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From the stage in a packed concert hall, France’s youngest presidential candidate looked up at the thousands of people who had come to witness his trademark thunderous speaking style. “Never accept those who promote exclusion, hatred or closing in on ourselves!” Emmanuel Macron urged the audience in Lille, a city surrounded by France’s leftwing northern heartlands that are increasingly turning to Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National. “When the Front National promises to restore security points at the border, they are lying,” he said. Then the maverick centrist, who is running an independent, outsider campaign, did something no others are doing. He hailed the European Union to a standing ovation. “Europe is us! Brussels is us! We need Europe!” he shouted. Cheering supporters, many in their 20s, stood up waving EU flags. Emmanuel Macron launches outsider bid for French presidency Read more Macron is becoming a growing phenomenon in the highly unpredictable French presidential election campaign. In recent weeks, the maverick former economy minister has begun to rise so steadily in polls that he is now seen as capable of causing a major surprise in the spring vote – perhaps able to reach the final round by knocking out one of the current top contenders: the rightwing, social conservative, free-market reformist François Fillon and the far-right, anti-immigration, anti-EU Marine Le Pen. When Macron launched his outsider bid to blow apart the inadequacies of the “vacuous” political class two months ago, he was bucking every trend in French politics. The 39-year-old former investment banker, who had been a chief adviser and then economy minister to François Hollande, was not a member of any political party. He had never run for any kind of election. He defined himself as “neither left nor right”, and only two years before, the public had never even heard of him. He was more than a decade younger than any serious presidential contender, and his disgruntled opponents inside French traditional parties said he was a “champagne bubble” waiting to burst. But now, with huge numbers turning up to his rallies, rising ratings and one poll this week showing he was France’s most popular politician, the political novice who has promised to revolutionise the way France is governed is being eyed nervously by the other main candidates. There are no foregone conclusions in the French presidential race, and the final line up of candidates for the two rounds in April and May is not yet known. But Macron wants to show he can buck a recent trend in western politics – he styles himself as a liberal “progressive” who believes he can triumph against the odds in a political landscape where support for the extremes is growing. More than 4,500 people in Lille turned out to see Macron, a very high number in the historically Socialist city. Far from the well-heeled dotcom entrepreneurs who attended Macron’s first rally in Paris last summer, they were of all ages, from students and sixth-formers, to doctors, hauliers, teachers, pensioners and local business people. Macron is economically liberal and a pro-business reformist, but he is firmly on the left on social issues, including on the freedom to practise religion in a neutral state, on equality and immigration. Emmanuel Macron: France’s political prince eyeing the Elysée | Observer profile Read more “I’m afraid of the rise of Marine Le Pen and if Macron proves a possible rampart against her then I’m interested,” said Franck Tronet, a former wedding photographer on disability benefit who lives near Calais and considered himself centre-left. “Macron represents something new in French politics. He’s young, he’s not aggressive, he’s always smiling and that’s a good thing.” The growing curiosity about Macron and his fledgling movement, En Marche (Forward), is also linked to disappointment in other parties. The Socialists are in disarray and expected to fare badly no matter who they choose as their candidate in an open primary race this month. Fillon’s rightwing campaign is struggling to take off. Fanny Brunet, 24, an engineering student from Aix-en-Provence, once voted Socialist. “Emmanuel Macron is young; he sees the world the way we see it,” she said. “I want realism; I’m fed up with politicians making promises that can’t be kept.” Ghislaine Desbordes, 50, a trainer in office management and an independent local councillor from Wambrechies, near Lille, approved of Macron’s regular appearances on the front cover of celebrity magazines with his wife, who is 24 years older and was once his drama teacher. “Having an older wife means he’s tolerant in life. He’s not closed-minded,” she said. Macron’s critics say France has a long tradition of an outsider “third man” peaking before a presidential election but then fading away. There are many variables – such as whether or not the veteran centrist François Bayrou decides to run, and whether disgruntled Socialists defect to Macron, seeing him as the only way to stop the far right. Macron’s trip to the north did not all go according to plan. His comments in the former mining heartlands that the difficulties, social and health problems in the area included high rates of “smoking and alcoholism” were attacked by one local Front National mayor as the Parisian elite stereotyping the northern working classes. France's economy minister Emmanuel Macron launches political movement Read more Yves-Marie Cann, political director at the Elabe polling group in Paris, said: “Some saw Macron as a bubble that would burst, so far that isn’t the case. The indicators show that he is now a weighty candidate. “If the momentum around him continues, he could reshuffle the cards and disprove predictions that the final run-off will be between Fillon and Le Pen. He could re-orientate the second round into a battle that is Fillon versus Macron or Le Pen versus Macron. This is not yet the case – Fillon and Le Pen remain the frontrunners – but the campaign is about to begin in earnest and things could change.” Pierre Mathiot, a politics professor at Lille’s Sciences Po university, said: “There are two questions. First: will French voters accept a candidate who says he is above the left-right divide? Second: is he credible when he says he embodies change, a break with the past and a new way of politically doing things? “Those factors, added to the poor health of the Socialist party and the poor start for Fillon, could carry him far in terms of results,” said Mathiot. One 28-year-old IT technician from Lille had come to the rally out of curiosity. He has always voted right but thought Fillon was “too socially conservative and wants too much austerity”. Afterwards he said: “Macron has really given me a boost. If enough people come to see him live, he’ll rise higher and higher. I found him quite exhilarating.” |
Published: 11:02, 22 April 2017 | Updated: 11:10, 22 April 2017 Eddie Jones is only just starting to get over England's Grand Slam failure in Dublin, five weeks on from the defeat by Ireland which ended their world-record winning run. It's been more than a month since the Red Rose saw their series of consecutive victories stopped at 18 but Jones says the memories are still eating him up. And the head coach concedes that part of the reason for that is the realisation that he was at fault for the 13-9 loss at the Aviva Stadium. Eddie Jones is only just starting to get over England's Grand Slam disappointment England's winning run came to an end as they slipped to a 13-9 loss to Ireland on March 19 'I've been filthy for four weeks. I'm probably just getting over it,' he told the Daily Express. 'I blame myself. I got the tactics wrong, I got selection wrong and I got the substitutions wrong and I'll never get that back so I'm still angry with myself. 'There were players who were absolutely outstanding for us early in the tournament who were poor in that game and I should have picked up the signs of that better. 'I should have made some changes after Scotland. I got a bit complacent after that win. I probably thought things were going better than they were. 'And at half-time I should have brought about five finishers on – or even before half-time. Why I didn't I still can't work out. I've been really disappointed with myself.' Red Rose head coach Jones is currently preparing for England's summer tour of Argentina Jones is currently planning for a summer tour of Argentina, for which he has named 15 uncapped players. The 31-man travelling party will be without a number of key stars due to the British and Irish Lions' trip to New Zealand, but Jones has included the likes of Dylan Hartley, Joe Launchbury and George Ford. 'We are very pleased for the 16 [England] players who have been picked for the Lions and disappointed for the guys who have missed out,' said Jones. 'But you miss out on the Lions and you get an English tour, so it is not a bad second prize.' |
Julian Assange is due back in court this morning to appeal against his extradition to Sweden to face accusations of rape and sexual assault. The WikiLeaks founder will be at the high court from 10.30am for the latest stage of his battle to avoid being sent to Sweden. Robert Booth is in court four of the Royal Courts of Justice and Paul Owen in the Guardian office; together we will cover the hearing throughout the day. Assange will appear in front of two high court judges today: Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Ouseley. The accusations against him relate to a trip the 40-year-old Australian made to Stockholm in August last year. The Swedish authorities secured a European arrest warrant in December 2010, after which Assange was arrested and bailed. His first appeal was in February this year. His defence team claimed that he would not get a fair trial and that his extradition was politically motivated. Assange's team said his arrest warrant amounted to an abuse of process because the allegations were originally dismissed and then reopened. But City of Westminster magistrates court, sitting at Belmarsh magistrates court, found against him and ordered his extradition, leading to today's appeal. Assange has hired a new legal team for the hearing today: Gareth Peirce, who represented the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and former Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg, and Ben Emmerson QC, who specialises in European human rights law. The WikiLeaks founder has been under house arrest for seven months in Ellingham Hall, Norfolk. If he loses this week, he could appeal to the supreme court. The case is expected to last until tomorrow. But judgment is expected to be reserved, so a ruling might not be made public for days or weeks. Robert Booth sends his first update from the royal courts of justice on the Strand in central London. Assange arrived around 9.15am, giving no answer to questions as he moved at a snail's pace through a tight scrum of photographers. He was asked if he was looking forward to his latest day in court and whether he would take the case to the supreme court if he loses over the next couple of days. He said nothing and if anything looked mildly anxious though that may well have been the effect of the media scrum. He looked slim and smart in a navy suit and black shoes and was wearing dark-rimmed spectacles. He was carrying a heavily stuffed laptop bag. Around a dozen camera crews awaited him and more photographers. Also by the court railings are small groups of protesters. One is carrying the banner: "Free Assange! Free Manning! End the wars." Bradley Manning is the US soldier arrested on suspicion of having passed classified material to WikiLeaks. The accusations against Assange relate to alleged incidents with two women in Stockholm in August 2010. One accusation, that he had sex with a woman while she was asleep, amounts to rape under Swedish law. Assange denies any wrongdoing. Assange has claimed that if he was extradited to Sweden in this case it would make it easier for the US authorities to seek to extradite him to face possible charges relating to his release last year of hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including US diplomatic cables and war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq. Assange's legal team argued before their last appeal that there was a "real risk" he could face the death penalty in the US or detention at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The changes to his legal team – Gareth Peirce replaces media lawyer Mark Stephens and Ben Emmerson replaces Geoffrey Robertson QC – are thought to be part of a more conciliatory approach by Assange. Peirce's office would not comment on their strategy yesterday, but she has previously been quoted indicating the need for sensitivity and respect in the case. She reportedly wrote to former US senator Tom Hayden for an article in US magazine the Nation: Each of the human beings involved deserves respect and consideration. It is hoped that whatever steps as are required to be taken in the future will be taken thoughtfully, with sensitivity and with such respect. Peter Tatchell, the human rights campaigner, has been having his say outside court. Tatchell said: WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have provided a great public service in exposing US war crimes. The sex allegations must be taken seriously but he is innocent until proven guilty. So far he has not been charged with any offence. Swedish prosecutors and police need to interview him. There is no reason why they can't come to London. If he goes there I am sure the US will seek his extradition. Here are a couple of pictures from outside the court – one of Assange from Robert Booth, and one of the banner mentioned earlier from Joseba Elola. Campaigning leftwing journalist John Pilger is set behind Assange, Robert Booth reports. The press benches are packed in the grand, wood-panelled court. Other supporters of Julian Assange in court this morning include WikiLeaks's Kristinn Hrafnsson, the Icelandic investigative journalist, Vaughan Smith, at whose house Assange has been staying under strict conditions since December, and Gavin MacFadyen of the Bureau for Investigative Journalism. There have been hints online from a high-profile member of Anonymous, the loosely organised group of hackers sympathetic to WikiLeaks, that confidential US data might be leaked online to coincide with this hearing. Early this morning the Associated Press news agency reported that hackers affiliated with Anonymous claimed to have stolen tens of thousands of encrypted military passwords from US contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and posted them on the internet. The Pentagon said it was aware of the incident and coordinating with other federal partners on the matter. The Press Association news agency says that Assange's lawyers are expected to argue that the alleged offences are not extraditable and sending him to Sweden would be an abuse of process and incompatible with his rights under the European convention on human rights. They are also expected to challenge the validity of the arrest warrant and complain that it did not contain a proper, fair and accurate description of the alleged sexual misconduct. Gareth Peirce, Assange's solicitor, has handed out the "skeleton case". On page three it reads: "Reports were filed as: i 'rape' ii 'molestation'." Ben Emmerson, Assange's barrister, says the case against his client rests on four sex charges, and goes on to describe them in graphic detail. The Assange team is promising not to attack his accusers and not to doubt their discomfort about his sexual conduct. The description of the circumstances of the alleged offences in the warrant is not fair and accurate, Assange's team says, and the offences cannot be fairly characterised as rape. Assange's team is taking a conciliatory line. They will not challenge whether the alleged victims felt he was "disrespectful, discourteous, or disturbing". The Assange team is making a big play of the fact that the warrant fails to describe the complete complaint, and that the whole file has not been seen by them. Assange's team says the Swedish district judge got it wrong over the charges. The Swedish judges were misled by the wording of the arrest warrant, Ben Emmerson says. In one case Assange is accused of having sex with a woman without a condom – but Emmerson says deceiving someone on this issue is not illegal under English law. The Press Association has filed a first take from the court this morning. As mentioned earlier, Ben Emmerson QC told Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Ouseley that the European arrest warrant under which Assange is being held was flawed because it failed to provide a "fair, accurate and proper" description of the alleged sexual misconduct. Emmerson argued that Assange was a victim of a "philosophical and judicial mismatch" between English and Swedish law over what constituted sex crimes. Assange's legal team is asking the judges to rule that Assange's sexual encounters with the women were "consensual" and that the alleged offences are not extraditable. The so-called "minor rape" allegation – when Assange was alleged to have had sex with one of the alleged victims, known as SW, when she was asleep or half asleep – was an "entirely consensual sexual encounter", Emmerson says. "He ripped her clothes and at one point ripped her necklace," Emmerson tells the court about Assange and the other alleged victim, known as AA. This alleged victim is "convinced Assange broke the condom by the glans and then continued to ejaculation", Emmerson says of AA's statement. Emmerson stresses there was "no violence or threats", so the arrest warrant was misleading, he says. Emmerson is now explaining the alleged victim SW's witness statement. Emmerson says: They fell asleep and she woke up by his penetrating her. She immediately asked if he was wearing anything. He answered: "You." She said: "You better not have HIV." He said: "Of course not." She may have been upset, but she clearly consented to its [the sexual encounter's] continuation and that is a central consideration. The thrust of the Assange team's case is that there was no lack of consent in the incidents and that the Swedish district courts were misled by the wording of the arrest warrant. Emmerson says it is "surprising and disturbing" that the warrant misled the district judges by misinterpreting witness statements. Emmerson has told the judges that the allegations against Assange cannot amount to crimes in England and therefore extradition must be blocked. The extradition order is also flawed, he says, because it seeks Assange's return to Sweden "not for prosecution but for the purposes of an investigation" (Assange has not yet been formally charged with any offence and according to the Swedish legal system charges will only be laid after extradition and a second round of questioning). Emmerson argues that using extradition for the purpose only of an investigation amounts to "a disproportionate utilisation" of the European arrest warrant system. He says the court is not inquiring into the credibility of the women, SW and AA, or determining guilt or innocence. Nothing he says should be taken as condemnation of the women, he says; this is not intended to challenge "the genuineness of their feelings of regret about having had consensual sex with Mr Assange or trivialise their experiences". Emmerson said earlier that he was not challenging the fact that they "found Mr Assange's sexual behaviour in these encounters disreputable, discourteous, disturbing or even pushing towards the boundaries of what they were comfortable with". But the sexual activities that occurred had taken place with consent, he argued, and, unlike in Sweden, could not be criminalised in the English jurisdiction. Emmerson is arguing today that the arrest warrant against Assange inaccurately described what happened. The four allegations against Assange are misdescribed in the arrest warrant, Emmerson says, and in all but one case would not be crimes in England. The alleged rape by Assange when he had sex with SW when she was asleep or half asleep was not a crime, Emmerson says, because SW then consented. The judges are wondering if they can investigate the difference between the strong wording in the arrest warrant and that of the witness statements. The court has now broken for lunch. We will be summing up some of this morning's proceedings shortly. Robert Booth has sent more from the high court, where proceedings are about to start again. • Julian Assange's legal team is arguing that the European arrest warrant issued against the WikiLeaks founder is invalid, because of significant discrepancies between its allegations of sexual assault and rape and the testimonies of the two women he allegedly had sex with. • Ben Emmerson QC told the court that the warrant – which details four allegations of unlawful coercion, sexual molestation, and rape relating to encounters between Assange and two Swedish women, known as SW and AA, on a trip to Stockholm last year – was a misinterpretation of the evidence and it was "surprising and disturbing" that Swedish district judges who requested Assange's extradition had been misled. • Emmerson told Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Ouseley that there was no evidence that there was a lack of consent in the encounters, as appeared to be suggested in the wording of the arrest warrant, and that three of the allegations would not amount to criminal offences under English law. Referring to the allegations in the European arrest warrant, Emmerson said: The senior district judge found that those factual allegations would establish dual criminality on the basis that lack of consent, and lack of reasonable belief in consent, may properly be inferred from the conduct described, particularly the references to "violence" and a "design" to "violate sexual integrity". However, that description of conduct is not accurate. The arrest warrant misstates the conduct and is, by that reason alone and invalid warrant. • Of the encounter on 13 August between Assange and AA, Emmerson said: The appellant [Assange]'s physical advances were initially welcomed but then it felt awkward since he was "rough and impatient" … They lay down in bed. AA was lying on her back and Assange was on top of her … AA felt that Assange wanted to insert his penis into her vagina directly, which she did not want since he was not wearing a condom … She did not articulate this. Instead she therefore tried to turn her hips and squeeze her legs together in order to avoid a penetration … AA tried several times to reach for a condom, which Assange had stopped her from doing by holding her arms and bending her legs open and trying to penetrate her with his penis without using a condom. AA says that she felt about to cry since she was held down and could not reach a condom and felt this could end badly. But crucially, Emmerson said, there was no lack of consent sufficient for the unlawful coercion allegation, because "after a while Assange asked what AA was doing and why she was squeezing her legs together. AA told him that she wanted him to put a condom on before he entered her. Assange let go of AA's arms and put on a condom which AA found her." • The case does not hinge on whether Assange accepts this version of events and others relating to other incidents because there are no charges against him, but whether the arrest warrant in connection with them is valid on "strict and narrow" legal grounds, Emmerson said. As if to illustrate the change of strategy of Assange's new legal team, Emmerson said: Nothing I say should be taken as denigrating the complainant, the genuineness of their feelings of regret, to trivialise their experience or to challenge whether they felt Assange's conduct was disrespectful, discourteous, disturbing or even pushing at the boundaries of what they felt comfortable with. Assange has arrived late to the afternoon session. The Press Association has put up a bit more from this morning's session. Ben Emmerson, Assange's QC, said that one of Assange's alleged victims described his behaviour at one point as "very strange" and talked of "just wanting" sex to be "over with". Emmerson said: Her words may indicate she was not particularly enjoying what was going on. But they certainly do not go anywhere near what we would regard in this country as lack of consent. He said the high court had to decide whether the "acts" would have been offences had they happened in England. What [Swedish prosecutors] must prove beyond reasonable doubt is that if these circumstances as alleged had happened in London, would they have constituted offences? [There are] very serious questions on dual criminality in [three charges]. [There are] very serious questions on whether what happened in charge four could have recognisable as a charge in this [country]. Emmerson said there was evidence that Assange's lawyers had not seen because under Swedish law prosecutors were not obliged to reveal it until proceedings were at a later stage. Reuters points out that permission to appeal to the supreme court if Assange loses this appeal will only be granted on a point of law considered to be of general public interest. Lord Justice Thomas and Ben Emmerson are having an argument about the European arrest warrant regime. Should Assange see all the evidence now? I am going to try to answer some of the most frequent questions posed below the line as we go: Why is Assange facing extradition to Sweden when there are as yet no charges against him there? Under the Swedish legal system, charges are laid after extradition and a second round of questioning. Maya Wolfe-Robinson of guardian.co.uk's law site adds: In terms of the charges in Sweden, if you read the judgment when the judge ruled that he should be extradited, the judge found that "the proceedings in Sweden are at the preliminary investigation stage. The preliminary investigation does not come to an end until evidence is served on Mr Assange or his lawyer and there is an interrogation of Mr Assange with the opportunity for further enquiries. Thereafter there is a decision as to charge. If charged the trial is likely to take place shortly thereafter. If Assange is extradited to Sweden, and the US were then to request his extradition, what would happen to the Swedish case? It is worth remembering that there are no extradition proceedings currently pending against Assange from the US. I have just been speaking to Joshua Rozenberg, who writes for the Guardian's law site. Rozenberg told me that under the terms of the European arrest warrant, the Swedes would not be able to set aside their own case and pass Assange on to the US. "They are not allowed under the deal to send him to the US on other charges," Rozenberg said. If, on the other hand, the US requested Assange's extradition while the Swedish extradition request was still being decided, the British home secretary would have to decide which request to give precedence to. Rozenberg said he thought the home secretary would be likely to favour the US, on the assumption that the charges from the US would be likely to be more serious. In addition, Julian Knowles, a barrister at Matrix Chambers, has said that Assange's contention that he should not be extradited to Sweden because he might be extradited to the US, where he might face the death penalty or detention in Guantanamo Bay, is "frankly, a hopeless argument". Amy Jeffress, the US justice department's attache to the American embassy in London, told the BBC's Law in Action: "The president, of course, has decided to close Guantánamo Bay, and so no one is going to Guantánamo Bay and that claim is baseless." She said the US always gave assurances in any case for which it had requested extradition that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty. Robert Booth at the high court says the debate over the European arrest warrant has "gone into hyperspace", with Assange's barrister Ben Emmerson talking at double speed. The application could be significant though, Robert says. The warrant must be a "fair and accurate" version of the claims, Emmerson says, and the court must ask if what is detailed there would be a crime in England, authorities say, according to Emmerson. The Assange team thinks it is "profoundly unjust" if allegations are made to satisfy "dual criminality" test for extradition when they actually do not satisfy this test. On the question of whether the offences a suspect is wanted for extradition for would be a crime in England, my colleague Afua Hirsch wrote this interesting piece in December: The European arrest warrant "has been controversial since it was introduced in 2003, creating everyday injustices", Afua wrote. It was agreed a week after 9/11 and sold to voters as a way of ensuring cross-border cohesion in prosecuting suspects wanted across Europe for terrorism and serious crime. It's been downhill from there. Around three people per day are now extradited from the UK, and there is little to suggest that the majority are terrorists or serious criminals. In fact those involved in the process agree that many of the cases are "trivial". She goes on to say that last year Poland accounted for 40% of British extradition requests, giving the example of a case against a man who went over his overdraft limit, which would be a civil, not criminal matter in the UK. The Assange team says the use of an EU arrest warrant for pre-prosecution questioning is not allowed under UK law. At the high court, Robert Booth points out how dry the Assange team are "with all this legalese about EU law" – a new tack. No more shrill claims about Assange ending up in Guantanamo. The Assange team is raising issue of "whether the requested person is an accused" and if a prosecution has "commenced". If not, then the warrant is not valid, they say. Mark Summers, speaking for Assange, says that three weeks after the EU warrant was issued the Swedish prosecutor said "no decision to prosecute has been made in this case". That lack of a decision to prosecute is key in undermining the validity of the Assange arrest warrant, Summers says. Assange's "physical presence in Sweden is not necessary for finishing the preliminary investigation", says Summers, suggesting phone and Skype be used. Here's a picture of Assange in the media scrum today, via m_cetera. In the comments, satinsun asks what penalty Assange is facing in Sweden if found guilty. The rape charge carries a maximum sentence of four years. Today's hearing is finished and the case will resume tomorrow. Here are the key points: • Julian Assange is claiming that the European arrest warrant that led to this hearing contained "fundamental misstatements" of what occurred in Stockholm last August. It falsely claims he used violence and "acted in a manner to violate sexual integrity", Assange's legal team said. • The WikiLeaks founder's team claimed that his encounters with two women who made complaints against him involved consensual sex and would not be considered crimes in England. Ben Emmerson QC, his barrister, admitted that the women involved may have found Assange's behaviour "disreputable, discourteous, disturbing, or even pushing towards the boundaries of what they were comfortable with" – discussing, for example, Assange's initiating sex with one woman while she was asleep – but maintained that no crime had been committed under UK law. • Emmerson also claimed that the use of the European warrant was "disproportionate", as there were other means available to obtain Assange's assistance in the Swedish investigation. Tomorrow lawyers for the Swedish authorities are expected to argue the decision to allow Assange to be extradicted at the last stage of this legal process was correct. They will contend the EAW is nothing less than fair, accurate and proper and there is no justification for an inquiry into the validity or accuracy of the statements it contains. Join us again tomorrow. For now, for legal reasons, we will be turning comments off – but thanks for all your contributions. |
NORTH Korean state media on Tuesday warned of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of a U.S. pre-emptive strike as a U.S. Navy strike group led by a nuclear-powered aircraft steamed towards the western Pacific. NORTH Korean state media on Tuesday warned of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of a U.S. pre-emptive strike as a U.S. Navy strike group led by a nuclear-powered aircraft steamed towards the western Pacific. Tension has escalated sharply on the Korean peninsula with talk of military action by the United States gaining traction following its strikes last week against Syria and amid concerns the reclusive North may soon conduct a sixth nuclear test. North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said the country was prepared to respond to any aggression by the United States. "Our revolutionary strong army is keenly watching every move by enemy elements with our nuclear sight focused on the U.S. invasionary bases not only in South Korea and the Pacific operation theatre but also in the U.S. mainland," it said. South Korean acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn warned of "greater provocations" by North Korea and ordered the military to intensify monitoring and to ensure close communication with the United States. "It is possible the North may wage greater provocations such as a nuclear test timed with various anniversaries including the Supreme People's Assembly," said Hwang, acting leader since former president Park Geun-hye was removed amid a graft scandal. The North convened a Supreme People's Assembly session on Tuesday, one of its twice-yearly sessions in which major appointments are announced and national policy goals are formally approved. But South Korean officials took pains to quell talk in social media of an impending security crisis or outbreak of war. "We'd like to ask precaution so as not to get blinded by exaggerated assessment about the security situation on the Korean peninsula," Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-kyun said. Saturday is the 105th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the country's founding father and grandfather of current ruler, Kim Jong Un. A military parade is expected in the North's capital, Pyongyang, to mark the day. North Korea often also marks important anniversaries with tests of its nuclear or missile capabilities in breach of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent a message of congratulations to mark the event, lambasting "big powers" for their "expansionist" policy. "The friendly two countries are celebrating this anniversary and, at the same time, conducting a war against big powers' wild ambition to subject all countries to their expansionist and dominationist policy and deprive them of their rights to self-determination," Russian news agency Tass quote the message as saying. The North's foreign ministry, in a statement carried by its KCNA news agency, said the U.S. navy strike group's approach showed America's "reckless moves for invading had reached a serious phase". "We never beg for peace but we will take the toughest counteraction against the provocateurs in order to defend ourselves by powerful force of arms and keep to the road chosen by ourselves," an unidentified ministry spokesman said. North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the South and its main ally, the United States. SANCTIONS WARNING Delegates from around the North have been arriving in Pyongyang ahead of the assembly session. They visited statues of previous leaders Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il, state media reported. North Korea is emerging as one of the most pressing foreign policy problems facing the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. It has conducted five nuclear tests, two of them last year, and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States. The Trump administration is reviewing its policy towards North Korea and has said all options are on the table, including military strikes, but U.S. officials said non-military action appears to be at the top of the list if any action were to be taken. The U.S. Navy strike group Carl Vinson was diverted from planned port calls to Australia and would move toward the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a U.S. official told Reuters over the weekend. U.S. officials said it would still take the strike group more than a week to arrive near the Korean peninsula. Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, met in Florida last week and Trump pressed Xi to do more to curb North Korea's nuclear programme. China and South Korea agreed on Monday to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea if it carried out nuclear or long-range missile tests, a senior official in Seoul said. On Tuesday, a fleet of North Korean cargo ships was heading home to the port of Nampo, the majority of it fully laden, after China ordered its trading companies to return coal from the isolated state to curb coal traffic, sources with direct knowledge said. The order was given on April 7, just as the U.S. and Chinese leaders were set for the summit where the two agreed the North Korean nuclear advances had reached a "very serious stage", U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. Following repeated missile tests that drew international criticism, China banned all imports of North Korean coal on Feb. 26, cutting off the country's most important export product. As well as the anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth, there are several other North Korean anniversaries in April that could be opportunities for weapon tests, South Korean officials have said. The North is seen ready to conduct its sixth nuclear test at any time, with movements detected by satellites at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site. Online Editors |
The pharmacological effects of 5,7-dihydroxyflavone (chrysin), a naturally occurring monoflavonoid that displaces [3H]flunitrazepam binding to the central benzodiazepine (BDZ) receptors, were examined in mice. In the elevated plus-maze test of anxiety, diazepam (DZ, 0.3-0.6 mg/kg) or chrysin (1 mg/kg) induced increases in the number of entries into the open arms and in the time spent on the open arms, consistent with an anxiolytic action of both compounds. The effects of chrysin on the elevated plus-maze was abolished by pretreatment with the specific BDZ receptor antagonist Ro 15-1788 (3 mg/kg). In the holeboard, diazepam (1 mg/kg) and chrysin (3 mg/kg) increased the time spent head-dipping. In contrast, high doses of DZ (6 mg/kg) but not of chrysin produced a decrease in the number of head dips and in the time spent head-dipping. In the horizontal wire test, diazepam (6 mg/kg) had a myorelaxant action. In contrast, chrysin (0.6-30 mg/kg) produced no effects in this test. These data suggest that chrysin possesses anxiolytic actions without inducing sedation and muscle relaxation. We postulate that this natural monoflavonoid is a partial agonist of the central BDZ receptors. |
Trump is giving U2 a bad case of "Vertigo." The Irish rock band was left spinning after Trump was elected president and despite their next album being "pretty much complete," they decided to hold of releasing it to give themselves "breathing space." "We just went, 'Hold on a second – we've got to give ourselves a moment to think about this record and about how it relates to what’s going on in the world,'" U2 guitarist The Edge told Rolling Stone. He said Trump's election was "like a pendulum has suddenly just taken a huge swing in the other direction...Suddenly the world changed." U2 had written most of the songs for "Songs of Experience," the follow-up to their 2014 platinum "Songs of Innocence," but The Edge said it needs to be revised because "the world is a different place." They're putting the album "on ice for a minute, just to really think about it one more time before putting it out, just to make sure that it really was what we wanted to say." |
Congressmen demanded that Rahul Gandhi be promoted to the post of party president. Highlights Congress loses Assam and Kerala, says Gandhis can't be blamed Congress now in charge of just one major state- Karnataka Rahul Gandhi should be promoted to president, say party leaders The Congress picked up the pace of its collapse considerably today, with huge defeats in Kerala and Assam; it now retains charge of just one major state - Karnataka. Neither Sonia nor Rahul Gandhi, the party's chief and No 2 respectively, were seen. Mr Gandhi tweeted, "We accept the verdict of people with humility". As is the natural order for the party, leaders formed a verbal human chain around the Gandhis, insisting today's results cannot be seen as a failure of their leadership. "All state elections are not a referendum on national leadership, there are local issues involved," said Shashi Tharoor. In another trademark reaction to defeat, made no less baffling by the consistency of its offering, Congressmen used the occasion to fervidly demand that Mr Gandhi, 45, be promoted to the post of party president. "The process of his elevation cannot be stopped, he will be president" said Congress leader PC Chacko. Assam, governed for 15 years by one of the Congress' strongest leaders, Tarun Gogoi, has emphatically chosen the BJP, whose government here marks the first for the party in the North East. The loss in Kerala, which see-saws habitually between the Congress-led coalition and the Left Front, may have been foreseen; but the scale of the defeat, with several Congress ministers losing their constituencies, somewhat breaks the mould in the coastal state. Deserted look outside Congress headquarters in Delhi In Tamil Nadu and Bengal, the partnerships that were struck in desperation produced no joy for the Congress. Its odd coupling with the Left in Bengal, whom it fought against in Kerala, was thoroughly rebuffed. In Tamil Nadu, the alliance with the DMK failed to evict J Jayalalithaa as Chief Minister, though the state has a 32-year-record in not re-electing a government for a consecutive term. In 2014, the Congress did not name Mr Gandhi as its prime ministerial candidate, but he led the campaign that scooped the party's poorest-ever national result of 44 Lok Sabha seats. Since then, apart from a bit role in the alliance that won Bihar last year, the Congress has been an electoral hot mess. Congress' win in Puducherry today with the DMK apart, what each successive election seems to reinforce is that India's oldest party is no longer a contender even as the lead opposition player; instead, it will be up to an arrangement of regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee, J Jayalalithaa and Nitish Kumar to counter the BJP for the next national election in 2019. |
‘Healthy Kids Check” – The gov’t cares Andrew Puhanic, Contributor Activist Post In an another attempt by Big Brother to intrude on the development of our children, the Australian Federal Government has begun to systematically test three-year-old children for signs of mental illness via a national program aptly named “healthy kids check”. The Australian Federal Government claims that the aim of the program is to improve the health and well-being of Australian children by identifying lifestyle risk factors that three-year-old children may be exposed to (for example, sleeping with the light on, having temper tantrums and being shy). The healthy kids check program is expected to start July 1 2012 and will be predominantly managed by local General Practitioners who will be expected to report their findings to the Federal Government upon completion of an assessment form. This test will form part of a standardised evaluation program for developmental problems such as hearing, vision and speech impairments. The Australian government expects that 27,000 3-year-old children will be assessed for “mental illness” within the first few months. However, the Federal government is not only ordering general practitioners to look out for three-year-old children who are suffering from shyness, temper tensions and sleeping with the light on, they have also been instructed by the Federal Government to look out for the following “unusual” behaviours by three-year-old children: Ask questions about eating habits (child’s appetite and variety of food they eat) Ask questions about the child’s toilet habits (do they need assistance, can they go independently or does the child wet the bed) Ask questions about the child’s behaviour and mood (how well do they sleep, what’s the social and emotional well-being of the child and can the child separate from the main carer.) Many experts have warned that by introducing such intrusive checks at such an early age, doctors and general practitioners who are well-intentioned, will most likely end up prescribing antipsychotic medicines to 3-year-old children who are not technically suffering from any formal mental illness, but are simply showing signs of normal behaviour. Professor Allen Frances, an American psychiatrist is quoted as saying Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free? Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets Many kids have developmental problems that disappear by themselves and it’s very difficult to evaluate in any given child whether the improvement resulted from treatment or just growing up. Before you have a mass national experiment like this, it needs to be carefully piloted to make sure that the harms are not going to be greater than the risks. To put this initiative in perspective, let’s examine my own circumstance. I myself am a father of two (one and three-year old children). My one-year-old sleeps all night, eats most of what we give him and will sometimes get cranky. Should I be worried? My three-year-old on the other hand doesn’t always sleep all night, likes to eat baked beans on toast and not always eats a “variety” as described by the checklist and sometimes gets very cranky when she doesn’t get what she wants. Should I be worried about my three-year old daughter? This initiative instigated by the Australian Federal government will lead to the over-prescription of drugs to children. However, the problem is not only localised in Australia, but is one that has the potential to affect all children around the world. In a study released by Medco Health Solutions Inc in the United States, it was revealed that over 25% of children and teens are taking some sort of prescription medication. Many of the prescription medicines identified in the study were statins, ADHD pills, antipsychotics, and sleeping pills. All of which have been shown to cause considerable harm. The continuous encroachment of Federal Government Agencies into the lives of our children is alarming. In this example, testing three-year-old children for mental illness is not only unethical, it is wrong and immoral. Survival Solar Battery Charger - Free Today! The mental well-being of children cannot be improved or modified by intervention from the Federal government and will only further exacerbate the difficulties both parents and society have in combating the globalist agenda and the continuous assaults on our freedoms and liberties from Governments around the world. You can support this information by voting on Reddit HERE. Andrew Puhanic is the founder of the Globalist Report. The aim of the Globalist Report is to provide current, relevant and informative information about the Globalists and Globalist Agenda. You can contact Andrew directly by visiting the Globalist Report var linkwithin_site_id = 557381; linkwithin_text=’Related Articles:’ |
Facebook: www.facebook.com/nazegorengcrafts Tumblr: www.nazegoreng.tumblr.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/Nazegoreng Furaffinity: www.furaffinity.net/user/nazeg… For 900+ posts of walkthroughs, tips, video tutorials, commission spot reservations and wips: www.patreon.com/Nazegoreng ----------------------- - See page & journal for details. PROCESS Ember is made from azure, electric blue, tiffany, ivory and dyed sky minky. She is approx 27" tall (HUGE!!). Her eyes were embroidered with a Bernina 830LE embroidery machine, Madiera Rayon embroidery thread, and Bernina V6 embroidery software and feature gradients. The eyes were designed and digitised by me. Her pattern was also designed by me. She has wiring in her wings, legs, fingers and tail so that she can stand on her own and is mildly posable. Please do not ask for the pattern, under no circumstance will I be giving it out. COMMENTS When I saw Gauntlet of Fire I immediately fell in love with Ember. I have a real soft spot for badass female dragon characters. She reminded me of Cynder from Spyro. That design was just to die for. I pretty much never make plush for myself during commissions, but I had already finished 2 commissions this week, and worked many late nights to get her done. It was so refreshing to work on her as a bit of a creative breather, and I learnt a tonne making her that I can now apply to my next commissions. I would LOVE to keep her myself but she is up for sale. Hope she finds a great home. PLEASE zoom in to check out her details |
If you haven’t heard about VR/AR by now, your desert island must not have Wi-Fi. But there are millions of folks who know about VR/AR who haven’t seen it yet. User trial is on the critical path for VR/AR to go mass market. So what are the lessons from previous digital platforms about moving mass consumers from awareness to trial? AKQA founding chairman Tom Bedecarre gets right to the point. “New technology follows a familiar adoption curve, and it’s easier to attract your first customers, innovators and early adopters. It’s very hard to cross the chasm and attract the early majority and beyond.” The challenge is particularly acute for VR/AR, where even 360-degree videos can’t completely translate the surprise and delight that users get from the best VR/AR apps. For the full experience you need to have it on your face. To paraphrase, “It’s the stereoscopic vision, stupid.” So how are VR/AR companies getting mass consumers to try it beyond early adopters? Free is a pretty good price point The New York Times has given away more than a million Google Cardboards to its readers. McDonalds’ “Happy Goggles” turn a Happy Meal box into a VR headset, and Coca-Cola has experimented with a similar approach using its multi-pack containers. Moving up in quality from Cardboard, Samsung has bundled its Gear VR headset for free with compatible phones, which together with sales has delivered “millions of people with a Gear VR, and over a million monthly active users” according to a Samsung spokesperson. Samsung has also enabled location-based trial, with “15,000 retail locations in the US.” Verizon gave away Google’s Daydream View VR headset with pre-orders of Pixel phones, and China’s OnePlus gave away 30,000 VR headsets with its phones. We aren’t likely to see high-end PC or console VR headsets bundled for free, but prices for high-end VR headsets and the systems to run them will be driven lower by Microsoft’s new Windows 10 VR headsets. Location, location, location Richard Marks, the head of Sony PlayStation Magic Lab, believes that “trying VR is really important, because the experience is so dramatically beyond what most people have seen before now. We’ve shown over 400,000 in-store demos, and to encourage people to show their friends, we give away a free demo disc with every PSVR as well as a free asymmetric multiplayer game that enables everyone without a headset to play along with the person in VR.” HTC Chief of Staff Pearly Chen is equally emphatic about getting the Vive in front of people, “seeing is believing, and there isn’t a better way to communicate what VR is than letting people see it with their own eyes. We’ve run the Vive World Tour since mid-2015, touring major cities, universities, events and trade shows — which gave us significant press exposure, grass-roots engagement, and learning about consumer feedback.” “We continue to engage major retail partners to set up demo stations, including Microsoft stores, GameStop and MicroCenter in the US, as well as Suning, Guomei and internet cafes across China. We’ve also announced Vive Land in Taipei as a location-based entertainment center to reach mass consumers.” When producing content and applications for mass consumers…how do you get in front of lots of people, and how do you leverage that trial more broadly? HTC isn’t just getting its own products in front of consumers, but is thinking more broadly. “To help the entire ecosystem, our $100 million Vive X program is committed to helping companies with the right vision to help everyone and everything in VR.” AR/VR education player zSpace has a proactive approach to location-based trial, taking the location to its users rather than requiring them to go anywhere. They have multiple buses complete with full-demo experiences touring the U.S. to take their magic to schools around the country. CEO Paul Kellenberger says that, “we do it because it just plain works. Students and teachers don’t need to travel for miles or take a chance on buying a system they haven’t tried yet. And with our highly collaborative approach to AR/VR, the entire school community sees how effective it is. We have strong ROI from this approach, and some of our largest school system sales have come from it. So we see a direct bottom line impact from going to where potential users are and making trial as simple as possible for them — it’s a significant driver of our business growth.” Gotta catch ’em all The AR smartglasses that are already hitting the market (Microsoft HoloLens, ODG, Meta, etc.) are largely enterprise focused so far, making it too early to assess their approach to consumer trial. But Pokémon GO has already achieved both mass awareness and trial of AR (even if industry insiders don’t like to call it that). Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella happily declared Pokémon GO as an early win for the AR market. So while the huge splash it made this year peaked at over 50 million monthly active users, globally there are tens (if not hundreds) of millions of consumers who think they’ve tried AR and liked it. The big question is how will “true” AR smartglasses leverage that awareness when they go consumer in the next year or so? Hopefully the lessons learned from both Google Glass (boo) and Snap Spectacles (yay) will inform what comes next. Snap to it Snap’s approach with Spectacles has been nothing short of marketing genius, almost single-handedly erasing the years of damage done to AR’s consumer profile by Google Glass (even if Spectacles aren’t really AR). Spectacles are a cool populist toy, not a vision of the dystopian future. They’re scarce but not elitist, with a limited rollout for anyone prepared to drive hours to get to a vending machine (rather than hand-picked Glassholes). Spectacles’ $130 price point is a lot less than some alternative ways to buy into the new hotness (regardless of functionality). The free marketing hype and virality surrounding Spectacles videos gives Snap’s 150 million-plus daily active users the chance to feel like they’re trying Spectacles (even if they can’t get hold of them yet). And all the data from early adopters (some might call them paying beta testers) enables Snap to tweak Spectacles hardware and software to perfection before a full launch. That Evan Spiegel is one smart cookie. Call me maybe There are five critical success factors for consumer AR when it gets here: hero device (i.e. an Apple quality device, whether made by Apple or someone else), cellular connectivity, all-day battery life, app ecosystem (similar in quality to early mobile) and telco cross-subsidization. Telco data revenues and cross-subsidization will be key, so how will the telcos help consumer trial? Verizon Ventures Director Ed Ruth believes telcos will have a meaningful role to play when AR is ready for consumers. He says, “Beyond the in-store trial telcos could enable through retail stores across the country, eventually they could help AR reach consumers in the same way that they do with smartphones today. The data revenues from this new market could help reinvigorate growth for mobile networks, especially when you consider that 360-degree video alone takes 4 to 5 times the bandwidth of regular video.” Content is king (again) When producing content and applications for mass consumers — ranging from high-end VR content like Baobab Studios’ Invasion and Asteroids, to next-generation visual messaging for VR/AR like Eyetouch Reality — how do you get in front of lots of people, and how do you leverage that trial more broadly? Penrose Studios CEO Eugene Chung takes a holistic view. “The development of VR/AR as a new artistic medium is unprecedented in the modern era. The last time we saw this transformational change was with the advent of the moving picture. Right now the nascent stage of hardware penetration constrains VR/AR, but that is rapidly evolving. With developments such as the PlayStation VR release and Google Daydream, the addressable market for VR is growing bigger than ever. While much of the technorati have seen VR, the vast majority has not. As the population at large sees and understands the power of the medium, adoption will grow accordingly.” Sketchfab CEO Alban Denoyel thinks “mass adoption will come when people are able to create VR content themselves. When you take VR shots (360 or 3D) of your family or holidays, you’ll want to revisit them in VR. So user-generated content will be key to mass adoption. In terms of reach and audience, it’s key to deliver the content where the audience already is, typically the social networks. That’s why WebVR is important, as it lets creators reach consumers directly and bypasses the app store gates.” The young ones Mass markets cover everyone from your nephew to your grandma. But recent tech success from Facebook to Snapchat skewed younger at launch, before migrating upwards to take over the world. So the cool kids need to try VR/AR for it to go mass market, with Pokémon GO and Snap Spectacles showing how it’s done. As they say in the classics, “Ditto.” |
This reports comes out while members of the congressional supercommittee are pissing and moaning about how we can't possibly cut any more money from the Defense department. These numbers seem to indicate otherwise: How often does the Pentagon award contracts to defense companies that have already been proven to be defrauding taxpayers? A report the Department of Defense did at the request of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reveals an answer that should make Washington very uncomfortable. The report, released today, showed that hundreds of defense contractors found guilty of civil fraud received more than $1.1 trillion in defense contracts since 2001. The study took into account only companies that were found to have defrauded taxpayers of more than $1 million dollars. More than $573 billion went directly to companies that were guilty of defrauding taxpayers, and when you factor in the awards that went to the parent companies of those contractors, the total is $1.1 trillion. Of that $573 billion, more than two-thirds—$398 billion—went to companies after they had been found guilty of fraud. Companies convicted of “hard-core criminal fraud” received $255 million in contracts, $33 million of it after conviction. Some of the country’s biggest defense contractors were implicated. “The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money,” said Sanders. According to the report: Lockheed Martin in 2008 paid $10.5 million to settle charges that it defrauded the government by submitting false invoices on a multi-billion dollar contract connected to the Titan IV space launch vehicle program. That didn’t seem to sour the relationship between Lockheed and the Defense Department, which gave Lockheed $30.2 billion in contracts in fiscal year 2009, more than ever before. In another case, Northrop Grumman paid $62 million in 2005 to settle charges that it “engaged in a fraud scheme by routinely submitting false contract proposals,” and “concealed basic problems in its handling of inventory, scrap and attrition.” Despite the serious charges of pervasive and repeated fraud, Northrop Grumman received $12.9 billion in contracts the next year, 16 percent more than the year before. |
One month ago, I wrote an article that provided a brief overview to the happenings of the national college football landscape, and predicted who would make the inaugural College Football Playoff (CFP). A selection committee sets up the four-team playoff, and I anticipated that Mississippi State, Florida State, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma would earn bids. As is expected, chaos has continued to tear through the college football season, and things are more muddled than I anticipated. There are currently three teams that control their destiny in the playoff picture: Florida State, Oregon, and Alabama. That’s it. Everyone else needs either committee assistance or a key loss in order to get into the playoff. TCU and Baylor are probably the two favorites for that fourth spot, with Ohio State and Mississippi State still in reasonable contention. Ole Miss can still win the SEC, but won’t make the playoff. Oklahoma is currently a 3-loss team with no hope for anything significant. So already, two of my four predictions were wrong. The easiest path to the CFP belongs to Florida State. They have clinched the ACC Atlantic, and if they can manage wins over Boston College and Florida in the final two weeks of the regular season, the Seminoles will be assured that a conference title equates to a playoff birth. If Florida State doesn’t lose–and maintains their a 26-game streak–they are in. Oregon and Alabama can win out and make the CFP too, but both teams will face tougher tests than Florida State will. Alabama still has their annual contest with archrival Auburn, and if they can win that, they will still need to face a tough Missouri or Georgia in the SEC Championship game. Alabama, who I criticized in my last article, has actually looked phenomenal lately. The Tide’s win over #1 Mississippi State this past Saturday will put Alabama into the top three, and a tough OT win in Death Valley (LSU) is a great resume booster as well. The Tide are a battle tested team, so winning out is certainly possible, but it will still be a harder path than that of Florida State. The Oregon Ducks have what appears to be the easiest regular season schedule remaining, having to face only lowly Pac-12 opponents Colorado and Oregon State. Oregon State absolutely shocked the college football world by upsetting #6 Arizona State this past weekend though, ruining Arizona State’s chance to make the playoff. Oregon will be heavily favored against both teams, but this year’s “Civil War” will be played at Oregon State, and strange things can happen to teams that visit the Beavers. What is going to be a dangerous game for Oregon though, is the Pac-12 Championship Game. The Pac-12 South is a five-horse race right now, with important interstate games between USC-UCLA, and Arizona-Arizona State coming up. Oregon will face someone who survived a tornado of chaos in the southwest, and whoever comes out of the division will be a threat to knock off the Ducks days before the committee makes its final selection. Baylor and TCU are currently tied for the Big 12 Conference lead. Both teams sit on only one loss, and don’t have to worry about a conference championship game, as the Big 12 doesn’t host one. Baylor beat TCU 61-58 earlier this year, in what some consider the most entertaining game of the season thus far. TCU was ranked 4th in last week’s poll, largely thanks to a win over formally #7 Kansas State, and the lone loss to Baylor. TCU looked awful in a close win over Kansas this week though. Baylor, who came in at #7 behind the TCU team they beat, had a bye this week. They still have Kansas State on the docket, and will technically win the conference if they win out, because they hold the head-to-head victory over TCU. Baylor’s loss, though, came to West Virginia, a team that is good, but not ranked. The committee has caused a bit of controversy by implying that the head-to-head victory isn’t as valued as strength of schedule, and strength of losses. Ultimately, Baylor will probably jump TCU as the season winds down though. So if Florida State, Alabama, Oregon, and Baylor win out, in my opinion, they all deserve to be in the CFP. Ohio State and Mississippi each only have one loss right now, and there is a window of opportunity for both of them to sneak their way in. Mississippi State can still earn a huge win over Ole Miss, and could even win the SEC if Alabama drops the game against Auburn. The Bulldogs are down after this weekend’s loss to Alabama, but they shouldn’t drop out of the top 5, and could easily work their way back into the playoff. Georgia, Georgia Tech, Wisconsin, and Missouri are all praying for as much chaos to ensue as imaginable, because if one of them can win out, and enough one-loss/undefeated teams fall, one of these lucky contenders can potentially earn a bid. The odds of this happening are about .1%, and the Georgia schools are the only ones that even have a prayer in my mind. Ohio State recently beat highly-respected Michigan State, and is considered a lock for the Big 10 championship game. They will most likely face Wisconsin, who looked dominant in a win over Nebraska this past weekend. If Ohio State loses once more this season, no Big 10 team will have a likely shot at the playoff. If they win out, they could jump into the fourth spot on their own, but will most likely need someone else to lose. This season has featured plenty of big wins by traditionally good teams, but also the rise of some typical underdogs. Chaos has been plentiful, and the committee’s practices are still not completely understandable, so the CFP picture is still incredibly cloudy. What’s funny though, is that after all of the upsets and mishaps, the teams that started the year ranked in the top three are the same three who control their own destinies at this point: Florida State, Alabama, and Oregon. The sun is not setting on the season just yet, though. The last weekend of the regular season is “rivalry weekend”, and plenty of intense, unpredictable, important games will be played. Additionally, the weekend of conference championship games will more than likely add yet another twist to this year’s confusing season. Come New Years Day, when the CFB semi-finals are in full swing, I predict that the teams hunting for a national championship won’t be too shocking though. Florida State will be there. And so will Oregon. Baylor should be lucky enough to find their way in too. As for the SEC, that’s where I’m least confident picking. Judging from how teams are playing right now though, my money is on the Crimson Tide of Alabama. Four teams will enter, and one will survive. The hard part now though, is getting the chance to win it all. |
Watch the Michigan bald eagle cam in Beulah, Michigan. The feed is from CarbonTV. The Bald Eagle has been the national emblem of the United States since 1782 and a symbol of resilience as a once endangered species. In partnership with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, CarbonTV brings you 24/7 live streaming of this majestic creature in it’s native habitat. Join a pair of eagles in their nest 100 feet above ground as they battle the odds and elements to survive. Watch every second as they prepare their nest in the fall, lay their eggs in early spring and be the first to see the hatch and summer growth of the 2016 eagle chicks. The CarbonTV Eagle Cam is located near the Platte River State Fish Hatchery, which was established in 1928 as a satellite rearing station and converted to the state's main salmon hatchery in 1972. This facility raises coho and chinook salmon and is the main egg take station for coho salmon in the Upper Great Lakes. Viewers should be advised that as awesome as nature is, it is also harsh at times. It is entirely possible that they may see unpleasant events and natural circumstances (predation, disease, etc.) in this active nest. In the event of such events, no human intervention by the Department of Natural Resources or any other agency will occur. View at your own discretion. Copyright 2017 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit - All rights reserved. |
Christian Flag Use Banner Adopted 1942 Design A white banner with a red Latin Cross charged upon a blue canton Designed by Charles C. Overton and Ralph Eugene Diffendorfer The Christian Flag is an ecumenical flag designed in the early 20th century to represent all of Christianity and Christendom.[1] Since its adoption by the Federal Council of Churches in 1942, it has been used by many Christian traditions,[2][1] especially those of Protestant origin, including the Anglican,[3] Baptist,[4] Mennonite,[5] Moravian,[6] Lutheran,[7] Presbyterian,[7] Quaker,[8] Reformed, and Methodist among others.[9] Africa and the Americas are regions of the world where the flag remains popular.[10] The flag has a white field, with a red Latin cross inside a blue canton. The shade of red on the cross symbolizes the blood that Jesus shed on Calvary.[11] The blue represents the waters of baptism as well as the faithfulness of Jesus.[12] The white represents Jesus' purity.[13] The dimensions of the flag and canton have no official specifications.[citation needed] Origins [ edit ] The Christian Flag was first conceived on September 26, 1897, at Brighton Chapel on Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York in the United States. The superintendent of a Sunday school, Charles C. Overton, gave an impromptu lecture to the gathered students, because the scheduled speaker had failed to arrive for the event. He gave a speech asking the students what a flag representing Christianity would look like.[14] Overton thought about his improvised speech for many years afterward. In 1907, he and Ralph Diffendorfer, secretary of the Methodist Young People's Missionary Movement, designed and began promoting the flag.[15] With regard to the Christian symbolism of the Christian Flag: The ground is white, representing peace, purity and innocence. In the upper corner is a blue square, the color of the unclouded sky, emblematic of heaven, the home of the Christian; also a symbol of faith and trust. in the center of the blue is the cross, the ensign and chosen symbol of Christianity: the cross is red, typical of Christ's blood.[14] The ecumenical organization, Federal Council of Churches, now succeeded by the National Council of Churches and Christian Churches Together, adopted the flag on 23 January 1942;[2][1] the National Council of Churches represents Anglican, Baptist, Brethren, Eastern Orthodox, Mennonite, Methodist, Moravian, Lutheran, Oriental Orthodox, Presbyterian, Quaker, and Reformed traditions, among others.[16] The Christian Flag intentionally has no patent, as the designer dedicated the flag to all of Christendom.[17] The famous hymn writer, Fanny J. Crosby, devoted a hymn titled “The Christian Flag”, with music by R. Huntington Woodman, in its honour;[1] like the flag, the hymn is also free use.[18] On the Sunday nearest 26 September 1997, the Christian Flag celebrated its one hundredth anniversary.[19] Usage [ edit ] The Christian Flag to the right of the U.S. flag and the pulpit in a Presbyterian church in California; eagle and cross finials are on each flag pole respectively. Mainline Protestant denominations in the United States accepted the flag first, and by the 1980s many institutions had described policies for displaying it inside churches.[20] The Federal Council of Churches recommended that if the Christian Flag is to be used alongside a national flag, that the Christian Flag should receive the place of honor.[21] During World War II the flag was flown along with the U.S. flag in a number of Lutheran churches, many of them with German backgrounds, who wanted to show their solidarity with the United States during the war against Germany. The Christian Flag spread outside North America with Christian missionaries.[22] It can be seen today in or outside many Christian churches throughout the world, particularly in Latin America and in Africa.[22] It has so far been adopted by some Protestant churches in Europe, Asia, and Africa as well.[10] U.S. and Christian flags on a house in Oklahoma. The Christian Flag is not patented and therefore, "Anyone may manufacture it, and it may be used on all proper occasions."[23] In U.S. evangelical Christian schools, it is customary for the Christian flag to be displayed opposite the U.S. flag.[citation needed] In Canada and the United States, accommodationists and separationists have entered impassioned debate on the legality of erecting the Christian Flag atop governmental buildings.[24][25] Pledge [ edit ] Some churches and organizations practice a "pledge of allegiance" or "affirmation of loyalty" to the Christian Flag, which is similar to the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The first pledge was written by Lynn Harold Hough, a Methodist minister who had heard Ralph Diffendorfer, secretary to the Methodist Young People's Missionary Movement, promoting the Christian flag at a rally.[26] He wrote the following pledge: I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Saviour for whose kingdom it stands; one brotherhood, uniting all mankind in service and in love.[26] Some more conservative evangelical, Lutheran, and Baptist churches and schools may use an alternative version of the pledge: I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Saviour for whose Kingdom it stands; one Saviour, crucified, risen, and coming again with life and liberty for all who believe.[26] Others use this version: I pledge allegiance to the Christian Flag, and to the Savior for whose Kingdom it stands; one brotherhood uniting all [true] Christians, in service, and in love.[27] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ] |
Intel hopes to set "a new standard for commercial-grade drones," with its announcement of the Intel Falcon 8+ UAV for North American markets. This octocopter drone is based upon the 'leading' AscTec Falcon 8 drone, with the best performance and weight-to-payload ratio available today. Intel has taken the design further and improved upon it with its own technology including the Intel Cockpit for ground control, and Intel Powerpack smart batteries to power the UAV. The Intel Falcon 8+ is the first Intel-branded commercial drone. With its new drone product, Intel has incorporated full electronic system redundancy and automated aerial-sensing solutions with best-in-class onboard sensors. The triple-redundant AscTec Trinity autopilot further enhances the drone's core functionality. With all the AscTec UAV technology on board you might think it would be a good idea for Intel to buy up this specialist company – it already did so, back in January. Hinting at one possible use of the new Falcon 8+ System, Intel says that it can capture detailed images down to millimetre accuracy "and gives valuable structural analysis that helps users detect and prevent further damage to infrastructure". Drone operators will be able to generate highly valuable precision aerial data, says Intel. Above you can see the drone clearly pictured, and below is an equally impressive looking piece of hardware - the Intel Cockpit. From this water resistant device an operator controls the UAV and can even equip a tablet computer for flight planning and monitoring. You can read more in depth details about the Intel Falcon 8+, Intel Cockpit, and Intel PowerPack in a PDF factsheet. Intel asserts that "drones are an important computing platform for the future," and has created a webpage dedicated to drones and supporting technology. |
After the Assam victory, the BJP is aiming big in the northeast. The party on Tuesday formed the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) which would improve coordination among NDA partners in the region and strengthen party bases in the NE states. After Sarbananda Sonowal’s swearing-in ceremony as chief minister of the state, Amit Shah, BJP national president, held a meeting with chief ministers of Sikkim Paban Kr. Chamling, Arunachal Pradesh Kalikho Pul and Nagaland TR Zeliang. The chief ministers were present at the swearing-in ceremony of Sonowal. BJP national secretary Ram Madhav was also present in the crucial meeting of NDA partners. One of the architects of BJP’s victory in Assam assembly election, Himanta Biswa Sarma, was appointed convenor of NEDA. “For improving coordination among NDA partners in NE states and strengthening our base in the region, we have formed North East Democratic Alliance today. We will lay emphasis on good governance, speedy development in states where NDA partners are in power in the NE region,” said Sarma after formation of the new alliance. NEDA would target its main rival Congress in the region. BJP has already started its works to oust Congress from power in two Congress-ruled states of Meghayala and Manipur. The party may go for tie-up with small regional political parties in these states. Congress is in power in Mizoram also. BJP had supported dissident Congress MLA Kalikho Pul in overthrowing Nabam-Tuki led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh. First Published: May 25, 2016 00:48 IST |
Why the humble Dosa — the South Indian dish loved by all — continues to cost high when RBI is claiming a victory over inflation? Governor Raghuram Rajan blames lack of technology upgrades from its traditional ‘Tawa’ preparation and high wages of the person making it! Advertising ‘The technology for making Dosas hasn’t actually changed. Till today that person puts it (Dosa batter) on Tawa, spreads it around and then takes it out, right? There has been no technological improvement there. “However, the wages that you are paying to that gentleman, especially in a high-wage sort of state like Kerala, are going up all the time,” Rajan said. The RBI Governor was replying to a question from a Dosa- loving engineering student at a Federal Bank event in Kochi last night. “In real life, I have a query on Dosa prices — when inflation rates go up, Dosa prices go up, but when inflation rates are lower, the Dosa prices are not lowered. What is happening to our beloved Dosa, sir?” she asked. Rajan replied that the workers can be used in many productive areas where productivity has gone up such as factory works, banking where today that same bank clerks service many more people because of technology. “So, what happens is that in an economy which is growing and when there are sectors which are improving technologically while other sectors are not improving their technology, the prices for the goods manufactured by sectors, that are not improving their technology, will go up faster. Advertising “You are seeing it in the case of Dosa,” Rajan said. |
Oct 3, 2015; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs forward James van Riemsdyk (21) controls the puck in front of Detroit Red Wings goaltender Petr Mrazek (34) during the second period at the Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports According to The Fourth Period there is some activity around the Toronto Maple Leafs in the rumor mill. The Fourth Period had some information to pass along about the Toronto Maple Leafs in their latest post. “According to multiple league sources, several teams have inquired about van Riemdsyk, but it’s unclear if the Leafs are still willing to part with him.” (The Fourth Period) The Toronto Maple Leafs have had James Van Riemsdyk pop up in rumors before, but there hasn’t been much concrete speculation on him being dealt. His age, and talent, make him a player for the Toronto Maple Leafs to retain for the (anticipated) successful years that are somewhere on the horizon. In the same breath, though, those are also reasons that make him an attractive acquisition for teams around the league. Van Riemsdyk has a cap hit of $4.25M for an additional two years beyond the 2015-2016 season, which only adds to his value. The 26 year old has struggled this season to produce much offense, which has likely led to him being mentioned in the rumor mill. JVR is a player the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to have to evaluate and decide whether or not he’s a core piece moving forward. If he isn’t then they’d be wise to sell now and get as high of a return as possible. Talking With Anaheim? Also from The Fourth Period, the Toronto Maple Leafs are reportedly in conversation with the Anaheim Ducks on a deal. “The Leafs and Anaheim Ducks are rumored to be having significant trade talks, involving a number of players, though TFP could not confirm which players are being discussed. Adding fuel to the rumor fire Monday night was the fact Ducks GM Bob Murray was in attendance for the Maple Leafs’ 4-1 win over the Dallas Stars along with one of his pro scouts.” (The Fourth Period) Let’s play connect the dots and speculate, everyone’s favorite game. In other rumors recently, the Toronto Maple Leafs were in search of a goaltender. Anaheim has a goaltender named John Gibson that half the NHL would love to acquire. Gibson would be my first choice if I was calling Anaheim. After Gibson I’d be looking at Cam Fowler on defence and Nick Ritchie up front. Those aren’t cheap acquisitions, but the rumor from The Fourth Period suggests a multi-player transaction is being discussed, which could mean there are valuable pieces at play. Toronto has players to move and Anaheim could be looking to shake things up after a very slow start to the 2015-2016 campaign. |
Kevin Pietersen has revealed how he “almost envied” the Australian team during last summer’s Ashes series because of the relaxed environment and tactical superiority that new coach Darren Lehmann brought to his job. In his autobiography ‘KP’, Pietersen makes no effort to disguise the fractured relationship he developed with England’s Zimbabwe-born Team Director Andy Flower who he claims “built a regime, he didn’t build a team”. The antipathy between the star batsman and the national coach was already deeply embedded when Alastair Cook’s team arrived in Brisbane for last summer’s opening Ashes Test. In his book, Pietersen describes Flower – who led England to the top of the world Test rankings in 2011 but stood down from his role following the Ashes whitewash – as a “dreadful coach” whose “methods created an environment where people became terrified of failing”. The 34-year-old batsman, whose international career was also terminated in the wake of the Ashes disaster in Australia, drew a sharp distinction between the England dressing room and their rejuvenated rivals who had embraced Lehmann’s ‘play hard but enjoy the game’ philosophy. “I looked at the Aussie set-up and I almost envied them. They had brought in Darren Lehmann,” Pietersen writes. “Two quick points on Lehmann. “First, Michael Vaughan (ex-England captain and Lehmann’s former Yorkshire teammate) … described him as 'a fun character who laughs all the time, likes a beer and just loves to talk cricket ... also one of the hardest cricketers I have ever met' and went on to say: 'His ability to make people view cricket as just a game is his strength. “’He makes a player, even during pressurised situations, feel as if he is playing for his club side on a Saturday afternoon. He knows it is more important than that but he makes the player feel relaxed. “’It is a refreshing mentality to have' “Wow. “Second, Lehmann actively encourages aggressive batting against spinners on the principle that 'There are no fielders in the car park.' “Wow again. Are you reading this stuff Flower? “Lehmann was big and very Australian, and he kept his players chilled. “He was also out-thinking us the whole time.” Pietersen cites the personnel and structural changes employed to reshape the Australian batting order from the preceding Ashes series in the UK that England won three-nil, and the fact they were able to utilise the same bowling attack in each of the five Tests in Australia. And then there was the aggressive intent that was another hallmark of Lehmann’s leadership. “The Australians settled on a line-up that saw every ball bowled by Swanny (off-spinner Graeme Swann) as a chance for a six,” Pietersen writes. “No fielders in the car park. “Among the bowlers, Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon earned their places in (the preceding series in) England, but Mitchell Johnson was used carefully and cleverly in (that UK) summer series. “He didn't play the Tests, but they (Australia) let him loose in the more aggressive settings of the one-day games. “There, he gave a glimpse of the shock and awe to come before going back under wraps. “Then, in the meantime, the Australians got lads to bowl gently at us in the warm-up games and let us worry about Johnson until Brisbane. It worked.” Pietersen has described elsewhere in his book the fear that Johnson was able to instil throughout the England dressing room when he unleashed in Brisbane. Quick Single: England were scared of Mitch But he also documents how the strategic as well as philosophical differences between the two teams became starkly apparent to him. And he once again lays the blame squarely at the feet of Flower, and cites the culture of bullying that he claims was perpetuated by the England bowlers for muddying the minds of the batsmen and, ultimately, the entire team. “The Aussies had worked out what they were best at, and had a coach who saw the merits of his players and established a system that played to their strengths,” Pietersen says. “We were all at sea. “We were a mix of fear and fake cockiness, pretending to be up for a fight that we didn't have the weapons for. “We had a dressing room in which the bowlers were allowed to cow to the batters. “Flower was like a deer in the headlights. “He hated the Aussie aggression. “He had produced an ugly team who ground out wins by playing within our limits. “Now guys who would normally be conservative were swiping at things madly. “We didn't have any new ideas, and had also forgotten how to do the old things we were good at. “My role had always been to bring a bit of adventure to the batting order, but now we were just a series of individuals trying to survive out on the field. “Then we would go in and devour each other in the dressing room afterwards.” |
In late October 2012 the east coast of the United States was pummeled by Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Sandy swept through the entire eastern seaboard, killing over 250 people in seven countries. Financial losses were over $74 billion; Sandy was in fact the second-costliest natural disaster in United States history. What happened to the flood-damaged vehicles? One company had the foresight to sign a lease on a seldom-used airport just before the storm hit the coast. Thanks to photographer Doug Kuntz, we have aerial photographs of the salvage progress. ** According to the Insurance Crime Bureau, over 230,000 cars were damaged by Hurricane Sandy – 150,000 of them from New York. There are dozens of storm salvage companies pulling hurricane damaged cars from the area, but Insurance Auto Auctions (IAA) is one of the largest with about 40% of the Sandy volume. IAA employ experts to study weather patterns and predict major storm strikes; in the case of Hurricane Sandy, IAA spent $2.7M to lease Calverton Executive Airpark in advance of the storm. In addition, Insurance Auto Auctions leased massive holding facilities and sent 400 tow trucks to the area – all before Sandy even made landfall. Click thumbnails to enlarge Riverhead town supervisor Sean Walter said there are approximately 18,000 damaged vehicles stored at Calverton Airpark. If that number is accurate, Calverton represents just eight percent of reported Sandy’s hurricane damaged cars. If you’re interested in hearing more about what happens to the Hurricane Sandy damaged cars, the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has a quick video describing the progress that has been made: * courtesy Spencer Platt ** Advertisements Share this: Email Facebook Twitter Pinterest |
The prisoner’s dilemma shows why two perfectly rational individuals – in this example Owen Farrell and Johnny Sexton – might not cooperate, even if it appears to be in their best interests to do so. It is Warren Gatland’s dilemma now. For the British and Irish Lions to win a test series in New Zealand, Gatland must get the best out of these dual play-makers. Farrell has enough quality and strength in defence to wear 12 outside Sexton but the real value of this pairing would be seen by others profiting in attack. The obvious solution is Sexton at 10, Farrell at 12, with Robbie Henshaw and Jonathan Joseph scrapping over the 13 jersey (along with Elliot Daly and Garry Ringrose), but who kicks at goal? That makes for an interesting conversation come the week of the first test. Who wins that argument? Who makes that decision? Gatland’s dilemma now. The similarities are obvious in both character and dominance on the field (Farrell, now 25, is growing into a superb player and by all accounts a great guy to have in the team environment). They got rightly stuck into each other on Saturday but that was inevitable, and nothing new, as it is clear they represent everything good about their respective teams. In just two and half Six Nations games, Johnny ended any argument about who should play 10 for the Lions. Dan Biggar, Finn Russell and George Ford are competing amongst themselves to tour. Farrell is the next option at 10. He was really efficient when moved to outhalf for the last 15 minutes against Ireland. He has that Rugby League style about him, he’s an astute decision maker, but Johnny is an old school rugby union first-five that gets his team moving. Farrell can get there, and a summer alongside Johnny might just accelerate the process. Farrell, like Johnny or any of the great NFL quarterbacks, is willing to hold onto the ball until the best opportunity presents itself. That usually guarantees heavy contact as a flanker – such as Maro Itoje – knows he won’t be heavily punished for committing to a tackle when the outhalf still has the ball in his hands. On 26 minutes Farrell, playing heads up rugby, put Daly into space with a brilliant chip over the defensive line (and he stayed alive to run a support line for the offload with the attack only stopped by Seanie O’Brien and Peter O’Mahony tackles while Johnny was first to the breakdown). So, the Lions will have to find a workable balance in a very short space of time. It is a familiar narrative, one that Irish rugby are constantly trying to figure out. Rotation now looks like Irish rugby’s ideal companion. Jamie Heaslip is far from finished as an international number eight. He is having one of his best ever seasons. He got injured and the door was opened for Peter O’Mahony to produce a fantastic performance at six. But could Pete produce that level of brutal physicality for five games in a row without getting injured? Could anyone? CJ and Jamie are physical anomalies to the theory but even they need rest to play better. People look at the current Ireland backrow conundrum and say four into three simply does not go. Actually, it does or could. A rotation policy is currently working at loosehead prop with a balance being struck between Jack McGrath starting and Cian Healy coming off the bench. Or vice versa, depending on the opposition or shape of both men on any given week. Now, Ireland are not blessed in every position like we are at fullback, backrow and loosehead prop. But we are getting there. It means that players have to change their perspectives in order to get the most out of them. They will never be happy with wearing number 17 or 20 but it can make Ireland a better team. Players are hardwired into thinking: I play well this week, I start next week. That cannot be a non-negotiable any more. Granted, there will be exceptions for Tadhg, Johnny, CJ and Robbie but these are the players Ireland need at optimum levels when it really matters. It is a treacherous balancing act. But Joe is the right man to make those decisions. Joe also gives players the confidence to perform. Sometimes by putting enormous pressure on them. Joe Schmidt is exactly the man needed to coach and bring on Ireland's strength-in-depth. There was that conversation he had with Rob Kearney just before the Chicago kick-off or a number of moments working with Kieran Marmion over the past two years. Marmion didn’t make the World Cup squad but had been part of the training panel building up to that tournament. Joe wasn’t easy on him; he kept on him to improve fundamental areas essential to becoming the Ireland scrumhalf. He spoke as recently as November, post-Australia, about knowing Kieran can tackle, but not knowing whether he can control a Test match. By saying that, Joe challenged him publicly. Privately, he would have been giving Kieran specific goals to improve with the reward of being selected for Ireland. He backed him. I’ve seen Joe working away with players who are a year or so off the match 23. He reaches out to guys playing in France and England. He is keenly aware just how small our playing pool is. He shows players the pathway; encourages them to aim for the standard of those currently in the Ireland team so in the event of injuries they are ready. We see this with players who, seemingly, come from nowhere yet hit the ground running. The way Joe delivers a message is to put incredible pressure on the individual to improve but in the same breath he reveals a reward; selection is in your hands if you achieve this goal, or reach this standard. Convince me to pick you. That’s great coaching. Look at Luke McGrath when he came on; it looked like cap 20. Not his second game in a green jersey. That kick to the corner is why Leinster have already promoted Luke to their leadership group. Eddie Jones calls the England bench “finishers.” The Irish management have had an expectation from their bench to be ready from the first to the 80th minute for some time. Now, there are huge positives. Look at O’Mahony’s performance after two months on the bench, after missing out on the squad entirely in November. Same goes for Iain Henderson when given a start against England over Dev Toner. Again, see Dev’s impact when he came on. It mattered. The day of Brian O’Driscoll and Richie McCaw hitting 130-plus caps may be consigned to history. The first 30 caps I played for Ireland, props looked like props. The game wasn’t as attritional as it is today. Rotation, if done correctly, is definitely Ireland’s companion on the road to Japan 2019. But only if world class players continue to embrace the decision. Until now, we haven’t had the quality of players outside our starting XV to fully embrace this policy. We do now. And we will, more so, in the future. Of course we are always going to be shy in a couple of positions. That’s just a numbers thing. Ireland have five backrowers who should be playing Six Nations. It could be seven next season if Dan Leavy and Jack Conan continue to improve. Factoring in injuries, they can now look to spread the work load across five or six men over five matches. Andrew Conway's growth is a major plus for Ireland and he could begin to feature heavily. The result should produce more ravenous performances like O’Mahony produced against England. I was at an event with Will Carling before the match and the double Grand Slam winning captain noted that you never really knew how your team will perform until about five or ten minutes into any game. I knew we were in the fight to win on Saturday when I heard Seanie over the ref mic early on. A strong indicator of Leinster or Ireland being in a good collective head space is when Seanie won’t shut up. It has a positive ripple effect because it makes everyone around him talk more. Especially in defence. When you hear Seanie you don’t have to look for him, or the person he is yelling at, so you focus on ensuring those around you are organised. It lifts the team. I heard him on my ITV head phones for every scrum – talking his prop up before the ball was put-in until it was shipped on. What I like about Seanie talking is he isn’t mouthy. He isn’t trying to distract or antagonise the opposition. He is bringing teammates up to the high intensity he is playing at; cajoling whoever was near him into the next moment, the next carry, the next tackle. It is incessant but great to hear. Seanie had his match fitness back up to where he needed to be so he never shut up on Saturday. The energy was infectious. It was also clear that Ireland are stacked full of leaders – Seanie, Johnny, CJ, Pete and even Luke McGrath, while Jared Payne is a leader in how he plays, in the decisions he makes. That is not a pop at England, they are a younger group and as Jones says “14 months into a four year plan.” Ireland are just further down the track in terms of experience under Rory Best’s captaincy. It showed. We have seen, yet again, just how good this Ireland team are when they starve opponents of the ball. Ireland had 75 per cent of the possession in the opening 35 minutes. That drains the life out of any defence. Mistakes are inevitable, points will follow. If Ireland got it right in those opening 20 minutes in Murrayfield and Rory was driven over for that try in Cardiff (and we kept a rampant Wales at home scoreless for the last 10 minutes) they would be the best team in the world. But Ireland are not the only dog with a bone. Could they possibly be as motivated to beat France if not for defeat in Edinburgh? Same goes for how England were smashed but what if Ireland had won in Cardiff? England struggled under the weight of expectation going for back-to-back Grand Slams and a 19 match unbeaten record. Just as any team would. The overall analysis of this Six Nations has Ireland in a good place. They lost away from home but so did everyone else. Nothing in international rugby is a linear path. People isolate performances and immediately call for heads to roll. Stand back, view it all and there are clear incremental improvements in how Ireland are playing and performing since the summer tour of South Africa. No rolling heads, just rotate our talent to ensure the maximum value is drawn from the 140 professionals on this island and more great days will follow. |
When Danielle Powell fell in love with the woman she would marry, it ended up costing her nearly $6,000 — and her education. Powell was finishing her psychology degree at Grace University in Omaha, Nebraska, when she started openly dating Michelle Rogers. Unfortunately for her, Grace isn’t your ordinary college, but a private Christian school that requires its students uphold a rigid code of “moral” conduct: Grace University’s code of conduct for its students is strict: No kissing, no prolonged hugs and certainly no premarital sex. The school even monitors students’ television habits, forbidding HBO, MTV, Comedy Central and several other channels “because of the values they promote.” The rules are laid out in a student handbook and signed by students every year. “No one was more surprised than me,” Powell recalled of her relationship. “I had been very religious since I was a small child, and that did not fit in with what I thought I believed.” Last January, the university confronted her about the relationship and suspended her. To be considered for readmission, Powell had to undergo months of mandatory counseling, church attendance, spiritual training and mentoring, in addition to promising she wouldn’t engage in premarital sex. She obliged. She was readmitted, but only briefly. Just a few days letter, Powell received a letter from the university’s vice president, Michael James, informing her that she was expelled. James wrote that her re-admittance had been based on professions she made to various faculty and staff that she would change her behavior, but that “the prevailing opinion is that those professions appear to have been insincere, at best, if not deceitful.” “I was livid,” Powell said. “I had done everything they asked me to do. I drove over to my mentors’ house and just bawled my eyes out.” To make matters worse and prove their “values” once and for all, Grace University sent Powell a bill for $6,000, the tuition cost for her unfinished semester that should have been covered by federal loans, grants and scholarships. The school even refused to submit the proper transcripts and credits for her to transfer to another university unless she paid off the tuition she says should have been covered. School officials declined to discuss specifics of Powell’s case, citing federal student privacy laws, but through a public relations agency said it would provide Powell official transcripts and transfer her credits. She noted that nine months after she was expelled in January 2012, the registrar’s office denied her request for her transcripts because of the bill, though she eventually received student copies of her transcripts. Powell’s wife has launched a Change.org petition asking that the school take back its financial demands; as of Saturday it has close to 40,000 signatures. She writes: Danielle dreamed of completing her degree at Grace University in Omaha, Nebraska and becoming the first person in her family to graduate from college. She earned scholarships to cover her tuition and, for 3 ½ years, contributed to the school both academically and in extracurricular activities, including playing on the volleyball team and starting an on-campus homeless outreach in Omaha’s downtown area. In the spring 2011, that dream came to an end when university officials found out Danielle was in a same-sex relationship and expelled her from school just one semester short of graduation. She was told, “…it would be impossible for the faculty of Grace University to affirm your Christian character, a requirement for degree conferral.” Danielle’s life was completely turned upside down and her academic career ended simply because she fell in love with another woman. The comments on this Associated Press article about the incident are disappointing, with a number of people dismissing Powell as a misguided girl who simply broke a contract with her school and must suffer the consequences. But the problem is much bigger than that: it’s about the culture of religious universities that impose their so-called “values” on students rather than acknowledge their own prejudice. These schools refuse to acknowledge that there’s more than one way to be a Christian, so when circumstances like this arise, they shatter a student’s life with no harm to the school at all. Isn’t it easy to blame your bigotry on a breach of contract? Not to mention that while the school may have had the right to expel her, they displayed none of their so-called “grace” in charging her tuition costs for a semester when she wasn’t even in class. There’s no question that Powell was a valuable member of the Grace University community who deserves far better than how she was treated. The real question, though, is why she’d choose to attend such a hateful school in the first place. |
The 2015 Bike Master Plan comprehensively maps out bike routes in every neighborhood in Baltimore. It's a robust guiding document for bicycling in Baltimore, but it lacks specificity in two areas: facility selection and prioritization of implementation. Recognizing these faults, Baltimore City Department of Transportation has drafted an addendum to the 2015 Bike Master Plan, the Baltimore City Separated Bike Lane Network. Like our neighbors in the DC region, the addendum begins by mapping the level of "traffic stress" on each of Baltimore's streets, and then identifies a network of protected lanes and supporting bicycle facilities, like bike boulevards, to connect to existing facilities and existing "low-stress" streets. A "low-stress" street is far more likely to be used by people identified as "interested but concerned" bicycle riders. For example, only about 38% of "interested but concerned" bicycle riders would use a standard bike lane, but that number grows to 80% if protected bike lanes are present or if the street is slow, calm, and has a neighborhood feel. |
In an amazing act of generosity, a substantial majority of the Roselle Catholic faculty and staff have voluntarily and anonymously elected to give back a part of their salary, which provides tuition assistance to more than 25% of the student body. In these challenging times, an increasing number of our students are in need of financial aid if they are to attend Roselle Catholic. Almost 60% of the Roselle Catholic student body are in need of, and receive some level of tuition assistance -- starting at $350 up to considerably more. A year at Roselle Catholic now costs $10,850 in tuition and fees (not to mention books and transportation), a sizable sum for just about all of our students' families. While the need is clearly there, the school can't address it without lots of help from its many alumni and friends. Some of our teachers have decided to confront this dilemma head on. They have started something called "the Faculty/Staff Initiative," whereby the teachers, administrators and support staff can donate a portion of their salary to the Tuition Assistance Fund. Acting voluntarily and anonymously, a substantial majority of the school's employees have elected to participate, and together have pledged approximately $85,000 in payroll deductions over the next 10 months to make Roselle Catholic more affordable to deserving students in need of help. This $85,000 represents tuition aid to just over 100 students. So, the amazing generosity of faculty and staff helps keep 100 or more kids at Roselle Catholic. The Office of Development, headed by Director of Development Patrick Collins, is planning a campaign that will ask our alumni and other friends to follow our staff's lead and join them in this special sign of support for our Tuition Assistance Fund. |
Data Analysis Reveals Consumers Are Paying Down, While the Federal Government Is Piling Up, Unprecedented Rates of Debt; Massive Tax Increases Loom by Bill Sardi Recently by Bill Sardi: The Flu Vaccine Horror Story You Never HeardAbout Data gleaned from governmental agencies reveals consumers are beginning to reduce their personal debts while the rate of debt growth by the federal government in the past two years is 3—7 times greater than in prior years in this decade. While the annual rate of debt growth for consumer debt rose by around 10—11% at the beginning of the decade, it came to a halt in 2008 and declined in 2009. Meanwhile, the rate of debt growth by the federal government, which ranged from 3.9 to 10.9 percent per year from 2002 to 2007, rose to 24.2% in 2008 and 28.2% in 2009. A data review also reveals that: For the first time since 1930 the rate of growth of the gross domestic product, everything produced by all the people and all the companies in the U.S., has almost come to a complete stop in 2009. The federal government provides a rosier picture of the current economic meltdown, choosing to portray it as a brief recession rather than the complete and prolonged collapse of modern banking and currency systems that it is. There is no technological breakthrough that would give reason for high rates of unemployment to drop, nor is there any meaningful reform of financial systems and institutions to prevent a repeat of the recent economic bubble that created false prosperity throughout the nation. Any stimulus programs appear to be fleeting attempts to temporarily cover for major economic problems that demand true reform. The growth in federal debt will peak in 2009 and begin to be reduced thereafter, according to projections by the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), but this debt reduction reflects higher tax revenues rather than any cutbacks in government spending. While the OMB predicts a $192 billion decline in individual federal income tax revenues between 2008 and 2009, it inexplicably projects individual tax revenues will rise from less than $1 trillion in 2009 to $1.6 trillion in 2014, which foretells huge increases in federal income tax rates rather than any rise in employment, wages or increases in exports or consumer spending. While total federal debt increases over the next half-decade, it falsely appears to drop by nearly $400 billion in 2010, as federal spending declines in the aftermath of the bank bailout/Fannie Mae-FreddieMac/ troubled asset relief program. Federal debt still is at unprecedented levels in upcoming years. Furthermore, the OMB figures don’t add up correctly. The OMB estimates the gap between Federal revenues and federal government spending will be $535 billion in 2014. (See chart below.) But using OMBs own figures, by 2014 there is a huge gap between individual income taxes collected ($1.612 trillion) and federal outlays ($4.016 trillion). Taxes on corporations will make up for some of that gap ($420 billion), but that leaves a spending/tax revenue gap of $1.984 trillion in 2014! Taxes would need to be nearly doubled to eliminate debt financing of federal spending in 2014. The federal government gets into onerous debt when it passes legislation that requires funding without any source of revenue. The gap between revenues and spending is then closed by obtaining loans, which becomes the national (collective) debt. The President recently urged Congress to refrain from passing any future legislation that requires spending that isn’t offset by cuts in federal spending. The week following the President’s appeal for budget-neutral legislation, the Executive Branch proposed a massive health insurance reform plan that widened the gap between federal revenues versus spending by more than $1 trillion. This gap was to be reduced by taxing health benefits provided by employers and by increased taxes upon wealthy Americans. ECONOMIC STATISTICS: PAST OR PROJECTED PERFORMANCE Sources: Office of Management & Budget, Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT — In Trillions of Dollars (Source: Office Management & Budget) 10.48 10.96 11.69 12.42 13.18 13.81 14.27 14.16 14.57 15.14 15.97 16.80 17.49 GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT — Percent growth or decline (Source: Office Management & Budget) 3.4% 4.7% 6.6% 6.3% 6.1% 4.8% 3.3% —0.7% 2.9% 4.0% 5.4% 5.2% 4.1% INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX — In Billions of Dollars (Source: Office Management & Budget) 858 793 808 927 1.043 1,163 1,145 953 1,051 1,211 1,381 1,500 1,612 FEDERAL OUTLAYS — In Trillions of Dollars (Source: Office Management & Budget) 2.011 2.160 2.293 2.472 2.655 2.729 2.983 3.998 3.591 3.615 3.633 3.817 4.016 SURPLUS OR DEFICIT — In Billions of Dollars (Source: Office Management & Budget) —157 —377 —412 —318 —248 —160 —458 —1,841 —1,258 —929 —557 —512 —535 DEBT GROWTH — HOME MORTGAGE — Percent growth or decline (Source: The Federal Reserve) 7.3% 8.1% 8.9% 9.5% 9.0% 8.7% 6.0% 4.9%* — — — — — DEBT GROWTH — CONSUMER CREDIT — Percent growth or decline (Source: The Federal Reserve) 10.8% 11.6% 11.1% 11.1% 10.0% 6.6% 0.3% —1.7%* — — — — — DEBT GROWTH — FEDERAL GOVERNMENT — Percent growth or decline (Source: The Federal Reserve) 7.6% 10.9% 9.0% 7.0% 3.9% 4.9% 24.2% 28.2%* — — — — — NET INTEREST PAYMENT ON DEBT — In Billions of Dollars (Source: Office Management & Budget) 170 153 160 183 226 237 252 142 135 254 348 411 460 UNEMPLOYMENT RATE (See Congressional Budget Office data projections) 5.8% 6.0% 5.5% 5.1% 4.6% 4.6% 5.8% 9.3% 10.2% 9.1% 7.2% 5.6% 4.9% * 2nd Quarter 2009 data The reaction of the federal government to a downturn in the economy has been to spend wildly almost as if there were no consequences. Interest on the National Debt will rise from $142 billion 2009 to $460 billion in 2014. An article in the New York Times reveals interest payments on the current $12 trillion of accumulated national debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion in 2009. As the New York Times article points out, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined 2009 federal budgets for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such massive debt causes false employment and a false economy. The current downturn in the economy, as the aftermath of the economic bubble brought on by cheap money policies at the Federal Reserve Bank and by relaxation of requirements to qualify for a home loan, now challenges every level of American society as to how to pay interest on its crushing debt. The federal government is adding to the collective debt of Americans at a time when incomes are plunging and unemployment is rising. It is unlikely the principal on the national debt will ever be paid down given derelict spending now underway. The US Debt Clock tells all, in real time. The Debt Clock shows that the US, with 108 million taxpayers out of a population of 307 million, with 43 million workers who pay zero income tax, and with 21 million US workers being on the public dole as federal, state or local employees, and nearly 16 million unemployed chasing about 2 million available job openings, this leaves less than 100 million taxpayers to shoulder the nation’s bills. The National Debt now adds up to $39,000 per taxpayer and other unfunded liabilities (Social Security, Medicare and a prescription drug program) amount to an additional $345,000 of debt per citizen. Despite denials by politicians, according to a pie chart issued by the OMB (see below), more federal revenues will be derived from huge increases in federal income taxes, while borrowing to make up for the federal deficit will subside. This is because foreign lenders (mainly China and Japan) are reticent to lend America any more money, fearing the US will default on its loans either by devaluing the US dollar or by non-payment. In 2009 the gap between spending and revenues was closed by printing more money, which threatens to cause inflation. Fortunately, the newly printed money was parked at US banks and did not enter the economy to fan the flames of inflation. The US Treasury says it will not print money to make up for spending gaps next year, which again suggests massive tax increases are inevitable. Burden the wealthy The United States has chosen to lay the burden for this economic mess upon upper-income groups. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation in Washington DC, the tax burden upon the top 1% of tax payers now exceeds that paid by the bottom 95% of taxpayers. (See chart below.) However, the Washington DC-based Tax Foundation reports that even the most onerous tax upon wealthy Americans cannot possibly close the anticipated deficit for 2010. According to Bill Ahern, director of policy and communications at the Tax Foundation, a 90% federal tax rate on wealthy Americans plus state and local income taxes and other taxes would well exceed the entire income for many upper-income households. There is no possible way the wealthy can shoulder this debt burden. It will have to be spread across the income spectrum, raising taxes of joint filers from 10—35 percent to 27—95 percent. This essentially represents a tripling of the federal income tax. For example, to balance the 2010 federal budget, a taxpayer paying $7,055 dollars would have to pay $20,515, and a wealthy American who pays $800,000 in federal taxes would have to pay almost $2 million. The Tax Foundation reports that even in 2012, when the President’s Budget projects a lower deficit, tax rates would still be need to be prohibitively high in order to balance the budget: nearly double, with rates ranging from 18.7 percent to 74.1 percent. The Best of Bill Sardi The Best of Bill Sardi |
Captain Kane Williamson struggled to fathom how the Wellington Test escaped so quickly from New Zealand's grasp, and he could barely hide his frustration that spin was central to their demise. Having recovered on the opening day to post 268 - on the back of Henry Nicholls' maiden Test century - New Zealand had South Africa 94 for 6 shortly before lunch on the second. From there, however, the match turned on a 160-run stand between Quinton de Kock and Temba Bavuma followed by a last-wicket bolstering partnership of 57. New Zealand were five down before the deficit was erased and their last five wickets collapsed for 16 runs in the final session of the third day as Keshav Maharaj claimed a career-best 6 for 40. "To see it slip away so quickly, today in particular but also back end of yesterday, the frustrating part for us is when you play a side like South Africa, and you do have them under pressure you have to keep them there," Williamson said. "That's the challenge and you have to do it for a long period of time, and if you don't, they can change the shape of the match quite quickly. We certainly let it slip very quickly and it went bad quickly." Williamson was critical of how his batsmen handled South Africa's spinners on a surface "not offering a lot of turn". Maharaj claimed eight in the match to take his series tally to 13 at 13.92 - the best tally for any bowler - and JP Duminy nipped in with four in New Zealand's first innings to stymie their recovery. However, Williamson did not believe they had been caught out by the pre-series talk of the pace attack South Africa would bring to their shores only to be gazumped by the spinner. "I guess you don't expect to see much spin here at the Basin when the wickets are a bit green and taking a bit of movement for seamers," Williamson said. "Often the spinner's role is to hold up an end into the wind. For them to take 12 wickets is disappointing. "Credit to them, they did bowl well. But on a surface I thought more suited to the seam bowlers, to lose that many wickets to spin, in the first innings in particular when the ball wasn't spinning, is something we need to address moving forward," he added. "We spent a bit of time in India when it went square and showed better application than we have in this match. We do need to play it hell of a lot better." New Zealand are coming to the end of a busy home season - which has included visits by Pakistan, Bangladesh and Australia before South Africa, plus a quick trip across the Tasman - and before that they had overseas tours to Zimbabwe, South Africa and India which began in August. Williamson, though, wanted to believe this performance was a bad day, albeit a "very, very bad day", rather than signs of fatigue. "You're in the moment and giving it everything. We are trying to look at it as a bad day but it was a huge turn in the match," he said. After dusting themselves down - and they have two extra days to do that - New Zealand will have to work out their response in Hamilton. The pitch is expected to take turn - it did during the two one-day internationals - which at the start of the series may have been seen as New Zealand's chance to ambush South Africa, who have since supplemented their squad with offspinner Dane Piedt. However, the success of Maharaj means he'll go there full of confidence having exploited a slow surface in Dunedin and one without huge assistance in Wellington. Mitchell Santner, the left-arm spinner, could return to the line-up while legspinner Ish Sodhi may be added to the squad when it is named later in the week. There will also be hopeful glances towards the fitness of Ross Taylor and Trent Boult, the former's absence the bigger loss despite the maiden Test hundred for Nicholls and Jeet Raval's battling 80 in Wellington. "It's the final game of the summer and it's important we do get back on the horse very quickly," Williamson said. "Will try and look at it as a bad day, but it is a bit of a blow really." |
Welcome to Rogue Squadron, pilot! In this series we will be looking at different squadrons you can fly in Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing miniatures game. We give you the squad, what expansion pack all of the upgrades come from and then give you the low down on how best to fly it. Strap in and get ready to fly… All Wings Report In TIE Defender “Countess Ryad” (Imperial Veterans Expansion) (36 pts) (PS5) When you reveal a Straight maneuver, you may treat it as a K-turn maneuver. Elite Pilot Talent- Juke (TIE F/O Expansion): When attacking, if you have an evade token, you may change 1 of the defender’s results into a result. Juke (TIE F/O Expansion): When attacking, if you have an evade token, you may change 1 of the defender’s results into a result. Title- TIE/x7 (Imperial Veterans Expansion): Your upgrade bar loses the Missile and Cannon upgrade icons. After executing a 3-, 4-, or 5-speed maneuver, you may assign 1 evade token to your ship. 2x TIE Defender “Delta Squadron Pilot” (TIE Defender Expansion) (33 pts) (PS1) None Cannon- Ion Cannon (B-Wing/M3-A/Slave-1/TIE Defender Expansion): Attack (3, range 1-3): Attack 1 ship. If this attack hits, the defender suffers 1 damage and receives 1 ion token. Then cancel all dice results. Ion Cannon (B-Wing/M3-A/Slave-1/TIE Defender Expansion): Attack 1 ship. If this attack hits, the defender suffers 1 damage and receives 1 ion token. Then cancel all dice results. Title- TIE/D (Imperial Veterans Expansion): Once per round, after you perform an attack with a secondary weapon that costs 3 or fewer squad points, you may perform a primary weapon attack. Lock S-Foils in Attack Position With the release of Imperial Veterans the TIE Defender, these long neglected ships, will be seeing a resurgence in a big way. It’s hard to saw how often we’ll see triple Defender lists but I like the idea of this kind of list (so much so that I bought triple Defenders when they first launched). I debated what list to put as the showcase list for talking about triple TIE Defenders. While the potential variations are many, I went with the above solely because I’ve flown it. We’ll discuss it’s strengths and weaknesses and compare to some other builds. My first desire when building a triple Defender list was to run three generics with the TIE/D title and cannons. But since I didn’t want to buy two Imperial Veterans (netting me five TIE Defender models) I went with a mix of the two titles. The TIE/x7 will probably see the most play as it is quite powerful with it’s free evade token and price reduction but the above combo is all about maximizing damage potential. With two ships wielding ion cannons and the TIE/D title you get a total of five shots from three ships. Two ships could end up ioned each round giving you a lot of board control. Thanks to their preference for jousting, due to the white 4 K-turn, Defenders get a lot of mileage out of ion cannons. While the two Delta’s are trying to control movement and generally be annoying, the Countess is flitting about being unpredictable and stripping tokens. Thanks to Juke and TIE/x7, as long as she goes fast she’s forcing her target to either take extra damage or spend a Focus token. This increases the hit chances of the two Delta’s. With her ability you can never be sure if she’s going to turn around or pull something sneaky by just taking the soft one. Just having the option to make a 5 K-turn is incredibly potent as that allows you to clear a good distance so it’s hard to block. Variations Sticking to these pilots, the best variation is to drop one ion cannon to a tractor beam and give Ryad Push the Limits and a TIE Mk II. She suddenly becomes a lot more dangerous as she can get a Focus, Target Lock and Evade every round. Just giving her the option to clear a stress on a maneuver other than straight is also very useful. As for other potential triple Defender lists, we’ll stick with the restriction of just using one copy of Imperial Veterans: Vessery + Marksmanship + TIE/D + Ion Cannon + TIE Mk II 2x Delta’s + TIE/x7 + TIE Mk II This one has potential as Vessery can be one of the most accurate ships in the game if played right. If you take TL with your Deltas Vessery is almost definitely going to get three hits on all of his attacks. The main downside is that Vessery becomes the obvious first target. Compared to the above list, the Delta’s are easier and therefore more tempting, leaving Ryad around longer to be more useful in the end game. Vessery + TIE/D + Tractor Beam Ryad + TIE/x7 + Adaptability Glaive + TIE/x7 The main advantage of this list is that you have three PS 6 Defenders. They are moving after all generics so you have some arc dodging potential. You’ll want Vessery firing first to get maximum benefit out of the tractor beam but it adds a lot of potential shenanigans. Of course, the list suffers against real aces as it fairs no better than triple Delta’s. Comments comments |
U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy arrives in Okinawa Tuesday for a highly anticipated visit that will center on the U.S. military presence and the unpopular relocation of a Marine base within the prefecture. While scheduled to meet with Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, senior local business leaders who support the relocation of Futenma air station to the Henoko district of Nago, and members of the U.S. military and their families, Kennedy is also sure to encounter anti-base demonstrators. The trip comes about a month and a half after Nakaima caused an uproar by approving a landfill project for the partially offshore Henoko replacement base, and just over three weeks after incumbent Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine, who strongly opposes the base, won re-election. Nakaima’s decision to approve the landfill project has been widely condemned in Okinawa. Last month, the prefectural Assembly passed a resolution calling on him to resign for breaking a campaign promise to seek to move the base outside of Okinawa. Pressure on Nakaima to resign is growing. However, because he’s not expected to run again when his term ends later this year, pro-Henoko supporters in the Okinawan business community and the local Liberal Democratic Party chapter have been searching for his successor for some time. Nakaima and Kennedy are scheduled to meet Wednesday morning in Naha. A U.S. Embassy spokesman said there would also be opportunities for the ambassador to hear from proponents and critics of the base. One of the more prominent members of the latter is Inamine. A Nago spokesman said the mayor was expected to attend a reception with Kennedy Wednesday evening in Naha, but that no formal meeting between them was currently planned. Despite Nakaima’s approval of the landfill project, Inamine has promised to use his authority as mayor to block specific permits needed to actually build it, raising the possibility of further delays. The expectation that Futenma will close in five years, as Nakaima has demanded, is likely to be the most contentious question the ambassador will face. |
The only danger about people like me and Ed saying Ron Paul can never win is that it fuels his anti-establishment cred. Paul has two bases of support: a libertarian base that likes Paul for his consistent purism on stripping government of all but extremely limited powers and a really angry base that is more about creating chaos than philosophy. This second group would like nothing more than to send a giant message of anger to the political establishment, and Paul is a good vehicle for that. But, as I argued yesterday, as primaries unfold, most voters become less and less interested in sending a message and more interested in electing a president. Under that theory, Paul will hit his ceiling pretty fast, as perhaps another protest candidate, Newt Gingrich, already has. I also agree with Ed that Ron Paul’s potential strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire — after all, isn’t the Granite State’s slogan, “Live free or die,” tattooed on his chest? — will benefit Mitt Romney. The specter of a Paul presidency made even slightly manifest will help Romney do what he does: Call his reluctant flock home. |
Texas commercial real estate markets have for the most part dodged the bullet of lower oil and gas prices, a new analysts report says. Dallas in particular has seen either low or no impact from the cutbacks in the state’s energy sector, according to the new report by Morningstar Credit Ratings LLC. “The oil market has had a tempered effect across the Texas commercial real estate property market as a result of the state’s diversified economic base,” Morningstar analyst Stephanie Mah writes. “While pockets of vulnerability are surfacing in the Houston multifamily and office markets, commercial real estate in Dallas and San Antonio has remained relatively unscathed. “Morningstar Credit Ratings LLC expects Dallas and San Antonio to remain fairly insulated from the oil decline aftershocks,” the report says. “The recent rebound in crude-oil prices should mitigate potential further deterioration." While Texas lost almost 34,000 energy sector jobs in 2015 and more cutbacks have been announced this year, Morningstar’s analysts are relatively optimistic about the state’s real estate markets. The exception is the Houston office market, which the ratings firm said has high downside risk from the declining oil and gas energy employment. “Amidst this backdrop of a diversified workforce, the Houston commercial real estate market has generally fared well, but some cracks are appearing,” the report says. Dallas looks much brighter, according to Morningstar. “Dallas also boasts a diversified economy, and its economic base is less rooted to the oil industry,” the analyst says. “Economic activity in Dallas and Fort Worth remained robust.” |
By Tony Cartalucci In an article by Thai PBS titled, “US cuts 2018 funding for demining operations in Cambodia,” it’s revealed that next year’s meager $2 million in US government funding for de-mining operations of US unexploded ordnance (UXO) in eastern Cambodia leftover from the Vietnam War has been discontinued without warning or explanation. The move caused confusion across Cambodia’s government, as well as across partner nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Cambodia participating in the US program. Speculation over the move revolves around growing tensions between Washington and Phnom Penh as the United States desperately attempts to reassert itself in Asia Pacific, while Asian states – including Cambodia – continue to build closer and more constructive ties with Beijing at the expense of Washington’s waning influence. Cambodia has recently exposed and ousted a myriad of US-funded fronts posing as NGOs and independent media platforms executing a campaign of US-backed political subversion. This includes the disbanding of the Cambodia National Rescue opposition party and the arrest of its leader, Kem Sokha, who bragged of his role in a US conspiracy to overthrow the Cambodian government and install him into power. Tensions in Cambodia represent a wider, regional trend where US footholds face increasing scrutiny and resistance as Washington’s abuse of “NGOs,” “rights advocacy,” and “democracy promotion” is systematically exposed and rolled back. Cut or Renewed, US UXO Assistance is Meaningless The US embassy in Cambodia would claim after receiving backlash for the move that the US had unilaterally decided to shut down funding in order to open up bidding for a new and “world-class removal program” – the details of which have yet to be confirmed or released. The US boasts that it has spent “more than 114 million dollars” over the past 20 years to clear explosives it itself helped drop on Cambodia as part of its nearly two decades-long war in Vietnam and wider intervention in Southeast Asia – or in other words – the US has spent over 5,000 times less in 20 years on removing UXO in Cambodia than it does annually on its current military operations around the globe. In fact, a single F-35 Joint Strike Fighter warplane costs roughly the same amount of money the US has spent on de-mining Cambodia over the last 20 years. There are an estimated 6 million pieces of UXO still littering Cambodia, which since the end of the Vietnam War and the rule of the Khmer Rouge have cost nearly 20,000 Cambodians their lives – with casualties still reported monthly. Efforts that last 20 years, cost as little as a single warplane in Washington’s current arsenal, and still leave people dead or maimed monthly indicate efforts that are halfhearted – a diplomatic stunt more than sincere reparations or humanitarian concern. Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free? Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets Doubling Nothing is Still Nothing In neighboring Laos, the United States left an estimated 80 million submunitions littering the country, or about 11 for each man, woman, and child that lives there. 20,000 people have also been killed by UXO in Laos and many more have been maimed. According to the Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme (UXO LAO), 444,711 submunitions (about 0.55%) have been destroyed between 1996 and 2010. Despite the dangerous and exhausting work, eliminating 0.55% of the 80 million submunitions still littering the country amounts to virtually nothing. Despite this, the US insists that it is “dramatically” increasing its efforts. US Ambassador to ASEAN Nina Hachigian would claim upon the US being criticized for its current meddling in Laos in light of the horrific UXO legacy it has left there, that: We’ve been spending hundreds of millions of [dollars] to clean them up and [President] Obama just doubled [our] annual [contribution]. Western establishment journal, The Diplomat, in an article titled, “Obama in Laos: Cleaning up After the Secret War,” would try and explain this increased “contribution,” claiming (emphasis added): |
Jeff Fischer Jeff Fischer Voice actor Jeff Fischer Jeff Smith, formerly Jeff Fischer, is Hayley's husband, however prior to their elopement in "100 A.D.", they had been a frequently on again off again couple. Jeff was brutally beaten by Stan's boss, Avery Bullock in "Bullocks To Stan". He has also recovered from being crushed under a heavy object in "Phantom of the Telethon" and having all his skin peeled from his body by Roger in "Love, American Dad Style". Until "Joint Custody", Jeff had not spoken to his father for years and "his mother ran away before he was born". In that episode, he went to his father Henry Fischer's farm in Raleigh, North Carolina, when trying to escape from Stan and Roger. Jeff is wanted in Florida for possession of marijuana as he had skipped bail. In "Daesong Heavy Industries II: Return to Innocence", a navy carrier captain believes that Jeff may be his long-lost illegitimate son, and carries a photo in a locket of a woman that bears a striking resemblance to Jeff. In "Naked to the Limit, One More Time", Jeff discovers about Roger being an alien and Stan has to kill one of them so the CIA wouldn't find out and risk his family. When Roger asks Jeff for a hug before he leaves, Roger tosses him into a tractor beam from a ship sent to pick him up from his home planet which takes Jeff away, leaving a stunned Hayley behind. In "Lost in Space", he is forced to reveal the trickery of Emperor Zing in hiding true love from his people, setting off a revolution and escapes in a spacecraft, looking for a way to get back to Earth and to Hayley. In "The Longest Distance Relationship", Jeff is able to communicate with Hayley though a CB radio and discovers a way to return to earth through a wormhole, but arrives 60 years in the future and learns that he cost her a chance to have a great life with Millionaire Matt Davis. Unhappy with having upset the family and giving the elderly Hayley a heart attack, he returns through the wormhole and tells the again-young Hayley to move on with her life as he sadly gives up on her, unaware that Matt is killed by Roger very shortly after. Jeff appears to return from space in "Holy Shit, Jeff's Back!", but he acts strange, causing Hayley some doubts, although his new attitude soon wins over Stan. In reality, he is an alien named Zebleer from a species that "collects" and he has come to sample more earth items, his race having dissected Jeff in order to find out more about him. Hayley and Roger board the alien mothership and find that the real Jeff has been killed previously and when they are captured, they are due to be next. Having bonded with Stan over froyo, Zebleer confesses what is going on and escorts Stan to the ship to save Hayley, noting that the froyo makes mankind worth protecting. When Hayley rejects his direct offer to replace Jeff, he instead elects to have Jeff's brain put in his body, trading his life. As they return to earth, Roger informs them that they will have their memories erased when they depart the spaceship, leaving them unaware that Jeff is no longer entirely human. When Jeff and Hayley decide to have a baby between episodes "Bahama Mama" and "Roger's Baby", they find they cannot get pregnant due to Jeff's alien physiology. Roger becomes a surrogate to "re-birth" Jeff into a fully-human adult, although a hormonal imbalance nearly causes Roger to flee with the embryonic Jeff and rename him "Tristen." After the situation is resolved, Jeff is reborn as fully human, although he decides he is too young to have a child. Personality He is known to be a 'stoner', and lived in his van for some time. He seems to be extremely easy going; He was dumped by Hayley in "Bullocks To Stan" for being a push-over. However, Stan taught him to stand up for himself by beating, electrocuting, and entombing him and they got back together. In addition, the Jeff and Hayley break up became some sort of annual tradition on American Dad!. Episodes noting the break up include the aforementioned "Bullocks To Stan", "Haylias", "Dungeons and Wagons" and "Pulling Double Booty". Jeff also appears to care very much for Hayley, as revealed in "For Whom the Sleigh Bell Tolls", as he tells this to Stan when he heals him. In "Lost in Space", he was willing to put his privates on the line to prove that his love for Hayley is real. Notes |
Photographers around the world can compete for a US$4,000 fellowship. SocialDocumentary.net (CDN) and Management Sciences for Health (MSH) are seeking submissions founded in using photography to increase the understanding of complex global issues.Specific topics may include, but are not limited to, problems of and solutions to global health, conflict, security, the environment, human trafficking, loss of traditional cultures, domestic violence, energy, incarceration, climate change and the Arab Awakening.Two grand prize winners will be each awarded a US$4,000 fellowship to spend up to two weeks documenting the global health projects and up to two weeks of expense-paid travel in one to two of the countries in which MSH works. The SDN documentary winner will receive US$1,000 cash award.All winning entries will participate in an exhibition at powerHouse Arena, Brooklyn, NY, February 27 through March 23, 2014. SDN and MSH will pay all printing and preparation costs for the exhibition.Photographers selected for the MSH Photography Fellowship must: provide all his/her own photography equipment and have valid passport (MSH will arrange for any appropriate visas), have strong spoken English language skills, be available for up to two weeks of travel to between January and June, 2014.In addition to the photography part of the project, photographers must prepare and execute a one-day training program for MSH local staff.The application fee of US$35 allows for submitting 6–24 images.The deadline is Sept. 28.For more information, click here |
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government, created by Congressional statute (see 47 U.S.C. § 151 and 47 U.S.C. § 154) to regulate interstate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the media, public safety and homeland security, and modernizing itself.[4] Click to expand... DISCLAIMER: Everything in here is my interpretation of the information I found. If I'm wrong, please correct me.UPDATE:ANATEL - the equivalent to the FCC in Brazil is not so strict when it comes to NDAs of Photos:Note the different numbers in the document and photo.END OF UPDATEWhat is the FCC? I will quote WikipediaBasically every device that includes wireless data transmission technology and that is going to be sold to the public in the US must be approved by the FCC.Now to the meat of the thread.Microsoft is just testing the wireless chip for FCC approval. (See modular approval request)The console itself is called the "Host".Each FCC filing has Exhibits including the label location, test photos, manuals etc...The applicant can chose to NOT make certain information public by the FCC which mostly includes photos, manuals and drawings of the device.This will be important later.(C3K is the unique identifier for Microsoft and 1525 the model number)you can see it's Xbox One:- by opening the attached user manual for the Host that carries the wireless chip --> https://fccid.io/document.php?id=1994252 - by looking on the bottom of your Xbox One - you will find the FCC ID 1525--> https://fccid.io/C3K1682 --> https://fccid.io/C3K1683 Not if we check the Exhibits for those two models we can see that modelincludes a document namedwhich is not yet available and thus under NDA but the name gives away that this is basically a new Xbox One which will use the safety information manual from the OG Xbox One ( https://fccid.io/document.php?id=1994252 - the NDA expires June 25 which means we will probably see a surprise release during E3Modelhas the same wireless chip tested but the NDA expires late in July 29 and has it's own host manual linked but not the 1525 reference. Also there are quite some more Exhibits available here which makes me think this is the rumored Xbox Next or whatever it is called.Also compare the label placements between OG Xbox One and 2 new filings.I also tried to compare the test reports but a lot of results are missing in the 1682 model results.TL;DR: FCC Filings show 2 consoles tested using the same WiFi chip where one is referencing the manual of the Xbox One and the other one not. (+ different expiry dates for attachments) |
Image copyright EPA Image caption Amazon's distribution depot in Rheinberg is one of the centres hit Strikes have begun at Amazon distribution depots in Germany in a dispute over pay and conditions. Five of the online retailer's nine centres have reportedly been affected in what will be a three-day walk-out. The strikes come in the run-up to Christmas, but Amazon said delivery schedules remained the same and that orders would be met. The union Verdi wants Amazon staff to be part of the retail industry's collective bargaining structure. Amazon designates the staff as logistics workers, but says they receive above-average pay for this sector. The company employs about 9,000 staff in Germany. Despite the disruption, Amazon said customers could order up until midnight on 21 December to get gifts in time for Christmas, or even on 23 and 24 December if they pay for "express" delivery. "We deliver reliably," an Amazon spokeswoman said. Verdi has organised a number of strikes at Amazon since May 2013. In the past Amazon has drawn on other depots throughout Europe to help meet delivery schedules. |
The Harper government has ordered extra taxpayer-paid polling in the months leading up to the scheduled October election, spending beyond its budget and asking Canadians more questions about hot topics, such as the future of the Senate. The prime minister's own department, the Privy Council Office, twice added public opinion research it had not budgeted for in 2014-15, at a cost of $160,278 on top of its original allotment of $250,000. And the department later ordered a spring poll that's being conducted this June by Harris Decima, a departure from past practice of two polls each year, one in midwinter, the other in late summer. CBC News has learned the current Harris Decima poll asks Canadians for their opinions on whether Ottawa has raised or lowered taxes; on support for sending the military to fight ISIS; and whether the Senate should be abolished, changed or kept the same. Previous polls have asked about taxes, ISIS and the Senate – but not all at the same time. A spokesman for the Privy Council Office confirmed the department has commissioned more polling than originally planned. "PCO requested approval to conduct additional research in 2014-2015 in order to ensure that the department had an up to date understanding of public perceptions in light of developing circumstances," Raymond Rivet said in an email. Polling creeps up Rivet did not respond to related questions about the department's current-year polling, including the cost of the June survey by Harris Decima or any other polls planned for later this year. Among the taxpayer-funded polling the Harper government has ordered this election year is one about whether the Senate should be abolished. (Sean Kilpatrick/CP) Since first coming to power in 2006, the Conservatives have drastically cut the amount the taxpayer-paid polling government-wide, from $31 million a year to a low of $4.3 million in 2012-2013. But the amount started to creep up again in the following year, to almost $5 million. And in 2014-2015 the Privy Council Office – the central organ of government – ordered $410,278 worth of public-opinion research, the highest sum spent by that department on such research since 2008. On Oct. 29 last year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper personally approved $25,781 worth of extra focus-group work in the wake of the Oct. 22 attack at the National War Memorial and in Parliament. Harper also approved a Leger Marketing survey, awarded March 6 this year, for $134,500. No further details were made available by PCO. 'Typically what happens is there's a bit of a freeze that happens in the run-up to an election' - Pollster Stephen Kiar Another key department, Finance Canada, has also been increasing the amount of public opinion research it conducts. Polling and focus-group contracts posted on the Finance Canada website show spending in 2014-2015 of $512,000, similar to the previous year. Those levels are the highest since 2010. Under federal rules, public opinion surveys commissioned from pollsters must be publicly posted on a Library and Archives website "within six months of the completion of the data collection," which means most are stale by the time the public or opposition parties can view them. And since April 2010, Privy Council Office has taken over the pollsters' traditional task of analyzing the raw data of those polls that ask questions about hot topics. The office is not required to make these internal analyses public. Such analytic reports can be requested through the Access to Information Act. But the Privy Council Office has been withholding most of the information they contain by citing Section 21, which protects "advice" given to ministers. The information commissioner of Canada is currently investigating a complaint from CBC News about such censorship. The PCO's website calls itself "the hub of non-partisan, public service support to the prime minister and cabinet and its decision-making structures." Dynamics changing? Pollster Stephen Kiar, CEO and owner of Ottawa-based Phoenix SPI, says that public opinion research normally winds down as a federal election approaches. "Typically what happens is there's a bit of a freeze that happens in the run-up to the election as well as during the election," he said in an interview. But Kiar added that the new fixed election date may be changing the dynamics of advertising and polling. NDP House Leader Peter Julian says the Harper government's use of tax dollars for promotional TV ads and extra polling is 'completely inappropriate.' (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press) The Harper government has previously come under fire for using taxpayer dollars to pay for what critics say is thinly disguised partisanship, including what the opposition parties have denounced as "vanity videos" by the Prime Minister's Office and by Social Development Minister Pierre Poilievre's department; and ubiquitous Economic Action Plan ads that sometimes tout programs not yet passed by Parliament. Peter Julian, New Democrat House leader, said the stepped-up polling is characteristic of the government's repeated use of public money for partisan purposes. "The Conservatives are basically breaking every single ethical code imaginable … to get themselves re-elected," he said in an interview. "This government has not an honest bone in its body." Follow @DeanBeeby on Twitter |
Possession analysis in football With most major football competitions finally getting underway in the next few weeks, and the Eredivisie 2011/12 kick off just a few days away, there’s just enough time for one more ‘soccermetrics’ related post. As you are probably aware, ‘soccermetrics’ aims to measure the performance of teams and/or players during a football match. The fact that it’s called ‘soccermetrics’ rather than ‘footballmetrics’ might support the argument that these kind of sports sciences found their origin in the United States, where the beautiful game is referred to as ‘soccer’ and not ‘football’. Sabermetrics The sport most known for the use of statistics is perhaps baseball, and Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball has emerged as a pivotal work, raising awareness for the use of statistics in sports, in particular during recent years among football enthusiasts. The fact that mainstream use of sports statistics started with baseball, rather than with any other sport, seems strongly related to the ‘stop-and-go’ nature of that game. Each pitch starts from the same setup, from the same position on the field and with readily measurable outcomes. Even though, turning baseball data into comprehensible information that accurately represents performance, remained a challenge for many years, earning the term ‘sabermetrics’ in the process. The acceptance of statistics in baseball has familiarized sports fans with regular use of this kind of information and slowly, but surely, other sports adopted regular use of stats. Among these, American football and basketball, two sports that mix the stop-and-go elements of baseball with the fluidity of football. It’s those two sports that we can use as examples of how to analyze a fluid ball game like football. Fluency Plainly accepting the fact that “football is too fluent a game for any sensible analysis to be made” will serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy. We can learn from the progress made in other (partly) fluent sports. One of the key differences between analysis of basketball or American football and analysis of football is the approach towards possession. The first statistics to be adopted in the mainstream football world has been possession percentage. Most, if not all, regular viewers of football matches will be aware of the value that’s been attributed to possession of the ball. To cite Johan Cruijff on this subject: “As long as we’ve got the ball, they can’t score.” This early adoption of possession in terms of ‘time on the ball’ is slowly losing ground as recent analyses have shown no clear relation between the amount of possession and match outcome. In other words, Barcelona’s out-and-out dominance in terms of possession and passing against Mourinho’s Inter in the 2010 Champions League semi-final, resulting in them losing the tie might not be the exception, or at least, not anymore. Definition Skeptics might argue that possession is hard to define within football, as turnovers are everywhere, but this is a matter of convention. Defining the team in possession as the team that last made a passing attempt would work. Any tackle or clearance by the defending team doesn’t interrupt possession unless they make a passing attempt from it. A goal scoring attempt doesn’t automatically lose possession as saves can lead to rebounds and corners are nothing less than a rebound too. Set pieces are passing attempts taken either at predefined positions (corners, goal kicks, etc) or anywhere else (free kicks). Possession analysis How should we analyze possession? Again, learning from basketball and American football, looking at the sheer number of times a team had possession of the ball, rather than how long they held onto it! What is a football match more than two teams trying to put a ball into each other’s net, while preventing that happening to themselves? Well, the objective of each time a team has possession of the ball is exactly that: put the ball in the net. A problem in drawing upon the examples of basketball and American football is the fact particularly basketball is a high scoring game. With football being an extremely low scoring game (which sports regularly see 0-0 scores anyway?), calculating the amount of goals per possession would not work. To increase the incidence rate of our outcome we could look at shots rather than goals, but this would reward teams opting to quick shots over teams preferring to create the best of scoring opportunities. Referring to an earlier post, we would best use the chance that any goal scoring attempt produces a goal. An open play shot from just outside the area, just left of the axis of the pitch will on average be a goal in 14.1% of cases, hence would be worth 0.141. A close range header from a corner finds the back of the net in 38.2% of cases, for a worth of 0.382. This way, we could easily present the value created per possession. In the end This metric would enable a fair comparison of teams playing different playing styles. Other options of this form of possession analysis are to compare the value created from different ways to start possession. We all know that winning the ball in the opponent’s half is a valuable thing, but on average how many goals does your team score from it? This metric also enables us to quantify where a team’s possession starts. Again using the example of Barcelona: winning the ball from them is tough, but a big issue is that you’ll almost never do that in their half due to their pressing game. This metric would allow the effect of different tactics in such a situation. At present, data to carry out this kind of analysis does not seem to be as widely available in football as it is in other sports, but the emergence of stats in football is growing as a whole, which is a step in the right direction. Now let’s try and raise the quality of the information they provide! Advertisements |
When I first started getting into sabermetrics, there were a lot of people writing about the stupidity of the bunt. That’s one of the first lessons everyone learns, and, not coincidentally, we’re seeing bunts on the decline, league-wide. More recently, analysts have come to celebrate the bunt. But not the sacrifice bunt — what we want to see more of are bunts against the shift. You could say the play itself is fine; it just requires a certain set of circumstances. Bunting against the shift inspired a whole recurring column at Baseball Prospectus by Ben Lindbergh. It’s a seemingly obvious tactic, that’s also seemingly under-utilized. For now. So, there are times when it’s smart to bunt. The bunt shouldn’t be eliminated from the game entirely. Sometimes, it’s smart to bunt against the shift. Sometimes, it’s smart to bunt not against the shift, if you’re quick. Sometimes, yes, it’s smart to drop down a sacrifice. And Tuesday night, Kyle Seager demonstrated another sort of intelligent bunt. It didn’t work, but since when do we get wrapped up in the results? It was the fifth inning, and the Mariners and Yankees were tied at one. There were two outs, but the Mariners had runners on the corners. So, with the go-ahead run 90 feet away, Seager stepped in against CC Sabathia. The whole of it: Seager bunted. But he didn’t bunt well enough, so he was thrown out by two steps, and that was the inning. It was certainly a surprising play, because Seager is one of the team’s good hitters, and good hitters generally want to swing in swing situations. Seager isn’t fast. Nor was he bunting into an over-shift: Because Seager didn’t swing the bat, it looked bad. Because Sabathia handled the ball easily and threw to first on the mark, it looked bad. It looked like a give-up attempt, but of course, it wasn’t that at all. Plenty of things to keep in mind. Seager’s a left-handed hitter, with more or less a normal platoon split. Steamer projects him for a .298 wOBA against southpaws. Sabathia has his problems, but then, he’s also a southpaw, and even lately he’s been effective against left-handed hitters. So in that matchup, maybe you’d expect a wOBA in the .290 – .300 range. In Seager’s first at-bat against Sabathia, he struck out swinging. In the next at-bat, he struck out swinging. And in this at-bat, Seager took a first-pitch strike, so he fell behind in the count, lowering the expected wOBA. At the time of the bunt, the odds strongly favored that Sabathia would get Seager out. Then you have the other variables. Sabathia is, visually, a large man. The last few years, he’s been one of the worse defensive pitchers in baseball, if you think those numbers mean anything. Perhaps more importantly, Sabathia’s not far off knee surgery. So you’re expecting limited mobility. Already, Sabathia wouldn’t be looking for the bunt, nor would any of the infielders. So the element of surprise is present. Then you have Sabathia maybe not moving very well, and, how many times do you see a pitcher make an errant throw to first? What I don’t know is the expected wOBA of a bunt attempt. Not all bunt attempts yield fair bunts, so the statistics can mislead. Batting average on bunts doesn’t get you far enough. But I’m pretty confident suggesting that Seager had better odds there trying to bunt than he did trying to swing. The count was against him, the matchup was against him, and it’s possible he wasn’t seeing the ball well against Sabathia on the night. And Seager has something of an established history of bunting against the shift, so it’s not an unfamiliar maneuver for him. Hell, Seager did this in 2013 with a runner on third, albeit with one out instead of two: Your browser does not support iframes. It’s an uncommon play, but that doesn’t make it a bad one. In fact, that’s part of what makes it such a good one. This year, there have been 15 fair bunts with two outs and a runner or two in scoring position. Nine of them have gone for hits. Five have driven in runs, and here’s an example of Carlos Gomez pulling it off against the Tigers: Your browser does not support iframes. Gomez is one of the other good hitters with the nerve to try it. Eric Hosmer tried it against the same-handed David Price. The Giants have actually attempted three of these, putting them in the early league lead. Brandon Crawford, Gregor Blanco, and Nori Aoki all attempted such bunts against same-handed pitchers. (Two of them worked.) You wonder if it’s a case of Bruce Bochy picking up on something — last year, the Giants led the league with four such bunts against. But that’s an over-simplification, and two of those bunts were attempted by Franklin Morales. Sometimes the Play Index tells you weird things. The general point: in certain circumstances, the bunt is an under-utilized weapon. It remains under-utilized against the shift, but it’s also under-utilized in run-scoring situations, when the hitter is facing perhaps a platoon disadvantage. In Seager’s case specifically, he was bunting against a pitcher who might not move very well, but that’s not always necessary; you just need to catch the defensive team by surprise. Maybe you bunt against a pitcher who falls off the mound. For however much crap a hitter might get for trying to steal a single instead of swinging away, bunts are a lot cooler when they bring a runner home. Too often, hitters are leaving RBI on the bases. After Sabathia made the play and threw Seager out, he shouted a few obscenities, not at Seager directly, but about him. Sabathia had every reason to be fired up; he worked out of a jam, and he responded well to a personal challenge. But as he said later, after everything had been decided: “I shouldn’t have been fired up; that was actually a good play,” Sabathia said. “Normally I don’t do this, but I can admit when I’m wrong. I was wrong right there. I’m just glad I got the out.” Credit to Sabathia for having the ability to make the play. Credit to Seager for having the balls to make him have to make it. |
After a nearly six-week strike, Verizon workers are celebrating a huge victory on Friday after a deal was reached in principle with the telecom giant that will bring gains for union members and end one of the nation's largest work stoppages in recent history. The deal, announced Friday afternoon by U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, reportedly includes a four-year contract between Verizon and its two biggest unions, CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). Between the two labor groups, nearly 40,000 workers have been on strike since mid-April over charges that Verizon was refusing to grant basic protections such as fair contracts, stopping pension cuts, and preventing the offshoring of jobs. CWA president Chris Shelton said Friday that the "addition of new, middle-class jobs at Verizon is a huge win not just for striking workers, but for our communities and our country as a whole. The agreement in principle at Verizon is a victory for working families across the country and an affirmation of the power of working people." SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts Workers are expected to be back on the job next week, Perez said. IBEW president Lonnie R. Stephenson said the groups will be sharing details of the agreement in the coming days. "This tentative contract is an important step forward in helping to end this six-week strike and keeping good Verizon jobs in America," Stephenson said. "My thanks to our members, along with those of the CWA, who made numerous sacrifices to finally come to this point. They look forward to returning to work serving their customers, working under a strong pro-worker and pro-jobs contract." Shelton added, "This proves that when we stand together we can raise up working families, improve our communities and protect the American middle class." |
Clips required: What to expect: Higher-level positions: Resume, cover letter, at least 4 sample layouts Long and short term projects, weekly meetings with the online team and with project-specific groups Lead web designer, online manager. Experience: Understanding of design principles and typography Awareness of website functionality and the user experience Preferably experience with website design or publication layout Working/collaborating in a team environment Experience with the design and development process a plus Programs: Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (CS5 or CS6) Knowledge of Adobe Fireworks is a plus Basic understanding of web development is a plus Web designers help shape the online presence of the Daily Californian, creating special pages and collaborating with editors and reporters to clearly and interactively inform a diverse online readership. Designing for the web involves content from the editorial staff, input from both editors and web developers, and a truly cooperative process to produce the most effective and aesthetic online content. Web designers blend many different aspects of the design field, from an understanding of visual information flow, to basic logo and icon design principles. Designing for the Daily Cal website is also a chance to enter a field that is constantly changing and innovating. Online journalism means that designers must work with multimedia content as well–interactive graphics, videos, slideshows and more. Clips required to apply for this position: Please submit 4 or more sample website layouts showing a variety of styles. Samples may be static images, or links to functional websites. Applicants should only submit pages they worked on. Website designs created specifically for the Daily Cal application are accepted. Apply |
Foreign Secretary says Pakistan has no desire to become part of the international coalition against IS ISLAMABAD: Days after the interior minister denied the presence of Islamic State (IS) in South Asia, particularly Pakistan, the Foreign Office said the militant group poses a threat to the country. “The government is on alert to the IS threat in the region,” Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry said while briefing the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs in Islamabad at Parliament on Monday. The foreign secretary further said the government has directed all concerned authorities to ensure that no organisation or individual remain in contact with IS in the country. Read: The Islamic State movement and Pakistan The Islamic State, is a militant group that has has set up a self-proclaimed caliphate on large swathes of land in Syria and Iraq. A bipartisan parliamentary panel discussed the potential threat posed by IS or Daish to Pakistan amid reports that the ruthless militant outfit is seeking a foothold in the country. Read: Potential hazard: FO to brief Senate panel on threat posed by IS However, Chaudhry clarified Pakistan has no desire to become part of the international coalition against IS. The cabinet meeting presided over by Senator Haji Adeel was called to address the potential threat posed by the IS in Pakistan. Read: The Islamic State — implications for Pakistan The government has long denied the presence of the militant group in the country. “As of now, I can say with confidence that the ISIS only exists in the Middle East,” he said. “It absolutely has no presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said while speaking at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington on Thursday. Read: Peshawar attack brought a sea of change in Pakistani mindset on terrorism: Nisar He said that the terrorist space in South Asia was totally occupied; however, if the issues were not addressed, a grand alliance between different groups could not be ruled out in the future. IS wall chalkings in DI Khan. PHOTO: PPI Last year as well, the interior minister had quashed speculation about the presence of the militant group. Read: Nisar rules out presence of IS in Pakistan His statement had come a few days after Balochistan Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani denied claims of the presence of IS militants on ground in the province. Read: Neither IS nor sympathisers present in Balochistan: Home Department However, wall chalkings in favour of the militant group have earlier appeared in major cities, including Lahore, Quetta and Karachi. Read: Writing on the walls: Quetta police to investigate graffiti supporting IS IS wall chalking in a Quetta street. PHOTO: ONLINE Earlier, splits within the Taliban, and doubts over whether its elusive leader is even alive, were said to be driving a growing number of militant commanders in Afghanistan and Pakistan towards IS for inspiration. Read: Disenchanted militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan eye Islamic State with envy Security and intelligence sources believed there are no operational links yet between IS and South Asia, and that the region is not a priority for a group that occupies areas of Syria and Iraq and is focused on the Arab world. Earlier, this year intelligence sources had also claimed security forces arrested a man believed to be the commander of the IS group in the country as well as two accomplices involved in recruiting and sending fighters to Syria. Read: Security forces arrest local Islamic State commander in Lahore: sources However, sources revealed that al Salafi was actually arrested sometimes in December last year and it was only disclosed on January 22. Read: Startling revelations: IS operative confesses to getting funds via US Yousaf al Salafi – allegedly the Pakistan commander of IS – had confessed during investigations that he has been receiving funds through the United States. Read full story |
As already noted by Driftglass, MSNBC, yet again, gives a giant eff you to all its viewers. The once liberal-ish network added Bloomberg Politics' With All Due Respect to its line-up, and it included this gem of an interview with the life-loving Dr. Ben Carson. MSNBC thinks that we need more Halperin and Heilemann, in case Morning Joe didn't give us enough of them. Maybe they should give a few more hours of programming to Chuck Todd, why not? Carson explains that since he's the only candidate who's also a retired neurosurgeon, and he's the only person to come up with new techniques and procedures to save the lives of infants, so who could compete with that? What have these other Republican Presidential Candidates actually done to save anyone? In other words, we know that he has saved lives, and he promises to keep all fetuses from being aborted, even those who are the result of unspeakable awful. Dr. Ben Carson is asked, 'What is your position on abortion?' CARSON: I believe that abortion should not be done, I believe that it's murder. In cases of rape and incest too? Including in cases of rape and incest. I know people who are the result of rape, James Robinson, the Televangelist, was a result of a rape. His mother was getting an abortion, it got botched, she thought the better of it and kept it. He's had a positive impact on hundreds of thousands of lives. I suppose that settles it then? Televangelists are wonderful people. A woman should have to birth the result of a violent physical assault against her, because Carson thinks life is sacred and he knows who James Robinson is. What if James Robinson had been a Mooslim, one who has been radicalized? What then? Is this going to become another Baby Hitler hypothetical for the extreme, pro-forced birth crowd? |
Hemant Kumar Rout By After nearly two years, Indian Armed forces on Friday successfully conducted a fresh trial of surface-to-air medium range anti-aircraft missile Akash from a defence base off the Odisha coast. The missile destroyed a tow body suspended from an unmanned aerial vehicle. Defence sources said the missile was launched from the launching complex-III of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur-on-sea at around 11.22 am. Prior to the launching of the missile, a Pilot-less Target Aircraft (PTA) was flown from the launching complex-II at 11.02 am. The mission boosted the air defence shield of the country and re-validated the weapon’s operational efficiency. During the trial, the missile was aimed at intercepting a floating object supported by the PTA at a definite altitude over the Bay of Bengal. A defence official said the test was to gauge the flight consistency and effectiveness of the missile. “The trial was cent per cent successful. The missile with live warheads destroyed the target suspended from the PTA. The entire flight was captured by electro-optical tracking systems. Four more trials are likely to be conducted in next few days,” he said. Akash is a medium-range surface-to-air missile and can reach targets 25 km away. A reliable source, however, informed that the missile on Friday covered around 16 km and destroyed the target with a few metres accuracy. The missile is crucial to India’s air defence programme as it will be used to counter ballistic and cruise missiles, enemy aircrafts and air-to-surface missiles. It can handle multiple targets with the help of a digitally coded command and guidance system. It can also be fired from tracked vehicles. While its land variant was inducted in the Army in 2008, the air version was handed over to the IAF later. |
Here’s something really rare that turned up. For the 3rd and final single (“Is Apollo Still Alive?”) to be taken from Swedish industrial metal-step crossover act Rave The Reqviem’s self-titled debut album, DWA has taken full advantage of both the song’s length and the length of the 3 remixes presented alongside it to squeeze both 4 tracks of CD-audio and – on the first 100 copies only – to lathe-cut the title track for vinyl playback. Yes – you read that correctly. The first 100 copies of the “Is Apollo Still Alive?” CD (available here) are in fact ‘a hybrid CD/vinyl’ – a format so rare that it doesn’t even really have a name and is only produced by one company on the planet. Below you can see how that looks like as DWA provided us a picture of the final product. The CD comes with a special plastic adaptor already inserted, in order to facilitate playback on a record deck. The vinyl track is lathe-cut around the outer-most part of the CD (see also the picture), with the regular CD-audio data occupying the remaining space inside creating a highly unusual and unique artefact. “Is Apollo Still Alive?” is released on October 9th, and can be pre-ordered now. Be fast if you want to be sure of picking up one of the lathe-cut CD-vinyl hybrid disc versions. Track listing: Is Apollo Still Alive? (first 100 copies ONLY) Is Apollo Still Alive? Is Apollo Still Alive? (W.A.S.T.E. Remix) Is Apollo Still Alive? (IVARDENSPHERE Remix) Is Apollo Still Alive? (VPROJEKT Version 2) Quite a nice stunt from DWA! donate monthly donate once only Select a Donation Option (USD) $2 $5 $10 Other Enter Donation Amount (USD) … we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading Side-Line Magazine than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. Side-Line’s independent journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we want to push the artists we like and who are equally fighting to survive. If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as 2 US$, you can support Side-Line Magazine – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. The donations are safely powered by Paypal. |
I first met alcohol in the late 1980s. It was the morning after one of my parents’ parties. My sister and I, aged nine or 10, were up alone. We trawled the lounge for abandoned cans. I remember being methodical: pick one up, give it a shake to see if there’s anything inside and, if there is, drink! I can still taste the stale, metallic tang of Heineken on my tongue. Just mind the ones with cigarette butts in. But it was at university that booze and I became properly acquainted. My memory of my first week is of social anxiety offset by cheap alcohol – a harbinger of the next four years. At one ball, I drank so much free wine that I vomited the stud out of my nose and down the sink. My diary entry that night consisted of four oversized words scrawled in turquoise pen: “drunk + sick / Freshers’ Ball”. But that was how it was: sometimes you were the one bundling people into a taxi, sometimes you were the one being bundled. Recently, I started to wonder if my generation’s relationship with alcohol was abnormal. When I looked into the numbers, I realised that it was. I discovered that 2004 was Peak Booze: the year when Brits drank more than they had done for a century, and more than they have done in the decade since. Leading the way to this alcoholic apogee were those of us born around 1980. No other generation drank so much in their early 20s. Why us? In 2004, we were drinking 9.5 litres of pure alcohol – the equivalent of more than 100 bottles of wine – each year Everyone in alcohol research knows the graph. It plots the change in annual consumption of alcohol in the UK, calculated in litres of pure alcohol per person. (None of us drinks pure alcohol, thankfully; one litre of pure alcohol is equivalent to 35 pints of strong beer.) In 1950, Brits drank an average of 3.9 litres per person. Look to the right and at first the line barely rises. Then, in 1960, it begins to creep upward. The climb becomes steadier during the 1970s. The upward trajectory ends in 1980, but that turns out to be temporary. By the late 1990s consumption is rising rapidly again. Come Peak Booze, in 2004, we were drinking 9.5 litres of alcohol per person – the equivalent of more than 100 bottles of wine – each year. It’s impossible to untangle the forces behind the graph’s every rise and fall, but I’ve talked to researchers who have studied our relationship with alcohol. They told me how everything from recessions to marketing to sexism has shaped the way the British drink. This is the story of that research, and of what it tells us about the ascent to Peak Booze. It begins more than half a century ago, in the pub. The postwar pub During the late 1930s, a group of observers set out to record what went on in British pubs. The result was a book called ‘The Pub and the People’. The part of the pub where working-class men gathered was known as the vault: “Along the base of the bar counter, whose top is of well worn, well wiped mahogany, runs a line of scattered sawdust, about six inches wide, on to which people spit, throw fag ends, matches and empty cigarette packets.” The authors list the activities that took place there and elsewhere in the pub: talking, thinking, smoking, spitting, playing games, betting, singing, playing the piano, buying and selling goods, including hot pies and bootlaces. And, of course, drinking. In post-war Britain, much of the drinking took place in pubs. It was mainly men that drank there, generally beer. Relatively little changed in the two decades after ‘The Pub and the People’ was published. It wasn’t until the 1960s that British drinking culture began to shift in more fundamental ways. Part of this change was about Brits learning – or being persuaded – to enjoy a drink they had long shunned. Josef Groll made the first batch of Pilsner, the light, golden beer we know as lager, in the Czech town of Pilsen in 1842. Word spread and, thanks to Europe’s developing train network, so did the drink. Soon brewers from Germany started to make their own Pils, and ‘Pilsner’ no longer meant just a beer from Pilsen, but a new type of beer. Lager spread around the world, but British drinkers of the time stuck to their home-brewed pale ales. These drinks were weaker than the 5% alcohol content of many lagers, and suited British drinking habits. “Mild [a type of beer] was about 3%,” says beer writer Pete Brown. “Men who worked in factories and mines would drink pints and pints of it after work, partially to rehydrate without getting hammered.” It also suited the UK tax system, under which beer is taxed in proportion to its strength. Even Prince Albert enthusing about lager after a trip to Germany wasn’t enough to get British drinkers to switch. Lager suddenly exploded, very quickly, after years of unsuccessful marketing – Pete Brown But you can’t keep the drinks industry down. The brewers promoted lager intensively after World War II. In the generation that came of age in the late 1960s – one thirsty for change – they finally found an audience. “Lager suddenly exploded, very quickly, after years of unsuccessful marketing,” says Brown. “We were still doing most of our drinking in pubs, they were still male-dominated environments, the beers were still the same strength. But [Dutch brewer] Heineken in its advertising used ‘refreshment’ as a key benefit for the very first time in British beer advertising.” When the ads first aired in 1974, the campaign was doing “okay”, says Brown. But when Britain experienced unusually hot summers in 1975 and 1976, the refreshment angle gelled. Suddenly, lager started selling. Heineken’s television ads were game-changers. They promised a lager that “refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach”. In one, a man sits in an armchair reading a newspaper, surrounded by furniture covered in sheets. Hearing someone approach, he leaps up and pretends to study the wallpaper. Enter his wife, angry. The decorating must be done by the time she’s back. The man waits until he hears the car door shut, then sits back down and lifts a small dustsheet to reveal a tankard of foaming Heineken. Off to his side, we see his pet dog whistling, roller in paw, painting the wall. A Scandinavian-sounding voiceover says, “So you see, Heineken even refreshes the pets other beers cannot reach.” It’s bizarre but distinctly British: the nagging wife and recalcitrant husband, and the absurd painting pet, which references the “Dulux dog”, an Old English Sheepdog used in the UK to advertise a popular brand of paint. Lager is firmly lodged in British identity Decades later, I can recall the slogans from other lager ads of the time: “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label” and “Australians wouldn’t give a Castlemaine XXXX for anything else”. On holiday with my cousins, sometime in the late 1980s, I remember one of the older boys emulating the swaggering walk of the bear used to promote Hofmeister. The ads paid off. Between 1971 and 1985, annual sales of ale and stout fell by 10 million barrels, while sales of lager grew by nearly 12 million barrels. Lager now accounts for some three-quarters of total UK beer sales. The drink is firmly lodged in British identity: it’s the pint of choice for banter-loving, football-watching blokes. And that helped the alcohol industry realise the extent to which it could reshape drinking traditions – which it has been doing ever since. Bottled up Around the same time, British drinkers were also developing a taste for another foreign import: wine. In 1960, wine accounted for less than one-tenth of British alcohol consumption. But a few years later the government made it easier for British supermarkets to sell wine. The amount drunk nearly quadrupled by 1980, and then nearly doubled again between 1980 and 2000. In a survey of 4,000 UK adults published early this year, 60% said they chose wine over other alcoholic drinks. This extra drinking helped push us to Peak Booze, but wine is also important because it’s mostly drunk at home. It’s one reason why the pub is no longer the sole focus of British drinking. “The popularisation of wine represents one of the most significant developments in British drinking cultures over the last half-century – and it has been driven primarily by sales in off-licenses and supermarkets,” writes James Nicholls, Director of Research and Policy Development at Alcohol Research UK. The story of wine in Britain is also the story of female drinkers. Pubs were traditionally not particularly welcoming to women. As the authors of ‘The Pub and the People’ noted, women were excluded from certain rooms: “Vault and taproom are for men only, [taboo] to women, who drink in the parlour. And beer is a penny a pint more in the parlour.” Another custom was that women didn’t stand at the bar. Even the researchers who compiled the report used language we’d now consider sexist. One observer described a pub waitress as “a plump piece well painted”. The book also features a “dossier on some of the pub whores”. The story of wine in Britain is the story of female drinkers “Drinking spaces always excluded women, until fairly recently,” Clare Herrick, a geographer at King’s College London, told me. There was also the idea that “women should drink sweet sherry, or have a half-pint, not a pint.” This, she argues, came from the fear of women becoming more masculine than men, competing with men, drinking the same drinks as men. I remember experiencing the tail end of this culture when ordering beers as a student. The barman pulled a pint for my male friend and then reached, without asking, for a half-pint for me. Today, it’s taken for granted that a woman can walk into a pub and order whatever she wants. It’s largely the result of the profound change in women’s financial and social status over the past half-century. It’s also a big part of why my generation drank so much. Alcohol consumption by women almost doubled in the three decades leading up to Peak Booze, a change that was one of the “key drivers” of the UK’s increased consumption. The rave wave The 1980s were an unusual time for the drinks industry. After 30 years of near-continuous increases, British drinking pretty much levelled out between 1980 and 1995 – the nation’s thirst reined in, perhaps, by the high unemployment that gripped the country. But the alcohol industry had not pressed pause. It was preparing to target a new generation of drinkers, and would go on to transform the places Brits drank in. These changes would set the scene for one of the most rapid increases in alcohol consumption seen in the last century. One of the industry’s initiatives was the introduction of a new category of drink – a drink with origins in a culture that once posed a threat to alcohol companies. Rave culture was part of my generation’s adolescence, even if the closest some of us got to it was buying glow-in-the-dark bracelets and smiley-face T-shirts. I still remember the Shamen’s number-one hit, with its “Es are good” chorus. My friends and I sang along, even if we didn’t know for ourselves. But there wouldn’t have been many smileys in alcohol company boardrooms: ravers didn’t want beer when they had ecstasy. That’s probably part of the reason pub attendance fell 11% between 1987 and 1992. The industry’s solution wasn’t long in coming, however. It began when the government used new legislation to force rave entrepreneurs into what alcohol policy consultant Phil Hadfield calls a stark choice: “work within the system… or be closed down”. Some chose the latter option, but the more successful started licensed indoor dance venues, such as the Ministry of Sound in London. Ravers didn’t want beer when they had ecstasy The drinks industry wasn’t going to miss an opportunity like that. It saw a chance “to reposition alcohol as a consumer product which could compete in the psychoactive night time drugs economies,” according to alcohol researchers Fiona Measham and Kevin Brain. The industry launched new and stronger drinks, which it targeted at a young and culturally diverse crowd. First were strong bottled lagers, beers and ciders. Then came alcopops, including Hooch, in the mid-1990s. A few years later, drinks containing stimulants such as caffeine and guarana arrived. It was all part of the industry’s desire to recast alcohol from a bloating depressant into a pleasant-tasting, stimulating drink that fitted the youth culture. The dance scene, say Measham and Brain, helped bring about a “revolution in the 1990s alcohol industry”. The industry was also hard at work transforming British pubs. Soon after alcopops were introduced, pub chains such as the Firkin Brewery decided to convert old buildings – banks, theatres, even factories – into new drinking warehouses, often in city centres. Expanses of glass replaced external brick walls. This overhaul, argue Measham and Brain, was designed to attract “a new customer base… whose leisure sites were to be found in dance clubs, gyms, shopping centres”. Not just old men, in other words. Smaller, higher tables replaced lower ones with seats, because drinkers are thought to consume more when they stand Shots were popular in these new pubs. Whisky chasers had accompanied beer in Scotland for years, but shots for their own sake were new to the rest of the UK. Also new were members of bar staff coming to tables to sell the shots, sometimes dispensed from guns or holsters. What the industry calls “vertical drinking” was the norm in these new venues. Smaller, higher tables replaced lower ones surrounded by seats, because drinkers are thought to consume more when they stand rather than sit. The loss of surfaces forced customers to hold onto drinks, making them drink faster. Noisy surroundings made chatting harder, so people drank instead. “Most bars have cleared out their interior walls and furniture to accommodate more of what the industry names ‘mass volume vertical drinkers’ (with the heart-warming humanistic touch for which it is famous),” write Simon Winlow and Steve Hall, a sociologist and a criminologist who have studied Britain’s night-time economy. Some pub managers were offered £20,000 bonuses if they used sales techniques – like upselling singles to doubles – to exceed revenue targets Marketing practices in pubs, bars and clubs, including happy hours and other drinks deals, encouraged the British to drink more, too. In 2005, when changes in the law allowed pubs to stay open for longer, managers at some large vertical-drinking pubs were reportedly offered bonuses of up to £20,000 if they used sales techniques – upselling singles to doubles, for instance – to exceed revenue targets. All this was happening as the real cost of purchasing alcohol, allowing for inflation and changes in disposable income, fell every year from 1984 to 2007. As one liver consultant put it to me: “My patient who’s drinking 100–120 units per week can afford to buy three times as much alcohol now as they did in the mid-1980s.” ‘Determined drunkenness’ These changes, from the falling price of alcohol to the marketing of stronger, more easily consumed drinks, are thought to be behind the rise of what researchers call “determined drunkenness”. Forty-somethings might get drunk on a night out, but it wouldn’t be their explicit aim. It increasingly was for those in their 20s. Young people “regard alcohol itself as crucial to a ‘good night’,” write the authors of the book ‘Alcohol, Drinking, Drunkenness: (Dis)orderly spaces’. They deliberately try to accelerate their drunkenness by ‘preloading’ at home before they go out, playing drinking games and mixing drinks. As the new century began, alcohol was easier to access, cheaper to buy and more enthusiastically marketed than it had been for decades. By 2004, Brits were drinking well over twice as much as they had been half a century earlier. The nation stood atop Peak Booze, and my generation was drinking the most. By 2004, Brits were drinking well over twice as much as they had been half a century earlier More than 500 people were killed by drunk drivers on British roads that year. Young drivers were most likely to have drink-drive accidents, and while a large majority of those drivers were men, women made up nearly a third of the casualties. Alcohol makes many of us unpleasant; around half of violent offenders are thought by their victims to be under the influence of alcohol. There’s a horrifying scene in the 1996 film Trainspotting where one of the characters attacks a man in a pub by thrusting a full pint glass straight into his face. ‘Glassing’ is a common enough problem that some pubs have started using pint glasses made from plastic or strengthened glass that are very hard to smash. (It says something about British drinking culture that images from Trainspotting were used in the 10th anniversary press campaign for Revolution Vodka bars.) It’s tempting to link the amount we drink with the frequency of alcohol-related harm, but it’s hard to do so definitively because many factors are involved. Drink-driving casualties have been falling since the 1970s, for example, probably due to media campaigns and better education for offenders. British roads might also be safer because more of our drinking now takes place at home. Still, the steady decline in drink-driving fatalities of the last 40 years was temporarily reversed between 1999 and 2004 – a period that closely matches the rapid rise in alcohol consumption that led to Peak Booze. We just don’t know if this is coincidence or causation. In any case, the members of generation Peak Booze may well have harmed themselves already. There are no pain fibres in the liver, so we can’t feel damage we may be doing there. But the statistics roughly track consumption: annual alcohol-related liver deaths in England and Wales climbed steadily until around 2008, when the numbers levelled off. Several experts told me that changes – since reversed – in alcohol policy that made booze less affordable were having a positive effect on liver deaths. The incidence of alcohol-related deaths, which includes nervous system degeneration and poisoning as well as liver disease, also began falling a few years after Peak Booze. Again, we don’t know this is correlation or causation. The trend seems different in the generation after mine. Young people are drinking less frequently, and more of them are teetotal. It could be financial hardship, an increase in the proportion that don’t drink for religious reasons, or increased time spent online. We don’t know whether the decline will continue. Still, this generation’s relative reluctance to drink is part of the reason UK alcohol consumption in 2013 was only 7.7 litres per person, the lowest since 1996 and nearly two litres lower than Peak Booze. Drinking because you’re happy, because you’re sad, because there’s a random beer in the fridge – for many in my generation, all normal For many in my generation, it’s still normal to go to the bar after work on Friday. Drinking because you’re happy, because you’re sad, because there’s a random beer in the fridge – also normal. Even in our thirties, with partners and babies and jobs and mortgages, we understand when someone loses their purse while drunk, vomits in a taxi or sleeps in their clothes and crawls into work with a hangover. In fact, drinking isn’t just normal to our generation. In some ways, it defines us. It’s hard not to think that this isn’t partly because we grew up watching alcohol adverts on the TV, surrounded by plentiful, cheap booze in the supermarket. Today the drinks commercials are more tightly regulated, but the wine-sponsored TV cookery contest and beer-branded football shirt are here, reminding us that alcohol is a normal part of everyday life. Beyond the health risks and potential harm, that’s the more insidious aspect of Peak Booze: the mental baggage. A fair few of us are more dependent than we’d like to be on that cold glass of white wine or cheeky gin and tonic at the end of the day. It’s important to me to know that drinking is a choice, not a need. But if I choose not to drink for one night out, I find myself rambling an explanation, assuring people that, no, I’m not pregnant. The fact that staying sober for a month is seen as a feat of willpower and the subject of charity campaigns such as Dry January shows just how embedded alcohol is in our lives. It’s the grease that keeps many of our days moving. This would be fine if we chose to be part of the drinking culture. Sometimes, it feels like it chose us. This is an edited version of an article originally published by Mosaic, and is reproduced under a Creative Commons licence. Follow BBC Future on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. BBC Britain is a series focused on exploring this extraordinary island, one story at a time. Readers outside of the UK can see every BBC Britain story by heading to the Britain homepage; you also can see our latest stories by following us on Facebook and Twitter. |
"Making Plans for Nigel" is a song written by bassist Colin Moulding of the English rock band XTC, released as the lead single from their 1979 album Drums and Wires. The lyrics are told from the point of view of parents who are certain that their son Nigel is "happy in his work", affirming that his future in British Steel "is as good as sealed", and that he "likes to speak and loves to be spoken to". Its distinctive drum pattern was discovered by accident after a miscommunication between guitarist Andy Partridge and drummer Terry Chambers. Partridge was bothered by the amount of time spent recording the song, remarking that "[w]e spent a week doing Nigel and three weeks doing the rest of the album."[1] According to guitarist Dave Gregory: "Despite glowing press reviews [of Drums and Wires], we were still struggling to fill small theatres in the UK and the brief tour was disappointing. But then, the unthinkable happened -- Nigel got playlisted at the BBC and in early October, XTC were back in the charts! And back on Top of the Pops! Twice!! When we resumed touring in late November, every gig was sold out."[2] The single spent 11 weeks on the UK Singles Chart. Biographer Chris Twomey wrote that although the single is reported to have reached number 17, it was "later learned that a computer error by the chart compilers had forced the record downwards when it had in fact gone up." The song also reached number 12 on the Canadian chart and remained on the charts there for 22 weeks.[4] In 2016, "Making Plans for Nigel" was ranked number 143 on Pitchfork's list of the 200 best songs of the 1970s.[5] As a response to the song, British Steel reportedly gathered four Sheffield employees named Nigel to talk about job satisfaction for the trade publication Steel News.[5] Official video [ edit ] The video, directed by Russell Mulcahy was shot in London on 10 July 1979, together with another put together very quickly for "Life Begins at the Hop."[6] Media [ edit ] The song has been used in Layer Cake and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Personnel [ edit ] As provided on the record sleeve:[7] XTC Technical Cover versions [ edit ] Charts [ edit ] Chart (1979) Peak position UK Singles (Official Charts Company)[8] 17 |
Bangkok Expressway and Metro Public Company Limited (BEM) managing director Sombat Kitjalaksana said yesterday the removal of the seats was a temporary measure to increase passenger capacity on the MRT Metro blue line system as BEM waited for the delivery of new trains. A statement, announced on the official MRT Metro Facebook page, said yesterday was the first day of a trial period, as one of the 19 trains in service had been modified by removing the seats. Sombat added that the removal of seats would not affect safety, but admitted that some passengers might “feel odd” due to the change. However, he said removing seats was a common practice in many countries and BEM had also implemented other measures to solve the overcrowding problem such as increasing the number of staff during rush hour and maintaining a stock of train spare parts to reduce delays during service disruptions. “I also would like to ask passengers to be prepared before getting onto the train and leaving the train. “They should queue in line to board the train to speed up the passenger flow,” Sombat said. Aim Chato, a frequent passenger on the MRT Metro blue line, said he agreed with the measure. “The intention of the subway system is to transport people to their destination as fast as possible, so it makes sense to get rid of some seats and open additional space for more passengers to board the train,” Aim said. Another passenger, Kitiwat Puttanupap, said the measure could not resolve the overcrowding problem completely and suggested that instead of removing the seats, BEM should add more train cars to increase capacity. “I don’t think this is a good idea [to solve the congestion problem] and it also shows that the company is only looking for more profit, because they do not have to invest in anything to remove the seats, but they can get more passengers,” Kitiwat said. According to an earlier report, Sombat said BEM had purchased 35 new trains for Bt20 billion, which will be ready for service in late 2019, as the company had registered rapid growth in the number of passengers and revenue from subway fares on the MRT Metro blue line. The sharp growth in passengers was attributed to the opening of the “missing link” between the blue line and purple line, as the average number of journeys on the MRT Metro blue line has increased from 340,000 journeys per day to 360,000. |
General Motors Gives 2019 Chevrolet Silverado Surprise Debut General Motors unveiled the next-generation Chevrolet Silverado full-size pickup truck at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday. A helicopter carried the 2019 Silverado through the sky and gently lowered it onto the race track’s infield. The reveal was a surprise move well before the truck’s expected debut at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next month. GM is moving to defend its turf in the hotly competitive pickup market. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will show off its next generation Ram 1500 truck at the show next month. Ford Motor Co. also is expected to announce improvements to its market-leading F-150 pickup. The 2019 Silverado boasts a striking design compared with the current model. Its familiar horizontal grille is modernized with projector headlamps and curved LED strips. The sheet metal is drawn taut across the hood and front fenders, and has aggressive swoops carved into the side. A dramatic shoulder line runs straight across the doors and bed to swooping taillights. “Chevrolet” is stamped wide across the rear tailgate. “It’s strong, it’s modern, but it’s instantly recognizable as a Chevy truck,” said Alan Batey, president of General Motors’ North American operations. The model shown in Texas is the 2019 Silverado LT Trailboss. The new trim comes with the Z71 off-road package and a two-inch suspension lift. It is one of eight trims that will be available across the 2019 Silverado lineup. Mixed materials are prevalent throughout the new Silverado, Batey said. But the automaker did not offer many details about the truck’s construction. The new Silverado features a higher-grade steel alloy in its bed floor, Batey said. The steel alloy indicates that GM is not following Ford, which uses aluminum to build truck beds. According to GM, the Silverado’s high-grade material reduces the truck’s total weight. Ounce for ounce, the steel alloy is stronger than conventional steel. GM will display the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado at the Detroit auto show, where the company is expected to reveal more information about the truck. The pickup will be available with expanded engine and transmission combinations, as well as more technology and convenience features. It is expected to offer improved fuel economy. Silverado is the second best-selling vehicle in the U.S. this year. GM has sold 518,000 Silverados through the first 11 months of 2017, a dip of 0.5 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, according to industry research firm Autodata Corp. Ford’s F-Series line of trucks are the biggest sellers. The automaker has sold more than 807,000 this year, a 10 percent gain over the same period a year earlier. Ram is third in both truck and overall automobile sales. The brand has sold almost 456,000 trucks this year, a 3 percent increase. Automakers are pouring money into pickup truck development because it is among the fastest growing and most profitable segments in the industry. Car companies earn a profit of $10,000 or more on the typical full-size pickup, according to industry analysts. They only make $1,500 to $2,000 for a passenger sedan. That’s because the average transaction price for a truck is almost $40,000, according to market research firm J.D. Power. The average transaction price of a compact sedan is less than $19,000, and the average mid-size family car costs less than $22,000. Automobile manufacturers enjoy more favorable margins for pickup trucks because, despite the difference in cost to the consumer, pickup trucks do not cost twice as much to produce as a passenger car. Saturday’s Silverado unveiling was held at the Chevy Truck Centennial Event, which celebrated 100 years of Chevrolet trucks. The brand’s first truck was sold in January of 1918. Since then, Chevrolet has sold more than 85 million trucks. “Think of this as an all-new truck 100 years in the making,” Batey said. Read Next: 5 Ways the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 Is Better Than the Ford Raptor |
Democratic lawmakers are expressing shock and outrage following a bombshell report that President Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to end the federal investigation into Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Comey's memo, the details of which were reported by The New York Times and other outlets, detailed a February meeting in which Trump reportedly told him, "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go." The story dropped as the White House continued to grapple with the aftermath of Trump's surprise firing of Comey last week and a separate fallout Monday after reports emerged that Trump disclosed highly classified information to Russian diplomats. ADVERTISEMENT Some Democrats doubled down on calls for a special prosecutor to investigate Trump campaign ties to Russia following news of the Comey memo Tuesday, while others called the actions by the president "obstruction of justice." “We are witnessing an obstruction of justice case unfolding in real time," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a statement. "I am stunned that any of my colleagues would possibly oppose the appointment of an independent special prosecutor after this astonishing revelation and other mounting evidence of political interference in a criminal investigation," he said. Rep. Gerry Connolly Gerald (Gerry) Edward ConnollyDem rep hopes Omar can be 'mentored,' remain on Foreign Affairs panel Fairfax removed from leadership post in lieutenant governors group Virginia Legislative Black Caucus calls on Fairfax to step down MORE (Va.) and other Democrats echoed that sentiment. "Obstruction is obstruction. Doesn't matter whether you are an insider or outsider, whether the establishment likes you or not," Connolly said in an interview with Fox News. "This is a country of due process of law. When you are intimidating ... when you are explicit in trying to persuade that director to back off a specific investigation of a specific individual, that's obstruction of justice." Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) stopped short of calling for impeachment while speaking with reporters off the House Floor, but called the report "a smoking gun" and "a sad day for our country." See how other Democrats reacted below: If reports are true, Trump's attempt to shut down the FBI’s Flynn investigation is an assault on the rule of law. https://t.co/vo4mpcmi1K pic.twitter.com/kYUW4kdLYd — Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) May 16, 2017 This president is out of control. Republicans: do your jobs or be on the wrong side of history. We need a special prosecutor now. https://t.co/S2UfL26jjS — Tom Perez (@TomPerez) May 16, 2017 We are now beyond the realm of @POTUS being not normal. We are in the territory of criminal activity. #ComeyMemo https://t.co/Ben2UePXyt — Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) May 16, 2017 Asking FBI to drop an investigation is obstruction of justice. Obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense.https://t.co/cQT5kVuWeD — Rep. Ted Deutch (@RepTedDeutch) May 16, 2017 .@RepCummings: #POTUS #Trump has not had to answer to anyone. We have a smoking gun. This is a sad day for our country. #TrumpComey — House OversightDems (@OversightDems) May 16, 2017 Tonight’s news is exactly why I asked this question of Acting FBI Director McCabe last week: pic.twitter.com/0Ci2WCkCq2 — Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) May 16, 2017 If true, Trump’s statement shows he tried to influence the FBI investigation into his ties to Russia. We are not letting this go. #ComeyMemo pic.twitter.com/GxA34d8NQr — Rep. Ed Perlmutter (@RepPerlmutter) May 16, 2017 We are witnessing an obstruction of justice case unfolding in real time. — Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) May 16, 2017 There is no defense for @POTUS divulging classified information that compromises our national security. #TrumpRussiahttps://t.co/vwVG674zJj — Rep. Scott Peters (@RepScottPeters) May 16, 2017 |
Her split from her husband of 17 years Matthew Robertson has been nothing short of shocking. So Davina McCall has been putting her focus on her fitness, which was evident as she was seen working up a sweat in her new Toned In Ten workout video, shortly before she posted a sizzling, bikini-clad snap on Instagram. The 50-year-old presenter showed off impressively taut abs in a tiny white sports bra and skintight grey leggings as she embarked on the gruelling workout session. Working hard: Davina McCall has been putting her focus on her fitness, which was evident as she was seen working up a sweat in her new Toned In Ten workout video, shortly before she posted a sizzling, bikini-clad snap on Instagram Already exhausted, Davina was seen walking back and forth as her fitness buddy egged her on to continue the session. Making a number of disgruntled faces before accepting the fact she had to continue, she was seen making her way to the mat. She slowly rolled down before executing a series of difficult plank jacks - undoubtedly wowing fans with her moves. While she wavered slightly, exercise-fanatic Davina did her best to finish the rep before showcasing just how exhausted she really was. After showing off her incredible workout prowess, the stunning star made the most of her frame by sharing an incredible image of her figure while giggling in a bikini on Wednesday morning. Hitting the gym hard: Her new workout video hit screens shortly before she posted a sizzling, bikini-clad snap on Instagram Tough stuff: She slowly rolled down before executing a series of difficult plank jacks - undoubtedly wowing fans with her moves Hard work: She slowly rolled down before executing a series of difficult plank jacks - undoubtedly wowing fans with her moves Posting the shot on Twitter, she penned: 'Cozzie and trainers and a smidgen of underboob .... I was a brownie, it was there that I learned “be prepared” #tonedin10 @melissaodabash @ASICSUK' Meanwhile, Davina has been keeping her mind of her recent heartache with a sun-soaked holiday to Sydney with their three children to visit her sister. The TV star showed off her incredible six-pack as she posed in a sports bra and referred to dating app lingo as she joked 'swipe left' in the caption. Davina added: 'In Aus with the kids visiting my sis and her family. feels so good to workout outside !!! Referring to the string of shots in the same sporty outfit, she concluded self-deprecatingly: 'ps didn’t mean to post 4 pics.' Abs-olutely fantastic: Davina kept her mind off her marital woes with a sun-soaked holiday to Sydney with their three children to visit her sister Devastating: Her trip down under comes just weeks after she announced her shocking split from her husband of 17 years, Matthew Robertson (pictured together) The former Big Brother presenter looked every inch the gym bunny as she showed off her impressive abs in the skimpy crop top and grey shorts. Proving she's a sucker for a scantily-clad snap, Davina displayed her impressively rippling abs in a selfie with her instructor Sarah earlier this week. Posing in front of the mirror for the snap, Davina's right hand, which clasped on to her phone, remained in view - with her wedding ring clearly visible on her fourth finger. Cheeky: The TV star showed off her incredible six-pack as she posed in a sports bra and made a dating app reference as she joked 'swipe left' in the caption Leaf it out! The Big Brother presenter looked every inch the gym bunny as she showed off her impressive abs in the skimpy crop top and grey shorts Davina was first seen swapping her ring to her other hand while running errands in Bedfordshire on Saturday. However, the Million Pound Drop host was also spotted with a bandage on a finger on her left hand - potentially providing reason for the changeover. The move comes after Davina confirmed she was parting ways with husband Matthew Robertson, after seventeen years of marriage. Festive: Davina took her mind off her romantic troubles on Tuesday as she headed to St Martins Carol Service in London She told MailOnline earlier this month: 'I am very sad to say that Matthew and I have separated. 'Our amazing children are our number one priority, above everything else so therefore we ask for as much space and respect from the media as possible while our family goes through this difficult time.' It later emerged that Davina and Matthew were not pictured together for a whole year prior to their shock split. The pair were last seen in public together at a party hosted by Kelly Hoppen in November 2016, to celebrate her 40-year career as an interior designer. Abs-olutely ripped: Davina is known to be a fitness fanatic, and often shares sizzling workout snaps to her Instagram - but they have slowed in recent weeks following her marriage split The brunette has also not posted about Matthew on Instagram since August 2016, when the pair enjoyed an action-packed holiday in Canada. However, Davina has shared a number of inspirational quotes to the site - which potentially hinted at her marriage woes before news of the split broke. One heart-wrenching image read: 'When I say 'I'm fine', I actually mean 'Just hug me'. Wanting to reassure fans she was 'doing great', she wrote in the caption: 'This is very true.... fine is very rarely fine... annnnnnnd I really love a hug!!!! But today , just in case any of my mates are worried.... I'm doing great.' |
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