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Former Vice President Joe Biden speaking at commencement exercises Saturday at Morgan State University, decried the decline of "civilized discourse" during the election campaign last year and urged graduates to stay engaged in the world.
Speaking to more than 700 graduates and their families at the historically black university in Baltimore, Biden touched on his eight years as vice president under Barack Obama, his personal life, the 2016 election and the current political climate.
"This past election cycle churned up some of the most ugly realities," he said. "Civilized discourse and real debate gave way to a coarseness in our rhetoric."
During the campaign, he said, "we saw just how much of a grip racism and sexism still has on America."
"Racism was embraced as a political tool on the national level," he said. "I thought we had passed the days where it is acceptable for politicians to say out loud, to bestow legitimacy on hate speech and fringe ideologies."
While the climate might discourage some, Biden urged the graduates not "to write off the system as irredeemably flawed."
Biden said the attitudes are "temporary" and not tolerated by the country.
Biden, who declined to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 after the death of his son Beau, said he "may very well" run in 2020.
He opened the speech saying he first learned of Morgan State's reputation as a young lifeguard on the east side of Wilmington, Del.
"I was the only white boy. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not," he said to laughter. When the other lifeguards spoke about their college plans, he said, Morgan State often came up.
"I grew up feeling self-conscious I didn't go to an HBCU," he said, and drew cheers.
He closed with advice: He urged graduates to strive to find a balanced work life, and find fulfillment in in what they do. He spoke about cherishing time with loved ones, even when work might take over. He spoke about his first wife and young daughter, who were killed in a car crash shortly after he was first elected to the Senate in 1972.
Biden also spoke about the pressure to succeed and the temptation to do what others think is right. He urged the graduates to "follow what you feel in your gut. That's your North Star."
He told them to "engage the world around you, because you will be more successful and happy, and because that's how progress happens."
Biden got laughs acknowledging the internet commentary poking fun at his friendship with Obama.
"I know all those memes you guys did," he said. "It's the truth, we're the closest of friends."
Haneef Hardy, 23, who earned a bachelor's degree in sociology, said the speech was "motivating."
The Philadelphia native, the first in his family to graduate from college, said he was ready to "give back to the community."
Hardy has been teaching first grade at Margaret Brent Elementary School in Charles Village. He said he's considering several jobs. He wants one in which he can "make a difference."
Several students who were killed last year were granted degrees posthumously.
Charles McGee, 23, who was fatally shot in November, was granted a degree in political science. Marcus Edwards, 21, who was stabbed to death in September, was granted a degree in social work. Tyronn Hodges, who was shot to death in Northeast Washington in February, was granted a degree in business administration.
Biden; Sylvia Brown, a Baltimore philanthropist; Sheldon Goldseker, chairman of the board of directors for the Goldseker Foundation; and Morgan alumna April Ryan, White House correspondent for the American Urban Radio Networks, received honorary doctorates.
jkanderson@baltsun.com
twitter.com/janders5 |
Dutch police arrested five Romanian men as part of an investigation into a criminal ring that brazenly stole iPhones from moving trucks on highways, a spokesperson said Monday.
Authorities made the arrests in Otterlo over the weekend and found a half a million euros ($587,000) worth of iPhones during the raid, police spokesman Ed Kraszewski said.
The men are suspected of tailgating electronics delivery trucks with a modified van so that one of the thieves could climb onto the hood and break into the trucks while the vehicles were driving down the highway.
The thief would then pass the iPhones back to their co-conspirators in the van without the truck driver ever noticing.
Investigators puzzled
Kraszewski said that police have been investigating missing iPhones from trucks for some time but didn't think that such a method was possible.
The last late-night heist took place a week ago.
"The truck was taking its freight from A to B and did not stop. Even so, (the phones) were gone," he said. "So it must have happened that way. And now we finally have the evidence, with the van and the loot."
Of the 17 truck heists believed to have been carried out the by the gang, five were in the Netherlands.
Dutch police will send the suspects' fingerprints to other countries' law enforcement to see if there is a match with similar heists.
cw/se (AP, dpa) |
Wairarapa DOC ranger Henry Campbell explains the process of releasing Turbo, a young North Island brown kiwi, into the wild at the Pukaha Mt Bruce wildlife centre on Wednesday.
A North Island brown kiwi released into the wild at the Pukaha Mt Bruce wildlife centre north of Masterton has been christened Turbo, after hatching in record time.
But even Turbo might struggle to keep up with competitors in the centre's unique multisport race on September 27.
The Wild Challenge, a 10-kilometre run through virgin bush full of some of the country's rarest wildlife, followed by a 23km road cycle, includes among its prizes the chance to name, then personally release, one of next year's Kiwi House residents.
CALEB HARRIS/ FAIRFAX NZ Wairarapa DOC ranger Henry Campbell attaches a transmitter to a young kiwi named Turbo before releasing him into bush at the Pukaha Mt Bruce wildlife centre north of Masterton on Wednesday.
Ten-month-old Turbo, whose gender is not known yet, broke through the egg's shell in just three hours instead of the normal period of up to five days, and is one of last season's hatchlings.
He was released on Wednesday by Wairarapa DOC ranger Henry Campbell as part of the reserve's forest restoration project. He was helped by Wild Challenge competitors Jess Matthews and Judy Howard, who work for project sponsor Higgins contracting.
The 942-hectare, unfenced reserve is protected by an intense trapping programme, which put a stop in July to a bad run of kiwi deaths attributed to a "rogue" ferret, centre general manager Helen Tickner said.
"So we are now confident about returning our kiwi back into the forest."
READ MORE:
* Forest duathlon a wild challenge
* White kiwi chicks killed at Pukaha Mt Bruce
Campbell has personally released about seven kiwi before Turbo. He said it was an important task since forest restoration was not just about ridding the forest of introduced predators, but also restocking it with native fauna and flora.
"It's a privilege, quite special and a pretty rare thing to be a part of."
Between 12 and 20 North Island brown kiwi hatch each year in the centre's nursery and are gradually released into the wild as part of an effort to slowly restore birdsong to the remnant of the primeval bush.
This year's Wild Challenge will include a short, easier kids' course and all competitors get a family pass for their support crew, worth $50. More information: www.pukaha.org.nz |
You missed it! But Today's Woot is waiting!
Leave some for the rest of us!
Hey, you can only buy 3 of these.
Just Beat It
Your heart rate must go on.
Use this: in the heart of the moment, telling me what my heat meant. Wait, did we mix that up?
Don't use this: for running. USE IT FORERUNNING! JEEZ! CAN'T YOU PEOPLE READ?!
This just posted on Facebook: "I always say, 'I can see into yr heart,' and people are all, 'thaz cheezy!' n I'm like, 'no seriously.' :D"
Left to its own devices, this: would alternate between whispering sweet nothings to and yelling obscenities at your heart rate to make its graph as interesting as possible.
The experts say: if a heart beats in a body, and no one monitors, then there is no proof that it's beating at all.
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Image by Joe Flood licensed under Creative Commons.
Recent data from the 2016 American Community Survey has spoken: at 18.3 percent, DC now has the highest percentage of commuters in the country walking and biking to work, while another 37 percent take transit. However, the way employer benefits are currently set up gives the biggest reward to people who drive. This means more traffic and longer commutes. A proposed bill called “parking cash-out” could give employees the chance to trade in their parking space for extra cash and encourage drivers to explore other commuting options.
Parking cash-out will give more people access to transit benefits
Right now, employers can provide their workers with a tax-free commuting benefit that covers up to $255 a month for parking and another $255 a month for public transit. This means that an employee who takes advantage of both the transit and parking benefit can set aside over $500 of tax-free income toward parking and transit. They can also get a bike benefit — but it’s capped at $20 a month and can’t be combined with the parking or public transit benefit. People who walk to work, meanwhile, are on their own.
While a parking subsidy is not very useful to people who work where parking is free and abundant, the value of it can add up for people driving into a place where parking is at a premium. In parking-scarce areas like downtown DC, the parking subsidy makes driving more attractive for workers — and contributes to more congestion and longer commutes.
DC councilmembers Charles Allen, Mary Cheh, and Brianne Nadeau have introduced a plan to give people an equally strong incentive to bike and walk to work: the Transportation Benefits Equity Act. This bill would require employers of a certain size that already provide their employees with subsidized parking to give their employees the option to trade in that benefit for cash. That means employees who walk or bike would now have the chance to pocket the value of their parking space as taxable income, or use the parking benefit for transit. Employees who drive to work could still use their parking benefits to commute in and park at work.
DC residents already prefer to get to work in ways that don’t rely on driving. This flexible commuter benefit (known as “parking cash-out”) would give these employees an incentive to keep up their habit and encourage more people to walk or bike to work instead. Cheryl Cort, Policy Director at the Coalition for Smarter Growth, estimates that a benefit like the one proposed in the Transportation Benefits Equity Act would lead to a 10 to 12 percent reduction in the number of people driving alone to and from work.
Image used with permission.
Parking cash-out is easy to turn into reality
This bill would be easy to implement because it builds on DC’s Commuter Benefits Law, which requires all employers with 20 or more employees to provide them with the option to use their own pre-tax money to pay for transit. The parking cash-out bill will use the systems employers already have to make to their payroll systems to administer pre-tax benefits under the Commuter Benefits Law. If an employee wants to opt for transit rather than a parking benefit, their benefit would just be switched from parking to transit in the system. If an employee wants to use their parking benefit to walk or bicycle, they would receive the value of the parking space as taxable income.
Proponents point out that the bill could even wind up benefiting employers in the long run. According to the World Resource Institute, converting a non-active employee into a bike commuter saves $3,000 in employer health care costs and reduced absenteeism.
The DC Council is considering passing a parking cash-out bill
The DC Council will hold a hearing on the Transportation Benefits Equity Acton September 25. You can tell the Council you support more incentives to get people biking, walking, or riding transit to work by testifying in person or by sending a letter of support. You can also sign a petition with the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
Want more information? Email claire@smartergrowth.net. |
Microsoft will extend support for the Windows Server and SQL Server product lines to keep customers, and ultimately convince them to move their workloads into the cloud, an analyst said today.
Last week, Microsoft unveiled "Premium Assurance," which will add up to six more years to the support lifespan of Windows Server 2008 and later, and SQL Server 2008 and later. Enterprises with existing Software Assurance agreements will be able to purchase the additional support starting in March 2017.
Under Premium Assurance, only those security updates classified as patching "Critical" and "Important" flaws will be provided. The extended support will cost between 5% and 12% of the current licensing cost for each year of coverage, depending on when during the next two and a half years a customer commits.
Analysts read between the lines of the announcement, trying to discern Microsoft's motivation -- beyond what a pair of marketing executives put forward -- and to explain why the company switched from a semi-secret practice of offering extended support to some firms, but not all, to a more transparent policy available to most commercial customers.
According to Dolores Ianni, research director at Gartner, Premium Assurance was an admission by Microsoft that customers have had problems migrating their servers to newer versions.
"Look what they are up against," said Ianni, pointing to the upcoming deadlines for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, which will be retired from traditional support in January 2020 and July 2019, respectively. "This is a huge issue, and Microsoft is trying to get out in front of it," Ianni added, referring to the large numbers of enterprises that won't upgrade those editions before they reach end-of-life.
Under the old regime, customers would be out of luck if they missed a migration deadline. The only way to continue receiving security updates was with a Custom Support Agreement, or CSA, which were notoriously expensive and came with strings, including demands that the company commit to a migration timeline. CSAs were renewed annually, but were, in fact, temporary; Microsoft rarely allowed a CSA to run for more than two or three years.
"CSAs made customers dig way too deep into their budgets," said Ianni. "This became a huge problem for Microsoft, because it prevented spending on new areas, like the cloud." In other words, although Microsoft was happy to book revenue from CSAs, it would rather customers spend that money on something new, preferably a service, that would generate more revenue over time.
By making Premium Assurance more affordable than a CSA, Microsoft will give customers what they need -- additional support for server products they're unlikely to soon abandon -- but without breaking enterprise budgets. Ianni applauded the move. "They could have structured this so that it would have been even more expensive," she said. "I'm happy to see that there is some flexibility."
The end goal, Ianni and others said, was to get customers running Windows Server or SQL Server on premises or in a data center to transfer those workloads to Azure, Microsoft's cloud-based service.
"Microsoft is saying, 'Invest in our platform and look at Azure,'" Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said about Microsoft's ultimate ideal result.
"The strategic endgame here for Microsoft is to get customers into Azure. But they don't want to lose those customers along the way," Ianni said, referring to Microsoft. "They don't want customers to jump ship, from SQL Server to Oracle, say."
Desertions from one ecosystem to another are most likely when product support runs out -- when a change must be made in any case -- whether by upgrading to a new edition from Company A, or switching to the competitor from Company B.
"This is just kicking the can down the road in some ways," Ianni acknowledged. At the same time, Premium Assurance should give companies the breathing room needed to migrate from, for example, Windows Server 2008 R2 to a newer edition, like Windows Server 2016.
"I see this as the first phase in a longer-term strategy to get people to move [server workloads] into the cloud," Ianni said. |
This week the Australian Renewable Energy Agency reported that module installation had commenced at Australias largest renewables mining project. On completion, Sandfire Resources’ DeGrussa Copper-Gold Mine in Western Australia will be equipped with a 10.6 MW PV power plant to supply the mines daily operations.
Single axis tracking will be deployed on the project that will utilize 34,080 solar PV modules. The juwi Group is acting as EPC on the project that will offset approximately five million liters of diesel fuel annually.
ARENA is providing AU$20.9 million (US$15.25 million) in funding for the AU$40 million (US$29.2 million) project and the agency hopes it will provide the mining industry with an example to be rolled out elsewhere.
While this is underway, international investors are showing increasing interest in offgrid projects for mining operations. Offgrid renewables consultant Thomas Hillig says that he is aware of one investment group having set aside 100 million for offgrid renewable investments.
Over the last months we have done several introduction workshops to solar and wind diesel hybrid markets which address investors needs, THEnergys Hillig told pv magazine. After we announced a collaboration with an established renewable energy investor who is setting up a 100 million (US$109 million) plus fund for investing into off-grid projects, we have been addressed by even more investors.
Hillig explained that as traditional renewable incentive schemes such as FITs, ROCs and tax incentives have declined or been wound back, development in sunnier regions has picked up.
In these regions, the business case [for PV] is quite often excellent, but local governments or utilities are not always the most reliable PPA contract partner for investors, said Hillig. Mines often have to pay a high price for electricity: particularly if they are located in remote locations and diesel has to be transported over long distances. Mines consume much electricity that means that there is a good potential for large solar and wind power plants often much more than in other industries.
Offgrid projects do come with inherent risks. THEnergys Hillig said that often there is no alternative offtaker if a mine operation is shuttered due to commodity price fluctuations, however that this risk it mitigated by multinational mining groups good standing with the investment community.
While it may seem a relatively niche application of solar PV, the potential to supply mining operations with renewable electricity from PV in countries like Australia, Africa and parts of Latin America is in GW-scale. Ray Wills is the Managing Director of Future Smart Strategies and he says that as production and fuel-saving data begins to flow in from projects such as DeGrussa and BHPs Weipa project in Queensland, that mining companies will move very quickly to employ solar PV in remote locations.
Because these projects are being funded by ARENA and others, that data will become public and once that data is public I think many mine sites will start to move very quickly, Wills told pv magazine. I am suggesting as early as early 2016 we will see a lot of the miners step up and theyll move past pilot [projects] and trialing to actually saying that solar will bring down operational costs.
We know that there is at least 700 800 MW of demand in diesel power generation alone [in Western Australia], so there is at least that much and that is just for the miners.
The DeGrussa project will also employ battery storage, in the form of a 6MWh battery system.
pv magazine has formed a media partnership with the Energy and Mines conference series. The first of the 2016 conference series will take place in London on January 28-29. |
It may not be a streamlined hybrid, a futuristic electric vehicle or a snazzy biofuel car, but a distinctly boxy diesel Volvo has won What Car? magazine's award for the year's greenest car.
A small family car with carbon emissions on a par with Toyota's Prius, the Volvo S40 DRIVe received the award today from London mayor Boris Johnson. Vauxhall's Ampera electric car and US electric car-maker Tesla also received awards.
Johnson said: "There are clear incentives for manufacturers to raise the bar higher and higher to design less gas guzzling cars that take hundreds of pounds off consumers' fuel bills. This is good for the planet, good for the economy and great for the driver."
What Car? editor Steve Fowler said of the winning Volvo: "It's not just about a low CO2 figure. The S40 is great to drive, safe, has enough space for the family and, crucially, is cheap to run, too."
Ford, the US motoring giant which owns Volvo, lost out to Toyota in the battle for trophies between major car manufacturers. Toyota's Avensis 2.0 D-4D (CO2 emissions of 135 grammes per kilometre) won the best family car award, while Toyota subsidary Lexus picked up the prize for the greenest 4x4 with a petrol hybrid SUV, the RX450h SE-L (148g/km).
The winner of the technical award, Vauxhall's electric Ampera, is expected to debut in its US model the GM Volt in 2010 and arrive in the UK by 2012. Vauxhall's parent company General Motors claims the Ampera will change the image of electric cars by combining a 100mph top speed with an electric motor capable of driving 40 miles and a petrol engine which can increase the car's range to several hundred miles. Most of today's production electric cars, such as the G-Wiz, have a range of less than 100 miles.
Two notable omissions from the winners' list were Honda's hybrid Insight — which is the same size as the Volvo S40 DRIVe but has lower emissions — and the next generation Prius, which is set to go on sale later this summer.
Fowler warned the recession had made cars' environmental credentials a low priority for consumers. "Green issues are still a hot topic, but it's fair to say that they are not right at the top of car buyers' priorities at the moment. It's just as well then, that green cars will save you plenty of cash at the fuel pumps and will likely be worth more than other cars when you come to sell."
The winners:
Supermini
Fiat 500 Start&Stop £9,700, 113g/km, 58.9mpg
Small family car
Volvo S40 1.6D DRIVe S £17,495, 104g/km, 72.4mpg
Family car
Toyota Avensis 2.0 D-4D T2 £17,545, 135g/km, 55.4mpg
Executive car
BMW 318d ES £24,235, 123g/km, 60.1mpg
MPV
Citroën Grand C4 Picasso 1.6 HDi £19,095, 140g/km, 53.3mpg
4X4
Lexus RX450h SE-L £50,460, 148g/km, 44.8mpg
Sports car
Mini Cooper S £16,575, 149g/km, 45.6 mpg
Luxury car
Audi A8 2.8 V6 FSI SE £49,970, 199g/km, 34.0mpg
Technology
Vauxhall Ampera
Editor's award
Tesla |
One year ago to the day Team Canada lost the opener of the world junior hockey championship, an omen perhaps to the worst showing for the country in almost 20 years.
The Canadians got it right to start the tournament this year, sailing past the Russians 5-3 in their preliminary-round opener on Monday night. Canada scored three power-play goals, including a pair by captain Dylan Strome, and outshot their long-time international rivals 37-17.
“It’s a good start for us,” said Strome, one of five returning players from the 2016 squad. “I think we were really ready to play and we were really prepared for Russia and we’ll be prepared for Slovakia (Tuesday) night.”
Shut out of the medal hunt in three of the past four world junior tournaments, this was the kind of mostly emphatic start the Canadians needed. Canada dropped their opener to the Americans last December in Finland – losing 4-2 – and eventually finished sixth, the worst result for the country since an eighth-place outcome in 1998.
Russian defenceman Mikhail Sergachev was only slightly impressed.
“They’re a pretty fast team,” said Sergachev, a Montreal Canadiens prospect who scored the first Russian goal. “But we can beat them all the time because they get weak in the second and third periods. They’re just pretty good in the first.”
Canada indeed started fast, bursting out of the gate at Air Canada Centre with speed and energy. The Canadians outshot the Russians 7-1 over the first seven minutes or so of regulation, Tyson Jost getting on the board after three minutes ticked by.
Speeding down the right side, the St. Albert, Alta., native was fed cross-ice by defenceman Philippe Myers, Jost lifting a nifty backhand over the glove of Ilya Samsonov, the Washington Capitals’ top pick in 2015.
Canada continued to attack the Russians with good pace, forcing turnovers and creating scoring opportunities.
“We expect that, with the speed we have,” head coach Dominique Ducharme said. “It’s part of our identity.”
Russia halted the momentum around the midway point of the period when Denis Guryanov, a Dallas Stars first-round pick, won a puck battle in the Canadian corner. He then dished it to Sergachev, the 18-year-old blue-line prospect picked ninth overall at the 2016 draft, and he whipped a shot from above the slot which beat Canadian netminder Carter Hart.
It was only the Russians’ second shot, Hart seemingly unable to pick it up cleanly through a maze of bodies. Goaltending is among the central question marks for Canada, Hart’s performance (three goals on 17 shots) is unlikely to inspire much early confidence.
Russia got its best pressure of the second frame with Thomas Chabot in the box for slashing and the score still tied at one. But the Canadians survived, a key Blake Speers blocked shot aiding in the nervous final moments of the Russian advantage.
Strome, who called Speers Canada’s hardest working player in the win, scored on a power play a short while after his teammate’s short-handed efforts. The 19-year-old Strome, who grew up 15 minutes outside of Toronto in the suburb of Mississauga, fired a one-time shot from the right face-off circle, the attempt just getting under the glove of Samsonov. Strome was set up nicely by Matt Barzal, the New York Islanders’ first-round pick who threaded a pass from the opposite face-off circle.
Nicolas Roy upped the Canadian lead to two less than four minutes after that. Fighting for control of the puck with a Russian in the slot, the six-foot-four, 193-pound centre quickly shot it after he gained control, beating Samsonov.
Despite Sergachev’s proclamations of Canadian weakness in the second period, shots were actually 15-4 for Canada in the middle frame and 27-9 overall after 40 minutes.
Canada struck again on an early power play in the third, a highlight-worthy play from Barzal. He stormed to the left in the area just in front of Samsonov, sending the shot in the opposite direction, the attempt just sailing over the glove of the Russian netminder. Barzal was fed from behind the net by Pierre-Luc Dubois.
After the Russians cut it to 4-2, Strome increased the lead back to three on yet another man advantage, the Arizona Coyotes’ top prospect scooping up a Barzal rebound for the Canadians’ third power-play tally of the game.
“We just kept saying, ‘if we’re getting the opportunities they’re going to go in eventually'”, Strome said. “Two great plays where I just picked up the trash.”
Barzal, added his third point of the night on the play, finishing with a goal and two assists. He was named Canada’s best player after the game.
The Canadians face Slovakia on Tuesday night. |
By Dr. A.J. Drenth
INTPs, ENTPs, ISTPs, and ESTPs experience similar challenges in their relationships. Many of these challenges relate to the fact that their Feeling function, Extraverted Feeling (Fe), resides lower in their functional stack and is therefore more unconscious and childlike.
One effect of an inferior Fe is a tendency to fantasize about the ideal romance. Since Fe represents a sort of goal or endpoint of TPs’ type development, dreaming of ideal love can provide a “quick hit” of ephemeral bliss or wholeness. To further fuel these feelings, TPs may turn to musical ballads or romantic movies, which soothe and support their childlike ideals of the fairy tale romance.
While highly idealistic on the one hand, an inferior Fe can also produce ample doubt and cynicism toward relationships on the other. TPs with sufficient dating experience come to realize just how challenging relationships can be and may at some point come to doubt that they (or any prospective partner) have what it takes to sustain a deeply meaningful relationship. Since TPs, especially ITPs, are disposed to developing a bipolar, love-hate relationship with their Fe, they often exhibit the same bipolarism (i.e., idealism vs. nihilism/cynicism) toward their relationships. In many ways, the capacity for TPs to individuate and their ability to develop healthy, meaningful relationships runs along the same track.
In ENTP and INTP relationships, it is not only Fe that contributes to relational doubt, but also their Ne imagination. As with other things, Ne is adept at envisioning numerous ways in which the relationship could potentially fail. NTPs may worry, for instance, that it is only a matter of time before their partner will start trying to control or make excessive demands of them. INTPs, in particular, may be terrified of compromising their cherished independence and autonomy. Unfortunately, while their Fe, Ne, and Ti may contribute to a perfect brainstorm of fears and concerns, NTPs are often reluctant to reality test their hypotheses. Namely, they may fail to express their fears and concerns to their partners in order to determine whether they are well-founded. But why is this the case? Why are TPs reluctant to disclose their fears and concerns to their partner?
Reasons TPs Fail to Communicate in Relationships
One reason TPs may fail to communicate their thoughts in relationships is a concern for hurting their partner’s feelings. Considering their status as Thinking types, it may seem a bit strange that TPs be overly concerned about hurting others feelings. But there may actually be more going on here than meets the eye. In reality, TPs may be less worried about their partner’s feelings than they are their own discomfort with navigating emotional situations. Their real fear may involve feeling ill-equipped to effectively handle emotionally sensitive situations. Many TPs feel and act like children when it comes to dealing with emotional matters. Again, this can be attributed to the inferior development of their Fe.
Another reason TPs may fear expressing their relational concerns is the fear of saying something that will jeopardize the relationship (e.g., “If I tell her how I really feel, will she still love me or want to be with me?”). This fear is typically rooted in deeper fears, such as the fear of being alone, of being rejected or unlovable, or of being unneeded. Such fears are not entirely baseless in the sense that Fe is a real part of TPs’ functional stack; they do enjoy and benefit from love and relationships. But as we’ve seen, when it comes to Fe matters, it is easy for TPs to think in extremes and imagine the worst. So although they may be highly rational when it comes to T matters, their thinking can veer into the irrational when it comes relationships. Some TPs may even worry that each new relational problem or obstacle is irremediable and a likely portent of relational doom.
What are TPs Thinking? The Danger of Concealed Thoughts
When TPs conceal their concerns about their partner or about the state of the relationship, they do neither themselves nor the relationship any favors. Here are some examples of thoughts TPs may harbor and fail to share with their partners:
“There she goes being irrational again. Another emotional rant.”
“I’m really not interested in what she is saying right now, I wish I could escape and do something else.”
“She is so needy and demanding. I wish she would just leave me be for a while.”
Such thoughts involve judgments that can lead TPs to close themselves off to further information. For instance, by assuming that the display of strong emotions is irrational, they close themselves to the possibility that there may be a rational basis for the emotional response, even if they fail to see it upfront. By sticking to such judgments, they are really acting tyrannically and disrespectfully. They assume their subjective response is correct and their partner’s is inferior. In such instances, they are not really relating to their partner, but judging and demeaning them.
What is most curious is the fact that this process often occurs entirely internally, in the TPs’ mind. In the meantime, TPs may outwardly feign participation in the conversation in order to avoid escalating the conflict and to preserve their “nice guy” (or girl) persona. Unfortunately, many TPs fail to realize that what they are doing is really not nice at all. Rather, they are being passive-aggressive, controlling, and cowardly.
It can also be easy for TPs to consider their hidden thoughts benign, perhaps reasoning that some degree of secrecy and dissatisfaction is inevitable in any relationship. What they may not realize, however, is the degree to which their undisclosed thoughts serve as raw material for further relational breakdown. Such thoughts can lay the foundation for the construction of an alternate reality to which their partner has no access. As this alternate reality grows, it becomes increasingly difficult for TPs to truly love their partners or to perceive them fairly and accurately. Rather, they become increasingly dishonest, passive-aggressive, disinterested, and detached from the relationship. This also reinforces TPs’ love-hate relationship with their inferior Fe. They become more cynical toward love and perhaps even toward life.
Closing Thoughts
If Fe represents open, honest, and effective interpersonal communication, it is unfortunate that TPs, who can be seen as striving to realize Fe in their lives, often undercut themselves by failing to be open and honest in their relationships. In short, they often idealize Fe while at the same time failing to exercise Fe principles in their actions. They may choose to be “nice,” which really is nice at all, rather than being honest. Like most folks, they are controlled by their fears, concerned that fully unveiling themselves is a sure road to rejection. But it is only through complete vulnerability that TPs will find the depth of love and acceptance they desire. Only an uncensored relationship will hold their interest and keep them from constantly retreating into their own minds.
As discussed in my recent post, Mature vs. Childish Relationships, real love, mature love, is built on reality rather than on illusions or ideals. Love must be founded on truth, even when it hurts. When partners are completely open and honest with each other, the roots of the relationship can extend ever deeper as problems, fears, and frustrations are successfully expressed, analyzed, and integrated.
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On August 22nd I went to visit my parents who have been retired and currently live in Italy and attend the wedding of my best friend in Germany. Before I had left my father had what seemed to be a swollen lymph node on his neck the size of a bean, not a big deal and as he put it "Ehhh...it's nothing." When I had returned from Germany 4 days later it had grown the size of a grapefruit, he had trouble breathing and was waiting to be seen in Italy. He was seen a couple days later and given antibiotics, day before I flew out he said it was getting better and figured it was just a bacterial infection. I flew back stateside and a week after received a phone call from my mother after he had been seen again by a specialty team in Verona, Italy. My father had been diagnosed with Anaplastic cancer of the thyroid or Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma (ATC) on his neck, very rare and very aggressive. The surgeon said in his 48 year in medicine he had only seen 4 cases like this in his entire career. Not genetic and no known cause, my father has never smoked in his life and till the day he was told has been living a very active life. Even winning the 2016 Italian racquetball Open masters (50+) division at 69 years of age. There were only 600 cases nationwide in the US last year, only 2 cancer centers in the US that specialize in this form. I flew in to Tampa 2 weeks ago on Saturday to get things set up at the Moffitt Cancer Center and my parents flew in Sunday from Italy and soonest we could get him seen was on Tuesday morning due to the extended weekend (Labor Day). My father had gone from a clean bill of health to stage 4 cancer in 11 days, couldn't believe what I was hearing. 2 days after being admitted he had to have a tracheotomy, due to the tumor pushing his trachea making it very difficult to breathe, started chemo and was to begin radiation treatment within 3 days to slow down the growth of tumor. Due to the aggressive nature of this type of cancer it had pushed the first breathing tube and had to have surgery again to get refitted just a few days after. To make matters worse he had been taking blood thinners to prevent blood clots, in order to do surgery they had to stop the blood thinners and he had developed 2 clots, one in his arm and another in his leg. Pulmonary team had been concerned about his breathing and then was being treated for pneumonia. All this in a matter of 2 1/2 weeks, my mother or myself have been by his side since he landed in Tampa. Their insurance covers most of the costs but not all and due to the aggressive nature of the cancer there will be many more costs involved. My parents are in the process of selling their home and I've depleted my savings to contribute what I could with costs associated. The amount for just a single day dosage of Lenvatinib is $8000.00, which we have been told he will need for 6-8 weeks...this is just one of the medications which he will be needing. I want my mother and father to be concerned about getting well and recovering not finances or any other stress causing factors. At this point my only priority in life is the health of my father and mother being by his side fighting along with him, I've decided to put my pride aside and reach out to everyone I know and ask for donations to assist me in eliminating a portion of what debt has incurred and future medical costs and leave them with enough that can cover their medical expenses that will be related in his fight against this cancer. I have been happy and proud to assist in a wide variety of non-profits from animal shelters to disabled combat veterans and dependents. I have found my purpose in life and created my own non-profit with another fellow veteran (We Defy Foundation) to assist disabled combat veterans and veterans fighting PTSD/TBI by creating a community where they can fight the battle together and create a brotherhood through Jiu Jitsu. My father is a veteran, Retired Department of Defense civilian for 26 years, my hero and the reason I have had the courage and strength to do what I have done in life. It is because of his moral standard that I am the way I am and able to do the things I am doing. Without him I wouldn't of had the guidance and support to be a Special Forces operator, make it through multiple combat rotations or have the confidence to start my own business or anything I'm able to do currently. Without my mother and fathers influence I would not be the man I am today. Any amount will make a difference, all donations will be tax deductible. Sincerely, Thank you all for your support and your assistance in this matter. |
NEW DELHI: As the iconic 163-year-old telegram passed into history, the last message was sent to
Gandhi.
RahulThe telegram counter closed at 11.45pm on Sunday night and the last message was booked at the counter of Central Telegraph Office (CTO) Janpath by one Ashwani Mishra, who sent messages to Rahul Gandhi and director general of DD news SM Khan.The revenue collected was Rs 68,837 as the country bid adieu to the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians.The total booking was 2,197 of which billing through computer accounted for 1,329 and phone booking 91, a senior telegraph officer said.CTO had collected forms from many individuals and these will be manually handled, the officer said.A large number of people, many of them youngsters and first timers, turned up on Sunday at four telegraph centres in the capital which have almost been forgotten in recent years to send a message to their loved ones on the last day of the service.Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Kolkata and Diamond Harbour, it was opened for use by the British East India Company the following year. In 1854, the service was made available to the public.It was such an important mode of communication in those days that revolutionaries fighting for the country's independence used to cut the telegram lines to stop the British from communicating.Nudged out by technology — SMS, emails, mobile phones — the iconic service gradually faded into oblivion with less and less people taking recourse to it.Though started as a Morse code service, the telegram service evolved gradually with the use of computers. At the time of its death, it had become a web based telegraph mailing service (WBTMS) which used emails to instantly convey message to the other end.Old timers recall that receiving a telegram would be an event in itself and the messages were normally opened with a sense of trepidation as people feared for the welfare of their near and dear ones.For jawans and armed forces seeking leave or waiting for transfer or joining reports, it was a quick and handy mode of communication. |
A man accused of stabbing two people he lives with at a house in Huntington Hills in northeast Calgary says he "didn't mean to."
Qisong Zhou, 50, is charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon and two counts of possession of a weapon dangerous to the public.
Zhou appeared before a justice of the peace from the arrest processing unit on Wednesday morning.
"I need to talk about the process of the incident," said Zhou through a Mandarin interpreter.
A man and a woman were badly injured in a brutal stabbing Monday morning
Police have called the attack "unprovoked" and say although Zhou lives with the victims, it is not a domestic relationship.
Throughout the appearance, Zhou tried to speak several times to explain himself.
"I didn't mean to," he said. "Can I tell my reason?"
But Justice of the Peace Paul Newcombe interrupted, explaining the accused was to simply indicate if he understood the charges he was facing.
Eventually Zhou indicated he did understand the charges.
This is the home where a man and a women suffered stab wounds in northeast Calgary Monday morning. (Monty Kruger/CBC)
Police arrested Zhou around 4 p.m. Tuesday after releasing his name and photo and asking for the public's help locating the suspect.
He was found walking along Deerfoot Trail near Beddington Trail.
Police have not commented on what motivated the attack, but investigators say they are speaking to the victims as they recover in hospital.
On Wednesday, the accused expressed frustration that he's been unable to find a lawyer who speaks Mandarin.
"I need you to help me find a lawyer, I really cannot find a lawyer," said Zhou.
The matter was put over to Thursday morning to give Zhou another day to try to find counsel. |
Friday, July 20, 2012, 10:30am, we hit a goal of $40,000!
Hopefully, we'll finish strong at $50,000 by Sunday evening July 22, 2012. Thank you all for your help!
---------------------------
This page is set up to raise funds and ease the burden on Steve's wife, son, and step-daughter.
Steve was a devoted husband, loving father, a good friend, and beloved by everyone that had the chance to know him as a person. He left us all way too early and will be deeply missed.
We reached our first goal of $5000 in the first 8hrs. The goal was increased to $20,000 and we broke that in 22hrs!
A message form MJ Carlesi:
" There are no words to express my gratitude to everyone who has reached out to me to give their condolences. I have not gotten to the hundreds of emails, the 100 posts on my wall and the hundreds of posts on Steve C 's wall yet but I have been browsing over them until I am overtaken by tears.
Thank you just doesn't seem like enough.
It's been a rough 5 days but the support has been beyond amazin
g and I only wish Steve knew how many of you loved him before he left us.
I hope to be able to reply to each and everyone of you...but please be patient.
ALSO, I want to send a HUUUUUUGE thank you (again, not sufficient wording) to The Opie and Anthony Show on Sirius XM. Erik texted me what you guys have donated and I cannot stop bawling.
I am beyond touched. |
Sometimes you see something and your only reaction is … wow! Tonight we were cruising the interwebs and caught sight of Diamondbacks new Andean and our only reaction is our mouths hitting the floor. We don’t yet have the full details but this is what we do know.
The Andean is very much UCI illegal and triathlon specific. It includes storage locations for hydration, salt tabs, fuel, garbage, a tool kit with CO2 and multitool, and even room for your wallet.
As you can see from the images – the bike is built with disc brakes. And while the images show front derailleurs – it was designed to for 1X groups.
Andean will be available in multiple build options, with drivetrains, wheels, and components to choose from. Each Andean order is assembled in Diamondback’s exclusive in-house shop, Diamondback Studios. Prices will range from $6280 to $8600.
We will definitely share more details as we hear them but until then check out the video below for the Andean in action. And you can check out their white paper here.
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Dredging up the myriad scandals of Hillary Clinton’s past is central, it seems, to how Donald Trump plans to defeat her. So it is not entirely surprising that Dick Morris, the former ally turned avowed enemy of the Clintons, is reportedly in talks to join the Trump campaign to help dig up dirt on his onetime employers.
New York magazine’s Gabe Sherman reports that Morris, Bill Clinton’s right-hand man until he resigned from the White House following a scandal with a prostitute, would join the campaign’s “Hillary unit,” dedicated to hunting for damaging rumors and facts that could hurt her bid for the presidency. “It’s on the table,” one of two sources with knowledge of the talks reportedly told Sherman. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks immediately shot the story down, telling me that “there is no truth to this.”
Even if Morris isn’t officially throwing in his lot with the Great Orange Menace, 2016 certainly offers the former Clinton adviser his last, best chance to exact whatever revenge he’s long hoped to exact against Bill and Hillary. And the Trump campaign would be the perfect vehicle to do so. Morris famously came up with the “triangulation” strategy that won Bill Clinton re-election in 1996, in which the then president specifically avoided attaching himself to any particular party platform in order to appeal to a broad base of supporters—a similar strategy, it could be argued, to what Trump is trying to engineer now. A bigger impetus for Morris, however, seems to be his deep-seated hatred for the Clintons: ever since he was booted from their orbit following an alleged dalliance with a call girl, Morris has published several tell-all books portraying the Clintons as ruthless and dishonest, had a contract for a time at Fox News, where he endlessly criticized the power couple, and worked as a political consultant on several Republican campaigns. He has a weekly column at the New York Post, which has endorsed Trump, and was recently named “chief political correspondent” at the National Enquirer, whose C.E.O., David Pecker has reportedly been close friends with the billionaire for years.
That Morris has an ax to grind is indisputable. Less clear is whether he would be of much use to Trump. Ever since he left Clintonworld, Morris has developed a reputation for making legendarily terrible political predictions, particularly ones involving the Clintons themselves. While the Trump campaign is certainly combing every possible source for damaging revelations about the Clintons—including a new exposé, penned by an ex–Secret Service agent in the Clinton White House, which describes Hillary as having a “Jekyll and Hyde” personality—they may not be that desperate after all.
Donald Trump FOLLOW Bill Clinton FOLLOW Follow to get the latest news and analysis about the players in your inbox. See All Players |
Is the government about to ban Christianity and turn it into a criminal offense? According to one documentary, the answer is ‘yes’ because the gay rights movement is determined to outlaw the practice of Christianity.
As Kyle reported, the “documentary” will include appearances from Sen. Rand Paul and former Gov. Mike Huckabee, both likely presidential candidates.
Reps. Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Steve King and Tim Huelskamp also make appearances, joining the likes of creationist leader Ken Ham, discredited pseudo-historian David Barton and even “ex-homosexuals.”
Scott Lively, the Religious Right activist who pushed for laws criminalizing homosexuality in Uganda and banning pro-gay-rights speech in Russia, is also a featured guest. Not only does Lively believe that Obama is the Antichrist and claim that gay wedding songs caused Noah’s flood, but he even wrote a book, The Pink Swastika, blaming gay people for the Holocaust.
The documentary is the brainchild of Janet Porter, a former talk radio host who runs the group Faith 2 Action and the social media outlet FreedomBook (formerly known as ReaganBook).
Porter once co-chaired Huckabee’s Faith and Values Coalition during his 2008 presidential campaign and the former Arkansas governor once remarked that “there are two Janet’s that I answer to: my wife Janet and Janet Porter.” Most recently, she has dedicated her time to passing an anti-choice law, known as the Heartbeat Bill, in Ohio which would criminalize abortion even before many women know they are pregnant. Several GOP leaders, including Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, have endorsed her bill.
Porter has built quite a reputation for claiming that President Obama is set to literally imprison, starve and murder his political opponents and that the gay rights movement will destroy freedom as we know it.
Porter’s remarks on LGBT people include:
Said that the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crime Law will make it a felony to refuse the “unwelcome advance” from a gay person, give legal protections to pedophiles and imprison pastors.
Claimed that pastors who won’t perform same-sex marriages will be “ carried off into jail ” in states with marriage equality laws.
Cited a satirical essay to claim that gay rights advocates seek “ the criminalization of Christianity .”
Worked to promote opposition to gay rights with anti-Semitic pastor Ted Pike , who believes that Jews will commit an anti-Christian genocide to seek “ world dominion .”
Blamed gay rights for Noah’s Flood in a column entitled: “How Same-Sex Marriage Points To End Of The World.”
Suggested that homosexuality is far more dangerous than cigarette smoking.
Claimed Jason Collins’ decision to come out of the closet will endanger freedom .
Criticized Disney World for allowing gay events that will “target thousands of children” by “ parading public displays of perversion .”
That’s not all, as she has also:
Predicted that Obama would personally meet with Osama bin Laden to broker a peace deal.
Warned that President Obama will use the Swine flu to “round up American citizens” and throw them in “ FEMA concentration camps .”
Repeatedly warned that Obamacare will murder conservatives and impose “ jail sentences on those who seek treatment outside the socialized health care system.”
Asserted that Obama will create food shortages to bring about mass starvation .
Asked God to stop Obama from taking office as president , warning that Obama is a Communist spy who has been plotting to destroy America since his birth.
Regularly pushed debunked conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birth certificate.
Called Hillary Clinton the “evil Queen of Slaughter,” predicting that she will throw Christians in jail if elected president.
Prayed for conservatives to take control of the government and media .
Claimed America has so far avoided God’s wrath, unlike Haiti, only because “ Haiti was dedicated to Satan .”
Blamed deadly tornadoes on legal abortion. |
The world of the “World Wresting Entertainment” has often been an interesting point of discourse. Today, AirPlay will be diving into whether or not the WWE is an actual sport. Since the early 90s the whole world of wrestling has captivated the hearts of generations of people. There was always the discussion on whether or not the wrestlers and the whole concept of entertainment wrestling were to be considered a sport. They were always at a gray area of existence. Or you could always say that they were an existence all on their own. What Makes a Sport? If we were to base it off the traditional description of a sport: it is anything that requires physical exertion, an event where this physical exertion is celebrated, and has a sort of following. So in every sense of the description of |
By JULIE MOULT
Last updated at 00:24 02 February 2008
A British teacher's trip to Africa turned to horror - when a lion leapt on her from behind and clamped its jaws round her head.
As she was dragged to the ground, Kate Drew screamed in pain as the animal's teeth sank into her.
To add to her terror, two other lions were prowling not far away, waiting to pounce.
Luckily, tour guides were nearby and they tackled the 400lb animal, wrestling it away from her and saving her from more serious injury or death.
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She was left needing 13 stitches in bite wounds - but it is thought the lion may simply have mistaken her for a playmate, because of her mane-like long blonde hair.
"I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm a goner'", said 28-year-old Miss Drew, from Hornchurch, Essex.
"I was scared enough when the lion pinned me to the ground, but when I looked up and saw the other two, I really thought I'd had it."
The primary school headmistress had been working as a volunteer teacher in Tanzania since last September and was spending a few weeks travelling across Africa on a bus with other backpackers.
As part of the trip, they visited a project where lions are bred to be released back into the wild.
Tourists are able to walk with several of the big cats which are considered tame enough to be allowed close contact with humans.
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"I was a bit apprehensive, but we were just leaving and everything seemed to have gone well until this one lion jumped at me from behind," said Miss Drew.
Her 57-year-old mother, Carole, said: "She didn't tell me about it at first, because she didn't want to worry me or her father.
"I couldn't believe it when she told me what had happened. I was pretty shocked. She had told me that she planned to go walking with these lions and I said then that I didn't think it was a very good idea.
"At the first hospital, they didn't have a doctor, so they took her to a second hospital where they stitched her up.
Scroll down for more...
"She said it was very painful - she's had the stitches out and her head is still very sore.
"They said it had never happened before. They think that because she's got long, blonde hair the lion thought she was a playmate, another lion."
Her father Colin, a 57-year-old retired oil trader added: "My first reaction was to laugh. It all sounded so unbelievable.
"It all happened so quickly, but she was very, very lucky. However, she has an adventurous nature and it won't put her off."
Miss Drew was yesterday flying out on her latest expedition - to work with disabled children in an orphanage in Peru. |
The Syrian Salafi scene witnessed in October the emergence of a new fighting force called Jaish al-Sham, which appears to have distanced itself from other hard-liners by embracing populist and nationalist slogans.
With the polarization of the Syrian military scene, Salafi organizations such as Ahrar al-Sham have gained power and notoriety. The militant group, which is active around the Idlib region, is also present in Hama and Daraa. According to the University of Stanford’s website, Ahrar al-Sham is perceived as a more moderate Islamist alternative to other Salafi factions.
On Oct. 16, Carnegie Endowment’s researcher Aron Lund, who is the editor of the website Syria in Crisis, published a report on a new faction that appears to have resulted from a split within Ahrar al-Sham.
“The creation of Jaish al-Sham reflects the feeling of unease experienced within Ahrar al-Sham,” Sinan Hatahet, a researcher at think tank Omran Dirasat, told Al-Monitor. Omran Dirasat, based in Istanbul, also published a report on the new faction.
Jaish al-Sham has branches in Aleppo, Idlib and Hama, and is comprised of about 5,000 fighters, although Lund believes the figure to be closer to 1,000, recruited mostly from smaller groups. “The group is expected to consolidate smaller factions,” Syrian Islamic scholar Sheikh Hassan Dgheim told Al-Monitor in a phone interview from Turkey.
Local sources said that the faction is also hoping to be endorsed by the Turkish Military Operation center. What distinguishes Jaish al-Sham from other organizations is that many of the movement’s founders are former members of Ahrar al-Sham, namely Mohammed Talal Bazerbashi (alias Abu Abderrahman al-Souri), Abu Homs Ratyan, Yamin al-Naser (alias Abu Bakr al-Deiri) and Mohamed Ayman Aboul-Tout (alias Abul-Abbas al-Shami).
Souri, a former high-ranking leader of Ahrar al-Sham who had left because of “organizational differences” in 2015, is the new military leader of Jaish al-Sham, according to Dgheim. Ratyan, who used to supervise Ahrar al-Sham’s military activity, has become Jaish al-Sham’s military leader in Aleppo, Dgheim said.
According to Lund, Naser is a former prisoner of the Sednaya military prison and one of the original founders of Ahrar al-Sham in 2011. According to Dgheim, Aboul-Tout, who played a part in the 1979-1982 Muslim Brotherhood insurrection, which took place under the mandate of former President Hafez al-Assad, is considered the Jaish al-Sham spiritual leader.
Most of these figures, explained Hatahet, have either been recently pushed to leave Ahrar al-Sham or left it out of their own volition. “We cannot really say that the Jaish al-Sham founders are more moderate than Ahrar al-Sham’s members — they just have a different political project,” he added. “Unlike Ahrar al-Sham's members, they have clearly declared they should abandon weapons when the war ends.”
The group's strategic goal is to take over Aleppo’s eastern rural areas as well as the Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa regions, according to Dgheim. In addition, they have mentioned that they will be fighting both the regime and the Islamic State, which Dgheim said has made them the first Syrian rebel movement to clearly state its enmity with the terror organization.
Jaish al-Sham has publicized its members to be all native Syrians. Lund underlines as well the group’s use of the Syrian independence flag, “which has become a widely recognized symbol of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad,” but is not used by al-Qaeda-like groups, which generally opt for a banner with the Islamic declaration of faith.
The creation of Jaish al-Sham might be indicative of widening ideological fissures inside Ahrar al-Sham and other Salafi movements. This year was marked by an ongoing rivalry between two competing currents within Ahrar al-Sham, namely between the “more moderate” movement of Labib al-Nahhas, the head of foreign political relations at Ahrar al-Sham, and the more conservative views of the military branch represented by Mohammed Abu Sadek, which is believed to be closer to Jabhat al-Nusra.
The creation of Jaish al-Sham might be also a symptom of rivalry within other groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, with some reports mentioned by Lund pointing to the possible adherence to the group of two Jabhat al-Nusra dissidents, Abu Maria al-Qahtani and Saleh al-Hamawi.
Last June, Islamic sources interviewed in Rihaniya, Turkey, by Al-Monitor had mentioned that Qahtani increased tension with the Jabhat al-Nusra leadership, resulting from Qahtani’s pragmatism and his willingness to work with Free Syrian Army factions, and further hinted to the possible withdrawal of Qahtani from Jabhat al-Nusra.
“These rumors are nonetheless still unconfirmed in spite of the fact that the creation of Jaish al-Sham was welcomed by Qahtani,” Hatahet said.
Hatahet added that the goal of the new organization and how it will fit within the overall Syrian military scene will depend greatly on how effective they will be at raising funds and weapons and their ability to collaborate with other groups, including Ahrar al-Sham.
The new movement’s ability to act nationalistic as a transition between Salafi mujahedeen groups and more moderate rebel groups remains to be seen. Generally speaking, mujahedeen groups such as Ahrar al-Sham or Jaish al-Islam view jihad as a tool against the Assad regime and do not conform to the transnational ideal of jihad of al-Qaeda-like groups, for which jihad across the globe is the ultimate goal.
“Does Jaish al-Sham represent a complementary project to more conservative groups? And is it a reflection of a rethinking process that is occurring at the regional level?” Hatahet asked. “Their success will depend greatly on their performance,” he said.
Performance alone will not determine the fate of Jaish al-Sham. It is certain that further polarization of the Syrian conflict, due to the direct military involvement of yet another player (Russia) in what has become an international proxy war, will make the transition from hard-liners to more moderate a more challenging exercise. |
Two Israeli businessmen - one a relative of Yitzhak Rabin's, and the other a former aide to the murdered prime minister - once visited Bill Clinton's office, at their own request, to try to interest him in some venture. The former U.S. president listened with demonstrative courtesy, went out with them to the lobby and loudly told his staff to please let him know how the two young men were progressing. He then put an arm around the shoulders of one, shook the hand of the other and escorted them to the door with great affection.
"Hurrah!" crowed the former aide as they walked to the elevator. "Clinton will help us!"
U.S. President Barack Obama addressing AIPAC on Sunday. Reuters
What are your thoughts on this issue? Follow Haaretz.com on Facebook and share your views.
"You didn't understand him," sighed his partner, more experienced in the ways of America. "He told us, 'Get out of my sight and don't waste my time.'"
U.S. President Barack Obama, no great friend of Clinton's, adopted a similar mode of address in his speech to the AIPAC conference on Sunday: He spoke American. To translate it into Hebrew would do it an injustice. No one who knows Washington and its ways could mistake the subtext of his words. A strong commitment to Israel? Assuredly. Capitulation to the dictates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Not a chance.
After a speech like that, his meeting with Netanyahu on Monday is almost superfluous: It already seems clear that Obama is determined not to grant him anything.
Obama sent a complex, multifaceted message. He is a loyal friend of Israel, as evidenced by both the record of his actions over the last three years and the testimony of an eminent witness, President Shimon Peres. He is absolutely and unequivocally opposed to Iran having nuclear weapons. But he is first and foremost the U.S. president, whose commitment to do everything possible to thwart Iran's nuclear program has properly been given to the citizens of his own country - the ones who will pay the price of any war with their lives and their wallets - rather than to the impudent leader of a foreign country.
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In the 1980s, Peres watched with growing frustration as the unity government he established together with Likud's Yitzhak Shamir bumped into the sharp right-wing leanings of AIPAC activists, who preferred the Shamir half of the government and embraced U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Republican administration. Peres, in an impulsive gesture, waived the appointment of his own candidate for UN ambassador, Elyakim Rubinstein, in favor of Likud's candidate, Netanyahu. And that is how, with his own two hands, he created the public and media reputation of the man who would defeat him in the prime ministerial race a decade later.
Obama's Democratic administration is not facing an Israeli unity government. But the unique status enjoyed by Peres, to whom Obama is ideologically akin, enables him to serve as a counterweight to Netanyahu.
Unlike the Israeli prime minister, who demonstratively surrounds himself with a screen of security guards provided by the Shin Bet security service, Obama looks like the supremely confident leader of a confident superpower. The cameras don't show a single security guard in his vicinity, though America has had no lack of assassinated presidents, from Lincoln to Kennedy.
Obama made do with the cover provided by one single but noteworthy guard: Peres. The praise Peres showered on Obama was a preemptive strike at Netanyahu, lest he entertain the notion of accusing Obama of indifference to Israel's fate. And Obama repaid the gesture by giving Peres the Presidential Medal of Freedom and 250 warm words. Netanyahu received only a mention of their meeting on Monday and perhaps two or three words more. And his wife, Sara, got nary a word.
This is a campaign year, as Obama noted, and he came to speak to his supporters, donors and voters. In the acronym AIPAC, which stands for American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "American" precedes "Israel." The president is the commander in chief when it comes to the Iranian issue, but the head of his party when it comes to elections.
Therefore, he opened his speech by welcoming the delegates from his hometown of Chicago (where he will also host the NATO summit in another two months ), and especially his party chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Translation: Netanyahu is the ally of the Republicans - those who, in Obama's words, "question my administration's support for Israel" - and Netanyahu's patron, American Jewish businessman Sheldon Adelson, seeks to anoint a Republican in my place. But I, too, understand a bit about politics.
But the game being played by Netanyahu, who openly hopes for Obama's defeat, is dangerous for Israel. It blurs the boundaries between the grand statesmanship of national security considerations and the petty politics of meddling in someone else's elections. That is what lies behind Obama's clarification of the time frame for his policy: He believes that months still remain in which to exhaust the policy of pressuring the regime in Tehran, which is the only one that can decide to abandon the nuclear weapons option. In other words, right now it would be premature and rash to make good on his promise to use military force against Iran as a last resort - especially since its rulers may well insist on rebuilding the facilities destroyed in the operation.
The news in Obama's speech was that it deliberately didn't include any news. Everything he said last night has been said in the past, by him and by other senior administration officials. There's no point in trying to bargain for just a bit more ("Give me something - at least free Jonathan Pollard, so I don't go home empty-handed"). In American, this was a message whose meaning is unmistakeable.
Read this article in Hebrew |
Rebel shadow ministers who defied Jeremy Corbyn and voted against triggering formal Brexit negotiations have been told they can keep their jobs in a fresh blow to his authority.
The Labour leader and his chief whip decided on Friday to let 14 frontbench rebels - 11 shadow ministers and three whips - stay in post despite saying before the vote it would be "obviously impossible" for rebels to carry on in their jobs.
It caps a difficult week for Labour with the party's MPs deeply split over Mr Corbyn's decision to impose a three-line whip to force his MPs to vote for triggering Article 50.
A total of 52 MPs voted against the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, with 17 of his shadow government defying him too.
Party rules state shadow ministers who refuse to obey a three-line whip must resign or face the sack. Four shadow cabinet ministers - Clive Lewis, Rachael Maskell, Dawn Butler and Jo Stevens - quit over the vote.
Corbyn: 'Talk of standing down is nonsense'
However, the 11 shadow ministers and three whips, whose job it is to enforce party discipline, have been told they would be allowed to stay in post.
The decision means that Tulip Siddiq, the former shadow minister for early years, resigned for nothing.
The former frontbencher, who quit her post just days before Wednesday's vote, could have joined the rebels and kept her job.
The 11 shadow ministers who voted against the Bill in its final Commons stage without quitting their jobs were Rosena Allin-Khan, Kevin Brennan, Lyn Brown, Ruth Cadbury, Rupa Huq, Chi Onwurah, Stephen Pound, Andy Slaughter, Catherine West, Alan Whitehead and Daniel Zeichner.
The whips were Thangam Debbonaire, Vicky Foxcroft and Jeff Smith.
Corbyn ally quits as MPs trigger Article 50
A Labour source told Sky News: "Jeremy Corbyn and Nick Brown met earlier today to discuss it and decided, because of the exceptional circumstances of the vote, those who rebelled would not be losing their jobs.
"They are being given a written warning on future conduct and keeping to the whip.
"It was felt that those in the shadow cabinet who took the decision on the vote were bound by collective responsibility [where they have to support the shadow government's position] to obey the whip.
"But those who were not part of the decision, but are on the frontbench, were not given the exceptional circumstances."
Labour sources also said Mr Corbyn told his rebels that if they break the whip again they will be sacked.
Mr Corbyn appeared to have a change of heart over the rebellion after the vote, amid suggestions that he might struggle to restock his frontbench if he sacked all the rebels.
The U-turn comes just days after Mr Corybn was forced to deny he was standing down as leader.
One Labour backbencher described the situation as "farcical". |
OTTAWA — The Canadian Medical Association Journal says it’s time to do away with the Criminal Code’s so-called spanking law.
A strongly worded editorial in the journal Tuesday calls for the repeal of Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which gives parents and teachers a legal defence when they physically discipline children.
“It is time for Canada to remove this anachronistic excuse for poor parenting from the statute book,” editor-in-chief John Fletcher wrote in a signed editorial.
The editorial will likely reignite debate on a controversial topic that has inflamed opinion for decades.
[np-related]
The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Criminal Code provision by a 6-3 margin in a landmark 2004 ruling.
The high court ruled that the provision did not infringe a child’s right to security of the person under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Several private members’ bills to ban corporal punishment have failed in the House of Commons and Senate, most recently in 2008.
In the editorial, Fletcher argues that parents need to be educated on how to discipline their children.
He said the Criminal Code needs to be amended because it tells parents that physical punishment is an acceptable way to discipline children.
To have a specific code excusing parents is to suggest that assault by a parent is a normal and accepted part of bringing up children. It is not
“Although it is not necessary to make spanking a crime to encourage alternative approaches to parenting, Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada sends the wrong message, stating, ’… a parent is justified in using force by way of correction … if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances’.”
The editorial said that police already have discretion to decide when an assault is trivial, but argued that “any bias” should be aimed at vulnerable children.
“To have a specific code excusing parents is to suggest that assault by a parent is a normal and accepted part of bringing up children. It is not. While Section 43 stands, it is a constant excuse for parents to cling to an ineffective method of child discipline when better approaches are available.”
A Library of Parliament analysis of the issue concluded that there was no national consensus on this issue.
It noted that the Supreme Court and the United Nations committee on the rights of the child have divergent views on Section 43.
The UN panel called for the removal of the section.
In 1984, the Law Reform Commission of Canada recommended the repeal of Section 43 as a defence for teachers, but said it should remain for parents, “primarily out of concern that the criminal law would otherwise unduly encroach on family life for every trivial slap or spanking,” the analysis said.
The library also found that public opinion on the topic has also been divided.
It said that a 2003 poll found 69% of Canadians favoured repealing Section 43 for teachers. But only 51% said it should be removed for parents. |
Many psychiatric illnesses are characterized by deficits in the social domain. For example, there is a high rate of co-morbidity between autism spectrum disorders and anxiety disorders. However, the common neural circuit mechanisms by which social deficits and other psychiatric disease states, such as anxiety, are co-expressed remains unclear. Here, we review optogenetic investigations of neural circuits in animal models of anxiety-related behaviors and social behaviors and discuss the important role of the amygdala in mediating aspects of these behaviors. In particular, we focus on recent evidence that projections from the basolateral amygdala (BLA) to the ventral hippocampus (vHPC) modulate anxiety-related behaviors and also alter social interaction. Understanding how this circuit influences both social behavior and anxiety may provide a mechanistic explanation for the pathogenesis of social anxiety disorder, as well as the prevalence of patients co-diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders and anxiety disorders. Furthermore, elucidating how circuits that modulate social behavior also mediate other complex emotional states will lead to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which social deficits are expressed in psychiatric disease.
Social Deficits in Psychiatric Disease
Social deficits have emerged as one of the major symptoms observed in many psychiatric diseases including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and Fragile X (Kennedy and Adolphs, 2012; American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Derntl and Habel, 2013). In addition, some diseases, such as autism and social anxiety disorder, are primarily characterized by deficits in the social domain (Stein and Stein, 2008; Losh et al., 2009; Kennedy and Adolphs, 2012). While impairments in social function are found in a variety of psychiatric disorders (Ormel et al., 1993; Wohlfarth et al., 1993; American Psychiatric Association, 2013), the prevalence of social anxiety disorder and the high rate of co-morbidity between anxiety and autism spectrum disorders highlights the need to understand the relationship between anxiety and social behavior (De Bruin et al., 2007; Simonoff et al., 2008; Stein and Stein, 2008). As a result, in this review we focus on anxiety and its link to deficits in social behaviors. For a more extensive discussion on how social function is affected in psychiatric disease see the review by Kennedy and Adolphs (2012).
Anxiety is characterized as a heightened state of arousal and vigilance that occurs in the absence of an immediate threat (Davis et al., 2009). Although it may have evolved as an adaptive behavioral state, anxiety can become pathological when it is no longer an appropriate response to a given situation (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Anxiety can be conceptualized as having two components, state anxiety and trait anxiety. Whereas trait anxiety refers to an individual's personality and predisposition for anxiety, state anxiety refers to the emotional response generated by a perceived threat (Spielberger et al., 1983; Endler and Kocovski, 2001). Clinically, general anxiety disorder is characterized by excessive and uncontrollable anxiety as a result of non-threatening stimuli, accompanied by defined physiological symptoms that cause serious distress or impairment that must not be caused by another psychiatric or medical disorder (Fricchione, 2004; Hoge et al., 2012; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Although it is implicit in the diagnosis of anxiety disorders that patients likely have an increase in state and trait anxiety, this is not usually directly assessed. As a result, in this review we refrain from using those terms when discussing clinical findings.
In patients with general anxiety, social function is significantly affected and has been found to be an important cause for disability when comparing anxious patients to controls (Schonfeld et al., 1997; Kessler et al., 1999; Kroenke et al., 2007). In young adults with anxiety, these deficits may be even more detrimental because they occur during a period vital for social development (Wittchen et al., 1998). Aside from the impairments and disability in the social domain that occur with generalized anxiety, anxiety itself can be limited to social functioning—which is exemplified in social anxiety disorder. To be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, a patient must suffer from significant distress or impairment that interferes with ordinary routine in social settings, at work or school, or during everyday activities (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Individuals with social anxiety disorder avoid interpersonal interactions whenever possible. If they must endure one, it is with extreme emotional and physical discomfort (Schneier, 2006; Stein and Stein, 2008).
The lack of specific pharmacological treatments for neuropsychiatric diseases such as social anxiety disorder and autism points to a need for a greater understanding of the neural mechanisms that mediate social behaviors and how they are affected by anxiety-related illnesses. Current pharmacological treatment approaches for social anxiety disorder and autism spectrum disorders utilize drugs which are also used to treat other psychiatric disorders (e.g., anxiety and depression) (Gordon et al., 1993; Stein et al., 1998; Fedoroff and Taylor, 2001; Malone et al., 2002; Rodebaugh et al., 2004). In addition, treatments for autism are often ineffective at treating social pathologies (McDougle et al., 2005; but see Hollander et al., 2007; Andari et al., 2010). These data call for a better understanding of the neural correlates underlying these disorders.
Optogenetics and the Use of Animal Models to Study Psychiatric Disease
Experimental approaches in human subjects have yielded significant insights about brain regions involved in anxiety (Etkin and Wager, 2007; Ressler and Mayberg, 2007) and social behavior (Adolphs, 2003; Lieberman, 2007). However, there are considerable ethical and technological limitations to using humans as experimental subjects [Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences, 2002; Institute of Medicine (US) Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System, 2008]. Establishing causal relationships between specific neuropsychiatric symptoms and precise brain mechanisms requires invasive techniques that are not suitable for human subjects. In addition, the expense of drug development for psychiatric disorders dictates that drug targets are validated in more economical systems prior to being tested in humans (Frantz, 2004).
Animal models are one important means to address the limitations of human neuroscience research (Cryan and Holmes, 2005; Nestler and Hyman, 2010). Animal models enable more invasive methodologies and the application of new technologies in order to provide information about the basic mechanisms involved in driving behavior (Nestler and Hyman, 2010; Aston-Jones and Deisseroth, 2013; Cruz et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2013b). One such technology is optogenetics. Optogenetics involves the integration of light-sensitive proteins, called “opsins,” into cell membranes allowing for millisecond temporal control of cellular activity by photostimulation (Boyden et al., 2005; Fenno et al., 2011). The most commonly used light-sensitive opsins are channelrhodopsins (ChRs), halorhodopsins (NpHRs), and Archaerhodopsins (Archs) (Soliman and Trüper, 1982; Mukohata et al., 1988; Nagel et al., 2002, 2003; Zhang et al., 2007a,b). ChRs are a class of cation channels that, when exposed to blue light, cause the depolarization of neuronal membranes where opsins are expressed and results in neuronal excitability (Nagel et al., 2003; Boyden et al., 2005). In contrast, NpHRs are chloride pumps and Archs are proton pumps that, when exposed to yellow light, cause the hyperpolarization of neuronal membranes and results in subsequent inhibition (Zhang et al., 2007a,b; Chow et al., 2010; Gradinaru et al., 2010). Through various targeting strategies, optogenetics allows a high level of spatial and temporal control of specific, molecularly defined neuronal circuits (Tye and Deisseroth, 2012). Importantly, optogenetics has been successfully used to elucidate neuronal circuits involved in many complex behaviors relevant to rodent models of psychiatric disease (Nieh et al., 2013; Deisseroth, 2014).
However, whether it is possible to model psychiatric disease in animals is controversial. For instance, some diagnostic features of psychiatric diseases include terms such as sadness, guilt, delusions, and disorganized thinking (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). These symptoms are difficult to ascertain in animal models. In addition, the variability in clinical presentation of psychiatric diseases makes modeling emotional disease states in animals a challenge. Nevertheless, scientists have been able to successfully create models that recapitulate important features of various psychiatric diseases such as anxiety (Lister, 1990; Lang et al., 2000), depression (Willner, 1984; Castagné et al., 2001), and autism (Lewis et al., 2007; Ting and Feng, 2011).
Using Animal Models to Understand Anxiety and Social Behavior
Neuroscientists have made significant strides toward understanding the neural mechanisms of anxiety (Shin and Liberzon, 2009; Dias et al., 2013). Rodent models of anxiety have been a useful tool in this regard as they have been shown to have both face validity and predictive validity (Lister, 1990; Cryan and Holmes, 2005) and have led to mechanistic and potential therapeutic insights (Cryan et al., 2003; Holmes et al., 2003; Rudolph and Möhler, 2004). In order to study anxiety-like behaviors in rodents, a variety of tests and strategies have been employed. The three main strategies involve ethological or conflict-based tests, classical conditioning tests, and genetic models (Lister, 1990; Cryan and Holmes, 2005). Ethological/conflict-based tests rely on unconditioned responses based on innate behaviors while classical conditioning tests rely on learned responses to experimental conditions. Finally, genetic models rely on specific gene manipulations leading to different levels of “trait” anxiety. This has led to the discovery of a number of promising cellular mechanisms involved in anxiety-related behaviors (Kent et al., 2002; Wu et al., 2008; Johansen et al., 2011). However, it should be noted that in rodents, the tests used to assess “trait” anxiety are the same ones utilized to assess “state” anxiety [i.e., elevated plus maze (EPM), open field test (OFT)], thus it is difficult to dissociate whether genetic mouse models have truly increased trait anxiety or excessive state anxiety to the tested context (Lister, 1990; Cryan and Holmes, 2005).
Thorough explanations of the tests used to study anxiety-like behaviors in rodents have been presented in previous literature (Lister, 1990; Rodgers, 1997; Finn et al., 2003; Fuchs and Flugge, 2006; Cryan and Sweeney, 2011; Campos et al., 2013; Kumar et al., 2013). As such, we will not discuss them in detail here (For an overview of the most commonly used tests, see Table 1).
TABLE 1
Table 1. Tests used to assess anxiety as well as social behavior in rodents.
The combination of these well-established tests with recent advances in optogenetics (Fenno et al., 2011; Tye and Deisseroth, 2012; Deisseroth, 2014) has highlighted the importance of combining these established behavioral models with new technology to uncover the mechanistic basis of anxiety disorders. In fact, various groups have employed tests such as the EPM and OFT to highlight the causal role of various circuits in modulating anxiety-like behaviors in mice (Tye et al., 2011; Yizhar et al., 2011; Felix-Ortiz et al., 2013; Jennings et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2013a,c; Kheirbek et al., 2013; Anthony et al., 2014; Heydendael et al., 2014; Gunaydin et al., 2014) (see Figure 1). In these assays, the temporal precision of optogenetics is underscored by allowing for within-subject and within-session comparisons.
FIGURE 1
Figure 1. Neural circuits implicated in anxiety and social function through optogenetic investigations. The ability to selectively manipulate distinct neuronal populations and projections with high temporal resolution is a significant advantage of optogenetic approaches. Several recent studies have used optogenetic strategies to establish causal relationships between specific neuronal projections and behaviors relevant to anxiety and sociability in non-stressed animals. Abbreviations: ad, anterodorsal subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis; aMH, anterior hypothalamic area of the medial hypothalamus; CeA, central amygdala; Crfr2, type-2 corticotropin-releasing factor receptor; BLA, basolateral amygdala; BNST, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis; DA, dopaminergic neurons; DG, dentate gyrus; Drd1a, dopamine receptor 1a; E/I, manipulation of excitatory/inhibitory balance; GABA, GABAergic neurons; GCs, granule cells; HPC, hippocampus; Hyp, hypothalamus; LH, lateral hypothalamus; LS, lateral septum; mPFC, medial prefrontal cortex; NAc, nucleus accumbens; Orx, orexin neurons; ov, oval nucleus of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis; pLH, posterior lateral hypothalamus; vBNST, ventral subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis; vDG, ventral dentate gyrus; vHPC, ventral hippocampus; VTA, ventral tegmental area. (For review of optogenetic investigations into the neural circuitry involved in aggression and sexual behavior, we refer readers to Anderson, 2012).
Just as in anxiety, animal models have also been a useful tool for scientific inquiry into the brain regions, connections, and signaling involved in social function (Cacioppo, 2002; Insel and Fernald, 2004; Crawley, 2007; Adolphs, 2009; Silverman et al., 2010). Many animals are known to display a wide array of social behaviors that can be assayed in a laboratory setting (Hau et al., 2002). For example, Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster have been successfully used to study the genetic basis of social behaviors such as aggregation, mating, and aggression (Antony and Jallon, 1982; Liu and Sternberg, 1995; Lee and Hall, 2000; Srinivasan et al., 2008; Macosko et al., 2009). For a synopsis of insights provided by the rich genetic toolkits of these model organisms, refer to the review by Sokolowski (2010).
Various studies have utilized the social behaviors found in rodents to find neural substrates of innate behaviors like aggression and mating (Choi et al., 2005; Lin et al., 2011; Anderson, 2012). Others have made strides in understanding the basis of behaviors such as emotional contagion, empathic responses, and observational learning in rodents (Jeon et al., 2010; Atsak et al., 2011; Bartal et al., 2011). Social behavior has also been studied extensively in non-human primates (Brown and Schafer, 1888; De Waal and Suchak, 2010). Primates exhibit a very complex set of social behaviors including the formation of long-term alliances and “friendships” that lead to social interactions and hierarchies that closely resemble human social structures (Cheney et al., 1986; Whiten et al., 1999; Adolphs, 2009).
Another important animal model for studying social behavior is the prairie vole. Prairie voles maintain long-term social attachments after mating, known as a pair bond (Getz et al., 1981; Carter et al., 1995; Wang and Aragona, 2004; Young and Wang, 2004) and thus serve as an appropriate analog to the type of social bonds observed in humans (Cacioppo, 2002; Insel and Fernald, 2004; Adolphs, 2009). To date, anatomical and pharmacological techniques have been used in combination with behavioral assays of pair bonding in prairie voles to reveal the importance of oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, and opioids in selective social attachment (Insel and Hulihan, 1995; Cho et al., 1999; Aragona et al., 2003, 2006; Resendez et al., 2012).
Just as with anxiety, optogenetics offers a great opportunity to begin elucidating the circuits involved in social behavior. Various optogenetic manipulations have provided recent evidence about the neural basis for a number of different rodent social behaviors (Gunaydin et al., 2014; Reviewed by Anderson, 2012; Yizhar, 2012) and application of optogenetic approaches to models such as the prairie vole holds great promise for future insight into the neurobiology of social attachments and behavior.
Experimental/Behavioral Evidence of a Correlation Between General Anxiety and Social Dysfunction
From clinical data, there seems to be a significant link between anxiety and impaired social interaction. Considering the body of experimental evidence on anxiety and social interaction, there is compelling evidence to support a correlation between anxiety and impaired social interaction [Although there is a wide range of social animal behavior, here we focus on non-aggressive, non-sexual, reciprocal social interaction (For overview see Table 1)]. This relationship may provide clues for understanding the mechanism by which co-expression of anxiety and social deficits arise.
Human studies have shown that anxiety disorders are common in individuals with autism. For example, in a side-by-side comparison, children with high-functioning autism have higher levels of reported anxiety than controls without autism (Muris et al., 1998; Gillott et al., 2001; MacNeil et al., 2009; White et al., 2009). Likewise, youth with anxiety disorders have higher scores on the autism spectrum disorder symptom scale than healthy controls (Pine et al., 2008). In patients with Williams Syndrome, social dysfunction increases as anxiety levels increase (Riby, 2013). Further, pharmacological studies have shown that benzodiazepines, commonly prescribed for generalized anxiety, have also been used as treatments for social anxiety disorder (Davidson et al., 1993; Jefferson, 2001; Schneier, 2006). Additionally, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which increase serotonin concentration, have been shown to have enhancing effects on complex social behaviors (Knutson et al., 1998; Harmer, 2002) and have been used for treating general anxiety disorder as well as social anxiety disorder (Stein et al., 1998; Van der Linden et al., 2000; Rickels et al., 2003). Lastly, oxytocin, a neuropeptide well-known for its role in enhancing social function (Domes et al., 2007; Guastella et al., 2008; Meyer-Lindenberg et al., 2011), also carries anxiolytic properties (Labuschagne et al., 2010; Missig et al., 2010). These studies suggest there may be some common neural mechanisms underlying anxiety and social behavior in humans.
Animal studies also support the same relationship between anxiety and impaired social function. Early rodent studies showed that anxiolytics prevent decreases in social interaction that occur when animals are placed in anxiogenic environments (i.e., novel environments, bright light) (File et al., 1976; File and Hyde, 1978; File and Seth, 2003). Further, various autistic mouse models exhibit both pronounced deficits in sociability as well as enhanced anxiety-like behaviors (Nakatani et al., 2009; Silverman et al., 2010; Peça et al., 2011). In line with human literature, serotonin activity in rodents mediates social behaviors such as aggression and social reward (Saudou et al., 1994; Dölen et al., 2013), while reduced serotonin signaling increases anxiety (Heisler et al., 1998; Ramboz et al., 1998; Gross et al., 2002; Akimova et al., 2009). Lastly, oxytocin appears to facilitate social behaviors (Donaldson and Young, 2008; Insel, 2010; Lukas et al., 2011; Meyer-Lindenberg et al., 2011) and attenuate anxiety-related behaviors in rodents (Amico et al., 2004; Insel, 2010; Viviani et al., 2011; Knobloch et al., 2012) (See Table 2 for summary). These studies further demonstrate that anxiety and social function are intimately linked and suggest that pathologies in the respective domains may share a common neural mechanism.
TABLE 2
Table 2. Human and animal data supports a correlation between social dysfunction and anxiety.
Although there is evidence that increased anxiety is correlated with deficits in social function, there are several caveats. For example, in Williams syndrome, there is a tendency to engage in “pro-social,” friendly behavior despite these patients exhibiting increased anxiety (Porter et al., 2009; Stinton et al., 2010; Riby et al., 2013). This finding may be explained by observations that although patients afflicted with Williams syndrome appear to be highly social, they often have abnormal social cognition that can lead to serious deficits in appropriate social interaction (Bellugi et al., 2000; Meyer-Lindenberg et al., 2005; Riby et al., 2013). Another finding at odds with the trend discussed above is that the neuropeptide vasopressin, well-known for its positive influence on social behavior, has also been shown to be anxiogenic in both humans and rodents (Bielsky et al., 2004; Thompson et al., 2006; Bosch and Neumann, 2008; Donaldson and Young, 2008; Simon et al., 2008; Tobin et al., 2010; Neumann and Landgraf, 2012). Lastly, some autistic mouse models contain deficits in social interaction but show no changes in anxiety-like behaviors (McFarlane et al., 2008; Liu and Smith, 2009). These are a few examples that highlight the fact that although anxiety and social dysfunction are often co-expressed, there are exceptions. Importantly, the expression of behaviors relevant to anxiety and social interaction encompasses a wide array of behaviors. Therefore, it is possible that certain subsets of these behaviors share the same neural machinery, while others may not.
The Amygdala and Its Role in Anxiety and Social Behavior
We can begin to understand the connection between anxiety and social behavior by identifying neural substrates that mediate both behaviors. The amygdala is one such region. Initial work elucidating the amygdala's role in fear and anxiety was the observation that bilateral destruction of the amygdala results in attenuated fear (Klüver and Bucy, 1939). Since then, human studies have consistently shown that the amygdala is involved in processing emotional faces, particularly those involving fearful or threatening expressions (Adolphs et al., 1994; Morris et al., 1996; Rauch et al., 2003; Etkin et al., 2004). It has also been shown that patients suffering from anxiety show enhanced amygdala activation to emotional face stimuli when compared to controls and that the degree of activation correlates with the severity of their pathology (Etkin and Wager, 2007; Stein et al., 2007). Further, high anxiety has been shown to be associated with increased amygdala volume and connectivity (Qin et al., 2014). Animal models have also been used to show the role of the amygdala in anxiety-related behaviors (Davis, 1992; Roozendaal et al., 2009). Concordant with human data, amygdala lesions in animals reduce anxiety-related behaviors (Amaral, 2002; Kalin et al., 2004). Lastly, recent optogenetic manipulations of the amygdala were shown to have an acute effect on anxiety-related behaviors (Tye et al., 2011; Felix-Ortiz et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2013a).
Along with its role in anxiety, the amygdala's role in social behavior has also been well-established (Brown and Schafer, 1888; Klüver and Bucy, 1937; Jonason and Enloe, 1971; Kling and Steklis, 1976; Amaral et al., 2003; Adolphs, 2010). Diseases such as autism, Urbach-Wiethe disease, Kluver-Bucy syndrome, and Williams syndrome have provided clues regarding the involvement of the amygdala in social behavior as amygdala damage or dysfunction appears to precipitate aberrant sociality in these diseases (Baron-Cohen et al., 2000; Meyer-Lindenberg et al., 2005; Todd and Anderson, 2009; Adolphs, 2010; Haas et al., 2010). In support of the notion that the amygdala plays a role in social functioning, it has also been found that higher amygdala volume and stronger intrinsic connectivity is correlated with having a larger, more complex social network (Bickart et al., 2011, 2012). In animals, amygdala lesions also result in changes in social behavior (Rosvold et al., 1954; Emery et al., 2001; Amaral et al., 2003; Machado and Bachevalier, 2006; Machado et al., 2008; Adolphs, 2010; Bliss-Moreau et al., 2013). These studies strongly suggest that amygdala circuitry may be involved in mediating aspects of anxiety and social function and that pathology in these domains may arise from a common, aberrant pathway involving the amygdala.
Optogenetic Investigation of the Amygdala and Hippocampus
The amygdala is composed of functionally and anatomically distinct subnuclei that include the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the central amygdala (CeA) (McDonald, 1982a,b; Pape and Pare, 2010). The CeA can be further subdivided into medial (CeM) and lateral (CeL) subnuclei (McDonald, 1982a,b; Sah et al., 2003). Selective manipulation of these various subnuclei using optogenetics has revealed that specific regions have distinct roles in controlling behavior (Ciocchi et al., 2010; Haubensak et al., 2010). For example, Ciocchi and colleagues demonstrated that CeM activation as well as CeL inhibition caused unconditioned freezing, an innate behavioral fear response in rodents (Ciocchi et al., 2010). Amygdala subnuclei not only have distinct functions, they are also intricately connected. The BLA is glutamatergic and sends projections to the CeA, a GABAergic nucleus (Paré and Smith, 1993; Pape and Pare, 2010). Within the CeA, the CeL sends inhibitory projections to the main output nucleus of the amygdala, the CeM (Krettek and Price, 1978). Optogenetics allows for projection-specific manipulations (Stuber et al., 2011; Tye et al., 2011; Tye and Deisseroth, 2012) and because of this technological advantage, researchers are able to examine the distinct role of specific circuits in governing different aspects of behavior. For example, Tye and colleagues showed that the BLA-CeL projections bidirectionally control anxiety-related behaviors (Tye et al., 2011). Interestingly, manipulations of this specific circuit had the opposite effect to manipulations of the BLA as a whole (Tye et al., 2011). This study established the importance of using optogenetics to dissect the functional roles of specific projections.
The amygdala is connected to a number of downstream and upstream regions that may be candidates for circuitry involved in anxiety and social behavior (Davis, 1992; McDonald, 1998; Fendt and Fanselow, 1999; Davidson, 2002). One region of interest is the ventral hippocampus (vHPC) due to its robust and reciprocal connections with the amygdala (O'Donnell and Grace, 1995; Pikkarainen et al., 1999; Chen and Etkin, 2013) and its involvement in both anxiety and social behavior. In humans, the hippocampus and amygdala have been shown to be dependent on one another during the encoding of emotional memories (Richardson et al., 2004). Further, amygdala:hippocampal volume ratio corresponds to the severity of anxiety observed in some patients (MacMillan et al., 2003). In addition to these clues in the human literature, previous work in rodents has shown that the vHPC is important for the expression of fear- and anxiety-related behaviors (Kjelstrup et al., 2002; Bannerman et al., 2004; Kheirbek et al., 2013). Along with its role in anxiety, the vHPC is also involved in social behaviors. In non-human primates, hippocampal lesions lead to abnormal responses to social signals and degradation of social bonds (Machado and Bachevalier, 2006). Experiments using social interaction paradigms in rodents also provided evidence that the vHPC is involved in social behavior (Cadogan et al., 1994; Deacon et al., 2002; McHugh et al., 2004).
The BLA-vHPC Circuit Facilitates Anxiety-Related Behaviors and Impairs Social Interaction
Taken together, the studies discussed above strongly suggest that the amygdala and the vHPC are both involved in mediating anxiety-related behaviors; however, the contribution of the specific connection between these two regions has been poorly understood. As demonstrated by the optogenetic manipulation of specific projections from the amygdala (Tye et al., 2011), specific projections from a brain region may encode information that cannot be gleaned from non-specific activation or inhibition of an entire brain region. Given that the non-specific activation of the BLA was anxiogenic while activation of BLA-CeL was anxiolytic, one possible explanation was that the majority of BLA neurons projected to other regions and mediated an anxiogenic phenotype. Indeed, the BLA projects to many other regions implicated in anxiety, including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and the vHPC (Bishop, 2007; Etkin and Wager, 2007; Kim et al., 2013a).
To study the BLA-vHPC circuit, light-sensitive opsins were expressed in glutamatergic BLA projection neurons and an optical fiber was positioned above BLA axon terminals within the vHPC for precise illumination. In line with hypotheses that posit amygdala hyperactivity underlies anxiety (Anagnostaras et al., 1999; Drevets, 2003; Kalin and Sheltona, 2003; Carter and Krug, 2009), in vivo phasic light activation of ChR2-expressing BLA terminals within the vHPC transiently and significantly increased anxiety-related behaviors in the OFT, EPM, and novelty-suppressed feeding paradigm (Figure 2). These light-evoked anxiogenic effects were prevented by intra-vHPC glutamate antagonism, demonstrating that excitatory projections from the BLA to the vHPC are sufficient to mediate anxiety. Conversely, in vivo light inhibition of BLA axons in the vHPC reduced anxiety-related behaviors in the OFT and EPM (Figure 2) (Felix-Ortiz et al., 2013). Therefore, this study identified the BLA-vHPC as a circuit that bidirectionally governs anxiety-related behaviors in a manner opposite to that of the BLA-CeL circuit (Tye et al., 2011). Together, these data show that BLA projections to different downstream targets can have opposing roles in modulating anxiety-related behavior.
FIGURE 2
Figure 2. Projections from the BLA to the vHPC bidirectionally modulate anxiety-related behaviors as well as social interaction. To perform all of the following experiments, channelrhodopsin-2 or an enhanced version of halorhodopsin was injected into the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and an optical fiber was placed above the ventral hippocampus (vHPC). This allowed selective optogenetic manipulation of BLA projections to the vHPC. (A) In the open field test, decreased time spent in the center was measured as a proxy for increased anxiety. Excitation of BLA-vHPC projections lead to an increase in anxiety-related behaviors while inhibition of BLA-vHPC projections lead to a decrease in anxiety-related behaviors. (B) In the elevated plus maze, decreased time in the open arms was measured as a proxy for increased anxiety. Excitation of BLA-vHPC projections lead to an increase in anxiety-related behaviors while inhibition of BLA-vHPC projections lead to a decrease in anxiety-related behaviors. (C) The resident intruder test was used to measure social interaction. The overall score of social interaction included body sniffing, anogenital sniffing, direct contact, and close following (<1 cm). Activation of BLA-vHPC projections led to a decrease in social interaction while inhibition of BLA-vHPC projections led to an increase in social interaction. (D) The three-chamber test was used as a test for sociability. Time spent in the social zone was measured as proxy for sociability. Activation of BLA-vHPC projections lead to a decrease in time spent in the social zone. (A–D) These experiments demonstrate that anxiety and social interaction can be modulated at the level of the neural circuit. Additionally activation of BLA-vHPC projections leads to increases in anxiety-related behaviors as well as decreases in social interaction while inhibition of the same circuit causes a decrease in anxiety-related behaviors as well as an increase in social interaction. Data are mean values and error bars represent SEM. For the Open Field Test and Elevated Plus Maze, the light-off epochs were pooled and averaged (One Way ANOVA with Bonferroni post test, *p < 0.01). For the Resident Intruder Test and the Three-Chamber Test statistics described in Felix-Ortiz and Tye (2014) (*p < 0.05).
The evidence that anxiety is correlated with deficits in social interaction and that both the amygdala and hippocampus appear to be involved in both processes, prompted investigation into the role of the BLA-vHPC circuit in social behavior. Using the approach described above to target BLA terminals in the vHPC, the effects of BLA-vHPC manipulations on rodent sociability were tested during two behavioral paradigms: the juvenile-intruder test and the three-chamber sociability test. Inhibition of BLA-vHPC projections increased sociability in these two paradigms, while excitation of this pathway decreased sociability (Figure 2) (Felix-Ortiz and Tye, 2014). Just as in the previous study, intra-vHPC glutamate receptor antagonism attenuated the effects of optogenetic stimulation demonstrating that glutamatergic transmission from the BLA to the vHPC was critical for mediating the light-induced changes in social behavior. This study provides evidence that although complex social behaviors likely involve a distributed neural network across multiple brain regions (File and Seth, 2003), social interaction can still be modulated by manipulations of a single circuit element.
Combined, these two studies reveal that the BLA-vHPC circuit can control anxiety and social interaction in the same manner that would be predicted by the animal and human literature discussed throughout this review. This demonstrates that anxiety and social behaviors can be mechanistically linked at the level of the neural circuit. These studies also provide evidence that the co-morbidity of anxiety disorders and autism spectrum disorders (Gillott et al., 2001; Pine et al., 2008; MacNeil et al., 2009) may, in part, be caused by dysfunction of circuits that mediate both anxiety and social behavior.
Conclusion
The above-mentioned studies provide the first evidence that a common circuit can link both social behavior and anxiety. Interestingly, these studies also provide evidence that manipulation of a single population of synapses can effectively change social behavior, which is likely dependent on multiple circuits acting in concert (Baron-Cohen et al., 2000; File and Seth, 2003; Bachevalier and Loveland, 2006; Rushworth et al., 2013). Perhaps the manipulation of BLA-vHPC drives multiple downstream circuits modulating these complex behaviors, or otherwise alters the transmission in a corticolimbic loop that maintains behavioral states. It remains unclear from these studies whether the observed changes in social behavior seen after optogenetic manipulations of BLA-vHPC are due to direct control of social behavior or are secondary to the changes in the state of anxiety.
The fact that social deficits and general anxiety do not always co-occur suggests that the mechanism underlying these two forms of behavior are dissociable (Gonzalez et al., 1996; Schneier, 2006; Liu and Smith, 2009; Toth et al., 2012). It is possible that the difference between the variable social deficits seen in general anxiety and the socially-specific anxiety seen in social anxiety disorder arises from differences in functional connectivity between circuits governing both behaviors. Lastly, the high co-morbidity of anxiety disorders with autism spectrum disorders suggests that these diseases may share common pathological mechanisms (De Bruin et al., 2007; Simonoff et al., 2008). There are mouse models of autism that show co-expression of social deficits and general anxiety-related behaviors, while other models show social deficits without changes in general anxiety-related behaviors (Moy et al., 2008). Elucidating the circuit differences between various models may provide insight as to why some autistic patients have co-morbid anxiety disorders while others do not.
Future studies should aim to differentiate between non-overlapping circuits by identifying specific circuit elements wherein manipulation causes changes in either social behavior assays or anxiety-related behaviors without altering the other. Toward this end, optogenetically stimulating molecularly defined neurons within specific circuits could further elucidate where the separation and overlap lies between circuits controlling social behavior and anxiety. An example of this was seen in recent work which provided evidence that dopaminergic projections from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens modulates social behavior, while dopaminergic projections to the mPFC modulates anxiety with no effect on social behavior (Gunaydin et al., 2014). Indeed, using optogenetics to clarify how circuits governing social behaviors interact with circuits governing other complex behaviors will likely provide insight about the mechanism by which social function is impaired in a wide array of psychiatric diseases.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
We thank Ada C. Felix-Ortiz for thoughtful comments on this manuscript as well as for the use of illustrations. We thank the BCS department and the Picower Institute for support, as well as funding to Kay M. Tye from the PIIF Funds from the JPB Foundation, Whitehall Foundation, Klingenstein Foundation, Whitehead Career Development Professorship, NARSAD Young Investigator Award, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NIH New Innovator Award (DP2-DK-102256-01), and NIMH (R01-MH102441-01). We would also like to thank the BCS department for funding support through the Jeffrey (′76) And Nancy Halis Fellowship and the Henry E Singleton (1940) Fund (Stephen A. Allsop) in addition to the NIGMS T32(GM007484) (Caitlin M. Vander Weele). Lastly, we would also like to thank the NWO Rubicon Program and Simons Center for the Social Brain for funding support (Romy Wichmann).
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Donald Trump and Theresa May. Reuters
LONDON — The UK government has put on hold plans to welcome US President Donald Trump to the UK for at least the next two years, it was confirmed on Wednesday.
The US president was originally scheduled to visit Britain this summer, but he postponed his trip until the autumn following huge public protests across the country.
The visit has now been dropped for the foreseeable future, however, with Prime Minister Theresa May omitting it in her Queen's Speech, which covers the government's plans for the next two years.
The only state visit listed in the speech is a visit in July from the king and queen of Spain.
Traditionally all planned state visits for the period covered by the speech are listed by the Queen in advance.
The decision not to include Trump's visit adds credence to earlier reports that the president was unwilling to visit the UK while the threat of further protests against him remained.
Trump reportedly told May in a phone call that he would not undertake a visit until the British public opinion turned.
The prospect of a visit from the president has become a major controversy in the UK. In February the House of Commons Speaker John Bercow gave a speech revealing that he planned to bar Trump from speaking in Parliament because of the president's attempted travel ban and "our opposition to racism and to sexism".
Watch Bercow applauded after calling to bar Trump |
No statistical methods were used to predetermine sample size. The experiments were not randomized. The investigators were not blinded to allocation during experiments and outcome assessment.
Study design
Patients with high-risk melanoma provided informed consent and were enrolled between April 2014 and October 2015 to a single centre, phase I clinical trial approved by the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Institutional Review Board (NCT01970358). This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Key eligibility criteria were clinically or radiographically evident, pathologically confirmed stage IIIB/C and IVM1a/b melanoma deemed amenable to complete surgical resection and an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status of 0 or 1. Other requirements included an absolute lymphocyte count of ≥800 cells per microlitre, absolute neutrophil count of ≥1,500 cells per microlitre, haemoglobin ≥10 g dl−1, platelet count ≥100,000 cells per microlitre, aminotransferases ≤2 times the upper limit of the normal range, total serum bilirubin ≤1 times the upper limit of the normal range, and serum creatinine ≤1.5 times the upper limit of the normal range. Patients with uveal or mucosal melanoma, previous immune modulating or other cancer-directed therapies (except for IFN-α given as systemic adjuvant therapy for a previous melanoma or melanoma recurrence), active autoimmune disease, or an immunosuppressive condition were excluded.
The primary endpoints of the study were safety and feasibility; secondary endpoints were induction of tumour- and neoantigen-specific cellular immune responses and the number of patients alive at 2 years after melanoma resection. A personal neoantigen-targeting vaccine consisting of long peptides combined into four distinct immunizing peptide pools with 0.3 mg of each peptide admixed with 0.5 mg poly-ICLC per pool in a volume of 1 ml was generated as described below, and was administered subcutaneously on days 1, 4, 8, 15, and 22 (priming phase) and weeks 12 and 20 (booster phase). Each of the four neoantigen vaccine pools per patient was assigned to one of four ‘non-rotating’ extremities (or the left or right midriff as alternative anatomical locations) for each injection.
Clinical assessments
The safety of study treatment was assessed on the basis of the occurrence of adverse events, which were categorized and graded according to National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (version 4.0). During the treatment phase, safety assessments were performed on the day of vaccination and 1 week after each vaccination. During the follow-up phase, safety assessments were conducted every 3 months. Surveillance scans (computer tomography or combined position emission tomography/computer tomography) were performed every 6 months; standard RECIST 1.1 criteria were used for assessment of disease recurrence.
Patient samples
Heparinized blood and serum samples were obtained from study participants on Institutional Review Board-approved protocols at the DFCI. Patient PBMCs were isolated by Ficoll/Hypaque density-gradient centrifugation (GE Healthcare) and cryopreserved with 10% DMSO in FBS (Sigma-Aldrich). Cells and serum from patients were stored in vapour-phase liquid nitrogen until the time of analysis. HLA class I and class II molecular typings were determined by PCR-rSSO (reverse sequence specific oligonucleotide probe), with ambiguities resolved by PCR-SSP (sequence specific primer) techniques (One Lambda).
Tumour samples from patients were obtained immediately after surgery. A portion of the sample was removed for formalin fixation and paraffin embedding (FFPE). The remainder of the tissue was carefully minced manually, suspended in a solution of collagenase D (200 U ml−1) and DNase I (20 U ml−1) (Roche Life Sciences), transferred to a sealable plastic bag, and incubated with regular agitation in a Seward Stomacher Laboratory Blender for 30–60 min. After digestion, any remaining clumps were removed and the single-cell suspension was recovered, washed, and immediately frozen in aliquots and stored in vapour-phase liquid nitrogen. For patients 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 10, the frozen tumour cell suspensions were used for WES and RNA-seq. For patients 4, 6, 8, and 10 WES and RNA-seq were performed on scrolls from the FFPE tissue (Supplementary Information 1a, b).
Generation of personal neoantigen vaccines
WES. Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)-certified WES was conducted by the Clinical Research Sequencing Platform, Broad Institute; CLIA 22D2055652. Library construction from surgical melanoma specimens and matched germline DNA of all ten patients was performed as previously described25. Genomic DNA was sheared, end repaired, ligated with barcoded Illumina sequencing adapters, amplified, and size selected. For patients 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9, whole-exome capture was performed using an Agilent SureSelect Human All Exon 44 Mb version 2.0 bait set (Agilent Technologies)26. For patients 5, 6, 8, and 10, WES was performed using an Illumina Nextera Rapid Capture Exome version 1.2 bait set. The Illumina exome specifically targets approximately 37.7 Mb of mainly exonic regions made up of all targets from the Agilent exome design (Agilent SureSelect All Exon V2), all coding regions of Gencode V11 genes, and all coding regions of RefSeq gene and KnownGene tracks from the UCSC genome browser (http://genome.ucsc.edu). Resulting libraries were then qPCR quantified, pooled, and sequenced with 76 base-paired-end reads using HiSeq 2000 or 2500 sequencers (Illumina). Pooled libraries were normalized to 2 nM and denatured using 0.2 N NaOH before sequencing. Data were analysed using the Broad Picard Pipeline, which includes de-multiplexing, duplicate marking, and data aggregation.
RNA-seq. For RNA-seq library construction, RNA was extracted from frozen cell suspensions (patients 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10) or FFPE samples (patients 4, 5, 6, 8, 10) using a Qiagen RNeasy Mini Kit or Qiagen FFPE RNeasy Kit, respectively. RNA-seq libraries were prepared using an Illumina TruSeq Stranded mRNA Library Prep Kit (for cell suspensions) or Illumina’s TruSeq RNA Access Library Prep Kit (for FFPE samples). Total RNA was quantified using a Quant-iT RiboGreen RNA Assay Kit and normalized to 5 ng μl−1. For patients 1, 2, 3, 7, and 9, each sample was transferred into library preparation which was an automated variant of the Illumina TruSeq Stranded mRNA Sample Preparation Kit. This method preserved strand orientation of the RNA transcript. It used oligonucleotide dT beads to select messenger RNA (mRNA) from the total RNA sample. It was followed by heat fragmentation and complementary DNA (cDNA) synthesis from the RNA template. The resultant 500 bp cDNA then went through library preparation (end repair, base ‘A’ addition, adaptor ligation, and enrichment) using Broad-designed indexed adapters substituted in for multiplexing. For patient 4, the mRNA enrichment step was omitted before library preparation. The resulting libraries were quantified with qPCR using a KAPA Library Quantification Kit for Illumina Sequencing Platforms and then pooled equimolarly. For Illumina sequencing, pooled libraries were normalized to 2 nM and denatured using 0.1 N NaOH before sequencing. Flowcell cluster amplification and sequencing were performed according to the manufacturer’s protocols using either an HiSeq 2000 or HiSeq 2500. Each run was a 101 bp paired-end with an eight-base index barcode read. Data were analysed using the Broad Picard Pipeline, which includes de-multiplexing and data aggregation.
For patients 5, 6, 8, and 10, a RNA transcriptome capture method was used. Using Illumina’s TruSeq RNA Access Library Prep Kit, a stranded cDNA library was prepared from isolated RNA which was then hybridized to a set of DNA oligonucleotide probes to enrich the library for mRNA transcript fragments. The transcriptome capture targeted 21,415 genes, representing 98.3% of the RefSeq exome (and was the same bait set as the Rapid Capture Exome). Flowcell cluster amplification and sequencing were performed according to the manufacturer’s protocols using either a HiSeq 2000 or HiSeq 2500. Each run was a 76 bp paired-end with an eight-base index barcode read. Data were analysed using the Broad Picard Pipeline which includes de-multiplexing and data aggregation.
DNA quality control. Standard Broad Institute protocols as previously described27,28 were used for DNA quality control. The identities of all tumour and normal DNA samples were confirmed by mass spectrometric fingerprint genotyping of 95 common single nucleotide polymorphisms by Fluidigm Genotyping (Fluidigm). Sample contamination from foreign DNA was assessed using ContEst29.
Somatic mutation calling. Analyses of WES data of tumour and matched PBMCs (as source of normal germline DNA) from the patients were used to identify the specific coding-sequence mutations, including single-, di-, or trinucleotide variants leading to single amino-acid missense mutations and small insertions/deletions. Output from Illumina software was processed by the ‘Picard’ data processing pipeline to yield BAM files containing aligned reads (bwa version 0.5.9, to the NCBI Human Reference Genome Build hg19) with well-calibrated quality scores27,30. Somatic alterations were identified using a set of tools within the ‘Firehose’ pipeline (http://www.broadinstitute.org/cancer/cga). Somatic single nucleotide variations were detected using MuTect (Firehose version 13112); somatic small insertions and deletions were detected using Indelocator27 and Strelka31. All indels were manually reviewed in Integrative Genomics Viewer32. All somatic mutations, insertions, and deletions were annotated using Oncotator33. The ABSOLUTE algorithm (version 1.1) was used to calculate the purity and ploidy of the samples. RNA-seq data were processed using PRADA software34. Comparisons of gene expression were conducted against data from GTEx (Analysis V6, dbGaP accession number phs000424.v6.p1, doi:10.1038/ng.2653) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) (Broad Institute TCGA Genome Data Analysis Center (2016): Firehose stddata__2016_01_28 run. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. doi:10.7908/C11G0KM9).
Identification of target epitopes for peptide design. NetMHCpan version 2.4 was used to identify patient-specific mutation-containing epitopes that were predicted to bind to the MHC class I molecules19,35,36. Thirty peptides of 15–30 amino acids in length (‘long peptides’) from up to 30 independent mutations were selected and prioritized for peptide preparation. Epitopes were chosen for inclusion on the basis of a pre-defined set of criteria in the following rank order: (1) neoORFs which included predicted binding epitopes; (2) high predicted affinity (<150 nM) somatic single nucleotide variations due to anchor residue changes; (3) high-affinity (<150 nM) somatic single nucleotide variations due to mutations in positions other than anchor residues; (4) neoORFs with no predicted binding epitopes; (5) lower affinity (<150–500 nM) versions of (2) and (3).
Mutations in oncogenes were given highest priority within each ranked group; otherwise epitopes were ranked by predicted mutated peptide affinity. Only somatic single nucleotide variations that demonstrated expression of the mutated allele were used. Additionally, a variety of possible biochemical properties (hydrophobicity, presence of multiple cysteines) that may have affected the synthesizability or solubility of the long peptide were considered.
Synthesis of long peptides, pooling, and final vaccine preparation. GMP peptides were synthesized and purified (CS Bio) using standard solid-phase synthetic peptide chemistry and reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). Up to 20 peptides were formulated in an aqueous solution containing ≤4% DMSO in isotonic dextrose and mixed into a maximum of four pools (three to five peptides per pool, with a final dose of 0.3 mg of each peptide per vaccine). On the day of vaccine administration, each peptide pool was admixed with 0.5 mg poly-ICLC (Hiltonol; Oncovir) by syringe-to-syringe transfer at the DFCI Clinical Pharmacy.
Melanoma cell-line generation
Fresh tumour-cell suspensions or thawed cryopreserved cells were washed and cultured in tissue culture plates containing OptiMEM GlutaMax media (Gibco, Thermofisher) supplemented with fetal bovine serum (5%), sodium pyruvate (1 mM), penicillin and streptomycin (100 U ml−1), gentamycin (50 μg ml−1), insulin (5 μg ml−1), and epidermal growth factor (5 ng ml−1; Sigma-Aldrich). Cell cultures were dissociated and passaged using versene (Gibco, Thermofisher). The expanding cell lines were tested mycoplasma free and verified as melanoma through immunohistochemical stains using antibodies against the melanoma markers HMB45, MITF, MART-1, Melan-A, and S100 that were performed in the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Specialized Histopathology Core Laboratory.
Immunohistochemical evaluation of primary melanoma cells
Dual immunohistochemical staining of the antigen presentation components: HLA class I (Abcam, EMR8-5, 1:6,000) and HLA class II (Dako, CR3/43 M0775, 1:750) with the melanoma marker SOX10 (EP 268, Cell Marque, 1:1,500) was performed using an automated staining system (Bond III, Leica Biosystems) according to the manufacturer’s protocol, as previously described37. Semi-quantitative scoring was performed for the intensity of positive staining of melanoma cell membranes for the marker of interest (0, negative; 1, weak; 2, moderate; 3, strong) and for the percentage of positive staining malignant cells (0–100%). A cumulative ‘H score’ was obtained by multiplying intensity score (0–3) by the percentage of malignant cells with positive staining (0–100%; with any intensity of positive staining). Stained slides were first reviewed and scored independently by two individuals and subsequently reviewed together with a final, consensus score tabulated as previously described37.
Generation and detection of patient neoantigen-specific T cells
PBMCs were cultured in RPMI-1640 medium supplemented with l-glutamine, non-essential amino acids, HEPES, β-mercaptoethanol, sodium pyruvate, penicillin/streptomycin (Gibco), and 10% AB-positive heat-inactivated human serum (Gemini Bioproduct). For in vitro expansion (‘pre-stimulation’) of antigen-specific T cells, PBMCs were stimulated in 24-well cell culture plates at 5 × 106 cells per well with individual (2 μg ml−1) or pooled peptides (each at 2 μg ml−1) in the presence of IL-7 (20 ng ml−1; R&D Systems). On day 3, low-dose IL-2 (20 U ml−1; Amgen) was added. Half-medium change and supplementation of cytokines were performed every 3 days, as described previously38. After 10–21 days, T-cell (referred to as ‘T-cell lines’) specificity was tested against peptide, minigenes, or autologous tumour by interferon (IFN)-γ ELISPOT or CD107αβ degranulation assay in RPMI-1640 medium supplemented with penicillin/streptomycin and 10% FBS (complete RPMI). For deconvolution of CD8+ T-cell responses, CD8+ T cells were enriched with CD8+ T-cell Isolation Kit beads (Miltenyi Biotec) before plating for ELISPOT.
Antigen formats for immune monitoring
Assay (ASP) and predicted class I epitope peptides (EPT) were synthesized and lyophilized (from either JPT Peptide Technologies; or RS Synthesis) (>80% purity). ASP were 15–16 amino acids and overlapped by at least 11 amino acids, covering the IMP sequence. EPT were 9–10 amino acids. Peptides for generation of class II tetramers were synthesized to >90% purity (21st Century Biochemicals). Minigenes were constructed39 such that (1) for non-synonymous mutations, they encoded the mutated amino acid and surrounding upstream and downstream native amino acids for a total length of ~25 amino acids; (2) for frame-shift mutations, they encoded the entire corresponding immunizing peptide. Multiple minigenes (3–7 per plasmid) for a given patient were arranged in tandem without additional linker sequences and synthesized as a gBlock (Integrated DNA Technologies). Each tandem minigene construct was inserted into a pcDNA3.1 vector using available EcoRI and BamHI cut sites. RNA was generated by in vitro transcription of the tandem minigene plasmids using an mMESSAGE mMACHINE Ultra Kit (Thermo Fisher). Twenty micrograms of the in vitro transcription RNA was introduced into autologous positively selected CD19+ B cells (CD19 Microbeads, Miltenyi Biotec) by nucleofection using V-buffer and the X-001 program (Amaxa Cell Line Nucleofector Kit V, Lonza). The B cells were used within 24 h of transfection. Transfection efficiency was typically 70–85%, on the basis of 24 h green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression after nucleofection with control in vitro transcription RNA generated using a pcDNA3.1-GFP plasmid. Tandem constructs containing the wild-type versions of the minigenes with non-synonymous mutations were also similarly designed.
In some experiments, antigen-specific T cells were tested against autologous melanoma cells. In other experiments, autologous irradiated melanoma cells were co-cultured with autologous dendritic cells. Immunomagnetically isolated CD14+ cells (Human CD14 MicroBeads; Miltenyi Biotec) were cultured in complete RPMI containing 120 ng ml−1 GM-CSF and 70 ng ml−1 IL-4 at 3 × 106 cells per well in a six-well plate. Media were exchanged on days 3 and 5. For feeding of melanoma cells to autologous dendritic cells, melanoma cells were irradiated with 150 Gy and cultured in serum-free RPMI overnight. Dendritic cells were cultured with or without melanoma cells in complete RPMI (0.25 × 106 dendritic cells and 0.25 × 106 melanoma cells) in a 48-well plate for 5 h at 37 °C, followed by addition of 30 μg ml−1 poly-inosinic-poly-cytidylic acid (Sigma-Aldrich) to induce dendritic cell maturation. After overnight culture, dendritic cells were harvested and used as APCs on ELISPOT assays.
IFN-γ ELISPOT assay
IFN-γ ELISPOT assays were performed using 96-well MultiScreen Filter Plates (Millipore), coated with 2 μg ml−1 anti-human IFN-γ mAb overnight (1-D1K, Mabtech). Plates were washed with PBS and blocked with complete RPMI before use. For pre-stimulated T cells, 5 × 103 T cells and 1 × 104 CD8+ T cells for detection of CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses, respectively, were co-cultured with 1 × 104 autologous CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell-depleted PBMCs, 8 × 104 B cells, 1 × 104 autologous tumour cells, or 5 × 103 autologous dendritic cells, unless otherwise stated (Fig. 3e: 2 × 104 CD8+ T cells plated; Fig. 4c: 1 × 104 T cells plated). APCs were pulsed with peptides (2–10 μg ml−1), or peptides were directly added to the ELISPOT wells with APCs and incubated with T cells overnight in complete RPMI at 37 °C. For ex vivo ELISPOT, 2 × 105 PBMCs were plated with 2 μg ml−1 peptide and incubated overnight. Plates were rinsed with PBS containing 0.05% Tween-20 and then 1 μg ml−1 anti-human IFN-γ mAb (7-B6-1-Biotin, Mabtech) was added, followed by Streptavidin-ALP (Mabtech). After rinsing, SIGMA FAST BCIP/NBT (5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl phosphate/nitro blue tetrazolium; Sigma-Aldrich) was used to develop the immunospots, and spots were imaged and enumerated (Cellular Technology Limited). For some experiments, APCs were cultured on the ELISPOT plate with HLA blocking antibodies (10 μg ml−1; pan anti-DR (clone: L243) or anti-HLA I (clone: W6/32)) for 1–2 h in advance of the addition of peptides and T cells to the wells. Ex vivo responses were scored positive if >55 spot-forming cells were detected and were at least 1.5 s.d. over the DMSO control (>3 s.d. over background for patients 5 and 6). For Fig. 2b, for each patient, the numbers of spot-forming cells were regressed on assay, time, and the interaction of assay and time using repeated-measures models with an unstructured covariance. P values (t-test) for the comparisons of each pool against the mock were adjusted using the Benjamini–Hochberg procedure to maintain an overall alpha value of 0.05 at each time within each patient.
ICS and CD107αβ degranulation assay
For ex vivo intracellular cytokine detection, PBMCs were stimulated with 5 μg ml−1 peptide or 50 ng ml−1 PMA (Sigma-Aldrich) and 1 μg ml−1 ionomycin (Sigma-Aldrich) in complete RPMI with 10 μg ml−1 brefeldin A (Sigma-Aldrich) at 37 °C overnight. For detection of cytokines from pre-stimulated CD8+ T cells, 2 × 106 T cells were re-stimulated with 1 × 106 T-cell-depleted PBMCs pulsed with 5 μg ml−1 peptide in complete RPMI with 10 μg ml−1 brefeldin A at 37 °C overnight. Subsequently, cells were stained with antibodies against surface markers for 20 min at 4 °C, followed by fixation with 1% formaldehyde at 4 °C for 20 min, and then stained with antibodies against cytokines in 0.5% saponin solution at 4 °C for 1 h to overnight. Anti-CD4 antibody (conjugated with PerCP-Cy5.5, clone OKT-4, eBioscience), CD8 (PE-Cy7, SK1, eBioscience), CD3 (APCCy7, HIT3a, Biolegend), CD14 (BV510, M5E2, Biolegend), CD19 (BV510, HIB19, Biolegend), IFN-γ (APC, 4S.B3, Biolegend), TNF-α (BV421, Mab11, Biolegend), and IL-2 (PE, MQ1-17H12, Biolegend) were used. A CD107αβ degranulation assay was performed by culturing 5 × 105 T cells and 1.5 × 105 target minigene-expressing B cells with Alexa Fluor 647-conjugated CD107α (H4A3) and CD107β (H4B4) antibodies (BD Biosciences) in complete RPMI for 6 h at 37 °C. Cells were stained with anti-CD4, -CD8, and -CD69 (Pacific Blue, FN50, Biolegend) antibodies for 30 min at room temperature, followed by fixation with 4% formaldehyde. Flow cytometry analysis was performed on a BD FACSCanto II High Throughput Sampler (HTS) instrument.
Generation of HLA-DR tetramers loaded with defined neoantigen peptides
DR1/CLIP or and DR4/CLIP complexes were expressed in stably transfected CHO cells as previously described40. The DRα and DRβ chain extracellular domains carried Jun and Fos dimerization domains; a C-terminal BirA site was attached to the DRα chain to enable site-specific biotinylation. The peptide binding site was occupied by a CLIP peptide that was linked through a thrombin-cleavable linker to the N terminus of the mature DRβ chain. DR/CLIP complexes were purified from CHO cell supernatants by affinity chromatography using mAb L243 (American Type Culture Collection). Purified DR molecules were biotinylated with a 1:20 molar ratio of BirA:DR as described40. Before peptide loading, DR complexes were treated with thrombin for 2 h to release the CLIP peptide. Peptide-exchange reactions were performed with a 15-fold molar excess of dansyl-labelled peptides (21st Century Biochemicals) in a buffer containing 50 mM sodium citrate, 50 mM J10 (ref. 41), 100 mM NaCl, and 1× protease inhibitor cocktail overnight at 30 °C. DR/peptide complexes were separated from unbound peptide using a Superose 12 HPLC gel filtration column (Amersham). DR molecules loaded with defined neoantigen peptides were then isolated using an anti-dansyl affinity column. Complexes were eluted from the column using 50 mM CAPS, pH 11.5, and neutralized with 1 M phosphate, pH 6.0. Biotinylated DR/peptide monomers were buffer exchanged with PBS, concentrated to >1 mg ml−1, and frozen in aliquots at −80 °C. Fluorophore-labelled streptavidin (either PE or APC) was added to biotinylated DR/peptide monomers at a 1:4 molar ratio in four separate additions over 60 min at room temperature.
Tetramer labelling of CD4+ T cells
Patient PBMCs that were CD4-enriched using a CD4+ T-cell Isolation Kit (Miltenyi Biotec) were stained with both APC- and PE-labelled tetramers at 20 μg ml−1 in RPMI containing 10% FBS, 10 mM HEPES, 2 mM glutamine and 50 U ml−1 penicillin/streptomycin for 1 h at room temperature. DR/CLIP tetramers were used as negative controls. The cell density during staining was 10 × 106 to 20 × 106 cells per millilitre. Unbound tetramer was removed using two washes with flow staining buffer (PBS + 2% FBS). Cells were then stained with Live/Dead Aqua (Invitrogen) for 15 min at room temperature, followed by staining with anti-CD4 (Alexa Fluor700, OKT4, Biolegend), anti-CD3 (BV421, UCHT1, Biolegend), and anti-CD14/CD19 (BV510) for 20 min at 4 °C. Cells were washed once with PBS and analysed on a BD Aria cell sorter.
Single-cell trancriptome data generation and analysis
Single-cell transcriptomes of CD4+ T cells before vaccination and of class II tetramer-positive CD4+ T cells after vaccination were generated using the CEL-Seq2 protocol with the following modifications: single cells were sorted into 0.6 μl of 1% NP-40 buffer in a 384-well plate, into which 0.6 μl of barcoded reverse transcriptase reaction primers and a mixture of dNTPs were added. The plate was incubated at 65 °C for 5 min, and then moved immediately to ice. Reverse transcription, the second-strand synthesis reaction, and the in vitro transcription reaction were performed as previously described42. Amplified RNA was fragmented at 80 °C for 3 min and cleaned up with RNAClean XP beads. Amplified RNA was converted to cDNA using random priming, and then Illumina adaptor sequences were added by PCR. Paired-end sequencing was performed on a HiSeq 2500 in high-output run mode. Raw universal molecular identifier data were first filtered to remove all universal molecular identifiers that had fewer than ten corresponding reads. All cells that had at least 200 genes with non-zero universal molecular identifier counts and <25% of universal molecular identifiers originating from mitochondrial genes were retained for downstream analysis. All genes that were not detected in at least three cells were excluded. Linear (principal components) and nonlinear (t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding) dimensionality reduction was performed with the Seurat package43. The SCDE package44 was used to identify differentially expressed genes.
Data availability
WES and RNA-seq data are deposited in dbGaP ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/gap/cgi-bin/study.cgi?study_id=phs001451.v1.p1). All other data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. |
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Campaigners have occupied the Carnegie Library following the planned 6pm closing of the Herne Hill public building by Lambeth Council for the final time this evening.
A peaceful vigil took place between 4pm – 6pm outside the library, with a celebration of the history and the people that make the building so special taking place inside.
When it came to the time for the Council to padlock the doors ahead of what appears to be an uncertain future, campaigners from the Friends of Carnegie Library refused to leave.
A spokesperson told Brixton Buzz:
“This is not Lambeth Council’s library to close after 110 years, it belongs to the locality. We are staying here to publicise just what Lambeth’s Labour council is doing to our local libraries – ripping the heart out of them to turn them into unwanted gyms.”
The aim is to keep the library operating independent of the political interference of Lambeth Council, and showcase the Carnegie as a beacon of resistance to library cuts in Lambeth and across the country.
Padlocks were changed by Council staff on Wednesday evening. The Council has even gone to the expense of hiring 24 hour security guards to keep a look out at the Carnegie.
It will actually cost the Progress led Council more money to keep the Carnegie closed than it will to keep it open, in the absence of any business plan from Greenwich Leisure Ltd.
Cllr Jane Edbrooke, [right] the Progress Cabinet member for Book-ish Gyms, remains defiant in wanting to gift the public building to her Third Way chums.
She has also managed to manufacture an argument between GLL and the Carnegie Trust – the ‘independent’ group that close connections with the Progress Cabinet.
Brixton Buzz reported yesterday how the farce of the book-ish gyms has now led the Trust to consider excavating the basement of the Grade II listed building, just to appease their Progress pals and find somewhere for GLL to place their treadmills.
In the absence of any viable plan from Lambeth Council or GLL, the Friends group now plans to keep the library open as a community run facility – the true definition of a Co-operative Council. |
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Like this stuff? Get it delivered to your email inbox daily! Sign up below! Archives | Share: At some point this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow, I'll be rolling out a new design for Now I Know: a totally fresh design which includes ad units and some recent issues linked in the sidebar. I don't have a preview available but if you want the back story, I wrote it up here. The inclusion of ad units will help support Now I Know as it grows (I hope!) in its second year. -- Dan
Tax Refund
The minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour. It is €8.63 per hour in the United Kingdom and €8.40 per hour for some trades in Germany.
In 2004, Juergen Graefe, a German lawyer, did about an hour of work and earned a bit more than that. No, make that a lot more than €8.40 -- his fee came out to €440,234 (about $570,000 at the time).
In 2001, a German pensioner went into the tax collector's office to fill out his tax return. He put down an annual income of €11,000 -- which, it turns out, was an error. He filed a correction, restating his income to be €17,000. Unfortunately, the tax official working on his paperwork failed to enter the correction properly. Instead, the pensioner's income was listed at an absurd €1,100,017,000 -- the GDP of a tiny country.
Given those "earnings," the pensioner's tax bill came in at €287 million and change.
Clearing up the error was not hard. The pensioner's lawyer, Dr. Graefe, simply wrote a letter to the German tax authorities explaining the error. His client's tax liability was corrected and he went on with his life. Dr. Graefe, thereafter, looked to collect his fee.
In the United States, typically, the client pays the fee for services provided, and in a matter like this, the fee would (likely) be an hourly one; the American equivalent of Dr. Graefe would probably earn $100 or so. Not bad. But in Germany, the law holds that when an attorney wins such a reduction, the lawyer's fee -- paid for by the tax man -- is a percentage of said reduction. In this case, Graefe's cut should have been about €450,000, but of course, the tax department disputed this amount as excessive.
The court agreed with Graefe, who collected his world-record fee.
Bonus fact : Before 1999, it was legal in Germany to bribe foreign public officials -- and companies were able to deduct any such bribes (as a "business expense") from their tax returns.
Related reading : "Great Government Goofs: Over 350 Loopy Laws, Hilarious Screw-Ups and Acts-Idents of Congress," by Leland Gregory. $12.00, 4.5 stars on 7 reviews. Not available on Kindle. Archives | Subscribe | Share: |
In recent years Chinese TV dramas have won lots of media attentions and gradually obtained lots of favors in the world. Chinese TV series are similar to TV plays in the USA, but are often longer, and tell a story with complicated plots. If you want to follow Chinese TV series, you should check our list of the 10 most popular websites to watch Chinese TV series online for free without downloading.
When watch videos outside China, you will often find the screen says: “抱歉， 此视频只限中国内地播放. Sorry this video can only be streamed within Mainland China”. That’s because foreign countries are very strict with copyright. TV plays and movies on Chinese video sites such as Youku, Tudou and iQiyi are only available to users in mainland China. If you want to watch films and television shows in your own country, you need to use VPN service to bypass the IP detection. In the past year, I have tested about a dozen of VPNs with servers in China, and I find HideMyAss has the best speed and its servers in China work well. HideMyAss has 2 servers Bejjing, capital of China. Its VPN service also offers 30 day money back guarantee. You can SAVE 56% for its annual plan by click Here.
Youku.com is China’s leading Internet video company. Its TV Chanel offers thousands of latest TV dramas that just aired on China television screens. Youku also make mini television series itself and some of which are very popular among netizens. At present these contents are just available to IP from China, people from other regions can only use VPN to watch it.
2. Baidu TV
Baidu TV Series Channel is attached to Baidu, China’s largest search engine. The site provides a large number of up-to-date hit dramas and feature programs. With considerable financial strength, Baidu can provide viewers with the up-to-date the most complete TV plays.
3. 360 TV
360 TV is owned by Qihoo 360, a leading Internet platform company in China. The site provides many resource links which can direct you to the popular TV series from other websites. Users can change among its many links until find the site with the best watching experience.
4. Letv
LeTV, a popular Chinese streaming website based in Beijing, supplies legal TV shows and movies from countries and regions such as Mainland China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand. For users from outside Mainland China VPN service is needed to unlock its region restriction.
5. QQ TV
QQ is the largest free instant messaging application in China and its TV Channel provides the full-episode TV plays online. Its mobile app are supports Android, iOS and Windows Phone platform.
6. Tudou TV
Tudou, a Chinese video sharing website, owns many full-length TV series, TV shows and movies from China, South Korea the USA, England and other regions. All these dramas are available on its mobile app and are free to download.
7. Kankan TV
Xunlei Kankan is a video-on-demand site which provides high-definition TV and other video contents. At present there is no region restriction for all its dramas, users can watch them anywhere in the world. Xunlei Kankan is also available on mobile platforms including Android and iOS.
8. PPTV If you are a Chinese drama lover, PPTV is the right place to go. PPTV provides video-on-demand of dramas and other contents. I strongly recommend it for its well-designed interface, fast speed and vast drama resources. PPTV is available for a variety of systems, including windows PC, Mac, Android mobile phones, and iPads etc. It is absolutely free to watch all its dramas online from anywhere in the world.
9. Iqiyi TV Iqiyi.com, like Hulu in the US, is a streaming video platform that focuses on Chinese HD TV series and movies. The site is owned by Baidu, China’s largest Internet search engine. Besides the latest copyrighted video contents, IQiyi also produces its own content including drama programs, that cater to young people.
10. Sohu TV Sohu Video channel provides the latest legitimate HD TV plays from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The site belongs to Sohu.com, one of the biggest China Internet portal. Its strong financial strength guarantees many exclusive dramas and TV shows. The site also produces video contents itself. |
From hanging out with George Clooney and Princess Diana to making a terrible faux pas with billionaire Bill Gates, the pop star turned vicar Richard Coles gives Event chapter and verse on his extremely quirky parish life
The Reverend Richard Coles first found fame with Eighties pop band The Communards, whose hit Don’t Leave Me This Way became the biggest-selling single of 1986.
Today he is best known as the presenter of Radio 4’s morning magazine programme Saturday Live – which attracts two million listeners – and as a regular contributor to Pause For Thought on the Chris Evans Radio 2 breakfast show.
Richard Coles with his dogs at St Mary the Virgin, Finedon
His day job, however, is as vicar of St Mary the Virgin, Finedon, Northamptonshire (he was the inspiration for Tom Hollander’s character in the BBC2 sitcom Rev). He revealed in his 2014 memoir Fathomless Riches how he enjoyed sex with strangers in car parks, took drugs and lied about having HIV.
Today, he lives in a celibate civil partnership with his partner the Rev David Coles (né Oldham).
In his new book, Bringing In The Sheaves, from which we print exclusive extracts here, Coles draws on his 11 years in the clergy, with all the humour, quirky characters and incidents that life – and death – serve up.
WELL THAT TOLD ME
I’m sitting at my desk in my study. The phone rings. Someone has called to tell me a parishioner is dying and would I go to see him?
When I arrive the man is in and out of lucidity. I talk to him but I am not sure if he understands much or anything of what I say.
I anoint him with holy oil and he seems to respond to that, to stir a little, so I sit beside him for a while and read to him from the Psalms.
Onstage with Jimmy Somerville in The Communards in 1985;
After a while he seems to wake almost, and taking this as encouragement I carry on until we reach the great Psalm 130, De Profundis: ‘Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice’.
He stirs again and tries I think to say something, so I pull my chair up closer. He looks at me and with a great effort says, ‘Shut up you stupid t***.’
MY SHIRLEY BASSEY MOMENT
When I presided at the Eucharist for the first time, after my ordination to the priesthood in 2005 at St Botolph’s Church in Boston, Lincolnshire, I wore a special chasuble – the long poncho a priest wears at the altar – made for the occasion, in wild scarlet silk with a hanging orphrey [embroidery].
As I processed down the nave I overheard one church warden, a solid Lincolnshire type, say to another, ‘He looks like Shirley Bassey.’
Richard with Saturday Live cohost Aasmah Mir
After Boston I went to be curate at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, in west London. I was licensed and installed as 59th Vicar of St Mary the Virgin, Finedon, in Northamptonshire, in 2011. Once, I was in the front garden when a lady peered over the fence. ‘Are you the new chap?’ she asked. I said I was. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we thought you were black.’ I wondered why. ‘We thought you were in The Commodores.’ (Coles’s band was The Communards.)
That same year I became a co-presenter of Saturday Live. I stay in a hotel round the corner from New Broadcasting House on Friday nights, leaving at 6.30am for work.
In the office we sign off the scripts, gossip, and then at 8.30am Aasmah Mir, my co-presenter, and I go to the Today studio on the third floor.
They are approaching the end of their programme and there is usually a demob-happy atmosphere, which suits the tone of our visit to trail what’s coming up in half an hour on Saturday Live.
Care must be taken not to sound too breezy if the news is especially bad that day, or if there is a big interview to follow.
Several times I have alerted listeners to a lady from the bat protection league, or a man dressed up as Henry VIII, or a soap star’s live confessions, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer, sitting next to me, pores over a page of scribbled calculations...
EVERYTHING IS BRILLIANT
In corporate life, I have noticed, it is getting harder and harder to say that things are bad. I was once sent on a ‘half-day seminar’, as it was ominously called, with a BBC bigwig.
A group of us from across the organisation spent the morning being told how marvellous everything was, and how exciting were the challenges that faced us.
Coles with Jimmy Somerville in The Communards in 1987;
The seminar concluded with a rather breathless speech from a young apparatchik from Corporate Affairs, intended to raise morale and get us fully on board with the new regime. Any questions? There was silence until a veteran reporter from the back said, ‘Why don’t you f*** off, Tinker Bell?’
At the BBC we often gather in ‘Del Boy’, one of the meeting rooms in New Broadcasting House named after the Corporation’s comedy greats, for the Saturday Live Friday meeting.
We go through what’s on the following day’s programme while around us, semi- visible through semi-opaque glass walls, other BBC people are in meetings.
Once a group of stern-looking managers broke into a chorus of Bring Me Sunshine when they noticed that they were in ‘Morecambe and Wise’, and two of them did that funny skip with the hand gestures round the table.
GOOD EVANS, IT'S GEORGE!
I am in early to do Pause For Thought on the Chris Evans breakfast show. You can always tell the star wattage on the show by the number of autograph collectors gathered round the door.
Coles with Radio 2 DJ and Event columnist Chris Evans
Inside Chris is sitting behind the desk talking to a man with an improbably gravelly voice.
Another man, looking like he had got up for this too early, is sitting in his hat and coat.
As I sit down I say hello to the man in the hat and coat and he says ‘Hello, Sir’ in reply.
It’s only after I’ve done my piece that I realise it was George Clooney.
RETURN OF THE LUFTWAFFE
At St Botolph’s, or Boston Stump, as it’s known, I once saw an old man walking around on his own looking nostalgic, so I introduced myself and asked if he’d visited before.
Not exactly, he replied, in accented English, but it was a place of happy memories.
He’d been in the Luftwaffe during the war, a bomber pilot, and on the return leg of a raid when they saw the tower of the Stump they knew they were heading out to the North Sea and to safety.
Richard with his partner, David
I wondered what drew him back to Boston Stump. Was he seeking forgiveness of some kind? And if he was would we be capable of giving it?
LET US KRAY
Betty, who comes to morning prayer, tells me that she had been a nurse during the war at the London Hospital and lived in the East End where she was adopted by a family.
But she could never understand why the mother of the household never had to queue when she went to the butcher, or why people went suddenly quiet when her twin boys, Ronnie and Reggie, turned up to help out with the shopping.
CELEBRITY WHINGERS
When I was curate at St Paul’s, every Advent we hosted carol services for the big charities.
Princess Diana. I met her, precisely, twice – once with a semi-circle of others at a charity auction at Christie’s, and once at the London Lighthouse, of which we were both patrons
The celebrities would arrive early to run through their readings and my job was to take them to the Vicarage for a glass of champagne and a pee before they were shown to the front pew.
One year one of them cornered me and complained that his reading was not the ‘King James Version’ that he preferred.
What we had given him to read actually was the ‘King James Version’, or Authorised Version as it is properly known here, but I just adopted my ‘how interesting’ face, partly because there were more pressing matters, partly because he and I had form, which I had remembered and he had forgotten, form which had for an inglorious period exposed him to public ridicule and in which I was involved.
Did any memory of that stir within him? I do not think so, and he read, sonorously, the ‘King James Version’ which I pretended to have photocopied but actually just handed him back the page he had given me to change.
GETTING SNAPPY WITH HER MAJESTY
The Queen is on a visit to Broadcasting House. I watch her arrive, and am struck by the eerie silence.
The last time I saw her arrive somewhere was at the Royal Academy of Music, when I was chaplain, and everyone clapped and cheered as she emerged.
The silence now does not indicate the decline of popularity, but the rise of new technology, smartphones, which people hold up, making clapping impossible.
Richard on Celebrity Masterchef earlier this year
It is more important to capture the moment on your phone than to greet the Lord’s anointed. I wonder if she notices?
We have a special guest on the programme the following day: Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. The other guest with us round the table calls him, respectfully, Mr Gates, while we call him, in line with the programme’s temper and our correspondence with his office, Bill. Once, when his fellow guest’s ‘Mr Gates’ is followed by my ‘Bill’, he looks up, for a second, and I feel a frisson of lèse-majesté.
DIANA AND ME
After Christmas I go to stay with a friend in Staffordshire. At dinner that evening we are talking about the glitter of bling, and the glamour of power, and the mystique of royalty, and how that works today, if at all. Princess Diana comes up, who seemed to me to be both self-deprecating and slightly embarrassed by her status and yet use it to the full when it suited her.
I had known her slightly (our acquaintanceship couldn’t have been much slighter) and went on to say something about the Panorama interview she gave as her marriage to the Prince of Wales disintegrated. Then my friend says, ‘I know so many people who claim to have known her, people who met her on the charity circuit… of course, they didn’t know her at all.’ I say, evenly, ‘Yes, that’s how I knew her,’ and he says, ‘I guess she had a knack for making you feel that she was sharing intimacies with you, when they weren’t really intimacies at all.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘That’s right.’
But he’s right about Princess Diana. I met her, precisely, twice – once with a semi-circle of others at a charity auction at Christie’s, and once at the London Lighthouse, of which we were both patrons, when I was talking to her stepbrother and she came over to say hello. Funny, friendly, but covered in diamonds, which flashed as she entered the room like tiny strobes.
THE WORST NEWS AT THE WORST TIME
I am just going to bed when the phone rings. It’s a parishioner, telling me that her husband, whom I had seen in hospital the day before, is not looking good and the family has been called in. ‘Do you want me to come?’ I ask. I take the things I need and drive to Kettering General, so tired I nearly get hit by a lorry on the A14. At the hospital I say a prayer. A nurse comes in and says they are going to be some time so I tell the family I will be back in a few minutes and go to see Dad, who is dying in the room directly opposite.
Two days later, just as I am about to give a speech to a WI meeting, a text from David [Coles’s partner] arrives to tell me that my father has died. I go on stage and do my piece and at the end someone talks to me about her bereavement while I keep my own to myself until I’m driving home on the coldest night of the year, worrying I might skid and then I say out loud: ‘Daddy, my daddy’ like Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children.
HATCHING...
I first met David at a parish not far from Boston. It was the first day of the new smoking ban [July 1, 2007]. Inside, I caught sight of a young man, handsome, in the congregation. As the altar was being cleared, he introduced himself as David, a member of the Parish Church Council. On an impulse I asked if he had a fag – he gave me his last one. We stood outside, me in a cassock, smoking on a roastingly hot day.
Four years later, he and I were living together in Wymondham.
I am not sure if you can renew a baptismal vow but that is what David and I did when we took our party of pilgrims from Finedon to the Holy Land, to a bend in the River Jordan, in the waters where Jesus received the baptism of John 2,000 years ago.
Reggie and Ronnie Kray. Betty, who comes to morning prayer, tells me that she had been a nurse during the war at the London Hospital and lived in the East End where she was adopted by a family, which turned out to be the Krays
At the riverside, some enthusiastic Americans were robing in white and undergoing total immersion. At the gift shop where we bought ice creams, they bought T-shirts with what looked like jokey slogans until you saw them close up. I saw a young man wearing one which showed a pregnant woman in a hijab in a rifle’s sights, the crosshairs meeting over her pregnant belly. The slogan said, ‘One shot, two kills’.
Sometimes I loathe religion. I loathe it when it is adopted as a cosmic justification for a political agenda that needs to turn its vices into virtues and its violence into crusade or jihad.
...MATCHING
A wedding enquiry at St Paul’s Knightsbridge. She is shy and foreign, he a big, gruff Scot. They want the wedding as late as possible and I explain that we have to be done by six and that is a problem because their reception venue is not available until seven. I ask where it is and they say ‘The V&A’, and I suggest they ask again because it shouldn’t be too much trouble to open the restaurant.
‘It’s not in the restaurant,’ he says. Where then? I ask. ‘We’ve booked the whole thing.’
They invite me to the reception, which is as splendid as anything I’ve seen, and when the band come on I think they sound like Snow Patrol until someone tells me they are Snow Patrol.
We had no guests at ours because being involved in big weddings puts you off them, or it does me, and besides I rather like the municipal feel of a civil partnership. The ceremony, about as romantic as applying for a TV licence, took about ten minutes and then we went to the pub.
...AND DISPATCHING
A cremation at Mortlake so the funeral directors offered to pick me up at St Paul’s and drive me there. When it arrived it was the van, or the Private Ambulance, as it is coyly called, which picks up bodies from hospitals. It was driven by one of the most taciturn members of that profession, a tall Jamaican of few words who I rather liked. He nodded hello and we sat in agreeable silence until he said, ‘Jeremy Beadle?’
I said, ‘Yes?’
There was a pause.
‘Him in de back.’
And that’s how I found out about the untimely death of television’s favourite prankster.
BEAM HER UP SCOTTY
I was in the gym when I saw on the telly that Mo Mowlam had died. Mo was that rarest of things, a genuinely loved politician. I had become friendly with her and her husband Jon in the Nineties.
I called Jon with condolences and he asked me to conduct Mo’s funeral, but with no religious element if that was something I could do. I didn’t need to think to say yes, and the components of it were entirely up to her and Jon.
The day before the funeral Jon showed me letters of condolence he’d received, a generous one from Gordon Brown (terrible crabby writing in thick felt-tip), lovely ones from Prince Charles and Madeleine Albright, and a sober typed note from ELIZABETH R.
The crem staff were helpful and showed me the buttons and stuff I needed to know, including Button 2, which made a bright light shine on the coffin, growing in intensity and then going out as the curtain curled round the catafalque. A bit showbiz, I said, and they said ‘Yeah, we call it the Beam Me Up, Scotty’. |
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How will bitcoin impact America’s campaign finance system? Corruption, anonymous donations and foreign contributions stand out as some of the currency’s biggest risks. Currently, these issues are being debated by policymakers at the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
A large portion of last week’s FEC open meeting was taken up with a discussion about the Conservative Action Fund’s (CAF) desire to start accepting bitcoins, something that chairwoman Ellen L Weintraub called “a seemingly exotic and novel issue”.
As a result, four advisory drafts were presented in a hearing last week by the FEC. One draft proposed that advisory opinion should be voted on.
Let’s take a look at some of the interesting discussions these policymakers had regarding bitcoin.
Bitcoin isn’t money
The question at hand is not really whether political groups can accept bitcoin. In reality, there are other units of value that groups already accept as in-kind donations; bitcoin should have a place not as money, but as a tradable instrument. It’s clear the FEC is making the assertion that, in its view, bitcoin is not money but a “thing of value” such as stock or a treasury bond. Lee Goodman, the vice chairman of the FEC said:
“The CAF does not need our permission to accept in-kind contribution of things of value, including bitcoins.”
He continued: “I think the legal question for the FEC is quite vanilla. The legal analysis starts with the clear and unambiguous statutory right that Mr Backer’s client has to give and receive contributions. There’s no debate about that. Contributions are defined as anything of value.”
“Bitcoins clearly are things of value to many people. They have purchasing value, they have trading value. They have US dollar exchange value. That makes bitcoins, in my mind, no different from any other in-kind contribution that political committees can give or receive today.”
He added: “There are any number of things of value that are like these bitcoins, and we have quite easily adapted our regulatory regime to regulate them. Many treasury bonds now are nothing more than an electronic transfer with an account number on them.”
Anonymity
However, as a result of this, CAF may not use bitcoins for disbursements (bitcoin being a thing of value and not cash money). Instead, CAF must sell its bitcoins and deposit the proceeds in a registered bank account in order to use them. That distinction is important, since the FEC is very concerned about anonymous political donations.
“Bitcoins are zipped electronically over the internet, from one bitcoin wallet to another bitcoin wallet. And There is concern that somehow that gives rise to potential anonymity and false reporting of the donor,” said Goodman.
It’s clear that the FEC’s job is to make sure that it can keep track of political donations, a serious concern for them regarding the usage of bitcoin.
“Congress, when it enacted the FEC, put in very low limits on donations that come in anonymously and donations that come in as cash. [Bitcoin] seems to share some of those features,” Weintraub commented.
According to commission member Matthew Petersen, the question of anonymity still remains an issue once a political group has received bitcoin. He noted that all four draft opinions on the subject deem the acceptance of BTC as fine, but the disbursement was another issue altogether. He said:
“All the drafts would allow the CAF to receive bitcoins as in-kind contributions, and then [the] question was, what could they do with them at that point?”
What happens next?
In the end, a motion to vote on one of the advisory opinions, Agenda Document No. 13-45-B (Draft D), failed to pass, with the votes split 3-3.
The cause can be attributed to some of the FEC’s leaders, who highlighed the need for more time and information during the hearing. Each member discussed the amount of consideration virtual currencies such as bitcoin take to fully understand, given the precarious circumstances of something like campaign finance law.
It’s possible that the FEC could reach some kind of temporary consensus before the end of the year. One proposed solution was to draft an advisory opinion that everyone could agree on, then allow it to expire at some point in the near future. One of the issues is that bitcoin’s status as a ‘thing of value’ could be problematic given “potential problems because of the volatility”, according to FEC member Caroline Hunter.
Weintraub, the chairwoman, suggested at the hearing that the FEC could “try and craft an interim policy” by the end of the year. Ultimately, the major concern now is that rules are put in place for the anonymity issues that surround bitcoin.
“We have a statue that requires transparency,” she said. |
Here’s a question you don’t hear in the breastfeeding debate: why doesn’t milk turn breasts to bone?
Charles Darwin suggested that lactation evolved through natural selection, starting when the ancestors of mammals gained a nutritional advantage from lapping up sweat-like secretions from glands under their mothers’ skin.
This idea had some grounding. Darwin would have studied monotremes – egg-laying mammals such as the echidna. Monotremes have nipple-less mammary patches, and these secrete a fluid that provides moisture to permeable eggs.
But milk contains 100 times the calcium of these gland secretions, and 1000 times the concentration of protein. Such an increase in calcium should cause calcification of the secretory gland, and the proteins in milk should form toxic fibrils.
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Hard problem
In fact, it is a long-standing paradox that hard tissues such as bone calcify, whereas soft tissues do not – even though both tissues are fed by the same extracellular fluid.
To find out what was going on, Carl Holt at the University of Glasgow, UK, and John Carver from the University of Adelaide, Australia, built 3D models of the interaction between ions and proteins in biological fluids.
They found that caseins, nutritional proteins in milk, help to prevent calcium build-up by capturing calcium phosphate and squirrelling it away inside molecular aggregates called micelles.
Holt and Carver say that the concentration of these spherical micelles in milk may have increased over evolutionary time, producing a progressively more nutritious fluid.
Journal reference: Journal of Evolutionary Biology, DOI: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02509.x |
The War On Gays
By Chris Hedges
29 May, 2012
TruthDig.com
The sentencing of Dharun Ravi for the hateful abuse that may have driven his gay roommate at Rutgers, Tyler Clementi, to commit suicide, or Barack Obama’s public acceptance of gay marriage, prevents many of us from seeing that life for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people is getting worse—much worse.
No one understands this better than the gay activist and pastor Mel White. White, along with his husband and partner of 30 years, Gary Nixon, founded Soulforce, an organization committed to using nonviolent resistance to end religion-based oppression. White and hundreds of Soulforce volunteers protest outside megachurches that preach hatred and bigotry in the name of religion. White travels to communities where young gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgender people have committed suicide. He holds memorial services for them in front of the church doors. He accuses the pastors of these churches of murder. His books “Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America” and “Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tell Us to Deny Gay Equality,” are two of the most important works that examine the innate cruelty and proto-fascism of the Christian right. White, more than perhaps any other preacher in the country, has pulled young men and women back from the brink of despair, from succumbing to the tragic fate of Tyler Clementi. And White is scared.
“What kind of environment creates a Dharun Ravi who would carry out that kind of bullying, as well as a kid like Tyler who would become a victim of that kind of bullying?” White asked when I reached him by phone at his home in Long Beach, Calif. “It is society. At its heart it is the church. The churches should be convicted, not just Ravi. He’s just an extension of the hatred that people feel about this threat, this gay threat. Pope Benedict XVI should be on trial. Richard Land from the Southern Baptists should be on trial. Religious leaders, Protestant and Catholic, should be on trial. They made this happen, but too few Americans make the connection.”
White applauds President Obama for taking a personal stand for marriage equality. But he also notes that the president’s statement was accompanied by a reiteration that states have the right to determine their own policies toward marriage.
Despite gains by gays in the wider culture, especially in the entertainment industry, and despite the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the civil rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people in most states are deteriorating, White said.
“Married gays in the military are miserable,” White said. “They can get married, but they can’t have any of the rights of other married military members, including housing or travel. They can give their lives but they get so little in return.”
“Class difference is at the heart of understanding sexism and homophobia,” White said. “Class difference is based on sexism. It is based on homophobia. It is based on men who want to stay in power. And men who want to stay in power go to church. They sit in the front pews. They are generous, loving and faithful. They give away a tiny little bit to keep these churches going. Which is why I stand with the Occupy movement. At least I know I’m with people who will be on my side.”
White and Nixon left Virginia for California a few weeks ago because the culture, he says, had become increasingly inhospitable to gay couples. In distressed communities across the country there is a correlating rise in intolerance, hate talk and homophobia.
“When I moved to Lynchburg it was a blue city, in spite of Liberty University being there,” White said. “We had an amazing progressive woman, Shannon Valentine, as our state representative. She visited our home. We had a progressive mayor and a progressive City Council. In 2008 everything went to hell. Our new attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, is crazy. He talks about putting cameras up vaginas [as part of a trans-vaginal ultrasound procedure that would be required by law of all women seeking abortions]. We had so many possibilities until 2008. Then it suddenly ended. Unfortunately, more and more this is reflected across the country. The reversal came with the collapse of our financial system. Suddenly everything blue was seen as costing too much money, including helping the poor. There was a revolt led by Fox News and its allies. It’s difficult to find a restaurant or bar in Lynchburg that isn’t playing Fox News. People quote Fox as though Fox is the arbiter of truth. In fact, Fox is the enemy.”
The long-term unemployment, the collapse of housing prices, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the draconian cuts in social spending have created a climate in which the vulnerable, the different, the marginal—from Muslims to undocumented workers to homosexuals—are blamed for the nation’s decline, White argues. This climate is fueling a culture of hate. Right-wing candidates, channeling the rage and frustration of a beleaguered working and middle class, use marginal and oppressed groups as scapegoats. And, White says, those who disseminate this culture of hate lie about the positions and records of liberal elected officials such as Shannon Valentine.
“The lies against her were heinous,” White said, “but the Christian right is convinced that if you have a call to save the nation you are allowed to lie, because the ends justify the means. Jerry Falwell lied on a regular basis. We lost Shannon Valentine. We lost so much that was good about our state after that election. And this is true almost everywhere.”
The culture of hate feeds off the frustrations and feelings of betrayal among the impoverished, the unemployed, the underemployed and the hopeless. And the longer the expanding underclass is ignored, the longer we refuse to define what is happening to us in our corporate state as a vicious class struggle, the more the culture of hate spreads. The dwindling culture of tolerance, confined now mostly to white, urban, college-educated members of the middle class, because that group refuses to engage in the struggle of class warfare, unwittingly abets the economic dislocation that is empowering the increasingly potent culture of hate.
“Progressives ought to move out of New York immediately,” White went on. “Gay people should evacuate the major cities to see what life is like for gays in rural areas. The urban centers of the gay community are too isolated from wider reality. Many in these [urban] communities do not seem to care about reality. Gay people can survive, unfortunately, without paying attention to reality, especially if we’re white and male. If you’re white and male you often can pass.”
“You see Ellen DeGeneres, the most popular talk show, or you see Queen Latifah leading this week’s gay pride parade [May 20] in Long Beach, and you think all is well,” White said. “But you have to remember that in the local Baptist church, or among any of the 15 million Southern Baptist congregants, people see Ellen and Queen Latifah as a threat to family values. What we count as a forward step, they count as evil. They see it as more gay people getting power. We may watch the same television programs. But while we cheer the presence of an openly gay woman or man on television there are large numbers of people in Virginia and other states who see these public affirmations as another step towards the country’s oblivion.”
White fears that the vast sums of money available to the Christian right and groups such as the tea party (which he sees as an extension of the Christian right) are solidifying institutions from universities to media outlets in the propagation of this culture of hate. White, before he accepted his homosexuality as a gift from God, ghost-wrote autobiographies for Christian-right leaders including Falwell. White and Nixon, knowing that White’s old clients were the primary sources of anti-gay rhetoric, moved to Lynchburg. They set up house across the street from Falwell’s megachurch. They attended services and stood together in silent protest as Falwell delivered anti-gay rants from the pulpit. White watched as Liberty University rose to dominate Lynchburg.
“Liberty University is funded by fundamentalist billionaires, like the man who owns Hobby Lobby, like Chick-fil-A and the fundamentalist author who wrote these terrible books, the ‘Left Behind’ series, Tim LaHaye,” White said. “These guys are giving tens of millions of dollars to institutions such as Liberty. They see the Liberty Universities of the world as the Koch brothers do, as the bastions of training for the new Americans. They are brainwashing young people whom they hope will guide us away from the precipice of liberalism.”
Liberty is one of the fastest-growing universities in America. It has 50,000 students, on campus or taking degrees through online courses. The university built a 24-hour, all-seasons ski resort, the first in the nation. It has an Olympic-size pool and an Olympic-style ice rink. It has an accredited law school. Its debate team often beats major Ivy League teams. It is putting in a medical school. This is also a university that teaches that the oldest fossils date from only 6,000 years ago. It produces Ph.D.s who believe exclusively in creationism, reject evolution and deny that global warming exists. And it is a university that is openly hostile to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and those who are transgender.
“By the time Gary and I moved away from Lynchburg a majority of Virginians seemed to be turning against gay people,” White said. “They passed a constitutional amendment against marriage equality and new laws saying we cannot adopt [children] or provide foster care. More than half the people of Virginia seem to see us as the enemy.”
As the economy unravels, as hundreds of millions of Americans confront the fact that things will not get better, life for those targeted by this culture of hate will become increasingly difficult. Rational debate will prove useless. “Fundamentalists aren’t interested in data,” White said. “They are not influenced by truth, including scientific, psychological, psychiatric or historic truth. They are not influenced by a personal experience with truth. The Bible is more important. Verses are taken out of context to condemn even sons and daughters. How do you oppose that?”
“We have 29 states that do not outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,” White said. “Transgender Americans are invariably the worst victims of discrimination and violence. And yet there are 44 states that do not outlaw discrimination on the basis of gender identity. There are 44 states that have laws or constitutional amendments denying us the rights of marriage, claiming our relationships are unholy, that we’re sick and icky,” White said. “And Mr. Obama has just said marriage equality is up to the [individual] states. A majority of the states have already decided against us. If you ask a gay person in New York ‘Can we adopt?’ he will respond of course we can adopt. Can we provide foster care? Of course we can provide foster care. Can we get jobs equally? Of course we can, especially if we are white and male. But with all the progress we have made, 44 states still see us as the enemy. Add a few more states to this list and it is over. How awful it will be if these restrictions make their way to states such as Connecticut, New York and California. Remember, California is going down the tubes financially. And the fear about the nation’s financial future is the engine that drives all of this.”
“Too many of my sisters and brothers in the gay community don’t seem to understand the power of religion,” White lamented. “They have been rejected by religion. They hate the idea of religion. Therefore, they’re not going to deal with religion, which is fatal, because religion is the heart of homophobia. Without religion there would be no homophobia. What other source of homophobia is there but six verses in the Bible? When Bible literalists preach that LGBT people are going to hell they become Christian terrorists. They use fear as their weapon, like all terrorists. They are seeking to deny our religious and civil rights. They threaten to turn our democracy into a fundamentalist theocracy. And if we don’t reverse the trend there is the very real possibility that in the end we will all be governed according to their perverted version of biblical law.”
Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years
Copyright © 2012 Truthdig, L.L.C. |
(Image: NetComm Wireless)
Australian telecommunications technology company NetComm Wireless has announced developing the world's first fibre-to-the-curb/distribution point (FttC/DP) network connection device (NCD).
NetComm's NCD incorporates a G.fast and VDSL modem and is able to monitor and report diagnostics on the performance of the line going into a premises.
The NCD is used in conjunction with NetComm's FttC distribution point unit (DPU), and includes a reverse-power feed allowing the DPU to be powered via the customer's premises.
NetComm CTO Steve Collins told ZDNet that the NCD brings FttC solutions up to the same point that fibre-to-the-premises (FttP) is at, in that it powers the DPU and provides the modem to the end user, with retail service providers then simply connecting them.
"The NCD in our opinion completes the ecosystem of what the distribution point unit set out to solve," Collins told ZDNet on Monday.
"If you're looking at fibre to the home, you get a fibre going in and then you have a product that goes into your home called an ONT -- optical network termination -- and the ONT converts a fibre into an Ethernet signal," he explained.
"With fibre to the DP historically, that product didn't exist; you had this distribution point product in the pit out the front of your house, it delivered VDSL or it delivered G.fast into your home, and then you had to ... supply a modem into the home. You'd need a reverse-powered unit and you'd need a modem into the home.
"The NCD closes that loop."
Building in reverse power capabilities and the VDSL/G.fast modem makes FttC easily deliverable to the home in an "all-in-one product", he explained.
"[It] gives you an Ethernet port just like an ONT would for a fibre-to-the-home solution," Collins added.
"So that integration of the reverse power and the modem in one product, and the software that's in that product to be able to be managed and controlled by the network operator to offer a network grade solution to the home, we feel it is quite unique."
NetComm has already seen a "large" volume order for its NCD product from Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) company, which it said is worth AU$66 million in revenue, including AU$40 million in incremental revenues within 18 months of launch.
"We now have this product in front of a number of customers, but NBN is the most mature customer that we have, really because NBN's going so early," Collins told ZDNet.
"We are in active discussions with Openreach at the moment about how that fibre to the DP product would take shape, and the NCD has been mentioned."
NetComm also expects NBN's volume order to grow over time, with Collins saying the latter will now undertake trials of the product inside its National Test Facility in Melbourne ahead of launch NBN's FttC launch in 2018.
In November last year, NBN had announced that NetComm Wireless would be supplying its FttC DPUs and related services. This was as a result of NetComm directly tendering for the FttC contract after NBN specifically asked it to take part, Collins told ZDNet earlier this year.
Under the deal, NetComm will supply NBN with one-port and four-port DPUs to be installed in pits outside premises to connect the legacy copper with fibre within NBN's FttC footprint of 1 million premises.
ZDNet revealed last year that NBN will be launching its FttDP network not with new G.fast as per its trials, but instead with old VDSL technology. It will enable G.fast before the end of next year.
FttC trials in the United Kingdom have seen NetComm's G.fast DPU attain 1.66Gbps aggregate speeds in partnership with Openreach using 40 metres of copper lead-in cable as well as spectrum frequency of up to 212MHz.
The NetComm DPU can be installed on either a telegraph pole or in a pit to provide aggregate gigabit speeds when within 150 metres of a premises, according to the company.
NetComm is also working with NBN on its fixed-wireless network, helping the broadband company attain gigabit speeds and developing a fixed-wireless network terminating device that allows a 100/40Mbps fixed-wireless product.
The company's fixed-wireless solution is also being rolled out across 18 states in the United States in partnership with AT&T.
Related Coverage
Vodafone launches NBN services
Customers whose premises are ready for service across Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Newcastle, and Geelong are now able to order an NBN service from Vodafone.
ACCC appoints SamKnows to monitor NBN speeds
SamKnows will be monitoring fixed-line NBN speeds for the next four years, while the ACCC has said only Telstra and Optus have made changes to their advertising based on its guidance in August.
ACCC examines Telstra FttC migration plan
Telstra has submitted a proposed variation to its plan for migrating customers off existing broadband services onto the NBN to make way for fibre-to-the-curb technology.
NBN HFC pause will cost Telstra AU$600m in FY18 EBITDA
The decision by NBN to pause its HFC rollout while it repairs network issues will cost Telstra AU$600 million in EBITDA, AU$700 million in total income, AU$200 million in free cashflow, and AU$600 million in net one-off NBN receipts over FY18, the telco has said. |
Republic Wireless
Republic Wireless aims to shake up the wireless industry with new service plans that actually pay customers for data they didn't use that month.
"If you're using a different amount of data each month, why should you pay the same price each month for it?" David Morken, CEO of Republic Wireless, said in an interview Monday. "The entire industry needs to be challenged. Customers should only be charged for what they use."
Available this summer, the new plans will give customers a credit on their month for any portion of their data plan they didn't use. That's in contrast to plans from the likes of AT&T, the second largest wireless carrier in the US, which will let wireless customers roll unused data into the next month.
Republic Wireless is a small wireless operator that uses both Wi-Fi hotspots and traditional cell phone networks to deliver voice and data service for smartphones at a much reduced price compared with plans from larger rivals. The company came on the mobile scene in 2012 with the introduction of a $19 a month wireless service. Republic can offer such low prices because its customers are using a Wi-Fi network most of the time. When Wi-Fi isn't available, Republic leases capacity from a wireless provider, allowing Republic's customers to seamlessly roam onto a cellular network.
Now, the company believes its new pricing model will offer yet another reason for consumers to ditch the big wireless operators -- AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint -- for its service.
Customers will get unlimited voice and text messaging service and will buy a "bucket" of data much like they do when subscribing to a larger carrier's service. That bucket applies only to data customers use while roaming on a 3G or 4G cellular network. All usage on a Wi-Fi network is unlimited and included in the cost of the service.
This is a drastic departure from how the wireless industry has operated in recent years. All major carriers offer plans that include a bucket of data that can be used by an individual or shared among multiple subscribers. Customers who exceed their limits are either billed for the overage or have their service slowed. In the past six months, however, AT&T and T-Mobile introduced plans that let customers rollover unused data.
AT&T's Mobile Share Value plan -- introduced in January -- allows customers to add unused data to their monthly data cap the following month. That data is available only until the next billing cycle ends. T-Mobile's offer introduced late last year is available to customers who sign up for 3GB of data or more a month and allows customers to bank unused data for up to 12 months.
Morken said these new plans are a good start, but they don't give wireless subscribers what they want: to pay only for the data they use. "It just doesn't make sense," he said. "They should be giving you money back. And that's what we will do."
"What would you do if you have extra gas at the end of the month?" he asked. "Would you take a long road trip to burn through it? No, that's insane. And it's crazy that people pay for mobile data every month that they don't use."
While Republic Wireless hasn't released details of the new plans, Morken said they will be available for new and existing subscribers starting in June. As part of this move, Republic is eliminating its $25 unlimited data plan. Credits for unused data will offer bigger savings, said Morken, although current subscribers can keep this plan if they wish.
Republic also announced Monday that it has added roaming access to a second cellular network. The company currently allows roaming onto Sprint's 3G and 4G wireless networks. While Morken did not identify the new provider, he did say customers will need a new device to access that provider's voice and data services. Those devices are expected to be available late this year or early 2016, Morken said. |
Man in the Wilderness is a 1971 American revisionist Western film about a scout for a group of mountain men who are traversing the Northwestern United States during the 1820s. The scout is mauled by a bear and left to die by his companions. He survives and recuperates sufficiently to track his former comrades, forcing a confrontation over his abandonment. The story is loosely based on the life of Hugh Glass. It stars Richard Harris as Zachary Bass and John Huston as Captain Henry.[1]
The expedition in the movie is notable for bringing a large boat with them, borne on wheels.
Plot [ edit ]
A classic survival story, told partly through flashbacks to Zachary Bass's past. After being left for dead by his fellow trappers, he undergoes a series of trials and adventures as he slowly heals and equips himself while he tracks the expedition, apparently intent on retribution for his abandonment, while earning the respect of the Indians he encounters. However, when he finally confronts his fellow trappers and Captain Henry, he chooses not to seek revenge, but instead to focus on returning to his infant son.
Cast [ edit ]
Production background [ edit ]
Man in the Wilderness is based loosely on the 1818-20 Missouri Expedition and "Capt. Henry" is likely a fictionalized Major Andrew Henry of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The film was shot near Covaleda, Province of Soria, Spain, with the terrain looking more like the Adirondack wilderness and less like the Absaroka Range country of the Yellowstone River. Not technically a "Spaghetti Western", Man was filmed in the rugged highlands where David Lean had shot some of the scenes for Doctor Zhivago in 1964.
John Huston joined the production a few days after quitting as director of the film The Last Run due to on-set fights with George C. Scott.
Themes [ edit ]
Though survival and revenge are the main themes, Christianity and religion play a significant role in the evolution of the main character, who is shown through flashbacks to be at odds with religion and God in general due to his lonely and abusive childhood involving indoctrination into Christianity.
Release [ edit ]
The film was theatrically released in the United States on November 24, 1971, including New York City, New York and Los Angeles, California.
The film was the first feature to be shown in years at the newly refurbished Princess Theatre (renamed the Klondike Theatre, at the time) in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on December 25, 1971.
See also [ edit ] |
The Latest: Trump gets glimpse of New York protesters
President Donald Trump looks for people in the audience as he speaks at a fundraiser at Cipriani in New York, Saturday, Dec. 2, 2017. Trump is attending a trio of fundraisers during his day in New York. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the GOP tax bill (all times local):
Noon
Protesters are making their voices heard in New York City as President Donald Trump visits for political fundraisers.
Outside his first event, several hundred protesters stood behind barricades along 42nd Street. His motorcade ducked into a side street so he saw some of the action but not most of it. Chants of “Donald Trump is going to jail” rang out.
Signs read: “Tax the rich, not working people” and “New York hates Trump.”
___
11:15 a.m.
President Donald Trump is taking a victory lap at a New York City fundraiser, praising the Senate’s passage of a sweeping tax overhaul.
The president is noting that Republicans had enough support to pass the bill without needing Vice President Mike Pence. He says the fact that no Democrats voted for the bill will “cost them very big” in the next election.
Trump is raising $6 million during a series of political fundraisers in New York on Saturday.
___
10:30 a.m.
President Donald Trump is expressing thanks to Senate and House Republicans for their hard-fought victories on taxes. The Senate passed its legislation early Saturday, and now that chamber and the House must try to reconcile differences in their two versions. It’s shaping up to be the largest tax overhaul in three decades, and Trump says he aims to sign it into law before Christmas.
The Senate bill gives most of its tax breaks to businesses and high-earners. Altogether, the vote was a big step toward giving Trump his first major legislative triumph after months of false starts and frustration.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is shrugging off polls that find scant public enthusiasm for the measure. He says in an interview it will prove its worth and get the country “growing again.”
___
1:51 a.m.
The Senate has passed a nearly $1.5 trillion Republican tax bill that’s historic in scope and an urgent political priority for President Donald Trump and the GOP.
The vote was 51-49, largely along party lines. Not a single Democrat voted in favor of the legislation, which was crafted behind closed doors by Senate Republican leaders. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who calls the growing debt a national security threat, joined Democrats in opposing the bill.
The bill lays the bulk of its tax cuts on businesses and higher-earning individuals and gives more modest breaks to others.
It would bring the first major overhaul of the U.S. tax system in three decades. The measure must be reconciled with a version the House passed last month.
___
1:35 a.m.
The Senate has voted to eliminate a tax break for a politically-connected conservative college in Michigan.
Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon proposed the amendment to eliminate the tax break for Hillsdale College in southern Michigan. He noted that Hillsdale has connections to powerful Republicans, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Merkley says, “Isn’t that just the type of insider deal for the wealthy and well-connected that we should oppose?”
The Senate Republicans’ sweeping tax package would impose a new tax on investment income earned by some private universities and colleges.
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania added a provision exempting certain colleges that don’t receive federal funds. Democrats say Hillsdale was the only college that would benefit.
Merkley’s amendment was adopted by a 52-48 vote.
___
1:20 a.m.
The Senate has given a green light to opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
In a vote early Saturday morning, Republicans rejected an effort led by Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state to block drilling.
The vote was 52-48. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has pushed for oil and gas drilling in the refuge.
Opening the remote refuge to oil and gas drilling is a longtime Republican priority that most Democrats fiercely oppose.
The 19.6-million acre refuge in northeastern Alaska is one of the most pristine areas in the United States and is home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife.
__
12:20 a.m.
The Senate has adopted an amendment that would allow parents to use 529 college funds to pay private school tuition for students in kindergarten through high school.
Parents could also use the tax-exempt funds on home-schooling expenses.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas offered the amendment to Senate Republicans’ sweeping tax package. The vote was a 50-50 tie with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaker.
All Senate Democrats opposed the measure. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only Republicans who voted against it.
__
8:20 p.m.
Democrats have taken to the Senate floor to attack a planned amendment to the tax bill that would give a break to a conservative college in Michigan.
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Patrick Toomey acknowledged he’d sponsored the language and said Hillsdale College would benefit from it.
Toomey defended Hillsdale as “a wonderful institution” and said other schools might qualify for the tax break, too. His provision would shield schools that receive no federal aid from language in the bill that taxes the investment income of some colleges and universities.
Democrats say Toomey’s provision was written in a way that only Hillsdale would qualify for the reduction. They complain that some well-known conservatives have connections to the school, including Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
__
8 p.m.
As the Senate nears a momentous vote on the massive Republican tax bill, Democrats are mocking what they say is the late-provided, hefty text of the legislation in videos and tweets.
They’re displaying the nearly 500 printed pages with handwritten notes in the margins.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweets, “No, I haven’t had time to read the 500-page #GOPTaxScam bill that we’re voting on tonight,” with a photo of her reading aloud from pages at her desk. “Couldn’t read it if I tried — and I did.”
Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana says “one page literally has hand-scribbled policy changes on it that can’t be read. This is Washington, D.C. at its worst. Montanans deserve so much better.”
__
5:10 p.m.
Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker has become the only Republican senator to say he will vote against his party’s $1.4 trillion tax bill.
His decision won’t affect the measure’s fate. GOP leaders have already said they have enough votes to push the legislation through the Senate in a vote they hope will come later Friday.
Corker’s decision is not a surprise. He had expressed concerns that the measure would add more red ink to the government’s $20 trillion in accumulated debt. He said Friday he doesn’t want to burden future generations.
Corker has broken openly with President Donald Trump, questioning his stability and warning he might cause World War III.
Corker says he told Trump of his decision, and isn’t ruling out backing a compromise House-Senate tax bill.
__
4:45 p.m.
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins has become the latest GOP holdout to say she’ll vote for the tax bill her party is set to push through the Senate.
The moderate Collins says she believes the measure will provide “much-needed tax relief” to middle-class families and spur economic growth.
Her announcement lacked suspense because GOP leaders have already said they have enough votes for passage, which they hope will occur later Friday.
Earlier this year, Collins was among a group of Republican senators who bucked the party and helped derail their effort to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Collins says she decided to back the tax bill after leaders agreed to let taxpayers deduct up to $10,000 in local property taxes and make other changes.
___
4:15 p.m.
Senate Republicans are steaming toward passage of a $1.4 trillion tax bill, overcoming eleventh-hour hitches in their drive to deliver a major legislative accomplishment to President Donald Trump by Christmas.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans “have the votes.”
One prior holdout, Jeff Flake of Arizona, announced he would support the bill. Another, Susan Collins of-Maine, said on Twitter she was “delighted” she’d won an agreement from leaders to add a $10,000 deduction for local property taxes and was considered all but certain to back the measure.
With the party controlling the Senate 52-48 and Democrats uniformly opposed, Republicans need 50 votes to win approval for the bill. Vice President Mike Pence would break a tie.
___
1:10 p.m.
Republican leaders have made changes to the tax bill to win enough votes to clear the Senate. A summary obtained by The Associated Press shows the changes include allowing local property tax deductions up to $10,000 and fatter breaks for many businesses.
The original Senate bill wouldn’t have allowed the property tax deductions. The change was a key demand of Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
There would also be lower taxes on companies with owners that pay individual tax rates on profits, and a more gradual elimination of tax breaks for firms buying equipment.
To pay for these changes, the new plan doesn’t fully repeal the alternative minimum tax on high-income families. And it would increase a one-time tax on profits held overseas by U.S.-based corporations.
___
12:05 p.m.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says “we have the votes” to pass the GOP tax bill.
McConnell talked to reporters after a closed-door meeting of Republican senators.
One prior hold out, Sen. Susan Collins, says she won an agreement to add a deduction for local property taxes. The Maine Republican had been withholding her support for the bill because she wanted homeowners to be able to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes.
The original Senate bill had completely eliminated the tax deduction for state and local taxes.
Still, Collins was coy about whether she would ultimately vote for the bill.
Smiling, Collins said, “I’m pleased with the progress that’s being made but I’ll announce my position in a couple of hours.”
___
10:35 a.m.
The No. 2 Republican in the Senate says the GOP has the votes to pass a sweeping tax overhaul.
That’s the word on Friday from Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who told reporters, “We’re confident in the 50 and we’d like to build on that.”
Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority, but with 50 votes — and Vice President Mike Pence breaking a tie — they can muscle their legislation through the Senate.
Cornyn made the comments after Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said he had won concessions for businesses and would support the legislation.
The sweeping tax overhaul would slash the corporate tax rate and ease some taxes on individuals.
___
9:35 a.m.
A key Republican, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, says he’s backing the sweeping GOP tax bill. That’s according to an aide.
Johnson’s support for the legislation is a major boost for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as he tries to muscle the measure through the Senate.
GOP leaders hope to vote on Friday and send the measure to a House-Senate conference to work out the differences. They want to deliver a bill to President Donald Trump by Christmas.
In a radio interview with WISN in Wisconsin, Johnson said he secured changes in the bill on the taxes paid by businesses and is now a yes on the legislation.
At issue were millions of businesses whose owners report the firm’s profits on their individual tax returns. The vast majority of U.S. businesses are taxed this way.
___
6:55 a.m.
President Donald Trump says the Republican tax bill “is getting better and better.”
In an early morning Friday tweet, Trump wrote: “This is a once in a generation chance. Obstructionist Dems trying to block because they think it is too good and will not be given the credit!”
Republicans are eyeing a crucial final vote Friday on the $1.4 trillion Senate bill. GOP leaders have been making major changes up to the last minute, including one that would roll back some of the tax cuts after six years to appease deficit hawks.
___
3:50 a.m.
Senate Republicans are stepping quickly to meet competing demands of holdout GOP senators for a tax overhaul package expected to add $1 trillion to the nation’s deficit over 10 years.
GOP leaders have been making major changes up to the last minute, including one that would roll back some of the tax cuts after six years to appease deficit hawks.
Republicans eyeing a crucial final vote Friday on the $1.4 trillion Senate bill.
The overall legislation would bring the first overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 31 years. It would slash the corporate tax rate, offer more modest cuts for families and individuals and eliminate several popular deductions. |
About Me
I've been a Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master (DM) and player since the mid 90's.
I currently run two D&D 3.5e campaigns, one with heroes and the other with a group of villains.
I post resources that can be used to add a little something more to your game. It could be sharing tips or suggestions, answers to questions I'm comfortable with, inspiring images, encounter ideas, or anything helpful or fun I find online that relates to tabletop gaming.
Most of what I post will be meant to apply to D&D 3.5e, but a lot of it will be system-neutral.
Thanks for visiting!
A Note on Tags:
I use tags to remind myself of what an image/tip/tool/etc could be USED FOR not what it's from. I sometimes add a tag reflecting the source if I'm certain of it, but frankly that's not what I care about. So yes, I am fully aware that the subject of a post may ACTUALLY be from X,Y, or Z and NOT D&D (for example).
Thank you, tumblr tag police. ;) |
Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) made waves through the business world once again last week when it unveiled its new Amazon Go convenience store, which has no checkout counters or lines. Using technology similar to what you’d find in a self-driving car, cameras and microphones detect what items customers pull off the shelves and then charge them after they walk out of the 1,800 square-foot store. Customers only have to scan the Amazon Go app upon entering.
It’s potentially groundbreaking technology, but it’s unclear what Amazon’s goal with it is. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Amazon planned to open up 2,000 grocery stores across the country over the next 10 years, but an Amazon spokesperson put the kibosh on that story, saying the company had no such plans and that it was only in “learning” mode.
The new Amazon Go store. Source: Amazon.com.
For investors looking to make a play on the new high-tech way to shop, Amazon stock, worth nearly $400 billion, is unlikely to reflect its value anytime soon. However, there is one small company that has soared on a rumored connection to the so-called “Just Walk Out” technology.
Shares of Impinj (NASDAQ: PI) rose as much as 41% as the maker of RFID tags and similar Internet-of-Things devices is thought to be involved in Amazon Go. The stock has since given back about half of those gains as it made a secondary offering and Amazon cooled off expansion hopes, but it’s still been an impressive week for the recent IPO.
Neither company has confirmed the relationship, but there is ample suspicion that they could be connected. RBC Capital’s Mitch Steves said:
Impinj is working with Amazon in its small set of retail stores, and we think the company may be involved in the Amazon Go initiative as well. This would act as a logical extension of the Impinj product line as the chips could be used as the inventory management tracker (when lifting a new item the system recognizes a picked up sale allowing for seamless walk-out the door checkout).
It’s unclear what small set of stores Steves is referring to, but Amazon and Impinj do have a prior relationship.
Where Amazon Go is going
It’s not surprising that Amazon would want to quell any rumors about its grocery plans, which included testing several formats such as a drive-through and a full-service store. The company has notoriously played its plans close-to-the-vest, even refusing to release data on the number of Prime members it has or the number of device sales it makes — which are standard pieces of information at peer companies. It’s understandable that Amazon wouldn’t want to let competitors like Wal-Mart and Kroger, which are probably anxious after last week’s demonstration, know its strategic direction, but it would also be foolish to think Amazon doesn’t have big plans for the Just Walk Out technology.
After all, this is a company that’s been extraordinarily ambitious across a range of industries throughout its history, and often found success. It also spent four years developing the technology, so it has bigger aspirations for it than just a handful of stores.
Last Friday, a number of sources reported that the company had registered a trademark for Amazon Go in the UK, indicating the technology is likely to cross the pond in the near future as it clearly has global potential. Given the company’s history, it’s likely to move quickly.
What that means for Impinj is unclear, but the growing importance of its IoT devices bodes well as competitors are likely to follow Amazon into a checkout-less future. Expect Impinj to continue to move with Amazon Go news, at least until company sources confirm what, if any, relationship exists between the two companies.
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Facebook's live streaming platform is proving to be a significant source of cash for some media companies.
The social network is paying out more than $50 million to publishers and celebrities who produce content for Facebook Live, according to "a document" reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook has contracts with close to 140 publishers and celebrities, the report said. Facebook made deals with several media partners (including Mashable) following the launch of its live streaming platform last summer, but the value of these deals was previously unknown.
The terms of each "varies wildly," according to the Wall Street Journal, but BuzzFeed's deal is the most valuable at $3.05 million. In total, at least 17 are worth more than $1 million, including deals with the New York Times and CNN.
Facebook is also paying a handful of celebrities to live stream, including Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, actor Kevin Hart and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, along with YouTube stars and institutions like the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
how much a publisher is paid for these broadcasts depends on how big their audience is and how many videos they agree to make
Under the contracts, publishers and celebs agree to produce a set number of broadcasts using Facebook Live. How much a publisher is paid for these broadcasts depends on how big their audience is and how many videos they agree to make, the report says.
Facebook has high hopes for the platform, which it opened up to all its users earlier this year. Eventually, the network plans to sell ads against its video streams and is using its current deals with publishers and other influential users to jumpstart engagement with the service.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the list of partners and contracts it reviewed didn't include all of the social network's live streaming deals, so Facebook is likely spending more than $50 million on these partnerships — something that could make Twitter-owned Periscope take notice.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments. |
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Hillary Clinton's campaign issued a statement saying they would decline Fox New's invitation for a California debate, saying they're focusing on the general election. | Getty Clinton declines Fox News debate with Sanders
Hillary Clinton has declined an invitation to participate in a Democratic debate on Fox News, the campaign said Monday evening.
"We have declined Fox News' invitation to participate in a debate in California. As we have said previously, we plan to compete hard in the remaining primary states, particularly California, while turning our attention to the threat a Donald Trump presidency poses," campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement.
"We believe that Hillary Clinton's time is best spent campaigning and meeting directly with voters across California and preparing for a general election campaign that will ensure the White House remains in Democratic hands."
In February, the Clinton and Sanders campaigns agreed to extend the Democratic debate schedule by four more debates. Three have been held, with the final debate to be held in California in May before the state's June 7 primary, according to the agreement. The statement does not signal good news for any possible California debate.
Last week, Sanders accepted the invitation from the network to participate in the debate. Fox News has expressed interest in holding a Democratic debate for months and has been publicly lobbying the Democratic National Committee — earlier this month, Fox sent letters to both campaigns formally inviting them to a debate, moderated by Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace. Clinton and Sanders both appeared on Fox News earlier this year in back-to-back town halls moderated by Baier.
"Naturally, Fox News is disappointed that Secretary Clinton has declined our debate invitation, especially given that the race is still contested and she had previously agreed to a final debate before the California primary," Fox News Vice President and Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon said in a statement.
Sanders also expressed frustration: “I am disappointed but not surprised by Secretary Clinton’s unwillingness to debate before the largest and most important primary in the presidential nominating process."
A DNC spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. |
A monster black hole rotates at roughly half the speed of light, astronomers reported on Wednesday, twisting space as it turns. (Read "Star Eater" in National Geographic magazine.)
Most galaxies, including our own spiral Milky Way, possess such monster black holes. Located at the center of a quasar galaxy some 6.1 billion light-years away, the jumbo black hole in the study, which is about 200 million times as massive as our sun, is the most distant one with its spin revealed to astronomers.
And the study quasar is at least four times farther away than any other galaxy whose central black hole spin has been determined, notes astrophysicist Emanuele Berti of the University of Mississippi at Oxford. That puts it closer to the era of the earliest galaxies more than 13 billion years ago. (See: "Hubble Reveals Universe's Earliest Galaxies.")
For that reason, the fast-spinning observation points to how galaxies, such as ours, grew larger billions of years ago.
"Information about the formation of a galaxy is contained in the spin of its supermassive black hole," says Berti, who was not on the study team. "That is why this observation is interesting."
In the study, the team measured the distortion of spectral lines from x-rays emitted by the black hole. That distortion reveals the spin rate of the black hole.
The x-rays themselves are emitted from a belt of star stuff circling the black hole at nearly the speed of light, Reynolds says. That material is heated to tremendous temperatures and giving off powerful bursts of energy.
Black Hole Gastronomy
The supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies are thought to grow through mergers of smaller ones, as well as the gravitational accretion of gas, dust, and stars. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, weighs about four million times as much as the sun. Some large galaxies have central black holes billions of times heavier than the sun.
But they all started out smaller. Whether the growth of the black hole was smooth or bumpy tells us something about how galaxies grew larger around the supermassive black holes, say Berti and other astrophysicists.
"If the growth is chaotic, then the spin of the black hole heads toward zero," Berti says. In that case, the black hole acts like a top given random kicks from side to side, which rob it of energy to spin.
If instead, the structure of a growing galaxy is orderly, with vast clouds of hydrogen gas (and the occasional smaller black hole) flowing into its center to feed the central black hole steadily, its spin will increase.
"We're seeing a very rapid spin, which points to a more coherent structure to early galaxies during their formation," Reynolds says. How our own galaxy and stars like our sun formed might be better explained by understanding this formation.
Quasar Hunt
Quasar galaxies such as the one in the study (dubbed RXJ113212 1231) are some of the most powerful sources of energy in the universe, their central black holes emitting powerful jets that shine like beacons in astronomical surveys.
The astronomers caught a lucky break to view the x-ray emissions from the quasar with NASA's Chandra x-ray telescope, Reynolds says, because it required a gravitational "lens" to view.
"The alignment of the quasar with the gravitational lens had to be just right to see it," Berti says. The gravity of closer galaxies actually bends the light from the quasar, focusing it to make it viewable from Earth—the so-called gravitational lens effect.
The team hopes to hunt out more such quasars, including ones even farther away, and divine the spin of their central black holes. In that way, an understanding of the formation conditions of early galaxies might come into focus. |
No matter the level of accomplishment she might achieve, a woman profiled in the media can always expect to field questions about marriage, motherhood and the tired concept of "having it all." And when society celebrates a woman's professional achievements, it often comes with the implication that she either shirked her familial duties or achieved success in spite of them.
In November, the New York Times tweeted about Adele, "A 27-year-old mother who barely uses social media is selling more albums than anyone thought was still possible." Daily Beast senior editor Marlow Stern quipped back, "Imagine Justin Timberlake being described as a '34-year-old dad who barely uses social media.'"
And it's not just the women of Hollywood who are pigeonholed in this manner. Twitter user @Daurmith posted a string of clever tweets Saturday that illustrate just how the language used when describing a successful woman diverges from that of a successful man, composing bios about renowned male scientists the way they might be characterized as females.
"A devout husband and father, Darwin balanced his family duties with the study of the specimes he brought from his travels."
In March 2013, science writer Christie Aschwanden published a piece on DoubleX Science explaining what she calls the Finkbeiner Test. (Think of it as science's Bechdel Test, which evaluates how women characters are portrayed in film.)
Aschwanden came up with the idea when her colleague Ann Finkbeiner took a radical approach to an article she was asked to write on a female astronomer. Finkbeiner decided she wouldn't identify the astronomer's gender; instead, saying in a post, "I'm going to pretend she's just an astronomer." Taking her cue from Finkbeiner, Aschwanden developed a set of criteria for biographies on women scientists.
In order to pass the Finkbeiner Test, an article or bio on a female scientist must not mention "the fact that she's a woman, her husband's job, her child care arrangements, how she nurtures her underlings, how she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field, how she's such a role model for other women" or "how she's the 'first woman to...'"
But while we wait for that to take, we'll keep enjoying Daurmith's musings on Isaac Newton's "large eyes and frail appearance" and the "sassy and carefree" Richard Feynman. |
Powerful owl found tangled in rope and hanging from tree rescued in Sydney
Updated
A threatened owl has been released back into the wild after it was found tangled in rope and hanging from a tree at Engadine, in Sydney's south.
Sagar Dave and his family found the powerful owl late on Monday night and called Sydney Wildlife and New South Wales Fire and Rescue for help.
"We were so pleased that the little one was saved," Mr Dave said.
"We were all concerned, it's a beautiful bird and we didn't want anything else to happen to it."
Mr Dave said he initially thought the owl was dead but when they approached it, it started fluttering its wings.
"We thought it was dead because it was lying down, but [I] think it was clever, it was just trying to pretend," he said.
"We said we must do something about it, we can't just leave it.
"We did freak out a bit at first and we didn't know what to do, but we called Sydney Wildlife and they called the firefighters for help.
"The firies were here in about 10 minutes."
Mr Dave's family named the bird Eve, because it was found days before New Year's Eve.
Engadine firefighter Andrew Moser said it was a pretty simple rescue.
"We cut the rope down and then someone held its wings and someone held its big sharp talons," he said.
"We didn't want to release it [straight away] because we were afraid it had a broken wing."
Mr Moser said the rescue was an unusual one for him.
"Usually it is cats and dogs, occasionally it's possums, very rarely do we get birds like this," he said.
"I've always wanted to see one, because I like birds, but I never thought I would get to rescue one."
Powerful owl population declining in Sydney
Jacqui Marlowe from Sydney Wildlife took the owl to the vet where it was nursed back to health.
"It's a magnificent animal, unique and rare and threatened," Ms Marlowe said.
"It's a juvenile, because it does a juvenile begging call.
"Powerful owls are really unusual animals, they're on the New South Wales threatened species list.
"They exert 1.1 tonnes of pressure on possums from their talons and they can rotate their head through 180 degrees."
Ms Marlowe said in recent years the powerful owl population in Sydney was declining and no-one was sure exactly why.
"It could be development and loss of tree cover, it could be a disease, or it could be that there's less possums, because that's their main prey," she said.
"They're not found anywhere else except for in Australia, on the east coast."
She said because 60 to 80 per cent of young die before reaching adulthood there was a program monitoring the powerful owl population in Sydney's north and south.
Topics: human-interest, animals, engadine-2233
First posted |
Bloomberg has won a lengthy Freedom of Inforn battle to get the details of a secretive, no-strings-attached multi-trillion-dollar payout from the Bush administration (continued by the Obama administration) to banks, the details of which were not available to Congress. The documents make it clear that the banks' posture that they were only borrowing the money to help the government (JP Morgan said it borrowed "at the request of the Federal Reserve to help motivate others to use the system") were purest refined BS. Morgan for example, had borrowed twice its cash holdings.
The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, argued that revealing borrower details would create a stigma -- investors and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank as lender of last resort -- and that needy institutions would be reluctant to borrow in the next crisis. Clearing House Association fought Bloomberg’s lawsuit up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the banks’ appeal in March 2011.
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.
“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing...”
Lawmakers knew none of this.
They had no clue that one bank, New York-based Morgan Stanley (MS), took $107 billion in Fed loans in September 2008, enough to pay off one-tenth of the country’s delinquent mortgages. The firm’s peak borrowing occurred the same day Congress rejected the proposed TARP bill, triggering the biggest point drop ever in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (INDU) The bill later passed, and Morgan Stanley got $10 billion of TARP funds, though Paulson said only “healthy institutions” were eligible. |
During a Monday interview on CSPAN, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said "it is part of the Middle Eastern culture" to lie.
"In the Middle Eastern culture it is looked upon with very high regard to get the best deal possible, no matter what it takes, and that includes lying," Hunter said.
When asked if he meant that "all Middle Eastern countries are this way," Hunter reiterated his point.
"Yeah, that's part of Middle Eastern culture. They like to barter there," Hunter said.
Hunter did finally acknowledge he was making a generalization after calling the Iranian government "liars."
In an email to TPM, Joe Kasper, Hunter's director of communications, said the congressman's comments were only in reference to Middle Eastern leadership and not the Middle East as a whole.
"I recall when asked to specify on one of the issues, he said the goal is to get the best deal in general terms," Kasper told TPM. "But to be specific, he was talking about the political culture."
This isn't Hunter's first questionable statement. In June 2010, Hunter said he would support deporting U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, saying "it takes more than walking across the border to be an American citizen," and he also criticized the fight to repeal "don't ask don't tell," saying it would open the "military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites to gays and lesbians."
Hunter also told CSPAN this week that he believes the United States should use nuclear weapons against Iran if necessary. |
CLOSE A rare two-headed kitten is born in Oregon. Powered by NewsLook.com
Image from Reuters video of two-headed kitten born in Oregon. (Photo11: Newslook)
It's quite an adorable aberration.
A rare two-headed kitten named "Deucy" was born in Amity, Ore., on Tuesday. The feline has four eyes, two noses and two mouths.
Her owner, Stephanie Durkee, didn't believe her kids when they told her what they found in the litter.
"The kids actually found them and came in and said, 'mom there's a kitty with two heads,' and I said, 'I think you guys are just tired, you're crazy, that doesn't happen,'" Durkee said.
After an examination, vets say the kitten appears to be in good health, despite being rejected by her mother. She's now being fed kitten formula with a syringe.
Cats born with the rare condition are known as 'Janus cats', after the Roman god with two faces.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/10d40Aq |
Technology continues to innovate, and business is evolving with it. Because companies and individuals are able to interact globally to conduct business, client bases have grown too expansive and complex to be easily managed with a paper Rolodex. However with the development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, companies can effectively manage interactions with current and future customers.
Sophisticated CRM systems not only manage account and contact information, but track and forecast sales in one central location. In particular, sales and marketing departments have benefited most from integrated CRM systems. Many companies offer CRM services including Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP) and Salesforce (CRM). In particular, Salesforce remains the industry leader in CRM systems and customer solutions. Primarily utilized in the cloud, Salesforce offers customers the ability to integrate reporting, process controls and visibility of ongoing projects.
Customer Relationship Management
Prior to widespread access to CRM systems, companies recorded and received information through numerous channels. Widespread access to CRM systems has allowed companies to organize information including sales, accounts and contact information in one central location. In particular these systems facilitate sharing information across various teams in an organization.
Notably, sales and marketing departments utilize a number of features offered through most CRM platforms. In 2013, worldwide customer relationship management software amounted to $20.4 billion in revenue. Leaders in the industry include Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. As competition continues to intensify, the increasing sophistication of CRM software differentiates platforms from one another.
The market contains various types of CRM systems including Business to Business (B2B), Business to Customers (B2C), Software as a Service (SaaS), and social media platforms. In particular, SaaS platforms represent the largest share of CRM systems, accounting for more than 41 percent of all CRM revenue. Software as a Service is a means of delivering applications over the Internet. Commonly referred to as cloud computing, SaaS bypasses the installation and updating of software. In particular Salesforce provides both SaaS and PaaS CRM systems to companies.
Salesforce
The focus of the CRM industry is to provide seamless processes within a company. Prior to CRM systems such as Salesforce, centralizing information required extensive data entry. However the utilization of Salesforce within departments in a company allows accessible circulation of information. Besides process control, Salesforce is a valuable tool providing visibility, tracking, reporting and several quantifiable metrics which enable companies to more effectively hit strategic goals.
As the industry leader, Salesforce is widely recognized for CRM systems with over 100,000 companies using its services. As a proven innovator, Salesforce provides new features and capabilities with continual updates. Salesforce’s combination of Force.com and AppExchange lead the SaaS CRM industry in cloud integration and software customization.
Features
Some of Salesforce's most popular features include sales forecasting, collaboration, contact management, and reporting. Salesforce claims that the application of its CRM systems can increase revenue by 30 percent. In addition, Salesforce says its software increases sales productivity, pipeline, win rate, and forecasting accuracy.
The utilization of a CRM system can track all sales activity including past and future customers. This information provides insights for companies to act on higher potential customers.
In customer focused industries, CRM systems provide insights to customer information and decisions. Information such as social media, emails, and client data can help companies understand customer needs and leverage potential sales.
Not only can a CRM be utilized with large companies, small businesses can benefit from pairing Salesforce with accounting software. Salesforce claims it will increasing sales by up to 29 percent, sales productivity by up to 34 percent and forecasting accuracy by 42 percent.
Limitations
Like all software and applications, Salesforce has its advantages and disadvantages. High level executives tend to be highly separated from data within the CRM platform. Contrary to the mission of increasing efficiency, a convoluted platform causes a disconnect with users.
Notably Salesforce involves a great deal of training. Furthermore, the reporting process can be difficult for the novice and experienced user. The customization toolkits for reporting can be too technical for use by even seasoned administrators.
However as a tool, Salesforce is only as powerful as the individuals who use it. When components of the process do not operate smoothly, the potential value associated with Salesforce can not be realized. As a result, the largest limitation of Salesforce is not necessarily the complexity of the platform itself but the the willingness of an organization to learn and fully integrate it into their operations.
The Bottom Line
As company operations continue to become more complicated, a clear and comprehendible process can help increase productivity and sales. The development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems assist in the implementation of executable processes for all departments of a company including sales, marketing and finance.
The use of a CRM system within a company predicts increased sales and revenue growth as a result of more efficient tracking, reporting and visibility of processes. Increased visibility supports companies monitoring of end to end processes from a project's inception to completion. As a result, companies can further track and report completed and future sales. |
Georgia Congressman and orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Tom Price was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services early Friday morning after a long second hearing and a great deal of fretful debate. Price is seen as pivotal in administration efforts to scrap, overhaul, or otherwise undo Obamacare.
As Vox.com put it earlier today: “He’s the HHS secretary you’d pick if you were dead serious about dismantling the law.”
As with seemingly every nomination of late, Sen. Elizabeth Warren made the most overwrought and maudlin objections to Rep. Price’s nomination, saying that his experience in healthcare should “horrify” you and that he wants to “destroy fundamental protections that millions of Americans depend on.” (Also she said he has “no shame,” so obviously she hasn’t shut up yet.)
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) in his remarks in opposition during the hearing tonight said:
And by the way, we all ought to understand that if confirmed, Congressman Price would be the captain, the captain of the Trump healthcare team. So what he says matters and what he offers, legistlatively, his positions and his votes. He voted again and again to repeal the Affordable Care Act. So it really matters.
Those are quite the endorsements. Price has stated his support for protections for preexisting conditions, saying no one should be denied coverage on that basis. But so avid is opposition to Price, and loyalty to Obama’s ACA, that he has even been attacked for wanting more cancer screenings.
You can read more about Price from RedState and our diarists here.
But the tl;dr is this: He’s the new HHS Secretary, he supports repeal and replace, and Democrats despise him. |
With a huge assist from ESPN Stats & Information, we've attempted to track the frequency of ACL injuries in the NFL this season. If you recall, a significant spike was evident near midseason, and while the pace has since slowed, the total still exceeds the number of confirmed injuries in each of the past two seasons.
Based on research from Rachel Eldridge, using information verified by StatsPass.com, at least 40 players have been placed on injured reserve because of ACL injuries. (There likely have been more, but these are diagnoses we could confirm.) Using the same parameters, there were 32 such injuries in 2012 and 25 in 2011.
Browns QB Brian Hoyer suffered a torn ACL in his right knee Oct. 3 while playing on a grass field. AP Photo/David Richard
The natural inclination is to wonder if the NFL's expanded rules on hits to the helmet have prompted more shots to the knee area, but an analysis this week by The MMQB.com cast data-based doubt on that possibility. Earlier this year, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested an alternate theory: Some players are choosing shoe styles that emphasize speed over support and safety.
This week, I wanted to look at another explanation that often surfaces during ACL discussions: Playing surface.
Many of you are probably aware that a study published last year in the American Journal of Sports Medicine found the rate of ACL and ankle sprains were 67 percent higher on artificial turf than grass between 2002-09. But for reasons that aren't immediately clear, most of the ACL injuries we've confirmed this season have occurred on grass.
Of the 40 we've documented, one occurred in college. So among the remaining 39, we counted 34 to have happened on grass and five on some version of artificial turf. Twenty-three occurred in games and 16 in practice, including training camp. All of the turf injuries came in stadiums during games rather than on practice fields.
As we discussed in the ESPN.com Hot Read last month, the NFL's competition committee will compile all of this information after the season and analyze it for trends. This season's compilation will be of particular note considering the new rules, but I don't think we'll see anything to suggest that they are responsible for an increase in ACL injuries. The rate of injury on grass will certainly merit further inspection.
The increase in ACL injuries, now that the pace has slowed, generally reflects what we found in the Hot Read: Overall injuries, and resulting missed starts, are up this season. But in terms of raw data, the frequency is not as dramatic as it appeared anecdotally earlier this season. |
Tenet 1: Business Strategy
The business strategy is what gives product makers the direction to grow in the marketplace while beating the competition.
Business strategy is the top-line vision of the company. It is why the company exists. It ensures the long-term growth and sustainability of the organization. It is the basis for the core competencies and offerings, which are the products. In this book, I will use the term products to include both products and services.
The business strategy is what gives product makers the direction to grow in the marketplace while beating the competition. The business strategy identifies the company’s guiding principles of how it will position itself and still achieve its objectives. For this to happen, the business must continually identify and utilize a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is essential to the company’s long-term existence.
In his classic book, Competitive Advantage, [3] Michael E. Porter lays out the two most common ways to achieve a competitive advantage: cost leadership and differentiation.
The advantage behind cost leadership comes from offering the lowest price for products in a particular industry. Whether it is the cheapest car, television, or hamburger, this was the traditional way that companies achieved dominance in the marketplace. After all, allowing the private sector to compete without government regulation is what free market economy is all about! I mean, look at the rampant success of stores such as Walmart and Target. They can offer consumers the best prices and widest selection of merchandise. But what happens when prices hit rock bottom? Then, the battle needs to be about what makes the product better.
This brings us to Porter’s second type of competitive advantage: differentiation. Because we are product inventors planning to build disruptive technologies, this is where our actual power lies. With differentiation, the advantage is based on a new or unique product or a unique aspect of the product for which customers will pay a premium because of its perceived value. As consumers, we choose one product over another based on the things we personally value, ranging from the product’s usefulness to how much pleasure we derive from it. That perceived value is what transforms a simple little café and cup o’ joe into the crazy success story of Seattle-based Starbucks. There’s a reason why people pay $5 for a cafe latté—it’s the experience that’s also wrapped into the product. It starts the moment a customer steps into the store and ends when that person tosses his cup and sleeve into the trash.
Today, a UX differentiation is the digital product game changer. Differentiated user experiences have completely revolutionized the way we communicate with the world. Consider what the world was like before micro-blogging. When it was released in 2006, Twitter confounded users with their 140-character limit. But the limit turned out to be a valuable perk, especially with respect to updates. Today, users don’t check traditional news outlets for instant updates; they check Twitter, instead. When Hurricane Sandy pounded the East Coast in 2012, the power went out, but more than 20 million Tweets occurred between users, residents in the storm, and media and government outlets. [4] I know I spent some time on Twitter, tweeting to friends in New York about the hurricane updates I saw on TV from my home on the West Coast.
Another tool that has distinguished itself from the competition with a UX differentiation is the map app Waze. It combines social traffic with GPS navigation, thereby allowing users to find the quickest route of the moment to their destination. By merely driving around with Waze open, users passively contribute traffic and other road data to the network. Users also can take a more active role by sharing road reports on accidents, police traps, or any other hazards along the way, helping to give other users in the area a heads-up about what surprises might ahead of them. In June of 2013, Waze (an Israeli startup) was acquired by Google for $1.1 billion. Now, Waze still offers its distinct UX to its users, but its data is also channeled into Google Maps. [5] Clearly, Google recognized the competitive advantage of UX collaboration and chose to adopt Waze for what it could add to its product rather than compete against it.
A UX competitive advantage is important to understand in this brave new world of technology. Traditionally, the purpose of a competitive advantage was to make a product that was self-sufficient through a revenue stream. A revenue stream is how the company gets paid. And when a customer pays more for the product than what it costs to make, value is created for the stakeholders. To many people, this is the heart of a product’s business model. Today, though, a UX differentiation doesn’t necessarily mean big bucks when your product hits the market. Instead, the goal of many entrepreneurs is mass adoption. Products such as Facebook didn’t kick competitors like MySpace or Friendster’s asses because it was a cheaper alternative. Facebook won the field because, a) it offered a differentiated UX that was perceived by users as more valuable, and b) everyone adopted it. From that point, Facebook innovated a new kind of business model that relied on monetizing its user data for selling targeted advertising.[6] In 2013, Waze did a similar thing when Google bought it. Waze made a lot of money by selling access to its devoted users, and Google will make a lot of money because so many users continue to use both the Waze and Google Maps apps. The two companies essentially turned their users into customers because they were able to monetize them, and because of this, from here on out, I am going to use the terms “user” and “customer” interchangeably.
Still, a good business model doesn’t just define the revenue stream of a product. Nor does it just rely on a ridiculous amount of users adopting it. This is something often lost on young tech entrepreneurs. Because they grew up in a world in which products like Facebook became solvent and conquered the world without an obvious business model, they don’t realize what an uphill battle they have ahead of them to acquire users. They also forget that the mega-successful digital products that continue to define our everyday lives didn’t just stumble onto their business models. These game-changing companies experimented, tested and failed before they hit on and innovated the right one. And if, like me, you worked on the Web when the Dotcom bubble burst in the 1990s, you have first-hand experience of all of the risks involved in creating products without proven business models. When the investment money runs out, and there isn’t any more coming in, life is bleak.
The process of business model construction is foundational to a business strategy. As Steve Blank writes, a business model describes the “flow between key components of the company.” [7] This quote comes from Blank’s Customer Development manifesto in which he challenges product founders to stop writing static business plans. Instead, he encourages them to adopt a flexible business model that requires all of the key components are validated using empirical, customer-facing discovery methods. To get a sense of these key components, let’s take a look at a tool called the Business Model Canvas.
In their seminal book Business Model Generation, [8] authors Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur deconstruct each of the nine essential building blocks of a business model so that visionaries can systematically think through the logic of how the company will eventually make money. Blank also refers to this tool in his own work on business-model creation. What’s relevant to us in this book is how many of these components align with the UX strategy for a digital product. They are as follows (see also Figure 2-3):
Customer segments —Who are the customers? What are their behaviors? What are their needs and goals?
—Who are the customers? What are their behaviors? What are their needs and goals? Value propositions —What value (either qualitative or quantitative) do we promise to deliver?
—What value (either qualitative or quantitative) do we promise to deliver? Channels —How will we reach our customer segment? Is it online or offline?
—How will we reach our customer segment? Is it online or offline? Customer relationships —How are we going to acquire and retain our customers?
—How are we going to acquire and retain our customers? Revenue streams —How does the business earn revenue from the value proposition? Are the customers going to pay for it? Or are there other options?
—How does the business earn revenue from the value proposition? Are the customers going to pay for it? Or are there other options? Key resources —What unique strategic assets must the business have to make the product work? Is it content, capital, or patents? Is this something we must develop?
—What unique strategic assets must the business have to make the product work? Is it content, capital, or patents? Is this something we must develop? Key activities —What uniquely strategic things does the business do to deliver its proposition? Are we optimizing an outdated business process? Are we creating a platform to bring customers together to transact?
—What uniquely strategic things does the business do to deliver its proposition? Are we optimizing an outdated business process? Are we creating a platform to bring customers together to transact? Key partnerships —What partnerships and suppliers do we need in order to deliver our value proposition?
—What partnerships and suppliers do we need in order to deliver our value proposition? Cost structure —What are the major costs that will be incurred to make our business model work? Are we trying to cut costs by throwing out the thrills? Are there fixed costs that won’t go away?
Figure 2-3 — Business Model Canvas showing the nine essential building blocks of a business model
By using the canvas, product makers collect all their hypotheses about their product into one place. They then revise it as they move through the discovery phase, and it’s something you’ll see as we develop all the techniques in this book. For this tenet, however, it is another place in which we can see how business strategy and UX strategy really intersect. So many of the concerns of the business model canvas—customer segments, value propositions, revenue streams, and customer acquisition and retention—are elements that are essential to creating a product’s user experience, which as you’ve learned, is key to our competitive advantage.
When you don’t see these connections, you can potentially end up in the same position as our software engineer in Chapter 1. His business model relied on an affluent customer segment to provide the company’s revenue stream, but he had not correctly identified that segment before he built his product. If he had not come in contact with that user during my team’s customer discovery, he might have pushed ahead with a lengthy and expensive campaign to blitz media and online advertising outlets. This, as my team’s UX strategy proved, would have been very problematic because the campaigns wouldn’t have reached out to the user segment actually interested in the value proposition.
This leads us to how the Business Model Canvas also calls out the importance of collaboration between stakeholders and team members in the discovery phase. Categories such as key resources and partnerships aren’t something that a digital product manager or UX designer should think up in a vacuum. Rather, these categories are where the stakeholders can offer a wealth of information and leads. Other categories, such as key activities, customer segments, and value propositions, will more likely rely on the guidance of the digital team to lead the stakeholders to the best product. But the digital product team must also recognize that these same categories need input from actual users before a hypothesis can be changed to a fact, which is what our UX strategy research demonstrated to the software engineer.
We need to recognize that building a business strategy isn’t about formulating and executing a perfect plan. Instead, it’s about being able to research what’s out there, analyze the opportunities, run structured experiments, fail, learn, and iterate until we devise something of value that people truly want. Also, as the product scales and the market evolves, the business strategy must be nimble. For a new product, a strategy probably revolves on just getting enough product/market fit to raise financing, or grabbing enough market share so that its customer base is the competitive advantage. But, for a more mature company, the strategy is on building out the company’s core value proposition while trying to keep the company’s infrastructure and internal processes in place. It is in this way that what might have been the business model or competitive advantage in the early life cycle of the product might not be the same in later phases. Nevertheless, in chasing this moving target, companies must continue to experiment with varied offerings so that they can scale, remain competitive, and continue to offer value to users in an ever-changing marketplace.
Discount for UXmatters Readers—Buy UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products That People Want from O’Reilly Media, using the discount code AUTHD, and save 50% off the retail price for the ebook and 40% off the print book.
You’ll find Part 2 of “Chapter 2: The Four Tenets of UX Strategy” from UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products That People Want in the January 2016 edition of UXmatters.
Endnotes
[1] Sun Tzu, Art of War, first published by Lionel Giles in 1910.
[2] Gray, David, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo. Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010.
[3] Porter, Michael. Competitive Advantage. New York: The Free Press, 1985.
[4] Guskin, Emily, and Paul Hitlin. “Hurricane Sandy and Twitter.” Pew Research Center, November 6, 2012. Retrieved December 21, 2015.
[5] McClendon, Brian. “New Features Ahead: Google Maps and Waze Apps Better Than Ever.” Google Maps Blog, August 20, 2013. Retrieved December 21, 2015.
[6] Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
[7] Blank, Steve, and Bob Dorf. The Startup Owner’s Manual. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012.
[8] Osterwalder, Alexander, and Yves Pigneur. Business Model Generation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010. |
A criticality accident is an uncontrolled nuclear fission chain reaction. It is sometimes referred to as a critical excursion, a critical power excursion or a divergent chain reaction.
Any such event involves the unintended accumulation or arrangement of a critical mass of fissile material, for example enriched uranium or plutonium. Criticality accidents can release potentially fatal radiation doses, if they occur in an unprotected environment.
Under normal circumstances, a critical or supercritical fission reaction (one that is self-sustaining in power or increasing in power) should only occur inside a safely shielded location, such as a reactor core or a suitable test environment. A criticality accident occurs if the same reaction is achieved unintentionally, for example in an unsafe environment or during reactor maintenance.
Though dangerous and frequently lethal to humans within the immediate area, the critical mass formed would not be capable of producing a massive nuclear detonation of the type that fission bombs are designed to produce. This is because all the design features needed to make a nuclear warhead cannot arise by chance.
In some cases, the heat released by the chain reaction will cause the fissile (and other nearby) materials to expand. In such cases, the chain reaction can either settle into a low power steady state or may even become either temporarily or permanently shut down (subcritical).
In the history of atomic power development, at least 60 criticality accidents have occurred, including 22 in process environments, outside nuclear reactor cores or experimental assemblies, and 38 in small experimental reactors and other test assemblies.
Although process accidents occurring outside reactors are characterized by large releases of radiation, the releases are localized. Nonetheless, fatal radiation exposures have occurred to persons close to these events, resulting in 14 fatalities. In a few reactor and critical experiment assembly accidents, the energy released has caused significant mechanical damage or steam explosions.[1]
Physical basis [ edit ]
Criticality occurs when sufficient fissile material (a "critical mass") accumulates in a small volume such that each fission, on average, produces a neutron that in turn strikes another fissile atom causing another fission; this causes the chain reaction to become self-sustaining within the mass of material.
Criticality can be achieved by using metallic uranium or plutonium, liquid solutions or powder slurries. The chain reaction is influenced by range of parameters noted by the acronyms MAGIC MERV (for Mass, Absorption, Geometry, Interaction, Concentration, Moderation, Enrichment, Reflection and Volume) and MERMAIDS (for Mass, Enrichment, Reflection, Moderation, Absorption, Interaction, Density and Shape). Temperature can also be a key factor.
Calculations can be performed to determine the conditions needed for a critical state, mass, geometry, concentration etc. Where fissile materials are handled in civil and military installations, specially trained personnel are employed to carry out such calculations, and to ensure that all reasonably practicable measures are used to prevent criticality accidents, during both planned normal operations and any potential process upset conditions that cannot be dismissed on the basis of negligible likelihoods (reasonably foreseeable accidents).
The assembly of a critical mass establishes a nuclear chain reaction, resulting in an exponential rate of change in the neutron population over space and time leading to an increase in neutron flux. This increased flux and attendent fission rate produces radiation that contains both a neutron and gamma ray component and is extremely dangerous to any unprotected nearby life-form. The rate of change of neutron population depends on the neutron generation time, which is characteristic of the neutron population, the state of "criticality", and the fissile medium.
A nuclear fission creates approximately 2.5 neutrons per fission event on average.[2] Hence, to maintain a stable, exactly critical chain reaction, 1.5 neutrons per fission event must either leak from the system or be absorbed without causing further fissions.
For every 1000 neutrons released by fission, a small number, typically no more than about 7, are delayed neutrons which are emitted from the fission product precursors, called delayed neutron emitters. This delayed neutron fraction, on the order of 0.007 for uranium, is crucial for the control of the neutron chain reaction in reactors. It is called one dollar of reactivity. The lifetime of delayed neutrons ranges from fractions of seconds to almost 100 seconds after fission. The neutrons are usually classified in 6 delayed neutron groups.[2] The average neutron lifetime considering delayed neutrons is approximately 0.1 sec, which makes the chain reaction relatively easy to control over time. The remaining 993 prompt neutrons are released very quickly, approximately 1 μs after the fission event.
In steady state operation, nuclear reactors operate at exact criticality. When at least one dollar of reactivity is added above the exact critical point (where the neutron production rate balances the rate of neutron losses, from both absorption and leakage) then the chain reaction does not rely on delayed neutrons. In such cases, the neutron population can rapidly increase exponentially, with a very small time constant, known as the prompt neutron lifetime. Thus there is a very large increase in neutron population over a very short time frame. Since each fission event contributes approximately 200 MeV per fission, this results in a very large energy burst as a "prompt critical spike". This spike can be easily detected by radiation dosimetry instrumentation and "criticality accident alarm system" detectors that are properly deployed.
Accident types [ edit ]
Criticality accidents are divided into one of two categories:
Process accidents , where controls in place to prevent any criticality are breached;
, where controls in place to prevent any criticality are breached; Reactor accidents, which occur due to operator errors or other unintended events (e.g. during maintenance or fuel loading) in locations intended to achieve or approach criticality, such as nuclear reactors or nuclear experiments.[1]
Excursion types can be classified into four categories depicting the nature of the evolution over time:
Prompt criticality excursion Transient criticality excursion Exponential excursion Steady state excursion
The prompt critical excursion is characterized by a power history with an initial prompt critical spike as previously noted, that either self terminates or continues for an extended period as a tail region that decreases over time. The transient critical excursion is characterized by a continuing or repeating spike pattern (sometimes known as "chugging") after the initial prompt critical excursion. The longest of the 22 process accidents occurred at Hanford Works in 1962 and lasted for 37.5 hours. The 1999 Tokaimura nuclear accident remained critical for about 20 hours, until it was shut down by active intervention. The exponential excursion is characterized by a reactivity of less than one dollar added, where the neutron population rises as an exponential over time, until either feedback effects or intervention reduce the reactivity. The exponential excursion can reach a peak power level, then decrease over time, or reach a steady state power level, where the critical state is exactly achieved for a "steady state" excursion.
The steady state excursion is also a state which the heat generated by fission is balanced by the heat losses to the ambient environment. This excursion has been characterized by the Oklo natural reactor that was naturally produced within uranium deposits in Gabon, Africa about 1.7 billion years ago.
Recorded incidents [ edit ]
At least sixty criticality accidents have been recorded since 1945. These have caused at least twenty-one deaths: seven in the United States, ten in the Soviet Union, two in Japan, one in Argentina, and one in Yugoslavia. Nine have been due to process accidents, and the others from research reactor accidents.[1]
Criticality accidents have occurred in the context of production and testing of fissile material for both nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.
The sphere of plutonium surrounded by neutron-reflecting tungsten carbide blocks in a re-enactment of Harry Daghlian's 1945 experiment. [32]
A re-creation of the Slotin incident. The inside hemisphere with the thumb-hole next to the hand is beryllium (replacing the uranium tamper in a Fat Man bomb), with an external larger metal sphere under it, of aluminium. The 3.5-inch-diameter (89 mm) plutonium "demon core" (the same as in the Daghlian incident) was inside at the time of the accident, and would not be visible. However, its dimensions are comparable with the two small half-spheres shown resting nearby.
Image of the Lady Godiva assembly in the scrammed (safe) configuration. [33]
Image of the Lady Godiva assembly, showing the damage caused to the supporting rods after the excursion of February 1954. Note the images are of different assemblies.[33]
There was speculation although not confirmed within criticality accident experts, that Fukushima 3 suffered a criticality accident. Based on incomplete information about the 2011 Fukushima I nuclear accidents, Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress speculates that transient criticalities may have occurred there.[34] Noting that limited, uncontrolled chain reactions might occur at Fukushima I, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “emphasized that the nuclear reactors won’t explode.”[35] By March 23, 2011, neutron beams had already been observed 13 times at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. While a criticality accident was not believed to account for these beams, the beams could indicate nuclear fission is occurring.[36] On April 15, TEPCO reported that nuclear fuel had melted and fallen to the lower containment sections of three of the Fukushima I reactors, including reactor three. The melted material was not expected to breach one of the lower containers, which could cause a massive radioactivity release. Instead, the melted fuel is thought to have dispersed uniformly across the lower portions of the containers of reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, making the resumption of the fission process, known as a "recriticality", most unlikely.[37]
Observed effects [ edit ]
Image of a 60-inch cyclotron , circa 1939, showing an external beam of accelerated ions (perhaps protons or deuterons ) ionizing the surrounding air and causing an ionized-air glow . Due to the similar mechanism of production, the blue glow is thought to resemble the "blue flash" seen by Harry Daghlian and other witnesses of criticality accidents.
Blue glow [ edit ]
Many criticality accidents have been observed to emit a blue flash of light.[38]
The blue glow of a criticality accident can result from the fluorescence of the excited ions, atoms and molecules of air (mostly oxygen and nitrogen) falling back to unexcited states, which produces an abundance of blue light.[39] This is also the reason electrical sparks in air, including lightning, appear electric blue. The smell of ozone was said to be a sign of high ambient radioactivity by Chernobyl liquidators.
This blue flash or "blue glow" can also be attributed to Cherenkov radiation, if either water is involved in the critical system or when the blue flash is experienced by the human eye .[38]
It is a coincidence that the color of Cherenkov light and light emitted by ionized air are a very similar blue; their methods of production are different. Cherenkov radiation does occur in air for high-energy particles (such as particle showers from cosmic rays)[40] but not for the lower energy charged particles emitted from nuclear decay.
In a nuclear setting, Cherenkov radiation is instead seen in dense media such as water or in a solution such as uranyl nitrate in a reprocessing plant. Cherenkov radiation could also be responsible for the "blue flash" experienced in an excursion due to the intersection of particles with the vitreous humour within the eyeballs of those in the presence of the criticality. This would also explain the absence of any record of blue light in video surveillance of the more recent incidents.
Heat effects [ edit ]
Some people reported feeling a "heat wave" during a criticality event.[41][42] It is not known whether this may be a psychosomatic reaction to the terrifying realization of what has just occurred (i.e. the high probability of inevitable impending death from a fatal radiation dose), or if it is a physical effect of heating (or nonthermal stimulation of heat sensing nerves in the skin) due to energy emitted by the criticality event.
A review of all of the criticality accidents with eyewitness accounts indicates that the heat waves were only observed when the fluorescent blue glow (the non-Cherenkov light, see above) was also observed. This would suggest a possible relationship between the two, and indeed, one can be potentially identified. In dense air, over 30% of the emissions lines from nitrogen and oxygen are in the ultraviolet range, and about 45% are in the infrared range. Only about 25% are in the visible range. Since the skin feels light (visible or otherwise) through its heating of the skin surface, it is possible that this phenomenon can explain the heat wave perceptions.[43] However, this explanation has still not been confirmed and may be inconsistent with the intensity of light reported by witnesses compared to the intensity of heat perceived. Further research is hindered by the small amount of data available from the few instances where humans have witnessed these incidents and survived long enough to provide a detailed account of their experiences and observations.
See also [ edit ]
Related terms and concepts [ edit ]
In popular culture [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ] |
The FBI has “reopened” a request for documents related to former President Bill Clinton’s 2016 tarmac meeting with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) President Jay Sekulow told Fox News that the FBI sent him a letter indicating officials reopened his Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request, after initially denying the existence of records related to the Clinton-Lynch meeting.
The meeting between Bill Clinton and Lynch, which occurred at the Phoenix airport June 27, 2016, drew scrutiny as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was being investigated at the time for improperly handling classified information.
“While we appreciate that the FBI has ‘reopened’ the case file and is now ‘searching’ for documents responsive to our duly submitted FOIA request from more than a year ago, it stretches the bounds of credulity to suggest that the FBI bureaucracy just discovered that ‘potentially responsive’ records ‘may exist’ on its own accord,” Sekulow, who is also a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team, said in a written statement.
WATCH:
Watch the latest video at <a href=”//video.foxnews.com”>video.foxnews.com</a>
The FBI’s letter, sent one week after the ALCJ accused the agency of lying about the existence of the documents, states “records potentially responsive to your request may exist.”
The ACLJ released 400 emails last week, surrendered by the Justice Department in response to a FOIA request, which show Lynch used an alias to coordinate a communIcations response to media inquiries about the meeting. (RELATED: Here Is The Alias Email Account Loretta Lynch Used As Attorney General)
Sekulow told Fox News the ACLJ will continue to “press on in our legal fight to ensure that the details of the secret Clinton-Lynch meeting and the subsequent cover-up and withholding of information from the public comes to light.”
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As an openly queer filmmaker and the executive editor of the documentary Web series 50Faggots, I pay attention to media editing and content. That's my jam. And though these filters make me more sensitive to the whole content-selection process, I sort of expect that most YouTube users today have dealt with similar keep-vs.-trash editing dilemmas before posting their material. I bring this up because watching reality TV shows and recognizing all the Frankensteined post-production is no longer a foreign process to the amateur viewer. Our feedback system is set on high alert, watching for moments and conversations unnaturally hodgepodged together (of which there are many). In other words, heavily edited broadcast video no longer manipulates us as much as it did before the emergence of consumer filmmaking.
All this just goes to introduce the fact I love RuPaul's Drag Race, despite its heavily edited ways.
You see, we expect that now of reality TV. When we're lying there in bed, eating yesterday's Thai food and watching RPDR on Logo, the criticality we bring to the viewing process is inherent to our role. And our role as active audience members is a far leap from the early days of film, when the projected image of a train rolling toward the viewer on the big screen would send moviegoers fleeing their seats in fear of being hit. The intention of those early films was to create a shocked and passive audience, whereas now, reality TV puts us right in the position they want us: knowing enough that we're familiar with the inner workings of content manipulation, but still in awe of the pedestrian-made-star glow of fame. The position and reality we're deliberately placed in is just twisted enough to keep us hooked. I mean, come on, we love being voyeurs to all the shit that goes down on these shows, and we can't wait to meet these now-celebrities in person, making our obsession central to the success of reality TV (despite the fact we know better).
This brings me to my point: knowing better.
The last few episodes of Season 5 of RPDR were the first ever to leave me fuming. Personally, I can't stand when someone fails to admit their jealousy, bullies the very person they're jealous of and instigates a ganging-up on that person. And I don't even think Roxxxy Andrews can pinpoint the bitter emotions that lie underneath her excuses for acting all third-grade. Actually, "third-grade" might be too generous. Maybe "delusional," "manipulative" and "drama-causing" is more the T. (Of course, there were queens who acted just as bad, or even worse, in past seasons, and that's equally ugly.) She seems to believe that drag should favor runway bathing suits, hairography and flat-lined humor, and that somehow this is creative.
Think about what kind of voice of reason, wisdom and utter hilarity Sharon Needles has become for so many people. Can you picture Roxxxy handling the role of "America's Next Drag Superstar" and LGBT spokesperson as comprehensively? Sharon won her fans' affection with a mix of brain, creativity and crass smut. She pairs frankness with the ability to digest criticism: Remember when she apologized to Max Mutchnick for talking back during their "Hot in Tuckahoe" challenge? Conscientiously, Sharon realized that that mistake was hers to claim. She also owned her part in the Sharon Needles/Phi Phi O'Hara shenanigans. And the fact that she's as self-deprecating as she is motivating encourages others in her wake to take their ego (not their way of life) less seriously. (At least this is how she interacted onset and, for the most part, since, although we can't ignore her flippant and captured insults, which were notably problematic, not to mention disappointing. This is inexcusable.)
RPDR is my favorite show (for many real-life reasons), but I've got to say that this season leaves me with a bad taste. If you re-watch episodes from past seasons sporadically throughout, you really notice how much more honest, empathic, open-minded and playful past queens were with themselves and each other, in very real ways, and in situations when it was hard to be that way. With each consecutive season, though, each new crop of queens seems to grow more aware of (and possibly motivated by) their own compounded fame, and it causes them to focus on the cold, hard competition instead of supporting each other as a community. Unfortunately, there's a lot of effort put into discrediting each other's form of drag. Much of this season's judgement comes from within, and less from the actual judging panel, meaning throwing queens under the bus happens more often in the Interior Illusions Lounge than onstage. (Just think of the cannonfire that would have been spared had the feuding queens not shredded their community from the inside out.)
What's lacking on the show is a transparent critique of the show itself. RPDR selects queens from different backgrounds and drag genres but never prompts an explicit conversation about the clashing of their respective ideals. Most fights between queens involve telling each other who deserves the crown more, and why. And as it turned out recently, Roxxxy claimed, to both Jinkx Monsoon and Alaska Thunderfuck, that being a funny queen means you're mocking and disrespecting the art of drag. Aside from being unfounded, this argument is one to be made with the show, not fellow contestants. What Roxxxy doesn't realize is that by attacking the season's two funniest queens, she's attacking RuPaul. There have been times on earlier seasons when RuPaul has asserted a correlation between savvy drag and improvisational humor, therefore instilling these values in the very foundation of RPDR. For this reason, acting challenges shouldn't come as a surprise to newer contestants, and, consequently, they should know that RuPaul likes herself a funny queen. Humor is crucial not only for connecting with a wide fan base but for emulating the Queen herself. (After all, isn't it RuPaul's purpose to select the top-shelf stars who can achieve her level of integrity, peerlessness and repartee?) We all know that humor, when done well, is an intelligent form of social critique, and I'd say that it's among the most useful tools for LGBTQ public figures.
It's a hive mind out there. When bitter seeds are planted, they beget nasty environments. I'm not even talking about who's throwing shade. RuPaul made the distinction, with Sonique on Season 2, between sass and unwarranted bitchiness; this is what I'm referencing. And in every season, you can always spot the queen who doesn't grasp that distinction, based on how she performs in the "Bitch-Fest" or "Library Is Open" mini-challenges: Her act is so heavy with pent-up bitterness that it's not funny at all. Everyone needs doses of being read to keep egos in check, but reading is a talent, and good reading requires good taste, intelligence and wit. Otherwise, it's an uninformed opinion and can be dismissed as just that.
So my burning question is this: Why, when so many queens are drawn to performing in drag because they inherently march to a different beat, is there so much intra-community discrimination? As we see over and over on RPDR, people's reasons for being there and wanting to be there are diverse, sensitive and emotionally charged. This is not just a competition.
We're in a time where LGBTQ communities are in need of openness and vulnerability (especially given that the bonding agents that were once the gay rights/liberation movements and the AIDS crisis have been replaced by the divisive agent of marriage). And RPDR is the perfect opportunity to witness this potential on a small scale. If this is sounding hippy-dippy, let me just say that past queens have already exhibited generous traits that function to bond and not isolate. I miss Jujubee for her talent, heart and sauce. Now she was good with approaching difficult, potentially havoc-wreaking conversations on the show. And Nina Flowers, Latrice Royale, Sharon Needles, Alaska Thunderfuck, Chad Michaels, Carmen Carrera, Yara Sofia, Milan, Alexis Mateo, Ongina, Pandora Boxx, Shangela and Raven... all these queens were too, in their own ways. Beneath some of the cattiness that undeniably comes along with competition, most girls displayed a refreshing dose of self-possession and self-admitting honesty that, especially this season, morphed into entitlement, defensiveness and parry. And it goes unchecked, as does the bullying.
I understand why the forming of cliques ("Rolaskatox" and "The Heathers" alike) feels necessary to bullies: They provide power and intimidation in numbers, a hall pass to tear other queens apart out of mere jealousy, free rein to act annoying, white noise to distract from a lack of individual character, and protection for those moments when someone debunks your bullying as insecurity. But we're all insecure. Just be human about it. I know this is a competition, but is it so hard to be a good human at the same time?
If I sound tired, yeah, I do sometimes tire of people not checking themselves at the door, of people pretending, or believing, that they're the only person in the world. That's a cringe-worthy stereotype of our generation.
I'm not judging Roxxxy or other past-season bullies; I'm judging their judgment, and the delusion that they project onto others. I hope it's obvious that I still adore RPDR; part of the reason I love it so much is that it makes me feel and apply all this nuance.
What I'd really like is to see another queen win who, like Sharon Needles, encourages uniqueness à la RuPaul herself circa 1980s Atlanta/New York, as opposed to sameness à la big-hair pageant girls. How long are we going to blindingly award the very similar concepts that keep pride parades mired in corporate-sponsored homogeneity?
If we're abiding by RuPaul's charisma/uniqueness/nerve/talent definition of what ideal drag representation looks like, then Jinkx Monsoon is the queen most deserving of the title of "America's Next Drag Superstar" this season. Unlike Roxxxy's analysis of her, Jinkx is chock-full of schticks. In fact, she's supersaturated with talent, and by no means did she skate through the competition. Her strength and lack of being "victimized" (a misinterpretation of the situation anyway) just exposes Roxxxy's sick satisfaction in hurting others. Jinkx happens to be a good person, attempting, through roadblocks, to create community and not destroy it. She would would absolutely benefit from a makeup overhaul, but haven't we heard every RPDR alumna say she learned major painting tips from being on the show?
My memory is drawn to Feast of Fun podcast #1644 with Sharon Needles and Alaska Thunderfuck. This is one of a number of times I am reminded that Sharon Needles, like Jinkx Monsoon, takes her fame and doesn't soak it in like a tampon but gives back in such subtly sensitive ways that it'll shock you sideways. Who would have thought that our supposedly "spooky" Sharon Needles would provide the very combo-personality necessary to better this "me" generation and, in turn, every LGBTQ human out there?
I don't glorify Sharon Needles; she's no angel. In fact she's quite the opposite, and she would be happy to know so. I don't vilify Roxxxy either, although I was happy to see Mathu Andersen clock her dimness, and Gloria Allred clock her spite and "pageant babble." At the end of the day, that might make me an idle bully for wishing repercussion on Roxxxy. Maybe we're all a part of the problem. |
The military has high-tech equipment to track sniper fire, using microphones carried by soldiers or stationary mics mounted at strategic points. Now that technology is getting shrunk so it can be used in the hands of civilian bodyguards with Android phones.
A team of computer engineers from Vanderbilt University, led by Akos Ledeczi, has developed an inexpensive piece of hardware and related software to turn an Android smartphone into a sniper finder. The Vanderbilt team described the new system at the 12th Association for Computing Machinery/IEEE Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks in Philadelphia earlier this month.
NEWS: ‘Smart’ Armor Learns More With Every Bullet
They built a sensor module that is about the size of a deck of cards. When a shot is fired, the sensor picks up the sounds and logs the exact time. The sensor then sends the data to a smartphone via a Bluetooth connection. If any other smartphones in the local wireless network have similar modules, the location of the gunshot can be pinpointed by the timing of the sounds’ arrival. It’s a similar idea to the ShotSpotter, a system used in Seattle to track locations of shooting incidents.
There are two versions of the system. One uses a single microphone per module, but requires at least six separate phones to accurately calculate the location of the shooter. The second setup has four microphones in each (slightly larger) sensor module, but needs only two separate phones to locate the sniper.
The sensors make use of a distinctive feature of gunshots: they produce two bangs. One is from the muzzle of the gun, as the gases propelling the bullet expand and create a shock wave. That sound wave goes out in all directions, and it is shaped like a sphere.
Bullets make a second sound. As they are usually moving at supersonic speeds, it is a small sonic boom. The sound wave is conical, with the bullet at the point of the cone.
Timing when the two sounds arrive at the microphone can give a good idea of where the shot came from, and when that data is taken from separate locations, it allows for triangulating the sniper’s position.
Using the sonic boom form the bullet allows the microphones to “hear” the shots over longer ranges. Janos Sallai, a research scientist on Ledeczi’s team, told Discovery News that at larger distances, the spherical wave from the muzzle is distorted by obstacles on the ground. That’s one reason people have a difficult time figuring out where sounds like gunshots are coming from.
ANALYSIS: How the Falling Meteor Packed a Sonic Punch
The microphones in a phone, he added, wouldn’t work. “Originally we were thinking of the phone mic, but the sampling rate wasn’t enough,” he said.
In addition, the noise cancellation that most phone makers build into them so that you can have a conversation in a crowded restaurant or outside, gets in the way.
Civilian bodyguards could use these sensors to protect dignitaries, with each member of a team equipped with a sensor module. If a shot were fired, the guards could track where it came from and help local police track down the shooter. Sallai added that the Secret Service has shown a lot of interest in this system and has even called for proposals.
Photo via iStockphoto, DeanMillar
This article originally published at Discovery News here |
This is a story from my best friend, who will be going by the name Ana here on Catster. She has written several pieces about her life with cats and rescuing cats from all sorts of situations. She prefers to remain anonymous. All names have been changed, but I can verify that her stories are true.
I know a hoarder. Not a collector or an “eccentric” person, but a real live TLC documentary-style hoarder. She and her husband engage in hoarding behavior, he with tools, equipment, auto parts, and old broken electronics. Hers consists of clothes, family “heirlooms,” holiday decorations, and animals. A LOT of animals — and the number has increased alarmingly during the past few years.
They share a dark, ramshackle house on several acres of land, right off a major highway that routinely kills the denizens of her hoard, but still, the numbers invariably increase year after year, as she picks up more unfortunates, bringing them back to the hoard, to “rescue.”
I’ve always hesitated to use the word “rescue,” even before meeting this woman, who we can call Patty. It implies that you have saved an animal from some awful fate, that you are an angel of aid and succor for some lost little soul. But we can’t keep them all, and many of these “rescues,” particularly in rural areas with no support from any agency, would more honestly be labeled as interventions, often ending in the death of whomever it is we’ve acted in the benefit of — but I digress.
Currently, Patty has hamsters, birds, dogs, fish, mice and, most of all, cats, under her care. Cages line every windowless, heaped space; their little eyes stare out at me from the dusty gloom. After my first trip into her home, which I know was not easy for her to allow, I sat weeping in my car on the side of the road. It was their eyes. Even now I can see them in my mind, and it brings water to my eyes.
“They’ve been keeping me up all night, scratching, the little loves!” she says to me with an awkward laugh. I look over the pack of nervous cats and find they are literally festooned with fleas. There are cats on every surface. Cats poised atop heaps of trash, cats in the laundry, cats on every filthy stair.
My immediate response was delight. “I can fix this!” I cry, then drive the hour to my home, gathering up all the ampules of Advantage and Frontline I can find; it’s not enough. Up to the ATM to check my balance, I use the grocery allowance to get more from the local pet store. It’s terribly overpriced, you can do much better online, but the thought of leaving them to pace and scratch and yowl for another night is too much to bear. All my intervention work is done out of pocket, and unfortunately there will always be more fleas than dollars. I’ve done this so often that there is no longer a need to measure, I carry several syringes with black marks for different weights, and dispense by feel.
Back to Patty’s house, now in full darkness. As I come up the driveway, a waifishly thin cat with sagging teats runs over to greet me. She gets the first dose, then I follow her back to the house and go through the entire colony, quick jabs to the back of the neck until my hands are numb. I make casual offers, while she follows me anxiously through the piles of her treasures, to get them into the low cost spay and neuter program I already visit for feral colony management. To take pictures and put some on Craigslist, to try and find homes. To apply for food donations with a faraway shelter.
There are no shelters within a hundred miles where they won’t be killed, particularly these shy, scabby kids. She gently refuses any further help. She’s already very uncomfortable with the flea treatment having been provided for free. She can’t tolerate the idea of charity, she says, but having been a hoarder myself, I know the truth is far more complicated. Leaving them there, in the squalor, was more difficult than I can explain.
The phone rings the next morning. “It’s a miracle!” Patty exclaims, “They’ve been asleep since about half an hour after you left!” Of course they have, I think; they are exhausted from pacing and scratching and chewing themselves. “That’s wonderful!” I reply, trying to sound upbeat and casual.
She forces me to take five dollars for the treatment, and I accept under the condition that she permit me to treat them every 30 days. She gratefully accepted, but when I broached the subject of neutering, or rehoming, she politely demurred, and I didn’t dare to push any further, possibly alienating her and causing the hoard to lose their only chance of flea treatment. They all have names, they are all sources of comfort for her, but she is desperately poor and in way, way over her head.
I catch myself thinking about her and the brood, usually when I’m supposed to be sleeping. I keep seeing those wary, somehow desperate eyes, peering out at me from in and around every heap of trash. I haven’t given up on pushing Patty, but it is a painfully slow process, with no end in sight.
Is anyone else in a similar situation, or have you ever been? Local animal authorities are no help — we live in an isolated area, and their only solution is to gas every single animal.
Hoarding doesn’t happen overnight. If you know someone who is experiencing difficulty letting go of things, even if they don’t appear in immediate danger of being overwhelmed, talk, and ask. Tell them you are worried, tell them how much you care. Offer your time, support and friendship. Whether it’s help with animal care, housecleaning, organization, or even just a weekly lunch date, these little connections can make a real difference in the life of a person who is in crisis, and help them to stay grounded in reality. You can also contact organizers, life coaches, therapists and support groups in your area for additional resources.
I know mine is a delicate situation, but I’d like to hear your suggestions. Have you ever been involved in something like this? How did you handle it? Let me know in the comments.
Here is some related reading on hoarding, hoarders, and what you can do to help:
Read stories of rescue on Catster: |
With Israel and Saudi Arabia still lusting for war with Iran, President Trump and his disdain for reality about the Iranian nuclear accord have become the key enablers, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
By Paul R. Pillar
Donald Trump’s disdain for the truth does not prevent reality from repeatedly bumping up against his policies, the most consistent theme of which has been to try to destroy his predecessor’s accomplishments. The degree to which reality inconveniences Trump — and more importantly, how much Trump’s efforts to shove reality aside damage U.S. interests — vary from issue to issue.
Dominating the headlines recently, of course, has been health care, in which the denied truths include basic principles of how insurance pools work and the fact that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has successfully extended health care coverage to many Americans who did not previously have it. In foreign policy, one of the most glaring rejections of truth has concerned climate change and Trump’s associated withdrawal from the Paris agreement, which represents rejection of a well-established scientific consensus.
Trump appears to care little about the resulting near-term consequence of U.S. isolation and loss of leadership. The most cataclysmic physical and economic consequences are longer-term ones that will mostly occur after Trump leaves office, and there is no evidence that he cares about those consequences at all.
As for what was probably Barack Obama’s leading foreign policy accomplishment — the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to restrict Iran’s nuclear program — the reality that Trump rejects is that the accord is working as intended to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon and that Iran is complying with its obligations under the agreement, as verified by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Trump faces every 90 days a congressionally imposed requirement for the president to certify whether Iran is observing the agreement. The certification is supposed to be a statement of fact, not an expression of a preference. For a truth-denier like Trump, who has been vituperative in denouncing the agreement, this requirement is a problem. The account in the New York Times of White House discussions leading to the most recent certification of Iranian compliance (the second of Trump’s presidency) indicates that Trump’s advisers had to drag him kicking and screaming into making the certification.
Tearing Down Obama
Notwithstanding (or perhaps because of) the JCPOA’s success, Trump clearly is still determined to try to destroy the accord. With his failure on the domestic side to undo Obamacare, he is probably more determined than ever to achieve destruction of this foreign policy accomplishment.
The Times’s account leaves the impression that when the next certification is due three months from now, there is a significant chance that Trump will refuse to acknowledge the truth a third time, no matter how rigorously the Iranians observe the agreement. A failure to certify would open the door to new sanctions that would represent wholesale U.S. violation of the JCPOA.
Meanwhile, the Trump White House already has violated not only the spirit but the letter of the JCPOA by openly and explicitly discouraging other countries, as it did at the G-20 summit meeting, from conducting normal business with Iran. The Iranians have not yet given up on the agreement in response, but as Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has indicated, Iran’s patience, like anyone’s patience, is not unlimited.
For Trump and others who want to confront and isolate Iran and who all along have opposed the JCPOA or anything like it, the preferred scenario is for the Iranians to get so annoyed by U.S. noncompliance that Tehran finally does give up and declares the agreement void.
If that tactic fails, then do not be surprised if, in October, Trump refuses certification. That decision would be accompanied by trumped-up charges of Iranian violations. Anyone willing to examine the issue carefully would know they are trumped-up because, thanks to the highly intrusive monitoring regime that the JCPOA established, international inspectors have very detailed and timely cognizance of everything going on in the Iranian nuclear program.
Of course, readily available refutation has not stopped Trump from lying about many other things. But if Iranian conduct regarding the JCPOA to date continues over the next three months, then the world should realize that a Trumpian accusation of Iranian noncompliance would have as much validity as Trump’s statements about the size of his inauguration crowd or the millions of fraudulent voters who supposedly cast ballots for Hillary Clinton.
If Trump rejects the truth about Iranian compliance, the most favorable possible outcome would be for Iran and the other five non-U.S. powers that negotiated the JCPOA to try to continue the agreement despite U.S. noncompliance. Even that outcome would have significant negative consequences for the United States in the form of lost business in Iran, lost opportunities to build on the JCPOA in addressing other regional problems, and further isolation of the United States and estrangement from its allies.
Less favorable outcomes would involve complete breakdown of the JCPOA and an accelerated Iranian nuclear program, with renewed concern about diminishing breakout time until a possible Iranian nuclear weapon, increased uncertainty about the Iranian program in the absence of the enhanced international inspections established under the JCPOA, and heightened danger of U.S. involvement in a new Middle Eastern war.
Trump’s Motivations
How much would Donald Trump, motivated by whatever psychological and political factors drive him along his path of destruction, care about any such consequences? The experience with health care gives us some indication. To realize the campaign mantra of abolishing Obamacare, Trump evidently is willing to remove health-care coverage from millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him.
One way he has been dealing with the truth he denies is to try to create a new reality by saying “let” [sic] the ACA fail while he actively sabotages the program, such as by refusing to enforce the individual mandate and sowing as much uncertainty as possible to discourage insurance companies’ participation.
Such a man is not likely to care much about setting back the cause of nuclear nonproliferation or stoking increased dangers and tensions in the Middle East, if that means getting a big notch in his achievement-destroying belt.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is author most recently of Why America Misunderstands the World. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.) |
Far-right protesters rally in the town of Dover in southeast England on May 28. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)
After last week's referendum on a "Brexit," a wave of racist incidents have been reported to British police and documented in widely shared social media posts. Since the referendum, the hashtag #Postrefracism has been trending, and its contents provide a disheartening view of how Britain's vote to leave the European Union may be emboldening those who harbor virulent racist sentiments.
A Facebook group called "Worrying Signs" now has more than 11,000 followers, many of whom are posting live updates from the scenes of such incidents. The group describes itself as "a space where you can share information, post pictures, add screen grabs (etc.) of any worrying signs or incidents of racism/xenophobia you've come across since the UK EU referendum results."
Some 800,000 Poles live in the U.K. but after their cultural center in London was vandalized, during a spate of hate crimes in recent days, many are wondering if the post-Brexit era means they are no longer welcome. (Reuters)
Tuesday morning, at least two young men harassed another man whom they perceived to be an outsider on a Metrolink train in Manchester. The incident, which was confirmed by police, was caught on video, which has now been widely shared.
Despite it being early in the morning, the young men appear to be drunk, and one flings beer onto the victim before leaving the bus. Fellow passengers prevent a fight from breaking out and then shout the young men down, calling them a "disgrace to Britain."
On Monday afternoon in Walsall, outside Birmingham, a man working at a halal butcher shop was injured after he was hit with a lit bottle containing flammable liquid. The shop was badly damaged, according to the BBC.
"We can't say definitively that it was a racist attack." Halal butchers 'petrol bomb'https://t.co/r7UfWssOBE pic.twitter.com/weNZRVKwmD — Express & Star (@ExpressandStar) June 28, 2016
Police in West London were investigating what they called a "racially motivated" attack against the Polish Social and Cultural Association. Poles make up the largest foreign-born population in the United Kingdom. The organization's building was apparently defaced with graffiti that said, "Go home."
In Cambridgeshire, leaflets were apparently distributed with “Leave the EU/No more Polish vermin” written in both English and Polish. The Polish Embassy in London has expressed its "grave concern."
[The uncomfortable question: Was the Brexit vote based on racism?]
In a speech given to Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister David Cameron called the increase in hate crime "despicable." Some reports indicate that incidents have risen by over 50 percent since the referendum.
"In the past few days, we have seen despicable graffiti daubed on a Polish community center, we’ve seen verbal abuse hurled against individuals because they are members of ethnic minorities," Cameron said. "Let’s remember these people have come here and made a wonderful contribution to our country. We will not stand for hate crime or these kinds of attacks, they must be stamped out."
In a stunning victory for the "Leave" campaign, Britain has voted to exit the European Union. Here's what happens next. (Jason Aldag,Adam Taylor/The Washington Post)
Those campaigning for a Brexit offered clear assurances that a new immigration system would not affect E.U. citizens already living in Britain: “There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK,” the campaign noted on its website. But despite the assurances, many immigrants to Britain are unsure of their future.
Racism isn't exactly an unexpected outcome of the victory for the Brexit camp at the polls, either. Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) and the most hard-line proponent of a Brexit, has spoken of the "n----- vote" and told reporters that he would use a racist slang term to refer to Chinese restaurants. But he and other "Brexiteers" have said that their concerns are about increasing immigration flows perceived as coming at the expense of the British-born and have nothing to do with prejudice.
Britain's massively popular tabloids have done little to calm the public's nerves over immigration, often resorting to blatant scaremongering and race-baiting. Below is a compilation of dozens of tabloid fronts doing so.
Visual reminder of how immigration played in Leave camp narrative.34 front pages this yr compiled by @gameoldgirl pic.twitter.com/tW6iUBGhz5 — Kim Ghattas (@BBCKimGhattas) June 26, 2016
The message of most of the attacks that have been reported since Friday seems to be simple: A victory for the Brexit camp should herald the repatriation of all non-white, non-Anglo-Saxons in the U.K. Never mind that the official campaign pushing for a Brexit expressly eschewed that sentiment.
What follows is a harrowing sampling of Twitter posts detailing specific incidents.
"Table next to me says to Polish waitress "How come you're so cheerful? You're going home." Him and the missus started laughing." Disgusting — Jamie Pohotsky (@jamiepohotsky) June 24, 2016
Oh my god, someone on #r4today called the @BBCRadio4 correspondent a 'Paki' followed by 'I am not a racist'. How is this allowed 2 b on air? — Ahmed Masoud (@masoud_ahmed) June 28, 2016
Man in Kings X station yells ‘BREXIT’ in my south Asian friend’s face. Within 10 hours of the result I experienced 2 racialised altercations — kerem (@KeremBrulee) June 25, 2016
Picture from Romford today. (Photo with permission from the must-follow @diamondgeezer) pic.twitter.com/tsB56jAuww — Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) June 25, 2016
Disgusting RT @fionaand: Older woman on the 134 bus gleefully telling a young Polish woman and her baby to get off and get packing.Horrific. — ChannyAmos (@Channy_Amos) June 25, 2016
Read More:
Britain just killed globalization as we know it
Brexit: A modern-day Peasants’ Revolt?
An astute online comment has some wondering whether Brexit may ever happen |
Square Enix is taking its biggest ever line-up of games over to Gamescom 2015, the publisher has announced, with Just Cause 3 set to be playable for the first time at next month's event.
Avalanche's action-packed sandbox will be joined on the show floor by playable demos of Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below and the upcoming PC version of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, alongside hands-on builds of earlier releases Life is Strange, Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae 2.0 and Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward.
Hitman and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided won't be playable at the show, however, with Square Enix instead planning to host hands-off demonstrations at its on-site cinema.
The main stage, meanwhile, is being reserved for Final Fantasy XV, where Square plans to have "a number of exciting stage presentations with many well-known guests" that offer "new insights" into the game.
And there may even be a few surprises in store, too, with Square teasing that info on "more new announcements and reveals at Gamescom 2015 will be released in the coming weeks".
"At this year's E3 we presented one of our biggest line-ups in years including several new game reveals. At Gamescom 2015 we will set another mark with the biggest show in our history," said Square Enix Americas and Europe CEO Phil Rogers. "We are very happy to present our sensational portfolio of titles not only to industry representatives but also to gamers from all over the world. Whether it is FINAL FANTASY or DRAGON QUEST, DEUS EX, HITMAN or JUST CAUSE - Square Enix presents its biggest franchises large-scale.
Gamescom gets underway on Wednesday, August 5 with the doors opening to the public the following day on Thursday, August 6.
Source: Square Enix |
The concept of remaking a film is an interesting one to think about. Is it respectful to the original’s legacy, or disrespectful? Remakes really vary in quality – some are great, even better than the original source material, and then some are just awful – insulting, and just plain disrespectful to the original.
Some stories are so classic that they have to be updated with time, and reimaginings of them are welcome, but there is a group of movies that remain untouchable. Not necessarily relating to the quality of the films, but more just that certain thing about them that makes them so special and beautifully unique. Maybe it’s the film’s aesthetic, tone, or characters, but whatever the case, these are 15 films that absolutely could never be remade.
15. Ghostbusters
The classic 1984 sci-fi comedy features all the zaniness and hilarity promised by its premise: three sold-out scientists decide to start a ghost extermination business – they get famous and have to save the world. While this comedy plot seems like it would be easy enough to update to present-day with modern special effects, you have to step back and think about why Ghostbusters was such a success.
The characters – Doctors Venkman, Spengler and Stantz, brilliantly portrayed by Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, respectively. These three characters (as well as Winston, the fourth and less memorable Ghostbuster), had such perfect comedic chemistry, a blend of personalities and dialog that could never be duplicated. Also, the original Ghostbusters features endearing, classic effects. Now-a-days it would of course all be CGI, and probably look like garbage.
14. Clerks
Kevin Smith’s famous first film is a day in the life of two convenience-store clerks named Dante and Randall. These two best friends hang out at their jobs, play hockey on the roof, talk about movies, and generally slack off. Clerks was a hilarious low-budget masterpiece, and was an essential part of the 90’s independent film wave.
Kevin Smith’s dialog is so funny, and rings so true, and the black and white low-budget feel of the film is so original that this story could simply never be told again. Smith even seemed to acknowledge this with his 2006 follow-up, Clerks II, which has a different tone and vibe than the original. Only Kevin Smith can direct a Kevin Smith movie.
13. Annie Hall
Woody Allen has such a distinct and unique cinematic voice. His writing is like no other’s, and his characters are honest and relatable, just like his films. Annie Hall is his magnum opus of his idiosyncrasy and quirk films, and the structure and storytelling of the film is like no other. Annie Hall is a romantic comedy told with such an original voice and directed with such uncommon flair. The characters are honestly depicted and thoroughly realistic, and the deeper themes at work in the film are fascinating.
Though the general structure of Annie Hall has been reduplicated by films such as (500) Days of Summer, the original’s legacy has never been contested. This rom-com would be impossible to replicate because of Allen’s very particular sense of humor and characterization, as well as the interesting storytelling techniques and ingenuity he utilized.
12. Pulp Fiction
Few filmmakers can make non-linear storytelling work as well as Tarantino, and no filmmakers can replicate his style or dialog. There are many imitators, but Pulp Fiction remains QT’s untouched masterwork. Every actor in this film fits his/her character so perfectly, and the dialog written for those characters defines them so genuinely.
Despite the fact that Tarantino is one of the most widely imitated directors, the darkly hilarious and clever tone that Pulp Fiction hit so brilliantly is something that could never be recreated – not even by Tarantino himself.
11. Borat
Borat may be too obvious of a pick, but it’s true, this is one film that could never be remade. Sacha Baron Cohen’s ingenious mockumentary is one of the funniest films ever made, and perfectly captured the zeitgeist of America at the time, at the same time making sly statements about how much xenophobia and racism there is to be found at the heart of America.
Through the un-scripted ingenuity of his comedy, and the real reactions of his victims, Cohen captured something so amazing, hilarious and topical all at once, and as proven by his follow-ups Bruno and The Dictator, not even he can replicate his brilliant satire.
10. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
Tim Burton’s first feature film is also one of his funniest, and showcases the director’s imagination and quirky sense of humor as well as any of best films. The obvious reason that Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure could never be remade is that Paul Reubens is not planning on playing the character again anytime soon, and no one could play this character but him.
If anyone else tried to be Pee-Wee, it would just be embarrassing and lame, and not in the intentional sense as captured by Rueben’s performances. Also, Tim Burton was the perfect director for making a film as ridiculous and dumb as this one actually something fun to watch and interesting. The colorful set-pieces are definitely something to behold, and the film’s sense of humor is odd and hilarious.
9. Being John Malkovich
Spike Jonze and Charlie Kauffman burst onto the scene in 1999 with all of their unparalleled creativity with Being John Malkovich. This one-a-kind film is truly one of the best of the 90’s, and features such wacky and wonderful ideas. Watching the film today, it holds up marvelously, and is still just as funny and moving.
No one can write a Charlie Kaufman script but Charlie Kaufman, and no one can direct a movie like Spike Jonze. They work so well together and John Malkovich an artistic and creative triumph in every way. Its bold ideas light up the screen, and almost every scene features an odd and interesting mise-en-scene. |
By Larry Shaughnessy
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told members of Congress on Wednesday that Army special forces in Tripoli were never told to "stand down" from rushing to Benghazi to help when the diplomatic mission there came under attack last year.
In doing so, he disputed the claims of Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya who testified last month before a House committee that a unit of four special forces troops was told to stand down rather than rush to Benghazi.
The September 11 attack killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Members of Congress, especially House Republicans, have aggressively sought answers from the military and the Obama administration about the response to the terror assault and why armed forces were not dispatched quickly to help.
Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta testified earlier this year that "unfortunately, there was no specific intelligence or indications of an imminent attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi. And frankly, without an adequate warning, there was not enough time given the speed of the attack for armed military assets to respond."
Under questioning from Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, Dempsey said the special forces contingent was not told to stand down but rather given a different mission.
"By the time they contacted the command center in Stuttgart (Germany), they were told the individuals in Benghazi were on their way back and that they would be better used at the Tripoli airport."
Dempsey said had the four troops flown to Benghazi at that time, the victims would have been on a plane flying to Tripoli.
"If they had gone, they would have simply passed each other in the air," he said.
Earlier, Dempsey was asked about whistleblower reports that commanders of the Libyan unit were not at their base in Stuttgart or even in Europe.
He responded to Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, that the commanders were in Europe, but they were on a training mission. That meant the response time was much longer than it might have been had they been in Germany, and a lot longer than the three to four hours that the whistleblower suggested.
"No, I would not agree to that time line," Dempsey said. "The travel time alone would have been more than that, and that's if they were sitting on the tarmac."
Dempsey was testifying at a hearing on the military budget. |
Researchers in Halifax are looking at Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma as they continue work to better understand mass evacuations.
“It’s giving us some first-hand experience,” said Dr. Ahsan Habib, a transportation professor at Dalhousie University.
Habib is working to try and understand the what-if scenarios of evacuation if a hurricane or other natural disaster was to strike Halifax.
READ: Halifax professor wins Canada’s top science prize for battery research
‘We cannot plan it when it’s happening’
Part of Habib’s work involves developing traffic simulation models, which are used to determine how long it will take to evacuate certain areas, identify traffic issues and what countermeasures could be put in place.
“We are trying to learn through simulation modeling what type of things may happen in these type of scenarios in Halifax, in particular Halifax peninsular,” said Habib.
“We cannot plan it when it’s happening right? Disaster management planning or disaster modeling is a little bit different because we have to anticipate. We cannot wait for things to happen and then respond.”
Habib says he’s been closely watching recent disasters in both Texas and Florida to see what type of situations Halifax should be simulating and what issues may have not been anticipated.
That includes how a gas shortage could potentially impact a mass evacuation.
READ: ‘How are we going to survive here?’ Florida residents assess damage after Irma’s destruction
Simulation shows it would take 15 hours to evacuate peninsula
One of the traffic models that Habib has created is considered a worst-case scenario and determined that it would take hours to get roughly 35,000 vehicles off the Halifax peninsula if there was an emergency and an evacuation was required.
“If we have a mass evacuation mandatory order at 10 a.m., when all the commuters are in the peninsula, we found that we need at least 15 hours to evacuate the entire peninsula. Assuming that there’s no incident, assuming that there’s no blockage or unintended or unforeseen traffic conditions,” said Habib.
“It’s a big number. There’s no doubt about it.”
Habib says he is hopeful that they can improve evacuation times by using different types of countermeasures in further simulation models as their research continues.
READ: What homeowners can do if they’re hit with major flooding
Halifax has few exit points, could cause panic
Through his research, one of the things Habib has identified is that there are only a few enter and exit points on the Halifax peninsula.
“It’s very difficult for a historical town with narrow roads and these bottle necks to evacuate very efficiently, so we have to think through and learn more as we go,” he said.
WATCH: Mandatory evacuations as millions flee hurricane Irma
Dr. Kevin Quigley, a Dalhousie professor and director of the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy & Governance is also researching the topic.
He has been working alongside a psychologist to understand how people may respond to emergencies in the Halifax area.
“One of the interesting things about the peninsula is because there are so few points of exit, it causes panic,” said Quigley.
“A lot of other dangerous scenarios people don’t actually panic (…) But when you have few exit points, it can generate a little bit more panic.”
READ MORE: Hurricane Harvey: Coast Guard, EPA cleaning up a dozen chemical spills
Vulnerable populations and evacuations
Right now, researchers are two years into a five-year project.
Part of Quigley’s work is looking at how emergency managers deal with vulnerable populations during an evacuation.
“Vulnerable populations are always something that come up after an evacuation. So, it’s not so much the general population and how you’re gonna get 80 per cent or 90 per cent off the island so to speak. It’s the 10 ten per cent,” said Quigley.
WATCH: British Columbia’s Elephant Hill wildfire forces prompts evacuations
“When you have an elderly population, people in hospitals or seniors residences, that’s just simply a long, logistical operation to get those people out of those buildings and off the peninsula. So they may actually be better off sheltering in place in a lot of cases.”
Since more people choosing to stay in their homes longer nowadays, Quigley says that’s another element that needs to be looked at if there was a large-scale evacuation.
“The question then is not simply evacuating people in hospitals and seniors residences but also where are the other vulnerable populations? How are we engaging with those folks who are still at home? Do we know where they are? Do we know what they need?”
READ MORE: Florida looters taking advantage of Hurricane Irma evacuations, several arrested
Next phase of research looking at ‘ethical consideration’ during evacuations
Quigly says the next phase of his work on the project will be about the ethical consideration surrounding evacuations, since officials are trying to make difficult decisions in a limited amount of time and with limited resources.
“You have to make tough choices about who you’re going to help and so we want to introduce that kind of complexity also to get emergency managers to think about how to think about ethical dilemmas.”
Once the research by Habib and Quigley is complete, the goal is to use it to develop training tools for emergency personnel so they are better prepared.
Follow @NatashaPace |
by Josh Nelson
In what will perhaps become Chris Wallace’s proudest moment, yesterday’s interview of Barack Obama offers a glimpse into the subtle efforts FOX makes to frame the debate.
In the first 9 minutes all of Wallace’s questions and comments were about race.
9:03 A.M EST: WALLACE: But some observers, and some liberal observers say is that part of your problem is you come off as a former law professor who talks about transforming politics when the lunch bucket crowd really wants to know what youre going to do for them. Bob Herbert, columnist for the New York Times, happens to be a black man, says that Hillary Clinton seems tougher than you do.
9:06:32 Senator, for all your efforts to run a post-racial campaign, isn’t there still a racial divide in this country that is going to make it very hard for you to get elected president?
Which created a perfect transition into… the real issue at hand.
9:09 WALLACE: I wasn’t sure whether I was even going to ask you about your former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, but he made it easy for me because he’s now begun this…
Which continued through 6 questions and 6 minutes, to lead into this.
WALLACE: Senator, you say a lot of good stuff. Reverend Wright (INAUDIBLE) are distractions from the real issues. But especially for someone like you, who’s a newcomer to the national scene, people don’t know a lot about, don’t voters have a legitimate interest in who you are and what your values are?
Obama swung back at this one fairly hard, forcing Wallace to pivot his line of questioning to William Ayres, which continue for the final three minutes before first television break.
20 minutes in, no questions related to policy.
First question after the break:
Over the years, John McCain has broken with his party and risked his career on a number of issues, campaign finance, immigration reform, banning torture. As a president, can you name a hot button issue where you would be willing to cross (ph) Democratic party line and say you know what, Republicans have a better idea here.
Shorter Chris Wallace: John McCain is a maverick, are you? You want Republican votes? Prove it.
Everyone on the Internet seems to have gotten the message that John McCain is not a maverick anymore. As Arianna said on Real Time last week, he has been reduced to a “pandering pawn” of the “agents of intolerance” he once repudiated.
Obama was then allowed two minutes to talk policy, in order to talk about situations where Republicans have better ideas than Democrats. Having his victim exactly where he wants him, Wallace completes the trap.
9:24:46 WALLACE: But, Senator, if I may, I think one of the concerns that some people have is that you talk a good game about, let’s be post-partisan, let’s all come together — just a couple of quick things, and I don’t really want you to defend each one, I just want to speak to the larger issue.
The larger issue, excellent!
On some issues where Democrats have moved to the center, partial-birth abortion, Defense of Marriage Act, you stay on the left and you are against both.
9:25:22 And so people say, do you really want a partnership with Republicans or do you really want unconditional surrender from them?
Shorter Chris Wallace: If you really wanted to be post partisan, you’d chip away at a woman’s right to choose and discriminate against homosexuals.
Obama was then given another two minutes to bend over backwards to appeal to conservative voters.
With all of the fluff out of the way, Wallace has one more thing to get off his chest. Opposition research.
9:28 WALLACE: I want to ask you about more area during this segment. Tax and spending, the Republicans are keeping a running total of all of your plans. They say it’s $662 billion over four years.
And onto the question.
Question, John McCain is going to go after you as another classic liberal tax and spender.
That is a Republican talking point, not a question. Obama was then given about three minutes (almost) uninterrupted to talk about taxes and the economy (#1 issue for voters) before the final commercial break.
Wallace sets the next trap:
9:35 WALLACE: Senator, this week President Bush named David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to be the head of Central Command, which controls overseas military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia. Will you vote to confirm his nomination?
If he says no, he hates America (Go Wallace!). If he says yes…
9:36 WALLACE: Petraeus, I don’t have to tell you, is the architect of the troop surge, a strong advocate of our continued engagement in Iraq. If you become commander-in-chief and he says your plan to get out of Iraq is a mistake, will you replace him?
But Petraeus wants war forever, and you don’t. Gotcha!
One more follow up on Petraeus, where Obama sneaks in one minute about Iraq (#3 issue for voters)
That’s enough substance for now (a total of 5 minutes). It’s time for the lightning round!
Lets clear out this campaign business. Why are you ducking another debate with Hillary Clinton?
Clinton talking point.
9:38:48 WALLACE: You say its premature to discuss running mates. Are you at least open to the possibility of running with Hillary Clinton with places on the ticket to be determined?
You answered your own unoriginal question right before you asked it.
9:39 WALLACE: If the voting ends in June and you’re still leading in the popular votes and delegates and the superdelegates hand the nomination to Hillary Clinton, do you think the young people, the African American people, the young first time voters you brought into this campaign, aren’t they going to be awful angry?
Translation: Any chance the primary process will tear the Democratic party apart?
Wallace spends the next 90 seconds trying to determine what it would take for Obama to give up his massive fundraising advantage against John McCain. Obama raised more in March than McCain did in the first quarter.
Wallace, apparently out of ammo, goes fishing with his final question.
9:41:13 WALLACE: Finally, and we have about a minute left, what have you learned in this campaign? And I don’t mean, gee, what a great country this is answer.What mistakes have you made?
Here is the breakdown of the questions, with issue rating determined via Yahoo and AP:
Jeremiah Wright : 8 questions
: 8 questions Race : 6 questions
: 6 questions Reaching Across the Aisle to Republicans : 3 questions
: 3 questions The Economy (#1 issue for voters): 2 questions
(#1 issue for voters): 2 questions Gas Prices (#2 issue for voters): 0 questions
(#2 issue for voters): 0 questions Health Care (#3 issue for voters): 0 questions
(#3 issue for voters): 0 questions Iraq (#4 issue for voters): 0 direct questions, 3 through the lens of Petraeus
Here is the amount of time devoted to various topics:
Total interview time minus commercials? 37 minutes.
37 minutes. Time devoted to commercials? Over 6 minutes.
Over 6 minutes. Time devoted to the four most important issues for voters? 5 minutes.
5 minutes. Time devoted to Jeremiah Wright? 9 minutes.
The FOXnews.com homepage currently lists the transcript of the interview as a subheading under a story about Rev. Wright. Because let’s be honest, we all know what the real story is here.
Cross posted at The Seminal. |
When asked this week if the Texans were considering Colin Kaepernick as a replacement for the injured Deshaun Watson, Bill O’Brien said that while the former 49ers quarterback is a “good football player,” he “hasn’t played football in a while.”
On Tuesday, the Texans pretty much shut the door on the Kaepernick talk by signing Josh Johnson, who has never proven himself to be a “good football player” and also “hasn’t played football in a while.” At least not real live NFL football.
New Texans backup QB Josh Johnson has not attempted a pass since Dec. 11, 2011. — Sarah Barshop (@sarahbarshop) November 7, 2017
Kaepernick had yet to start an NFL game when Johnson last attempted a pass. He’s attempted 1,687 passes since Johnson’s last attempt.
Skill-wise, there’s no comparison. Johnson has had trouble sticking on a roster and just lost a camp battle with Geno Smith for the Giants backup role. Obviously the Texans were looking for a mobile quarterback who is capable of running the offense they had put together for Watson, and decided to go with the lesser talent.
Texans’ lengthy evaluation process takes them to a QB with a 57.7 career passer rating who couldn’t beat out Kaep for a backup job in SF https://t.co/W7Ury6d7dW — Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) November 7, 2017
With Kaepernick, Houston had a shot at the playoffs. With Johnson? Not so much.
O’Brien is not the first NFL coach to come up with an underwhelming excuse for passing on Kaepernick. Packers coach Mike McCarthy berated a reporter who dared to ask about Kaepernick, saying he was happy with his quarterbacks, before pursuing Brian Hoyer a week later. Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said he wasn’t considering adding a quarterback because he typically only carries two quarterbacks, which is simply not true.
What will be the next QB-needy team’s excuse for not signing Kaepernick? We’ve got some ideas. |
VIENNA (Reuters) - A senior Syrian diplomat said on Tuesday he had voiced his nation’s “deep concern” to the U.N. nuclear chief about the possible risks involved if a research reactor near Damascus were hit during any military strikes against his government.
Ambassador Bassam Al-Sabbagh’s comments came a day after Russia and the United States clashed over whether the U.N. nuclear agency should analyze the possible impact if the site near the Syrian capital were struck during U.S.-led strikes.
Russia said last week any military action against Syria’s government could have catastrophic effects if the reactor that contains radioactive uranium was hit “by design or by chance”.
Moscow called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to urgently assess the issue with the United States preparing for possible punitive strikes in Syria over an alleged poison gas attack in its civil war.
But the U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA, Joseph Macmanus, told an IAEA board meeting on Monday that such “comprehensive risk analyses of hypothetical scenarios are beyond the IAEA’s statutory authority”.
In a later development on Monday that could avert U.S. strikes, U.S. President Barack Obama said he saw a possible breakthrough in the crisis after Russia proposed that Damascus hand over its chemical weapons for destruction.
Al-Sabbagh, when asked about a meeting with IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, said his country “strongly” endorsed the Russian request for an assessment by the U.N. agency.
“I expressed our deep concern regarding the possible risks of any military attack on facilities under safeguards agreement,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the board meeting, referring to sites under IAEA monitoring.
The IAEA - which said in a report last month that it was monitoring, via satellite images, the Syrian research reactor, as well as “other locations of safeguards relevance” - was not immediately available for comment.
HIGHLY-ENRICHED URANIUM
Amano said on Monday he was considering the Russian request.
“We assure Director General Amano that the IAEA has the mandate and the responsibility to have this analysis and to present it to the member states,” Al-Sabbagh said. It is a matter related to “nuclear safety and security,” he said.
Moscow is the Syrian government’s most powerful ally and main arms supplier and has blocked U.N. Security Council action sought by Western powers to stop Syria’s war and bring about a political transition. The West has backed the two-and-a-half-year old uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Nuclear experts say Syria’s so-called Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR), a type of research reactor that is usually fuelled by highly enriched uranium (HEU), is small but that any radioactive fallout might pose a local hazard.
The kilogram of HEU that such a reactor usually holds is only a small fraction of the 25 kg (55 pounds) that would be sufficient to assemble a single nuclear bomb, they say.
The light water reactor was built in the early 1990s and the HEU fuel was enriched to near 90 percent, an IAEA document showed, the same refinement level as needed for atomic arms. |
One constant in my life is anxiety. For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with this invisible monster. My childhood environment was not a healthy one, and for a long time I was ashamed of the things I went through and the anxiety they created in me; but not anymore.
I never really had the support I needed to believe I was good enough or capable of accomplishing anything. I grew up in a home in which I didn’t always feel comfortable or safe. I was talked down to, ignored and forgotten at times, often mocked, and made to feel like everything was my fault and that there was something wrong with me. I endured both physical and emotional abuse in my home, and sexual abuse outside of it. It took me a very long time to even begin the process of attempting to love and accept myself. Fortunately, despite a lot of negatives, I was able to take everything I felt and turn it into something positive. Because I knew what it was like to suffer, I was always full of compassion for others, and I never wanted anyone else to suffer. That desire and passion in me to stop the suffering of others was a big part of why I was able to survive and to stay strong.
When I describe my anxiety, I tend to call it debilitating. It affects every aspect of my life. What are everyday tasks for others might as well be climbing Mt. Everest for me. Even just writing this, my heart is racing, my palms are sweaty, and all I can think is, “Am I good enough to write this? Would my words even help anyone? Isn’t there someone more qualified to do this? Will people question my anxiety because of the things I have been able to accomplish?” I can’t seem to ever escape my own mind’s endless questioning and self-doubt. The physical symptoms, while different depending on the situation and the level of anxiety felt, are just as unpleasant. They typically manifest themselves as a racing heart, sweating, shaking, breathing rapidly, feeling weak, chest pain, nausea, and a general out-of-control sensation that is hard to put into words.
I experience all of those things before a DxE action. I am also stuck in my head wondering, “Is this it? Will this be the time I fail?” When I am out there speaking for the animals, I am not doing it because I love speaking in front of people, talking to people I don’t know, or having any sort of attention on me (all things that cause a great deal of panic in me), but because the stakes are too high not to speak. Every moment counts; every moment could potentially make a difference.
I have done so many things in the last few months that are completely out of my comfort zone. Traveling alone, participating in public disruptions at restaurants, several solo speak outs—including a half-hour of just speaking by myself in front of Whole Foods—among others.
There are two specific moments that stick out in my memory— moments in which it became clear to me that I was going to start my own DxE chapter in Cleveland. One mid-November evening in 2014, after a trip to Chicago to meet its amazing DxE team, I walked into two very different restaurants in my neighborhood. One was an upscale Italian restaurant, and the other was a bar/grill. I spoke out at both—my very first (and second) time doing it. My voice came out loud and coherent—which, to be honest, surprised me, as I am very soft spoken and don’t typically articulate very well. |
After President Donald Trump proposed a $54 billion increase in military spending, a new report suggests that money will not fix fundamental problems that have existed since the Cold War ended.
A report released Monday by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) says that the current system of recruiting, training and retaining military personnel is a “holdover from the Cold War, reflecting the national security priorities and American society of that time.”
READ MORE: Over 33mn US employees, including military personnel, had their data hacked
After World War II, when the Soviet Union was the only major threat to the US, defense leaders created the “one-size-fits-all” system to ensure that the armed forces would “remain ‘young and vigorous’ enough to meet the physical demands of battle but also retain a large number of midgrade officers and NCOs prepared to command units in case of another major war.”
The BPC says that the system helped win the Cold War, however, is no longer working in the current environment.
“The military uses a 70-year-old ‘one-size-fits-all’ personnel system that brings young people into the military in their teens and 20s, puts them into a rigid command-and-promotion structure, and removes all but the most-senior-ranking service members by their early 40s,” the BPC found.
BPC determined the status quo caused an unsustainable growth of personnel costs and discouraged prospective candidates with new skills from joining, while also “favor[ing] uniformity over individual merit” and discharging personnel at their peak.
Part of the problem, the report says, comes from thoughtlessly throwing money into a bureaucracy. Since 2001, the cost of military personnel has increased by more than 50 percent. However, during that time, the Army lowered recruiting standards, the Air Force saw lower retention with pilots, and service members from all branches have reported a stagnant satisfaction with military life.
Instead, the report suggests creating a more sustainable military system that entices Americans to serve.
"You can’t buy your way out of this problem, and we’ve been trying to buy our way out of the problem with bonuses and all the other things,” former defense secretary Leon Panetta, co-chair of the BPC study team, told Breaking Defense. “Frankly that’s why personnel costs have gone up 50 percent in the last 15 years.”
The report claims that “one-size-fits-all” system that is trapped in the past and “needs to be updated to one that fully engages all of American society, adapts to new threats, is sustainable over the long term, and is technically proficient.”
To adapt to the rising new threats, the report says the military needs to recruit service members with specialties ranging from cybersecurity to translators. To achieve this, it calls on lawmakers to implement 39 policy proposals to create a Fully engaged, Adaptable, Sustainable, and Technically proficient (FAST) military.
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Some of the BPC suggested reforms include requiring every young American to take the military’s Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test, which would assess an individual’s critical skills. At the moment, the Selective Service registration is only filled out by men and only assesses basic information.
The BPC also suggests creating a “smart draft” that would be gender-equal, bringing women into the draft. Along with the proposed ASBA test, the military would have a massive database that could be quickly accessed in times of need.
Military spouses would also be able to more easily sustain a career when relocating and improve their access to quality child care services. Many service members become “geographic bachelors and bachelorettes,” due to forced relocation of one member of a family.
A pilot program is recommended that allows service members to have more influence over their future assignments and travel options. At the same time, it would give commanders greater input in staffing decisions, allowing them to pick the members that would be best suited for future missions.
Targeted for removal is the “up or out” system, which ensures turnover by kicking service members out if they are not promoted quickly enough. The BPC suggests replacing it with a “perform-to-stay” system based on merit, performance and experience.
The report calls for specialized recruiting offices to focus on critical skills and allow mid-career civilians to enter the military at higher ranks. An online marketplace would also be created so that commanders could post jobs and rank their favorite candidates, while applicants would be allowed to search and rank their preferred jobs. |
ALBANY – Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget would result in tax and fee hikes of as much as $4.5 billion if fully implemented in the next couple of years, Senate Republican officials said Monday morning.
Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan said Cuomo’s 2017 fiscal plan alone would hike motor vehicle fees by $250 million this year. The fee hikes were not discussed by Cuomo when he publicly unveiled his proposed budget last week.
“When you tell me there’s basically nothing and then there’s $250 million in new (motor vehicle) fees, that’s important for the public to know and it’s important for it to be part of the discussion,’’ Flanagan said. The Long Island Republican spoke after addressing a gathering of county clerks, many of whom run local motor vehicle offices on behalf of the state government.
In all, $803 million would be raised in higher taxes and fees, Senate Republican officials said after Flanagan’s brief session with reporters. Those higher fees, when fully effective in the next several years, would end up costing taxpayers $4.5 billion a year.
The Cuomo administration lashed out at the Senate GOP analysis, saying $700 million of the $803 million tax and fee hike claimed by the Senate would come from extending an income tax surcharge on wealthy people. They said 45,000 people would have to pay the higher tax rate if extended.
“No one is fooled by their fuzzy math. This is clearly a smokescreen to mask Senate Republican support for giving a tax break to millionaires – half of which don’t even live in New York – at the expense of the middle class,’’ said Richard Azzopardi, a Cuomo spokesman.
If the tax surcharge on the wealthy is not extended, forget additional funding for education or tax cuts for middle class, Cuomo said during an Editorial Board meeting at The Buffalo News on Monday.
The surcharge affects 45,000 millionaires, half of whom are nonresidents and 3 percent of whom live upstate, Cuomo said.
“I wonder who they are representing and whose interests they’re carrying,” Cuomo said of Republicans who oppose extending the surcharge on the wealthy.
The surcharge, dubbed the “millionaire’s tax,” generates “a tremendous amount of money,” Cuomo said.
The Buffalo News last week reported on the cornucopia of tax and fee hikes contained in Cuomo’s $162.2 billion budget plan. There is a doubling in the amount New Yorkers would have to pay to get a title to a motor vehicle; in all, motor vehicle fees are proposed by Cuomo to rise 28 percent this year.
Cuomo also wants more of an effort to be made to collect sales taxes on internet sales through Amazon and other such second-party sellers of goods. The state would save $50 million this year under Cuomo’s plan by capping increases in STAR property tax breaks for some homeowners. There would also be tax increases on the energy sector, or at least a portion of that industry. There are higher taxes proposed on cigar purchases as well as new taxes on vapor products, such as e-cigarettes.
Cuomo's proposed budget also includes a $250 annual increase – in each of the next five years – for tuition at the State University of New York. At the same time, he proposes a free college tuition program for some students in the system.
“I want to have fairness and equity all around,’’ Flanagan said when asked about the Cuomo plan to both raise and lower college tuition.
Senate Republicans will huddle behind closed doors at the Capitol to get their first full briefing from fiscal aides on the various aspects of Cuomo’s 2017 budget plan.
The Senate's $803 million net total "revenue actions" proposed by Cuomo for this year does not include $128 million in "enforcement actions,'' such as requiring internet sellers like Amazon to collect taxes directly from consumers. The top proposed fee increase under Cuomo's budget for this year: $74 million from higher fees slapped on consumers who get vehicle titles from the state motor vehicle agency. By the 2019-20 fiscal year, the revenue actions Cuomo is proposing this year would bring the state $4.9 billion annually, of which $4.5 billion would come from keeping in place the expiring surcharge on millionaires.
The taxes and fees Cuomo wants to increase this year would be worth a total of $13.9 billion during the next four years, the Senate estimated on Monday.
The Assembly Democrats, in a separate analysis, say Cuomo's budget would add $828 million in taxes and fees in the coming fiscal year that begins April 1. |
If you are an expecting parent, stem cell banking is the best gift you can give to your child. Cells found in a baby’s umbilical cord blood hold great potential. They can be used for treating various life-threatening diseases and debilitating conditions.
Medical Importance of Stem Cells:
Banking stem cells will ensure your baby’s healthy and happy future. By easily adapting to a patient’s body, cord stem cells reduce the likelihood of rejection. Due to this characteristic, if your baby gets afflicted with a certain genetic disease or cancer, his/her cord blood cells can be used for treatment without the risk of rejection.
By preserving the cord blood, you also eliminate the need to find a bone marrow donor in case your baby ever needs a stem cell transplant. Even a sibling in need of a stem cell donor can use a brother’s or sister’s stem cells for treatment. Compared to a non-relative, treatments using a family member’s cord blood have been found to be more successful.
Several scientific discoveries are being made in this field to find additional medical applications for stem cells. Studies are being conducted to determine the potential use of these cells in treating certain illnesses such as type 1 diabetes, spinal cord injury, muscular dystrophy, autism, stroke and cerebral palsy.
Scope of Stem Cell Therapy in India- Will it last?
Banking of cord blood is a popular concept in western countries; however, in India, this concept is still new. With an increase in awareness, many hospitals in the country have started providing this facility to their clients. Efforts are being made to educate parents about the benefits of preserving their baby’s cord blood cells.
Stem cell therapies have been successful in various countries, including India. Analyzing the future potential of this concept, many private players have entered the market. Today, cord blood banking is regarded an essential medical service all over the world. Almost every major country now has an umbilical cord blood bank. Market for cord blood banking in India is also growing steadily.
Read more about umbilical cord blood stem cells:-
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Elizabeth Marvel as Antony.
Right-wing protesters once again interrupted the Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park Sunday night in response to its decision to style Caesar, who is stabbed midway through the play, after President Donald Trump. According to the New York Daily News, the two disruptions occurred early in the play. First, a protester named Jovanni Valle jumped onstage and shouted “liberal hate kills” and “Goebbels would be proud.” Later, 28-year-old Salvatore Cipolla climbed onstage and also shouted “Goebbels would be proud.” Both were quickly escorted offstage by security and have been charged with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. Their protests echo those of right-wing bloggers Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec Friday night. Loomer ran onstage during the play’s assassination scene shouting “stop the normalization of political violence against the right,” while Posobiec filmed her and shouted “You’re all Nazis like Joseph Goebbels” and later, repeatedly, “Goebbels will be proud.” (Goebbels was Hitler’s minister of propaganda.)
Sunday night was the closing night of the production, which has been surrounded by controversy throughout its run. The show was first denounced by right-wing media such as Breitbart and Fox News, leading corporations like Delta and Bank of America to pull sponsorships from the Public Theater. In response that outrage, which centers on the idea that this production promotes violence against Trump, the play’s director Oskar Eustis, who also happens to be the Public’s artistic director, has said that Julius Caesar “warns about what happens when you try to preserve democracy by non-democratic means” and the Public has issued a statement standing completely behind the production. Meanwhile, theaters across the country have received hate mail and death threats over their own Shakespeare productions, in seemingly misdirected outrage over New York’s Shakespeare in the Park.
After the protesters were escorted out Sunday night, “the show continued to cheers and applause” according to a statement the Public made to the Daily News. This summer’s next Shakespeare in the Park production is of the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which will surely be less controversial, unless someone decides the forest should have single-payer health care. |
In the first hundred days of the Modi government, what has changed is the country’s mood.
Three words that should worry the Prime Minister more than the bad by-election results are: nothing has changed. I hear them everywhere and most of all from businessmen who have been Narendra Modi’s biggest supporters ever since he first showed that Gujarat welcomed investment. So, when he now says the same thing for India and announces that there will be a ‘red carpet’ instead of ‘red tape’, why are they not convinced? Well, because nothing has changed. Not even the bad laws and policies that brought India to her knees and halved the growth rate in the last three years of the Sonia-Manmohan ‘welfare state’.
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Here is a short list of policies that should already have been thrown into history’s dustbin. The retroactive tax. Tax terrorism. The land acquisition law. The companies Act. And visa restrictions that make it impossible for foreign travellers to enter India more than once in two months. This illogical restriction was imposed with David Headley in mind but without noticing that most jihadi terrorists come to India without visas.
The Finance Minister admitted at a recent Indian Express Adda that the land acquisition law made land acquisition impossible even for defence purposes. But the government seems to have no intention of making major changes without a “consensus”. Why? The BJP has the first full mandate to rule in 30 years. Would it not be simpler to admit that under the Sonia-Manmohan government, the BJP wrongly supported a lot of very bad laws because of their populist nature, and that it is time to rid India of them? My knowledge of the new companies law is limited, but those who are affected by it tell me that it allows so much government interference in routine business that it makes doing business very difficult.
While the Prime Minister talks about “minimum government”, his ministers seem not to have understood what this means. So his Minister for Human Resource Development has encouraged the UGC, which is the Planning Commission of higher education, to meddle in matters that should be the business of university officials. The minister herself shows no sign that she understands that she needs to dismantle a licence raj, not impose it more strictly.
On a daily basis, ministers handling vital economic portfolios speak of more controls and regulations. They appear to have forgotten that Modi managed to get a full mandate because people want change, not continuity. And because ordinary Indians believed that he would bring back investors and revitalise a job market that dried up in recent years because of vindictive, ill-conceived polices and laws. In the first hundred days of the Modi government, what has changed is the country’s mood. But economies do not grow on optimism and good intentions, they grow from good policies. Of these there are few signs.
The Environment Minister has been generous with handing out permissions but has not yet announced the formulation of measureable norms. If he did, the ministry would play the role of the regulator it is meant to be, and the danger of it becoming the licence raj it was under the last government becomes minimised. Objective, measureable norms would automatically reduce chances of bribery and corruption and allow the minister to concentrate on more serious problems like river pollution, urban squalour and the reversal of bizarre rules that impose coastal zone restrictions in cities like Mumbai that rise directly out of the sea.
In the Prime Minister’s defence, it must be said that his choices were limited. Far too many of his ministers are men and women whose political careers rose out of the TV studios of Delhi and not out of political movements. But this means that Modi needs much more than other PMs to play a bigger role in making policies than he has so far. Leftist political pundits and Congress spokespersons spread it around from day one of his government that Modi would run India like he ran Gujarat, as “a one-man show”. If only this lie were true.
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The truth is that it is because the Prime Minister has been so occupied with external affairs that on the domestic front his government has very little to show by way of “parivartan”. The first hundred days of a new government are when real policy changes can happen, as P V Narasimha Rao demonstrated when he became prime minister. This may only have happened then because India was so broke that the choice was between opening up the economy and pledging our gold reserves. The economic legacy this Prime Minister inherited was nearly as bad. So he needed at the very least to discard stupid policies like a food security law that seeks to distribute cheap food grain to nearly every Indian, rich or poor. Time to come home Prime Minister. And, stay a while.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh |
[Test Run] Introduction to Prediction Markets By James McCaffrey | June 2016 | Get the Code: C# VB
Suppose you want to predict the outcome of an upcoming championship football game between the Xrays and the Yanks. You find a group of 20 football experts and give each of them $500 in tokens. The experts are allowed to buy and sell shares of each of the two teams, in a way that’s somewhat similar to how the stock market works.
When an expert buys shares in one team, say the Xrays, the price of a share of that team increases and the price of a share of the other team decreases. Over time, the experts will buy and sell shares of the two teams until prices stabilize, and then you’ll be able to infer the probability of each team winning.
You halt trading the day before the championship game. After the game is played and the winner is determined, you pay experts who have shares in the winning team according to the last price of the team when trading closed. Because the experts know they’ll be paid, they have incentive to give their true opinions during trading.
What I’ve just described is called a prediction market. In this article, I’ll describe the math behind prediction markets and show you how to implement the key functions in code. It’s unlikely you’ll ever have to create a prediction market in your day-to-day job, but I think you’ll find the ideas very interesting. Additionally, some of the programming techniques presented in this article can be used in more common software development scenarios.
This article assumes you have at least beginner-level coding skill, but doesn’t assume you know anything about prediction markets. I present a complete demo program, and you can also get the source code from the download that accompanies this article. The demo uses C#, but you should have no trouble refactoring the code to another language if you wish.
Note that this is an informal introduction to prediction markets, intended primarily for software developers. I take some liberties with terminology and definitions in order to keep the main ideas as clear as possible.
An Example Prediction markets are perhaps best explained with a concrete example. Take a look at the demo program in Figure 1. After some preliminary messages, the demo output starts with: XML Copy Setting liquidity parameter = 100.0 Initial number of shares owned of teams [0] and [1] are: 0 0 Initial inferred probabilities of winning are: 0.5000 0.5000
Figure 1 A Prediction Market Demo The liquidity parameter will be explained in detail shortly, but for now it’s enough to know that liquidity controls how much market prices react to buying and selling. Larger values of liquidity produce smaller changes in prices. Initially, no shares are owned by the experts. Because the number of shares owned for each team is the same (zero), it’s reasonable that the initial inferred probability a team will win is 0.50. The next part of the demo output is: XML Copy Current costs for one share of each team are: $0.5012 $0.5012 At any point in time, a share of each team has a certain price. Experts need to know this price because they’re playing for real money. Because the initial probabilities of winning are equal, it’s reasonable that the prices for a share of each team are also the same. The next part of the demo output is: XML Copy Update: expert [01] buys 20 shares of team [0] Cost of transaction to expert was: $10.50 Expert #1 believes that team 0, the Xrays, will win and buys 20 shares of team 0. The cost to the expert is $10.50. Notice that the price for 20 shares ($10.50) is not the same as 20 times the price of a single share (20 * $0.5012 = $10.02). As each share is purchased, the price for an additional share of the team increases. The next part of the demo output is: XML Copy New number of shares owned of teams [0] and [1] are: 20 0 New inferred probabilities of winning are: 0.5498 0.4502 The demo displays the updated number of shares outstanding on each team, (x, y) = (20, 0) and computes and displays updated inferred probabilities of each team winning (0.55, 0.45). Because experts have bought more shares of team 0 than team 1, the inferred probability of team 0 winning must be greater than that of team 1. The calculation of the probabilities will be explained shortly. Next, the demo displays: XML Copy Current costs for one share of each team are: $0.5511 $0.4514 Update: expert [02] buys 20 shares of team [1] Cost of transaction to expert was: $9.50 The new cost per share for each team is calculated and displayed. Notice that the price of a share of team 0 ($0.55) is now quite a bit more expensive than that of team 1 ($0.45). This gives experts an incentive to buy shares of team 1 if they think the price is a good value relative to the likelihood of team 1 winning. In this case, the demo simulates expert #2 buying 20 shares of team 1 for a cost of $9.50. Next: XML Copy New number of shares owned of teams [0] and [1] are: 20 20 New inferred probabilities of winning are: 0.5000 0.5000 There are now 20 shares outstanding for each team, so the inferred probabilities of each team winning revert to 0.50 and 0.50. The next part of the demo output is: XML Copy Current costs for one share of each team are: $0.5012 $0.5012 Update: expert [03] buys 60 shares of team [0] Cost of transaction to expert was: $34.43 New number of shares owned of teams [0] and [1] are: 80 20 New inferred probabilities of winning are: 0.6457 0.3543 Expert #3 believes strongly that team 0 will win, so he buys 60 shares of team 0 for a cost of $34.43. This transaction changes the number of outstanding shares to (80, 20) and causes the new inferred probabilities of winning to move strongly toward team 0 (0.65, 0.35). Next, expert #1 sees that the value of his shares in team 0 have risen greatly to approximately $0.6468 per share: XML Copy Current costs for one share of each team are: $0.6468 $0.3555 Update: expert [01] sells 10 shares of team [0] Cost of transaction to expert was: $-6.34 New number of shares owned of teams [0] and [1] are: 70 20 New inferred probabilities of winning are: 0.6225 0.3775 Expert #1 feels that team 0 is now somewhat overpriced relative to its chances of winning and sells 10 of his 20 shares, getting $6.34 (indicated by the negative sign). The new inferred probabilities adjust back to a bit more equal, but team 0 is still predicted to win with probability 0.63. The demo ends by closing trading. The final probabilities are the goal of the prediction market. After the game between the Xrays and the Yanks is played, experts would be paid for shares they hold in the winning team, based on the final share price of the winning team. The payments encourage the experts to give their true opinions.
The Four Key Prediction Market Equations A basic prediction market uses four math equations, as shown in Figure 2. Bear with me; the equations aren’t nearly as complicated as they might first appear. There are several math models that can be used to define a prediction market. The model presented in this article is based on what’s called the Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule (LMSR).
Figure 2 The Four Key Prediction Market Equations Equation 1 is the cost function associated with a set of outstanding shares (x, y). The equation, which isn’t at all obvious, comes from economics theory. From a developer’s point of view, you can think of the equation as a helper function. It accepts x, which is the number of shares held of option 0, and y, which is the number of shares held of option 1, and returns a value. Variable b in all four equations is the liquidity parameter. Suppose x = 20 and y = 10. If b = 100.0, then C(x,y) = 100.0 * ln(exp(20/100) + exp(10/100)) = 100.0 * ln(1.22 + 1.11) = 100.0 * 0.8444 = $84.44. The return value is used in equation 2. Equation 2 is the cost of a transaction to a buyer. Suppose a current set of outstanding shares is (20, 10) and an expert buys 30 shares of option 0. The cost of that transaction to the expert is computed using equation 2 as C(20+30, 10) - C(20, 10) = C(50, 10) - C(20, 10) = 101.30 - 84.44 = $16.86. If an expert sells shares, the cost of the transaction will be a negative value indicating the expert is paid. Equation 3 is technically the marginal price of option 0 based on a set of outstanding shares (x, y). But a marginal price can be loosely interpreted as the probability that an option will win. Equation 4 is the marginal price (probability) of option 1. If you look at the two equations closely, you’ll notice they must sum to 1.0, as is required for a set of probabilities. Implementing the four key prediction market equations is straightforward. The demo program implements the cost, equation 1, as: C# Copy static double Cost( int [] outstanding, double liq) { double sum = 0.0; for ( int i = 0; i < 2; ++i) sum += Math.Exp(outstanding[i] / liq); return liq * Math.Log(sum); } The Cost method is virtually an exact translation of equation 1. Notice method Cost assumes there are just two options. For simplicity, no error checking is performed. Equation 2 is also rather simple to implement: C# Copy static double CostOfTrans( int [] outstanding, int idx, int nShares, double liq) { int [] after = new int [2]; Array.Copy(outstanding, after, 2); after[idx] += nShares; return Cost(after, liq) - Cost(outstanding, liq); } The array named after holds the new number of outstanding shares after a transaction, and the method then just calls the Cost helper method twice. With a method to calculate the cost of a transaction in hand, it’s easy to write a method that calculates the cost of buying a single share of each of the two options: C# Copy static double [] CostForOneShare( int [] outstanding, double liq) { double [] result = new double [2]; result[0] = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 0, 1, liq); result[1] = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 1, 1, liq); return result; } The cost of a single share can be used by experts to get an approximation of how much it would cost to buy n shares of an option. Method Probabilities returns the two marginal prices (inferred probabilities) of each option winning in an array: C# Copy static double [] Probabilities( int [] outstanding, double liq) { double [] result = new double [2]; double denom = 0.0; for ( int i = 0; i < 2; ++i) denom += Math.Exp(outstanding[i] / liq); for ( int i = 0; i < 2; ++i) result[i] = Math.Exp(outstanding[i] / liq) / denom; return result; } If you compare the code for method Probabilities with equations 3 and 4, you’ll see that, again, the code follows directly from the math definition.
The Demo Program To create the demo program, I launched Visual Studio and selected the C# console application program template. I named the project PredictionMarket. The demo has no significant Microsoft .NET Framework dependencies, so any version of Visual Studio will work. After the template code loaded, in the Solution Explorer window I renamed file Program.cs to the more descriptive PredictionMarketProgram.cs and allowed Visual Studio to automatically rename class Program for me. At the top of the source code, I deleted all using statements that referenced unneeded .NET namespaces, leaving just the reference to the top-level System namespace. The complete demo code, with a few minor edits and some WriteLine statements deleted to save space, is presented in Figure 3. All the program control logic is in the Main method. All the prediction market functionality is in four static methods, and there are two ShowVector helper display methods. Figure 3 Prediction Market Demo C# Copy using System; namespace PredictionMarket { class PredictionMarketProgram { static void Main( string [] args) { Console.WriteLine( "Begin prediction market demo " ); Console.WriteLine( "Goal is to predict winner of Xrays" ); Console.WriteLine( "vs. Yanks using expert opinions" ); double liq = 100.0; Console.WriteLine( "Setting liquidity parameter = " + liq.ToString( "F1" )); int [] outstanding = new int [] { 0, 0 }; Console.WriteLine( "Initial number of shares owned are:" ); ShowVector(outstanding); double [] probs = Probabilities(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Initial probabilities of winning:" ); ShowVector(probs, 4, " " ); Console.WriteLine( "=================================" ); double [] costPerShare = CostForOneShare(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Current costs for one share are: " ); ShowVector(costPerShare, 4, " $" ); Console.WriteLine( "Update: expert [01] buys 20 shares " + "of team [0]" ); double costTrans = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 0, 20, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Cost of transaction to expert was: $" + costTrans.ToString( "F2" )); outstanding = new int [] { 20, 0 }; Console.WriteLine( "New number of shares owned are: " ); ShowVector(outstanding); probs = Probabilities(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "New inferred probs of winning:" ); ShowVector(probs, 4, " " ); Console.WriteLine( "=================================" ); costPerShare = CostForOneShare(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Current costs for one share are:" ); ShowVector(costPerShare, 4, " $" ); Console.WriteLine( "Update: expert [02] buys 20 shares " + "of team [1]" ); costTrans = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 1, 20, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Cost of transaction to expert was: $" + costTrans.ToString( "F2" )); outstanding = new int [] { 20, 20 }; Console.WriteLine( "New number of shares owned are:" ); ShowVector(outstanding); probs = Probabilities(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "New inferred probs of winning:" ); ShowVector(probs, 4, " " ); Console.WriteLine( "=================================" ); costPerShare = CostForOneShare(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Current costs for one share are:" ); ShowVector(costPerShare, 4, " $" ); Console.WriteLine( "Update: expert [03] buys 60 shares " + "of team [0]" ); costTrans = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 0, 60, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Cost of transaction to expert was: $" + costTrans.ToString( "F2" )); outstanding = new int [] { 80, 20 }; Console.WriteLine( "New number of shares owned are:" ); ShowVector(outstanding); probs = Probabilities(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "New inferred probs of winning:" ); ShowVector(probs, 4, " " ); Console.WriteLine( "=================================" ); costPerShare = CostForOneShare(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Current costs for one share are: " ); ShowVector(costPerShare, 4, " $" ); Console.WriteLine( "Update: expert [01] sells 10 shares " + "of team [0]" ); costTrans = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 0, -10, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Cost of transaction to expert was: $" + costTrans.ToString( "F2" )); outstanding = new int [] { 70, 20 }; Console.WriteLine( "New number of shares owned are:" ); ShowVector(outstanding); probs = Probabilities(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "New inferred probs of winning:" ); ShowVector(probs, 4, " " ); Console.WriteLine( "=================================" ); Console.WriteLine( "Update: Market Closed" ); Console.WriteLine( "
End prediction market demo
" ); Console.ReadLine(); } // Main() static double []Probabilities( int [] outstanding, double liq) { double [] result = new double [2]; double denom = 0.0; for ( int i = 0; i < 2; ++i) denom += Math.Exp(outstanding[i] / liq); for ( int i = 0; i < 2; ++i) result[i] = Math.Exp(outstanding[i] / liq) / denom; return result; } static double Cost( int [] outstanding, double liq) { double sum = 0.0; for ( int i = 0; i < 2; ++i) sum += Math.Exp(outstanding[i] / liq); return liq * Math.Log(sum); } static double CostOfTrans( int [] outstanding, int idx, int nShares, double liq) { int [] after = new int [2]; Array.Copy(outstanding, after, 2); after[idx] += nShares; return Cost(after, liq) - Cost(outstanding, liq); } static double [] CostForOneShare( int [] outstanding, double liq) { double [] result = new double [2]; result[0] = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 0, 1, liq); result[1] = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 1, 1, liq); return result; } static void ShowVector( double [] vector, int dec, string pre) { for ( int i = 0; i < vector.Length; ++i) Console.Write(pre + vector[i].ToString( "F" + dec) + " " ); Console.WriteLine( "
" ); } static void ShowVector( int [] vector) { for ( int i = 0; i < vector.Length; ++i) Console.Write(vector[i] + " " ); Console.WriteLine( "
" ); } } // Program class } // ns After displaying some preliminary messages, program execution in method Main begins with: C# Copy double liq = 100.0; int [] outstanding = new int [] { 0, 0 }; ShowVector(outstanding); Variable liq is the liquidity parameter. A value of 100.0 is typical, but if you experiment by adjusting the value, you’ll see how it affects the change in share prices after a transaction. Larger liquidity values produce smaller changes. The array named outstanding holds the total number of shares owned by all experts, on each of the two teams. Notice that the liquidity parameter has to be passed to the four static market prediction methods. An alternative design is to encapsulate the methods into a C# class and define liquidity as a member field. Next, the number of outstanding shares is used to determine the inferred probabilities of each team winning: C# Copy double [] probs = Probabilities(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Initial probabilities of winning:" ); ShowVector(probs, 4, " " ); Next, the demo displays the costs of buying a single share of each of the two teams: C# Copy double [] costPerShare = CostForOneShare(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Current costs for one share are: " ); ShowVector(costPerShare, 4, " $" ); In a realistic prediction market, this information would be useful to the market experts to help them assess whether the share price of a team is too high or too low relative to the expert’s perception that the team will win. The demo program simulates one of the experts buying some shares, like so: C# Copy Console.WriteLine( "Update: expert [01] buys 20 shares of team [0]" ); double costTrans = CostOfTrans(outstanding, 0, 20, liq); Console.WriteLine( "Cost of transaction to expert was: $" + costTrans.ToString( "F2" )); In a real prediction market, the system would have to maintain quite a bit of information about experts’ account balances and the number of shares owned. Next, the number of outstanding shares is updated, like so: C# Copy outstanding = new int [] { 20, 0 }; Console.WriteLine( "New number of shares owned on teams [0] " + "and [1] are: " ); ShowVector(outstanding); If you refer back to the math equations in Figure 2, you’ll notice that the number of outstanding shares for each team/option, (x, y), is needed by all equations. After the number of outstanding shares has been updated, that information is used to estimate the revised probabilities of each team or option winning: C# Copy probs = Probabilities(outstanding, liq); Console.WriteLine("New inferred probabilities of winning are: "); ShowVector(probs, 4, " " ); Recall that these values are really marginal prices, but it’s useful to think of them as probabilities. Ultimately, the purpose of a prediction market is to produce the likelihood that each team or option will win, so the final set of probabilities after the market stabilizes is what you’re after. The demo program concludes by repeating the following five operations three more times: Show current cost for one share of each team
Perform a buy or sell transaction
Show the cost of the transaction
Update the total number of shares outstanding
Update the probability of each team winning Notice that the demo program begins with the probabilities of both teams being equal. This isn’t realistic in many real prediction-market scenarios. It’s possible to initialize a prediction market with unequal probabilities by solving for x and y in equations 3 and 4. Wrapping Up The information in this article is based on the 2002 research paper, “Logarithmic Market Scoring Rules for Modular Combinatorial Information Aggregation,” by Robin Hanson. You can find a PDF version of the paper in several places on the Internet by using any search tool. Prediction markets aren’t just an abstract theoretical idea. In the past few years, several companies have been created that actually implement prediction markets for real money. An area of active research is in what are called combinatorial prediction markets. Instead of picking just one of two options to win, experts can buy shares in combination events such as team A will beat team B and Team J will beat team K. Combinatorial prediction markets are much more complex than simple markets.
Dr. James McCaffrey works for Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash. He has worked on several Microsoft products including Internet Explorer and Bing. Dr. McCaffrey can be reached at jammc@microsoft.com. |
Coming Soon
Over the Moon
In this animated musical, a girl builds a rocket ship and blasts off, hoping to meet a mythical moon goddess. Legendary animator Glen Keane directs.
The Spy
This drama series tells the astonishing true story of Israel's most prominent spy, Eli Cohen, who infiltrated the Syrian government in the 1960s.
Bulbul
A man returns home after years to find his brother’s child bride now grown up and abandoned, and his ancestral village plagued by mysterious deaths.
Nowhere Man
A strange encounter causes a man awaiting execution to experience alternate timelines, leading to his escape from prison to protect his family.
Jupiter's Legacy
When a superhero seizes control of the government, the next generation of heroes must join the new regime or fight back. Based on Mark Millar's comics.
PIECES OF HER
When an afternoon outing explodes into violence, a young woman's view of her mother is forever changed. Based on Karin Slaughter's best-selling novel.
Carlo & Malik
An old-school homicide detective in Rome is paired up with a star rookie born in Ivory Coast in this crime series starring Claudio Amendola.
Dead to Me
A powerful friendship blossoms between a tightly wound widow and a free spirit with a shocking secret in this darkly comic series. |
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AutoTrader.com to Purchase Kelley Blue Book
ATLANTA and IRVINE, Calif., Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- AutoTrader.com, the Internet's ultimate automotive marketplace and consumer information web site, announces that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kelley Blue Book (www.kbb.com), one of the most recognized and influential brands in the automotive industry. As part of the deal, AutoTrader.com will also acquire Kelley Blue Book's sister companies CDMdata and CDM Dealer Services.
Details of the transaction are not being disclosed. Kelley Blue Book will operate as a subsidiary of AutoTrader.com and continue to be headquartered in Irvine, CA. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. J.P. Morgan acted as Kelley Blue Book's exclusive financial advisor through this process. Goldman, Sachs & Co. acted as financial advisor to AutoTrader.com.
"AutoTrader.com is excited about becoming the new owner of Kelley Blue Book because we believe the company has a great future," said AutoTrader.com President and CEO, Chip Perry. "Kelley Blue Book has a wonderful history as an iconic brand and trusted provider of vehicle information to generations of car buyers and sellers, and as we look into the future we believe together we can bring a host of new technologies and tools to market that will significantly improve the car shopping process for consumers, and help auto dealers and manufacturers better capitalize on the fundamental efficiency advantages of the Internet."
"The future that lies before us is full of potential," said Kelley Blue Book President and CEO Paul Johnson. "We are proud of the Kelley Blue Book brand and our many accomplishments over the past 84 years. Becoming part of the AutoTrader.com family of companies will help us accelerate our growth in the vehicle valuation and consumer car shopping spaces. By working together, we can help all of our customers achieve their goals by providing best-in-class values, information, products and services."
AutoTrader.com strongly believes in maintaining Kelley Blue Book's independent and unbiased position in the marketplace. Furthermore, AutoTrader.com is committed to maintaining and strengthening Kelley Blue Book's role as The Trusted Resource® for vehicle valuation and other important industry information among consumers, dealers, manufacturers, financial and governmental institutions. Paul Johnson and the rest of Kelley Blue Book's leadership team will remain in place and continue to enhance the company's brand in collaboration with AutoTrader.com.
"The Internet has become a primary marketing channel for auto dealers and manufacturers to reach and influence consumers during the vehicle purchase process," added Perry. "We believe our two companies are well positioned in this very competitive environment to help the industry adopt and embrace new tools and technologies that will drive higher levels of efficiency and profitability among both dealers and manufacturers over the next decade."
Founded 12 years ago, AutoTrader.com quickly became a premier online destination where vehicle sellers and buyers connect and initiate automotive transactions. With innovative marketing tools and one of the largest audiences of in-market auto shoppers on the Web, AutoTrader.com has become a leading resource for auto dealers and manufacturers to present their vehicles for sale, target shoppers and seek to influence shopper and buyer behavior via highly targeted and cost effective online advertising. For the auto shopper, AutoTrader.com offers a wealth of research-and-compare functions, search tools and inventory of cars for sale, all of which allows car shoppers to find the perfect car to meet their individual needs.
Kelley Blue Book, founded in 1926, launched its top rated Web site in 1995 and is now a leading provider of new and used vehicle pricing information to the auto industry. The company provides its values to dealers, banks, finance and insurance companies nationwide on a weekly basis. In the last few years, the company implemented a new multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art vehicle information management system, positioning the company to deliver market insights.
About AutoTrader.com
Atlanta-based AutoTrader.com, created in 1997, is the Internet's ultimate automotive marketplace and consumer information website. AutoTrader.com aggregates in a single location millions of new cars, used cars and certified pre-owned cars from thousands of auto dealers and private sellers and is a leading online resource for auto dealers, individuals and manufacturers to advertise and market their vehicles to in-market shoppers. The company also provides a robust suite of software tools for dealers and manufacturers to help them manage and market their vehicle inventory and display advertising on the Internet. AutoTrader.com continues to grow key business metrics, including revenue, profitability and site traffic. Today, AutoTrader.com attracts more than 15 million unique monthly visitors who utilize the site to review descriptions, photos and videos of vehicles for sale; research and compare vehicles; review pricing and specials; and read auto-related content like buying and selling tips and editorial coverage of major auto shows and automotive trends. AutoTrader.com operates two other auto marketing brands, AutoTraderClassics.com and AutoTraderLatino.com. AutoTrader.com also owns used vehicle management software company vAuto. AutoTrader.com is a majority-owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. Providence Equity Partners is a 25 percent owner of the company and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is also an investor. For more information, please visit www.autotrader.com.
About Kelley Blue Book (www.kbb.com)
Since 1926, Kelley Blue Book, The Trusted Resource®, has provided vehicle buyers and sellers with the new- and used-vehicle information they need to accomplish their goals with confidence. The company's top-rated website, www.kbb.com, provides the most up-to-date pricing and values, including the Fair Purchase Price, which reports what buyers are paying for new cars. The company also reports vehicle pricing and values via products and services, including software products and the famous Blue Book® Official Guide. According to the C.A. Walker Research Solutions, Inc. - 2009 Spring Automotive Website Usefulness Study, kbb.com is the most useful automotive information website among new- and used-vehicle shoppers, and half of online vehicle shoppers visit kbb.com. Kelley Blue Book's kbb.com also is a W3 Silver Award winner, sanctioned by the International Academy of Visual Arts. Kbb.com is a leading provider of new car prices, used car values, car reviews, new cars for sale, used cars for sale, and car dealer locations.
SOURCE AutoTrader.com |
I wasn't surprised upon reading up on Tucson, Arizona band, North, that back in 2005 they started out as an instrumental act. Those gigantic, crashing chords and post-metal melodies captivated me instantaneously before the vocals had time to catch up. This is the definition of what the more melodic side of sludge is all about. Somewhere in between Beautaly's Einfallen and Trapped Within Burning Machinery's The Filth Element exists a new masterpiece called Light the Way.
And when I said "instantaneously," I meant it. From the first few seconds of sampling the amazing title track for the original post, and then once more in just the 2 minute intro of "Moonswan" when I had my first full playthrough, I was glued. Immediately, everything else in my day was a distant memory. Listening to this album was like awaking from a dream; where my workday, any troubles at home, and virtually anything else occupying my mind were but glimmers behind an impenetrable veneer.
North mixes the light and darkness as if they were elements you could simply put in a bowl and whisk. Big, brooding power chords crunch through thunderous grooves and depressive doom riffs in time with the emphasis of each strike of snare and cymbal. Yet all the while I am levitating in a cathartic energy brought forth by the post rock and post metal lead guitar. As the surging weight of the world is carried by the gruff-but-powerful screams and rhythm section, I am watching it all from a safe distance above; acknowledging, accepting, transcending.
Light The Way, true to its name, is a guiding star through the darkness. Sometimes when things seem the most grim in my life it takes a moment of reflection or meditation on the finer details to get back on track: a cross-examination, perhaps with a temporary glance from an outside perspective. This album is the auditory equivalent of that process. Who couldn't use a little more of that? Anyways, if you are looking for a more down to earth, sonic description I would call North a hopeful, melodic counterpoint to The Lion's Daughter. The album comes out today and is streaming below. Another must-hear for 2016. |
Since the start of the project, listening to fans has been important in making sure Star Wars™ Battlefront™ II is the very best experience for all of you. We’ve done this with the closed alpha, through the beta last month, and our Play First Trial. And we continue to make adjustments based on your feedback as the game launches worldwide this week. Listening, and providing choices in how you play, will always be our principle with Star Wars Battlefront II. We want to ensure the game is balanced and fun both today and for years into the future.
Making games great comes from regular tuning. As one example, today we’re making a substantial change based on what we’ve seen during the Play First Trial. There’s been a lot of discussion around the amount of in-game credits (and time) it takes to unlock some of our heroes, especially Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Unlocking a hero is a great accomplishment in the game, something we want players to have fun earning. We used data from the beta to help set those levels, but it’s clear that more changes were needed.
So, we’re reducing the amount of credits needed to unlock the top heroes by 75%. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader will now be available for 15,000 credits; Emperor Palpatine, Chewbacca, and Leia Organa for 10,000 credits; and Iden at 5,000 credits. Based on what we’ve seen in the trial, this amount will make earning these heroes an achievement, but one that will be accessible for all players.
It's a big change, and it’s one we can make quickly. It will be live today, with an update that is getting loaded into the game.
We’ve also been listening to how much you’re loving features in the game (Starfighter Assault, 40 player MP battles, Darth Maul lightsaber throws, etc.) as well as what you haven’t liked. We know some of our most passionate fans, including those in our subreddit, have voiced their opinions, and we hear you. We’re making the changes to the credit levels for unlocking heroes and we’re going to keep making changes to improve the game experience over time. We welcome the conversation.
In fact, this Wednesday we’d like you to join us for a Reddit AMA with some of the key leads on our team. Stay tuned to our social channels for more info on the AMA, and our blog for continual updates on what we’re seeing, hearing and adjusting in the game.
For those of you already playing, thank you. For those of you looking forward to playing the Star Wars™ game you’ve been waiting for, thank you, too. The team is fully committed to listening to our community, continually adjusting the game, and providing even more great Star Wars content over the upcoming months and years of live service updates. More to come. |
Lately, Bernie Sanders seems to have been acting a little … off. There was the terrible interview with The Daily News. (“I don’t know … It’s something I have not studied … I haven’t thought about it a whole lot.”) Then there was the strange series of claims that Clinton is not qualified to be president, the most improbable description he could pick short of “lazy.”
That Senate race defined Clinton as a candidate — someone who balanced her stupendous fame and celebrity with down-home, low-key campaigning. The “Listening Tour” was so stuffed with worthy, headline-free discussions that members of her press corps developed twitches, drinking problems or a sudden yearning to be transferred to the culture desk. But voters loved it.
Then in 2008, after a terrible start, presidential candidate Clinton started listening again, with many variations on the Zanesville Economic Summit. She won the Ohio primary and came very close to beating Obama.
This time around, she launched off in a van that was unfortunately named “Scooby,” meeting at an Iowa auto mechanics classroom, then holding a small-business round table at a family-owned fruit company. The biggest drama came in Maumee, Ohio, when she visited a Chipotle and failed to leave money in the tip jar.
What can we learn from all this? First, that Clinton will come out of this year’s campaign better informed about the concerns of everyday Americans than she was when she went in. Her events may be sloggy and staged, but nearly every day she gets some little insight into the woes of preschool teachers, peach farmers with irrigation problems or parents of children with autism.
Second, she isn’t exactly causing hearts to flutter in the process.
Sanders, who doesn’t have to prove he’s down to earth, should be showing us his policy range and depth. Instead, he just keeps giving the same speech. But it’s a wowser, and it’s about change.
Clinton’s not great on full-throated oratory, and she’s about improvement. The very things that have turned her from a political celebrity into a serious presidential candidate are the ones that give her problems in a high-pitched, melodramatic race for the nation’s attention.
We’ll find out soon who her former constituents prefer. Whichever way it goes, you can blame it on Buffalo. |
Dear friends of BlackMonkeys.de & Star Wars Mod: Galactic Warfare,
Today we would like to celebrate two things with you! It’s our 4th birthday of blackMonkeys.de, and at the same time we are happy to present our final version of Star Wars Mod: Galactic Warfare. After all the modding, mapping, scripting, gaming, and drinking, it is done! We hope you will enjoy the mod which is a non-profit project operated by fans. Star Wars, its characters, locations, weapons and all associated items are the intellectual property of Lucasfilm. ©2009 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™ All rights reserved.
This version contains seven maps (“Mos Eisly”, “Bespin”, “Bestine”, “Not A Cave”, “Jundland”, “Jundland Dusk” as well as the new “Anchorhead). There is also a new killstreak called “viper droid”. The Y-Wing and Tie-Bomber are now part of the killstreak “airstrike” (finally!). We have also fixed some bugs of course. With version 1.0 you will also get an installer which makes your life a bit easier (see the video tutorial below).
Thanks to all who supported us over the last years. We are still stunned by the enormous feedback we have received. Around 75,000 downloads and more than 900,000 visitors on our YouTube Channels were our motivation to go on with the mod for such a long time. A lot of your ideas and recommendations are integrated to this final release.
We also like to thank the worldwide CoD Modding Community. It’s so awesome that most of you old scruffy looking nerf herders have participated to this project. Awesome! The Force is strong with you! Hopefully you will enjoy our new version of SWM: Galactic Warfare for the time being.
You can also download the Mod (incl. Serverfiles) here:
We will upload the installer within today too!
If you like to learn more about us and the team of SWM, you are always welcome at blackMonkeys.de. Please don’t hesitate (either in English or German) to use our board if there are any questions or ideas concerning the mod: forum.blackmonkeys.de
May the Force be with you! Modders for Life!
Sincerely,
Your Blackmonkeys and friends!
Video Tutorial for the GW Installer: |
That was the secret of the English success. But in Malaysia we have so many different religions. So we are still going to be divided even 2,000 years to come. So, if we want to achieve what England achieved, we need to all follow just one religion. Then, 1,000 or 2,000 years from now, there will be just one Malaysian race, just like there is only one English race today.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Life is so much easier for you Malaysians. You know who you are. You are either Malays, Chinese, Indians or ‘lain-lain’. In England it is a bit more difficult. We do not know who we are — unless you are of African, Chinese or Indian continent origin (Pakistanis included) and came to England since after WWII.
So we cannot tell an Englishman to go back to wherever it is he came from. I mean, in Malaysia we can tell a Chinese to go back to China, an Indian to go back to India, a Malay to go back to Indonesia, an Orang Asli to go back to Polynesia, and so on.
But to where do you tell an Englishman to go back to, to Germany? And to whom do you return England to, to the Celts?
England actually belongs to the Celts. And the Celts were everywhere, all over Europe since the Iron Age. The three main Celt groups were the Gauls, the Britons and the Gaels.
Evidence shows that the Celts first came to England in 750 BC. That was about 2,765 or so years ago.
Then, in 55 BC, Julius Caesar and the Roman came to England and the country became part of the Roman Empire until 409-410. But the Romans did not call the people they found in England Celts. The Romans called them Britons, who were actually one branch of the Celts.
Over more than 400 years of Roman occupation, England saw mass migration by a mixture of people from north Germany, Denmark and northern Holland. Most were Saxons, Angles and Jutes. There were some Franks and Frisians too. If we use the modern names for the countries they came from, the Saxons, Franks and Frisians were German-Dutch, the Angles were southern Danish, and the Jutes were northern Danish.
In 793, the Vikings invaded England. Over hundreds of years, the people from Norway, Sweden and Finland migrated to England in large numbers and occupied various parts of England.
Then, in 1066, the Normans invaded England. The Normans were actually from France, from a region called Normandy. And they were originally pirates from Denmark, Norway and Iceland who had settled in that part of France 200 years earlier.
Today, there are no longer any Celt Britons. The English that you see today are a product of 2,000 years of conquest and intermarriage. No doubt, for more than 1,000 years since 55 BC, the people in England had been fighting one another.
And the Scots and Irish are still ‘fighting’ the ‘pendatang’ English until today while the Welsh refuse to speak English in Parliament and still insist that all road signs must be in Welsh plus English, which is actually French. In fact, the anti-United Kingdom SNP controls the Scottish Parliament and is still determined to pull Scotland out of Britain and declare independence.
So you see, what is happening in Malaysia today also happened in England since 2,000 years ago. Only that now the original Celt Britons have been totally ‘wiped out’ though intermarriage that they no longer exist. So the English no longer fight because there is no longer any original English to fight with.
It took 2,000 years for the original Celt Briton Englishman to disappear and to be replaced with the ‘modern’ Englishman. But that was only possible because they were all of the same religion and that made intermarriage possible.
This may never happen in Malaysia, not even in 2,000 years, because intermarriage in Malaysia is almost impossible due to religious reasons. If the Malays, Chinese, Indians and ‘lain-lain’ were all of the same religion, like in England over 2,000 years since 55 BC, then in time Malaysia could become like England — no more Celt Britons and everyone is an Englishman.
The bottom line to my ‘thesis’ is that race is not the problem in Malaysia, as many believe. The problem is religion. In England, everyone discarded their old (and many different) pagan religions and became Christians. (And those who refused to become Christians were exterminated by the church — ethnic cleansing in the name of Jesus).
That was the secret of the English success. But in Malaysia we have so many different religions. So we are still going to be divided even 2,000 years to come. So, if we want to achieve what England achieved, we need to all follow just one religion. Then, 1,000 or 2,000 years from now, there will be just one Malaysian race, just like there is only one English race today.
But then, after all that, the English once again divided themselves. And the division is, in fact, very serious. But it is not race or religion that divides the Englishman. It is football, the new religion of the English. Today, more English watch football than those who go to church.
Ironical is it not? But then that is what happens when most, if not all, English have Viking blood flowing through their veins. They just love fighting. |
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The NBA came down swiftly and severely on Clippers owner Donald Sterling, for racially insensitive remarks he was heard saying in a recorded private conversation.
The lifetime ban and hefty fine were only the beginning, as the league is also moving toward forcing Sterling out of his ownership stake entirely — something he is more than likely to fight, at least initially to a certain extent.
But Sterling reportedly has health concerns that are far more serious than the ultimate fate of his NBA franchise.
Both the the New York Post and ESPNLosAngeles.com have confirmed that Sterling is battling cancer. Here is the Post’s report (in a very NY Post tone) :
Disgraced racist Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is battling cancer — surprising those around him by beating the final buzzer for as long as he has, sources told The Post on Thursday. “They thought he would die two years ago,” one source said of Sterling, who on Tuesday was banned for life from the NBA for his now-infamous recorded racist rant. … Another source said Sterling, 80, was specifically suffering from prostate cancer.
The tone of the piece is unnecessarily spiteful, but with confirmation from other outlets the reporting seems to be solid.
We wouldn’t wish the scourge of cancer on anyone.
That doesn’t change the fact Sterling will have nothing more to do with the Clippers or the NBA. His health issues, while unfortunate, are completely separate from his history of making remarks and taking actions which have proven to be racist in nature. They may affect his willingness to go through a long, litigious battle with the league over the punishment that’s been meted out, but that much remains to be seen. |
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Richarlison did not dive to win Watford a penalty against Arsenal and I would be very surprised if the incident was referred to the FA panel today.
It was the correct decision to award the penalty as there was contact between him and Héctor Bellerín, the Arsenal defender, that wasn’t initiated by the forward.
It is interesting because I’ve looked at three angles of the incident; the first one looks like nothing, there appears to be no contact, the second also looks like no contact but a third angle that I’ve studied shows Bellerín’s left leg hit the right leg of Richarlison. There is contact. We as referees cannot work out if that’s sufficient contact to award a penalty but what we try to understand… |
A state of emergency decree allowing Austrian authorities to take stricter measures against asylum seekers could be reviewed by the government as early as September, Chancellor Christian Kern has said.
Adoption of the decree depends on the outcome of the negotiations between Austria and Hungary scheduled for early September which will focus on the issue of readmission of refugees and migrants, Kern said in an interview with the Austrian APA news agency.
“Early September, talks between Austria and Hungary at the level of the interior and defense ministers will take place,” Kern told APA, adding that the talks should create the “preconditions for implementing the [state of emergency] decree and sending people back to Hungary.”
Read more
Kern added that the decree could be successfully implemented only if similar agreements on readmission are negotiated with Italy and Slovenia.
The draft was prepared by the Austrian Interior Ministry on August 12. If implemented, it would allow Austrian authorities to turn refugees and migrants away directly at the border. Any who entered Austria illegally could be detained and placed in custody even if they had already submitted an asylum request.
The decree sees “a threat to the maintaining of public order and internal security” as a precondition of imposing this state of emergency. Although the text of the decree has not yet been published by the Interior Ministry, Austrian media report that the “polarization of society” and “influence of the refugee and migrant issues on the public peace” could be considered as threats to public security under the ruling.
The rising number of crimes committed by refugees and migrants, as well as the increasing number of attacks on asylum seekers, could also be considered as reasons for the introduction of a state of emergency as they are “indicators of the fact that public peace is jeopardized,” Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundbock said, as quoted by Der Standard.
A law allowing the Austrian government to impose a state of emergency if too many migrants attempt to enter the country was passed in May. Under the law, the state of emergency could be introduced for six months and extended for another three separate six-month terms depending on the severity of the situation.
It is expected that a state of emergency would be introduced if the number of refugees and migrants entering Austria this year exceed the cap of 37,500, which was earlier enforced by the authorities for 2016. However, the move could be in breach of EU law if it were proven that it contradicts the European Convention on Human Rights. In such a case, it could be canceled by the European Court of Justice.
Read more
In this regard, the Austrian chancellor ordered the Interior Ministry on Monday to “clear” all legal issues as well as to ensure there are technical capabilities for the implementation of the measures envisaged in the state of emergency decree.
Kern also said he is committed to the idea of reducing the refugee and migrant influx and stressed that the number of new arrivals “has significantly decreased in the recent months.” At the same time, he said the situation in North Africa and Turkey may change and that Austria has to prepare for any turn of events that could lead to a renewed increase in the inflow of asylum seekers.
The chancellor once again emphasized the importance of protecting the EU’s external borders and expressed his hope that the EU-Turkey refugee deal will not break down. He also said that if EU borders are properly secured and the refugee deal lasts, Austria may be able to keep the number of new arrivals in 2016 under the cap without imposing a state of emergency.
Austria had accepted 24,260 asylum seekers by the end of July, according to the Interior Ministry. Around 10,000 more asylum requests are still being processed, Der Standard reports. On average, about 3,000 refugees and migrants come to Austria each month. The government expects that the refugee cap could be exceeded in November.
In this context, Kern expressed doubts over whether it would be worth imposing a state of emergency if the cap were to be exceeded only four weeks before the end of the year. |
Recently, I made a difficult decision to leave the New Democratic Party and sit as an Independent MP. The media (and many partisans) wondered aloud why anyone would give up the protection and support offered by a strong political tribe, along with the perks that go with it.
I agree with the NDP most of the time, and hope they form the next government. The NDP blocked my resignation delivery in the House, so I released it through digital social media. It caused a firestorm in Ottawa, in my riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North, and across Canada. Why did I do this?
All three main parties require lockstep discipline by MPs, with little room for meaningful public debate... or for putting constituents ahead of party politics!
Fueled by a flawed and antiquated electoral system where 39 per cent of the vote can gain 100 per cent of the power, the main parties are mired in a win-lose battlefield mentality. Instead of cooperation and compromise, our voters often observe mindless solidarity, where our tribe is always right, and THEY are always wrong!
I will no longer belong to any party that "whips" (mandates) voting by their MPs, especially on issues not clearly laid out in agreed-upon written policies or platforms. Which means that none of the main political parties is currently an option for me.
Many Canadian voters share my disillusionment. Two out of five eligible voters declined to even cast a ballot in the 2011 federal election. It has become clear that our current political and electoral system often brings out the worst in politicians and parties.
Parliament is a mess. Can we fix it? Yes. Here is my suggested "Four-Step Plan to Restore Democracy to Parliament." Three are quick and simple -- the fourth is definitely not!
Randomize Seating
We currently sit in hockey-style party blocs, waiting for our team captains to send us over the boards. Like hockey, some fans and media love the violence. Thoughtful journalists and voters long for civility, mutual respect, and meaningful debate. We can fix this in a single week: seat us randomly in the House. We will sit next to "them." We will get to know them as people, parents, spouses, and fellow citizens who care about Canada. It will be much harder to hurl insults at colleagues sitting right beside you, will facilitate open discussion between parties, and will result in voting more with our consciences or the wishes of our constituents, rather than the whippings of party "discipline."
Riding Level Candidate Approval
Since 1970, our flawed election laws mandate that a candidate must have his/her nomination papers signed by his/her national party leader. It is a "Sword of Damocles" held above heads of MPs. The parties and the leaders don't trust the members in the riding to know who they prefer to represent them, or the voters in that riding to elect the best person. Pierre Trudeau described his own back-benchers as "trained seals." Let's do away with that. If the local riding association picks a turkey, let democracy work. Allow the voters to weed them out -- or not. The riding associations should sign our nomination papers.
Collaboration Between Parties
Allow co-sponsorship of private member's bills across party lines (currently not allowed). Bills are often branded as an initiative of the party the member belongs to and opposed or defeated just because the idea comes from "them." Last Parliament (2009-2011) out of 441 private member's bills introduced, only four passed!
Proportional Representation
Here is the BIG ONE. We will never have real democracy in Canada until we have a truly democratic electoral system. That means some kind of proportional pepresentation ("PR"). The vast majority of democracies in the world (about 100) have some kind of PR. Only a handful use our antiquated British "first-past-the-post" system, where in each riding the voter's vote affects only the outcome in that single riding.
Most modern democracies have a hybrid electoral system, where most parliamentarians are elected directly, but some are selected indirectly to result in..."PR"! Imagine if 20 per cent of the nation's voters vote for the "Purple Party" -- the "Purple Party" gets 20 per cent of the seats! Right now, Stephen Harper is dictating through a "false majority." If we had real democracy, here is what Canadians voted for in the 2011 election: Conservatives122 seats (vs. 167), NDP 94 (vs. 102), Liberals 58 (vs. 34), Greens 12 (vs. one), Bloc 19 (vs. four) , Independent or Other, three. With PR, strategic voting would no longer be necessary!
I am going to devote much time and energy towards achieving these goals to fix Parliament. Are there other "Independent Democrats" out there who will help make it happen? |
Julian Assange appeared at The Telegraph Hay Festival to defend Wikileaks' “enviable record” and claimed that the FBI had tried to bribe the organisation’s staff.
The founder of the whistle-blowing website disclosed his group would publish more leaked documents in the future. He also threatened to break controversial super-injunctions if the details were leaked to him.
During an hour-long appearance, Mr Assange insisted that “the internet does not give you free speech”.
He said that those revealing secrets online were “hounded from one end of the earth to the other”. His speech was watched by a series of well-known personalities including Vanessa Redgrave and Ralph Fiennes.
Mr Assange added that his group had faced numerous recent challenges, including attempts by the FBI to try and bribe employees.
Mr Assange pointed out that Wikileaks had published details of “five or six” super-injunctions in the past. However, in a bizarre moment, he admitted that Wikileaks might resort to a super-injunction in order to protect its sources.
“There probably is a circumstance where we would [apply for a super-injunction],” said Mr Assange.
Mr Assange also accused the British public of “a rather annoying middle-class squeamishness” over the publication of secret cables and documents.
“It would rather destroy an entire revolution,” said Mr Assange.
He insisted that he had seen no evidence that anyone had lost their lives as a result of Wikileaks disclosures, despite American Government warnings that this would occur.
“We have a perfect record, and an enviable record that I am proud of,” he said.
But he indicated that opening up societies around the world may mean fatalities are a price worth paying.
Mr Assange was heckled by the Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow as he answered a question about Private Bradley Manning, who has been accused of leaking secret documents to Wikileaks.
Private Manning is currently being held in Fort Leavenworth after being arrested just over a year ago.
“He’s your Bradley Manning,” shouted Mr Snow when Mr Assange raised the issue of political prisoners around the world. The Wikileaks founder expressed support for the plight of Mr Manning and thousands of other “political prisoners” who he said are held without good reason.
Mr Assange also described his time in solitary confinement in prison.
Mr Assange is currently fighting extradition to Sweden, where he has faced allegations of sexual assault.
For information on upcoming events at the Hay Festival, see the Hay Festival programme. |
CLOSE Police confirm that South Africa's Olympic and Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius' girlfriend was shot dead at his home. VPC
Oscar Pistorius competes in the London 2012 Olympic Games. He was charged with murder on Tursday for allegedly shooting his girlfriend at his home. (Photo11: Johannes Eisele, AFP/Getty Images) Story Highlights Pistorius will appear in court Friday; police say they will oppose bail
Police said the victim, Reeva Steenkamp, was shot in the arm and head
Pistorius was the first double amputee to compete in the Olympics
Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius was charged with murder after his girlfriend was shot and killed at his home in South Africa earlier Thursday morning.
The circumstances of the incident are still unclear but police in South Africa said they would oppose bail when the Paralympic gold medalist appears in court Friday. The hearing was scheduled for Thursday afternoon but was delayed to give forensics investigators time to do their work, the Associated Press reported.
Police in South Africa do not name suspects in crimes until they have appeared in court but police spokesperson Brigadier Denise Beukes said that Pistorius was at his home after the death of the victim and that "there is no other suspect involved," The Associated Press reported.
Britain's Sky News first named the woman as Reeva Steenkamp, a model and recent contestant on Tropika Island of Treasure 5, a South African reality TV show. Sarit Tomlinson, described by AP as Steenkamp's publicist, was quoted as saying, "We can confirm that Reeva Steenkamp has passed away." Police, however, have yet to confirm the woman's relationship with the Olympic and Paralympic athlete.
MORE: Steenkamp cared about empowering women
REACTION: Track athletes stunned by news
Representatives for Pistorius in South Africa and the United Kingdom could not immediately be reached for comment by USA TODAY Sports.
Earlier, multiple media outlets in the country, including the Mail & Guardian and the South African Press Agency, citing local police, said the woman, 30, died at the scene at the athlete's house in Pretoria. The original source of the report appears to be Beeld, an Afrikaans-language daily newspaper. Local radio also reported on the fatal shooting.
Some media commentators speculated that the victim may have been in the act of surprising Pistorius for Valentine's Day.
South African Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp attend an awards ceremony in Johannesburg, South Africa last November. (Photo11: Lucky Nxumalo, AP)
Steenkamp had posted on Twitter about Valentine's Day on Twitter.
What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow??? #getexcited #ValentinesDay
Police spokesperson Captain Sarah Mcirca confirmed to South African media that a woman was shot in the arm and head. A 9mm pistol was recovered at the scene.
Brigadier Denise Beukes told members of the media in South Africa that police were not the source of the report that the victim was mistaken as a burglar.
"We have also taken cognizance of the media reports during the morning of an alleged break in or that the young lady was mistaken to be a burglar," Beukes said. "Obviously our forensic investigation is still ongoing and we're not sure where this report came from. ... Our detectives have been on the scene, our forensic investigators have been on the scene and the investigation is ongoing."
AD PULLED: Nike ad referred to him as bullet in chamber
South African police said that there had been "previous incidents" of a domestic nature reported at Pistorius' home.
Pistorius, 26, made history by being the first double amputee to take part in the Olympics.
Known as the "Blade Runner" for his use of carbon fiber prosthetic blades, Pistorius won gold medals in the 4 x 100 meter relay and 400 meter individual events at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.
He was born without the fibula, the long, slender bone running along the outside of the leg from below the knee joint and down to the ankle, in each of his legs, information on his website says.
Pistorius is a huge star in South Africa and is viewed as an ambassador for the nation's sporting achievements. In 2012, Time magazine named him as one of the world's 100 most influential people.
He has sponsorship deals with brands including Nike, Oakley and the French fashion designer Thierry Mugler. He has appeared on the cover of numerous publications such as GQ and The New York Times Magazine.
The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee said that it was not in a position to comment on the alleged fatal shooting. "Our thoughts are with the respective families at this time," the organization said, in a statement.
Speaking to CNN's Piers Morgan late last year, Pistorius said: "I grew up in a family where disability was never an issue. We didn't really speak about my disability, not because it was a topic that was taboo ... it was just never an issue. And that's the mentality that I've had."
The athlete's father, Henke Pistorius, told South Africa's SABC radio news on Thursday that he didn't know the facts. "If anyone makes a statement, it will have to be Oscar. He's sad at the moment."
PHOTOS: OSCAR PISTORIUS CHARGED WITH MURDER
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/14TL8Vr |
A product of collaboration between Stanford’s Dynamic Design Lab and the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab, Shelly the self-driving Audi TTS hit track speeds of 120 mph.
Other than some decals and a few extra antennas, there’s nothing outwardly remarkable about the white Audi TTS zipping around the track at Thunderhill Raceway, north of Sacramento, California. Its tires squeal as it zigs through chicanes. Its engine growls as it tops 120 mph on the straights. The car gets around the 3-mile course in less than 2-1/2 minutes, a time that rivals those posted by professional drivers.
Shelley is the product of collaboration between Stanford’s Dynamic Design Lab and the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab.
What is remarkable about this car is its driver: There isn’t one.
Shelley, as the self-driving car is known, is the product of collaboration between Stanford’s Dynamic Design Lab, led by mechanical engineering Associate Professor Chris Gerdes, and the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab. Earlier this summer, Gerdes’ group brought Shelley to Thunderhill for high-speed tests of the latest tweaks to the software that tells her when to brake, how tight to take turns and when to punch the gas.
The experience and data gathered by running Shelley around the track could one day lead to fully autonomous cars that safely drive you and your loved ones from Point A to Point B on public roads. In the nearer term, the technology could show up as a sort of onboard co-pilot that helps the driver steer out of a dangerous situation. And while Gerdes and crew clearly enjoy racing Shelley, the truth is that pushing the car to its limits on the racetrack – its brake pads melted on its last Thunderhill run – is the best way to learn what type of stress a car is under in a crisis, and what it takes to get the car straightened out.
For example, the math involved in getting a spinning wheel to grip the pavement is very similar to recovering from a slide on a patch of ice. “If we can figure out how to get Shelley out of trouble on a race track, we can get out of trouble on ice,” Gerdes said.
The human element
There’s very little difference between the path a professional driver takes around the course and the route charted by Shelley’s algorithms. And yet, the very best human drivers are still faster around the track, if just by a few seconds.
“Human drivers are very, very smooth,” Gerdes said. Shelley computes the fastest line around a course and executes the exact corrections required to stick to it. A person relies more on feel and intuition, and thus may, for example, allow the car to swing too wide in one turn if he knows it sets him up better for the next.
“Human drivers are OK with the car operating in a comfortable range of states,” Gerdes said. “We’re trying to capture some of that spirit.”
Gerdes and his students will have the opportunity to do just that Aug. 17-19 at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion races at the Laguna Seca Raceway. The group has enlisted two professional drivers to wear a suite of biological sensors as they race around the track; among other things, the sensors will record the drivers’ body temperature and heart rate. And in an effort to determine which driving maneuvers require the most concentration and brainpower, scalp electrodes will register drivers’ brain activity as they race against other humans.
The biological data will be paired with mechanical performance data from the car – a 1966 Ford GT40, the only American-built automobile to finish first overall at the 24 Hours of Le Mans race – which Stanford has kitted out with feedback sensors similar to those on Shelley.
“We need to know what the best drivers do that makes them so successful,” Gerdes says. “If we can pair that with the vehicle dynamics data, we can better use the car’s capabilities.”
Image: Stanford University News |
Heavyweight Bobby Lashley will finally get a chance at redemption when he faces James Thompson in a June 19 mixed martial arts rematch on the main card of Bellator 138 at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis.
The 6-foot-3, 265-pound Lashley (12-2), owner of American Top Team Altitude martial arts center in Denver, is on a five-match winning streak since losing a unanimous decision to Thompson (20-14) in 2012. They were originally scheduled to fight in February, but that was postponed after Lashley withdrew because of an injury.
Lashley, 38, was a three-time NAIA national wrestling champion for Missouri Valley College at 177 pounds from 1996-98. He rose to fame after entering the professional wrestling ranks with World Wrestling Entertainment in 2004. He still works in the industry, now with Total Nonstop Action, where he became a two-time TNA world heavyweight champion.
Headlining the Bellator 138 card is a heavyweight fight between Kimbo Slice and UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock, who is competing in his first MMA bout in more than four years. The main card will be televised on Spike at 7 p.m.
Joe Nguyen: jnguyen@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joenguyen |
A prison guard stands on a tower at the Connally Unit near Kenedy, Texas, after an inmate escape in 2001. AP Photo/Eric Gay The recent assassinations of two Texas prosecutors have drawn attention to brutal gangs that rule prisons in the Lone Star State and beyond.
The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT) was linked to the case after the gang allegedly issued orders to inflict revenge on law enforcement for recent arrests.
The ABT and similar gangs allegedly operate criminal enterprises involving meth trafficking and murder even though many of their members are behind bars.
To do so, gang members send coded messages to each other through girlfriends on the outside, former Texas prison warden Terry Pelz tells us. Prison gangsters also rely on the very people guarding them to facilitate their criminal activities, according to Pelz, who's now a "prison environment" expert and consultant.
Prison guards have been known to accept bribes in exchange for bringing in contraband like cellphones or drugs. Since guards listen in on prisoners' official phone calls, a cellphone can be highly useful contraband.
Even though this contraband can play a huge role in making prison gangs' illegal activities possible, Pelz says, corrections officers sometimes just get fired and not criminally prosecuted if they get caught.
But in February prosecutors handed down a rare federal indictment accusing 13 Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison guards of racketeering. The feds said they were cracking down on a Beeville, Texas facility's "culture of corruption" that involved smuggling phones in to members of the Aryan Circle (a rival of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas).
One of the former corrections officers, 38-year-old Jaime Jorge Garza, pleaded guilty after getting caught at a checkpoint with four cellphones, pot, and tobacco, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported earlier this month. In court, Garza said he got pushed around a lot when he was a corrections officer.
"When I got caught at the checkpoint I was relieved," he said, according to the Caller-Times. "I was glad it was over."
Not only is it tempting for low-paid guards to accept bribes in the first place, but it's hard for them to stop doing so because prison gang members might threaten them, says Pelz, who was a warden in an Angleton, Texas prison in the 1980s when the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas started to proliferate.
"Our standards aren't very high for hiring officers," Pelz says. "These youngsters come to work for the penitentiary and the convicts eat them alive." |
Members of the public should stop using the expression “fishermen” because it is sexist, according a member of Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench team.
The party’s Shadow Environment Secretary Kerry McCarthy was ridiculed for suggesting on Twitter that Britons should not use the word “fishermen”.
The minister, who does not eat meat but is in charge of food and rural affairs, said on Twitter that people should find a “gender neutral alternative”.
Shouldn't say fishermen but "fishers" sounds wrong as a gender neutral alternative?
She wrote on Twitter: "Shouldn't say fishermen but "fishers" sounds wrong as a gender neutral alternative?"
Users of Twitter struggled to find alternative suggestions, such as “fishing folk”, “fisherdudes”, “codbotherers” and “fish stranglers”.
Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY
Charles Walker, a senior Tory MP, said: “I am sure her statement on this matter will be met with some agricultural comments from fishermen and women.
“How such utterances advance of the English commercial fishing fleet, I don’t know. With every one of its meaningless utterances Labour is losing its mandate to be taken seriously across the country and countryside.
Campaigners have long tried to ensure that more gender neutral language is used in society, changing policemen to police officers and firemen to firefighters.
Photo: ALAMY
Chairmen are also variously called chairpersons or just chairs.
Earlier this year Ms McCarthy sparked criticism when she compared eating meat to smoking cigarettes.
Ms McCarthy told Viva! Life magazine: “I really believe that meat should be treated in exactly the same way as tobacco, with public campaigns to stop people eating it.” |
Dec 03 2017 11:29 am
A group of hockey players from the local Jewish communities today are thanking the Toms River Police Department for their quick actions, and for taking very seriously an incident involving what appeared to be a Neo-Nazi.
During a hockey game last night, a man entered the arena and proceeded to remove his shirt, allegedly displaying Swastikas on his body, the game coordinator told TLS.
“The rink managers realized he was up to no good – they became fearful and called the cops,” the coordinator said.
The man reportedly left a short time later, just moments before multiple police officers arrived and locked down the arena.
The officers surrounded the arena and remained there for the remainder of the game, and then escorted the parties out, while gathering information from the players.
Several of the players from Jackson were even escorted back to their homes, the coordinator said.
“They were definitely overprotective, but it’s really nice,” the coordinator said. “In light of what goes on in public places with crazy people, they’re taking it seriously.”
But it turns out the man may not have been a Neo-Nazi, according to police.
Police said they were dispatched to the Winding River Ice Rink in reference to a disorderly man causing a disturbance during a Jewish Men’s Hockey Club Game.
“Employees at the ice rink stated that a white male with a shaved head and multiple tattoos entered the rink and walked past the employees while making obscene hand gestures,” Spokesman Ralph Stocco said. “He approached the ice area while taunting and making gestures towards the players. He then ripped off his shirt and continued to yell, prior to leaving in a white pickup truck 5 minutes later.”
“Initially, the officers were told that the man may have been showing a swastika tattoo once his shirt was removed. The police officers spoke to the employees; however they all add that they did not hear any specific comments made by the man in reference to the players. Several players were spoken to and they all confirm that the man was definitely out of sorts and aggressive but they heard no specific language, comments, or threats being that they were on the ice enjoying the game.”
At around 2 am, police officers located the suspect in the area of Route 37 and Route 166.
“When asked about the incident at the hockey rink, the man stated he was in the area and stopped to see if his deceased friend’s jersey was still hanging at the rink. The Jersey was not observed and this agitated him. Additionally, he was not satisfied with the skill of the players on the ice. He then taunted them, at one point ripping off his shirt to show his many hockey related tattoos. He voluntarily showed his tattoos to the officers and in fact does not appear to have any swastikas on his torso. The officers believed that the man had no knowledge of the Jewish league on the ice at the time and his arrival was random. The man was permitted to leave and the incident will be assigned to detectives who will review the case to determine the appropriate charges, if any, to be signed against the individual.” |
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A French customs officer has reportedly been killed after a gunfight broke out this morning.
Two police officers were also wounded in the incident in the Saint Jean du Var region of Toulon, near Marseille, the French media has reported.
It allegedly happened at 11am (10am GMT) when officers carried out a raid to target arms traffickers.
The man, who was apparently armed with an M16 - a rifle used by the US military - and wearing a bulletproof vest, began shooting multiple times as he fled through the streets.
A police source told AFP one officer was is dead and two policemen injured during the operation.
A 33-year-old man has since been arrested by security forces in connection with the incident, according to Var-matin .
Another man is reportedly at large, according to Le Parisien.
Police have cordoned off the area while investigations are underway and residents have been asked to stay inside.
A witness at the scene told Var-matin: "I heard like an explosion. I turned and I saw people run away."
French media say the operation was linked to weapons smuggling in the city, which houses a major naval base in the south of France.
It comes just over a week after gunmen opened fire in Paris, killing 130 people and injuring hundreds.
ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attacks and raids have been carried out across France and Belgium in a bid to uncover any further planned assaults.
The French government has been under increasing pressure to prevent the flood of arms into the country and dozens of weapons have since been seized.
There has been almost 300 raids in Paris alone, according to police chief Michel Cadot.
Meanwhile more than 10,000 police and 6,400 soldiers have been deployed across the region, particularly at station, airports, large public spaces, government buildings, hospitals and cultural sites, The Local reported.
However, this morning's shooting is not believed to be connected to the Paris terror attacks, France3 reports. |
New York City Arrests Subway Dancers
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New York City police have begun cracking down on subway dancers under the justification of “quality of life violations.” This is part of a general quality of life campaign conducted by Police Commissioner William J. Bratton.
Subway dancers typically perform within closed subway cars, during the interim between the train leaving one stop and reaching another.
This short documentary by Scott Carthy explores the cultural phenomenon of subway dancing and its newly-threatened status. The intro cards to the film claim that NYC places subway performers in the category of “panhandlers,” making them an easy target for arrest under NYC laws.
As Business Insider reports:
Forty-six subway dancers have been arrested and charged with reckless endangerment since January, an NYPD spokesman said in April. Another 50 dancers with less flashy tricks (essentially those who keep their feet on the ground), have been charged with the lesser count of disorderly conduct. In total, subway panhandling and peddling arrests are up 271% year over year with 371 arrests in 2014, compared to 100 by this period in 2013, according to NBC.
Meanwhile, just weeks ago NYPD Transit officers arrested a man with an illegal firearm on Metro premises. This was posted on NYPD’s twitter feed:
#NYPD Transit officers arrest a man and recover loaded firearm, 6/17 in Brooklyn. #81Pct pic.twitter.com/Ct5rYGNpfo — NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) June 18, 2014
Given that there is real, violent crime for transit officers to be concerned with, one is left wondering whether cracking down on dancing is the best use of limited NYPD resources.
myfoxny.com quotes Bratton as saying “”Is it a significant crime? Certainly not,” but, he continued “Does it have the potential both for creating a level of fear as well as a level of risk that you want to deal with?”
Word’s out on whether New Yorkers themselves consider their subway dancers to create “a level of fear.” |
The sneaky, dishonest way Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Legislature shoveled an extra $30,000 in annual retirement benefits to the head of the Louisiana State Police should forever prevent Jindal from bragging about having cleaned up his state's politics.
It won't, but the events that resulted in an illegal retirement boost for Col. Mike Edmonson - Jindal's appointed police chief - suggests that Louisiana politics remains a cesspool of cronyism.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal speaks during The Family Leadership Summit, Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014, in Ames, Iowa.
In the closing hours of the 2014 legislative session, legislators passed legislation with an amendment granting Edmonson and another state trooper - both enrolled in the state's DROP retirement plan, but still working and earning full salaries - additional retirement benefits.
Of course, the amendment didn't mention Edmonson or anyone else by name. That fact didn't give legislators pause. They passed the bill without the required fiscal impact statement. Only after Jindal's signature did we discover the retirement honey pot and its cost.
Had they asked any questions, legislators might have realized they were giving $300,000 in extra retirement benefits to just two individuals. Actually, they spent much more money than that, as the fiscal analysis (conducted after the bill passed) only assessed the impact of the bill's first five years. Edmonson is 55. He stands to collect the extra money for several decades.
When state Treasurer John Kennedy and the state's news media (including dogged bloggers C.B. Forgotston and Tom Aswell) challenged the propriety of the deal, no one seemed to know where the amendment originated. After first denying authorship, Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia), a close Jindal ally, finally acknowledged his role.
Edmonson says that the legislation wasn't his idea, but rather that of his loyal staff. If you are gullible enough to accept that, you might also believe that most charismatic leaders inspire their underlings to agonize over the boss's post-retirement comfort.
Edmonson was finally forced to decline the benefits. But unless the law is repealed or ruled unconstitutional, what's to prevent him from quietly taking the additional money once he's fully retired?
Several legislators pledge to repeal the language while Kennedy and the bloggers have pushed a reluctant State Police Retirement System Board to investigate the sordid affair. The board will hold a hearing about the matter on Sept. 4.
Silent is one person who could have stopped this outrageous misuse of public resources and who, if he cared, would demand an investigation into how this scandal occurred.
You'd think a governor devoted to good government, who was tricked into signing an illegal and unethical bill, would be outraged. But he's not. After all, his close aide Edmonson was the beneficiary of a shady scheme executed by a close legislative ally. Jindal's silence and inaction tell us all we need to know about his willingness to police his own administration.
His so-called ethics reforms, which he called the "gold standard," are really false gold. Among other things, Jindal's 2008 ethics legislation blessed an appalling system of conflicts, codifying a shadowy recusal process for the state's boards and commissions. A true gold standard would demand something stronger, such as requiring board members with financial conflicts to resign or at least disclose the nature of the conflict. Jindal's law requires neither.
Worse, Jindal, who once campaigned against exemptions to the state ethics code, has signed a passel of them over the years. Most recently, he approved legislation to allow former state senator Francis Heitmeier to lobby the Legislature, even though his brother, David, now holds his old Senate seat.
Most egregious, perhaps, is how special interests have purchased access to Jindal and his administration through a foundation created by the state's first lady, the Supriya Jindal Foundation.
Someday soon, when Jindal formally launches his presidential campaign, he'll boast about all the ways he's transformed Louisiana. Among other achievements, he'll claim that he's reformed our education system, supercharged the economy and transformed health care. That's all debatable, at best.
But it's especially absurd - and patently false - for Jindal to claim that he has cleaned up Louisiana politics. Until he sweeps out the corruption in his own cabinet, such assertions should be met with a chorus of catcalls and raucous laughter.
In his 2010 book, "Leadership and Crisis," Jindal bragged about changing Louisiana's ethical culture, asserting, "The real test for leaders, and indeed the real test for all of us, is to answer this question: are my actions designed to help others or help myself? Taking advantage of others, or exploiting powerful positions to enrich ourselves or feed our own appetites, is the opposite of real leadership."
Jindal should reread those words. As for Edmonson, he's probably very familiar with Jindal's book and that passage. After all, the State Police chief's image is prominently featured on the cover, walking alongside his patron and now-protector, Bobby Jindal.
Robert Mann, an author and former U.S. Senate and gubernatorial staffer, holds the Manship Chair in Journalism at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. Read more from him at his blog, Something Like the Truth. Follow him on Twitter @RTMannJr or email him at bob.mann@outlook.com. |
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cleveland State University will discontinue funding its 52-year-old wrestling program in fall 2016.
The world's oldest sport will be replaced by men's lacrosse - the fastest growing college sport in the last decade. Its first season will start in the spring of 2017.
The moves are a result of a "program prioritization process" led by Athletic Director John Parry that explored factors including funding, competitiveness and national trends, the university said in a statement.
The 25 members of the wrestling team were told the news at 3:30 p.m. Coach Ben Stehura, in his fifth season at CSU, wasn't immediately available for comment.
"The decision to no longer fund wrestling at CSU was a very difficult one," Parry said in a news release. "The athletes, coaches and support staff have shown exceptional dedication to their sport and the university."
CSU will seek external funding to continue the program, officials said.
Wrestlers competed at Fenn College, which in 1965 became CSU. Its team competes in the Eastern Wrestling League.
Redshirt senior Ben Willeford and junior Riley Shaw recently competed in the NCAA tournament in St. Louis. They led the Vikings to 7-3 overall and 4-2 in the league, and the team finished fourth at the league championships.
CSU did not want to drop a sport but cannot afford the additional cost of about $900,000 a year to add two sports, because if it added lacrosse it would have to add a women's sport to meet federal Title IX requirements, officials said Monday.
CSU would become only the second public university in Ohio to offer lacrosse. Ohio State University has men's and women's teams.
The team will play at Krenzler Field, and games are expected to attract students and community members, the university said.
The university began discussing adding lacrosse in fall 2014 and had hoped its first team would be on campus this fall and compete in the spring of 2016.
At that time it had planned to add a women's sport, either lacrosse or indoor/outdoor track and field, said Parry and President Ronald Berkman.
Public colleges are following the lead of their private counterparts in adding lacrosse, which in recent years has become the latest recruitment tool.
Relatively inexpensive to start, the sport has grown in popularity at high schools, especially those with middle-class students.
By offering the chance to play at the next level, colleges hope to attract students who otherwise wouldn't have considered those campuses.
CSU added men's lacrosse as a club sport in 2013.
No sport has grown faster at the NCAA level over the past decade than lacrosse, said US Lacrosse, the national governing body of the sport.
It said a record 170 teams played NCAA Division I lacrosse (67 men's, 103 women's) in 2014. It said nearly 30,000 players are playing collegiate lacrosse each year.
A Division I men's team has about 45 members.
Parry played lacrosse while at Brown University and completed football and lacrosse coaching stints at Brown while working as the assistant athletic director between 1975 and 1979.
He served two stints on the NCAA men's lacrosse committee. His wife, Candis, is an assistant women's lacrosse coach at Baldwin Wallace University. |
Citi Field Seating Chart/Seat Map Details
We take great care in providing the most accurate seating charts/seat maps because we understand how crucial they are to choosing the right event. We try to also provide you with seat views that show you what kind of view you can expect from different parts of the venue. You can go to our Citi Field seat views page to see them. Citi Field can hold up to 41,800 people but that's a lot of seats and therefore a lot of potential seat views. We wish we had all 41,800 individual seat views for Citi Field but we don't, therefore the seat views we show are usually a sample from different sections in a venue.
Every seating chart/seat map at Citi Field can be a little different, therefore it's probably a good idea to double check you're looking at the one that matches the event you're attending. If not, you can always choose a different seating chart from the list above.
That's all we've got on seating charts but you can always browse events in New York by visiting one of the following pages:
See below if you're looking for other events at Citi Field: |
Announcement!
After almost 10 years, I will be leaving Freaks 4U Gaming.
Thank you for all the opportunities. Thank you for all the support. Thank you for letting me become the "me" I always wanted to be.
I will never forget where we started and will always be proud to have been a part of the freaks-family.
Every end is followed by a new beginning. My new beginning will lead me to France where my childhood dream will come true. I am incredible happy to tell you that I will start working for Blizzard in their Europe HQ in Versailles this january.
I will take on the role of the Associate Esports Manager - but don't worry...this does not mean that I stop hosting or casting by any means. I will still work in front of the camera and will be involved in talent management amongst other things.
I can't wait to start this new chapter in my life...and hope to still have all of you by my side as I continue my little adventures in yet another country.
Reply · Report Post |
Francisco Águila, Emol
SANTIAGO.- 10 detectives y cuatro persona civiles fueron detenidas tras una amplia operación realizada por un equipo multidisciplinario de Carabineros en las dependencias de la Bicrim Pudahuel y la Brigada Móvil de Cerrillos, ambas de la PDI, en la capital.
Se trata de una investigación de largo aliento que lleva adelante el Departamento OS-9 de la policía uniformada en conjunto con la fiscalía Metropolitana Occidente por los delitos de allanamiento ilegal, obstrucción a la investigación y abuso contra particulares.
El operativo policial se inició en forma paralela en ambas unidades a las 07:00 horas de hoy, en la que hasta ahora trabajan 17 equipos tanto del OS-9, OS-7, Labocar e incluso el Servicio de Encargo y Búsqueda de Vehículos (SEBV).
Por su parte de la policía civil informó en un comunicado que el Departamento V de Asuntos Internos realizó las detenciones ordenadas por el Primer Juzgado de Garantía de Santiago.
"El personal aludido fue alejado de sus funciones, y se instruyó por el mando regional un
sumario administrativo, con el fin de determinar eventuales responsabilidades", señala el escrito.
Asimismo, la institución sostiene que "no tolerará acciones de su personal que estén reñidas con los valores institucionales y reitera su compromiso más absoluto con el Estado de Derecho y la seguridad y justicia de todos los chilenos". |
MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Police in Virginia on Thursday backed off efforts to take sexually explicit photos of a 17-year-old to prove a sexting case against him. Police and prosecutors faced…
MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press
McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Police in Virginia on Thursday backed off efforts to take sexually explicit photos of a 17-year-old to prove a sexting case against him.
Police and prosecutors faced a wave of criticism following news media reports that they had obtained a warrant to take photos of the teen’s erect penis. Police wanted the pictures to compare against photos he is accused of sending to his 15-year-old girlfriend at the time.
On Thursday, Manassas Police Lt. Brian Larkin said the Police Department will not proceed with the plan to take the pictures and will let a search warrant authorizing the photos to expire.
Privacy advocates had criticized the plan as a violation of the teen’s constitutional rights.
The teen’s aunt, who serves as his legal guardian, said she had not heard of the police department’s reversal until contacted by an Associated Press reporter Thursday afternoon. She said she would be ecstatic if police follow through on their statement that they will no longer pursue the photos. But she said she won’t be fully satisfied until the case against her nephew is dropped entirely.
The aunt had sent her nephew to West Virginia, where he grew up, for the past several weeks, fearful that police would show up to enforce the search warrant. The teen’s defense lawyers said authorities had explained that they intended to take the teen to a hospital and chemically induce an erection to facilitate the photographs.
The Associated Press is not identifying the teen or the aunt in accordance with a policy of not identifying juvenile suspects.
Manassas Police Chief Douglas Keen posted a statement Thursday saying that “the decision to pursue prosecution or not lies with the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office and not the Police Department.”
Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert declined to comment on the case in detail, citing ethical rules about discussion of pending cases outside the courtroom.
The teen is charged in juvenile court with felony counts of possession and manufacture of child pornography. The aunt maintains that the charges are overblown and said the plan to pursue photos of her nephew in an aroused state came about only after she and her nephew refused to accept a plea bargain that had been offered.
Larkin said he had no information on why the department no longer plans to pursue the photos. On Wednesday night, the department issued a statement saying it was not their policy “to authorize invasive search procedures of suspects in cases of this nature” but made no definitive statements about whether they would continue to pursue the photos that had been specifically authorized in the search warrant.
Rebecca Glenberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said the pursuit of the photos would have raised serious constitutional questions, compounded by the fact that the subject of the photos would have been a minor and by the fact that authorities apparently intended to induce an erection through a medical injection.
“People have a constitutional right to control their bodies,” said Glenberg, who was unaware of any similar case.
The aunt felt certain that the tidal wave of criticism against authorities is the only reason police reversed course.
“They would have gotten away with this. They were not going to back off,” she said.
Manassas City Manager Patrick Pate acknowledged Thursday that the department and the city had been fielding irate calls from across the country and internationally after the story broke. He said the city was being portrayed unfairly, given the fact that the photos were never actually taken. He also downplayed the possibility that they would ever have been taken, even though he acknowledged that a warrant authorizing them had been issued.
The teen’s lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment Thursday.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
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