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“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.” — Sun Tzu There are two kinds of player-versus-player combat in New Eden: fights, in which both participants willingly commit to the engagement, and ganks, in which one side is attempting to avoid combat. Ganking ratters and miners can be a satisfying and profitable occupation in its own right, but as a solo combatant, finding hostile pilots or gangs that are both willing to engage and possible to engage can be a frustrating experience. There’s a simple reason for this, of course: pilots and gang leaders won’t usually take a fight they aren’t convinced they will win. Since you as a solo pilot also want a victory, you must somehow conceal your strength to draw an overconfident opponent into a fight. In solo engagements, your greatest asset is therefore being underestimated. A Trip To The Junkyard Let’s have a look at one of the most consistently underestimated ships in the game: the Stabber. A 5% rate-of-fire bonus for medium projectiles, giving us a total of +33% damage with Minmatar Cruiser V, and a 10% falloff bonus (also for medium projectiles), giving us +50% falloff overall. The hull’s base speed is also a stunning 290m/s, compared to 240m/s on the Thorax, 235m/s on the Omen, and 230m/s on the Caracal. Since the damage on autocannons is lower than any other short-range weapon system, we’re left with an extremely unimpressive 293 dps on paper with the largest-caliber weapons and two gyrostabilizers, using short-range faction ammo. For comparison again, the Omen puts out 339 dps under similar conditions, the Caracal with assault missiles fitted dishes out 395 dps, and the Thorax deals a stunning 468 dps with Neutron blasters. Given the slim effective HP on the Stabber (21,300 with double large shield extenders and resist rigs), on paper, we’re looking at a thoroughly unimpressive ship, and one that any of the other attack cruisers should happily engage one-on-one. The key to the Stabber lies in the falloff bonus and the base speed. Using 220mm autocannons, even short-range ammunition has its first falloff at nearly 20km, and Barrage ammunition reaches to nearly 30km before first falloff. It’s also extremely fast when fitted for it: with a microwarp drive and a single nanofiber internal structure fitted, the Stabber can go a blistering 2664m/s, a speed that puts it on par with many combat frigates. Choosing The Battleground If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. — Sun Tzu Let us take a moment to imagine an engagement: on one side yourself, the noble Stabber pilot, and on the other side a small gang — for the sake of argument, let’s assume five, composed like so: an Atron, a Coercer, a Vexor, a Rupture, and a Dominix. It ought to be obvious that you can’t engage this gang head-on: three of these ships (the Vexor, the Rupture, and the Dominix) can handily defeat you in terms of damage output and tank by themselves. The opposing gang leader will also be well-aware of this. Since you can’t take this gang, size up the individual members. The Atron you can easily kill if you can separate her from the gang; the Coercer you can probably also defeat, and the other three you can’t really engage at all. So how to separate the Atron and the Coercer from the rest? The secret lies in your speed. Of these ships, only the Atron is faster than you. To draw her away from her gang, warp in at a distance (100km), and begin to align away from the mass of their gang. Unless he is quite cautious, her fleet commander will likely order her to burn after you and establish tackle, assuming rightly that if he can get his gang atop you, he can kill you easily. Once the Atron begins to burn after you, she begins to separate from her gang (who are all substantially slower than she is). She’s faster than you, so she will catch you eventually, but — and here’s the key — to do so, she has to chase more or less directly after you with her microwarp drive on, blooming her signature radius dramatically and reducing her transversal against you. Loading your longer-range ammunition, you can begin applying significant damage even with her at 50km or more. At this point, three things can happen: the Atron pilot can warp off when she starts taking significant damage, the Atron pilot can get on top of you, or the Atron pilot can lose her ship. At this point things begin to get interesting, so let’s look at a fleshed-out Stabber fit: http://pastebin.com/dkPadLXB. Every part of this fit has a role to play in this fight, but in particular, our secret weapons are in one of our utility high slots and in our cargo bay. The medium neutralizer we have drains 180GJ of capacitor every 12 seconds, emptying the Atron pilot’s capacitor (if she has perfect skills and starts at full capacitor!) in just two cycles. Without any capacitor, she can’t use her microwarp drive or any tackle modules she may have fitted, which preserves our ability to escape from the fight. Our other weapon against her is Titanium Sabot ammunition (faction, naturally), which provides a 20% tracking bonus compared to regular ammunition. With the bonus from this ammunition provides, the guns on the linked fit have a tracking speed of 0.199, or about a third of that of a frigate, so we still can’t track the Atron pilot up close, although it helps. Our last ingredient is a bit of fancy piloting: as long as we can keep some distance from the Atron, we can pull her back into a tail chase, which will reduce her transversal and increase our damage application. Unless she’s inside 12km or so (which is our neutralizer range), she can’t apply any sort of hard tackle to us, which dooms the rest of her gang to being slower than us. Of course, if the Atron pilot is very skilled, she may still get atop us and establish hard tackle, at which point it’s more or less game over for us unless we can get away before the rest of her gang lands, but sometimes so it goes. Baiting For A Fight If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. — Sun Tzu His tackle lost, the enemy commander may at this point decide to simply leave you be; an Atron is a fine kill but not terribly impressive for a cruiser pilot. At this point, the hostile gang leader will be somewhat frustrated with having lost his tackle, as he now has no ship capable of chasing you down. To turn your one kill into many, you need a way to apply pressure to force him to fight while you pretend to be killable. My personal favorite way to apply pressure is simply to be in a popular ratting system at a highly visible location (say, a couple hundred kilometers off the station undock), aligned towards a safespot. The enemy commander has two choices to engage you: he can attempt to chase you down with a faster ship again, letting you replay the same engagement, or he can attempt to probe you down and warp heavier ships atop you directly. You already know how to deal with a chasing tackler, so let’s address probes. On its face this seems like a dangerous counter to your tactics, since it negates your advantage of distance, but there’s a critical weakness in it which you can exploit: all ships which can warp while cloaked, except for stealth bombers, have a delay after decloaking before they can lock you. If you are aligned, you can easily warp before any non-bomber can tackle you after decloaking, or before any conventional gang lands on you — but suppose a bomber does tackle you. It is unusual for bombers to fit hard tackle, so most likely you will find yourself only pointed; a quick cycle of your microwarp drive will take you out of danger and then you are faced with a slow, undertanked frigate-size target 30ish kilometers from you, which you should be easily able to handle by now. As such, be always vigilant for combat probes on your directional scanner, but do not worry overmuch about them; repeatedly warping right as his heavy assets lands will frustrate the enemy commander and make him careless, as will losing bombers if he tries to use them to tackle you before you can warp out. Talking In Local In order to encourage the enemy to engage you, it is useful to be insufferable in Local; do not let the enemy forget your presence, and always remind them of your inferiority. It is usually unwise to be negative; instead, play the honourable pirate, offering a “good fight” in Local after every enemy ship dies. It is likely the enemy will tire of you and begin insulting you; when this happens, further kills are at hand, for frustration makes a commander overly aggressive. In all cases, be relentlessly cheery and friendly, and be forthcoming about your own weaknesses; by admitting to gaps in your own skills, or discussing your previous losses, you build your opponent’s confidence while helping keep your own ego detached from the fight. Remember that you want him to underestimate you to draw him into a fight he cannot win. Time To Leave This particular style of combat is versatile and can be made to work against many opponents, but there are certain situations you should be careful to avoid or to exit as rapidly as possible. Cynabals and Vagabonds: these are the grown-up versions of your ship; faster, tougher, and more deadly. They can catch you, and having caught you they can kill you. these are the grown-up versions of your ship; faster, tougher, and more deadly. They can catch you, and having caught you they can kill you. Huginns, Rapiers, Arazus, and Lacheses: these recons can apply hard tackle to you at positively horrifying ranges, preventing you from outrunning a heavier gang — and given their own relative toughness, once one of them lands hard tackle on you, you can’t likely kill it before the rest of their gang catches up. these recons can apply hard tackle to you at positively horrifying ranges, preventing you from outrunning a heavier gang — and given their own relative toughness, once one of them lands hard tackle on you, you can’t likely kill it before the rest of their gang catches up. Crucifiers, Arbitrators, Pilgrims, and Curses: the bonused tracking disruptors on these ships will destroy your damage projection from far out of your own range and (at least in the case of the Crucifier) you cannot outrun them either. the bonused tracking disruptors on these ships will destroy your damage projection from far out of your own range and (at least in the case of the Crucifier) you cannot outrun them either. Many (3+) interceptors: you may kill one of them, but the other two are likely to be on top of you, and you will have only a matter of seconds before the rest of their gang will join them. you may kill one of them, but the other two are likely to be on top of you, and you will have only a matter of seconds before the rest of their gang will join them. Skirmish links: if the enemy has Skirmish gang links and you do not, you cannot kite effectively; enemy ships will be much faster and more agile than you. Enemy skirmish links put you into the unpleasant realm of being caught by hostile combat cruisers, which are easily a match for your own ship. Wrap-Up Despite its poor paper statistics, I hope this brief guide has made it clear that the Stabber can be a deadly weapon in the right hands for engaging even multiple heavier enemies. But Wait! There’s More! A friend points out I’d forgotten to list my cargo, so here it is: |
SATURDAY, 12:17PM: The move is official, as per a Blue Jays press release. SATURDAY, 11:59AM: Floyd’s deal with the Jays is a Major League contract, Gideon Turk of Blue Jays Plus was first to report (via Twitter). Floyd will earn a $1MM base salary and can get up to $1MM in incentives based on how many days he spends in the 25-man roster. He’ll also receive $500K for 90 days on the roster, $250K for 120 days and another $250K for 140 days, per Jon Heyman (Twitter links). THURSDAY: Right-hander Gavin Floyd “appears headed for [a] deal with [the] Blue Jays,” Jon Heyman reports (on Twitter). SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo tweets that the Moye Sports client is indeed in agreement with the Jays, pending a physical. Floyd, who turned 33 just last week, would serve as a back-of-the-rotation option for the Blue Jays, though it’s tough to imagine he’d be promised a spot in the starting five after throwing just 92 Major League innings across the past three seasons. The longtime White Sox righty underwent Tommy John surgery early in the 2013 season and returned with a flourish with the Braves in 2014 (2.65 ERA in 54 1/3 innings) before missing the remainder of the season due to a fractured olecranon bone in his right elbow. Somewhat astoundingly, Floyd suffered the exact same injury in Spring Training with the Indians last year. He was thought to be lost for the season, although he did return to toss 13 1/3 effective innings of relief late in the year. Given the lengthy list of recent injuries, Floyd seemed like a candidate for a minor league deal, though details on his agreement with Toronto remain unclear. At his best, Floyd has proven to be a highly capable mid-rotation arm, although it’s obviously been quite some time since he was healthy enough to display that over the course of a full season. Nevertheless, from 2008-12, Floyd averaged 190 innings of 4.12 ERA ball with 7.2 K/9, 2.8 BB/9 and a 45.1 percent ground-ball rate. When adjusting for Floyd’s hitter-friendly home park and the heightened offensive output league-wide during that period, Floyd was about eight percent better than the league-average pitcher in terms of both ERA and FIP. Clearly, president of baseball operations Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins, both former executives with the Indians, think highly of Floyd, as this is the second time he’s signed with a team under that duo’s leadership. Floyd had reportedly drawn interest from the division-rival Orioles on a minor league pact earlier this offseason and had also been speculatively mentioned as a fit for the Rangers, among other clubs. Floyd will look to crack a rotation that currently has Marcus Stroman, R.A. Dickey, Marco Estrada and J.A. Happ locked in place. Toronto has no shortage of candidates for the fifth spot, with Drew Hutchison, Jesse Chavez and Aaron Sanchez representing rotation options on the 40-man roster (to say nothing of non-roster invitees like Scott Diamond, Roberto Hernandez, Wade LeBlanc and Brad Penny as potential depth pieces to stash at Triple-A). |
About a week before the Coleses made their surprise discovery in Kent, I went to a hotel in south London to visit Samuel, a gentle-voiced man in his early thirties who came from the city of Debarwa, Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa. I had first met him in August when he was still on the French side of the Channel. Samuel told me that a few weeks after this, in late August, he had walked to a lorry park a few miles outside Calais, near the approach road to the Channel Tunnel. In the darkness, as the drivers slept, he found a suitable vehicle. It was a large container lorry, with three pairs of wheels at each end and a detachable cab; the kind you see everywhere on Europe’s roads. They are like the red blood cells of our motorways, carrying goods that keep our high-street shops full, our restaurants cooking, and our building sites building. They are also popular with stowaways, and contain several places where a person can be concealed. Of these, the most obvious is inside the container itself, among the cargo, but this is difficult. The back doors are usually locked and breaking in is noisy. In Calais, some criminal gangs have keys that will open these doors, but they charge between €500 and €7,000 a time and often steal the migrants’ money. Some people try to run after the lorries and open the doors when the vehicle is in motion but this, too, is hard. Instead, many others try to hide on the underside of the lorries, crawling below the back section and maneuvering their bodies on top of the rear wheel axle. There is just enough space to hide here, lying above the axles and balancing with your hands and feet on top of the wheel arches on either side of the vehicle. (The young man who hid under the Coles family’s motor home probably used a similar method.) It is not easy to hold on, particularly when the vehicle is moving, and those who fall off risk being crushed to death under the wheels. Six other Eritrean men were with Samuel that night, which meant they could push one another forward, along the narrow gap that separates the rear axle from the underside of the container above, until they reached the middle of the vehicle. Most lorries of this type have an extra storage space there, in between the two sets of wheels—a metal frame that holds a box or a spare tire—and it was on top of one of these boxes that the six men squeezed together. “You couldn’t move your arms,” Samuel recalled, “and there wasn’t much air to breathe.” The men hid at midnight and the lorry did not move until 5 am, and in all that time they dared not move or make a sound, for fear of being discovered. Once on the motorway, the breeze allowed Samuel and his companions some fresh air, but they still had to remain concealed for another four hours as the lorry was transported by train through the tunnel and towards its destination in England. When they reached Kent, the men started banging on the container to alert the driver, but it was only when the lorry reached its depot several hours later that a staff member heard them, helped them climb out, and called the police. Samuel told officers that he was a refugee and wanted to claim asylum; they kept him in cells overnight before handing him over to immigration enforcement staff, who took him to London. When I arrived at the hotel in the Crystal Palace area to meet Samuel, I was surprised to find an ornate white Victorian building near a park, with a blue plaque on the front wall noting that the French novelist Émile Zola had once lived there. A friend who resides nearby told me later that the hotel usually hosted coachloads of German schoolchildren. But recently it had been rented by the Home Office, an early sign of a crisis, news of which reached the media a few weeks subsequently. Companies contracted to provide housing for asylum-seekers (the system was privatized in 2012) had been failing to do so, forcing the Home Office to step in and find accommodation at short notice for hundreds of people. This led to a flurry of headlines about asylum-seekers being housed in “luxury” hotels. In reality, their living conditions were crowded and dirty. Some 600 people had been placed in Crystal Palace, even though the hotel had only 98 bedrooms. Samuel and I walked along the high street to find a café where he could sit and tell me about his journey. The night underneath the lorry was only the last stage of a 9,000-kilometer odyssey, during which he witnessed a friend die of thirst in the Sahara Desert, squeezed into a leaking smuggler boat to cross the Mediterranean from Libya, and was so badly beaten by French police that he needed hospital treatment. Tens of thousands of Eritreans, men and women, make similar journeys to Europe every year to escape from compulsory military service, which can last for up to 25 years in their country. This year so far, 37,000 Eritreans have come to Europe to seek asylum, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, making them the second-largest refugee group after Syrians. Most of the Eritreans go to Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland, not Britain. While still in France, Samuel told me why he’d wanted to reach the U.K.: he spoke English and he had heard there were jobs here—he was willing to do anything to earn a living. France was less attractive; he had friends who had been left living on the street because of a housing shortage in the asylum system. But Samuel had no idea how Britain’s asylum process worked, and now seemed bemused to have ended up where he was. The biggest shock of all was discovering that most of the others in the hotel had made much simpler journeys. If you have the money to apply for a visa, or to buy false documents, you can travel to the U.K. through a legal route and then claim asylum on arrival. Airports are the single biggest route into Europe for irregular migrants, according to the EU border agency Frontex. “Our journey is very long,” Samuel told me, referring to those who traverse the Sahara. “We cross many countries, sacrifice our life. But many people in the hotel arrived on flights. When they hear about us, they are surprised—they say our life is already passed.” The next day I caught the P&O ferry from Dover to Calais, at the start of a weekend of protests there. Until May, the first thing you would have seen on leaving the French port on foot towards the town center was a makeshift tent camp, home to several hundred migrants. Others lived elsewhere in the town, in squatted buildings and self-built camps. Most had come from countries where conflicts or internal repression were rife, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Eritrea, and Sudan. As the volume of migrants living rough in Calais grew steadily leading up to the summer, the police demolished the tent village and several other camps, sometimes using tear gas to clear them. Riot police had been sent to patrol Calais, and the migrants complained of rough treatment. On the Friday afternoon, around 150 migrants from Sudan and Eritrea marched through the terraced streets of working-class Calais chanting, “We want human rights!” under the impassive, occasionally hostile gaze of the town’s people. Every now and then, the protesters would switch to a chant of “U.K.! U.K.! U.K.!” Two days later, on the Sunday, the anti-migrant group Sauvons Calais (“let’s save Calais”) held a rally outside the town hall, with the support of activists from several extreme-right political parties who had been bused in. As their leaders addressed the crowd, calling for fire hoses to cleanse the town and blaming the traitors and “collaborators” in government who had allegedly opened the door to migrants, a group of masked anti-fascists tried to attack the gathering, but was stopped by police. Calais has long been a stopping point for undocumented migrants hoping to reach the U.K. In 2002, after a flurry of negative press coverage, the British government pressured France into closing a Red Cross camp at Sangatte, just outside the town, because it was deemed to be attracting migrants. Since then, the local policy has been one of deterrence, by making conditions as harsh as possible for the unwanted visitors. But as migrant numbers in Calais have recently swelled—from a few hundred last winter to the present high of well over 2,000—the sight of destitute refugees trying increasingly desperate methods to reach the U.K. has drawn unwelcome attention. Fights have broken out between migrants of different nationalities as they compete for access to the lorry parks. To circumvent the smuggler gangs, groups of migrants have tried running into the ferry port en masse, hoping that a few of them will be able to hide before the police catch them. On the Saturday between the two protests, I visited one of the largest migrant squats, a former scrap metal yard nicknamed Fort Galoo, after the name of the company that was once based there. It had been reclaimed by members of the pan-European No Borders Network, who work to disrupt what they see as unacceptable state controls on migrants. Fort Galoo was surrounded by high walls, with a small office building in one corner. On its ground floor was a generator surrounded by a spaghetti junction of extension cables. At sunset the power would be turned on for a few hours and a scrum would develop as the migrants crowded round to charge their phones. About 100 people, mainly East Africans, lived upstairs or in tents in the courtyard. There was a fire hose, still connected to the mains, for washing, and a few toilets donated by the charity Médecins du Monde. Two ageing portable buildings had been made into women-only living quarters. Female migrants are in the minority in Calais but face extra hardships: they run the risk of sexual harassment or assault and because they tend to avoid the more physically demanding methods of hiding, such as hanging beneath vehicles, they are open to exploitation by people smugglers. Looking around the yard, I noticed a group of men and women sitting on plastic chairs in a semicircle. They were being lectured by a man who was writing out French phrases on a whiteboard. He wore a shabby corduroy jacket and spoke to his audience in Arabic-accented English, ostentatiously pronouncing phrases such as “education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” Mekki was originally from Sudan and now resident in Calais, and he came to the squat most days to give the residents language lessons to help them negotiate life in France and Britain. He did this for free: in Calais, there is a whole community of volunteers, from the No Borders radicals to individual well-wishers, who help feed, clothe, and advise the migrants. During a break in the lesson I chatted with some of Mekki’s students. They asked me to conceal their identities. The first was a middle-aged woman from an East African country, who wore a matching blue-patterned dress and headscarf and had been carefully writing down phrases in an exercise book. She told me she had been a scientist studying how to increase grain output in her famine-prone home region. But a government crackdown on her ethnic group had disrupted her work. So one day she left home, traveled overland to Egypt, and took a boat across the Mediterranean. She had two teenage sons, and the first they knew of her plan was when she phoned them a fortnight after she left and said, “I’m in Calais.” Why not stay in France? I asked. She looked at me a little sternly. “I’m 40 years old,” she said. “Language is the main problem. I speak English, not French. I can’t start ‘A, B, C’ again if I want to do a PhD.” By now, Mekki was ready to begin teaching again. He asked me to come to the front and explain the meaning of some English proverbs he had written on the board. I read them out and the students repeated them softly in unison: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.” As they did so, I recognized some of the people who had been chanting angrily at the migrants’ demonstration a day earlier. The last proverb was one I had not heard before: “A bush grows best where its roots are.” I could not resist asking: this one was wrong, wasn’t it? Surely people can feel at home wherever they settle. A dozen people looked up at me and shook their heads. Say “refugee,” and usually it evokes a sympathetic image: a terrified family on the run from a war zone, in urgent need of protection. Say “economic migrant”, however, and the picture gets murkier. If they are fleeing poverty and not war, so what? Do we owe them a living? Are they even here to work, or just to scrounge off our welfare systems? But it is possible to be one and the same thing. Several hundred thousand people apply for asylum in Europe each year, but once there, refugees need the same things as the rest of us: not just shelter, but a chance to build a life. Many try to do what millions of EU citizens do every year and travel to the parts of Europe where they think they have the best chance of achieving that. Standing in their way is a treaty known as the Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that refugees must claim asylum in the first EU country they enter. When they first claim asylum, their fingerprints are taken and placed in a Europe-wide database: if a refugee is stopped in, say, Sweden, but the database shows that he first arrived in Italy, he can be sent back there. The Home Office told me that over 12,000 asylum-seekers have been removed from Britain under the Dublin Regulation since it came into force in 2003. The system does not always work. In late September, a young Sudanese man contacted me on Skype. “Hassan” and I had first met in February, when he was living under a bridge by the canal that rings the center of Calais. He spoke good English, and loved American R’n’B. “I don’t like hip-hop, I can’t understand the words,” he’d said. “Except Eminem. ‘Lose Yourself’, from 8 Mile? Beautiful. I go to the internet and read his lyrics and sometimes I think they’re to do with me.” Hassan had a Twitter account, so we swapped details. But the account remained silent for months, and I had begun to wonder where he was. Had he become a casualty on the motorway outside Calais? Then one day in August, I saw a tweet: “Fuck the police! They ain’t shit but a legal gang.” Hassan, now 23, had spent almost his whole adult life in Europe. When he was 18 and still living near Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, he was briefly arrested on suspicion of being a member of a rebel militia. It was a case of mistaken identity, he said, but the police put him under surveillance. He fled to Turkey on a false passport and then to Patras in Greece, where he claimed asylum. That was in 2009, the year after the global financial crash, an event that exposed profound inequalities between EU member states and sent hundreds of thousands of Greek citizens abroad in search of work. Hassan needed to work for a living, too, but he faced a double bind. First, the growth of racism in Greece had made daily life intolerable for him and other black immigrants, as they faced frequent harassment from the police and supporters of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement. Second, Greece’s dysfunctional asylum system left refugees for years at a time with “temporary” identification documents that gave them no right to travel. In early 2014, Hassan decided he needed to get to Britain. He had cousins in Cardiff and he wanted to study to become a film director. At Patras, a port city that faces western Europe, he sneaked on to a ferry bound for Italy and hid beneath a lorry. To know which Italian port you’ll arrive at from Patras, you have to count the hours the journey takes: 24 hours and you are in Ancona; if it is 35 hours—as it was for Hassan—you have reached Venice. During the entire voyage he had to stay out of sight, scooping water from the floor when he got thirsty. It was night when Hassan arrived at the port of Venice, which is some distance from the city itself. On the road in, police asked to see his documents. All Hassan had was his “pink paper,” the temporary document issued to refugees in Greece. The police could have arrested him but they chose not to: a 2011 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Greece detains refugees in inhumane conditions has led to most EU states suspending Dublin returns there. National courts also sometimes consider other economically struggling countries on the edges of the EU—Bulgaria, sometimes even Italy—unsuitable for returns. The deep inequalities within Europe have thrown the Dublin system into crisis. After walking for several hours, Hassan reached the outskirts of Venice—an industrial sprawl built inland from the historic city—where he came across a Bangladeshi man. Hassan asked him for directions to the nearest mosque. He was tired, hungry, and cold and had only €2 in his pocket. At the mosque he told the imam his story. Wait here, the imam said; after people have come to pray we will have a collection for you so you can buy a train ticket to Milan. Italy’s second-largest city, Milan has become a hub for migrants who want to make clandestine journeys to northern Europe. It is a ten-hour drive to Berlin from there, or just eight to Paris. Syrian refugees here often try to reach Sweden or Germany, where they have a good chance of being granted asylum. Others with less certain claims might head for London, where they have heard there is work available on the black market. Milan is a multicultural city and a newly arrived migrant can find people from similar backgrounds who are willing to help. Europe’s police forces are aware of these underground networks: on 13 October, 25 EU states launched a two-week operation to round up, detain, and deport “irregular” migrants and to gather intelligence on their methods of travel. When Hassan reached Milan, he met an Eritrean man outside the train station who took him to a part of the city where other Sudanese people lived. He stayed there for five days until a relative was able to wire him money, then he caught a train to Ventimiglia, the last stop on the coastal line that leads into France. There has not been much of a border there since the Schengen Agreement, but in 2011 the French government temporarily blocked trains coming from Italy because of the number of undocumented migrants on them. When Hassan crossed, the border was open: he caught a train from Ventimiglia to Nice, and then Paris. After three days sleeping on top of the air vents outside a Métro station, he boarded another train, to Calais. When we talked over Skype in late September, I asked Hassan what had happened during the months when we had lost contact. “I began getting tired of trying and failing to get into the U.K.,” he told me. Every time he hid under a lorry, it turned out to be going to the Netherlands. “The more you fail, the more upsetting it is to have to walk back to Calais in the morning.” He was on the verge of giving up when a friend told him that refugees in Scandinavia were treated better than in Britain, and suggested he go there. He went back to Paris and paid a Sudanese contact €500 to drive him to Denmark. He was living in a refugee reception center outside Copenhagen when we spoke, and was happy about where he had ended up. “They know we have come from struggles,” Hassan said, “and they don’t want us to be in our rooms all day on the internet. They teach us Danish; they really want us to learn the language.” In early October I visited Augusta, a port on the east coast of Sicily. On the quayside, a yellow powder that stained the tarmac was swept upwards by the breeze, stinging my eyes. It was sulfur, a by-product of the oil refineries a few miles south from where I stood, watching people disembark from an Italian navy patrol boat and taking their first steps on European soil. There were more than 100 of them: families with young children from Syria and Gaza; teenage boys and young men from Sudan; young women from Somalia. Some had only the clothes they were wearing, while others carried small bags of possessions. A few were so weak that they had to be carried off the boat. One Arab man strode down the metal walkway with a laptop briefcase as if he was on his way to the office. Augusta is one of Italy’s major commercial ports. Its fate has long been linked with events in North Africa. In the past decade many European powers, including Britain, sought to strike deals with the oil-rich regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi, but Italy was the single biggest beneficiary. At one point a third of the country’s energy requirements were met by Libyan oil, much of which passed through ports such as Augusta. Other deals were struck, too: in 2008, under an agreement between Gaddafi and Italy’s then prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, Libya committed to halting the flow of migrants setting sail for Europe from its Mediterranean coast. Since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, that deal has unraveled. Libya’s coast is now a major launching point for smuggler boats carrying migrants across the Mediterranean. The frequency of such crossings has increased as the world experiences its worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. It is no longer possible to claim asylum at the overseas embassies of most European states, and the EU has been investing heavily in fences and surveillance at its land borders, which pushes more people to attempt journeys by sea. Europe takes only a small proportion of the world’s refugees—some 86 percent are hosted by developing countries, according to UNHCR—but the Mediterranean is the world’s most deadly route for migrants. More than 3,000 people drowned there last year. In October 2013, after one particularly deadly sinking off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, the Italian navy launched Mare Nostrum, a search-and-rescue operation to find migrants at sea and bring them to land at ports such as Augusta. At the quayside, police officers wearing medical face masks and stab vests gave the signal to move. Nobody said much as we walked away from the water’s edge towards a white tent that offered shelter from the midday sun. The migrants, I later discovered, had been lost at sea for a week. Now, all you could hear was the slow tramp of feet over tarmac. A man turned round to me and asked if I had any cigarettes. His name was El Haji, he said, from Darfur. “You’re from London? See you there,” he joked. Already these people were being monitored and tracked by EU officials. Their final destinations would be determined by their wealth and their ability to negotiate Europe’s asylum system. Those with the money would pay €800 for a taxi ride from Sicily to Milan. Others would try to make their way up the Italian mainland in stages. Many would stay in Italy and chance their luck in a country with a weak economy, already struggling to accommodate the 150,000 or more refugees who had arrived on its shores this year. First, though, they needed to be documented. Outside the white tent the refugees were told to sit on the floor, in the sun, as they waited to be registered and fingerprinted. Even in October, temperatures in Sicily can reach 30°. A Syrian man who had a baby boy strapped to his chest in a sling asked for some sunscreen but was told to wait. The heat got too much for him and he started walking unsteadily towards a medical tent run by Médecins sans Frontières. His wife walked with him, taking hold of their son. When the man was a few meters away from the tent, he took back his boy and held him, somewhat defiantly, for the last few paces. As he reached the doctors, they took his son and pointed towards a camp bed. He collapsed on to it. The next day, I visited the old town in Augusta, at the end of a peninsula on the other side of the bay from the port. On a dusty road buckled by an earthquake that shook the town over a decade ago, I found an old school building that had been hurriedly pressed back into service to house children rescued from the sea without their parents. Under Italian law, adult refugees and their families can be put up at reception centers around the country, but unaccompanied minors must be looked after by the local council in the town where they arrive. About 4,000 of these minors, mainly boys, had passed through Augusta since the start of Mare Nostrum; nearly 3,000 were being looked after; the rest were unaccounted for. There were several dozen teenage boys living at the school when I visited. Most came from West Africa; there were smaller groups from Egypt and Bangladesh. They slept on camp beds, ten to a room, and the building was left unsupervised in the evenings and at weekends. They got three meals a day, but no money, and spent much of their time wandering around the town, begging outside supermarket doorways. The people of Augusta were generous, if disturbed by the humanitarian crisis unfolding on their doorstep. The boys pooled their money to buy cheap smartphones, and in the evenings, some of them would sit in a row on tiny primary-school chairs outside the school gates, trying to catch a wifi signal from the pizza shop opposite. They chatted on Facebook with friends and family back in their home countries, and posted photos of themselves pretending to buy expensive clothes and electronic goods in the shops on Augusta’s main street. One of the boys, Ibrahim, was 17 and from Guinea, a poor country with rich natural resources including bauxite ore, the raw material for aluminium, without which modern travel—in trains, aeroplanes, lorries, boats, and camper vans—would not be possible. First Ibrahim had gone to Senegal to study, but his parents couldn’t afford to keep paying for his education. Then he had tried to become a tailor and went to Mauritania to look for work. When that did not work out he went home again, and decided to set out for Libya. He’d never intended to come to Europe, but the chaos in Libya, where the assault and murder of black Africans has become commonplace, was such that he decided to flee. I asked Ibrahim whether he’d like to go back to Guinea. “Life there is not very stable, you know,” he said. In October, Italy announced the end of Mare Nostrum. The intention was always that it would run for a year as an emergency program, a stopgap until a rescue operation supported by all members of the EU could launch. But it is unclear whether the replacement operation will focus on saving lives, or on keeping boats out of European waters. The British government’s position is that the rescues should stop, because they only encourage more migrants to attempt the crossing. All of the people I interviewed for this story made their first journey to Europe in a smuggler boat across the Mediterranean. Our government believes that, had any of them drowned, it would have been a useful deterrent to others. |
If legislation introduced by Democrats in both houses of the Illinois state legislature passes, the Land of Lincoln could be the 39th state to allow citizens the use of suppressors. Dual bills in the state Senate and House introduced last week aim to not only make National Firearms Act-compliant sound suppressors legal, but also to allow their use in hunting. Illinois is one of just 11 states that currently prohibit the devices. “There are a lot of veterans, a lot of hunters and shooters, who have suffered hearing loss,” State Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, sponsor of the House legislation, told the Belleville News Democrat. Phelps is ready for a fight to get the bill passed, saying, “We’re just trying to move Illinois into the 21st century, like we did with concealed-carry.” Phelps’s legislation, HB 433, is identical to that of Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, whose SB 803 was introduced to the state Senate simultaneously. The measures would strike the state’s blanket prohibition on suppressors of all kinds. In turn, it would replace it with language allowing the use of the devices as long as they are NFA-compliant and the user also had a state-issued Firearm Owner’s Identification card. According to March 2014 statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the 12.8 million person state has just 1,348 NFA-registered suppressors, primarily in use by law enforcement. As a comparison, Pennsylvania, with a virtually identical population and less stringent suppressor regulations, has some 20,629 devices registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. Meanwhile, Illinois’s neighbor to the East, Indiana, although with half the population, has 22,223 suppressors on file. Gun control advocates are not enamored with the idea of legal suppressors in the state no matter who is behind the legislation. “We think the Illinois state legislature should focus more on policies that will do more to save lives,” said Brian Malte, national policy director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “This includes policies like gun dealer licensing that will help law enforcement crack down on negligent gun dealers that supply many of the crime guns to cities like Chicago.” NFA industry groups explained to Guns.com that much of the concern over legal suppressors is unfounded, painting the devices as safety equipment. “Noise induced hearing loss and tinnitus are two of the most common afflictions for recreational shooters and hunters,” Knox Williams, president of the American Suppressor Association told Guns.com. “Walk into any gun store in the country, and you will see as many, or more, customers with hearing aids as without them. Everyone knows that guns are loud, but very few people understand the implications that shooting has on their hearing until it’s too late. Most hunters do not wear hearing protection because they want to be able to hear their surroundings. The trouble is, exposure to even a single gunshot can, and often does, lead to permanent hearing damage,” Williams said. In recent years, pro-suppressor legislation has gained traction nationwide. Last year alone Ohio, Louisiana and Georgia saw lawmakers responding to increased pressure from sportsmen and hobbyists to expand protections and use for suppressors. This came while Alabama saw regulatory changes that paved the way for hunters to use their suppressors for the first time in generations. This January a Florida judge dismissed a challenge to a law expanding use in the Sunshine State. The fact that Democrats, Williams feels, back the Illinois legislation could be key to its passage. “The American Suppressor Association is now working with Rep. Brandon Phelps to help make recreational shooting and hunting a safer experience in Illinois. Given his outstanding track record of bipartisan accomplishments, we feel confident that we will be able to avoid the traditional partisan politics that bog down many firearms issues,” Williams said. The Illinois House and Senate bills have been referred to the Rules and Assignments committees respectively. |
The press. Government employees. Non-partisan government agencies helmed by Republicans. All of them are now being portrayed by the administration as unworthy of the public trust, because they put out information damaging to the president. After years of posturing about repealing Obamacare — with scores of votes but no consensus plan to replace it — House Republicans finally released their bill to reshape the health insurance market on Monday. President Donald Trump is one of the rare supporters of the proposal: Health care experts and reporters of allideological stripes, health care industry stakeholders, and Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill promptly panned the legislation, with many noting that it fails to achieve any real policy aim other than providing tax cuts for wealthy Americans. Notably, Republicans released the bill without a score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which would project the number of Americans who would have health insurance if the law is passed and how it will impact the budget. House Republicans voted to pass the bill through committee yesterday even though they don’t have a sense of what will happen if it becomes law. But according to the White House, there’s no reason to wait for the CBO’s report because the office can’t be trusted to properly analyze the bill anyway. “If you’re looking at the CBO for accuracy, you’re looking in the wrong place,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said yesterday when asked about the issue. “Last time, if you look at the number of people that they projected would be on Obamacare, they are off by millions. So the idea that we’re waiting for a score — it will be scored. But the idea that that’s any kind of authority based on the track record that occurred last time is a little far-fetched.” That’s a shocking repudiation of the expertise provided by an agency of nonpartisan experts helmed by a director hand-picked by the administration’s own secretary of health and human services, then-Rep. Tom Price (R-GA). It’s also a notable shift for Spicer, who repeatedly cited the CBO’s reports on the impact of Obamacare and its score of Republican replacement legislation while serving as the communications director of the Republican National Committee. The CBO’s initial 2010 score of the Affordable Care Act wasn’t perfect — the law has cost less and insured fewer people than the agency originally predicted. But at least a score provides a frame of reference for what a bill that will impact the health care of millions of Americans will actually do. Right now that doesn’t exist. Asked during a March 7 press briefing whether he could “guarantee that this plan will not have a markedly negative impact on deficit or result in millions of Americans losing health insurance,” Price could say only that “the goal and the desire I know of the individuals on the Hill is to make certain that this does not increase the cost to the federal government.” And so Spicer was reduced to trying to damage the reputation of an impartial source of information, presumably because the CBO’s forthcoming score will add another log to the fire currently scorching a key administration priority. This is the latest effort by the White House and its allies to discredit information sources other than those approved by the president. Battered by criticism for its incompetence, extremism, and corruption, the administration is trying to build an environment in which its supporters have a ready stream of scapegoats and alternative facts with which to explain away White House scandals, while the rest of the public exists in a constant state of confusion, not sure who they can believe or trust. Trump and his White House want to be able to engage in a widespread disinformation campaign, as is evidenced by his constant stream of false claims. But he can’t do that if other sources who dispute his lies are considered credible sources of information. The administration’s effort begins with its constant denigration of the news media. Building on decades of conservative attacks on the press, Trump’s campaign treated reporters as a punching bag. Trump responded to critical coverage by blaming the outlets producing it, denying everything, threatening lawsuits, and denying their reporters credentials. He lashed out at reporters on Twitter and encouraged his supporters to jeer at the journalists covering his rallies. That vitriol followed Trump to the White House. As president, Trump has said that he is in a “war with the media,” calling reporters “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” and claiming that they will “pay a big price” for purportedly lying about him. He has described major newspapers and networks as “fake news” sources that are the “enemy of the American people.” The White House staff has followed Trump’s lead, championing his attacks on the press and adding their own. Spicer used his first appearance as press secretary to claim reporters had engaged in “deliberately false reporting” and has criticized the media because their “default narrative is always negative.” Chief of staff Reince Priebus has claimed “there’s an obsession by the media to delegitimize this president, and we are not going to sit around and let it happen.” Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, has called the press the “opposition party” and said that “It’s going to get worse every day for the media.” These efforts create an alternative narrative in which critical reporting about the White House is recast as an effort to bring down the president using what Trump has characterized as fake sources and deliberate lies. When Trump isn’t claiming that journalists are making up their sources, he and his administration allies are trying to cast critical leaks from inside the government as part of a shadowy conspiracy against his presidency. Those government workers are a third independent source of information that the administration wants to discredit and delegitimize in order to preserve their control of the information ecosystem. As The Washington Post detailed, Trump believes “that his presidency is being tormented in ways known and unknown by a group of Obama-aligned critics, federal bureaucrats and intelligence figures,” which are referred to within the White House as the “deep state.” According to the Post, Bannon has been stoking these fears: Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist who once ran Breitbart, has spoken with Trump at length about his view that the “deep state” is a direct threat to his presidency. Advisers pointed to Bannon’s frequent closed-door guidance on the topic and Trump’s agreement as a fundamental way of understanding the president’s behavior and his willingness to confront the intelligence community — and said that when Bannon spoke recently about the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” he was also alluding to his aim of rupturing the intelligence community and its influence on the U.S. national security and foreign policy consensus. Over the past few months, the “deep state” has become a frequent topic of discussion for the writers of Breitbart.com, some of whom reportedly remain in contact with Bannon following his move to the White House. The “deep state” was first described at Breitbart in a December 12 piece on the site headlined “The Deep State Vs. Donald Trump,” authored by the pseudonymous “Virgil.” The term is used as a catch-all designation for Trump’s purported domestic enemies, including but not limited to Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans, the press, all 22 million local, state, and federal government employees, every person who works for a government contractor, “all the wheeler-dealers, plus the hired-gun experts, lawyers, think-tankers, foundation executives,” anyone who benefits from government regulation, and companies that receive federal loans and loan guarantees. According to the piece, the “deep state” is acting solely to protect its “luxe life” from Trump’s “drain-the-swamp pledge.” The author portrays Trump’s “purported ‘Russia Connection’” as solely an invention of those sources aimed at damaging the president. Virgil, who has written for Breitbart since 2012 and has provided much of the site’s “deep state” coverage, describes himself as a “grizzled Beltway veteran.” His other writing for the site also revolves around Bannon priorities, including attacks on the press, glowing descriptions of ethno-nationalism and criticisms of globalism, and defenses of the White House chief strategist. The Breitbart writer describes the press and the bureaucracy as allies in a war against Trump, and recommends the administration respond with a “permanent reworking and rewriting of operating budgets and statutory laws” — in other words, the firing and imprisonment of leakers. Breitbart’s criticism of the “deep state” picked up significantly after retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn was forced to resign as Trump’s national security adviser following media reports that he had communicated with the Russian ambassador. Over the next few days, the website published four different pieces blaming those stories — and Flynn’s resignation — on the “deep state.” “The Deep State can now claim a Trump administration scalp. And it’s hungry for more — a lot more,” wroteVirgil. Without changes, he warned, “the situation will only get worse; the new future inside the federal government will be the bureaucratic version of kill-by-leak or be- killed-by-leak.” Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow devoted much of his radio show on February 15 to the “scalp” the “deep state” had obtained, even asking a guest if it was part of a “coup happening from the Deep State.” Last weekend, Trump’s escalating fury at his floundering administration finally manifested in an entirely baseless claim that Obama had ordered him to be wiretapped during the 2016 election. Obama denied the claim, baffled Republicans ran for cover, and reports circulated that FBI Director James Comey had asked the Justice Department to deny Trump’s statement because it “is false.” But at Breitbart — apparently the initial source of Trump’s allegation — this was portrayed as a brilliant attack on his foes. “The White House statement on ‘DeepStateGate’ — President Donald Trump’s allegations that former President Barack Obama ordered surveillance on him during his 2016 presidential campaign — has the feel of cards and chips thumping down on the table,” wrote John Hayward. “After months of unfounded allegations and badly sourced speculation intended to cripple his administration, maybe Trump wanted to prove that only one side of the partisan divide is permitted to make ‘wild allegations.’ Obama’s plants in the Deep State can leak whatever they please, law and truth be damned.” The press. Government employees. Non-partisan government agencies helmed by Republicans. All of them are now being portrayed by the administration as unworthy of the public trust, because they put out information damaging to the president. Only Trump can be trusted. “I am your voice,” as Trump declared during his RNC speech. “I alone can fix it.” When nothing the president says can be believed, and the president says that no one that rebuts his statements is trustworthy, the information ecosystem is taking on a truly authoritarian shape. |
Two Ottawa police officers have pleaded guilty to discreditable conduct under the Police Services Act for unlawfully searching an arrested man’s cellphone for video he shot of them, deleting the video, then turning the camera onto the detained man before subsequently deleting that video, too. Constables Salomon Gutierrez and Benjamin Ham each pleaded guilty Friday to one count of discreditable conduct after a ByWard Market arrest of an intoxicated man led to two illegal searches of his cellphone for reasons not related to the investigation. Gutierrez and Ham responded to a call on Dalhousie Street on July 29, 2015 from a drunk man who said he had been beaten up by multiple people. The man complained that police weren’t adequately investigating his alleged assault. Officers discovered that his friend had two drivers’ licences on him and when they moved to seize one, the original complainant began using his cellphone to film police. Officers repeatedly asked the man to stop shining the bright cellphone light in their eyes, but he refused. Gutierrez and Ham proceeded to arrest the man for public intoxication. Gutierrez, however, grabbed the man’s cellphone from on top of the police cruiser and deleted the video from the phone. The officer told internal investigators that he deleted the video because he didn’t want footage of him uploaded to YouTube out of concerns for his safety but then later told investigators that he realized it was unlawful. Ham then took the phone and used it to film the arrested man to offer the man a taste of what the officers were experiencing, but then subsequently deleted that video as well. Internal investigators did not find that there was any officer wrongdoing during the arrest. Police prosecutor Insp. Michel Marin said it was “completely unacceptable” for the officers to have essentially conducted two illegal searches of the man’s phone. Marin also charged that the officers “taunted” the man by turning the camera on him while he was under arrest. Ottawa Police Association representative Mike Lamothe told the hearing that the incident was a “learning experience”. The prosecution and defence jointly asked that Gutierrez receive a written reprimand and that Ham be docked eight hours of pay. Neither Gutierrez, an officer since 2011, nor Ham, an officer since 2010, has any previous history of disciplinary action. |
Hello Games Sean Murray has shared some more information on No Man’s Sky. In his last interview on the topic, Sean has only given very bare details on the topic, but there’s a lot more now, including an interesting tidbit about online and offline modes. So, we know that it’s a space adventure game in the same vein as Elite Dangernous and Star Citizen, with procedural generation elements to help create star systems to explore. However, Hello have not been forthcoming on what you get to actually do in their game. Sean says this is deliberate, since the game is being designed around open-endedness. With all this in mind, there will be a linear core game mode, with a beginning and ending. There are progressions systems revolving around upgrading your suit, weapons, and ship, and loops around combat, trading, mining, etc. These systems will push you towards earning more money and upgrading higher and higher, and will eventually compel you to the center of the galaxy, where they reach their zenith. Sean showed off a resource gathering mode in the game, although again, they are reticent to describe it as terraforming, or similar to Minecraft, or pin it down to other descriptors. There will be scanners to find resources, and environments are destructible. Perhaps the most interesting revelation is what Hello has chosen to do regarding offline single player and online multiplayer mode: obscure them. The game will have no indicators when you’re surrounded by bots in other ships, or if they’re other players online. The question arises on what the game does if those players do go offline, but of course Hello is keeping all of this under wraps. No Man’s Sky is coming this year to Windows and PlayStation 4. What would you like to know next about the game? Share your thoughts with us in the comments. |
Tony Blair believed that the Prince of Wales publicly interfered in sensitive areas of government policy in a manner that sometimes stepped over the constitutional boundaries historically respected by the royal family, according to Alastair Campbell. In extracts from the latest volume of his diaries, published in the Guardian today and on Monday, the former No 10 communications director writes that Blair became so exasperated he once privately accused the prince of "screwing us". Campbell, a teetotaller, also discloses in today's extracts that the pressure of working in Downing Street became so great that he started drinking again around the turn of the millennium. He never told Blair. He also reveals that George Bush said in July 2001 that Vladimir Putin had "looked a bit scared" when he accused the then Russian president of selling more than conventional weapons to rogue states. The main focus of today's extracts confirms what ministers across the spectrum have long complained of in private: the Prince of Wales regularly attempts to influence government policy, usually in long handwritten letters. In the most detailed account of the prince's interventions, Campbell suggests that the heir to the throne even displayed signs of disapproving of the government. Campbell indicates that at one point Blair raised his concerns with the Queen. "While publicly we stayed supportive, TB said Charles had to understand there were limits to the extent to which they could play politics with him," Campbell wrote on 31 October 1999 of a meeting between Blair and the prince after he took Prince William on a provocative day's foxhunting. "He said it was 90 minutes of pretty hard talk, not just about hunting." Campbell writes that Blair, who was not invited to the royal wedding, became angry when the prince: • Made "deeply unhelpful" interventions during the foot and mouth crisis in 2001. Campbell wrote on 16 March 2001: "TB said he knew exactly what he was doing. He also asked whether Charles had ever considered help when 6,000 jobs were lost at Corus [the steel manufacturer]. He said this was all about screwing us and trying to get up the message that we weren't generous enough to the farmers." • Boycotted a banquet in 1999 for Jiang Zemin, then president of China, a decision criticised by Blair as "silly". In a long paper to Blair the prince wrote: "I feel very strongly about it." • Challenged Blair on plans to outlaw foxhunting. In what Campbell described as a "long note on hunting" in late 1999, the prince said it was good for the environment. • Declared in the same note that hereditary peers, the majority of whom were abolished by Labour in 1999, had much to offer. Campbell wrote that the prince had said "menacingly": "We don't really want to be like the continentals, now do we?" • Insisted that he had to speak out about GM foods after Downing Street had made clear its unhappiness with what Campbell describes as a "dreadful" Mail on Sunday article. In the same note to Blair the prince wrote: "I cannot stay silent." Campbell said Blair was furious with the prince's Mail on Sunday article in May 1999. "He was pretty wound up about it, said it was a straightforward anti-science position, the same argument that says if God intended us to fly, he would have given us wings. It certainly had a feel of grandstanding." Campbell writes that Blair thought the prince had a political agenda because he was upset by the former prime minister's speech to the Labour conference in October 1999 in which he attacked the "forces of conservatism". He wrote on 1 November 1999: "TB said he bought the line that because we were modernising, that meant we were determined to do away with all traditions but he had to understand that some traditions that did not change and evolve would die. It all had the feel of a deliberate strategy, to win and strengthen media support by putting himself at arm's length from TB and a lot of the changes we were making." Campbell added: "TB felt he had been really stung by the forces of conservatism speech. He said they felt much more vulnerable than in reality they are. We know they still have the power to 'keep us in our place' but they don't always see it like that." Blair even appeared to have raised his concerns with the Queen. On 1 June 1999, shortly after publication of the prince's article, Campbell wrote: "TB saw the Queen and seemingly didn't push too hard re Charles, but he was very pissed off." Campbell said last night that the anger in the Blair team was mainly caused by the prince's media operation under Mark Bolland, his deputy private secretary between 1997 and 2002. Matters improved when Paddy Harverson, the prince's head of communications, joined his team in 2004. Campbell told the Guardian: "Tony Blair valued their regular private conversations and respects Prince Charles's right to speak up on important issues. But this was a period when it seemed Charles's media team was proactively and publicly setting them at odds on some of the government's most difficult issues – not just hunting, where the differences were well known, but GM food, China, and agriculture. "When Paddy Harverson [Bolland's successor] came in, things improved greatly. It might seem ironic me complaining about the media operation but just as I felt Charlie Whelan gave Gordon Brown problems so I thought the same of Mark Bolland at times for the Prince of Wales." Clarence House declined to comment. Power and Responsibility: The Alastair Campbell Diaries, Volume Three, covers the years 1999-2001. |
February 10, 2016 After 10 weeks of development the Devparty contest is officially closed and five new Counterparty integrations are competing for the prize of up to 9,500 XCP! Below we’re listing all projects that have met the contest criteria: SoGParty by X_ETHeREAL_X SoGParty is a webwallet and marketplace tailored to Spells of Genesis game assets and built off of a fork of counterwallet. The site is live and available for use at: https://SoGParty.com/BETA It is is endorsed by Spells of Genesis as announced on the SpellsOfGenesis slack group and twitter: https://twitter.com/SpellsofGenesis/status/696032909711556608. For support, please join the SoGParty slack channel: https://sogparty.signup.team/ A video demonstration is available here while the code can be accessed on github. To vote for SoGParty please send your DEVPARTY tokens to the following address: 1JCWDtW76JrxwHwnmKXGoxi1GP7jk8m37K XCP Wallet by Joe Looney (loon3) Reboot of the XCP Wallet for Chrome. The following new features were developed during the Devparty contest time frame. updated UI broadcasts via OP_RETURN client-side subasset prototype see subassets.md for protocol spec see Chrome-Extension/test/register_subasset.html to issue subassets (uses OP_RETURN) Blockchain-based Encrypted Messaging utilizing ECIES and written into txs using the Counterparty Arc4 and OP_CHECKMULTISIG encoding method Full codebase is available at https://github.com/loon3/XCP-Wallet/, while the screenshots of the wallet can be seen here. To vote for the XCP Wallet please send your DEVPARTY tokens to the following address: 1DTmJxVP2RWkTuGNBmwEqBV1ukaXr27Yib XCP DEX by Dan Anderson XCP DEX is all Dex and no wallet. For more information checkout the YouTube video or see the project in action at https://xcpdex.com/. Full source code is available at https://github.com/droplister/xcpdex To vote for the XCP DEX please send your DEVPARTY tokens to the following address: 19jUemChVcQ66vVATVd9fwBqfAhPgRsd15 CounterTools by JP CounterTools is a modular JavaScript Bitcoin and Counterparty GUI Wallet. In addition to standard wallet features, it offers tools for notarizing files, sending in bulk, and recovering passphrases. The wallet is optimized for ease of adding additional modules. A developer guide is included. For more information checkout the YouTube video or the project’s source code. To vote for CounterTools please send your DEVPARTY tokens to the following address: 14G8brfiSQzAzpwRdwumCUHdWR3AnK4Eum ONOMA by sull ONOMA is a Counterparty-compatible Asset-based Content, Identity and Reputation Platform. With ONOMA you can create website for multiple verified Counterparty Assets and generate “Enhanced Asset” JSON metadata. Each asset has it’s own content feed where asset owner can post updates to and has JSON/XML output. Here are some of its features: Uses Static Flat File system (JSON, XML) and No SQL database. Portable platform can upload to other servers and run without “installation”, only some settings file changes. User adds and verifies Bitcoin Addresses and XCP Asset Ownership prior to being able to create and use Asset Feeds or other Asset Transaction functionality. Sites can have multiple users with their own Assets and Feeds. Users can also create feeds unrelated to Assets for general content publishing. Users can create RSS Aggregators (River of News) to compile various news sources into a single page with RSS and OPML outputs. Supports Podcasting, Automatic Hashtag and Username linking, Microformats for Bitcoin Tips, QR Codes and other features. Easy to extend and theme. Integrated with following 3rd party services: Disqus.com – Comments on posts Tierion.com – Anchored Blockchain Receipts for posts and other transactions get stored on server in various ways and on Airtable DB. Airtable.com – Syncs to remote database service as backup or lightweight ledger depending on how it is implemented. Amazon S3 – Backup of static files etc. Future plans: Support All Counterparty Transactions Types within platform itself. Export off-chain token transactions and Import to wallets for on-chain settlement flow. Community features and integrated wallet Blockchain Identity and Reputation Components Update Design to be mobile-first with newer CSS frameworks. General rewrite of code to evolve from “Prototype” to “Release Quality” Demo is available at https://ono.ma while the source code can be accesses here. To vote for ONOMA please send your DEVPARTY tokens to the following address: 1L338fGqCjfS91EyjDAQ7kNr7RYTcB7K6M Voting Rules Voting will be done by two separate groups. The first group is comprised of seven judges appointed by the Counterparty Foundation: Ivana Zuber: Counterparty General Manager Robby Dermody: Counterparty Co-founder; Symbiont Robert Ross: Counterparty Community Director; Folding Coin Chris Derose: Counterparty Community Director Jeremy Johnson (J-Dog): Coindaddy Ruben De Vries (rubensayshi): Blocktrail; counterparty-lib contributor Matthew Tan (mtbitcoin): Blockscan The second group is comprised of the community itself. Voting will be done by sending one or more DEVPARTY tokens to the address of the project one wants to vote for. Vote counting will be done via http://blockscan.com/votes, both for judging panel and community voting. Once again, here are the addresses where the DEVPARTY tokens should be sent to: SoGParty 1JCWDtW76JrxwHwnmKXGoxi1GP7jk8m37K XCP Wallet 1DTmJxVP2RWkTuGNBmwEqBV1ukaXr27Yib XCP DEX 19jUemChVcQ66vVATVd9fwBqfAhPgRsd15 CounterTools 14G8brfiSQzAzpwRdwumCUHdWR3AnK4Eum ONOMA 1L338fGqCjfS91EyjDAQ7kNr7RYTcB7K6M Prizes After the one week long voting period (till February 16th), the two voting groups will award a first, second and third place for both the main prize and the community prize: Main prize (7,500 XCP total, awarded by the panel): 6,000 XCP – First place 1,000 XCP – Second place 500 XCP – Third place Community prizes (up to 2,000 XCP total, awarded by community vote): Up to 1,000 XCP – First place Up to 750 XCP – Second place Up to 250 XCP – Third place We thank again all the participants and wish everyone the best of luck during voting! |
Image copyright AFP Image caption These gravestones were knocked over, while others were covered in swastikas Hundreds of Jewish graves have been desecrated at a cemetery in eastern France, near the border with Germany. Images on social media showed the gravestones in Sarre-Union daubed with swastikas and Nazi slogans. On his Twitter feed, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said every effort would be made to catch the perpetrators of an "ignoble and anti-Semitic act, an insult to memory". Anti-Semitic attacks have risen sharply in France in recent years. A kosher supermarket in Paris was one of the sites targeted by Islamist gunmen in a series of attacks last month which left 17 people dead. A special investigative team is at the cemetery in Sarre-Union, the French news agency AFP reports, quoting Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. |
Montreal police clashed with anti-capitalist protesters in downtown Montreal Sunday afternoon, forcing some stores to temporarily lock their doors and sending shoppers fleeing from smoke bombs and tear gas. Police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of protesters after coloured smoke bombs, fireworks, rocks and paint bombs were thrown at officers outside police Station 20 on Ste-Catherine St. W. around 4 p.m. Over the next hour, police cruisers raced around downtown trying to nab the troublemakers. Police made nine arrests, including four people on Mansfield St. Two officers and two protesters suffered minor injuries. Police say 10 of their vehicles ended up with flat tires, and another non-police vehicle was damaged. Among the projectiles found by police was a Molotov cocktail, they said. Many shoppers were surprised to see police patrolling Ste-Catherine St. on horseback. “What the hell is going on?” asked one shopper as he left the Eaton Centre and saw a police helicopter in the sky. Security guard Kurt Rabinowitz said he was sent by his employer to help guard The Bay after the store’s management decided to temporarily close its doors. Several police officers in riot gear also stood outside the store and there was a heavy police presence outside Premier Philippe Couillard’s office on McGill College Ave. Members of the anti-capitalist group CLAC organized the protest, saying it wanted to “disrupt commercial activity dominated by the local bourgeoisie.” The group issued a statement on its website saying it’s fighting “imperialism, racism, borders and colonialism in an attempt to destroy capitalism.” The protest was one of several marches in Montreal to mark May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day Montreal police chase anti-capitalist demonstrators on Ste-Catherine St. on Sunday May 1, 2016. In a separate demonstration, thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of the Plateau Mont-Royal Sunday afternoon to demand better working conditions for Quebecers. Union members, students and health-care workers were among the thousands of marchers who walked from Parc Lafontaine to Parc Jeanne Mance. Marie-Claire Baigner, a union leader, said she came to support the Quebec public service, which she said is being downsized by the government. “A public service is important because it delivers service to the public on an equal basis,” said Baigner, who works for le Syndicat de la fonction publique et parapublique du Québec. Many of the marchers called on Quebec to gradually increase the province’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. Quebec’s minimum wage increased by 20 cents on Sunday, to $10.75 an hour, but union leaders say that is not enough. The increase works out to about $7 for a 35-hour workweek. It is estimated more than 260,000 Quebecers earn minimum wage. The Quebec Federation of Labour used the May Day demonstration to launch its $15-an-hour campaign, saying too many working Quebecers are having trouble paying their bills and buying enough food for their families. “The buying power of low-wage workers is going down or stagnating every year,” said Daniel Boyer, the president of the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec. “We need a minimum wage that will allow people to keep their heads above water. It doesn’t make sense that people who work full time have so little income.” Québec solidaire MNA Manon Massé said her party supports the campaign for a $15-per-hour minimum wage, saying too many workers have to rely on food banks to feed their families. Couillard put out a statement on the weekend saying that the Quebec government is planning to hold a summit with government officials, union leaders and employers’ groups to discuss issues related to employment. “Developing the economy and creating quality jobs in all regions of Quebec is a priority of our government,” Couillard said. Monique Normand marched on Sunday carrying a sign calling for the resignation of Health Minister Gaétan Barrette. Normand, a social worker in the public sector, said ongoing cuts to health-care budgets are making it impossible to provide services to the public. “They are dismantling the CLSCs,” she said. kwilton@postmedia.com Correction: A previous version of this article said police made 24 arrests during the protest. In fact, authorities arrested nine people and 15 others were fined for breaking municipal bylaws. The Gazette regrets the error. |
The Stable Dweller and company on a rescue mission in Zebra Town. Currently they are attempting to rescue as much rain from touching the ground as possible. Littlepip is winning. EDIT: Forgot to add that this is based of characters from Fallout: Equestria by Kkat. Just sort of assumed everyone would know that. So this took a longer time in coming because I was working on another piece I ended up scrapping as it wasn't working out. Still it took less time then I thought it would when I got going on it. Some things I'm still not sure about it. Having a scene lit up by an overcast sky and having everything wet made for some contradictory light to dark transitions and I'm not sure I pulled it off. On the plus side I don't think I strayed from cannon this time. I usually have memories that differ in slight ways from the story so when I draw without researching properly things tend to... not quite coincide. |
THE mammoth clean up effort in the wake of Glastonbury 2017 has begun. More than 1,000 volunteers have been left with the job of cleaning up after the music festival, binning tonnes of rubbish and salvaging as much as possible to recycle in its aftermath. SWNS:South West News Service 44 Monday morning reveals the huge amounts of rubbish left on-site at Glastonbury Festival SWNS:South West News Service 44 People had to leave the festival by 6pm , having seen musicians including Ed Sheeran and Dizzee Rascal perform EPA 44 A festival-goer lies down amid waste left on a meadow as people leave after the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, near Pilton Getty Images 44 Litter pickers begin the job of clearing the fields at the Glastonbury Festival site at Worthy Farm in Pilton The clean up, which costs about £785,000 and is expected to last six weeks, began as 200,000 festival-goers head home. Despite organisers urging festival-goers to take their rubbish with them, and to try to leave "zero waste", photographs after the event show the field strewn with rubbish. Abandoned tents, camping chairs and even wellington boots can be seen left behind in the wake of the festival, which offered a stellar line up of artists including Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Ed Sheeran and Katy Perry this year. PA:Press Association 44 The site was left strewn with rubbish, including tents left behind. Some tents will be donated to charity Getty Images 44 A pile of abandoned camping chairs Getty Images 44 Stewards sleep after their shift as festival-goers prepare to leave the Glastonbury Festival site SWNS:South West News Service 44 Festival-goers were warned to limit what they brought with them, and to clean up after themselves SWNS:South West News Service 44 Two women stand on the field, surrounded by rubbish, as the festival draws to a close PA:Press Association 44 Laughing gas canisters and rubbish left following the Glastonbury Festival The festival tried to encourage attendees to take their tent home with them, saying: "A tent is for life not just for a festival." But many of the tents have still been left behind, with some to be donated to charities while the rest will be dumped in a landfill. One image of the aftermath of the festival shows a broken pair of glasses, and old cups surrounded by laughing gas canisters left behind from the raucous festival. Other photographs show rubbish spilling out of bins, with birds soaring overhead. But not everyone tried to put their litter in the bins, with the field in front of the Pyramid stage covered in huge amounts of waste. MOST READ IN NEWS NET NASTY Stacey Solomon fears for kids after Momo Challenge spreads to YouTube & Fortnite Latest brink of war India ‘shoots down Pakistani jet' after two of its own planes blasted from sky Exclusive PIE ROLLER £148m EuroMillions winner scoffs 50 home-delivered Cornish pasties every WEEK TREE OF TERROR Mum horrified to learn what the strange 'pods' were hanging from branches ROCK STAR DEAD The Cure and Iggy Pop drummer Andy Anderson dies aged 68 after cancer battle Exclusive BRUTE FARCE Albanian killer fighting deportation over right to happy family life beats wife More than 1,300 volunteers have poured into the site to clean up the rubbish, with 1,200 of them working off their ticket. They have a big job ahead of them, if statistics from previous years is anything to go by. In 2014, festival organisers managed to recycle half of the waste left behind, including recycling 114 tonnes of composted organic waste, 400 tonnes of chipped wood, 23 tonnes of glass, 85 tonnes of cans and plastic bottles, 41 tonnes of cardboard, 162 tonnes of scrap metal, 11.2 tonnes of clothing, tents, sleeping bags, 0.264 tonnes of batteries, 3 tonnes of dense plastic. SWNS:South West News Service 44 More than 1,000 volunteers cleaned up the aftermath of the festival, which had attracted hundreds of thousands of music lovers SWNS:South West News Service 44 A couple can be seen sitting on the ground as a truck full of rubbish from the festival drives past SWNS:South West News Service 44 A tired festival-goer lays on the grass, getting some shut eye before heading home Getty Images 44 A man rests his eyes in a camping chair in the aftermath of the festival Getty Images 44 A person picks their way through the rubbish as they walk past a pile of camping chairs Getty Images 44 Festival-goers begin the long trudge back to their cars to return home from Glastonbury SWNS:South West News Service 44 A person gets 40 winks between some tents Other measures organisers took was to introduce compost loos, with 1,200 brought into the festival. Products sold to festival-goers also avoided plastic bags in an attempt to limit the impact on the environment. Organisers have asked attendees to take their tents with them, with posters around the venue reading: "Love the farm, leave no trace" and an emphasis on recycling throughout. The 514 food vendors on-site had only been allowed to provide compostable plates, cups and cutlery, while glass was banned across the festival. Tractors carrying magnetic strips worked to clear the rubbish across the fields while workers will also carry out a fingertip search to make sure no inch of the land goes unchecked. But the damage done to the site of the festival - which takes place on Worthy Farm, a working dairy farm in Pilton, Somerset - has meant there will be no event next year, with it hoped the year off will allow the site to recover from the thousands of people tramping across it. SWNS:South West News Service 44 Birds swarm around the rubbish left behind from the festival SWNS:South West News Service 44 Two people walk through the grass, covered in litter, with Glastonbury organisers having vowed they would recycle half the waste generated by the festival SWNS:South West News Service 44 Festival-goers were urged to take home their camping equipment, including their tents Getty Images 44 Festival-goers leave after a jam-packed event SWNS:South West News Service 44 It costs £780,000 to dispose of the rubbish left at the Festival grounds - with organisers warning that it meant the money would not reach charities like Oxfam The organisers said they were giving "the farm, the village and the festival team the traditional year off". Determined not to let Glasto’s thousands of yearly revellers down, organiser Michael Eavis had hoped to move the festival to a different site in 2018. He had planned to host the musical extravaganza at the Longleat Estate, in Wiltshire, but the plans fell through. There are no plans to hold future Glastonbury festivals anywhere other than at Worthy Farm. But he is already looking towards the event's 50th anniversary, which will take place in 2020. He said: "We're already booking acts for that one. "Half a century. It's an incredible feat, actually. We've been through so many struggles to get here." As you pack up, please remember to... pic.twitter.com/8nJ9DX7wEt — Glastonbury Festival (@GlastoFest) June 26, 2017 SWNS:South West News Service 44 Partygoers leave the site at Glastonbury Festival after the weekend SWNS:South West News Service 44 The festival pushed its motto of 'reduce, reuse and recycle' PA:Press Association 44 A suspicious-looking plastic bag among the rubbish left in the wake of the festival SWNS:South West News Service 44 An estimated 5,000 tents were abandoned after the festival at Worthy Farm in Pilton, Somerset SWNS:South West News Service 44 A brightly-dressed festival-goer walks through the rubbish-strewn field Getty Images 44 People had attempted to put their rubbish in bins, which were quick to overflow SWNS:South West News Service 44 The clean up is expected to take about three weeks The last year break from Glasto was back in 2012 but the festival will resume as normal in 2019. There’s no word yet on which artists will be headlining the 2019 festival but an announcement will be made closer to the time. But ravers had made the most of the 2017 event, going wild for performers including Johnny Depp. Several people appeared to be taking laughing gas as they sucked from brightly-coloured balloons as the sun rose on the first day of Britain's biggest music festival. Famous faces even appeared during the festival, including Brad Pitt. SWNS:South West News Service 44 The big clean up near the Pyramid Stage that saw musicians perform to screaming crowds SWNS:South West News Service 44 Two festival-goers sit on the grass, observing the massive amounts of rubbish left behind from the 2017 Glastonbury festival SWNS:South West News Service 44 More than 1,000 volunteers are tackling the huge job of cleaning up after Glastonbury PA:Press Association 44 Rubbish can be seen spilling out of bins, with volunteers doing their best to clean up and recycle PA:Press Association 44 Rubbish is collected, with tonnes of plastic and glass collected The event has been the most political in its history, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn addressing tens of thousands of revellers from the iconic main Pyramid Stage and giving a talk at the Left Field tent. Artists, revellers and festival organisers have spoken in support of the Islington North MP – with the chant "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn" to the tune of the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army becoming the unofficial anthem of the festival. With the party officially over, campers now have until 6pm tonight to leave the 900-acre site, while crew and stall holders are given a week to clear the property. SWNS:South West News Service 44 Three women leave the site, taking their possessions with them to help limit the waste left behind SWNS:South West News Service 44 Festival-goers pick their way through the field, which had attracted more than 177,000 attendees Getty Images 44 Organisers had encouraged attendees to think about leaving behind zero waste Getty Images 44 Many of the volunteers who clean up after the festival work for their ticket Reuters 44 Camp chairs left behind from the festival - with tonnes of belongings left behind ultimately recycled Reuters 44 The festival has introduced hybrid generators in an attempt to better power the music event Reuters 44 In 2014, the festival recycled 114 tonnes of composed organic waste and 23 tonnes of glass Reuters 44 The money that volunteers would be paid for cleaning up after the festival is instead donated to charity PA:Press Association 44 Well worn wellington boots were left behind after the festival came to a close |
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been the public face of the Democratic Party's feud with President Barack Obama over his trade agenda. But behind the scenes, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) quietly united his party behind a strategy that resulted in a major defeat Tuesday for the president. Brown's weeks of work came to fruition when Democrats voted to block legislation that would have given Obama so-called fast-track trade authority. Fast-track authority would strip Congress of the ability to amend trade deals negotiated by the president and is essential for the passage of Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal the administration is negotiating with 11 Pacific nations. Brown’s opposition to giving Obama expedited powers to funnel a trade deal through Congress is no surprise, but his hand in uniting Democrats, specifically those supporting fast-track, proved pivotal on Tuesday. Democrats held up the fast-track legislation in the Senate Finance Committee for months, until Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) cut a deal with Obama and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), securing a handful of Democratic concessions. But Hatch didn't package those concessions into the fast-track bill itself. Instead, they were included in other pieces of legislation that were considered at the same markup hearing. Trade Adjustment Assistance, a program that provides job training and financial aid for workers who lose their jobs to foreign trade, was presented as its own bill, as was a customs enforcement bill. Hatch allowed a handful of other Democratic amendments to sail through in the enforcement bill. The two most important items cleared with bipartisan support. Both were Brown projects that would significantly alter TPP and the enforcement of other existing trade deals. To get Senate leadership on board, Brown immediately reached out to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) following the Finance Committee’s markup of those bills, arguing they should be voted on as a package. "Hatch was already making noises that he would pull out TAA and pull out customs," Brown told reporters after Tuesday's vote, referring to individual provisions. Reid took it from there, threatening, in an interview with The Huffington Post on May 4, that Democrats would block moving to a fast-track bill unless all four measures were considered together. “It seemed to be coming together right from the start, from the moment I talked to Senator Reid about it,” Brown said. Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Brown said he made some 25 calls to members of his caucus, urging them to vote against bringing the fast-track bill to the chamber floor because it did not include commitments on enforcement. “I talked to people particularly who were pro-TPA,” Brown said. “Some people [I called] two or three times, mostly talking to people who were already for TPA, some that were undecided.” One Democratic aide told The Huffington Post that Brown “gave a pretty impassioned plea in caucus and has been calling his colleagues over the past few weeks to encourage them.” The aide added Brown had “many” one-on-one conversations with leadership. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) confirmed Brown’s role in rallying Democrats behind a strategy that called for a vote on all four trade bills. “Sen. Brown brought it up to me right away," Durbin said shortly before the vote. "He thought keeping them as a package was critical and he worked the caucus on it." Brown was the only senator to sign a letter with Warren firing back at Obama, after the president accused her and other trade critics of being "dishonest" about the trade debate. Brown scolded Obama for his comments toward Warren, calling it “disrespectful” by “referring to her as her first name, when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps?" Brown said it’s now up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to decide whether he will bring the bill up again. “If McConnell thinks it's killed, it's killed," Brown said. "If McConnell wants to bring it back with all four provisions, it would be on the floor today and we'd be debating it and the amendment process would begin.” McConnell indicated earlier on Tuesday that he was willing to loop Trade Adjustment Assistance to fast-track, but not the customs enforcement bill. The Senate fight, however, is just a warm-up for the House battle, which promises to be even more difficult for backers of the trade bill. In the House, tea party Republicans are deeply skeptical of the trade deals, with many grassroots activists considering TPP to be a step toward a one-world government. "The House doesn't have the votes to pass any one of these individually," Brown said, except a small one that relates to Africa and Haiti. "They've got to figure out how they hold the four together [in the House]. It's not my job to figure out how to pass something in the House." For his part, McConnell said he remained committed “to processing TPA and TAA, and other policies Chairman Hatch and Senator Wyden can agree to” after Tuesday’s vote. “But blocking the Senate from even debating such an important issue is not the answer,” he added. Still, Democrats want more, including an amendment offered by Brown and Wyden during the committee markup that would ban products made with forced labor from entering the U.S. It's a straightforward human rights project that received nine votes each from Republicans and Democrats. But three countries currently involved in TPP talks -- Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei -- are forced-labor hotbeds. While the Obama administration has persistently argued that TPP will include robust labor protections, most Democrats remain skeptical that those standards will be enforced. The administration has a poor record of enforcing labor rules in existing trade deals, but the Brown-Wyden amendment wouldn't depend on trade staffers sorting out foreign worker abuses before international panels. It would direct domestic law enforcement to send back any products made with forced labor. While that would almost certainly be permitted under TPP, it would reduce the value of the deal for Vietnam and Malaysia. The other amendment, penned by Brown and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), would combat currency manipulation by foreign governments, a top priority for Democrats. By devaluing their currency, governments can make their own goods cheaper overseas without lowering standards of living domestically. While China is the most notorious currency manipulator, Japan and other countries involved in the TPP talks have been almost as aggressive. |
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence holds a news conference in Indianapolis on March 26, 2015. | AP Photo Potential Pence pick not winning over Koch network While Mike Pence is a vigorous fundraiser who is popular with many of the right’s deepest-pocketed donors — including some in the Koch brothers’ orbit— it’s not clear whether his addition to Donald Trump’s ticket would thaw the frigid relations between the Manhattan billionaire and the GOP’s elite donor class. The network of advocacy groups helmed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch has all-but foresworn big-money spending in the presidential race out of distaste for Trump, instead focusing its spending down ballot. Story Continued Below And an official at the network’s central group, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, on Thursday said Pence’s potential ascension to the ticket wouldn’t change the network’s approach. “Our efforts will remain focused on the Senate,” said James Davis, Freedom Partners’ executive vice president for communications and marketing. |
Mad Bodgin’ Mage (Amiibo SMASH) Log: Dan promotes his Saikyō style “I hope you’re ready for a bodgin’!” This was a real quick bodge to do, making main man Ryu Into the joke character of the Street fighter series, Dan. So for that we needed to give ryu… …a little bit of a haircut… …and apply Dan’s hair style via greenstuff shaped with a wet blade or needle: From here on out it was all painting, didn’t bother with priming this time: Since Ryu’s uniform had subtle shading and such I opted to do some drybrushing to give’s uniform more texture. Here is the result: Dan is ready for Street smashin’ and tryin’ to get people to join his Dojo. 360 view His training will consist entirely of taunts. T’was a bodgin’ |
Attorney-General Robert McClelland and part of the censored document. The exact details of the web browsing data the government wants ISPs to collect are contained in the document released to this website under FoI. The document was handed out to the industry during a secret briefing it held with ISPs in March. But from the censored document released, it is impossible to know how far the government is planning to take the policy. The government is hiding the plans from the public and it appears to want to move quickly on industry consultation, asking for participants to respond within only one month after it had held the briefings. ------------------------------------------ See the highly-censored document (PDF, 3.60MB) See government reasons for censoring it (PDF, 3.23MB) ------------------------------------------ The Attorney-General's Department legal officer, FoI and Privacy Section, Claudia Hernandez, wrote in her decision in releasing the highly-censored document that the release of some sections of it "may lead to premature unnecessary debate and could potentially prejudice and impede government decision making". Hernandez said that the material in question related to information the department was "currently weighing up and evaluating in relation to competing considerations that may have a bearing on a particular course of action or decision". "More specifically, it is information concerning the development of government policy which has not been finalised, and there is a strong possibility that the policy will be amended prior to public consultation," she wrote. Further, she said that although she had acknowledged the public's right to "participate in and influence the processes of government decision making and policy formulation ... the premature release of the proposal could, more than likely, create a confusing and misleading impression". "In addition, as the matters are not settled and proposed recommendations may not necessarily be adopted, release of such documents would not make a valuable contribution to public debate." Hernandez went further to say that she considered disclosure of the document uncensored "could be misleading to the public and cause confusion and premature and unnecessary debate". "In my opinion, the public interest factors in favour of release are outweighed by those against," Hernandez said. The "data retention regime" the government is proposing to implement is similar to that adopted by the European Union after terrorist attacks several years ago. Greens Communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said the excuse not to release the proposal in full was "extraordinary". Since finding out about the scheme, he has launched a Senate inquiry into it and other issues. "The idea that its release could cause 'premature' or 'unnecessary' debate is not going to go down well with the thousands of people who have been alarmed by the direction that government is taking," he said in a telephone interview. "I would really like to know what the government is hiding in this proposal," he said, adding that he hoped that the Attorney-General's Department would be "more forthcoming" about the proposal in the senate inquiry into privacy he pushed for in June. Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, George Brandis, said the government’s decision to censor the documents showed ‘‘how truly Orwellian this government has become". "To refuse disclosure of material that had already been circulated among stakeholders, on an issue of intense current political debate on the ground that it might provide unnecessary discussion, shows that the Gillard government has become beyond satire," Brandis said. Online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia spokesman Colin Jacobs said what was released was "a joke". "We have to assume the worst," he said. "And that is that the government has been badgering the telcos with very aggressive demands that should worry everybody." Jacobs said that the onus was now on government to "explain what data they need, what problem it solves and, just as importantly, why it can't be done in an open process". "The more sensitive the process and the data they want, the more transparent the government needs to be about why it wants that data," he said. "Nobody could argue that public consultation ... would somehow help criminals," he added. "We have to turn the age-old question back on the government: if you don’t have anything to hide, then you shouldn't be worried about people having insight into the consultation. "This is a very sensitive and important issue. It raises huge questions about privacy, data security and the burden of increased costs to smaller internet service providers. What really needs to be debated is what particular information they want, because that's where the privacy issue rears its ugly head," he said. According to one internet industry source, the release of the highly censored document was "illustrative of government's approach to things where they don't want people to know what they're thinking in advance of them getting it ready to package for public consumption". "And that’s worrying." The Attorney-General's spokesman declined to comment, referring comment to the department. The department said it had "nothing to add" to the FOI letter it provided. You can follow the author on Twitter @bengrubb or email bgrubb@smh.com.au. |
Talk slots will be 30 minutes: 25 minute talk and 5 minutes for questions. Provide sufficient detail in your submission to enable the reviewers to understand your proposal and clearly identify what an attendee will gain from attending your session. You should include the following information in the submission system: Authors - The details of each of the presenters Title - Title of the presentation (please keep it brief and specific) Abstract - A 300-500 word description of your presentation, ideally including... Description of the content Goal Keywords - List any keywords that will help the program committee and attendees categorise your presentation. Also indicate the functional programming languages that you will be targeting. You are not required to have a paper accompanying your presentation. Nothing upsets an audience more than a speaker that stands on stage blatantly promoting his or her company, product or achievements. Please keep the content of your talk on-topic and do not use this speaking opportunity as a sales pitch. Note: Accepted presenters will not be required to purchase a ticket. |
List of countries by intentional homicide rate per year per 100,000 inhabitants.[1][note 1] The reliability of underlying national murder rate data may vary.[2] UNODC data is used in the main table below.[1] In some cases it is not as up to date as other sources. See farther down as to why its data is used over other sources. Research suggests that intentional homicide demographics are affected by changes in trauma care, leading to changed lethality of violent assaults, so the intentional homicide rate may not necessarily indicate the overall level of societal violence.[3] They may also be under-reported for political reasons.[4][5][page needed] A study undertaken by the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development estimated that there were approximately 490,000 intentional homicides in 2004. The study estimated that the global rate was 7.6 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants for 2004.[6] UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) reported a global average intentional homicide rate of 6.2 per 100,000 population for 2012 (in their report titled "Global Study on Homicide 2013").[8] UNODC calculated a rate of 6.9 in 2010.[9] Definition [ edit ] UNODC statistics only include the intentional killing of others outside of war. Deaths occurring during situations of civil unrest are a grey area. Intentional homicide is defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its Global Study on Homicide report: Within the broad range of violent deaths, the core element of intentional homicide is the complete liability of the direct perpetrator, which thus excludes killings directly related to war or conflicts, self-inflicted death (suicide), killings due to legal interventions or justifiable killings (such as self-defence), and those deaths caused when the perpetrator was reckless or negligent but did not intend to take a human life (non-intentional homicide). Though some discrepancies exist in how specific categories of intentional killings are classified, the definitions used by countries to record data are generally close to the UNODC definition, making the homicide rates highly comparable at the international level. UNODC uses the homicide rate as a proxy for overall violence, as this type of crime is one of the most accurately reported and internationally comparable indicators.[12] Figures from the Global Study on Homicide are based on the UNODC Homicide Statistics dataset, which is derived from the criminal justice or public health systems of a variety of countries and territories.[13] The homicide rates derived from criminal justice data (typically recorded by police authorities) and the public health system data (recorded when the cause of death is established) may diverge substantially for some countries. The two sources usually match in the Americas, Europe and Oceania, but there are large discrepancies for the three African countries reporting both sources. For the 70 countries in which neither source was made available, figures were derived from WHO statistical models. Deaths resulting from an armed conflict between states are never included in the count. Killings caused by a non-international armed conflict may or may not be included, depending on the intensity of hostilities and whether it is classified as 'civil unrest' or a clash between organized armed groups. UNODC's global study [ edit ] All data in this section comes from the Statistics Online website of the Research and Analysis Branch of UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime).[17] By region [ edit ] Rates are calculated per 100,000 inhabitants. By country [ edit ] The regions and region names in the table are based on the United Nations geoscheme since the table sources are United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports.[19] There is a total yearly count of homicides for each country. Rates are calculated per 100,000 inhabitants. Subregion names are based on the United Nations geoscheme. Row numbers on the left are fixed. Table [ edit ] UNODC intentional homicide victims: intentional homicide victims per 100,000 inhabitants.[1] Country subdivisions [ edit ] The following is a list of rates. Click the "show" links next to the country names at the top left of each chart. The references are linked from the sources column. Australia [ edit ] Brazil [ edit ] Canada [ edit ] Mexico [ edit ] United States [ edit ] See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] ^ Global Study on Homicide) has a methodological annex (pages 109ff) and a statistical annex (pages 121ff). The statistical annex has detailed charts for homicide counts and rates by country with data from 2000–2012. Map 7.2 on page 112 is a world map showing the homicide count for each country or territory. Page 21 states estimated total homicides of 437,000 worldwide. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 (pages 21 and 22) have exact rates and counts by regions. Figure 1.3 on page 23 is a bar chart of homicide rates for the subregions. Figure 1.16 on page 34 shows timeline graphs by subregion. The 2013 PDF full report ) has a methodological annex (pages 109ff) and a statistical annex (pages 121ff). The statistical annex has detailed charts for homicide counts and rates by country with data from 2000–2012. Map 7.2 on page 112 is a world map showing the homicide count for each country or territory. Page 21 states estimated total homicides of 437,000 worldwide. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 (pages 21 and 22) have exact rates and counts by regions. Figure 1.3 on page 23 is a bar chart of homicide rates for the subregions. Figure 1.16 on page 34 shows timeline graphs by subregion. ^ The UNODC report has bar charts and timeline graphs of homicide rates for subregions. But the report does not list exact rate numbers. Subregion counts are not found in the report, but may be calculated by manually totaling the counts for each country in a subregion. |
This interview discusses in detail the plot of the You’re The Worst season-three premiere. Viewers have come to expect that emotional damage will be inflicted in You’re The Worst, but bodily harm? Not so much. (Outside of the occasional hangover, of course) The premiere of the show’s third season changes that. Lindsay (Kether Donohue) violently stabs her husband Paul (Allan McLeod) in the side while chopping mushrooms as they prepare a dinner that, to her, symbolizes the dreadful monotony of domestic life. The couple reunited in season two, after Paul learns that Lindsay is pregnant with his child (thanks to either artificial insemination via turkey baster or pre-ejaculate); now she’s trying to settle back into the marriage, and it’s clearly not going well. The A.V. Club spoke to Donohue about Lindsay’s knife attack and the character’s current state of mind. Advertisement The A.V. Club: This will run after the premiere, so I want to ask you about what happens in that episode. Namely, Lindsay stabs Paul. KD: Yeah, you know that little thing. No biggie, just stabbed her husband. AVC: When I saw that moment, I was shocked and could not stop laughing. KD: I know! FX PR sent us screeners so before we do interviews we could see what we’re talking about. I was in awe of how that whole scene was—the build-up to it! I’m impressed with—I was just floored by—I’m speechless, I’m mumbling right now. Just write, blah blah blah, Kether is babbling because she loved the scene so much. AVC: So that was when you saw it. What was it like when you read it for the first time? Advertisement KD: Oh my God. It was kind of a build-up. When [creator Stephen Falk] and the writers are in the writers’ room, the actors are so excited we always text Stephen. At the FX upfront Stephen said to me, “You are going to be excited. Lindsay does even more fucked-up stuff this season than she did last season.” My response was, “How do you get more fucked-up than artificially inseminating yourself with a turkey baster?” So when I sat down to read the first episode, I knew that something big was going to come.When I found out that she stabbed him I was just so excited and couldn’t wait to shoot that, and just explore the psychology behind why Lindsay does that and the aftermath of it. We’re all very lucky as actors that we have so much wonderful material. There’s just so much to play with. AVC: You see Lindsay go through this process in the scene. It ends on her face and this moment of relief. What did you touch on when you dug into that psychology and decided where she was? KD: It’s all in the writing. The way season two left off was on this great note of you see Lindsay in the sidecar and you see the conflict going on in her face. The thing for me that was exciting to explore was how her external world and her internal world are completely at odds with each other. She’s verbally agreed to get back together with Paul and have this baby, but when she’s driving away in the sidecar [at the end of season two] you can see that she’s dying a slow death on the inside. So when episode one [of season three] starts, it’s that build of the friction. She’s telling Gretchen, “Yep, I’m having this baby.” She’s really trying to convince herself to buy into this idea of family. On the inside, she knows that this life and and this man are not right for her. There’s a lot of suffering in silence. Stephen was guiding me through the whole process. He would call out certain things during the scene, reactions he wanted to give. My favorite was at the end, after I stab Paul, Stephen was like, “Now just have a look on your face of all the tension has been released. You just got out all of the tension and now back to chopping, back to normal.” Advertisement AVC: Was the scene intensely choreographed beforehand? KD: What I really love about working with Stephen, is he has a very precise vision for things. A lot of our scenes are very very precisely choreographed, kind of like a dance number in a way. Especially with the stabbing, we had a stunt guy on set, and he had to we had to strap Allan in this padding. I had to stab him in this exact right spot or else he could get hurt. It was a very choreographed scene, and it was fun to find the emotional life within that. There was a nice framework set up and then I was able to play within that. It was a blast to shoot. AVD: What does this portend for Lindsay’s journey this season? Where is her headspace now? Advertisement KD: The stakes are increased. It leaves a very fun playground throughout the rest of the season to explore what that means when you’re not being authentic to yourself as a human. All of the choices she was making and commitments that she’s making are completely at odds with who she really is and what she really wants. She is trying hard to buy into this idea of family and what that means from what’s “normal” in society and what her family expects from her, and her sister, and it’s just not who she is. The rest of the season is exploring how far you go in choices you make to hold on to this life you think you’re supposed to have. AVC: Should we assume that she is going to become a mother? KD: Absolutely. Lindsay has decided to to have this family, have this baby, even though she’s still wrestling with hesitations she has about the marriage, and this life, she is absolutely moving forward with having the family. Advertisement AVC: Why do you think the idea of family is so important to her? Is it just that she know what else her role could be? KD: I think a lot of it is how she was brought up. She’s competing with her sister. Every human being needs to feel safe and secure in their life, and I think that part of her life is very misplaced. This idea of having a family and Paul gives her that sense of safety and security that she so desperately needs. She really needs to find it within herself. I think she’s seeking it in outer things in the world to validate her existence. AVC: What do you think Lindsay took away from last season? Did she decide she can’t be alone? Advertisement KD: In season two she did find parts of herself and she did learn that she could do things on her own. She admitted to herself that perhaps Amy, the beer kooz girl, was a better fit for Paul. She did do some soul searching and did let Paul go out of a place of genuine love. I think in society and especially in movies and media we’re fed this idea that there’s the one or the right person. I think it brings great ambiguity and confusion for people. I myself and many friends are currently or have been in long-term relationships. You’re with somebody you love with all your heart and soul but you can still have extreme reservations where you’re petrified, like: Oh, no once I say yes and walk down the aisle is this the only person I’m going to fuck for the rest of my life? Or the only person I’m going to be with for the rest of my life? Is this the right choice? What’s really interesting for me about exploring Lindsay’s world in season three, that takes it to a different level than season two, is more things are being taken into account with her decision-making. She made the commitment to be with Paul from a genuine place, but still has extreme reservations, but now there’s a baby involved and she’s also trying to convince herself that she can handle that. There’s just a lot of fun conflict to explore, and also just hilarious situations her and Paul get into. Allan McLeod is such a brilliant actor, and I’m so excited for people to see his work this season. AVC: So are we not supposed to take the stabbing as Lindsay legitimately wants to murder Paul? Advertisement KD: No, she doesn’t want to murder Paul. I think sometimes she wishes he would just disappear for sure. AVC: Will there be another musical number? KD: Ooo! I don’t know what I’m allowed to tell you. I feel like I have to ask Stephen what I’m allowed to tell you. Advertisement AVD: How has Lindsay’s relationship with Gretchen changed, since Gretchen’s depressive episode in which she said some mean things to Lindsay? KD: Particularly in the first part of season three, because Lindsay has gotten herself into a very big rut here, I think she’s too self-involved to kind of pay attention to Gretchen or anybody else. You definitely do see more tension progress between Lindsay and Gretchen. But also as is true of strong female bonds and friendships oftentimes we have the most friction with our best friends who are closest to us. You definitely see more tension, but also the love and support that’s always there. |
Graffiti or Street Art in Devonport Graffiti or Street Art in Devonport This page has the street art or graffiti I've found in Devonport. 18th September 2017 Devonport Community Center This one of the latest murals added in Devonport, it was added after the 2017 Devonport Arts Festival. It's on the side road next to the Devonport supermarket heading down to the waterfront and Devonport ferry terminal. It's by Marcus Watson. 11th June 2017 Coast Mural This is the latest mural on the wall outside the Devonport Community Center and a small picture painted beside the door of the Art Gallery next to the Community Center. 22nd May 2017 Devonport Bird This one of the latest murals added in Devonport, it was added after the 2017 Devonport Arts Festival. It's on the side road next to the Devonport supermarket heading down to the waterfront and Devonport ferry terminal. It's by Charlotte Hawley. Devonport Snake This one of the latest murals added in Devonport, it was added after the 2017 Devonport Arts Festival. It's on the side road next to the Devonport supermarket heading down to the waterfront and Devonport ferry terminal. It's by Cinzah. 18th October 2015 Devonport Girl This is painted on the side of a restaurant on the main road in Devonport and a block from the library. It does look as if it was paid for by the restaurant. 28th December 2014 Devonport Community Centre This is on the wall next to the entrance to the Devonport Community Centre, which is around the corner from the supermarket. I am assuming that was done by one of the children's art groups held at the community centre. 5th December 2014 Tree and Kiwis I just noticed this on the side of a shop, on a side road going off Victoria Street in the main shopping centre in Devonport. It's on the left hand side as you head down to the ferry terminal and the first side road passed the movie theatre. 21st November 2014 Flowers This was painted on the side of the building during the Devonport Arts Festival 2014. It is by cinzah. 10th November 2014 Girl and Books This was painted on the wall of Devonport Community Centre during the 2014 Devonport Arts Festival and is right around the corner from the local supermarket. 7th April 2014 Possum and Penguin This is next to a cafe called The Stone Oven and a sushi shop, which are off the main road leading up from the ferry terminal. I spotted it as I was heading towards the supermarket in Devonport. Other Devonport related links on My Midnight Moon Previous versions of this page Devonport links not on My Midnight Moon |
How to Organize Survival Food It can be quite easy to forget that we are actually living in quite a fragile way of life. Most people have power and electricity that feed directly into their homes, free-flowing water at their fingertips. There are grocery stores at almost every corner with everything they need in order to survive. However, with political unrest constantly raging in many countries across the globe, natural disasters occurring with increasing severity and frequency and the failing economy today, it is very evident that the system nowadays isn’t infallible. It is no surprise that many people are now getting educated on how to organize survival food supply. Being prepared for emergencies is much more important these days than ever before. You need to be prepared on your own to be sure that you and your loved ones are safe and will be taken care of in times of crisis. Thus, if you want to be able to meet you and your family’s needs, having sufficient emergency food by knowing how to organize survival food is the first essential step. So, why do you need to organize survival food when there are a lot of grocery shops where you can buy all you need to eat in order to survive? There are a lot of people who already know how to organize survival food for disasters, but there are still many others who think that their next meal could be easily bought in the market once a huge disaster occurs. In the US, when trucking is halted or delayed, goods and merchandise are delayed and a lot of establishments may close down. Many supplied would not also make it to the retailers and manufacturers. This will then result in consumers not being able to obtain the goods they need. If you want to have peace of mind knowing that whatever happens, you and your loved ones have food to survive, organizing survival food is of great importance. You will also have a sense of security knowing that you would not be caught without food and unprepared when emergencies or disasters occur. Therefore, it is an absolute must to understand how to organize survival food. Having survival food on hand enables you to sustain yourself and your loved ones in times of major crises. Your Guide on How to Organize Survival Food Supply The Types of Survival Foods. There are different types of survival foods, and those that suit you and your family often depends on some important factors, such as your preference, storage space, budget and the types of food available in your area. The type of food you can include in your survival kit is usually dependent on what you normally eat. When it comes to storing survival food, it’s not really advisable to store grains. It is also important to consider the special cases in your home when planning on the foods to store, including the presence of infants or elderly who might need particular types of food and allergies to some types of food or ingredients. Label Everything. It can be easy to put a container in the freezer thinking that you will be able to identify it later, but when the time comes, you can’t even remember what that mystery package is and when did you place it in there. Even if it seems that they are easy to identify label it anyways. Label bags, buckets, and any unidentifiable containers, not only with expirations dates but also with cooking instructions. You can just write the instructions on a piece of paper or print them out and tuck them into the package or tape to the outside of the container. It is very handy to have them in your food storage package. Store the Items in the Right Spot. Although you don’t really want your survival foods to be used, you want to ensure that the food is at its optimum quality. One way to do this is to ensure that the place where the food is stored has a minimum exposure to air, moisture, heat and sunlight. Goods that are stored in a dark area or room will last longer than those in the garage or pantry. twice as long as they restore at seventy degrees compared to those stores at ninety degrees. Keep in mind that temperature has the biggest effect on foods. Temperature can affect the taste, texture, and nutrition of the food. Moisture is also another consideration when storing foods. Look for a dry spot to keep food items. Also, avoid storing them next to particular products, like fuels or soaps. This is vital to prevent the spread of odor and some other potential contaminants. Rotate & Resupply. All items purchased for a long-term storage closet must be used, rotated and resupplied. This is a very important way to ensure that you have the freshest foods. When you organize food reserves, put the item with the earliest expiration date in front of the shelf so that it’s used first. You can also utilize a can rotation system to assist you in a FIFO (First In First Out) inventory method. It may be a good idea to conduct an inventory check every six months. This will ensure that preserves, canned goods, and other food storage items are within the expiration dates. Store Snacks with High Energy Ingredients to Enhance Energy Levels. When it comes to organizing food survival, you should not just include everything you want to eat. You must also pay great attention to the essence of each food item. Eating high-energy snacks and those that are high in protein will provide a guaranteed boost in energy. Include snacks that are high in protein and complex carbohydrates, such as granola bars, trail mix, and crackers. They can be stored for up to one year. They will keep your spirits and energy levels high in any emergency situation. Do not Forget a Good Supply of Water. Having enough supply of water in the home is actually more important than food. Everyone can go with without food but with water, you can only survive for three days. Perhaps, you won’t die but an individual who goes more than 1 day without water will surely be in an extremely bad shape. A lot of disaster organizations recommend having a 2-week supply of water to be stored up. This is equal to fourteen gallons of water for drinking only. Used bottles of soda or juice can be utilized to store extra water to use in case of a disaster. These can be frozen to be used at later times. One great option that I personally recommend is purchasing the Aqua-Tainer 7 Gallon Rigid Water Container. It might also be a good idea to have an additional water filtration system or pump. Never Forget the Basics. There are some essential staples that must be considered when organizing survival food. This includes baking soda, spices, sugar, salt, cooking oil, vinegar, cornmeal, and flour. These valuable items should not be overlooked but included in your survival food package. If these items can be found in your kitchen, they must also be present in your emergency food supply. Organize Based on Your Preference. Of course, every individual has his or her own way of organizing. You can group items together, like baking needs, snacks, breakfast, meat, vegetables, fruit, soup, etc. It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s organized to your taste and accessing them is easier for you. Be Ready for the Possibility of Electricity Loss. Some disasters and emergencies may lead to the loss of electricity. When this happens, you would not be able to see cans and other items clearly. To make sure that you can access your goods and food items at all times, you can include a number of flashlights to different shelves and baskets. It is also a great idea to add some manual can openers to your pantry. Also, never forget to let everyone living in your house know about the whereabouts of everting tool and food item. Through this, everyone can easily access drinks and foods every time they are needed by any member of the family. Also, do not hesitate to get additional storage when necessary. Due to a lot of items needed for just a single person, you might need to get extra cabinets and shelving to condense the space. Bear in mind that when it comes to an emergency food storage, organization is actually half the battle. Spend some time to organize your survival food package, and you’ll always be ready for any crisis or emergency. Knowing how to organize survival food is the key to having a sense of security and peace of mind. When disasters come along, you and your family can survive even when food shops and grocery stores are unavailable. These would be my tips on how to organize survival food supply. If you have any questions or suggestions then please leave them in the comment section below. Your feedback helps the community to prepare the smart way now so that we can thrive later. Thank you to Smart Prepper Gear Patreon Community for helping me to produce helpful blog posts, podcasts and videos! Photography by jjkbach |
Get ready to load up your Bullseye, and clean out your Marksman – the Resistance 3 multiplayer demo is coming exclusively to PlayStation Plus. If you’ve checked out the US Blog, you will see that the R3 multiplayer demo will be accessible to SOCOM: Special Forces (aka SOCOM 4) purchasers in North America. In PAL, this demo will be opened up to PlayStation Plus subscribers at the exactly the same time – additional info (such as how and when) will be unveiled in due course. Also, we’re delighted to announce the two winners for the Resistance 3 ‘Get in the Game’ competition – Hal Dimond and Martyna Porożyńska! Insomniac were extremely impressed with the quality of entries and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that took the time to create such amazing (and indeed epic) images. Resistance 3 is coming exclusively to PS3 later this year. Check out eu.playstation.com for more information. |
White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said of President Donald Trump: “He has concerns about the accusations." White House: Trump would campaign for Moore if he didn't believe accusers The White House on Sunday refused to say where President Donald Trump stands on beleaguered Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, though legislative affairs director Marc Short suggested the president’s actions speak much louder than his words. Many Republican lawmakers have called on Moore to step aside following allegations that he pursued romantic relationships with teenagers as a man in his 30s, including alleged sexual contact with a 14-year-old at age 32. Moore has denied the allegations, and the White House has been largely silent on the issue. Story Continued Below Trump released a statement through White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during his travel through Asia but notably hasn’t tweeted about Moore, a candidate he once pledged to campaign for if he defeated appointed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in the special election’s GOP primary, which he did. Short told ABC’s “This Week” that while “we are uncomfortable with the explanations that Roy Moore has given to date,” the issue is up to Alabama voters. “We have serious concerns about the allegations that have been made, but we also believe that all of this information is out there for the people of Alabama,” Short said. “Roy Moore has been a public servant for decades in Alabama. He has run multiple times. The people of Alabama know best what to do and the right decision to make here.” Morning Score newsletter Your guide to the permanent campaign — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. Short repeatedly declined to answer “yes or no” when asked whether the president believes Moore’s accusers. He argued, however: “If he did not believe that the women’s accusations were credible, he would be down campaigning for Roy Moore.” “He has not done that,” Short noted. “He has concerns about the accusations. But he’s also concerned that these accusations are 38 years old. Roy Moore has been in public service for decades, and the accusations did not arise until a month before election. So we are concerned about several aspects of the story.” Trump, Short added, has not campaigned for Moore, endorsed him or issued robocalls. “You should certainly be able to infer by the fact that he has not gone down to support Roy Moore his discomfort in doing so,” he said. |
Congress routinely allows huge packages of nominally temporary tax incentives, loopholes, deductions, and credits to expire, only to revive them over and over again. Collectively known as “tax extenders,” the current group of 55 tax breaks actually expired at the end of 2013. But with only a month left to pass tax legislation, Congress is scrambling to come to a deal to extend these breaks retroactively, so they may apply to 2014 and though the next decade. Many of the extenders are simply giveaways to select groups of corporations and individuals that would not be approved were they to be considered one-by-one. The figure below shows the 10-year costs of two proposed tax extenders deals. The first deal—nearly reached by the Senate and eventually scuttled by President Obama’s veto threat—would have made some of the breaks permanent, expanded the research and development tax credit, phased out the Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit, and extended most of the rest through 2015. As shown in the first stacked column, these business friendly tax breaks would total $440 billion over 10 years. The second stacked column looks at one possible consequence of Congress’s likely fallback plan to extend the expired breaks retroactively for 2014 alone. If Congress were to extend all the breaks that expired in 2013 every year for the next decade, it would total $762 billion. These tax packages are then compared to the 10-year costs of three policies that Congress has failed to address, deeming them too expensive and unworthy of an increase in the deficit: a one-year extension of the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, a patch to fill in the Highway Trust Fund’s shortfall for the next decade, and a repeal of the remaining non-defense discretionary sequestration spending cuts. Economic Snapshot Misplaced budget priorities : Ten-year costs of proposed tax extender provisions versus other selected policies (billions of dollars) Policy option Tax breaks for businesses Tax breaks for individuals Total One-year extension of unemployment insurance $25.213 Covering 10-year shortfall of the Highway Trust Fund $157 Repealing remaining non-defense sequester provisions $256.26 Senate tax extenders deal $315.553 $124.447 10-year extension of all 2013 expired tax provisions $694.103 $68.014 Chart Data Download data The data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel. The data underlying the figure. Note: Increased interest costs not included. Source: EPI analysis of CBO and JCT data, and contemporaneous news reports. Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image It is hypocritical for Congress to cite deficit concerns when blocking legislation that would help low- and middle-income Americans, and then to disregard these deficit concerns when considering tax extenders overwhelmingly beneficial to big business. |
CLOSE FC Cincinnati is looking at three possible sites to build a stadium as part of its bid for Major League Soccer expansion. The Enquirer/Patrick Brennan Buy Photo FC Cincinnati fans watch the game in the second half during the USL soccer game between Orlando City B and FC Cincinnati, Saturday, May 13, 2017. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)Buy Photo The ultimate Major League Soccer dress rehearsal is about to commence for Futbol Club Cincinnati, and it's likely MLS will be watching. A forthcoming eight-day stretch starting Saturday looks to be an unparalleled period in FC Cincinnati's relatively short history. During that time, the club will host three high-profile matches highlighted by Wednesday's visit from Columbus Crew SC of MLS for a Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup fourth-round match, a coveted and highly-valuable opportunity involving a member of the league FC Cincinnati is pushing hard to join. Off the field, FC Cincinnati on Monday will host a town hall-style meeting at the Woodward Theater in Over-the-Rhine. The club plans to unveil to season ticket holders preliminary designs for its soccer-specific stadium, introduce the architect involved in the project and invite feedback from those in attendance. MORE: Here's where FC Cincinnati is looking to build new stadium MORE: FC Cincinnati to unveil 'innovative' stadium design MORE: FC Cincy: We're not asking voters to build a stadium "I do think it's certainly an audition for our city. I do view it that way," Berding told The Enquirer Wednesday. "You know, we're hosting our first MLS team, and not just any MLS team but a founding member of the league. Someone who has blazed the trail for teams like FC Cincinnati. We're standing on their shoulders because they truly paved the way... We have so much respect for the Crew. We think it's an honor to play them, to host them here at Nippert (Stadium). "Having said that, it's an audition because we can host an MLS team in our city with what's looking like an extraordinary turnout. We're confident the game atmosphere is going to be terrific... The town hall meeting is an opportunity to share with the public an overview of our expansion bid with a little more detail than we've done in the past and also share for the first time with our season ticket holders our initial stadium design." FC Cincinnati's no stranger to big occasions, but never has it squeezed so many important dates into such a tight window. Last summer's friendly against Crystal Palace FC and the visit to Cincinnati from MLS Commissioner Don Garber come to mind as meaningful moments in FC Cincinnati history. Both events required extensive planning and ended up adding to the fast-growing notion of FC Cincinnati as a serious contender for MLS expansion. By most accounts, the club pulled off both events with flying colors, but the events were also separated by approximately four months. Garber's November trip to the Queen City to survey FC Cincinnati's expansion efforts occurred deep into the club's offseason. Front office staff had weeks to focus solely on nailing the Garber visit. NEWSLETTERS Get the Bengals Beat newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-876-4500. Delivery: Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Bengals Beat Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters MORE: Don Garber on FC Cincy: 'They have done a lot of things really well' The luxury of time isn't on FC Cincinnati's side this time. "This certainly would rival it, for sure," Berding said through laughter when asked if the week will be the busiest in club history. "We've sold more tickets this week than in any other week... There's no question we have a lot of really good things going on. Our staff is working really hard to make sure we perform at a high level." Following Saturday's United Soccer League match against Charlotte Independence, which could draw a crowd of 20,000 to the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium, Berding said, the club will set its sights on the town hall meeting at the venue where it also hosted the public portion of Garber's visit late last year. The event at the famous Over-the-Rhine theater (1404 Main St.) amounts to the beginning of a vital public discourse regarding FC Cincinnati's long-term stadium solution. Then comes the match against Crew SC. Tickets for the match went on sale to the general public Tuesday. Sales immediately surged and eventually produced a club record for single-day ticket sales, Berding told The Enquirer. Get the latest FC Cincinnati news. Download the FC Cincinnati Soccer app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. The match already appears likely to set an attendance record for this stage of the U.S. Open Cup. Insiders said they believe match attendance could climb as high as 25,000. Berding on Wednesday said the only piece of preparation left open for discussion for the Crew SC visit was possibly removing decorative tarps around Nippert to accommodate more spectators. "We have tiers of stadium staffing as it relates to ushers, ticket takers, levels of police, et cetera," Berding said. "We're approaching (Crew SC) as a 'Tier One' game. We'll be fully staffed up at the highest level for the building." The Crew SC date is book-ended by the league matches against Charlotte (7 p.m.) and USL Eastern Conference-leading Charleston Battery (June 17, 7 p.m.). FC Cincinnati (4-5-3) has never beaten Charleston, which opened the 2017 campaign on a blistering pace (7-2-3, third-place overall in USL). There is no doubt the week ahead is a test for FC Cincinnati – the kind of test MLS might be keeping its eye on. An MLS spokesman declined The Enquirer's Thursday request for comment. But considering Crew SC investor-operator Anthony Precourt is one of five MLS owners on the league's expansion committee, it seems unlikely that word of FC Cincinnati's various happenings next week wouldn't reach the league's New York City headquarters. "I think we have good communication with them (MLS)," Berding said, "so I think they're well aware of our efforts here and the strength of the support in Cincinnati." |
Microsoft will shutter its Windows XP line June 30, as planned, ceasing sales of Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home to retailers and direct OEMs, Microsoft confirmed to eWEEK April 3. The statement from Redmond executives ends weeks of speculation that Microsoft would extend the life of the operating system as users turn up their nose at Vista, the operating system meant to supplant XP, and OEMs argue lighter versions of desktops and notebooks don't have the juice to run Vista. Windows XP Home and Starter editions will still be preloaded on ultra-low-cost PCs through June 30, 2010, or one year after the launch of the next version of Windows - whichever comes first, the company said. "Last fall, our OEM partners asked us to extend sales of Windows XP to give their customers more time to transition to Windows Vista while we worked with other software vendors to expand application compatibility," Michael Dix, the general manager for Windows Client, told eWEEK April 3. Windows Is Caught Between Linux and Mac That decision was based on market feedback from customers and Microsoft's OEM and retail partners, and this decision not to extend that date is also based on their feedback, he said. "They are telling us that they feel good about these dates and that the market is ready. For those customers who actually want XP, we are providing enough time for them to actually get it and so we feel good about this being the right transition point," he said. Supporting ULCPCs/UMPCs The decision to allow Windows XP on the ultra-low-cost PCs, or ULCPCs, reflected Microsoft's commitment to ensuring that Windows was available for this new and growing class of low-cost, hardware-constrained computers that were originally intended for consumers in emerging markets, Dix said. This also effectively offered OEMs choices based on their plans and assessments of what the market needed and wanted. "They can elect to preload XP Home on these machines, a flavor of Vista or, in emerging markets, Starter Edition. As this category is still in its infancy, we wanted to give OEMs flexibility, which is how we approached it," Dix told eWEEK. OEMs were considering a wide range of machine configurations in this category, and Windows Vista would be able to run on some of those. But, at the very low end, in the range of 2- and 4-gigabyte flash devices, those would run XP Home, he said. "But in the middle- and high-end, it is up to the OEM which operating system they choose to offer there," he said. But to Rob Enderle, the principal analyst for The Enderle Group, Vista just is too heavy for many of these devices and likely would not have been sold on them. "For Microsoft, it was a choice of letting Linux go unchallenged in this segment or block it using XP, which provides a slightly better user experience and has some software compatibility advantages over most of the Linux implementations I've seen so far," he said. "They wisely chose not to hand this market to Linux on a silver platter, but Linux will improve while XP won't, and some of the Linux stuff I've seen lately is actually competitive with Apple." Microsoft was also publishing some formal guidelines to enable manufacturers to build extremely hardware-constrained machines with less than 4GB flash-based storage, and which can run Windows well and please customers, Dix said. Many of Microsoft's partners are now also offering affordable ULCPCs like Intel's Classmate PC and Asus' Eee PC in developed countries as well as in developing nations, he said. Click here for eWEEK Labs' take on shrunken notebooks such as the OQO 2 and the Eee PC. Partner feedback and Microsoft's own internal research had found that customers preferred Windows on these machines as it was "a system they are familiar with, enables access to a vast ecosystem and provides them with a full operating system on these affordable PCs," Dix said. Asked if these machines could run both Windows and Linux, Dix said that was up to the discretion of the OEM, but "my guess is that they are going to be discouraged from doing that because of the hardware constraints they are working with. Dual boot would require more space and partitioning an already small drive would be difficult to argue for," he said. Asked how the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) played into this announcement, Dix said the challenge was that the OLPC's XO machine was even more extreme in its hardware constraints than the typical ULCPC being shown on OEM road maps. As such, Microsoft had a separate team of engineers working on a port of Windows to that machine, as this required a lot more development and focus than the traditional ULCPC, he said. |
Brutal North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is shipping tens of thousands of impoverished citizens to Russia for the hard currency his cash-strapped regime desperately needs, Fox News has found. Alarmed human rights groups say the North Korea workers in Russia are little more than slaves, subjected to everything from cruel and violent acts to ruthless exploitation at the hands of corrupt officials, while being forced to turn over large chunks of their pay to the North Korean government. A report issued earlier this year by the Seoul-based Data Base Center for North Korean Human Rights estimates that about 50,000 North Korean laborers are working low-paying jobs in Russia. They send at least $120 million every year to the regime in Pyongyang. “The North Korean government maintains strict controls over their workers’ profits, in some cases probably taking 90 percent of their wages,” Scott Synder, director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council of Foreign Relations, told Fox News. “This is an issue that has been going on under the radar for a long time.” International sanctions have crippled North Korea’s economy. The country produces few goods suitable for export. Kim needs money any way he can get it. North Koreans helped construct a new soccer stadium in St. Petersburg. They also helped build a luxury apartment complex in Moscow. The North Korean workers toil under terribly harsh conditions. A North Korean working on the soccer project was killed. Two North Korean laborers were found dead in June at a decrepit hostel near the Moscow apartment building site. For years North Korean laborers have worked at remote Russian logging camps, which has brought to mind the brutal Soviet-era Gulag system. Even so many North Korean laborers are willing to pay bribes to be sent to Russia given the dire economic and political situation at home. The U.S. State Department issued a report on human trafficking last month that concluded that North Korean workers in Russia had been subjected to “exploitative labor conditions characteristic of trafficking cases such as withholding of identity documents, non-payment for services rendered, physical abuse, lack of safety measures, or extremely poor living conditions.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has proposed new sanctions to deal with the problem. “Secretary Tillerson has called on all countries to fully implement all U.N. Security Council resolutions, sever or downgrade diplomatic relations, and isolate [North Korea] financially, including through new sanctions, severing trade relationships, expelling guest workers, and banning imports from North Korean,” a State Department official told Fox News. One reason for making such resolutions international is because North Korean laborers work in other countries besides Russia. China uses large numbers of them, and Qatar has North Korean laborers helping build its World Cup stadium. Among the exploited North Korean workers are painters sent to the Pacific Ocean port of Vladivostok. Still, they have it little better than the North Koreans working in the Russian logging camps. The boss of a decorating company in Vladivostok told the New York Times recently that minders from the Workers’ Party of Korea, the ruling party in Pyongyang, will confiscate half or more of a laborer’s monthly salary. He said a construction crew boss will take another 20 percent. The corruption has apparently only increased in the last 10 years as the monthly pay rate for the laborers has increased from about 17,000 rubles, around $283, to 50,000 rubles, or about $841, according to the report. “They don’t take holidays. They eat, work and sleep and nothing else. And they don’t sleep much,” the Russian boss said. “They are basically in the situation of slaves.” He was reluctant to give the Times his name for fear the laborers would be punished by Workers’ Party officials. Experts question why the human trafficking of North Koreans to Russia hasn’t drawn as much attention on the international stage as sex trafficking and other forms of human trafficking. “It’s very much analogous to any other type of trafficking situation across the world,” Snyder said. “Sex trafficking is done by shadowy, illegal organizations, but here we’re talking about state entities carrying out the trafficking. This really speaks to the nature of these regimes.” |
How do small birds survive the winter? By Olav Hogstad Published 27.01.15 Mature birds are better at surviving the winter than young birds. Older birds have learned a few tricks along the way. Norway’s small birds face many challenges during the winter, including short days and long energy-intensive nights, tough weather conditions and food shortages, along with the risk of becoming a meal for hungry predators. Many of the smallest birds live on the edge of survival with this enormous physical pressure. Bottleneck period Northern winters are the limiting factor for many creatures. This is especially true for the smallest birds, which have to use every daylight minute to find food. They are constantly adjusting to shifts in weather and trying to fend off starvation. Cold temperatures, strong winds and snow-covered branches increase the stress factors for birds that primarily reside in trees. The birds optimize their energy balance by changing location continuously depending on the weather. Changing sides In cold, sunny weather, small birds conserve their energy by keeping to the trees’ sunny side. The goldcrest, Norway’s smallest bird at only 5-6 grams, and the slightly larger coniferous tits (coal tit, crested tit, and willow tit) all take advantage of this sun exposure. Even small changes in wind speed affect birds’ energy balance. Coniferous tits move to the lee side of trees when winds approach moderate breeze level (5-6 m/second), which offers a significant advantage. Every calorie counts Small birds need to find enough food to get through the day and also build up adequate fat reserves for the coming night – all in the course of the limited daylight hours. Long-tailed tits at 8-9 grams and willow tits at 10-12 grams, for example, need to increase their body weight by 10 per cent to survive an 18-19 hour night. Unlike the willow tit, the somewhat larger great tit does not normally have the ability to lower its body temperature and thereby reduce heat and energy loss, and has to lay on even more body fat. Dead great tits have been found in birdhouses when nighttime temperatures have dropped to -30°C. Safest at the top Survival requires more than just finding food. It’s also a matter of not becoming the next meal for hungry owls or sparrowhawks. Birds are always gauging whether to hunt for food or to keep an eye out for potential predators. They often congregate in flocks in difficult periods, presumably to take advantage of more pairs of eyes to spot predators. Birds search for food where they are less likely to be preyed upon. The safest places are in the upper parts of trees. Mature birds fare the best Bird flocks have a shared interest in efficient foraging as well as protecting themselves from their enemies. And at the same time they are also competitors. Willow tits live in small multi-age flocks except during the breeding season. On average about 75 per cent of the older birds, versus only about 40 per cent of the young birds, survive the winter. What accounts for this difference? Mature birds are socially dominant over younger ones and generally have better access to resources such as food and good nighttime roosts. The older birds also occupy the safest places, with the result that the young birds lead a much more uncertain and stressed existence than older birds do. Changing with the weather Young birds maintain a little distance from the dominant older birds in mild weather when the temperature reaches 0°C or warmer, but both groups stay mainly in the upper half of the trees where they are safer from hungry predators. The figure below illustrates how birds distribute themselves in pine trees in different conditions. When conditions are favorable with no wind and mild weather, both the old (green) and young (red) tits keep mostly to the upper reaches. The birds need to spend more time foraging for food as soon as the temperature drops and their energy requirements increase. They then flock together to reduce their risk of predation and can spend more time feeding. In these colder conditions the distribution of the birds changes, as the mature birds search for food above where it is safer, and force the young birds to stay in the lower part of the tree. Snow and wind When tree branches are snow-laden, both older and younger birds prefer to be in the lower branches where it is easiest to find food. To avoid heat loss in strong winds, most tits congregate on the lower branches of the trees’ lee side, where the wind penetrates least. In both of these weather situations, young birds have less time to forage since they need to keep an eye out for the older birds and other predators. Young birds most vulnerable Young birds, especially in cold weather, are forced to be vigilant for both predators and the dominant older birds, which means that young willow tits may spend only about 60 per cent of their time foraging versus 85 per cent for the mature birds. The birds have to use their days optimally so they can put on a critical amount of fat needed to survive the night. Recurring disturbances due to changing weather conditions and dangerous predators give birds less time to build up the fat reserves they need to survive their long nighttime fasts. The higher mortality rate among young willow tits is due in great part to having less time to find food. As might be expected, more young than old willow tit remains have been found in the regurgitated pellets of Eurasian pygmy owls and northern hawk owls. Despite young birds losing valuable foraging time when together with their mature species-mates, their company has some positive sides. The young learn the territory from the older birds, and greater bird numbers also warn against predators more effectively. Every bird must carefully adjust its tactics— all depending on ever-shifting meteorological conditions and its social situation — to increase its chances of surviving one more day or week or month, until the milder days of spring finally arrive. |
Where have we seen an anti-Obamacare threshold of two-thirds before? Oh, right. In this case, undecided voters basically fall into two categories. They're either pure independents, or they're low information voters who nonetheless say they're likely to go to the polls in November. It looks like the GOP is enjoying a significant advantage among both groups heading into the midterms -- including with those under-informed voters who are so often ripe for Democrats' picking. The perception that Obamacare stinks has calcified in the public's imagination, and it's tough to reverse those sort of sentiments, especially amidst powerful headwinds. Check out this graph: - On the generic Congressional ballot, 53 percent of likely voters say they'd support a "Republican who will be a check and balance to Barack Obama," while 47 percent prefer a "Democrat who will help Obama pass his agenda." That's a six-point GOP edge. Among independents, Republicans hold a 30-point lead on this question. - Eighty-seven percent of respondents say the "Affordable" Care Act will not make their coverage more affordable, with nearly six in ten predicting higher costs as a result of the law. - Question: "Has the government's implementation of the 1010 health care law...made you more confident in the government's ability to address problems in the health care sector, less confident, or...no effect either way?" Twenty percent (virtually all Democrats) say more confident, while fully 56 percent say less confident -- including two-thirds of independents. This speaks to my point about Obamacare failing much faster than pro-single-payer Democrats may have hoped. Overall, a majority of likely voters disapprove of the Democrats' law by a double-digit margin, but opposition is particularly strong among self-identified undecided and independent voters. TMC's nationwide poll includes some additional mention-worthy nuggets Allahpundit flags a Pew survey showing strong Republican enthusiasm for the 2014 election cycle. GOP loyalists hold a ten-point enthusiasm edge, and the percentage who say they're excited to vote is higher today than it was in January of 2010. AP correctly notes that Obamacare hadn't yet passed at that point, whereas the current Obamacare implementation meltdown is fresh in citizens' minds. Speaking of which, here's Politico Problems with the rollout are sure to continue, and they’ll get plenty of attention when they do. It’s also a rule of storytelling that the unexpected always makes a better story — and “people couldn’t keep their health plans because of Obamacare” is always going to be a twist that commands more coverage than “people gain health coverage because of Obamacare.” Even if the Obama administration succeeds in steering more attention to the successes, like the people with pre-existing conditions who are getting better deals now, that may not make a big difference to the mindset of the majority of Americans who already have health insurance through the workplace, who just want to make sure their own coverage won’t be affected. But for tens of millions, coverage most certainly will be affected -- on costs, access, and "keeping your plan." National Journal notices that the administration shifts its own definition of Obamacare "success" with such regularity that's hard to keep track. The goalposts are being dragged all over the field. They're desperate to distract from relentless headlines about rising premiums, swelling out-of-pocket costs, denied care due to Obamacare snafus, and the onslaught of new Obamacare taxes: "Starting in 2014, the Obamacare tax man is coming for insurance companies — who contend a good chunk of these costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums." In other words, higher taxes on insurers equals more money out of your wallet, too. Taxing big corporations may sound great, but it impacts average people. UPDATE - A new Q-poll pegs Obama's approval rating at 41 percent. He's 26 points underwater on healthcare approval, and (-19) on the economy. |
Yesterday afternoon, groups who line up on opposite sides of mayor Ed Murray’s hookah lounge crackdown faced off at city hall. And, in marked contrast to last week, when a large crowd of East African immigrants surprised the council by showing up to protest the proposal (despite the fact that it wasn't on the council's agenda), the crowd this time was evenly split pro and con. Some people who returned this week to condemn the proposal—it wasn’t on the agenda this time either—believed that Murray, not wanting to be embarrassed again, helped organize the turnout from the pro camp. Pro– and anti–hookah lounge groups gather outside council chambers at city hall. Murray supporters from left to right: Ahmed Ali, Ubah Warsame, and Abdi Mohamed. “His [the mayor’s] mouth pieces are going out and giving false allegations [about hookah lounges] to our communities. There are people who have official titles with the city, who used to work for the city, still work for the city, who go down [into East African communities] and organize for the mayor, for the mayor's political salvation,” Medina hookah lounge owner Nabil Mohamed, who's Ethiopian, told PubliCola at city hall yesterday. “This is divisiveness and dirty politics.” Nabil Mohamed said that SPD's recently hired East African liaison, Habtamu Abdi, was sent out last week by the Mayor's office to drum up anti–hookah lounge sentiment in East African communities. Murray's spokesman Viet Shelton said the the mayor has been "working with the East African and API [Asian Pacific Islander] community for a while" ever since the runup to mayor's original anti–hookah lounge announcement three weeks ago. "It's been a two way street" of communication, Shelton said, and the mayor's office has been "working with them to make sure their voices were heard and would continue to be heard." Shelton added that Abdi, the SPD's liaison, was engaged from the beginning, both informing the mayor's office about concerns in the community about hookah lounges and also getting people engaged. Shelton acknowledged that the last week's big showing at city hall from East African opponents of the ban surprised both mayor's office and the members of the community who supported the mayor's ban, and so they have "continued organizing." Council president Tim Burgess had to extend the public comment period to accommodate the hookah lounge showdown. The opposition, a group of Middle Eastern and East African hookah lounge owners, young patrons, and sympathizers, sported the now familiar black and red “Stop blaming hookah lounges” posters, while older members of the Somali community and representatives from Somali community institutions came out in force to support the Mayor. (The organizations testifying in support of the crackdown ranged from the Somali Health Board to the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority.) Indeed, adding a further divide, members of the International Districtcommunity held signs condemning the businesses with references to the recent shooting death of ID community activist Donnie Chin near King’s Hookah Lounge. International District community members stand in contrast with hookah lounge supporters. Pro–hookah lounge speakers made clear that they think the mayor is exploiting divisions within the East African Community (and between them and the Asian American community) to carry out his agenda of closing all 11 of Seattle’s hookah lounges. “The mayor has made shameful political use of the grief and the pain that we are experiencing in the African American and Asian American communities. His political opportunism is not uniting us, but it is dividing us, these communities of color in a time of mourning,” Henry Luke, with the group Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR) said during public comment. He read from a letter titled “a love letter to our communities: when we mourn we all mourn.” (A copy of the letter can be found online here.) Lu read: “By blaming hookah lounges for this violence, Mayor Murray is diverting attention away from the city's long time neglect of these communities of color…As result of the mayor's actions, rumors and misinformation and mistrust have spread like wildfire. But our communities know one thing for certain: The problem of violence existed long before the first hookah lounge ever opened its doors in Seattle." Others from the East African community stood by the Mayor during public comment. “I am very concerned about what the hookah lounges are doing to our children. Hookah, health wise, it is very detrimental to our health and our youth's health. Hookah has no place in our culture, in our values, our religion.... We need to close those places down,” Ubah Warsame, a Somali community activist based out of Tukwila, said. Ubah Warsame told PubliCola the Somali community is excited that the Mayor wants to close hookah lounges due to the associated violence. “We've been trying to get somebody's attention [for a long time]. It's sad that it has to come to the point that we have to lose lives in order for this to come above the surface and on the table as a priority.” “These are primarily East African people,” said Somali community activist Abdi Mohamed in front of the pro-hookah lounge crackdown crowd assembled on the steps. “They have a unified message to support the mayor's decision to shut down the bedrock of crime, the bedrock of illegal substances where people smoke mushrooms.” (Abdi Mohamed also stood shoulder to shoulder with Murray when he first announced the crackdown.) It was apparent there was a generational aspect to the East African community's disagreement. “There are not many places that we can go as Muslim Americans,” said Taki Alazadi, a young University of Washington Bothell Alumnus who started a petition supporting hookah lounges (it has garnered over 1,500 signatures so far). “Our religion does not support alcohol so we are not able to go there [bars],” he went on to say, barely holding back tears at the podium. “People say, ‘Oh this is a health issue.’ I understand that. But we're 18 and above and we have the choice,” he said to cheers from the pro–hookah lounge attendees (some of the pro-hookah lounge signs featured slogans like “we respect our elders”). Hookah lounge supporters gather outside the Bertha Knight Landes room at city hall. “You can see the generational gap and also the people that we have versus the people that they have. They [Murray’s supporters] have more conservative, older people,” Medina hookah lounge owner Nabil Mohamed said. “I'm Eritrean-American and no person that came up here and said that they speak for East Africans [actually] do,” Banaa Be—a young pro–hookah lounge Eritrean woman—said at the end of public comment regarding previous comments over hookah lounges place in East African cultures. “You don't speak for me. I speak for myself.” The back and forth continued outside of council chambers as the opposing camps faced off, lining up on opposite sides on the large stairway in the city hall atrium and shouting across at one another while simultaneously jockeying for the attention of the television cameras. City hall security attempted to maintain order and deputy mayor Hyeok Kim watched from the sidelines, clearly taken aback by the spectacle. Joined by an elderly member of the East African community, she eventually walked off into the elevator. Ahmed Ali of the Somali Health Board (he has backed the Mayor on the crackdown from the get-go) told PubliCola that the mayor's office had reached out to him to show up at city hall. “Yes the mayor's office has reached out to me and the Somali community at large,” he said, while Warsame—who was standing next to him—not-so-subtly attempted to tell him to stuff it, shaking her head as I posed the question to Ahmed Ali (when I had put the same question to Warsame a few minutes earlier, she had denied that there was any nudging from the mayor). Ali told me that the mayor's office originally reached to the Somali Health Board out following Donnie Chin's shooting: “They've [the mayor's office] invited us to come talk about the health aspect [of smoking hookah] and how it's impacted the community.” While Murray's spokesman Shelton acknowledged that the mayor's office was doing outreach "meeting with members of the community to help them participate" he also noted that the East African and API community who support the mayor's proposal "are good organizers themselves." Members of the Asian American community in the International District were out in force supporting the ban as well, citing issues of late night disturbances and violence. One commenter said ID community activist Chin would have wanted the lounges to close. “The two hookah bars in our area, King's hookah lounge on Eighth Avenue South and Medina hookah lounge on South Dearborn have been a blight fostering violence, gun play, brawls,” Teresita Batayola, executive officer of the International Community Health Services—which is located in the ID—said. (When Mayor Murray originally announced the crackdown he cited over 100 incidents of fights and disturbances in and around hookah lounges since 2012 and three homicides near such businesses over the last eighteen months, including Chin's shooting, which occurred near King's Hookah Lounge in the ID—but several hours after the establishment closed.) I'm looking to see if any of the organizations that spoke out in favor of the Mayor's crackdown rely heavily on city funding. So far, we know the Somali Health Board, a steadfast backer of the ban, does not receive any funding from the city. “If he's going to be our mayor, lead us. Be a mayor, not political,” Nabil said, saying that the mayor’s tactical comeback efforts are not addressing the “underlying issue, which is youth violence, gun violence.” He added that his business and other hookah lounges have received letters from the city ordering them to shut down before the 31st of August. Yesterday, I reported that the city appears to be taking a different approach when it comes to marijuana lounges, proactively trying to foster them in accordance with laws restricting indoor smoking—a progressive initiative, but one that apparently doesn't extend to hookah lounges. |
PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - French bank BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) has warned it might be hit with a fine far in excess of the $1.1 billion that it set aside last year to cover litigation costs linked to potential breaches of U.S. sanctions on countries including Iran. An eventual settlement is likely to be closer to $2 billion, and also will likely involve a guilty plea, a person familiar with the matter said. The person declined to say whether the bank itself or one of its units would be required to plead guilty to criminal charges. A plea at the parent company level could more severely constrain the bank’s ability to do business in the United States. A settlement could come in the next month, the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. The warning from France’s biggest bank comes as the global banking industry faces mounting legal woes due to investigations into a string of alleged misdeeds, including fixing benchmark interest rates and manipulating foreign-exchange markets. A big U.S. fine could have ramifications for BNP beyond the immediate financial hit, as the bank is targeting expansion in North America as a key plank of a new strategy to raise revenue and profits outside traditional European markets. “There is uncertainty with respect to the amount and the nature of penalties the U.S. will impose,” Chief Financial Officer Lars Machenil told Reuters Insider television. “It’s not impossible that the fine is far in excess of the ($1.1 billion) provision.” Asked if the fine could reach $2 or $3 billion, BNP’s Machenil told Reuters Insider: “There is nothing more to say.” Machenil told analysts on a conference call that the bank had already set aside around 2.7 billion euros ($3.73 billion) for litigation costs, including the specific $1.1 billion provision. His comments came after BNP posted a higher-than-expected 5.2 percent rise in first-quarter net income. Shares in the bank were down 3.8 percent at 53.80 euros by 1434 GMT, having fallen as low as 53.55 euros, not far from their lowest of the year so far. The European banking sector .SX7P was down 0.8 percent. U.S. federal prosecutors are considering criminal charges against BNP for doing business with countries subject to U.S. sanctions, such as Iran, Sudan and Cuba, a second person with knowledge of the matter has said. The New York Times first reported the potential charges. Regulators may consider suspending the bank’s ability to conduct dollar clearing in New York - the process by which transactions are quickly settled and cleared within the banking system - and are looking at possible penalties for individual employees, the person said. The head of the New York Department of Financial Services, which is investigating BNP over sanctions violations, said last month his office is, in general, considering penalties including banning certain banks from dollar clearing transactions for specific time periods, but declined to name specific banks. <id:nL2N0MG16N> BNP declined to comment. The bank has said it wants North America to account for 12 percent of revenue by 2016, up from 10 percent in 2013, and wants to improve cross-selling between its U.S. investment bank and retail bank unit BancWest. OPERATIONAL SANCTION “The risk is that some form of operational sanction may undermine the bank’s ability to meet these targets,” analyst Jean-Pierre Lambert at brokerage Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said. “There does not seem to be a serious likelihood that BNP will lose its banking license outright, but there may be consequences for its current activities if its ability to clear U.S. dollar transactions is limited,” Lambert said. Past U.S. settlements have ensnared rivals such as Standard Chartered (STAN.L), which agreed in 2012 to pay $327 million to resolve allegations that it violated U.S. sanctions against Iran, Sudan, Burma and Libya. The bank was separately fined $340 million by New York’s banking regulator over Iranian sanctions. French BNP Paribas bank logo is seen at their presentation of their 2010 annual results in Paris February 17, 2011. REUTERS/Charles Platiau Meanwhile BNP’s results showed the effects of its full takeover of Belgian subsidiary Fortis last year, which helped offset writedowns on assets exposed to the Ukraine crisis and rising loan losses in Italy. The bank has a robust capital base relative to peers, with a core Tier 1 ratio of 10.6 percent at end-March. Machenil said BNP has “excess capital” but would not use this to buy back shares at their current valuation. ($1 = 0.7237 Euros) |
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has stayed true to his promise to the Pike River families that he will fight their fight with them ahead of this year's election. On Saturday he travelled deep into the West Coast to the mine gates to visit some of the Pike families and has reiterated he will hang any coalition deals on it. Locking the gates to the Pike River Mine that the families erected in protest, Mr Peters was a politician very keen to show he is on their side. "You've been stitched up from the word go, you've been told one thing, whereas they've always intended to do something else," Mr Peters said. He is supporting their calls to re-enter the drift - a 2.3km tunnel leading into the mine, where 29 people died after an explosion in 2010. The families are pinning their hopes on it. "He's put his stake in the sand and said he won't go into coalition with any party that goes into power," families spokesman Bernie Monk says. Mr Peters says they've been treated appallingly and Prime Minister Bill English needs to step up. "Keep the promise that his former leader made but that he never kept, he could start off being a Prime Minister doing something real." Mr Peters says his coalition bottom line will be simple: get the bodies out. "Instead of hiding behind, for example, Solid Energy's excuses - that the political process ensures it does happen - that's what the bottom line is. The families are feeling hopeful. "Hopefully that will send a clear message to whoever wants Winston on his side to take the Pike River families seriously," widow Anna Osborne says. The same sentiment was shared by Sonya Rockhouse, who lost her son in the explosion. "Any support from any politician we can get is awesome." "He's the first guy that's come and stood really beside us and put his stake in the sand so I admire him for that," Mr Monk says. Next month, a Parliamentary select committee hearing will investigate Pike River re-entry. The families say the Government must stand up, get rid of Solid Energy and take action. There's no doubt these people are still not even beginning to contemplate giving up. Newshub. |
Goldin Auctions founder Ken Goldin discusses the sale price for a Super Bowl XLVII ring given to Jamal Lewis by Ravens owner Stephen Bisciotti. (2:36) A Super Bowl ring that Baltimore Ravens owner Stephen Bisciotti gave to former running back Jamal Lewis was sold in an auction for $50,820 on Sunday morning. The ring was from the Ravens' Super Bowl XLVII victory, which Lewis wasn't a part of. But Bisciotti gave rings to former Ravens greats including Lewis, who was inducted into the team's ring of honor in 2012. Jamal Lewis was given a ring commemorating Baltimore's Super Bowl XLVII victory by Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti. Courtesy Goldin Auctions The Ravens on Monday said that they respect Lewis' decision because he has been dealing with financial problems. In 2012, three years after he retired, Lewis filed for bankruptcy. "Jamal Lewis informed us that he was forced to sell the Super Bowl XLVII ring due to financial difficulties. We understand and respect his decision," the team said. The ring, which is made out of 10K white gold and has 3.75 carats worth of diamonds, was consigned to the auction by a pawn shop that Lewis sold the ring to. "Jamal is one of the all-time Ravens greats," said Ken Goldin of Goldin Auctions, which sold the ring to a collector in Maryland. "This ring was hotly contested, and we saw a lot of interest from Ravens fans." Lewis was drafted in 2000 and led the Ravens to a Super Bowl title in his rookie year. He played with the Ravens until 2006 before finishing his career with the Cleveland Browns. Another noteworthy ring that sold in the auction was the 2008 AFC title ring given by the New England Patriots to Matt Estrella, the team videographer who filmed the New York Jets defensive coaches in a scandal dubbed "Spygate." The 10K gold ring, which has 55 diamonds on it, sold for $16,940. Other items that sold in the auction included a ball signed by the 1919 "Black Sox" ($81,070), a 1942 game-used Joe DiMaggio jersey ($169,400) and a Michael Jordan game-used jersey and shorts from the 1990-91 season ($29,040). |
New Image Media photo A Fearless Affair battled with frigid temperatures to win in 1:55.4 It may have been a very frosty evening, but that didn’t get in the way of some impressive fillies and mares in round one of the Blizzard Series Thursday night at Woodbine. A total of 24 three and four-year-old pacing fillies and mares were split into three $16,000 divisions in the first leg of the three-week series for non-winners of two races or $30,000 lifetime as of October 31, 2014.The wind-chill throughout Thursday night’s card made the conditions feel below -20 C, while the Ontario Racing Commission judges allowed a two-second variant.In the opening division, Artistic Fusion lived up to her 1/9 billing, cruising to a 1:56.1 victory.Driven by Sylvain Filion, Artistic Fusion sprinted out quickly to grab the early lead, but would have to take back to second in the first turn, as a pesky Spiritina drove on to overtake the lead through an opening quarter of :27.2. However, Filion wasted no time removing Artistic Fusion and quickly took back the front with the four-year-old mare.After posting fractions of :58 and 1:27, Artistic Fusion put her rivals in the rearview mirror and opening up a massive advantage in the stretch and jogged to a 7 ¾ lengths victory in 1:56.1. Deuces For Charity, who was first up in the third-quarter, finished second, while Docs Hollywood finished third.Artistic Fusion is trained by Joe Agostino and has been on a roll over the last few months. The daughter of Artistic Fella won the Autumn Series final back on November 28 and finished second in the Niagara Series final on Boxing Day. She is now one for one to start 2015 after scoring five victories from 19 starts last year for owner Mike Foote. Artistic Fusion’s career earnings now exceed $78,000. She paid $2.30 to win.The second division was a battle from start to finish between the two favorites with A Fearless Affair coming out on top. Badlands Love and Sylvain Filion, the slight even-money favorite, grabbed the early lead, while A Fearless Affair and Simon Allard, the second choice at 6/5, got in the two-hole right behind the leader.Badlands Love set fractions of :27.3, :57.2 and 1:27, but as she reached the three-quarter pole Allard popped the pocket with A Fearless Affair to take their best shot at the leader. In the stretch, A Fearless Affair took a slight advantage early in the lane, but put Badlands Love to bed in the final-eighth of the mile to score a 3 ¼ lengths victory in 1:55.4. Badlands Love held on for second, while Onyourmarknatava got up to take the show spot.A Fearless Affair is trained by Shawn Robinson for owner Robert Hamather and is coming off a three for 15 season last year. The four-year-old daughter of Western Ideal is now one for one this year and now has four career victories and earnings of over $50,000. She returned $4.50 to win.In the third and final division, Mappos Moenhay went to the front and never looked back winning in 1:57.3. Driven by Jody Jamieson, Mappos Moenhay cleared to the front as the field hit the opening quarter in :28.3. The four-year-old daughter of Real Desire would go on to hang up fractions of :59.2 and 1:28.3, before pacing a final-quarter of :29 to hold off her rivals for a one length victory. All The Ladies turned in a strong final-quarter to finish second over P L Hurricane in third.Mappos Moenhay is trained by Jean Guy Belliveau for owners Carol and Hailee Campbell and is coming off a six victory season last year from 26 starts. The leg one victory is her eighth career victory and pushes her bankroll to over $42,000. The clocking of 1:57.3 equaled her lifetime mark. Mappos Moenhay returned $5.10 to win.Winter series action continues Friday night at Woodbine with the first leg of the Snowshoe Series for three and four-year-old pacers.Post time is 7:25 p.m. |
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2012 SAT Reading Scores Lowest Since 1972 NPR's Claudio Sanchez brings us this bit of bad academic news: The class of 2012 scored the lowest average SAT reading score since 1972. A bit of good news is that math scores were up. Claudio filed this report for our Newscast unit: "Writing, too, is down nine points since the SAT introduced a writing section in 2006. The average score in math was 514 out of 800, five points higher than it was 40 years ago. "Just under 1.7 million high school seniors took the test. Nearly half were racial or ethnic minorities. A fourth did not grow up speaking English at home. Asians outscored White, Black and Latinos. But overall, according to the College Board which commissions the SAT's, 6 in ten test takers are not prepared for college level work. Experts say this is a clear indication that academically, high schools are just not rigorous enough." In a press release, College Board President Gaston Caperton said these scores should be a "call to action to expand access to rigor for more students." "Our nation's future depends on the strength of our education system. When less than half of kids who want to go to college are prepared to do so, that system is failing," he said. And, as we've reported, this kind of news just keeps coming. In Sept. 2011, we reported that the reading scores were already in bad shape then. And, last month, we reported that according to the ACT , just "25 percent of high schoolers who took the test are college ready." |
The high cost of low corporate taxes A deep dive into the financial statements of Canada’s biggest corporations shows these companies pay far less than the official corporate tax rate. “Some income simply is not taxed,” said Peter Spiro, an economist with the Mowat Centre, a public policy think tank at the University of Toronto. “The public policy question becomes: are these tax breaks or tax exemptions justifiable?” This project is the first comprehensive attempt to combine Canadian corporations’ audited financial statements with government data to quantify the extent of corporate tax avoidance — and determine how much it costs the rest of us. The Star/Corporate Knights analysis looked at the amount of taxes companies paid as a per cent of profits over a six-year period to even out yearly fluctuations. Big losses and investments happen, and may reduce a corporation’s tax rates in any given year, but consistently low tax rates can indicate a pattern of avoidance. The accounting manoeuvres Canadian corporations perform to reduce their tax bills are legal. But complex reporting rules make it difficult to determine if a company is actually paying its fair share of taxes. That 8.9 per cent gap translates into tens of billions of dollars that could have been used to pay for the schools, roads, hospitals, police and paramedics we all rely on. During that time, the average official corporate tax rate in Canada for this group of companies was 26.6 per cent. The 2011-2016 audited financial statements of all large Canadian corporations (those worth more than $2 billion) reveal they paid an average of 17.7 per cent tax. Our analysis of the financial filings of Canada’s 102 biggest corporations shows these companies have avoided paying $62.9 billion in income taxes over the past six years. We found the amount of tax most big companies pay has been dropping as a proportion of their profits for years, and not only because the corporate tax rate has been cut repeatedly. Canada’s largest corporations use complex techniques and tax loopholes to reduce their taxes significantly below the official corporate tax rate set by the government. At a time when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made tax fairness a centrepiece of his government, the Toronto Star and Corporate Knights magazine spent six months poring over tax data to determine how much income tax corporations are really paying. For every dollar corporations pay to the Canadian government in income tax, people pay $3.50. The proportion of the public budget funded by personal income taxes has never been greater. At a time when stocks and corporate profits are near record highs, the federal government has targeted small private corporations, expecting to recoup an estimated $250 million in tax revenue by closing loopholes. If Ottawa instead closed all the loopholes used by large corporations, it could collect 40 times more than that. In an average year, the 102 biggest companies in Canada pay $10.5 billion less than they would if they paid tax at the official corporate tax rate. “That gap is undermining the integrity of the tax system,” said Jordan Brennan, an economist with UNIFOR, Canada’s largest private sector union, which represents Star employees. “Once we establish what the rates are, you have to have enforcement mechanisms to make sure (corporations) pay them.” “If the government closed that gap they stand to gain $10 billion every year. Think about what you could do with $10 billion each year. That’s a national child care program. That’s any government’s signature program. Even if you’re fiscally conservative, you could use it to reduce the deficit. That’s not an insignificant portion of revenue,” said Brennan. What would $10.5 billion buy? 1,768 new streetcars Put the Gardiner Expressway underground Build electric high speed (300km/hr) rail corridor Montreal–Ottawa–Toronto Build 11,560 km of bike paths Provide 1.2 million child care spaces 8 new heavy-duty icebreakers Make college tuition free for 1,679,858 students (On average, undergraduate students paid $6,191 in tuition fees in 2015/2016) Hire 30,678 new doctors (at average income of $339,000 per year) The last year that corporations paid as much income tax as people was 1952. That year, the Canadian government was flush with money and used it to start setting up the social safety net with the establishment of the Old Age Security pension program. The private sector was also doing well, as corporate capital investments hit record levels and wages soared. The postwar boom was in full swing and the wealth was being enjoyed widely: Suburbs were exploding, schools and hospitals were built and new highways were laid down across the country. This era of public and private prosperity — “unrivalled in our history” said then-federal finance minister D.C. Abbott — came after Canada had twice imposed an “excessive profits” tax during both world wars. Excessive profit, or rent, is an economic term used to describe profit beyond what is needed to keep a business running. For the first half of the 20th Century, the Star campaigned for establishing and keeping this excessive profit tax in place, repeatedly arguing: “There is, in fact, no better or juster source of tax revenue than unreasonably high profits.” Under publisher Joseph Atkinson, the Star’s editorial board made this argument for taxing corporate profits in 1946: “A special tax should be levied upon profits in excess of a reasonable amount ... The principle of imposing a proportionately higher tax upon high incomes of individuals is recognized as just, and should be in a measure applicable to the profits of corporations when these are beyond reason.” Today, Canada’s economy is the strongest in the G7, but municipal, provincial and federal governments have to borrow money every year, or dip into savings, to make ends meet. Inequality is at an all-time high. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and public infrastructure — from transit to social housing — is failing and falling apart. When corporate tax and personal tax were equal 1952 Between 1949 and 1954, Canada’s first subway was built along Yonge St. in Toronto. The construction budget was $50.5 million, or $464.5 million in today’s dollars. Photo: TTC Archives TODAY After years of slim budgets and inadequate maintenance, there was a mass breakdown of air conditioning on the subway during the summer of 2016. At its peak, a quarter of all subway cars on line 2 were “hot cars” with internal temperatures over 32 degrees. The city spent $13 million to replace the broken A/C units. Photo: Nakita Krucker/Toronto Star 1952 The Gardiner expressway was built between 1955 and 1966, at a cost of $103 million, or about $766 million in today’s dollars. Photo: Boris Spremo/Toronto Star TODAY The raised highway has become so neglected that pieces of concrete have been falling from its underside, damaging cars for the last decade. It will cost $3.6 billion to rebuild the crumbling eastern end of the expressway. Photo: Richard Lautens/Toronto Star 1952 The federal government introduced the Public Housing Program in 1949, which led to a 10 fold increase in social housing in the 1960s, when more than 20,000 units were built each year. One of the first major projects was Regent Park in Toronto, where more than 2,000 subsidized units were built between 1947 and 1960. Photo: City of Toronto Archives TODAY Currently, public housing in Toronto has a $2.6 billion repair backlog, and foresees closing more than 7,500 units over the next 5 years. Regent Park has been almost entirely torn down and replaced by a mixed development of subsidized and market units. Photo: Richard Lautens/Toronto Star 1952 In 1952, there were 1,233 hospitals in Canada with 146,032 beds. Photo: City of Toronto Archives TODAY In 2015, there were 719 hospitals in Canada with 93,595 beds. Photo: Dave Chan/Toronto Star 1952 In 1955, there were 115,835 primary and secondary teachers in Canada and 3,295,000 students (28.4 students/teacher). Photo: Paul Smith TODAY In 2015, there were 445,175 primary and secondary teachers in Canada and 5,055,987 students (11.3 students/teacher). Photo: Aaron Harris/Toronto Star 1952 Average weekly earnings for non-agricultural industries were $54.13 in 1952, a 9 per cent increase from the year before. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $502.53/week. Photo: Leo Harrison/Toronto Star TODAY In 2016, the average weekly wage was $956.50, a 0.3 per cent increase over the year before. Photo: Richard Lautens/Toronto Star While Canadian governments have trouble coming up with cash for public services, Canadian companies are rolling in dough. Among Canadian corporations, one sector emerges as the most profitable. It’s also the sector with the companies that pay the lowest taxes: banks. Last year, Canada’s Big Five banks — BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank and TD — occupied the top five slots on Report on Business Magazine’s Top 1000 ranking of the country’s most profitable companies. Collectively, they booked $44.1 billion in pre-tax profit. (Their just-reported 2017 profits were even higher.) That same year, the Star/Corporate Knights analysis found those five banks avoided $5.5 billion in tax. This was not a one-off. Over the past six years, while the Big Five have been posting record profits, the tax rate they paid has dropped. According to Statistics Canada, pre-tax profits in the banking sector as a whole soared by 60 per cent from 2010-2015. During that period, the sector’s tax rate (taxes paid divided by pre-tax profit) has dropped by almost the same amount. Banks: profits up, taxes down, 2010-2015 Banking sector pre-tax profits ($ billions) Banking sector paid tax rate Source: Statistics Canada CANSIM Table 180-0003 Banks reduce their taxes by far more than other corporations. In 2015, businesses in the rest of the economy (including the banks’ credit union cousins) paid taxes at a rate triple that of banks. This number is skewed by the huge losses oil and gas firms suffered in 2015. If oil and gas companies are removed, the tax rate paid for non-financial companies is still 24 per cent in 2015, or 2.5 times greater than banks. Banks vs the rest of the Canadian economy, 2010-2015 Banking sector paid tax rate Non-financials paid tax rate Non-financials without oil and gas paid tax rate Source: Statistics Canada CANSIM Table 180-0003 Not only do banks pay a lower tax rate than other companies, Canadian banks pay at a lower rate than banks in other countries. While all banks legitimately reduce their tax burdens through depreciation, investment losses, loan interest writeoffs and tax credits, Canadian banks use these measures to erase more tax than their global competition. We did an international comparison and found Canada’s big banks have the lowest tax rate in the G7. This November, when the Senate was discussing closing loopholes for small corporations, Senator Scott Tannas asked Finance Minister Bill Morneau, “why wouldn’t you hunt where the ducks are … with the big banks?” “If we could get them to pay what should be a fairly reasonable average between their U.S. operations and Canadian, we’d be billions ahead. I don’t understand why, year after year, only Bay Street has a special rate,” Tannas said. Tax rate paid by large banks in G7 countries Source: Bloomberg, cash taxes paid as percent of pre-tax profits for banks with >$2B (US) market capitalization, 2011-2016 How do the Canadian banks do it? The Big Five earn the vast majority of their revenue in Canada and the U.S., which has a higher corporate tax rate than Canada. Yet in their financial statements to investors, the banks declare that lower tax rates in their “international operations” helped them reduce their taxes by $6.5 billion over the past six years. While the banks don’t disclose how they lowered their tax bills through their international operations, they all have subsidiaries in tax havens. Many of these tax haven subsidiaries have tiny offices, but account for massive profits. TD, for instance, has a subsidiary in Ireland that is valued at over $1 billion, even though TD Ireland employed only two of the bank’s more than 85,000 staff. Canadian banks have subsidiaries in Barbados (0.25 — 2.5 per cent corporate income tax), the Cayman Islands (0 per cent), Ireland (12.5 per cent), Bahamas (0 per cent), Bermuda (0 per cent) and Luxembourg (starts at 19 per cent, but can be much lower as many multinational companies negotiate special tax deals). All of these tax havens have something in common: they have a tax treaty or Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with Canada. These treaties and agreements were meant to prevent the double taxation of corporate profits, but in practice they make it possible for companies to avoid paying tax altogether, recording profits where there are low or no income taxes and then repatriating this income to Canada tax-free. Canada has admitted this is a problem, and this year joined 67 countries in an international effort to crack down on a widespread tax avoidance method called “profit shifting,” where a corporation performs internal transactions to concentrate its profits in tax havens. “We want to make sure that large companies aren’t inappropriately having expenses in high-tax jurisdictions and taking profits in low-tax jurisdictions,” said Morneau in the Senate last month. “We want to have rules that appropriately force people to pay taxes in jurisdictions where the business activity is actually happening.” NDP justice critic Murray Rankin suggests the government go one step further and explicitly ban corporate transactions without any “economic substance” — a move, he says, that will hamper companies’ ability to exploit offshore tax loopholes. Big Five Banks and tax haven subsidiaries TD Canada Trust Total avoided tax (2011-2016): $6.3B Tax Haven Subsidiaries Barbados Bermuda Cayman Islands Ireland Luxembourg Singapore Royal Bank of Canada Total avoided tax (2011-2016): $5.8B Tax Haven Subsidiaries Antigua Bahamas Barbados Cayman Islands Dominica Luxembourg Montserrat Netherlands St. Kitts St. Lucia Trinidad and Tobago Scotiabank Total avoided tax (2011-2016): $4.7B Tax Haven Subsidiaries Anguilla Bahamas Barbados Belize BVI Cayman Islands Costa Rica Ireland Jamaica Malaysia Panama Singapore Turks and Caicos Bank of Montreal Total avoided tax (2011-2016): $4.0B Tax Haven Subsidiaries Barbados Bermuda Ireland Netherlands Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Total avoided tax (2011-2016): $2.1B Tax Haven Subsidiaries Bahamas Barbados Cayman Islands Ireland Netherlands Singapore Source: Company financial statements |
South China Morning Post | 20 June 2017 US in trade talks with Asian nations to replace TPP, commerce secretary says by Robert Delaney The US has started trade talks with multiple countries in Asia to find an alternative to the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said. “We expressed a willingness on the US’ part to indulge in bilateral talks with Japan” on a trade agreement, Ross told reporters at the annual SelectUSA investment conference in Washington, organised by the Commerce Department. “We’ve also had some very, very preliminary scoping sessions with some of the other individual nations.” Ross declined to specify with which other countries the US has resumed talks, saying: “We like to announce things when it’s agreeable to the other nation. The Japanese have acknowledged our overture. So far, I don’t think other nations have.” US President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from TPP on his first day in office, following through on a campaign pledge he said would help stem job losses. That move was at odds with the wishes of most US state leaders, Scott Pattison, CEO of the National Governors Association, said in a separate press briefing at SelectUSA. “Most governors were very pro-TPP, Republicans and Democrats,” Pattison said. “They’re not going to get directly involved in the negotiations because they know their role and it’s not appropriate. “On the other hand, though, what they’d like to push, because most of them were for TPP, they want to ensure there’s as much trade and investment activity between the states and other countries as possible.” The other 11 members of the regional trade pact, which doesn’t include China, agreed to continue talks aimed at keeping TPP intact, even without the US. However, the US’ withdrawal significantly reduces the trade bloc’s influence. If you include the US, the 12 TPP signatories account for 38 per cent of world GDP and 26 per cent of its trade, according to David Dodwell, executive director of the Hong Kong-Apec Trade Policy Group. Without the US, this shrivels to 13 per cent of GDP and 15 per cent of trade. |
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Sergio Brown has never seen the video clip of Rob Gronkowski blocking him out of bounds and into a sideline television camera crew. That doesn’t mean the memory of that play in Week 11 last season has faded. It’s hard for him to forget it because people keep bringing it up. "All the time," said Brown, who was playing for the Colts at the time. Especially this week, because the Jacksonville Jaguars are heading to Gillette Stadium to play the New England Patriots. It will be Brown’s second trip to Foxborough, Massachusetts, since Gronkowski 'threw him out of the club'. That’s the way Gronkowski described what happened during a postgame interview with NBC. He said Brown had been talking the whole game and he had just had enough, so on Jonas Gray's fourth touchdown run, Gronkowski just stayed on his block and took Brown off the field. The play drew a flag and Gronkowski was fined $8,268. Clips of the play were shown over and over for weeks, and again in the week before the two teams met in the AFC Championship game. "It never did bother me," Brown said. "People always talk about it, but it was a flag. It was illegal. "Oh well." Brown and Gronkowski have a history together. The two were teammates in New England from 2010-11 and played against each other numerous times during Brown’s tenure with Indianapolis (2012-14). Brown was the player that hit Gronkowski and broke his arm during an extra point attempt in 2012. One play before Gronkowski’s block, Brown was penalized for pass interference on Gronkowski. Despite everything that has happened, Gronkowski said there are no hard feelings, though the two haven’t spoken since. "I have a lot of respect for Sergio as a player, how he prepares for a game, and just him," Gronkowski said. "Emotions were flying high last year in the game, and that’s all put behind us." Gronkowski said the comment about throwing Brown out the club was in jest. "It was right on the spot, and like I said, emotions were flying high that game," Gronkowski said. "It was right after the game, and you’re still buzzing from the game. So it was all just for fun and football-related." Brown said he doesn’t expect things to be awkward when the two meet up again on Sunday. He also said what happened isn’t going to keep him from talking on the field. "My name is Sergio Brown," he said. "That’s who I am." -- Patriots reporter Mike Reiss contributed to this report |
For 67 years the United States and the world have paid the price of Harry Truman’s decision to renounce the possibility of victory in Korea. Global communism has come and gone, South Korea has become a wealthy and democratic society, and North Korea’s past and present protector, the People’s Republic of China, has unshackled its economy and thus its military potential from the learned idiocies of scientific socialism. And yet China’s client state, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, still looms beyond the DMZ, persisting in all its menace and belligerence. The Kim dynasty enslaves its own people and exports threats around the globe, its goals not the welfare of its people but the survival, power, and pleasures of a ruler more absolute than Pharoah. Kim Jong-Un has been paying closer attention than we have done to the harshest foreign policy lessons of the last eight years. Libya’s Gaddafi and the rulers of Ukraine had renounced the pursuit or possession of nuclear weapons: both were attacked and defeated by states that applauded their disarmament. Americans were unimpressed with Hillary Clinton’s flippant boast about Gaddafi: “We came; we saw; he died.” Kim Jong-Un would have to the greatest fool imaginable to ignore her boast. Kim will never, ever, give up his nukes or his missiles. For a sufficient inducement, however, he might sign a paper where he promised disarmament. Indeed, his father and his grandfather made similar promises. Of course, they did not keep these promises, and in the world of 2017, there is no inducement imaginable that would convince Kim Jong-Un to keep such a promise. For the Trump Administration and the United States there is, therefore, nothing of importance to be gained from diplomatic concessions to Kim Jong-Un, not even Nobel Prizes. The Norwegian Parliament would sooner honor Benjamin Netanyahu for building settlements in Samaria than reward President Trump or Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for achieving a “paper” world peace. Confrontation, however, offers no reward commensurate with the risks. Of course, the time is long past when the North could plausibly threaten to conquer the South with conventional arms. As Canadian Lt. Colonel Raymond Farrell has written, “the combined ROK/U.S. forces would quickly win the military conflict, though it would be hard-fought and civilian casualties would be high.” The North Koreans have, it is said, have 15,000 or even 45,000 cannons and rocket launchers pointed at metropolitan Seoul’s 25 million civilians. And who knows what nuclear, biological, and chemical horrors they are poised to unleash, in Pusan or Portland or Pensacola? There is thus nothing to be gained by diplomacy, and nothing worth the price to be gained by military pre-emption. If the United States or the Republic of Korea make concessions, the North Koreans will just pocket whatever concessions they make and continue to build nuclear-tipped ICBMs. If the United States and the Republic of Korea do not make concessions, the North Koreans will continue to build nuclear-tipped ICBMs. Inspections cannot assure the disarmament of a regime that does not wish to be disarmed. Every sensible ruler has learned from what the United States did to Gaddafi, and what Putin did to Ukraine, never to allow himself to be disarmed. Nor is the secret to be found in dealing with China, Pyongyang’s patron: until that day, much to be longed for, when Kim Jong-Un decides to retire to a villa in Hangzhou, there is nothing the Chinese can offer or threaten that would make him renounce the nuclear weapons that are his best means of personal protection. And while the Chinese, like the United States or the Republic of Korea, could obliterate the North Korean regime in days, this might simply ensure that they get to share directly in horrors that regime would impose in its death struggle. To repeat, military action isn’t worth the costs. And yet there is literally nothing to be gained by diplomatic engagement with a regime that never reciprocates. This is not to deny that there are actions the world can undertake to degrade or retard the North Korean threat. While North Korean scientists or technicians may be hard to stop, foreigners who aid and abet their evil can be brought to the fate of Saddam Hussein’s cannon-maker, Gerald Bull. The North Korean regime uses starvation and famine to control its people, so sanctions won’t weaken the regime internally, but they will do something to slow down its purchases of weapons and technology. The United States and its allies need to go full speed ahead on developing and deploying anti-missile and anti-artillery systems to protect their civilians. Israel’s Iron Dome has already proven its worth. China and Russia won’t like it, but they will understand it. When threatened by blackmail, England’s greatest modern warrior, the Duke of Wellington, responded “Publish and be damned!” Kim and his people are already damned: North Korea is hell on earth, and Kim Jong-Un is its satanic master. We should not ignore the threat that North Korea poses to the peace and safety of the world, nor should the United States pay or encourage the South Koreans or Japan to pay Kim Jong-Un for “protection.” But we also need to resist the impulse to “do something,” until we actually come up with something that is worth doing. |
Photo by David Steinberg For many disabled people, sex is off the cards. While most needs are met through the provision of carers, or by parents, sex is often missed out entirely. But now a number of sex workers are looking to combat this, stepping into the breach to provide specialist services to help disabled people to fulfil their sexual desires. It's easy for disabled people's sexuality to become obscured by a web of societal assumptions about what it is to be disabled. But of course, disabled people are just as horny as anybody else. "Sex is as essential as eating, but people look at it as a luxury for disabled people rather than a right. We pretend they don't need sex just as much as we do. I think I thought like that myself at one point too," says Pru, a sex worker who has specialised in working with disabled people for a number of years. Pru had her eyes opened when she realised a regular commenter on her blog about her experiences as an escort was disabled. With her interest piqued, she started researching what it would take to work with disabled people. "I decided to make a page on my website addressing disability and making it clear that I understood their needs, and was willing to be accommodating," she says. "The things people take for granted can be really difficult. When a horny builder storms in and has his shirt off and is stripped down in five seconds, they hardly consider that it can be a lot harder for people with disabilities. Sometimes I have to lift people out of a wheelchair, undress them before we can do anything, and then dress them and put them back in the wheelchair once we're done. It can be pretty difficult and tiring." However, the work can be more rewarding than working with other clients, Pru says, offering a real sense of having helped someone realise something vital within them. She recounts one instance of working with a severely disabled man. "As nervous as he was, I managed to get him erect, and I remember him asking if he was hard, as he couldn't really tell. So I took has hand and wrapped it around himself. He was so happy. He was in a hoist and I had to climb on top of him. It was a bit awkward but we managed it. "And when we had finished and he realised what had happened – that he'd actually done it – he burst into tears. He had thought he was going to die a virgin. Part of him wanted me to leave then, but another part wanted to carry on. So he got it up again and we had a second go – amazing. I never heard from him again, but it was touching that he cried. I'll always remember that." It's not just about a quick fuck, it's more of a learning experience. But things don't always go as planned. On one occasion, Pru was with a man with cerebral palsy when he moved towards her nipples. "He bit down really hard – it was so painful. It was just because his coordination was a bit off. It had never happened before, but after that I was a bit afraid when he moved towards that area. It was like dangling your head in a crocodile's mouth." For some people it is not just about one or two experiences. Instead they are looking to educate themselves about sex and particularly their own abilities. Johnny Wheels is in his 20s and has Cerebral Palsy. He also has a condition called CVI, which impairs his vision, and means he finds it difficult to recognise faces and read expressions, making the formation of a relationship a struggle. He decided to turn to the services of an escort at the age of 20, following his breakup with his childhood sweetheart. "Her disability was ten times worse than mine, so any sexual activity was near enough impossible, or at least that's the way she saw it," he tells me. "I was becoming very sexually frustrated. I thought, 'why am I missing out on this?' I just really badly wanted a sexual experience at that point," he says. So he went online to enlist an escort to help him explore his sexuality. "I've learnt so much from her. It's not just about a quick fuck, it's more of a learning experience. I've got to know her and trust her and build a kind of relationship," he says. For his part, Johnny would like to enter into a long-term, loving relationship, and believes his sessions with his sex worker are a step in that direction, helping him to build the confidence and knowledge needed. A protest in London about the sexual rights of disabled people And now it's easier for people like Johhny to find these kind of services. Tuppy Owens is a campaigner for disabled people's sexual and relationship rights, and is the driving force behind the TLC Trust, an online network that connects disabled people with appropriate sexual services. She was motivated to help provide a bridge between clients and escorts by the idea that such contact could act as a first step towards the formation of non-paid relationships, although she does concede that some people "are just horny and want to have a good shag". "Some people have given up on the chance of forming a relationship," she says. "They feel like they've had enough struggles and enough disappointment in life. They often find a sex worker they are happy with and are content to just continue with that. But generally I encourage them to look at it as an education, as a stepping stone towards forming proper relationships." Moves to help disabled people connect with sex workers have, in some cases, met with resistance. Tuppy reckons that there is no need to change the law in the UK – under which prostitution is legal, but a lot of the activity around it is not – but a shift in attitudes is necessary. The issue came to the notice of the public in 2013 when a care home in Eastbourne was dragged over the media coals for allowing escorts to visit residents. The media whirlwind that was whipped up as a result led to an investigation by the local council. "The reaction was totally overblown. Whenever the issue has been written about, the papers say prositution is illegal when that is not, and has never been, the case," says Tuppy. It can already be hard enough – practically and emotionally – for parents or carers of disabled to arrange for them to meet with a sex worker. "There was one mother who had made the decision to help her son, but it was almost like signing away her home, she had such a look of gloom on her face," says Pru. And for some, it is just too much of a taboo to take that leap. Pru tells me about a bedridden man's mother who was so deeply religious that she was unwilling to countenance the idea of her son being involved with a prostitute. "She would have keeled over and died if she had known he was paying for sex," she says. "We had to wait until she had gone out of the house to the hospital. It was a bit of a race to arrange it all, we had to get it all done before his mother returned. Maybe we won't be able to get to the situation where it's delivered like meals on wheels, but we need to be more open to it at least. "He was totally dependent on his carer, but thankfully she was in on the secret. When I arrived we gave each other this look that said we both knew what was going to happen. She had bathed him, taken great care to make sure he was clean, and she had to give me the money. Without her it wouldn't have happened for him." All of the people I spoke to said they would like to see these services available on a wider basis. "The first thing we need is more escorts who can deal with the needs of people with disabilities," says Pru. "Maybe we won't be able to get to the situation where it's delivered like meals on wheels, but we need to be more open to it at least." Tuppy is full of admiration for the women who are part of the TLC Trust. She feels that at least, they deserve more credit. "Sex workers, particularly those working with disabled people need to get respected as legitimate workers who do a great job. Think about what they do – would you go into a room on your own with someone, take your clothes off with no one there to support you, and show the person the time of their lives? They're so brave and yet they get just get slagged off." More sex workers: Inside the Wall Street Sex Trade We Spoke to the Sex Workers Behind the Sex Workers Opera I Marched Through Soho Last Night in Support of Britain's Sex Workers |
Aquaman movie given permission to film at Hastings Point, despite locals' anger Updated It was more akin to a country soap opera than the bright lights of Hollywood, with a mayor in tears and claims the environment was being forgotten. But despite significant community opposition, movie giant Warner Bros was cleared to film its blockbuster Aquaman at the Hastings Point Headland, on the New South Wales far north coast. It took an emergency meeting of the Tweed Shire Council to rubber-stamp the proposal for the $160 million project after furious ratepayers complained they were not consulted about plans to block off the site for at least two months. The council granted a temporary licence to film at Hastings Point, with regular checks to be conducted. Aquaman, which stars silver screen royalty Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Jason Momoa and Willem Dafoe, is based on an American comic book character. Duncan Jones, Warner Bros' location manager, said he had spent a lot of time talking to locals but conceded "a few had slipped through the cracks". "This is a really exciting project, we do make films everywhere, this is not the only location for this production," he said. "We embrace every community that we go to. We like to think we make movies, but we give back to everywhere we go. "We give back in a positive way, not just in terms of jobs and money, but we give that Hollywood wow-factor. "This is the magic of Hollywood coming to the Tweed Shire." Environmentalists bemused by decision This is not the first time the area has been used to film a major movie. Many local residents claim native grasses at the rocky foreshore were damaged during the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean last year and fear history will repeat. Greens Mayor Katie Milne broke down in the meeting while delivering an emotional speech about how the town must not forget the environment for the "bright lights" of Hollywood. Gary Thorpe, president of Progress Association of Hastings Point, could not understand the decision. "We're at a loss to understand why council has given this production crew such an extended period of time to exclude visitors and locals from the headland," he said. He claimed local residents were not properly consulted. "I think there needs to be some sort of limitations given," Mr Thorpe said. "Otherwise we'll have one film crew queuing up after the next with no regulation in place." Tweed Deputy Mayor Chris Cheery, also a Green, said council had tried to address ratepayers concerns, but conceded they had learnt from the spat. "We need to do our consultation for this sort project that is going to have a high community impact, quite a bit earlier," she said. "We need to be clearer to the film producers what we expect." Filming will start next week. Topics: arts-and-entertainment, film-movies, environment, environmental-impact, environmental-management, environmental-policy, local-government, hastings-point-2489 First posted |
The State of Bitcoin Core is Strong Muneeb Ali Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 21, 2016 Mike Hearn’s recent article along with the NY Times piece is attracting attention from people who don’t pay attention to Bitcoin these days. Even savvy Bitcoin investors like Fred Wilson seem to think that the days of Bitcoin Core are numbered. I personally believe we will see a fork accepted by the mining community at some point this year. And that will come with a new set of core developers and some governance about how decisions are made . — Fred Wilson (full post) I believe that a) it’s highly unlikely that anything will replace Bitcoin Core and b) Bitcoin’s open-source development model is far from broken. The Bitcoin Core Team is Extremely Hard to Replace: The level of technical expertise needed for being a core Linux kernel developer or a core Bitcoin developer is not something you can gather in a couple of months. It takes years and years of getting your hands dirty in the trenches combined with exceptional engineering skills. Currently there are only a handful of people who can carry on the development of Bitcoin. Introducing new core developers requires highly skilled engineers to first get interested in Bitcoin and then invest significant time to gain experience and catch up to the knowledge pool. You can re-arrange the hierarchy of current Bitcoin Core developers a little bit, but you cannot expect a completely new team to take over anytime soon. We need new engineers to get involved and need to better document current knowledge. Making it easier for engineers to get involved is important, but in the short run there is no replacement for Core developers. Rolling Out Networking Protocols Takes Time: Most disruptive technologies went through periods of heated debates. Moreover, upgrading networking protocols takes longer because you need to update already deployed infrastructure that is interlinked. TCP’s basic operation has not changed significantly since the first specification (1974) and the v4 specification (1981). Updates to TCP, e.g., TCP Vegas, take years before they are widely deployed or incorporated in the Linux kernel. Compared to other revolutionary open-source technologies, the rate at which Bitcoin Core is evolving is impressive. It’s a success story. Reliability, Security, and Inclusion is More Important Than Bandwidth: I’m surprised by how big an issue the blocksize debate has become when the current bandwidth is clearly not throttling down usage in any significant way. We, at Onename, were sending 50–100 blockchain ID transactions per block last week (~9,000 total) and didn’t hit bandwidth limits or spike fees. Yes, increasing bandwidth before we reach capacity is important, but things are not falling apart today. A reckless increase in blocksize can expose security and reliability issues or disconnect nodes with slower connections. Increasing bandwidth without proper testing and data collection from real networks risks security and reliability which is a bad tradeoff to make. In short, the state of Bitcoin Core is strong. Bitcoin developers are doing what they should and the project is evolving faster than most other revolutionary technologies of the last decades. There is a public roadmap. A bunch of progress was made recently (e.g., signature validation performance) and other updates (e.g., segregated witness) will roll out after proper testing. Let’s thank these volunteers that are tirelessly working out of passion and show support for the extremely important work they’re doing. |
A 2 million-year-old flat-faced skull pulled from the sandstones of East Africa has shored up claims that at least three species of early humans once coexisted in an “evolutionary experiment” that saw an explosive increase in brain size paired with radically different faces, teeth and jaws. While the new partial skull and two newly found jawbones look radically different from modern humans, they match an enigmatic, nearly complete skull found 40 years ago that paleoanthropologists have long struggled to fit into the human family tree. Together, the new finds and the puzzling skull describe a species of early humans clearly distinct from two others known from fossils from the same period, said Meave Leakey, the 70-year-old paleoanthropologist who led the team that discovered the fossils. The “base of the human lineage was indeed diverse,” Leakey said from her longtime home at the Turkana Basin Institute in northern Kenya. Her colleagues made the finds near there. Long thought to be the seat of human origins, East Africa was once “quite a crowded place with multiple species,” said Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, a co-author of a report describing the finds. Leakey and her colleagues stop short of assigning the fossils a species name. But 20 years ago, others scientists classified the 40-year-old mystery skull as Homo rudolfensis. An associate of Leakey’s noticed a jawbone sticking out of a block of sandstone in the arid region in 2007. After hauling the block to their laboratory, the team whittled away with dental drills and revealed a face, its right cheek and upper jaw intact. The small fossil likely came from an adolescent, Leakey’s team reports in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. Nearby, the team also found two partial jawbones that match both the new skull and the mystery skull, Spoor said. All of the fossils date between 1.78 and 1.95 million years old. At that time, East Africa was a roiling hotbed of human evolution. Other fossil finds show that the long-lived species thought to be the direct ancestor of modern humans, Homo erectus, thrived in the region, which was undergoing rapid changes in plant cover, rainfall and, in all likelihood, availability of various foods. Meanwhile, another group of early human fossils from the region has been classified as Homo habilis, which means “handy man,” as these creatures were thought to create primitive stone blades. Yet another, more primitive hominid species, called Paranthropus bosei, also lived in the region at the time. Stout-bodied and with giant molars, these beings more closely resembled the more ape-like creatures known as the Australopitecines and are not thought to be human ancestors. Instead of evolving, they died out. But the new finds — and the mystery skull — clearly don’t belong to any of these groups, said Leakey, who is also a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. The face is too flat, falling like a cliff from brow to chin. The front teeth line up straight as a ruler instead of arcing forward as in the other human species. The molars are also quite large, and, as the mystery skull shows, the brain was bigger — though still only roughly half the size of that of a modern human. The mystery skull — known by only a number, KNM-ER 1470 — was discovered in 1972 and shown to the patriarch of the Leakey family, Louis Leakey, just days before he died. An associate had pulled it out of the ground and didn’t know what to make of it. Louis Leakey didn’t either, calling it “indeterminate Homo.” In the 40 years since, despite combing the arid sandstone surrounding Lake Turkana, three generations of the Leakey family found no other fossils resembling 1470 until now. And so controversy raged in the famously contentious circle of researchers studying human origins on whether this outlier belonged to a separate species or was a deformed member of one of the other groups. “There just hasn’t been any evidence one way or another,” said Susan Anton of New York University, who collaborated with Meave Leaky in describing the new fossils. Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s human origins program, said he’s convinced the new fossils do represent a distinct species. Potts, who did not participate in the new work, added, “There will still be controversy over what to call these things.” Whatever name the fossils eventually receive, one thing is certain, said Potts: The old picture of human evolution heading in a straight line — where an early species gave rise to a more advanced species and so on, until finally reaching modern humans — is all but defunct. Instead, with each new find, human origins appear more and more complex. “It does look like these are a lot of experiments in how to be a Homo species, doing slightly different things and looking a little different,” Anton said. As researchers pull more early human fossils from the sedimentary rocks of East Africa, Potts expects to see more evidence of “evolutionary chaos” at the base of the human family tree. “That experimentation is a brilliant part of the evolutionary process.” All of these groups likely made simple stone tools, Potts said. And yet, they left only a fragmentary picture of who they were — let alone what they ate or how they behaved. “At the moment, all we’re doing is classifying heads,” said Bernard Wood, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University who studied the mystery skull in the early 1990s and declared it likely represented a new species. “It will be a different ballgame when we can match heads with limbs. There are limb bones, but with no heads.” Spoor cautioned that it’s still unclear if the different species of early humans interacted or interbred. “It’s not that we can say for sure that in one given month in one particular year that these species could meet each other and shake hands at the lake margin.” |
EUR 290,00 Un foco principal compacto Desde las primeras generaciones el foco Barbolight U-15 fue un éxito por varias razones. Para empezar, al ser el primero en combinar baterías de li-ion con una optoelectrónica de alta potencia le permitieron las prestaciones propias de las linternas que multiplicaban su peso por varios enteros, Otra razón era la combinación adecuada de potencia y autonomía que lo tenían para el adecuado el 99% de las inmersiones. En esta versión hemos mejorado las prestaciones, con una opción de mucho más alcance, y hemos aumentado la autonomía hasta 2 horas. Contenido La linterna se entrega con funda BG15, anilla, cordón, dos baterías 18650 Panasonic 3400 mAh y cargador / "power-bank" BB02. Características generales Todas las linternas Barbo se fabrican en la aleación más resistente que existe de aluminio, la 7075 T651 , con un acabado anodizado duro que asegura su durabilidad y resistencia de roscas y superficies. Las partes más expuestas están en bronce náutico "Almirantazgo latón" , un material extraordinariamente resistente a la corrosión, que además es más elegante, más se usa, adquiere una única y personal en cada unidad. Las lentes se Realizan en policarbonato y Toda su electrónica se protege con Compuesto ONU Especial de 3M para Asegurar Que Pueda funcionar INCLUIDO ante una eventual Una inundación de la Cámara de Baterías. Los contactos están recubiertos en una aleación de cobalto-oro. Usamos las baterías de más alta capacidad y contrastada fiabilidad, las Panasonic 18650 3400 mAh. Dimensiones y prestaciones Tamaño 62 * 24 * 205 mm (diámetro mayor / cabeza * diámetro menor / tapón * longitud) Peso 390 gr (dos baterías de 46 gr incluidas). 298 gr sin baterías. Potencia disipada máxima: 12 vatios. Potencia lumínica máxima 876 lm 57500 lx @ 1 metro Temperatura de color ≧ 6200Kº CRI ≧ 70 Ángulo del haz central: 3º Autonomía hasta 50% de emisión inicial 110 min (1h 50 min). Potencia lumínica media durante la descarga; 749 lm. Estanqueidad IP69K -200 metros. Resistencia a medidas según norma Mil.Std. 810. F "Prueba de caída" Garantía de por vida GARANTÍA DE POR VIDA SIN COMPROMISOS. Una linterna confiable y de calidad ha sido respaldada por un servicio técnico confiable y de calidad. En Barbolight contamos con un servicio técnico preparado para mantener un estocaje permanente de piezas, herramientas específicas y el proveedor de formación constante. Todos nuestros centros de distribución en Europa, Asia y EE. UU. Disponen de una serie de linternas completas para que no se queden a oscuras mientras reparamos o hacemos el mantenimiento a vuestras linternas. La garantía original de la línea es de 2 años, sin embargo, esta quedará renovada anualmente y sin el uso del mantenimiento básico en un centro reconocido. |
Yes, I grew up in Veneto. I lived all of my childhood in a small village in the province of Vicenza, at the foot of the Berici Hills and this is probably why I love nature and the outdoors so much. I have always been a curious person. I never have enough while exploring a new place. I love discovering landscapes and local tastes, and meeting local people, especially if they have a good story to tell. How long have you been leading tours? This will be my third year. I worked with green tourism as an agriculture technician before deciding to get my license and become a guide. As a technician, I visited many beautiful agriturismos and amazing rural landscapes in Veneto. Everywhere I visited, I found myself surprised that these places were almost unknown to tourists, and that they could be incredible off the beaten path destinations. A lot of Americans dream of visiting Venice. It’s like a Disneyland for grown-ups. I would recommend no more than a couple of full days in Venice, and instead getting out to see more of the region. Alex, what do you say makes a great base to explore more of the region? Well, Venice is Venice, one of the most popular (and crowded) destinations in the world. No doubt it is wonderful but Veneto is really much more than Venice. Veneto has is strength in its big landscape variety. Consider in barely 150 km you can start from the sea level of Venice and arrive at the foot of the 3000 meters peaks of the Dolomites (a UNESCO site). From Venice in just 100 km you can be at Garda Lake, the biggest Italian lake, which is less popular with American tourists, but is at least as picturesque and amazing as the more famous Como Lake. Having said this, I can understand that sleeping a couple nights in Venice, walking under the moonlight and seeing the lights on the lagoon is a good life experience. However after that, my general advice is to find a good accommodation in a smaller city or in a local agriturismo in the countryside and visit the region from there. The first advantage is the prices: Venice is Venice guys (expensive)! The second advantage is that you can move much more easily by car (in Venice you have no cars at all so you can move just by foot and by boat). For example, Vicenza is small charming city. It is the city of the famous Palladio architect, and it is exactly between Venice and Verona. It has a super nice historical center, old palaces, and countryside villas, yet it's incredibly “out of the radar”. Most visitors make just a quick half-day visit, but they don't even consider it as a good starting point to see the region. |
A former co-worker of Omar Mateen said Sunday that the man identified as the mass shooter in the Orlando nightclub massacre often used slurs against African Americans, gay people and women. Daniel Gilroy, 44, worked with Mateen for about a year as a security guard at PGA Village South in Port St. Lucie, Fla. "I complained multiple times that he was dangerous, that he didn't like blacks, women, lesbians and Jews," Gilroy told The Times on Sunday. Mateen threatened violence in front of him, Gilroy said. Once when Mateen saw an African American man driving past, he said he wished he could kill all black people, using a racial slur, Gilroy recalled. "You meet bigots," Gilroy said, "But he was above and beyond. He was always angry, sweating, just angry at the world." Gilroy, a former Fort Pierce police officer, described Mateen as "unhinged and unstable." He said Mateen talked about his father living in the area but did not mention his Afghan roots or his faith. Gilroy said he quit his security job after Mateen began harassing him, sending as many as 20 or 30 text messages a day and more than a dozen phone messages. Gilroy said his employer, G4S, did not intervene. "I saw this coming," he said. In a statement released earlier in the day, John Kenning, chief regional executive for GS4, confirmed that Mateen worked for the company since 2007. "We are shocked and saddened," Kenning said. Company officials said they are preparing a response to Gilroy's remarks. |
A work of Azula for my brithday, it is probably one of my favorite art pieces so far. (still not satisfactory though) I definitly wanna to see a serise about her, titled this way.I feel so happy that I met her last year, Princess Azula. It was she that lead me all the way back to the world of art.I kinda feel like a mother raising a daughter, it always makes me feel so happy when I can draw her the best, and i wanna draw the best of her. Her remarkable excellence and talent make me proud, her loneliness and sadness hurts me deeply, and no matter how "evil" she is, I just can't stop my love.I know it is weird to think/act in this way,but just as I wrote on my profile page"this love maybe naive but I'll take it seriously"LOVE, That's the whole meaning of Fanart for me.so will I.-------------------------------------------------------------This is my first Birthday in DA and I m so touched. Again, THANK YOU For all your Birthday greetings and llama badges !! They mains a lot to me. |
I was reading io9 today, as I’m wont to do, and I came across a piece written by Jesse Alexander — currently the showrunner for ABC’s new Day One — singing the praises of Fox’s late, apparently lamented sci-fi series Space: Above and Beyond. In said piece, Alexander explains how the futuristic military pioneered many of the storytelling and production initiatives that would eventually bear fruit in shows like Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Lost, and Alias. Which all may very well be true; Alexander certainly makes a compelling case. The thing I always took away from Space: Above and Beyond was, Why didn’t Fox just make a Colonial Marines series? Surely, you remember the Colonial Marines, the astro-badasses introduced by James Cameron in Aliens? The men and women who strapped on massive guns and pounded ground all over the galaxy? The troopers who led Ripley onto the mining facility on LV-426 and found a whole nest of acid-for-blood aliens? Those guys should’ve had their own show. Still could. It’d be a natural extension of an already existing Fox-owned franchise, as well as a way to do space-based military sci-fi on a large scale without the burden of a cheesy name like Battlestar Galactica (which even the producers admitted was something of an albatross that kept the show from reaching more viewers). Plus, you could blow lots of stuff up on a semi-regular basis. As excited as I am at the prospect of a Ridley Scott-directed Alien prequel, I’d be more excited for this. Who’s with me? |
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