like a daunting task to accomplish, particularly with the low voter turnout in District 3. With only two weeks before early voting begins, this feels overambitious and Duff saying that “we’ve been through this stuff already” is warranted. Are panels really what will engage the citizens of District 3, or Dentonite's in general? Can creating these opportunities for community members to come out and get to know their candidates do the job we need it to do as far as increased voter participation? Despite the proposed locations for the panels spread across District 3, it will take some strong footwork by the teams and their current supporters to get more people to the polls. Header image design by Christopher Rodgers
The Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW) has announced the opening of hunting season in the Pu’u Wa’awa’a Forest Reserve (PWW) Youth and Disabled Hunt and Makai Sections. DLNR-DOFAW has also announced a special Ungulate Control Program for the PWW Mauka section. The special Youth and Disabled Hunt will be open in the safety zone above the Pu’u Lani subdivision on weekends and state holidays during the month of August 2017. Only youth ages 15 and under and disabled hunters may hunt in this area. Only one licensed adult hunter may accompany each youth hunter and one licensed, non-hunting assistant may accompany each disabled hunter. The bag limit for the youth and disabled hunt is three non-typical rams and one typical ram per hunter per day. This is also the season limit. Deboning and skinning is allowed. Skull with attached horns must remain intact and genitals must remain attached to the carcass. The Makai Archery (below Mamalahoa Highway) season will be open during the four consecutive weekends in August, and during any state holidays that occur during that time (i.e. Aug. 18, 2017; Statehood Day). The bag limit for this hunt is one pig, one non-typical ram, and three goats per hunter per day. This is also the season limit. Deboning and skinning is allowed. The tail and genitalia of harvested animals must remain attached for species and sex identification purposes. The Makai Muzzleloader season will take place during the three weekends following the archery season, and during any state holidays that occur during that time (i.e. Sept. 4, 2017; Labor Day). The bag limit for this hunt is one pig, one non-typical ram, and three goats per hunter per day. This is also the season limit. Deboning and skinning is allowed. The tail and genitalia of harvested animals must remain attached for species and sex identification purposes. The PWW Mauka Ungulate Control Program (above Mamalahoa Highway) will be a non-typical ram and feral goat hunt and will take place concurrently with the Makai Muzzleloader season (during the three consecutive weekends following the Makai Archery season, including state holidays). The bag limit will be one non-typical ram and two goats (either sex) per hunter per day. During this program, the whole carcasses (entrails can be cleaned, but with attached genitalia on carcass) need to be inspected at checkout. For safety purposes, a maximum of 30 permittees will be allowed per day. Hunters interested in participating on the PWW Mauka Ungulate Control Program will be issued permits at the hunter check station on a first-come, first-served basis. ADVERTISEMENT Hunters will need to purchase 2018 goat and ram tags to legally hunt these species in these areas. Tags may be purchased from any Hawai‘i Island DOFAW office and at the PWW Hunter Check Station during the hunt. Exact change of $10 per tag (resident hunters) and $25 per tag (non-resident hunters) is required when purchasing tags at the hunter check station. The harvest tags will be non-transferable and non-refundable and must be placed through the hind leg of the animal immediately after each kill, and remain tagged until the hunter checks out of the hunting area and arrives home or to their final destination. Hunters are to check in at the Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a check station beginning at 5 a.m. the day of the hunt and must be checked-out by 7:45 p.m. There is no camping allowed in the hunting area on any night before or during the hunt. For more information, contact the DOFAW office in Kamuela at (808) 887-6063.
Cathy Heller became the ninth woman to allege Trump acted inappropriately toward her as the Trump campaign continues to deny any and all accusations. Heller, now 63, told the Guardian that two decades ago she attended a Mother’s Day event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate when Heller alleged Trump grabbed her and tried to kiss he. “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips,” she told the Guardian. She resisted his kiss. “Oh, come on,” Heller told the Guardian Trump told her. Eventually, Heller said Trump did kiss the side of her lips. “He was strong. And he grabbed me and went for my mouth and went for my lips,” she told the Guardian. Heller told her story to the Guardian after years of sharing it with family and friends. A family member who declined to be namde in the Guardian story, but was present at the event at Mar-a-Lago 20 years ago, corroborated her story. Heller told the Guardian she came forward to share her experience in an effort to add another voice to the host of accusers who Trump has dismissed. “He can’t claim we’re all liars,” Heller told the Guardian. Trump’s campaign vehemently denied the most recent allegation as it has with the others. “There is no way that something like this would have happened in a public place on Mother’s Day at Mr Trump’s resort,” spokesman Jason Miller told the Guardian in a statement. “It would have been the talk of Palm Beach for the past two decades.”
The Competition Bureau has announced that it is closing its investigations relating to air transportation services for passengers and cargo in Northern Canada. Advertisement The bureau conducted investigations into three matters: a merger between First Air and Calm Air, a codeshare agreement between First Air and Canadian North, and allegations of predatory pricing against First Air and Canadian North. In conducting each investigation, the bureau gathered evidence and obtained information from diverse sources including the companies targeted, competitors, customers and various levels of governments. The bureau also retained the services of financial and economic experts. During the course of the bureau’s investigation, First Air and Canadian North terminated their codeshare agreement, resolving concerns regarding its potential impact on competition. With respect to the merger between First Air and Calm Air and the investigation into allegations of predatory pricing by First Air and Canadian North, the bureau did not find sufficient evidence to challenge the airlines’ actions under the Competition Act. Should the Commissioner determine that any future conduct or business combinations engaged in by carriers operating in the North are anti-competitive, within the meaning of the Competition Act, he will not hesitate to take appropriate action. Details of the investigations and the findings are available on the bureau’s website in a comprehensive position statement. Advertisement “Air transportation is challenging in the North due to difficult weather conditions and operational challenges,” said John Pecman, commissioner of competition. “However, it is also essential to remote communities, businesses and governments who rely on it for economic development, food and healthcare. For these reasons, competition plays a key role and while we are closing our investigations, airlines must recognize that compliance with the Competition Act is an essential practice and the bureau will continue to be vigilant in this arena.” Quick Facts
Police are “letting [suspects] off with a warning and hoping for the best” because they can’t cope with the scale of the crime problem, a senior officer has warned. Since 2010, the number of custody cells has dropped by as much as 50 per cent, with further cuts planned to the suites where suspects are taken after they are picked up by police. In a similar timeframe, the number of arrests saw a dramatic fall from 1.5 million in 2006/2007 to 780,000 in the year to March — despite large increases in recorded crime. The reduction in custody cell numbers has seen Gloucestershire left with just one suite to cover the whole county, whilst several other counties including Cambridgeshire and Nottinghamshire have just two each. England Policing Crisis: Crime up 13 Per Cent, Rape up 22 Per Cent, Just One in Nine Burglaries Solved https://t.co/cnhoCUa2Yz — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 19, 2017 As a result, driving a suspect to the nearest custody suite and back to the town where the arrest took place can take as long as four hours, according to Police Federation chairman Steve White, who said the cutbacks have led to “a change in the mindset of many officers not to arrest unless they absolutely have to”. White told The Telegraph: “What is going through their mind is that ‘this person needs arresting, but there is no one left on the ground, is there going to be something else more pressing that I might have to deal with? “So what they are doing is letting someone off with a warning and hoping for the best. Hoping for the best that person does not go on to do something terrible,” added White. Former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett asked why Chancellor Philip Hammond had failed to make available in his Budget the additional funds required to keep custody suites open. What Free Speech? British Police Arrest At Least 3,395 People for ‘Offensive’ Online Comments in One Year https://t.co/6sB2P99162 — Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) October 14, 2017 “Scrapping custody suites costs more in the long-term because you have to transport people around, while taking police off frontline duties,” he said. “Arrests are bound to tumble because police know that in making an arrest they are taking themselves out of action.” Police have blamed budget cuts for the plummeting number of arrests in Britain, with the Metropolitan Police having said cutbacks mean they can no longer look into many “low level” crimes. But, with the number of arrests over “hateful” comments posted online rising as much as 877 per cent in some parts of England, the Met boasting of having more than 900 specialist “hate crime” investigators, and officers touring mosques to tell worshippers to report any perceived slights to their community, people have questioned whether forces are spending their resources wisely.
ESB and Vodafone joint venture Siro has dropped out of the Government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP), suggesting there was no longer a “business case” for its continued participation. The move is major blow to the process, which aims to bring high-speed broadband to rural Ireland, as it leaves just two potential bidders - Eir and Enet - in the procurement race. This is likely to result in a less competitive tendering process, which could inflate the State subsidy required and/or extend the rollout period, which has already been delayed several times. Review “Following a comprehensive review, Siro cannot develop a competitive business case to justify continued participation in the National Broadband Plan bid process and therefore has decided to withdraw,” the company said in a statement, noting its original plan to build a high-speed fibre broadband network in 50 regional Irish towns would be unaffected by the decision Chief executive Sean Atkinson said the decision to withdraw had not been taken lightly. “We will continue with our original plans focusing on transforming Ireland’s regional towns, putting them on a par for high speed connectivity with cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong,” he added. The company’s decision to exit the race comes just five months after the Government controversially removed 300,000 homes from its original plan and placed them back into Eir’s commercial rollout plan. Siro had long viewed the 300,000 homes as the quasi commercial end of the project, suggesting their removal had undermined the viability of the scheme for the other bidders. Anne O’Leary, chief executive of Vodafone Ireland, added: “Naturally we are disappointed that Siro is withdrawing from the National Broadband Plan tender, but our vision of creating a Gigabit society in Ireland is unaffected as the Siro roll out continues as part of our €450 million investment with ESB.” Also commenting on the decision Pat O’Doherty, chief executive of ESB said: “Siro’s withdrawal from the National Broadband Plan tender process was a difficult decision, it was made on the basis that Siro was unable to make a business case for continued participation in the process. Plan As it stands, the Government’s plan now covers 542,000 homes and businesses in rural Ireland. Eir has been accused of gaming the Government’s process by including the 300,000 homes in its commercial rollout at the last minute having previously deemed them uneconomic. Mininster for CommunicationDenis Naughten said he had received “detailed submissions” from the two remaining bidders as per Tuesday’s deadline, marking another milestone in the process. While acknowledging Siro’s departure, he insisted: “We are one of a few countries in the world that has a compelling competing operator to the incumbent.” Enet said Tuesday that it would mount a joint bid for the National Broadband Plan contract with energy firm SSE. The two companies earlier this month announced they had entered into a €100 million joint venture to supply fibre broadband to 115,000 premises in several west of Ireland towns. Minister Naughten said the scheme remained on track and on schedule and that the Government’s plan would put every place name on the digital map. “The facts are that close to seven out of 10 premises now having access to high speed broadband. Within a year, that will rise to nearly eight out of 10 premises and, by 2020, nine out of 10 premises or 90 per cent of premises the length and breath of the country will have access to high speed broadband,” he said.
Once again, Comey BECAME the story when he returned to his original July position on Hillary’s email. Trump had something to say about this: ‘The rank-and-file special agents in the FBI won’t let her get away with her terrible crimes – including the deletion of 33,000 emails after receiving a congressional subpoena.’ ‘Right now she’s being protected by a rigged system!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can’t review 650,000 new emails in eight days! You can’t do it, folks!’ Trending: WATCH: ‘How Jussie Smollett REHEARSED His Attack’ Is HILARIOUS ‘We are going to deliver justice, the way justice used to be in this country… at the ballot box.’ Have you thought about the math? That’s a big number. Even with a mechanical AUTOPEN, Virgina’s Governor could only sign 60,000 pages. We happened across someone who crunched the numbers in a facebook timeline. Here’s what he said: Just did some quick math. It would take 74 FBI agents, reviewing 1 email per SECOND for eight straight 24h days non-stop to be able to review all of the Clinton email scandals. All 850,000 emails just saying. Are they miracle-workers? Hardly. The investigation that… so far… has taken a full year to go through 50K emails was able to confer with the various agencies responsible for their classifications? This is the SAME agency that can suddenly confirm that everything was ethically sound and dismiss any guilt against Hillary? Maybe it’s time we all go back and re-watch ‘Wag The Dog’. QUESTION: Can The FBI TRULY Review 650,000 Emails In 8 Days? QUESTION: Can The FBI TRULY Review 650,000 Emails In 8 Days? * Maybe? HELL no. Enter your email to see the poll results: *
Students Jeremy McCouch, Brian Otterness, Charlotte Munkel-Olson, Pintu Bhakta and Emily Miotke, left to right, talk to fellow students about their opposition to "Charting the Future," Nov. 13, 2014 at Inver Hills Community College. Groucho Marx glasses on their faces, a dozen students stood in front of the fine arts building at Inver Hills Community College on Thursday, telling passersby about plans to overhaul the state's system of colleges and universities. • Discuss this story on Facebook The big nose and fuzzy eyebrows were a cheesy caricature of system Chancellor Steven Rosenstone, who bears a resemblance to Marx. The students' posters spoofed the statewide presentations the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system has used to solicit suggestions for the overhaul. But behind the funny glasses and mockups lie real worries about what the overhaul will do to colleges. The small group is part of a revolt by students and faculty against "Charting the Future," the administration's plan to revamp the system to make it more efficient and effective. MnSCU Chancellor Steven Rosenstone Jeffrey Thompson / MPR News file Rosenstone envisions a network of innovative campuses with affordable degrees that land students good jobs. But many faculty and students fear MnSCU would become a system of stripped-down diploma factories that crank out workers for Minnesota industry. In response to such criticism, Rosenstone has said he wishes he'd been clearer in some of his communication with faculty and students. But he said they're well represented in overhaul talks, and that many of the complaints he has seen in media reports don't match what he's heard in private. "This is the most engaged, open, consultative process that the system has ever engaged in," he said. The big question is how the reforms that emerge would change life on campus. How it shakes out will affect the majority of the state's college and university students. MnSCU is the largest provider of higher education in the state, serving 410,000 students. Two out of three Minnesotans who earn an undergraduate degree or certificate attend one of its schools — and 80 percent of graduates remain in the state after graduation. That heightens the stakes to professors such as Ted Gracyk of Minnesota State University - Moorhead. "We educate the teachers, the police officers, the social workers" of the state, said Gracyk, a professor of philosophy and president of the Moorhead Faculty Association. Under Charting the Future, he said, "the potential for change is enormous." The heart of the plan is its call for campuses to stop competing with each other for the same students — and instead work together so they could offer a better education at less cost. It's a call similar to the one that formed MnSCU almost 20 years ago, when lawmakers united separate university, community- and technical-college systems in the hope that they would operate more smoothly and efficiently as one system. That hasn't entirely happened, and Charting the Future concludes that by streamlining operations and injecting more consistency into the system, MnSCU can make it easier and cheaper for students to earn their degrees. "Charting the Future is all about creating a better education for our students," Rosenstone said. Under the plan, students could transfer credit effortlessly between schools, he said. They could receive more consistent advising throughout their college careers. Those who could prove they already understand a subject could receive academic credit for that — and not have to take a class on it again. Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minn., Nov. 11, 2014. Yi-Chin Lee / MPR News "We need to make sure that when a student starts at, let's say, Century College, and transfers to Metro State, that that's a smooth pathway — no credits are lost — and that there's continuity in the course of their program," he said. Rosenstone said students recently told him they wished that if a course they wanted was already full at the college where they were registering, the website would show them other campuses that offered it — and let them immediately enroll there. Others asked him for a single, guaranteed admissions process for qualified students who wanted to start at a two-year college and transfer later on to a university, he said. Some wished one adviser could work with them throughout their college careers — even if they attended more than one campus. "Those are all things I think we can do if we work together a little differently," Rosenstone said. Along the way, he said, faculty and administrators could put their heads together to find ways to graduate more lower-income and minority students, drive down costs, and educate students better. That could be through the use of technology, more advanced teaching methods or more hands-on learning. "We've got to think creatively about the classroom of the future," Rosenstone said. But MnSCU professors say higher student performance, greater affordability and smarter use of technology are basic principles everyone could get behind. "Who's against mom and apple pie?" Gracyk said. But how MnSCU might try to achieve those goals worries many faculty members and students. System administrators haven't yet completed details of the overhaul, but the wording of some of the suggested strategies has raised suspicions. When the plan stresses that campuses need to "collaborate, coordinate or align," many faculty members fear that is another way of saying that campuses will operate according to a central-office formula controlled by system leaders. “We believe we students [and not businesses] are the customer. We're buying our education.” Edward Conlin, vice president of the Winona State University Student Senate Professors and many student leaders worry that under Charting the Future, campuses would slowly homogenize education, trimming the variety of liberal-arts offerings and focusing too much on what students need to accomplish to earn jobs after graduation. To cut costs, they say, the system would enlarge class sizes and herd students toward an increasing number of online courses, whose impersonal nature would make it difficult for lower performers to succeed. "It's called the McDonaldization of higher education," said Vicky Brockman, faculty association president at Southwest Minnesota State University. Some fear that in the name of efficiency and market demand, MnSCU would close programs on some campuses or relocate them across the state. That's especially worrisome to some students and faculty in greater Minnesota, who wonder whether the central office would divert resources to campuses in the metropolitan Twin Cities area, where demand for degrees is expected to grow. That, they say, could cut both faculty jobs and the choices students have at campuses in other parts of the state. "I'm from Duluth," said Damon Kapke, a Lake Superior College English instructor and faculty union leader. "I'm in one of those corners. I'm concerned about that." Although there is growing concern across the nation for better job placement of graduates, one of the greatest concerns of many students and faculty is that business leaders will have too great an influence on curricula. Faculty and students point to the plan's call for campuses to align courses and services to student demand — "as well as to regional and state workforce needs." "Who is the customer?" asked Edward Conlin, vice president of the Winona State University Student Senate, who serves on one of the overhaul's implementation teams. "That's a huge question. We believe we students [and not businesses] are the customer. We're buying our education." Rosenstone said he doesn't know where critics are getting their ideas. "If those were things that Charting the Future was really about, I'd be concerned, too," he said. "But none of those are things that are in the document. ... This is about protecting our ability to serve students across the state of Minnesota. This is about protecting the quality of our academic programs." Students and instructors say they wouldn't be so wary of the outcome if they trusted Rosenstone. Faculty members say they're suspicious of his sudden announcement earlier this month that the state would mediate their dispute — an offer they rejected. They and student leaders point to the MnSCU system's decision to give Rosenstone a contract extension and spend $2 million to hire a private overhaul consultant — neither of which happened with formal board approval — as signs that the chancellor hasn't been above board in his dealings. Rosenstone acknowledged that he could have handled the overhaul better. "I think I could have communicated differently, and earlier, about the work that [the consultant] did," he said. "I didn't handle that communication well at all." Rosenstone already has carried out a number of changes requested over the past several months. But some faculty leaders say they want to scrap the current committees or at least have talks to "reset" the situation. Union leaders say faculty contracts require campus presidents to run most academic changes by them. They think they'll be able to wield more influence at the campus level than in current statewide committee proceedings.
President Trump beckoned to an Irish journalist in the Oval Office on Tuesday to comment on her 'nice smile' during a phone call with Ireland's newly elected Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. RTÉ reporter Caitriona Perry was one of a group of reporters in the room when he made the 'bizarre' gesture. Trump was on the phone with Varadkar, who is Ireland's first gay prime minister, to congratulate him on his recent election win when he remarked: 'Well, we have a lot of your Irish press watching us. They're just now leaving the room. 'And where are you from? Go ahead, come here. Where are you from? We have all of this beautiful Irish press. Where are you from?', beckoning to Ms. Perry. President Trump beckoned Caitriona Perry over to the Truman desk as he spoke with Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Tuesday The president remarked that Ms. Perry had a 'beautiful smile on her face' He then told the Irish leader that she had a 'beautiful smile on her face' and added 'I bet she treats you well'. As she stood awkwardly beside the desk, Ms. Perry continued smiling before gingerly making her way back to her seat. Others in the room giggled at the president's remark. Caitriona Perry is the Washington Correspondent and US Bureau Chief for Irish news outlet RTÉ Finally, the president delivered a message from the Irish prime minister. 'He thanks you for the newspapers Caitriona,' he said, prompting more laughs from the room. Perry shared a video of their encounter on Twitter afterwards, describing it as 'bizarre'. Twitter users were quick to criticize the president's remarks. 'Ms.Perry, please accept the apology of at least 1 female American,' said one while others deemed the president 'gross'. 'We apologize that our president is a weird, inappropriate creep,' said another. 'I'm sorry our president treated you this way,' said another embarrassed US citizen. Actor Kevin Chamberlin said: 'He called you over to look you over. Gross,' adding the hashtag 'Embarrassed for my country'. Trump was on the phone with Leo Varadkar, 38, the youngest-ever Irish leader and the nation's first-ever gay government minister, and has Indian parentage – and isn't a fan of Trump The outrage was of a similar tone to complaints about a 2005 recording of the president in which he boasted about 'grabbing women by the p****' while he thought he was off-camera. I managed to catch his eye and he called me over Critics on Tuesday also reminded their followers online of the many women who spoke out to accuse of him sexual misconduct before the election. Trump denies all of their claims. Perry, who is married, described herself as a 'one woman newsroom' in a 2013 article. She is due to remain in the US as RTÉ's correspondent until 2018. She appeared to take the encounter in her stride. In an interview with her own network afterwards, she said: 'One minute we were outside the window and the next minute I'm meeting the President of The United States. 'Usually we would shoot from outside the window of the White House and that's what we were expecting today but instead we were invited inside to witness the President's call to the Taoiseach. Others in the room laughed as Ms. Perry awkwardly made her way back from the desk with her recorder taping their reactions The journalist shared a video of the encounter on Twitter afterwards, describing it as a 'bizarre' experience Ms. Perry was inundated with messages from critics who labeled the president's remarks 'gross' Perry described herself in a previous interview as a 'one woman newsroom' for the Irish network. She is seen above at the Oscars earlier this year and with Bono 'When we went in he was already on the phone but I managed to catch his eye and he called me over,' she said. Trump had been put on hold for more than a minute and a half on Tuesday, waiting for Ireland's new prime minister to get on the phone and receive his congratulations. Varadkar, 38, eventually picked up. But the president was left fidgeting with papers, and intermittently smiling and grimacing at an Oval Office full of reporters who were brought in to witness the call. Trump wasn't the first foreign leader to reach him: French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel all beat him to it in the two weeks since Varadkar took office. But the U.S. president cranked up the small talk just the same, offering 'congratulations on your great victory. 'We have so many people from Ireland in this country. I know so many of them. I feel I know all of them. But I just wanted to congratulate you. 'That was a great victory that you had.' Varadkar – Ireland's youngest-ever leader, its first openly gay government minister and the first of Indian heritage – has indicated that he's not a regular passenger on the Trump Train. Trump was left twisting in the wind as Varadkar left him on hold for a minute and a half before a congratulatory phone call Eventually the U.S. president made his diplomatic connection and cranked up the small talk before reporters were hustled out of the Oval Office He said in February that he 'wouldn't be keen' on inviting Trump to Dublin for a visit if he ran the Emerald Isle. 'I wouldn't,' he previously told RTÉ Television. 'I'm not sure what purpose it would serve.' A month later at the White House, his predecessor Enda Kenny did just that, extending an official invitation for a state visit. 'I will not, of course, rescind that invitation,' Varadkar said last week, calling the idea 'inappropriate' and saying it could spark a 'diplomatic incident.' Trump has been a firm friend to the Irish since his inauguration. He was enthusiastically welcoming to Varadkar's predecessor Enda Kenny earlier this year, inviting him to Washington DC for a state visit which coincided with St. Patrick's Day. He seemed sympathetic to Kenny's plea for him to pardon the tens of thousands of undocumented Irish workers who currently live in the US illegally. The president's ties with Ireland also predate his political career. In 2002, Trump International Golf Links and Hotel Ireland opened in Doonbeg. Varadkar's predecessor Enda Kenny (right) invited Trump for a state visit when the two men met in March, but the new PM indicated that's a step he would never have taken
In this interview, Rutgers University climatologist Alan Robock talks with Elisabeth Eaves from the Bulletin about geoengineering and nuclear winter. He says that geoengineering is not the solution to global warming because of its many risks and unknowns. He notes that some of the technology that would be required to implement geoengineering has not been developed and that many socio-political questions would have to be resolved before it could be put into practice. The world would have to reach agreement on a target temperature and on what entity should do the implementing. Robock’s biggest fear with regard to geoengineering is that disputes over these questions could escalate into nuclear war which in turn could cause nuclear winter, producing global famine among other effects. He goes on to describe his meeting with former Cuban President Fidel Castro and discuss the role of the arts in addressing existential threats. Alan Robock’s interest in climate science dates back to 1974, when his doctoral thesis advisor Edward Lorenz, the meteorologist known as the father of chaos theory, told him that “climate would be a good field to get into.” Robock took the advice, and today he is a distinguished professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, where he also directs the undergraduate meteorology program. He served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report and is a vocal advocate for action on global warming. Robock is an expert on the potential effects of geoengineering, those untried technologies aimed at manipulating the climate system in order to counter the effects of global warming. Interest in geoengineering has intensified since the National Academy of Sciences released a report (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=02102015) in February recommending federal funding for more research, including into what it calls “albedo-modification techniques,” which would prevent sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface. Robock doesn’t think geoengineering is the right solution to climate change though, as he explains in this interview. Robock is also one of the foremost experts on the potential climatic impacts of nuclear explosions. By producing smoke that blocks the sun’s rays, a nuclear war could cause a nuclear winter, cooling the planet catastrophically and causing global famine. He calls nuclear weapons a more serious threat to humanity than global warming. In this interview, conducted by contributing editor Elisabeth Eaves in January, Robock talks about geoengineering and nuclear winter, his encounters with the CIA and Fidel Castro, and what movie stars he thinks could best get his message across. BAS: In the past, you’ve warned of geoengineering’s potential dangers. Have any new techniques or studies led you to become more optimistic about it? Robock: No. The solution to global warming is to stop putting out greenhouse gas. And we know how to do that. We have the technology. It’s sun and wind. The problem is political, not technical. If we try to compensate for warming with engineering projects on the only planet known to sustain intelligent life, it’s still just too scary. If you could put a cloud in the stratosphere and maintain it there, it could cool the planet and counteract some of the negative aspects of global warming. But there are risks that haven’t been addressed, such as how does the world decide what temperature it wants to be? What would happen if we started and then abruptly stopped, which could be catastrophic? Questions like these haven’t been solved. There’s a new technique people are studying, which is to try to dissipate cirrus clouds to let heat escape. In theory, this doesn’t come with some of the negative aspects of blocking out the sun. For example, it doesn’t change precipitation patterns as drastically. But you would need fleets of airplanes to spray chemicals into the upper atmosphere, which is an undeveloped technology. I don’t know of anybody who has come up with an idea of how to do it safely. The one thing called geoengineering that probably is a good idea is to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, it has the same name—geoengineering—as these other proposals, but it’s a completely different issue in terms of the technology, costs, and risks. If we could do it cheaply enough and find a place to store the carbon dioxide, that would take away the cause of global warming. An even better idea, of course, is to not put the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the first place. You can do that by using energy more efficiently but also, if you’re going to burn fossil fuels, by capturing the carbon dioxide out of the smokestack. It has a much higher concentration right when it leaves a fixed source than it does once it’s free in the atmosphere, so it’s much cheaper to capture. BAS: Is there anything you fear could happen that would make geoengineering inevitable despite all its problems? Robock: I don’t really fear geoengineering because I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. There was a conference at Asilomar five years ago where a bunch of people got together and discussed the ethics of geoengineering. Robert Socolow, who is a professor at Princeton, went around asking people their greatest fears, and at the end of the week he read them off. The greatest fear, which is also mine, was global nuclear war. Because if countries can’t agree on what the temperature should be, and somebody is mad at somebody else for controlling their climate, the situation could escalate into hostilities. And different countries have different interests. People at high latitudes, like in Canada or Russia or maybe even the United States, might want to exploit the Arctic and send ships. So some people don’t mind it a little bit warmer. But people in the Pacific, whose islands are sinking, want it to be cooler than it is today. They’re already suffering. So there’s a spectrum of different local impacts. I can’t imagine how the world could agree on where to set the thermostat. Let’s say we get to the point where the feared emission of methane from the Arctic occurs, and the ocean starts bubbling up really fast, or there’s even more catastrophic melting in Antarctica and Greenland. There might then be calls to implement geoengineering until we get mitigation under control. Once demand for geoengineering gets started, who’s going to implement the process? Remember that whoever ends up doing it will have a huge financial interest in continuing to do it. Would you trust the planet to the BP Geoengineering Corporation, for example? I can’t imagine the world agreeing. BAS: So we might see calls for geoengineering, but then a fight about what to do? Robock: Yes. People have said it’s so cheap and easy that an individual could do it. Like, you know, Richard Branson is an environmentalist and he owns a lot of airplanes—how about him? But I find it hard to believe that any individual or country would do it. You could shoot their planes down once they started, so there’s no way to do it without the agreement of the rest of the world. I guess a country could do it over its own territory. Consultants for the CIA called me up four years ago and asked, “Could we detect somebody else trying to control our climate?” Well yeah, we could, because if somebody was creating a thin cloud in the lower stratosphere we could detect that with our current satellite and ground-based observational system. We can see the effects of various small volcanic eruptions. If somebody were sailing ships around the ocean brightening clouds, we could see the lines in the clouds with satellite imagery. And we could see the airplanes or the ships that were doing it. So it would be impossible to do it in secret. Of course, what they were also asking is, “Can we control somebody else’s climate?” There’s a big report on geoengineering [http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/public-release-event-climate-intervention-reports/] by the National Academy of Sciences that is being released. It was funded mainly by the CIA. The CIA asked several other agencies, like NASA and NOAA, to help fund it, so that the report would look like a joint effort, but I was told it was almost all the CIA, which goes by the “US intelligence community” in the report. What’s wrong with this picture? The CIA wants to figure out how to control the globe’s weather. BAS: So they’re taking it seriously. Robock: I don’t know what their motivations are. But the panel that did the report is very good. It’s the top scientists, and I know a lot of them, and I reviewed part of the report. I don’t think the report is influenced by the CIA. It seems like it was done very responsibly. BAS: Are there other ethical issues raised by geoengineering you’d like to talk about? Robock: Some people say we shouldn’t do research because it’s a slippery slope to deployment, or because it takes resources away from something more productive. But in my opinion, indoor geoengineering research—that is, studying data, studying past volcanic eruptions as analogues, doing climate modeling—is something we should do because we have to know what the possible impacts might be. If we are going to make policy decisions about this in the future, they should be informed, not emergency panic decisions. Outdoor geoengineering research, such as actually spraying stuff into the atmosphere to brighten clouds or to create a cloud in the stratosphere, needs to be regulated. If the scientists can show that the amount of material they’re going to spray is not going to be dangerous, is going to be very small, and is going to be a particular amount over a particular time, then that should be fine as long as their environmental impact statement is independently evaluated and monitored and they are sanctioned if they break the rules. Otherwise they could say, “Well, we didn’t get a really strong signal, so let’s just do it twice as long or put twice as much in or over twice the area.” And there is no organization currently that can regulate outdoor geoengineering research. This infrastructure doesn’t exist today. If you want to go out in the atmosphere over national territories there are environmental rules, but if you get over the ocean there are no rules. BAS: Let’s move on to talking about nuclear winter. How small a nuclear weapons exchange would be necessary to cause a climatic effect? Robock: Well first of all I don’t like the jargon of “exchange.” It really sanitizes it. It sounds like you’re going to take a sweater you got for Christmas back to the store. Rather you could ask, “How much burning of people and villages and cities do we need?” The United States and Russia have enough nuclear weapons to produce nuclear winter. That is, the effects of smoke from burning cities and industrial areas could cause the temperature to go below freezing in the middle of the continents. We did a scenario in which we looked at 50 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs being dropped on India and 50 being dropped on Pakistan on the targets that would produce the largest amounts of smoke. That’s much less than one percent of the current global nuclear arsenal. We found that these 100 bombs would produce enough smoke to block out the sun and cause temperatures to fall lower than any temperature in recorded human history, colder than the Little Ice Age of several centuries ago which produced famines and revolutions. BAS: What else could result? Robock: China and the United States are the two biggest grain-growing regions in the world. Weather disruptions caused by that small nuclear war could cause production to go down by 10 to 40 percent for five years and 20 percent for ten years. This would be a huge hit to the world food supply. BAS: You recently wrote that nuclear weapons are a more serious threat than global warming. Why is that so? Robock: Because nuclear weapons produce climate change too, and the climate change caused by nuclear weapons could be much more devastating. It could have a much larger immediate impact on our food supply, producing social disruptions as well as famine. Nuclear weapons are also an easier problem to solve than global warming: just don’t use them. To solve global warming, you have to stop burning fossil fuels, and to do that you have to change the energy infrastructure of the planet and fight against very, very rich, well-funded multinational corporations that want to do business as usual. BAS: You met with former Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2010 and 2011. How did that come about? Robock: I had a student from Cuba, Juan Carlos Antuña, who got his PhD at Rutgers and then returned to Cuba, where he’s a research meteorologist. He sent me an e-mail saying that the Cubans wanted me to come and talk about climate change. The next day, he sent me to a website where Castro was talking to the head of the Cuban weather service about nuclear winter. As you know, Fidel fell down and broke his shoulder and his leg, and then he had these intestinal problems, and he was so sick he gave up power to his brother. But then he got better and he had free time on his hands that he never thought he would have. So somehow he discovered my work. He asked his son, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, to contact the head of the weather service, who contacted Juan Carlos, who contacted me and asked me to come. BAS: What was it like to meet Castro? Robock: Very surreal. I couldn’t believe it was happening. But he’s a really charismatic guy. The second time I met him, I sat across the table from him for more than three hours, and he went through his entire life history from his earliest childhood memories. He talked about the Bay of Pigs invasion. He talked about Nixon and Kennedy and what movies you should see and said to read Anatoly Dobrynin’s autobiography because that’s the best record of what happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ten days after my first meeting with him, he said in his blog, “We’ve got to get rid of all nuclear weapons.” And I was thinking, well, too bad he doesn’t have nuclear weapons to get rid of. On the other hand, it’s probably pretty good that he doesn’t have them. I just have to convince people who have them. BAS: What do you think small countries, like Cuba, can do about climate change and nuclear weapons, given that the superpowers control so much of what happens? Robock: In the 1980s, the non-superpowers of the world realized, based on nuclear winter theory, that they could experience huge suffering even if no bombs were dropped on their countries. There was a lot of pressure from these countries on the United States and Soviet Union to stop the arms race. Because, for example, more people could die in China than in the United States and Russia combined, even if no bombs were dropped there. That pressure from all the rest of the world helped to end the arms race. And so I think that these conferences on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons can have an effect. But unfortunately Putin is sort of ramping up the Russian nuclear establishment, building new submarines and ordering threatening flights. And in order to sign New START, Obama had to agree to this $300 billion modernization of US nuclear weapons. And so those things have to be addressed. BAS: You wrote a paper about weather imagery in Bob Dylan lyrics. Robock: My best paper. BAS: What role do you think artists can or should have in grappling with existential threats like nuclear weapons and climate change? Robock: After my lecture in Cuba, they told me it would be broadcast on national television the next day at prime time. So we walked into a hotel bar with a television. And I looked and there was a Julia Roberts movie on. It was a DVD because they only have two channels there. And I said to the bartender, “Could you change the channel and see if I’m on?” He changed it and sure enough there I was. But what it taught me is that if you want to change the way people think you need a movie with Julia Roberts, not a professor giving a lecture. I’ve been working with a colleague to write a screenplay for a feature film where this Russian climate scientist falls in love with an American one, and they discover what the climate effects of nuclear war would be. Meanwhile, on the India-Pakistan border there’s an escalating conflict. I think you could write a screenplay with a little bit of sex. I’m not sure how to do the violence—whether to show the effects of what would happen in a dream, or let it really happen but not have a happy ending. I don’t know. But I think if we had some entertainment like that, that’s the way to educate people, not articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists or even TEDx talks. Anybody who would be interested: If you know of any contacts who could write a movie about this, that would be great. BAS: Do you envision any particular movie star in the role? Robock: I’m old, so Julia Roberts would be fine for me, or Meryl Streep. But maybe some younger star so that it could appeal to young people too. Lizzy Caplan—she was in Masters of Sex and The Interview. She could be one of the scientists. BAS: Is there anything you would like to add? Robock: These are problems caused by humans. If we can cause them, we can fix them. We have free will. People say it can’t be done, but of course it can be done because we created the problems in the first place. We just need somebody with the vision and the courage to solve them. We worry about tipping points in the climate system but there are also tipping points in human behavior. If you look back at the United States 10 years ago, could you have imagined gay marriage or legalized pot or a black president? These things have changed pretty rapidly, so I think it’s possible we can get to the point of solving climate change and nuclear weapons too. I’m sort of optimistic, and that’s why I keep working on them.
NEW DELHI: Members of need to give up religion and "be firm Marxist atheists" or face punishment, the country's religious affairs regulator has said, reported Global Times. The Chinese Communist Party is officially atheist, but China's constitution explicitly allows "freedom of religious belief". "Party members should not have religious beliefs, which is a red line for all members", wrote Zuoan, director of the , in the latest issue of the Party's flagship magazine. Wang's comments are line with official Party rules. The Party has by and large exhibited a cautious tolerance towards religion but it prohibits its nearly 90 million Party members from holding religious beliefs, says the Council on Foreign relations, a US think tank. The Party has often demanded the expulsion of members who belong to religious organizations. Wang reiterated these rules. He said Party members are forbidden from supporting or getting involved in religious affairs in the name of developing the economy or diversifying culture. "Party members should be firm Marxist atheists, obey Party rules and stick to the Party's faith … they are not allowed to seek value and belief in religion," Wang said. Another government official said that party unity is damaged and the party's "values based on dialectical materialism" take a hit when its officials have religious faith. "Some people who claim to be scholars support religious beliefs in the Party, which has undermined the Party's values based on dialectical materialism," said Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the ethnic and religious committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Wang said "foreign forces" are using religion "to infiltrate China" which is a threat to the country's security. "Some foreign forces have used religion to infiltrate China, and extremism and illegal religious activities are spreading in some places, which have threatened national security and social stability," Wang said.
MEERUT: Balraj Dungar, convenor of the Bajrang Dal for Meerut, said on Tuesday that Bangladeshis living in India must either leave the country or convert to Hinduism. “Our first demand is that they must leave the country, as they are abusing our resources. However, if they wish to live here, they must convert to Hinduism and adapt to the ways of our life,” he said.Commenting on the recent instances of ‘ghar wapsi’ in Uttar Pradesh, Dungar said, “We had been involved in ‘ghar wapsi’ campaigns even during the UPA regime. This is a continuous, ongoing process,” Dungar said.Dungar said Bangladeshis have taken refuge in India, and continue to live here even 43 years after the Bangladesh war. “They now need to go back,” he said. Told that the illegality of the stay would not change with conversion, Dungar said, “At least they will add to our strength in numbers.”VHP organisational secretary Sudarshan Chakra, however, said he would not agree with the Bajrang Dal leader.Members of Bajrang Dal take out a bike rally as part of Hindu Samajotsav. (File photo)“Our organization’s agenda does not give any respite to Bangladeshis. As per government statistics, there are around three crore Bangladeshis in India. They must all leave. There is no question of them converting to Hinduism. Because of them, unemployment and crime rates have risen. They indulge in anti-national activities. Despite all that, various governments in the past have been providing them with benefits. They have ration cards and voter IDs. Nothing will legalize their stay in India. They have to go,” Chakra said.Estimates of the number of Bangladeshis in India vary widely. The 2001 Census report, quoted by an online site, estimated that there were 30 lakh Bangladeshis in India. In 2012 Mullappally Ramachandran, then Union minister of state for home, claimed that nearly 14 lakh Bangladeshi migrants had entered India in the last decade alone. In 2007, central government statistics had said there were two crore Bangladeshis living in India illegally.
Georgia recently passed a bill that would allow law-abiding citizens with concealed weapons permits to carry firearms on some parts of college campuses. What most people see as an affirmation of our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms, liberals see as a sign of the apocalypse. Former REM singer Michael Stipe worries that the bill will transform lawful gun owners into sexual predators who will use their firearms to rape women on college campuses statewide. HB 859 was passed by Georgia lawmakers in March and awaits Governor Nathan Deal’s signature to make it a law. Basically, it allows anyone 21 and over with concealed carry license to possess concealed firearms on Georgia college campuses. The exceptions are, no guns in dorm rooms, fraternity and sorority houses, and sporting events. Writing for USA Today, the McDonald’s of news, Michael Stipe pitched a fit over an inborn and Constitutionally protected right. He starts out by saying that 78% of all Georgians oppose this bill, but the link he provides to this fact tells a different story. Two years ago the Atlanta Journal Constitution did an informal poll and 78% of the respondents said they didn’t favor allowing guns in college dorms. As you can see by the paragraph above this one, HB 859 doesn’t allow guns in dorms so this poll is irrelevant. After framing his argument with bullshit, Stipe shovels some more manure on the pile: Like many other Georgians, I am worried about how guns on campus would affect college life. I worry about what it means when loaded guns are allowed at a tailgate where alcohol is being served. Again, HB 859 does not allow firearms at sporting events. Are there drunken tailgate parties for the debate team or a political science seminar? I think Stipe could allay all of his fears if he just spent 5 seconds reading an overview of the campus carry bill. Here is easily the dumbest thing the alt-rocker is fretting about: I’m concerned for survivors of sexual assault, who may soon have to face an armed assailant at the time of the crime and again at their disciplinary hearing. Most, if not all campus sexual assault falls into the date rape category, in which the victim knows her attacker and usually alcohol is involved. I know this because feminists constantly lash out at anyone who suggests that women could protect themselves against rape by being armed. The point is, that campus rape doesn’t involve armed attackers. This is also a very sexist notion that only men can carry concealed weapons. Women can carry guns too, and they should to keep from being victimized. The way Stipe put this is that helpless women will be powerless against the male-only concealed weapons club. And that brings us the final stupid thing in Stipe’s statement. Concealed weapons holders are the most law-abiding people on the planet. I defy him to show an example of a concealed weapons permit holder raping a woman at gunpoint. It doesn’t happen. Just because the state decides to extend a Constitutional right to college campuses doesn’t mean law-abiding citizens are suddenly going to be transformed into maniac rapists. This is part of the liberal lie that guns turn otherwise good people into dangerous criminals. That’s not how things work. Guns do not possess evil magical powers. The biggest thing Michael Stipe is missing about the campus carry bill is that it only affects law-abiding students. Bad guys don’t give a shit if the law says they can’t carry a gun on campus. If a criminal wants to do bad things on a college campus, he or she will do those bad things regardless of the law. With HB 859, at least there might be a good guy with a gun who can stop a killer or at least mitigate the body count. Follow Brian Anderson on Twitter
NEW YORK (Reuters) - It wasn’t long ago that politics, like religious affiliation or sexual orientation, was a taboo topic in the American workplace. Political beliefs were considered a private affair - off limits to the boss. Walmart employees cheer at the Walmart U.S. associates meeting in Fayetteville, Arkansas in this June 4, 2014, file photo. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/Files But today employers are increasingly approaching workers to fundraise, lobby and campaign in ways they never have before, according to a Reuters analysis of FEC filings and data compiled by the Business Industry Political Action Committee. The Washington trade group, which has offices across the street from the White House, helps firms such as Wal-Mart, Halliburton and Lockheed Martin mobilize employees on policy issues important to the companies. BIPAC is working with top U.S. companies on a massive employee voter registration drive in September in preparation for the 2016 Presidential election. For years it was unions and trade associations that were the politically powerful workplace players, operating political action committees (PACs) that raised millions of dollars to support their preferred candidates. But since a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed for unlimited political spending by corporations, the number of companies engaged in this sort of activity - be it nudging employees to write letters, donate, campaign or vote - has risen 45 percent to 7,317, according to BIPAC’s internal research, seen by Reuters. The new approach to workplace giving is called “E2E,” or employer-to-employee outreach. These PACs donate to both Democrats and Republicans, depending upon who supports policies and issues favorable to the business interests of the corporation. “When you compare the amount of money the Wal-Marts and McDonald’s and their employees have, compared to even the largest American unions, it’s peanuts and watermelons,” said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. Employees at the nation’s top firms are contributing more money than ever before to company PACs controlled by CEOs and senior management, according to April 2015 quarterly fundraising and spending documents disclosed to the U.S. election regulator, the Federal Election Commission. An analysis of FEC filings of 122 of the top company PACs shows employees raised a median 25 percent more in the first quarter of 2015 versus the same period four years ago. For the PACs analyzed, the median amount of contributions collected was $130,842. PARKING SPACE INCENTIVES To encourage this sort of donation, some companies are attaching perks to the giving. BP, for example, says employees who donate at least 2.5 percent of their salary to the company PAC get choice parking spots in the company lot. At Wal-Mart, the company gives employees who donate to the company PAC a two-for-one match to Wal-Mart’s in-house charity for associates in need. A BP spokesman said federal law permitted “recognition gifts” such as preferred parking. Wal-Mart said it only asks salaried employees to give, not hourly ones, and that workers are free to stipulate whether their contributions go to Democratic or Republican candidates. At companies that depend heavily on government contracts, the giving is especially high. For example, employees of Honeywell International, a major manufacturer of aircraft electronics, gave more than $1 million in the first quarter of 2015 - up 52 percent since the same period in 2011. Honeywell, along with Lockheed Martin, BP and Halliburton, says its employee contributions are 100 percent voluntary and legal and that no pressure is put on employees to become more politically active. “Honeywell’s PAC supports those who support policies that are good for our business and help to create jobs in the United States,” company spokesman Rob Ferris said. EMPLOYEES’ DONATIONS SOARING This sharp increase in political donations by employees is fueling concerns among some campaign finance watchdogs, ahead of the November 2016 elections, that workers may feel pressure to donate to candidates they do not support or to lobby on issues they don’t agree with. “What I worry about is the inherently coercive nature of these workplace situations,” Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said. “Let’s say an employer decides to throw corporate resources behind a candidate and sets up a phone bank, asking employees to get on the phone to get people to support candidate Jones. It’s very hard to say no to your employer. It puts the employee, especially the low-level employee, in a very difficult position.” Weintraub and FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel, also a Democrat, said they were not allowed to comment on any cases before the commission that may be related to this issue. The top Republican on the FEC, Lee Goodman, did not echo his Democratic colleagues’ concerns and noted in an email that the law prohibits employers from coercing employees to make political contributions. Supporters of the employer-to-employee outreach say that it performs an important civic function by educating workers and turning them into active political participants. BIPAC says its research shows that many workers rate their employers as more credible information sources about politics than political parties, labor unions or the news media. “If it’s done right, there’s nothing illegal about it,” said Greg Casey, president of BIPAC. Some 89 percent of the candidates its PAC supports are Republicans. PFIZER EMPLOYEES’ EMAIL BLAST The practice drew mixed reviews among a dozen employees at five companies interviewed by Reuters. “The legislators that would support the company are absolutely the ones I would never support,” said one global director at Pfizer who spoke on condition of anonymity. An email sent to staff in April noted that Pfizer’s employees had sent more than 8,000 emails to politicians about healthcare and patent legislation favorable to Pfizer. The Chairwoman of Pfizer’s employee PAC, Sally Susman, said that, “while strictly voluntary, we encourage colleagues to raise voices on behalf of the patients we serve on important issues.” Some companies go further. Before the 2012 presidential election, Koch Industries sent its employees a voter packet informing them which candidates, including Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the company supported, as well as an editorial knocking President Barack Obama. Campaign finance reformers said at the time that Koch’s actions crossed the line, while Koch Industries defended its actions as “nothing unusual” and the type of thing unions did all the time. Some employees allege they have suffered retribution as a result of not supporting a CEO’s politics. At Ohio-based Murray Energy, a coal mining company, plant shift forewoman Jean Cochenour said in a 2014 lawsuit that she was fired in retribution for not responding to letters she received from the company’s CEO, Robert Murray, that began: “Dear Jean: The coal industry and our jobs are being destroyed by President Barack Obama. Our only hope to stop them is by electing friends of coal.” The letters, samples of which were included in the pending lawsuit, identified the Republican candidates employees should donate to, and vote for, like New Hampshire Senate hopeful Scott Brown. Murray requested employees make a $200 donation to each candidate and included a self-addressed envelope for the donations, according to court documents. Cochenour also alleged that managers were required to donate at least 1 percent of their salaries to Murray’s candidates. And vendors and suppliers were also required to give - lest they lose the company’s business. In an emailed response to these allegations, Murray Energy spokesperson Gary Broadbent said Robert Murray never knows who gives to his personal fundraisers. He called Cochenour’s statements “blatantly false and totally concocted.” There are, of course, limits to what money can buy. Of the four Senate candidates Murray asked employees to support in the 2014 mid-term election, all lost.
Pin +1 Share 68 Shares President-elect Trump took to Twitter this morning to blast Obama for ‘inflammatory’ comments, statements and roadblocks. He hit Obama for disrespecting Israel in the United Nations and told Israel to stay strong and ‘January 20th is fast approaching.’ Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition – NOT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016 We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but……. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016 not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016 Comments
I took an interest in Yemen some years ago and began following events there for The World, our Boston-based radio show. Because the US has taken on a major role in the Yemen civil war — supplying weapons, logistical and intelligence support to one side in the conflict — I've become, from a distance, a conflict journalist. Yemen's civil war is now in its third year, and no Yemeni is unaffected. To date, the war has killed 10,000 civilians. It has driven more than 2,000,000 people from their homes. And 17,000,000 Yemenis are now food insecure. But numbers alone won't show the war's impact on daily life in Yemen. We asked Yemenis with strong English skills to recall one vivid experience from the first two years of the war and to record the story on their phones. I've written up some of their accounts here. But for a more direct experience, click on the audio bars and hear Yemenis tell you their experiences of the war — in their own voices. Stephen Snyder Boston March 26, 2017 A girl holds up a picture of a relative killed while fighting with the Houthi rebels, during a rally marking the 'Martyr Day' in Sanaa, Yemen, February 9, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Mohamed al-Sayaghi “Yemeni people… should stop acting like this.” Ami lives in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. She asked that we not use her real name, because in Yemen, anything you say about the war can have unintended consequences. “I am married with one child,” she says, “so I'm living the war. Every day, every day you hear a story about someone whose relative was killed in a war, and dead bodies are received every day, at least, in one house of my neighborhood.” She says neighbors gather at one house or another to grieve and to help with the ritual washing of the dead. “So I washed, like, five dead bodies,” she remembers, “and families were just crying and encouraging the eldest member of the family to go and fight and [take] revenge ... so it was much hate speech.” Ami has become weary of the partisan politics that now divide people in her city. She knows people who support the exiled government of Yemen, and people who support the Houthi rebels that overthrew the government in 2015. She would like to count them all as her friends, but that is not easy. Read more: If Yemen's Houthis weren't Iranian proxies before, they could be soon Ami and her husband have agreed that staying neutral in the Yemeni civil war is important for their family. Ami's brother-in-law was staying neutral as well. But that did not shield him from danger when he went to the besieged city of Taiz to deliver food. “Someone from the family called my husband,” Ami remembers. Her words begin to come more quickly, agitated. “They were telling him that, ‘Your brother has passed away, he was killed,’ and we were just confused, asking them so many questions, and they kept silent, and then they just told us that we have to go to the hospital to see the dead body. We went there, and we saw him, and we identified the body, and they were telling us, ‘Will you take care of the dead body or should we bury it?" And they want to bury it in groups, I mean like, taking photos of the dead bodies." Both sides in the conflict — the Houthi rebels, and the exiled Yemeni government — have been flooding Facebook and Twitter with photos of their war dead, presenting them as martyrs. “See,” says Ami, “when someone is killed, each one is running to take a photo of the dead body. Assuming that the other party killed that person, and that person belongs to him. So, we took the body and we buried the body by ourselves.” Ami says Yemen should not have to endure the same kind of sectarian war that divides Syria, Libya and Iraq. “Yemeni people are different,” she says. “They are kind [and] deep inside, and they should stop acting like this. Politicians should listen to a woman's voice because their sons, their husbands are being killed, and this is really hard.” Ami has plans to start a youth education program in Yemen, serving kids from families across the political spectrum. And, she says, she is not waiting for the fighting to end to do it. People bury judge Yahya Rubaid and his family, who were killed by a Saudi-led air strike, in Yemen's capital Sanaa January 26, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah “My son was completely frightened.” ”You know, after the airstrike campaign started in Sanaa, that was really an unforgettable day, I had to move from Sanaa to Taiz." Taiz, Yemen's cultural capital, was not being bombed in March 2015. So Yemeni journalist Mohammed al-Qadhi took his family there. But Taiz would soon have its own troubles. Houthi rebels encircled the city and blocked every entrance. Local resistance fighters kept the invaders at bay. Taiz residents found their city becoming one of Yemen’s deadliest battlegrounds. “The war started there in Taiz, and I had to take my kids and my wife down in the basement to be a little bit safer,” Mohammed recalls. “But the situation was completely terrible because of the shells flying over the house and the tanks that were nearby, shelling.” The noise and the shaking of their building upset Mohammed's youngest child. “My son, Aziz, he was completely frightened … and he was completely attached to me,” he says, as if reliving the experience. “Wherever I go, even to the toilet, here and there he is attached to me, he doesn't want to leave me at all, he sleeps next to me and he develops some kind of phobia, that I might depart him, and leave him at that moment.” FIfty days into the siege of Taiz, Mohammed got the chance to move his family out of the city. But he then returned to Taiz, alone, and remains one of the few journalists covering the fighting there for international media. He is relieved that his children are living in relative safety, but regrets that he can't see them. “I miss their company. I miss the company of my wife,” Mohammed says. “I was receiving a call from my daughter today telling me, ‘Dad, when are you coming back?’ My tears are falling down because I am not able to go back to my house." A man comforts another, whose brother was killed by a mortar shell blast during clashes between Houthis and fighters of the Popular Resistance Committees in Yemen's southwestern city of Taiz May 26, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Stringer “We started hearing the snipers' bullets passing right over our heads.” Suha Almujahed expected it to be hard to enter her besieged city of Taiz. But it was worse than that. On Jan. 5, 2016, the Al-Dahi crossing was the only entrance into Taiz, and it was heavily guarded by Houthi fighters. That day Suha and her cousin were returning from Sanaa, and hundreds of people were crowded in front of the checkpoint. “They were holding cooking gas cylinders, small amounts of vegetables and some daily supplies,” she says. The checkpoint was opened for only a few hours a day, and there was no telling when it might be abruptly shut down. “So, me and my cousin had to ram ourselves between the crowds to reach the checkpoint before they just decide to close it,” Suha remembers. “But when we were near, a Houthi soldier on a pickup [truck] pointed his weapon towards us and threatened [that he would] open fire if we didn't stand appropriately in a row." “We were frozen. We couldn't move. We were scared, we started hearing the snipers' bullets passing right over our heads, and everywhere. My cousin dropped her bags. She closed her ears and started crying from fear.” “I just felt humiliated,” Suha adds. “I was scared and I couldn't prevent my tears from flowing down.” Once through the checkpoint, after their luggage was opened and searched in the middle of the street, Suha and her cousin walked quickly as they could into Taiz, she says, scared, shaking and tired. “There was no time to look back ... just [to] run before a sniper decides to take away your life.” One hour after reaching home, Suha remembers, a dead body was delivered to the neighbors. “It was a child,” she says, “who was killed at the crossing just minutes after we passed." Anti-Houthi fighters of the Southern Popular Resistance stand near a tank in Yemen's southern port city of Aden May 16, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Stringer “People outside Yemen do not understand about the south. And they should." Nadeem Salmeen lives in Aden, the port city that every ship from the Indian Ocean must pass to reach the Mediterranean. Wars have been fought over this spot through the centuries. In 2015, the Houthis and soldiers loyal to former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh marched south from Sanaa and tried to seize Aden. “The first day that Houthi forces entered my neighborhood,” says Nadeem, “women and children were crying and afraid, and the [Houthi] snipers shot at everyone who was moving.” Pictures from Aden at the time are eerie to look at. “The streets were empty, and some cars were burning,” he remembers, “and no one stopped the fires.” Nadeem knows that Aden was once the capital of an independent South Arabia. It remains rich in resources and is strategically located to participate in global trade. He is not alone among southerners who want to restore southern independence. “People outside Yemen do not understand about the south," he says, "and they should, because the future of our people can not be in the hands of the north.” The Yemen civil war, to people in Aden, is complicated by this longing for independence, for southern control over its own resources. “Most of the gas and oil fields are in the south, not in the north,” Nadeem says with bitterness, with the foreknowledge that after the civil war is settled, southerners will still have to fight for self-determination and independence. “Nobody wants to help the Southern Movement,” he says, “because the big oil and gas companies made a contract with Yemen [meaning, the government in the north]. So all this contract will be cancelled if we are separated.” In 2015, southern independence was less on Nadeem’s mind than basic survival. “When the Houthis attacked Aden, all the young people volunteered for war," he recalls, "and we went out to the police station, but unfortunately there were no weapons.” The fight over Aden went on for months, with forces loyal to the exiled president Hadi, local resistance fighters and the Saudi-led coalition battling for turf against the invading Houthis. Nadeem’s neighborhood was on the front line, and he recalls when the Houthis got another foothold there. “I was angry because they did it again," he says. "So we left Aden, with all our neighbors, and moved to Hadramout, to be safe from the war." Hadramout, about 435 miles east of Aden, is controlled variously by local tribesmen, al-Qaeda, and the exiled Yemeni government. But, importantly, not by the Houthis. For now, Nadeem feels gratitude to the forces that saved Aden from the northern invaders. “We will not forget that the Arab alliance helped us in our battle with Houthi[s].” But he also has his eye on the future, and the promise of southern independence. An artist paints graffiti on a wall in Sanaa, Yemen March 15, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah “I feel that I am not going to marry ...” Ahmad was a university student before the war began. He was engaged to be married, and he felt like he had a bright future. But the past two years have not been good to this young man from Dhamar. “I have lost six of my best friends,” he says. One of them — his very best friend, Bilal — was killed in a Saudi airstrike that shook all of the capital city, Sanaa. “I wanted to study abroad, but I couldn’t,” says Ahmad, who not only missed out on a scholarship opportunity, but saw many of his professors drop everything and flee the country. “If I finish my studying in the college, what am I going to do?” he laments. “There is no job there,” he says, “even employees, themselves, don't have a salary.” Yemen’s economy was ruined first by the war, and now by partisan tinkering with the nation’s central bank. “So I cannot feel that my life is going well,” Ahmad says with a deep sigh. “I feel that I am not going to marry, I'm not going to have a job, I'm not going to have a salary, I'm not going to do anything. Just waiting for an airstrike to kill me or to kill my family,” he says. "And I hope that will not happen.” Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Suha Almujahed.
Pan-Africanism: it is a belief that African peoples, both on the African continent and in the Diaspora, share not merely a common history, but a common destiny. This sense of interconnected pasts and futures has taken many forms, especially in the creation of political institutions. “We the African people are our own liberators and thinkers whose task is to make a mighty stride towards genuine freedom by any means necessary.” These ideas are referenced in Elumelu’s Africapitalism which is defined as the positive role the private sector must play in Africa by making long-term investments in strategic sectors of the economy in a way that creates and multiplies local value in order to accelerate and broaden prosperity throughout the continent and around the world. Africapitalism calls for a new kind of capitalism – a version in which Africa leapfrogs other models, creating a more broad-based and sustainable economy. The history of Africa has been characterised by massive swings in political thought. The anti-colonial and initial postcolonial movements were concerned with imagining Africa as a refinement of its precolonial past. Due to postcolonial troubles, SAP etc, current intellectual political thought is concerned with imagining Africa as a pale imitation of neo-liberal structures. However, little attention has been paid to the role of informal sector in fostering growth and creating jobs. In fact, the informal sector contributes about 55 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP and 80 per cent of the labour force. Nine in 10 rural and urban workers have informal jobs in Africa and most employees are women and youth. The beauty of the informal economy is that it reflects everyday realities and is divorced from the strictures of neo-liberalism. The informal economy involves practices, knowledge and values that are related to, and grow out of, local and community circumstances. On the other hand, the dominant discourse is that indigenous practices are outmoded, archaic and out of tune with modernity. But as Siyanda Mohutsiwa states quite succinctly, social media has finally given Pan-Africanism a new voice. The world and Africa would do well not to ignore this voice. These are our voices. Can Pan-Africanism save us? Pan-Africanism is us. Like this: Like Loading...
A moose was the likely culprit after hikers found an injured a woman on a Summit County trail over the weekend, a Division of Wildlife Resources official said Wednesday. On Sunday, two hikers were walking on an unnamed trail, created by locals on the northern outskirts of Jeremy Ranch, when they came across the woman lying in the path, said DWR spokesman Mark Hadley. About 20 feet away, the hikers saw a moose cow and her calf. The moose cow “made an aggressive movement” toward the hikers, who worried the animal might charge them, Hadley said, but it didn‘t. The hikers took the injured woman and her dog, which was not injured, to safety and called police. A DWR officer was called to the scene in the afternoon, Hadley said, and at that point the woman was being loaded into an ambulance. The woman was “injured enough that she wasn’t able to share her name” with emergency personnel, Hadley said. There were no witnesses to her injury, Hadley added, and the hikers didn’t know how long the woman had been lying in the path when they found her. The officer spent more than an hour searching the area for the moose and calf but didn’t find either, Hadley said. Based on the hikers’ accounts, the DWR believes a moose had attacked the woman. “We are almost as certain as we can be without visiting with her that it was a moose attack,” he said. “Just the fact that when the two individuals found her there was a cow and a calf moose 20 feet away or less.” Officers tried to contact the woman, Hadley said. They likely won’t be able to talk to her unless she comes to them; most DWR officers are busy patrolling for the deer hunting season. The area is known for having a “healthy population” of moose, according to Hadley, and it wouldn‘t be surprising for hikers to come across the animal. Moose generally are found in the northern half of the state, where temperatures are lower than the south, though attacks are uncommon. “It’s not something that happens very often, but there’s the potential for, yeah, this could happen again,” Hadley said. “It wouldn’t be out of the question at all.” Typically, moose cows are more aggressive than normal when trying to protect a calf, Hadley said, and bull moose, which “can be a bit ornery” under normal circumstances, are especially aggressive during breeding season, which is from late September to mid-October. Article continues below Adult moose generally weigh between 800 and 1200 pounds, Hadley noted, and have shoulders that are about 6 feet tall. They move quickly, he said. “These are big, strong animals,” Hadley said. “They don‘t hesitate at all to go after what they perceive as a threat.” If people come across a moose in the outdoors, Hadley said, the first thing they should do is back up and give the animal space. Pay attention to the animal’s behavior, Hadley said. If its ears stand up, if the hair on the back of its neck is lying down or if it starts to lick its snout, those are signs that the moose is agitated. If a moose is agitated, Hadley said, people should not turn around and try to run away — that could elicit a negative response from the moose. “Face the animal, and just slowly walk back the way you came,” Hadley said. If a moose does begin to charge at someone, the person should try to get behind a solid object, like a tree, to block blows from the animal, he said. And “if a moose knocks you down, curl up in a ball and try to protect your head,” Hadley said. Though some animals might be deterred when someone tries to fight back, moose are not, Hadley said. Fighting back likely would aggravate a moose further.
Image: Screenshot from The Rachel Maddow Show I know some people think that paper towels and duct tape can fix just about anything, but could someone please tell the guys at Exxon that this isn't always true? Watch the absurd video below.On a recent episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow reported on the recent Exxon oil spill in Montana's Yellowstone River. Lies from Exxon regarding the extent of the spill and danger area residents faced have caused Montana's government, led by Governor Brian Schweitzer to distance themselves from the Exxon clean-up command center, as well as inspire Gov. Schweitzer to call on Montanans to do their own soil analysis to help document the extent of the damage Exxon has caused. But as good as the clip was at summarizing the news and giving it a historic context, what shocked me most about it was the footage of Exxon workers trying, if you can call it trying, to clean up the oil spill with paper towels. In the clip, Maddow raises the point that despite earning $5,000,000 in profits every hour Exxon (and other oil companies) are still using primitive methods to clean their spills. Be sure to watch the clip to minute 7 to see Exxon workers perform a high-tech maneuver called duct taping some paper towels together. Because, why not, right? If one paper towel absorbs some oil, surely duct taping a bunch together would make some sort of super paper towel. A few more rolls of towels and tape and we should have this river as good as new! The paper towels and duct tape creations aren't the only method for attempting to clean the oil. Exxon is also using boom, which is not always effective. If this is really the best we can do, let's be sure to keep this in mind when discussing other oil projects. Here's the video. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy If you like this post, you might like the things I post on Twitter: @ChrisTackett More on Exxon Oil Spill Exxon's Lack Of Public Transparency Prompts Montana Leaving Oil Spill Clean Up Command Yellowstone River Oil Spill Now Extends 150 Miles Downstream
The plot was thought to be a follow-up to the airline bomb attempt that was foiled in 2009. Officials: Bomber-to-be was informant WASHINGTON (AP) — Over the past three years, al-Qaida bomb makers in Yemen have developed three fiendishly clever devices in hopes of attacking airplanes in the skies above the United States. First, there was the underwear bomb that fizzled over Detroit on Christmas 2009. Next, terrorists hid bombs inside printer cartridges and got them on board cargo planes in 2010, only to watch authorities find and defuse them in the nick of time. Story Continued Below Then last month, officials say, al-Qaida completed a sophisticated new, nonmetallic underwear bomb — and unwittingly handed it over to the CIA. The would-be suicide bomber, the man al-Qaida entrusted with its latest device, actually was a double agent working with the CIA and Saudi intelligence agencies, officials said Tuesday. Instead of sneaking it onto a plane in his underwear, he delivered it to the U.S. government and handed al-Qaida its latest setback. The extraordinary intelligence operation was confirmed by U.S. and Yemeni officials who were briefed on the plot but spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. The FBI is still analyzing the explosive but officials described it as an upgrade over the Christmas Day bomb. This new device contained lead azide, a chemical known as a reliable detonator. After the Christmas attack failed, al-Qaida used lead azide as the detonator in the 2010 plot against cargo planes. Security procedures at U.S. airports Tuesday remained unchanged despite the plot, a reflection of both the U.S. confidence in its security systems and a recognition that the government can't realistically expect travelers to endure much more. Increased costs and delays to airlines and shipping companies from new security measures could have a global economic impact too. Security officials said they believe airport security systems put in place in the United States in recent years could have detected the new device or one like it. But the attempt served as a stark reminder that security overseas is quite different. "I would not expect any real changes for the traveling public," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said. "There is a concern that overseas security doesn't match ours. That's an ongoing challenge." While airline checks in the United States mean passing through an onerous, sometimes embarrassing series of pat-downs and body scans, procedures overseas can be a mixed bag. The U.S. cannot force other countries to permanently adopt the expensive and intrusive measures that have become common in American airports over the past decade.
While kicking back on your couch watching this year's Tour de France contenders suffer their way up the Col du Tourmalet, you probably felt that nagging itch to get back on the bike and start logging some serious miles. And of course, that itch is always compounded by a burning lust for more gear. We gathered up some of the best hard goods the 2012 season has to offer -- bikes, components, shoes, helmets, shades and apparel -- taking it all up into the California hills for a week to put it to the test. In this round-up, you'll see how it all shook down. Ladies and gentlemen, start your wallets. Trek Domane 6 Series Road Bike Trek's new Domane road bike ($6,930 and up) is outfitted with some pavement-smoothing technology that keep your poor bones from getting too rattled on long days in the saddle. "Endurance bikes" like the Domane are designed to be more comfortable and stable than traditional road bikes. They usually have shorter top tubes, taller head tubes and slightly longer wheelbases, effectively bringing the handlebars closer to the rider. They're also referred to as "Classics" bikes -- machines designed to be ridden over rough roads for long distances in bad weather, much like the Specialized Roubaix frame Tom Boonen rode to a decisive victory in this year's wild and woolly Paris-Roubaix race. Trek's approach to reducing the shocks of the cobbles? The Domane's IsoSpeed technology -- it's a decoupler system that separates the seat tube from the top tube, so the bone-shaking bumps of the road aren't directly transferred to the rider's body. -- Jim Merithew Read the Full Review WIRED IsoSpeed tube coupler and shock-absorbing front fork mitigate the worst effects of rough roads. All-day comfort while remaining more Ferrari than La-Z-Boy. Tech is inconspicuous and doesn't look nerdy. TIRED There's a gaggle of cables at the stem. The correct saddle pairing for this technology remains a mystery -- the Bontrager saddle on my test bike left my butt wanting better. Capo SC-12 Cycling Jersey Capo's SC-12 jersey ($150) is clearly made for performance cycling, but it feels more like it's designed for hurtling through space at great velocity. The first thing I noticed when slipping on the top half of this middle-tier kit is, well, nothing. That's precisely the point. I want to feel naked while cycling (ahem), like there's nothing holding me back from setting land-speed records. If you find your soigneur has neglected to wash your skinsuit come race day, this $150 jersey from the Emeryville, California-based company is so snug, breathable and light that it would be a passable replacement. -- Bradley Hughes Read the Full Review WIRED Materials are weightless and softer than a baby's bottom. Zipper is nearly invisible. Graphics are as unobtrusive as the kit itself. TIRED Pockets are sky high and small. Sizes are more European than Fabian Cancellara, so buy a size up. Assos SS.Uno s7 Cycling Jersey It seems making a cycling jersey would be simple, right? Get some spandex, slap on some pockets and you're good to go. But that's not how Assos, the mad genius Swiss cycling apparel makers, approach things. For Assos, a jersey isn't a piece of apparel, it's a blank canvas which the company proudly fills with as much tech as possible. For instance, the SS.Uno s7 jersey ($200) is constructed using four fabrics. The key is what the company calls Type.vX121, which is designed to effectively protect your chest from wind while still allowing for ventilation and quick drying times. In our group tests, it was a noticeable improvement over other jerseys, especially on cooler Bay Area days. -- Mark McClusky Read the Full Review WIRED Tremendous fit in the cycling position. Zip side pocket for valuables. UV 50+ rated sun protection. TIRED Tight Euro-style fit is not for every rider. As usual, Assos takes a big bite from your wallet. Scott Sports Foil 10 Road Bike In terms of all-out blistering speed, I've never experienced anything like the Foil. It's the rare aero-road frame that feels every bit as light, stiff, and snappy as its more traditional, round-tubed brethren, yet it holds huge aerodynamic advantages over those frames. (Scott claims a 20 percent boost over round-tubed frames.) In essence, the Foil is free speed. Aero-road frames have been around for only four or five years, but they've quickly become a required product for any serious frame manufacturer. The frames borrow the teardrop tube shapes of triathlon bikes but with geometries and components made for road racing. However, the narrower tube profiles can introduce a lot of side-to-side flex, which robs pedaling efficiency. Scott solved this by cropping off the back end of each tube. If you think of the aero tube cross section as being teardrop shaped, Scott chopped off the rear third or so, the part that narrows down to a point. As with Trek's patented Kamm tail shape, the trailing edge of each tube is flat and runs perpendicular to the frame. This not only sheds weight, it stiffens the frame. -- Nathan Hurst Read the Full Review WIRED Everything that makes standard race bikes fast, plus aero benefits they can't match. Surprisingly comfortable for such a twitchy, race-oriented frame. TIRED Ho-hum graphics and overall look. Frustratingly slippery seatpost clamp; I finished several rides with my saddle a few millimeters below where it had started. Assos Zegho Noire Sunglasses Checking myself out in the mirror at home, I was digging the look of these Assos Zeghos ($470) shades, as crazy and weird as their Euro-goggle looks are. I flashed back to visions of Mario Cipollini -- teeth clenched, muscles bulging, barreling six lengths ahead of the peloton in a mass Tour sprint, grandly sporting the most audacious kit and a pair of fluorescent Briko Stingers. I imagined my next ride would be one filled with intense sprint repeats, followed by some iced Sambuca and a nice hot tub with molte belle ragazze. But out on the road, when all my friends started ribbing me, it dawned on me that I'm not as cool as Super Mario, nor will I ever be. I just look like a dork. But who cares? These shades are downright awesome. To develop the Zeghos, Assos partnered with Carl Zeiss Optics to work up a shockingly lightweight, one-piece lens that offers 100 percent UV protection. The tinting features a unique gradient Assos is calling "Tunnel Vision," where the bottom third of the lenses are clear. There's zero distortion across the entire lens, even the curviest parts. -- Jim Merithew Read the Full Review ‎ WIRED Great optics from Carl Zeiss. Tinting gradient is perfect -- it blocks the sun, but you can still read a computer or phone screen and see the road clearly. No sweat. Featherweight construction is supremely comfortable. Impenetrable to UV rays. TIRED They cost (cough) $470. My wife let me leave the house wearing these? Giro Factor Cycling Shoes The night I brought these Giro Factor kicks ($290) home, I found myself lounging around the apartment in them as if they were just another pair of house slippers. That's the first time I've had that experience when trying on a new bike shoe. Sure, the Factor's super-stiff carbon-fiber soles aren't made for walking. But as I sat there with the uncleated shoes strapped to my feet, they felt about as comfortable as a sneaker. The Factor achieves that comfort level without any noticeable sacrifices in terms of efficiency. The 6.5mm soles come from corporate sibling Easton, a maker of some of the sickest carbon wheels, stems, bars and forks on the market. Cadel Evans rode Easton wheels to victory in last year's Tour de France. I felt absolutely zero unwanted flex, even when mashing the pedals on 12 percent climbs in my testing grounds of Marin County, California. These are bona fide race shoes. -- Jim Merithew Read the Full Review WIRED Comfortable right out of the box. Wafer-thin, rock-solid platform. Customizable arch support for a wide range of feet. TIRED Red and white patent leather look ain't exactly classic. Walking pads border on cosmetic. Assos FI.Uno S5 Cycling Shorts Telling a bike rider to try a pair of Assos shorts is like telling a gearhead to get behind the wheel of a Ferrari. The product is beautiful, impeccably thought out and insanely expensive. There's not a reason in the world that you should actually have either, but once you try them, you find it hard to settle for less. The FI.Uno S5 bibs are actually Assos' value product, if you can call a pair of bike shorts that retail for around $200 a value. Slip them on, though, and you see why you might pay such big bucks. The cut is simply perfect -- when you're standing, they feel odd and binding, but once in the saddle, they seem to almost disappear. These are made for riding bikes, not walking around. -- Mark McClusky Read the Full Review WIRED Typically high comfort on the bike. Assos products wear like iron, so should last for years with good care. Comes with wash bag. TIRED Very expensive. Leg grippers not quite as solid as they could be. Specialized Prevail Helmet The Kevlar-reinforced internal skeleton inside every Specialized S-Works Prevail helmet ($230) helped the company's designers get away with massive vents that wouldn't be possible with pure foam. The added structural support allowed them to shave away external foam to create massive ports and channels, which have a double benefit: They allow more cooling air to flow over the wearer's head and also, according to Specialized, improve aerodynamics. I don't have easy access to a low-speed wind tunnel, so I can't speak to aerodynamics, but all of Wired's testers who've been wearing the Prevail over the past several weeks agree it's possibly the most well-vented helmet they've worn. It's markedly cooler than my 2009 S-Works helmet. -- Jim Merithew Read the Full Review WIRED More air flow than a jet intake. Micro-adjustable fit system for fine-tuned snugness. TIRED Fixed strap system may not be for everyone. If you are already self-conscious about the size of your melon, beware. Nalini Acrab Cycling Jersey Slip on the airy Nalini Acrab cycling jersey ($130) and you'll feel like you're floating on a Mediterranean breeze. A wide knit and wicking polyester fabric keep you cool, and the slightest wind is enough to thermoregulate. Designed and made in Italy, the Acrab is a mid-range offering from the 32-year-old company. It's a no-frills piece; the back pockets are simple and straightforward, but not saggy. A lot of jerseys have grippy hems to keep them from riding up in the front. It doesn't always work, but on the Acrab, it was effective. One quirk: the Acrab is available only in a three-quarters zip, which is fine if you're into that type of fit, but frustrating otherwise. -- Nathan Hurst Read the Full Review WIRED Light, venting fabric. Simple but effective. Slim fit through the body. TIRED Too-slim fit through the neck. Three-quarter zip only. Smith Pivlock V2 Sunglasses If you're out there mashing it three or four (or 10) hours a day, you've got enough obstacles to deal with. Fighting for a clear field of vision shouldn't be one of them. I'm tired of looking around, or under, or even through the top bar of my glasses frames while descending my favorites climbs. It's a dangerous distraction, but mostly it just takes all the speed (and fun) out of it. The Pivlock V2 ($160) is a new, rimless design from Smith that smartly solves this issue while still covering all the prerequisites typical to sport protective eyewear. -- Bradley Hughes Read the Full Review WIRED Adjustable nose pads give you a great fit. Classic Smith looks. Obstruction-free views. TIRED Even with the Hydroleophobic lens coating, I still fogged up in the fluctuating temps of Northern California. Sweaty lenses almost propose more issues than a pair of glasses with a top rim. Giant TCR Advanced SL 1 Road Bike Some people want to be warriors on bikes. Some want to be pirates. Me? I want to be a ninja. And that's why I so enjoyed my time with the Giant TCR Advanced SL 1. The murdered-out color scheme is only the beginning, though. (And let's face it, most serious cyclists would ride a hot pink frame if it made them faster.) No, the ninjaness really came from the bike's tracking -- smooth and silent. The hugely oversized headtube is offset by nearly rectangular top tube and down tubes, giving the bike a distinctly stealth-bomber appearance and a stability that surprises. In past years, some complained that the Advanced SL line got jarring on rough pavement, but I felt nearly as comfortable flying over cattle guards as I did on newly repaved roads. The Dura-Ace groupset is Shimano's crown jewel for a reason, and it performed admirably, even when struggling up 20-percent-plus grades. Never a hitched shift, never a dropped chain. -- Peter Rubin Read the Full Review WIRED Black-on-black-on-black made for the most badass ride of the crop. Component quality and performance for the price ($6,900) can't be matched. TIRED Integrated seat post feels unduly permanent. People love catching — and dropping — ninjas. CycleOps PowerTap G3 Power Meter Wheelset CycleOps Power unveiled its newest line of PowerTap power meters last year. Like previous PowerTap models, the G3 unit is built inside a rear hub. But the G3 is thinner and lighter yet has wider flanges, which, in theory, would make any wheels built up with the hub stiffer and more durable. And for the first time, CycleOps is offering not just standalone hubs but also prebuilt wheelsets. I've spent two months on the company's 45mm G3 Carbon Wheelset ($3,200), and even in the incredibly windy and hilly San Francisco Bay Area, I prefer them in most conditions to all of the other wheels I own. But the rims' more traditional wedge profile struggles with strong sidewinds, much more than rims with the bulging profiles that have become so popular on aero wheels over the past two years. The new design puts most of the electronics in the removable cap, rather than the body of the hub. Where repairs on the old design often involved sending your entire wheel back to CycleOps, now you can just mail them the Oreo-sized cap, which takes all of 10 seconds to remove. CycleOps has also redesigned its Joule computer, and the new $169 unit is much smaller and way better looking than the old Joule 2.0 while retaining features like a customizable dashboard and fields that let users dive deep into their power data. -- John Bradley Read the Full Review WIRED Full power-meter training in a package lighter than a lot of standard race wheels. Insanely stiff, responsive wheels. Easy-to-service hub design. ANT+ compatibility means unit will talk to a wide range of devices. TIRED Slightly last-gen shape to the deep-dish rims. Tricky in strong side winds. Would be tough to create a more boring logo for such an exciting set of wheels. Braking performance isn't the greatest. Oakley Radarlock Pitch Sunglasses When you're powering your bike alongside traffic at 20 mph and you've got a six-inch stretch of street between you and the shoulder, the last thing you need is to be blinded by an unrelenting sun. Like the wind in your face, there's not much you can do but fight through it, but a competent pair of shades will help you plow through any angle of sun. Oakley's latest, the cycling-specific Radarlock Pitch ($220 and up), which expands the company's push for better lens-swapping designs, proved more than up to the task. During our group bike test, a few of us ran the Radarlocks through the rigors while biking around San Francisco Bay and the challenging terrains around northern California. On first usage, the lens provided noticeable protection against the sun's unforgiving UV rays as well as any unexpected fog or haze -- always a concern around these parts. When the sun did go down, switching out the dark polarized lens and popping in one designed for low light was a cinch, thanks to the innovative Switchlock button located near the left eye hinge. You just slide the button back a little, bend the hinge, and gently pull the lens out. Swapping one lens for another can be done in under a minute, once you get the hang of it. -- Erik Malinowski Read the Full Review WIRED Excellent protection against bright glare. Structurally sound. Decent wind deflection in all elements. Nail the balance between coverage and venting. TIRED Tight fit around some noggins. Cumbersome to slip on while helmeted. Rapha Performance Roadwear Pro Team Jersey The first thought I had when I put on this Rapha Pro Team jersey ($210) was NOT, "Well, this is going to look absolutely ridiculous" -- which is important, because that's a thought I have about almost every single jersey I've owned. On aesthetics alone, it's a thing of beauty. It's got a slim fit, but it's somehow forgiving enough to find room for and camouflage my last couple of burritos. And for those of you, like me, who cringe at the garish all-over prints of most jerseys, the off-white/cream with a single black band on the left arm is nice fresh breath of minimalism. Details abound (sorry for just saying "abound"): The very top of the placket, when unzipped, exposes a subtle black-and-white pattern that's as close to a color splash as you're going to get. An eyesore it ain't. Functionally, it's got all the hallmarks of a true race-fit jersey (rare for Rapha, which tends to opt for boxier "club cuts"). The sleeves are snug, but not so tight as to leave marks after a long ride. The front is cut higher than usual -- when you're low in the saddle, the logic goes, all that extra material is just going to bunch up and make things uncomfortable. There are radio cable loops, which 99 percent of us are never going to need, but give the same feeling of craftsmanship as the label in one of the pockets featuring an odd little meditation on the joys of cycling ("Tongues hang, like those of dogs, and the gang breathes fast and heavy"). The pocket placement was significantly higher than most other jerseys, which I didn't love -- it certainly inhibited the usual in-and-out inventory transfers of a long ride (vest, arm warmers, food, etc.). -- Peter Rubin Read the Full Review WIRED It's a departure for Rapha, to be sure, but one that bodes well for trimmer cyclists riding in warmer weather. A head-turner on the road. TIRED Beware the high pockets, and the high price. Sidi Ergo 3 Road Cycling Shoes The Sidi Ergo 3 road cycling shoe ($400) is packed to the gills with technology. These pedal-pushers are outfitted with enough straps and buckles to make Houdini drool all over his penny-farthing. Up top, there's Sidi's new Techno II buckle, a line-and-dial tightening system that gives you a more accurate fit than a ratchet closure. There's some Velcro below that to keep the forefoot snug. The Ergo 3s also use Sidi's familiar heel-retention system, a caliper buckle on the back of the shoe that tightens and grips your foot from behind. This keeps your heel securely planted on the carbon sole, which comes with little vents you can open or close. But despite having all the fancy buckles, straps and vents, or maybe because of them, the Ergo 3 just works. Indeed, once I got past my initial fascination with Techno II buckle and adjustable venting system the shoe seemed to disappear onto my foot about as well as any shoe I have ever worn. On rides short and long, I did not find myself fidgeting with the strap or buckles like I am prone to do with other shoes. -- Jim Merithew Read the Full Review WIRED Instant Euro cred. Best fit of any Ergo shoe to date. Replaceable heel pad. Built to last. TIRED Might want to stick with black if you are going to keep these for years to come. Instant Euro cred.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Saudi Arabia announced Wednesday that a woman who was detained after wearing a miniskirt in a video that went viral has been released without charge. Police in Saudi Arabia had arrested the young woman for wearing "immodest clothes" after an outcry from people who say she flagrantly violated the kingdom's conservative Islamic dress code. The young Saudi woman drew attention over the weekend when the video was shared online of her walking in a historic village north of the capital wearing a miniskirt and crop top, and showing her hair. Saudi rules require all women living in the kingdom, including foreigners, to wear long, loose robes known as abayas in public. Most Saudi women also wear a headscarf and veil that covers the face. A statement released by the Center for International Communication said police released the woman, who was not named. It says she was released Tuesday evening after a few hours of questioning and that she told investigators that the video posted on social media was published without her knowledge. "She was released without charge and the case has been closed by the prosecutor," the statement said. It was a rare win for supporters of women's rights in Saudi Arabia, who criticized the public outcry against her, which prompted police to bring her in for questioning. Her release from detention without charge was also unusual. Women who have fled allegedly abusive families have landed in prison without charge, as have women who defied a ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia. The decision not to press charges also comes as Saudi Arabia overhauls its prosecution system. Last month, King Salman announced that public prosecution powers would be moved from under the interior minister's purview to that of the royal court, directly under the monarch. A new attorney general was also named in the reshuffling. The country's new 31-year-old heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has pushed for greater openings in society as part of a wider overhaul plan called Vision 2030. More than half of Saudi Arabia's population is under 25. Qatari FM says Trump "wrong" to say his country supports terrorism The country has been leading a regional boycott on the tiny Gulf nation of Qatar, which has been accused by the Saudis, their allies and President Trump of funding terrorism. Qatar denies the accusations. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani told CBS News White House and senior foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan last month that the country is "commited to countering terrorism."
MIDDLETON, Wis. - People who swam in the Middleton High School pool during an 11-day period in February might have been exposed to a parasite. Public Health Madison & Dane County said it received a confirmed report of a Cryptosporidiosis infection in a person who swam in the Middleton High School pool. "This isn't an outbreak at the pool," Beth Cleary, PHMDC Environmental Health supervisor, said. "It's just a notice to be aware and to remind people not to swim in the pool when they have diarrhea." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cryptosporidium, or Crypto, is a microscopic parasite that causes the disease cryptosporidiosis, which causes diarrhea. The parasite is protected by an outer shell that allows it to survive outside the body for long periods of time and makes it very tolerant to chlorine disinfection, the CDC said. "Crypto could still be living in well-maintained pool water because chlorine does not kill crypto in the water immediately," Cleary said. PHMDC said in a notice on Feb. 22 that anyone who swam in the Middleton High School pool between Feb. 8 and Feb. 19 might have been exposed to Crypto. The infection can occur if someone swallows water, even a small amount, from a pool where a person with Crypto swam. During the 11-day period, the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District said students, the community and competitors used the pool. "The biggest thing that took place there during that time period was we held a Division I Sectional diving and swimming meet involving, I believe, eight to 10 teams, so about 400 athletes," district communications director Perry Hibner said. "So we notified each school about the fact that something may have happened and that they should be aware of it." The district has posted a notice where people sign in to use the pool and said it will stay up until March 10. Health officials said no one else has come forward with symptoms. Anyone who experienced diarrhea might want to consult a health care provider for a diagnosis and let the provider know about the potential exposure to Crypto. The most common symptom is mild to profuse diarrhea, along with nausea, vomiting and cramping, PHMDC said. Fever can also accompany the symptoms. Health officials asked that anyone who has experienced the symptoms associated with Crypto in the last 14 days not to use the pools. Anyone with questions can contact the Public Health Nurse Help Line at 608-266-4821.
The Distances Between Streets & Avenues – Things You Probably Didn’t Know If you are traveling at the same pace, regardless of the avenue, it is faster to walk between 6th and 7th Streets than walking from 13th to 14th Streets. Why? Because the block between 6th and 7th is only 181 feet, 9 inches while the block between 13th and 14th is 206 feet, 6 inches. Anyone walking around Manhattan is sure to notice that street distances between blocks and avenues vary widely. But few know that the block lengths can vary by several feet. When the grid plan for Manhattan’s streets were laid out, you’d think that the streets would be equidistant. They are not. Maybe this is the sort of thing that almost no one would care about, but living up to this web site’s name, I found this chart very interesting. It is from the New York Bureau of Buildings in the 1892 edition of The World Almanac. As you see, the chart lists the distances between the avenues, the width of the avenues and streets and the length of blocks north of Houston Street. There are a few interesting things to note. One is how far Avenues A, B, C and D extended northward in 1892. Avenue A was later renamed Sutton Place north from 53rd Street and York Avenue north from 59th Street. Avenue B was renamed East End Avenue from 79th to 90th Street. Many portions of Avenue A, B, C and D were never completed (the landfill required to extend them was never done), or wiped out with map changes and construction in the 20th century (e.g. The Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive). Regardless, the almanac still lists the proposed dimensions for the phantom avenues via the Bureau of Buildings. The other thing to note is that the main cross streets of 14th, 23rd, 34th etc. are all the same: 100 feet wide as compared to the other streets which are all 60 feet wide. I have used the modern names of avenues in parentheses. Below are some highlights of the chart. Avenues in Manhattan are 100 feet wide with some notable exceptions: Lexington Avenue – 75 feet Boulevard (Broadway) above 59th Street – 150 feet Madison Avenue South of 42nd Street – 75 feet Madison Avenue North of 42nd Street – 80 feet Madison Avenue From 120th to 124th Streets – 100 feet Sixth Avenue (Lenox/Malcolm X Boulevard) North of 110th Street – 150 feet Seventh Avenue (Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard) North of 110th Street – 150 feet Eleventh Avenue (West End Avenue) North of 110th Street – 150 feet The length of blocks North of Houston Street vary depending upon the street. Examples: The distances between 3rd and 5th Streets are 192 feet and 1 inch The distances between 6th and 7th Streets are 181 feet and 9 inches The distances between 11th and 16th Streets are 206 feet and 6 inches The distances between 16th and 21st Streets are 184 feet and 0 inches The distances between 21st and 42nd Streets are 197 feet and 6 inches The distances between 42nd and 71st Streets are 200 feet and 10 inches The distances between 71st and 86th Streets are 204 feet and 4 inches The distances between 86th and 96th Streets are 201 feet and 5 inches The distances between 97th and 125th Streets are 201 feet and 10 inches The distances between streets north of 125th Street are 199 feet and 10 inches The distances between the avenues vary quite a bit and also depend upon the section of Manhattan they are located in. Distances Between the Avenues from 34th to 42nd Streets Avenues D and C – 646 feet Avenues C and B – 646 feet Avenues B and A – 646 feet Avenues A and First – 613 feet Avenues First and Second – 650 feet Avenues Second and Third – 610 feet Avenues Third and Lexington – 420 feet Avenues Lexington and Fourth (Park Avenue) – 405 feet Avenues Fourth and Madison – 405 feet Avenues Madison and Fifth – 420 feet Avenues Fifth and Sixth – 920 feet All the avenues between Sixth and Twelfth – 800 feet Distances Between the Avenues from 42nd to 110th Streets – All the streets are the same with the exception of: Avenues Fourth and Madison – 405 feet Distances Between the Avenues north of 110th Street – the distances for the east side avenues remain the same but some of the west side avenues change. The changes include: Avenues Fifth and Sixth – 895 feet Avenues Sixth and Seventh – 750 feet Avenues Seventh and Eighth – 775 feet Avenues Tenth and Eleventh- 775 feet Avenues Eleventh and Twelfth – 775 feet
Transparent Multi-hop SSH It is often necessary to SSH through one host to get to another host. This article will walk you through configuring SSH so that the intermediate step is transparent. Example Network For our example, we're going to use the network pictured below: From your computer at home you wish to log in to the host called 'tongariro' on the LAN at your office. All connections into the office LAN must pass through the firewall host 'aoraki'. The firewall host will only accept connections from the bastion host 'ruapehu'. Doing It Manually These are the steps we plan to automate: To connect to 'tongariro' you must first ssh to 'ruapehu'. Because you're connecting over the internet, you'll need to specify the full domain name when you connect. You'll also want to use '-A' to enable 'agent forwarding' (discussed below): ssh -A ruapehu.example.com Now that you're logged in to a shell prompt on 'ruapehu', you'll need to connect to 'aoraki'. To allow password-less logins you'll have installed the public key from your home computer into the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys of each host along the way. When you execute the following command, the SSH server on 'aoraki' will request a key, this request will be forwarded back through 'ruapehu' to the agent running on your home computer and access will be granted: ssh -A aoraki Finally, you can connect to the target host 'tongariro': ssh -A tongariro Quick and Dirty Automation The manual steps outlined above use three chained SSH connections to pass through two intermediate hosts. You can chain the three commands together into one monster command-line (perhaps in a shell script or a shell alias): ssh -A -t ruapehu.example.com ssh -A -t aoraki ssh -A tongariro In addition to the -A to enable agent forwarding, I've added -t to force a pseudo-tty to be allocated. Normally when your ssh command specifies a command to be run on the target host, no pseudo-tty will be allocated. That's fine if you want the command to run and then exit, but if you want an interactive shell session then you'll need a pseudo-tty. Quick and Dirty Automation with SSHMenu You could assign that same monster command-line to a host connection on your SSHMenu: A Better Way Another way to automate the connections through the intermediate hosts is to add a 'ProxyCommand' setting to your SSH config file. For this to work, you must have the 'netcat' package installed on the intermediate hosts. Start by editing your SSH config file (which might not exist yet): gedit ~/.ssh/config And add the following lines: Host ruapehu HostName ruapehu.example.com Host aoraki ProxyCommand ssh -q ruapehu nc -q0 aoraki 22 Host tongariro ProxyCommand ssh -q aoraki nc -q0 %h 22 The first entry defines a hostname alias so that you can ssh to 'ruapehu' instead of having to type 'ruapehu.example.com'. The second entry sets up a proxy command that will be used to connect to the 'aoraki' host. Normally ssh establishes its own TCP connection to port 22 on the target host, but with this setting in place it will use the proxy command to establish the connection. The proxy command in the example will establish a normal SSH connection to the intermediate host ('ruapehu') and then use the 'nc' command to extend the connection to port 22 on 'aoraki'. Now that the proxy command is set up, you can connect to the 'aoraki' host simply by typing: ssh aoraki The third entry builds on this by using the newly accessible 'aoraki' host in a proxy command which extends the connection to our ultimate target 'tongariro'. Note that in this command, '%h' was used for the hostname. This is simply a shorthand that tells SSH to insert the target hostname (from the line above) in place of the %h. If you want to connect to other hosts on the office LAN you can duplicate the last two lines and just change the hostname in one place. So Why is this Better? With the above configuration in place, you can now SSH directly to the 'tongariro' host with this command: ssh tongariro You can copy files directly to (or from) 'tongariro' without having to worry about intermediate steps: scp path/to/local/file tongariro:path/to/remote/file You can enable X-forwarding which means that any GUI program you start on 'tongariro' will display on your workstation: ssh -X tongariro xclock GUI application performance will be sluggish over slow network connections but some GUI apps on your local machine will now be able to use SSH to talk to the remote host. For example if you're running GNOME, you can use an 'ssh' URL in Nautilus to browse files on the remote host. (KDE provides equivalent functionality): If you right click a file and select "Open with Text Editor", the GNOME Text Editor program will run on your local machine but will use SSH to read/write the file to the remote host. For an even more powerful approach to editing files over an SSH connection, you might like to look into bcvi. Many other familiar tools will also be able to use the transparent SSH connections. For example you can access version control repositories (CVS, Subversion, Git etc) over SSH. You can also use port-forwarding on the SSH conection to access intranet servers or HTTP proxies on the office LAN from your workstation. Reusing Connections The transparent multi-hop connections can be very useful but you may find that it takes a second or two to establish each connection. This delay can become annoying if it happens a lot (e.g.: every time you save a file from the text editor). The good news is that if you can configure SSH to reuse an existing connection. This means that for example if you have an SSH shell session running then a new connection for SCP can skip the connection setup phase. Two steps are required: First, you must create a directory (or 'folder') which SSH will use to keep track of established connections: mkdir ~/.ssh/tmp Next, add these two lines at the start of your ~/.ssh/config (make sure to use your username in place of 'YOUR-NAME'): ControlMaster auto ControlPath /home/YOUR-NAME/.ssh/tmp/%h_%p_%r As you can see, a small investment in time setting up your SSH configuration can pay back dividends in convenience.
Ya know, I normally don’t do this but I really love you guys on TPP along with all of my followers. So is it cool if I be real with you guys Bro to Bro/Sis? If not just scroll pass this no worries. This is going to be a hell of a long post. Today actually made me learn/remember a lot of things on TPP. First time in a looooooooooooong time you guys just witness the worse of me here, the chat and the subreddit over this whole Kakuna thing. When I second look now, it’s really is a ridiculous thing to get worked up over. Yet here’s the weird part about it. We tell ourselves things like “Don’t get to attached”, or “we all play to have fun with the chaos TPP brings”, and for a minute we all can agree with that. Then out of no where, some way, some how, you just get frustrated. You enjoy taking that chaos out to the world but the question on TPP will always be how much of it will you take? You guys should know first hand I hardly be that way. It’s rare I have a moment that I just bring pure rage on the table to make people go “holy crap Pioxys actually got angry???”. I’m very snarky with you guys in the chat that it makes me a funny friendly prick yes, but that’s about it. Even if I talk back, you all know it’s in good fun. Every single one of you guys are epic in the chat and I love all of you. However the level I was just in, today I just made myself look like an idiot infront of everyone and my followers. Then while I was feeling like that one idiot who took things to seriously and should just stop and take a break from the stream, I looked in the subreddit and in the tags and felt a lot better because there’s people who were feeling the same way I do. Chat leaders included when I seen them in the chat. It can get hectic, but sometimes dark hectic. Sometimes it’s nice to take a joke to the next level, but there’s a limit to where enough is enough before it gets annoying to your core. Now I’m spouting nonsense how I want that Kakuna dead or it’s the next False Prophet when really, I like that little guy a lot. Just the people using it as PC bait just gave me a reason to hate it. It just made the joke that started out epic, to absolute nonsense/garbage. It was never like that previous runs when we lost an epic member in our team (Or at least from what I know when I was there). We just plowed straight through after we tried once or twice. Then again, maybe the same things actually happened too back in Red1. We do have a lot of new and returning players from the original Red run ready to raise some good hell in the stream. Honestly I love that too. Haven’t seen the stream this crazy since Emerald. It also could be the fact that we haven’t done this stuff in TPP for so long, we just sorta forgot things can get this to this level of insanity. I don’t know. I guess then all what I’m trying to say, it is all in good fun at first, but always take that one breather to save yourself from going to deep into the abyss of TPP’s spell of chaos. Nothing stays the same in TPP. Everyday something new happens and from there we learn from it. If you feel yourself losing your cool with the chat, just sit back, take a deep breath and just say to yourself “I came here to have fun” so you can actually see how hilariously crazy this run is getting. If you’re an inputter, definitely take this advice to mind. When you input, you try to go somewhere, but when you can’t, you start to get a bit annoyed trying to go there. Like now with getting out the PC. We want to have fun but when it comes to the PC, that brings out the worse in you cause you want it done and over with already. you just want to get the hell out of there. Giovonni Wild Ride and the ledges always might be the same result too. So when that times comes, just pull yourself back for awhile and ease down. When you do, trust me, you’ll start seeing pass your frustrations and actually start cracking up how it might take 10 hours to Jump a ledge. Or 30 hours struggling in the PC for a freaking kakuna or magikarp or even a town map for Arceus sake. It’s just to golden that it makes you laugh in the future when you remember the run. We’re just like that. It’s how we is. We are Twitch Plays Pokemon, and I couldn’t ask anything better than it already is. Now if you excuse me. I gotta got SwiftRage at some people on why we’re back on the PC. Kappa Edit: Just fixed a heck lot of typos.
New York City’s residential market had the biggest quarter since at least 2006, according to a new Real Estate Board of New York report, with $13.6 billion worth of condominiums, co-ops and one-to-three family homes trading hands between July and September. Deal volume citywide was 15 percent larger than in the third quarter of 2015. The average condo sales price in Manhattan reached a new record high of $2.952 million, while home prices in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx also rose. The figure is a record high since 2006, when REBNY began tracking residential sales. There’s a caveat: REBNY’s report only counts closed and recorded sales. New development sales often close years after a contract was signed. This means that in Manhattan, where new development makes up a big share of the overall market, last quarter’s high sales volume may partially reflect a strong luxury condo new development market in years past. Still, Michael Slattery, REBNY’s senior vice president of research, said new development doesn’t make up the bulk of Manhattan sales, and that the market would be on the rise even if you excluded new development. “The trend is a broader trend than just driven by high-end condos,” Slattery said. Brian Klimas, REBNY’s chief research economist, added that the market “seems to be a lot stronger than we thought.” Residential deals signed in the third quarter totaled $7.31 billion in Manhattan (up 16 percent year-over-year), $2.9 billion in Brooklyn (up 11 percent), $2.25 billion in Queens (up 12 percent), $767.3 million in Staten Island (up 41 percent) and $413.9 million in the Bronx (up 16 percent). The average sales price rose by 8 percent to $891,000 in Brooklyn, by 6 percent to $523,000 in Queens and by 3 percent to $400,000 in the Bronx.
CLOSE Sal Maiorana recaps the Buffalo Bills' 24-16 victory over the Miami Dolphins. Buffalo finishes the season 6-2 at New Era Field, its best home record since 1999, which is the last year the Bills made the playoffs. (Dec. 17, 2017) Sal Maiorana and Jamie Germano Buy Photo Bills running back LeSean McCoy rushed for 50-yards and two touchdowns against Miami. (Photo: JAMIE GERMANO, @jgermano1/Staff Photographer)Buy Photo Story Highlights LeSean McCoy leads all NFL running backs with 12 runs of 20 yards or more. Even with a decent day, the Bills passing game sunk to dead last in the NFL. On the flip side, the Bills have improved to sixth in the NFL in rushing. ORCHARD PARK – Whenever this season ends for the Buffalo Bills, be it on New Year's Eve in Miami, or at some point in January after the Bills have played their first playoff game in 18 years, the conversation will immediately shift to the roster. More: Here is how the Buffalo Bills can make the playoffs after win over Miami More: If the Buffalo Bills make the playoffs, Kyle Williams could fulfill quest for postseason Who will be back, who will be gone, which quarterback are the Bills going to draft in the first round? We’ve spent some time in the past week debating what defensive tackle Kyle Williams’ future holds, and that remains a mystery due to an expiring contract and the possibility that he may decide to retire. What should not be a mystery, what should not be up for any debate, is LeSean McCoy’s inclusion on the 2018 Bills. I don’t care if he’s going to be 30 years old when training camp opens in July, and I don’t care that he will count $8.95 million against the salary cap. McCoy is the Bills’ best player on offense, maybe on either side of the ball, and Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott would be making a huge mistake to even consider dumping him to save some money. McCoy didn’t have his best game Sunday in Buffalo’s 24-16 victory over Miami, and still, he was the most dynamic player in a Buffalo uniform as he scored two touchdowns, one on the ground, one through the air. He now ranks fifth in the NFL in rushing yards (1,057), fifth in first downs achieved via the rush (51) and first in runs of 20 yards or more with 12. More: Final score and recap: Buffalo Bills 24, Miami Dolphins 16 Add to the mix his team-leading 52 receptions, and he represents 33.7 percent of the Bills’ total offense, which puts him in the same category as the rest of the elite backs. By comparison, Todd Gurley of the Rams is responsible for 35.4 percent of Los Angeles’ offense, Pittsburgh’s LeVeon Bell comes in at 34.1 percent, and Kansas City’s flashy rookie, Kareem Hunt, is good for 31.4 percent of the Chiefs' total yardage. Bell is the oldest of those three players at 25. Buy Photo Bills running back LeSean McCoy goes over 10,000 yards for his career on this run against the Dolphins. (Photo: JAMIE GERMANO, @jgermano1/Staff Photographer) While it’s true that running backs often hit a wall when they reach 30, McCoy remains a physical specimen who is still quick and shifty and capable of explosive plays. If the Bills do as we expect and draft a quarterback, and then decide to play him right away next year, McCoy’s presence will be vital, and he’ll be worth every penny. Also, he’s long past his dismay over being traded to the Bills in March 2015, and he said Sunday, “I would love to end my career here. I look at Buffalo like home. The city and fans have embraced me with open arms and I’m thankful for that. I’d love to end my career here with a ring.” As untouchables on this team go, McCoy has to be at the top of the list. Upon Further Review, here are some other thoughts I had about the victory. Three things I liked Buy Photo Bills quarterback Tyrod Taylor celebrates his 9-yard touchdown run against the Dolphins in a 24-16 Buffalo win. (Photo: JAMIE GERMANO, @jgermano1/Staff Photographer) 1. Red zone efficiency. In the first half, the Bills offense was tremendous as it scored touchdowns on all three of its red zone penetrations to cap drives of 81, 75 and 80 yards. This was the first time Tyrod Taylor has produced three first-half TDs since the Houston game in December 2015, and he was efficient as the Bills ran only four plays once they got inside the 20, and three of them went for touchdowns. On defense, for the game, the Bills allowed just one TD in three Miami red zone trips, and that came thanks to a drive start at the Buffalo 13 following a lengthy punt return and penalty set the Dolphins up. If the Bills hope to beat the Patriots, this has to happen again. 2. Taylor’s performance. He does it in every game he plays, escaping a perilous situation that looks destined to end in a sack. He had a couple of beauties in this game, and if indeed Taylor is gone in 2018, I will certainly miss his wild, Houdini-like scrambles. Taylor played as well as he’s capable of in the first half, and it was nice to see was his willingness to throw the ball over the middle. He showed some patience and poise and he delivered. He also threw two nice touch passes, one for a 29-yard gain to Charles Clay, the other to McCoy for a 16-yard TD. If only this was the norm for Taylor, and not the exception. 3. Jay Cutler being Jay Cutler. The Miami QB had quite a day. Not only did he throw three interceptions, he also fumbled four times (though he didn’t lose any). According to Elias, no player has had a game with as many interceptions and fumbles since Kurt Warner when he was with Arizona in 2008. The Cardinals lost that game to the Jets 56-35. The last player to do this without throwing a touchdown pass was Boomer Esiason of the Bengals in a 30–16 home loss to the Steelers in 1987. Cutler continues to be one of the most inconsistent QBs in the league. NEWSLETTERS Get the High School Sports newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Stay in the know about what is happening in HS sports Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-790-9565. Delivery: Thurs Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for High School Sports Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Three things I didn't like Buy Photo Bills Preston Brown can't hold onto this onside kick which was recovered by Miami, giving it a chance to tie late in the game. (Photo: JAMIE GERMANO, @jgermano1/Staff Photographer) 1. The struggle to close out the game. Last week against the Colts, the Bills wasted a 7-0 lead with just over a minute left thanks to a 19-play, 77-yard TD drive that forced overtime. Sunday, the Bills were in a more comfortable position going into the fourth quarter, but Miami scored 10 points — three coming after a 17-play, 78-yard drive — and then recovered an onside kick with 37 seconds left. Cutler threw a pick on the first play to end the drama, but the lesson is that the Bills need to finish off their opponents when they’ve got them down. That got a little too close at the end. 2. The Adolphus Washington penalty. Leading 24-6 and in control, the Bills had just stuffed Kenyan Drake at the 1-yard-line and Miami was faced with fourth-and-goal with about eight minutes left. That is, until the second-year DT decided to slap the ball out of Drake’s hands while they were jawing on the sideline after the play. Washington was nailed with unsportsmanlike conduct which gave Miami a first down, and Drake scored two plays later to make it a one-possession game. McDermott was not happy, and he had a conversation with the player, which he chose to keep quiet, though he added, “We’ve got to play disciplined.” 3. The E.J. Gaines injury. When he has been on the field, the Bills’ defense has been noticeably better and it can play a little more man coverage on both sides of the field when necessary. Without Gaines, the Bills have to play primarily zone and are more predictable in coverage. Gaines suffered a knee injury in the third quarter and he was carted off, so that doesn’t look good. He has already missed four full games this season, and there’s a chance that he won't be available for the closing stretch. Stat pack Buy Photo Sean McDermott led the Bills to a 6-2 home-field record this season. (Photo: JAMIE GERMANO, @jgermano1/Staff Photographer) 1 – Player in NFL history, McCoy, to have compiled the following stat line: At least 10,000 yards rushing, 400 pass receptions, a 4.5 average per carry, and 80 touchdowns. 10 – Games in which Taylor has rushed and thrown for a touchdown, one of only three QBs with that many since 2015, Kirk Cousins and Cam Newton being the others. 6 – Head coaches in Bills history who have won at least eight games in their first full season with the team as McDermott joined Joe Collier (1966), Kay Stephenson (1983), Wade Phillips (1998), Mike Mularkey (2004), and Rex Ryan (2015). Snap count analysis Buy Photo Bills linebacker Lorenzo Alexander fills a hole intended for Dolphins running back Kenyan Drake. (Photo: JAMIE GERMANO, @jgermano1/Staff Photographer) ► WR Zay Jones played 44 snaps, was targeted twice, and did not make a catch. It’s the second game in a row without a catch and his third this season. ► LB Lorenzo Alexander played 60 snaps in all, 40 on defense and a team-high 20 on special teams. The fact that a 34-year-old is playing that much on special teams, willingly, and is contributing, is impressive. ► WR Kelvin Benjamin played 37 snaps, or 59 percent of the time on offense, and he had two catches for 20 yards. He’s not close to healthy and won’t be until next year after he undergoes offseason surgery. He was primarily a decoy against Miami. MAIORANA@Gannett.com
The Indian real estate sector is witnessing a strong inflow of funds from the private institutional investors with investments increasing steadily from about USD 5.2 billion in 2013 to about USD 7.1 billion in 2016, driven majorly by private institutional investors. The rising deal size has also more than doubled the average deal size to USD 111 million in 2017, says a new report by KPMG titled India Real Estate – Decoding institutional investments’. The paper was released on at the Real Estate and Infrastructure Investors’ Summit 2017 on Thursday. Sovereign wealth funds and pension funds from Canada, Singapore, Netherlands and Qatar have become more active with over USD3 billion investments in 2017 in India’s real estate. But they have focused primarily on leased commercial assets such as office, retail and warehouses, says the paper. Private equity funds and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) continue to remain the largest investor in Indian real estate, accounting for about two-third of the total investments since 2016, it says, adding they are the preferred capital source for under construction projects. Investors have also started moving towards sub-urban regions and smaller cities. Over 40 percent if the total investments since 2016 have been made in non-metro cities such as Pune, Greater Noida, Chandigarh and Amritsar. The shift could be due to mid-term saturation in large cities resulting from high property prices and fewer launches, says the paper. The breakup of investment is as follows: Retail is USD 1.6 billion; office is USD 1.4 billion; warehouse is USD 1.1 billion and residential is USD 0.6 billion. In metro cities, investors have been focusing primarily on office and residential assets. But in non-metro cities, investors appear to have diversified their investments into different asset classes such as warehousing, retail, office and residential. The paper points out that commercial assets – rent generating leased office, warehouse and retail assets – have been the most preferred class for investments in the last couple of years and have attracted about 80 percent of total investments between 2016 and YTD-2017, with office spaces cumulatively attracting USD 5 billion invested since 2016. It points out that around 160-170 million sq ft of office supply are expected in the next three years, more than half of which is expected to come up in Delhi-NCR. The foreign investors’ base having interest in Indian realty is rising, with new investors from Netherlands and Hong Kong garnering additional 9 percent and 6 percent share (2016-YTD 2017 over 2013-2015). Foreign investors comprised 80 percent of total private institutional investments made since 2016. The paper says that the unsold inventory in the first half of 2017 stood at 8 lakh units or over three years of unsold inventory. Three cities accounted for 70 percent of inventory – MMR (2.5 lakh), Delhi-NCR (1.8 lakh) and Bengaluru (1.1 lakh). “The year 2017 is on its course to witness highest annual investment in Indian realty in past decade, with about USD 5 billion worth of deals already closed so far. With deal size breaching billion dollar plus in past one year, Indian real estate is attracting interest and attention of global real estate community,” says Neeraj Bansal, Partner and Head, ASEAN Corridor, Building, Construction and Real Estate, KPMG in India. “While PE funds continue to be bullish about India, there is a growing interest from foreign pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, who have more than doubled their investments in YTD2017 accounting for nearly 60 percent share (USD 3 billion) of total investments as of date. The strength of the Indian economy and favorable demographics, coupled with the introduction of several growth oriented reforms including Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016; Real Estate Investment Trusts; Goods and Service Tax; relaxation of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) norms etc. are aiding the real estate sector to attract higher investments,” he adds.
I opened up my package and saw a bunch of sour candy (my fave) and a container of cocoa (which I realized after looking at the other gifts, must have been purchased in Europe). I kept digging and found a chocolate bar from Ireland and a witch to "sweep away demons" from Slovenia! Then, I found 3 teas from DavidsTea and a book full of stories by HP Lovecraft. Awesome!! My Santa didn't give their Reddit username (as far as I could tell, maybe I'm blind?) but I'd like to thank them all the same! Especially since they took great care with my dietary restrictions <3 UPDATE: Woah I just got a second package in the mail!! It contained more tea, a "mini love voodoo doll", a cute card, and some alcohol that I promptly got into. My spooky santa was amazing!!
He also said that he finds any type of fundamentalism 'terribly funny' was being interviewed on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher Cleese added that you can make jokes about Muslims but 'they'll kill you' starts out as 'a halfway decent idea' then goes 'completely wrong' John Cleese has argued that political correctness is 'condescending' as it only allows jokes to be made about certain groups while implying others need to be protected. Speaking to Bill Maher on HBO, the legendary comedian said he used to make race jokes about nationalities such as the French and Australians - but if he mentioned Mexicans it was deemed unacceptable. 'It's so awful isn't it? he said. 'It starts out as a halfway decent idea, and then it goes completely wrong. Scroll down for video John Cleese has argued that political correctness is 'condescending' as it only allows jokes to be made about certain groups while implying others need to be protected 'Make jokes about Swedes and Germans and French and English and Canadians and Americans, why can't we make jokes about Mexicans? Is it because they are so feeble that they can't look after themselves? 'It's very very condescending there.' The British comedian then goes on to say suggest that the reason you can't make jokes about Muslims is because 'they'll kill you'. 'Who are the people you can't make jokes about?' he asks Maher who instantly responds: 'Muslims' John Cleese joked with Bill Maher as the pair discussed political correctness on his HBO show 'Try that,' he adds. 'See what your Twitter feed says.' A laughing Cleese responds: 'That's not saying that you can't, it just means that they'll kill you. Theoretically you could.' The comedian added: 'The problem is if you make jokes about people who are going to kill you, there is a sort of tendency to hold back a little isn't there?' Clease, 75, described writing his memoir 'So, Anyway' as 'the most fun I have had in 10 years' Speaking on Real Time with Bill Maher, Cleese went on to say that he finds any type of fundamentalism 'terribly funny'. He said: 'Because the thing about fundamentalism is that it's taking whatever the book is - the book Qur'an or the bible - absolutely literally. 'I've met some pretty smart people in life and you know not a single one of them was literal-minded.' Cleese, 75, took British audiences by storm in the 1970s as a member of the famous comedy team Monty Python's Flying Circus. He went on to make several movies, including Life of Brian and A Fish Called Wanda. He recently released a memoir titled 'So, Anyway ...', in which he describes how being a lonely child who did not fit in helped forge his career in comedy because he learned the value of making people laugh. The comedian told Reuters that now he is 'the happiest I have ever been in my life', living in London with his wife and three cats. He said that writing the book was 'the most fun I have had in 10 years'. Cleese also revealed that with age has come the realization of the importance of comedy. 'Making people happy for an evening is a rather useful thing to do in this world,' he said. 'I think I rather downplayed it in the past.'
Harmony Brewing expands to Grand Rapids' west side Copyright by WOODTV - All rights reserved Harmony Hall is inspired by German beer halls. (July 21, 2015) [ + - ] Video Amanda Jarrett - GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) -- The owners of Harmony Brewing are getting ready to open a new location on Grand Rapids' west side. Harmony Hall is located at the corner of Bridge Street and Stocking NW. Harmony Hall differs from Harmony Brewing in that it's inspired by German beer halls and has a different menu. Co-owner Heather Van Dyke-Titus said Harmony Hall will serve up sausages and homemade bread, along with Harmony Brewing's main stay beers and new lagers as well. "Just like Harmony in Eastown we want it to be a neighborhood spot where locals claim it as their space," Van Dyke-Titus said. Harmony Hall is also larger than Harmony Brewing, with seating for about 240 people. 3 Photos Copyright by WOODTV - All rights reserved Harmony Hall is located at the corner of Bridge and Stocking. Harmony Brewing expands to Grand Rapids' west side Gallery 1 Harmony Hall is located at the corner of Bridge and Stocking. Harmony Hall is inspired by German beer halls. Harmony Hall is inspired by German beer halls. "It's more than three times the size so the opportunity to grow is daunting," Van Dyke-Titus said. "But it's really exciting. As it gets closer to opening day we're getting more and more excited about what we can build here." Harmony Hall has a downstairs bar area, larger brewing facility and a beer hall/dining area upstairs, along with an outdoor deck. Van Dyke-Titus owns the business along with her two brothers and her father. The family said they wanted to expand their business in a storied building in the city's re-emerging west side. The building was once home to the restaurant Little Mexico, a favorite for the family. "We loved Little Mexico, it was an icon. When our whole family gets together there's 16 of us so we would actually eat here with our kids," Van Dyke-Titus said. "We were really sad to see it close. We want to honor the legacy of Little Mexico." Van Dyke-Titus said they don't have a firm opening date for Harmony Hall at this time, but they expect it to open in late August or early September. Harmony Brewing will remain open in Eastown, serving up its usual menu and beers.
The Democratic National Committee had its worst May since 2003, raising just $4.3 million dollars as it struggles to rebound from a series of election defeats, according to Federal Election Commission data. The last time May fundraising was lower was in 2003, when the DNC raised just $2.7 million. In contrast, the Republican National Committee raised more than double, notching $10.8 million in May, a record-high amount for an off-year. DNC Chairman Tom Perez defended the party's fundraising in April, noting that he had just taken over at the helm of the organization. In an NBC interview, Perez was asked about his progress on his goal of doubling the DNC's budget from $50 million to $100 million in 2017. "Well again, I got there on March 1. And so, I was the first to say, 'We have a lot of rebuilding to do,'" Perez told NBC's Hallie Jackson. ADVERTISEMENT April brought in $4.9 million, making it the worst fundraising April for the DNC since 2009. Fundraising woes aren't the DNC's only concern. Despite a cash advantage, Democrat Jon Ossoff lost Tuesday's special election for a Georgia House seat in the most expensive race in history, costing at least $40 million dollars.
Donald Trump was supposed to be the racist. Yet his response to the murders of five police officers in Dallas was measured and sensitive, emphasizing his support for law enforcement while acknowledging the concerns of the black community. In contrast, Hillary Clinton made Dallas about “systemic racism” and the collective guilt of white people — deeply offensive in the context of an attack where white officers had been targeted, and the very opposite of what a president is supposed to do. Three separate times — on television, on Twitter, and again via e-mail to her supporters — Clinton made stark, condescending generalizations about white people and their supposed inability to listen to black people. White Americans need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day. — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 8, 2016 She spoke as if she had the responsibility, and the authority, to speak on behalf of millions of Americans, defined by race. In doing so, she made no reciprocal requests of black Americans — no need to examine cultural attitudes to police, or the hostile rhetoric of some community leaders. On CNN, she talked about “systemic racism” — much like President Barack Obama does, condemning the very nature of the society she aspires to lead. “Systemic racism” is, on the one hand, an easy cop-out for virtue-signaling white liberals, because if the “system” is racist, then no individual is to blame. On the other hand, if the “system” is racist, no one can be free from guilt. And so “systemic racism” is held over our heads like an anvil, compelling political conformity. The media spent the past week parsing a tweet by Donald Trump to find evidence of a “dog whistle” to the extremists who, we are told, are his political base. And yet here is Hillary Clinton, responding explicitly to Dallas in a way that makes sense only to the radical left. Dilbert‘s Scott Adams quipped this week that Trump should attack Clinton for having “a race-first view of the world that is corrosive to society.” It was unclear, until now, how he could do that. Clinton has done it for him.
Ted Danson & Kristen Bell Join NBC’s New Comedy Series Good Place Two-time Emmy Award winner Ted Danson and acclaimed actress Kristen Bell have been cast in NBC‘s new Michael Schur comedy series “Good Place.” Kristen Bell plays Eleanor, a woman from New Jersey who comes to realize that she hasn’t been a very good person. She decides to turn over a new leaf by learning what it actually means to be “good” or “bad,” and then trying to make up for her past behavior. Ted Danson plays Michael, who, through an unlikely set of circumstances, comes to be Eleanor’s guide through her self-designed self-improvement course. Danson is widely known for his iconic role as bartender Sam Malone on the 28-time Emmy-winning NBC comedy “Cheers.” Over the course of the show’s historic 11-season run, Danson was nominated for 11 Emmys, winning twice. He was also nominated for eight Golden Globes and won twice. Besides “Cheers,” Ted Danson has made his mark on several other acclaimed comedies, including HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Bored to Death.” On the drama side, Danson was three-time Emmy nominated and Golden Globe-nominated for his role on the FX series “Damages.” Most recently, he is coming off his role as a Minnesota state trooper in the critically-applauded FX drama “Fargo” and also recently starred in CBS’ “CSI.” Bell has extensive television experience, most notably the lead role in the popular drama “Veronica Mars,” which ran from 2004-07. She has many other TV credits, including “Deadwood,” “Heroes,” “Party Down,” “Gossip Girl,” “Parks and Recreation” and “House of Lies.” On the film side, Bell recently starred as the voice of Anna in Disney’s box office hit Frozen, which grossed more than $400 million at the domestic box office. She also brought her Veronica Mars character to the big screen as well as having co-starring roles in Get Him to the Greek and Safety Not Guaranteed. She’s also set to co-star in the upcoming film Chips, based on the popular 1970s NBC series. NBC ordered 13 episodes of Schur’s “Good Place” last August during the network’s TCA day. A two-time Emmy Award winner, Schur has one of the most fertile minds in comedy. His NBC series “Parks and Recreation” remains one of the best-reviewed comedies in the history of television. Schur is currently executive producer of the Universal Television-produced series “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” which won a Golden Globe for outstanding comedy series in its first year of eligibility. He is also an executive producer on the Netflix comedy “Master of None,” produced by Universal Television and starring Aziz Ansari. Schur has written and produced for other seminal series, including “The Office” and “Saturday Night Live.” “Good Place” will be produced by Universal Television, 3 Arts Entertainment and Fremulon. Schur and David Miner will executive produce. (Photo credit: WENN)
The Polish foreign minister has been filmed telling a protest leader that if the opposition did not sign up to a deal offered by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych "you will all be dead". Radoslaw Sikorski, one of three European foreign ministers who brokered Friday's agreement to end the bloody standoff, was emerging from talks with opposition leaders when he issued the stark warning. "If you don't support this [deal] you'll have martial law, the army. You will all be dead," he said, in comments that were captured on film by ITV News. When asked if he had managed to convince the opposition, the minister, clearly frustrated, muttered: "I don't know." After a break in talks, the ministers returned to the negotiating table, and shortly after announced that the opposition had agreed to sign the deal. Asked later to confirm his statement, Mr Sikorski told ITV that the threat of martial law had been real. "To my knowledge interior ministry troops were being readied," he said according to the news channel. The astonishing warning will disturb an international community which has been pressing hard for a deal to bring an end to the violence which left over 70 protesters dead amid sniper attacks on Thursday. While it is hoped that the agreement will stop Ukraine sliding into civil war, the suggestion that it has apparently been forced on the opposition on the threat of deadly force will be difficult to stomach. The agreement, which calls for early presidential elections, the return of the 2004 constitution and the formation of a government of national unity, was the result of nearly 24 hours of non-stop shuttled diplomacy by the EU foreign ministers and a Russian government delegation headed by former ombudsman Vladimir Lukin. “Good compromise for Ukraine. Gives peace a chance. Opens the way to reform and to Europe. Poland and EU support it,”Mr Sikorski posted on his Twitter page just before the signing ceremony. Mr Yanukovych and the three opposition party leaders Arseny Yatsenyuk, Vitalty Klitchko, and Oleh Tyahnybok, finally signed at 4 PM. Mr Yanukovych first announced the agreement would be signed at midday, but opposition parties initially refused to confirm that an agreement had been reached. The deal grants several key demands that protesters have put forward in the past. Returning the 2004 constitution would strip Mr Yanukovych of many of the sweeping executive powers the presidency currently enjoys. Mr Yatsenyuk, Mr Klitchko, and Mr Tyahnybok reportedly refused to sign until they had consulted with protesters, apparently worried that they would fail to sell the compromise to an increasingly hard-line crowd who want Mr Yanukovich’s resignation or nothing. In the event Mr Sikorski and his German counterpart Frank Walter Steinmeier left the presidential administration building to persuade the Maidan Civil Council, the opposition’s rough equivalent of a parliament, to “mandate” the three leaders to sign the agreement. It is far from clear that all protesters within the disparate alliance will abide by the deal, and Mr Sikorski's unsettling revelation could act as a call to arms for the more radical groups that have joined the movement. Among protesters on Maidan, the attitude to Mr Yanukovych's offer of snap elections and return to the 2004 constitution is best summarised as one of indifference. "There is no possible deal that would mean anything to us. There was a chance for compromise, and Yanukovych missed it. He has two choices - exile or prison," said one self defence volunteer who declined to be named. Pravy Sektor, the right-wing paramilitary group whose fighters have played a prominent role in fighting since January, immediately rejected the elements of the deal announced by Mr Yanukovych. "After reading Mr Yanukovych’s statement, we must state the obvious fact that the criminal regime is still not sufficiently aware of either the graveness of their own misdeeds or the depths of the people’s anger,” the group said in a statement posted on its website before news of Mr Sikorski's warning broke. “This statement does not include a clear commitment to dismiss the pseudo-president or dissolve parliament… or the punishing the leaders of law enforcement agencies and those who carried out criminal orders,” the statement went on. “The national revolution continues.”
Whether you’re a fan of Trolls the movie or are just looking for an excuse to be incredibly cute and covered in pink, we’ve got you. You’re just a tutu or two away from DIYing your own Poppy the Troll costume this year! What you need What to do Hair On the backside of the sickly blue felt, draw out flowers like Poppy Repeat on green sticky felt for flower leaves. Place neon pink and blue elastic headbands around neck Place tutu around head like a crown Use the pick headband to secure the tutu Add blue headband for color detail Add sticky felt flowers to headbands Dress Lay blue t-shirt on a flat surface to cut sleeves on. Use a tank top for guidelines if you need, keeping the neckline the same. Cut the band from the t-shirt sleeves off, then cut to have a long piece of fabric Use this fabric to tie the back of the tshirt together for a tighter fit With the white sticky felt, draw out the shapes for her dress (making a stencil with any paper is helpful) Cut out your shapes and stick to dress Complete the look with pink sneakers. Show us how you made your own DIY troll costume in the comments below! Images by: Emily Kinsolving
IG*GETTY Jihadis are being taught how to carry out beheadings Extremists are carrying out mock beheadings and taught how to slit the throat of a bound captive, according to prison sources. The shocking revelations claim that would-be terrorists are being given lessons in how to carry out mass killings during supposed “evening classes” – the Daily Star Sunday has reported. GETTY Murder lessons were being carried out inside prisons Held in cells – fanatics inside category A prisons such as Belmarsh, Whitemoor and Long Lartin – are using diagrams and models to teach jihadi recruits how to construct a booby trap, make the poison Ricin and create explosives from just garden fertiliser. The government believes around 1,000 prisoners are at risk of being radicalised. English jails currently hold 131 Islamist inmates convicted of terrorist offences. GETTY Belmarsh is one the prisons accused of having lessons being carried out One senior prison source said: “We have caught terrorist prisoners showing other inmates how to carry out an execution. When we ask what they are doing, the inmates claim they are messing around – but it’s clear that they are involved in something far more sinister. “There are now so many hardened terrorists in top-security prisons in England that in some cases they are ‘running’ wings.” Our insider added: “The terrorists recruit and radicalise young Muslim men and tell them that the only people who will give them a chance in the future are radical Islamists. “We have seen them reenacting beheadings and found diagrams of IEDs. Prisons are now the main recruiting grounds for terrorist groups.” The fight against ISIS Fri, November 18, 2016 The battle against ISIS militants (also abbreviated as Daesh, ISIL, IS and Islamic State) continues in the Middle East. Play slideshow Getty 1 of 183 Forces battle against ISIS One case revealed how prisoners learned how to hide a bomb inside a torch and use a mobile phone to detonate a explosive device. Glyn Travis, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, said: “We have concerns Islamist extremists are deliberately getting custodial sentences in order to target vulnerable prisoners.” IG Jihadis are being trained up ahead of joining brutal groups such as ISIS
Photos by Robin May Northside High Principal Melinda Voorhies arrived Monday morning at the LPSS central office with her resignation letter in hand, and within minutes, LPSB member Tehmi Chassion's cell phone started ringing. The central office that morning was like a ghost town, recalls Voorhies, as she went office to office in search of administrators she could deliver her resignation letter to. After dropping copies of the letter in the empty office chairs of Human Resources Director Bruce Leininger and interim Superintendent Burnell LeJeune, Voorhies tells The IND she finally found one central office administrative worker, who told Voorhies she wasn’t sure of the whereabouts of Leininger or LeJeune. So Voorhies gave a copy of the letter to the central office worker as well, and then went out into the parking lot and got into her car, bringing an abrupt end to a nearly three-year effort that was just beginning to see positive results from all the major changes enacted under her watch at what has historically been (and continues to be) the school system’s poorest performing high school. When Melinda Voorhies was pulled out of retirement three years ago to help in the efforts at turning Northside around, it was supposed to only be a temporary gig. Voorhies — a former longtime high school basketball coach with a commanding voice and a no-nonsense approach to education — was recruited at the start of 2012 by the newly arrived superintendent, Pat Cooper, as part of his plan to resuscitate the long-neglected schools in the district, namely the ones where academic performance has a long history of mirroring the economic conditions of the area in which they’re located.At the time of her arrival, Voorhies’ original agreement with Cooper was only for a 4.5-month stint as Northside’s interim principal, charged with not only bridging the ever-widening achievement gap that has long plagued the schools of Lafayette’s north side, but also with eradicating what at the time had become an out-of-control discipline issue (averaging a fight a day) and a learning environment that left many students feeling unsafe even within the school’s confines.Within the first month of her arrival, Voorhies quickly brought the school’s discipline issues under control, and soon agreed to toss the short-term commitment in favor of becoming Northside’s permanent principal. She then turned her focus toward changing what she calls the school’s “climate,” and with that she also introduced a never-before-seen excitement to Northside’s learning environment. Between classes, music started coming from the school’s PA system, playing appropriate songs based on student requests. She also staged surprise events for Northside’s student body, bringing in influential speakers like former LSU basketball coaching great Dale Brown as well as the authors of The New York Times bestselling character-building novel “The Pact,” written by three African-American doctors, who, like many of Northside’s students, had challenging upbringings. Voorhies also made the book required reading not just for the school’s students, but her entire staff, everyone from teachers to janitors to cafeteria workers. And to combat Northside’s wretched graduation rates, Voorhies, in October 2012, staged a two-day photo shoot — which was also this reporter’s first experience with Voorhies and Northside — as a surprise for the close to 250 freshmen enrolled that year. With each freshman decked out in his or her gown and robe, as if graduation day had come four years early, former IND staff writer Heather Miller and I took photos of each student. Those photos were posted along the walls inside the school. In the months after the freshman photo shoot, Voorhies commented on the experiment and its impact on students, telling The IND: Some of them were saying they didn’t want to do it, but after they put it on and took their pictures they were like, "Wow." Kids told me it gave them chills and made them feel completely different. The attitude they walked up with was very different than when they walked away. It showed them what it’s going to feel like to graduate. If they think it, feel it and see it, they walk by and remember that they want to graduate. Those freshmen from 2012 are still waiting on their official graduation day. We hope every one of them will graduate, even without Melinda Voorhies' incessant encouragement. IMPROVEMENT TAKES TIME In the more than two years that have since passed, Northside's graduation rate has begun to inch up ever-so-slightly, rising from 56 percent during the 2012-13 school year to finish the 2013-14 school year at 57 percent. But with the rollout of the Louisiana Department of Education’s major changes in statewide testing and school accountability standards — substantially raising the bar on what's expected of the state's public schools — Northside was hit with a reduced score on its state-issued Report Card for the most recent school year, dropping from a D to an F grade. That drop, however, isn’t a sign that Northside is performing worse than it was, just that the state’s system for ranking schools changed, drastically, from how it was calculated in years past. One notable difference is that although students can still receive a grade of “Fair,” that score is no longer factored into a school’s composite ranking by the state. For Northside, despite seeing a shift of students moving from a “Needs Improvement” to a “Fair” performance score during the 2013-14 school year, none of it counted in the formula used by the state in issuing Northside’s F letter grade. Despite all of Northside's progress under Voorhies, it was that F grade from the state, coupled with the school board’s termination in November of Cooper (who backed Voorhies’ efforts 100 percent) that ultimately led to Monday’s resignation letter. Two sources close to the situation tell The IND there had been tension between Voorhies and Assistant Superintendent Sandra Billeaudeau for some time, and that following Cooper's termination, Voorhies knew the pressure was on to replace her as the school's principal. (The IND verified the claims of a strained relationship between Voorhies and Billeaudeau with Cooper, who says he had to act as their go-between.) On Tuesday, The IND spoke at length with Voorhies, who says the chain-of-events that led to Monday’s resignation were put on the fast-track earlier this month when LPSS Academic Officer Virginia Rabalais received instructions from higher-ups to write up a discipline letter against Voorhies related to Northside's performance under her watch. "On March 9, [Virginia] Rabalais told me that she'd been instructed to write the discipline letter on me," Voorhies tells The IND. Voorhies says shortly after learning of the discipline letter, on March 16, she met with interim Superintendent Burnell LeJeuene, who denied any involvement with the Rabalais letter. "At that meeting, I said, 'Well, you are probably aware that [Virginia] Rabalais is writing a discipline letter,' and I said what's going on?" recalls Voorhies. "Mr. LeJeune said he didn’t know about the discipline letter and that he didn’t give those instructions. He said that he felt those instructions probably must have come from Ms. Rabalais' immediate supervisor. So I said, 'Answer my question,' and he told me he'd asked Ms. Rabalais to gather data from before [former Northside Principal] Carlton Handy until now, look at the info and find out why we can't get Northside over the hump. And that’s when he addressed me in the third person saying, and I quote: ‘I’m not sure Melinda Voorhies is the right person to take Northside to the next level.’” According to the school system's employment hierarchy, Virginia Rabalais' immediate supervisor is Assistant Superintendent Sandra Billeaudeau. The IND spoke Thursday morning with Billeaudeau, who denies she gave the order for Rabalais' investigation into Northside's data and also says she had nothing to do with Voorhies' departure. "Really? Really? No sir, no sir. I wasn't even in town when it happened. I knew nothing about her departure until I got a phone call from [Tehmi Chassion]," says Billeaudeau, adding that the directive for Rabalais' investigation came straight from interim superintendent Burnell LeJeune. "This isn't the first time she resigned," notes Billeaudeau, referencing an episode in December 2012 when Voorhies briefly resigned over an issue she's still unwilling to talk about but likely resulted from her butting heads with board member Chassion (a conflict we'll go into in more detail later in this story). "I'm not going to comment anymore on this silliness," says Billeaudeau. Voorhies also included that third person quote from LeJeune about "Melinda Voorhies" not being the "right person to take Northside to the next level" in her resignation letter.LeJeune, who spoke Thursday morning with The IND, says he was unaware of a discipline letter, but did confirm that he'd asked for information on the amount of resources allocated to the school, the progress made and the plans for moving forward. That, he tells The IND, is when he made the statement questioning whether she was the right fit for the school.Yet, in an interview Monday with KATC , LeJeune downplays the comment, ultimately putting the decision to resign back on Voorhies, telling KATC, “She felt it was time to move forward, and as a school, and as a district, our commitment is to continue to move [N]orthside forward.”Voorhies is adamant that Rabalais didn't mince words during their March 9 talk, and that her resignation 100 percent resulted from certain forces she describes as "politically-connected people ... intent on getting rid of me." In that same report by KATC, the local TV station also talks with District 4 school board member Tehmi Chassion, who represents the area surrounding Northside, J.W. Faulk Elementary and Acadian Middle (all historically low-performing schools targeted for turnaround by Cooper): “I think overall, it’s a sad day for Northside, and the Northside community,” Lafayette School Board member for District 4 Dr. Tehmi Chassion said. Chassion is concerned this resignation will delay Northside’s turnaround. “We were coming up with that plan, and to have the bombshell dropped on us this morning, we just have to wait and find out what’s going on,” Chassion said. Chassion’s District 4 is one of the most economically disadvantaged areas of the parish. Its schools are among the lowest performing in the district. It has the highest rate of students — with minorities being the overwhelming majority — enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program. And historically it’s been the district most overlooked by school officials and board members when it comes to allocating the school system’s money and resources. That’s what ultimately makes the departure of Melinda Voorhies so difficult to swallow. She was part of the effort to enact real change at schools like Northside launched with the arrival in early 2012 of Cooper as the newest in a long line of Lafayette Parish School superintendents. One of Cooper's earliest efforts at changing the tide at Northside involved a complete overhaul of the school's faculty. That move is what sparked the first signs of resistance toward his superintendency due to the removal of many longtime and popular teachers from the school. And Voorhies must have spit up her coffee upon reading the song and dance Chassion gave KATC. For the last 2.5 years, Chassion has been after Voorhies' job. The icy relationship between the two is largely the result of a master key to the school that Chassion had obtained prior to Voorhies taking over as principal in early 2012. Voorhies eventually caught on that Chassion had been staging after-hours pickup games and practices in the school’s basketball gym — without an insurance policy covering the numerous friends who benefited from the board member’s 24-hour access to the school’s facilities. Voorhies had the locks changed, and this, as we’ve argued in our previous school system coverage (read more here), was the moment Chassion made his split from Cooper and Voorhies, and is the reason he’s largely stayed away from the campus over the last two years (and the only possible explanation for him consistently voting against Cooper's efforts to put more money and resources into District 4's schools). “All that stuff in the news about Tehmi wanting to help, well, I can count on one hand the times he visited campus in my time,” Voorhies tells The IND. “The last time, was a PTO meeting in November, and before that, it was over a year, almost a year and a half. He doesn’t come on campus. And it's not like he wasn't invited. I've maintained an open invitation for people to come see what we're doing at the school, because I don't think you can really know or understand Northside until you're there at the school.”That, however, wasn’t the case Monday morning. No more than 30 minutes had passed from the time Voorhies dropped off her resignation letter when a phone call reached Chassion, who’d just arrived for a pop-in visit at J.W. Faulk Elementary School, another perpetually low-performing school located in District 4’s boundaries.“When he came to our school Monday morning, I was coming out from my office to meet him and he was on the phone with someone talking about whatever had just happened with Ms. Voorhies,” recalls the elementary school’s principal, Jamilah Hicks (another principal picked under Cooper's superintendency to help a District 4 school with a history of poor academic performance). “After [Chassion] got off the phone he said he’d like to visit the school but he had to go over to Northside and see about what was going on involving Ms. Voorhies.”“About 30 minutes after I submit my resignation Tehmi arrives on campus,” says Voorhies, noting she received word of his surprise visit from the Northside staff. “From what I hear, he was there almost all day yesterday.” According to a report received by The IND Tuesday and prepared by a Northside administrator documenting Monday’s chain of events, Chassion arrived on campus and signed in right after 9:40 a.m. According to the account, Chassion remained on campus well into the afternoon, speaking with at least 10 employees about Voorhies’ departure in which he's alleged to have made claims that with Voorhies gone, he was no longer banned from campus (he was never banned from campus) and that he would now be helping the school take back control. According to two of the 10 members of the Northside faculty who reported having an interaction with Chassion Monday, the District 4 board member is also said to have made some pretty big claims: Namely that he’d already found someone to replace Voorhies as the school’s next principal, which would be a serious circumvention of state law and a likely violation of the ethics code since the hiring and firing of school system employees — a process redefined in Act 1 of the 2012 Legislature as part of an effort to stamp out corruption among the state's elected school board members — is the sole responsibility of the district's superintendent. And Chassion's visit to Northside wouldn't be his last stop of the day. After leaving his alma mater without signing out on Monday, Chassion headed far outside his district for a surprise visit at Carencro Middle, which was documented in a complaint submitted to the central office Tuesday by the school’s principal Spurgeon Banyard. Here's Banyard's complaint: [Tehmi] Chassion came onto Carencro Middle grounds and requested from Mrs. Moten to tour the school. He also stated to her he didn’t deal with me and wanted to notify [administrators] of his presence. I believe his visit was to try to harrass, intimidate, antagonize, provoke me in some way. I have an ongoing suit against Mr. Chassion due his ethics and unprofessionalism. I find it troublesome that he continues to use his seat on the LPSS board to continue in his efforts to harrass me. His presence on Carencro Middle campus is unwarranted and causes tension for my staff and myself. The present court proceedings are due to the same questionable “visits” that he has made which resulted in my claims. Mr. Chassion is not assigned to this district. ... He is aware that his presence is not wanted on Carencro Middle campus. Like Voorhies, Banyard is another of the principals brought in by Cooper to help with the Turnaround Plan. And like Voorhies, Banyard has also seen big improvements in his time here. He’s also had to repeatedly butt heads with Chassion (read The Advocate's story about it here). On Tuesday, interim Superintendent LeJeune confirmed Chassion's three school visits on Monday. As far as Chassion's alleged claim of already having Northside's next principal lined up, LeJeune says: "A board member doesn't make decisions on the personnel of a school; that's the responsibility of the superintendent." For Voorhies, Monday marked the end of a 32-year run as an educator. But to those who knew and worked with her, she was way more than just that. Here’s a recollection from one Lafayette Parish educator who spoke on the condition of anonymity about what it was like working for Voorhies during her first two years as Northside’s principal: Melinda had an amazing vision. She was a leader in every aspect of the word. It was also difficult. Melinda and her administrative team had this great vision, but it was also so hard to get through all the red tape and negativity that came with representing change. I felt that Melinda never had the full support she needed. And it was always a struggle. Not with Cooper. Cooper was behind her all the way. They represented agents of change, and that’s always scary to some people. It was sad to see teachers and administrators and students alike working so hard only to be met with road blocks constantly. Funding for sure was a problem, but it was also the constant questioning of Melinda and her decisions, the micro-managing [by school board members]. But she had her heart in the right place and those who were aligned with her there understand that. I think it got to be too much. A lot of times, as you know, people need a scapegoat, and unfortunately it fell on her shoulders. She meant business and was very stern, and unfortunately some had personality issues that just couldn’t handle that. And although Voorhies says she’s sad to go, she also feels she’s made the right decision. “I think it’s the right thing for me to do,” she says. "I unequivocally think we were on the right track, making the progress we needed to make. I believe, as in basketball, that it takes a good three to five years to dramatically turn around a program like this. I think we’ve definitely made some dramatic advances in my 2.5 years, and given two more years, if we could’ve fixed this absence problem, I think we would have really seen that dramatic turnaround. Unfortunately, there’s people that wanted me gone. For those people, the people who wanted me fired and worked to get me fired, they can be satisfied; and for the people that wanted someone else as principal, they too can finally be satisfied.”
The Crain's New York Business news source reports that the anime and manga distributor Central Park Media ( CPM ) filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and has closed its doors as of Monday. According to Crain's, the company owes US$1.2 million to creditors. The company has not been active in releasing new titles in the past 12 months. CPM and its Software Sculptors , U.S. Manga Corps , and Anime 18 labels were once the North American homes of such prominent works as Grave of the Fireflies , Utena , Mobile Police Patlabor , Record of Lodoss War , Slayers , Night on the Galactic Railroad , Project A-Ko , Dominion Tank Police , Descendants of Darkness , Demon City Shinjuku , Urotsukidoji , and La Blue Girl . It later branched out into the book publishing field by releasing Comic Party , Record of Lodoss War , Slayers , Embracing Love , Kizuna , and other titles under the CPM Manga and Be Beautiful Manga imprints. It sponsored the Big Apple Anime Fest earlier this decade. Companies that file for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States will face liquidation — unlike Chapter 11 and 13 bankruptcies which still allow companies to restructure and continue to operate. CPM 's former management did not respond to ANN's request for comment. Thank you to Jess Pavlovich for the news tip. Update: Added the Be Beautiful imprint. Thanks, gynocrat_rex. Update 2: CPM laid off staffers in its comic book and sales departments in 2005 due to slowing book sales and a change in its distribution system. It laid off additional staffers in 2006 after being "significantly impacted" by the retail chain owner Musicland's bankruptcy filing earlier that year.
We originally chatted with Barbara Gaines, the former executive producer of the Late Show with David Letterman, last March, and needless to say, a lot has happened since. Gaines was kind enough to answer a few follow-up questions about life after Letterman, which includes a new variety show and some hope for a future Late Show archive: First off, how has life been since the show ended? Near the end of the first month, my son and I were walking in the Village [in NYC] and a stranger stopped us and asked “Hey, what have you been doing?” My son immediately jumped in with, “She’s been in bed for weeks!” I didn’t really believe it was more than a long hiatus until September and school started up and I still had nowhere to go. Then I started karate classes, a writing class with Jennifer Belle, and took on volunteer production projects for my temple and LPAC. I started to get used to the idea of my new life. At the ten-month mark, [former Letterman producer] Matt Roberts asked me if I wanted to work on his new show and I said yes. Any thoughts or particular reflections from that last day and show a year ago today (May 20)? The final montage with the Foo Fighters may not have been a work of genius, but it was the most important thing I did for the end of the show, and I left there so proud of it. I was happy I got a chance to put it together with Randi Grossack and Mark Spada. How much video did you go through to make the montage? How long did it take? I began working on it as a video piece in October 2014. It changed to freezes from the show, I think, six weeks later. I would probably still be working on it, if I didn’t have a deadline. Any hard decisions, shots that didn’t make it? (I’m not sure I saw Trump…) To this day, I will be in the shower or in line at a store and think, “Blast, I didn’t put in a freeze of Dave electrocuted, or…” and then I will try and remember, “Did I put it in?” I’m still slightly obsessed with it. Is there one show or moment during that final run of shows that has stuck with you more than others? The last 28 shows were all wonderful, and it was a joy being at the helm. I felt they were a culmination of my 35 years with Dave, and I was delighted how they turned out. It was a beautiful end. Any guests you were trying to get for the final shows but couldn’t? Of course, Jay Leno was a story. Obviously Jay would have been nice and I think it would have been huge! Mostly all our friends came to say farewell. How did you and the staff take the barrage of media (most of which was highly appreciative) during those weeks? I wished my parents were alive. Have you seen Letterman since? We have spoken. Has the subject of working on future projects come up? Or do you just mean on a personal level? I mean I’ve texted, “I’m taking karate,” and he’s texted back, “I knew things would work out for you.” What are you up to these days? I’m back at Rockefeller Center as the Associate Producer of the “Maya & Marty Show,” a variety show starring Martin Short & Maya Rudolph. It will air at 10pm (9pm C) on Tuesday nights, six episodes: May 31 through July 12. You hinted in our first chat that there were plans to preserve the Letterman shows. I know many would be thrilled to see something, especially with old Carson shows appearing on the Antenna TV network recently. Do you know the status of those plans? I think things are still in the discussion stage. Thoughts about the late-night scene since Letterman retired? I think everyone is working hard and doing their thing. I honestly have not watched much late-night television since I stopped working in it. I like Jimmy Kimmel and Conan, and of the new guys on the block, I think I’m leaning James Corden. Finally, any statement on Letterman’s current look? I think he is a handsome devil with or without the beard. Previous chats: Anton Fig Bill Scheft Brian Teta Barbara Gaines – 2015 Gerard Mulligan Randy Cohen (part 1) (part 2) Tom Shales Don Giller & David Yoder
When Anthem Entertainment announced they’d officially acquired Global Force Wrestling (GFW) earlier this week, many people asked what it was they were acquiring. It was an easy joke, yes, but GFW didn’t have much in the way of tangible assets. What they did have, however, was a name that wasn’t a double entendre and that wrestling fans didn’t often say with LOL in front of it. So, according to a story just published in The Tennessean, the newspaper which covers TNA’s headquarters city of Nashville, from here forward Anthem’s wrestling company will be known as GFW. Their weekly show on Pop TV, Fight Network and other outlets will keep the title Impact. Obviously, Anthem also acquired Jeff Jarrett, and this announcement confirms he remains in charge of all creative aspects of what is now GFW. We’ll surely be hearing more about this as Anthem and GFW use this as a fresh start for their branding, and attempt to build off recent ratings increase and the social media success touted in The Tennessean article to grow on across the world with new initiatives like a new on-demand streaming app they plan to make the centerpiece of their video strategy. Like the name change, Cagesiders?
Fox News Suggests Rabbis Protesting Beck Are In the 'Vast Soros Conspiracy' Too Bruce Wilson print page Sat Jan 29, 2011 at 12:03:56 PM EST Part of the grim underlying reality of this ongoing saga, the stirrings of Jewish protest against the sort of Jew-baiting that Texas megapastor John Hagee and other evangelicals have been doing for years, which Glenn Beck has now picked up, is that the group of 400 rabbis who have written a letter to Fox News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, concerning Glenn Beck's attacks on Holocaust survivor George Soros, appear to have taken on an organizational mandate which, once upon a time, was championed by the Anti Defamation League. Glenn Beck has not only suggested that George Soros bears some personal responsibility for the Nazi theft of property from Holocaust victims, he has repeatedly claimed that Soros is part of a vast international conspiracy - a thinly veiled contemporary analog to the early 20th Century anti-Jewish conspiracy theories used to whip up hatred against Jews in America, Europe, and especially Nazi Germany. As described in a Yahoo news story, Fox's official response doubles down on Beck's Jew-baiting by insinuating that the group of rabbis who wrote the protest letter to Murdoch were themselves part of the alleged Soros conspiracy. The letter, addressed to News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch (see image here), requests that host Glenn Beck "be sanctioned by Fox News for his completely unacceptable attacks on a survivor of the Holocaust" -- philanthropist and financier George Soros -- and that Fox News chief executive "Roger Ailes apologize for his dismissive remarks about rabbis' sensitivity to how the Holocaust is used on the air." (News Corp. owns both Fox News and the Journal.) In a statement provided to The Cutline, Joel Cheatwood, senior vice president of development for Fox News, said: "We haven't seen the ad, but this group is a George Soros backed left-wing political organization that has been trying to engage Glenn Beck primarily for publicity purposes." Beck's conspiracy theory places George Soros in a role, in a conspiracy theory narrative, that in the early 20th Century was filled by Jewish banking concerns headed by the Rothschild, Kuhn-Loeb, Warburg, and Schiff banking concerns: all banking entities cited in Nazi propaganda as allegedly controlling the world economy by controlling international money markets. Those four banking entities are listed to this day, in Christian versions of anti-Jewish conspiracy theory, as leading the alleged Jewish conspiracy. Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee also claims Rothschilds control international finance. There is truth to the claim that there is concentrated control of international finance, but the controlling entities aren't Jewish--according to a study by two Swiss physicists released in early 2009 and reported in a February 13, 2009 Science News story: Researchers have made the first maps of corporate stock ownership for the stock markets of a large number of countries, 48 in all. The new network analysis technique reveals "backbones" in these ownership networks: big players that together own a controlling stake in more than 80 percent of the companies in the markets... "If you do a network analysis, you can see things that you couldn't see otherwise," says Stefano Battiston, coauthor of the study and a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who studies complex socioeconomic networks. "Although from an individual point of view corporations are widely held, from a global point of view ownership is more highly concentrated."... The top ten such companies were: 1. The Capital Group Companies (U.S.) 2. Fidelity Management & Research (U.S.) 3. Barclays PLC (U.K.) 4. Franklin Resources (U.S.) 5. AXA (France) 6. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (U.S.) 7. Dimensional Fund Advisors (U.S.) 8. Merrill Lynch & Co. (U.S.) 9. Wellington Management Company (U.S.) 10. UBS (Switzerland) To discuss this story, sign up for a free account Fox News Suggests Rabbis Protesting Beck Are In the 'Vast Soros Conspiracy' Too \| 0 comments ( topical, 0 hidden) comments ( topical, 0 hidden)
"The establishment of an international criminal tribunal under Chapter VII of the UN Charter for this purpose would send a clear message that the international community will not tolerate acts that threaten international peace and security by endangering civil aviation," said Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Four days prior, on July 17 of last year, the Malaysia Airlines flight travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was downed roughly 25 miles from the Russian border, in Ukraine's Donetsk region. All 298 passengers and crew, died, including 196 from the Netherlands. Malaysia, an elected member of the Security Council, has circulated a draft resolution aiming to create such a body. According to diplomats, the five countries, who comprise the so called "Joint Investigation Team" that is focused on the crash, aim to bring the text to a vote by July 21 — exactly one year after the Security Council's first resolution on MH17. Five countries — Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine — have urged the UN Security Council to establish an international tribunal to prosecute those responsible for downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine nearly one year ago. Read more Five countries — Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine — have urged the UN Security Council to establish an international tribunal to prosecute those responsible for downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine nearly one year ago. Malaysia, an elected member of the Security Council, has circulated a draft resolution aiming to create such a body. According to diplomats, the five countries, who comprise the so called "Joint Investigation Team" that is focused on the crash, aim to bring the text to a vote by July 21 — exactly one year after the Security Council's first resolution on MH17. Four days prior, on July 17 of last year, the Malaysia Airlines flight travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was downed roughly 25 miles from the Russian border, in Ukraine's Donetsk region. All 298 passengers and crew, died, including 196 from the Netherlands. "The establishment of an international criminal tribunal under Chapter VII of the UN Charter for this purpose would send a clear message that the international community will not tolerate acts that threaten international peace and security by endangering civil aviation," said Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Related: Here's What You Can Do at Russia's 'Military Disneyland' Following the crash, suspicion immediately fell upon Russian-backed separatists fighting in the Donetsk region. Western governments blamed the Kremlin, which has supported the rebels as they battle the Ukrainian army. A preliminary report released by the Dutch Safety Board in September found that the plane was struck by a "number of high-energy objects." Western countries and the Ukrainian government say the plane was brought down by a "Buk" surface-to-air missile supplied by Moscow. Russia denies these allegations. "The logic of the five [Joint Investigation Team] countries is that doing it now around the time of the first anniversary, before the investigation is concluded, allows one to sort of get away from any sense that this is going after one country or person," said one Council diplomat. But Russia — that "one country" — has already made clear its displeasure with the proposed tribunal. "Unfortunately, it seems that this is an attempt to organize a grandiose political show which only damages efforts to find the guilty parties," Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters last Thursday. Russia is one the Security Council's five permanent members, and wields a veto. Related: New Report Offers More Evidence Separatists Used a Russian Missile to Shoot Down MH17 The July 21 resolution, number 2166, called for "efforts to establish a full, thorough and independent international investigation into the incident," and for "all States and actors in the region to cooperate fully in relation to the international investigation of the incident." The Dutch Safety Board is expected to release its final report on the incident in October 2015. Diplomats say the five Security Council members who support the proposed tribunal don't want to wait until October to approve — or at least try to — a tribunal, particularly if the existing investigation further implicates Russia. "A tribunal established by the Council would ensure broad international support for prosecutions and would maximise the prospects of securing international cooperation, which will be necessary for an effective prosecution," said Australian Foreign Minister Bishop. Follow Samuel Oakford on Twitter: @samueloakford Watch the VICE News documentary, " Russia's Ghost Army in Ukraine."
Eric Tucker, The Associated Press WASHINGTON -- In ways both overt and subtle, the acting director of the FBI undermined White House explanations for the firing of former Director James Comey. Andrew McCabe, testifying before Congress Tuesday in place of his fired boss, contradicted the administration's characterizations of an investigation into potential co-ordination between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the presidential election. McCabe told lawmakers a counterintelligence investigation that a White House spokeswoman dismissed a day earlier as "one of the smallest things" on the FBI's plate was actually "highly significant." And though the White House has asserted Comey lost the backing of rank-and-file agents, McCabe flatly said, "that is not accurate." "I can tell you that the majority, the vast majority of FBI employees, enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey," said McCabe, who called it the "greatest privilege and honour in my professional life to work with him." Comey, he added, "enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day." McCabe's testimony undercut a White House narrative that has evolved in the two days since Comey was ousted. The White House initially said President Donald Trump made the call at the recommendation of the top two officials at the Justice Department, but in an NBC News interview that aired Thursday, the president said he would have fired Comey even without the recommendation. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, McCabe repeatedly -- and at times bluntly -- rejected some of the claims the White House has used to explain the firing and to describe the investigation. In one of the more dramatic exchanges, he was asked whether the investigation was -- as White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders maintained Wednesday -- a small investigation in relation to the other work the FBI is conducting. "Sir," he told Sen. Angus King of Maine, "we consider it to be a highly significant investigation." He also said he would refrain from discussing the investigation with the White House, pledged to report to the committee any efforts to interfere in it and said the dismissal of the director would do nothing to impede the probe. "You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," he declared. Trump maintains Comey told him that he was not under investigation, but McCabe suggested under questioning that was highly improbable. He refused to comment on what Comey did or didn't say, but when asked whether it would be common for an FBI director to notify someone they were not the target of an investigation, said "I'm not aware of that being a standard practice." McCabe's willingness to cut against White House talking points may reflect an understanding that he may not serve for long as acting director. The Justice Department seemed to be laying the groundwork for that possibility even before his congressional appearance, with leaders there interviewing four other candidates for the interim job Wednesday. McCabe, a career FBI agent who ran the Washington field office and oversaw national security investigations out of headquarters, was a target of Trump's on the campaign trail following reports that his wife had accepted campaign donations from a close ally of Hillary Clinton during a failed bid for the state Senate.
As many of you will know, RvB likes to explode things. Especially itself. And to kick off 2013, we will be holding our third MASS FFA. What is a MASS FFA? The Mass FFA is an idea that Torve Starduster had back in October 2012. The basic premise is get a POS, chuck in a few thousand pre-fit frigates, dilute with several hundred RvB pilots, leave to cook for a couple of days with the end result usually a dead server node and lots and lots of wrecks. It works! The first Mass FFA in November saw 8,000 frigates exploded over 48 hours, with the second in December seeing 12,000 over the same period. The next, to be held on January 26th 2013, will hopefully see 26.000 pre-fitted frigate hulls blown up all in the name of a good time. How do I join in? You have to join RvB any time between now and 15.00 EVE on the 26th January 2013. Then on the 26th, get into the FFA fleet, find out the POS password, grab a hull, warp to a belt, planet, gate or station and start killing fellow Reds & Blues. Then do it over again. And again. And again. Until nothing is left. To get an idea of what these are like, check out this video by Catalyst XI:
The Bears officially reported to training camp Wednesday at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, settling in for the start of their 2017 season. Coming off three consecutive last-place finishes in the NFC North, expectations and outside excitement remain low. But the Bears believe they can be much more competitive in the season ahead and arrived on campus Wednesday with a predictable level of optimism. General manager Ryan Pace and John Fox met with the media first. A handful of players also spoke. Here are highlights from those interview sessions. Ryan Pace On what separated Mike Glennon from Mitch Trubisky during the spring portion of organized team activities and minicamp I think you lean on Mike’s experience a lot. You can tell. He’s been in the league for four years with different coordnaitors. And you can feel that. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. But I think really right now you really lean on Mike’s experience and some of the things he’s been through. That’s the reason why he’s here and that’s the reason he’s our starting quarterback. You can feel (his experience) in the huddle and in the meeting rooms and on the field. And that’s natural. That’s what you’d expect for a veteran quarterback when compared to a rookie quarterback. On how he will be evaluating Trubisky in the weeks and months ahead It’s all of the things we evaluate at quarterback that we’ll watch. We’re going to be paying attention to his accuracy and his ball placement and his ability to get in and out of the huddle and connect with his teammates and go through his progressions. And it’s learning the playbook. It’s pretty substantial what he’s going through and he’s doing a great job. … It’s just going to be exciting to see that process. On his expectations for third-year receiver Kevin White He’s ready to go. He’s had a great summer, a great offseason. You can just feel his confidence building, (greater) knowledge of the offense and just being comfortable with his body. He’s pretty much unleashed. We expect him to be rolling. John Fox On his overview of the team he has arriving to camp I know our coaching staff is really excited. I think this is the deepest, most competitive team we’ve fielded so far. I think there are going to be some hard (roster) decisions. … We’re excited to get start. On what he views as his strengths as he tries to put a charge into a young team You can only speak to what you’ve done in the past. I know here recently the last few years have not been very productive. I can see that. I think most people, in general, can. But I think our roster’s at the point now where I think it is competitive. ... One of the things I was probably impressed with was how our guys hung together when dealt a tough set of cards a year ago. It was impressive. Some of those guys are going be able to make our football team this year. And hopefully we’ve even improved with more depth than that. On whether he feels increased pressure as he enters Year 3 as Bears coach with only nine wins in the previous two seasons It’s really like Year 28 for me. I’m beyond the feeling-the-pressure part of it. As a coach, you put pressure on yourself. I think there’s a lot of people in that building, in those stands on Sundays, who want to see a winner bad. Every year, whether it’s this year or the last two years, that’s been the main focus and main objective for myself. Mike Glennon On how his approach has changed as he reports to training camp as the announced starting quarterback for the first time in his career When I signed here, I already had my mind set on that. So it is a different approach when you go into the season as the starter rather than as the backup. When you’re the backup, you want to prepare like you’re the starter. It’s just not the same. You can try to trick your mind into that as much as you want. But when you are the starter, it’s different. I don’t know that I’ve prepared that much differently. I just think it’s a different mental approach to know what’s coming. On the importance of having a bond and a trust with his other offensive teammates That’s a big part of what being a quarterback is. It’s making those other 10 guys in the huddle better. I think we really have a good group of guys, starting with those guys up front. They’re kind of the backbone of our offense and a big part of Jordan (Howard’s) success last year. We’re lucky enough to have a guy as talented as him. But without that offensive line, I don’t think he would have had those kinds of yards. That’s kind of the foundation of where we are. I think I’ve gotten to know those guys, built relationships with them. I want to play for them. I don’t want to let them down, and I don’t think they want to let me down, either. I think there’s just kind of an unwritten (rule). What you do for your teammates is you don’t want to let them down, and you want to have their back. On the culture and vibe he feels as training camp gets underway Everyone is buying-in. We’re wanting a culture of buying in, trusting, understanding, being competitive. Guys understand that three wins is not acceptable. It’s not acceptable to us, to the fans. Fans definitely deserve better than that. I think everybody’s on the same page as far as culture and wanting to bring winning back to Chicago. On his openness to escalating talks for a contract extension I love the city, man. It’s funny because, I was coming to Chicago long before I played for the Bears. My mother’s from here. ... I’m a momma’s boy, obviously. And when my mom found out Chicago was a team that was interested in me (during free agency in 2016), she was ecstatic. She was excited. She wanted me to be here. She wanted to be able to come here and see her son play in her home city. In living here, I’ve grown to love it. Go Cubs! I’ve just enjoyed my time here and I’m completely open to ending my career here.
The professor who tweeted “[President] Trump must hang” and “justice = the execution of two Republicans for each deported immigrant” will not be returning to teach in the fall, according to a Saturday report. California State University, Fresno President Joseph Castro announced that history professor Lars Maischak would not be returning to teach at the school in the fall semester, according to The Los Angeles Times. But while the professor will not be returning to campus, his contract does not expire until May 2018, and he is tasked with converting 2 courses into online formats. “Has anyone started soliciting money and design drafts for a monument honoring the Trump assassin, yet?” Maischak asked in another since-deleted statement, first reported by The Daily Caller News Foundation in April. (RELATED: Professor: ‘Trump Must Hang,’ Republicans Should Be Executed For Each Immigrant Deported) “Dr. Lars Maischak, Fresno State History lecturer, will not be teaching this fall,” said Castro in a Friday statement. “In accordance with California State University, Fresno’s contractual obligation, Dr. Maischak has been assigned to convert two courses to an online format which meets his unit requirement per the faculty collective bargaining unit agreement.” The school president mentioned that the two courses will meet the Quality of Online Learning and Teaching Standards set forth by California State University. Maischak’s “contractual assignment” finishes December 20, 2017 and his contract expires in May 2018. The professor originally took a voluntary, paid leave of absence after mass publication of his remarks. UPDATE: California State University, Fresno responded to TheDCNF’s request for comment post-publication with clarification on details concerning Maischak’s contract and assignment to convert courses to online formats. Follow Rob Shimshock on Twitter Connect with Rob Shimshock on Facebook Send tips to rob@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
The prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk national republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, declared that the DNR claims the entire territory of the Donetsk region and will disagree on "special status" for the third of it which it currently controls. As the adviser of the president of Ukraine, Yury Lutsenko, declared the day before, the Minsk protocol doesn't provide special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk areas as a whole, and it will be received only by the third of the territory of Donbass controlled by the militants. The protocol following the results of a meeting of the tripartite contact group (Russia - Ukraine - OSCE) on a settlement of the Ukrainian crisis also presupposes a truce and acceptance in Ukraine of a law on the special status of the Donetsk and Lugansk areas and carrying out early elections. The head of the self-proclaimed Lugansk republic specified that the consent of the LNR and the Donetsk republic to adoption of this law doesn't mean their rejection of independence. The prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk national republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, declared that the DNR claims the entire territory of the Donetsk region and will disagree on "special status" for the third of it which it currently controls. As the adviser of the president of Ukraine, Yury Lutsenko, declared the day before, the Minsk protocol doesn't provide special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk areas as a whole, and it will be received only by the third of the territory of Donbass controlled by the militants. The protocol following the results of a meeting of the tripartite contact group (Russia - Ukraine - OSCE) on a settlement of the Ukrainian crisis also presupposes a truce and acceptance in Ukraine of a law on the special status of the Donetsk and Lugansk areas and carrying out early elections. The head of the self-proclaimed Lugansk republic specified that the consent of the LNR and the Donetsk republic to adoption of this law doesn't mean their rejection of independence.
RBs dominate PFF's early Heisman Trophy watch By Steve Palazzolo • Jun 20, 2016 The 2015 season was shaped by the running back position more than any in recent history, and 2016 is primed to become an encore to the same story. Many of the nation’s top runners return, and they’re all slated to be the focal point in their respective offenses. While quarterbacks have dominated the Heisman Trophy voting in recent years, there’s a strong chance that we will see another running back hoist the trophy once again this year. Here’s a look at the top Heisman candidates for 2016 as we head into the “Year of the Running Back, Part 2.” [Editor’s note: Be sure to check out our 7 dark-horse candidates for the Heisman Trophy as well.] Christian McCaffrey, RB, Stanford McCaffrey did it all for Stanford’s offense in 2015, leading all running backs with a +49.1 overall grade. His 2019 rushing yards ranked second to Heisman winner Derrick Henry, while adding 645 yards through the air at 14.3 yards per reception. He set the NCAA record for all-purpose yards and while that can be an inflated stat when putting return yards on the same scale as yards from scrimmage, the record encapsulates McCaffrey’s value to Stanford’s offense. He’s a smooth runner in any scheme, whether working downhill in Stanford’s preferred downhill system or looking to find a cutback lane on zone runs. McCaffrey can then create matchup problems for opposing defenses as he can take wildcat snaps or line up as a receiver where he looks like a veteran wide receiver with his smooth route running. Regardless, getting the ball into McCaffrey’s hands is vital, and he’ll have plenty of opportunities to carry Stanford’s offense this fall. If there’s a concern for McCaffrey’s campaign it’s breaking in three new offensive linemen which may hurt his production on the ground, but given his versatility, he should be able to make up ground by getting the ball in creative ways to exploit the defense. McCaffrey was our pick for the Heisman last season and he’s the early front runner heading into 2016. Leonard Fournette, RB, LSU The Heisman front-runner for much of last season, Fournette ran into a brick wall in November, starting with the Alabama defense. It’s unfortunate that his campaign was essentially halted on a night when Alabama’s defense gave him no room to run while Henry ran wild on the other side, but it shouldn’t take away from Fournette’s incredible sophomore season. He posted the highest rushing grade of any running back while also leading the way with 85 forced missed tackles. His improvement after a stellar true freshman season was evident as he looked more agile last year, adding a shifty component to his already-impressive combination of size and speed. Snap for snap, he looked like a better runner than Henry and given the leaps he made from 2014 to 2015, it’s possible that Fournette takes another big step forward as a junior and that’s a scary proposition for opposing defenses. Deshaun Watson, QB, Clemson Last year’s No. 3 finisher in the voting, Watson got off to a slow start before carrying Clemson to the title game and capping the year with an impressive performances against the national champs. Watson is the early favorite to become the top pick in next year’s draft as he has the ability to make accurate downfield throws while bringing athleticism and power as a runner that Clemson often uses in the designed running game. Watson’s +41.9 overall grade ranked third among FBS quarterbacks and from Week 9 through the end of the playoff, he was the nation’s best. After flashing his potential as a true freshman in 2014, we saw what Watson is capable of as a sophomore last season and his best football is still ahead of him. The challenge for Watson’s campaign is the nature of the quarterback position that almost demands perfection in the eyes of the voters, so any slip up by Clemson along the way could hurt his chances. The Tigers have a talented roster, but they’ve lost huge numbers to the NFL on the defensive side of the ball and Watson will be called upon to carry them on a weekly basis more than ever. Dalvin Cook, RB, Florida State Few running backs can change a game on one play quite like Cook. In just two years at Florida State, Cook has been the catalyst for a number of fourth-quarter comebacks, whether 2014 against Louisville or last season against Miami. He brings a big-play threat every time he touches the ball as evidenced by 62.9 percent of his years coming on breakaway (15-plus yard) runs last season, highest in the nation. Even when fighting through injuries last year, Cook took the slightest bit of daylight and made opposing defenses pay as his speed is unmatched once he gets to the second level. With questions surrounding the quarterback position in Tallahassee, Cook will be relied upon more than ever and he’s proven up to the challenge as a freshman and sophomore. Given Cook’s ability to change angles with his speed and his incredible acceleration that gets him to top speed, he is the nation’s best running back when given strong blocking up front. While he may not be the classic runner that will keep the offense on schedule and fight for the tough, early-down yards, Cook’s big plays will keep him entrenched in the Heisman race. Baker Mayfield, QB, Oklahoma After transferring from Texas Tech, Mayfield continued to exceed expectations, posting the third-best grade among quarterbacks at +49.6 and leading Oklahoma to the College Football Playoff. He played an efficient brand of football, as he had the lowest percentage of negative grades of any quarterback in the nation and that style kept the ball moving in Norman. While the Big 12 gets a bad rap defensively, and rightfully so, Mayfield deserves credit for taking advantage and spreading the ball around to his various playmakers. Losing the nation’s top-graded wide receiver, Sterling Shepard, should hurt, but games like Mayfield had against Baylor showed his capabilities as he made a number of big-time throws while going head-to-head with one of the nation’s top offenses. With an adjusted completion percentage of 77.2 that ranked fourth among Power-5 quarterbacks combined with an opportunistic running style, Mayfield’s efficiency will keep him in the Heisman mix, especially if he can spearhead another run at the College Football Playoff. Nick Chubb, RB, Georgia Yet another talented runner, Chubb is coming off a season-ending injury, but a return to health will have him squarely in the middle of the Heisman conversation. He burst onto the scene as a true freshman when eventual first-round pick, Todd Gurley, was injured and he ranked third in the nation with an elusive rating of 108.5. Opponents stood no chance when trying to tackle Chubb as they bounced off his regularly, and perhaps most impressive, he then showed the speed to create big plays. That combination has led to an excellent 7.4 yards per carry average in his two years at Georgia. Chubb finished his freshman season at +21.0 overall, good for sixth in the nation, and he was off to another strong last year before injury struck. Georgia got inconsistent quarterback play a year ago, and this year may be more of the same, so look for Chubb to carry the offense. If he’s back to form, Chubb is as talented as any of the other backs in the nation. Royce Freeman, RB, Oregon Often overlooked in the running back conversation, Freeman brings a tough, downhill style to an Oregon offense that gets pigeonholed as a finesse system. Freeman doesn’t have any one trait that stands out as special, especially when compared to the other top runners, but few 230-pounders can move like him and tacklers bounce off him as his 80 forced missed tackles ranked third in the nation a year ago. Oregon’s spread offense does a good job of creating space for running backs and Freeman took advantage to finish with the fourth-best rushing grade in the nation while averaging 3.8 yards after contact per rush to tie for 12th. Like others on the list, having an unknown at quarterback may help in Freeman’s favor as he’ll be featured heavily in the offense with plenty of opportunities to build his Heisman campaign. Other top candidates: Myles Gaskin, Washington; Saquon Barkley, Penn State; Samaje Perine, Oklahoma; Elijah Hood, North Carolina; Mason Rudolph, Oklahoma State; Chad Kelly, Ole Miss; Greg Ward, Houston; Myles Garrett, Texas A&M; Derwin James, Florida State.
Close A scientist from the University of Texas San Antonio has developed a novel way of killing cancer cells using ultraviolet light. The new method can potentially help cancer patients with hard-to-reach or inoperable malignant tumors, especially young children. The new cancer treatment method was developed by Matthew Gdovin, the university's associate professor at the Department of Biology. The therapy involves an injection of nitrobenzaldehyde, a chemical compound, directly into the tumor to allow it to spread into the tissue. The next step is to aim a light beam to the tissue. This causes the cells to become highly acidic and eventually die. In just two hours, up to 95 percent of the targeted cancer cells can be eradicated, Gdovin estimated. Gdovin explained that even if there are various cancer types, they all share one thing in common, and that is to commit cell suicide. For his study, Gdovin used the method on one of cancer's most aggressive types: triple negative breast cancer. This type is also one of the most difficult to treat and often leaves one of the recipients with very poor prognosis. "There are so many types of cancer for which the prognosis is very poor. We're thinking outside the box and finding a way to do what for many people is simply impossible," said Gdovin. Using mice subjects, Gdovin was able to prevent the malignant tumors from growing and increase the survival rates by almost double. Compared with chemotherapy, Gdovin's novel method targets only the tumors, which makes it a more precise therapy. In contrast, chemotherapy targets all of the body's cells. There are certain chemotherapeutics that allow the cancer cells to stay acidic as a method to get rid of the cancer. However, this often leads to hair loss and makes many patients weak. The scientist is hoping that the new non-invasive cancer treatment will help doctors get rid of challenging tumors including the ones in the spine, brain stem and aorta. The new method could also prevent radiation-related mutations in young cancer patients when they grow older. Moreover, Gdovin is hoping that it can assist cancer patients who have maxed out their radiation treatments, especially those who can no longer bear the pain and scarring associated with chemotherapy. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2012, there were 2,125 men and 224,147 women in the country who received breast cancer diagnoses. Among them, 405 men and 41,150 women died from the disease. The research is featured in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Photo: Eric Norris \| Flickr ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
As yet, we do not know to what extent the NRL assisted in closing the Sam Burgess deal with South Sydney. But to what extent should we care? On Sunday night, NRL head of strategy Shane Richardson told the Sydney Morning Herald :”I am not involved in any negotiations to bring Sam Burgess back, although if I can help in any way I will.” No doubt in the days ahead, as this messianic event is deconstructed, we’ll find out if he was able to help. Maybe someone else at League Central lent a hand. Maybe not. Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Reddit Email Share But if so, there is sure to be criticism. The AFL and ARU and any number of overseas leagues can centrally contract players and dole them out to clubs they are propping up financially, and fans either say nothing or congratulate them for doing this. But not rugby league. We are so selfish and petty that the contest between clubs is regarded as far more important than the one between ourselves and other sports. If there is a ‘greater good’ in rugby league, it’s not very great and not very good. The fact is that South Sydney will not be given salary cap concessions to reclaim Sam Burgess. He is not going to be a beneficiary of David Smith’s mythical bag of cash. So if the resources of the NRL or England’s Rugby Football League went into snaring him, what of it? Maybe rugby league has found a way to fight fire with fire when it comes to united action, but without sacrificing equity and fair play like others have. If so, it’s a wonderful development. Advertisement Advertisement More of it, please. Personally, I have more of an issue with another announcement made by the NRL this morning – about the new resources being sunk into the Australian Kangaroos. The NRL is a competition that includes a club from New Zealand and players from at least a dozen countries. But the NRL has no compunction about showing its overwhelming support for one country. I can remember just after the Commission was formed, attending an Eden Park Test where the Kiwis were dismayed that not one commissioner visited their sheds afterwards. They were all next door with the green-and-golds The entire rugby league world relies on the NRL so much and yet it admits it is focused on getting Australia back to number one. What hope does that give anyone else when it’s down to the NRL to improve eligibility rules, release players for Tests and fund the Pacific? Surely we should have ‘church and state’ style separation, like that between the FA and Premier League. Can’t the Australia team be administered by an autonomous performance unit? Can’t the team be read out by the coach, not John Grant? The NRL saying it’s going put Australia back on top is like Microsoft or Coca-Cola announcing it plans to act like a big corporation and make a lot of money at the expense of small business. Advertisement Advertisement Are we supposed to cheer? And as for claiming in the press release there has never been more interest in the international game… ever heard of any year from 1908 to 1986? The key word for the NRL today is statesmanship. Helping get Sam Burgess back fits the bill. Trying to simultaneously support international football while openly seeking to have one team win more than anyone else does not.
Condé Nast layoffs are under way, and GQ is one of the first titles to be targeted for a round of cuts. Around seven editorial staffers were let go on Thursday. Among those laid off were executive digital director Mike Hofman, fashion director Madeline Weeks and digital entertainment editor Ashley Fetters. “So: Yesterday GQ laid me off, alongside a slew of extremely talented others. Still not the worst Nov. 9 of my life, somehow?! But a sad one nonetheless,” Fetters said via her personal Twitter account Friday. More cuts are expected at other titles in the coming weeks. The fashion department at Allure was also reduced, according to multiple sources. A Condé Nast spokesperson declined to comment. The layoffs are part of the publisher’s latest cost-cutting measures, which will ultimately slash around 80 jobs across the company. Some of the weaker magazines and divisions are expecting cuts of up to 20 percent. As WWD reported last week, the budget-saving initiatives include reducing the frequency of several print titles, including GQ, and doing away with Teen Vogue’s print component altogether. The fate of the editorial staffers on Teen Vogue’s print side remains uncertain. The layoffs at Condé Nast are expected to continue over the coming weeks, and Glamour staffers are bracing for pink slips. Naturally, they won’t come until after next week’s Women of the Year summit, which kicks off on Monday. Read more: Condé Nast to Cease Teen Vogue in Print, Cut 80 Jobs and Lower Mag Frequencies Two Execs Out in Latest Condé Nast Reorganization Exclusive: Exec Shake-up at Condé Nast as Pamela Drucker Mann Moves Up, Jim Norton Moves Out Condé Nast Employees Brace for Yet Another Reorganization More Changes at Condé Nast as Howard Mittman, Men’s Chief Business Officer, Resigns More Changes Coming to Condé Nast as Frustration Grows Under Jim Norton Meet Jim Norton: The Man Behind Condé Nast Restructuring Exclusive: Condé Nast Reorganizes Business Side Condé Nast to Cut 100 Jobs Condé Nast Combines Creative and Copy Teams Across Company to Cut Costs
A roundup of the significant signings on the third day of CFL free agency: Veteran Owens agrees to deal with Tiger-Cats The Flyin' Hawaiian is a Hamilton Tiger-Cat. Veteran receiver/kick-returner Chad Owens agreed to a one-year deal with Hamilton on Thursday. The five-foot-nine, 180-pound Owens had spent the last six seasons with the Toronto Argonauts before becoming a free agent Tuesday. Owens, 33, is a four-time CFL all-star who in 2010 was named the league's top special-teams performer before being named its outstanding player in 2012. That season he had 94 catches for 1,328 yards and six TDs while accumulating a record 3,840 all-purpose yards. Last year injuries limited Owens to just 13 games as he registered 55 catches for 570 yards and two touchdowns. But in Hamilton he'll combine with Brandon (Speedy) Banks to potentially give the Ticats a dangerous 1-2 special-teams punch. "There isn't enough words to express the gratitude I have for the Toronto Argonauts!" Owens said in a tweet to Argos supporters. "It would've been nice to finish what we started together and paddle my last canoe in double blue, but life has a way of teaching us lessons on a daily and we must acknowledge those lessons, learn from them and ultimately become better people from them. "Thank you and we love you!" Owens began his CFL career with Montreal in 2009 before being traded to Toronto in June 2010. Argonauts add free-agent Bulcke The Toronto Argonauts have agreed to terms with free-agent defensive lineman Brian Bulcke. The 28-year-old native of Windsor, Ont., fills a need for Toronto, which lost American defensive lineman Euclid Cummings in free agency to Winnipeg. Also, Canadian-born tackle Cleyon Laing and international end Tristan Okpalaugo are both exploring NFL opportunities. The six-foot-four, 285-pound Bulcke spent the last three seasons with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats but is coming off a season-ending knee injury. Bulcke also only played in eight games in 2014 before his campaign was ended prematurely by a biceps tear. Bulcke was a dominant player in 2013, his first season with Hamilton, registering career highs in tackles (24), sacks (three) and fumble recoveries (three). Bulcke played collegiately at Stanford. Toronto also lost free-agent kicker/punter Swayze Waters to the NFL's Carolina Panthers but gained Calgary Stampeders defensive back Keon Raymond on the third day of CFL free agency. Lions add experience, depth The B.C. Lions signed free-agent running back Anthony Allen to a one-year deal Thursday. Allen spent the last two seasons with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He appeared in 28 regular-season games, rushing for 1,504 yards on 261 carries with eight touchdowns. Allen also had 48 catches for 314 yards and three touchdowns. "Anthony is another experienced running back who brings an established set of skills to our team," Lions head coach/GM Wally Buono said in a statement. "We're trying to create the highest level of competition for the running back position this season and Anthony helps us along the way to achieving that goal." Allen earned a Super Bowl ring with the Baltimore Ravens and also spent time with the Buffalo Bills before heading to the CFL.
I’m not really sure who Damon Linker is, but this recommendation on his website doesn’t give me a lot of confidence: Damon Linker is one of the most arresting and honest writers of his generation on the subjects of faith and politics. —Andrew Sullivan And if you Google “Damon Linker”, the second hit you get, after his own website, is a critique I wrote on this site. Linker clearly doesn’t like me because I make Baby Jesus Cry, and, as you’ll see, he harbors a great deal of love for Jesus. In fact, in his latest piece at The Week, “Why atheism doesn’t have the upper hand over religion,” he gives the Saviour credit for human altruism and for the fact that we humans admire it so much. But what it does is not do is show any advantage of religion over atheism. Rather, Linker proves beyond any doubt that he understands neither evolutionary biology nor science in general. Linker begins with a gratuitous slap at yours truly, for I supposedly instantiate the philosophical dimwitedness of New Atheism: In my last column, I examined some of the challenges facing religion today. Those challenges are serious. But that doesn’t mean that atheism has the upper hand. On the contrary, as I’ve argued many times before, atheism in its currently fashionable form is an intellectual sham. As Exhibit 653, I give you Jerry Coyne’s latest diatribe in TheNew Republic, which amounts to a little more than an inadvertent confession that he’s incapable of following a philosophical argument. My “diatribe” was a critique of David Bentley Hart’s new book, which Linker has promoted furiously as the kind of stuff we New Atheists need to deal with because its Srs Bsns. But if I instantiated intellectual sham, Linker does it in spades, for his piece simply makes a God-of-the-gaps argument for human altruism. This, says Linker, is something that atheism simply can’t explain: Atheism shouldn’t be wholly identified with the confusions of its weakest exponents any more than we should reduce religious belief to the fulminations of fundamentalists. Yet when it comes to certain issues, the quality of the arguments doesn’t much matter. The fact is that there are specific human experiences that atheism in any form simply cannot explain or account for. One of those experiences is radical sacrifice — and the feelings it elicits in us. Think of a soldier who throws herself on a live grenade to save her comrades. Or a firefighter who enters a blaze to rescue a child knowing that he will likely perish in the effort. Or consider Thomas S. Vander Woude, the subject of an unforgettable 2011 article by the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. One day in September 2008, Vander Woude’s 20-year-old son Josie, who has Down syndrome, fell through a broken septic tank cover in their yard. The tank was eight feet deep and filled with sewage. After trying and failing to rescue his son by pulling on his arm from above, Vander Woude jumped into the tank, held his breath, dove under the surface of the waste, and hoisted his son onto his shoulders. Josie was rescued a few minutes later. By then his 66-year-old father was dead. This is something that any father, atheist or believer, might do for his son. But only the believer can make sense of the deed. First error: it’s not atheism that has to explain or account for altruism, altruistic feelings, or our approbation of altruism. It’s science that must do that—and sociology (which, properly conducted, is a form of science). For atheism is simply denying belief in Gods. It doesn’t have to explain anything about nature, but only denies that there’s convincing evidence for the divine. Since human morality is surely a joint product of evolution and acculturation, those disciplines are where we should look for clarity. And, of course, altruism is not a complete mystery to scientists. “True” altruism, in which animals sacrifice their lives (or rather, their reproductive fitness) to help unrelated members of the same species, is vanishingly rare among animals. (Don’t mention vampire bats regurgitating blood to other’s offspring, for that result has not been replicated, and is questionable.) And that’s exactly what you expect under Darwinian individual selection, for no animal could be selected to sacrifice itself without getting some reproductive payback. (The rarity of “true” altruism in nature, by the way, also argues against its production by group selection, for group selection can supposedly overcome the disadvantages of individual altruism if such acts are beneficial for the persistence of the group. But that apparently hasn’t happened, for we see almost no true altruism in nature. In fact, I know of no such cases. In contrast, the way altruism and cooperation play out in human society strongly implicates individual rather than group selection.) Kin selection is not “true” altruism, for the sacrificing individual gains genetically by saving copies of the gene that promotes sacrificial behavior. If your expected genetic benefit (discounted by the degree of relatedness to those you’re saving) exceeds the genetic cost, then the behavior will evolve. In other words, you’d be willing to voluntarily and certainly sacrifice your life to save more than two children—each of whom shares half your genes. And if your chance of dying (or loss of reproduction) is less than certain, then you’d try to save even one child. This, of course, is the rationale for why parents care more about their own kids than other people’s. And it’s a good explanation for why Thomas Vander Woude would try to save his child. He didn’t know that he would die, he simply had the impulse to try to save his child—something that’s certainly built into us by natural selection. There are also cases of reciprocal altruism, in which you’ll sacrifice a certain amount because you expect reciprocity from those you help. You might, for instance, share food with others if you have a surfeit, knowing that they’ll remember and reciprocate when it’s your turn to go hungry. That kind of altruism can be shown to evolve in small groups in which individuals recognize and remember each other—precisely the situation that obtained over millions of years of human evolution. So surely some of our altruistic feelings come from evolution acting on individuals in the small groups of our ancestors. But those instinctive and evolved feelings can also be highjacked, for they rest on certain cues that can be mimicked by other situations. Soldiers, for instance, form bonds with their platoons: it’s not for nothing that they call each other “brother” (i.e., “Band of Brothers.”) In such cases your feeling of solidarity may piggyback on your evolved feelings for either kin or groupmates, and cause you to, say, fall on a grenade, or take horrific chances in wartime to save your “brothers.” Remember, the cue for helping is likely to be familiarity with others, not explicit recognition of a genetic relationship. Remember the video I showed a few weeks ago of a mother cat suckling a brood of ducklings? Explain that one, atheists! But of course we can: the ducklings happened to be around when the cat, infused with motherly hormones by her own impending litter, was willing to take care of anything. Does that constitute proof of God for Linker? Is it The Argument from Suckling Ducklings? I suppose that the frequent phenomenon of human adoption, something that’s deeply altruistic yet evolutionarily maladaptive, also constitutes evidence for God! We highjack evolutionary feelings in a maladaptive way all the time. When you don a condom before sex, you are deliberately doing what evolution doesn’t “want” you to do: sacrificing your reproduction. But you’re doing that because you like the cue that evolution has given us to reproduce: the pleasure of the orgasm and the sheer wonderfulness of sex. We don’t impute condoms to God; we impute them to the fact that we’ve evolved to be wily enough to overcome our evolved tendencies: to get the sizzle without the steak. Finally, as Peter Singer and Steve Pinker have noted, morality can be—and certainly is—culturally inculcated. As we become more and more familiar with other cultures, their inhabitants become more “brotherlike”: we see that we stand in no special moral position with respect to them, and so will help them, especially when it doesn’t cost much. (Really, how much of our reproduction do we sacrifice by giving $100 to Doctors Without Borders?) Therefore we will help them, and our feeling of satisfaction accompanying that help can also be explained either by evolution—reciprocal altruism could depend on a cue of approving of sacrificial acts—or by culture (we’ve learned that people behave better when they are rewarded for sacrifice, and that depends on the approbation of people who see that altruism). In fact, people are more likely to be altruistic when other people are around to see it; “free-riding” (benefitting from other’s sacrifices without paying back) is more common when you can do it undetected. Linker shows his abysmal ignorance of all this when briefly considering, and then dismissing, the alternative explanations: Other atheistic theories similarly deny the possibility of genuine altruism, reject the possibility of free will, or else, like some forms of evolutionary psychology, posit that when people sacrifice themselves for others (especially, as in the Vander Woude case, for their offspring) they do so in order to strengthen kinship ties, and in so doing maximize the spread of their genes throughout the gene pool. But of course, as someone with Down syndrome, Vander Woude’s son is probably sterile and possesses defective genes that, judged from a purely evolutionary standpoint, deserve to die off anyway. So Vander Woude’s sacrifice of himself seems to make him, once again, a fool. Things are no better in less extreme cases. If Josie were a genius, his father’s sacrifice might be partially explicable in evolutionary terms — as an act designed to ensure that his own and his son’s genes survive and live on beyond them both. But the egoistic explanation would drain the act of its nobility, which is precisely what needs to be explained. We feel moved by Vander Woude’s sacrifice precisely because it seems selfless — the antithesis of evolutionary self-interestedness. Oh, my dear Mr. Linker, we save our children based on inborn impulses that just say “save your kids”. Those impulses don’t include a brain module that says “but first make sure your kid isn’t sterile, and it would help if he were a genius.” In the same way, putting on a condom doesn’t eliminate the possibility of having an orgasm. It’s the cue that’s important—whatever cue evolved over 6 million years to guarantee an evolutionarily beneficial result. And over those six million years, the chances that a child would one day be fertile were very high. And yes, we feel moved by that sacrifice, but, as I’ve said, the emotions of approbation for sacrifice can also be explained in both evolutionary and cultural terms. Culture, by the way, is surely an important source of moral feelings. As developmental psychologist Paul Bloom explains in his recent book, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (recommended), babies start off being pretty selfish towards strangers and then must be taught to help others. As I wrote about Bloom’s views when I reviewed his book: The empathy that seems inherent in “human nature” is directed only towards those the infants are familiar with, like family. It is not directed at strangers. In fact, infants are spiteful little things, and do not like even equality with strangers. They will, for example, prefer to have one cookie while another infant nearby gets none, over the alternative where both infants get two cookies. In other words, infants sacrifice their own well-being just to affirm their superiority in the acquisition of goods. Several other studies show the same thing. Infants are empathic but not altruistic. Bloom argues, then, that the altruism comes from education, an argument also made by Peter Singer in his superb book The Expanding Circle. I quote Bloom: “And so there is no support for the view that a transcendent moral kindness is part of our nature. Now, I don’t doubt that many adults, in the here and now, are capable of agape. . . . When you bring together these observations about adults with the findings from babies and young children, the conclusion is clear: We have an enhanced morality but it is the product of culture, not biology. Indeed, there might be little difference in the moral life of a human baby and a chimpanzee; we are creatures of Charles Darwin, not C.S. Lewis.” Of course Linker has his alternative theory: altruism comes from God, and it’s instilled in us divinely by the Christian God. I am not making up this conclusion from his piece: What is it about the story of a man who willingly embraces a revolting, horrifying death in order to save his son that moves us to tears? Why does it seem somehow, like a beautiful painting or piece of music, a fleeting glimpse of perfection in an imperfect world? I’d say that only theism offers an adequate explanation — and that Christianity might do the best job of all. Christianity teaches that the creator of the universe became incarnate as a human being, taught humanity (through carefully constructed lessons and examples of his own behavior) how to become like God, and then allowed himself to be unjustly tried, convicted, punished, and killed in the most painful and humiliating manner possible — all as an act of gratuitous love for the very people who did the deed. Why does Vander Woude’s act of sacrifice move us? Maybe because in freely dying for his son, he gives us a fleeting glimpse of the love that moves the sun and the other stars. Which is to say, he gives us a fleeting glimpse of God. That might sound outlandish to atheists. But for my money, it comes closer to the truth, and does more to explain the otherwise irreducibly mysterious experience of noble sacrifice than any competing account. Don’t buy it? I dare you to come up with something better. I just did in the post above, Mr. Linker. And your theory doesn’t explain altruism in non-Christians, does it? To close, I’ll simply repeat the words of Linker’s hero, David Bentley Hart: If my salad at lunch were suddenly to deliver itself of such an opinion, my only thought would be “What a very stupid salad.”
Roberts: Phoenix does right by Officer Tiger ... finally Craig Tiger killed himself a year after he was fired from the Phoenix Police Department. (Photo: Rebecca Blickem Tiger) The city of Phoenix has finally done right by one of its police officers. In death, the city treated Officer Craig Tiger as it should have treated him in life. With respect and understanding. With the help that he desperately needed. Tiger killed himself in November 2014, a year after the city he served for 12 years fired him. Some background is in order. Tiger was involved in a fatal shooting in June 2012 and shortly after that, he began drinking and suffering from nightmares. Though he had dealt with depression and alcohol problems previously, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association officials reported the problems got worse after the fatal shooting. Despite that, he was quickly cleared to return to duty. On the first anniversary of the shooting, Craig was stopped for DUI as he headed to his family's cabin in Payson. That stop saved his life as Craig intended to kill himself that day. That stop also ended his career. As a result of the DUI, Craig was diagnosed with PTSD. But Phoenix police have a zero tolerance policy for cops who drink and drive. Tiger pleaded his case to then-Police Chief Daniel Garcia, pouring his heart out about what had happened and why. Then Garcia fired him. The reasons Tiger was drinking didn't matter – not to Chief Garcia anyway. A little over a year later, on the day he lost custody of his children, Tiger killed himself. NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Tiger’s family has applied for disability benefits. The Phoenix Pension Board questioned whether Tiger’s children are eligible for help, given that their father was fired. But an independent medical examiner determined that Tiger's PTSD should have been considered an accidental disability, one that left him unable to do police work. I would guess the medical examiner considered the final words written by Officer Tiger, words he left for Garcia right before he pulled the trigger. “You and the city of Phoenix failed me, plain and simple,” he wrote. “Police work is hard. I've seen everything – every way a person can die, I've seen. No excuse! Just not as strong as I thought I was." The Pension Board on Wednesday approved disability benefits for the Tiger’s children, both of whom are under 12. It was the decent thing – the only thing – to do. Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1SbbUlm
This is a live blog covering Walt Disney Co's (NYSE: DIS) annual meeting of shareholders. The meeting begins at 10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT. Refresh this page for frequent updates. The meeting has now come to a close. 01:48:14: Disney and Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter said that the team had so much fun making the short "Frozen Fever" that it was excited to make a sequel. Josh Gad joked that the "Frozen" sequel was going to be called "Rogue One." 01:47:50: Disney announced that "Frozen 2" is in development. 01:46:14: Josh Gad, voice of Olaf in "Frozen," joined the meeting. 01:35:02: "Frozen" remains the biggest animated film of all time, "Big Hero 6" is now third behind "The Lion King." "Feast" won best animated short, making it only studio to win both best animated short and best animated film in the same year. 01:34:13: Iger reiterated that "The Good Dinosaur" is coming this fall. Said that animation is incredibly important to Disney and has always been its heart and soul. Said the company's most successful times has been when its animation thrived, and that's the case today. 01:30:33: Iger said that he hoped Pixar would help the company boost its animation across the board when it joined in 2006. He believes it worked. Noted that "Inside Out" reflects the "creative genius that Pixar is known for." 01:27:13: Iger reiterated the deal between Sony and Disney to feature Spider-Man in Marvel Universe films. Praised the new "Cinderella" film. Referred to "Tomorrowland" as a "fantastic, futuristic adventure." 01:27:02: "The movie is absolutely fantastic," Iger said the new "Avengers." 01:26:48: It must be a very long clip. The meeting has yet to return. 01:23:11: Iger reiterated that 11 Marvel films will debut in the next four years. The latest "Avengers" trailer was viewed 35 million times upon debut. Disney is now showing a new clip from the film…which investors at home cannot see. 01:22:30: "This is a huge year because 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' is just one" major film coming out in 2015, Iger said. 01:21:51: Iger praised ESPN's success, said it is at the top of its game. 01:19:50: There are a lot of visuals that investors at home are not being shown. Will this inspire more investors to attend future meetings? 01:19:34: First Latino princess will debut in a cartoon series next year. 01:18:21: Iger said ABC is the only network to grow its audience this season. 01:17:14: Iger said that Shanghai Disneyland is coming along nicely, major construction will be wrapped at the end of this year. Disney is planning a grand opening in spring 2016. Said the park will feature the company's grandest castle yet. 01:13:50: Eleven separate Disney products generated more than $1 billion in global revenue over the last year. 01:11:20: Iger showed off concept art from Rogue One. He also said that the second Star Wars sequel will be released on May 26, 2017. 01:10:03: Iger said the first Star Wars spinoff will be released in December 2016. Title: Rogue One. Starts filming this summer. 01:09:55: "Just wait until you see the whole movie," said Iger. He said director JJ Abrams has created something truly spectacular. 01:07:11: "We're all incredibly excited" about Star Wars. The teaser trailer has been viewed 150m times. 01:05:02: Disney CEO Bob Iger picked up one of the first Apple Watches with Mickey Mouse on it. 01:01:40: The meeting is starting. 12:58:09: Disney is constantly acquiring new animated series. 12:57:17: The company, which owns Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar and a number of other key properties, has impressed many analysts this year. 12:56:23: Disney performed very well during the first quarter. 12:56:01: Disney shares are up three percent today. Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.
Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. WASHINGTON – In his final public remarks as secretary of state, John Kerry called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a friend. But he had a message for the Israeli leader that he explained he has repeatedly offered in private. “You’re affecting the ability to make peace,” he said. “You’re changing the peace map, and you’re doing it unilaterally. And if you continue to do that, you’re going to have trouble also with us, because our credibility is on the line – we can’t say we’re against settlements and then turn around and turn away from an effort to try to do something about it.” The outgoing statesman spoke with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who, in their short time on stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, focused his questions heavily on the issues of climate change and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kerry’s responses were familiar: His only major foreign policy address since the November presidential election has been on this topic, and he is repeatedly pressed on Israel policy, including by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour this week.“Let me say to my friends in Israel that you cannot be a unity state and be democratic and Jewish at the same time. You can’t do it,” he told Friedman, who noted that Kerry has received grief from Israel and the American Jewish community over his address on the topic last month.John Kerry lays out Mideast peace vision“Is it over?” Kerry quipped.Kerry said that the Obama administration, with his speech and their UN abstention, had intentionally spurred debate over Israel’s future ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump – a figure who, by all measures to date, plans a different approach to Israel over its settlement activity.“We saw a process taking place whereby the West Bank is slowly and steadily being eaten up – where municipal boundaries of settlements are expanded well beyond the settlement buildings themselves,” he said. “And if you take all the concentric circles of the municipal boundaries around these settlements, you actually see that most of the West Bank has been reserved for the exclusive use of Israel.”“It’s a hard thing to be the messenger of truth,” he added, “because it quickly gets distorted into one sentence or one attack.”Noting that the majority of Israel’s cabinet now opposes a two-state solution, Kerry said that a unitary state would be a “recipe for permanent insurgency, permanent conflict.“You see 11,000 demolition orders for Palestinian homes right now, and they’re taking place at an increased rate,” he said. “It’s impossible to say that every person you add isn’t a complication when you decide what kind of state you want to have.”Neither he nor Obama supports an immediate withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank, he said, citing administration concerns for Israel’s security.But the spirit of the 1993 Oslo Accords – which reserved much of the West Bank for a future Palestinian homeland – is being violated, Kerry argued.“It really was important for us to make a statement, and frankly, ignite a debate,” Kerry added. “And I think that debate is now on.” Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>
Withered potted palms hang upside down over the rusty railing. Chairs lie scattered across the deck and devastated banquet tables can still be recognized under glass roofs. Viewed up close, from one of the coast guard's inflatable boats, the cruise ship Costa Concordia resembles a city that has been hastily evacuated. The clock over the children's pool stopped at 11:30 p.m. on Jan. 14, the night that the ship ran aground. By that time, captain Francesco Schettino had long since abandoned ship, but passengers and crew were still fighting for their lives. Nicholas Sloane, 51, a red-haired, freckled South African with hands like bear paws, is steering the rubber boat around the wreck. Before him looms the gaping gash in the large hull, many meters long, where part of the rock that caused the shipwreck was still embedded until recently. Above him, workers are hovering in a steel cage suspended from the swivel arm of a floating crane. He jokingly shouts to welders who are hanging against the sloping wall of the bow like mountain climbers. Sloane is the senior salvage master for the Costa Concordia. He studied nautical science, and with his master's certificate he could command a luxury ocean liner like the Queen Mary 2 or a supertanker, but that kind of career has never interested him. Sloane doesn't steer ships -- he gets rid of them. For the past three decades, he has been working as a clean-up man on the world's oceans, raising sunken oil rigs and cutting up ships underwater. But his job on Giglio Island is to return the wreck to an upright position and tow it to a mainland harbor -- in the best possible condition and ideally still in one piece. Then the TV camera crews will produce new images that his employers hope will overshadow the old ones that have been indelibly etched in our minds: the images of people desperately clambering down ropes on the side of the ship to reach the lifeboats. Thirty-two people died that night, including 12 Germans. Like a Sea Dog and His Lover The phone call from Florida-based company Titan Salvage reached Sloane while he was removing a freighter from a reef in New Zealand. He had never heard of Giglio, the so-called enchanted lily island, located between Elba, Montecristo and the coast of Tuscany. He thought of Italian red wine, pinot noir, which he highly appreciates. He called his wife and asked her if she wanted to meet up in "good old Europe." Forget it, his wife said. She had seen the horrific images from Giglio on TV. A few weeks ago, though, she changed her mind and visited him with their three children. Sloane speaks tenderly and lewdly about the ship, like an old sea dog referring to his lover. He describes how he intends to bed her on a cement mattress -- how he plans to dress her in nappies, attaching floating pontoons to her flanks. His work uniform, a white polo shirt, is emblazoned with the mission's motto: "Determination & Love." Sloan is acting on behalf of Costa Crociere, the Italian shipping company that owns the Costa Concordia. He currently commands some 100 engineers, 24 divers and roughly 100 additional specialists. If the salvage operation is a success, he says with a grin, he will stand triumphantly on the upper deck next to the pool. The plan is for the Costa Concordia to float again in the spring, albeit only for a brief final voyage -- and a great deal can happen in the meantime. On the island of Giglio, they are currently preparing the most spectacular shipwreck towing maneuver in maritime history. Never before has such a colossal cruise ship been raised to an upright position. The vessel is 290 meters (951 feet) long and 36 meters (118 feet) wide. It has a displacement of 50,000 metric tons. To make matters worse, it's lying in a precarious position on a rocky slope and is in danger of sliding into deeper water. The salvage is expected to cost at least 300 million ($387 million) and will set new technical and environmental standards. Indeed, the idea is to give a clean image to a tainted industry, to make a grand gesture after the grand fiasco. It's also hoped that, if the pleasure vessel can be salvaged in an exemplary fashion, it will send a strong signal to those who criticize the trend in the industry to build ever more enormous cruise ships. For Costa Crociere, the future is at stake; the shipping company has to win back trust. As part of its bid to do so, the company took a SPIEGEL team to view the wreck and presented details of its work for the first time. No Plan B A hotel in the harbor of Giglio serves as an organizational hub for the salvage crews. The windows of the "salvage room" on the ground floor are covered with blue curtains. Fans whir in the background. Young men wearing caps and rugged boots sit at laptops and chase away anyone who has no business being here. Before the salvage operation can begin, a lot of purely mathematical work is required. Hundreds of files have been sent back and forth between Giglio and the Hamburg-based marine engineering company Overdick. The work involves complex calculation models to determine whether the ship has the structural strength to be rolled upwards. At the moment, the plan appears feasible and the hull should be able to withstand the lifting forces. But what happens if the critical area along the edge where the ship is rotated breaks apart? No one can say with absolute certainty that it will work -- and there is no plan B. In early May, four months after the ship ran aground, a technical committee comprised of representatives of the shipping company, shipbuilding companies and additional experts awarded the contract to Titan Salvage and Micoperi, a company based in Ravenna, Italy that specializes in underwater constructions such as oil platforms. Six other companies had also bid on the project, including specialists working for Smit from Rotterdam, who until just a few weeks ago had been pumping the heavy fuel out of the wreck. The Dutch were so popular that Giglio residents performed a Mexican wave for them down at the harbor. Smit was also the company that achieved the feat in 2003 of cutting apart a sunken car freighter in the English Channel and removing it piece by piece. The committee decided against cutting apart the Costa Concordia, and instead opted for the most expensive proposal -- the plan to bring the capsized ship to an upright position. To achieve this, they will use a kind of rolling maneuver called the parbuckling principle (see graphics gallery). For the experiment, 33-meter high watertight steel boxes, or caissons, will be attached to the sides of the ship and used as floats. From an underwater platform deeply anchored in the bedrock, 36 steel cables, each as thick as a lamppost, will extend to the upper edge of the caissons. These cables will be used to almost silently rotate the ship out of its tilted position. It will have taken one year to painstakingly prepare the maneuver, but it will require less than two hours to perform it -- if all goes well. Clash of Cultures It has already become clear that the salvage operation with Titan Salvage and Micoperi has set the stage for the clash of two very different corporate cultures: One is a team of daredevil problem solvers who rope down from helicopters to the decks of stricken tankers and lasso abandoned ships on the high seas as if they were wild horses. The other is a group of designer engineers who work meticulously according to official guidelines, where each step is coordinated with the coast guard, the Environment Ministry, the region of Tuscany or the mayor of Giglio. In situations like this, Italy's bureaucrats can be very fussy. On numerous occasions, Micoperi engineers have urged their colleagues from Titan Salvage to show more respect for rules and regulations: "We are not in Bangladesh." Captain Sloane often works in countries like Bangladesh. But he says this is the type of first-class salvage that only the industrialized world can afford. There are certainly cheaper ways of dealing with wrecks. The most cost-effective solution is simply to leave it where it is. Blowing it up with dynamite is another solution. Sloane is an expert at doing that. He opens a folder on his laptop that he named "Blow Jobs" and shows films of stranded ships that collapse like high-rise buildings. "Blow jobs are always an option," says Sloane with a grin, "but not for Giglio." The wreck is like a surprise package, he says, adding that you never know how much detergent and cosmetics, not to mention sheets and carpets, such an explosion would toss into the sea. And, of course, a demolition would show a lack of respect for the two corpses that are still presumed to lie within the ship's hold -- the bodies of a Sicilian passenger and a waiter from India.
Lost in the big news weekend was this gem of a piece by Racialicious’ Arturo R. Garcia, highlighting the effort to get Marvel Comics rep Tom Brevoort to come clean about race’s role in the creative process. The conversation was kicked off by an interview in which Brevoort discards the idea of an all-black lineup for an Avengers series, saying there weren’t enough black superhero characters who’d be suited for such a team – but then goes on to pull reasons out of the air for each member of an existing all-white Avengers lineup. Garcia details how comics fans, particularly @SonofBaldwin, approached Brevoort on Twitter over this. Brevoort, to his credit, is forthcoming with honest answers. What results is a fascinating case study of how the stewards of popular culture understand race, and in turn, on how popular culture informs us about race. It should be noted that Brevoort’s no slouch on this stuff; check his excellent response to a fan complaining about too much diversity in his escapism: I don’t know who you are, obviously, but just based on your question I would posit that you’re a white male. I think you cannot overestimate the power that readers, especially younger readers, seeing a heroic character that resembles themselves, can have. For white guys like me, that’s easy – there are hundreds of them. Not so for almost any other demographic you might choose to name. That’s why, I think, people are supportive and even delicate with any character of a particular race or orientation or background. It’s a diverse world out there, and any time we can reflect that diversity in a meaningful way, it’s worth doing. Which is why it’s so frustrating to see Brevoort duck behind circular logic defenses here. To wit: there aren’t enough good non-white characters for a team, the lack of non-white characters is due to the less-enlightened racial agendas of the past, and correcting the agendas of the past is an agenda itself, so that’s out. Brevoort says on Twitter that social justice and cultural criticism are nice when possible, but entertainment and storytelling is job number one. (He also plays the “you’re subjected to racism, but I’m subjected to accusations of racism” canard.) Setting aside whether accurate demographic representations count as ‘social justice,’ there’s a couple of problems here. First, nobody’s asking Marvel to release crap; at most, they’re asking for a chance to decide what’s crap. And second, social agendas work in storytelling. Just look at Marvel’s seven decades of white-male-as-neutral superheroes. Garcia puts the issue in perspective: What Brevoort doesn’t mention is that a comic-book company is perfectly suited to run a course-correction on whatever attitudes came from those “less-enlightened times,” because it deals with universes and characters of its own creation. […] When it comes to diversity, it appears the “contrivances” appear when they’re most convenient for the comics industry, as it does for so many others: there’s not enough qualified candidates; the market won’t support it; that’s not our job. As Garcia alludes, these ‘contrivances of convenience’ show up in everything from whitewashed Hollywood casting to judicial politics – see the parallels in Melissa Harris-Perry’s case for an all-black, all-lesbian Supreme Court. This is a battle that gets fought in all industries, over billions of dollars, every day, in closed rooms – and we aren’t in those rooms. The ‘black Avengers’ flap should make us aware us that colorblindness, or a single enlightened individual, isn’t enough to offset an entrenched system of exclusion, or an industry’s internal staffing patterns. As Brevoort frames it, the essential question is of the responsibility of the artist to the audience. The problem is that this question relies upon a old utopian ideal of artist-in-a-vacuum, one that’s been explicitly false since the invention of money. I hate to pick on Tom Brevoort, because he gets so much right – but as I bet he’d agree, if he has no responsibility to publish comics that look like us, we have no responsibility to pay his salary. We all have a hand on the ink brush. Related reading: our resident black lady comics nerd Shani Hilton, writing in appreciation of the late Dwayne McDuffie.
Showtime You got us, Noel Fisher. You got us right in the heart. It’s been quite a season for Fisher, who portrays Mickey Milkovich on the vastly underrated Shameless. Over the past several weeks, we saw Mickey and Ian’s relationship take center stage, offering quite an evolution for Fisher’s character. He has taken Mickey from ultra-closeted thug to the man in the most fiercely committed relationship on the show. There’s no denying the magnitude of his series arc – his Season 4 story alone is nothing to sneeze at. The audience was in Mickey’s thrall from the moment he first butted heads with his Russian prostitute wife and began not-so-subtly pining for Ian. We drew in further once Ian was back on the scene: fans cheered when Mickey finally relented on his self-hate enough to admit that he and Ian were together. His coming out brawl was even better – Mickey regaling his father with details from his love life, all while the pair was handcuffed on the hoods of adjacent police cars, was a scene for the ages. In fact, the scene was only topped by the ensuing head-kiss/profane banter with Ian, which was plentiful in “aww” factor. And to think this time last season, he was brutally beating Ian to a pulp. That’s some character development, y’all. Shameless is a show of highs and lows. Of juxtaposition – more specifically, of how much awfulness you can temper with just a little sweetness. And Fisher’s Mickey has become the embodiment of that contrast that the show has so carefully created. It’s not a balance easily maintained, but Fisher does it masterfully. It’s generally the big stars like William H. Macy and Joan Cusack that tend to pick up the accolades, but Fisher has more than earned his place among the greats: his Mickey is fascinating, from everything from what has become an endearing capacity for violence and foul language, right down to the way he haphazardly swings his arms as he walks. We can’t wait to see how he weathers Ian’s bipolar disorder in Season 5. Follow @Hollywood_com Follow @RosieNarasaki
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) blamed the failure of Obamacare markets on “fake news” from the Trump administration during a press conference on Thursday. “The Trump administration is peddling fake news and falsehoods to cause the [Affordable Care Act] to explode and implode,” Blumenthal declared. Blumenthal continued, “the fake news they are using and the falsehoods they are peddling involve women’s health care particularly.” It would appear that Blumenthal forgot it was the Democrat-leaning advocacy group Ultraviolet that The Washington Post‘s fact checkers called out for spreading ‘fake news’ about the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Ultraviolet had claimed that the AHCA would make being a rape survivor a pre-existing condition. The Washington Post‘s fact-checkers gave Ultraviolet’s claim four Pinocchios, the paper’s highest rating, and said it was “false” and a product of “out-of-control rhetoric.” In Blumenthal’s home state of Connecticut, the average rate for health insurance increased drastically in 2017, with individuals seeing a 25 percent increase, and 13 percent for small groups. In 2016, UnitedHealthcare left the Obamacare exchanges in Connecticut, leaving the state with only two health insurers providers. Meanwhile, the lies Democrats have told the American people about Obamacare are well-documented. Some of the best-known lies Democrats told the American people about Obamacare include: ‘if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,’ ‘if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,’ and that premiums and deductibles will go down under Obamacare. Blumenthal’s claims that Republican “fake news” is responsible for the failure of Obamacare exchanges doesn’t hold up in the light of day.
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Spacewalking astronauts from U.S. shuttle Discovery finished outfitting Japan’s newly arrived Kibo research laboratory and carried out other tasks during 6 1/2 hours of work outside the International Space Station on Sunday. Mission Specialist Mike Fossum (L) helps Mission Specialist Ron Garan (R) with the foot restraint system on the 58-foot robot arm which Garan will ride during the spacewalk in this image from NASA TV June 8, 2008. The spacewalking pair will replace a nitrogen tank assembly, install TV equipment and remove a thermal cover from Japan's new robotic arm during the planned 6 hour plus spacewalk. REUTERS/NASA TV Astronauts Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan also did preventive maintenance on the station’s air conditioner, which NASA wants in the best shape possible before the shuttle fleet’s retirement in 2010. Sunday’s work was the latest in an ambitious schedule to complete construction of the $100 billion station over the next two years. Nine more shuttle flights to the station are planned by the U.S. space agency, along with a single flight to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. Soaring 210 miles over Earth, Fossum and Garan floated back inside and closed the station’s airlock by 4:28 p.m. EDT (2028 GMT). Their main job was to replace a 550-pound (249-kg) tank of nitrogen used to pressurize the outpost’s ammonia cooling system. Riding on the station’s 58-foot (18-metre) Canadian-built robot arm, Garan removed the old tank and picked up the new tank from a storage platform on the other side of the outpost. “Enjoy the ride,” said Karen Nyberg, who operated the crane from inside the station’s Destiny laboratory. She maneuvered the robot arm after remarking earlier Garan would be riding “on top of the world.” Nyberg and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, who also operated the robot arm, reversed the maneuver so Garan could install the new tank. Fossum, meanwhile, took another look inside one of the huge paddle-wheel joints that pivot the station’s solar wing panels so they constantly face the sun to provide electrical power. One joint has been contaminated with metal shavings and engineers are determining how best to clean it up and prevent more damage. The other side has been working well, but a quick inspection by Fossum during a spacewalk on Thursday revealed what appeared to be a thin coating of debris on the metal ring, which engineers would like to analyze. The spacewalkers also reinstalled a television camera that was outfitted with a new power supply, removed a window cover from the Kibo laboratory and removed locks that secured Kibo’s 33-foot- (10-metre-) long robot arm during launch on May 31. Discovery, which arrived at the orbital outpost on June 2, is scheduled to depart on its trip home on Wednesday.
“A civilized society must not allow an assault to be committed under the guise of civil disobedience,” Justice Zweibel said. The trial became a rallying point among people who sympathized with the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011 and 2012, which called attention to the gap between rich and poor and criticized the government bailout of big banks. Many of Ms. McMillan’s supporters saw in her a potent symbol of the police crackdown that ended the occupation of Zuccotti Park and snuffed out the protest’s momentum. Image A jury found Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street protester, guilty of second-degree assault. Credit Anthony Lanzilote for The New York Times Upon her conviction, Ms. McMillan’s supporters wrote scores of letters to Justice Zweibel, urging him to be lenient. Five City Council members delivered the same message on the steps of City Hall, and the Russian activists Pussy Riot, who were recently imprisoned for criticizing President Vladimir Putin, visited her on Rikers Island and called for her release. An online petition calling for leniency garnered 160,000 signatures. Ms. McMillan had testified that she reflexively struck the officer, Grantley Bovell, with her elbow after he groped her breast, a charge he denied. She told the jury that she had been out drinking to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day before she went to the park, and had never intended to join a protest; she was merely meeting a friend and had plans to continue a pub-crawl. Officer Bovell testified that he encountered Ms. McMillan yelling and waving her arms at another officer in Zuccotti Park, shortly after the police moved in to arrest dozens of people who were holding a rally to celebrate the founding of the Occupy Wall Street movement six months earlier.
As we saw when Hammond got his hands on the sensational Pagani Huayra in series 19, Top Gear presenters rather like talking about hypercars. Well, it turns out this is also true in the digital world. The clip below featuring Jeremy waxing lyrical about said Huayra, plus the epic new McLaren P1, is the first to emerge from the imminent Forza Motorsport 5 game on the new Xbox One. It’s not just Clarkson: all three of the presenters will feature in the game, passing on their occasional wisdom throughout the game’s career mode on a selection of cars (whether the Reliant Robin has made it into the final selection, we’ve yet to have confirmed). There’s plenty more Top Gear in the game: as revealed last week, as well as racing on the our track, you’ll also be able to race Stig’s Digital Cousin in the game. And some say that if you beat him you’ll unlock the “Some Say” achievement (whatever that is)… UPDATE: And if you look above, you’ll see the first glimpse of our ramshackle track just outside Guildford in the game…
12:02 p.m. Update: More than 200 cars were damaged in the fire, Metro Fire says. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. UPDATE: @metrofirepio says "hundreds" of cars involved in the fire. No injuries reported. pic.twitter.com/W2AQyvWg3e — Drew Bollea (@Drew_CBS13) July 29, 2016 11:54 p.m. Update: Metro Fire says several hundred cars are involved. 11:49 p.m. Update: Tipu, the owner of AZ Auto Dismantlers, where several vehicles are burning, says he just bought the business. “I don’t know where the fire started. It’s in my neighbor’s yard as well. I didn’t have insurance. We bought the business one month ago,” he said. 11:37 p.m. Update: Fire spread to AZ Auto Dismantlers. Employee tells me they have 400 cars in the yard, several are on fire pic.twitter.com/W4zC6fBQ4H — Drew Bollea (@Drew_CBS13) July 29, 2016 11:32 p.m. Update: The sound of explosions can be heard coming from the yard. A propane business is next door to the yard. More than a dozen fire engines at the scene. Flames visible above the fence. pic.twitter.com/o7NRWGOMgh — Drew Bollea (@Drew_CBS13) July 29, 2016 Here's a look of what firefighters are dealing with. pic.twitter.com/vRLZ48VBTI — Drew Bollea (@Drew_CBS13) July 29, 2016 SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – A large fire has spread to a wrecking yard in South Sacramento where multiple cars are reportedly on fire. The fire started as a grass fire along 7050 McComber Street and spread to nearby businesses. Firefighters from Metro Fire Department are battling the blaze. According to a Metro Fire Department statement, 13 fire engines, one water tender, one medical unit, and four battalion chiefs have been assigned to the fire. Huge plume of black smoke visible in night sky. https://t.co/8Go4mTIH4L — Drew Bollea (@Drew_CBS13) July 29, 2016 Save
PORTLAND, Ore. -- More than 100 people were ready when doors opened for an open casting call Tuesday afternoon at Mister Theater in East Portland. Many them were crossing their fingers for 15 minutes of fame as an extra on season four of the TNT series The Librarians. “I'm feeling pretty good,” said Colin White, who was waiting for his turn. “I think we all have a pretty good shot on this show,” said Cassandra Frost, who wants to pursue a career in acting. “I think today is great. We've got a lot of fresh faces,” said Bill Marinella, with Marinella Hume Casting Portland. The Librarians is one a handful of productions that will be filming in Portland through the summer. “We also have an HBO series coming in next week,” said Tim Williams, executive director of Oregon Film, part of the Oregon Governor’s Office of Film and Television. The new HBO series is currently being referred to as the "Untitled Alan Ball HBO Drama” series. The title hasn't officially come out yet. Alan Ball is known for writing popular HBO shows such as True Blood and Six Feet Under. Sign up for the daily 3 Things to Know Newsletter Thank You Something went wrong. This email will be delivered to your inbox once a day in the morning. Thank you for signing up for the 3 things to Know Newsletter Please try again later. Submit From Cast Iron Studios: "Those interested in working as extras on the show can submit online by this Wednesday evening or attend our open casting call this Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM at Cast Iron Studios, 1430 SE 3rd Avenue, Suite 100, Portland, OR 97214." Along North Mississippi Avenue, flyers have been posted telling people how filming on April 25 will impact streets. It’s expected filming will occur on North Mississippi between North Mason and North Cook Street from 6-11 a.m. There are other productions as well. “Portlandia is going to come back for season eight, which will be their last,” said Williams. He said there's also something else in the works. “Hopefully we'll be able to talk about it soon. That will also be here during the summer,” Wiliams said. Williams said Grimm spent about $300 million in its six years in Portland. While Grimm is gone, he said there are more opportunities ahead. “Over the last few years we've been tracking anywhere between $130 million and $180 million of in-state spending on these projects as they come through,” said Williams. He said it was only about $10 million of in-state spending about 10 years ago, and between 22-25 projects come through the state every year. That number is likely higher, because not all production companies work with Oregon Film. The activity in Portland is good news for aspiring actors. A spokesperson with Cast Iron Studios said they’re already filling spots, so if folks want to get a jump start on things, apply online.
Only a few days (June 30 deadline) for applications to the first Institute for Open Leadership. I don’t know anything about it other than what’s at the link, but from what I gather it involves a week-long workshop in the San Francisco area on open policy and ongoing participation in an online community of people promoting open policies in their professional capacities, and is managed by an expert in the field, Timothy Vollmer. Read an interview with Vollmer (wayback link to spare you the annoying list-gathering clickthrough at the original site, not least because its newsletter is an offender) . The institute and its parent Open Policy Network define: Open Policy = publicly funded resources are openly licensed resources. (Openly licensed includes public domain.) … Now, why open policy is the most promising knowledge regulation reform (I wrote “copyright” in the title, but the concept is applicable to mitigating other IP regimes, e.g., patent, and pro-commons regulation not based on mitigating IP): Most proposed reforms (formalities can serve as an example for each mention following) merely reduce inefficiencies and embarrassments of freedom infringing regimes in ways that don’t favor commons-based production, as is necessary for sustainable good policy. Even if not usually conceptualized as commons-favoring, open policy is strongly biased in that direction as its mechanism is mandate of the terms used for commons-based production: open licenses. Most proposed reforms could be reshaped to be commons-favoring and thinking of how to do so a useful exercise (watch this space) but making such reshaping gain traction, as a matter of discourse let alone implementation, is a very long-term project. The concept of open policy is scalable. There’s no reason as it gains credence to push for its expansion to everything receiving public or publicly interested support, including high and very low culture subsidy. At the extreme, the only way to avoid being subject to some open policy mandate would be to create restricted works in an IPer colony, isolated from the rest of humanity. In order to make open policy gain much more credence than it has now, its advocates will be forced to make increasingly sophisticated public policy arguments to support claims that open policy “maximizes public investment” or to shift the object of maximization to freedom and equality. Most proposed reforms, because they would only reduce inefficiency and embarrassment, do not force much sophistication, leaving knowledge regulation discourse rotting in a trough where economists abandoned it over a century ago. Open policy implementation has the potential to destroy the rents of freedom infringing industries. For sustainable good policy it is necessary to both build up the commons as an interest group and diminish interest groups that depend or think they depend on infringing freedom. It is possible for open policy to be gamed (e.g., hybrid journal double dipping). As troubling as that is, it seems to me that open policy flips which side is left desperately clawing for loopholes contrary to the rationale of policy. Most reform proposals at least implicitly take it as a given that public interest is the desperate side. Open policy does not require any fundamental changes to national law or international treaties, meaning it is feasible, now. Hopefully a few reformists have generally grasped the no-brainer concept that a benefit obtained today is more valuable than one obtained in the future, e.g., in 95 years. It also doesn’t mean that open policy is merely a “patch” in contrast the “fixes” of most proposed reforms — which aren’t fixes anyway, but rather mitigations of the worst inefficiencies and embarrassments of freedom infringing regimes. If open policy is a patch, it is a one that helps the body of knowledge regulation to heal, by the mechanisms above (promoting commons production and discourse, diminishing freedom infringing interests). … In my tradition of critical cheering, consider the following Open Policy Network statement: We have observed that current open policy efforts are decentralized, uncoordinated and insular; there is poor and/or sporadic information sharing. As illustrated by the lack of the Open Source Definition or any software-centric organizations on Open Policy Network lists of its guiding principles and member organizations. Fortunately software is mentioned several times, for example: If we are going to unleash the power of hundreds of billions of dollars of publicly funded education, research, data, and software, we need broad adoption of open policies. Hopefully if the Open Policy Network is to become an important venue for moving open policy forward, people who understand software will get involved (by the way, one of the ways “publicly funded” is scalable is that it properly includes procurement, not only wholly funded new resources), e.g., FSFE and April. I know talking about software is scary — because it is powerful and unavoidable. But this makes it a necessity to include in any serious project to reform the knowledge economy and policy. Before long, everything that is not software or suffused with software will be obsolete.
OAKLAND, Calif. — Before excuses are made for LeBron James, before the bulk of the blame for consecutive horror shows at Oracle Arena is heaped on a supporting cast of Cleveland Cavaliers that has turned to dust when removed from a comfy Eastern Conference refuge, it must be reiterated that this was the team the King himself courted. This was the crew James left Miami for, the one he reconfigured with back-room leverage upon returning home and then stood by approvingly when a coach with an impeccable (albeit limited) N.B.A. record was dismissed for a replacement with no head-coaching record at all. That is not to say that Tyronn Lue, who slid over into David Blatt’s big-boy seat midseason, is the primary reason — if a reason at all — that the Cavaliers are down, two games to none, against the Golden State Warriors in the N.B.A. finals and, thus far, are embarrassing themselves. Losing in the finals to a Golden State team that won a record 73 regular-season games, if that is the inevitable result, would be no disgrace. But if the series continues this way, and so far it has not been remotely competitive, the epitaph for the Cavaliers’ season should be: This is the team James wanted, and assembled.
Ann Coulter told radio host Eric Metaxas yesterday that she realized she was a Republican when she was in kindergarten. After defending Donald Trump’s extramarital affairs, Coulter explained her conservative origin story. As the story goes, a school librarian was wearing a black armband in protest of the Vietnam War. Then, a young Coulter started debating with the librarian about the conflict in Vietnam, “raised my little paw” and told her that “we made promises to our allies and we need to stand by our allies, or something to that effect.” The librarian, Coulter reveals, finally removed the armband so she could get through the class without an argument. “It’s all starting to make sense,” Metaxas joked. “By the end of the hour I will have you psychoanalyzed.”
Possible options to reform school admissions to limit or remove the role that a child's religion plays in the process have been announced by the Minister for Education. Richard Bruton outlined four options and announced a 10-12 week consultation process on the issue. Mr Bruton says he believes it is unfair that publicly-funded religious schools can give preference to children of their own religion who might live some distance away, ahead of other children who live close by. The Minister says while 96% of primary schools here are Christian - the vast majority Catholic - over a third of couples getting married in Ireland are choosing civil non-religious ceremonies. The options include allowing schools to favour children of their own religion only when those children live within the school's catchment area, or when that school is their nearest one. A third option is the introduction of quotas, allowing preference on religious grounds for a limited proportion of places. The fourth is an outright ban on using religion as a factor in admissions. Under this last option, the minister says, religious schools could require parents or students to indicate support for the school's religious ethos. Mr Bruton said there is a most important need to avoid possible impacts on the wishes of minority religions - such as Protestants - to run schools in accordance with their ethos and admit children from their communities. Other possible consequences, he says, are breaches of the Constitution, or the creation of so-called 'postcode lotteries' where schools in less advantaged areas could suffer. The minister says he will be commencing a process of consultation, and is interested in hearing the views of groups who are affected, as well as members of the public. Mr Bruton will say the desire of religious parents to educate their children in their faith is welcome and should be respected. But he says that non-religious parents or parents of minority religions should not be unfairly disadvantaged. The minister says while this unfairness must be addressed, he believes that there is "no easy fix" to what he calls a "highly complex and contested area". He delivered his speech at a seminar organised by Equate, an organisation that is campaigning for equal access to publicly-funded schools for all children. A group campaigning for an end to religious discrimination in education say they are concerned that progress on the issue will be further delayed by the consultation process. Education Equality also said that three out of the four proposals made by the Minister would allow for continued discrimination against children on religious grounds. A spokeswoman for the group, which is largely made up of parents, said today's announcement of a public consultation represented nothing more than a delay to necessary reform in the area and would provide no relief to parents who were waiting anxiously for school places for September. Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Seán O'Rourke, Education Equality policy officer Paddy Monaghan said 96% of schools are entitled, by law, to discriminate on terms of religion. Mr Monaghan said as long as those schools are not oversubscribed, the schools would accept any pupil because they needed capitation grants. He said tax payer funded services should not be allocated on the basis of religion. Speaking on the same programme, independent Senator Ronan Mullen said it is important to have a consultation process to look at the admission policies of primary schools. However, he said the core problem is that the Department of Education has not planned well in urban areas and that all schools are oversubscribed. Atheist Ireland, meanwhile, has said three of the options "would just fine-tune the religious discrimination in access, and indeed would result in some Catholic families being discriminated against". Fianna Fáil education spokesperson Thomas Byrne said the minister was "floating ideas" and not "taking any real action". He added that the Oireachtas Education Committee is "in the middle of carrying out a consultation on this issue and has held hearings before Christmas and will have further hearings shortly. Then it is envisaged that we will legislate." The Catholic Church has indicated that it would favour one of four options put forward today for consideration by Minister Bruton. The Catholic Primary School Manager's Association, which runs 90% of the State's publicly-funded primary schools said it had already been considering one option which would allow Catholic schools to continue to give preferential access to Catholic children so long as those children lived in the school's catchment area. Under this proposal, the second category of children to be admitted would be non-Catholic children who live within the same boundaries. Catholic children who live outside a school's direct catchment area would only be considered after that. The CPSMA said it had been considering this option since before Christmas. The organisation said while it believed the problem was not as large as some made out, the Catholic church was looking at ways to make the system fairer to all. The Church of Ireland has said it will give close consideration to the options put forward by the Minister, with specific consideration to how they would affect both primary and second-level Church of Ireland/Protestant schools. In a statement it said, however, that each school would have its own view on what was appropriate for them in their individual contexts.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The Carolina Panthers aren’t in the market to unload any players as the NFL trade deadline approaches on Tuesday. But coach Ron Rivera didn’t rule out a potential purchase for general manager Dave Gettleman and his staff. Much could depend on what happens in Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals in terms of the Panthers (1-5) believing they still are in playoff contention or building for next season. Joe Haden is a solid cornerback, but his price might be too high for the Panthers to be interested in a trade. Nick Cammett/Diamond Images/Getty Images “Maybe this is the type of game that could dictate whether or not we’re buyers,’’ Rivera said. “That’s pure speculation.’’ Rivera said there are a number of players rumored to on the trade block that Gettleman and his staff have been looking at. Most belong to the Cleveland Browns (0-7_, who are rumored to be shopping left tackle Joe Thomas, as well as cornerbacks Joe Haden and Tramon Williams. San Francisco left tackle Joe Staley also could be available. But all of those players likely would require giving up at least a second- or third-round pick, and Gettleman covets his draft picks. Gettleman also would have to decide, particularly at cornerback, if he’s willing to spend that kind of money. He rescinded the franchise tag ($13.95 million) of cornerback Josh Norman and let him sign with Washington. Haden, for example, would count only $5.347 million against the cap this season if he’s traded the week of the deadline. But the 27-year-old would count $11.2 million ($4 million guaranteed) in 2017 and $11.2 million in 2018. The Panthers need help at cornerback, but they drafted three this year whom they want to see develop. They also could need help at left tackle if the concussion that on Sunday will have sidelined Michael Oher for four straight games is deemed to be a long-term issue. At the same time, they like what right tackle Mike Remmers has done since replacing Oher and what Daryl Williams has done in replacing Remmers. “We’ve got a good, solid group,’’ Rivera said. “I don’t think there is anybody we’re looking to sell. For us everything is going forward.’’
Galactic Civilizations III is the definitive 4X space strategy game, coming exclusively to 64-bit PCs. Galactic Civilizations III stays true to the core mechanics while adding more depth and options for players to create their own immortal legacy as rulers of the galaxy. As an absolute ruler in Galactic Civilizations III, the choices you make shape your empire as it inevitably enters into cultural, trade, diplomatic, ideological, and military conflicts with your neighbors. Every empire has multiple paths of victory to pursue. Forging an empire so culturally influential that rival worlds defect to your cause is perfectly viable, so long as you can keep their dropships from landing on your core worlds through literal defenses or soft-power diplomatic maneuvers. Galactic Civilizations III puts players in charge of one of several fantastical sci-fi races (including 23rd-century humans) about to begin interstellar colonization. Spreading your empire throughout the galaxy, unlocking the secrets of creation through radical scientific research, and building massive fleets of starships to defend your way of life is only the beginning. As the age of expansion ends and the age of war dawns, you must navigate the waves of conflict crashing through the galaxy. Diplomatic channels may secure your borders, cultural imperialism might expand them peacefully, or you could do things the old-fashioned way through military conquest. Finally, the age of transcendence brings the struggle for galactic dominance to a fever pitch as mighty empires bring titanic forces to bear in the race for final victory. Galactic Civilizations III v2.0 includes a new resource called Starbase Administrators, improved diplomacy, tweaks to the game's UI, balancing, and more. "Version 2.0 is the culmination of many months of working closely with our community on the kinds of features players like but often don't get a lot of attention," Stardock CEO Brad Wardell said. "For example, the diplomatic AI is more sophisticated and plays a lot like a human would both in terms of trading and how they deal with the complex web of foreign relations. We also added a new concept called administration that is designed to let players have smaller empires that are competitive." Among the other improvements to v2.0 is an AI "redlining" system. The computer AI will internally evaluate diplomatic trades and "redline" for feedback to the player in order to better evaluate its own trades. This process allows for a much more interesting and engaging relationship with the AI players. Several changes to the UI offer up even more improvements available in v2.0. These include folding categories for auto-generated military ships, adding player-designed ships to their favorites, and showing important resources and turn information to both the planet and shipyard windows. To see a complete list of what's new in v2.0, you can view the full changelog here. The latest v2.0 update for Galactic Civilizations III releases during a special Steam weekend sale where players can save up to 75% off of the complete Galactic Civilizations III: Gold Bundle from January 26 - 30. Existing players can complete their collection while players who are newer to the franchise can pick up the base game (Steam, Stardock or GOG.com) and all of its existing DLC for one low price. Galactic Civilizations III gives players far more detail in the textures, models, and overall look of everything from the planets they colonize to the fleets they command. New interstellar terrain elements on the hex-based map like black holes and mysterious Precursor relics change the way players explore the galaxy. A completely overhauled ship builder puts nearly every element of starship design in players’ hands, while the new resource system creates fresh opportunities to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. Key Features:
Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama called on lawmakers Wednesday to overcome the "selfish" norms of politics and "do their job" in order to strike a deal on raising the federal government's current $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by the start of August. People shouldn't get "spooked," but "the yellow light (is) flashing," he warned. "This is urgent." Top economic analysts have warned of potentially catastrophic repercussions if the ceiling is not raised by August 2, including skyrocketing interest rates and a plummeting U.S. dollar. The president blasted congressional Republicans for refusing to consider raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans as part of any deal. Congress needs to be willing to "take on their sacred cows and do tough things" while moving away from "maximalist positions," he said. He said Congress should cancel upcoming summer vacations if a deal isn't struck by the end of the week. "I want everybody to understand that this is a jobs issue. This is not an abstraction," he said. "If the United States government, for the first time, cannot pay its bills -- if it defaults -- then the consequences for the U.S. economy will be significant and unpredictable. And that is not a good thing." David Gergen: Will Obama's barbs help or hurt? Obama made his remarks during a wide-ranging news conference covering the state of the economy, the wars in Afghanistan and Libya, and hot-button social issues such as same-sex marriage. It came at a time of rising questions over Obama's ability to maintain control of the political narrative and boost public confidence in his stewardship in the run-up to next year's presidential election. GOP leaders have shown no signs of yielding in their opposition to higher taxes as part of any grand bargain with the White House. Recent bipartisan talks led by Vice President Joe Biden collapsed over the tax disagreement. "The president is sorely mistaken if he believes a bill to raise the debt ceiling and raise taxes would pass the (Republican-controlled) House," Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said after Obama's news conference. "A debt-limit increase can only pass the House if it includes spending cuts larger than the debt limit increase; includes reforms to hold down spending in the future; and is free from tax hikes," Boehner added. "The longer the president denies these realities, the more difficult he makes this process." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, insisted earlier in the day that Republicans will "refuse to let the taxpayers take the hit when it comes to reducing the debt." The debate is "about holding Washington accountable for a change," McConnell said. "It's about refusing to subsidize the Democrats' irresponsible spending habits another day." For his part, the president ripped Republicans for protecting "millionaires and billionaires," oil companies, hedge fund managers, and owners of corporate jets. The wealthy, he said, can afford to pay higher taxes. "You can still ride on your corporate jet. You're just going to pay a little more," Obama said. Gloria Borger: Where are the adults? At the same time, the president pushed Congress to act on a series of pending measures to help strengthen the economy faster, including easing the ability of entrepreneurs to get patents, providing loans to private companies for infrastructure development, and approving free trade agreements. Obama noted that America's economy has gone through a series of major structural changes. As a result, the country's economic problems are "not going to be solved overnight," he stressed. Turning his attention overseas, Obama dismissed criticism that his administration failed to obtain clear congressional approval before committing U.S. military forces to the NATO-led campaign in Libya. Some representatives and senators on both sides of the aisle argue the White House has violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which gives a president 60 days to get congressional approval for sending U.S. forces to war, followed by a 30-day extension to end hostilities. The combined 90-day period ended last week. Will Cain: The number that's killing the economy Obama insisted that the War Powers Resolution does not apply in the case of Libya. The law was intended to avoid a repeat of a Vietnam-style war, he said. In contrast, "this operation is limited in time and in scope." "We have engaged in a limited operation to help a lot of people against one of the worst tyrants in the world," the president said. "A lot of this fuss" over the U.S. intervention in Libya "is politics." It's become a "cause celebre for some folks in Congress," he asserted. "We have done exactly what I said we would do" in Libya, Obama argued. America's allies "have carried a big load when it comes to these NATO operations" while "we've sent reams of information" to Capitol Hill. "The noose is tightening" around longtime Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, he asserted. The president reiterated the administration's stance that Gadhafi's removal from power is "the primary way that we can assure that the overall mission in Libya of people being protected" is successful. Obama's claims regarding the War Powers Resolution echoed those made Tuesday by Harold Koh, a top State Department legal adviser, who argued before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the law does not apply to American forces in Libya because the U.S. mission is limited in terms of its scope, means, exposure of forces, and chances of escalation. In short, administration officials believe the U.S. role in Libya does not meet the law's definition of hostilities. Obama, however, overruled contrary legal opinions put forward by both the Pentagon and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in declining to seek congressional authorization, according to the New York Times. On Afghanistan, Obama insisted that the United States and its allies "can be successful in our mission, which is narrowly drawn." The president, who recently announced the withdrawal of 33,000 American "surge" troops by next summer, declined to use the word "victory" in reference to winding down the Afghan military mission. He instead stressed the success of U.S. forces in dismantling al Qaeda and preparing Afghan forces to assume responsibility for the country's security. Noting this week's bombing of Kabul's Inter-Continental Hotel, he warned that the violence in Afghanistan will likely continue for "some time." Turning to the debate over same-sex marriage, Obama refused to provide new specifics about his personal opinion. A supporter of civil unions, he has indicated in the past that his views on the matter are "evolving." He noted, however, that his administration has stopped defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act against legal challenges. Obama argued it is up to states to determine if they will legalize same-sex marriage, as New York recently did. "The president, I've discovered since I've been in office, can't dictate precisely how this process moves," the president said. The nation is "moving toward greater equality," Obama added. "I think that's a good thing."
For the German jurist, see James Goldschmidt Sir James Michael Goldsmith (26 February 1933 – 18 July 1997) was an Anglo-French[1] financier, tycoon[2] and politician who was a member of the prominent Goldsmith family. In 1994 he was elected to represent a French constituency as a Member of the European Parliament. He founded the short-lived Eurosceptic Referendum Party in the United Kingdom, and was one of the key power-brokers in British political circles that initiated party political opposition to the country's membership of the European Union. Goldsmith was allegedly the inspiration for the fictional character of the corporate raider "Sir Larry Wildman" in the 1987 American film Wall Street.[3] Margaret Thatcher said of him: "Jimmy Goldsmith was one of the most powerful and dynamic personalities that this generation has seen. He was enormously generous, and fiercely loyal to the causes he espoused".[4] Early life [ edit ] His father Frank Goldsmith changed the family name from the German Goldschmidt to the English Goldsmith. The Goldschmidts, neighbours and rivals to the Rothschild family, were a wealthy, Frankfurt-based, Jewish family, who had been influential figures in international merchant banking since the 16th Century. James's great-grandfather was Benedikt Hayum Goldschmidt, founder of the Bank B.H. Goldschmidt [de] and consul to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. James's grandfather Adolphe Benedict Goldschmidt (1838–1918), a multi-millionaire, came to London in 1895.[5] His father had had to flee France with his family when the III Reich overran the country in 1940, only just managing to escape on the last over-loaded ship from the French port of exit, leaving behind their hotels and much of their property. His father and grandfather had lived in great style, and there was little left of the family's previous fortune by the time Goldsmith started out in business.[citation needed] Born in Paris,[5] Goldsmith was the son of luxury hotel tycoon and former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Major Frank Goldsmith and his French wife Marcelle Mouiller,[6] and younger brother of environmental campaigner Edward Goldsmith. He received his formal education at Millfield, and Eton College, which he left early in 1949 at the age of 16, after winning a horse racing bet of £10 on a three-horsed accumulator Lewes, winning £8,000 (equivalent to about £262,000 in March 2017).[7] With his winnings he decided that he should leave Eton immediately; in a speech at his boarding house he declared that, "a man of my means should not remain a schoolboy!"[1] Goldsmith served as a Gunner in the British Army's Royal Artillery under the National Service requirements, during which time he received a commission as an officer.[8] Business career [ edit ] During the 1950s and 60s Goldsmith's involvement in finance and as an industrialist involved many risks, and brought him close to bankruptcy several times.[9] His successes included winning the British franchise for Alka-Seltzer and introducing low-cost generic drugs to the UK. He has been described in the tabloid press or by those with a contrary political agenda as a greenmail corporate raider and asset stripper, a categorisation he denied vigorously. He claimed the re-organizations he undertook streamlined the operations, removed complacent inefficient management, and increased shareholder value.[2] Goldsmith started out in business after the tragic death of his first wife by taking on the management of a small enterprise selling an arthritis remedy in France. His father had set up the company with the initial intention that it would provide a career for the older son, Edward. But Edward had little interest in business and was more engaged with his pioneering environmental activism. After a publicity stunt involving an arthritic racehorse, sales escalated and within a couple of years the staff had been expanded from two to over a hundred. Goldsmith took on the agency for various slimming remedies and branched out into the manufacture of generic prescription drugs[citation needed]. His acquisition of the distributorship for Slimcea and Procea low-calorie breads were the start of the shift of focus towards the food industry. In the early 1960s in partnership with Selim Zilkha, Goldsmith founded the Mothercare retail chain, but sold out his share to Zilkha who went on to develop it with great success.[2] With the financial backing of Sir Isaac Wolfson,[10] he acquired diverse food companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange as Cavenham Foods in 1965. Initially the group had an annual turnover of £27m and negligible profits. He added bakeries and then confectioners to the group, and then took over a number of wholesalers and retailers including small chains of tobacco, confectioner and newsagent shops. By rationalising the activities, closing inefficient factories, and improving the management practices, he steadily improved productivity. By 1971 the turnover was £35m and profits were up to £2m.[2] In June 1971 he launched a bid for Bovril which was a much larger company with a diverse portfolio including several strong brands (including Marmite, Ambrosia, Virol and Jaffajuice), dairies and dairy farms, and cattle ranches in Argentina. It was run by the third generation of the founding family and Goldsmith concluded that they were clueless. The bid was strongly contested and Goldsmith was fiercely attacked by the financial press. The directors tried to induce Beechams and Rowntree Mackintosh to make rival offers, but in the end they both withdrew.[2] After the successful bid, Goldsmith sold the dairies and farms to Max Joseph's Express Dairies group for £5.3m, and found buyers in South America for the ranches. Sales of other parts of the company recouped almost all of the £13m that the acquisition had cost him.[10] Some years later he sold the brand names to Beecham for £36m. Later he took over Allied Distributors, who owned a miscellaneous portfolio of grocery stores and small chains, including the Liptons shops. He set Jim Wood (who had been responsible for imposing systems and business discipline on the sweetshops) to work on rationalising the operations of these shops, and disposing of those that did not fit into the overall business logic.[citation needed] As journalists began to question his techniques of dealing with the funds and assets of publicly quoted companies, Goldsmith began dealing through private companies registered in the UK and abroad. These included the French company Générale Occidentale and Hong Kong and then Cayman-registered General Oriental Investments.[2] In early 1973 Goldsmith travelled to New York to assess the US business opportunities, followed by a tour round Central and South America. He took the view that the UK economy was due for a downturn and began aggressively liquidating many of his assets. In December that year, in the midst of financial chaos, he announced that he had acquired a 51% controlling stake in Grand Union, one of the oldest retailing conglomerates in the US. He set Jim Wood – who had revitalised his British retail operations – to work on rationalising the operations of the chain, but he ran into continuous obstruction from both unions and management.[citation needed] During the 1960s and '70s Goldsmith received financing from the banking arm of the conglomerate Slater Walker, of which he succeeded founder Jim Slater as Chairman following the company's collapse and rescue by the Bank of England in the secondary banking crisis of 1973–75. Goldsmith was knighted in the 1976 resignation honours – the so-called "Lavender List" – of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. In early 1980, he formed a partnership with longtime friend and merchant banker, Sir Roland Franklin. Franklin managed Goldsmith's business in the Americas. From 1983 until 1988, Goldsmith, via takeovers in America, built a private holding company, Cavenham Forest Industries, which became one of the largest private owners of timberland and one of the top-five timber-holding companies of any type in America. Goldsmith and Franklin identified a quirk in American accounting whereby companies with substantial timberland holdings would often carry them on their balance sheets at a nominal valuation (as the result of years of depreciation).[2] Goldsmith, a reader of financial statements, realised that in the case of Crown Zellerbach the underlying value of the timberland assets alone, carried at only $12.5m on the balance sheet, was worth more than the target company's total market capitalisation of around $900m. With this insight, Goldsmith began raids that left him with a holding company owning huge tracts of timberland acquired at virtually no net cost.[11][12] The majority of the pulp and paper assets were sold to James River Corporation in 1986,[13][14][15] which in turn became a part of Georgia-Pacific in 2000. (The brown paper container division became Gaylord Container).[16] Additionally, in 1986 Goldsmith's companies reportedly made $90 million from an attempted hostile takeover of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, although he regarded this profit as an inadequate consolation for the failure to carry the bid through to a successful conclusion. The management of the company coordinated a virulent campaign against Goldsmith, involving unions, the press and politicians at state and federal level.[2] Goldsmith retired to Mexico in 1987, having anticipated the market crash that year and liquidated his assets. However he continued corporate raiding, including an attempt on British-American Tobacco in 1989 (for which he joined Kerry Packer and Jacob Rothschild). He also swapped his American timber assets for a 49.9 percent stake in Newmont Mining and remained on the board of Newmont until he liquidated his stake through open-market trades in 1993. He had been precluded by the original purchase of Newmont from acquiring a controlling shareholding in the company. In 1990, Goldsmith also began a lower-profile, but also profitable, global "private equity style" investment operation. By 1994 executives working in his employ in Hong Kong had built a substantial position in the intermediation of global strategic raw-material flows.[2] Studies of public filings have found signs of the same Goldsmith-backed Hong Kong-based team taking stakes in operations as diverse as Soviet strategic ports in Vladivostok and Vostochny, and in Zee TV, India's dominant private television broadcaster later sold to Rupert Murdoch[original research?]. A large Hong Kong-linked and Goldsmith-funded stake in one of the world's largest nickel operations, INCO Indonesia, was also disclosed in the 1990s, showing Goldsmith's ability to position capital before a trend became obvious to others. The Group was also a major backer of the Hong Kong-based and Singapore listed major raw material player Noble Group, with low-profile long-time Goldsmith protégé Tobias Brown serving for many years as the company's non-executive chairman. Although little is known about the somewhat enigmatic Brown, he is widely credited with orchestrating the Goldsmith investments in the Far East, which have created more than a third of the family's wealth.[citation needed] Environmental campaigning [ edit ] Goldsmith became an active campaigner on environmental issues during his later years. He published a book entitled The Trap in 1994 outlining what he believed were some key challenges facing mankind, with a focus particularly on the fields of modern intensive farming and the use of nuclear power. This area had been a lifelong passion of his brother, Edward, but Goldsmith himself had shown little interest publicly in the topic during his business career. The book received criticism of its content from a variety of sources, including the European Commission, the British Tory politician Chris Patten, Brian Hindley of the Neo-Liberal Centre for Policy Studies, John Kay and Norman Macrae. Goldsmith rebutted their reaction in another publication entitled The Response, published in 1995. Posthumously Goldsmith's estate would provide funding for an organization entitled the 'J.M.G. Foundation', which supports a range of activism opposed to the commercial advance of Genetically Modified Organisms in farm production.[17] Goldsmith and the press [ edit ] Goldsmith is known for his legal attack on the magazine Private Eye, which referred to him as "Sir Jams" and in Goldsmith's Referendum Party period as "Sir Jams Fishpaste". In 1976 he issued more than 60 libel writs against Private Eye and its distributors, nearly bankrupting the magazine and almost imprisoning its editor Richard Ingrams. This story is detailed in Ingrams' book Goldenballs! The publisher of the magazine was Anthony Blond, an old friend; Blond and Goldsmith themselves remained on good terms. The libel actions arose from a piece that Private Eye published following the disappearance of Lord Lucan after the murder of his children's nanny. The article stated (incorrectly) that Goldsmith had participated in a meeting called by John Aspinall after Lucan's disappearance, and further claimed that the meeting amounted to a conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice by hampering the police enquiries. Goldsmith certainly was acquainted with Lucan as a fellow regular at Aspinall's gambling club, the Clermont, but it is not clear how close they were (but apparently on good enough terms for Lucan to ask him for a loan of £10,000 the previous year, and for Goldsmith to counter with an offer to make him a gift of that sum). The matter was made more serious by an action being brought for criminal libel in addition to the civil suits. This was a common law offence that had not been the basis of a prosecution for over fifty years, with a precedent which required a criminal libel to be "so serious as to risk the public order", and Ingrams was initially confident that the judge would dismiss the case. He became extremely anxious when Mr Justice Wein indicated that he favoured criminal proceedings, which then carried a jail sentence rather than just the award of damages as in the civil actions. Goldsmith also pursued vendettas against other journalists who queried his methods, including Barbara Conway, who wrote the Scrutineer column in the City pages of the Daily Telegraph; he expressed the hope that she would "choke on her own vomit".[18] In November 1977, Goldsmith made an appearance on The Money Programme on BBC television when he accused the programme of making up lies about him.[19] In 1977 Goldsmith bought the French weekly L'Express and between 1979 and 1981 published the UK news magazine NOW! which failed to survive.[20] Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street featured a British billionaire financier, Sir Lawrence Wildman. This character was modelled on Goldsmith as stated by the film's director Oliver Stone in the DVD special feature documentary and the director's commentary as Sir Lawrence Wildman is introduced. Into politics [ edit ] Goldsmith had become increasingly concerned throughout the 1980s about the nature of the European Economic Community, and harboured a deepening suspicion that at its core lay a desire for the domination of the European continent by Germany, a suspicion which was for him confirmed further when in 1992, via the passage of the Maastricht Treaty, the E.E.C. re-titled itself as the European Union, with dramatically centralizing governmental powers being enacted over its constituent member nations.[21] In March 1993 Goldsmith gave a televised lecture publicly declaring opposition to the European Union, which was transmitted across the United Kingdom on Channel 4 Television as part of its Opinions political commentary series, the text of which was published in The Times the following day under the title Creating a Superstate is the way to destroy Europe.[22] In the mid-1990s he financially supported a Eurosceptic think tank entitled the European Foundation. In 1994 he published The Trap,[23] a book detailing his broader political philosophical thoughts, giving a critique of the dominance of Neo-Liberalism in the governments of the First World. In its text he criticized their ideological dogmatic pursuance of Free Trade, and the facilitation of the American Melting Pot societal model being copied by the rest of the First World's governments through mass foreign migration, driven by a pursuance of short term economic advantage, which he posited was fatally flawed in societal concept and brought with it great societal dangers. As an economic alternative he espoused a restoration of Classical Liberalism, and a return to Mercantilism. He also advocated the prevention by governmental action of mass migrations by populations from poorer areas of the globe into the First World driven by economic motivation, which he foresaw as an inevitability of escalating Third World population demographics and First World governmental Neo-Liberal and Socialist ideologies.[24][25] In 1994 he was elected in France as a member of the European Parliament, representing the Majorité pour l'autre Europe party, and subsequently became the leader of the eurosceptic Europe of Nations group within the European Parliament. The Referendum Party [ edit ] In the early 1990s, with the removal of Margaret Thatcher from the United Kingdom's Prime Ministerial office by the Tories, and their enactment into law of the Maastricht Treaty, Goldsmith, who up until that time had retained close links with the Conservative Party, came to the conclusion that it was no longer a serious political vehicle to oppose the European Union's advancing power, and that opposition would have to be created within the party political system beyond its current order of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats parties, all of which supported the United Kingdom's incorporation into the European Union.[Note 1] In consequence, in 1994 Goldsmith founded and financed The Referendum Party in the United Kingdom, modeled upon the Majorité pour l'autre Europe, with the objective of seeking a referendum for its national withdrawal from the European Union, which would go on to stand candidates in the country's General Election of 1997. As the mid-1990s progressed Goldsmith involved himself in British politics, appearing with increasing regularity in the political press, and in domestic political televised debates, raising opposition to the nature of the European Union and what he perceived was mainstream media culpability in playing down its supranational ambitions, and pouring scorn on a Westminster parliamentary political order that he stated had failed the nation and was now willfully betraying its governmental sovereignty.[26] During the 1997 electoral campaign Goldsmith had mailed to approximately five million homes a VHS video cassette film to allow him to address the electorate free from the editorial control of the nation's mainstream media, having previously rejected the idea of by-passing the United Kingdom's legal restrictions on the broadcast of political information by the means of an offshore radio station named "Referendum Radio".[27] United Kingdom general election, 1997 [ edit ] At the 1997 Westminster parliamentary general election Goldsmith stood as a candidate for the Referendum Party in the London constituency of Putney, against the former Conservative Minister David Mellor, MP, in an electoral contest in which Goldsmith polled 3.5% of the vote. The declaration of the Putney result, which was televised and nationally broadcast live on the night of 1 May 1997, saw a charged atmosphere at the count, with a rowdy crowd in attendance of anti-European Union activists from the Referendum Party, and the recently inaugurated United Kingdom Independence Party (which would itself receive only a couple of hundred votes in Putney that night). An acrimonious confrontation between Mellor (who had lost his seat to the Labour Party candidate) and Goldsmith developed on stage after Mellor, in what was to be his valedictory address from politics, personally insulted Goldsmith's candidacy, during which part of the crowd, Goldsmith and some of the other candidates began a gleefully defiant collective repetitive shouting chant of "Out!" in response, in celebration of the perceived substantive damage having been done to a prominent member of the Westminster Parliamentary political order which they had become so contemptuous of.[28] Goldsmith's electoral performance at Putney had been, however, reasonably insubstantial, in an English electoral culture in which it is notoriously difficult for new political parties or maverick politicians to establish themselves. He was also terminally ill during the election, a fact which he had kept secret beyond his closest personal circle, and which had limited his ability to campaign. The 1518 votes that his candidacy had garnered had not in itself defeated the incumbent Mellor, who had lost by 2976 votes; moreover it amounted to less than 5% of the total votes cast, this being insufficient for Goldsmith to retain the candidate's financial deposit of £500, a part of the 20 million pounds that he had reportedly poured into The Referendum Party in its brief existence.[29][30] Mellor had correctly predicted at the count that the Referendum Party was "dead in the water", and indeed the party did disappear with Goldsmith's death two months after the election. However, many of the Referendum Party's activists and voters would go on to join and support the nascent United Kingdom Independence Party, which would ultimately lead a sea-change in the nation's politics, which almost twenty years later would see the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union in a referendum on the issue.[31] Death [ edit ] Two months after contesting the 1997 general election, Goldsmith died from the effects of pancreatic cancer at a farmhouse that he owned in Benahavis, Southern Spain, on 18 July 1997, he was 64 years old.[30] Personal life [ edit ] Goldsmith was married three times, and some assumed that he coined the phrase "When a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy." However, the phrase was actually coined by Sacha Guitry.[32] His first wife, whom he married when 20, was the Bolivian heiress Doña María Isabel Patiño y Borbón, the 17-year-old daughter of tin magnate Antenor Patiño by his wife María Cristina de Borbón y Bosch-Labrús, 3rd Duchess of Dúrcal. When Goldsmith proposed the marriage to Don Antenor Patiño, it is alleged his future father-in-law replied, "We are not in the habit of marrying Jews". Goldsmith is reported to have replied, "Well, I am not in the habit of marrying [Red] Indians".[5] The story, if true, is typical of Goldsmith's humour. With the heiress pregnant and the Patiños insisting the pair separate, the couple eloped in January 1954. The marriage was brief: rendered comatose by a cerebral haemorrhage in her seventh month of pregnancy, Maria Isabel Patiño de Goldsmith died in May 1954. Her only child, Isabel, was delivered by caesarean section and survived. She was brought up by Goldsmith's family and was married for a few years to French sportsman Arnaud de Rosnay. On her father's death, she inherited a large share of his estate. Isabel has since become an art collector.[33] and is the owner of Hotel Las Alamandas in Mexico. Goldsmith's second wife was Ginette Léry with whom he had a son, Manes (born in 1959), and daughter, Alix (born in 1964). This marriage was dissolved by divorce in 1978 but they shared a house in Paris until his death and he built her a house on his Cuixmala estate. His son Manes worked for FIFA and CONCAF and has also owned football teams in Mexico. His daughter Alix took over his properties in Mexico managing them with her husband Goffredo Marcaccini whom she married in July 1991; together they have four children. Cuixmala and Hacienda de San Antonio are two of the most renowned Hotels in Mexico, having won various prizes in the hospitality business.[citation needed] In 1978, he married for the third time, to his mistress Lady Annabel Birley, by whom he had already had two children, Jemima (born in 1974) and Zacharias (born in 1975); they went on to have a third child, Benjamin (born in 1980). Zac and Jemima Khan have both become much reported-upon figures in the media, the former being a Conservative MP for Richmond Park from 2010 to 2016 and again from 2017, and the latter a journalist who was married to Pakistani cricketer and politician Imran Khan between 1995 and 2004. In 2003, Ben married heiress Kate Emma Rothschild (born 1982), daughter of the late Hon. Amschel Rothschild and his wife Anita Guinness of the Guinness Brewery family. After his third marriage, Goldsmith embarked on an affair with Laure Boulay de La Meurthe (granddaughter of Bruno, Count of Harcourt and Princess Isabelle of Orléans), with whom he had two more children, Jethro and Charlotte. Charlotte married Philip Colbert and has a daughter. Speculation about Goldsmith's romantic life was a popular topic in the British media: for example, there were claims in the press that James Goldsmith was the father of the family friend Diana, Princess of Wales, due to his friendship with Diana's mother and, later, with Diana.[34] Publications [ edit ] The Trap (1994) Notes [ edit ] References [ edit ] Books Richard Ingrams, Goldenballs! London: Harriman House, 1993. ISBN 1-897597-03-7.
Edward Snowshoe didn't have much of a life. Born in 1985 in the small town of Fort McPherson, NWT, he was one of four boys. His father died at an early age, leaving Edward's mother to raise the children. It was a struggle. In a town where there was little to do, kids often gravitated toward booze, drugs and trouble. In his late teens, Mr. Snowshoe moved to Inuvik, where he shot and injured a cab driver in a bungled robbery attempt. He was sentenced to five-plus years in prison and, in the spring of 2007, transferred to the Stony Mountain Institution in Manitoba. There he became another of the thousands of aboriginal men overrepresented in correctional institutions across the country. Story continues below advertisement So why are we writing about Edward Snowshoe today? Because he was the subject of a judicial inquiry into his death, the findings of which were recently released. They are ugly. And anyone who believes that we have an obligation in a civilized society to care for our fellow citizens in a humane fashion, regardless of where that life is being spent, should be outraged by Justice James Wheatley's report. Cutting to the crux of the story, Mr. Snowshoe was placed in segregation on March 1, 2010, for fashioning a "stabbing weapon" out of a small juice-box container. He spent 134 days isolated from the general prison population in a darkened cell before he was taken out for a day to be transferred to Edmonton Institution. Upon his arrival, he was put back in isolation for 28 more days, the last of which he spent fashioning a way to kill himself – which he ultimately did at the age of 24. For those who knew anything about his time in prison, this should not have come as a surprise. Mr. Snowshoe had tried to kill himself on at least three occasions at Stony Mountain between 2007 and 2009. After a fourth self-harm incident in 2010, he was placed on suicide watch. He was depressive and clearly had severe suicidal tendencies. Given that history, why was he put in segregation for more than five months and allowed to kill himself? That is what Justice Wheatley set out to find; what he discovered was disturbing. In his report, you can almost feel the contempt for which he holds a system that could treat human beings this way. Anything of significance that happens with a person occupying a prison cell in Canada is recorded in the Offender Management System (OMS), effectively an electronic log. Information such as suicide attempts and signs of acute depressive behaviour, for instance, would be documented. Justice Wheatley heard evidence that correction officers in direct supervision of Mr. Snowshoe didn't realize they had access to the OMS system and consequently were not aware of his disturbing mental health history. Proper psychological follow-up assessments that were supposed to have been conducted after his suicide attempts did not take place. His transfer to Edmonton was botched. The clock on his time in segregation was reset, instead of continuing from the previous institution. If this sounds familiar, it should; it's exactly what happened to Ashley Smith, who strangled herself in an Ontario prison in 2007 after being segregated for most of four years. She was transferred numerous times, and in each case, her segregation count was reset instead of continued from her previous stay. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement Justice Wheatley wrote that during Mr. Snowshoe's brief time in Edmonton, only cursory attempts were made to establish a mental health profile. Mandate reviews of his situation in segregation didn't occur. The officers who interacted with him on a daily basis had no idea of his suicidal history. No one really knew what was going on inside that cell, in which his movements could only be observed through a small mail slot. Meantime, full observation cells were available. Edward Snowshoe spent 162 days in solitary confinement for brandishing a juice box knife. It was probably the last place someone with his mental health history should have been. Once there, he was essentially forgotten, left to end his sad life on tragic terms. Justice Wheatley made a number of recommendations aimed at ensuring this story isn't repeated elsewhere. But somehow, that doesn't seem enough. This isn't the first time this has happened in a Canadian prison – it's like a recurring theme. Yet, no one seems to care. Nothing seems to change. Edward Snowshoe is dead and he didn't need to be. How that happened should concern us all.
HBO has released a brand new trailer for Eastbound & Down Season 2. The hilarious comedy, which stars Danny McBride as washed-up baseball pitcher Kenny Powers, returns with a vengeance this September. The second season will focus on Danny McBride’s character, Kenny Powers, moving from North Carolina to Mexico. Season Two premiers on Sunday, September 26 at 10:30PM on HBO! In the first season finale, former professional baseball pitcher Kenny Powers (McBride) quit his physical ed teaching job for an offer to join the Tampa Bay Rays but, after the offer fell through, he dumped his girlfriend and was last seen driving away with a worried look on his face. In Season 2, hiding from his problems, Kenny finds himself in Mexico where he joins a local baseball team. Crash co-star Pena will play Kenny’s friend and owner of the baseball team he joins. De la Reguera will play Kenny’s love interest in Mexico. Be sure to follow Kenny Powers on Twitter at twitter.com/kfuckingp!
German engineering conglomerate Siemens has selected Associated British Port's (ABP) Hull development to build what will be Britain's first major offshore wind turbine manufacturing plant. The decision means that ABP is in line to receive about £20m for the development from the government's ports upgrade fund, which energy secretary Chris Huhne fought to save from the spending cuts in October's comprehensive spending review. Siemens' proposed plant will also create about 700 jobs and the news will be a boost for Hull, which has beaten off competition from ports in Teesside, Sunderland and the Humber which had also been shortlisted for the project. Siemens will announce today that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with ABP over its Green Port Hull proposed development at Alexandria Dock. The two companies have yet to sign a formal binding contract. Under the plan, ABP would build a £100m deepwater berth at the port capable of handling the new generation of large offshore wind turbines. It would be one of the biggest single investments ABP has made in Britain. Siemens also wants to build a new £80m wind turbine plant on the site. The two companies hope to sign definitive agreements this year. Siemens, together with General Electric and Mitsubishi, which also plans to build similar plants in Britain, had threatened to go elsewhere if the £60m ports funding had been withdrawn. It is understood that Siemens was looking at alternative sites in western Denmark to build a plant to make turbines for the North Sea.The two companies will work to develop the plans for the new Siemens plant and export facility at the Port. The news from Siemens and ABP will also be a shot in the arm for the government's attempts to create new jobs from the "green economy", particularly from the manufacturing of wind turbines, which are being rapidly installed off the British coast. Industry sources estimate that the proportion of UK-sourced components in onshore wind farms is as low as 6%, with companies bemoaning the missed opportunity for British manufacturers and the wider economy as vast sums are now being spent on renewable energy. Some government advisers believe the state could do more to promote British turbine manufacturers, for example by introducing specifications for UK wind farms that would benefit domestic firms.
All signs suggest that the planet is still hurtling headlong toward climatic disaster. The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has issued its "State of the Climate Report" covering January-May. The first five months of this year were the warmest since records began in 1880. May was the warmest month ever. Intense heat waves are currently hitting many parts of the world, yet still we fail to act. There are several reasons for this, and we should understand them in order to break today's deadlock. First, the economic challenge of controlling human-induced climate change is truly complex. Anthropogenic climate change is caused by two principal sources of emissions of mainly carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide: fossil-fuel use for energy and agriculture (including deforestation to create new farmland and pastureland). Changing the world's energy and agricultural systems is no small matter. It is not enough to just wave our hands and declare that climate change is an emergency. We need a practical strategy for overhauling two economic sectors that stand at the centre of the global economy and involve the entire world's population. The second major challenge in addressing climate change is the complexity of the science itself. Today's understanding of earth's climate and the human-induced component of climate change is the result of extremely difficult scientific work involving many thousands of scientists in all parts of the world. This scientific understanding is incomplete, and there remain significant uncertainties about the precise magnitudes, timing, and dangers of climate change. The general public naturally has a hard time grappling with this complexity and uncertainty, especially since the changes in climate are occurring over a timetable of decades and centuries, rather than months and years. Moreover, year-to-year and even decade-to-decade natural variations in climate are intermixed with human-induced climate change, making it even more difficult to target damaging behaviour. This has given rise to a third problem in addressing climate change, which stems from a combination of the economic implications of the issue and the uncertainty that surrounds it. This is reflected in the brutal, destructive campaign against climate science by powerful vested interests and ideologues, apparently aimed at creating an atmosphere of ignorance and confusion. The Wall Street Journal, for example, America's leading business newspaper, has run an aggressive editorial campaign against climate science for decades. The individuals involved in this campaign are not only scientifically uninformed, but show absolutely no interest in becoming better informed. They have turned down repeated offers by climate scientists to meet and conduct serious discussions about the issues. Major oil companies and other big corporate interests are also playing this game, and have financed disreputable PR campaigns against climate science. Their general approach is to exaggerate the uncertainties of climate science and to leave the impression that climate scientists are engaged in some kind of conspiracy to frighten the public. It is an absurd charge, but absurd charges can gather public support if presented in a slick, well-funded format. If we add up these three factors – the enormous economic challenge of reducing greenhouse gases, the complexity of climate science, and deliberate campaigns to confuse the public and discredit the science – we arrive at the fourth and overarching problem: US politicians' unwillingness or inability to formulate a sensible climate-change policy. The US bears disproportionate responsibility for inaction on climate change, because it was long the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, until last year, when China overtook it. Even today, per capita US emissions are more than four times higher than China's. Yet, despite America's central role in global emissions, the US Senate has done nothing about climate change since ratifying the UN climate change treaty 16 years ago. When Barack Obama was elected US president, there was hope for progress. Yet, while it is clear that Obama would like to move forward on the issue, so far he has pursued a failed strategy of negotiating with senators and key industries to try to forge an agreement. Yet the special interest groups have dominated the process, and Obama has failed to make any headway. The Obama administration should have tried – and should still try – an alternative approach. Instead of negotiating with vested interests in the back rooms of the White House and Congress, the president should present a coherent plan to the American people. He should propose a sound strategy over the next 20 years for reducing America's dependence on fossil fuels, converting to electric vehicles, and expanding non-carbon energy sources such as solar and wind power. He could then present an estimated price tag for phasing in these changes over time, and demonstrate that the costs would be modest compared to the enormous benefits. Strangely, despite being a candidate of change, Obama has not taken the approach of presenting real plans of action for change. His administration is trapped more and more in the paralysing grip of special-interest groups. Whether this is an intended outcome, so that Obama and his party can continue to mobilise large campaign contributions, or the result of poor decision-making is difficult to determine – and may reflect a bit of both. What is clear is that we are courting disaster as a result. Nature doesn't care about our political machinations. And nature is telling us that our current economic model is dangerous and self-defeating. Unless we find some real global leadership in the next few years, we will learn that lesson in the hardest ways possible. • Jeffrey D. Sachs is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia university. He is also pecial adviser to UN secretary-general on the millennium development goals. There is a podcast of this commentary. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
Black Friday is just a couple days away so I thought I would compile all the best deals for video games and put them into one place. These aren’t ALL the Black Friday deals, just the ones I thought were worth it. These are cheapest deals for each game listed from all the major stores in Canada and the US (that I know of), but if there are others I am missing with a lower price please don’t hesitate to message me and I’ll change the list. All games – that are not obvious exclusives – are for PS4/X1 unless noted beside the name. Canadian section will be updated as the flyers and advertisements release, but for now, I just wanted to get this out there for people looking for good deals from both sides. Use CTRL+F to search if you are looking for something specific. Games with beside it are my recommend pickups. Best Deals for US Black Friday Assassin’s Creed Syndicate – $8 (Walmart/Target) Batman: Arkham Knight – $15 (Gamestop) Batman: Return to Arkham – $25 (Walmart) Batman: Telltale Series – $15 (Gamestop) Battlefield 1 – $27 (Walmart) Bioshock: The Collection – $30 (Best Buy) Borderlands: The Handsome Collection – $15 (Best Buy/Gamestop) Civilization VI (PC) – $40 (Gamestop) Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare – $35 (Target) Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition – $57 (Walmart) Dark Souls III – $15 (Walmart) Destiny: The Collection – $30 (Best Buy/Target/Amazon) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – $25 (Target/Amazon) DOOM (2016) – $15 (Walmart) Fallout 4 – $15 (Target/Amazon) [$10 on PC via Amazon] Far Cry Primal – $15 (Best Buy/Target/Walmart/Amazon) FIFA 17 – $30 (Target) Gears of War 4 – $30 (Target) Grand Theft Auto V – $25 (Walmart) The Last of Us Remastered – $10 (Gamestop) Mad Max – $10 (Gamestop) Madden 17 – $27 (Walmart) Mafia III – $30 (Best Buy/Target) Metal Gear Solid V: Definitive Edition – $25 (Best Buy) NBA 2K17 – $27 (Walmart) NHL 17 – $35 (Target/Walmart) Overwatch (PS4/X1/PC) – $35 (Best Buy/Target/Gamestop/Walmart) Rainbow Six Siege – $15 (Walmart/Target/Amazon) Ratchet & Clank – $10 (Gamestop) Rise of the Tomb Raider – $35 (Walmart) Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – $8 (Walmart) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim SE – $25 (Walmart/Best Buy) Star Wars Battlefront – $10 (Gamestop) Titanfall 2 – $27 (Walmart) Tom Clancy’s: The Division – $10 (Amazon) Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection – $15 (Walmart/Best Buy) Until Dawn – $15 (Target/Best Buy) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition – $25 (Best Buy) WWE 2K17 – $27 (Walmart) XCOM 2 – $30 (Best Buy/Gamestop) [$20 on PC via Amazon] The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD – $25 (Walmart) Best Deals for Canadian Black Friday Assassin’s Creed Syndicate – $20 (Best Buy) Battlefield 1 – $50 (Best Buy/Walmart/EB Games/Amazon) Bioshock: The Collection – $40 (Best Buy/EB Games) Borderlands: The Handsome Collection – $15 (EB Games) Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition – $80 (Best Buy/EB Games) Civilization VI – $60 (EB Games) Dark Souls III – $25 (Best Buy/EB Games) Destiny: The Collection – $45 (EB Games) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – $40 (Best Buy/Walmart/EB Games/Amazon) Dishonored 2 (PS4/X1/PC) – $50 (Amazon) DOOM – $30 (Best Buy) Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 – $40 (Best Buy/EB Games) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim SE – $35 (EB Games) Fallout 4 – $20 (EB Games) FIFA 17 – $50 (Best Buy/Walmart/EB Games) Forza Horizon 3 – $50 (Best Buy/EB Games) Gears of War 4 – $40 (Walmart) Grand Theft Auto 5 (PS4/X1/PC) – $30 (Best Buy/EB Games) Halo 5: Guardians – $20 (Amazon) Madden 17 – $50 (Best Buy/Walmart/EB Games) Mafia III – $40 (EB Games) Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain Definitive Edition – $40 (EB Games) NBA 2K17 – $40 (EB Games) NHL 17 – $50 (Best Buy/EB Games/Amazon) Overwatch (PS4/X1) – $40 (Walmart/EB Games) Quantum Break – $30 (EB Games/Amazon) Rare Replay – $10 (EB Games/Amazon) ReCore – $30 (Best Buy/EB Games/Amazon) Rise of the Tomb Raider (X1) – $30 (Best Buy/Amazon) Rise of the Tom Raider 20 Year Collection (PS4) – $50 (Best Buy/EB Games)** The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition – $50 (EB Games) Titanfall 2 – $50 (Best Buy/Walmart/EB Games/Amazon) Tom Clancy’s: The Division – $30 (EB Games) WWE 2K17 – $40 (Best Buy/EB Games) XCOM 2 (PS4/X1) – $40 (EB Games) Advertisements
Officials say one or two Braintree officers responding to a domestic disturbance on Liberty Street shot the man after he refused to drop a knife. BRAINTREE - The Norfolk County district attorney's office says a man shot and killed by Braintree police Thursday morning was a 44-year-old former Quincy resident named Robert L. Dussourd. Officials say Dussourd, who had recently been living on Liberty Street in Braintree, was shot by one or two Braintree police officers after he refused to drop a knife during a confrontation near his home around 3 a.m. Thursday. The district attorney's office said the two officers tried to subdue the man using non-lethal methods, including a beanbag gun, but he continued to brandish the knife and was shot. District Attorney Michael Morrissey has promised a "full, deliberate and fair investigation" into the shooting. The district attorney said the officers immediately began life-saving measures while awaiting emergency medical workers, who took the man to South Shore Hospital. Officials did not say when or where the man was pronounced dead. Liberty Street resident Daniel Hoffman said he noticed lights outside his window around 2 a.m. and saw several police cruisers, ambulances and fire trucks. At one point, he said he heard two bangs, one after another. "I knew it was gunshots," he said. "It had to be." Morrissey said Braintree police had been "cooperative" in the investigation, which is still in the early stages. "While we are a long way from being done with this investigation, it is important in the case of a police shooting to provide information to the public, even if that information is preliminary in nature," Morrissey said in a statement. "Every police shooting demands a full, deliberate and fair investigation and that is what we are doing here." Braintree Police Chief Russell Jenkins referred all questions to the district attorney's office. Officials said the confrontation on Liberty Street started with a call around 1:20 a.m. for a domestic disturbance at a home near the intersection of Liberty and East Division streets, which marks the line between Braintree and Holbrook. Police were told that a man who lived in the home had left after brandishing a knife. Police said officers using a dog were able to find the man hiding under a car parked outside the home. Police said the climbed out from under the car and confronted the officers while brandishing the knife. Dussourd, a former resident of Cherry and Summer streets in Quincy, had several run-ins with police while living in the city in the 1990s and spent at least a year in jail, according to court records. In July 1997 he was arrested for assaulting two people and later given a one-month jail sentence. While out on probation the following November, he was arrested again for assaulting a woman with a hammer and was eventually sentenced to a year in jail.

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