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At most S.A. schools, growth rarely ceases Warming up for the school year: Teachers get energized at the Spirit of the Northside event as the 2012 school year began for Northside School District. Warming up for the school year: Teachers get energized at the Spirit of the Northside event as the 2012 school year began for Northside School District. Photo: San Antonio Express-News Photo: San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close At most S.A. schools, growth rarely ceases 1 / 20 Back to Gallery As San Antonio's population grows, so does the demand for more schools. Keeping up with growth can pose challenges for some of the area's public school districts and 25-plus charter districts, especially those in northern Bexar County and closer to the Eagle Ford shale energy boom to the south. Compounding the challenge is the ongoing argument in recent years between school districts and state lawmakers over the adequacy of public education funding. The fastest-growing ones, such as Northside, North East, Judson, Southwest and Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City independent school districts, have relied on bond funding to keep facilities at pace with a swelling population. During the 2011-2012 two-year state budget, they increased their class sizes, asking the state for special permission to do that for a record number of K-4 classrooms. Northside, San Antonio's largest school district, is a good example of the intersection between growing numbers of students and less funding. The district is expected to reach a record 100,000 students this fall and is building several new schools. It gained 5,000 students between 2010 and 2012 while cutting its budget by $61.4 million and asking the state for more than 600 class size waivers to handle the growth. District officials say the restored funding will help them likely avoid class size waivers. Northside has held successful bond elections every three years since 1995, persuading voters to approve more than $2.5 billion for construction programs. It was able to break that cycle with belt-tightening and lower post-recession construction costs but plans to ask voters in 2014 for a bond that would help build its first new high school in years. Voters in two other growing school districts, Judson and Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City, approved bonds in May's elections to also help tackle their needs. “In Northwest Bexar County, we have communities for every kind of income level, ” said Northside spokesman Pascual Gonzalez. “You have multimillion-dollar communities on one side of town and more humble starter homes in another part, so there is something for everyone.” While Northside still has plenty of room to build with an area only 55 percent developed, neighboring North East ISD is more landlocked. The city's second-largest school district, with about 68,000 students, opened two elementary schools this year, and a new middle school on Bulverde Road near Loop 1604 is on its way. But district officials said they have no active plans to build beyond that, as the newer schools were designed to accommodate future growth. Districts south of the city are also seeing more students. Southwest ISD enrollment is swelling with rising manufacturing plants and the oil and gas drilling that has ramped up in nearby counties. Now around 13,024 students, Southwest added about 600 in each of the past two years — the same period that saw it lose almost $12 million to the Legislature's education cuts. Voters there overwhelmingly approved a $165 million bond last year that will allow the district to make multiple improvements to existing schools and add a new high school and middle school. Harlandale ISD has added more than 300 new elementary school students as it wrapped up projects from two school bonds. Despite the challenges, several of the growing districts, including Northside, North East, Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City, Harlandale and Southwest, have attained top accountability ratings from the state. Some received recognition as among the top districts in the state in H-E-B's Excellence in Education awards. fvara-orta @express-news.net

Image copyright Theranos Image caption Elizabeth Holmes is worth $4.5bn (£2.7bn) Monitoring what's going on in your body has gripped California's Silicon Valley like a mania. Enthusiasts wear two or three wrist bands to keep an eye on their blood pressure 24 hours a day. They use sensors to tell them how many paces they have taken - the recommended daily rate is currently 10,000, I think. That's about five miles. And up and down the valley, new companies are rushing to get a piece of the action. They are matching body measuring devices to the smartphone, to produce a torrent of data that may or may not be useful to doctors and specialists, if they have the time to deal with it. There are dozens of such entrepreneurial start-ups, maybe hundreds. It is happening because only very recently have people become permanently connected to the internet in this always-on, display-rich way. Mobile technology is seemingly reordering our relationship with ourselves, as well as the outside world. After you've liked or friended a person, you may as well include your own body in your digital network. Self-made billionaire The beginning was what I could do to make a change in the world Elizabeth Holmes Meanwhile, on a corner of the Stanford University campus where Facebook once had its office, Elizabeth Holmes is working away at a health monitoring project that has already taken up 11 years of her life. Her company Theranos is the antithesis of the digital healthcare gold rush, though it is not unconnected with it. She is only 30, but she has been nursing this company all through her 20s. Only now is it breaking cover and making itself known. Elizabeth Holmes has that unshakeable surety of purpose that is one of the hallmarks of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. She dresses in black like the late Steve Jobs of Apple. Like him, too, she generates a kind of force field of attention and self-confidence. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Unlike some rivals, Theranos' technology only requires a drop of blood And she seems to have had it since at least the age of 19, when she dropped out of her engineering studies at Stanford University to found her corporation. Theranos is as yet little known, but private investors have taken stakes that value it at an extraordinary $9bn (£5.4bn). Ms Holmes still owns half the business, making her on paper (according to the magazine Forbes) the youngest woman ever to become a self-made billionaire. And Theranos has attracted some striking believers. On one of the most star-studded boards of directors in the USA sit two former secretaries of state - Henry Kissinger and George Shultz - and a former defence secretary. Theranos has what is on the face of it a straightforward purpose - to make blood tests simple, timely, unalarming, and cheap. Elizabeth Holmes is convinced that she is on a big mission: "The beginning was what I could do to make a change in the world. "To affect people's lives in a meaningful way." 'Difference to the world' A huge number of medical diagnoses are based on blood tests - billions of tests a year in the US alone, costing tens of billions of dollars. Yet for many people they are unaffordable and invasive. There's a widespread fear of needles and testing. Image copyright AP Image caption Theranos has some powerful shareholders As a result, Ms Holmes says that in the US, nearly half the people do not get the tests that their doctors order for them. Theranos has a upfront price list for more than 200 specified blood tests, seemingly far cheaper than established test companies, where the bill comes in after the tests. Much smaller blood samples are used to do tests - little more than a drop. And then the blood is analysed fast in company facilities - automated labs shrouded in proprietary secrecy. "We are handling such small amounts of blood that we needed to redevelop the chemistries and the analytical systems on which to run them," she says. Interesting yes, but is affordable blood testing really a revolution in healthcare? Elizabeth Holmes says it's about access to information: "We believe that when someone you love gets really, really sick, by the time you find out about it is usually too late to do something about it... a very painful experience." Image copyright Reuters Image caption A growing number of us use mobile phone apps to monitor different aspects of our health "If we could build a system that would help to change that, then we would make a difference in the world." To that end, Theranos has recently launched an alliance with the largest drugstore chain in the USA. Walgreen's has more than 8,500 stores all over the country, within five miles of a huge swathe of the US population. The stores have just started installing what are called Theranos Wellness Centers. I dropped in on one a mile or so from the company's HQ in University Avenue, Palo Alto. The experience was certainly straightforward - a welcoming staffer put a soothing warm wrapper on my finger, a pin prick which I hardly felt, and then a small phial of blood filled in a second. The results were emailed back in 24 hours. 'Saving money' To change the trajectory of early detection of illnesses, says Elizabeth Holmes, it is very important to be close to where people live. For some years before this retail drug store rollout, Theranos has been making money by selling its services to big pharmaceutical companies. For them, large-scale testing of drugs in development is an expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome process. It's the stage where costs soar in the development of a new drug. Speeding up tests gets more information about the efficacy of a new drug back to base faster. Easy, frequent blood testing may enable drug companies to see the impact of adjusted drug dosage on their trial patients much faster. Theranos has Europe in its sights too. The cost to patients of blood testing may be a hidden issue when a health service pays, but there is - says Elizabeth Holmes - the chance to save "an incredible amount of money". And when people start taking a much closer interest in their health by having blood tests more frequently, then illnesses will be spotted earlier, she thinks. Blood testing is a market worth billions in the US alone, dominated by big corporations such as Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp. The established companies are unlikely to let a newcomer such as Theranos gain market share by waiting to be undercut, if it can roll out its services as it intends. Theranos is a highly ambitious company with a strikingly ambitious founder and a lot still to prove. But healthcare is only just beginning to wake up to the implications of personalised medicine. And diagnosis - including blood tests - will be at the heart of some great big changes in the way we think about our health. Peter Day is currently reporting from Silicon Valley - and its new obsession with digital healthcare - in Global Business on the BBC World Service.

I wasn’t sure if I could fit the weekend’s two biggest news stories into one comic, but I did it! As I’m sure you all know by now, over the weekend Southpaw Regional Wrestling was finally released! Also an old video of Paige, Xavier Woods, and Brad Maddox involved in sexual congress was hacked and put online. There’s no doubt that it’s terrible for all of the people involved, but honestly I’d be surprised if WWE did anything about it other than keep them off TV for a few weeks. WWE didn’t do anything to Hogan (who wasn’t fired until his racial epithets were revealed) or Seth, so I think it would be hard to dish out any punishment out now. Yes, I know there are graphic photos involved (I’m not going into detail here, you can google it if you’re interested), but it was a long time ago and since Paige is out with an injury and Brad’s long gone, I’m hoping for the sake of the wrestlers that WWE just looks past this one.

Redistricting — the process by which congressional and state legislative district boundaries are drawn — sounds like an unremarkable government chore. And, in theory, it should be. But, too often, it is subject to “gerrymandering,” or manipulation, by the majority political party. Decades ago, University of Illinois political science professor Wendy K. Tam Cho (pictured above) realized that what’s needed is a computational tool that would help the courts objectively measure the fairness of a legislative map. She developed a tool that could generate hundreds of millions of voter district maps that would serve as a “comparison set” — a way to measure the level of partisanship exhibited by any particular electoral map. But any further work was stymied by the lack of compute power. Then she heard about the “Blue Waters” supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Blue Waters is a Cray® XE™/XK™ hybrid supercomputer with 13 PF peak performance and 1.6 PB of system memory. The barriers to progress fell away. Today, Cho and her research assistant, Yan Liu (pictured with Cho), are using Blue Waters to bring her idea to life. “We’ve created a tool that quantifies, synthesizes and analyzes massive amounts of redistricting data, both to engage a broader array of interested stakeholders as well as to provide a tool for judges to use in adjudicating gerrymandering claims,” Cho says. The aim isn’t to end up with one perfectly objective legislative map. Instead, it’s to bring transparency to the redistricting process that can come only from generating and scrutinizing billions upon billions of legally viable electoral districts. The next redistricting is in 2020, and Cho and Liu are hoping their project will enable improvements in the country’s democratic process. Cho’s story is one of many examples of Cray users doing amazing work that affects people every day. You can read more about her work here.

Prescription drug ads are a multibillion-dollar industry that promotes treatments you may or may not need. Here's how to use that information to your advantage. Ads for prescription drugs are everywhere. You can't watch a sporting event without seeing an ad touting a treatment for erectile dysfunction, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or joint pain. Drug marketing is a big business, and companies are willing to spend a lot of money to offer you an easy solution to a health problem you may or may not have. From 2012 to 2015, yearly spending on prescription drug advertising in all media outlets (except digital) rose from $3.2 billion to $5.2 billion, and that figure is expected to only go up. "Older men are a prime target for prescription drug advertisements since they are prone to multiple chronic health conditions, but they should approach them critically as a resource for information and not as answers to questions about treatment," says Dr. Ameet Sarpatwari, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School who studies pharmaceutical marketing. How drug ads work The United States and New Zealand are the only countries where drug makers are allowed to market prescription drugs directly to consumers. The U.S. consumer drug advertising boom on television began in 1997, when the FDA relaxed its guidelines relating to broadcast media. Drug-specific ads fall into two main categories: product claim and reminder. A product claim ad names a drug, notes its generic name and the condition it treats, and talks about both benefits and risks in a balanced fashion. (It's common for any potential side effects to be described rapidly at the end or written in small type that makes it hard to read and comprehend.) A reminder ad gives the drug's name, but not the drug's use. The assumption is that the audience already knows what the drug is for. This kind of ad does not contain risk information because it does not discuss the condition the drug treats or how well it works. The FDA does not approve prescription drug ads in advance, but its staff tries to monitor them to ensure claims are not false or misleading. Ads are submitted to the FDA only when they first appear in public, which means people may see inaccurate ads before the FDA has had time to review them and seek corrections. Many medical advocacy groups say that drug companies employ direct-to-consumer advertising in a way that puts consumers at a disadvantage. First, the FDA cannot limit the amount of money companies spend on advertising; nor can it ban ads for drugs that have serious risks. Companies don't have to spell out exactly how the drug works, mention the cost, or note if there is a generic drug in the same class or a similar drug with fewer risks. The ad blitz of expensive brand-name drugs is often cited as a factor for rising health care costs. Prescription drugs accounted for nearly 17% of total health care spending in 2015, up from about 7% in the 1990s before the revised FDA guidelines went into effect. "These increased costs translate into higher insurance premiums, coinsurance rates, and copays," says Dr. Sarpatwari. "Seniors have been particularly hard hit, facing high out-of-pocket costs for select so-called specialty medications—high-cost, sometimes heavily advertised products—under Medicare Part D." And the drug ad landscape may change even more. Dr. Sarpatwari says that soon drug companies might be able to advertise drug uses that haven't been vetted by the FDA, called off-label uses. While some off-label uses for drugs are well-studied and have been a part of routine medical practice for years, many other off-label uses have not. For example, an antidepressant may one day be advertised as a treatment for insomnia on the basis of highly limited data that may not have passed FDA review. A good or bad thing? The most important issue that consumers need to realize with drug ads is that they are just that—advertisements. Their primary goal is not to help the consumer, but to sell the product. "The information is designed to tell you what it is for and why you need it—but not if you need it," says Dr. Sarpatwari. But drug advertising is not all about deception. It can offer helpful information if you know what to look for. "Advertisements can offer information on drugs that may help many older men, especially those who have conditions that may be tough to treat or manage, such as diabetes and hypertension," says Dr. Sarpatwari. "Ads can help men learn what's available and spur them to strike up a conversation with their doctor. Such engagement can definitely be a good thing." If you're curious about a drug, make sure to ask your doctor the right questions during your next visit (see "Drug ad questions"). Even if the drug is something your doctor agrees you should try, always ask if there are alternatives or lower-cost generics available. Another benefit: your conversation may lead to a discussion about other, nondrug treatments for your condition that may be even better and cheaper.

It’s nothing new for media organizations to employ lofty rhetoric about the role of the press in democracy to advocate special legal privileges. Likewise, it’s nothing new for content creators to try to limit the speech rights of others in order to garner more profit. What is fairly new, however, is for the press to use language about the importance of the First Amendment to argue for a copyright policy that would explicitly limit free speech. In other words, in order to save the First Amendment, we have to limit the First Amendment. Irony is dead. This week, Rupert Murdoch wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that exemplified this clever strategy. Aptly titled “Journalism and Freedom,” the article belittles the fair use doctrine and demands compensation for news content online, while going on to wax eloquent about the ideals of the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The problem is that the right he claims to value above all else, the freedom of speech, is precisely what prevents media companies like News Corp. from claiming ownership in the news. Facts cannot be owned, so while News Corp. can certainly prevent third parties from reproducing stories in full, it has no right to control the facts within those stories. This is not a peculiarity of copyright law; it is a protection of the First Amendment and an effort to create the informed citizenry Murdoch claims to cherish. Near the end of the article, Murdoch argues that the government should stop regulating media companies because the Internet has exponentially increased competition. Standing alone, this argument makes sense. The monopoly of the mass media over information is diminished by limitless competition on the Web. But Murdoch’s aim to own news content would negate the pro-competitive effect of the Internet entirely by granting news organizations the right to control access and reproduction of the news of the day. There are a host of logistical problems with any law that grants intellectual property in facts. Who really creates a fact? Can a news organization own someone’s quote? What if multiple reporters discover a fact simultaneously? But at the end of the day, the most important problem with the concept of owning a fact is that it would undermine the First Amendment and pose a major threat to a healthy, functioning democracy. It is truly sad that the institution that has historically defended and benefited from the First Amendment more than any other is now leading the charge against it. That’s not just irony; it’s hypocrisy.

Both the number of international billionaires and their collective net worth reached record-setting levels in 2015, according to a new study. (Terry J Alcorn/iStock) Although the global economy has been mired in sluggishness for years amid stagnant wages in many developed countries, the world's wealthiest have never been richer or greater in number, according to a billionaire census published this week by research and analysis outfit Wealth-X. All told, the world held a record 2,473 billionaires in 2015 – up 6.4 percent over the year. This group of individuals held a collective net worth of roughly $7.7 trillion, also a record. Putting that sum in perspective, if the world's billionaires joined together to form an ultra-elite nation of their own, their combined wealth would eclipse the gross domestic products of every country in the world except those of the U.S. and China. "Although the overall size of the billionaire population is small, the impact of billionaires on the global economy is significant," the report says, noting that there is "only one billionaire for every 2.95 million people on the planet." Europe again stood as the premier destination for billionaires, as more than 800 ultrawealthy individuals staked claims within the continent's borders. Another 645 billionaires were tied to Asia, while 628 called North America home. It's worth noting, though, that the combined wealth of North America's billionaires – a whopping $2.56 trillion – still eclipsed the billionaire wealth total from every other geographic region. That said, the report indicates that the Asia-Pacific region is "poised to eventually take over the Americas," as it managed to produce "four times more billionaires than the Americas during 2015 and thus leads all regional groups in terms of growth rate of billionaire population and wealth." Region Number of Billionaires Billionaire Growth (Year Over Year) Total Wealth ($Billions) Wealth Growth (Year Over Year) Europe 806 4% $2,330 -1.9% Middle East 166 7.8% $413 9% Africa 41 2.5% $114 -14% North America 628 3.1% $2,371 8% Latin America & the Caribbean 154 0.7% $511 -4.5% Asia 645 15.2% $1,410 19.6% Pacific 33 -2.9% $97 -27.8% A potentially more concerning trend highlighted by the report is that billionaires in 2015 continued their flight to liquid assets. The world's richest held more than 22 percent of their wealth in cash or easily convertible assets like stocks or bonds last year, marking the highest liquidity level on record. The report indicates that between 2014 and 2015, there was a "considerable ramp-up in liquidity events." This trend suggests the world's wealthiest are trying to shield themselves from international economic volatility, shying away from risky ventures and protecting their nest eggs from economic downturns. Theoretically, these are the folks with the strongest connections to the business world, and those who are likely employing financial advisors and portfolio managers with proven track records. If the ultrarich are starting to head for the bunker, it's probably not a good sign for everyone else. "Billionaires are taking money off the table where available," the report says, citing "uncertainties in the economy" as a complicating factor. But who are these wildly wealthy individuals? The report indicates the average billionaire is in his or her early 60s, holds a bachelor's degree and earned much of his or her wealth through ventures and not inheritance. About 56 percent of the world's billionaires are self-made, while 13 percent inherited their wealth and another 31 percent inherited some of their assets but invested in their own interests to grow their cache. "The common denominator of the world's billionaires is their entrepreneurialism," the report says. "In most instances, achieving billionaire status requires more than just inheritance; 87 percent of billionaires, up from 81 percent in 2014, made the majority of their fortunes themselves." The other common denominator among the lion's share of the world's billionaires is a Y chromosome. The world holds only 294 female billionaires, accounting for less than 12 percent of the group's population. This demographic's net worth accounts for only 11.4 percent of total billionaire wealth. Encouragingly, more than 56 percent of the world's billionaires cite "philanthropy" as an interest or hobby in which they're involved. Another 31 percent are passionate about traveling, and nearly 15 percent said boating was a hobby of theirs. "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Giving Pledge have instilled a sense of humanitarian responsibility in billionaires to use their vast wealth to make a difference in the world," the report says. Charitable donations and philanthropic ventures often come with tax incentives, but billionaires' proclivity to give is undoubtedly a positive in the U.S. and beyond amid growing concern about income inequality. A separate study published earlier this year by the Giving USA Foundation and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found that Americans' charitable donations in 2015 clocked in at a whopping $373.25 billion, up 4 percent year over year. That means Americans for the first time collectively donated more than $1 billion per day, on average.

Despite years of open source fans claiming that “many eyes make all bugs shallow” there are far too few security researchers actually auditing these projects. And even fewer making their work public. That’s why it’s nice to see a post like this that describes an interesting bug. On June 26th Lab Mouse Security published a nice write up of a 20 year old integer overflow vulnerability in a widely used LZO implementation written by Markus Oberhumer. When I see something like this and a patch is released, I like to investigate the code to look for additional issues. Auditing source code for vulnerabilitis is hard and bugs like to travel in groups. Even professional auditors miss vulnerabilities and trying to prove that there are no security vulnerabilities in a certain piece of code is essentially impossible. First: The patched Linux version is still vulnerable to integer overflows. The bug(s) still require that about 16Mb is decompressed at once, which is hopefully is uncommon. As a result of the integer overflow it is possible to write data beyond the output buffer. We will use the source code of the current (as of this blog post) version in the Linux tree. This is the version that was patched for the reported integer overflows. We are only focusing on out of bound writes into out . And only on issues that allow us to write behind the buffer. Lab Mouse Security detailed how the overflow can be used to write before out , but I’ll only look at writing beyond out . In the following code op is the current output pointer end op_end is the end of the output buffer. When reading the code it becomes clear that the HAVE_OP macro on line 26 is the primary defense against writing outside of the output buffer out . 26 #define HAVE_OP(t, x) \ 27 (((size_t)(op_end - op) >= (size_t)(t + x)) && \ 28 (((t + x) >= t) && ((t + x) >= x))) Analyzing this macro one can see several ways this check can be bypassed. If op is ever higher than op_end (size_t)(op_end - op) will be a big value effectively negating any further bounds checks and allowing writing beyond the out buffer. There are no checks to check that op does not point before the output buffer out . This post will not investigate this part further. The checks for overflow on line 28 are, depending on the compiler and settings, incorrect, C standard compliant compilers are free to remove both checks. This post however is also not about this 3rd issue. If you are interested there is some info from LLVM and GCC. Linus Torvalds indicated that the Linux kernel is compiled with -fno-strict-overflow which prevents the optimization. Lets focus on just the first issue. Are there any places in the code where op can be increased beyond op_end ? First example at line 103: 103 { 104 NEED_OP(t, 0); 105 NEED_IP(t, 3); 106 do { 107 op++ = ip++; 108 } while (--t > 0); 109 } NEED_OP is a simple wrapper around HAVE_OP : 36 #define NEED_OP(t, x) \ 37 do { \ 38 if (!HAVE_OP(t, x)) \ 39 goto output_overrun; \ 40 } while (0) As we can see from the macros above NEED_OP(t, 0) will succeed without error when t = 0 even if op_end and op point to the same location. Once this check is passed op will be increased inside the while loop. After the increase op points past op_end bypassing further checks in HAVE_OP . The question then becomes, can we get t to be 0. If we look a little above this code, at the while loop at line 78 we see: 77 if (unlikely(t == 0)) { 78 while (unlikely(ip == 0)) { 79 t += 255; 80 ip++; 81 NEED_IP(1, 0); 82 } 83 t += 15 + ip++; 84 } 85 t + 3; We find a familiar sight. A nice integer overflow. By having a lot of 0’s inside the input t keep being increased. We can now increase t to 0xfffffffd . The addition of 3 in line 85 will increase the value of t to 0x100000000 , which requires 33 bits to store. On 32bit systems t only has room for 32bit and the extra bit is simply ignored and not stored. As a result by having around 16 million 0 bytes it is possible to raise t sufficiently high that the addition of 3 can wrap t around to 0. If we go back to the actual while loop in line 103 we see that this example is not very usefull. The while loop will ‘decrease’ t to 0xffffffff and keep looping and writing memory for a very long time, likely triggering all sorts of traps or segfaults, making exploitation inconvenient and depending on the actual target impossible. Let’s continue auditing. Second example is at line 207 in the middle of the following code: 203 unsigned char oe = op + t; 204 NEED_OP(t, 0); 205 op[0] = m_pos[0]; 206 op[1] = m_pos[1]; 207 op += 2; 208 m_pos += 2; 209 do { 210 op++ = m_pos++; 211 } while (op < oe); Once again this operation is protected by a NEED_OP(t, 0) . But in this case op is increased by at least 3. Once by 2 on line 207 and once by 1 on line 210. As long as op points at most 2 bytes before op_end this will increased op beyond op_end allowing writing beyond the out buffer. For this scenario to happen we need to pass the NEED_OP check at line 204. Given that op_end - op has be at most 2 t has to either 2, 1, or 0. t can be controlled in many location in the code. Tracing where t comes from and checking if it can be 0, 1 or 2 is a short auditing exercise. Most of the code ensures that t will be at least 3. At line 139 however we find a familiar while loop: 138 if (unlikely(t == 2)) { 139 while (unlikely(ip == 0)) { 140 t += 255; 141 ip++; 142 NEED_IP(1, 0); 143 } 144 t += 31 + *ip++; 145 NEED_IP(2, 0); 146 } An integer overflow can once again occur while parsing t , once again requiring at least around 16Mb of data inside the input buffer in . Now that we have found a path that allows increase op beyond op_end we can see what is required: Fill out with out_len - 1 bytes, ensuring that op_end - op is 1. Using the integer wrap in the while loop at line 139 to set t to 0, 1 or 2. Trigger the increase of op beyond op_end . op will now point beyond op_end bypassing all the checks in HAVE_OP and allowing writing beyond out . At this point the limit of data we can write beyond the end of out is limited by the room in the input buffer. Since LZO is a compression algorithm few bytes inside the input buffer can result in many output bytes. Lesson we can learn from this: Though developers find and fix a lot of security vulnerabilities during development, some tricky vulnerabilities can stick around for a long time without a dedicated auditing effort. Just because the code is included in a lot of projects and in a lot of code bases does not imply that it has had sufficient (if any) code audits to assure a level of security. And just because an auditor has audited the code and found some bugs, doesn’t mean they found all of them. Auditing is hard and it takes time to do well. Finding one bug is only a warning. Based on these bugs I doubt anyone interested in disclosing bugs ever audited this code for security vulnerabilities before Lab Mouse Security did. Without hiring skilled auditor working on the defense side, we can be sure many security bugs will never be patched. We cannot rely on the free evenings of professional auditors and haphazard audits by volunteers of varying skill levels to secure critical infrastructure like the Linux kernel or OpenSSL. Not fixing the root cause, in this case the integer overflow options for t , means that you have to very carefully audit the code to make sure the root cause does not lead to other unwanted behaviour. , means that you have to very carefully audit the code to make sure the root cause does not lead to other unwanted behaviour. With that said, the LZO code is relatively small so if you have an afternoon, take a look and let us know what you find. I do not have enough free time to go over all the different version of LZO out there, but a quick look at the minilzo implementation from Markus Oberhumer indicates that it added a proper check to prevent t from overflowing. If you would like to further limit my free time I can be reached at info@lekkertech.net Patch suggestions: Fix the incorrect overflow checks in HAVE_OP and HAVE_IP , code that is used in this many locations will likely be used with optimizing compilers that just remove those checks. Fix the integer overflows when calculating t . Have the code reviewed by code auditors trained in finding security vulnerabilities. Simple patch for the Linux Kernel. As an exercise: Spot the other places op can be increased beyond op_buf in the Linux LZO version.

In July 2012 GAME Australia closed its doors for the last time. 700 members of staff, 90 stores, 20 years. All lost. Gone. But two years previously, when the UK’s Chief Executives sent its best men to save GAME from the doldrums, no-one could have predicted how quickly it would all go wrong. This is the story of how one retailer tried to reinvent itself, but came tumbling apart at the seams. “Who is GAME?” he asks. “Don’t you mean EB Games? “Well, I’m fed up of hearing that. We’re GAME and I’m very much proud of that.” Five metres to Ben’s right is Paul Yardley, GAME’s Managing Director. Brought on initially as a consultant it is now his job to rescue GAME’s struggling Australian operation. This transformed Parramatta store is part of the plan. On Paul’s left, ‘Phil and Ed’, a comedy duo. The first stage in a marketing blitz that will ultimately land GAME in some serious trouble. At least that’s what GAME hopes. They want to make waves, land a headline or two. ‘Phil and Ed’ is just the beginning. Behind everyone, standing at the counter, watching it all transpire, is Parramatta’s store manager Travis Jones. He has no idea what the hell is going on, and he’s not entirely sure he likes it. His store has become an experiment. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing. Just over one year later, Travis Jones, with stubborn tears in his eyes, will lock up GAME’s Parramatta store for the last time. He will head to Parramatta RSL for beers with a group of store managers who have just done the exact same thing. They will drink their sorrows until they drop and GAME will be no more. Hotshots November 2010. The sun beats down on Elizabeth Bay. Ben Grant is still dressed in black. In between drinks, he tells us the master plan. GAME's stores are dull. No-one cares. Worse, no one really knows who GAME is. That’s set to change, he says. The UK has sent some hotshots to the rescue. These men have dragged other territories out of trouble into calmer waters. They’ll do the same with the troubled Australian market, believes Ben. Things are about to get interesting. Hotshot #1: Gordon Graham, a gruff Scottish Operations Manager. A man Travis Jones affectionately refers to as “a mean old prick”. The man who single-handedly saved GAME’s Irish territory from the abyss. Hotshot #2: GAME’s brand new Managing Director Paul Yardley. But Paul Yardley had already been in Australia for three months before his appointment — time he mostly spent sunning himself on Sydney’s beaches. Paul had just entered his 30s. After spending four years working for Deutsche Bank as an investment banker, he took a sabbatical, headed to the other side of the world, and quietly wondered what the hell he was doing with his life. He found his answer in a chance phone call. In his past life at Deutsche Bank, Paul Yardley had spent the past three or four years getting to know the executives who ran GAME PLC. When he heard GAME’s Chief Executive was on a visit to Australia, he figured catching up for drinks was a decent idea. The conversation soon turned to business. GAME’s Chief Executive was frank. “Australia’s a struggle,” she said. "Why?" That was Paul’s first question. Surely Australia, with a population of 22 million and an engaged set of potential consumers, was the perfect market for GAME. What could have gone wrong? That’s what she wanted Paul Yardley to figure out. “She said, ‘Can you do a bit of consultancy work?” says Paul. “’Go look at GAME for three months? Figure what it is that we’re not quite doing right, see if the business in the right place?’ “I said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. I’m very happy to do that’.” Paul Yardley’s days of sunning himself on the beach were about to be over. Store Wars Paul Yardley scratched his head. As far as he could tell, there were roughly five major things GAME was doing wrong, almost all of which were the result of one major issue. GAME had far too many stores, and too many of those stores were being fundamentally mismanaged. Too much stock, not enough sales, poor management. First order of business: close the offending stores, clean up the mess. In its rush to expand rapidly, he concluded, GAME had been taken advantage of. They had an overwhelming amount of stores, paying extravagant rental rates for mediocre retail space. According to Parramatta Manager, Travis Jones, GAME’s previous Managing Director was essentially being paid to open as many stores as he could in as short a time as possible. It took the previous owners of the Game Wizards brand almost 20 years to establish 15 stores. In 30 months, GAME increased that number to an incredible 125. Ben Grant claims the UK wanted 200+ GAME stores in Australia as part of a global expansion plan. And they wanted them fast. “GAME saw that the market in this country was big, and EB pretty much had it to themselves at that stage,” explains Paul Yardley. “There was a big attractive market, with $110 price points. So they thought, 'Brilliant, here we go.’” Here we go indeed. But while GAME was busy expanding, so too was its main competitor EB Games. Both were caught up in bidding wars for retail space throughout the country, allowing the Westfields of the world to play one against the other. “We were losing so much money that it made sense to say to the landlords, ‘Look, we know we owe you for another three years, if we pay you six months rent, can we walk away?’" “The property market was very, very full,” says Paul. “Westfield had eight people begging for every site they had. So you ended up in this bidding war, and I think all the landlords were saying, ‘OK, GAME, OK, EB Games, I’ve got one site in the centre. I want a games store there. What’s your best offer?’” Ben Grant agrees. “The arrival of GAME into the Australian market resulted in EB Games accelerating their store expansion plan,” he admits. “The landlords did very well out of the property expansion battle between us.” Paul immediately set about the painful task of deciding which stores were financially viable, and which needed to be closed immediately. “We took the business from 130 stores down to about 90 over a six-month period,” says Paul. “It was quite painful.“ Painful because of the job losses, admits Paul — Managing Directors typically don’t want to be part of a shrinking business — but the majority of the financial pain came from the exorbitant cost of closing stores. GAME were bound to multiple overpriced locations for three years, getting out of these contracts proved costly. “We were losing so much money that it made sense to say to the landlords, ‘Look, we know we owe you for another three years, if we pay you six months rent, can we walk away?’ “We’d have that debate, and eventually they would say yes.” Closing the stores was the first order of business. The second order of business was to whip the remaining stores into shape and make sure capable hands were manning the deck. And that’s where Gordon Graham comes in. The man Travis Jones once called a “mean old prick”. Travis And Hotshot #1 Travis Jones was a little sick of wearing a shirt and tie to work. That’s one reason why he quit his job at EB Games in Shellharbour. The other was poor management. EB Games put more focus on Key Performance Indicators than customer service, and that was difficult to take. Working at GAME was far more suited to a man like Travis, who took real pleasure in making sure customers walked out of his store with a smile on their face. “GAME always told us the customer came first,” says Travis, and that suited him fine. “Before you stack a shelf you serve every customer. You make sure they feel comfortable.” Travis admits that life before Paul Yardley was a little more relaxed. He was usually left alone to run his store, and visits from the previous Operations Manager were few and far between. Very little scrutiny was placed on how things were run. But that all changed when Gordon Graham came on board. “A lot of the staff members were scared of him,” says Travis. “He had a presence.” Gordon Graham was ‘hotshot #1’. It was his job to fix what Paul Yardley believed was the second major issue with GAME’s business in Australia — the stores themselves. What did they look like, how were they run? Were the right people in charge of these stores? Thankfully, Travis made the cut. “Gordon was very strict in making sure everyone hit their targets,” says Travis. “He kept an eye on that. The feeling you got when he came over was this guy is fucking serious. A lot of the staff members weren’t used to that because the Aussie guys who were running it before were so laid back they didn’t give a fuck!” But Gordon Graham gave a fuck — he gave several fucks. And despite feeling intimidated by his presence, most managers grew to respect his style. Gordon Graham expected the world from his managers, but was quick to reward success. “He was definitely fair. Gordon rewarded good work quite well. At the end of the day we all understood that this guy knew what he was doing. We all respected that.” The Bitter Pill In a warehouse in Sydney 10,000 copies of the latest Just Dance gather dust. GAME, across 90 stores, is selling roughly 200 copies a week. It’s endemic of an ageing business model, endemic of the poor purchasing practices of GAME’s previous management team. If GAME was to have any chance of surviving in Australia, changing the way it dealt with local publishers and distributors was essential. The constant overpurchasing of retail units had resulted in all kinds of difficulties. “Historically we were buying too much,” admits Paul Yardley. “But that’s the way publishers tend to work, or used to work I should say. THQ were good at this. “They’ll sell you 10 million, and you sell five. Then the publishers say, ‘well, that’s terrible isn’t it — what are you going to do about it?’ We say, 'Well, alright we have to pay for it, right?' Then they say ‘I’ll do you a deal, you put it on the front of your window for a week and I’ll take off $10 a copy.’ “So you end up being forced to do these things because you bought too much in the first place. You’re constantly in debt. Then the publishers say, ‘OK, if you buy 10 million of the next game, I’ll half the price of the last stock you couldn’t sell.' So you end up in this sort of spiral. It’s a bit like being at the drug dealer where they give you the first hit for free.” Paul Yardley wanted to change the conversation. Again, it was as easy as taking the right people out for a drink. “There’s roughly, I don’t know, 12 people here in Australia who run the games industry,” says Paul. “If you have a beer with them once every three or four weeks, you don’t necessarily get everything you want, but you’re at least able to ask for certain things politely. They’ll say, 'Yeah, I’ll give you that, but I won’t give you this.'" The tough part of the conversation was obvious — GAME would now be buying less of what publishers and distributors were trying to sell. That was the bitter pill. The sweetener was a slicker business model, where GAME would consistently sell through the stock they purchased. Retail, as a whole, was changing, and GAME was helping drive that change here in Australia. “Retailers started to understand that when we bought four million we sold 3.8 million,” explains Paul. “Brilliant. Perfect. Because they don’t have to worry about the next shipment and how we’re going to pay for that. "Whereas before GAME were screaming, ‘Ship it in! We’ll sell 10 million!’ Then we’d come back, saying, ‘Give us some discounts! We can’t sell them!’” A Brief Encounter Travis Jones pauses for thought. He chooses his words carefully. “Ben Grant definitely has... uh, a different kind of mind when it comes to marketing.” In 2010, GAME’s Marketing Director Ben Grant had very little to lose. He had already handed in his resignation. Ben Grant initially arrived in Australia in 2008 on a 12-month contract; GAME had acquired the Game Wizards stores, and Ben was asked to come over to Australia and help drive this new commercial undertaking. Two extensions and three years later, he was ready to go back home to England. Ben Grant missed his family. But the proposition offered was impossible to pass up. Paul Yardley and GAME’s UK Directors gave Ben a blank slate — reinvent GAME’s image from the ground up, build GAME’s brand awareness to the point where they could no longer be ignored, to the point where no one would ever mistake them for EB Games again. “The brief I was given was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he says. It was a dream assignment, but Ben’s budget was almost non-existent. It was the challenge that motivated him: How could he maximise brand awareness with minimal investment? Ben’s first step was GAME TV, hosted by Phil and Ed. Phil and Ed were invented characters, played by actors Steen Raskopoulos and Seamus McAlary. They lived and played in Ed’s mother’s basement and were intended to appeal to GAME’s core audience, to represent a new, edgier GAME — a brand with personality and presence. Interesting concept, but patronising in practice. Some saw Phil and Ed as a harmless bit of fun, but many gamers were offended by the idea of two basement-dwelling man-children representing them. But Ben Grant’s intention was to elicit some sort of reaction, positive or negative, so he pressed on. There were harmless campaigns like the Battle Of The Clans or the Sonic Quest, but Ben was intent on stirring the pot. As far as he was concerned, the more controversy the better. The likenesses of Phil and Ed were used on some fairly juvenile reward cards — strategically positioned holes allowed owners to get a little ‘creative’. And then there was the notorious ‘WTF?!’ campaign... A dancing dwarf, a couple of regular joes, a playboy bunny, a gardening grandmother — all exclaiming "What the F—" at GAME’s trade-in deals. It was attention-grabbing by rote but smart positioning. According to Ben Grant a number of these campaigns resulted in complaints to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which, of course, was precisely the reaction Ben Grant was looking for. He wanted to market the GAME brand as a bit crazy, a bit edgy, a bit out there. “I would much prefer to have had 100 per cent positive press coverage, but this resulted in a lot of free media coverage and articles,” says Ben. “People were talking about GAME for the first time.” And Ben Grant was just getting started. GAME Swinging “The GAME swingers thing?” begins Travis Jones. “That was really fucking weird, and it should never have happened.” “Everyone who worked for GAME was thinking, ‘What the fuck is going on. Has it really come to this?’” GAME Swinging. It was the culmination of Ben Grant’s reinvention of GAME. An attempt to maximise exposure with minimum marketing dollars, a last gasp shot at rebranding GAME as something completely separate and distinct from its competitors. It backfired. Massively. But GAME Swinging was supposed to backfire. It was designed to fail, right from the start. The concept for GAME Swinging was relatively simple: a series of speed-dating events focused on gaming and trading games. Male and female gamers would meet up, swap games and maybe even swap phone numbers. It seemed like harmless fun. The actual event itself, however, was far from harmless. GAME Swinging began, as you’d expect, with some gaming and a few drinks. Later, however, a series of clearly paid male and female models spontaneously began removing their clothes and wandered around the venue naked. A promotional video for the event ended with a male and female model leaving the event, heading up to a hotel room and suggestively closing the door behind them. By the end of the video, no one was ever in any doubt — what initially seemed like a curious, if misguided, dating concept was actually a calculated attempt at grabbing shock headlines. Today, Ben Grant is happy to admit as much. His goal was to create controversy, to generate media headlines and mainstream outrage. “GAME Swingers was a PR stunt,” he admits. “We wanted make the national news and cause enough public outcry to get the event closed down.” From the beginning, says Ben, the GAME Swinging event was designed to achieve a handful of distinct goals: get the GAME brand on national television, distance GAME from EB, and shock consumers. But Ben’s ultimate goal was to generate multiple letters of complaint that he could then send to the media to prolong media coverage and get a “second bite of the cherry”, as he puts it. Ben even ascribed a financial target to the GAME Swinging operation: he wanted the event to garner $1 million dollars of free media coverage. In the end, according to his estimates, GAME pulled in roughly $500,000 — half of what Ben had initially hoped for. “Would I do it again? No,” he says. “I would have tried something else more controversial that would have obtained double the media coverage, with an even bigger shock factor.” But by the end of Ben Grant’s media blitz, he was mentally and physically drained. He left Australia and headed back home to his family in the UK, having built GAME’s brand awareness from 18 per cent to 50 per cent in just over a year. “Ben Grant tried his best to promote GAME in different ways,” says Travis Jones. “I give him real credit for that.” The Dance Late 2011. A meeting room in the UK. GAME PLC is in the midst of a dangerous gambit. Paul Yardley refers to it as a ‘dance’. Like most PLCs, GAME UK owed a large sum of money to the Bank, but that wasn’t the problem. GAME PLC was starting to show the stresses that came with steering a retail giant through a declining market in the midst of a global recession. That was the problem. Soon those stresses became visible fractures; the bank was concerned. GAME wasn’t exactly proving itself to be a profitable company that could pay its bills on time. The dance went sour. “It was around about that time the UK noticed their dance partner was eyeing up the girl behind them,” explains Paul. “They started to think, ‘OK, now we really are in trouble.'” GAME’s credit, like anyone’s, was tied to a number of financial covenants. There was a golden ratio: to manage its debt GAME PLC had to prove a certain level of profitability. And it had to cough up a certain amount of cash for expenses. And therein lay the issue — heading into 2012 GAME, as a global company, wasn’t profitable enough to maintain those financial covenants. It was struggling. Majorly. “Initially the banks were friendly,” explains Paul. “They listened carefully and GAME outlined a plan to restore profitability to the group. All the way through this we really, honestly believed this was just a game of poker. The banks would say, ‘You’re going to break your covenants’. We would say, ‘Well, yes, we might, but we’ll come good again in six months time.’” But the stakes were high. The dance became tense. GAME’s lenders, in the first quarter of 2012, sent in financial services firm PwC to double check if GAME’s generous business forecasts actually held water. GAME PLC was put in the difficult position of having to work in the same offices as its potential administrators. One false move and the accountants working across the office would have their heads on a silver platter. “There was this mob of accountants sitting in the UK offices saying, ‘be nice to us or we’ll tip you over the edge’,” explains Paul. And all the while, looming on the horizon, the spectre of store rent, paid quarterly in the UK. It was an expense that always had the potential to sink GAME. There were over 600 stores across the UK. A lot of cash to pay in one hit; an almost impossible sum of money. And, in the end, it was this store rent that took GAME PLC to the cleaners. “GAME UK went to pay the rent and the bank just said ‘nope’,” says Paul. “It was very much a moment of ‘insufficient funds’.” “At that point you haven’t got an option. If the bank won’t give you any money and you can’t pay your rent. You haven’t got a business anymore. “So the UK had to call in the administrators.” The mothership had just gone bust. A Moment Of Clarity You would expect chaos. Meltdowns. Staff walkouts. You’d expect instantaneous storewide sales across Australia. In truth, no one knew what to expect when GAME PLC went into administration. Most assumed that when the UK went pop that, in turn, GAME Australia would go pop. A reasonable assumption, but what actually happened was this: Paul Yardley drove to his office, sat down on his chair, took a deep breath and exhaled. At his desk, in the midst of the insane situation he had just inherited, Paul did some thinking. The Australian banks are still dealing with us, he thought. We have money in the bank. We can pay our rent, and we can buy stock. We still have a business. “We had this moment of clarity,” says Paul. “We realised we didn’t have to do anything day one. We could keep going.” But there was fallout. Paul Yardley and his team had been busy transforming GAME into something approaching a profitable business, but that process required a cash investment. If GAME was to survive it needed a buyer, someone who would continue to fund GAME’s reconstruction. But, before that could happen, it was the responsibility of the management team to reassure everyone — business partners, staff members, themselves — that recovery was possible. “I spent a lot of the first few days telling everyone ‘We’re still here’,” says Paul. “We’ll find an answer.” On the frontline, however, everyone’s confidence was shaken. “Although none of us wanted to believe it,” says Travis, “we all knew the UK situation would affect us in Australia. We were told numerous times that it wouldn’t, but it scared the absolute fucking shit out of me. That was the start of everything, when everyone started wondering, ‘Are we going to be OK?’” The answer to that question depended solely on Paul Yardley’s ability to find a buyer for GAME Australia. Falling Down The Crack Crack picture from Shutterstock Paul Yardley spoke to multiple interested parties, 10 in total. At one point, the management team got together and discussed the possibility of buying GAME themselves, but that was eventually deemed impossible. In the end, three major parties seemed genuinely intrigued in GAME, and Paul truly believed a solution was in sight. “We had some good healthy discussions with a number of people,” says Paul. But one buyer suddenly left negotiations — that was a blow. Then, later down the track, the second prospective buyer pulled out. GAME’s bargaining power was significantly reduced. And, finally, May 13. GAME’s final prospective saviour walked away. All was lost. GAME was too risky a proposition. For those who didn’t understand the cyclical nature of games retail, GAME was simply too much work for too little reward. “There were three things that anyone coming into the situation had to get their heads around pretty quickly,” explains Paul, “and this was hour by hour stuff.” “One. If I’m not from the games market, if I’m new to this, what I’m seeing is a declining market. I’m investing in a company that’s telling me it’s going to turn around in a few year’s time but I’ve got no proof of that. Will I gamble four million bucks on that? “Two. Let’s say I buy into the gaming market. I’ve got a business that’s been through a pretty tough six months and lost a lot of good people. Do I have the appetite as a buyer to rebuild this thing? A lot of people were like, ‘That sounds like a lot of fucking hard work actually’. Quite high risk. “Three. GAME is a funny size really — 90 stores. If I’m, say, Anchorage Capital, I can buy Dick Smith, which has 400 stores. I could put in $20 million and make $200 million. Or I could put in $4 million into GAME and make $20 million. Both are going to take the same amount of energy. "I think we fell down the crack in a way. Just an awkward size at an awkward point in the market cycle.” May 13, Paul Yardley has two very difficult phone calls to make. The first is to GAME’s lawyers. He double-checks the figures, triple-checks his options. The last thing he wants is to be charged with insolvent trading. As a Managing Director, that may be the one thing that follows him to his grave. Paul Yardley is now out of options. He saves the most difficult phone call for the next morning. May 14. Paul Yardley calls PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). We know you’re outside waiting, he says. You can come in now. It was official, GAME Australia was in administration. “You make that phone call,” he says. “You actually sign a piece of paper. You sign a piece of paper that says GAME is bust. And then you’re depressed.” No Longer In Control “I think everyone sort of knew something bad was about to happen.” Employees in the back are busy packing boxes; buyers are on phones, frantically negotiating with distributors. Reluctantly, Paul Yardley stands up in the middle of GAME’s head office. He watches as productivity slowly grinds to a halt. He begins to talk; he explains the situation as plainly as possible. He scans the room for a reaction. Fear, exhaustion. Before the day is out there will be tears. “Everyone had worked so hard,” says Paul. “It was like being in the trenches and you’ve just lost the war. It’s not an episode I care to repeat in my corporate life. “You sign a piece of paper. Then you call a staff meeting. You say, ‘this morning we’ve had to put the company into administration, we’re very sorry. And I’m very sad to be standing in front of you telling you this. Here is Mr PwC who will now tell you what’s going to happen, what that means for you. Because I won’t be here any more.’” At that precise moment, Paul remembers one specific conversation. A few weeks back an employee came into his office. "Will I lose my job if we go into administration?" he asked. "I don’t know," Paul replied. "But there’s a good chance you will." "My wife lost her job four weeks ago,"" the employee continued. "How am I supposed to cope when my family has lost both sets of incomes within two months?"" The memory sent Paul reeling. “There’s not a lot you can say to someone in that situation,” says Paul. “Those discussions and conversations weigh very heavily on you. You walk round the office and people are crying. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I really wouldn’t.” Two years after he first agreed to help reel GAME in from the brink, one year after GAME's reinvention, Paul Yardley walked out of head office. No longer responsible. No longer in control. No longer in charge. “You go from the busiest, most mental time of your career and all the pressure of administration to nothing. Absolutely nothing.” He headed directly to the nearest pub and ordered himself a stiff drink. 'I Read It On Kotaku' Travis Jones wasn’t angry, just disappointed. Alright, maybe he was a little bit angry. News of GAME’s administration spread fast. Before Head Office had a chance to inform its 700 members of staff, most had heard or read the news elsewhere. “It was on a website before we heard it from GAME,” says Travis. “Actually I read it on Kotaku. They didn’t say anything to us about what was going to happen. They denied it until the day it happened and I felt that was very unfair. I think everyone saw it as a bit of a kick in the nuts.” It was the opposite of what Travis had come to expect from GAME, a company he still refers to as the best he’s ever worked for. To this day he resents the idea that GAME may have been hiding something from its store managers, the staff who kept GAME afloat during incredibly trying times. Paul Yardley blames the lack of information on, well... a lack of information. GAME’s final potential buyer pulled out on May 13. Paul made the call to PwC the next morning but, up until that moment, he genuinely believed that GAME could be saved. Part of it was an attempt to keep spirits up, but he did, as he puts it, “believe his own hype”. Paul didn’t think GAME would go into administration until the day GAME actually went into administration. But that didn’t make things easier for staff on the frontline. The situation was bad and it was about to get much worse. With GAME in administration it could no longer guarantee its customer’s pre-orders, of which there were literally thousands. The highest profile launch around that time was Diablo III. A large majority of customers had paid this game off in full, and GAME couldn’t provide the game or offer consumers a full refund. The laws of administration define customers as debtors, and if they wanted their money back, they would have to head to the back of a very long queue. The harsh reality was most of these customers would not be getting their money back. Not then, not ever. And it was the job of GAME’s store staff to inform customers of that fact. “It was hard dealing with that many complaints,” says Travis. “There was so much frustration and anger.” At the time, Travis had roughly 25 fully paid-off pre-orders in his store and countless others that were partially paid. Travis and his staff had to bear the brunt of this. Every day, there was an incident. Every day, they had to suffer volleys of abuse from frustrated consumers. “We were getting yelled at by customers demanding $10 or $20 back when we were all about to lose our jobs,” says Travis. There was one incident Travis will never forget: “He was an absolute pearler.” “He was my customer, so he came directly up to me. The guy had $50 down on a game for his son; a decent amount of money. I tried to explain to him that GAME was in administration, that we couldn't give him the game or his money back. I said, ‘If you want to register to get your money back, you should head to our website...’” “We were getting yelled at by customers demanding $10 or $20 back when we were all about to lose our jobs,” says Travis. At that precise moment the customer lost any semblance of control. In front of his wife and kids he exploded with rage, screaming, shouting, threatening violence. “I said, look, mate, your kids are here, calm down, it’s not my fault.” The customer then calmly and casually walked his wife and children out of the Parramatta store — before charging back with another stream of abuse that threatened to turn physical. “He ran back in saying he was going to jump the counter and punch my head in! I had to get security in to drag him away!" It was a difficult situation for everyone involved: for the consumers, who lost money, for GAME’s staff members who had to manage the situation. The games industry had become increasingly dependent on the pre-order model for a multitude of reasons — to gauge interest, to measure the success of marketing campaigns — but it proved a dangerous game to play in a volatile retail environment. With distance and perspective, Paul Yardley admits the pre-order model GAME and other retailers used (and still use) is heavily flawed. “It’s a lesson for everyone about retail in general,” explains Paul. “Any money you’ve given to a retailer before you’ve taken something out of the door isn’t protected. You rank below everyone in the list of creditors.” As someone who has worked at the highest level of retail Paul’s advice is simple. “The games industry loves having pre-orders because it’s the best indicator of what will sell,” he says. “But paying them off? It’s terrible. Because it puts you at risk. “My advice for people would be this: unless you’re very sure of the standing of your retailer, don’t risk it. Don’t ever pay anything off in full.” 20 Years To Build... With GAME finally in administration, PwC made a final sweep of any potential investors but, in Paul Yardley’s words, he had already "bled the market dry". Internally, at head office and in stores, everyone was preparing for GAME’s inevitable liquidation. Within two days there were redundancies at head office. Before the end of the week GAME went from 90 stores to 60. Massive storewide sales sent the message to consumers: GAME was going out of business and it was only a matter of time before every single store in Australia closed its doors for good. In the end it took PwC eight weeks to close GAME completely. “Twenty years to build, eight weeks to close it down,” says Paul. On the last day of trade, Travis Jones made sure all of his full-time staff were rostered, he owed that to them he thought. Morale was low. They packed games into boxes, they tossed a football around in an attempt to lighten the mood. Towards the end of the shift, Travis brought in some beers. They sat around and clinked some bottles. “We just tried to celebrate the fact that GAME was GAME and it was going under,” says Travis. Paul Yardley took longer to let things go. He distinctly remembers two particularly harsh weeks in the middle of winter, directly after GAME’s closure. It took six months for him to put the events of the last two years into some sort of perspective. “You reflect, you twiddle your thumbs,” he says. “You feel very depressed for a while. And I don’t use that word lightly because I don’t think you should. “Up until November 2012 it still felt very fresh and raw. But now everyone has their new jobs; I realise it could have been worse.” Travis Jones was one of those people with a new job, in retail, in a new store, but he’ll never forget his last day at GAME, as he locked up the flagship Parramatta store for the very last time. July 2012. Just over a year before, Ben Grant stood on a small raised stage and said GAME had to “adapt or die”. Somehow, GAME Australia managed to do both, and it almost felt inevitable — but for Travis it genuinely was the end of an era. He'll never forget his last day. The boxes packed, the display units dismantled, GAME's flagship store felt like a strange tomb — a historical relic, a last testament to a retail model in transition. In the end there was nothing left but storage space. “Walking out of my store and locking up the padlock for the last time, I did get teary. I had so much care and respect for that store and I worked harder for that company than I have for anybody. “For me, memories of GAME are always going to be good.”

One of Apple’s most interesting new mobile updates is an augmented reality toolkit called ARKit, which will show up on iPhones and iPads next week with iOS 11. Even before the official release, developers have used ARKit to realize some pretty clever ideas. But yesterday, ARKit felt like a minor sideshow to the big news of the day. Where Apple was effusive about augmented reality earlier this year at WWDC — and competitors Google and Facebook have steadily stressed it as a sea change in human-computer interaction — yesterday’s event made it feel like an extra perk. Writer and VR / AR evangelist Robert Scoble called it “totally undersold,” with “no effort at explaining why Apple's new OS is bringing a new world to us.” But right now, that might be a smart idea. Augmented reality’s silly present sits uneasily with lofty rhetoric about its future Showcasing “augmented reality” on a smartphone comes with a lot of baggage. The term seems simultaneously futuristic and obsolete: it could refer to the awkward AR gimmicks of early smartphones, high-tech glasses that people might not use for years, or a conflation of both. ARKit has a lot of potential uses, but many of them are still pretty silly, which sits uneasily alongside lofty rhetoric about the future of computing. And, above all, people can’t use ARKit until iOS 11 is released next week, so they’d have to wait to check out anything Apple demonstrated at the keynote. For an example of how overselling an idea too early can backfire, look at Google’s phone-based Daydream VR platform. Daydream is a great idea with good technical execution, but since so few phones supported the system at first, practically nobody could try it during the first wave of publicity. Google created a separate Play Store to make Daydream feel like an independent platform, but this also highlighted the small launch catalog. People were primed to pass judgment on Daydream as though it were a full-fledged computing ecosystem, when it was still largely an experiment. Besides, watching an augmented or virtual reality demo isn’t the same as trying one. Apple used an AR demo to showcase the iPhone’s high-powered graphics, but as far as the actual augmented reality part goes, it’s more magical to see objects overlaid on your personal world than on a stage. Conversely, you don’t want to oversell a shiny demo that’s boring or glitchy in real life, especially if it’s one of the first examples people see of ARKit in action. With the iOS 11 release so close, and some apps already on the way, it’s worth letting consumers discover experiences on their own. Is Apple doing this intentionally? Who knows And unlike Daydream, which needed to convince users to buy $79 headsets, people will get the iPhone whether or not they care about ARKit. So developers can feel out the space with a relatively low profile, until there’s a proven market for Apple to highlight — the way apps or games weren’t originally a central selling point for iOS. Since Apple keeps mostly quiet about future tech like smart glasses, despite long-running speculation about an Apple headset, app makers also aren’t working under the weight of meeting expectations set by sci-fi movies. I’m not sure Apple is doing this intentionally, or that it will stay on this path. Tim Cook lauded augmented reality after ARKit’s original announcement this summer, calling the technology “profound.” Apple doesn’t shy away from grandiose pronouncements, and it flew through a lot of features during yesterday’s keynote. It might simply be impressive that ARKit got as much time as it did. Intentional or not, though, a low-key launch could be what augmented reality needs. AR will inevitably be treated as a successor to — or a replacement for — virtual reality, which has spent years in a brutal cycle of hype and disillusionment. By letting it grow organically before declaring a revolution, we could help make AR’s development a little calmer.

The police used tear gas against several thousand protesters in and around central Cairo's Tahrir Square, birthplace of the 18-day uprising that toppled authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in February. The protesters pelted the police with rocks. The clashes followed a day of violence in Cairo and elsewhere in the country in which at least two people were killed and hundreds wounded. They were the worst clashes between police and protesters in months. The violence is stoking tensions just more than a week before the start of the country's first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections, and comes at a time when the nation is roiled by a political storm over plans put forward by the military-backed government to enshrine a political role for the military in the next constitution and shield it from any civilian oversight. "We have a single demand: The marshal must step down and be replaced by a civilian council," said protester Ahmed Hani, referring Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt's military ruler and Mubarak's longtime defence minister. "The violence yesterday showed us that Mubarak is still in power," said Hani, who was wounded in the forehead by a rubber bullet. He spoke over chants of "freedom, freedom" by hundreds of protesters around him. Rocks, shattered glass and trash covered most of Tahrir early Sunday. Several hundred protesters were camping out on the lawn of the square's traffic island. All roads leading to the square were blocked by protesters who ran ID checks on anyone coming into the plaza. Sunday's clashes, which were mostly on a road leading from Tahrir to the Interior Ministry, appeared likely to grow. Protesters were using social networking sites on the internet to call on Egyptians to join them, and there were reports of several demonstrations headed to the square, including one from Cairo University. The military, which took over from Mubarak, has repeatedly pledged to hand over power to an elected government but it has yet to set a specific date. According to one timetable floated by the military, the handover will take place after presidential elections are held late next year or early in 2013. The protesters say this is too late and accuse the military of dragging its feet. They want a handover to take place immediately after the end of parliamentary elections in March. On Saturday, police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and beat protesters with batons, clearing the square at one point and pushing the fighting into surrounding side streets of downtown Cairo. A 23-year-old protester died from a gunshot, said Health Ministry official Mohammed el-Sherbeni. At least 676 people were injured, he said. One other protester also was killed in Alexandria, where clashes also took place, said a security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to journalists. After nightfall, protesters swarmed back into Tahrir in the thousands, setting tires ablaze in the street and filling the area with an acrid, black smoke. Police appeared to retreat to surrounding areas, leaving protesters free to retake and barricade themselves inside the square. The air was thick with stinging tear gas. The government urged protesters to clear the square. A member of the military council, Maj. Gen. Mohsen el-Fangari, said protesters' calls for change ahead of the election were a threat to the state. "What is the point of being in Tahrir?" he asked, speaking by phone to a private TV channel. "What is the point of this strike, of the million marches? Aren't there legal channels to pursue demands in a way that won't impact Egypt ... internationally?" "The aim of what is going on is to shake the backbone of the state, which is the armed forces." In a warning, he said, "If security is not applied, we will implement the rule of law. Anyone who does wrong will pay for it." Saturday's confrontation was one of the few since the uprising to involve the police, which have largely stayed in the background while the military took charge of security. There was no military presence in and around the square on Saturday or on Sunday. The black-clad police were a hated symbol of Mubarak's regime. Some of the wounded had blood streaming down their faces and many had to be carried out of the square by fellow protesters to waiting ambulances. Human rights activists accused police of using excessive force. Police arrested 18 people, state TV reported, describing the protesters as rioters.

80.lv was extremely fortunate to record an interview with environment artist Javier Pintor from CD Projekt RED. We’ve discussed some techniques that allowed to build such a massive and beautiful 3d world, including various optimization solutions. Introduction Hi, my name is Javier Pintor and I work as an Environment Artist at CD PROJEKT RED. I’m from Spain and I previously worked as a Photographer, Cameraman and Video Editor for various newspapers, magazines and news agencies in Spain. Right after that I freelanced in Architectural Visualization for a few years until I realized video games are what I am leaning towards, artistically speaking, and seemed like the next step for me with my background. Not to mention it was my dream to work in this industry ever since I got my first computer back in 1996, and even more so during the advent of 3D games. So I applied to CD PROJEKT RED and they welcomed me on board, and The Witcher 3 was my first adventure in game development. Witcher 3 is a huge accomplishment in terms of environment design. What do you think were the biggest challenges in the creation of this amazing project? I think the most difficult and, at the same time, most important challenge we had to face when making the open world of The Witcher 3 was balance. What I mean by that is trying to keep the player engaged and immersed in the world — create interesting places that feel alive and breathe history and culture. Creating places that are believable and consistent throughout, while at the same time interesting gameplay-wise and fun to traverse and explore. It’s easy to overlook some of these aspects when making a massive game and that’s why it’s important to keep the process iterative and nonlinear. Could you discuss the way you are optimizing the scenes for the game? What were the main performance factors? When working on environment optimization, there are many different types of tasks, some more complex than others. The most common ones usually come in the form of issues that have already been documented by the QA department, which we then proceed to debug and fix accordingly. The bigger and more complex tasks require a more thought out approach, as they usually involve multiple assets or entire sets to be reviewed. In terms of environment assets, a few things you need to keep in mind are vertex count, amount of materials that are being used, texture resolution, levels of detail and collisions, or number of instances in the world. At the end of the day, optimization is a production-wide effort and involves every department. Sometimes there isn’t an easy or clear way of how to approach certain issues. That’s why teamwork, communication and proper organization are essential to manage some of the bigger optimization tasks. Everyone on the team should be on the same page and equipped with the documented workflow for the most common optimization cases on the project. How do you manage to not overflow the scene with extra assets and elements? There are various methods for doing this depending on what element of the environment you’re working on. It will look different when you’re working on decorations, and different when you’re doing architecture or terrain structures. One way are decoration sets — entities built using a variety of assets arranged in different ways, which we then instance around the world, adding additional details on top of each instance to create a unique look. This way, a single change inside one of these entities will be automatically applied across all of its copies in the level, keeping the environment’s consistency in check. It’s rare for a location to be worked on all the way through by a single artist, so communication and feedback are key to keep your scenes from overflowing. And because being exposed to the same location or asset for a long time can make you overlook some details, getting feedback from team members and your supervisors is also very important in the process. What are the main things to consider when building such big varied environments, which feature a lot of different elements in them? There are definitely many things to take into account when building huge environments. For the Witcher 3, I think one of the challenges was to capture the feeling and atmosphere of the story, which lies at the core of the experience. And given the massive size of the world, keeping the locations consistently interesting with beautiful vistas and making them fun to explore was also at top of our list. The things we need to consider change and evolve as we continue to reach new milestones and works on the environment progress. For starters, we try to keep things simple. Playability and figuring out the scale and distribution of the main areas and points of interest are essential. Things like modularity and reusability are important in terms of set dressing. And, of course, as I mentioned before, because no environment is the work of a single person, communication, teamwork and organization are what make the magic happen. Could you discuss some of the ways you are working with the assets in the environments? How do you work with the hero assets? How do you optimize these elements? When I start working on an asset, regardless of what it is, I always try to keep in mind the optimization plan. I don’t want to hold back my creativity, so I try not to be too strict at the beginning. The same applies when I’m working on a location, though I always try to think ahead and figure out which parts are more important and which can be taken out if necessary, what textures or materials can be cut out or shared with other assets. Basically always trying to ensure the best quality possible, but keeping a backup plan for when time for optimization comes. More often than not, hero assets don’t require as much optimization, as they are unique and aren’t going to be replicated throughout the world. But the general workflow is pretty much the same — triangle count, collisions, levels of detail, autohide distance, etc. Are there some tricks which you can share, that allow to trick the player and capture his interest? In my opinion, the best way of driving player interest are keeping a balance and playing with contrast in composition. A well-balanced scene will contain less saturated areas, where the eyes can rest and take in other, more detailed parts of the level. The same rule applies whether it is an interior of a house, a dark cave, or a ruined castle. Don’t get trapped or obsessed with details. All of the elements have their place within a scene and work together to convey whatever it is you are trying to tell the player — to either guide them through a pre-defined path, call their attention towards a specific element, or convey a certain feeling. In the environment team everyone has their own tricks for these kinds of situations and it is our combined effort that makes the look and feel unique. Could you give some advice as to how you can approach the search for these questionable elements of the world? In general, just about everything requires a certain amount of optimization. Most of it isn’t even related to visual quality. Rather simple tweaks that will be invisible to the player, but have a big impact on performance. Areas that require particular attention are those more densely populated by NPCs, or sections with important cinematic sequences and gameplay interactions, where the changes we make can affect the work of other departments. There are dozens of different methods we use for finding cases where optimization is needed. We have access to a variety of debugging tools created by the Engine and Technical Art teams, that make searching and sorting areas that need optimization much easier and faster. This helps us decide where to tweak assets, textures, locations, lights, foliage, terrain and many other elements that can potentially help boost performance, increase the quality, sometimes both if possible. Not to mention we have the support of our QA team, who are constantly working on playtesting the game and debugging problematic areas. Javier Pintor, Environment Artist at CD Projekt RED Interview conducted by Kirill Tokarev. Follow 80.lv on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

A parade of companies are jumping into the business of online therapy, bringing live face-to-face behavioral health treatment to patients that have better access to video conferencing technology and more accepting insurance policies. Though telemedicine has been around for years to connect patients in rural and other areas with little access to medical care, technology has not always been reliable enough for behavioral health. But more new computers are enabled with web cameras and better bandwidth while health insurance companies including UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Humana Inc. (HUM) and certain Blue Cross plans are becoming more open to paying for online therapy. The latest to enter the online behavioral health space is eTherapi; a Redwood City, Calif.-based company founded by a group of entrepreneurs with Stanford University business and behavioral health pedigrees. “Two years ago or even three years ago, in terms of technology, we were not there,” said eTherapi chief executive and co-founder Dr. Farzad Soleimani. “Most Internet connections are good enough to have a fluid conversation,” he added. “You are only as good as your patient’s willingness to listen and engage with you in improving their health outcome. The benefit of the Internet is that the interactions are easier and you can have more frequent interactions with the doctor.” eTherapi joins others that include Breakthrough and CopeToday. These companies are signing up hundreds of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to their ventures. “In three years, this will take off like a rocket,” Eric A. Harris, an attorney and psychologist who consults with the American Psychological Association Insurance Trust told the New York Times last September. “Everyone will have real-time audiovisual availability.” Harris’ prediction is looking good. eTherapi said it has more than 200 mental health professionals in more than 30 states lined up to offer its therapy sessions and expects to at least double the size of its provider network. Insurance companies are not completely sold on the concept, which can cost $100 to $150 a session depending on the therapist. The online companies generally get a cut of what the therapist charges. Health insurance giant UnitedHealth, for example, said in a statement that its United Behavioral Health unit “covers telepsychiatry when it’s clinically appropriate and in compliance with state and federal regulations.” Health Care Service Corp., parent of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma said it covers telemedicine in rural areas like New Mexico where access to medical care services is a problem for patients. When it comes to online therapy, however, the Blues plans are “monitoring and assessing the viability of that model.” Online therapy companies say their connections are secure and compliant with federal privacy rules. “This is about efficiency,” Dr. Soleimani said. “Because so much stigma is associated with going to a therapist, they are taking solace in online interactions because they know it is private.” A potential downside is that the online market still tends to cater to consumers who would be better off financially, having the latest technology on their laptops, mobile phones and tablets. Patients also need to be leery of the credentials of the mental health professionals they encounter, particularly online. But eTherapi executives say their mental health providers are licensed and patients have the ability to get to know them online through profiles as well as videos of the providers to “get a sense of their mannerisms,” Soleimani said. “Patients don’t have adequate information to see who is who,” Soleimani said. “We take the time to make sure they are qualified and licensed providers.”

Chip manufacturer giant Intel, achieved a big breakthrough in AI research and introduced first-of-its-kind self-learning chip named “Loihi” which is called neuromorphic chip. Announcement was made by Dr. Michael Mayberry (corporate vice president and managing director of Intel Labs) from Intel Corporation in an editorial yesterday. Basically, Neuromorphic Engineering was founded by Carver Mead, a professor from California Institute Of Technology(CalTech) who was known for his foundational work in semiconductor design. The combination of chip expertise, physics and biology yielded an environment for new ideas. Then the idea was very simple but revolutionary. Intel Introduced new test learning chip “Loihi”, that is capable to mimic the functions of brain by learning to operate from various mode of feedback from the environment. The best part is — chip doesn’t need to be trained in traditional way. Also, its very power efficient, uses the data to learn and make inferences. It also get smarter as time passes using data from various sources. Dr. Michael Mayberry wrote in editorial — The potential benefits from self-learning chips are limitless. One example provides a person’s heartbeat reading under various conditions – after jogging, following a meal or before going to bed – to a neuromorphic-based system that parses the data to determine a “normal” heartbeat. The system can then continuously monitor incoming heart data in order to flag patterns that do not match the “normal” pattern. The system could be personalized for any user. This is a big breakthrough in AI chip designing which is just a first step in chip designing with 130,000 neurons and 130 million synapses using 14nm process technology. Some of the major highlights are as follows (as given in editorial): Fully asynchronous neuromorphic many core mesh that supports a wide range of sparse, hierarchical and recurrent neural network topologies with each neuron capable of communicating with thousands of other neurons. Each neuromorphic core includes a learning engine that can be programmed to adapt network parameters during operation, supporting supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement and other learning paradigms. Fabrication on Intel’s 14 nm process technology. A total of 130,000 neurons and 130 million synapses. Development and testing of several algorithms with high algorithmic efficiency for problems including path planning, constraint satisfaction, sparse coding, dictionary learning, and dynamic pattern learning and adaptation.

Counting is now completed, but the sheer scale of suspected fraud questions any result [EPA] Counting is now completed, but the sheer scale of suspected fraud questions any result [EPA] Counting is now completed, but the sheer scale of suspected fraud questions any result [EPA] Abdullah said that the announcement of the preliminary results was premature. "First of all this is not final. Second of all this is not right that they are making this announcement, according to the electoral law, because the issues of complaints have not been dealt with," he told Al Jazeera. "Also it includes hundreds and thousands fraudulant votes ... those are included in these results so it doesn't mean a lot." 'Irresponsible' Philippe Morillon, the EU chief election observer, told Al Jazeera that what was needed now was an investigation and a decision as to how to proceed. "It just adds more controversy... The EU was the largest independent group in Afghanistan monitoring those elections on August 20" Zeina Khodr, Al Jazeera correspondent in Kabul "Over a million votes are suspect and must be investigated ... the decision as to whether there will be a first round or second round election victory is in the hands of the Election Complaints Committee (ECC)," Morillon said. Zeina Khodr, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said: "Karzai's campaign spokesman has told Al Jazeera that the statements made by the EU representative were irresponsible. "According to the spokesman it is not the job of the EU to talk about fraud, recounts and re-runs ... that job is for the ECC. "Their decision will decide the final outcome of the vote." Arsala Jamal, Karzai's spokesman, said that the comments were made by the EU to put pressure on the IEC and ECC. "We clearly see some kind of pressures on the IEC and ECC from outside and this is one of the pressures." EU observers did not give an estimated figure for turnout, but Al Jazeera's correspondent James Bays reported that total voter turnout according to the IEC is believed to be about 5.5 million. The total registered electorate was 17m, with more than 400 stations containing suspected fraud so-far excluded. Legitimacy questioned Electoral officials have already warned that hundreds of thousands of votes could be quarantined for two to three weeks for investigations, delaying the announcement of the victor. Any final victory of less than 50 per cent would trigger a second round run-off. Khodr said: "It just adds more controversy... The EU was the largest independent group in Afghanistan monitoring those elections on August 20. "For an EU representative to say that there was massive fraud really calls into question the legitimacy of the election. "The Afghan people really are growing impatient and frustrated and fearing the danger of such a political vacuum in the country."

HONOLULU — A German woman who lost her arm in a shark attack died Wednesday, one week after she was bit while snorkeling off Maui. Jana Lutteropp, 20, who had been on life support, died at Maui Memorial Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Carol Clark said. "Jana fought hard to stay alive," said a statement from her mother and sister, which was released by Clark. "However, we are sad to say that she lost her fight today." Nicholas Grisaffi Rick Moore poses on the island of Maui, Hawaii, on Aug. 15, a day after he jumped into the water to rescue a shark attack victim who lost her arm. Clark said the family was requesting privacy. Lutteropp was snorkeling up to 100 yards off Palauea Beach in Makena when the shark bit off her right arm. A high school teacher visiting from California jumped into the water after hearing her screaming and seeing blood in the surf. Rick Moore, 57, of Laguna Niguel, Calif., said Lutteropp went in and out of consciousness and kept repeating that she was going to die. On Monday, Clark said Lutteropp was in "very critical condition." It's not known what type of shark bit Lutteropp. State officials investigating the attack said witnesses didn't see the animal. "Jana was a very beautiful, strong, young woman who was always laughing, and we will forever remember her that way," said the statement from her mother, Jutta Lutteropp and sister, Julia Broeske. They asked that donations in her memory be made to the Maui Memorial Medical Center Foundation. "We appreciate all the support from the Maui community, as well as the prayers and thoughts from around the world and in Germany," they said. "We especially want to thank the wonderful caregivers and everyone at Maui Memorial Medical Center." Hawaii officials plan to spend the next two years studying tiger shark movements around Maui amid what they call an unprecedented spike in overall shark attacks since the start of 2012. There have been eight attacks statewide this year and 10 in 2012. Hawaii usually sees only three to four attacks each year, and saw one or zero attacks in each of the 11 years between 1980 and 2012, according to state data. Related: Tourist loses arm in apparent shark attack off Maui beach

Rockford, Illinois is on its way to becoming a strong town. There is a noticeable increase in collaborative efforts between various groups in the city and region, and the strong citizens of Rockford are coming together to make their town a better place to work, live, play… and bike! I Bike Rockford (#IBikeRKFD) is a grassroots community group that aims to unite all kinds of cyclists – road bikers, mountain bikers, people who bike for transportation, and people who just love bikes – to advocate for bike safety and awareness. Our mission statement is: “Working so that more people of all ages, abilities, and biking styles can say ‘I Bike Rockford’ for fun, recreation, and transportation.” I Bike Rockford started simply as a Facebook page created by a cyclist interested in increasing awareness about something he cares about. The group has morphed into a living organization with visible leaders, champions, and advocates in the area focused on safety, infrastructure, and community building. Zak Rotello, who started the I Bike Rockford Facebook page says, “I'm just amazed at how it has taken off and become a real community advocacy group.” Zak runs a local restaurant called the Olympic Tavern and each summer hosts an event called “Tour de North End” focused on bike safety awareness and local businesses in Rockford's North End neighborhood. Popularity of the event has grown over the past several years and it is well attended by cyclists of all abilities and ages. It was recently featured by a local company, Our City, Our Story and shows the collaborative nature of this group and this town. In June of 2016, this spirit of collaboration was taken to a new level with the help of I Bike Rockford when we heard about a new sewer project getting underway on a main east-west thoroughfare in town. Todd Fagen, a civil engineer in the Rockford area and avid bike rider, recognized that this road would need to be torn up for the sewer work and saw it as an opportunity to save money on the street project by doing two projects at once. He proposed the addition of a biking and walking pathway to the sewer plans.

In a new Quinnipiac University poll released today, the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump are neck and neck in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. In Florida and in Pennsylvania, Clinton is at 43 percent while Trump is 42 percent, according to the poll. Among Ohio voters, Trump gets 41 percent and Clinton gets 39 percent. In Pennsylvania, however, in a matchup between Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Trump, Sanders beats Trump 47 to 41 percent. Trump Doubles Down on Attacks on Clinton as 'Enabler' of Husband's Affairs Hillary Clinton Nicknames Donald Trump the ‘Presumptuous Nominee’ Hillary Clinton Aide on Trump Playbook: 'We’re Not Going to Chase Him Into the Gutter' Worth noting is that the gender and racial gaps in each state are wide. In all three states, Trump leads among men and white voters, while Clinton leads among women and nonwhite voters. For example, in Ohio, Clinton gets 76 percent of nonwhite voters, while Trump garners 14 percent. And 49 percent of white voters prefer Trump, while 32 percent prefer Clinton. Also, voters in all three states believe Trump would do a better job than Clinton in handling the economy. Florida and Ohio voters think he'd handle terrorism better than Clinton, while voters in Pennsylvania are split.

Theollyn is D.’s biological mother, but he transitioned when his child was just a year old. Theollyn said in an interview that the child, who is in second grade, began living as a boy last year. Theollyn said he met with his child’s teacher before the school year to discuss the situation. Theollyn said the teacher was accommodating and told him that D. would be given a hall pass to use whichever restroom he wanted when other children were not present. The first day of the 2011/12 school year in McIntosh County was Tuesday, Aug. 23. On the first day, Theollyn said his mother walked D. to his classroom and was informed that D. would have to use the girl’s restroom. “We thought there wasn’t an issue, but when he went to the first day of school he was told they had to use the girl’s restroom,” Theollyn said. An impromptu meeting with the school principal and the district’s superintendent followed. “It got nasty quickly,” Theollyn said. “It turned into threats almost immediately.” Theollyn said that Hunter threatened to call child services during the meeting. The next day, Theollyn pulled his son from the school over concerns for his safety. “We’re in a very traditionally Southern county,” Theollyn said. “The threat of violence is real. We’re feeling it. We’re scared. But does that mean that you stay silent? Does that mean you don’t challenge it? Fear is not a good reason to decide to do something.” Calls to Dr. Hunter and other district officials have not been returned. A transgender child Theollyn says that his son began expressing his own gender identity as early as age 18 months. “The first time he told me he was a boy he was about 18 months old,” Theollyn said. In early 2010, D. began insisting that he be identified as a boy. Theollyn said that D. asked to have his head shaved and began throwing away and hiding his girl’s clothing. “For a while he was saying he really didn’t care, that he was above all that gender stuff. Then one day he asked us to shave his head. He said, ‘I can’t wear girls clothes. I need to look like a boy.'” Theollyn said at first, he thought D. was just emulating him. Other people who knew D. also expressed the same feelings. “That really did not go well in a lot of ways,” Theollyn said. “He was very disappointed by the response.” D. was home-schooled prior to this year. Theollyn said that his son wanted to go to public school because he wants to be a veterinarian and he wanted to interact with children his age. Theollyn said that D. felt being in home school would hurt his chances of becoming a vet. “He was so ready,” Theollyn said. “It’s such a disappointment. He’s got a bookbag full of supplies he can’t use. He’s very clearly frustrated and disappointed.” Theollyn said that he and D. have been working with a doctor. What’s next for D.? Theollyn said that he reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this week to discuss the incident. The state chapter forwarded the case to the organization’s main office in New York, according to Theollyn. He said he has not heard back. Theollyn said he will present members of the McIntosh School board with educational material and a copy of the Change.org petition during a mid-September school board meeting. “There’s several things I want to discuss,” he said. “I have no idea how that’s going to go.” In the meantime, D. is back to learning at home. “I don’t want to give him the message that it’s OK to treat people this way,” Theollyn said. “At the same time, I also know where that leaves us — back at home school.”

In a collaboration that threatens to blow the minds of sci-fi and fantasy geeks around the country, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s 1990 novel Good Omens is to be adapted for Radio 4 by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy director Dirk Maggs – the man also responsible for the acclaimed dramatisation of Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere. Advertisement RadioTimes.com reported last year that the project was in the works but official confirmation comes today – along with news of a star-studded cast that only adds to the fanboy fun… The six-part audio series is packed with famous names from cult TV shows including Sherlock, Merlin, Game of Thrones, Being Human, Shaun of the Dead, Spaced and Peep Show. Take a deep breath… Mark Heap and Peter Serafinowicz will be taking centre stage as the angel and demon, Aziraphale and Crowley. Others on board include Colin Morgan, Louise Brealey, Clive Russell, Julia Deakin, Simon Jones, Arsher Ali, Phil Davis and Mark Benton. It will even feature cameos from Gaiman and Pratchett themselves. Comic fantasy Good Omens tells the story of a fast-approaching apocalypse and an unlikely duo – the angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley – who are keen to prevent it by killing the Antichrist. Unfortunately, they seem to have mislaid him… Released in 1990 and listed among the BBC’s Big Read Nation’s 100 favourite books, Good Omens has never previously been dramatised. Maggs has adapted the novel with the help of Gaiman and will team up once again with Heather Lamour who produced Radio 4/4 Extra’s critically and popularly acclaimed adaptation of Gaiman’s fantasy novel Neverwhere, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy and Natalie Dormer. Good Omens will come to Radio 4 in December with five half-hour episodes leading up to a – presumably apocalyptic – hour-long finale in time for Christmas. Pratchett and Gaiman are two of the country’s most well-respected fantasy authors. Along with Neverwhere, Gaiman has had success with American Gods and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, while the highly prolific Pratchett is known in particular for his Discworld novels. Advertisement Radio 4 controller Gwyneth Williams said of the project: “I’m delighted to have Neil Gaiman back on Radio 4 – and this time with Terry Pratchett. I can’t wait to hear what they will do with the apocalypse. The Radio 4 audience loved Neverwhere and Good Omens will be a splendid Christmas treat. “

DAVAO CITY—The militant Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) in Southern Mindanao on Tuesday called for a thorough investigation into the fire that tore through a shopping mall here on Christmas Eve, citing survivors’ complaints that pointed to violations of safety rules. At least 37 people, all call center workers at the US market research company Survey Sampling International (SSI) Davao, were killed in the 32-hour fire that destroyed the four-story New City Commercial Center in President Duterte’s hometown. ADVERTISEMENT The bodies of the victims have been recovered and Mr. Duterte has promised the families that he will get to the truth about the fire. “What I assured them is that the truth will out. That’s what they want,” Mr. Duterte told reporters on Monday night after meeting with the families of the victims at Southern Philippines Medical Center, where the bodies were being autopsied and identified. Mr. Duterte told the families that he would order the National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine National Police and Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) to investigate the fire, which started at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday and was put out at 5:15 p.m. on Sunday. The President said he could not confirm reports attributed to the city fire chief, Honeyfritz Alagano, that two other people, one of whom was a foreigner, remained missing. The Inquirer tried to contact Alagano for comment but failed to reach her on Tuesday. The departments of justice and labor have announced separate investigations into the fire. Carl Anthony Olalo, the KMU regional head, said information on how the fire started and how the SSI workers were trapped in the burning building was incomplete. “Information spread through social media by survivors and concerned netizens pointed out [that] fire alarms and sprinklers did not function during the [fire], and no evacuation system was made to bring the SSI employees to safety,” Olalo said. During the fire, he said, the call center employees could not call for help because their cell phones were held in one area of the office as part of SSI’s policy. ADVERTISEMENT A city resident said she had seen firefighters doing nothing while the building burned. She said they told her that they had run out of water. ‘Sorry we failed’ But Senior Supt. Wilberto Rico Neil Kwan Tiu, the BFP regional chief, said the firefighters did everything they could to save the trapped call center employees. “I’m really very sorry that we failed,” he said. Kwan Tiu earlier described the building as “an enclosed space with no ventilation,” though the authorities said they had yet to determine the cause of the blaze. “We made holes, we looked for ways in, we used ladders just to penetrate the locations as mentioned by colleagues, by employees who shared information that a group of people [was] in the rest room, near the elevator,” he told relatives of the victims during a Mass for the dead in front of what remained of the shopping mall on Monday. He said firefighters drilled holes through the walls of the building to “ventilate thick, toxic smoke” so they could get inside. Kwan Tiu said the firefighters had “unlimited water supply to put out the fire,” but temperatures of up to 700 degrees Celsius prevented them from entering the building. He said more than 30 firetrucks from different fire stations and volunteer fire-fighting brigades in the Davao region responded as the blaze reached general alarm. Firefighters reached the rest room mentioned by SSI employees on Sunday and found one body, identified later as that of Jeffrey Sismar. The search for the other bodies was delayed for about three hours on Monday as the authorities assessed the integrity of the building to ensure the firefighters’ safety. 36 bodies found Toward noon, the firefighters found bodies, many of them charred beyond recognition, near the SSI lobby on the building’s top floor. “I personally counted them before I gave the information to [Mayor Sara Duterte] … around 36 in number,” Kwan Tiu said. Owned and operated by Lim Tian Siu Trading, whose owners are reportedly close to the Duterte family, the shopping mall was inaugurated in 2003, when Mr. Duterte was the mayor of Davao City. But as indications of safety rules violations piled up on Tuesday, Mayor Duterte, a daughter of the President, declined to confirm that the mall owners were close to her family. “About the alleged link between the Duterte family and the mall owners, I do not know what that means exactly. So I do not think that deserves a reply,” the mayor said in a statement. SSI also came under fire from the moderate labor group, Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP), over the deaths of the 37 call center workers. Alan Tanjusay, spokesperson for the ALU-TUCP, said in a statement on Tuesday that SSI should be held liable, as its cost-cutting measures endangered its employees’ lives. “If they complied with the labor standards on fire exits, sprinkler system, ventilation, lighting, noise, [ingress] and egress specifications and fire evacuation plan, possible harm could have been avoided,” Tanjusay said. According to Tanjusay, there is a trend among call centers in the Philippines to rent or lease space in shopping malls instead of constructing buildings specifically designed as round-the-clock work places. “They do it to save cost and improve high margin of profit,” Tanjusay said. The ALU-TUCP, he said, is urging the Department of Labor and Employment to order the transfer of all call centers to independent buildings to prevent a repeat of the SSI tragedy. —WITH A REPORT FROM AFP Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READ

Charif Souki, CEO of Cheniere Energy , received total compensation of $142 million in 2013. This appears to place him atop the leader board of CEOs of all U.S.-based publicly traded companies. According to the company's proxy filing, released yesterday, Souki's pay included a base salary of $800,000, a $3.7 million cash bonus and $133 million in stock awards. That's a big improvement over 2012, when he scored $57.5 million, including $49 million in stock. All told, he owns 6.6 million shares of Cheniere (2.80% of the company) worth $370 million. In comparison, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson made $28 million, while John Watson of Chevron did $24 million. Cheniere (as I wrote about in this Forbes Magazine feature last year) is the company furthest along in building the multi-billion-dollar plants required to chill natural gas into condensed LNG for export around the globe. Its initial plants at Sabine Pass on the Gulf Coast are more than halfway complete, and first shipments could possibly occur as early as the end of 2015. So is Souki's pay outrageous, or justified? Definitely the latter. To understand why, start by looking at how shares in Cheniere, ExxonMobil and Chevron have performed in recent years. Go back to August 2008, the bottom of the market. Since then, shares in Cheniere Energy are up nearly 1,800%. Chevron has advanced 54%. While Exxon is up just 25%. By that measure, Souki absolutely deserves his pay -- years ago Cheniere's board created an incentive package and tied most of his stock awards to project completion milestones; if he hadn't executed, he wouldn't have gotten paid. Back in 2008 Cheniere was a zombie company. Souki, a decade ago, had bet that the U.S. would soon run short on natural gas. So in its first iteration Cheniere figured out how to cite and build big terminals to receive imports of LNG. Souki even convinced companies like Chevron and Total to pay tens of millions a year to reserve capacity. (See my 2005 Forbes Magazine story "First Mover.") When the shale boom hit and gas supplies flooded the U.S., Cheniere was left with some giant empty tanks. But Souki was determined that Cheniere's LNG holding tanks and brand new terminals. So in the past few years this former investment banker has raised about $8 billion to turn his lemons into lemonade and reposition Sabine Pass as an export terminal. He's already signed up companies like Korea Gas, BG Group, Total and Centrica to long-term "take-or-pay" contracts that will generate about $3 billion a year in fee revenue for Cheniere for the next 20 years. Now there's been a handful of other LNG export projects approved by the feds and dozens more that have been proposed. But the reality is that very few of these will ever be built. LNG exporters will be happy to buy American gas as long as it's cheap, but the more demand there is for gas (for power generation, transportation, manufacturing, LNG, etc), the higher the price will go, eroding the economics of shipping American gas to the other side of the world. In this business, first mover advantage matters a lot. Souki bet collosally wrong the first time. But he salvaged that bet, becoming first in line to export American gas. By seizing opportunity and executing, he is building what will be an almost unique asset, one with guaranteed cashflow for a generation to come. Souki and his small group of executives and dealmakers have made more than $12 billion for shareholders in recent years. Granted, Exxon and Chevron have generated significantly more shareholder value than that in the same time period, but Tillerson and Watson sit atop a much broader base of assets and opportunities and are backed by a much deeper bench of strong players. So don't begrudge the man his payday.

At the intersection of fat-shaming and war-mongering comes a bizarre public health campaign: an effort by retired generals and admirals to ban sugary sodas and snacks from public schools. The kids today, say the former brass, are too fat to fight for their country. Welcome to the sum of all libertarian fears: a Nanny State that packs an M4 rifle. Those officers, part of a group called “Mission: Readiness,” argue in a new report called “Still Too Fat to Fight” that unhealthy snacks, particularly in schools, endanger national security. “No other major country’s military forces face the challenges of weight gain confronting America’s armed forces,” they fret. (Well, except for the Chinese, but whatever.) “It’s clear to us that our military readiness could be put in jeopardy given the fact that nearly 75 percent of young Americans are unable to serve in uniform,” write two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff involved with “Mission: Readiness,” retired Army Gens. Hugh Shelton and John Shalikashvili. There’s a legitimate readiness issue here. In 2009, the military found that 75 percent of American 17- to 24-year-olds would be declared unfit to serve, for reasons involving obesity. Mission: Readiness estimates that something like 7 million military-aged youth are too fat for the military. Beyond that, Americans have an obesity problem in general, no matter how people act offended when Michelle Obama encourages kids to eat healthily. But it’s less of a readiness issue than it was in the past. In 2009, there were over 100,000 troops in Iraq and would soon be that many more in Afghanistan. Now, the Army and Marine Corps are slowly leaving Afghanistan and shedding themselves of approximately 100,000 soldiers and marines. Recruitment and retention in the services are once again high, although the all-volunteer force is certainly strained. And, real talk: Lots of jobs in the military require little physical prowess. Can’t do 20 pushups in a minute? There’s a headquarters-st aff job for you, while you get your sorry ass in shape. Still, it’s hard not to be cynical about this effort. Much as patriotism is the last bastion of scoundrels, national security is the last bastion of heavy-handed government rationales for social engineering. The military will not fail to protect the country because the lunchroom at P.S. 114 in Canarsie lets kids wash down their personal pizzas with chocolate milk. Will Mission: Readiness next advocate for greater public-school funding, since dumb recruits are greater military liabilities than fat ones — and, for that matter, because healthier school meals are more expensive? Public health ought to be debated on its own merits, rather than shoehorned into a jingoistic framework of military jeopardy. Besides, if all else fails, we have robots — slender, deadly, efficient robots — to protect us.

Foxconn, a Taiwan based electronics contract manufacturing company, will start making Xiaomi phones in Andhra Pradesh, India, reports The Economic Times. The report mentions that this plant will be a small scale unit with a capacity to manufacture about 10,000 phones a day. However, it’s not clear when Foxcon plans to start making Xiaomi phones at this factory. Apparently, Foxconn plans to set up 10-12 manufacturing units in India, and invest about $2 billion over the next five years. It’s worth noting that last year, Xiaomi had revealed plans of manufacturing its phones in India as it was struggling to meet the demand for its Mi handsets in the country. At the time, Xiaomi’s VP of International operations Hugo Barra had told Bloomberg that production in India will likely begin in a year or two. Foxconn is reportedly also in talks with Japanese telecom and Internet giant Softbank to form joint venture for telecom equipment manufacturing. Other companies setting up manufacturing units in India – Smartphone maker OPPO is planning to set up a handset manufacturing unit in India by August this year, to primarily tend to the domestic market. The company mentions that some of its devices manufactured here will also be exported to overseas markets. – In April this year, Chinese handset maker Gionee said that it would set up a manufacturing facility in India within 2018. The company claims it will invest Rs 300 crore to set up this plant, which will manufacture devices for India, the SAARC countries and Nigeria. – In April last year, mobile phone manufacturer Micromax had also started manufacturing devices in the country at its Rudrapur plant. Previously, the company imported devices from China where it had tie-ups with manufacturers such as Foxconn. – In March this year, Samsung and Sony had announced plans for setting up manufacturing bases in India as a part of the Make in India initiative. Samsung reportedly would invest as much as $500 million to $1 billion in the manufacturing unit that will produce smartphones and tablets for the company. – Earlier this year, Spice Group had said it would invest Rs 500 crores to set up a manufacturing unit in Uttar Pradesh. The company had also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Uttar Pradesh for the same, as per which the UP Government will support Spice in establishing the facility by providing the necessary infrastructure, ecosystem and incentives under various schemes.

After a long battle against drugs, prostitution and loud parties in Rowntree Mills Park, city officials closed the expansive North York green space to cars nearly five years ago. But is it time to unlock the gates? Rowntree Mills Park has been closed to cars without a parks pass since 2009 amid concerns about drugs and prostitution. The park is located just north of Finch Ave on Islington Ave in Toronto ( Vince Talotta / Toronto Star ) Amid concerns from some residents who see the solution as too heavy-handed in a largely car-dependent area, local Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti is reopening discussion with the community. “I’m trying to listen to everybody, and it’s becoming very difficult to make everybody happy,” said Mammoliti, who was recently appointed chair of the parks committee. “We should always be thinking of other options.” On Monday evening, Mammoliti and parks officials will hold a public meeting on the future of Rowntree. Article Continued Below The park, nestled between Islington and Kipling Aves. in the lush Humber River Valley, remains open to cyclists and pedestrians but a special permit from the parks department is required to bring in a car. Barbara Evers, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 20 years, said the permit requirement has effectively shut down all activity, including the good. “If you want to go on a picnic with your family on a Sunday afternoon, you are not going to apply for a parks pass,” she said. “The people that I think that park is there for have been barred from it. I don’t think that’s right.” Mark Lawson, customer service manager for the parks department, said about 40 permits per year were issued for outdoor social gatherings in Rowntree in 2012 and 2013. Those figures are down from 2008, before the car ban came into effect. On a recent morning, there were no visitors in sight in the tree-lined park. At the Islington Ave. entrance, a broken padlock and chain sat on the ground below the bright yellow gates, drifting in the wind. But Mammoliti, who had the park gates closed to cars after community consultation, said the park “was a hell of a lot scarier” before cars were banned. “One decision that we make that is wrong could potentially bring back the horror story that was going on a number of years ago,” he said. “The community that live beside it are saying, ‘I don’t want to go back to not being able to sleep at night.’ ” Article Continued Below Donna Kovachis, acting manager of parks and recreation, said city officials are interested in hearing alternative solutions from area residents. “There was a lot of illegal activity that was quite extreme, and they took an extreme measure,” she said. “It has curbed illegal activity but that was also five years ago. If the community wants, we can look at some other options.” Evers, who often walks through the park with her husband, believes at least part of the park should be reopened to cars during daylight hours. Regular police patrols could be another solution, she said. “If you have trouble in a school or a city, you don’t close the school, you don’t shut down the city,” she said. “You address the problems.”

This weekend on HBO there was a mini Star Trek movie marathon. Anyone else catch that? It was fun to see William Shatner in his Starfleet uniform and I got a chuckle out of the "cutting edge" graphics going on. Watching these movies made me sad. There's nothing like this on television at the moment. Firefly was canceled and when the Battlestar Galactica prequel show, Blood and Chrome, wasn't picked up by SyFy, it became a painful reality that there are no adventures in outer space on the tube. Nothing! That's crazy talk. With George Lucas saying a Star Wars live-action tv show is years away from becoming a reality, one wonders if we will ever see another a spaceship outside of it being taxied by a 747 to Washington, D.C. Here are just a few reasons as to why we need a Star Trek TV show. Paramount executives, please listen up. 1. There are zero space operas on TV at the moment. How is this even possible? 2. We finally have the technology to make Star Trek look cool. No longer will the Klingons have silly-looking pets. 3. Four years is a long time to wait between J.J. Abrams movies. 4. New episodes mean new social ideas to tackle. Gene Roddenberry would enjoy the series taking on new social and political questions of today. 5. Finally a show not about a crime scene or featuring lawyers 6. Finally a Star Trek show about crime scenes and lawyers? 7. Use characters other than Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew. The USS Viper sounds pretty bad ass. 8. This is probably the biggest hurdle the people at CBS (who own Star Trek property) have. They don't want to over saturate the market with Star Trek episodes and ruin their tent-pole film franchise. There is a way for both properties to coexist. Make them completely different stories. Get creative and have the TV show set 500 years in the future or the past. Although, be better than the lackluster Enterprise. 8. Merchandising! Merchandising! Merchandising! There's too much money to be made for this not to happen. 9. NASA named a spaceship after the ship in Star Trek. Think about that! I'm sure NASA nerds would love to help with making the show realistic or as authentic as it possibly can. 10. Episode 59: The crew encounters a planet where magic is real thanks to their green sun. 11. Slutty space aliens. 12. Explore the space of the Federation. Set a show on Earth or Mars or whatever! Just make sure there are transporters involved. 13. Episode 5 could take our heroes to a planet full of zombies. 14. Since J.J. Abrams rebooted Kirk and Spock, have someone else reboot Picard and Riker for Star Trek: The Next Generation. 15. Because Star Wars is officially embarrassing. Star Trek finally has the chance to become hip. 16. If all goes well, maybe someone will finally make that real life USS Enterprise in Las Vegas! 17. At this point there should be an entire channel dedicated to Star Trek. Channel 780 should be all Star Trek, all the time. 18. Star Trek: The Academy Years. 90210 meets Star Trek. BOOM! I just created a new franchise. 19. Space monsters never get old. 20. American Horror Story meets Star Trek: Stardate 4721 the crew of the USS Trinity start to experience strange anomalies as crew members begin to die mysterious deaths. BOOM! Franchise! 21. Cheers: Star Trek. A sitcom takes place in the bar of the Enterprise. 22. Finally have a likeable Vulcan character not named Spock. 23. Bring back Klingons! 24. Tribbles! 25. Vulcan-on-Vulcan sex scene. 26. Turn your phasers to KILL! 27. Episode 23: The crew travels back in time to Mad Men times, thanks to the Holodeck, to solve a murder mystery and learn a valueable lesson. Naturally. 28. A new Data! 29. Episode 56: Responding to a distress esignal the crews of 3 StarFleet ships must come together to solve global warming on an alien planet on the brink! 30. First openly gay Starfleet Captain! 31. Romulan wine drinking games! 32. The return of the magic sliding doors for elevators that no one EVER WAITS FOR! 33. Snakes on the Starship! 34. Episode 18 the USS Enterprise crew encounters vampires. Someone may be infected. All personel are required to head to sick bay where it turns out the ships doctor is the vampire and he's using blood samples to quench his thirst. TWIST! 35. Geordi wears the Google augmented reality glasses instead of my mom's hair clip on his face. 36: The captain gets to say no to Worf again! 37. More Lens Flares!! 38. Episode 97: First Officer Drake gets hooked on space drugs and turns the USS Falcon into a space drug delivery system 39. KHAN! 40. A truly epic Starfleet vs. Klingon battle in high definition. 41. Photon torpedoes! 42. Episode 8: Bottle episode where we learn our fearless Captain is looking for his long lost father. 43: Wormholes! 44: An HBO Star Trek series with a similar tone to Game of Thrones, but in space! Lots of blood, sex and talking. 45: An entire series set on the sick bay of a Starship where they must treat unsual space illnesses. Think House but in space! 46. A sweet new opening title sequence featuring, "Space, the final frontier..." 47. New catchphrases! Picard had, "Make it so." Spock had "Live Long and Prosper." McCoy had, "Damn it, Jim!" It's time for a new one! 48. Strange new worlds would look cool on my TV. Just sayin'. 49. Before there was the United Federation of Planets, there was something else. I want to see that on TV. 50. NBC could really use the ratings (even though CBS owns the rights to Star Trek, it's common practice for a show to be owned by one network and air on a different one) 51. New weapons! There has to be something better than a phaser to battle alien scum at this point. 52. We can finally know what happens to all the poop on Starships! Seriously, where does it all go? Do they beam it somewhere? Some shit filled planet or into a sun so it burns up on contact?

Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri has backed Liverpool to challenge for the Premier League title this season. Ranieri leads his side to Anfield for Saturday’s evening kickoff, with Liverpool playing out their first home game of 2016/17. The Reds and the Foxes are currently level on points in the league, having both taken four points from their opening three games. Leicester are defending their title this season, but will also have to navigate a Champions League campaign that begins next week away to Club Brugge. This has seen their odds of securing more Premier League success drop, and addressing reporters ahead of the trip to Merseyside, Ranieri highlighted Liverpool as a major contender for the title. “Liverpool are one of my favourites to win the league. They are ready to fight for the title,” he said. “Liverpool are a very good team and on Saturday we have a very good match. “We go there to try and win. We are the champions. It’ll be difficult for us but also for them.” Whether Jurgen Klopp‘s side are truly capable of fighting at the top end of the league remains to be seen, given their fluctuation in form so far this season. But the Reds find themselves in a much stronger position after the international break, with the fitness of a host of key players improving. Loris Karius and Joel Matip, for example, are now both back after pre-season injuries, and will likely go on to play a major role in Klopp’s defence in the future. Furthermore, the likes of Sadio Mane, Philippe Coutinho and Georginio Wijnaldum returned from international duty without injury, as well as England quartet Nathaniel Clyne, Jordan Henderson, Adam Lallana and Daniel Sturridge. Klopp has a variety of options to select from for Liverpool’s first Anfield outing of 2016/17, but so does Ranieri, particularly in attack. Leicester secured the £30 million signing of Algerian striker Islam Slimani at the end of the summer transfer window, with the 28-year-old joining Jamie Vardy, Ahmed Musa, Shinji Okazaki and Leonardo Ulloa as options up front. Saturday’s clash will provide the Reds with a test of their credentials, and they can prove them with a home win over the champions.

On first viewing of this ad I thought it may have been a joke akin to the Colbert Nation. It begins by declaring that "It's time to say 'NO' to biased media." Was Fox News coming clean and denouncing itself? No such luck. It was just that old "fair and balanced" Foxian doublespeak. Instead, Fox was announcing the birth of a nation - The Fox Nation. This should not come as a surprise. There has been much foreshadowing of this inevitable outcome. Glenn Beck proclaimed his intentions last month when he said: "...don't get me wrong. I am against the government, and I think that they have just been horrible, and I do think they are betraying the principles of our founders every day they're in office." Not to be outdone, Bill O'Reilly joins in with his view of a nation that is coming apart: "We'd love to see America become more unified, but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. There's a struggle going on to redefine America. And in 2009, that struggle will become even more intense." Beck, O'Reilly, and others at Fox News and across the conservative landscape, have been employing their airtime to turn Fox into a rallying point for rightist revolutionaries. They are recruiting "Culture Warriors" who will be dispatched to "Tea Parties" until they can shout victoriously that "We Surround Them." The battle lines are drawn and the broadcast brigades are deployed and armed for combat. This is an unprecedented, and frightening, initiative to use a major television network as an organizing tool for political activism. The sort of advocacy work normally done by independent organizations like MoveOn or Freedom's Watch is now being conducted by a billion dollar media enterprise with a well known partisan agenda. No matter how much the right wallows in their delusions of NBC or the New York Times being mouthpieces for the left, those institutions have never set themselves up as coordinating committees for social movements. But this goes far beyond conventional interest group pandering. There is a strain of hostility that runs through the conservative ranks that borders on the violent. Just last April, Rush Limbaugh was encouraging riots in Denver at the Democratic Convention. Now the Fox Nation invites viewers to... "Be a part of the REAL NEWS of America and join in the online community that believes in the right to express your views, your values, your voice." Indeed, the Fox Nation will be a "community that believes in the right." For a taste of what to expect, just take a look at the community that Fox already provides on their Fox Forums: Tom BB: America’s enemies rejoice now around the world and in the US. Obama the terrorist is in charge. Steven: Hell No! Obama is of the devil! drwoo: MAY OBAMA’S WIFE AND KIDS BE THE FIRST TO BE BLOWN UP, BURNED ALIVE OR HAVE TO JUMP OUT OF A WINDOW ON THE 88TH FLOOR (SPLAT). MAY OBAMA REAP WHAT HE HAS SOWN> AMEN!!! Jim: The Antichrist has arrived and is doing well in the White House. Say goodbye to what we all know as a free and God loving America. Jim P: WHEN THE BOYS FROM GITMO GET HERE OBAMA WILL GIVE THEM WELFARE,SECTION 8 HOUSING AND EVERYTHING ELSE THE STUPID ASS PEOPLE WHO PUT HIM IN OFFICE GET. LET THEM LIVE IN DC. THEY WILL BLEND IN WITH THE REST OF THE DC RESIDENTS! HOPE ALL THE LOW LIFE AND WELFARE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR OBAMA ARE HAPPY. BY THE WAY, WHEN WILL THE TICKETS TO THE FORD THEATER GO ON SALE? Don Brown: Obama needs to be checked to see if he has a 666 somewhere on his body. It is not presently known exactly what form the Fox Nation will take (We'll find out on Monday, March 30). As a self-described "online community" it could be modeled on MySpace, which is also owned by Fox News' parent company, News Corp. But the purpose of the Fox Nation is not hard to surmise. It is just another brick in the great wall dividing Americans from one another. It will likely tap in to existing movements like Beck's 912 Project and the Tea Partiers. Then these fanatics will be able to accumulate friends and form alliances. One thing is known for sure: There has never been anything like it from a social movement perspective. Fox News has a large and faithful following. Their daily exhortations to rise up against the Socialist hordes they imagine are occupying Washington could be channeled into an army that is loyal only to the hallucinatory paranoia of the Foxian mindset. Beck, O'Reilly, and Hannity, don't view themselves as commentators so much as they do as saviors. O'Reilly has confessed that he believes that he was "blessed with talent" and that he is "here for a reason." Beck beseeches his viewers at the start of every program to "Come on, follow me." Hannity leads into his All-Star Panel sermonizing with a preachy "Let not your heart be troubled." An evangelical fervor literally drips from these would-be prophets like a poisonous sap. So now Fox wants to start a new nation populated with believers and disciples. The nation that the rest of us inhabit is far too corrupt and sinful. It is infested with Secular-Progressives and far-left loons. There is no course left for the righteous, but to secede. The mysterious video that Fox is airing to promote the launch of the Fox Nation ends with this comforting enticement that seems deliberately crafted to appeal to lost souls: "Finally, a place to call home."

In the wake of the San Bernardino shootings last week , local law enforcement in Westchester County are stepping up their security. Sixty-one different police departments are working together through a county-wide intelligence clearing center to increase randomized security sweeps, utilizing heavily-armed police officials to conduct procedures in heavily populated areas, like shopping centers and malls, WLNY TV 10/55’s Lou Young reported. “We plan these so we can be anywhere, any time, any place,” Lt. James Luciano, of the Westchester County Police Department, said. Officers, dressed in military-style uniforms, are equipped with high-tech devices, like radiation detectors that have the ability to detect a dirty bomb. Bomb-sniffing dogs are also often on-scene accompanying the officers. “There’s no, ‘you’re a village police force, you’re a county police force, you’re a state police force, you’re federal –‘ you have to work together,” Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino said. “Not only to keep our own people safe but to have that added ring of intelligence around New York City.” The program started just after 9/11 and has continued to grow, especially in the wake of incidents like the San Bernardino shootings and the recent terror attacks in Paris. According to police sources, randomization of security sweeps is a priority — with sweeps sometimes occurring in the same spot twice in one day. “The whole idea behind this is to keep the bad guys off guard to keep them wondering,” Capt. Paul A. Stasaitis said.

Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Sep. 10, 2015, 12:06 PM GMT / Updated Sep. 10, 2015, 2:45 PM GMT By Rich McHugh, Tracy Connor and Kate Snow For years, they've been collecting dust — tens of thousands of evidence kits that could lead police to serial rapists but have never been tested. But now, almost $80 million is being earmarked to help clear the massive backlog and hopefully get justice for sexual assault survivors. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is putting $38 million in forfeiture funds toward the cause. "We have finally come together to solve one of our law enforcement community's biggest embarrassments which is having treated sexual victims, particularly women, not as seriously as we have treated other kinds of crimes and victims," Vance told NBC News. Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Loretta Lynch are set to announce that the Department of Justice is setting aside $41 million for the effort. "The bottom line is simple—if we’re able to test these kits, more crimes could be solved and more women can live with the comfort of knowing her rapist will not return," Biden said in a statement. The grants will be announced Thursday afternoon at a press conference in Manhattan, where the officials will be joined by "Law and Order" actress Mariska Hargitay, whose Joyful Heart Foundation has championed the cause for years. The problem came to public attention five years ago when a Detroit prosecutor, Kym Worthy, discovered 10,000 kits were sitting neglected in a dingy warehouse. The city just finished testing those kits and found 487 suspected serial rapists and links to cases in 39 states.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. MADISON, Wis. - Madison police said two people had to go to the hospital early Friday morning after they crashed their motorcycle on the westbound Beltline. The incident happened just before 2 a.m. Friday on the Beltline between Midvale Boulevard and Whitney Way. According to police two people, a 45-year-old Madison man and a 28-year-old Madison woman, left a tavern where they had been drinking and rode off on a motorcycle. The motorcycle had no second seat, so the operator rolled up his jacket for his female passenger to sit on. At some point, the jacket apparently became entangled in the rear wheel/sprocket, causing the bike to seize up. The operator lost control of the motorcycle, went off the road and crashed. Neither of the people on the motorcycle were wearing helmets at the time of the crash. They were both taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

A private investigator hired by the alleged victim said being tricked by a fortune teller is "not a matter of intelligence" and can happen to anyone "at a vulnerable moment." A fortuneteller accused of tricking an Island County woman out of more than $51,000 was arrested by Mount Vernon police Monday night after the alleged victim brought in a private investigator known for helping victims of con artists, police said. The suspect had persuaded the woman to give up the money by saying it suffered from an “evil energy” and needed “spiritual cleansing,” according to a statement from the Mount Vernon Police Department. The suspect told the woman the money would be returned when the ritual was complete, but she then rebuffed the woman’s effort to collect, police said. The woman initially sought counsel from the psychic because she was at a low point in her life, according to Bob Nygaard, a Florida-based ex-cop who says he helped put away 29 con artists in his career. She was depressed, thought her marriage was in trouble and had suffered both a concussion and a serious wrist injury, Nygaard said. She also felt guilty about an inheritance she received that her sister had been left out of, he said. Nygaard said he thinks the woman was groomed by the suspect to believe that her sister was jealous and had placed a curse on her. She was bamboozled, he said, into withdrawing, at first, a few small sums of money, and then several large ones, by the suspect who told the woman her money needed to be ritually cleansed. “It’s not a matter of intelligence,” Nygaard said in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s a matter of running into a professional con artist when you are at a vulnerable moment. You don’t walk in and they say, ‘Give me $51,000.’ They know how to build up your trust, manipulate you psychologically, prey on your vulnerabilities and groom you into a scam.” In all, the woman handed over $51,200 to the 69-year-old suspect. The woman sought Nygaard’s help after she went to Mount Vernon police, who initially told her it was a civil matter, Nygaard said. “The officer thought it was a matter of one person turning money over to another as part of an agreement,” Mount Vernon police spokesman Lt. Greg Booth said. That’s not particularly surprising, Nygaard said. “Most cops hear ‘psychic’ and roll their eyes or they say you willingly gave your money. But people gave their money willingly to Bernie Madoff, too.” Nygaard said it didn’t take him long to find out the suspect was the same woman who had been charged in similar crimes in Florida. In 2006, she worked with a police detective to defraud multiple victims out of more than $2 million and for that she was convicted of wire fraud and sentenced to four years in federal prison, according to media reports. On Oct. 6, Mount Vernon police detectives met with Nygaard and Seattle police investigators. They learned about the suspect’s previous criminal cases and were provided with financial records from the Island County woman, which helped them build the case, Booth said. The suspect was arrested on investigation of first-degree theft Monday night and booked into the Skagit County Community Justice Center. The Seattle Times generally does not name people who have not yet been charged with a crime. Mount Vernon police believe there may be additional victims and are urging them to come forward. “It’s not uncommon in a case like this for people to feel embarrassed,” he said.

On the last years, there has been an increasing trend towards transparency. Some organizations have been applying and preaching several habits and workflows that promote this. And simultaneously several world events (NSA whistleblowing, Wikileaks, etc) have fueled discussions around the importance of having transparency as a common value in companies and governments. Fortunately, leaders of a few institutions have been taking a bigger step towards this - they're willing to use transparency in a form that some call 'radical'; even if sometimes that makes them uncomfortable or even vulnerable. Let's see some examples: Radically transparent companies Buffer Buffer is one of the most well-known. At Buffer, every employee knows everyone's salary, and everyday everyone shares what they have been working on, and at what they're striving to become better at. And even the information about how well every employee slept in the past days is available to the whole company. Also, Buffer shares with the public how much money they've raised and how it's spent. And they're even considering opening their company's Wiki to the whole internet[1]. Buffer argues that being transparent is a great way to communicate expectations, and they say to strive really hard to be radically transparent; even if doing it doesn't always translate into wonderful consequences. They're aware of some backlashes, and so, they make sure to implement such practices one step at the time. Qualtrics Other well known example is Qualtrics[2], where the entire workforce has access to information about the performance of each employee, that includes: Noted successes and failures, with notes for everyone to learn from; Quarterly objectives and its detailed results; Performance reviews and ratings; Weekly snippets of each one's goals; Their career history at Qualtrics. Qualtrics recognize that this can be a tough environment for those who aren't "A" employees. But for those who are, they argue that it provides them focus, engagement, and better talent growth. Fred Wilson Also, some companies and individuals know that by putting their voice out there, they attract others who are like-minded - by broadcasting their culture and values, their personality and even their needs, they more easily draw in people that are a good fit to their organization, and people that are willing to help them. See Fred Wilson, whose blog has resulted in great deals for his venture Union Square. Surgery Center of Oklahoma A less techy example is the recent one from the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, where the decision of making every surgery price publicly available made the surgery prices of several other hospitals drop.[3] These procedures were unimaginable some years ago - there has been a clear shift on the belief that being more transparent is actually good. But let's get deeper into the use of transparency. Companies, governments, and the whole society are composed by individuals and their relationships. So, how does transparency work on a more individual level? What do experience and psychology have to say about it? Let's start with the 2004 Marshall Goldsmith's article named 'Leadership is a Contact Sport' [4]. Here he concludes that the best way for sustaining employees peak performance is to ensure that the organization has great feedback mechanisms and that its employees have a commitment aligned with the organizational goals. In other words, Marshal noticed that companies with the best results were the ones where its employees openly talked (follow-up) with each other about: Their performance; What was expected from them; Where they were good at, and; Where they needed to improve. By doing this, besides the consequent talent growth, everyone knew the organization's current weaknesses and strengths, and where it was heading. Which consequently resulted in better and faster decisions, and better understanding of the decisions that other people in the company have made. But there is one, even more, interesting fact that, when talking about transparency, no one seems to have mentioned yet. I'm talking about the Johari Window. What no one talks about: The Johari Window The Johari Window is a concept coined by the psychologists Joe Luft & Harrington Ingham, who argued that " whatever happens in our life depends upon how much we are actually aware of our inner being, and at the same time how much others know about it in a true sense"[5]. The concept tells us that there are certain things in our life which we are aware of, and others wich we aren't. Similarly, there are certain things others are aware of ourselves, and other things wich they aren't. Thus, at a given point of time in our lives, the way we and others see ourselves, can be represented through the Johari Window: Represantion of the Johari Window Hidden Self Is where are the things that we see in ourselves but that are blind to others. This is where we hide information that we prefer to not be disclosed to others because doing it makes us feel uncomfortable. It can be our weaknesses, faults and fears. Or even good qualities that due to modesty we prefer to not advertise. What's on our Hidden Self, if negative, it can reduce our credibility. Or, in the case of being something positive, it can end out not being useful to us since we tried to hide it instead of improving it, and making sure that other people are ware of those good traits of ours. Blind Self Represents what people see in us, but which we aren't aware of. Even though we may think that we're very funny, people may actually think that we're really annoying and, unfortunately, they prefer to not tell us. At the Blind Self, there can be negative and positive information, that will not be any useful to us if we don't acknowledge them - maybe telling us when we're annoying would help us correct this behavior. Undiscovered Self Is where resides the good and bad traits that neither we nor other people, notice in ourselves. This area is the reason why sometimes, after successfully facing a great challenge, we become more confident - we (and other people around us) have just realized capabilities or interests that we weren't aware of before. And of course, the opposite may also happen: we realise that coding is definitely not our thing. Overall, the Undiscovered Self is a good reason why we should always be experimenting new stuff - it's a great way of constricting our Undiscovered Self area. Open Self And finally, the Open Self is where we can find what is known to both ourselves and to other people. According to Joe Luft & Harrington Ingham, this is where the magic happens (!) - recognizing and being open about our known fears, weaknesses, strengths, interests and needs, and everything else that's in our Open Self, leads to a life of happiness and success. So, you should constantly work to grow out this area by: strengthening our qualities and putting them in positive use; being more introspective and open to self-assessment; overcoming our weaknesses; accepting various challenges in life so that we can realise your deeply hidden capabilities, qualities, or weaknesses and deep fears! Representation of the Johari Window with expanded Known Self area We should strive to show our personality and our true self to our peers. We should strive to create greater interpersonal intimacy so that we can both become more aware of ourselves. These are some interesting facts and real world experiences about being more transparent about ourselves and our organizations. Anyway, we cannot preach that being transparent about ourselves is full of unicorns and wonderful consequences. There still are a lot of questions about the boundaries of this practice. But as we saw in this post, there are great consequences that come with a more transparent world. Let's find the sweet spot, by experimenting and pushing the boundaries further. Main references: [1] Buffer: Buffer blog - Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer: Our Transparent Formula and All Individual Salaries, INC Magazine - Inside a Completely Transparent Company [2] Qualitrics: Harvard Business Review - Why Radical Transparency is Good Business [3] Oklahoma Hospital: How One Oklahoma Hospital Is Driving Down The Cost Of Health Care By Thousands Of Dollars [4] Leadership Is a Contact Sport, by Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan [5] Johari Window

Photo by Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images When I look at my phone, I see my daughter leaving for camp on my home screen. She stands at the bottom of an airport escalator, an orange backpack over her shoulder. She'd cut her long, strawberry blond hair the day before, so the person smiling from under the carrot top doesn't look familiar. But the image of a kid who just needs a backpack and a ticket is one I recognize. Some parents may have to nudge their children to camp. For the last two summers, our daughter has run out the door. "Yukon ho!" she yelled when leaving this year, an expression she learned from Calvin and Hobbes' main character Calvin, whom she now resembles. John Dickerson John Dickerson is a co-anchor of CBS This Morning, co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest, host of the Whistlestop podcast, and author of Whistlestop and On Her Trail. I hadn't been at the National Airport departure gate for her first trip as an Unaccompanied Minor. I was in the stands at my son's baseball tournament. For pickup my wife and I flipped the load-sharing. She did baseball duty, and I flew to Minnesota, driving almost four hours to a packed-dirt road lined with birch trees that ended at the shores of Lake Pokegama: Camp Mishawaka. Thirty-six years earlier, I had been the 9-year-old flying alone from Washington to this place with a new haircut. Hear this article on Slate Voice! slate.com/voice Listen to an audio recording of this article Get Slate Voice, the spoken edition of the magazine. In addition to this article, you’ll hear a daily selection of our best stories, handpicked by our editors and voiced by professional narrators. Your Slate Voice podcast feed To listen to an audio recording of this article, copy this link and add it to your podcast app: For full instructions see the Slate Plus podcasts FAQ. When I was at camp, my parents didn't know what was happening to me. We weren't allowed to use the telephone, so even on my birthday I just received word that they'd called to wish me a happy one. All they got on their end was a handful of sentences written in loopy script with scattershot spelling. Technology makes hovering easier now. For the last few weeks, my wife and I ended our days poking around on the camp website, scanning photographs for the flash of red hair among the campers playing capture the flag and canoeing. Now, as I stood on the soft grass at the edge of the compound, I was doing the same scan, watching my daughter fling herself around along with the other campers, passing time before the organizing ring of the dinner bell. Advertisement Some of my best encounters with our children are the ones they don't know about. At school pickup, I watch them conspiring with friends. When I drive carpool, I stay quiet so I can hear them making claims and testing theories. I notice that the voice mail messages from my son are different if he’s calling in the presence of his friends. Instead of speaking in his usual soft meander, he delivers crisp, informative sentences. One time I expected him to ask if we had ever really considered the benefits of a term life insurance policy. These hidden glimpses of children in their natural habitat show us their essential version of themselves. What you see is both new and familiar—like the picture of my daughter on the escalator at the airport. The moments don't last long. When the kids sense that you're watching—notified by some fibrillation of the hairs on their arms or inner ear disturbance—they change, even if it's to run to give you a hug. As I watched my daughter on the open field, I put my camera under my jacket. They can sense those at 60 paces. This disturbance in the Force is what walls us off from watching the truly great moments. But this is an evolutionary necessity. The best moments of childhood—the memories that stay with you into adulthood—are ones where your parents aren't there. They are moments you experienced truly for yourself. In Homesick and Happy, Michael Thompson writes about a study where people were asked about their happiest childhood memory; more than 80 percent name a parent-free moment. Thompson explains that kids are better off when they accomplish something without having to think about how their parents would view it. Those memories are also more indelible. The self-confidence that comes from that accomplishment sticks better because it is completely earned. So, as a parent you should want to push your kids out of your space to where they can rack up these 80 percent experiences—to explore, take risks, and try new identities. We are not invited, which is a paper-cut echo of the truth at the heart of parenting: You're doing it best when you're teaching them to leave you. Camp is an intensive course in how your children can do this successfully. "You step away from the care of your mom and dad into the world of independence. And that's your job in life. Every one of you accomplished steps in that direction,” said the Girls Camp director at the final-night campfire. To signify the change they've made, girls throw crystals into the fire, which explode like Floo Powder in flashes of color. Advertisement This makes camp sound a little bitter for the parent, but it doesn't need to be. The upside to camp is that it also offers a back door to sneak into their world undetected. The glut of independence dulls their parental defenses. They forget to remember they are oppressed. My kids are at that sweet age before the teenage years, before they are encased in those headphones that look like hamburger buns. Nursing resentments about the parents is not yet their full-time occupation. So when we picked up our son from a week of surfing camp, he went on a talking spree, explaining where he got his necklace made of shells, describing each room of the World War II defense bunker at the state park, and showing the campground layout with objects on the dinner table. We had five hours inside his world, until after dinner, as he was scrubbing his utensils thoroughly the way he had each night at the campground, he stopped and looked at us: "What am I doing? Shouldn't you be doing this?" Good one, Necklace Boy. We all laughed and then started the slow descent to the old relationship. By traveling to my daughter's new turf with the cloak of having been a camper there myself, I thought maybe the bubble might last a little longer. Maybe it would be 10 hours before our old routine closed back around us. She tackled me. I'd been spotted. We hugged, though it’s more accurate to say I wore her like a koala for a minute. Then we were off into her world. She introduced me to the counselors and campers—two categories: "nice" and "not so nice." All these glowing little people knew her name. I wasn't quite sure how to handle myself. Have you ever seen what happens when parents try too hard in front of their child and their child’s new friends? They use the word "man" or "awesome" and children just stare at them with brutal pity. When you transport from Washington—the land of permanent eye circles and insipid arguments—into a close room full of oxygenated children who've had at least 10 hours of sleep, your instincts fail you. Advertisement Tent caterpillars joined us for dinner. They dive-bombed our bug juice, formed letters on top of the cornbread and settled in our hair. Dragonflies took readings and droned off. In the family dinner theater production of Dinner at Our House, my wife or I will ask: "How was your day?" and our daughter answers, "It was a normal day." Scene. At camp, a place where boredom did not seem to exist, I didn't have many chances to ask questions. "He's a good leader," she said of the camp director, "because he's willing to do the work himself." Returning from the chow line, she brought me a napkin I needed but hadn’t asked for. "That's something I've gotten good at. Noticing when people need something and getting it for them." I wasn't a conversationalist so much as a backboard against which she was pinging thoughts. "Opportunities are like fireflies. You have to catch them or they'll fly away." When the kids get sick, they become extra-grateful and loving. This is also how they behave when you appear in the camp bubble. Did I have enough carrots, she asked? What did I want to see first? How was the flight? She was afraid she wasn't showing me and telling me enough. She reached over and brushed my hair off my forehead. "I do the same thing too now," she says brushing her short hair off her forehead. We had reversed roles. She was in command, and I was the one visiting. I'd been there before and little had changed in 40 years, but I let myself be led by the hand—over the exposed roots I'd tripped over and down to the pier where I'd lost my breath jumping into the frigid water. Advertisement If camp is a place where you can create an essential part of yourself, perhaps you can reintroduce yourself to that part of your character by stepping back into its grooves. It's as close as we get to going back in time. The location contains intense memories, and there are triggers everywhere that can pop them out of the subconscious. The split logs where we sat for vespers Sunday at twilight were still there, the open field seemed no smaller than it had when I pedaled my stick legs across it in Jimmy Connors shorts, and the dining hall smelled antique as always. But my daughter seemed so much more in command and unburdened than the young John Dickerson. When I went to camp, I was the same little person transported to a new place. She goes to camp to be someone different. That's why she's so keen to get there. That's what the short haircut was about. It had its downside, of course. On the first night, counselors doing the quick sort sent her and her bags to the boys’ camp. In the back of the dining room, we found the younger me, sitting in the front row in the 1977 camp photo. I'd never seen the picture, but I look almost identical to the boy in the official picture they had sent home to my parents. My mom never had a cellphone when she was alive, but that photograph—now my Twitter avatar—had been on her desk for the last 20 years of her life. I'm bright-eyed and happy, smiling like I could win the lottery any day I wanted. It’s the face my daughter is wearing. We became separated briefly, and as I tried to remember details about skits I’d performed and conjure the smell of the canvas tents, counselors came to tell me secrets. My daughter showed other campers how to make their beds. She got up every morning to swim in the freezing lake. She was a top competitor in the ad-hoc potty humor competition on the boat ride to one of the islands. (When you get in the outhouse, you're Russian, when you're going, European, and when you leave, you're Finnish.) At the talent show, she'd sung and played the guitar after being nervous about even stepping onstage. It was an inspiration to the other campers, I was told. She was the kind of kid who was game for anything. This is a different girl than the one I remember. I wish I had been that way. I wish I were that way now. This was the unexpected wonder of the trip. It was fun to observe the new her, but the surprise was listening to other people describe her. They didn't have my fuzzy lenses mucked up with emotion and memory and duty. She told me that Annie, the counselor who taught her the ukulele, said, "You have great things ahead of you." "Didn't you think that already?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "but it was nice to hear it coming from her too."

We keep an eye out for any hint of things to come and this prototype of a proposed Hot Toys figure has us drooling The tag line for these photos reads “In response to the Civil War, so it was born! Hot Toys Iron Man Transformation.” The photos come to us via a post by Shen Gong Yu who has our thanks. This is an utterly amazing look at the detail present in this prototypes and, for a moment, we get to watch as it evolves in startling detail. Sit back and enjoy the wonderful visual show to follow here… As you would expect with photos unveiled this early, there is no word on whether or not this little beauty will be produced and certainly no word on pre-order, price, or street date. This is about as fresh as you’re going to find in terms of a reveal, and I have to say, this one borders on a masterpiece I would love to see from Hot Toys.

‘The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan’’ on PBS sounds like a heartwarming documentary, but unfortunately the lives of these juvenile entertainers is anything but. The “Frontline’’ investigation illuminates one more dark corner of that tragic country’s soul. Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi infiltrates the subculture of “bacha bazi’’ — literally, “boy play’’ — in which poor or orphaned Afghan boys become the possessions of powerful men. They dress as women and dance to entertain at all-male parties; later they are used sexually by their masters and other men. It’s “sexual slavery,’’ in the words of a United Nations official, a tradition so odious that the Taliban banned it. It’s also illegal. But in one of the ironies that seem so common in that country, it has made a comeback under the more Western-friendly government now in place. Quraishi, who also reported for “Frontline’’ on “Behind Taliban Lines,’’ is courageous and crafty. He once fled Afghanistan in fear for his life after reporting on massacres during fighting against the Taliban. Now he somehow convinces several powerful men in the city of Takhar that he is making a sympathetic film comparing Afghan and European bacha bazi practices. They allow him to film bacha bazi parties and interview the adolescent boys they “own.’’ Chief among these villains are a former mujahedeen commander-turned-car dealer named Dastager, whose leering admiration of the dancing boys is impossible to mistake for anything wholesome, and a scarily quiet, dead-eyed musician who trains the boys. That the musician is named Rafi is another brutal irony, although he spells his name differently than the popular US children’s musician. Eventually the men become suspicious of Quraishi’s motives and he leaves Afghanistan again. Still, with the help of other Afghans, he tries to free Dastager’s latest acquisition, an 11-year-old boy from a poor village family. That effort adds some suspense to the last third of “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan,’’ but a happy ending for little Shafiq won’t change the power structure that protects the bacha bazi culture. © Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

Image copyright Trinity Mirror Image caption Ian Paterson will appear at Birmingham Crown Court in February A breast surgeon has been charged with 21 counts of unlawfully and maliciously wounding 11 patients. Ian Paterson, 58, who worked at hospitals run by the Heart of England NHS Trust and Spire Healthcare, faces 21 counts dating back to 1997. The surgeon, who treated about 700 women from 1993 to 2012, was suspended by the General Medical Council in 2012. He did not enter a plea at Birmingham Magistrates' Court and will appear at the city's crown court on 15 February. Mr Paterson, of Castle Mill Lane, Ashley, Altrincham, faces one charge of causing grievous bodily harm and 20 of wounding with intent. The alleged offences took place between 1997 and 2011. The GMC is investigating allegations that Mr Paterson, who worked mainly for the NHS at Solihull Hospital and two private hospitals run by Spire, carried out unnecessary, inappropriate or unregulated operations. Mr Paterson stands accused of carrying out invasive breast surgery on women with suspected breast cancer when a simple biopsy might have been sufficient. He is also accused of using a banned procedure, known as a cleavage sparing mastectomy, that involves leaving behind some potentially cancerous tissue for cosmetic reasons. Concerns about his work first surfaced in 2007, but it was not until 2011 that he was excluded from the trust where he worked. More than 550 patients were recalled to hospital to have their cases reviewed.

Lots of people know about the relationship between fantasy writers C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, but who know Bram Stoker stole Oscar Wilde's true love out from under his nose? I didn't, at least, so I think these relationships between classic authors are terribly interesting. I included Lewis and Tolkien for those who didn't know about their friendship. There are a lot more where this came from - I might make this a two-parter. And if you're impatient and don't want to wait for my second part, check out the book Secret Lives of Great Authors by Robert Schnakenberg. Very interesting read. 1. Bram Stoker was a frequent guest at Oscar Wilde’s parents’ house. Oscar’s mom, Lady Jane, was a poet who liked to keep literary company. Bram found himself in Lady Jane’s circle, and eventually met Florence Balcombe, who had previously been Lady Jane’s daughter-in-law to be. Yep, Florence was once engaged to Oscar Wilde. At least, by some accounts. Other accounts say they dated seriously and Oscar merely wanted to marry her. At any rate, Florence ended up marrying Bram Stoker instead. When Oscar heard she was engaged, he wrote her a letter and said that he was leaving Ireland and would never come back. He mostly stayed true to his word – he only came back twice for a brief visits. 2. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were good friends since they first met at Oxford and belonged to the Inklings group together. But they hated one another’s books. When Tolkien was writing a new character for Lord of the Rings and tried to describe the character to Lewis, Lewis famously responded, “Not another frigging dwarf!” Except, you know, he actually swore. But this is a family blog. 3. Louisa May Alcott loved Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Really loved them. Like Alcott, they were residents of Concord, Massachusetts, so she had friendships with both. She and Thoreau used to exchange ideas and he would play his flute for her. The Emerson infatuation may have started when Ralph Waldo gave her the book Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child, which involves a young girl in love with a horny old poet. You can see why Louisa may have been flattered and sort of started stalking him – she would leave flowers on his doorstep, write him love letters but never send them, and sit outside of his window and sing him songs in German. He was married and had a daughter just six years younger than Louisa and never returned her affections. 4. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were just three years apart in age. They met at the Dingo Bar in Paris in 1925, when Hemingway was 25 and Fitzgerald was 28. The Great Gatsby had just been published and looked to be a big hit; Hemingway, on the other hand, was a relatively unknown author. They were close friends for a while – Fitzgerald was notoriously insecure about himself in almost every aspect, and when his wife once insulted the size of his manhood, Fitz actually dropped trou and asked Hemingway if everything looked normal to him. Hemingway assured his friend that things appeared to be up to par. But the friendship quickly deteriorated. As Fitzgerald’s career fell and he descended further into alcoholism, Hemingway’s work started picking up. Hemingway started making fun of Fitzgerald to newspapers and magazines, to the point that Fitzgerald actually pleaded with his old friend to stop. The reason for the sudden cold shoulder? Hemingway was said to have been disgusted by Fitzgerald’s alcoholism, because he would make huge public scenes and embarrass himself and everyone around him when he was drunk. 5. And, speaking of Hemingway, he was also once very good friends with Gertrude Stein. He met her in Paris as well, at the introduction of their mutual friend, writer Sherwood Anderson (Anderson also introduced Hemingway to Ezra Pound). She reminded him of his mother both physically and otherwise. He even openly used Gertrude to try to work out some of his issues with his mother. She ended up introducing him to bullfighting, Spain, and prose. He used her as his sounding board and would completely rewrite something at her suggestion. He even made her the Godmother of his first son, Jack.

Anti-fracking campaigners have accused North Yorkshire council of declaring war on people’s rights to clean air and water after it approved the first operation to frack for shale gas in five years. Campaigners opposed to the development outside Kirby Misperton – a village in Ryedale near the North York Moors national park – launched a “people’s declaration” in an attempt to stop the process going ahead. There have also been calls for a judicial review from Friends of the Earth and Frack Free Ryedale, which led the campaign against the application by Third Energy. They said in a statement: “We urge and will support the government to develop a balanced long-term energy policy that will achieve our globally agreed climate change targets. Today we resolve to continue to fight to remain free from fracking, to protect our communities, our beautiful countryside, our air and water, and to protect the future of the planet.” 'Riding roughshod over democracy': residents on fracking in North Yorkshire Read more The council’s decision on Monday was met by chants of “We say no” and “You will be held accountable”. “It is a war, now, they’ve declared on us,” said Sarah Hockey, an anti-fracking campaigner from east Yorkshire. “It’s a war on our human rights to clean air and water so we’ve got to take it like that and keep pushing and pushing and pushing.” Friends of the Earth said it would consider whether the decision could be challenged. Campaigner Simon Bowens said: “This is an absolute travesty of a decision, but the battle is very far from over.” One of the councillors who voted in favour of the application, Cliff Trotter, said he had received intimidating emails. He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Yes, a few. But that’s par for the course, I suppose. But we tried to look to the future, the best for the people of England.” After a two-day meeting at the county hall in Northallerton, councillors voted by a majority of seven to four to approve the fracking operation near Pickering. The move was hailed by the government and the fracking industry as a “fantastic opportunity”. The decision was made despite thousands of objections from residents and campaigners and will allow fracking in the UK for the first time in five years. Fracking was halted on the Fylde coast in 2011 when tests found it was the probable cause of minor earthquakes in the area. Since then, two high-profile applications to frack in Lancashire have been rejected by councillors and are the subject of appeals. Planners had recommended the most recent application be approved, despite acknowledging that the majority of representations received in consultation were objections. Vicky Perkin, a council planning officer, told the committee that of 4,420 individual representations, 4,375 were objections and 36 were in support of the application to frack for shale gas at the firm’s existing well in Kirby Misperton, known as KM8. The chief executive of North Yorkshire council, Richard Flinton, said the decision did not mean similar approvals would follow. The chairman of the committee, Peter Sowray, said he knew people would be angry but he was comfortable with the decision. The government has said it is going “all-out for shale” to boost energy security and the economy. But opponents fear fracking – in which liquid is pumped deep underground at high pressure to fracture rock and release gas – can cause problems, including water contamination, earthquakes, and noise and traffic pollution. Environmentalists also say that pursuing new sources of gas – a fossil fuel – is not compatible with efforts to tackle climate change. Fracking wins battle in Yorkshire but not the war \| Damian Carrington Read more The UK’s regulatory approval mechanisms for fracking are fragmented, involving multiple agencies from local authorities to the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive. A taskforce set up by the fracking industry recommended last year that these should be replaced by a single regulatory body, with the required expertise to rule on fracking sites. Rasik Valand, chief executive of Third Energy, said work would not start at the site for months and there would initially be an exploration phase. A viability test lasting six to eight weeks will be carried out at the KM8 site. If it is found to be suitable, full-scale shale gas extraction will take place for up to nine years. When asked if this was a precedent for further fracking applications to be approved, Valand said: “We don’t look upon it like that. We are a local company, we see ourselves as a local company. For us, this is about testing what’s in our local area.” The UK’s fledgling fracking industry on Tuesday hailed the council’s decision. Ken Cronin, chief executive of UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said it was “a very important first step”. “[The decision] helps to dispel many of the misleading claims that have been made about this application, as well as the process of hydraulic fracturing more generally,” he said. “We look forward to Third Energy being able to conduct a test to see how much gas is under this area of North Yorkshire to power and heat homes and businesses.” The government also praised the decision by North Yorkshire council to allow fracking in the area. Andrea Leadsom, the energy minister, said: “We’re very clear that fracking is a fantastic opportunity. It’s good for jobs, the economy and strengthens our energy security. We already have tough regulation in place to ensure that fracking is safe.” The news delighted the UK’s shale gas pioneer, Cuadrilla, which is the only company to have used modern hydraulic fracturing technology in the UK so far at its site near Blackpool. Cuadrilla has been fighting to gain approval for other sites, including at Balcombe in Sussex, which was met with protests. Francis Egan, chief executive of Cuadrilla, said: “This will boost the shale gas industry across the north of England, providing much-needed jobs as well as gas vitally needed to heat our homes and power our businesses.” Others also welcomed the decision. Claire Dutch, a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells, which advises fracking companies, said: “We are at the beginning of the shale gas journey in the UK, but this is a significant step forward for the industry. We could see the start of the tide turning for unlocking shale gas development in the UK.” She said that further regulatory approvals would be easier to gain but warned that the main obstacles to a shale gas industry in the UK were likely to be economic, rather than regulatory. “The remaining hurdle will be whether it is possible to produce shale gas energy in the UK on a commercially viable scale.” Cuadrilla said five years ago that it had spent more than £100m without producing any gas at all. The company is now more coy about its expenditure. As all of the potential shale gas sites in the UK will face similar planning difficulties, protests and high costs owing to regulations protecting the environment – costs that have not been incurred by shale-gas drilling companies in the US, where regulations were kept lax to foster the industry.

Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort is lurking around the corner, and today you can book an experience that is unique to this spooky time of year. Disney’s Happiest Haunts Guided Tour takes you on a journey throughout the Disneyland Resort for a night of chilling tales, eerie sights and Halloween treats! Your mysterious “Ghost Host” will take you on an adventure as you track the mischievous Disney Villains, experience thrilling attractions and discover that the fate of the Disneyland Resort in your hands! Here are some things you should know about the Disney’s Happiest Haunts Guided Tour: Tour is offered each night from September 14 through October 31. The tour is approximately three hours long. Theme park admission for Disneyland park is required to attend the tour. Attractions and entertainment are subject to change without notice. Some tour attractions have a 42-inch height requirement and physical considerations. Each tour guest will receive a collectible souvenir pin and a tasty treat. For even more Halloween fun, be sure to ask about the “Ultimate Experience”! On select nights, you can combine Disney’s Happiest Haunts Tour with the trick-or-treating fun of Mickey’s Halloween Party. The “Ultimate Experience” is available on September 28 and October 2, 5, 9, 12, 15, 19, 23, 26, 29 and 31. For pricing and booking information (and to find out about a special discount for Disney Rewards Visa and AAA card holders, Disney Vacation Club members and Disneyland Resort Annual Passport holders) call 714-781-TOUR (8687). Also, be sure to check out the other Disneyland Resort Guided Tours at Disneyland.com/Tours. Check out these posts for more about Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort:

"So I'll sound like a crazy person for much of the night, but I just need to throw out all these scenarios to get through the evening." It's been a busy day for Andy Ross, an agent in Octagon Sports' football group, which is responsible for managing 12 players in a 2013 NFL Draft that starts in a couple short hours. He's representing two players in this year's class, one a potential first-rounder who could hear his name called on Thursday night. While preparing for what he calls an agent's Super Bowl, he's had to spend a good portion of the day handling concerns of clients already in the league. One client is facing a legal issue which requires Ross to coordinate with the player's attorney in a series of calls throughout the week. Another veteran free agent is trying to get a new deal, something Ross is managing on a hourly basis as he works with teams to arrange a new contract. This juggle is all taking place at his home, where he's set up for the first round. If you're one of the agents who doesn't already claim to have ADD, draft night will ensure that no one item keeps your attention for very long. Camped out in his basement in suburban Washington, D.C., Ross is comfortably nestled into his couch in a T-shirt and shorts. In front of him are five televisions, a projector screen, two phones, two computers, and several sheets of data he's assembled over the past five months. Much like your average fan or blogger, he keeps a fullscreen of Tweetdeck up on one computer while sifting through spreadsheets and his browser on another. Those sheets keep track of every interaction he or his clients have had with each team -- whether it's a pro-day session, team visit, combine interviews, or any other form of interest a team rep may have taken in one of his clients. The printouts track every player at the same position as his clients, as well as the teams targeting those positions. There's also a blank log where he'll manually keep track of the draft with pen and paper. Ross has been smoking a sundry of barbecue items all day, and his neighbors and friends come and go, grabbing food and beer and cracking jokes while he scrolls through his phone and re-checks all the info in front of him. Despite the array of audiovisual equipment, the scene is, at times, remarkably normal -- similar to the fantasy draft in a friend's house with the best basement setup (or in Rovellian terms, a "man cave"). Predictions and opinions on various players are tossed around the room and much like any draft get-together, it's an ostensibly casual affair. And then you realize that, unlike your fantasy draft party, for someone in this room, once the picks start rolling in, hundreds of thousands and potentially millions of dollars will be gained or lost with each announcement. It's a constant state of paranoia, bouncing from best-case to worst-case. Ross is one of four agents in the Octagon Football group, representing 12 players in the 2013 NFL Draft. He and other Octagon employees are hopeful that five of those players hear their names called in primetime on Thursday, but Oregon pass-rusher Dion Jordan is the only surefire first-rounder. C.J. LaBoy, Ken Landphere, and Doug Hendrickson are the three other agents with Octagon Football, and all three are assisting in the representation of Jordan. This year, Ross represents Missouri linebacker Zaviar Gooden and Syracuse offensive lineman Justin Pugh. The latter is a versatile tackle who had steadily risen up mock drafts into the back end of the first round by the time draft week hit. Gooden is a potential second-day pick, but could also fall as far as the top of the fifth round on Saturday afternoon. With the draft now spread out over three days, Ross spends much of the week managing expectations. On Wednesday night, he has a conference call with both families, answering questions and ensuring that the players keep their phone lines open and their voicemail boxes empty. He tells his players to be prepared for both the ceiling and the floor, reiterating to Pugh that he may need to be ready to fly out to his new team if he's taken in the first round, but at the same time not be disappointed if he drops to Friday. It's a constant state of paranoia, bouncing from best-case to worst-case and trying to keep your clients grounded in the understanding that they now have no control. Ross is a short, well-built man with what he calls a motormouth (that seems to be a stereotypical requisite for an agent, constantly pivoting from one call to the next). He's gregarious on the outside while churning away on the inside. He calls me "bro" within the first 15 seconds of meeting him, and he's continually referring to the "24/7 grind" that is an agent's life. Octagon is the only place he's ever worked, and he's certainly not someone who walked into the business with a network of connections in place and hefty commissions at the ready. As a senior in high school in Northern Virginia, Ross signed up for a sports marketing class because it included a free trip to Disney World. In that class, an internship opportunity came up at Advantage International, a predecessor to Octagon. Ross sought the aid of his high school instructor, Paul Wardinski, and learned to put together a résumé and write a cover letter in order to apply for the internship. Andy Ross and son Photo by Andy Ross When he called the company for the address to send his application, he was told the internship had been filled. Encouraged by his teacher, he put on his only suit, a cheap J.C. Penney number, and went to the Advantage offices, where he asked for Senior Vice President Tom George. He sat in the waiting room for hours until George walked out and said, "Do I know your parents?" Ross told him no, he was there for the internship. When George, a well-established figure in the sports business world, said the opportunity had been filled, Ross told him he'd work for free stapling documents or sorting paper clips, whatever was asked. That response was enough to get George to at least look over the résumé. Ten minutes later, an incredulous assistant emerged and said, "I don't know what you said to him, but he wants you to be here on Monday." Ross has worked his way through the Octagon structure in the ensuing 18 years to become the representative for multiple first-round draft picks. After selling sponsorship opportunities to events, he worked his way over to the sports side of the company, setting up sponsorship deals for five sports. Ross took a particular interest in football, where he apprenticed under Octagon's agents in San Francisco. Most of his time was spent helping support those more seasoned agents, but he was allowed to dedicate a small percentage of his time recruiting college players. His first big break came in 2008 when he signed eventual Houston Texans offensive lineman Duane Brown, a fellow Virginia Tech product. Brown is considered by some as the best left tackle in football, and Ross helped negotiate what was the largest contract in Texans history prior to last season. One year after the Texans took Brown, two more Ross clients landed in the first round -- Aaron Curry and Ziggy Hood. Curry, selected fourth overall, remains the highest picked client. But Ross has established a track record for pushing players into the first round -- starting with Brown, continuing with Hood, and most recently this April again along the offensive line with Pugh. Once Thursday rolls around, the teams have all the power and Ross has to decipher what's a smokescreen and who's taking serious interest in his clients. He's mostly a passive actor, digesting info that's relayed to him while following reports across Twitter. At the start of the week, Ross says that Pugh could go anywhere from 25 to 40, but by Thursday afternoon, several mock drafts had Pugh slotted at No. 19 to the New York Giants. One team in the top 10 tells Ross that they have Pugh rated as the third tackle behind Luke Joeckel and Eric Fisher, and that they're contemplating trading back to get him in the middle of the first round. But after getting that info directly, Ross sees a Tweet from reporters saying the same thing, so he begins to wonder whether it's smoke or real interest -- an exercise he calls a game that makes the draft exciting. Unlike the average viewer, Ross does have some control the week leading up to the draft, holding on to information for a strategic time to leak to the public. He discusses the selective approach to each bit of info he comes across, choosing to either relay it right away or waiting until draft week to try and change the narrative or momentum as the teams get closer to being on the clock. Ross is hoping that there's a run on offensive lineman at the top of the first round -- a distinct possibility given the lack of highly rated skill position players. Joeckel and Fisher are the two top rated tackles, both in position for the No. 1 pick. Reports on Thursday tabbed Fisher as the Chiefs' likely choice. Watching a red carpet interview with both tackles, Ross immediately calls out that he can tell, based on the side-by-side demeanor of each, that Fisher has been told he's the guy. By Thursday night Ross is saying that he thinks the highest Pugh could potentially go is No. 18 to the Dallas Cowboys, who took an interest in the offensive tackle during the pre-draft process and recently reiterated that interest. But all the draft day momentum coalesces around the Giants at No. 19. Twenty minutes before the draft officially starts, Ross gets word from the team that Pugh is indeed in play for them at 19. According to Ross, there are two types of teams -- those who "lock" in their board, and those who draft on emotion, and it's the emotional teams that are affected by a run on a certain position. The ideal run on Thursday night would include five offensive lineman going in the first 10 picks. The longshot fantasy scenario would involve six offensive lineman going in the first seven picks, potentially bringing even Tennessee in as an option at No. 10. But Ross maintains that this is just another scenario that makes him sound like a "crazy person" and one of the many that fire across the synapses as 8 o'clock approaches. Roger Goodell takes the podium to officially open the proceedings, and Ross exclaims, "Let's get these offensive linemen off the board!" The Chiefs oblige, and as expected, take Fisher with the No. 1 pick. "One down," says Ross with more than three hours left in what has become a less casual and more tense evening. Things continue to go according to plan, and for the first time ever, offensive tackles go 1-2 with the Jaguars opting for Joeckel. The first curveball of the night occurs at No. 3, where the Dolphins move up in a trade with the Oakland Raiders. Miami is also in need of a tackle, and the first inclination is that they're going with Oklahoma's Lane Johnson. Another offensive lineman off the board would help Pugh and Ross. Instead of Johnson, the Dolphins take Dion Jordan, which is still cause for celebration as he's a company client. "Nice, c'mon Octagon!" reverberates with Philly, and Jordan's former coach at Oregon, now on the clock at No. 4. "You like the ceiling, but we also got to pay attention to the floor." -Andy Ross The Eagles go with Johnson, which you'd think would prompt another celebration. But Ross has conflicting views on the selection -- another offensive lineman is off the board, but Philadelphia, Pugh's hometown, was one of the best backup options at the top of the second round. "You like the ceiling, but we also got to pay attention to the floor," he says as he considers a potential wait for Pugh until Friday's second round. At No. 5, the Lions could be in the market for yet another offensive lineman, specifically Alabama's D.J. Fluker. One hour into the draft, Ross is trying to keep his expectations in check but notes, "If Detroit takes Fluker, it makes me really think that No. 19 is a real possibility." Instead, the Lions take Ziggy Ansah. Arizona and Buffalo are on the clock, and Ross thinks offensive linemen are a possibility for both. The thought and rumor is that the Cardinals will take Fluker, and the Bills will likely go for guard Jonathan Cooper. But Arizona tabs Cooper, and the Bills drop out of their slot in a trade with the Rams. After Cooper goes, Ross entertains the possibility of the Titans, a team with money in a young quarterback and multiple running backs, which has said they like Pugh opposite Andy LeVitre, giving a look at No. 10. But with Fluker and his Alabama teammate Chance Warmack still on the board, he knows it's still too early. Warmack is the choice at No. 10, and Fluker goes one pick later to the Chargers. That makes six offensive lineman in the first 11 picks, the ideal run on the position that Ross and Pugh needed at the top of the draft. The first hour and a half play out just as they had hoped, and Pugh is left standing as the highest rated lineman, holding a first-round grade with 21 picks remaining on Thursday night. He's cautiously optimistic. Ross and Pugh exchange texts assessing the developments so far, but it will likely be an hour until the next team needing an offensive lineman is on the clock. The Dallas Cowboys, holding the 18th pick, have told Pugh they really like him, and the Giants one pick later are already known as a possibility. There was some buzz around Florida State's Menelik Watson as a potential first-round tackle ahead of Pugh, but Ross has heard from plenty of sources who say that's all smoke. As expected, teams in the middle third of the first round pass on offensive linemen and Pugh. Ross is checking his phone furiously, waiting for any word from the Cowboys or Giants. During these picks, he's forced to negotiate with his 3-year-old son in order to put him to bed, exchanging cartoons and breakfast in bed for the toddler going to sleep without a fuss. He's able to get back downstairs, where he quiets friends and guests in order to watch a 13-year-old St. Jude's patient announce the Saints' pick at No. 13. It was Ross who told Curry back in the 2009 Draft that it would be cool to have a child from Jude's join him on draft day -- an experience Curry granted. Ross asks everyone to pipe down, proudly reminiscing as he watches a Louisiana boy from St. Jude's announce the name of Kenny Vaccaro alongside Roger Goodell. Two hours into the draft, the Dallas Cowboys are set to come on the clock and it's the first real opportunity for a Ross client to go in the first round since both Curry and Hood in 2009. He's concerned that defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd, who some projected as a top-five pick, is still available in the second half of the first round. That may be persuasive value for the Cowboys or Giants, who likely didn't expect Floyd to be around. The Cowboys, however, never make a pick as the 49ers trade up into their spot. It's an unexpected draft night development, and it sends Ross scurrying for his sheets of data with team needs and best available. "Why are they trading up in front of the Giants?" he ponders as he hurriedly pores through any info he has trying to read into what the Niners may have planned. Moments later, San Francisco selects Eric Reid, a safety from LSU. The Giants are now on the clock. They appear to be the likely destination, but they never brought Pugh in for visit and only met with him at the combine. It was the only meeting they had. Ross sticks with his printouts, furiously scratching off names and double-checking his work based on what's happened through the first two-plus hours of Thursday's opening round. He's barely on the edge of his couch, scanning from notes to cell phone to Tweetdeck to Excel. "OK, Giants, c'mon!" he yells, realizing that looking over all the data in front of him isn't going to change a damn thing about the next 10 minutes. He lifts his head to zero in on the television screens, squinting his eyes with a pensive look and finger pressed to his chin. NFL Network's Mike Mayock, who was one of the mock drafters with Pugh at No. 19, takes control of their desk and says the pick should be clear -- the offensive tackle from Syracuse. For several minutes, he praises Pugh's versatility and says he's the perfect fit for the Giants organization as the clock ticks down. The chryon at the bottom of the screen lights up, flashing "Pick is in." While that dangles on the television, a worried Ross groans "But Mayock, you're not a GM. I wish you were right now!" That's shortly followed by "They didn't call." The knock on Justin Pugh throughout the pre-draft process is that he has short arms, which inhibit his ability to play tackle on the outside in the NFL. It was a narrative that dogged him in every evaluation across several months in the NFL scouting crosshairs. Pugh, who spent four years at Syracuse, made the decision to come out with one year of eligibility remaining. The start of the pre-draft process wasn't easy or encouraging. He submitted an application to the NFL Draft's Advisory Council, and they returned a lukewarm third-round grade. With one year of eligibility still left, the Advisory Council's report only amplified the stress of the decision to come out. Ross did not start recruiting Pugh until the very end of the 2012 season because he was an underclassmen. He sent some information to Pugh through Syracuse and also sent recruiting materials to Pugh's stepfather. At the end of the season, Pugh and his family told Ross and Octagon that he was considering coming out. Ross' advice was to put in the application with the Advisory Board. As the still unsigned agent, he abstained from influencing the decision and was adamant that the family be comfortable with the grade returned before going any further. The third-round evaluation wasn't exactly an unequivocal endorsement. Undeterred by the grade, the family said they were still strongly considering early entry and invited Ross up to the Philadelphia area to discuss the process further. The parties spent two hours going through the entire process, from pre-draft evaluation all the way through minicamps and contract negotiation. There was competition between at least six firms, but once the family made the decision to move forward, they called Ross and said he was the choice. He promptly made the trip back up to Philly and the partnership was official, starting a five-month process toward draft night. Ross then went to work on selling Pugh to NFL scouts and evaluators. During the five-month stretch, he talks to two-thirds of the teams in the league, whether it's face-to-face at workouts or events like the Senior Bowl and combine, or through the many direct lines he has to different members of the front offices. From the start of the recruiting process, he thought the tackle possessed the versatility and athleticism to play multiple positions on the line, and that would be the key to a steady rise up draft boards and improved grades. Pugh performed well in almost every interview setting. Part of the Octagon client prep includes the media training that is now de rigueur for almost every prospect. Ken Herock, who was profiled by The New York Times before last year's draft, tutors the prospects and preps them for interviews, particularly the interrogations from the team representatives. Herock is a former executive with the Falcons and Packers, but he's been running the interview training service for well over a decade now and he tells Ross that Pugh is the best interview he's ever had. The most significant critique is the refrain about Pugh's short arms, a physical deficiency that cannot be changed and may impact some teams' evaluations of whether he has the value of an offensive tackle. The agent and the player work to frame the negative as a positive. Ross tells his client that every time the topic of his short arms comes up in interviews, he should compare that length to tackles Joe Thomas and Bryan Bulaga. Both are now entrenched at tackle and are among the best in the league at the position. Bulaga's team, the Packers, are thought to be one of the likely destinations for Pugh at the back of the first round. There's offseason chatter that Bulaga, considered one of the top right tackles in the NFL, may be moved over to the left side of a line that could be shored up with the addition of a first-round pick. With Pugh already mocked to Green Bay, it also made sense to talk about Aaron Rodgers' impending contract and it was a way for Ross to increase Pugh's exposure. He had Octagon's PR department set Pugh up with interviews in the Green Bay area, working to push the narrative that the coming investment in Rodgers needed an improved offensive line. Opposite the PR work is the physical training, another investment that agents have to make for their clients during the pre-draft process. Ross typically sends his clients to Atlanta to work with Chip Smith of CES Performance. Smith and Ross are quick to cite their past success with Brown and Hood, training players for a push into the first round. Ross also has his clients use a company called Trigger Point Therapy, working to improve the muscles and break down scar tissue. It's a company he found while rehabbing his own shoulder injury, and as the agent making the investment, it's a place in the morass of training and therapy options that he's become comfortable with. Ross maintains it was particularly helpful improving the explosiveness and change of direction for his other client, Zaviar Gooden, a linebacker who went on to impress at the Senior Bowl. While only a redshirt junior, Pugh, along with Fluker, made history during the pre-draft process by becoming the first non-seniors to get an invite to the Senior Bowl. He got the invite just a week before the game while he was training in Atlanta, and immediately traveled to Alabama for the all-important practice sessions where much of the evaluation is done. For Pugh, versatility and agility are probably his biggest strengths. Ross claims he can play all five positions on the line if needed, but the preference is to stay at tackle. He's coming off a college career where he spent three years on the outside practicing against Chandler Jones -- a first-round pass-rusher who was successful early for Bill Belichick before getting injured. He's gone through the process as a tackle and was evaluated at that position, but because of that short arms knock, some teams think he'd be better at guard. Both media scouts and team evaluators are intrigued by his potential at guard and seem comfortable that he could make the transition. One team even asked Ross if Pugh could snap the ball. Ross didn't have the answer, so he called his client up on the spot and asked him. Pugh was willing to work out at center snapping the ball, and pulled it off without incident. That athleticism at multiple positions is the primary reason why the discussion of his short arms has faded during the final week and he's now tabbed as a first-rounder at the start of the draft. The span between the "Giants pick is in" displaying on the NFL Network screen and Ross saying "They didn't call" is enough for resignation. There have been no spoiler tweets yet, and the NFL Network crew stalls for several minutes despite the scroll below indicating that the Giants made their decision. Ross, however, doesn't have to wait any longer, and that span of 20 seconds of doubt turns to celebration, as he gets word from his colleagues at Octagon, as well as reps with the Giants that his client is the pick at No. 19. The five-month grind culminates here, at the mercy of an NFL general manager. Ross jumps off his couch and runs around his basement pumping his fist. "Back in the first round!" he yells, and high-fives his friends and family in the room. Mayock, who was Ross' unknowing best friend in the buildup to announcement, is heard saying, "It wasn't sexy, but I love the pick." Ross stops in front of the television to snap a picture of his client's big moment. It took the perfect run on O-lineman at the top of the draft, and No. 19 was about as high as they had hoped for Pugh. There was no agonizing seesaw or wait, prompting a relaxed Ross to exhale, "Nice when it's the area you think they're getting picked and it comes through." His phone starts blowing up, congratulatory texts and emails flow in from the other Octagon agents, the president of his company, friends, his other 2013 client Gooden, and even rival agents. The five-month grind culminates here, at the mercy of an NFL general manager. A comparable, if not more rowdy, celebration is taking place at Pugh's home in Philadelphia. Ross first gets a call from Pugh's parents, as Justin is otherwise occupied with his friends. As you'd expect, it's probably the lightest conversation they've had in the entire process. Ross tells them the most stressful part is over, reiterating that the parents and family made the right call and that they knew the Advisory Council grade would be off, thanks in part to the work put in by both parties in the pre-draft months. Thinking ahead, Ross starts highlighting all the positives of Justin playing so close to home, particularly with the family not even needing a plane ride to go watch him play in New York. Ross is also happy to have him close to his home in the D.C. area, where he'll be able to watch him regularly play in the NFC East. A few minutes later, Pugh himself calls. Ross screams into the phone with a resounding "Congrats, bro!" Pugh responds with "You did it! You did it!" Ross tells him to be available over the next few days because the Giants may ask him to come up to the facilities for an introductory press conference, so continue to keep the lines open. Pugh responds with a few anecdotes from the moment he got the call, including how Giants head coach Tom Coughlin told the Philly native to burn everything Eagles that he owns. While they're not in the same city, the agent and player have comparable experiences in buildup of the night, watching anxiously as the six offensive linemen came off the board in the first 11 picks. Pugh attempted to manage expectations, but his friends with him at his house celebrated as the scenario played out, telling him repeatedly, "Five down, you're the next one up." With four minutes left on the clock, he got the call from Coughlin, who told him he was the newest member of the New York Giants. Pugh summed up the atmosphere at his home with a quick, "We're just poppin' champagne" before pivoting to Ross, his advocate in the efforts to move into the first round. "Throughout the whole process, Andy said, 'Trust me and we'll get you into that first round.' I saw what he did with Duane Brown and Ziggy Hood, and it's happened again with me. I couldn't be happier with my selection of Octagon. I was set up perfectly." Before Thursday night comes to a close, Pugh calls back one more time while the end of the first round winds down, asking for potential contract numbers. Ross pulls open his computer and quickly references the deal for the No. 19 pick in the 2012 Draft. He tells Pugh that Shea McClellin signed a four-year deal with the Bears for $8.2 million, highlighted by a $4.4 million signing bonus and $7.5 million in guaranteed money. Ross smiles, and there's some jovial discussion about Range Rovers and Audis with a few more "bros" thrown around. It should be a nice payday for both and they hang up, knowing they'll be in contact daily as Pugh's professional career begins. Thursday is another huge career-defining night for Ross, who is now tapping his pen on the coffee table while bobbing and dancing on the couch to the techno music from a commercial on in the background. It's in stark contrast from the apprehensive look and edge of the couch position he maintained for most of the night. That's the nature of a day where millions of dollars are made in the moment a name is announced. More from SB Nation: • The NFL is poaching the CFL's best prospects • Greg Schiano learning from Bill Belichick • The system quarterback problem • 2014 NFL mock draft: Who gets Clowney? • The Trufants: A football family • The 10 most insane features of Atlanta's proposed stadium

Are there any Seahawks who are happy with their contracts? We have to ask because another day has brought another guy who wants a new deal. Now it’s safety Kam Chancellor, the enforcer of Seattle’s defense and one of this team’s locker-room leaders. He wants a raise, the NFL Network reported on Wednesday. In fact, he might not be present when training camp opens on Friday, according to the report. That puts Chancellor alongside Michael Bennett, who’s stated he wants a new deal. Then there’s the not-so-small issues of Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner, two guys who are in position to sign extensions. A more cynical person than myself would say those extensions would just buy Seattle a season or hopefully two before those guys want new deals just like Bennett and now Chancellor. That’s not to make light of the situation, but to point out the difficulty facing the Seahawks: The more success the team has, the more of a reward the players are going to seek for that success. At the same time, a hard salary cap leaves Seattle less room to make those players happy. Throw in the fact that Seattle has shown no reluctance to parting with guys who are starters – in fact leaders like Chris Clemons a year ago and Max Unger this offseason – and it’s tough to blame players for seeking to get what they can while they can. But understanding the player’s perspective is one thing. Giving into his demands is something else entirely, and the Seahawks simply can’t afford to go around handing out raises just because a guy might deserve it. That’s true not only because there is a salary cap that limits the money a team can allot to its payroll in a given year, but because to give one guy a raise when he threatens not to report for the start of a season makes it that much harder to convince the next guy to honor his contract when he feels underpaid. Precedent. That’s the word that is used in these instances, and now Seattle’s dealings with Marshawn Lynch last year are being cited as a precedent for the team giving in to a player’s demands. Just one problem with that: Seattle didn’t give in. Not according to what I was told last August after Lynch reported and not what was reiterated to me this week. While Lynch’s contract was adjusted last year with some performance bonuses being turned into base salary, I was told specifically that Seattle had already offered to make those adjustments previously in the offseason. No one from Lynch’s side ever disputed that description. In other words, Seattle didn’t give Lynch more because he held out. Rather, he accepted what had already been offered. All that being said, it’s tough to get a straight answer from either side of an NFL negotiation so it’s possible the Seahawks were trying to save face, but I don’t think that’s the case. Just as I don’t think Seattle will start re-writing contracts with more than a year remaining. Money might get moved around in those deals, but there’s not going to be money added to them. At least there shouldn’t be. That’s not to diminish the issue of contract unrest. This is something that the Seahawks are going to deal with for as long as they keep winning. You can call it the price of success in the NFL or the cost of doing business as a contender. Not everyone’s going to be happy. In fact, the list of the contractually discontented may only get longer going forward.

Australia Ploughing Ahead With TPP Negotiations Even Though It Has Never Checked If Any Previous Trade Agreement Was Beneficial from the who-cares-if-it-was-beneficial,-it-passed,-didn't-it? dept As Techdirt has noted many times, one of the things that makes it hard to engage sensibly with so-called "trade negotiations" like TPP and TAFTA/TTIP is the secrecy surrounding them. Aside from the odd leak and any crumbs of information that drop from the negotiating table, one of the few things that are made public is the predicted benefit of participating in these agreements. To hear the politicians tell it, the models employed for this purpose prove that a country would be crazy not to sign up to whatever deal they are currently pushing. Given the central role played by these econometric models, you'd think more would be done to refine them and check whether they get it right. Here's what has happened on this front in Australia, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald: On the eve of negotiations expected to finalise a giant trans-Pacific free trade agreement with 11 of Australia's neighbours, the Department of Foreign Affairs has revealed that none of Australia's existing agreements has been subjected to an independent analysis to work out whether the claims made for it have stacked up. That's rather strange, since Australia signed its Closer Economic Relations agreement with New Zealand 32 years ago and its free trade agreement with the US 11 years ago, so it's not as if the government there hasn't had time to collect and analyze the numbers. For the second of those agreements, we do have an independent investigation into how predictions compared with reality: Ahead of the US Australia Free Trade Agreement the department published modelling conducted by the Centre for International Economics that said it would boost Australia's gross domestic product by $5.7 billion. A study conducted a decade later by the Australian National University found it had boosted trade not at all. Given that sobering fact, and research that indicates trade agreements with Mexico and South Korea turned out to be equally disastrous for the US, you have to admire the shamelessness of governments that continue to commission these obviously-flawed models and trumpet their results, only to forget about them completely once they've done the job and the relevant agreement is signed and ratified. Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+ Filed Under: australia, evidence, faith based policy, tpp, trade agreements

By Jill U. Adams, ScienceNOW If you're paying premium prices for pesticide- and antibiotic-free meat, you might expect that it's also free of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Not so, according to a new study. The prevalence of one of the world's most dangerous drug-resistant microbe strains is similar in retail pork products labeled "raised without antibiotics" and in meat from conventionally raised pigs, researchers have found. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a drug-resistant form of the normally harmless S. aureus bacterium, kills 18,000 people in the United States every year and sickens 76,000 more. The majority of cases are linked to a hospital stay, where the combination of other sick people and surgical procedures puts patients at risk. But transmission also can happen in schools, jails, and locker rooms (and an estimated 1.5% of Americans carry MRSA in their noses). All of this has led to a growing concern about antibiotic use in agriculture, which may be creating a reservoir of drug-resistant organisms in billions of food animals around the world. Tara Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa College of Public Health in Iowa City who studies the movement of staph bacteria between animals and people, wondered whether meat products might be another mode of transmission. For the new study, published this month in PLoS ONE, she and colleagues bought a variety of pork products—395 packages in all—from 36 different stores in two big pig farming states, Iowa and Minnesota, and one of the most densely populated, New Jersey. In the laboratory, the team mixed meat samples "vigorously" with a bacterial growth medium and allowed any microbes present to grow. MRSA, which appears as mauve-colored colonies on agar plates, was genetically typed and tested for antibiotic susceptibility. The researchers found that 64.8% of the samples were positive for staph bacteria and 6.6% were positive for MRSA. Rates of contamination were similar for conventionally raised pigs (19 of 300 samples) and those labeled antibiotic-free (seven of 95 samples). Results of genetic typing identified several well-known strains, including the so-called livestock-associated MRSA (ST398) as well as common human strains; all were found in conventional and antibiotic-free meat. (The label "antibiotic-free" is not regulated, and the products were not "certified organic.") Smith says she was surprised by the results. In a related investigation, which has not been published, her group tested pigs living on farms and found that antibiotic-free pigs were free from MRSA, whereas the resistant bug is often found on conventional pig farms. The study reveals an important data point on the path from farm to fork, yet the source of the MRSA on meat products is unknown, Smith says. "It's difficult to figure out." Transmission of resistant bugs might occur between antibiotic-using and antibiotic-free operations, especially if they're near each other, or it could come from farm workers themselves. Another possibility is that contamination occurs at processing plants. "Processing plants are supposed to be cleaned between conventional and organic animals," she says. "But how well does that actually happen?" In another recent study, researchers from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, found that beef products from conventionally raised and grass-fed animals were equally likely to be contaminated by antibiotic-resistant Escherichia* coli*. In a second study by the same group, poultry products labeled "no antibiotics added" carried antibiotic-resistant E. coli and Enterococcus (another bacteria that causes invasive disease in humans), although the microbes were less prevalent than on conventionally raised birds. "The real question is, where is it coming from, on the farm or post-farm?" says Paul Ebner, a food safety expert who led the Purdue studies. And the biggest question of all, he says, "Is it impacting human health?" "There's a tremendous amount of interest in this issue—feeding antibiotics to food animals," says Ellen Silbergeld, an expert on health and environmental impacts of industrial food animal production at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. "Thus, determining when amending that practice makes a difference is important." "The definitive study would take every bacterium and follow that along until it gets in humans—from food supply to causing a certain disease," Smith says. "It would be a huge and costly study that no one's going to do, but that's what the meat producers" say is missing." Meanwhile, Smith says she will continue her investigations of MRSA, one potential transmission point at a time. This story provided by ScienceNOW, the daily online news service of the journal Science. Image: Even pigs raised antibiotic-free may harbor MRSA bacteria. (Janice Haney Carr/CDC) Updated: Feb. 1, 2012 at 10:20 a.m. EST. All original references to "organic" have been replaced by "antibiotic-free" because the meat used in this study was not certified organic.

Injury problems continue to mount for the Baltimore Orioles, who will have closer Zach Britton undergo an MRI on the ankle he tweaked in Saturday's loss to the Chicago White Sox and will send shortstop J.J. Hardy for a CT scan after he fouled a ball off his foot Sunday, reports MLB.com's Brittany Ghiroli. X-rays on Britton's left ankle came back negative after he was lifted from Saturday's game at Camden Yards, and the 28-year-old left-hander was optimistic he wouldn't require a trip to the disabled list when he spoke with reporters Sunday. "It feels pretty good compared to yesterday, but still some tenderness in there, and obviously I'm not walking great," Britton said. "So I think you've got to walk fine before I can even start pitching again. Hopefully, it's just a few days and maybe I can throw a (bullpen session) or at least run on (the ankle)." The club appears to be more concerned about Hardy, though, and a team source fears the 33-year-old may have sustained a fracture in Sunday's 6-1 loss, wherein he was lifted in the fifth inning after fouling a pitch off his left foot.

UFC heavyweight contender Francis Ngannou has revealed that his dream opponent in the octagon is former champion, Brock Lesnar. Ngannou (11-1 record) has quickly risen the ranks since making his UFC debut back in December 2015 with six finishes in his last six fights. The most recent one came in a devastating fashion at UFC 218 against long-time contender Alistair Overeem as "The Predator" was able to connect with a left uppercut that knocked his opponent out cold in the very first round to announce himself to the world. UFC president Dana White confirmed afterwards that a heavyweight title fight was next for the French-Cameroonian with current champion Stipe Miocic lying in wait. However, a dream opponent for Ngannou would be current WWE Universal champion and former MMA cash-cow Lesnar, who as of now, is retired from the UFC. "I'd always like to see the match between me and Brock Lesnar," Ngannou said, as quoted on MMAFighting. "Two big dudes. I like that matchup. I'm excited for that kind of match as a fan. ... I want to see that match." "He's big. Huge, as you say. But he's not stronger than me. I'm stronger than him. I'm the best striker in the heavyweight division and the more powerful guy. I'm also a talented guy and I will deal with that very easy." Ngannou has become known for his power, especially after his knockout of Overeem, but he has more to his game according to his coach Dewey Cooper. A real student of the sport, Cooper believes the 31-year-old has the potential to even go into boxing and defeat the heavyweight champion in a year's time. "This isn't some jock-type guy," Cooper told MMAJunkie. "He's really smart, he really studies, he really studies, and he really believes what he's going to accomplish. Everything is coming to fruition right now. "He has punching power. Anyone that has that equalizer will fare well. If he spends more time and takes it seriously, trains hard, he could be a champ in boxing also. "Everyone was so enthralled about the Conor McGregor/Floyd Mayweather fight. I'd like to see Francis about one year from now fight whoever the heavyweight champion is, whether it be Deontay Wilder or Anthony Joshua. "That would be a real fight, where an MMA fighter could go in there and upset a current boxing champion."

Wednesday, August 3, 2016 Following up on my previous posts (here and here): The Atlantic, Trump Wants to Make Churches the New Super PACs: His Promise to Repeal the 1954 Johnson Amendment Isn’t About Free Speech—It’s About Cash: Why have some religious conservatives decided to support Donald Trump for United States president? Leaders have named their reasons: He’s promised toappoint pro-life Supreme Court justices; he’s allegedly good at business. But they have also consistently cited something else, perhaps more unexpected: the tax code. Trump has promised to repeal the so-called Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision that prohibits tax-exempt organizations from participating in political activities. Proposed by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and later revised by Congress, it keeps churches and other non-profits from lobbying for specific causes, campaigning on behalf of politicians, and supporting or opposing candidates for office. While opponents of the Johnson Amendment often frame their objections in terms of free speech, the provision’s primary impact may be financial. Right now, the IRS makes a clear distinction between non-profit groups—from charities and universities to certain private schools and houses of worship—and political organizations. If the Johnson Amendment were repealed, pastors would be able to endorse candidates from the pulpit, which they’re currently not allowed to do by law. But it’s also true that a lot more money could possibly flow into politics via donations to churches and other religious organizations. That could mean religious groups would become much more powerful political forces in American politics—and it would almost certainly tee up future court battles. ... According to the Catholic University of America professor Roger Colinvaux, some critics have argued that the Amendment’s history is the best argument against it: Because it was an ad hoc measure written to satisfy one skilled legislator’s political needs, they say, it should be repealed. But, as Colinvauxwrote in 2012, this already was a long-standing issue by the time Johnson took it up—the legal limits around political activity for non-profit groups “had dogged charitable tax status from the inception of the federal-income-tax exemption for charitable organizations.” ... Since 2008, a group of predominantly conservative, Protestant churches have participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday—a day started by the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, when hundreds of pastors across the country give explicitly political sermons in protest of the IRS’s rule. The movement has been growing, and religious leaders will often mail tapes of their sermons directly to the agency to showcase their defiance. ... Critics of the agency, including some progressive religious groups, argue that the IRS should put more resources toward enforcing the electioneering ban. The main question, said Alan Brownstein, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, is not whether religious groups and leaders should be able to express their views—it’s whether that activity should be subsidized by the government. “Pastors can say whatever they want, as can anyone else,” he said. “The question is whether a tax-exempt institution can say whatever it wants and retain its tax-exempt status, and whether the pastor as an official can use his or her position in the tax-exempt institution to engage in electioneering.” ... What’s unclear about Trump’s promise to repeal the Johnson Amendment, though, is whether he’s only intending to push a repeal of the rule for religious organizations. A broad change to the provision would likely cause minor-level chaos within the U.S. political system: There would no longer be any meaningful difference between charitable groups and lobbying organizations. The government would effectively be subsidizing the political activities of all schools, charities, churches, and scientific-research organizations. On the other hand, if Trump’s theoretical administration pushed for a repeal only for religious groups, legal challenges would almost certainly follow. ... For those Americans who want more, not less, religious influence on American politics, the repeal of the Johnson Amendment is the perfect campaign promise: a guarantee of increased political power, greater freedom of speech, and more control over political dollars for groups that widely feel their electoral influence slipping. https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/08/trump-wants-to-repeal-the-johnson-amendment-and-make-churches-the-new-super-pacs.html

Tracy Morgan said it best, “Hoes be winning.” For today’s groupie, a meal ticket is so 2005. Groupies today are all about "that life," and the fastest way to that life is found with any athlete or entertainer within digging reach. The lifestyle these men lead allows them to think “It ain’t tricking if you got it,” and boy…they are out here tricking. And shamefully, some of these guys are simpin’ too. Whether these men are trickin’ or simpin’, if a groupie has that “good good” then her life is great. Football season is here, and the NBA lockout is a reality. Don’t underestimate the groupie, they know what's up. To the groupie, the NBA lockout is the equivalent of the 2008 stock market crash. The groupies need the NFL more than the fans need the NFL. This upcoming NFL season, the groupie wants to “just do it” and these NFL players “hear the footsteps” of fake red bottom heels coming. As part of Complex.com's week-long NFL Preview, we surveyed several NFL players to get a glimpse into just what the groupie scene is like these days. We offered them anonymity in exchange for their candor. Here’s what they had to say. POST CONTINUES BELOW By Richard Boadu for 6Magazine 1. How big of a problem are groupies? "You really have to protect yourself. Now, not every baby mama is a groupie, but you see a lot of women seeking the benefits of NFL players. I try to be fair that women are naturally attracted to successful men and that [includes] athletes. But now with groupies, it’s a bigger beast." - An NFC South Pro Bowler "A big problem because a lot of guys that never really had ‘em before have ‘em now, and they don’t now how to act with the new attention. Groupies are really bad because they destroy homes. A lot of these players are married with children. These groupies don’t give a fuck at all about a man being married. They just care about themselves and what they can get out the situation." - A free agent safety "Not a problem unless you let them be a problem." - One of the best defensive tackles in the game 2. What city has the most? "New York, L.A., Miami, Houston, Vegas and wherever the big events are." - A cornerback for a team on the East Coast "Miami, L.A. and Phoenix." - An East Coast Pro Bowler "Dallas, Houston…especially Atlanta, and Jacksonville has them too. The women in Puerto Rico and Brazil are easy but they really could care less that you play in the NFL. They just know that you’re from out of town and want to show you a good time." - A free agent safety POST CONTINUES BELOW 3. What city has the least? "I don’t know. They are everywhere really. If I had to pick a city, I’d say Buffalo." - NFC East Pro Bowler "Any city without a pro team." - An NFC South Pro Bowler 4. What city has the hottest groupies? "Houston, L.A. and Miami." - An NFC South Linebacker "You can never go wrong with Atlanta, and Miami would be a close second." - State of Florida lineman "Phoenix for sure." - A current Pro Bowler and Super Bowl champion 5. What city has the ugliest groupies? "Since they are small towns, Buffalo or Green Bay. They may have some diamonds in the rough though." - AFC East rookie RELATED: The 10 Famed Sexy Groupies of Rock 6. What's the age of the oldest groupie that's approached you? "About 40." - NFC South cornerback "48." - East Coast offensive tackle "She looked 50, but I don’t know." - AFC North rookie 7. What's the age of the youngest groupie that's approached you? "The youngest that they can get in the club." - NFC defensive back "I hope she was 18. She kept asking for my number, and I sad cut it out!" - Rookie, 2nd round pick POST CONTINUES BELOW "High school age, it was crazy. I ran from that girl." - NFC South linebacker 8. Of the groupies that you've seen, what race are most of them? "Black, but that’s just the environments I’m in. I hear other teammates talk about white girls and Latino girls being just as bad." - An anonymous #57 9. What's the most money you've spent on a groupie at one time? "None…they’re groupies. You don’t have to spend money on ‘em." - Free agent free safety "This girl wasn’t a groupie, but a chick I was dating. Me and her went to hang out and it was $500 times 2 for travel, $300 for food, throw away money about $200, hotel about $800 and that’s $2300 for a three-day weekend. Now imagine if you have a groupie, and y’all are staying in the Fontainebleau in Miami and hitting clubs and buying tables. You can easily spend $5K without blinking." - NFC offensive guard 10. What hotels are the easiest to sneak them in on the road? "Any hotel, you just have to do it right. The floor that the players are on has security, so a lot of times players just get a room in the same hotel on a regular floor." - Former NFC East safety 11. How do they get in contact with you? "Social media mostly. They also give you the groupie stare at the club too. Just stare at yo’ ass until you speak to them. Be hypnotizing guys [laughs]." - NFL Pro Bowl lineman POST CONTINUES BELOW "They just stare at us when we’re in the club. Like deliberately. It’s like you’re going to the dog pound, and they’re just waiting to get chosen. They will literally stare at you in VIP until you ask them if they want to come to VIP." - An anonymous #24 "Mainly in the clubs. Anytime there is a big event like a Super Bowl or All-Star weekend, they are around. They make sure to get your attention by the way they dress or they’ll approach you. I’ve had girls slip their number in my pocket before. When they come up to me, they’ll say they're your biggest fan or 'I can tell you play football by the way you’re built.'" - Former NFC East safety "You’ll see them digging you just by eye contact, and most guys go after those girls. A woman can’t make a man want her. A groupie is just an easy opportunity. They just be thirsty. Then you have the ones who play like they don’t know who you are. They know the rosters and they do their homework. Heck, she’s not bright if she hasn’t done her homework." - An anonymous #96 POST CONTINUES BELOW "I’ve had a waitress see that I’m big by my size. Once she took my credit card for the meal, she remembered my name or wrote it down or whatever and gave me my receipt. Within five minutes of leaving the restaurant, I get hit up on Twitter, and it’s her with a nude twitpic talking bout 'This is what I look like fresh out the shower after work.'" - An anonymous #75 12. What's the craziest groupie story that's happened to you? "In L.A. this chick domed me and my partners up. We left the room and our other homeboy went in to go fuck. We hear her moaning in the room, we’re laughing. And then all of a sudden we hear this weird noise. We thought she was choking him. We ran into the room to see what was going on, and it turns out that when he busted his nut, he threw up on her at the same time. Shit was hilarious and disgusting." - NFL Pro Bowl tackle "A girl was waiting outside my house. I wasn’t answering her calls or texts. Then all of a sudden she just started knocking on my door. I called the cops. [Laughs.] She knew I was inside, but I never came to the door because I had company. The police were calling her name outside and everything, talking about '[Player's name] called us and told us you were making a disturbance.' And then she’s like, 'Oh, so HE IS HOME!' really loud. It was funny." - Pro Bowl defensive lineman POST CONTINUES BELOW "I was at a DC club with a couple well-known guys. We’re at the table chilling, and two girls walk up to us. One of them was playing shy, and the other just came right out and said whoever gets up first is coming home with me tonight. No one got up, we just looked at her and busted out laughing." - NFL Free Agent defensive back "I met a girl on Twitter from Texas. She hit me up and asked me to mentor some kids. I told her I don’t live in Texas but I’ll do it in the offseason, which was around the corner. We exchange numbers, and I get a picture from her the next day. She says it was an accident and she meant to send it to her brother. It was a regular pic, I told her she looked nice. I was just being cordial, no flirting or nothing. We’re just talking casually, and then she hits me the next day and says, 'If you liked yesterday’s pic, you’re going to love this one'…she was ass naked! All of a sudden, she wants to come to the city I play in and visit me, etc. I’m not biting though. POST CONTINUES BELOW "We continued to talk for about two weeks and shit's just not adding up. I looked at the people she followed and I swear everyone was in the NFL or NBA. I asked her if any of the guys ever helped her with her charity, and she said they all try to holla at her. I asked her why she still follows them then, and she said she loves sports and is a tomboy. "I remember hearing about a little scam some groupies had going on, so I asked her to send me a pic, which she did. I sent her one back holding my cup and making a funny face. I asked her to send me a picture mocking the pose I just sent her. Guess what? She said her camera was broke. [Laughs.] I stopped talking to her. POST CONTINUES BELOW "Maybe two weeks later, I’m talking to my teammate and he describes the exact same situation. I told him to let me see the pics, and the same girl sent him all the same pics she sent me. It didn’t make any sense, because what if I had flown her to my city? What was her explanation going to be for not looking the same in the pictures she sent me? Maybe she wanted to ask me for money and thought I’d give it to her, I don’t know. That’s the craziest thing that’s happened to me though as far as groupies go." - Pro Bowl NFC offensive lineman 13. What's the craziest groupie story you've heard about? "We meet this one chick and chop it up with her in the lobby. She says she’s down to suck us all up. Me and my homeboy stay down in the lobby at the bar and my other friend goes up to the room with the girl. We get up there about 15 minutes later, and the girl is crying. My friend is cussing her out bad calling her all types of hoes. She sucked him up, but I have no idea why she was crying. My homeboy that was with me at the bar went up to her and was trying to get a blowjob and she said she didn’t want to do it. She put her hands back in her face. His dick was already out so he’s standing next to her and all of a sudden bust on her shoulder. She raises up and was like 'Are you serious?' and just lost it and started laughing actually. It was pretty funny." - Pro Bowl right tackle POST CONTINUES BELOW "We were at the club one night. We had a table and there was a group of girls next to us at another table. There were about ten of them. Well my homeboy got to chopping it up and he fucked all 10 of them in one night. I have no clue how he did it." - #29 who shall remain nameless One NFC South defender went on an interesting tangent… "To be honest, I don’t believe in groupies. All women that look for a great opportunity, I believe that’s what a smart girl would do. As a successful man, you’re at the top of the food chain. From athletes, entertainers, Fortune 500 CEOs, surgeons, and all other successful men your money, power and status puts them at the top of the food chain. What women is not going to want to be with you?" POST CONTINUES BELOW So they're taking him for his status rather than his character? "Yes. The attraction is more powerful than his character. They let you get away with a lot more when you have status. Some guys like easy access to a chick. They don’t want to have to work for a good girl. They want a chick on the side, you know, a show piece. The mentality is, well I got the money, I got the cars, I got the house, I GOTTA have the girl. Most successful men have the highest divorce rate. Did you know the NFL divorce rate after two years after retirement is 80%. Once the money doesn’t flow like it used to and the attention is gone, they bounce. The chick you with wasn't with you for the right reasons. And she never had to really learn to love with you or live with you. An NFL player is always gone. Practice, games, charity events, you’re never there. You don’t have to be around someone 24/7, but after you retire, it changes. Once the stadium’s gone, the fame is gone....where’s my backbone? She gone!" POST CONTINUES BELOW So if you don’t believe in groupies what would you call the women you just described? "An opportunist in love with opportunity and not in love with the guy. It’s very rare to find a good chick. You’re not going to find them in the clubs. It has to be something that just happens. A lot of times dudes know these girls are up to no good, but they don’t want to pay attention to signs. Some of these dudes be falling in love with these girls, it’s crazy. But men are the same way. We want a chick we can brag about too. She wants to tell her friends my man is a millionaire, he does this or that. We want the same. You don’t want to tell your friends and family your girl works at Walmart or is the 7/11 clerk. With these women, you just have to be true to yourself." Finally, a Pro Bowler’s parting words of wisdom: "These groupies are a young man’s dream and a young man’s worst nightmare. You got money in your pockets for the first time. You’re getting $60k checks a week, and the finest women are at your feet willing to do anything you tell them. It’s so easy, but you just have to make sure you meet the right one and not meet the wrong one with wrong intentions."

A demonstration on Wednesday in Madrid against the new system. Spain’s acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced on Thursday that the government would delay the full roll-out of a new exam system that forms part of a package of controversial education reforms introduced by his conservative Popular Party (PP) in 2013. Under the proposed changes students would be have to sit two externally assessed exams known in Spanish as révalidas, or final examinations. Critics say the new system will force students with economic and educational problems out of the classroom The first of these exams would be taken at the end of the basic secondary education system (ESO), when students are aged 15 or 16, while the second such exam would take place when students complete their higher secondary education course (bachillerato) at the age of 17 or 18). Students undertaking the first round of exams at 15 or 16 would have to pass to receive their high school diploma and be allowed to continue their studies. For the older group of students, the new exams would replace Spain’s selectividad university entrance tests. The government has defended the new exams saying they will have a “very positive” effect by giving students and their families a clearer idea of their progress. But opponents want the system to be scrapped. They say it places too much emphasis on the results of individual exams – 40% in the case of ESO exam and 30% for the bachillerato exam. Critically, they also argue the system will force students with economic and educational problems out of the classroom, creating a system of haves and have-nots. Spain has the highest school dropout rate in Europe with 20% of students not having any form of high school diploma, according to European Union statistics. The new system – which is expected to cost the government €2.3 billion – is being trialed during the current academic year but was expected to become standard in 2018. The exams will now remain toothless until a cross-party education pact is drawn up But speaking in parliament on Thursday, Rajoy said the exams would have “academic effect until there is a national pact on education, as per my proposal of yesterday [Wednesday].” During a tense investiture debate on Wednesday, the prelude to a second debate on Saturday at which Rajoy is expected to be named as the head of a minority government, the acting prime minister made mention of eight major issues that he is ready to discuss with the Socialists and the emerging reform party Ciudadanos. These topics include jobs, education, pensions and the fight against corruption. This means that while the new exams will take place, they will essentially be toothless: for now, students aged 15 and 16 will not have to pass the exam to receive their school leaving certificate and the older students will continue to sit the current university entrance tests. Rajoy’s announcement comes a day after hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and parents protested against the proposed changes in more than 40 cities. Between 30 and 40% of all students aged 14 and over this took part in the action while 12% of teachers stayed away from the classroom, according to official Education Ministry figures. But unions behind the action put the figures as high as 90% for students and 60% for teachers, describing the day as an “amazing success.” Spain has the highest school dropout rate in Europe with 20% of students not having a high school diploma Wednesday’s strike was the latest in a series of 23 protests against the 2013 education law, the LOMCE, which the PP forced through Congress in 2013 despite the opposition of 11 political parties who saw it as ideologically driven. “If they don’t call off the exams by Monday, the Students’ Union will take action again,” said group spokesperson Ana García. Meanwhile, the president of the Spanish federation of parent-teacher associations, CEAPA, demanded that the new minority government of Mariano Rajoy call off the exams within four months and start new parliamentary negotiations on the country’s education law. The organization also called on the government to reverse the cuts applied to the education sector during the crisis. English version by George Mills.

Getty Images Before the season, Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott said he was aiming to break Eric Dickerson’s NFL rookie record of 1,808 rushing yards. But now that Elliott is looking like he has a real shot at the record, he says it’s not on his mind. Elliott told reporters stats have never been his focus. “Honestly, I never started talking about Eric Dickerson’s record, you guys did,” Elliott said. “So you guys made that a story, but it’s honestly not something I’m very focused on. I’m focused on going out and winning ballgames. Focused on getting better with the team every week.” For the record, Elliott did start talking about Dickerson’s record, telling reporters he had approached Dickerson at an event and told him he planned to top his 33-year-old mark. But now that Elliott is close to record pace, he says he isn’t thinking about whether he can do it. “I don’t know,” Elliott said. With 546 yards through five games, Elliott is on pace to finish the season with 1,747 yards, falling just behind Dickerson’s rookie record of 1,808. Elliott is also on pace for 16 rushing touchdowns, which would be the second-best for a rookie as well, behind Dickerson’s 18. Breaking those records would be an impressive achievement, even if it’s one Elliott isn’t thinking about now.

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