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Transcript for Jennifer Lawrence Accused Stalker Arrested Actress jennifer lawrence has an oscar a string of hit movies. She has become enormously popular. Now, she's dealing with the downside of fame. A alleged stalker is under arrest this morning accused of harassing both her and her family, going to extremes to try to pleat the star. We have this story from los angeles. Reporter: Good morning. According to court documents the alleged stalker found jennifer lawrence's brother's information on a website for the family summer camp for kids. After repeated calls, e-mails, text messages went unanswered that's when the fan allegedly became more aggressive trying to meet the family in person. In movies jennifer lawrence is used to fending off attacks in hunger games and occasionally getting shot down by bradley cooper in "silver linings playbook." Now she's facing a real-life foe that police say is much more dangerous. A sh these canadian citizen is behind bars on bail. According to his arrest warrant he attempted to contact blaine lawrence more than 200 times in april. Once in town, prosecutors said that dhao left lawrence threatening voice mails. When I'm upset wait and see what happens. In hollywood we take this extraordinarily serious. Reporter: Zhao was arrested when police when he asked police for help contacting lawrence's parents. He went back to the police with two letters to jennifer lawrence. Because jennifer lawrence is so sweet and accessible, people get this perception that she would like to hang with them. Falling on the stairs to accept her oscar win. Jack nicholson showing some love and how about photo bombing iing sarah jessica parker at the met gala. Our expert say typically stars have protection. This alleged stalker is due back in july. That's when the trial is expected to start. A frightening situation for this family who told the police they have no idea who this guy is. Not over with the trial coming. John, thank you. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate. |
The Best Thrift Store Find... SCORE 65 The Ghost Of Richie Rich SCORE 208 Worth it. SCORE 221 A gym called "Resolutions." SCORE 221 Ceiling art in smoking room. SCORE 175 A bunch of flowers. SCORE 128 Somebody Enjoys Their Job SCORE 125 If you ever feel bad about your mistakes SCORE 89 Green ones, not so much. SCORE 126 Sage advice. SCORE 124 Sometimes All You Need Is Love SCORE 133 Not again! SCORE 69 Om nom nom. SCORE 113 Meet Walter my friend's baby duck SCORE 135 My mom said this to me this morning SCORE 125 Movie problems. SCORE 70 An accurate summary of some of my favourite bands SCORE 124 It's funny because it's true SCORE 67 Chivalry isn't dead SCORE 62 Break it up! SCORE 219 Why choose? SCORE 210 Richard Hammond Is A Cool Dude SCORE 190 Thank you, kid. SCORE 325 oh SCORE 92 Flirting SCORE 121 Slice of Meteorite SCORE 127 A difficult task. SCORE 91 I love Sideshow Bob SCORE 193 I'll just be a nice guy and let the kid have it... SCORE 78 A baby dolphin SCORE 125 How I imagine everyday in Australia is. SCORE 203 |
Image copyright AP Image caption Little is known about Mr Snowden's activities in Russia Russia has granted fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden permission to stay three more years with the right to travel abroad, his lawyer says. His year-long leave to stay in Russia had expired on 31 July. Mr Snowden fled the US in 2013 after leaking details of the National Security Agency's surveillance and telephone-tapping operations. The US has charged him with theft of government property and communicating classified information. Mr Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told journalists that the request for an extension had been accepted. "Accordingly, Edward Snowden was given a three-year residence permit," which will allow him to move about freely and travel abroad, Mr Kucherena said. 'Man up' The former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor has been hailed by privacy activists for revealing the extent of the NSA's surveillance operations and details of alleged US spying on foreign leaders, including US allies. The US Congress has since attempted to impose restrictions on the NSA's electronic surveillance activities. However, US leaders have accused Mr Snowden of damaging national interests and harming the country's security. Image copyright AFP Image caption Mr Snowden's supporters say he has acted in the public interest by revealing the extent of NSA surveillance In May, Secretary of State John Kerry said Mr Snowden was a fugitive from justice who should "man up" and return home. Mr Snowden had fled the US via Hong Kong in May 2013. He remained in a transit zone in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport for more than a month after the US revoked his travel documents, before being granted temporary asylum in Russia in August 2013. Russia's decision to shelter Mr Snowden was strongly criticised by the US. Little is known about his activities in Russia, although his lawyer says he is working as an "IT specialist" and as a rights defender. Mr Kucherena stressed on Thursday that Mr Snowden had not been granted asylum, but "temporary leave to remain on the territory of Russia," Interfax news agency reports. "In the future Edward will have to decide whether to continue to live in Russia and become a citizen or to return to the United States," he said. |
Fresh from his own re-election victory and his party’s powerful showing nationwide, Senator Mitch McConnell on Wednesday pledged to break the stalemate in Washington as newly empowered congressional Republicans moved quickly to demonstrate that they can get things done. “We’re going to pass legislation,” Mr. McConnell said at a news conference in Louisville, Ky. “This gridlock and dysfunction can be ended.” Despite their new majority in the Senate and an expanded one in the House, Republicans face multiple difficulties, not the least of which are internal divisions. But they say they know they have to deliver or face a backlash in 2016. “I think it really becomes important to appear to want to be a governing party rather than a complaining party,” said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the party leadership. “My belief is we have about six months before the American people check that box one way or the other.” |
About This concept engine uses a commonly found energy source in the form of magnetism and converts it into kinetic energy, from 0 rpms to variable speeds and torque, it uses carefully times arrangements and mechanical valves to coordinate magnetic forces in a unidirectional motion, in terms produces a complete rotational force, like any conventional engine or electric motor, best of all no need for any additional fuel source for many years to come, est 500 yrs average lifespan.this engine can work in day or night, with or without air, in or above water, with or without an atmosphere. but best of all many years without re fueling., witch means no more energy cost. completely green, and completely safe.imagine not paying for electricity or fueling your car at all, wile using those savings toward a cheaper world. Risks and challenges This is a new concept, in many words there are little to minor change to overcome trials to see what ic can actually produce in real world numbers, much less the applications around its limits if there is any.there are few versions of the assembly to test a try out son development will mainly prove a financial challenge if need be. to create a second revision for final concept to advance into the market. Learn about accountability on Kickstarter |
2015 was a turbulent year. Major catastrophes most of them man-made wreaked havoc across the globe. With territorial gains, Daesh emerged as a formidable challenge to all the world. It was borne out of an ideology that is repugnant to most people and yet has a an appeal to a certain segment of the society. Daesh, since its inception has been bolstered by a lone wolf attacks. The organization has cashed in on the publicity from these attacks not only boost its recruitment drive but also announce its reign of terror. From the shooting at Canadian parliament, the Tunisian beach massacre, to the carnage on the streets of Paris, all carried out by individuals who had pledged allegiance to Daesh. There is no hiding the fact that carrying out those attacks were young men. Young muslim men. Although the terrorist attacks in the west gained much publicity but similar attacks also devastated countries in the east (Pakistan, Thailand, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia etc). Mosques were bombed and dozens of children were murdered inside a school. From Aqsa Mehmood ( the Daesh recruiter from Glasgow), to Saad Aziz (Karachi bus Masacre fame), from Adem Karadagand (Bangkok bomber) to Seifiddine Rezgui Yacoub (orchestrator of Tunisian beach attack) all were young persons whose parents did not have a clue of their children’s bent of mind leave alone their plans. In fact in all the mentioned cases parents were shocked when they were informed about the relevant incident. In light of this conveyer belt of troubling news, Muslims parents are getting increasingly concerned if their children are in the wrong company or wrong frame of mind. This is also true for many non-muslim parents whose off-spring may have converted to Islam. On a similar footing, many parents already have concerns about their child’s thinking or behaviour but are clueless about the handling of the precarious scenario. This guide has been written specifically for parents who are finding themselves in such situations. It will help them in understanding what radical religious ideology is. How is Islam twisted to have a radical outlook and more importantly how to deal with a child that is treading or is likely to tread the path of extremism. This guide aims to equip parents with tools that will not only un-simmer the vile ideology bubbling in their child’s head but will also show them areas where their energy can be channelled positively. It is interesting to note that a great deal of literature is present on the importance of de-radicalization within Islamic community but very little if any is written on how to de-radicalize? Dealing with a radical mind-set is challenging. To de-construct a radical ideology requires thorough understanding of its foundations. Therefore, this guide will have three further segments: 1. Understanding Religious radicalization 2. Dealing (Identifying Engaging) with a radicalized mind 3. Treatment for a radicalized mind It is often the case that parents are ill equipped with religious knowledge that is needed to engage with someone of a radical mind-set. However, this should not be of great concern as anyone deemed radical has very little knowledge of theology themselves. Mostly their ideas are formulated on sound bytes and hearsay rather than academic research. The reader should take heart that for every extreme point of view that is quoted, there are several points that claim otherwise from the same religious sources. It is important that parents read all the segments of this guide thoroughly. This guide will present a step by step solution to the readers for engaging and effectively de-radicalizing a person. Although this guide only deals with Muslim extremism but the principals can be applied to other types of extremist behaviours too. The use of the term “Islamic radicalization” has been avoided because it is a misnomer. Islam by its definition means peace and champions the middle way. It is called the religion of collective consciousness (fitrah in Arabic). And therefore true understanding of Islam itself is enough to curb any notion of extremism. It should also be understood what “Radicalization” herein implies. It does not mean a person becoming religious. It does mean a person trying to achieve political objectives by hook or crook. In many countries, counter terrorism frameworks, such as PREVENT in the UK, are failing and in some cases proving to be counter productive. Although, the UK government has fixed a budget of 40 million pounds annually but such strategies can end up in alienating the very youth they seek to bring into the mainstream. For any strategy to succeed, it is important to listen and understand a person’s narrative and than communicate the counter narrative in a non-disparaging fashion. Parents, close relatives and friends are often best placed to offer advice than authorities that in the eyes of a subject are not trust worthy. It was felt that the need to dispel and disseminate this information for a great number of parents far exceeded the need for perfection. Therefore the author would like to apologize in advance for any grammatical or typographical errors. Part 2-1 of this guide can be accessed from this link |
James Wilburn wasn’t surprised to see white supremacists converge on Charlottesville last weekend. He wasn’t surprised the rally – nominally a protest against the removal of a statue – turned violent. Then deadly. He wasn’t surprised because he sees the shadow of that hatred every day. “All you have to do is ask the African-American students in our schools how many times they’ve been called the N-word,” Wilburn said. Wilburn, a former president of of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, works for Spokane Public Schools, connecting and helping struggling students. Usually those he assists are students of color. “All of the dark spots that have been hiding are coming to the forefront now because it has national support from the top,” he said. Longtime activists who have spent decades fighting hate and discrimination in the Spokane region expressed a mixture of anger and caution this week, but all were united on one point: the embers of rage that flared into violence last week have been smoldering below the nation’s surface for a long time. On another point, too, the response of most activists was unified: White supremacy, they said, should not be met with violence. “Antifa. It’s very scary,” said local activist Rusty Nelson, citing the emergence of left-wing groups that have begun to appear at white nationalist counterprotests, often resulting in clashes. “(The group) doesn’t have any nonviolent guidance.” Nelson, a longtime director of the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, said in the past outbursts of hate, or neo-Nazi ideation, seemed contained to a specific geographic area. That’s not the case anymore, he said, describing what he called a “nationwide phenomenon.” In the wake of Charlottesville, Nelson said, he’s concerned that much of the response to the violence has encouraged or led to more violence. “It’s basically a new generation of responders, and you know, God bless them,” he said. “I want them to be engaged but they can really miss some opportunities if they insist on going in there with an eye-for-an-eye mentality.” The tactics of antifa, whose name is a contraction of the word anti-fascist, diverge sharply from the methods of nonviolence employed by organizers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters. Spokane resident Cameron Kjeldgaard, who describes himself as ideologically aligned with antifa, broke with that philosophy. Confrontation and even violence, he said, can be an occasional necessity. “It’s about having a diversity of approaches,” he said. “It’s appropriate to approach those things in more than one way.” Tony Stewart, the co-founder of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, said the violence and unrest sweeping the nation has yet to metastasize in Idaho. “Today in our locality it is the most peaceful that it has been in a long time,” he said. Stewart remembers the violence white supremacist Richard Butler and his followers perpetrated in the Hayden area in the 1970s and 1980s. There were bombings, intimidating rallies and death threats. In response, Stewart and others created a robust organization that nonviolently monitored and stood up to the Aryan Nations’ campaigns. Locally he thinks the network may be keeping the overt hatred at bay. Keeping an eye on hate groups is key, Stewart said. He also emphasized the importance of working with law enforcement and the legal system. “Make it very clear that if you commit any acts in that community, you’re going to go to court,” he said. Part of what makes the current situation unique, Stewart said, is that there isn’t a centralized place where white supremacists are meeting. Much of the conversation and organization is happening online. That makes it easier for groups to swoop into communities for a rally or protest, blindsiding local organizations. Former Washington State University College Republicans President James Allsup, for instance, has become a semicelebrity in so called “alt-right” circles, with influence that extends to his 15,000 Twitter followers and roughly 150,000 YouTube followers. Last week he attended the Charlottesville rally, capturing footage that was later uploaded to YouTube. Liz Moore, the director of the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, sees the events of the last six months as a sort of wake-up call. “It’s really, really clear that total, overt, totally clear bias is absolutely a factor,” she said. Like Wilburn, Moore believes President Donald Trump has empowered white nationalists and and neo-Nazis, a segment of the population she believes was hidden for years. “The silence that our dominant culture imposes and tries to maintain around racism and politics is a big part of the problem,” she said. She urged people to push their comfort zones. If able, Moore recommended engaging friends and relatives in discussion about racism and politics. And, perhaps the most important thing, she said, is get involved politically. Sandra Williams, the Eastern Washington representative of the Commission on African American Affairs, echoed Wilburn and Moore. The underlying issues of implicit bias and racism never left, she said. But she had hoped the culture had moved beyond large-scale, overt racism. “It feels eerily similar to me,” Williams said. “I thought we had gotten past this place. I certainly didn’t believe it was gone in terms of the overt violence.” And that, she believes, can partly explain antifa’s acceptance of more confrontational, or even violent, acts. “I think when soft voices of reason are not listened to, then the voices get louder,” she said. “So I see them as stepping into a void because the country is not dealing with racial issues.” |
The ArmaLite AR-18 was initially designed as a lower priced competitor to the AR-15. It uses stamped metal construction instead of milling, similar to rifles like the AK47. The AR180B is a modernized, semi-automatic version of the AR18 that uses a polymer lower and more AR parts. If you’re really interested in the history, check out the Wikipedia page on the AR-18. Here in Canada, the AR-180B (technically the AR-180B2 which uses an integral muzzle brake instead of thread-on brake) is somewhat significant because it is non restricted. While the restricted AR-15 can only travel from your safe to the range, the 180B can go hunting coyotes or for a trip to the gravel pit to shoot rocks, tannerite, bouncing ground targets, or other fun targets that you may not be able to use at your range. If you’re in Canada, check out my review on the new WK180C Note: this particular rifle has been painted and has had a few modifications. Many AR180B’s come with a fixed or folding stock, while this one uses a stock adapter to enable use of AR-15 buttstocks. This rifle has a picatinny rail permanently installed on the receiver. AR-180B’s don’t come with a rail, but Stormwerkz sells a rail that can be used. A small picatinny rail section has been added to the bottom of the rifle forend. This is not stock. AR-180B Video Review AR-180B Operating Characteristics If you’ve used an AR-15 or any non-bullpup 223 Modern Sporting Rifle, you can probably figure this rifle out quick. The safety, magazine release, magazines, and trigger are either directly from the AR-15 or very similar. Instead of a non-reciprocating charging handle, it uses a fixed, reciprocating handle attached to the bolt. There is no bolt release, instead you need to pull back and release the bolt handle. It’s a more basic system than the AR-15, but simple isn’t necessarily bad. The trigger is a single stage unit and mine pulled at a gritty 8.5 lbs. Not the greatest trigger in the world but if you really disliked it, you could replace it. The firing pin is retained by a spring! That means you don’t have to be picky on primers and only choose the hard military ones for reloading, because the spring will keep that firing pin from denting primers significantly when the bolt slams forward on a fresh round. The iron sights are basic but decent quality. The holes are drilled in the middle and nothing looks crooked or crude like you’d commonly see on a Norinco M14. Elevation is adjusted via the front sight post, while windage is adjusted by a large knob on the right hand side of the rear sight. The rear sight offers a small peep and large size peep. Shooters more familiar with traditional, low mount sights will appreciate how much lower they are on the AR-180B vs an AR-15. AR-180B Accuracy With more moving parts, the AR-180B can be a bit less accurate than the AR-15. The heavy stock trigger doesn’t help, but many AR180B owners still report being able to shoot groups of 1-2.5″ at 100 yards. That’s still better than many other modern sporting rifle designs. AR180B Gas System and Design The AR180B uses a short-stroke gas system that is extremely similar to that of the WWII SVT-40. The fixed piston stays attached, while the vented gas cup/cylinder travels over it during cycling. Nothing wrong with this system: it’s reliable, keeps powder fowling way up front on the rifle (instead of dumping it into the bolt/action like the AR-15), and is very easy to clean. Because the bolt/BCG are no longer pulling double duty as gas piston, they can be nice and compact. Instead of needing a buffer+spring that go into the stock, the AR180B uses a double recoil spring system on dual guide rods. Shooting the AR180B Shooting the AR180B at the range is very similar to firing an AR-15, with a few minor differences. The stock is not straight line, it’s dropped a bit. This means that your iron sights & optics are lower and closer to the barrel. The bolt is very smooth to operate. It’d be nice to have a bolt release like on an AR-15. I dislike using my left hand to reload a mag and then reaching around or using my right hand to operate the bolt handle. Other than that, it’s basically the same as an AR: very fun to shoot! Partial Disassembly The AR180B is thoughtfully designed and features an easy disassembly. Just below the rear sight is a trough where you can insert a 5.56 cartridge, punch, nail whatever, to push forward on the rear plate. Rotate the rear of the rifle upper upwards just like you would an AR-15. Remove the recoil springs and guide rod assembly. Move the bolt carrier group rearward until the charging handle is at the disassembly hole and then pull out the charging handle. Remove the bolt carrier group Push in the firing pin from the rear and remove the firing pin retaining pin. Then, remove the firing pin and firing pin spring. Pull out the cam pin from the side Remove the bolt from the bolt carrier group. (off the bolt and action for a bit): remove the forend. The gas system disassembles quickly into 4 pieces: the cup(cylinder), operating rod link, operating rod, and operating rod spring. The middle connecting link can be removed easily first, then the cup, then the operating rod. If you really want, you can remove the gas piston to give it a thorough cleaning. I just use a pipe cleaner to clean mine out. Full AR-180B Disassembly AR-180B Weak Points Polymer lower. The front pivot point holds the upper and lower together and it’s metal pin acting on plastic hinge. If you use an AR-180B in winter when that polymer is brittle or if you’re abusive with it, it might break. Some people add in a “recoil lug” to reduce stress on the hinge point. Stormwerkz also offers a more robust replacement pivot that looks like it’d completely eliminate this issue. The polymer lower also includes the grip, which can’t be replaced. Lack of a picatinny rail on the receiver is somewhat offset by the easy-to-add Stormwerkz rail. Or, find a competent gunsmith to permanently add a section of rail to the receiver. Lack of factory support is something of a problem. You probably won’t find many replacement parts at your local gun store. The stock trigger sucks. The safety isn’t as solid as the one on the AR15, but at least it’s quiet. The action has some openings so it won’t survive dirt/mud/sand as well as rifles with dust covers or more enclosed actions. If you really love a scope, you’d have to mount it further forward or permanently remove the rear sight to get it out of the way. Common AR-height scope mounts will end up being uncomfortably high without a high cheek riser. ACOG mounts, scope mounts, and red dot mounts designed for the AR-15 will give poor cheek weld without really building up the cheek rest or getting the buttstock adapter AND a buttstock that features an adjustable cheek rest. Long story short: it’s not a perfect firearm, but there are inexpensive modifications that help eliminate some of the weak points. Conclusion If you’re in the US, this is a bit of a silly firearm to own. CNC machining is a lot cheaper these days, so the cost for a new AR-15 is much lower and they’re a more ubiquitous platform. If you’re in Canada, it’s a different story because only some firearms are granted “Non Restricted” status. For non restricted, semi automatic 223 rifles, it’s slim pickings and many of the options are priced very high. To get a platform very similar to an AR, with trigger parts that can be replaced with aftermarket, and a great gas system like the one on the AR-180B, there are few options available at under $2000. For a Canadian who loves going to the range, but also wants to be able to plink at a gravel pit or shoot coyotes at close range, the AR-180B is one of the best options available for the dollar. |
Stressed out?!?!? Back away from the pastries! Why eat six donuts when you can squeeze them instead? Our gourmet Donut Stress Ball will help you calm down when you haven’t had your coffee and doughnut yet! Just give it a good squeeze when you’re feeling a bit red. They don’t just look like the real thing… they also smell like the real thing too! They were truely created for your guilt-free pleasure! We all lead hectic lives but need to stop stressing out! Just give the donut another squeeze! This calorie free creation (because you don't eat it!) can help people ease away their tensions by simply squeezing or resting their wrists on them! This is NOT edible, seriously… do not try to eat this donut not matter how great it smells. Your donut will be pulled randomly fresh out of the oven! |
Grilled Eggs with Mexican Chorizo By Worker Bee Grilling isn’t typically an early morning activity, but Grilled Eggs with Mexican Chorizo might change that. Of course, just because eggs are involved you don’t have to serve this tasty meal for breakfast. It’s also great as a side or main dish for dinner. The method for grilling eggs is simple but ingenious: crack a raw egg into a bell pepper half and then grill until set. Cradled in the pepper, the egg cooks perfectly and the pepper is roasted by the flames, taking on a smoky, charred flavor. Fantastic as-is, you can bump the flavor up another notch by adding Mexican chorizo, a type of pork sausage that’s intensely seasoned with dried chiles, herbs and spices. Unlike Spanish chorizo, which is cured and more similar to salami, Mexican chorizo is raw and needs to be cooked before eating. It’s sometimes sold in links, but often cooked as loose ground meat. If you’ve tasted Mexican chorizo before, you know how addictive the earthy, smoky, spicy flavor is. The flavor is so rich and complex that you might be surprised by how easy chorizo is to make at home. Most of the seasonings you need are probably already in your spice rack: chile powder, paprika, dried oregano, cumin and cinnamon. The last, and most important, seasoning is dried chiles (either ancho or guajillo are most common) that have been re-hydrated and blended into a thick paste. Many grocery stores sell dried chiles and you can also buy them at Hispanic markets or from online spice stores. The exact blend of spices in Mexican chorizo varies widely, depending on who’s making it. This recipe has a really nice balance of flavor; it’s neither too smoky or spicy. You can add another dried chile or some cayenne pepper to make it hotter; throw in allspice or cloves for a gentler, sweeter flavor. Mexican chorizo tastes especially good with eggs, but can also be sautéed with dark leafy greens or tossed cold into a salad. You might even find yourself plucking pieces directly out of the skillet – it’s that good. In this recipe, though, the grilled eggs really steal the spotlight. The soft, creamy texture of the egg is amazing with the roasted pepper. Serve grilled eggs with a cup of coffee for breakfast or eat grilled eggs for dinner, either way you’re gonna love ‘em. Makes 4 Grilled Eggs Ingredients: 2 dried chiles, either ancho or guajillo 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar 1 pound of ground pork 1 teaspoon chile powder 1 teaspoon paprika 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 large bell peppers 4 eggs Instructions: Use a paring knife or kitchen shears to cut the stem off the dried chiles, cut the chiles open and scrape out the seeds. (If you want spicier sausage, keep some of the seeds in the pepper.) In a dry skillet or pot heated on high, toast the chiles on each side for about 25 seconds so they start to blister and puff up a bit. Add a few cups of water; leave the heat on until the water begins to boil and then turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let chiles soak until soft, about 30 minutes. Drain the water and combine the chiles and vinegar in a blender. Blend until a smooth paste forms. In a large bowl, use your hands to mix the chile paste with the ground pork and the next 7 ingredients until well combined. Cook the chorizo in a skillet over medium heat, breaking up the meat into small pieces as it cooks. It should be cooked through and slightly browned on the outside, which will take about 8-10 minutes. Heat the grill to high. Cut the bell peppers in half through the stem. Scrape out the seeds and cut out the white membrane. Crack an egg into each half of bell pepper. Sprinkle a handful of the chorizo inside the pepper. Place the filled peppers over the hottest part of the grill – charring the skin gives it a nice smoky flavor. Close the grill, checking on the egg’s progress once or twice as it cooks. Grille for 8-10 minutes for a soft yolk. Sprinkle with sea salt and enjoy. Post navigation If you'd like to add an avatar to all of your comments click here! |
To find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs A new book from NBC News correspondent Katy Tur about the Trump campaign details how the then-candidate surprised her with a kiss. Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about NBC News' Katy Tur details unwanted Trump kiss in new book on campaign CLOSE During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump vehemently denied allegations of sexual misconduct from more than a dozen women, including PEOPLE writer Natasha Stoynoff. But in November 2015, he bragged on live television about planting a “big kiss.” Time 'Unbelievable' by Katy Tur (Photo: Dey St.) CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN 18 COMMENT EMAIL MORE There are cringe-worthy moments aplenty in the new book from NBC News' Katy Tur about her experience covering the Trump campaign. But perhaps the most unbelievable moment in Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History comes when then-candidate Donald Trump abruptly kissed Tur on the cheek. Trump is "barreling" toward her before an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe shot in New Hampshire the morning after the Nov. 10, 2015, Republican presidential debate, she writes. "Before I know what’s happening, his hands are on my shoulders and his lips are on my cheek. My eyes widen. My body freezes. My heart stops." Trump leaves for the set "seemingly very proud of himself." But Tur writes she is "mortified" and thinks "F--k. I hope the cameras didn't see that. My bosses are never going to take me seriously. I didn't have time to duck!" During Trump's on-air chat with hosts Mika and Joe Scarborough, he is talking about press coverage and "then looks at Joe as if he just had an epiphany. 'But actually, Katy Tur — what happened? She was so great. I just saw her back there. I gave her a big kiss. She was fantastic." Katy Tury of NBC News. (Photo: MSNBC) Tur spent more than 500 days covering the Trump campaign for NBC News and MSNBC. During that time, Trump often singled out Tur, saying "Katy hasn't even looked up once at me," during a June 2015 event, also in New Hampshire, and "She's back there, little Katy ... third-rate reporter," in a December 2015 rally in Charleston, S.C., aboard the USS Yorktown. The back and forth between the candidate and embedded reporter led to the creation of the Twitter hashtag #ImWithTur. Looking back at the campaign, "it is still unbelievable," Tur told Today show host Matt Lauer during an interview Tuesday. "Especially when I went back and wrote the book and I reviewed a lot of the diary notes that I took and the reporting I did. I couldn’t believe that I experienced what I did. ... There were actual memories where I went back and didn’t actually think they happened, and then I found a clip of it on television." Since the book's release Tuesday, many have used Twitter to comment about the book and Tur's writing and experiences. Getting particular attention is an excerpt tweeted by her NBC News colleague and political reporter Benjy Sarlin. Near the book's end, Tur summarizes the incredible nature of Trump's campaign and how those who covered it will always "need each other just to vouch for stories that our children, spouses, and other friends surely won't believe. The shock-a-day style of the Trump campaign is overwhelming our means of recording it." Another section noted by some appears in the prologue, in which Tur attempts to explain the national momentum that led to Trump's election win: "They've decided that this menacing, indecent, post-truth landscape is where they want to live for the next four years. ... You feel like you are screaming at the top of your lungs in a room full of people wearing earplugs." Tur says she gets those who are worried about jobs, small-town economics and outsourcing. "What I don't get are the little old ladies in powder-pink MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hats calling me a liar," she writes. (this is from Katy Tur's new book) lol is this for real.(this is from Katy Tur's new book) pic.twitter.com/UTCOLaG1y3 September 12, 2017 Tur's book landed Tuesday, the same day as did What Happened? by Democratic presidential candidate and former first lady Hillary Clinton. Another book in the works on Trump is from New York Times reporters Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman. About all that, Trump chimed in Tuesday on Twitter to say: "Fascinating to watch people writing books and major articles about me and yet they know nothing about me & have zero access. FAKE NEWS!" Fascinating to watch people writing books and major articles about me and yet they know nothing about me & have zero access. #FAKE NEWS! September 12, 2017 Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN 18 COMMENT EMAIL MORE Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2x0wkc2 |
The intent of a vim scratch buffer is to provide a temporary area to store or edit text which gets discarded when you exit vim. The buffer will be retained as long as the vim session is on. Even if you are a heavy user of vim copy paste registers, the scratch buffer comes in handy to deal with reminders or code snippets you want to refer to later. There was a old plugin that does this. However, it’s not being maintained for 4 years (at the time of writing). scratch.vim is a new vim plugin inspired by the original project and adds some nice features: Auto-hide on inactivity. Mappings for note taking and selection pasting directly into the scratch buffer. Usage in vim :Scratch opens the scratch buffer window using top 20% of the screen (configurable via g:scratch_height and g:scratch_top ). The window automatically closes when inactive. The contents will be available the next time it is opened during the same session. opens the scratch buffer window using top 20% of the screen (configurable via and ). The window automatically closes when inactive. The contents will be available the next time it is opened during the same session. gs in normal mode opens the scratch window and enters insert mode. The scratch window closes when you leave insert mode. This is especially useful for quick notes. in normal mode opens the scratch window and enters insert mode. The scratch window closes when you leave insert mode. This is especially useful for quick notes. gs in visual mode pastes the current selection (character-wise, line-wise or block-wise) into the scratch buffer. in visual mode pastes the current selection (character-wise, line-wise or block-wise) into the scratch buffer. gS in normal/visual mode clears the scratch buffer before opening it. in normal/visual mode clears the scratch buffer before opening it. :help Scratch shows detailed list of configuration options. Auto-closing features require hidden to be set (and can be disabled via the g:scratch_autohide option). Installation Install pathogen.vim (required) $ mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle && \ $ curl -LSso ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim https://tpo.pe/pathogen.vim Install scratch.vim $ cd ~ /.vim/bundle $ git clone https://github.com/mtth/scratch.vim Webpage: scratch.vim |
When free agency kicked off a few weeks ago, George Iloka’s phone didn’t ring as much as the 25-year-old safety had expected. After finding a soft market, he wound up re-upping with the Bengals, who offered a five-year deal worth $30 million, of which only $5 million is guaranteed. In terms of talent and impact, Iloka ranks somewhere in the 8-15 range for NFL safeties (his annual salary of $6 million is 14th at the position). But it wouldn’t have been outrageous for him to expect top-five money, because that’s how growing markets are supposed to work. Elsewhere in the NFL, free-agent megadeals were signed at defensive end (Olivier Vernon), nickel defensive tackle (Malik Jackson) and cornerback (Janoris Jenkins). Vernon isn’t the NFL’s best defensive end, but the Giants guaranteed $55.2 million of his $85 million deal. Jackson isn’t the best defensive tackle, but the Jaguars guaranteed him $42 million. Jenkins is hardly one of the league’s top two corners, but the Giants guaranteed him $29 million—second most in history for a corner behind only Darrelle Revis. With an inflated cap, NFL salaries are soaring. But it hasn’t been quite the same for safeties. • BEHIND THE NFL-TWITTER DEAL: Peter King examines the league's live-stream partnership with the social media site, plus answers reader email The position’s value is by no means stagnant, but front offices would be wise to reconsider just how they’re determining value. The position’s 2016 franchise tag is $10.8 million, a 56% increase since 2013, when all franchise tag values started increasingly annually. And while that is a greater jump in percentage than every other defensive position except for tackle (61.5 %), it remains the lowest-paid defensive position in the NFL. That’s baffling because safety is rapidly becoming the most important position to defensive strategies across the league. NFL offenses are using three-receiver sets more than ever—about 65% of the time in 2015—but wideouts aren’t the driving force behind this sea change: Tight ends are. In 2015, there was about an 11% increase in the number of wide receivers who had at least 50 catches compared to the 2001 season; the same 11% increase is also true of wide receivers who had at least 600 yards during those years. From 2001 to 2015, the number of 50-catch tight ends jumped by 150%. The number of 600-yard tight ends rose by 49%. The rise of the tight end coincided with the emergence of Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates. In the early 2000s, these ex-college basketball players brought a never-before-seen level of athleticism to the position. NFL offenses quickly realized that having an uber-athlete in the middle of the field was a huge advantage. They started using more three-receiver sets, which spread the width of the defense and created more space in the middle of the field. Though one of the league’s bigger safeties, Iloka still gives up 40 pounds to Gronkowski. Jared Wickerham/Getty Images The superiorly athletic tight ends also began to revolutionize their position. Instead of always lining up in a three-point stance next to the offensive tackle, tight ends started sliding out to the slot, motioning out of the backfield and even splitting out wide. Offenses suddenly had more schematic variables with which to leverage the defense. The increased flexibility not only expanded playbooks, but it also presented more opportunities to go no-huddle. Formations were no longer constricted by personnel packages. With flexible tight ends, you could line up seven men across the line of scrimmage (five linemen, two tight ends) and pound the rock on one play, then split both tight ends out in a 3x2 spread set and throw on the next play without substituting or even huddling. Defenses did not—and still don’t—have athletes who can adequately guard these tight ends. Cornerbacks are much too small, linebackers much too slow. And so it falls to the safety. • INSIDE THE FILM ROOM WITH ALABAMA DT JARRAN REED: Andy Benoit breaks down tape with the first-round prospect This is what makes Iloka’s soft market so puzzling. He had some cornerbacking experience at Boise State. More importantly, he’s 6' 4" and 225 pounds, with long arms. He might not be able to shut down Rob Gronkowski on an island for four quarters, but he has the physical tools to compete with an athletic pass-catcher of Gronk’s mold. Of signed NFL safeties who play meaningful snaps on defense, only a dozen are at least 6' 2". Only eight weigh at least 225 pounds, and only seven others weigh more than 215. An average tight end runs somewhere around 6' 6", 245, and defenses simply don’t have big enough athletes in the deep middle of the field to compete with these versatile offensive weapons. The problem will only get worse before it gets better. This year’s draft class is particularly weak at safety. Only four of most experts’ top 20 safety prospects are 6' 2". And none weigh more than 219. The 6' 2", 225 Iloka was taken in the fifth round in 2012; none of this year’s top safety prospects is taller or as heavy. Matt Sullivan/Getty Images This athleticism gap between safeties and tight ends helps explain why an overwhelming number of quality tight ends have been drafted after the first round. (Gronkowski in the second; Jimmy Graham, Jordan Reed, Travis Kelce and Jared Cook in the third; Julius Thomas in the fourth; Gary Barnidge in the fifth; and Delanie Walker in the sixth.) If the safeties are limited in their capabilities, then you don’t need to draft a stud tight end in the first round; all you need is a decent tight end in order to create the desired offensive advantages. This frees up more first-round picks to be used on wide receivers. If your passing game is already rich by way of tight ends over safeties, it can keep getting richer by way of receivers over cornerbacks. (And it has. Any NFL coach will tell you that there aren’t enough quality corners to handle all the league’s dynamic wideouts.) • GRUDEN’S QB CAMP: Emily Kaplan goes behind the scenes at the show that’s must-see for fans and must-visit for the draft’s top quarterbacks At some point, coaches at all levels will get desperate enough to start grooming bigger, better athletes to play safety. But we’re probably a long way from that day. So congratulations to the Bengals. They got one of the few safeties with a fighting chance against tight ends. All things considered, they got him at a bargain price. • Question? Comment? Let us know at talkback@themmqb.com |
While trying to cross an intersection in Marietta, Georgia, in April of 2010, Raquel Nelson and her three children were hit by Jerry L. Guy, who would later confess to having consumed a “little” alcohol earlier in the day. Nelson’s 4-year-old son was struck by Guy’s vehicle and died from his injuries; Nelson and her younger daughter suffered minor injuries, while her older daughter was uninjured. Guy had been previously convicted of two-hit-and-runs on the same day, Feb. 17, 1997, the first of them on Austell Road, the same location as the accident involving Nelson and her children. According to David Simpson, Guy’s attorney, his client was “being prescribed pain medication and … partially blind in his left eye,” says the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. He pleaded guilty to hit-and-run in the death of Nelson’s son and, after serving a 6-month sentence, was released on October 29, 2010; he is to serve the remainder of a 5-year sentence on probation. Nelson, who lost her son in the hit-and-run, was convicted on July 12 of homicide by vehicle in the second degree, crossing a roadway elsewhere than at crosswalk and reckless conduct, said her attorney, David Savoy. She is to be sentenced at a hearing on July 26 and could serve up to 36 months. Yes, Nelson could be jailed for 30 months longer than the driver of the vehicle that killed her child. Furthermore, she’s been charged with vehicular homicide in her own child’s death, even though she was a pedestrian when the accident occurred. I had to read the facts of this case a few times to make sure I’d gotten them right — a mother was on foot with her children trying to cross a street, they get hit by a car that doesn’t stop, she is charged with her child’s death? Jess Zimmerman on Grist asks: What could Nelson have done instead? Basically either stayed inside or gotten some flying shoes. The court considered Nelson’s street crossing “reckless,” but her neighborhood has a Walkscore of 25, and the Marietta area ranks 11th in the nation for dangerousness to pedestrians. The street Nelson and her kids were crossing, Austell Road, is particularly dangerous — it’s a four-lane divided highway where safe crossings are sporadic. One of Guy’s previous hit-and-runs also happened on that road. After Nelson’s conviction, the president of a pedestrian advocacy organization pointed out that the city could have added a safe crossing for the cost of the trial. But that would mean prioritizing people over traffic. Zimmerman also points out an unfortunate “trend” this year, “penalizing pedestrians for trying to walk in pedestrian-unfriendly areas.” Even in car-centric America, not everyone has a car and not everyone who has a car can afford gas to use it all the time; in such cases, walking is the only option. Critics will say Nelson was clearly in the wrong not to be crossing the crosswalk. But doing so does not make it anymore “all right” for a driver to hit her and her children. Of course children need to learn to walk in the crosswalk and to look out for traffic — but if you’re driving a car and there’s a pedestrian in the road, you need to stop. Nelson has already suffered enough, losing a child in a terrifying accident and then being judged — convicted — of contributing to his death. Jailing her for more than two years is highly likely to adversely affect her other two children, who’ve already had to contend with the death of the sibling and the legal charges against their mother. Why penalize this family further? Take Action: Sign the Care2 petition against Nelson’s conviction! Related Care2 Coverage Drinking (Even a Little) + Driving = Not Safe At All Spain Cuts Speed Limit to Save Gas, Economy, and Carbon Can That Traffic Really Give You A Stroke? Photo by editorb |
TVNewser has learned that WVIT, the NBC station in Connecticut, won’t be airing Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, which includes Kelly’s interview with Alex Jones. The interview has come under intense scrutiny over the last week, no more so than from the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. Jones, a controversial talk show host, had claimed that the mass shooting at the elementary school in December, 2012 was a hoax. Sandy Hook Promise was among the groups calling on NBC to cancel the interview. But, despite an advertiser pull-out, threats of legal action, and even the subject of the story, Jones, demanding NBC pull the story, Kelly and the network continued to support its airing. Sandy Hook Elementary is in Newtown, CT which is in the Hartford/New Haven TV market. Here’s the internal memo from WVIT, obtained by TVNewser. Whenever there is news regarding the Sandy Hook tragedy, we know that the pain resurfaces for our community, our viewers and for you, our colleagues at WVIT. Over the last few days, we have listened intently to Sandy Hook parents, our viewers and importantly, to you. We have considered the deep emotions from the wounds of that day that have yet to heal. Because those wounds are understandably still so raw, we have decided not to air this week’s episode of Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly. We will continue our local coverage, including a special report on our Sunday 11pm newscast, which includes Sandy Hook parents, Governor Malloy and others who work to affect change around violence and mental illness. For those in our viewing area who still wish to see the show, it will be available Monday on NBCNews.com. Thank you for voicing your concerns and feelings. It’s not unusual for an affiliate to strip network programming from its airwaves from time to time, but it is rare when that affiliate is owned by the network, which is the case with WVIT. Comments |
(CNN) A man has been arrested in connection with the death of Ashley Olsen , a 35-year-old American artist living in Florence, according to multiple Italian media outlets. The reports did not identify the man and did not provide any detail. Italian officials have not announced the arrest and CNN has not independently confirmed it. Previously on Wednesday, a prosecutor and lead investigator in the case told media that police know the identity of a suspect. It's not clear whether the man reported arrested was the same person mentioned earlier. Investigators were able to identify the suspect in the image, taken from closed-circuit surveillance footage, investigator Domenico Giacinto Profazio said during an impromptu news conference. Prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told journalists the same thing. They did not disclose the suspect's name. No further information on the image's origin was immediately available. Investigators have said they've reviewed hundreds of hours of footage from multiple cameras. Olsen was found dead -- apparently strangled with a rope or cord, according to Italian media reports -- in her apartment on Saturday. Creazzo told reporters only that it appeared Olsen was strangled with something other than bare hands. The woman was not sexually assaulted, and exams meant to determine whether she had had sex before her death were not available, he told reporters. Toxicology reports, he said, could take weeks to be completed and may remain sealed during the investigation. JUST WATCHED American artist found dead in Italy Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH American artist found dead in Italy 02:14 Olsen's boyfriend, Federico Fiorentini, 42, had been unable to reach her Saturday and got Olsen's landlord, Claudia Colivicchi, who lived upstairs, to open the apartment for him, Profazio told CNN in a phone interview. Colivicchi told Italian media outlets that when she opened the door, Olsen was on a bed in a mezzanine loft of the studio apartment. Fiorentini moved her to the floor and performed CPR, she said. Creazzo confirmed in an interview with CNN that Fiorentini tried to revive her. Olsen's dog, Scout, who was a regular feature on her Instagram and Facebook feeds, had defecated in multiple places within the apartment, indicating that the well-trained beagle had not been taken for a walk in some time, Colivicchi told media outlets. Fiorentini has an alibi that lines up with testimony from other witnesses, Creazzo said earlier this week. But, the prosecutor said, "no one has been excluded" as a suspect in the case. Olsen's body was removed from the apartment Saturday night, and the autopsy was completed Monday. Forensic investigators returned to Olsen's home Wednesday to gather more evidence. The woman's friends told investigators they were with Olsen at the Montecarla nightclub in Florence on Thursday night and left her there between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Friday, local media reported. Ashley Olsen and Scout. The American's phone was turned off at about 9 a.m. Friday, police said, adding that they have not found her phone. Authorities are looking into a photo, posted on Olsen's Instagram feed in October 2015, which carried the caption, "I have a stalker." The picture is taken from above street level and appears to show Olsen, in jeans and a tank top with a cup in hand, and Scout walking down the street. It's unclear whether the post was serious, as it carries numerous hashtags, including #stalkeralert, #creeperpic and #scoutthebeagle. Olsen was originally from Summer Haven, Florida. She was living in Florence, where her father, an architect, works at an art school. Her father was seen with friends outside her building Monday, leaving flowers. "The police haven't really said anything yet. My son is waiting for the police to share more," Olsen's grandmother, Ann Olsen, told CNN by phone from Florida. Olsen's friends told CNN affiliate WJAX in Jacksonville, Florida, that Olsen was "full of life." "She never met a person who didn't like her. ... She had the best personality," Staci Kelly told the station, adding that Olsen loved to travel. "She never really stayed in one spot for too long." |
North Korea’s government has a lot on its plate. From what outsiders can tell through the country’s official news outlet, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), when the Pyongyang regime isn't busy manufacturing its own smart phones or bolstering tourism by building an unlikely ski resort, it's planning the latest nuclear developments and flexing military power. However, just like much of the other news that comes out of the pariah state, the official images published by KCNA should always be taken with some skepticism. The mysterious powers in charge of North Korea’s official news and media coverage have a reputation for doctoring images. Now, in what appears to be KCNA’s most recent alleged Photoshop disaster, the media outlet has released what seems to be another obvious attempt at deception, with a photo of the nation’s leader Kim Jong-Un along with members of his staff at a construction site for a children’s hospital in Pyongyang. Tech and gaming website Kotaku was one of the first to pick up on the new image, pointing at Kim’s small, “floaty feet” suggesting that the “fuzziness” of Kim’s image suggest that he was just edited into the photo. In addition, a “photo forensic” test on the image shows that a Photoshop layering was used to create the photo. While it makes sense for North Korea to want to enhance photos to show an improved, intimidating military, it raises the question why doctoring was allegedly used on a seemingly harmless event. In the past, North Korean photos were called out by photo experts and analysts for what they deduced two photoshopped hovercrafts in a Korean bay during a military drill. There was another instance when the news agency released photos of the country’s growing arsenal of weaponry with photos of non-existent missiles. The doctored photos, which are usually quite easily to spot, are seen as an ongoing form of propaganda to show the world that North Korea is a serious military power. North Korea’s media propaganda machine has been hard at work this past year. At the height of the reclusive country’s nuclear threats in March, a series of anti-American propaganda videos were discovered online, with bizarre use of footage of President Obama and the U.S. Capitol. |
Take a look at the stylish new themed PS4, available this September With the next instalment of the incredible Metal Gear Solid series less than three months away, I’m delighted to announce that a Limited Edition Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain PlayStation 4 will be available across Europe, Australia and New Zealand on 1st September. This exclusive bundle will include a limited edition 500GB PS4 that comes in a distinctive deep red with gold line detail, inspired by the look of Snake’s Bionic Arm. A special metallic grey Dualshock 4 Wireless Controller, resembling the handgun held by Snake, is also included and both the PS4 and Dualshock 4 feature the unit emblem of Diamond Dogs, a private military organisation led by Snake. You’ll also receive the Day 1 Edition of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain which comes packed with bonus downloadable content. In addition to the limited edition bundle, we’ll also have a Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain bundle which includes a PS4 and DS4 in Jet Black and the Day 1 Edition. Both bundles will be available on 1st September – the same day as the standalone game. Check out these brand new screenshots and prepare yourselves for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on PS4. |
Governments and online privacy: Who are the worst offenders? by Dennis Kügler on June 27th, 2012 In this article we take a quick look at the track records of western democratic governments when it comes to online privacy and data retention, rounding up the three best cases and the three worst cases. Obviously this isn’t a comprehensive list and you may (re: probably will!) disagree with our entries – so why not let us know what you think in the comments below? The good (relatively) Germany Germany has generally been good at resisting EU legislation that impacts on its citizens privacy and the Germans have shown themselves to be quite active in protesting anti-privacy legislation. Germany is still refusing to implement the EU’s Data Retention Directive over privacy concerns and may suffer disciplinary action because of it. Germany played a big role in defeating ACTA, after widespread protests throughout the country. The German government also famously forced Google to allow its citizens to opt-out of Google Street View – although this eventually resulting in Google opting out of expanding the service in the country. USA It’s no secret that the US government has been the source of many pieces of controversial legislation that would negatively impact online privacy if implemented (think SOPA, PIPA and CISPA). However, as it stands, you may be surprised to hear the US is better than many other western countries when it comes to online privacy. There is no state mandated data retention laws in the US, like there is in Europe. Rather ISPs are free to set their own data retention policies. And while SOPA and PIPA were frightening, they were ultimately defeated after popular protest saw political opposition grow across both Democrat and Republican parties. However, whether or not the status quo in the US will survive for much longer is another matter entirely. Canada Like the US, Canada does not require ISPs to retain data on its users. The Canadian government does require ISPs to track individual users and retain data, but only if a court order has been issued (there are reports suggesting law enforcement often circumvents this requirement). Canadians can also take heart over what happened to the ‘Protecting Children From Internet Predators Act’. PCIPA began life as a pretty nasty piece of legislation, zealous in its protection of copyright, which would have had dire consequences for online privacy. But popular protest actually forced the Canadian government to take a scalpel to the act and carve out a much more reasonable and even handed law. It’s still not perfect, but it’s a good example of governments and activists reaching a compromise. The bad United Kingdom The UK government wasted no time signing-up to the EU’s Data Retention Directive and currently requires all ISPs to retain the personal data of their customers for at least one year after you cancel your subscription. Your data must be handed over to police if they have a court order. There are over 200 agencies in the UK that are authorised to access your personal data and in 2009 there were over 1,700 requests for court orders to intercept communications data. The UK government recently announced its plans to introduce a new bill dubbed the Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP), which intends to give UK law enforcement enhanced powers to monitor your web browsing without the need for judicial oversight. Given the lack of political opposition to the CCDP, it seems likely that the bill will pass. France As with the UK and other EU countries France requires all ISPs to retain your data for at least one year until after you cancel your subscription. But while EU countries such Germany and Romania have fought the Data Retention Act, the French government has actually taken it one step further with the ‘Legal Regime for E-Commerce Trust’ directive. This directive requires that all internet access and hosting providers – i.e. any internet-based service, such as e-commerce companies and social networks – must retain financial transaction details, data logs, usernames, passwords, pseudonyms, email addresses and phone numbers of users. France requires these companies to then share this information with government agencies at their request. High profile web companies such as Facebook, eBay and Google are currently trying to petition the French government to repeal the law. Sweden The Swedish government initially resisted implementing the EU’s Data Retention Directive due to privacy concerns. However, in March 2012 it caved to the pressure, opting for the lesser retention period of 6 months. Beyond that Sweden has come under fire from privacy campaigners due to the FRA aw it passed in 2008. This legislation, brought in under terrorism concerns, requires around 20 surveillance hubs to be installed around the country, monitoring all traffic that comes in and out of Sweden. In 2010 the project ran into technical difficulties, as well as pressure from activist groups, but its unclear whether it’s still being carried out (I’ve not been able to uncover any info post 2010, so if anyone reading knows more let us know in the comments). Following Sweden’s IPRED legislation, which requires ISPs to reveal the personal info of file sharers, a number of news outlets have reported a spike in Swedish VPN usage. |
When Verizon Wireless unveiled its "Verizon Edge" early-upgrade plan in July 2013, the company allowed customers to switch to a new smartphone once they paid off 50 percent of the cost of their original device. But the amount that Verizon Edge customers had to pay to be eligible for an early upgrade kept creeping up, to 60 percent in June 2014 and then 75 percent in October 2014. Today, it's come to the logical conclusion: you can only upgrade to a new device once you've paid off the entire cost of the existing one. Verizon spun the news as a positive step in a press release titled "Verizon Edge Making it Easier to Upgrade and Experience Verizon’s 4G LTE Network." "Upgrading to a new smartphone has never been simpler with changes coming to the Verizon Edge program," Verizon spokesperson David Samberg wrote. "Beginning May 31, Verizon Edge customers can upgrade at any time after their prior Edge device is paid in full." Instead of providing a hardware subsidy and requiring an up-front device payment, Verizon Edge splits the cost of the device into 24 monthly installments, except when customers pay it off early in order to upgrade. Customers on standard contracts pay $40-per-month line charges for each phone (in addition to data charges), while Verizon Edge customers pay $15 per line. Last November, Verizon also changed its non-Edge contracts to boost early termination fees by up to $70. More than 50 percent of Verizon customers now sign up with Edge when activating or upgrading phones, the company says. The one positive change to Edge today is that customers will be able to upgrade immediately instead of waiting. But it isn't much of a change, because you could already upgrade after 30 days if you've paid off 75 percent of the cost of the device. Verizon's Edge website still quotes the old policy of allowing upgrades "After 30 days and [once] 75 percent of the current Edge device is paid off." Samberg confirmed to Ars that will be changed on May 31. "Customers who activate or upgrade before May 31st will still be under the old upgrade terms—after 30 days and 75 percent paid, customers can upgrade but are required to turn in their phone is good working condition," he told Ars. "Terms for customers who activate on Edge on or after May 31st are upgrade whenever you want once device paid in full." Customers can do whatever they want with the phones if they've paid off the full cost, he noted. If customers don't want to keep the phone or give it to a friend or family member, they can trade it in for a bill credit or donate it to Verizon's HopeLine program for victims of domestic violence. |
Every time a toilet is flushed in Brisbane's south and west it could be contributing to the fuelling of Australia's first poo-powered car. Queensland Urban Utilities is saving millions of dollars every year as it uses the city's toilet waste to power up to 50 per cent of two of its largest sewage treatment plants, and now one of its fleet cars. Every time Brisbane residents flush their toilet they could be helping run Australia's first poo-powered car. Credit:Paul Edmondson QUU spokeswoman Michelle Cull said one day the sewerage and water provider hoped to have an entire fleet of cars that could run on human waste. "At the moment we just have the one car, but yes, we do have plans to hopefully one day power our entire fleet by poo," she said. |
Tony Pulis would be willing to work alongside a director of football at West Bromwich Albion as long as guarantees of complete control of the club were included in his contract. The former Stoke City manager is the joint favourite with Tim Sherwood to succeed Alan Irvine, who was dismissed on Monday after a run of seven defeats in nine matches. The club have spoken to Pulis’s representatives and to Sherwood. West Brom, who are seeking their fourth manager in just over a year, are one point above the teams in the relegation zone. They are away at West Ham United on New Year’s Day, a game for which Rob Kelly and Keith Downing, the assistant head coaches, are preparing the players. A new appointment is expected before Saturday’s FA Cup home tie against Gateshead. It is thought Pulis would want assurances on the final say for all transfers, an area of responsibility that became blurred at Crystal Palace after he inspired their escape from relegation last May and led to his departure 48 hours before the start of this season. This would mean West Brom compromising on the continental structure that has served them with diminishing returns over recent seasons. Terry Burton, appointed the technical director in May, and Richard Garlick, the director of football administration, are in charge of player acquisitions. Sherwood, who was interviewed for the Hawthorns vacancy in the summer after Pepe Mel’s disastrous brief reign came to an end, may prove an easier appointment for Jeremy Peace and the West Brom board who would be willing to allow their next appointment to bring in his own immediate coaching staff. West Brom enjoyed success with Dan Ashworth operating as the sporting and technical director alongside Tony Mowbray, Roberto Di Matteo, Roy Hodgson and Steve Clarke. Since Ashworth followed Hodgson to work with the FA 15 months ago, the team’s fortunes have plummeted. Now West Brom need a manager with authority and Ashworth believes Peace will listen to sound advice and does not crave sole control. Sources close to Pulis have indicated he is not averse to working with Burton, who has a good reputation throughout the game after his years in Arsenal’s coaching structure. Burton also worked with Dave Kemp, Pulis’s long-term assistant, at Wimbledon. Pulis had Gerry Francis on board for two days a week at Stoke and Palace but it is thought he would be willing to continue with the club’s other coaches, certainly in the short term. Pulis, 56, would not come cheap and he reportedly received a seven-figure bonus for steering Palace to survival after they appeared doomed to the Championship when he arrived in November of last year with one point to their name. Palace, who appear on the verge of appointing Alan Pardew from Newcastle United, felt the absence of Pulis keenly during Neil Warnock’s four months as his successor at Selhurst Park. Pulis’s reputation has only been enhanced since he left Stoke in May 2013 after establishing them in the Premier League, getting to the FA Cup final and into Europe only for the board to decide they wanted Mark Cartwright as the technical director to oversee transfers. Pulis had worked closely with a director of football in John Rudge for much of the decade he enjoyed, in two spells, at the Britannia Stadium but always had the final say. It is Pulis’s belief a manager can only be judged on his own players, and Irvine had said in recent weeks how he could only work on the training field with the players at his disposal. Taken as a season, West Brom’s results over 2014 would mean relegation. Player recruitment has evidently not been good enough, with the £10m acquisition of Ideye Brown representative of last summer’s scattergun approach in which Irvine had next to no say. Peace cannot countenance relegation to the Championship and would consider stepping down. Renowned – or notorious – for his prudent husbandry, keeping the club in the black and refusing to pay inflated transfer fees, his system has frayed at the edges over the 18 months since they announced an annual profit of £6m. Irvine, who won only four games, was thought to earn around £750,000 a year, and Pulis could command double that. Sherwood, 46, and a success in his short spell in charge at Tottenham Hotspur in the latter half of last season, may come cheaper, though he would want to bring Chris Ramsey in with him. Les Ferdinand is happy as the director of football operations at Queens Park Rangers and would not be part of Sherwood’s coaching team. West Brom fans were aghast at the club’s low-key appointment in the summer after Clarke and Mel’s short spells. Whether they would celebrate the arrival of Pulis, with a proven track record but a reputation for a more pragmatic style of football, is a moot point. Other contenders such as Chris Hughton and Dave Jones have not been discounted by Albion sources. |
On stage at Seattle Opera next month is “Madame Butterfly,” the Giacomo Puccini classic about a 15-year-old Japanese maiden and her U.S. Naval officer husband that ends in tragedy. Seattle Opera decided five years ago to present this New Zealand Opera production, acclaimed as “visually stunning.” But since then, the Seattle arts community faced a vigorous political push and pull in 2014 over the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s production of “The Mikado,” an 1885 musical farce set in Japan. A Seattle Times op-ed lambasted the production, which had no Asian cast members, as “yellowface in your face.” Asian Americans, as well as other community members, picketed the production and the local uproar to the editorial — both pro and con —brought national media attention. The theater community subsequently initiated an open forum about cultural appropriation and sensitivity in casting. Now mindful of that three-year-old controversy and how its “Madame Butterfly” treads on equally sensitive ground with its stereotypes and its casting of non-Asians in Asian roles, the Opera is taking steps to heed community concerns. “As a historically white and European art form, opera has a history of using cultural appropriation to tell stories, and placing more emphasis on the voice in casting,” the Opera notes on its website about its upcoming production. “We are seizing this opportunity to encourage discussion and deepen our understanding about this important subject matter.” To that end, before the production opens, the Opera hosted a community forum last Sunday with eight Asian American and Pacific Islander theater professionals and critics. At the crux of the discussion were questions about casting and the racism and misogyny directed toward the character of Cio-Cio San, the Japanese maiden. Asian American Arts Leaders Respond to Madame Butterfly panelists (clockwise from top, left) The Shanghai Pearl, Matthew Ozawa, Angela Alviar-Langley, Karl Reyes, Roger Tang, LeiLani Nishime, moderator Frank Abe, and Kathy Hsieh. Image courtesy of Seattle Opera Moderator Frank Abe, a film producer and former radio reporter, pointed out that there were two kinds of people in attendance: those who love this opera and are new to this critical discussion, and those who do not think the discussion goes far enough and wish to cancel the production for its cultural appropriation and racial caricatures. He pointed out how a number of the 90 or so people in the audience were from the Seattle Opera Board of Directors and staff who came to listen and learn. “The problem is not the story but the repetition of it,” said LeiLani Nishime, University of Washington communication professor. “The story was written at a time of American imperialism and interest in Asia. But what does it mean to still be comfortable with this view of Asia? We keep telling these stories.” The opera premiered in Milan in 1904. “There are ways that you are appropriating this story and benefitting from it,” said Jenny Ku, a burlesque performance artist known as The Shanghai Pearl, addressing the opera company directly. “Ask yourself how you are benefitting from this?” Dancer Angel Alviar-Langley noted how she doesn’t see herself at all in the story. “Cultural appropriation is like you see in hip- hop all the time. Black culture is being appropriated by non-black hip-hop dance teachers and they’re financially benefitting from this with not enough reciprocation coming back to the originators. How are you doing something that is not harmful with this opera?” Theater producer Roger Tang, a nationally-known expert on Asian American theater, pointed out the racial disparities found in the performing arts: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders accounting for just 5 percent of speaking roles in films, according to a University of Southern California study; and just 4 percent of roles on New York stages, according to the Asian American Performer Action Coalition. And even when there are Asian-specific roles, the storylines are limited, argued Kathy Hsieh, a local actor and director who works with the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture. In “Madame Butterfly,” for example, the young protagonist is manipulated by the American naval officer with no will of her own. What are we teaching young girls? That you have to be pretty and have no agency in your own lives? There are so many better stories that could be told.” Karl Reyes, a Filipino American who is part of the Seattle Opera chorus, told the audience how he is often typecast for certain roles, such as Goro, the Japanese character who is the matchmaker in "Madame Butterfly." He said opera companies have been reluctant to cast him in lead roles. “It’s only after I work with a company for a while that they see what potential I have as a character tenor.” Panelist Matthew Osawa, opera stage director and a fourth-generation Japanese American from Chicago, said he has turned down jobs directing operas with stereotypical treatment of Asians, such as “Turandot” (another popular Puccini opera that is set in China and features a Chinese princess and a Persian prince.) But even with something like “Madame Butterfly,” he noted, changes can be made to be more culturally appropriate. When he recently directed a production for the Arizona Opera, Osawa hired a racially diverse cast and he changed the role of Kate Pinkerton, an American woman, from a savior of Butterfly’s child into a more menacing character. He also changed the opera’s death scene from a prolonged ritual suicide — which evokes Japanese stereotypes of suicide —into a quicker scene. “I deeply love opera,” he said, “but I have been conflicted over this. It’s a difficult career path. I’m actually lucky to be in opera and I applaud this discussion you are having here.” For its upcoming Seattle Opera production, the role of Butterfly will now feature a soprano from Japan (Yasko Sato) in the alternate cast. “We’ve added educational material in the lobby of McCaw Hall to give the background of the play’s origins,” said Barbara Lynne Jamison, the company’s director of education and community engagement. “We are committed to continuing the dialogue to be more equitable and diverse.” The production will also not attempt to change a given singer's race through wig or makeup. Seattle Opera’s “Madame Butterfly” opens Aug. 5. Other opera-related community engagement events include a July 28 performance of three short plays by Asian American female playwrights and “An American Dream,” a new opera focusing on the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, which will premiere this fall. |
TEHRAN, Iran (Kurdistan24) – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, recently warned his people gender equality was a “Zionist plot.” Talking to a group of religious speakers, Khamenei said Western countries and Zionists were trying to corrupt the role of women in society. “Making women a commodity and an object of gratification in the Western world is most likely among Zionist plots aiming to destroy the society,” he said, according to a translation on the Shia Muslim leader’s official website. “Today, Western thinkers and those who pursue issues such as gender equality regret the corruption which it has brought about,” he added. Khamenei explained some tasks for women “collapse and humiliate” their primary roles as housewives and mothers. International Human Rights organizations have called upon Iran to stop gender discrimination, domestic violence, early marriage, unequal access to health, education, political, and economic participation. In her March 2017 report on Iran, Asma Jahangir, the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur, regretted no progress had been made toward the elimination of legal provisions which discriminate women in various fields. “It is particularly disturbing that blatantly discriminatory provisions such as those contained in the penal code which stipulates that the value of a woman’s life is equal to half of a man’s remain in force,” she stated. Last August, the Iranian parliament reintroduced the controversial Comprehensive Population and Family Excellence Plan to “increase the pregnancy rate to 2.5 percent of the quantitative population growth until the year 2025.” It also “prohibits hiring ‘single individuals’ to faculty positions in all public and private education and research institutions,” and gives “hiring preference to men compared to women.” Activists say the plan which reduces women’s role to baby-making machines has made access to contraceptives difficult and would increase Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) in the society. Surgical contraception is outlawed, access to contraception is restricted, and the provision of information on contraceptive methods is banned. Additionally, the funding for government family planning programs has also decreased. Women’s rights activists are arrested and intimated in droves. Child marriage remains legally possible for girls aged 13, and for boys aged 15. Even younger children can be married with the permission of the court, but the marriage may not be consummated until puberty. In June, a spokesperson for the Tehran-based Association to Protect the Rights of Children stated child marriages had reached alarming levels. They also stressed approximately 17 percent of all marriages in the country involved girls married to older men. Moreover, the Iranian legal framework fails to protect women from violence and to criminalize marital rape. Article 1108 obliges wives to fulfill the sexual needs of their husbands at all times. Articles 301 and 612, of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code provide lighter or no punishment if a murder is committed by a father or paternal grandfather of the victim. Feminists who object to such laws are, according to the supreme leaders, corruptors of women’s roles and puppets of Zionism. Editing by Karzan Sulaivany |
The British government’s key counter-radicalisation policy is badly flawed, potentially counterproductive and risks trampling on the basic rights of young Muslims, a new study has concluded. Following a nine-month examination of the programme known as Prevent, the Open Society Justice Initiative has recommended a major government rethink, particularly on its use in the education and health systems. Instead of fighting terror, Prevent is creating a climate of fear | Amrit Singh Read more The US-based NGO studied 17 cases in which individuals had apparently fallen foul of the Prevent programme, or had been referred to a sister programme, called Channel, both of which are intended to prevent individuals from being drawn into terrorism. They included instances in which information was apparently gathered from Muslim primary school children without their parents’ consent; Prevent being used to bypass disciplinary processes during the attempted dismissal of a school dinner lady; a 17-year-old referred to the police by his college authorities because he had become more religious; and the cancellation of university conferences on Islamophobia. It is the second time in three months that Prevent has faced criticisms following a major study. In July, another NGO, Rights Watch UK, concluded that the programme stifles free speech. A United Nations special rapporteur has also warned that the programme may stifle healthy discussion and debate. The Justice Initiative report, entitled Eroding Trust, says: “The current Prevent strategy suffers from multiple, mutually reinforcing structural flaws, the foreseeable consequence of which is a serious risk of human rights violations. “These violations include, most obviously, violations of the right against discrimination, as well the right to freedom of expression, among other rights. Prevent’s structural flaws include the targeting of ‘pre-criminality’, ‘non-violent extremism’, and opposition to ‘British values’.” This leads the government to interfere in everyday lawful discourse, the report says. “Furthermore, Prevent’s targeting of non-violent extremism and ‘indicators’ of risk of being drawn into terrorism lack a scientific basis. Indeed, the claim that non-violent extremism – including ‘radical’ or religious ideology – is the precursor to terrorism has been widely discredited by the British government itself, as well as numerous reputable scholars.” The report says that there is cause for serious concern about the treatment of children who come into contact with the Prevent programme, arguing that the best interests of the child are not always regarded as a primary consideration. It says that the statutory responsibility on public bodies to take steps to prevent radicalisation, introduced under the 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, jeopardises health bodies’ responsibility of confidentiality to their patients. Finally, the report says there are serious indications that Prevent is counter-productive. According to police figures, only around 20% of the people referred to in the Channel programme are subsequently assessed as being at risk of being drawn into violent extremism. The report concludes: “Being wrongly targeted under Prevent has led some Muslims to question their place in British society.” Among the case studies in the report is that of a four-year-old who drew a picture of a cucumber while at nursery, and then told staff it was a “cuker-bum”. The staff, believing he was referring to something called a cooker bomb, told the child’s mother that he was being referred to Channel, and might be taken away from her. In her panic, the mother says she instructed the boy to stop drawing pictures. She is quoted in the report as saying: “I’ve never felt not British. And this made me feel very, very, like they tried to make me feel like an outsider. We live here. I am born and bred here, not from anywhere else. I feel this Prevent duty is picking on you because you are Muslim, Asian, Pakistani, or whatever. I don’t feel it’s working at all. They need to look at it and change it.” The Prevent programme was launched in 2003, but its existence went unacknowledged by the government for some years. Earlier this year the Guardian disclosed that one component of Prevent has been a covert propaganda campaign that aims to bring about “attitudinal and behavioural change” among young British Muslims. Among the people interviewed as part of the study was Sir David Omand, who was the UK’s security and intelligence co-ordinator when the Prevent programme was launched. He said he would not have placed it on a statutory footing, on the grounds that “if you can persuade people of why it benefits everyone to do what you consider best, you will get a more positive response than you would if you simply instructed them on what you want them to do”. Omand also stressed the need for public support for the programme: “The key issue is, do most people in the community accept [Prevent] as protective of their rights? If the community sees it as a problem, then you have a problem.” The author of the report, Amrit Singh, said: “This report shows that Prevent is a serious problem, not only because it creates a systemic risk of human rights violations, but also because it is counterproductive. We urge the government as well as health and education bodies to heed the voices in this report and abandon the fundamentally flawed aspects of this strategy.” The Justice Initiative is calling on the government to commission a public inquiry into the programme, publish whatever scientific data it possesses relating to extremism risk assessments, halt the targeting of non-violent extremism, and to place the health and education systems outside its remit. It is also calling on the Children’s Commissioners for England, Wales and Scotland to assess the impact of Prevent on children. Responding to the report, the security minister Ben Wallace said: “The threat from radicalisation, both Islamist and extreme rightwing, is very real. Helping to protect those vulnerable to radicalisation is challenging but absolutely necessary work. It is disappointing to see conclusions that risk damaging work that is essential to keeping vulnerable people safe from extremism and terrorism. “The findings contain inaccuracies and lack balance. They take no account of the severe nature of the terrorism threat and nor do they offer any solutions for how we protect vulnerable individuals.” |
How do you make sure the official Olympics website can handle the millions of people who will suddenly bombard its servers when the Games kick off this coming weekend? You get help from the cloud. In effort to ensure that its site — www.london2012.com – can juggle traffic from an estimated 1 billion people over the three short weeks of the games, the London Olympics Organizing Committee turned to SOASTA, a Mountain View, California, outfit that uses cloud services such as Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure to simulate traffic to websites and other online applications inside the world's businesses. The company's engineers spent six months working with the committee to simulate traffic not only to the Olympics website but across the many mobile apps that tie into it. But the process was far simpler than it would have been just a few years ago, according to SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos. The difference is that in 2012, you can so easily tap into EC2 and other services that provide instant access to a theoretically unlimited number of virtual servers. Without leaving your desk, you can hoist software onto virtual machines running inside data centers across the globe, using these servers to simulare traffic from almost anywhere. "In the past, to do the kind of testing we did with the Olympics Committee, you had to spend weeks setting up hundreds – if not thousands – of servers, and you would have spent millions of dollars just trying to do one test," says SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos. "With cloud testing, you can simulate 100,000 users within a few minutes. You can get the data from those tests in a matter of minutes. And you can do it for a fraction of the cost." The result, says Lounibos, is that the London Olympics website is probably better tested any Olympics site in the web's short history. "Before this, you probably wouldn't even run the tests," he says, pointing to the extreme costs of testing without the help of the cloud. Of course, the flip side is that with the rise of the mobile internet, these tests are more important than ever before. Known as CloudTest, SOASTA's testing tool taps into 17 cloud services around the world, including Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure as well as similar services from IBM, the Texas-based Rackspace, and smaller outfits such the San Francisco-based GoGrid. In testing the Olympics website, the company simulated activity from servers running everywhere from the United States to Europe to Hong Kong, hitting the site with traffic from as many as 500,000 virtual machines at any given time. According to Lounibos, SOASTA has ensured that the site can handle traffic from as many as 1 billion people over the course of the games. But not everyone is so sanguine. Yottaa – a Boston-based outfit that helps companies monitor and improve the performance – says that the official Olympics website is woefully unprepared from the coming onslaught of traffic. Judging from the company's outside examination of the site, Yottaa CEO Coach Wei says that the size of the images, JavaScript files, and other content at london2012.com is far higher than you see on the average website, and that loading each page requires far too many round trips. All this, he says, will cause big slowdowns when the traffic starts to hit. "In general, the performance of the site is way below average," Wei says. "If they don't make changes and the traffic increases by 100 times, it will have real problems." Wei sees much the same problem with the Olympics website run by NBC, which – at least here in the States – will likely get far more traffic than london2012.com. You can certainly argue with his assessment. But any dispute is easily settled. Or at least it will be in about five days. |
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair had some choice words for Bob Rae during Monday's Munk leadership debate, but the former NDP premier of Ontario was quick to strike back via Twitter. While explaining his party's track record on balanced budgets, Mulcair noted one exception, Rae's years as premier during the early 1990's. "But it turned out he was a Liberal," Mulcair quipped. Rae served as NDP premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995, a period that saw net provincial debt more than double, according to RBC. Rae later jumped to federal politics as a Liberal, eventually serving as interim leader from 2011 through 2013. In a burst of return fire on Twitter, Rae got in a few jabs of his own. He defended his record as premier. Very tired line from Mulcair - "sort of like being attacked by a dead sheep"- proud to have led a govt that re-built Ontario at a tough time —@BobRae48 Praised Pierre Trudeau (who Mulcair attacked at the debate) I didn't always agree with Pierre Trudeau but he was a great man. I can't say the same about Tom Mulcair <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash">#cdnpoli</a> —@BobRae48 And pointed out that Mulcair was once a Liberal himself. Mulcair's entire "record" on the environment was when he was a Liberal. So I guess it didn't count. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash">#cdnpoli</a>. —@BobRae48 He ended with this zinger. Nastiness is one thing, recycled nastiness is worse. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash">#cdnpoli</a> —@BobRae48 In a story that mirrors that of Rae, Mulcair served as a Liberal MNA in Quebec's National Assembly from 1994 to 2007, before moving to federal politics as a New Democrat. |
Adam Taggart did not linger long on a loan deal with Dundee United this time last year but, then again, he had the choice of playing in permanent warm sunshine 9,500 miles away in his home in Western Australia. In fact 23-year-old striker Taggart - capped by the Socceroos - is happily plying his trade with Perth Glory in his home city 'down under' as part of the flourishing A League. He returned from injury a month ago to score in four successive games to keep his team on track for a place in the league play-offs. In the three latest matches he has grabbed late winners and equalisers as Glory beat Newcastle Jets 3-2 in a thriller, and, at the weekend, levelled for a 2-2 draw with Brisbane Roar. It was after Glory's top scorer Taggart - 10 goals in 15 games - played for Australia against Holland and Spain in the World Cup in 2014 that he was signed by Fulham, who farmed the youngster out to Dundee United where he played nine games without scoring. He does look back ruefully on his appearance with The Tangerines in a 5-0 defeat at Celtic Park, and as United's form spiralled downwards he also featured in a 2-1 loss to St Johnstone at namesake Perth. Perhaps attempting football on frozen or sticky Scottish pitches did not suit the swashbuckling style of the speedy forward who made his mark in his homeland as the Nike A League Golden Boot winner, playing alongside former England internationalist Emile Heskey at Newcastle Jets. It didn't take much persuading by Perth Glory's English coach Kenny Lowe to entice the forward to fly home to pick up a career which marks him out as one of Australia's bright young hopes along with Celtic's Tom Rogic. Indeed, he has already scored two goals for the national side. As a regular visitor to Perth where they water the nib Stadium park 10 minutes before the kick-off in 80 and, at times, 90 degree heatwaves I watched recently as Glory's other recognised striker, Irish internationalist Andy Keogh (30 caps) starred in an engaging 2-2 draw with West Sydney Warriors in front of a very vocal crowd of 13,290 fans (compare that to Perth St Johnstone's home attendances of around 2,500). While sun-tanned cheerleaders wave giant flags as the teams take to the field the noisy supporters belt out the anthem, 'Bound For Glory' - a former Australian no. 1 record by a singer bizarrely called Angry Anderson. Although Glory are unlikely to win the competitive A League this season they have only lost once at home where they have made nib Stadium a fortress over the past two years. They look certain to feature in the play-offs for honours. Another star of the team is Aussie internationalist midfielder Josh Risdon who is tipped for a move to Europe. West Australia sports reporter Stan Lazaridis, who graced the English Premiership with Birmingham City said: "I think he's the best right-back Australia has. It's time for Risdon to move overseas, even if it means leaving Glory now. Glory has known for a long time that Risdon (24) would move on to bigger and better things." Lazaridis, capped 58 times for the Socceroos, has the ear of manager Lowe with whom he played at Birmingham in the 90s. Remarkably, Lowe was 31 when he turned professional with Barry Fry signing him for Barnet after spotting him as an uncompromising defender with England's Semi-Professional team. Lowe, who played until he was 39, cut his teeth in management with Non-league clubs Gateshead and Barrow before emigrating to Australia as a coach. He took over Glory in 2014, promptly taking them to the Australian Cup Final where they lost to Adelaide. Thousands of Scottish fans will know of the Perth club since Lowe followed in the footsteps of former Rangers and Scotland star Ian Ferguson who managed them for three years, also took them to the cup final, losing again to Brisbane Roar, but is now director of coaching at Northern Fury in Queensland. Incidentally, in Jose Mourinho style, Lowe was banned to the stand for two games recently for upbraiding the officials during half-time of a match but the Englishman is an outspoken character in a colourful league. Motor giants Hyundai are the major sponsors of "the ladder" as it's known over there where the teams travel thousands of miles every week for fixtures. Sydney FC are out in front. The calibre of the Aussie top dogs (or should that be kangaroos?) is illustrated by the fact they have five home internationalists, free-scoring Brazilian striker Bobo, signed from Besiktas, the quaintly named Joshua Brillante, who was at Fiorentina last year and former Liverpool youth keeper Chris Oldfield. They are managed by Graham Arnold who has been Australia head coach and, previously, assistant to Gus Hiddink. However, it was Adelaide United who won all of the honours last season with one of their top men being ex-Hearts defender Dylan McGowan. The A-League of ten includes Wellington Phoenix of New Zealand who are currently bottom of the ladder despite the best efforts of one-time Celtic man Michael McGlinchey who has 38 caps for his country. Mind you, there is no promotion or relegation 'down under.' Such is the growth of Australian soccer that it is broadcast in 65 countries and has a $160m satellite tv deal with Fox Sport. No doubt, the marquee signings of big names like Del Piero, Dwight Yorke, Robbie Fowler - who shone for Perth Glory - and home-grown stars such as Tim Cahill, still scoring for Melbourne City, and Harry Kewell over recent years has boosted its image. There is a salary cap set for the ten clubs, allowed to spend $2.6m a season but able to recruit three marquee signings from abroad at a higher rate than the average wage. Unusually, there are two champions of the league with the outright Premier winners being joined in a Championship play-off finals where the first and second placed teams automatically go into the semi-finals to be joined by the winners of one-off games between the next four highest placed teams - a major incentive for the also rans like Perth Glory. The top two go forward to the equivalent of the Champions League against the other top sides of Asia. Incidentally, the Aussie Champions Trophy is affectionately known as 'The Toilet Seat', so named because of its shape but, yes, you guessed it, the winners are flushed with success. |
The H prepares to enter the BrowserQuest sands, passing the HTML5 guards. Mozilla has launched a demo of an online roleplaying game that runs completely within a web browser. BrowserQuest, a homage to classic video games, was created by the French developers at Little Workshop and is completely based on HTML5 and JavaScript. It can be played on computers with Firefox or Chrome – or Opera, if WebSockets are activated. The developers say that it is also compatible with iOS and Firefox for Android. The creators of Browserquest say that it can be played by thousands of users at a time, spread out over the game's various worlds. A few hours after launch, however, the system doesn't seem quite able to handle such a high level of interest; the game takes a while to load, if it manages to at all, even though a status page says that only a few hundred players are active. Players in Browserquest can chat with other users as they complete tasks. They can also see how many people are currently exploring the game world. These other players can be observed but not attacked. The game also include homages to games like Portal and references to well known meme's such as "like a boss" and Nyan Cat. The game is intended to demonstrate what the WebSockets network protocol can already achieve. The developers explain that as soon as the game is started, the browser creates a connection with one of the servers via WebSockets. Each of these four servers is the host of multiple game worlds and synchronises player data. Two other servers are dedicated to serving only the static assets of the game.The game's server is written in JavaScript and runs on node.js. Beyond WebSockets, the game client also makes use of HTML5 Canvas for the 2D tiling, Web Workers for background processing, localStorage to retain the state of the player, CSS Media queries to help resize the game as appropriate for a device and HTML5 audio. This makes the code an excellent source of information on the practical application of these various technologies. All of the project's source code is available on Github. The licence for the code and assets is currently unknown, though expected to be open source, as it has not been added to the Github repository; an issue has been raised and currently the response is "The licensing information will be updated in the next few days". (djwm) |
On the eve of yesterday’s Parliamentary debate of the Get Britain Cycling report, the Labour Party threw its weight strongly behind improving conditions for cycling with the launch of Labour for Cycling, a campaign from the party’s SERA environmental group. As the debate started, a claimed 5,000 people rode from Jubilee Gardens to Parliament square an for the first time in its history Palace of Westminster was entirely surrounded by protestors on bikes. Image: London Cycling Campaign In supporting cycling, Labour is unsurprisingly taking the chance to have a pop at what it claims is the coalition government’s gap between words and deeds. “Cycling is currently seeing high visibility, with politicians on all sides eager to be seen with a cycle helmet or a Brompton,” writes Lambeth councillor and environmental campaigner Martin Tiedemann on the SERA website. “But for David Cameron, cycling means a photo opportunity with the ministerial car lurking around the corner, while Boris Johnson has been content to take the credit for a cycling revolution in London’s City Hall brought in by Ken Livingstone. We know that it is Labour councils, like Hackney, Camden and Lambeth in London, Manchester and Oxford elsewhere, who are showing the real leadership on cycling. “In recent weeks, we’ve welcomed the announcement of money for cycling in a number of cities around England but, as Tom Hayes pointed out on our website, this was largely double counting and replacing the money cut when the Tories abolished Cycling England, set up by Labour. Not so much cycle as spin cycle.” Strong stuff, but if Labour matches rhetoric with policies and action, it could make them the most pro-cycling of the big three parties at the next election. Image: London Cycling Campaign Transport charity Sustrans commented that the passionate pro-cycling words from MPs must now be backed by action. Sustrans policy director, Jason Torrance, said: “Cycling bridged the political divide tonight, with MPs from all parties supporting renewed action from government as they spoke passionately about the need to get more Britons on their bikes. “But words without action will do little to make our roads safer, improve the health of our population or give the economy its much-needed boost. “We need to remove barriers to cycling that government is introducing such as the parking free-for-all in our town centres, while also setting ambitious targets for UK cycling levels and introducing legislative change in England that echoes the Active Travel (Wales) Bill.” Sustrans is calling on the government to immediately: Dedicate an annual budget to cycling Set targets for increasing levels of cycling Appoint a cycling champion Implement blanket 20mph speed limits in residential areas The London Cycling Campaign (LCC) organised the ‘Space for Cycling’ ride that accompanied the debate and claimed 5000 people had taken part, forming a procession several miles long. While Sustrans and Labour for Cycling have national objectives, London Cycling Campaign is focussed on the capital. Its puerpose in yesterday’s protest ride was to remind Mayor of London Boris Johnson “that providing dedicated space for cycling is vitally important for make our streets safe and inviting for everyone.” The measures London Cycling Campaign wants to see include: making main roads and major junctions safe for cycling using segregated tracks and cyclist-specific traffic lights to protect people from fast-moving and heavy motor traffic; and transforming local streets – where people predominantly live and shop – into spaces that are safe for cycling and walking by removing through motor traffic and reducing its speed. |
Important: 48FILM PHASE OUT Time for the next move. After 10 YEARS operating the 48FILM Project, we have decided to phase out the service over the next year. We will have a final 48FILM Project and 48ISFF Awards at the glorious DIRECTORS GUILD OF AMERICA on February 14, 2019, celebrating the 10 Years of our festival, One prize one festival. The 48 Independent Short Film Festival. The great Winner will get $5,000 in cash and prizes. We are grateful to all the filmmakers who have shared their stories through 48FILM Project, and we are very honored and blessed to have discovered talented artists around the world using our film competition platform. We are highly encouraging our filmmakers to continue pursuing their dreams and exposing their fantastic talent, through 48 Independent Short Film Festival. Visit the new 48 here: https://www.48isff.com/ |
Get the biggest Sport stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email DUNDEE boss Paul Hartley admits he’s considering putting rising stars Craig Wighton and Cammy Kerr out on loan – but only to the right club. Dens duo Wighton and Kerr have both been tipped for big things after playing their part in last season’s Championship triumph which sealed a dream top-flight return for the Dark Blues. The Premiership new boys’ squad has been beefed up following the arrival of 12 summer signings. So striker Wighton, 17, and 18-year-old full-back Kerr may have to bide their time as the new season gets under way at home to Kilmarnock this weekend. Hartley said: “Craig might have to go out on loan to get him the game time he requires. But we’ve got to be careful and make sure we send him out where he’s going to play. “Like young Cammy too, it’s about getting some game time. “We might look at that possibility but obviously we don’t want to stop their progress. “They also have to play at a level which we believe would help their progress in the long run.” Dundee keeper Scott Bain has returned to training following his recent bout of appendicitis. The former Alloa No.1 was signed this summer to scrap it out with first-choice Kyle Letheren but was struck down during Dundee’s pre-season trip to Budapest and had surgery. |
Fresh data from the Bundesbank show that Anglo-German trade in goods and services soared to €153bn in the first nine months of 2012, with both exports and imports booming at double-digit rates. It is one of the fastest growing trade relationships in the developed world. France lagged behind at €150bn as trade stagnated, with the US at €149bn and China at €115bn. David Marsh from the financial group OMFIF said the trade swing underlines a “sobering truth” that Germany’s fundamental interests are shifting away from the eurozone core as Berlin embraces the wider world. The EMU share of German trade has fallen from 46pc to 37pc since the launch of the euro, displaced by Asia, as well as Eastern Europe and the Anglo-sphere. British goods exports to Germany rose 20pc over the first three quarters compared to a year earlier, despite the economic downturn. The surge was led by medical equipment, drugs, car components, and petroleum goods. The deficit with Germany narrowed slighty to €17bn, a sign that trade is becoming better-balanced. Although rarely acclaimed, British suppliers and manufacturers are deeply integrated into the German industrial machine and enjoy the follow-through benefits of German exports to the rest of the world. Pailton Engineering ships precision-steering systems for cars and trucks from its small plant in Coventry, one of countless UK engineering firms linked into the Wirtschaftswunder. The two economies have become entwined, and Britain is the biggest investment destination for German companies, despite hainving different currencies. The car group BWM builds engines for its BMW 1 and BMW 3 series at Hams Hall near Birmingham that are then shipped back to Germany for further assembly. The engineering conglomerate Siemens exports turbines and a host of compenents made in Britain back to Germany. The British “sorpasso” of France is a troubling moment for Paris as it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Elysee Treaty between the two Rhineland powers, once the all-powerful axis of EU affairs but now a fraying marriage that has lost magic and relevance since German reunification. Germany’s Angela Merkel has crossed swords repeatedly with France’s Socialist leader Francois Hollande over the eurozone crisis, and Berlin fears that France may become a liability for the eurozone after deferring trough reforms and letting state spending balloon to 55pc of GDP. Germany’s trade surplus with France grew 13pc last year to €28.5bn. France remains a crucial market, but it is diminish fast in relative terms and the political body-language is clearly changing. Mrs Merkel has quietly supported of fellow conservative David Cameron, stepping in to prevent British isolation at EU summits. The two leaders have broadly similar views on open global trade, EU competition policy, and budget restraint. “It is clear that Merkel it going out on a limb to try to keep Britain in the EU,” said Holger Schmieding from Berenberg Bank. Charles Grant, head of the Centre for European Reform, said Mrs Merkel will “bend over backwards” to help Britain by offering safeguards for the City and backing for market reforms, but only up to a point. “They will not agree to repatriate powers or let the UK cherry pick which parts of the EU they want to belong to,” he said, warning the Tories not to overplay their hand. |
The prime minister's advisers have dismissed a warning by a respected think tank that ultra-low interest rates need to start rising now to avoid damage to the Canadian economy. In a paper for the C.D. Howe Institute, economist Paul Masson argued in May that the Bank of Canada should nudge rates higher to forestall real-estate bubbles, excessive household debt, pension-fund woes and other dangers. But a May 31 briefing note requested by Stephen Harper's office on the controversial paper notes that Masson's arguments are "at odds" with the views of most economists. And it says the central bank cannot act as if Canada is an island while the United States, Europe, Japan and England continue to hold rates down to help prime their anaemic economies. The note, signed by the clerk of the Privy Council, advises Harper that the costs of raising Canada's interest rates would outweigh the benefits. A heavily censored copy of the document was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act. Short-term rates too low "The (C.D. Howe) report has captured some attention in the media, as the call for raising interest rates immediately stands at odds with the views of most economists and market players," says the five-page analysis. "The costs of raising interest rates well ahead of other major economies would likely outweigh the benefits." Harper, who has a Master's degree in economics from the University of Calgary, is frequently briefed on think-tank publications focusing on the economy. Masson is a widely respected economist, employed at various times by the Bank of Canada, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere. He was special adviser to Canada's central bank in 2007-2008. Now a research fellow at Toronto's Rotman School of Management, Masson argued in his May 15 paper that Canada's economy suffered less of a downturn than did other industrial nations after the 2008-09 meltdown, and low rates are now harming rather than helping. "Short-term rates are ... too low in Canada, a situation that is starting to build in pervasive problems for the economy," he wrote. "Below-equilibrium interest rates for an extended period distort investment decisions, leading to excessive risk taking and inefficient and ultimately unprofitable investments. "They also encourage the formation of asset bubbles whose collapse could lead to a recurrence of the recent financial crisis." Bank of Canada to announce new rate Wednesday Key sections of the Harper briefing note are censored under provisions of the Access to Information Act that protect advice given to ministers. The note also highlights a May 29 announcement by the Bank of Canada that low rates will remain in place with the continued slack in the economy and low inflation, suggesting Masson's view is an outlier. Masson says the briefing note does not rebut his main arguments, merely asserts that Canada will suffer consequences if the Bank of Canada goes alone in raising rates. And he says that since his article appeared, "financial markets seem to be agreeing with me, pushing up interest rates on traded securities, and the banks have also raised their mortgage rates." "Central banks may be led to raise rates earlier than was thought likely, especially if the good economic news coming out of the U.S. persists," Masson said in an email. The Bank of Canada is set to announce its next policy interest rate on Wednesday. |
Cruxis Home > Houdini Chess Engine September 15, 2017: Houdini 6 has been released - Get it today! Welcome to the Houdini Chess Engine home page. Houdini is a state-of-the-art chess engine for Windows combining outstanding positional evaluation with the most sophisticated search algorithm. The name Houdini was chosen because of the engine's positional style, its tenacity in difficult positions and its ability to defend stubbornly and escape with a draw – sometimes by the narrowest of margins. On the other hand Houdini will often use razor-sharp tactics to deny its opponents escape routes when it has the better position. Each Houdini release since December 2010 has been leading the major computer chess rating lists and has been widely considered to be the strongest chess engine money can buy. From numerous interviews it appears that many top Grand Masters including chess World Champions use and appreciate Houdini. The Chess Club Live Facebook page phrased it like this: "If there ever was a computer descendant of the romantic players like Morphy, Anderssen, Spielmann, Marshall, Bogoljubow, Tal, Nezhmetdinov, Shirov, Morozevich it would be Houdini. Houdini is the current World number 1 chess engine and plays in a very romantic style." Get the new Houdini 6 today! Houdini 6: The strongest engine in the world Houdini 6 continues the impressive surge made by its predecessor by adding another 50 to 60 Elo in strength, to become once again the strongest engine that money can buy. This playing strength increase means that Houdini 6 is stronger than Houdini 5 using twice the time; or in other words, upgrading to Houdini 6 is like doubling the computational power of your computer for chess. Every aspect of the engine has been thoroughly reviewed and refined: evaluation, search, time management and table base usage. Houdini 6 makes better use of multiple threads and will be particularly strong on hardware with many cores. To take into account the recent availability of mainstream processors with 8 cores, Houdini 6 Standard version now supports up to 8 threads. On high-end hardware Houdini 6 Pro can make use of up to 128 threads. The evaluations have again been calibrated to correlate directly with the win expectancy in the position. A +1.00 pawn advantage gives a 75% chance of winning the game against an equal opponent at blitz time control. At +1.50 the engine will win 90% of the time, and at +2.50 about 99% of the time. To win nearly 50% of the time, you need and advantage of about +0.60 pawn. The enhanced Tactical Mode turns Houdini 6 into the most impressive position solver ever, improving on the records the previous Houdini versions set for solving tactical test suites. When running multiple threads the tactical mode can now be activated for only some of the threads. The on-line Houdini Chess Engine User's Manual provides clear and detailed instructions so that you can effortlessly leverage your chess analysis capabilities. Houdini 6 Download Versions for Windows Houdini is written for Windows and will run on any not too ancient Windows version. On Linux systems you can run Houdini using Wine without any significant performance loss. On Apple computers a Virtual Machine (e.g. Parallels Desktop) is required to run Houdini. Two Houdini 6 download-only versions are available: Houdini 6 Standard €39.95 +VAT* Best buy for most users with main-stream hardware. Supports up to 8 threads and 4 GB of hash. Houdini 6 Pro €59.95 +VAT* For high-end users with powerful hardware. Supports up to 128 threads and 128 GB of hash memory, Large Memory Pages, NUMA-architecture and Nalimov bases. Click here for more information about Houdini Pro. *VAT will be added for customers from EU member states. The Houdini 6 download link and serial number will be sent to you by e-mail within 24 hours of purchase. Note that during installation you'll require an internet access to activate the product. If you haven't received our purchase confirmation mail within 24 hours, please check your spam folder first, and if the mail is not there please contact us immediately via the support e-mail address [email protected]. In particular Gmail has the nasty habit of putting the purchase confirmation mail in the spam folder, most of the "did not get the license" requests we receive are coming from Gmail users. Purchasing Houdini 6 will entitle you to all updates and corrections made to Houdini 6, direct e-mail support by the Houdini author and discounts to future versions of Houdini. Too expensive? You can still download the free Houdini 1.5 which at the time of the Houdini 6 release remains one of the stronger free chess engines. Support Direct support by the author of Houdini, Robert Houdart, is available by e-mail at the address [email protected]. Before mailing please check out the on-line Houdini Chess Engine User's Manual with installation tips and Frequently Asked Questions. Version History Houdini 6 Houdini 6.03 (20171120): Correction for incorrect detection of stalemate in positions with white pawn capture moves. Houdini 6.02 (20171001): Maintenance update with Polyglot book support. Houdini 6.01 (20170924): Maintenance update with Nalimov EGTB correction and new output option. Houdini 6 (20170915): Major new version. Improved search and evaluation (+50-60 Elo), enhanced multi-threading. Houdini 5 Houdini 5.01 (20161115): Maintenance update with some interface corrections and improvements. Houdini 5 (20161107): Major new version, about 200 Elo stronger. Rewritten evaluation function, deeper search. Houdini 4 Houdini 4 (20131125): Major new version. Improved search and evaluation (+50 Elo), 6-men Syzygy table bases. Houdini 3 Houdini 3 (20121015): Major new version. Improved search and evaluation (+50 Elo), Tactical Mode, Scorpio bitbases. Houdini 2 Houdini 2.0c (20111120): Maintenance update with minor bug corrections and new analysis options. Houdini 2.0b (20111007): Maintenance update with minor bug corrections and Nalimov EGTB support. Houdini 2.0 0 (20110901): Improved analysis capabilities, enhanced search and evaluation. Houdini 1.5 Houdini 1.5a (20110115): Maintenance update with work-arounds for Fritz GUI and other minor improvements. Houdini 1.5 0 (20101215): Improved search and evaluation. Gaviota Table Base Support. Houdini 1.0 Houdini 1.03a (20100717): Bug fix for Multi-PV. Houdini 1.03 (20100715): Multi-PV, searchmove and large page support. Improved evaluation function. Houdini 1.02 (20100618): SMP and hash collision bug fixes. Work-around for Shredder GUI. Houdini 1.01 (20100601): Bug fixes. Improved search algorithm. Houdini 1.0 0 (20100515): First release. Acknowledgements An invaluable resource for any chess engine author is the excellent Chess Programming Wiki. The Syzygy TB probing code used by Houdini is © Ronald de Man, the Nalimov EGTB probing code is © Eugene Nalimov. |
WASHINGTON—A new Pew Research Center report revealed Thursday that on the entirety of planet earth there exist only 17 square miles where gays are not systematically assaulted, slandered, or violently threatened for their sexual orientation. “In terms of locations where homosexuals don’t have to fear for their livelihood and well-being on a daily basis, we found roughly 16 places, including San Francisco’s Castro District, a few blocks in Manhattan’s West Village, a four-mile stretch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and Berlin’s Nollendorfplatz,” the three-year study read in part, noting that these numbers shrink to as low as 10 square miles when factoring in criteria such as being afforded any shred of civil liberties or essential decencies. “Resultantly, gays can only expect to be treated like human beings—rather than some sort of repulsive subhumans—on roughly .00005% of the world’s landmass. And these are our most generous estimates.” The report went on to confirm that there are currently 196,950,000 square miles on earth where straight individuals are free from sexual prejudice. Advertisement |
Myristicin (or methoxysafrole) is a phenylpropene, a natural organic compound present in small amounts in the essential oil of nutmeg and anise and to a lesser extent in other spices/herbs such as parsley and dill; also found in several members of the carrot family (Apiaceae). It acts as a naturally occurring insecticide & acaricide. It is insoluble in water, but soluble in ethanol and acetone.[1] Myristicin is also a psychoactive drug, acting as an anticholinergic, and is the traditional precursor for the synthesis of the psychedelic and empathogenic drug MMDA. Uses [ edit ] Nutmeg has psychoactive properties at doses much higher than used in cooking. Although these intoxications may be ascribed to the actions of myristicin, it is likely that other components of nutmeg may also be involved, as ingestion of pure myristicin has been found not to produce the same results obtained from ingestion of the entire nutmeg. In case reports, raw nutmeg produced anticholinergic-like symptoms, attributed to myristicin and elemicin.[2][3][4] Intoxications with nutmeg had effects that varied from person to person, but were often reported to be an excited and confused state with headaches, nausea and dizziness, dry mouth, bloodshot eyes and memory disturbances. Nutmeg was also reported to induce hallucinogenic effects, such as visual distortions and paranoid ideation. Most patients with accidental nutmeg intoxication experience high anxiety and an impending sense of doom after the initial excitation. In the reports, nutmeg intoxication took several hours before maximum effect was reached. Effects and after-effects lasted up to several days.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Recreational use of nutmeg has caused poisoning, requiring medical treatment, characterized by nausea, vomiting, collapse, tachycardia, dizziness, anxiety, headache, hallucinations and irrational behavior. Blood myristicin concentrations may be measured to confirm a diagnosis of poisoning.[15] Pharmacology [ edit ] Raw nutmeg consists of 5-15% essential oil by mass. 4-8.5% of nutmeg essential oil, or 0.2-1.3% of raw nutmeg, is myristicin.[16][2] One study found 20 grams of nutmeg to contain 210 mg myristicin, 70 mg elemicin and 39 mg safrole.[2][17] While myristicin has been widely accepted as the main psychoactive component of nutmeg (along with elemicin), both the differences in subjective effects observed between nutmeg and synthetic myristicin, as well as the fact that myristicin is not a major component of the seed (therefore is possibly not present in high enough quantities) suggest it does not fully explain the effects of consuming raw nutmeg.[3] A 1997 study found data to suggest that myristicin can alter the toxicity and / or metabolic pathway of some compounds.[18] A 1963 study found preliminary evidence that myristicin may be a weak monoamine oxidase inhibitor in mice and rats. The study concluded that more direct evidence will be required.[19] In a 2005 study it showed possible neurotoxic effects on cultivated human neuroblastoma cells.[20] In 1963, Alexander Shulgin speculated myristicin could be metabolized to MMDA, a psychoactive drug related to MDA, in the liver.[3] This speculation has never been confirmed and studies with the closely related compounds asarone and safrole demonstrated that the proposed transamination reactions did not take place in humans.[21] However, Alexander Shulgin notes in his book PiHKAL that "Myristicin and the conjugated isomer isomyristicin are also found in parsley oil, and in dill. This was the oil that was actually shown to be converted to MMDA by the addition of ammonia by passage through an in vitro liver preparation."[22] Reactions [ edit ] When myristicin is heated with potassium hydroxide in alcohol and the distillate is crystallized upon cooling, colorless needles of isomyristicin are formed.[23] |
Veterans groups today urged the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to follow the Defense Department’s lead in stemming the flow of federal education funds to the University of Phoenix, which was placed on probation this week by the Pentagon after an investigation into Reveal’s exposé on the for-profit school’s recruiting practices. The Pentagon has barred the university from recruiting at military installations and indefinitely suspended the school from receiving new money from the Defense Department’s tuition assistance programs. Veterans groups and members of Congress applauded the action but want the Pentagon and VA to do more to defend military personnel and veterans against predatory recruiting practices. They called on the VA to conduct its own investigation. “The DOD has taken action, and the VA has not. The VA hasn’t stepped up yet, as far as we know, to enforce its own rules on this matter,” said Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success, a Washington-based nonprofit that aims to protect veterans from being taken advantage of by for-profit colleges. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America added its voice, saying the VA should restrict the amount of money the University of Phoenix receives through the GI Bill – in the face of growing concerns over the school’s recruiting tactics. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who had pushed for the Defense Department investigation, called on the Department of Education and the VA to review the findings. In a letter today to VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald, he wrote that the VA should “take appropriate action to protect veterans and federal taxpayer dollars under the VA’s jurisdiction.” Since 2009, the school has received more than $1.2 billion in GI Bill money. Last year alone, it received $345 million to educate Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, along with $20 million in tuition assistance from the Pentagon. In a statement, the VA said the Pentagon’s actions “do not have an immediate effect” on students attending the University of Phoenix on the GI Bill, which is administered through the veterans agency. VA spokesman James Hutton said his department would work with the DOD and state agencies to evaluate the impact, if any, on GI Bill-approved schools. Hutton declined to comment about whether his agency is in the midst of an investigation of the University of Phoenix or is planning to launch one. In its statement, the VA invited veterans to visit its website to compare eligible institutions. But listings there for the University of Phoenix make no mention of the Defense Department’s action or of any open federal or state investigations of the school. In its letter to the university placing all of its campuses on probation, the Defense Department acknowledged an investigation by Reveal that showed how the university paid the military for exclusive access to bases – in violation of an executive order restricting access to only sanctioned education events – held recruitment events disguised as job-hunting workshops and improperly used military insignias on “challenge coins” handed out by recruiters. “Although the University of Phoenix has responded to these infractions with appropriate corrective action at this time, the frequency and scope of these previous violations of the DoD MOU (memorandum of understanding) is disconcerting,” Dawn Bilodeau, who leads the Pentagon’s voluntary education program, wrote in the letter. The Defense Department also cited separate investigations into the school’s marketing practices by California’s attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission. As disclosed in a July 29 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FTC probe centers on whether the company engaged “in deceptive or unfair acts or practices … in the advertising, marketing, or sale of secondary or postsecondary educational products or services or educational accreditation products or services.” The SEC filing requires Apollo Education Group Inc., the University of Phoenix’s parent company, to hand over documents and other information dating back to Jan. 1, 2011, on “a broad spectrum of the business and practices” at the University of Phoenix, including its military recruitment methods. In another SEC filing, Apollo revealed in August that California’s attorney general launched an investigation and issued a subpoena seeking documents, including those related to the marketing and recruiting of military personnel since July 1, 2010. The filing said the attorney general was looking into the use of military logos and emblems in the university’s marketing, which generally is prohibited by the Pentagon. In response to Reveal’s questions about custom-engraved challenge coins handed out by recruiters, which featured logos of all military branches, the school said it had pulled them from circulation. “The university intends to continue its cooperation with federal and state agencies to respond to their requests,” University of Phoenix President Tim Slottow said in a statement today to The Washington Post. “University representatives have been working closely with DoD leaders, and we all expected a different response from DoD.” Slottow said it was troubling that the Defense Department used the investigations by the FTC and California as part of its determination to place the university on probation. In a new SEC filing about the probation this week, Apollo asserted that “all of the prior sponsored events in question had been approved by base officials and were conducted pursuant to written agreements.” However, as Reveal disclosed in its coverage, those agreements were not made with the military’s education wing, but instead through branches that handle entertainment and other kinds of events. Participation in those events precludes recruitment of students, under President Barack Obama’s order, but Reveal showed through internal documents, interviews and undercover video that the university hosted those events with the specific intent to recruit. The university has 14 days to respond to the action. Defense officials then will determine whether to permanently bar the school from the tuition assistance program. “We’re just hoping the pressure stays on,” said Matthew Boulay, an Iraq War veteran who leads the Veterans Student Loan Relief Fund. “The DOD needs to think about what comes next, and the VA needs to take the same steps in looking at how these schools are recruiting.” Students who are currently enrolled at the University of Phoenix will be able to continue using military tuition assistance to finish their coursework, but new students will not be able to do so while the institution is on probation. In her letter, Bilodeau also made it clear that the university “will not be authorized access to DoD installations for the purposes of participating in any recruitment-type activities, including but not limited to job training, and career events and fairs. Further, no new or transfer students at the institution will be permitted to receive DoD tuition assistance.” Don't miss the next big story. Brave investigations that change minds, laws and lives. Emailed directly to you. |
Do Statistical Disparities Mean Injustice? How many times have we heard laments such as “women are 50 percent of the population but only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs” and, as the Justice Department recently found, “blacks are 54 percent of the population in Newark, New Jersey, but 85 percent of pedestrian stops and 79 percent of arrests”? If one believes that people should be represented socio-economically according to their numbers in the population, then statistical disparities represent injustices that demand government remedies. Before we jump to conclusions about what disparities mean and whether they are indicators of injustice, we might examine some other disparities to see what we can make of them. According to a recent study conducted by Bond University in Australia, sharks are nine times as likely to attack and kill men than they are women. If sinister motivation is attributed for this disparity, as is done in the cases of sex and racial disparities, we can only conclude that sharks are sexist. Another sex disparity is despite the fact that men are 50 percent of the population and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. I wonder what whoever is in charge of lightning has against men. Another gross statistical disparity is despite the fact that Jews are less than 3 percent of the U.S. population and a mere 0.2 percent of the world’s population, between 1901 and 2010, Jews were 35 percent of American and 22 percent of the world’s Nobel Prize winners. There are other disparities that we might acknowledge with an eye to corrective public policy. Asian-Americans routinely score the highest on the math portion of the SAT, whereas blacks score the lowest. The population statistics for South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont show that not even 1 percent of their populations is black. In states such as Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, blacks are overrepresented in terms of their percentages in the general population. When this kind of “segregation” is found in schooling, the remedy is busing. There are loads of international examples of ethnic disparities. During the 1960s, the Chinese minority in Malaysia, where Malays politically dominate, received more university degrees than the Malay majority — including 400 engineering degrees, compared with just four for the Malays. In Brazil’s state of Sao Paulo, more than two-thirds of the potatoes and 90 percent of the tomatoes produced have been produced by people of Japanese ancestry. Blacks are 13 percent of our population but 80 percent of professional basketball players and 65 percent of professional football players and among the highest-paid players in both sports. By stark contrast, blacks are only 2 percent of the NHL’s professional ice hockey players. Basketball, football and ice hockey represent gross racial disparities and come nowhere close to “looking like America.” Even in terms of sports achievement, racial diversity is absent. In Major League Baseball, three out of the four hitters with the most career home runs are black. Since blacks entered the major leagues, of the eight times more than 100 bases have been stolen in a season, all were by blacks. In basketball, 50 of the 59 MVP awards have been won by black players. If America’s diversity worshippers see underrepresentation as “probative” of racial discrimination, what do they propose be done about overrepresentation? After all, overrepresentation and underrepresentation are simply different sides of injustice. If those in one race are overrepresented, it might mean they’re taking away what rightfully belongs to another race. For example, is it possible that Jews are doing things that sabotage the chances of a potential Indian, Alaska Native or Mexican Nobel Prize winner? What about the disgraceful lack of diversity in professional basketball and ice hockey? There’s not even geographical diversity in professional ice hockey; not a single player can boast of having been born and raised in Hawaii, Louisiana or Mississippi. Courts, bureaucrats and the intellectual elite have consistently concluded that “gross” disparities are probative of a pattern and practice of discrimination. Given all of the differences among people, such a position is pure nonsense. |
Titan Comics were thrilled to announce they will publish Bloodthirsty; a visceral revenge thriller that merges the real-world hopes and horrors of a post-disaster community with an engaging thread of political corruption, class divide and blood-curdling terror! The series was announced during the SDCC 2015 Diamond retailer presentation this Friday . From Louisiana native and Disney screenwriter Mark Landry, Bloodthirsty is illustrated by Interview With The Vampire artist Ashley Marie Witter, and has received public support from none other than superstar artist Georges Jeanty (Serenity, Buffy The Vampire Slayer). The giant-sized issue #1 comes with two covers to collect, one of these is created by Star Wars cover artist Nick Runge. Haunted by the catastrophe that tore his city apart ten years ago, Coast Guard veteran, Virgil Lafleur, struggles daily with the hardships of a post-Katrina New Orleans. But when his younger brother’s murder leads him into a vortex of intrigue, corruption, and violence, Virgil becomes obsessed with bringing the killers to justice and exposing the horrific secret hiding beneath the Mississippi. Bloodthirsty #1 hits comic stores in September and will be available digitally to read on your digital devices. |
""Born amongst the gloom, terrible bloodshed and chaos of the first years of the New Age - Paladins emerged as guardians of order. Eternal law states that chaos is doomed to create order. They rose from the fires of countless feuds and fratricidal wars, daring to stand up for order and dedicating their lives to protecting the weak and oppressed. They are the spiritual heirs of Aeli and a true weapon of good." - Asterius’s Encyclopedia We would like to continue introducing you to the classes in Skyforge and today we will tell you about a fearless warrior and mighty defender of the oppressed- the Paladin! The Paladin prefers to fight at the forefront of a battle and he is not afraid to meet the enemy face-to-face. Paladins have a decent amount of health, allowing them to withstand the attack of any force and to "tank" several enemies at once, while fast regeneration means they are able to fight monsters non-stop, performing powerful attacks and spectacular combos as they move from enemy to enemy. Paladins can easily find allies for group adventures and their companions will find the Paladin to be a powerful and assiduous protector. He will defend allies with shields that reduce incoming damage, remove any weakening effects and keep the new effects from landing. First to engage in a fight, the brave warrior takes on most of the damage, drawing the enemies away from his less sturdy companions. As he performs basic attacks, he accumulates righteous anger which can be spent on more powerful techniques. Basic abilities: Righteous Blow (LMB) - The Paladin attacks the enemy with a sword and inflicts minor damage. First strike in a series of basic attacks. Waves of Wrath (RMB) - This ability needs to be charged and can be activated by holding down the mouse button. The character swings his sword in a circle, hitting several enemies at once and knocking them off their feet. The weaker the opponent, the longer they will stay down. The following series of attacks (combos) are based on those two basic abilities: Seal of Light (LMB+RMB) - The Paladin swings his sword crosswise, inflicting moderate damage to the target and all enemies in the line behind it. Punishing Bolt (LMB+LMB+LMB) - The Paladin sword deals a powerful downward strike. On Holy Ground the target will be struck by lightning and the attack will inflict increased damage. Justice Blade (LMB+LMB+LMB+LMB) - After Righteous Blow, the Paladin does three quick strikes with the sword, each dealing more damage than the previous one. Divine Scourge (LMB+LMB+LMB+RMB) - On the fourth hit, the character jumps in the air and deals a downward blow, accompanied by lightning that strikes several targets. If the paladin is affected by Celestial Shield (one of the defensive skills), the shield explodes, inflicting additional damage. On Holy Ground or when righteous anger is used, the radius and the force of the attack increase. Other abilities: Holy Ground - The Paladin sanctifies the ground around him and gains inexhaustible power. While Holy Ground is active, character skills do not consume righteous anger even outside its borders. Aegis of Light - The character raises his shield in the air. A bright beam of light strikes it, making the character invulnerable and immune to control effects for some time. Radiant Aspect (special ability) - The Paladin calls upon divine power, rising into the skies and shaking off all negative effects. A moment later, he strikes nearby enemies, knocking them down and inflicting massive damage. The character becomes temporarily immune to control effects, his attacks inflict increased damage and all incoming damage is reduced. Once the attack is activated, Holy Ground appears next to the Paladin. We have listed just a few of Paladin's abilities. In the future you will find a detailed list and description of all Paladin abilities in a special section on our website. The main feature of this class is a large number of defensive skills that include the removal of negative effects and resistance to control. The Paladin's abilities do not end there: some of them massively increase damage; others make monsters focus on him. He can also control his enemies, stun them and knock them down, slow down and even immobilize them. Unlocked talents will multiply your damage, restore health and increase your movement speed. All of these abilities can be used to create various combinations that will best suit your style of play. But bare in mind that the potential of the "tank" class should be tested out in group play. A good combination of passive and active skills will help heroes and their allies emerge victorious from the most dangerous fights. The Paladin is one of the most durable and hardy classes in the game. Temporary invincibility will help him escape from seemingly hopeless situations and turn the tide of battle. When things go really badly, the hero sanctifies the ground around him and gains the ability to use any skill without spending "righteous anger." For continuous DPS, a Paladin must be near his target. He can either draw the fleeing enemy to himself or dash towards them knocking them down. The attacks of this class are not the strongest, but they are not the Paladin's only weapon. His primary task is to draw enemies' attention to himself and let his teammates or his high survivability do the rest. The Paladin will be picked by those who want be at the forefront, in the midst of battle, and not hiding behind someone's back. Who will rush into the thick of battle, shielding his allies, and take the first hit. Players that choose the Paladin often become the leaders of the group, because it is usually up to them to decide when and how how they are going to lead their allies to victory! For your chance to try out the Paladin sign up for the beta now! |
During seven years of economic crisis, the intergenerational income and wealth divide has increased in many European Union countries. This paper reviews the pension reforms implemented by several countries and it provides policy recommendations to address the intergenerational divide. Highlights During the economic and financial crisis, the divide between young and old in the European Union increased in terms of economic well-being and allocation of resources by governments. As youth unemployment and youth poverty rates increased, government spending shifted away from education, families and children towards pensioners. To address the sustainability of pension systems, some countries implemented pension reforms. We analysed changes to benefit ratios, meaning the ratio of the income of pensioners to the income of the active working population, and found that reforms often favoured current over future pensioners, increasing the intergenerational divide. We recommend reforms in three areas to address the intergenerational divide: improving European macroeconomic management, restoring fairness in government spending so the young are not disadvantaged, and pension reforms that share the burden fairly between generations. 1. The emergence of an intergenerational divide During seven years of economic crisis, the intergenerational income and wealth divide has increased in many European Union countries. In the bloc as a whole, young people on average have become significantly poorer, while poverty among pensioners has been reduced (Figure 1). Unemployment among the under-25s has risen notably while older workers (aged 50-64) have been less affected (Figure 2). While this pattern has been particularly pronounced in southern Europe, it can also be observed for the European Union as a whole. In the EU as a whole, unemployment in the 15-24 age group increased by 7.8 percentage points between 2007 and 2013, peaking at 23.7 percent in 2013, while unemployment among older workers in the 50-64 age group increased somewhat less, by 2.4 percentage points to 7.8 percent in 2013. A more precise measure of forced inactivity of young people is the ‘not in employment, education or training’ (NEET) rate, which varies significantly between countries. In the countries most hit by the crisis (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain), the NEET rate increased by more than 7 percentage points between 2007 and 2013, peaking at over 20 percent in Greece and Italy (Figure 2). By contrast, the NEET rate declined in Germany in the same period, from 8.9 to 6.3 percent. Figure 1: Pre and post-crisis material deprivation rate and unemployment rate in the EU Source: Bruegel based on Eurostat. Note: The material deprivation rate is defined as the enforced inability (rather than the choice not) to pay for at least three of: unexpected expenses; a one-week annual holiday away from home; a meal involving meat, chicken or fish every second day; adequate heating; durable goods such as washing machines, colour televisions, telephones or cars; or being confronted with payment arrears. Figure 2: 15-24 year olds not in employment, education or training (%) Source: Eurostat. Material deprivation rates are typically higher for young people than for those aged 65 or over (Figure 1). In 2007, 20 percent of young people below the age of 18 were materially deprived, compared to 16 percent of people aged over 65. As with the NEET rates, there are major differences between countries. While less than 10 percent of young people faced poverty in Denmark, Finland and Sweden in 2007 (the proportion is even smaller for older people), more than 20 percent of young and old people were materially deprived in Cyprus, Greece and Portugal. In Latvia, Hungary and Poland about 40 percent of young people were poor. Figure 3 shows the percentage change per country in the material deprivation rate during the crisis (2007-13). The rate increased substantially more for the young compared to the old, especially in the countries hit most by the crisis (except Ireland), meaning that already high levels before the crisis in those countries were exacerbated. Only Italy and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom experienced deteriorating ratios for both the young and old. By contrast, Finland and Sweden, with low levels to start with, saw their respective material deprivation rates decline for both young and old people over the same period. The same is valid for Poland1. Figure 3: Change in material deprivation rate (2007-13, %) Source: Bruegel based on Eurostat. Overall, a worrying picture emerges. First, poverty indicators have shown the emergence of an intergenerational divide, especially in crisis-hit southern Europe. Second, unemployment has become a major concern, with young people hit hardest during the crisis in the most stressed countries. Surges in youth unemployment and youth poverty are particularly worrying because they have long-lasting effects on productivity and potential growth, marking young people for their lifetimes, reducing their productivity and often excluding them from the labour market for an extended period of time (Bell and Blanchflower, 2010; Arulampalam, 2001; Gregg and Tominey, 2005). Youth unemployment and poverty also have negative effects on fertility rates and demographics, possibly because of increased income uncertainty related to unemployment and subsequent decisions to delay starting a family (Kreyenfeld and Andersson, 2014; Currie and Schwandt, 2014). The cost for the EU of a large proportion of NEETs is therefore much greater than the immediate short-term loss of foregone economic activity (Darvas and Wolff, 2014). 2. Key drivers of the intergenerational divide The intergenerational divide that has emerged during the crisis has been driven by three important policy developments. The first is macroeconomic management. Unemployment responds to the business cycle, but youth unemployment reacts much more strongly to recessions than total unemployment. This is in part because younger workers disproportionately are on temporary contracts (Boeri, 2011). Other factors also matter, such as the difficulty for young people to prove their skills in recessionary periods when they are looking for work. Therefore, the intergenerational divide typically grows in times of recession. Second, structural changes to government spending are important. Fiscal consolidation measures in the EU during the crisis led to an increase in poverty rates (Darvas and Tschekassin, 2015). This raises the question of whether government spending has become less favourable for the young, increasing the share of materially deprived young people. Third, pension system reforms are hugely important for intergenerational equity. In the following, we deal with each of the three issues in turn. Macroeconomic management In times of crisis, generally speaking, the public sector steps in to smooth the impact of adverse developments, through automatic welfare policies (such as unemployment benefits), progressive taxation and discretionary policies such as investment programmes. Automatic stabilisers were broadly at work in the EU during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. However, during the sovereign debt crisis, budgets became constrained in some countries and they arguably cut government spending more quickly than would have been advisable from a stabilisation point of view. This substantially aggravated the recessions in those countries and increased unemployment and youth unemployment (Darvas and Wolff, 2014). In terms of investment, Darvas and Barbiero (2014) found that gross public investment declined in the EU during the European debt crisis, and even collapsed in the most vulnerable countries, exaggerating the output fall. The composition of government spending Table 1 shows the percentage point change in the composition of government spending in the EU from 2008 to 2013. Unsurprisingly, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, which experienced the sharpest fiscal consolidation in the euro area, and Italy saw unemployment expenditure increase substantially as a share of total expenditure as their unemployment rates soared. Spending on health grew in importance in the core countries (see Table 1 for definitions) and the United Kingdom, while it fell substantially in the programme countries, on the back of fiscal consolidation measures. The share of spending on education decreased slightly in the EU overall and fell substantially in the UK and Italy. The UK and the programme countries reduced their spending on families and children. By contrast, pensioners were the main beneficiaries of fiscal adjustments. Spending on this category increased in all countries and exceeded the EU average in the UK, the programme countries and, to a lesser extent, central and eastern European countries2. The composition of government spending therefore shifted from families and children and education towards pensioners, entrenching the intergenerational divide. Pension reforms Government expenditure on pensions can increase because pensions are considered to be more difficult to change than other benefits from a political point of view. Several member states introduced pension reforms during the crisis. Such reforms can benefit current pensioners at the expense of future generations or vice versa. The most important pension reforms happened in the stressed countries, especially in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, because the crisis highlighted that their pension systems were not sustainable. From an intergenerational perspective, these reforms typically aim at increasing the sustainability of pension systems by reducing implicit debt obligations, and should therefore favour the young and future generations. In general, a successful reform should increase sustainability while not compromising adequacy of future pensions. Moreover, all of this has to be understood in the context of rising EU life expectancy and declining fertility, which represent major challenges to future pension and health systems. The European Commission’s Ageing Report (2015) states that the EU will move from four working-age people per person over 65 today to about two working-age people in 2040. This will affect both revenue and spending: there will be less revenue because of the shrinking working-age population, and more spending because of higher costs for pensions, health and long-term care. To address these challenges, several EU member states have enlarged the role of pre-funded, privately managed schemes as opposed to the prevailing statutory, public, pay-as-you-go schemes (OECD, 2014)3. There are, however, clear limits to what such schemes can achieve. To see to what extent the intergenerational divide has been affected by reforms in the crisis years, we carried out an analysis of changes to benefit ratios, meaning the ratio of the income of pensioners to the income of the active working population (Box 1) Pension reforms that do not affect intergenerational equity should leave the benefit ratio unchanged. We considered (a) how the current benefit ratio changed over the crisis period, (b) how the 2060 benefit ratio changed over the same period and (c) how the relationship between the two ratios has changed. It is the latter that best captures the ongoing intergenerational changes in the pension system. Figure 4 compares the benefit ratios in 2007 and forecasts for 2060 to their current counterparts, the 2013 benefit ratios and their respective 2060 forecasts4. In 2060, current 20-year olds will be approaching or already in retirement, making it a useful year to discern the effect of current reforms on today’s young. A perfectly equitable pension scheme should safeguard the benefit ratio for those that will retire in or around 2060, keeping it the same as the current ratio. Figure 4: All pensions benefit ratio, 2007/2060 and 2013/2060 (%) Source: Bruegel based on European Commission Ageing Report (2009 and 2015 edition). Note: the benefit ratios take into account both private and public schemes. In 2013, Denmark, most continental welfare states and the United Kingdom were close to the 45 degree line and can therefore be considered to have relatively equitable pension systems. All other countries were below the 45 degree line, indicating a bias towards today’s pensioners, resulting from a smaller future benefit ratio compared to today’s ratio. Analysing how the ratio has changed during the crisis allows us to track the impact of pension reforms and other factors on the intergenerational justice of the pension system6. Compared to 2007/2060 benefit ratios, the countries most under stress from the crisis reduced their 2013/2060 benefit ratios. Greece moved from a benefit ratio biased towards future generations in 2007 towards a benefit ratio that favours current pensioners (also highlighted in Figure 4). Spain and Cyprus moved from a more-or-less balanced position in 2007 to a system biased in favour of current pensioners, while Portugal increased its benefit ratio for both current and future pensioners, not changing the burden-sharing between generations in a significant way. Meanwhile, Belgium did not change its position, while Austria curtailed entitlements for current pensioners, moving closer to the 45 degree line. Germany reduced its 2013/2060 benefit ratio compared to 2007/2060 for both current and future pensioners, not changing the bias towards current pensioners significantly. Denmark moved towards a more just intergenerational burden-sharing, by reducing the benefit ratio of future pensioners, while Sweden reduced entitlements for current and future pensioners, without improving its position. Romania and Hungary moved from balanced burden-sharing to significantly favouring current pensioners, while Bulgaria and Poland curtailed entitlements for both current and future pensioners, not affecting their intergenerational burden-sharing. A notable and important exception is Italy: compared to its 2007/2060 benefit ratio, its ratio for 2013/2060 marked the greatest shift among EU countries towards a more just intergenerational position. Italy achieved sustainability in its pension system not by cutting the future benefit ratio, but by reducing the current benefit ratio, thus improving intergenerational burden-sharing (see the Annex for more details). This analysis suggests that overall entitlements have been curtailed in many countries to address sustainability questions, but the burden seems not to have been shared equally, favouring current over future pensioners, especially in crisis-hit southern Europe (Italy being an exception). 3. Ways forward: Policies to address the intergenerational divide Measures to address the intergenerational divide could include policies against youth unemployment, rebalancing spending and more equal burden-sharing between generations in pension scheme designs. One of the biggest legacies of the crisis is high youth unemployment. Bentolila et al (2010) and Boeri (2011) argue that the tw o-tier system with ultra-secure permanent workers and vulnerable temporary workers (who are often the young entering the labour market) is a major factor behind the high rate of job losses among younger workers during recessions. It also suggests a possible solution: labour market reforms that allow for graded job security as workers acquire tenure. However, such reforms are unlikely to yield significant job benefits in a situation of depressed demand. Other measures to counteract youth unemployment, such as the Youth Guarantee7, are a step in the right direction but are hardly adequate as a counterweight to national policies; in addition, the European Court of Auditors has questioned the adequacy of such policies8. Beyond such structural measures, adequate macroeconomic policies are important in order to prevent a significant increase in unemployment. In the context of the euro-area crisis, some sort of shock absorber on the euro-area level could have helped mitigate the adverse impact on the economices of member states. In the short term, we are sceptical about creating major European stabilisation functions such as a European unemployment insurance scheme (Claeys et al, 2014). Such measures, such as the euro-area unemployment insurance scheme proposed by former European commissioner Laszlo Andor, could prove effective but would require an extraordinary effort to create harmonised European labour market legislation. Instead, for the euro area we would recommend an enhanced, symmetric and binding policy coordination framework for fiscal policy, as outlined in Sapir and Wolff (2015). The main reason we advocate this step is that 98 percent of EU government spending is national. Macroeconomic stabilisation therefore works through national budgets. It is of central importance that national public finance is cautiously managed in good times, in order to have enough fiscal leeway in bad times. However, a system relying exclusively on national policies would be inadequate for the monetary union for two reasons: Irresponsible fiscal policy can have substantial cross-border spillover effects; and the sum of national fiscal deficits does not add up to an adequate fiscal stance for the euro area as a whole. A deeper coordination framework that is binding in exceptional times should therefore be created, to prevent unsustainable fiscal policies, while it should ensure that countries provide adequate stabilisation for the area as a whole. For countries outside the euro area, fiscal policy, monetary policy and the exchange-rate channel should play their full role in mitigating shocks. In terms of burden-sharing between generations, we have found that current pensioners have been protected compared to future pensioners (Italy being an exception). Safeguarding a constant benefit ratio over generations by adjusting contribution rates for the working population and benefit levels for pensioners would enable better intergenerational burden-sharing9. This would counteract the limitations of existing fixed-contribution or defined-benefits schemes, under which adjustment would eventually fall only on the younger or on the older generation. Following a Musgrave rule, rising unemployment among the younger generation would mean that the contribution rates for the younger generation rise, but benefits for the older generation would decrease too, to keep the benefit ratio constant. Therefore, both parties ‘lose’ at the same rate, allocating the burden in an equitable way. However, it is not only pension reforms along the lines outlined above that are needed. As noted by Myles (2002), the aggregate well-being of future generations depends primarily on the quality and quantity of the stock of productive assets (including human and environmental capital) that they inherit or create, and not so much on the design of pension systems. We have shown that during the crisis, social spending on families and children, and on education, was preserved less in the UK and in Italy, and held constant in the countries that faced the highest youth unemployment rates. By contrast, policies aimed at education and child care, one of the pillars of the social investment strategy, could play a major role in addressing the intergenerational divide. Children are the future workforce, and investing in better education and affordable child care will lead to higher levels of productivity and employment (Hemerijck, 2013). Education is also important as a policy measure to reduce income inequality. By increasing access to high-quality education, greater equality of opportunity is fostered, which in turn contributes positively to economic growth (OECD, 2015a). Also, as pointed out by Vandenbroucke and Rinaldi (2015), investing in education and child care can reduce intergenerational gaps. Overall, we are concerned that the crisis has left a dangerous intergenerational legacy. Addressing this legacy by making the government spending mix fairer for the younger generation while re-establishing intergenerational equity in pension schemes, should be a priority for policymakers throughout much of the European Union. REFERENCES Arulampalam, W. (2001) ‘Is Unemployment Really Scarring? Effects of Unemployment Experiences on Wages’, Economic Journal, Vol. 11(475): 585-606 Begg, I., F. Mushövel and R. Niblett (2015) ‘The Welfare State in Europe: Visions for Reform’, Chatham House Europe Programme, September Bell, D. and D. G. Blanchflower (2010) ‘Youth Unemployment: Déjà vu’, IZA Discussion Paper No. 4705 Bentolila, S., P. Cahuc, J. J. Dolado and T. Le Barbanchon (2010) ‘Two-tier Labor Markets in the Great Recession: France vs. Spain’, IZA Discussion Paper No. 5340 Boeri, T. (2011) ‘Reducing Youth Unemployment and Dualism’, Thematic Review Seminar on the Reduction of Labour Market Segmentation Addressing the Needs of Young People, Brussels, 27 June Bonoli, G. and D. Natali (2012) The Politics of the New Welfare State, Oxford University Press Claeys, G., Z. Darvas and G. B. Wolff (2014) ‘Benefits and drawbacks of European unemployment insurance’, Policy Brief 2014/06, Bruegel Currie, J. and H. Schwandt (2014) ‘Short- and Long-term Effects of Unemployment on Fertility’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 11 (41) Darvas, Z. and F. Barbiero (2014) ‘In Sickness and in Health: Protecting and Supporting Public Investment in Europe’, Policy Contribution 2014/02, Bruegel Darvas, Z. and G. Wolff (2014) ‘Europe’s Social Problem and Its Implications for Economic Growth’, Policy Brief 2014/03, Bruegel Esping-Andersen, G., D. Gallie, A. Hemerijck and J. Myles (2002) Why We Need a New Welfare State, Oxford University Press European Commission (2009) ‘The 2009 Ageing Report – Economic and Budgetary Projections for the EU-27 Member States (2008-2060)’, European Economy 2/2009, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union European Commission (2015) ‘The 2015 Ageing Report – Economic and Budgetary Projections for the 28 EU Member States (2013-2060)’, European Economy 3/2015, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union Gregg, P. and E. Tominey (2005) ‘The Wage Scare from Male Youth Unemployment’, Labour Economics, Vol. 12: 487-509 Hemerijck, A. (2013) Changing Welfare States, Oxford University Press Hellström, E. and M. Kosonen (2015) ‘Governing the Welfare State and Beyond – Solutions for a Complex World and Uncertain Future’, Vision Europe Summit paper Kreyenfeld, M. and G. Andersson (2014) ‘Socioeconomic Differences in the Unemployment and Fertility Nexus: Evidence from Denmark and Germany’, Advances in Life Course Research, Vol. 21: 59-73 Musgrave, R. (1986) ‘A Reappraisal of Financing Social Security’, in Musgrave, R. (ed) Public Finance in a Demographic Society, Vol. II, Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books Myles, J. (2002) ‘A New Social Contract for the Elderly’, in Esping-Andersen, G., D. Gallie, A. Hemerijck and J. Myles (eds) Why We Need a New Welfare State, Oxford University Press Myles, J. and P. Pierson (2001) ‘The Comparative Political Economy of Pension Reform’, in Pierson, P. (ed) The New Politics of the Welfare State, Oxford University Press OECD (2013) Pensions at a Glance 2013: OECD and G20 Indicators, Paris: OECD Publishing OECD (2014) Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators, Paris: OECD Publishing OECD (2015a) In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All, Paris: OECD Publishing OECD (2015b) Social Impact Investment: Building the Evidence Base, Paris: OECD Publishing Sapir, A. and G. Wolff (2015) ‘Euro-area Governance: What to Reform and How to Do it’, Policy Brief 2015/01, Bruegel Schokkaert, E. and P. Van Parijs (2003) ‘Debate on Social Justice and Pension Reform’, Journal of European Social Policy, Vol. 13(3): 245-279 Thimann, C. (2015) ‘The Microeconomic Dimensions of the Eurozone Crisis and Why European Politics Cannot Solve Them’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 29(3): 141-64 Vandenbroucke, F. and D. Rinaldi (2015) ‘Social Inequalities in Europe. The Challenge of Convergence and Cohesion’, Vision Europe Summit Paper Wilson, K. (2014) ‘New Investment Approaches for Addressing Social and Economic Challenges’, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers No. 15 |
Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX-NI) is an extension to the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) that adds hardware transactional memory support, speeding up execution of multi-threaded software through lock elision. According to different benchmarks, TSX can provide around 40% faster applications execution in specific workloads, and 4–5 times more database transactions per second (TPS).[1][2][3][4] TSX was documented by Intel in February 2012, and debuted in June 2013 on selected Intel microprocessors based on the Haswell microarchitecture.[5][6][7] Haswell processors below 45xx as well as R-series and K-series (with unlocked multiplier) SKUs do not support TSX.[8] In August 2014, Intel announced a bug in the TSX implementation on current steppings of Haswell, Haswell-E, Haswell-EP and early Broadwell CPUs, which resulted in disabling the TSX feature on affected CPUs via a microcode update.[9] Support for TSX emulation is provided as part of the Intel Software Development Emulator.[11] There is also experimental support for TSX emulation in a QEMU fork.[12] Features [ edit ] TSX provides two software interfaces for designating code regions for transactional execution. Hardware Lock Elision (HLE) is an instruction prefix-based interface designed to be backward compatible with processors without TSX support. Restricted Transactional Memory (RTM) is a new instruction set interface that provides greater flexibility for programmers.[13] TSX enables optimistic execution of transactional code regions. The hardware monitors multiple threads for conflicting memory accesses, while aborting and rolling back transactions that cannot be successfully completed. Mechanisms are provided for software to detect and handle failed transactions.[13] In other words, lock elision through transactional execution uses memory transactions as a fast path where possible, while the slow (fallback) path is still a normal lock. Hardware Lock Elision [ edit ] Hardware Lock Elision (HLE) adds two new instruction prefixes, XACQUIRE and XRELEASE . These two prefixes reuse the opcodes of the existing REPNE / REPE prefixes ( F2H / F3H ). On processors that do not support TSX, REPNE / REPE prefixes are ignored on instructions for which the XACQUIRE / XRELEASE are valid, thus enabling backward compatibility.[14] The XACQUIRE prefix hint can only be used with the following instructions with an explicit LOCK prefix: ADD , ADC , AND , BTC , BTR , BTS , CMPXCHG , CMPXCHG8B , DEC , INC , NEG , NOT , OR , SBB , SUB , XOR , XADD , and XCHG . The XCHG instruction can be used without the LOCK prefix as well. The XRELEASE prefix hint can be used both with the instructions listed above, and with the MOV mem, reg and MOV mem, imm instructions. HLE allows optimistic execution of a critical section by eliding the write to a lock, so that the lock appears to be free to other threads. A failed transaction results in execution restarting from the XACQUIRE -prefixed instruction, but treating the instruction as if the XACQUIRE prefix were not present. Restricted Transactional Memory [ edit ] Restricted Transactional Memory (RTM) is an alternative implementation to HLE which gives the programmer the flexibility to specify a fallback code path that is executed when a transaction cannot be successfully executed. RTM adds three new instructions: XBEGIN , XEND and XABORT . The XBEGIN and XEND instructions mark the start and the end of a transactional code region; the XABORT instruction explicitly aborts a transaction. Transaction failure redirects the processor to the fallback code path specified by the XBEGIN instruction, with the abort status returned in the EAX register. EAX register bit position Meaning 0 Set if abort caused by XABORT instruction. 1 If set, the transaction may succeed on a retry. This bit is always clear if bit 0 is set. 2 Set if another logical processor conflicted with a memory address that was part of the transaction that aborted. 3 Set if an internal buffer overflowed. 4 Set if debug breakpoint was hit. 5 Set if an abort occurred during execution of a nested transaction. 23:6 Reserved. 31:24 XABORT argument (only valid if bit 0 set, otherwise reserved). XTEST instruction [ edit ] TSX provides a new XTEST instruction that returns whether the processor is executing a transactional region. Implementation [ edit ] Intel's TSX specification describes how the transactional memory is exposed to programmers, but withholds details on the actual transactional memory implementation.[15] Intel specifies in its developer's and optimization manuals that Haswell maintains both read-sets and write-sets at the granularity of a cache line, tracking addresses in the L1 data cache of the processor.[16][17][18][19] Intel also states that data conflicts are detected through the cache coherence protocol.[17] Haswell's L1 data cache has an associativity of eight. This means that in this implementation, a transactional execution that writes to nine distinct locations mapping to the same cache set will abort. However, due to micro-architectural implementations, this does not mean that fewer accesses to the same set are guaranteed to never abort. Additionally, in CPU configurations with Hyper-Threading Technology, the L1 cache is shared between the two threads on the same core, so operations in a sibling logical processor of the same core can cause evictions.[17] Independent research points into Haswell’s transactional memory most likely being a deferred update system using the per-core caches for transactional data and register checkpoints.[15] In other words, Haswell is more likely to use the cache-based transactional memory system, as it is a much less risky implementation choice. On the other hand, Intel's Skylake or later may combine this cache-based approach with memory ordering buffer (MOB) for the same purpose, possibly also providing multi-versioned transactional memory that is more amenable to speculative multithreading.[20] In August 2014, Intel announced that a bug exists in the TSX implementation on Haswell, Haswell-E, Haswell-EP and early Broadwell CPUs, which resulted in disabling the TSX feature on affected CPUs via a microcode update.[9][21] The bug was fixed in F-0 steppings of the vPro-enabled Core M-5Y70 Broadwell CPU in November 2014.[22] The bug was found and then reported during a diploma thesis in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens.[23] Applications [ edit ] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ] |
Amidst the oil-price slump battering Alberta's economy, WestJet Airlines Ltd. will suspend some of its regularly scheduled flights from Calgary and Edmonton to divert more of its capacity to Central and Eastern Canada. Canada's two major airlines have recorded a significant decline in passenger traffic to and from, and within Alberta. Oil and gas spending cuts, increased unemployment and a reduction in the number of people travelling between Atlantic Canada and Alberta for work in the energy sector in the last year have all played a role. As it unveils its summer schedule, Calgary-based WestJet has announced six fewer flights a day from the Calgary airport to various locales, and five fewer out of Edmonton. With no end in sight to Alberta's economic downturn, the move is part of a broader realignment of Canada's major carriers, which are placing increased focus on international flights and other parts of Canada. Story continues below advertisement "We are adjusting capacity to where there is more robust demand," Bob Cummings, WestJet's commercial executive vice-president, said in an interview. "The responsible thing for us to do now is to shift some capacity, at least temporarily." Mr. Cummings didn't provide detailed numbers on the drop in passenger traffic, but said it has been especially pronounced since November. In speaking with the heads of both cities' airports about the suspension of the flights last week, he told them: "I really hope that we've hit the bottom here." WestJet's summer schedule will include increasing the number of flights between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, increasing the frequency of Toronto-Fredericton flights and Halifax-Ottawa flights. As soon as the first week of March, there will also be more WestJet planes going to destinations in Florida and Mexico. In all of the changes, Mr. Cummings said Albertans will continue to be well-served. Not only is Alberta's current economic situation grim, there is little hope for a quick turnaround. Few are forecasting the end of low-priced oil in the near term. And WestJet isn't alone in its shift. Air Canada chief executive Calin Rovinescu said last year that his airline has focused on the growth of its international network to offset "the current economic slowdown in Western Canada." Responding to a drop in demand last fall, Air Canada decided in November to suspend its Edmonton-London Heathrow, Edmonton-Regina and Calgary-Terrace, B.C., routes "to better reflect current and projected demand," according to a spokeswoman. Other air industry players have changed, too. When oil prices were high, charter airlines could barely keep up with the demand to fly workers into Alberta from other Canadian cities such as St. John's, Fredericton, Kelowna, Kamloops and Vancouver. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement But that type of cross-Canada charter service has seen rapid declines in the oil rout. For instance, there used to be 14 charter flights from Moncton, N.B., into Alberta's oil sands region every week, according to Scott Clements, president and chief executive officer of the Fort McMurray Airport Authority. Now there are none. The steep drop in the number of charter flights bringing workers to and from oil sands project sites in Fort McMurray has actually helped mitigate losses to the airlines' Alberta business. As the charter flights have been halted, carriers such as WestJet have benefited from picking up the transport of the workers still travelling to the province on the oil companies' dime. But that still hasn't stopped both WestJet and Air Canada from reducing the number of flights to and from Fort McMurray – which was, until recently, Canada's fastest growing airport. In 2012 and 2013, Fort McMurray's airport average annual passenger traffic growth rate hit an astounding 25 per cent. In 2014 – the year the new $250-million terminal opened, and oil prices began to drop – that growth rate slowed to 9.5 per cent. In 2015, total passenger traffic dropped 16 per cent. Charter flight traffic decreased by more than 50 per cent. To help make ends meet, the airport authority had to lay off about 85 employees – mostly custodial and security staff who were replaced by contract workers. "This region is a one-industry region, as everyone knows," and oil prices are weak, Mr. Clements said. Story continues below advertisement "The oil companies have been losing money fairly heavily, and have taken very significant action to reduce their costs." On the positive side, he said, the airport's cost to complete its long-term plan, and extend the runway and expand the terminal, will likely be less than expected. The projects will also provide much-needed construction jobs in Fort McMurray. "The industry is very hungry." |
“Only Chance For Survival”: Roger Stone Issues Dire Warning to POTUS Trump Amid Manafort Indictment Veteran political operative Roger Stone has a dire warning for his long time friend, President Trump, amid reports of Paul Manafort’s indictment. As The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft reported Monday morning, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and business partner Rick Gates were ordered to surrender to federal authorities. Stone believes the President’s “only chance for survival,” is to appoint a special counsel to probe the Clinton-Uranium One scandal. Otherwise, Stone believes, Donald Trump’s days could be numbered as President. Daily Caller reports: Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told The Daily Caller Monday that President Donald Trump directing the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate an Obama-era Uranium deal is Trump’s “only chance for survival.” […] Before the indictment was released, Stone, who was previously a business partner with Manafort, told TheDC that he thinks “if the charges against Manafort and Gates do not relate to Russia, Mueller will look extremely foolish.” Stone told TheDC that it is “really simple” how Trump ends Mueller’s investigation. The Trump confidant said that Mueller intends “to levy phony charges against Trump in order to impeach him.” Trump has received past suggestions to fire Mueller, however, Stone maintains the president “doesn’t have to fire anybody.” Instead, Stone wants Trump to appoint a special counsel to investigate “all involved in the Uranium One investigation.” Is it possible President Trump knows this already? As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts reports sources have told Fox News that President Trump personally instructed the Justice Department to lift the gag order on the Clinton-Uranium One informant. “Source tells @FoxNews that @realDonaldTrump himself gave the order to the DOJ to lif[t] the gag order on Uranium One confidential informant,” tweeted Roberts on Thursday. Tweet source: John Roberts Source tells @FoxNews that @realDonaldTrump himself gave the order to the DOJ to life the gag order on Uranium One confidential informant — John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) October 26, 2017 On Sunday, President Trump called for investigators to probe Hillary Clinton’s role in funding the now discredited ‘Trump dossier.’ “Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),…….the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia,…….”collusion,” which doesn’t exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s……are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING! All of this “Russia” talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!,” President Trump said in a series of tweets. Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017 …the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia,…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017 …"collusion," which doesn't exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R's… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017 …are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017 All of this "Russia" talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017 |
We’ve come a long way, baby—but maybe not far enough. If you’re brave enough to hunt down statistics about the number of women represented in gallery and museum shows and directorships, you might want to grab a glass of wine to ease your pain. Women receive half the MFAs granted in the U.S., but female artists account for just 25 percent of solo exhibitions in New York galleries. At museums with budgets of more than $15 million, 24 percent of directors are female—and they earn 71 cents for every dollar male directors earn, according to a study from the Association of Art Museum Directors. Art+Feminism aims to balance the scales a little more. According to a 2011 Wikipedia Editors Study, just 8.5 percent of Wikipedia editors are women. On Saturday, March 7, the group will host its second annual Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon at the Museum of Modern Art, where participants will create and edit articles about female artists, feminist art scholarship and feminist art movements. The event aspires to improve female representation among editors so articles about female artists get more exposure. An additional 55 satellite locations—including the Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette in Paris—will also host edit-a-thons between March 7 and 9, coinciding with International Women’s Day weekend. At last year’s event, participants at 31 locations created more than 100 new articles and added content to another 90. “Many other popular sites pull in content from Wikipedia, including Google search. So it is important to improve Wikipedia’s gender bias because absences there are the ones that really matter,” said event organizers Siân Evans, a member of the Art Libraries Society of North America’s Women and Art Special Interest Group, and Jacqueline Mabey, curator and owner of failed projects, in a statement. Art+Feminism trains participants on best practices for editing a Wikipedia page, and it’s made its lesson plan open-source. As a result of last year’s Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, new pages were created for artists including Audrey Flack, Ethel Spowers and Senga Nengudi. |
Amazon Apologizes for Their Secret Cutting Amazon has formally apologized to customers for deleting ebooks from people's Kindles "This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.With deep apology to our customers,Jeff BezosFounder & CEOAmazon.com"It's an interesting apology, the sort of apology that a "secret cutter" would make. They will learn from the scar tissue of their self-inflicted wounds and they promise not to do it again. They deserve the pain and shame, but they are glad they can still feel ALIVE. They just needed to feel something real. Anything at all. God, don't you understand?I do understand. But I don't think Amazon is going to stop cutting books and delisting content until they recognize they have a problem and start getting the help they need.So here is some advice for Amazon from "kidshealth.org," taken from an article called "How Can I Stop Cutting?" "For people who cut, doing something different may be a big change. Making this change can take time because you are learning new ways of dealing with the things that led you to cut. The tips you'll see below can get you started. But a therapist or counselor can do more to help you heal old hurt and use your strengths to cope with life's struggles."Start by being aware of which situations are likely to trigger your urge to cut. Make a commitment that this time you will not follow the urge, but will do something else instead. Some people cut because the emotions that they feel seem way too powerful and painful to handle. Often, it may be hard for them to recognize these emotions for what they are âÂÂ" like anger, sadness, or other feelings. Here are some alternatives to cutting that you can try:* draw or scribble designs on paper using a red pen or paint on white paper âÂÂ" if it helps, make the paint drip* write out your hurt, anger, or pain using a pen and paper* draw the pain* compose songs or poetry to express what you're feeling* listen to music that talks about how you feel"Cutting can be a difficult pattern to break. But it is possible. If you want help overcoming a self-injury habit and you're having trouble finding anything that works for you, talk with a therapist. Getting professional help to overcome the problem doesn't mean that someone is weak or crazy. Therapists and counselors are trained to help people discover inner strengths that help them heal. These inner strengths can then be used to cope with life's problems in a healthy way."DON'T BOTTLE UP THE PAIN, AMAZON! EXPRESS YOURSELF! IF IT HELPS, MAKE THE PAINT DRIP!It's probably a good thing that Amazon has taken a recent interest in shoes by buying the company Zappos for a billion dollars . Amazon needs new hobbies. They need to feel young and pretty again.One interesting result of this apology is that since Bezos posted the apology using his "real name" Amazon account, we can see what he's been reviewing Evidently, he really likes these cookies (five stars):"This is an assortment of carefully wrapped cookies. They claim to ship only hours after the baking is done, and the taste would certainly indicate that that's true. I'm not exactly sure how many different cookie types there are in the box since I (and my co-workers) started eating before I started counting. But somewhere around eight or more different types. The snickerdoodles were the best I've ever had. Ridiculously good cookies."And he really hates the movie "The 13th Warrior" (1 star: "one star is indeed too many"):"Let's face facts. This is a terrible, terrible movie. We have to guess that all involved in this project are hiding. Really, I'm generally quite easy on movies, but this endless stream of uninteresting battle scenes with pointless dialogue and no discernable plot is perhaps one of the worst movies ever made. Sorry if this seems harsh, but I just don't want anyone to buy it unknowingly."So there you go. Next time you feel the need to de-list all your books about gays and sex, eat some cookies instead. And the next time you feel the need to delete ebooks from the Kindles of your customers while they sleep, remember how mad Antonio Banderas made you in the movie "The 13th Warrior," and assume your customers will be just as mad.We are gonna get through this together, Amazon! |
A major defense of the president exaggerates Obama's accomplishments and misses the point: his scandalous transgressions against rule of law. After reading Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek essay about President Obama, his critics, and his re-election bid, I implore him to ponder just one question. How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following? I submit that had Palin or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice or Jeb Bush or John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney proposed doing even half of those things in 2008, you'd have declared them unfit for the presidency and expressed alarm at the prospect of America doubling down on the excesses of the post-September 11 era. You'd have championed an alternative candidate who avowed that America doesn't have to choose between our values and our safety. Yet President Obama has done all of the aforementioned things. Pretend that you knew, circa 2008, that President Cheney or Palin or Rice or Rumsfeld or Giuliani would do all those things -- but that, on the bright side, they'd refrain from torturing anyone else, end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, sign a bank bailout, and pass a health-care bill that you regard as improving on the status quo starting in 2014. Would you vote for them on that basis? I submit that you would not. And if they were elected, and four years later were running for re-election, would you focus on the stupidity of the least persuasive attacks on their tenure? Or would you laud their most incisive critics? I believe that you'd be among their most incisive critics. Back to the present. The Newsweek cover headline for Sullivan's piece is "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" It's entirely defensible to point out that many critiques of Obama are laughably disconnected from reality -- I've done that myself on many occasions -- so it's arguably a fair headline. But the one I've chosen is fair too: "Why Focus on Obama's Dumbest Critics?" No, Obama isn't a radical Kenyan anti-colonialist. But he is a lawbreaker and an advocate of radical executive power. What precedent could be more radical than insisting that the executive is empowered to draw up a kill list of American citizens in secret, without telling anyone what names are on it, or the legal justification for it, or even that it exists? What if Newt Gingrich inherits that power? He may yet. Over the years, Sullivan has confronted, as few others have, American transgressions abroad, including torture, detainee abuse, and various imperial ambitions. He's long drawn attention to civil-liberties violations at home too, as a solo blogger and as lead editor and writer of a blogazine. When I worked for Sullivan, he not only published but actively encouraged items I found that highlighted civil-liberties abuses by the Obama Administration, and since I parted ways with The Daily Dish, he and the Dish team have continued to air critiques of Obama on these questions. But his Newsweek essay fits the Sullivan should reconsider this approach. During President Bush's first term, Sullivan will recall the most unhinged attacks on him -- the comparisons to Hitler, the puppets burned in effigy, the comparisons to a chimp. There wasn't anything wrong with lamenting those attacks, just as there's nothing wrong with pointing out exaggerated and baseless attacks on Obama, which have spread through most of the Republican Party. But the priority put on rebutting the least persuasive left-wing critiques of Bush, and pre-election 2004 worrying about the flaws of the Democratic field, are part of what postponed the backlash against Bush's ruinous policies. The backlash should've been the priority all along. The same is now true of Obama. Like President Bush, he is breaking the law, transgressing against civil liberties, and championing a radical view of executive power -- and he is invoking the War on Terror to get away with it. As much as it was in 2003 or 2007, it is vital in 2012 that there be a backlash against these post-9/11 excesses, that liberty-loving citizens push back so that these are anomalies that are reined in, rather than permanent features of a bipartisan consensus that can only end in a catastrophically abusive executive operating in an office stripped by successive presidents and their minions of both constitutional and prudential checks. Beyond strenuously objecting to the focus of his piece and what it doesn't mention, and agreeing with some of Sullivan's points, I have important disagreements with others. "Where Bush talked tough and acted counter-productively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war," Sullivan writes. "Since he took office, al Qaeda's popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted." But it's surely relevant that, according to surveys like more terrorists in the long run. It's a tradeoff some people consider prudent; but that's different from saying he is "winning the propaganda war." In fact, the predictable effect of some of his policies is to increase hatred of the U.S. But the one I've chosen is fair too: "Why Focus on Obama's Dumbest Critics?"No, Obama isn't a radical Kenyan anti-colonialist. But he is a lawbreaker and an advocate of radical executive power. What precedent could be more radical than insisting that the executive is empowered to draw up a kill list of American citizens in secret, without telling anyone what names are on it, or the legal justification for it, or even that it exists? What if Newt Gingrich inherits that power?He may yet.Over the years, Sullivan has confronted, as few others have, American transgressions abroad, including torture, detainee abuse, and various imperial ambitions. He's long drawn attention to civil-liberties violations at home too, as a solo blogger and as lead editor and writer of a blogazine. When I worked for Sullivan, he not only published but actively encouraged items I found that highlighted civil-liberties abuses by the Obama Administration, and since I parted ways with The Daily Dish, he and the Dish team have continued to air critiques of Obama on these questions.But hisessay fits the pattern I've lamented of Obama apologists who tell a narrative of his administration that ignores some of these issues and minimizes the importance of others, as if they're a relatively unimportant matter to be set aside in a sentence or three before proceeding to the more important business of whether the president is being critiqued fairly by obtuse partisans.Sullivan should reconsider this approach.During President Bush's first term, Sullivan will recall the most unhinged attacks on him -- the comparisons to Hitler, the puppets burned in effigy, the comparisons to a chimp. There wasn't anything wrong with lamenting those attacks, just as there's nothing wrong with pointing out exaggerated and baseless attacks on Obama, which have spread through most of the Republican Party. But the priority put on rebutting the least persuasive left-wing critiques of Bush, and pre-election 2004 worrying about the flaws of the Democratic field, are part of what postponed the backlash against Bush's ruinous policies. The backlash should've been the priority all along.The same is now true of Obama. Like President Bush, he is breaking the law, transgressing against civil liberties, and championing a radical view of executive power -- and he is invoking the War on Terror to get away with it. As much as it was in 2003 or 2007, it is vital in 2012 that there be a backlash against these post-9/11 excesses, that liberty-loving citizens push back so that these are anomalies that are reined in, rather than permanent features of a bipartisan consensus that can only end in a catastrophically abusive executive operating in an office stripped by successive presidents and their minions of both constitutional and prudential checks.Beyond strenuously objecting to the focus of his piece and what it doesn't mention, and agreeing with some of Sullivan's points, I have important disagreements with others. "Where Bush talked tough and acted counter-productively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war," Sullivan writes. "Since he took office, al Qaeda's popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted." But it's surely relevant that, according to surveys like this one from James Zogby in 2011, "After improving with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, U.S. favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush Administration, and lower than Iran's favorable ratings (except in Saudi Arabia)." And in the areas where Obama's drone strikes are killing innocent civilians, he is trading short-term terrorist deaths for the possibility that our policies will createterrorists in the long run. It's a tradeoff some people consider prudent; but that's different from saying he is "winning the propaganda war." In fact, the predictable effect of some of his policies is to increase hatred of the U.S. |
A woman walks past a 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) billboard in Kuala Lumpur in this January 27, 2014 file photo. According to reports, 1MBD booked a net loss of RM665.36 million in its previous financial year. — Reuters pic KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 6 — Sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MBD) booked a net loss of RM665.36 million in its previous financial year, a local daily reported today citing a filing with the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM). According to a report by The Star, 1MDB’s filing showed a loss before tax of RM668.55 million against reported revenues of RM4.258 billion. The filing was made after the sovereign wealth fund closed its books yesterday, some seven months after the end of its financial year in March 31, 2014. The loss was lower, however, than that registered in its previous financial year, when it splashed RM778.243 million worth of red ink on its accounts. According to 1MDB, its non-current assets now stood at RM31.879 billion, while current assets were at RM19.529 billion. It continues to hold a total of RM48.5 billion in both non-current and current liabilities. Earlier this week, DAP MP Tony Pua had questioned 1MDB over the late filing of its accounts, saying this raised concern that not all was well with the sovereign wealth fund. The fund has been dogged by negative publicity over massive fees paid for bond sales, the near one-year delay in publishing its financial accounts, and most recently, changing auditors. 1MDB, the brainchild of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, was set up to help drive Putrajaya’s strategic investments. |
As 95-degree temperatures baked a crowd of nearly 100,000 at the 2008 Belmont Stakes—the hottest June 7 on record—the only person who seemed unfazed was Richard Dutrow Jr., the trainer of Big Brown, an undefeated colt just 12 furlongs from the first Triple Crown in three decades. With history against him, Dutrow remained immodest. It was a foregone conclusion, he said. "He cannot be beat." The spring of Big Brown was a traveling circus, with the horse itself a sideshow. Dutrow, the ringleader, was all of racing's problems bundled into one man. The owners, Michael Iavarone and Richard Schiavo, were portrayed as clever businessmen who proposed to change the game with a new way of investing in horses. But the real decision-maker in International Equine Acquisitions Holdings was behind the scenes—a shadowy money man who ran an illegal investment fund in the Virgin Islands. Advertisement Only 11 horses had ever won the Triple Crown, and if Big Brown could do it, both Dutrow and IEAH would be immortalized. It would be the summit of anyone's career, but for both the horse and his connections the fall was swift and severe: a trainer banned for a decade; a stable put out of business, its funding revealed as the spoils of a Ponzi scheme. Big Brown was dead last at Belmont. He didn't even cross the finish line. Advertisement The worn sign outside Barn 10 on the Aqueduct backstretch has the feel of a Roman monument to a fallen dynasty. It reads: "2008 Winner of the Kentucky Derby & Preakness." Five years have passed since Big Brown came up empty in the Belmont Stakes; this plaque is what's left of IEAH and the career of Richard Dutrow. It was supposed to be a revolution. Michael Iavarone had a vision of an equine hedge fund, something untried in the sport. Instead of the traditional syndicate, with investors owning shares in individual horses, they could now own part of IEAH itself. The fund would collect management and performance fees, and allow investors to own a part of all of IEAH's assets—its horses in training, its broodmares, its future stallions, a state-of-the-art equine hospital. Each financial quarter, an independent auditor would assess the fund's value and investors could enter or exit. Iavarone often said he was raising $100 million to take the fund public. It was Wall Street come to the backstretch, and completely foreign to an old-fashioned and slow-moving game. Unpredictable, too; would daily share price dictate a stable's decision-making? Profits on the track are impossible to time or predict, if they ever come at all. Insiders thought it was ludicrous. Every year, owners put $2 billion into a game that spits out only $1 billion in purses. Were these guys so good at picking out horses, Dutrow so good at training them, that they could guarantee regular profits, month after month, year after year? Advertisement The wins and the money rolled in for a while, but none of it was real. Like the worst of Wall Street's excesses, IEAH's fortunes were illusions produced by unscrupulous, occasionally illegal methods. They turned to Rick Dutrow knowing he'd get results, no matter how many suspensions for doping his horses he'd have to serve. They pulled their main funding from an accused Ponzi schemer, since indicted by the federal government, who funneled millions from a host of hapless victims to keep the stables going. Soon enough the cash spigot was cut off, Dutrow committed one too many violations, and the revolution collapsed, leaving only the sign. Barn 10 used to be Dutrow's. In October 2011, New York regulators revoked his license and barred him from training horses for 10 years, after one final strike in a career of almost 70 violations—from the minor, like showing up late to the paddock, to the serious, such as using banned medications and hiding workouts. After losing in New York's highest appellate court this past January, Dutrow's horses were led away from his barn. Appropriately, he went out a winner. The day before, his horse Colossal Gift had won the last race of the day at Aqueduct. Dutrow watched from home. His last visit to the track had been that morning, a gloomy day when all of his horses jogged over a sloppy track and a beleaguered Dutrow sat in his black Mercedes and answered questions. His lawyers were considering one final request for an injunction, he said. They didn't file one, and the next day his horses were put in the care of other trainers. Dutrow is no longer allowed on the grounds and per the terms of his suspension, he cannot care for horses or assist with training or even provide advice to his former employees. Long a media fixture, Dutrow hasn't been heard from since. Advertisement Just south of Belmont Park, weeds grow around the shuttered Ruffian Equine Medical Center, the gorgeous facility that IEAH built in 2009 and closed two years later. The phones are disconnected. Its website, not updated for over a year, was taken down only weeks ago. It still listed Dutrow as IEAH's trainer in a section called Our People. IEAH began selling off its assets last year, including all its breeding shares in Big Brown. Its very last horse was Fantasy of Flight, trained by Michelle Nevin, Dutrow's longtime assistant, who sought her training license as soon as his suspension began. Racing in the colors of co-owner Sanford Robbins—not IEAH—Fantasy of Flight finished eighth in the Grade 1 Madison at Keeneland on April 13. IEAH unloaded its final shares in Fantasy of Flight soon after. The stable has no more horses. Advertisement Other markers are found in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, in indictments of James Tagliaferri on criminal and civil fraud charges. Tagliaferri, 73, was arrested in the Virgin Islands in late February. Beginning in 2007, according to prosecutors, he defrauded his wealthy clients by funneling more than $120 million of their money to IEAH and others, in exchange for at least $4.3 million in ostensible fees, of which $1.6 million came from IEAH. Tagliaferri put his clients into more than $40 million of notes from IEAH, without telling these clients that IEAH was paying him in return. He moved money from a deadbeat dot-com stock into IEAH to keep his clients at bay, allegedly paying them with other clients' money. Iavarone and Schiavo haven't been charged with anything. But the majority of their money came from Tagliaferri, and as one bloodstock consultant who worked with IEAH puts it, it's hard to describe the scheme as anything but "a Madoff thing for the racing business." Advertisement Rick Dutrow is from a racing family. His late father was a trainer, and his two brothers train as well. And even by racing's Wild West standards, Dutrow, 53, is an outlaw. In the 1980s, he was banned from Maryland tracks for a year then five years from New York for various marijuana offenses (possession, failed drug tests, getting caught with a "concealed apparatus" to provide a fake urine sample). Years later, the mother of his daughter was murdered in a drug-related break-in. By 1998, he was sleeping on a cot next to saddles and bridles and other equipment in a tack room of Barn 1 at Aqueduct, a couple of cheap horses in stalls just outside the door and nothing but a microwave, fridge, and television to keep him company. He had come back and more by 2001, with the help of wealthy owners like Wall Street trader Sandy Goldfarb, leading New York in wins and, a few years later, winning the Breeders' Cup Classic with Eclipse Award winner Saint Liam. He wagered outrageous sums on his own horses and bragged about it, such as the $160,000 plunge he took on Saint Liam that day, pocketing more than $385,000. Advertisement Few people doubted his horsemanship. He made unorthodox decisions and he won races with cast-offs, which made reporters wonder whether he was a genius or a cheater. His runners always looked great on the track, well-groomed, their coats shiny. "He's half-horse," says New York trucking magnate Paul Pompa Jr., the original owner of Big Brown who in 2007 sold 75 percent of the horse to IEAH for $3 million. "He cares more about the horses than himself." But there was another side to Dutrow's rise that suggested something other than selfless affection for his horses. He habitually disregarded the rules of racing, even to the extent of endangering those under his care. There were drug positives every year since 2000, some minor and others more serious, like a 60-day suspension for giving his horses painkillers. While serving the ban he remained in contact with his barn, which won him another suspension and a $25,000 fine. In 2005, he conspired to hide the workouts of a horse named Wild Desert leading up to a major victory in Canada. Advertisement Workout times are published in racing programs; because of their importance to gamblers, they're supposed to be accurate. Dutrow ostensibly wanted to conceal from the public how well Wild Desert was training in the hopes of finding longer odds for his team on the day of the race. It was an elaborate fraud in which three of his assistants—Rudy Rodriguez, Juan Rodriguez, and Nevin—were fined at least $1,000 for their roles. They reported a false workout for Wild Desert at Monmouth Park, in New Jersey, when in fact the horse had never left Aqueduct. On another occasion, Wild Desert breezed before the official clocker had arrived. New Jersey officials would say that Dutrow and Rudy Rodriguez tried to mislead them in their investigation, and Dutrow was suspended 14 days and fined $5,000, while Rodriguez got a seven-day suspension and a $1,000 fine. The fines paled in comparison to the money the owners won on Wild Desert. I never heard Dutrow own up to any of his violations, other than a subtle admission to Pat Forde of ESPN.com before the 2008 Derby: "I've had so many different suspensions—half of them I deserved, half of them I didn't." His record didn't scare away owners; in fact, they were drawn to him by his win-at-all-costs approach. Turfwriters, too. Dutrow was always a colorful quote, seemingly honest and introspective; he called everyone "Babe," so that's what everyone nicknamed him in return. I often heard reporters say outright, "I like Rick." Advertisement Dutrow had a thing for fame and the big score, and he finally got it with Big Brown. The late-blooming bay colt was his first Derby starter, and leading up to the race Dutrow crowed that he had the winner, pledging that he would make a huge wager on Big Brown. He didn't bet much in the end, but he was right. "We did it, babe," Dutrow yelled to Big Brown's owners from across the third floor of the Churchill Downs grandstand. "Did you bet? Did you bet?" Advertisement "It is who he is," Michael Iavarone said after Big Brown's cakewalk in the Preakness. "Rick has a quirky confidence. He knows what he says is controversial, but I think he plays off it." Dutrow's high profile that Triple Crown spring forced a lot of racing's issues into the spotlight. (He admitted that Big Brown was on the anabolic steroid Winstrol—legal and not uncommon for the sport's top horses—but decided he wouldn't get his monthly shot before the Belmont.) Dutrow had all the modesty of a prizefighter, and the IEAH principals were also prone to bouts of noisy confidence. The still-blue-blooded racing establishment cringed. New money. Reporters liked Dutrow as a person, but it was impossible to cheer for this partnership. No turfwriter I knew wanted to see Big Brown be the one to finally win the Triple Crown. I watched the Belmont on a simulcast feed at a separate racetrack, and everybody nearby—the track's announcer, its publicity director, its official handicapper, and other insiders—whooped and hollered as Big Brown suffered a nightmare trip and was eased up in the stretch. Others in the game confided not so privately that they were happy to see Dutrow eat crow. Advertisement The attention Big Brown had brought to the sport quickly turned negative. Congress held a hearing on racing's problems; Dutrow was a no-show. Months later, it came out that one of his horses had tested positive in a stakes race at Churchill Downs the day before Big Brown won the Derby. He received a 15-day suspension. Eventually, Dutrow's dark clouds had to break. In February 2011, New York suspended him for 90 days after one of his horses had tested positive for a banned painkiller and three unmarked hypodermic needles containing muscle relaxant had been discovered in a search of his office. Ed Martin, the president of the Association of Racing Commissioners International, wrote a letter to the New York State and Racing Wagering Board urging it go further and ban Dutrow. "At some point, an individual who continues to violate the rules of racing forfeits through his own actions the ability to be in the game," Martin wrote. "At some point, enough is enough." Advertisement Even in a sport that has long brushed off this sort of behavior, enough was enough. The board asked Dutrow to make his case at a hearing, but despite a heartfelt statement of how much his horses meant to him, the board suspended his license for 10 years and fined him $50,000. One board member said at the time: "It seems Mr. Dutrow loved his horses, but he loved winning even more, and he broke our rules to win." Kentucky denied Dutrow a license, forcing other states to reciprocate. But he kept going to the winner's circle even as he appealed his New York ban. No trainer won more races at the premier New York tracks in 2012. His horses won more than $7.2 million that year, of which Dutrow collected his 10 percent share, and he continued to wager. This bordered on the absurd, except nobody seemed dismayed. Stories about Dutrow's stakes winners rarely mentioned his looming suspension, and his owners faced no censure. Dutrow struck a defiant tone. "I'm going to get out of it one way or another because I didn't do anything wrong," he told the Times in August 2012. "I'm clean." None of his peers would criticize him publicly, such is the racing fraternity. The last thing a trainer wants is an enemy in a nearby barn. Advertisement Dutrow's personality wouldn't let him fly under the radar. In February 2012 he and IEAH tried to enter a horse in a small stakes race at Charles Town in West Virginia, but Dutrow was told by track officials that without a license he wouldn't be allowed. The horse was entered, but under the name of Tony Dutrow, his brother. A quick investigation by Charles Town stewards revealed that the horse had never left Rick's barn. They called Tony and he admitted that he wasn't the trainer—he had never even laid eyes on the horse. "It was the kind of thing [Tony] could get fined or even suspended for," says one person who watched the farce unfold, "but it was as if Tony welcomed it" so his brother might learn a lesson. Later that night, Iavarone called the stewards and, ever smooth, tried to win them over. "What's the problem, guys?" he asked them, saying, "I don't want any trouble. I just want to know what I have to do to play by the rules." Which was funny, since anybody in racing for five minutes knows that correctly listing a horse's trainer is one of the most basic rules. Michael Iavaraone, the public face of IEAH, was a slick hustler and deal-maker who had claimed to be a high-rolling stockbroker, even though he'd traded only penny stocks. Richard Schiavo, who had actually worked at major Wall Street firms, was the sober, nuts-and-bolts man. Long Island natives, they started IEAH as a traditional syndicate in 2003, bringing together people to own fractions of a few cheap horses. Their first trainer was Greg Martin, the son of Hall of Fame trainer Frank "Pancho" Martin. They were spending peanuts then and claimed a 4-year-old gelding named A One Rocket at Aqueduct for $7,500 on Dec. 13, 2003. Just five days later, A One Rocket ran off the screen, winning by 10 lengths and improving his time by nearly two seconds. Advertisement A year later, in an indictment of an illegal gambling ring affiliated with the Gambino crime family, it emerged that A One Rocket's winning race that day was the focus of a federal investigation. Martin was charged with drugging the horse. Several people pleaded guilty, including Martin. IEAH and its principals weren't subjects of the investigation or charged with any wrongdoing, and they claimed to consider taking legal action against Martin. However, Martin had a suspicious record for anyone who cared to check, having served 60 days for medication violations after 2000. IEAH never followed through on its threatened lawsuit. When Martin had to give up his license in 2005, IEAH moved its six horses to other trainers—and ultimately to Dutrow. He seemed like a good match for IEAH's ambitions. Dutrow could win with cheap horses as often as he won with good horses, which was great if you didn't look too closely at how he did it. Advertisement Iavarone and Schiavo dreamed up the Ruffian hospital around this time. There was no surgical equine hospital on Long Island, so trainers sent injured horses to New Jersey or Pennsylvania. It was a good idea, in theory, but they were businessmen, not horsemen. "It was just another angle they had," says James Hunt, who has the largest private veterinary practice in New York racing and was hired to run the hospital. "Mike could literally sell you the shirt off your back," Hunt says. "And Richard Schiavo was the bean counter. He counted the money. But then some bad guys got involved. And they started calling the shots." James Tagliaferri punched Iavarone's ticket from nickel-and-dime races to the big time. They met during a social encounter at a Yankees game, according to the Times. Iavarone pitched Tagliaferri on his hospital as a potential investment, and Tagliaferri, who ran a highly regarded fund in Connecticut, was intrigued. Horses are illiquid assets, and the hospital would add a fixed income to IEAH's portfolio. And with Tagliaferri's cash, the quality of the horses they bought would set them apart. Advertisement "They did the overpay-for-proven-talent model," says Jamie LaMonica, the president of the Lexington-based Stallion Company, who brokered the recent deal for Three Chimneys to buy out IEAH's shares in Big Brown. "But they were certainly rewarded for it." Beginning in March 2007, Tagliaferri became IEAH's major backer. The stable started splashing around money, buying up good horses fresh off of impressive wins. This strategy doesn't come cheap, but it worked for a time. They paid $900,000 for Benny the Bull, who then won more than $2 million as the champion sprinter in 2008, and $525,000 for Kip Deville, who won the 2007 Breeders' Cup Mile and returned more than $3 million. There were other successes, like Wonder Lady Anne L, the daughter of Real Quiet, and Court Vision, through Secretariat and Northern Dancer. It was a spend-to-win philosophy that left no room for error; one bad purchase could erase all the gains. "We were keeping our heads above water putting partnerships together, but we didn't have enough money to keep large pieces for the company," Iavarone told the Times in the spring of 2008. "We exploded when Jim [Tagliaferri] gave us the money to grow." Advertisement It was common to hear rumors of decadent parties and runaway expenses. The hospital grew in scope and size, its price tag moving from $6 million to $18 million. "We tried to temper their exuberance," Hunt says. "But at that time, they thought everything they touched turned to gold." Tagliaferri said he was "betting on Mike's track record." But that record included unpaid taxes and outstanding bills and misrepresentation of his Wall Street experience and a fine for unauthorized trading. Some accounts suggested that Iavarone hooked Tagliaferri, but it seems more likely that it was the other way around. Tagliaferri was a well-known investor for some very wealthy people and successful businessmen, while the younger Iavarone was a product of boiler-room brokerages and the penny-stock game. Did Tagliferri see a mark for his fraud to come? Or an accomplice? Either way, this "explosion" of money meant a payoff for Tagliaferri. He had usually stuck to blue-chip stocks and municipal bonds, but he now shifted into private, illiquid companies, easier to control. From March 2007 to April 2008, he collected $1.6 million from IEAH for funneling his clients into the stable. But Tagliaferri didn't notify his clients of the arrangement, according to prosecutors, and in the spring of 2008 there was an inquiry by the SEC. Tagliaferri attempted to disguise these kickbacks as "consulting fees" by sending 14 back-dated invoices to IEAH. Advertisement Iavarone knew that no such consulting had been provided. He signed off anyway. In a sworn affidavit given a few years later, Iavarone said: Mr. Tagliaferri threatened me on a regular basis to close IEAH down if his wishes weren't met, and that he would 'pull his investors out' if we objected to anything. Because IEAH was in such precarious financial shape I was afraid to protest further. Over the course of one year, Tagliaferri placed more than $40 million into IEAH for at least a two-thirds stake in the stable. Tagliaferri would call the shots; he even made two allies directors for IEAH. Advertisement But the success on the track—Big Brown's Triple Crown attempt, $11 million in earnings in 2008, runner-up for owner of the year—was backed by unsustainable and ill-gotten funding. The ride ended with Big Brown. The week after his Derby win, the horse was sold as a stallion prospect to Three Chimneys for $50 million. IEAH excised its one proven commodity from its proposed hedge fund, signaling that it would never get off the ground. How could it go public when that meant shareholders would learn where their money came from? The following spring, IEAH paid $3.175 million to David Lanzman for a half-interest in I Want Revenge, who'd looked like another Big Brown after winning the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct, and they put in another $1 million after I Want Revenge won the Wood Memorial. The colt was the morning-line Derby favorite but scratched the day of the race with an ankle injury. He was never quite the same. IEAH ultimately bought out Lanzman, but spending close to $5 million on I Want Revenge—plus the lawsuits and counter-suits—had backfired. Advertisement "People have told me that I have a dispute with these guys," Lanzman told the Times in 2010. "Using that word is like saying Bernie Madoff's investors had a dispute with Bernie Madoff." Iavarone, in the same article, called Lanzman "a filthy animal" and said Lanzman would "sell his soul for a dime." This controversy did not augur well for the Ruffian hospital, even though it was a beautiful facility that spared no expense. There were two surgery rooms, a bone-scan machine, top-of-the line equipment, all of it presided over by one of the country's most respected equine surgeons, Dr. Patty Hogan. Schiavo loved it and was very hands-on, Hunt says, while Iavarone was mostly concerned with whether it was making money. But although it didn't carry the IEAH name when it opened in 2009, Hogan says there were horsemen who refused to support the hospital because of the stable's reputation. IEAH was facing lawsuits for unpaid invoices at the time, which hinted at how stretched its finances already were. Once the economy sank, IEAH was dependent on Tagliaferri and his majority stake. Tagliaferri controlled the flow of money—buying horses, selling horses, keeping the hospital afloat. Tagliaferri's ruse was nearing its expiration date. In December 2010, Matthew Szulik, the former CEO and chairman of software company Red Hat, filed suit, claiming Tagliaferri had defrauded him of $60 million, of which $20 million had gone to IEAH. Advertisement Szulik's suit painted an outlandish picture. Besides the horses, some of his money paid for a strip club in Mexico and the Beverly Hills house of Jason Galanis, listed in Tagliaferri's indictment as "Associate 1." Who was Galanis? Once called "Porn's New King" by Forbes, in 2007 he prepared a false quarterly report for Penthouse, and the SEC fined him $60,000 and barred him from serving as an officer of a public company for five years. Galanis and Tagliaferri had their hands in a number of shady businesses, all seemingly existing to funnel money to IEAH. Right after Szulik filed his lawsuit, IEAH tried to sell its business to Gerova, a Bermuda-based reinsurance company for which Galanis was in charge of mergers and acquisitions. What possible interest could this company have had in a horse stable? When Szulik inquired about the sale, IEAH called it off. Galanis and Gerova also had close ties to Westmoore Capital, a $53 million Ponzi scheme that the SEC shut down in June 2011. Gerova didn't last long either. Several investment firms asserted that it was fraudulent, citing Galanis's involvement as a red flag, and last August Gerova filed for bankruptcy protection in U.S. court. When Tagliaferri began feeling the heat, he moved money from deadbeat Fund.com, another Jason Galanis affiliate that traded on the pink sheets, into IEAH. According to prosecutors, Tagliaferri kept victims of his fraud in the dark by paying them with money from other clients. He wrote to Galanis that if he could get $5 or $10 million he could "probably ... stave off disaster." Advertisement As this played out, Iavarone and Schiavo continued to utilize Tagliaferri's money. In February 2010, IEAH faced a $237,000 insurance bill in order to keep its policy. Tagliaferri took care of it, prosecutors say, by using proceeds from Fund.com shares. The IEAH principals maintain that they were at the mercy of Tagliaferri, but they had long known where Tagliaferri got his money from and what trouble he was in. Going back to spring 2008, with the backdated invoices, they knew Tagliaferri was diverting some of his clients' money intended for IEAH into his own personal bank account as a commission, sometimes up to 10 percent, according to court records. Businessmen like Iavarone and Schiavo would have realized this was illegal. Jamie LaMonica says that one IEAH investor told him, "I got the ride of my life." But, LaMonica says, "He was taken pretty good. When it came time to give financial results, that's when people got disenchanted." Advertisement The gig was up for Tagliaferri by the end of 2010, when Szulik's lawsuit was filed, and IEAH's pot began to evaporate. According to court filings, Tagliaferri's fund went from $261 million to $9 million in one year. The recession had owners of all stripes taking money out of racing, and even IEAH's legitimate investors were tapped. Iavarone and Schiavo had to raise cash, and quickly. In early 2011, Jim Hunt asked for more money for the hospital, but he was told there wasn't any. The hospital was closed. IEAH's horses made only a half-million dollars on the track in 2011. It ran a pinhooking operation, which entails buying unraced horses and selling them for a profit after some schooling. Last year, Iavarone tried unloading this to the American Basketball Association, of all places. Iavarone and ABA commissioner Joe Newman are friends from their time working together at a Long Island brokerage firm. The deal didn't go through. It was too complex, Newman told me, the price too high. Then, in the greatest of ironies, IEAH sold its interest in Big Brown only five days after Dutrow's license was finally revoked. The only keepsake was that little sign at Aqueduct. Advertisement Many trainers and owners still vigorously support Dutrow, in part because they believe there was a double standard at play. Dutrow's punishment was remarkably severe compared with the penalties levied on other big-name trainers, such as Patrick Biancone and Steve Asmussen, who have avoided serious punishment despite similar, if less prolific, violations. The difference was that Dutrow was the most famous and could be held up as an example that the sport was trying to clean itself up. "I'm a stupid talker," he told the Times last summer. "That's probably part of the reason I'm in this jam. But now I'm in it, and I got to fight." Advertisement Paul Pompa, one of Dutrow's owners, believes it was "disgraceful" how Dutrow was treated. "You go into a bar, get drunk, get in a car and run somebody over, and you don't get 10 years," he says. "They took away his livelihood." Pompa pauses to think. "He must have pissed somebody off the along the way, right?" In February, as a last-ditch effort, Dutrow filed a lawsuit in a Brooklyn federal court seeking to overturn his suspension. His lawyers allege that Dutrow was the victim of a concerted effort by officials, led by John Sabini, then-chairman of the state racing commission, to run him off the track. The investigator for Dutrow's lawyers told me they will provide evidence that the syringes found in Dutrow's barn were the result of a setup. "This is no longer just a racetrack case," he says. "Somebody is going to jail for this." In the meantime, Dutrow still can't be anywhere near the track or contact his former employees, and his brother Tony says that Rick doesn't know what to do with himself. Advertisement "It's just like A-Rod," Rick Dutrow said to the Daily Racing Form the day before his suspension began. "Some people love him, some people hate him, some people don't care. It's been like that all my life. "A lot of people like me, a lot of people don't. A lot of people don't care. If you would ask my horses, all of them love me, all of them. That's why I'm here—for the horses." His human friends aren't in better shape. Tagliaferri faces up to 20 years in prison, effectively a life sentence at his age. In a recent interview with The Paulick Report, Iavarone said IEAH was still paying the taxes on and the costs of upkeep for the shuttered Ruffian hospital. After hoping to break even selling it, Iavarone auctioned it off. It fetched $2.6 million for the land, the building, and all the medical equipment, a small fraction of what he had put into it. He has no choice but to take the offer. IEAH is done for. "We've taken $30 million out of our cash flow and it's put us in a position where operating is impossible," Iavarone said. Advertisement Few people are mourning that loss. The racing establishment, Hunt says, "revels in the fact that IEAH has basically gone under." When asked for comment, Iavarone said he was not available, while Schiavo did not return several messages. About the only winners are Three Chimneys Farm and Big Brown, who is popular enough that he shuttles annually between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, satisfying his black book twice a day, for a $35,000 fee per foal. But even Big Brown is tainted—as Dutrow and IEAH fell, so did the stallion's stud fees, from a 2009 high of $65,000. Advertisement But the beat goes on. Many of Dutrow's owners went to his former employee Rudy Rodriguez, who struck out on his own a few years ago. When Dutrow vacated Barn 10 at Aqueduct, Rodriguez moved in. He's already one of New York's most successful trainers but has dodged familiar allegations along the way. He recently served a 20-day suspension for two drug positives. Then came a third, though his lawyer claims someone got to Rodriguez's horse. A fourth positive was announced a few weeks ago. Last month, Rodriguez went to the Kentucky Derby for the first time, with a horse named Vyjack. Kentucky officials decided to grant Rodriguez a license, but with an unprecedented condition: Vyjack must have around-the-clock video surveillance. He drew the outside post for the Derby, same as Big Brown had five years earlier, but the outcome was poles apart. Vyjack finished 18th of 19 horses. Ryan Goldberg is an award-winning freelance journalist and has been following horse racing since ducking security as a teenager to bet the races at Monmouth Park. He lives in Brooklyn and is a sometime presence on Twitter at @goldbergryan. Advertisement James Tagliaferri criminal indictment Tagliaferri SEC report Advertisement Michael Iavarone affidavit |
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