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In part 1, we started a comparison between Magento 2 and Magento 1 in order to list what’s new in Magento 2, while comparing it to Magento 1 to put things into perspective. We compared themes and extensions development, frontend development, and admin dashboard.In this sequel, we will explore more into the features, performance, stability, and deployment process. Features Magento 2 has all the features included in Magento 1, yet adds upon it many new features like: CSS Preprocessing Better Security PayPal integration enhancements More payment methods based on BrainTree Full-Page Cache (FPC), now available for Community edition as well. Performance, or lackthereof as we will discuss later. Magento 2 is not an upgrade from Magento 1; it is more of a re-write so while it introduces some new features, more effort is put into Magento’s Core as we inspected earlier, so the lack of impressive new features is justified as long as no features were removed and hopefully with time new features will be added after stabilizing the product. Performance Releasing a re-write version of a software without adding new features is justifiable and actually expected for the first couple of releases until bugs are squashed and everything is stabilized. However, releasing a new version of a software like Magento 2 with clear performance issues, where performance has been/is a crucial cornerstone of the software, is never acceptable and is a clear sign that the maturity of the software is badly affected. Although the different articles list performance enhancements as a feature of Magento 2, we do realize from the experience of working with both Magento products that this is not true and, most probably, this is all just theoretical speculations. It takes only seconds after installing Magento 2 to realize the following: Magento 2 is more CPU hungry than Magento 1. Magento 2 requires more housekeeping than Magento 1 Running Magento 2 in “developer” mode, which is essential during development phase, means you have to wait minutes between page loads, and you won’t even be able to spend that time doing something else as Magento will make sure to leave no resources whatsoever for your computer to be able to perform other actions in parallel. Magento 2 is slow, like really slow, unbearably slow, not even comparable to Magento 1; we expected Magento 2 to be at least on par with Magento 1; however, this is not true, performance is much worse and pages load much slower and use much more resources. Even in “developer” mode, which should mean that all caching is turned off, Magento 2 still utilizes some caching mechanisms to be able to perform in an acceptable manner. You have to run `setup:static-content:deploy` to deploy static content like assets, and Magento automatically caches “Dependency Injection” in var/di directory, which causes frustrations and slows down development. These disappointments were confirmed by the various benchmarks published by other developers, as well as comments by the developers on the different forums. Almost all benchmarks indicated that while Magento 2 uses more CPU resources than Magento 1, it is also twice as slow as Magento 1, meaning that it can serve only half the number of requests that Magento 1 can serve in the same time, all while using more CPU resources. These benchmarks were confirmed even with caching turned on, so while Magento 2 offers Full-Page Cache (FPC) for both enterprise and community editions (Magento 1 offered FPC only for enterprise edition), and also offers integration with Varnish out-of-the-box, it is still slower even when utilizing the different caching techniques. A detailed benchmark can be found at https://www.magecore.com/blog/news/magento-ce-1-9-vs-magento-ce-2-0-performance-comparison “Magento CE 1.9 vs Magento CE 2.0 Performance Comparison”, written by “Dima Soroka” who is the former lead Architect of the Magento project and wrote on the official blog for “MageCore” who are certified Magento Partners. While Magento 2 supports PHP7 which normally reduces processing time by almost 50%, Magento 2 is still slower than Magento 1; however, utilizing PHP7 makes Magento 2 a bit faster and decreases the gap between Magento 2 and Magento 1. Here is a detailed benchmark by Dima Soroka as well, https://www.magecore.com/blog/news/php-7-affects-performance-magento-1-9-ce-vs-magento-2-0-ce “How Does PHP 7 Affects Performance of Magento 1.9 CE vs. Magento 2.0 CE” Magento 2 tries to offer better performance by offering the following tools, which while helping a lot it also adds a lot to the complexity: Compiling of PHP files. Merging of global assets Indexing Full-Page Cache Caching of “Dependency Injection” Caching various other items like configurations and layout We hope that Magento team will focus on optimizing performance so that Magento 2 at least matches the performance of Magento 1 in the near future. Stability It is expected that a major software like Magento doesn’t go live unless bugs are squashed and proper testing is conducted; unfortunately, this was not the case in our experience. A quick visit to Magento 2 code repository on GitHub at https://github.com/magento/magento2 reveals the amount of issues opened. We have also faced many issues ourselves although we have always used the latest stable release of Magento 2. Some issues were critical, like the issues affecting the cache and the translations, others we have attempted to make temporary fixes for ourselves, but all in all, our developers have always been surprised by the bad quality of the code in areas with bugs. Have a look at the release notes for the latest version of Magento 2.1 at http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.1/release-notes/ReleaseNotes2.1.0EE.html. Notice the amount of issues fixed and the known issues not fixed yet. This is obviously not an enterprise-edition software. It is worth-mentioning that upgrading from Magento to version 2.1 was a complete failure for us; we even had to roll back to a backup of version 2.0.7 after 48 hours of downtime and different trials to fix Magento issues ourselves. One issue was with the default Magento theme, which we built upon a customized theme. Here is an answer from Stack OverFlow pointing out the bug in the theme “Luma”, along with comments by developers who suffer from Magento 2 instability. Deployment Process In today’s software development world, deployment should be fully automated; it is no longer accepted to have a person dedicated to deployments, or even downtime caused by deploying a newer version of a software. Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) aim at decreasing the effort and time required to push new features, enhancements, and fixes by the developers to production servers by automating the process. Different softwares and frameworks are built with CI and CD in mind; tools and scripts are developed to make sure deployments are safe, automated, and fast. We have easily established an automated deployment process for Magento 1 on production servers; the process simplified is the following: Push release to code repository. Automatically trigger a script on production servers. Pull the updated files. Run modman to make sure new files are correctly linked. Clear the cache. What’s beautiful about this process is, beside the simplicity, it takes couple of minutes and doesn’t cause downtimes, unless the code itself caused issues which should be detected by CI when running the automated tests. We tried to devise a similar process for Magento 2, after many iterations we figured out a long process that looks something along the lines of: Push release to code repository. Automatically trigger a script on production servers. Run `composer update` to update the different packages and since we built our extensions as composer packages which will be updated as well and this usually takes a couple of minutes. Run `setup:upgrade`; this upgrades the extensions and run any install/upgrade scripts that alter the database and/or install new extensions; this usually takes a minute. Delete some directories from the directory “var” Run `setup:di:compile`, this generates DI configuration files, which usually takes 5 minutes and can fail and cause a lot of trouble. Clear everything inside the directory pub/static. Run `setup:static-content:deploy`, which creates and deploys static content and assets for all themes, and for all locales, usually takes a whopping 20~30 minutes, shouldn’t fail but actually failed miserably when upgrading Magento to version 2.1. Re-Indexing. Flushing the cache. The process is complicated, long and prone to failure. It causes downtime and takes on average 45 minutes. This is definitely an unacceptable downtime; the process is overly complicated due to different caching and caching-like mechanisms like DI configuration and static-content deployment. Conclusion Magento 2 is definitely a great effort towards matching modern PHP frameworks, which we touched upon in different aspects and have always praised during day-to-day development. However, Magento 2 team has a lot of challenges to tackle if they aim at staying the number 1 e-commerce solution, using and applying modern standards and technologies is an advantage; however, stability and performance are killers if not given proper focus. At the end, we hope to see practical improvements during the coming months so as to restore our confidence in Magento being our go-to solution for e-commerce platforms which require scaling, performance, and integrations with the different systems. |
The Ayatollah's Plan for Israel and Palestine Translations of this item: Spanish The book has received approval from Khamenei's office and is thus the most authoritative document regarding his position on the issue. Khamenei makes his position clear from the start: Israel has no right to exist as a state He claims his strategy for the destruction of Israel is not based on anti-Semitism, which he describes as a European phenomenon. His position is based on "well-established Islamic principles." According to Khamenei, Israel, which he labels an "enemy" and "foe," is a special case for three reasons. The first is that it is a loyal "ally of the American Great Satan" and a key element in its "evil scheme" to dominate "the heartland of the Ummah. " Khamenei describes Israel as "a cancerous tumor" whose elimination would mean that "the West's hegemony and threats will be discredited" in the Middle East. In its place, he boasts," the hegemony of Iran will be promoted." Khamenei's tears for "the sufferings of Palestinian Muslims" are also unconvincing. To start with, not all Palestinians are Muslims. And, if it were only Muslim sufferers who deserved sympathy, why doesn't he beat his chest about the Burmese Rohingya and the Chechens massacred and enchained by Vladimir Putin, not to mention Muslims daily killed by fellow-Muslims across the globe? In the early days of his mission, the Prophet Muhammad toyed with the idea of making Jerusalem the focal point of prayers for Islam. He soon abandoned the idea and adopted his hometown of Mecca. For that reason, some classical Muslim writers refer to Jerusalem as "the discarded one," like a first wife who is replaced by a new favorite. In the 11 th century the Shiite Fatimid Caliph, Al-Hakim even ordered the destruction of Jerusalem. Dozens of maps circulate in the Muslim world, showing the extent of Muslim territories lost to the infidel that must be recovered. These include large parts of Russia and Europe, almost a third of China, the whole of India and parts of the Philippines and Thailand. "The flagbearer of Jihad to liberate Jerusalem." This is how the blurb of "Palestine," a new book, published by Islamic Revolution Editions last week in Tehran, identifies the author. The author is "Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Husseini Khamenei," the "Supreme Guide" of the Islamic Republic in Iran, a man whose fatwa has been recognized by U.S. President Barack Obama as having the force of law. Edited by Saeed Solh-Mirzai, the 416-page book has received approval from Khamenei's office and is thus the most authoritative document regarding his position on the issue. Khamenei makes his position clear from the start: Israel has no right to exist as a state. He uses three words. One is "nabudi" which means "annihilation". The other is "imha" which means "fading out," and, finally, there is "zaval" meaning "effacement." Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei (center), is shown meeting in May 2014 with Iran's military chief of staff and the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. (Image source: IRNA) Khamenei claims that his strategy for the destruction of Israel is not based on anti-Semitism, which he describes as a European phenomenon. His position is based on "well-established Islamic principles", he claims. One such is that a land that falls under Muslim rule, even briefly, can never again be ceded to non-Muslims. What matters in Islam is control of a land's government, even if the majority of inhabitants are non-Muslims. Khomeinists are not alone in this belief. Dozens of maps circulate in the Muslim world, showing the extent of Muslim territories lost to the infidel that must be recovered. These include large parts of Russia and Europe, almost a third of China, the whole of India and parts of the Philippines and Thailand. However, according to Khamenei, Israel, which he labels as "adou" and "doshman," meaning "enemy" and "foe," is a special case for three reasons. The first is that it is a loyal "ally of the American Great Satan" and a key element in its "evil scheme" to dominate "the heartland of the Ummah." The second reason is that Israel has waged war on Muslims on a number of occasions, thus becoming a "hostile infidel" ("kaffir al-harbi"). Finally, Israel is a special case because it occupies Jerusalem, which Khamenei describes as "Islam's third Holy City." He intimates that one of his "most cherished wishes" is to one day pray in Jerusalem. Khamenei insist that he is not recommending "classical wars" to wipe Israel off the map. Nor does he want to "massacre the Jews." What he recommends is a long period of low-intensity warfare designed to make life unpleasant if not impossible for a majority of Israeli Jews so that they leave the country. His calculation is based on the assumption that large numbers of Israelis have dual-nationality and would prefer emigration to the United States or Europe to daily threats of death. Khamenei makes no reference to Iran's nuclear program. But the subtext is that a nuclear-armed Iran would make Israel think twice before trying to counter Khamenei's strategy by taking military action against the Islamic Republic. In Khamenei's analysis, once the cost of staying in Israel has become too high for many Jews, Western powers, notably the U.S., which has supported the Jewish state for decades, might decide that the cost of doing so is higher than possible benefits. Thanks to President Obama, the U.S. has already distanced itself from Israel to a degree unimaginable a decade ago. Khamenei counts on what he sees as "Israel fatigue." The international community would start looking for what he calls "a practical and logical mechanism" to end the old conflict. Khamenei's "practical and logical mechanism" excludes the two-state formula in any form. "The solution is a one-state formula," he declares. That state, to be called Palestine, would be under Muslim rule but would allow non-Muslims, including some Israeli Jews who could prove "genuine roots" in the region, to stay as "protected minorities." Under Khamenei's scheme, Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza would revert to the United Nations' mandate for a brief period during which a referendum would be held to create the new state of Palestine. All Palestinians and their descendants, wherever they are, would be able to vote, while Jews "who have come from other places" would be excluded. Khamenei does not mention any figures for possible voters in his dream referendum. But studies by the Foreign Ministry in Tehran suggest that at least eight million Palestinians across the globe would be able to vote, against 2.2 million Jews "acceptable" as future second-class citizens of the new Palestine. Thus, the "Supreme Guide" is certain of the results of his proposed referendum. He does not make clear whether the Kingdom of Jordan, which is located in 80 percent of historic Palestine, would be included in his one-state scheme. However, a majority of Jordanians, who are of Palestinian extraction, would be able to vote in the referendum and, logically, become citizens of the new Palestine. Khamenei boasts about the success of his plans to make life impossible for Israelis through terror attacks from Lebanon and Gaza. His latest scheme is to recruit "fighters" in the West Bank to set-up Hezbollah-style units. "We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 and in the 22-day war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip," he boasts. Khamenei describes Israel as "a cancerous tumor" whose elimination would mean that "the West's hegemony and threats will be discredited" in the Middle East. In its place, he boasts, "the hegemony of Iran will be promoted." Khamenei's book also deals with the Holocaust, which he regards either as "a propaganda ploy" or a disputed claim. "If there was such a thing," he writes, "we don't know why it happened and how." Khamenei has been in contact with professional Holocaust deniers since the 1990s. In 2000, he invited Swiss Holocaust-denier Jürgen Graf to Tehran and received him in private audiences. French Holocaust-denier Roger Garaudy, a Stalinist who converted to Islam, was also feted in Tehran as "Europe's' greatest living philosopher." It was with Khamenei's support that former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set up a "Holocaust-research center" led by Muhammad-Ali Ramin, an Iranian functionary with links to German neo-Nazis who also organized annual "End of Israel" seminars. Despite efforts to disguise his hatred of Israel in Islamic terms, the book makes it clear that Khamenei is more influenced by Western-style anti-Semitism than by classical Islam's checkered relations with Jews. His argument about territories becoming "irrevocably Islamic" does not wash, if only because of its inconsistency. He has nothing to say about vast chunks of former Islamic territory, including some that belonged to Iran for millennia, now under Russian rule. Nor is he ready to embark on Jihad to drive the Chinese out of Xinjiang, a Muslim khanate until the late 1940s. Israel, which in terms of territory accounts for one per cent of Saudi Arabia, is a very small fry. Khamenei's shedding of tears for "the sufferings of Palestinian Muslims" are also unconvincing. To start with, not all Palestinians are Muslims. And, if it were only Muslim sufferers who deserved sympathy, why doesn't the "Supreme Guide" beat his chest about the Burmese Rohingya and the Chechens massacred and enchained by Vladimir Putin, not to mention Muslims daily killed by fellow-Muslims across the globe? At no point in these 416 pages does Khamenei even mention the need to take into account the views of either Israelis or Palestinians regarding his miracle recipe. What if Palestinians and Israelis wanted a two-state solution? What if they chose to sort out their problems through negotiation and compromise rather than the "wiping-off-the-map" scheme of he proposes? Khamenei reveals his ignorance of Islamic traditions when he designates Jerusalem as "our holy city." As a student of Islamic theology, he should know that "holy city" and "holy land" are Christian concepts that have no place in Islam. In Islam, the adjective "holy" is reserved only for Allah and cannot apply to anything or anyone else. The Koran itself is labeled "al-Majid" (Glorious) and is not a holy book as is the Bible for the Christians. The "Supreme Guide" should know that Mecca is designated as "al-Mukarramah" (the Generous) and Medina as "al-Munawwarah" (the Enlightened). Even the Shi'ite shrine cities of Iraq are not labeled "muqqaddas" (holy). Najaf is designated as "al-Ashraf" (the Most Noble) and Karbala as "al-Mualla" (the Sublime). In the early days of his mission, the Prophet Muhammad toyed with the idea of making Jerusalem the focal point of prayers for Islam. He soon abandoned the idea and adopted his hometown of Mecca, where the black cube (kaabah) had been a magnet for pilgrims for centuries before Islam. For that reason, some classical Muslim writers refer to Jerusalem as "the discarded one" (al-yarmiyah) like a first wife who is replaced by a new favorite. In the 11th century, the Shiite Fatimid Caliph, Al-Hakim, even ordered the destruction of "discarded" Jerusalem. The Israel-Palestine issue is not a religious one. It is a political conflict about territory, borders, sharing of water resources and security. Those who, like Khamenei, try to inject a dose of religious enmity into this already complex cocktail deserve little sympathy. © 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute. Related Topics: Iran, Israel Recent Articles by Amir Taheri Putin to Join the Mullahs' Deception Club, 2019-02-24 Mullahs Masquerading as Patriots: Will it Work?, 2019-02-17 Syria: French Count Returns as Russian Apparatchik, 2019-02-10 Why Tehran Crosses Only 'Pink Lines', 2019-02-03 Trump: In Third Year with Three Charges, 2019-01-27 receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free gatestone institute mailing list en 39 Reader Comments Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> |
Over the past century, the personal response to breast cancer has dramatically changed. While breast cancer is still greatly feared (and rightly so), the increased visibility of breast cancer survivors has reduced the stigma that was once associated with the disease. High profile women, such as Guiliana Rancic, openly discussing life after their diagnosis with breast cancer provide a face for this cancer and motivate other women to look after their own health through preventive screening. Screening aims to diagnose breast cancer before symptoms occur, while the cancer is in its early stage and, thus, easier to treat. Mammography and breast self-exam (BSE) have been the standard screening methods for decades. Unfortunately, controversy remains around the effectiveness of these methods. BSE has been encouraged for women starting in their early 20s, but research suggests that breast cancer death rates are not lowered in women who regularly perform BSE. Mammography has been shown to save lives, but has come under recent fire for its limitations in diagnosis. Specifically, this test tends to over-diagnose individuals, which leads to invasive, unnecessary testing and anxiety. Of course, when it comes to cancer, many feel its better to be safe than sorry. These limitations have resulted in calls for alternative methods to improve diagnosis. Particularly, including breast ultrasound or MRI with mammography increases the chances of finding cancer. While increasing the chances of diagnosing and subsequently treating cancer will improve survivability, adding ultrasound does not appear to improve the false positive rates that have been one of the major criticisms of mammography. However, it does appear promising in improving diagnosis, particularly in women with dense breast tissue and other risk factors. Hence, these improved diagnostic measures will help some but not all women. Recently, a lot of media attention has focused on a promising new blood test for breast cancer. This test does not test for breast cancer per se, but can detect women with a high, genetic risk of developing breast cancer, years before breast cancer develops. Understanding risk early could result in preventative lifestyle changes. Of course, genetic risk assessment is not perfect. Our increased understanding of human genes has raised much hope for the notion of personalized medicine and early disease detection and prevention. As we learn more about the gene-to-disease pathway, it is clear that this process is extremely complex. This complexity means that for many individuals, genetic testing might not provide a clear picture of their true disease risk. This can also be seen in the development of the genetic testing for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which have been linked to breast cancer. One of the chief issues with this type of testing is that it can cause undue psychological stress -- a positive test only means that the individual has an increased risk of getting breast cancer not that they will get breast cancer, but can still be scary and life-changing. Despite these risks, some women feel empowered to know their genetic fate and feel comfortable taking extreme preventive measures, including preventive mastectomies. The new blood test includes multiple genetic markers associated with breast cancer, so it may at least improve the accuracy of risk assessment. Many view events like Susan G Komen's Race for the Cure and the pink ribbon as a sign of hope about our chances of curing breast cancer. While these social movements are important, the first step to a cure is early diagnosis. New methods in MRI and ultrasound appear promising in their ability to increase cancer detection in high-risk individuals. Additionally, a new blood test will improve our understanding of risk for breast cancer years before symptoms develop and could lead to individuals making lifestyle changes that reduce their own personal risk. Continued research into diagnostic measures is essential as proper diagnosis is the first step to curing this disease. |
Umberto Eco, the Italian writer and philosopher best known for novels like “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Name of the Rose,” will publish a new novel in the United States this fall, with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The satirical novel, “Numero Zero,” takes place in Milan in 1992 and tells the story of a struggling ghostwriter. The ghostwriter and narrator, Colonna, gets hired to write the memoir of a journalist who works at a shady publication called “Domani,” which is financed by a media baron who resembles Silvio Berlusconi. In the process, Colonna gets pulled into a world of corruption and conspiracy theories, including a plot involving the C.I.A. and the corpse of Mussolini’s body double. “This novel is vintage Eco — corrupt newspapers, clandestine plots, imaginary histories — and will appeal to his many readers and earn him legions of new ones,” Bruce Nichols, General Interest Publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said in a statement. “Numero Zero,” which comes out here on Nov. 3, is already a best seller in Italy, and foreign rights have sold in 34 countries. |
Some up-and-coming chefs are skipping culinary school Rather than spend tens of thousands of dollars on an education, many opt to work their way up in restaurants. For-profit schools across the country are facing a flurry of lawsuits claiming fraud; they're accused of misleading students about tuition costs, job placement rates and how much they'll earn after graduating. Yet the less-touted, less-glamorized path of working one's way up through the restaurant kitchen ranks is starting to sound more appealing. At a time when for-profit professional cooking schools are coming under more scrutiny, some of L.A.'s rising chefs — like Dickinson — are succeeding without ever having stepped into the classroom. That might sound obvious, but it makes him something of an anomaly as the number of culinary schools multiplies, drawing legions of novice cooks with the promise of turning them into top chefs. The cautionary tale of a would-be chef goes like this: A starry-eyed youth dreams of helming a restaurant kitchen and enrolls in a $60,000 culinary program but upon graduation still qualifies only for a job as a $10.50-an-hour line cook and struggles to work off crippling school loans that, with interest, can balloon to nearly $100,000. Dream crushed. Meanwhile, Dickinson has a coveted gig at one of L.A.'s most hotly anticipated restaurants. He was a 17-year-old bussing tables for Charlie Palmer in Healdsburg, Calif., when he first considered culinary school. "I didn't have the money. I had a single mom," Dickinson says, "so I got it in my head that I'd ask Charlie if he'd sponsor me and I'd come back and work for him. He basically said, 'Don't be an idiot. Work for me for a couple of years and I'll get you in wherever you want to go.' In a year and a half, I'd worked my way around every station of that kitchen.... I don't regret not going to culinary school at all." Besides his time with Palmer, Dickinson, now 27, worked at the Fat Duck in England, for Laurent Gras at L2O in Chicago, then for Voltaggio at the Tavern Room in West Virginia and at José Andrés' Bazaar in Los Angeles. In interviews with a dozen chefs and restaurateurs, few recommended culinary school; none said it was necessary. "We get asked all the time," says Karen Hatfield, who, along with her husband, Quinn, owns Hatfield's in Los Angeles. "Quinn and I don't recommend it to anybody ever. It's such a huge financial burden now." (She went to cooking school; he didn't.) And yet all but one of the restaurant's kitchen staff of about 15 attended culinary school. Palmer, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., who grew an empire out of his Manhattan restaurant Aureole, isn't so adamant. He advocates cooking school "if the person has the resources. But there's an enormous range as far as the quality of cooking schools. It's something especially younger students don't really understand." Even at well-regarded not-for-profit colleges, such as the C.I.A., it might not make economic sense. A two-year associate's degree program at the Culinary Institute of America costs $50,000. A bachelor's degree is more than $100,000. According to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual wage of a restaurant cook is $21,990. (That's about one-third the cost of tuition for the culinary arts program at the for-profit Art Institute of California in Santa Monica.) "Is it true that graduates [have to] pay their dues?" says Bruce Hillenbrand, vice president responsible for admissions at the C.I.A. "Absolutely, just like other graduates initially going into other careers." He points out that a C.I.A. survey shows that its graduates can expect to double their salaries within the first five years. |
DONG Energy, E.ON and Masdar will invest DKK 16.4 billion (about $US3 billion) in building the first 630MW phase of the London Array offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary. Once complete, the scheme will be the world’s largest, and the first 1GW, offshore wind farm. The project will supply enough power for around 750,000 homes—or a quarter of Greater London homes—and displace the emission of 1.9m tonnes of CO 2 every year. The decision to proceed came after the UK Government’s recent proposal to increase its support for offshore wind power, according to the partners, who are now satisfied that the project is now financially viable. Onshore work is now due to start in the summer, with offshore work due to start in early 2011. The scheme will be built around 12 miles off the coasts of Kent and Essex. The wind farm will be installed on a 90 square mile site and will be built in two phases. The consortium hopes the first phase of 630MW will be completed and generating in 2012. The first phase will consist of 175 turbines. The second phase will add enough capacity to bring the total to 1,000MW. The project consortium partners have the following shareholdings: DONG Energy owns 50%, E.ON has 30% and Masdar has a 20% stake. |
(AllHipHop News) Slowbucks is not taken getting his chain snatched in front of 55,000 people lightly. Today (June 5th) at Bostany Law Firm, Slowbucks and Civil Investigator John P Bostany outline their plan to investigate 50 Cent and others allegedly involved in his : According to Civil Investgator John P Bostany, he is conducting an investigation on multiple parties involved in assault and chain theft of Slowbucks over the claim of brand dilution. While there is no lawsuit currently in place, Bostany alleges that the motivation for the action was to stop Slowbucks' brand from being competition: They know he is the founder of Slowbucks, the #1 urban brand on the rise today. They want to hurt that brand and they are trying to hurt that brand we are going to put and end to that. We're here, I'm a Trademark attorney, I'm a copyright attorney and I fight unfair competition. Bostany states that 50 Cent lied to Angie Martinez last night (June 4th) during his interview that he had no knowledge of an assault and robbery taking place. According to Bostany, the proof is in the footage: I looked at the videos and I heard 50's interview on [Hot] 97 by Angie, who did an excellent job. Questioning him and I heard his responses and his demeanor. If you look at him he says 'oh I was looking at the crowd.' I didn't know what was going on behind me. I was happy that day.' But if you look at him when he's telling that story, he doesn't look happy. He doesn't look like he want to talk about it. If you look at the videos, every single one, whether he's the one picking up the chain or not is irrelevant. His body is facing what's going on and the he turns around, in the middle of it all, and faces the crowd. While Bostany does not state an exact financial compensation he is seeking for this potential legal action says Slowbucks is taking this route in order to send a message: He had the courage and the strength to come here and remind everyone that no matter how rich or powerful some might become, how popular they may be, they still are not above the law. Check out the Slowbucks/50 Cent incident from Summer Jam below: |
Watch out for that heavy machinery! Sexy young farmers strip off for a roll in the hay wearing nothing but flat caps and wellies Bedfordshire's Young Farmers posed in a series of nude photographs To raise money for mental health charity Mind Idea of Emily Steaggles after best friend committed suicide Advertisement A group of young farmers have posed in nothing but wellies and flat caps for a daring photoshoot - all in the name of charity. The men and women of Bedfordshire's Young Farmers stripped off for a series of nude photographs to raise money for mental health charity, Mind. The charity calendar was the brainchild of 20-year-old Emily Steaggles after her best friend Lizzie Barnes tragically committed suicide in December 2012. September: North Beds Girls pose in the nude for the charity calendar, cuddling up to some cute puppies Showing their guns: Woburn boys pose with guns and pups for their shoot in a local pub July features the Biggleswade boys baring all during a game of cricket, while the Leighton Buzzard girls are hitting the right notes in December, singing songs around the piano. Emily, from Barton-Le-Clay, Beds, spent three months planning and shooting the calendar, with farming communities from all over Bedfordshire posing for the project. Domestic godesses: Woburn girls channel their inner Mary Berry as they strike a pose in a country kitchen Bats and balls: Biggleswade boys indulge in a game of naked cricket Bottoms up! Leighton Buzzard boys play tug of war in the field Emily said: 'Lizzie introduced me to Young Farmers in 2006 and from day one I enjoyed everything it had to offer as did Lizzie. She entered almost every activity and competition going, and went to all the events. 'The last naked calendar produced by Bedfordshire Young Farmers Club was in 2009, Lizzie wasn't of age to participate but was very keen to if another one ever came about. 'So I decided a calendar would be a great way to celebrate all that YFC has to offer, and all the things that Lizzie enjoyed, whilst raising money for such a fantastic charity that helps people suffering with mental health issues, so they can get the help they need. Serious machinery: Silsoe boys Liam pose on tractors in a field for the calendar, which will see proceeds go to Mind Dinner is served: North Beds boys go for a 'butler in the buff' look 'Mind is one of the most recognised mental health charities and it provides support and advice for those suffering, ensuring they are not alone. ' A total of 76 people took part in the £10 calendar, which also includes four horses, ten dogs and fourteen sheep. Emily added: 'The Biggleswade girls who did a stock judging theme with the sheep had me in fits of laughter as sheep aren't the easiest animals to control, especially when they are being straddled by a girls who is completely starkers. ' The sheep were leaping about and trying to jump out of the pen while Gina Andrews, who luckily is a Jockey for a living, clung on in just her birthday suit. 'Nothing was too bad about the shoots, other than controlling lots of naked men; Woburn lads are a bit of a handful and have always enjoyed running around without clothes, which apparently is quite a regular occurrence. 'Some people jumped at the chance to show a bit of flesh, others only built up the courage because they knew it was for such a great cause and knew that Lizzie would be looking down laughing at us all.' Making music: Leighton Buzzard girls pose naked on the piano for the charity calendar Horsing around: Silsoe girls get comfortable in the stables with equine companions Au natural: Bedford girls pose al fresco in the vegetable patch Tribute: The charity calendar was thought up by 20-year-old Emily Steaggles after her best friend Elizabeth Barnes tragically committed suicide in December 2012 |
Comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld is returning to the Limestone City. The co-creator of Seinfeld and current star of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee will perform his signature standup routine at Rogers K-Rock Centre on June 6 at 7:30 p.m. Seinfeld, who last performed in Kingston in June 2010, has been hailed for his uncanny ability to joke about the little things in life that relate to audiences everywhere. Seinfeld now sets his sights on performing both nationally and internationally in 2015. During his 2010 comedy tour, Seinfeld visited only two Canadian cities, Kingston and London. Tickets sold out so quickly in Kingston that it created public outrage and calls for more tickets to be made available for purchase at the box office. At his Kingston appearance in 2010, then Whig reporter Greg Burliuk wrote about Seinfeld’s subjects that evening. "(Seinfeld is) not big on fancy restaurants that drizzle and crust things. Much more memorable are the days of his youth, when Pop Tarts were invented, the perfect food for a nine-year-old to cook and eat, protected by a wrapper as inviolable as if it had been made by NASA," he wrote, adding "He’s also not keen on the Starbucks type of coffee shop, with their extra large cups that allow the bearer to strut about with a sense of entitlement, especially with their Blackberry, the icon of modern technological hipness. As for e-mail, Jerry concludes that it’s a way to be hostile, even to the people we like, since sending one concludes you don’t want to see or talk to that person, just get information from them." Burliuk said: "Funny bones having been roundly tickled by world-class comedic talents." Seinfeld co-created the legendary sitcom Seinfeld with friend and fellow funnyman Larry David. The show went on to become one of the most successful TV shows of all time and continues in syndication today. Tickets for the June Seinfeld comedy show go on sale March 6 at 10 a.m. — The Whig-Standard |
Since July 30, when Yangervis Solarte returned from the disabled list, the Padres’ opening-day second baseman has started at every infield position, enabling rookie Carlos Asuaje to remain in the lineup while providing much-needed versatility. On Friday at AT&T Park, Solarte made his 23rd start of the season at shortstop, an assignment no one would have envisioned entering the year. At the moment, it’s unclear where Solarte will play next spring, both in the field and in what uniform. While the Padres could have a surplus to consider at second base — Asuaje has held his own, and prospect Luis Urias is nearing his major league debut — Solarte’s steady play has attracted trade interest from multiple teams. Solarte, a father of three daughters, has mulled the scenarios. Through an interpeter, on where he’d prefer to play: “It’s a question I’ve asked myself. But I don’t know. I think at the same time I would want to come in like I came this year, knowing I could focus on a position.” On which team he’d prefer to play for, there is more clarity. San Diego — where Solarte emerged as a regular, where a team and a city supported him through tragedy, where he was rewarded with financial security — is the pick. “After everything that’s happened, after everything I’ve gone through, I always just try to focus on what I have, I always try to stay focused on what’s in front of me, what I’m going to do day-to-day,” said Solarte, whose wife, Yuliett, died of cancer-related complications a little more than a year ago. “But of course, it goes through my mind every now and then. I want to stay here. I think my heart’s here. I’ve developed a ton of good relationships, a lot of friendships. It’s an organization that’s given me the opportunity to be here over all these years. “At the same time, I understand: If they want to trade me, what am I going to do? If I’m playing all these positions, I know there’s going to be teams that have interest in that versatility. Again, I want to stay here, I want to be here, but if they decide to trade me, I would just be thankful for the opportunity they’ve given me.” In spite of personal loss, Solarte produced career-best numbers last year, prompting the Padres to sign him to a contract extension. Now 30, he remains a productive player, a fan favorite and a bargain — Solarte will make $4 million in 2018, with two club options to follow. Were it not for an oblique strain, the Padres might have continued their rebuild by dealing him before the July 31 trade deadline. It will be a possibility again this winter or, if not then, next summer. Solarte’s affordable contract also means the Padres do not have to rush a decision. Solarte entered Friday hitting .256 with a career-high 18 home runs, numbers that manager Andy Green believe would have been better had the infielder not dealt with injury. “For us, I’m definitely very interested in having him in the lineup next year,” Green said. “He always hits in the middle of the order almost every single day.” Should Solarte return, where he plays will continue to be of interest. “That’s a tough question,” Green said. “I think there’s a lot that has to unfold in order to answer that. He’s one of the few guys that has true versatility for us. … I think in an ideal world, he’d be able to lock in and know he had one spot. It’s just not the way our team is set up right now. He’s kind of had to be that piece that moves around and provides that versatility for us. He’s done it very well, he’s played good defense all over the field. In all likelihood, he’s starting at second or third base going into next season. But he’s shown the ability to play shortstop in short bursts.” Said Solarte: “At the end of the day, it’s going out there and trying to help the team in any way that I can, at any position. The idea is to be on the field, and if you’re on the field, then you’re able to help. Having that opportunity first and foremost is what matters.” |
The final poll of the GOP Senate primary race from Kentucky television station WHAS shows Rand Paul coasting to what looks like an overwhelming victory over Trey Greyson: It’s the Senate race the entire nation is watching — as Trey Grayson — the choice of some of the biggest names in the Republican party is trying to overcome a tidal wave of tea – as Rand Paul is coasting on that tea party wave. The Rand Paul phenomenon in Kentucky shows no signs of ebbing tonight – as the Bowling Green opthamologist’s double digit lead continues over Secretary of State Trey Grayson. He says his message is behind his 16 point lead. Paul 49% Grayson 33% Stephenson 3% Martin 3% Scribner 1% Undecided 11% “I come from the Tea Party movement,” Paul said Wednesday, “and the tea party movement really feels like government is out of control, that we’re being consumed by this debt.” As Trey Grayson campaigned in Louisville this morning, some may suggest the dark clouds that hung over him were a metaphor for the poll numbers.. “We’re seeing a very close race,” Grayson insisted, “A jump ball if you will and we’re going to finish strong and one of the things you’re not going to see us do is quit. |
The government’s legal advisers have been accused of launching a “full-frontal attack” on whistleblowers over proposals to radically increase prison sentences for revealing state secrets and prosecute journalists. Downing Street believes a major overhaul of existing secrecy legislation is necessary because it has become outdated in a digital age when government employees can easily disclose vast amounts of sensitive information. Draft recommendations from the legal advisers say the maximum prison sentence for leakers should be raised, potentially from two to 14 years, and the definition of espionage should be expanded to include obtaining sensitive information, as well as passing it on. The moves have prompted concern from whistleblowers that draconian punishments could further discourage officials from coming forward in the public interest. One critic said the changes were “squarely aimed at the Guardian and Edward Snowden”. Meanwhile, media organisations and civil rights groups have expressed alarm at the Law Commission’s assertion that they were consulted over the plans, when they say no substantial discussions took place. The Guardian, human rights group Liberty and campaign body Open Rights Group are among a series of organisations listed by the Law Commission as having been consulted on the draft proposals, but all three say they were not meaningfully involved in the process. The Law Commission says on its website that in making the proposals, it “met extensively with and sought the views of government departments, lawyers, human rights NGOs and the media”. The law commissioner, Prof David Ormerod QC, said: “We’ve scrutinised the law and consulted widely with ... media and human rights organisations.” But Liberty said that while a meeting was held, it was “not on the understanding that this was a consultation”. A source said: “Liberty do not consider themselves to have been properly consulted. And we will be responding in detail to the [public] consultation.” Cathy James, the chief executive of Public Concern at Work, was also surprised to see her the whistleblowing charity listed as being involved. She said: “I didn’t actually know we were listed in the document as we have been working our way through it so it is a big surprise to me. I believe my colleague met with them initially but we were not consulted in the normal sense of the word consultation. That is not what happened. “We are very worried about the extent of the provision in the recommendations both for whistleblowers and public officials. It’s a huge backward step and we are very worried.” Jim Killock, the chief executive of Open Rights Group, confirmed it had not taken part in the consultation. “The real tragedy of this is that they’ve had nine months to actually talk to journalists and civil liberty organisations, and find out what the consequences of their suggestions might be, and in actual fact they’ve managed to talk to no one. But they’ve listed us all as having being consulted in the paper anyway,” he said. The Guardian also held only one preliminary meeting with the government’s legal advisers and was not consulted before being listed in the report. A spokesperson said: “The proposals to threaten journalists and whistleblowers with draconian punishment, combined with powers just introduced in the [2016] Investigatory Powers Act to surveil journalists without their knowledge, represent a further attack on freedom of expression. “We are surprised that a roundtable discussion with the Law Commission, which they billed as a ‘general chat’, has been described as formal consultation, and concerned that despite being told that we would be informed about the progress of these plans, the first we knew about them was when the law commissioner put pen to paper in the Daily Telegraph last week.” Killock said: “This is a full-frontal attack, recommending criminalising even examining secret services’ material. The intention is to stop the public from ever knowing that any secret agency has ever broken the law. “It’s squarely aimed at the Guardian and Edward Snowden. They want to make it a criminal offence for journalists to handle a large volume of documents in the way that journalists did with Snowden. They have even recommended that foreigners be criminalised for this, meaning Snowden would be prosecutable in the UK.” Killock expressed his concern over a proposed “redrafted offence” of espionage that would “be capable of being committed by someone who not only communicates information, but also by someone who obtains or gathers it”. “It’s the mere handling of documents that becomes a criminal offence on the basis of the risk handling those documents causes, not that you actually hand them to a foreign state,” he said. “So spying becomes possession of secret information. This is not what any of us would recognise as the definition of spying. It’s spying as China might define it.” The former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the proposed changes were “alarming” and had been set out “without any adequate consultation”. When asked about the organisations listed as being consulted, a spokesman for the Law Commission said: “Ahead of our open public consultation, we undertook a fact-finding exercise where we contacted a range of organisations with an interest in the area. “We met with a number of interested groups over the last 12 months. They are listed in the appendix to the report. All were either met with or contacted by phone. Everyone listed in the appendix provided views that we feel we have considered in the consultation paper.” On Friday, a Law Commission spokesman told technology website The Register there were delays to the consultation because the project “became a larger piece of work than we anticipated”. Ben Griffin, who quit the SAS over the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and later turned whistleblower to expose what he had witnessed, said: “The British government not only refuses to answer questions [about conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa], it is actively misleading the public. Given these facts, it is of no surprise that they have decided to clamp down on whistleblowers.” Another whistleblower, Peter Francis, made a series of revelations about a Scotland Yard undercover unit that spied on hundreds of political groups. Francis, who was deployed as an undercover police officer to infiltrate anti-racist groups in the 1990s, disclosed, for example, how police gathered information about the family of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. “I have been threatened, several times, with possible prosecution under the (1989) Official Secrets Act. Not a single suggestion, within the entire 326 pages [of the] Law Commission document, gives me any hope whatsoever that as a whistleblower, I would then be treated any more fairly with this new law in place,” he said. “In fact to the contrary, all that would now happen is that I would have to be prepared to serve 14 years’ imprisonment instead of currently two, which I personally am, but [it] might deter other officers from coming forward in the future.” He said he also disagreed with another of the Law Commission’s proposals suggesting that defendants should be prevented from claiming they believed they were acting in the public interest disclosing official secrets. How to contact the Guardian securely Read more According to the Law Commission, “such a defence would allow someone to disclose information with potentially very damaging consequences. The person making the unauthorised disclosure is not best placed to make decisions about national security and the public interest”. The proposals are contained in a 326-page report commissioned in 2015 by the Cabinet Office, which asked for a review of the “effectiveness of the criminal law provisions that protect government information from unauthorised disclosure”. According to the Law Commission, “the maximum sentence for the offences in the Official Secrets Act 1989 is low when compared with offences that exist in other jurisdictions that criminalise similar forms of wrongdoing”. In a pointed reference, it noted that the maximum sentence for whistleblowers in Canada is 14 years. The commission says the two-year sentence currently applicable in the UK did not reflect the damage that could be done to the country. “In the digital age, the volume of information that can be disclosed without authorisation is much greater than when the Official Secrets Act 1989 was originally drafted. It could be argued that this means that the ability to cause damage to the national interest and the risk of such damage occurring has also increased,” the Law Commission said. Michelle Stanistreet, the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said: “The scope for change is huge, wide-ranging and possibly detrimental. We are concerned at the ramifications for journalists and press freedom as a consequence. We have already faced many challenges and attacks on our right to report in the last few years. Could this be intended as another step taken to curtail the media in the UK?” A Law Commission spokesman told the Guardian: “We are currently conducting an open public consultation on the protection of official data, including the Official Secrets Acts. “We are seeking views on how the law could meet 21st-century challenges while also ensuring people don’t inadvertently commit serious offences. Our provisional proposals make a number of suggestions to improve the current laws around the protection of official data, and we welcome views.” Additional reporting by Owen Bowcott |
Donald Trump says congresswoman 'totally fabricated' his comments to fallen soldier's widow Updated Sorry, this video has expired Video: Body of ambushed soldier returns to US (ABC News) United States President Donald Trump has denied telling a war widow on her way to meet her husband's casket that the soldier "knew what he signed up for". Key points: Sgt La David Johnson and three other soldiers were killed in a terrorist ambush in Niger on October 4 Mr Trump had not addressed soldiers' deaths, criticised Obama and others for not calling families of death soldiers Congresswoman who heard President's call to grieving widow weeks after death says call was insensitive Sergeant La David Johnson, 25, of Miami Gardens, Florida, was killed in Niger earlier this month during an ambush carried out by Boko Haram and other extremists linked to ISIS. Congresswoman Frederica Wilson was riding in a limousine with the soldier's widow, Myeshia Johnson, and her family to meet the casket at Miami International Airport when she overheard the President's call and what she described on Twitter as his "insensitive comments". "Basically he said, 'Well I guess he knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurts'," Ms Wilson told CNN. "I heard what he said because the phone was on speaker." The Florida Representative said Ms Johnson was already distraught, particularly after hearing the casket would be closed. Mr Trump says Ms Wilson's claim is fabricated but is yet to provide evidence. Johnson's body arrived home on Tuesday, nearly two weeks after his death on October 4. He was one of four US soldiers killed when a joint patrol of American and Niger forces was ambushed by militants believed linked to the Islamic State group. "This is a young woman who has two young children, who is six months' pregnant with her third child [and] she has just lost her husband," Ms Wilson said. "She was just told that he cannot have an open-casket funeral which gives her all kinds of nightmares of how his body must look, how his face must look. And this is what the United States President says to her? "That is not something you say to a grieving wife." Ms Wilson said Ms Johnson could not say anything in response to the President because she was crying. "There were other family members in the car and they were all crying," Ms Wilson said. "All she said when it was time to hang up was 'thank you, goodbye'." The congresswoman's reaction to the call was to take the phone and "curse him out", but she was not handed the phone. When the limousine arrived at the airport to greet the casket, a sobbing, Ms Johnson and her two children awaited the casket, alongside various local officials and law enforcement officers, who were on site to pay their respects. Ms Johnson lay across the US flag draping her husband's casket, sobbing uncontrollably. Niger ambush could be Trump's Benghazi, Wilson says Ms Wilson said there are still questions about Sergeant Johnson's death that are yet to be answered. "[The family] don't know why he was separated from the other soldiers," she said. "This could turn out to be another Benghazi, and I have asked for an investigation. "We want to find out exactly what happened and I'm expecting a classified briefing when I return to Washington to answer some of these mitigating questions that I can't answer on my own." Ms Wilson said Sergeant Johnson, who mentored in her dropout prevention program for boys which she founded in 1993, was a hero in their community. "There was no reason for the President to be so insensitive, not only to the family of this soldier, but the impervious rhetoric is disrespectful to the family of every soldier that has paid the ultimate price of freedom," she said. Trump boasts he calls families where Obama, others did not The call came after the US President falsely claimed his predecessor, Barack Obama, did not contact the families of US troops killed in the line of duty. The claim drew a swift response from Mr Obama's foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes, who said it was "an outrageous and disrespectful lie". The President made the claims in response to questions about why he had not publicly spoken about the killing of the US soldiers in Niger two weeks ago. "If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls," Mr Trump said during a news conference in the Rose Garden with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. "A lot of them didn't make calls. I like to call when it's appropriate." Topics: donald-trump, defence-and-national-security, defence-forces, death, united-states First posted |
Audio: Andrea Dukakis reports on hunger in Colorado; Ryan Warner speaks with Kathy Underhill Fairmeadow Elementary School second grade student Jonathan Cheng, center, looks at fruits and vegetables during a school lunch program in Palo Alto, Calif., in December 2010. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) For many kids, the holidays mean gifts and dinner tables full of good food. The story may be different for one of every six children in Colorado who live in a poor family. During the school year, about 350,000 kids in the state depend on free breakfast and lunch served at schools. A statewide program provides meals and snacks for kids during the summer, but not during the holidays. The problem is apparent at a hotline run by Hunger Free Colorado in Centennial. People can call the number to find food pantries, figure out how to sign up for federal assistance and help paying heating bills. With schools closed and food pantries struggling to meet demand, Kathy Underhill, who runs Hunger Free Colorado, says it’s harder for people to find food. Mary Ann McLendon, who runs the nonprofit's hotline, has had to deliver the bad news. “Right now there are unfortunately no food baskets available,” McLendon says. “They only did that at the beginning of the month and very few organizations provided that.” Related: How to eat on a food stamp budget of $4 a day There are usually enough food baskets to go around at Thanksgiving but fewer during Christmastime. The reason for that is more donations of food flow in during Thanksgiving, but as Christmas approaches, there are more donations of toys. Another issue is that many families who are new to poverty have a hard time asking for help. McLendon says she knows what that's like. She lost her job at Raytheon during the recession and was unemployed for three years. Eventually, she ran out of money to buy groceries for herself and her daughter. McClendon remembers the first time she went to apply for food assistance from the federal government. “I looked around and figured I really didn’t belong there,” McLendon recalls. “I was really kind of thick-headed and didn’t want to do it, but I forced myself... because I had a daughter and I wanted to do what was best for her.” McLendon says she worried her daughter would suffer without access to things like fruits and vegetables, which can be more expensive than processed food. She says her experience makes her even more determined to offer support to callers -- along with resources. “I can relate more when someone calls in and says I’ve never been through this and don’t know how to go in and ask for help and I’m able to let them know they’re not alone,” McLendon says. This story is part of our ongoing exploration of Colorado kids who are living in poverty, how it affects their lives and our common future. We'd like to hear your ideas about about what can be done about child poverty in Colorado. Share your thoughts through our Public Insight Network. |
Explosive 6'9″ heavyweight contender and former unbeaten, Irish, Commonwealth and British Heavyweight Champion Tyson Fury, 20-0, 14 KO's, will make his New York debut on Saturday afternoon, April 20th when he takes on former cruiserweight World Champion Steve USS Cunningham, 25-5, 12 KO's, at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. This fight is an official IBF Heavyweight Voluntary Eliminator fight for the #2 position between #9, Tyson Fury and #12, Steve Cunningham. The winner will become #2 and must meet #1 or the leading available contender to establish the mandatory challenger for Heavyweight King Wladimir Klitschko. The fight will be broadcast at 4PM ET on NBC as a special 2 hour afternoon presentation of NBC Sports Fight Night. "Cunningham's got all the tools; a former World Champion, good fighter, he's got a lot of skill. I'm looking to put on a devastating performance; the best of my career to date." said Fury. "I'm absolutely ecstatic to be fighting at Madison Square Garden; it goes back in history and I can't wait to put my name with a long list of Champions who have fought there – I'm a historian of boxing myself so this is definitely the pinnacle of my career so far." Mick Hennessy, Hennessy Sports CEO, said, "I'm very proud to say that Tyson Fury's American debut is taking place at Madison Square Garden, New York, this is a dream debut in the US for Tyson as this fight is also being shown live on network TV (NBC). It just doesn't get any better than this. Steve Cunningham is ecstatic, "I'm looking forward to getting back in the ring on April 20th to face Fury. For the first time in my career I have a guy coming to my country to face me. I am certain he's never faced a fighter like me." He added, "What an amazing opportunity to fight in historic Madison Square Garden and return to NBC again. I am prepared to fight a great fight and come out with a victory." Kathy Duva, Main Events CEO, "Giving Steve the opportunity to fight on NBC again – in a bigger venue for another shot at the #2 position in the IBF – after his controversial decision loss to Tomasz Adamek in December is what Main Events and Fight Night are all about." "Steve put on a fantastic performance against Adamek and deserves to be rewarded with this fight." "We also get to introduce Tyson Fury, a young heavyweight contender, to the American public in a true crossroads match." Tickets to the bout, starting at $25, will go on sale next week. Details to follow. The fight is promoted by Hennessy Sports and Main Events. |
One Piece Film Gold earned 69,630,000 yuan (about US$10.1 million) at the Chinese box office in its first three days. The anime film opened in China on November 11. These box office earnings are the most any Japanese film has grossed in its first three days in China in 2016. In addition to One Piece Film Gold, nine other Japanese films have screened in China this year. Seven of those films were anime, including Doraemon Shin Nobita no Nihon Tanjō, Boruto: Naruto the Movie, and Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'. The Stand By Me Doraemon 3D CG film earned a total of 530,290,000 yuan (US$76.9 million) in China in 2015. One Piece Film Gold earned a total of 5.2 billion yen (US$46 million) at the Japanese box office. The film had surpassed 5 billion yen in Japan as of September. The film is the second highest-earning film in the franchise. The 2012 film One Piece Film Z earned 6.87 billion yen (about US$64.64 million). Including the latest film, the franchise's 13 films have earned a total of 30 billion yen (US$292 million) since 2000. The film opened in Japan on July 23, and screenings were listed for 33 other countries. Funimation will release the film in theaters in the United States and Canada from January 10-17. Source: Anime! Anime! |
OAKVILLE, Ontario — Janet Barber doesn’t dwell too much on the view from her driveway. Many of her longtime neighbors up and down the block have cashed in on the area’s soaring house prices and moved away. Where their modest wood homes once stood, much larger architect-designed houses of stone, steel and glass fill the lots. Across the street, a big sign plastered with “Sold” stickers means that one is probably next to go. But no matter how much Ms. Barber and her husband, Michael, might now be able to get for their own three-bedroom bungalow, they are not about to join the rush. Why? Though they are old enough to be empty-nesters, their nest isn’t empty. Their 29-year-old daughter, Sarah, has been living with them since she finished a graduate degree in 2013, because she can not yet afford a place of her own. Her older sister, Jennifer, did the same for six years. The more house prices rise, the longer it will take Sarah to save up enough to move out. But the longer she and thousands like her stay with their parents, the fewer houses are put up for sale — and that scarcity is a big reason prices are soaring. |
Haryana IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who has alleged that he is being persecuted for taking on Robert Vadra IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who has alleged that he is being persecuted for challenging land deals involving Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, has been asked to shift again.Two days ago, the Congress government in Haryana announced that another bureaucrat will be Director General, Archives Department, a post that Mr Khemka was assigned to in April this year. The move in April was the 44th transfer of Mr Khemka's 22-year career in the Indian Administrative Service.The state government says that this time it is not a transfer and that he is being temporarily removed so that he can be deputed, along with seven other officials, to help with election arrangements in other states. Meanwhile, it says, their duties are being assigned to other officers as additional charge only for that period."Khemka would have been transferred only if he went on election duty. Since he has not been called by the Election Commission yet, there is no transfer," the state's Chief Secretary RK Chaudhary said in a statement, trying to stem another growing controversy.The IAS officer has however shot off a letter to the state's chief secretary complaining that he was suddenly moved out of his post and while he was on leave. He has also pointed out that he has not been assigned election duties yet."There will be a break in my service. It is more sinister than a transfer order," Mr Khemka told NDTV. He said he was ready to do election duty, "Please issue an appointment letter and I'll go tonight."Union Minister Manish Tewari has defended the Hooda government, saying, "Poll duty is assigned by the Election Commission, not the central government or any state government."The state government headed by Bhupinder Hooda has repeatedly rejected Mr Khemka's allegation that Robert Vadra was given sweetheart land deals in the state, which allowed him windfall gain.In 2012, while Mr Khemka was the top man in the department that handles land registration, he cancelled a deal between Mr Vadra and real estate major DLF, a decision which triggered the first of two transfers since then. Mr Khemka had recently written to the Haryana government alleging that he was being targeted for taking on Robert Vadra. |
Viewers of Canadian television might not know it, but white women hook up with Asian guys a lot. Sometimes they even get married and have kids (I’m living proof). And despite the growing prevalence of “mixed unions” in this country — more than 360,000 couples, according to Statistics Canada — Tuesday night was the first time I’ve seen an Asian man depicted as sexually attractive to a white woman on TV. Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette. We can thank the new CBC series Kim’s Convenience for this pioneering moment in entertainment history. Chiseled bad boy Jung Kim (played by Simu Liu) applies for a promotion at a car rental agency, to the delight of his lovelorn boss: “I think you’d do a great job. You’ve got wonderful people skills, strong physical presence, amazing posture,” swoons budding cat lady Shannon (played by Newfoundland comedian Nicole Power). “When I picture someone under me — working under me, that someone looks a lot like you.” It was just one of the familiar, yet rarely televised moments that had Asian-Canadian viewers celebrating. So proud and excited to see my lived experience come to the screen #KimsConvenience #grewupworkingatthestore https://t.co/U79Cihdq2J — Sylvia Kim (@sylkim82) October 3, 2016 #KimsConvenience: I love that this looks and feels like *my* Toronto. So topical, so relevant. Full of colour. At long last on TV! #OKSeeYou — Wayne Leung (@wayleu) October 12, 2016 I've never felt so proud watching a tv show than I did tonight. #KimsConvenience #asiancanadianpride #congratulations — Nina Lee Aquino (@nininsky) October 12, 2016 Nice to see a representation of Canadians that doesn't involve hockey, flannel and people saying "aboot." #KimsConvenience — Christina Truong (@christinatruong) October 12, 2016 Adapted from a play by Ins Choi, the show has a willingness to laugh at uncomfortable aspects of the immigrant experience that makes it resonate far beyond the Korean community. Inter-Asian resentment? It’s a thing. Rigid scholastic expectations? Awkward church events? Unwelcome matchmaking? All too real. These generational rifts, including a badly broken father-son relationship, are what give Kim’s Convenience its heart. But is this dish ‘authentic’? The show’s pan-Asian accessibility is mirrored by the cast, which is... well, not entirely Korean. Simu Liu was born in Harbin, China. Calgary comic Andrew Phung, who plays Jung’s dirtbag roommate Kimchee, has Chinese and Vietnamese heritage. And the family’s dashing priest is played with a thick Korean accent by Hiro Kanagawa, a veteran character actor from Vancouver by way of Sapporo, Japan. So far it’s not something reviewers or fans have taken up. “I don't really see a problem with it,” says Korean-Canadian actor and writer Paul Bae. [Disclosure: Paul was also my high school English teacher.] “I only know a handful of Koreans who have fully invested themselves in acting as a profession. So I’m guessing they couldn’t find suitable Koreans to cast for certain parts. Besides, it’s acting. If a Chinese guy can pass himself off as a Korean, why not?” I mostly agree. Wagner Moura, the Brazilian actor who plays real-life Colombian sociopath Pablo Escobar on Netflix’s Narcos, had to learn Spanish for the role. He’s fantastic. So is Juan Riedinger, the Banff-born German-Peruvian actor who plays drug runner Carlos Lehder. And like South American actors trading nationalities, Asian cultures seem to have developed a certain entente when it comes to playing each other on TV — or opening competing sushi restaurants. It’s a poorly kept secret among Vancouver’s Asian communities that aside from marketing each other’s cuisines, we do the accents too. I’m still embarrassed by the memory of a visit to A&B Sound with my Japanese-Canadian dad when I was a teenager. I was looking at a car stereo system when he began ranting at me in a loud Cantonese accent about my supposed fondness for street racing (not true). I begged him to stop, but it only fed his enthusiasm. Naturally, the other customers didn’t bat an eye. The joke was obvious: they couldn’t tell the difference. There’s something similarly cheeky about Kanagawa (who talks like a CBC weatherman in real life) adopting the sibilant sing-song cadence and extra syllables of Pastor Choi on Kim’s Convenience. He pulls it off, just like series lead Paul Sun-Hyung Lee. Lee sounds much like Kanagawa (or my dad) off-set, but employs a thick Korean accent to play the Kims’ gruff but endearing patriarch, Appa. The show’s goal seems to be to unearth shared truths that speak to Korean immigrants — and a much larger audience at the same time. If that balancing act can be achieved by borrowing artists from different backgrounds, hey, that’s show business. Casting switcheroo A different issue pops up in the second season of The Romeo Section, also out this week. CBC’s Vancouver spy thriller is another showcase for local Asian-Canadian acting talent, though mostly in more well-worn roles: triad kingpins, shadowy consular agents, gangsters and their girlfriends. The exceptions have been Marcus Sim, as a B-movie director who dabbles in the seedy world of heroin smuggling, and series standout Jemmy Chen as Lily Song. Her character, a UBC professor with a hidden family connection to organized crime, becomes both the love interest and possibly the greatest danger to series lead Wolfgang McGee, played by Andrew Airlie. Over the 10 episodes of the first season, Chen’s character is drawn into an increasingly complex web of allegiances, as she plays Chinese and Canadian intelligence assets off each other amid a major power shift in the Pacific. This week Chen was gone, abruptly replaced in the role of Lily Song by actor Leeah Wong. In the world of espionage drama, where a tiny detail can make the difference between life and death, it felt strange for a show full of professional spies to carry on without noticing the new face at the table. An email to CBC chief publicist Katherine Wolfgang yielded only this as an explanation: “Jemmy Chen was replaced by Leeah Wong due to scheduling issues.” Crew members on the show were similarly tight-lipped. It’s not an unprecedented move for a drama series. The character of Daario Naharis, Queen Daenerys’s lover on HBO’s Game of Thrones, was played for three episodes by actor Ed Skrein. Michael Huisman replaced him in season four and has carried on since. The two look nothing alike. Fans were confused, but eventually got over it. Skrein later described his departure as “political.” I don’t know the full story behind Chen’s replacement. But I do wonder if the switch was made easier by the notion in North America that Asian people “all look the same.” Like it or not, it’s part of the reason so many Vancouver sushi restaurants succeed — and why the multi-ethnic comedians on Kim’s Convenience are safe playing Korean characters. In that case, we’re all in on the joke. I just hope it didn’t contribute to the decision to swap out a key actor on The Romeo Section without explanation. Two steps forward Overall, this is not a week to complain about minority representation on television. We have, for the first time in CBC history, a show led entirely by real Asian-Canadian actors, playing Asian-Canadian characters. Given recent history, that’s a pretty big deal. Two generations ago it was perfectly normal for John Wayne or Yul Brynner to simply embody Asian historical figures like Genghis Khan or King Mongkut. “Yellowface” was a feature of the entire 20th century, with Mickey Rooney, David Carradine, Tracey Ullman, Rob Schneider and other white actors donning face paint and squinty eyes to play Asian characters. When Asian women did get screen time in Hollywood, it was often as exotic femmes fatales. For men it was pathetic weirdos like “Long Duk Dong” in >em>Sixteen Candles, “Mike Yanagita” on Fargo or Ken Jeong as the micropenis-afflicted Mr. Chow in the Hangover series. In another generation maybe we can ditch the immigrant-parent accents, funny as they are, or have an Asian lead on a cop show or drama without it being a big deal. The public broadcaster is certainly pushing in that direction with its TV lineup this fall. Says Paul Bae: “I’m hoping the CBC gives Kim’s Convenience a chance to fully find its feet and grow into its own rhythms. Most sitcoms seem to take a season or two to find themselves and I think Kim’s Convenience has a good shot at growing into a Canadian classic.” I hope so, too. |
Ubisoft released a new set of screenshots this weekend for Assassin’s Creed 3 and its Vita cousin, Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation, confirming that the main game will finally include snowman building! In typical Ubisoft fashion, these new “screenshots” are a bit too well rendered to actually be from the game (especially in the case of Liberation). With that said, they are still representative of content found in both titles and are worth taking a look at. One of the more interesting AC 3 screenshots appears to show Connor before he suits up in his assassin outfit, indicating that some portion of the game takes place before the new protagonist brings the fight to the Templars. Check out the new screenshots for both titles in our gallery below. Assassin’s Creed 3 will release for the PS3 and Xbox 360 on October 30th, alongside Liberation for the Vita. The Wii U version of AC3 will launch with the console on November 18th, with the PC version following on November 20th. Source: NeoGAF |
READER COMMENTS ON "Easily Hacked Diebold Systems to Decide 'Toss-Up' U.S. Senate Special Election in MA on Tuesday" (84 Responses so far...) COMMENT #1 [Permalink] ... Mitch Trachtenberg said on 1/15/2010 @ 1:18 pm PT... Chain of custody being what it is, this probably won't help, but I'd be happy to count in MA exactly as I've counted in Humboldt. I'll go there at my own expense and they don't need to pay a thing. COMMENT #2 [Permalink] ... Meg said on 1/15/2010 @ 1:29 pm PT... Good Lord, how could they have let this happen? Why was this over looked till now? Thank you for writing about it! COMMENT #3 [Permalink] ... John R Brakey said on 1/15/2010 @ 2:49 pm PT... On the Scott Brown US Senate web site - Front page - VOTE ABSENTEE ... "Absentee voting” also called in the west "Vote by mail", is a disease moving from West to East. I too am concerned about the election next Tuesday. Excerpt from LA TIMES - June 25, 2006 article on the GOP Voter Vault system The GOP knows you don't like anchovies Unpopular Republicans still own the art of politicking. By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger FOUR DAYS before this month's special election in San Diego County to replace imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican strategists back in Washington were worried. In addition to voter discontent with GOP leadership and the looming shadow of scandal dominating the campaign, Democrats appeared to enjoy yet another advantage: More absentee ballots were being submitted by Democratic voters than by Republicans. The advantage did not last long. Jolted to life, the GOP machinery revved into high gear as activists poured into the district. They scoured the party's computer database for sympathetic voters who had requested absentee ballots but had not yet submitted them, knocked on their doors and called them on the phone. Suddenly, thousands of additional votes had been secured, and by election day, the GOP had turned around a costly deficit — with 10,000 more Republicans than Democrats voting absentee. That final flurry of absentees, along with other forms of voter targeting, contributed to a surprising GOP victory that cut through the heart of the Democrats' broader 2006 election strategy. Rather than using Cunningham's criminal role in a lobbying scandal to turn the special election into a preview of how they could translate a "culture of corruption" into a national revolution in November, Democrats watched in disappointment as a Republican lobbyist won the race — and as the Democratic candidate performed barely better than presidential nominee John Kerry had in that same district two years before. Rest of Article [ed note: Format edited. —99] COMMENT #4 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/15/2010 @ 2:53 pm PT... For those who don't know, Mitch Trachtenberg (at Comment #1 above) is the guy who developed the system which discovered that Humboldt County's Diebold system had dropped hundreds of ballots without notice to anybody. (As I mention in my full article over at Gouverneur Times). Folks in MA would be wise to get Mitch's butt out there ASAP, frankly. No matter which party they happen to support! COMMENT #5 [Permalink] ... Victoria Parks said on 1/15/2010 @ 3:04 pm PT... Its those convenient "too close to call" elections that always seem to get decided by the machines. We are the decider. Time for serious election justice activists in MA to find your problem precincts then have them drawn from a hat before everyone, demand an immediate 10% hand count audit (get your hand-counters and volunteers together!)of the entire state. LHS has a criminal record for God's sake. Why are they anywhere near our ballots?????? This company truly represents the shady underbelly of the election hardware/software business. COMMENT #6 [Permalink] ... karlof1 said on 1/15/2010 @ 3:45 pm PT... Regarding vote by mail. Here in Oregon, there are no absentee ballots, so there's no database to access to find out who requested one and hadn't yet voted, which brings up this question: How is it possible for it to be discovered if someone had requested an absentee ballot but not yet voted since those votes haven't been counted yet (aren't ballots only supposed to be counted AFTER the polls close)?!?!?! COMMENT #7 [Permalink] ... judesedit said on 1/15/2010 @ 3:47 pm PT... Is it possible for an accompanied honest, knowledgable hacker to track the computer readings realtime to correct any funny business prior to decision making time? Or to note odd calculations for investigation asap? Also, are there no watchdogs at the precincts? Would exit polls help in disputing the outcome if it appears funny when compared to voter registrations? Let the cameras roll! Personally, I think we should play their game better then they do. COMMENT #8 [Permalink] ... Jim March said on 1/15/2010 @ 3:52 pm PT... Bad situation for sure. In the Pima County public records fight John Brakey and I were involved in, Pima didn't want to give up the raw data files behind a wonky-looking election. So as a key argument against giving up the data, they outright admitted that the security behind the system stank. Yeah, I'm quite serious. They admitted in open court that the Diebold system was so "fatally flawed" that it was too easy for outside tampering to allow any "outsiders" additional knowledge about how the process worked. Thus turning the entire concept of a democratic process on it's head. In the end the judge didn't buy it, and John was able to dig through the internals of the data files and spot patterns of weirdness. In the latest go-round, we're now trying to get to the original poll tapes in that 2006 election with a $2bil (yeah, that *billion*) bond measure in play. The patterns of strangeness found by John indicate that once party observers left for the night, numerous precinct's worth of electronic uploads were re-done for reasons we still don't understand. That's why we want to go back to the original polltapes, to see if the signed output sheets match the numbers of voters at each precinct and the official final tallies. We suspect they won't. The good news is, we now have a lot of experience in cross-referencing this stuff - the electronic records against the paper in particular. We think that needs doing out in Mass... Jim March COMMENT #9 [Permalink] ... Big Dan said on 1/15/2010 @ 5:11 pm PT... How did it go from an easy Democrat win to a toss up, and is that even true? COMMENT #10 [Permalink] ... Stephen Bonser said on 1/15/2010 @ 5:38 pm PT... Should concerned citizens start putting pressure on NY Secretary of State Lorraine A. Cortés-Vázquez to ensure that the balloting and vote counting is done properly? Obviously the Secretaries of State for Ohio and Florida were very effective in helping ensure the vote was NOT fair in those states. COMMENT #11 [Permalink] ... Herschel Krustovski said on 1/15/2010 @ 5:42 pm PT... Bradblog, I really admired the work you did early on, and then major kudos for the work with Sibel Edmonds, but the fawning over obama has me saying "feh" to any of your future efforts. Why? NY23. real quiet there pal. Bev gets my money. COMMENT #12 [Permalink] ... karenfromillinois said on 1/15/2010 @ 5:58 pm PT... from brads fine article, "The petition filing must occur within 6 days of the election, requires at least 10 signatures per ward and "The petitioner must file a separate recount petition in each ward of a city or precinct of a town in which he desires a recount." if i was a dem in mass i would be trying to get those signatures lined up NOW COMMENT #13 [Permalink] ... Bickle said on 1/15/2010 @ 6:01 pm PT... Sounds like a pre-emptive lawsuit needs to be filed to stop this person, his company or his agents from coming anywhere near any election again. Sounds like there's definately criminal charges in there already. COMMENT #14 [Permalink] ... jimbo92107 said on 1/15/2010 @ 6:33 pm PT... Consider the election stolen. COMMENT #15 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/15/2010 @ 6:34 pm PT... Hershel K. said (for some reason): fawning over obama has me saying "feh" to any of your future efforts. Why? NY23. real quiet there pal. Bev gets my money. First, "pal", I don't care who you give your money to. Giving some to Bev sounds like a good idea to me. Second, "pal", "fawning over Obama"? Don't come by here much? Finally, "pal", in regard NY-23, who the hell do you think wrote two of Gouverneur Times key feature articles on NY-23?! Not to mention my coverage here. Get a clue, "pal". I'll accept your apology in advance since you don't seem the type to actually offer one after you've made a jackass of yourself. Pal. COMMENT #16 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/15/2010 @ 7:46 pm PT... The Al Franken election convinced me many close elections are totally rigged. You had absentee ballots just showing up mysteriously --- some reportedly found in abandoned cars. A man who has literally failed at everything he's ever done is now sitting in my Senate making laws that affect my future. I can't take it anymore. Vermont is fielding several candidates in state elections that are pushing to seceed, and other states are going to follow. Yes, state govs can be corrupt, but nothing like what has happened in DC --- a government that actively works against the will of the people like the unelected EU High Commission. Our federal government is bankrupt fiscally and morally and our democracy is in tatters with ACORN and Diebold running amock to win elections by any means necessary. We're going to have to drain DC of a lot of it's power and give it back to the states or they're going to force the issue by leaving this corrupt system. COMMENT #17 [Permalink] ... Jon in Iowa said on 1/15/2010 @ 8:51 pm PT... Good comedy, Brook. Minnesota has one of the most transparent and secure electoral systems in the country. Sure, there's more they could do, but the Franken election is about as successful a one as you're likely to find in this country. If you want a man who's failed at everything he's done getting into office through a failed election, look eight years earlier and a little higher on the official food chain. Incidentally, in our arrangement, failed elections are as much the states' fault as the federal government's. Thus, I'm really not sure how you've flown from one topic to the other. I do get some amusement from the thought of Vermont--a landlocked state with a legendarily stagnant economy--fighting a war for independence and then persisting as a sovereign nation. And as for ACORN . . . apart from registering voters, what have they done to win elections "by any means necessary"? COMMENT #18 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/15/2010 @ 8:51 pm PT... Brook @ 16: The Al Franken election convinced me many close elections are totally rigged. You had absentee ballots just showing up mysteriously --- some reportedly found in abandoned cars. No. You didn't, Brook. You've been conned. I hope you'll consider using better news resources, instead of the ones who have apparently lied to you. A man who has literally failed at everything he's ever done is now sitting in my Senate making laws that affect my future. Yes. Failed by be an award winning comedy writer for two decades, having a number of a Best-Selling books, a daily radio show for years until he quit to run (sucessfully) for the U.S. Senate. You should hope that you're as much of a failure, Brook. I can't take it anymore. Well, that may be true. But, as I said, try reading news sources who don't lie to you. It may (or may not) make things easier to take. Vermont is fielding several candidates in state elections that are pushing to seceed, and other states are going to follow. Yes, state govs can be corrupt, but nothing like what has happened in DC --- a government that actively works against the will of the people like the unelected EU High Commission. Why? How is DC government more corrupt than it's been for the last decade? And do you want scones with your tea party? Our federal government is bankrupt fiscally and morally and our democracy is in tatters with ACORN and Diebold running amock to win elections by any means necessary. What does ACORN have to do with anything? (And have I mentioned you need better news sources? Glad you found us.) We're going to have to drain DC of a lot of it's power and give it back to the states or they're going to force the issue by leaving this corrupt system. Well, that sounds fine to me. Good luck! COMMENT #19 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/15/2010 @ 8:56 pm PT... Stephen Bonser @ 10: Should concerned citizens start putting pressure on NY Secretary of State Lorraine A. Cortés-Vázquez to ensure that the balloting and vote counting is done properly? Well, yes. But not in the Massachusettes election coming up next Tuesday! But for all of the others ones, yes, of course they should! COMMENT #20 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/15/2010 @ 9:00 pm PT... Karlof1 @ 6: How is it possible for it to be discovered if someone had requested an absentee ballot but not yet voted since those votes haven't been counted yet (aren't ballots only supposed to be counted AFTER the polls close)?!?!?! All jurisdictions are different, but many states/counties allow counting to occur BEFORE polls are closed (and some, even before they are open!), though the results are not supposed to be checked until after polls closed. As Jim March notes @ 8 above, of course, that's not what happened in Pima County, AZ, where officials printed out results, several times, before Election Day! BTW, Jim March, hope you got enough gas in your motorcycle (and a sidecar for John Brakey) to get to Massachusetts! I hear the weather's lovely there this time of year! COMMENT #21 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/15/2010 @ 9:07 pm PT... Is it possible for an accompanied honest, knowledgable hacker to track the computer readings realtime to correct any funny business prior to decision making time? Well...not really. I suppose they could illegally break into a scanner, set a remote device, and then follow it from outside. But they'd then have to do that in every polling place, and break a lot of laws in the bargain. And even then, might not be able to notice funny business. In other words, no. That plan won't work, as I see it. Or to note odd calculations for investigation asap? Again, for a hacker, not that I can figure. But for a citizen, to demand access to Memory Cards in a court of law, under the premise that they are public records and should be available to the public and should be retained for 22 months following a federal election (as per federal law, which everyone ignores) --- well, with all of that, you might be able to get somewhere. Quicker route: get rid of the damn machines, and count the damn ballots in front of everyone and be done with it. Also, are there no watchdogs at the precincts? Yes. You! Please? Would exit polls help in disputing the outcome if it appears funny when compared to voter registrations? Only in the Ukraine. Or in the event that an exit poll says the Republican should have won, but the Democrat ends up winning according to the machines (the reverse doesn't work, trust me.) Let the cameras roll! Personally, I think we should play their game better then they do Sounds good to me! COMMENT #22 [Permalink] ... CharlieL said on 1/15/2010 @ 9:40 pm PT... If the Massachusetts election is stolen by the GOP, the Dems will be getting EXACTLY what they deserve for ignoring election protection. They can lose the Senate 40, lose healthcare, lose the 2010 mid-terms, lose the Presidency and cease to be a party. They deserve it, but unfortunately, we'll have to live with the mess too. COMMENT #23 [Permalink] ... bluebanshee said on 1/15/2010 @ 10:47 pm PT... KARLOF @ 6: I'm an election activist from Oregon. Even Oregon has absentee voters --- Overseas Military and others living/working abroad. Their ballots go out well in advance of the rest of us. Also anyone who will be out of the state during an election period can still request an absentee ballot. COMMENT #24 [Permalink] ... karlof1 said on 1/15/2010 @ 11:52 pm PT... Thanks for the reply Brad and all the work you're doing on so many issues. We can never be a democracy until everyone is allowed to vote and all the votes get counted. Unfortunately, there's the problem of who is getting elected with those votes and the agenda they're hiding from the voters that elected them. COMMENT #25 [Permalink] ... ron_woodward said on 1/16/2010 @ 12:48 am PT... Citizens Can Salvage Single Payer from Health Care Mess The health insurance industry, Big Pharma and other special interests have overplayed a pat hand. They have bribed every official in sight to the point the so-called health reform has the public by the short hairs. The bill promotes extortion with fines and punishments for those who don't comply with government dictates. This illustrates the disease of corporate communism, which has infested the entire nation. If the citizen has a brain, he realizes he has no say in health care delivery. The situation has come to a head in Massachusetts. If Coakley loses, the health care bills now before the Congress collapse without the 60th vote in the Senate. Horrified by this eventuality, the special interests have moved their funds and support to the Coakley campaign. They have ordered their lick-spittle President to rush to Massachusetts to pull their fat from the fire. Win or lose in Massachusetts, the citizens have an excellent window of opportunity. With both parties totally discredited and shamed beyond belief, any bill worth passing deserves a reconciliation effort to overcome a filibuster. Fifty-one votes should be enough to make H.R. 676 single payer the law of the land. Let every incumbent learn the 2010 election could unseat him and send him to prison. Such a realization is good for the character. COMMENT #26 [Permalink] ... Floridiot said on 1/16/2010 @ 1:21 am PT... B @ 15, don't sweat "Krusty the Clown" dude, if you didn't catch that handle...lol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krusty_the_Clown COMMENT #27 [Permalink] ... Floridiot said on 1/16/2010 @ 1:41 am PT... Why isn't anyone suggesting that Kennedy was put on the ticket by Repukes to garner votes from unsuspecting elderly people that would have normally went to the Dem candidate? Typical dirty tricks, more than a wrench in the system. They'll gain at least 5%+ from this action. COMMENT #28 [Permalink] ... molly said on 1/16/2010 @ 6:02 am PT... #22 I think a message has been sent by Don Seigleman.He went to bed as the gov. of Alabama, then at 1 AM. ...the vote was switched. He went to jail for objecting to crooked elections. COMMENT #29 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/16/2010 @ 7:04 am PT... Ron is correct. Both parties are discredited at this point, and this is really what the tea party rallies are about. However, i do not agree that a third party would make a difference. Look at Britain. Dismantling a few failed federal departments like education and relinquishing that responsiblity to the states is a much better solution. Washington has been trying to micromanage education since the 60's. How many more chances are we going to give them and flush more money down the drain, until we just shut them down? COMMENT #30 [Permalink] ... Ernest A. Canning said on 1/16/2010 @ 8:45 am PT... COMMENT #31 [Permalink] ... MarkH said on 1/16/2010 @ 9:25 am PT... Now I'm really convinced the Dems should pay Sarah Palin to come in and speak WITH Kennedy to convince people he's not Teddy, just a TEA Party guy. Short of that we need t.v. ads with pics to clarify just who the candidates are and who is supporting them. COMMENT #32 [Permalink] ... Big Dan said on 1/16/2010 @ 12:11 pm PT... OT, but: FOX doesn't "do" humanitarian disasters with global significance involving black people! MSNBC's Matthews/Olbermann/Maddow vs. FOX's Beck/O'Reilly/Hannity on Haiti earthquake coverage: http://4.bp.blogspot.com...ake+coverage+by+show.jpg COMMENT #33 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/16/2010 @ 3:45 pm PT... Brad, excuse me, weren't you the one who said Obama never spoke at a black church and you would apologize if i proved you wrong? Go for it! COMMENT #34 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/16/2010 @ 5:15 pm PT... I don't believe I said he never spoke at a black church. I said I was unaware of it, and would happily apologize if you were able to demonstrate differently (all of this is a different thread, which has little to do with the topic of this article, btw). Have been working on deadlines today, and not able to reply to, much less read, all comments. So, thanks for posting those three clips in that other thread. I looked at them. Obama speaking at the church in Selma, Alabama in March 2007 --- the very church where the "Bloody Sunday" marchers gathered --- at an event held to commemorate the Civil Rights movement on the anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" march is what you were referring to when you said: haven't i seen Obama appear to campaign at black churches all over the country --- on a Sunday? Or in 2005 when he appeared to support a candidate in New Jersey, and marked the anniversary of Rosa Parks, that's what you were referring to? Or in January 2008 when he spoke at DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING'S church, and was introduced by the pastor saying "Regardless of whether you are Republican or Democratic, Barack Obama makes us proud", that's what you were referring to?! (You gave three clips, and that's what they were). So yes, you did see "Obama appear to campaign at black churches" even if "all over the country" is a bit of an exaggeration (and even "appear to campaign" is up for grabs) and at each event speaking to crowds commemorating historic landmarks in civil rights moments in this country. If that's what you're offended by, then yes, I'm happy to apologize for having indicated that I was unfamiliar with those. I wasn't. But now I am. Thanks for sharing them. And I'll presume, if you are condemning him for having done so, that you're also condemning all of the "churches" and tax-exempt religious organizations who routinely proselytize and/or campaign for and/or send out materials in support of and/or fund ballot initiatives for Republican candidates and wingnut initiatives and George W. Bush, etc., right? (Eg. the Mormon church which spent MILLIONS in support of defeating Constitutinal equal protection in CA for example? Or Rick Warren and his church where Obama/McCain had their "debate"?) If so, then I'm right there with ya, and all for revoking ALL of their tax exempt status when those organizations fund campaigns and instruct voters how to vote. COMMENT #35 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/16/2010 @ 6:26 pm PT... Thanks to Brad for being a stand-up guy and admitting that both the right and left, (especially the Obamas --- witness openly using a black church to campaign for Jon Corzine), misuse religious organizations for political purposes. It is shameful, but it is ironic the ACLU only seems to sue the right-wing organizations. We are, however, looking forward to Brad's next blog on Black Liberation Theology and the danger it poses to America. COMMENT #36 [Permalink] ... Indy said on 1/16/2010 @ 6:46 pm PT... Democrat or Republican are both poor choices. They always promise everything and deliver nothing. Repub wins and I promise you despite any promises he will fall in line and vote right down the party line. WE NEED INDEPENDENTS nationwide to get our country back. VOTE INDEPENDENT. Don't be swayed, make a stand. COMMENT #37 [Permalink] ... zapkitty said on 1/16/2010 @ 10:09 pm PT... A bit off-topic, but a word of warning to those hoping that reconciliation will somehow magically result in a better HCR bill. Reconciliation will not result in a measurably better HCR bill because the Republicans did not make Obama craft this bill. This corporate-mandated shit sandwich is the bill Obama wanted in the first place. Again: this is the bill Obama wanted from the start. I’ve seen a lot of wishful thinking over at FDL articles, diaries and comments about reconciliation and I keep having to respond with these simple facts: Reconciliation is not going to happen because it won't be allowed to happen... but if it were used it would be used solely to impose the corporate will. (The oligarchic will, actually…) There’d be a lot of sweet nothings added in order to obscure that fact, possibly even that fig leaf of a public option after it had been safely watered down into uselessness, but the corporate shit sandwich would still lie at the core of a reconciliation vote. But that would mean a little too much exposure for comfort for even these leeches so reconciliation simply won’t happen. But if events were somehow forced to reconciliation then they’d still pass the corporate version regardless of how bad it would look. COMMENT #38 [Permalink] ... katie said on 1/17/2010 @ 12:40 am PT... Most likely the healthcare and bigpharm powers that be are willing to pay big bucks to produce public polls showing that Brown is ahead, and willing to pay the big bugs to LHS Associates who will ultimately count the votes. The tighter the race they can make it appear in the media, the less payola they'll have to pay to rig the election in Brown's favor. Democracy in the US is no longer democracy by majority rule, but by the golden rule: he/she/corporations who have the gold, decide. The MA Senate seat will be bought and sold by the highest bidder. For Brown to be even ahead 4% in the late Sen Kennedy's backyard is absolutely insane. For the public to go along with the perception that Brown stands a chance of winning and is in turn influenced by the media is also insane. I bet Brown will win, and nothing will be done about the how this election was purchased. Business as usual, move along folks, nothing to see here, just a few computer glitches. COMMENT #39 [Permalink] ... zapkitty said on 1/17/2010 @ 8:20 am PT... ... katie said... "The tighter the race they can make it appear in the media, the less payola they'll have to pay to rig the election in Brown's favor." Er... errrrr... hmmm... I'm afraid you seem to be somewhat out of date... I believe that Coakley is the favored of the oligarch's corporate footstools. It's Coakley has said that she will vote for the corporate-mandated shit sandwich. It was Coakley whose campaign was flooded with healthcare corporate lobbyists and healthcare corporate cash when the polls showed her losing. (The vast majority of her fundraising "hosts" are now big pharma and insurance gangsters.) Brown has said he'll vote no on the bill and as I said above that would make the corporate leeches have to move a bit more overtly than they are comfortable with... so it won't be allowed to happen. At all. It's Brown who doesn't stand a chance. As for what happened to Coakley that she needs to be bailed out by the oligarchs?... a commenter named kafka over at FDL said it best: It took Carter and his big Dem Congressional majorities 4 years to piss off the country. It took Clinton and his big majorities 2 years. It’s taken Obama and his big majorities less than 1 year. The Democrats are getting better at this. COMMENT #40 [Permalink] ... Big Dan said on 1/17/2010 @ 8:56 am PT... Easily hacked Diebold voting machines to decide American health care. COMMENT #41 [Permalink] ... zapkitty said on 1/17/2010 @ 9:19 am PT... Big Dan said... "Easily hacked Diebold voting machines to decide American health care." No. That has already been decided by the oligarchs… the plutocrats who exercise de facto control over the corporations and yet comprise less than >1% of the population. They issued their demands and Obama complied. And that is all. COMMENT #42 [Permalink] ... David Lasagna said on 1/17/2010 @ 9:51 am PT... Dear Zapkitty- I'm mostly completely with you here. Except for this-- I don't think anyone can know who's going to "win" because there's too much stuff we just don't know about how the "counting" will go down. Yes, all that you say about the corporate world wanting, wining, and dining Coakley I think is probably accurate. But since the "counting" will be handled by the wild card that is LHS Associates and we don't know what they might want or get paid to want or by whom, I think it's difficult to predict the outcome. And the machines fucking up all by their lonesomes can't be ruled out as a possible determining factor in any outcome. This is one of the problems of our current multi-faceted dysfunction. You can't make up shit crazier than what might be going down but on the other hand it might also for multiple reasons not be going down whichever way any of us is imagining(or hallucinating). So we're all busy making up our different possibilities of reality. Some of it's right. Some of it's not. Some of it's crazy. Some of it's partly right. Some of it will eventually be discovered and validated. Some not. Some never. And on and on. And that, as we all know, is why we need a transparent and honest election and voting system. And the return of transparency in government. And we're going to have to push and pull like crazy and forever to make these things happen. And even then they may not. And we gotta keep trying anyway. love, Dave COMMENT #43 [Permalink] ... MsKitty said on 1/17/2010 @ 10:21 am PT... Perfect scenario for the vote controlling hackers, a "squeaker", "too close too call", ... too easy to manipulate. I'll be stunned if the Democrat 'wins'. Keep on it Brad. Wake up people! This is no democracy if your vote can be disappeared, changed or multiplied! COMMENT #44 [Permalink] ... zapkitty said on 1/17/2010 @ 10:58 am PT... David, I said that the fate of HCR had been decided. And it has. The fingerprints are all over the fucking knife buried in America's back. There's no "conspiracy theory" about it and they haven't exactly been subtle... that's why voters are so damned pissed although they're mostly unaware of the slimey details or just how bad it's going to be. Your mistake is in thinking that this election will somehow affect the outcome of Obama's bill, the senate bill, the corporate-mandated shit sandwich we're all destined to eat... and the simple fact is the election will have no effect on that outcome. As for the rest... the mindset of "election fraud must equal a Republican win", something which Brad has warned against time and again, is in for a hell of an shock come Tuesday. Hint for the slow-to-wake-up... the corporations found Republicans useful as direct access to the levers of government but they've always worked both parties and now that they're in the drivers seat THEY DON'T GIVE A FUCK IF THE WINNER IS A REPUBLICAN OR A DEMOCRAT AS LONG AS THE WINNER TAKES THE MONEY AND DOES AS THEY ARE TOLD. And Coakley is taking the money and she will do as she is told. As would Brown in similar circumstances. COMMENT #45 [Permalink] ... renzoku bb.com said on 1/17/2010 @ 11:53 am PT... MsKitty on #43, Please be nicer to the sheeple and the sheep dogs. None of us are to blame for being managed and eaten by the wolves. And trying harder to do the same failed tactics is a sign of insanity. Brad et all do an excellent job. What we're seeing here though is that someone in control of a larger context than even Brad has access to is not much threatened by the excellent work Brad does. In fact, they seem to anticipate Brad's work. Jon in Iowa #17. Nice catch. Brook at any number of comments: The tea parties are not all about free and fair elections. The tea parties are about taking a group of people who are just barely informed enough to not be able to ignore the corruption and crime at current levels, and to systematically mislead, twist truths and flat out lie to them to make it impossible to figure the truth. And then take advantage of their anger by pointing it at anyone remotely involved in uncovering and understanding the truth. As Bill Gates did in the early software industry, spread Fear Uncertainty and Doubt to such a level that no one does anything to fix anything so the rabid wolves can keep on eating the sheeple without the sheeple having a clue. Brad, thank you again. I'm lookin and I still can't find a mistake in your research. Everyone, here's the pattern that keeps emerging. Just like Brooke's tea partying friends, the powers that be over elections (Dem AND Rep) seem consistently to do one thing well: obscure results and deny access to accuracy. We gotta face it. It's not just part of the system now, it is the system. The proof is in how much simpler and easier the cure is than the disease. For these voting systems to be used, it takes so much more effort than just simple paper hand counted ballots and the results are so much less accurate by machine that we all know consciously or not that huge efforts are being made to hurt us. It's not incidental nor accidental nor a result of some ongoing struggle between good politicians and evil politicians. For this kind of adulteration to persist for more than a day, let alone years, it takes concerted, cooperative effort at all levels from all sides. Ok so I'm blaming OBusha again? What motive? Hmmm, what would happen to the OBusha agenda if the Dems had their magic 60? Why not 70? What policies would Dems have to accept responsibility if they had 70? Corporate rape throughout our system as we've had in the financial bailouts, the criminal military/torture/industrial/mercenary/bigbrother complex, the medical/pharma/insurance complex, the complete loss of civil rights,.... these can't all be blamed on those dang blue dogs and reps who keep throwing sand in the gears of congress. Yep it's all screwing the folks making less than $1M/yr all the time and it's all done by, for and with the Dems as well as Repubs. Again, thank you Brad and Mitch and Al Franken and all for the incredible research and efforts over the last decade at least. More and more now, I'm starting to see Dmitry Orlov's point that as the system collapses, the corruption becomes more and more plain to see and less and less correctable. Who among us believes anything short of paper ballots counted by hand is going to resolve any of this? Didn't Franken (as well as Thom Hartmann) talk and write at length about Germany's hand counted ballots and their tenth of a percent accuracy when compared to comprehensive exit polls? So for me at least, the question becomes what are the odds that we'll get and what do we need to do to get paper hand counted ballots? COMMENT #46 [Permalink] ... David Lasagna said on 1/17/2010 @ 4:40 pm PT... Zappy @ comment #44-- When you say this... Your mistake is in thinking that this election will somehow affect the outcome of Obama's bill, the senate bill, the corporate-mandated shit sandwich we're all destined to eat... and the simple fact is the election will have no effect on that outcome. ...you're attributing thinking to me that I am not thinking. COMMENT #47 [Permalink] ... Lora said on 1/17/2010 @ 5:01 pm PT... Note to campaign managers (especially in MA): In addition to your people asking: Can we count on your MONEY? ---and--- Can we count on your VOTE? Please add: Can we count on your SIGNATURE on a RECOUNT PETITION the day after the election? BTW, are internet petitions acceptable? That would put "recount" more into the realm of the possible. COMMENT #48 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/17/2010 @ 5:09 pm PT... Renz, you are wrong about the tea parties because i am actively involved in them. it is a cross-section of society so you've got a wide range of IQ's but the tea party movement is about seeing through the corruption in both parties. They have nothing good to say about Bush. What we're demanding is accountability, fiscal responsibility, and the cessation of ever-expanding government that is driving us into bankruptcy. When you consider those goals, not that many Americans are going to disagree with them. COMMENT #49 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/17/2010 @ 6:54 pm PT... Lora said: Can we count on your SIGNATURE on a RECOUNT PETITION the day after the election? BTW, are internet petitions acceptable? That would put "recount" more into the realm of the possible. You can't "recount" something that hasn't been counted, Lora. And since there is neither an automatic "audit" law in MA nor a full hand-count in the case of very close reported results (as I understand), it seems that NONE of the ballots voted by voters will actually be counted at all when the "results" are announced. If you're hoping to get folks interested in a manual count of all ballots, however, that's a different matter and no, I don't believe an Internet petition for same would have any legal weight (though perhaps moral weight). COMMENT #50 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/17/2010 @ 6:58 pm PT... Brook said: the tea party movement is about seeing through the corruption in both parties. They have nothing good to say about Bush. Not from my first hand experience. It looks to me like the bulk of them are little more than sore-losing Bush supporters. Those who now claim not to be have little moral authority, since they spent eight years NOT calling for all of the things you mentioned above, even as the most historic and unprecedented corruption, biggest government and complete disregard for the U.S. Constitution was taking place right under their noses. They didn't raise a peep. Did you? COMMENT #51 [Permalink] ... renzoku bb.com said on 1/17/2010 @ 7:53 pm PT... Brook, Who financed the beautiful motor coaches for the Tea Party Express for their Red State only bus tour? Dude do you think everyone writing here doesn't read the rest of the excellent articles written here? Or do you not read here? Brad's point on #50 is dead on. Even better though, how did those 1500 tea party protesters pay for their 40 buses to Washington DC to protest OBusha and Congress against Health Care Reform (before we all knew what a shit-sandwich the oligarchs in OBushaland were definitely shoving down our throat)? Who paid for all their buses to get there? Go astroturf somewhere else Brook. I think I hear David H Koch and Dick Armey calling your name. COMMENT #52 [Permalink] ... renzoku bb.com said on 1/17/2010 @ 8:04 pm PT... So Brook, How do the Tea Partiers feel about hand counted paper ballots? Or better yet full investigations, prosecutions and fund confiscations of all fraudulent (redundant I know) voting machine companies? And everyone, my earlier question wasn't rhetorical. How do we get hand counted paper ballots again? COMMENT #53 [Permalink] ... Big Dan said on 1/18/2010 @ 6:44 am PT... COMMENT #48 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/17/2010 @ 5:09 pm PT... Renz, you are wrong about the tea parties because i am actively involved in them. it is a cross-section of society so you've got a wide range of IQ's but the tea party movement is about seeing through the corruption in both parties. Then why are Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann speaking at the February Tea Party? btw...I wonder how much donations Brown is getting from the health care industry? COMMENT #54 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/18/2010 @ 7:35 am PT... Let's cut through the tea bashing here to ask the question --- do you guys agree with these goals or not? If you agree that we have to get our fiscal house in order, then why are you protesting so loudly against this political movement? COMMENT #55 [Permalink] ... Big Dan said on 1/18/2010 @ 8:29 am PT... Again, Brook, answer the question: if it's "bi-partisan", why are Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann speaking at it? Not answering the question means you are dodging it and admitting the Tea Party is a "Republican thing" and not bi-partisan. COMMENT #56 [Permalink] ... Ernest A. Canning said on 1/18/2010 @ 9:24 am PT... I would add to Brad's piece that the Hursti hack, depicted in Hacking Democracy was verified by the 02/06/2006 UC Berkley Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuBasic Interpreter [PDF], which noted: Harri Hursti's attack does work….He was indeed able to change the election results by doing nothing more than modifying the contents of a memory card. He needed no passwords, no cryptographic keys, and no access to any other part of the voting system, including the GEMS election management server. The report adds that there is an even greater vulnerability in some 16 "bugs" in the interpreter code that permit malicious tampering that "would not be discovered by any amount of functionality testing." they could allow an attacker to completely control the behavior of the AV-OS. An attacker could change vote totals, modify reports, change the names of candidates, change the races being voted on, or insert his own code... COMMENT #57 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/18/2010 @ 10:03 am PT... Dan, realize this is a grass roots movement, and the Tea Party Convention looks like a bad idea to me in it's current form. The protests were spontaneous and open to all who wanted to lend their voice. Blue Dogs like John Tanner have spoken or addressed Tea Party rallies, but many Republicans are afraid of it --- ask Charlie Crist. Lindsey Graham also was censored for his support of climate change, and many GOP members are announcing retirement, I believe due to the grass roots pressure. Okay, Dan, I answered your question --- now you answer mine: do you agree with reducing the size of the federal government and giving some of it's authority back to the states? COMMENT #58 [Permalink] ... zapkitty said on 1/18/2010 @ 10:40 am PT... No. The states would be as corrupt under corporate rule as the federal level is... and the last thing we need is 50 corporate fiefdoms squabbling over the scraps of what was once America. COMMENT #59 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 1/18/2010 @ 1:17 pm PT... I feel it's important to point out here that the Tea-whatever movement is, in fact, a much more complex break-down of demographic than we might have been led to believe. The national Ron Paul movement was hi-jacked. So...what happened to the Ron Paul people? As one who was very much involved with the Ron Paul "movement", but dropped out when he did. (JAN. 08 / fter he showed no interest whatsoever in our New Hampshire Primary Recount Investigation which showed that the Diebold voting machines had a failure rate 163 times greater than allowed by Federal Law.)** Since then, I have watched the Tea Party Express / Tea Party Grass Roots evolution / dissolution with interest (and consternation) - always wondering how many of my smart, revolutionary, techno-saavy, hyper-aware, super-organized former RP people could be involved in this...stupid fest. So I made some phone calls to my former Ron Paul pals in Sarasota, Florida this past weekend - and just as I suspected, they were forced out of the local chapter Republican Party in 2009 after being VOTED IN as reps due the swelling of RP numbers in 2008. (Of interest to Bradblog readers, these folks were very aware of the wonky 'election' of Vern Buchanan in 2006, after the ES&S machines disappeared 18,412 votes for his opponent in our county.**) Since their ousting from local politics, they have quietly slipped back into the woodwork, now just trying to make ends meet. My point is, Brook and Damail may be completely different creatures (clearly are), with wide ranging IQ differentials (as Brook him/ herself mentions). I think we're seeing many different shades of Tea-party gray all parading (and pandering) under the banner of the TeaParty-Whatevs, which is why their recent bi-fercation is way note-worthy. (**links to verify upon request) COMMENT #60 [Permalink] ... kkthomas said on 1/18/2010 @ 1:52 pm PT... With a compliant (mainstream) media, Brown voters must do their own policing by exposing and documenting the Chicago machine in full action when busloads of ACORN and SEIU employees will attempt to rig the election. Please bring your video cameras, digital cameras and cell phone cameras to capture corrupt and fraudulent voting. Broadly disseminate any shady incidents via all news outlets and YouTube. Don't think they won't try. This is an "all-hands on deck" call for ethics enforcement. The day has long past since we can count on ABC, CBS, NBC, or CNN to expose political lies and corruption, but YOU can make a difference...................... "Democrats in power = widespread corruption" COMMENT #61 [Permalink] ... Agent 99 said on 1/18/2010 @ 2:18 pm PT... kk You forgot: Republicans in power = widespread corruption. You forgot: ANYONE in power in this completely corrupted government = widespread corruption. By all means, be vigilant to prevent the corruption of any election anywhere, but don't forget to look at the WHOLE thing, or it's just more election fraud, not work for election integrity. If you just pick out people from certain organizations to harry with video cameras, [1] you're not apt to get anything much, and [2] even if you do, you're still missing the whole picture, leaving the widespread corruption completely unfazed. You want to be EFFECTIVE against fraudulent elections? Pay attention. COMMENT #62 [Permalink] ... PLUNGER said on 1/18/2010 @ 2:22 pm PT... It is so obvious that the fix is in. The oligarchs want a divided country, and do everything in their power to use their media to ensure that outcome - always. It was like someone turned on a switch, and suddenly every talking head was declaring that this election would go to the GOP candidate. In fact, someone (CFR) did. When will we all admit this is just a big game, and the ruling elite are simply gaming us? Yammering about politics? They love it! MSNBC declares itself "Your channel for politics?" Who in the hell needs politics at all? The oligarchs do. You are being used. COMMENT #63 [Permalink] ... zpkitty said on 1/18/2010 @ 3:27 pm PT... kkthomas said... "... busloads of ACORN and SEIU employees... " ... "busloads"... when the real damage can be done in seconds by a single person out of sight. You see the core problem, Jeannie? They're still reflexively jerking off to the attack memes implanted in them by the right wing... and are spending their time preparing to fight an artfully crafted "enemy" that doesn't actually exist, and never did. I know the left can be just as bad and the center was bought straight off the clearance rack, but these people are still trying to wage their long-lost war against a "left" and an "Obama" that never really existed in the first place. Coordination will be difficult when reality is just now catching up to them and slamming their heads to and fro with a constant stream of facts that just don't fit their preconceived worldview... as they were basically indoctrinated to ignore such facts. *(I'm following the Ancient ways.) COMMENT #64 [Permalink] ... Agent 99 said on 1/18/2010 @ 3:46 pm PT... Just marry me, Zap. COMMENT #65 [Permalink] ... Lora said on 1/18/2010 @ 3:52 pm PT... Brad @ 49: You can't "recount" something that hasn't been counted, Lora. Well, I thought there was a 6-day time limit after the election to file a petition for a recount, and you had to have a separate petition for each ward, and you had to have 10 signatures for each petition. Even if the chance of a recount is slim to none, better to have your ducks in a row, just in case, I was thinking. Once the 6 days are up, you could not even ask for a recount, right? Am I missing something here? I'd appreciate clarification - TIA. COMMENT #66 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/18/2010 @ 6:18 pm PT... Lora asked: Am I missing something here? I'd appreciate clarification Sorry, I may have typed too fast. Point was, what you'd want after such an election is a manual hand count. A "recount" wouldn't be the right word, since the ballots will never have been counted in the first place. They will have been run through some computer gizmo which says --- accurately or not --- what might be on those ballots. I was largely making a semantical correction, not a legal one. On that score, you are correct. Sorry for the confusion. COMMENT #67 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/18/2010 @ 6:22 pm PT... The tea party will be co-opted or infiltrated by the elites eventually, which is why a third party is doomed to fail. This is why the folks i am working with are avoiding any formal structure. It's true some state governments are riddled with corruption, but imo they are far more responsive and accountable to the voters. COMMENT #68 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/18/2010 @ 6:24 pm PT... Brook said: The tea party will be co-opted or infiltrated by the elites eventually It already was, Brook. Long ago. It was coopted when the corporate Republicans lost the election and took over Ron Paul's real Tea Party which had been going on for years, as you guys called him crazy. Sorry the word hasn't gotten to you yet. Perhaps try watching something other than Fox "News". COMMENT #69 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/19/2010 @ 6:51 am PT... No, i disagree, because there is no formal structure in the tea party movement, and on the local level it is housewives, white-collar, blue-collar --- anyone who wants to be a part of it. We don't collect money to pay salaries and open offices all over the country like ACORN. Communication is mostly through email, and we won't be doing any protests until tax day or unless this monstrous health care bill is about to be passed. COMMENT #70 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 1/19/2010 @ 8:39 am PT... Brook said @ 69: there is no formal structure in the tea party movement Yes, I know. That's what you believe, because the largest media machine in the world, which has structured it, organized it and publicized it, keeps telling you as much. In the meantime, much larger grassroots groups, who really *didn't* have anybody structuring them have gone (and continue to go) ignored by that same media. (Eg. See the Iraq War demonstrations which dwarfed the Tea Bagger protests, but weren't covered at all in the corporate media). You've been conned, Brook. And you've fallen for it hook, line and tea bag. We don't collect money to pay salaries and open offices all over the country like ACORN. YOU don't. But the corporations who are running the scam do, and they've invested MILLIONS into your "grass roots" movement. Pay attention. As to ACORN, are you suggesting there is something wrong with citizens organizing themselves to help other citizens in need? Do you have something against "we, the people"?! Communication is mostly through email, and we won't be doing any protests until tax day Why would you protest on "tax day"? Obama has lowered taxes for 85% of America. (Guessing you didn't know that.) While Dubya raised the debt to an historic level and you guys didn't raise a peep. or unless this monstrous health care bill is about to be passed. But you forgot to protest when Bush's "monstrous health care bill" (Medicare Part D) was passed to the tune of $800 billion and, unlike what the Dems are doing, he didn't bother to actually pay for it? Starting to see how you've been conned yet, Brook? COMMENT #71 [Permalink] ... Ernest A. Canning said on 1/19/2010 @ 8:44 am PT... Brook said there is no formal structure in the tea party movement... _____________________________ Sorry to tell you this, Brook, but you have been misled by a well-funded group of snake-oil salesmen. Here's a tidbit from one article, out of many, on the subject: If you suspected Rick Santelli’s “spontaneous” tea party rant was actually a fake, you may be on to something. It’s starting to look like it was part of a conservative astroturfing campaign put together by FreedomWorks, Dick Armey’s right-wing propaganda operation. The article quotes another: Within hours of Santelli's rant, a website called ChicagoTeaParty.com sprang to life. Essentially inactive until that day, it now featured a YouTube video of Santelli’s “tea party” rant and billed itself as the official home of the Chicago Tea Party. The domain was registered in August, 2008 by Zack Christenson, a dweeby Twitter Republican and producer for a popular Chicago rightwing radio host Milt Rosenberg—a familiar name to Obama campaign people. On the same day as Santelli's rant, February 19, another site called Officialchicagoteaparty.com went live. This site was registered to Eric Odom, who turned out to be a veteran Republican new media operative specializing in imitation-grassroots PR campaigns. Astroturfing is by no means new to those in the election integrity movement. The same technique was used to blunt investigations of the massive, computerized theft of the 2004 election in Ohio. Countering efforts made by Democrats and others in the election integrity movement to get to the bottom of the weird shift of Ohio from the Kerry to the Bush column, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) conducted separate hearings in which he called as an expert witness Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II of the "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR) to testify at a Monday hearing. Turns out, ACVR had only been formed the preceding Thursday. Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II --- the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. --- gave testimony for the group and is listed on the U.S. House Administrative Committee website as simply "National Counsel, American Center for Voting Rights". No mention of his current high-level connections to Bush/Cheney and his long history of working with other powerful Republican officials all the way back to his time working for the Reagan Administration. One could go on and on about the use of phony think tanks and astroturf groups who challenge the science of global warming, etc. While the uninformed followers are indeed, as Brook describes them, simply "housewives, white-collar, blue-collar..." at the core of these astroturf organizations one will always find massive corporate wealth used to pay utterly corrupt and dishonest organizers whose propaganda is amplified by the hard-right echo chamber. COMMENT #72 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/19/2010 @ 9:21 am PT... I'm lmao at you guys. Let's see should we believe a liberal blogger or an active member of the movement on the inside who is privy to and involved in trying to steer what is going on? This movement would not have happened at all without talk radio. In my city 12,000 people came out for a rally and the overwhelming majority were persuaded to be there by local talk radio hosts who spoke at the rallies. These personalities were not paid to be there --- they were there because they actually believe their own rhetoric. They've also been instrumental in rallying folks to kill bad local legislation and pork projects, which proves they are not tools of nat'l corporations. Corporate profits are not affected at all by reducing federal government spending, which is the core demand of the movement. We want some sort of blueprint for how we are going to get out from under $ 12 trillion of debt and $ 50 trillion in unfunded mandates. Again, I can't see where any American would oppose making that demand of Congress, and Brad still has not indicated where he stands on the issue. COMMENT #73 [Permalink] ... Scott said on 1/19/2010 @ 9:47 am PT... These voting machine problems have existed for years. I suspect that the machines have been just swell there in Massachusetts until now; the eleventh hour, now that democrats are fearful of an embarrassing loss of a Senate seat. What if Martha wins? I wonder if you will still have the same degree of concern. COMMENT #74 [Permalink] ... Ernest A. Canning said on 1/19/2010 @ 11:28 am PT... Brook said This movement [tea-baggers] would not have happened at all without talk radio. ________________________ Yes, and just what "talk radio" station attracted you to the "movement?" Who owns that station --- and many others like it throughout the hard right echo chamber? COMMENT #75 [Permalink] ... Jon in Iowa said on 1/19/2010 @ 12:40 pm PT... You continue to amuse, Brook. "Let's see should we believe a liberal blogger or an active member of the movement on the inside who is privy to and involved in trying to steer what is going on?" Argument from disbelief is by itself a logical fallacy, and you've shown very little evidentiary support that Brad, Ernest and the sources they point to are dishonest. The tea parties' astroturfing underpinning is well documented. You're suggesting that you'd believe whichever somebody down the line, who's financially motivated to push a profitable position, rather than believe someone whose opinions you generally disagree with. About the talk-radio hosts, would you mind pointing us to a bit of documentation stating that they promoted and attended the rallies pro bono? It's not that I think it's out of the realm of possibility--lord knows talk-radio hosts can be duped, too--but I don't want to see anyone spinning assumptions into reality. Regardless, it's not difficult to see the connection between rallying a fan base and creating ratings. "Corporate profits are not affected at all by reducing federal government spending. . . . " So . . . you're not out to cut the oil-company subsidies and exorbitant military contracts and big-farm handouts and price-inflating medication controls? Instead you're after the rare bits of legislation that actually help the people? In trying to pin Brad to a position, you're first engaging in a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, where anyone who disagrees with you isn't an American, and then you're trying to catch Brad middling. Either he agrees with you, and you're right, neener-neener-neener, or he disagrees and defaults into what you've set up as the unpopular and unthinkable opinion. What you're neglecting to consider, of course, is that Brad isn't a politician, and his opinion has no bearing on his validity as a press organ. In fact, in that regard, it may be in his best interest not to express his opinion. Brook, it's not that we doubt your sincerity and good intentions, but the tea parties are not what you claim them to be; they didn't start--or at least didn't come to prominence--the way you say, and you have greatly idealized their integrity as a populist movement. I'm only a sporadic poster around these parts, but I know that your opinions are welcome here; just please can the "gotcha!" traps and derogative assumptions. That's not constructive discourse, and if you'll stop your cynical positioning of yourself as the victim opposition, you may find that a number of us share libertarian leanings with you. COMMENT #76 [Permalink] ... ctvoter said on 1/19/2010 @ 1:01 pm PT... David Schuster of MSNBC says there will be NO EXIT POLLS in Massachusetts tonight. Takes my breath away. COMMENT #77 [Permalink] ... Agent 99 said on 1/19/2010 @ 1:22 pm PT... I'm torn between hoping the Republican "wins" so the fascist bills hanging fire won't pass, and hoping the Democrat "wins" so people will finally realize the election fraud is cutting both ways. It's despicable to be left with this little to hope for, but, well, it's down to that... long as people will accept this crap as a viable election... long as people will accept MSNBC telling them they don't get exit polls... long as America doesn't bestir itself to stop all the travesties in progress right under our noses. COMMENT #78 [Permalink] ... Agent 99 said on 1/19/2010 @ 1:30 pm PT... Actually, that's not strictly true anymore. I've been torn. Today I find, amazingly even to me, that I prefer the fascist bill obstruction even to the possibility of awakening to the universal utility of rigging elections.... Sorry. COMMENT #79 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/19/2010 @ 2:24 pm PT... Jon from Iowa, how about you stick to speaking for Jon from Iowa? Brad doesn't need you to defend him. He can answer the question or choose to take a pass, and i don't need you to pierce any bubbles you believe i'm living in. COMMENT #80 [Permalink] ... Jon in Iowa said on 1/19/2010 @ 3:08 pm PT... Sorry, where did I defend Brad? I addressed nothing whatsoever he said, only your failed and presumptuous logic. It may be uncomfortable for you "open-minded" tea-party types, but this is an open comment section. It's hardly the place to privately bully anyone. I think any real American would agree with that. Where do you stand on it, Brook? Wow, that's fun! Now I see why you do it. Anyway, I think it's very interesting to see that your response to criticism of your position is not to prove the position or disprove the criticism; it's to try to wish away the critic and overtly state that you'd rather be ignorant than reconsider. COMMENT #81 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/19/2010 @ 6:00 pm PT... Comment # 75 Jon speculates on Brad's thought processes "Brad isn't a politician, and his opinion has no bearing on his validity as a press organ. In fact, in that regard, it may be in his best interest not to express his opinion." Then he provides my answer to Brad's answer --- even though Brad hasn't even offered up an answer. So, there's really no need for any of us to post anymore, folks. Jon will do our posting and thinking for us. "Either he agrees with you, and you're right, neener-neener-neener, or he disagrees and defaults into what you've set up as the unpopular and unthinkable opinion." You're like a character in an Elvis tune in the Vegas jumpsuit years. COMMENT #82 [Permalink] ... Agent 99 said on 1/19/2010 @ 6:32 pm PT... Brook and Jon Could you guys just stay mindful of the commenting rules while you go about yer argument? I know it's kind of psychedelic because, around here, personal attacks come in many flavors, are engaged in with no objection or objectivity and then suddenly reviled clear into exile, just end up being a catchall for whatever righteous excuse for one's personal animus one might be groping for at any given moment... etc. But anyway, at this moment I feel that comparing someone to a character in an Elvis tune is an insult, so yer getting this warning. COMMENT #83 [Permalink] ... Jon in Iowa said on 1/19/2010 @ 8:38 pm PT... And now, Brook, you've deflected into an entirely different complaint about me. I did not speculate as to Brad's thought process; I merely pointed out an obvious fact which you were missing. His opinion on any given issue--especially an overly generalized cheerleader issue--is irrelevant, unless you're deliberately creating a rhetorical dilemma. Your insistence that he answer, of course, is a way of suggesting he's got something--something unAmerican, perhaps?--to hide. That's how the "middling" attack works. Just connecting the dots doesn't make me the artist. And 99, reminder noted. I prefer to think of myself as a character from a Gordon Lightfoot tune. COMMENT #84 [Permalink] ... Brook said on 1/20/2010 @ 6:01 am PT... |
Sunderland are still on the prowl for new signings. Who isn’t? You never know; maybe they don’t need to sign anyone else. Dick Advocaat’s record thus far is 12 points from nine games. This is 1.33 points per game. Extrapolated over a season this would be 51 points and a top half finish. A slight further improvement would see the lads ringing on the doorbell of Europe. Hurrah. It would be a dream come true for the player to join a Premier League club. He would think it was his birthday, or at least one of them. Yes, when all else fails just relinquish any grasp of reality that you might still have. As we mentioned last week, the circumstances of Ricky Álvarez and Adam Johnson are such that SAFC can’t even know how much money there is to spend. Nor can other clubs be forced to buy the players that Sunderland want rid of (unfair but there you go). As ever, we shall all just have to wait and see what happens. It is neither healthy nor helpful to study the transfer activities of other clubs. It’s just that you can’t help it. Manchester United have spent a reported £80m this summer. But that is not likely to cause much concern on Wearside, unless anyone round here is barking enough to think that United are Sunderland’s direct rivals. New signings at clubs expected to be in the wrong half of the Premier League consist largely of players that hardly anyone in this country has heard of. Newcastle for example have enlisted a player from Belgium for £13m and another from Holland for £14.5m. They have been saving up for years and, based on the evidence of last season’s final third, they really can’t afford not to spend. Have Newcastle drafted in a Fellaini and a Bergkamp, or a Jon Dahl Tomasson and an Altidore? No one knows whether Sunderland fans should be envious or not, because the Belgian and Dutch leagues are not the greatest. They are unproven players. No one at this stage is envious of the quite extraordinarily complex attempted transfer of Chancel Mbemba from Anderlecht to the Sports Direct Arena. It is not clear whether the Congolese will be given a work permit. FA rules have been tightened to keep out mediocre foreign players, but not good ones. As Mbemba has only ever played in Africa and Belgium, his quality is yet to be corroborated. Also, the issue of Mbemba’s age has been hanging around for some time now. His date of birth does not seem to have been established since the matter was raised in February 2013. That was when CNN reported: “Mbemba was registered by his two first Congolese clubs as being born in 1988, according to documents obtained by CNN. Yet for a Cup of Nations qualifier in June 2011, his year of birth was listed as November 30, 1991. “Meanwhile, the birth date recorded by his Belgian club Anderlecht is August 8, 1994. “Just to complicate matters, Mbemba himself, thinks he was born in 1990.” Newcastle manager Steve McClaren, 54, is keen to land the player. Mbemba, 20, 23, 25 or 27 wants the move too. It would be a dream come true for the player to join a Premier League club. He would think it was his birthday, or at least one of them. As well as being amusing, the Chancel Mbemba situation is an unusually convoluted one. But it does at least illustrate that you can’t necessarily “just go out and sign some players.” Job done. Player waves scarf of new club. Snap, snap. Grin, grin. Agreeing terms and then making the transfer? Where would the fun be if life was so simple? |
CSEC Headquarters in Ottawa Canadians often have to wait for things that have already arrived in the US to make their way north of the border. As with MTV, a decent Netflix selection, or national independence, it has been several months of revelations into the NSA’s questionable practices before Canada’s own spy agency, Communications Security Establishment Canada, has been similarly damned by its own slideshow. The slides, leaked to American journalist Glenn Greenwald by whistleblower Edward Snowden, and aired on Brazilian television, exposed CSEC, which operates under the authority of the Minister of National Defence, for spying on the communications of Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy using metadata gathering software named Olympia. While a massive discovery of oil off the coast of the South American nation may prove to be competition for Alberta’s oil sands, Canadians could be excused if they expect an answer to NDP defence critic Jack Harris’ question, “What national security interest was at stake here?” The Anti-Terrorism Act mandates CSEC with acquiring foreign signals intelligence, protecting Canada’s electronic information, and assisting federal law enforcement and security agencies in the gathering of communications data. Former CSIS deputy director Ray Boisvert claims, that while working closely with CSEC, they “were all too busy chasing bad guys that want to kill people,” to be up to anything else. While we can thank the former spy for speaking to us about complex issues as if we were children, if that is so, perhaps we should really be asking what sinister plots the Ministry of Mines and Energy has been hatching. Thomas Mulcair disagrees. In his trademark style of half moral outrage, half truth, he proclaimed “the evidence is quite clear that CSEC has been complicit in industrial espionage, and it’s totally unacceptable.” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, still seething over embarrassing revelations of the NSA spying on her own communications and that of state-owned oil firm Petrobras, was slightly more diplomatic, stating that, “the spying could be a clear case of industrial espionage.” (Emphasis added) Whether it is or it isn’t is a question that cannot be answered without details which the public, the press, and most of Parliament are not privy to. But the optics are not good. A recent report by The Guardian has added to the growing body of circumstantial evidence when it revealed that CSEC, along with CSIS and the RCMP, have been giving representatives of Canadian energy firms with security clearances biannual classified briefings. There is no indication that intelligence acquired through espionage was shared at these meetings, but the National Resource Ministry touted these affairs as an opportunity for participants to share information “off the record.” The meetings were ostensibly for discussing threats to energy infrastructure. However, as The Guardian points out, the federal government classifies environmental activists as security threats; so what was being discussed in these classified sessions? Stephen Harper, always loath to break with tradition, has offered no explanation. Aside from expressing his concern over the scandal, and assuring us he has been “reaching out proactively” to the Brazilian government, the Prime Minister pointed out that a watchdog does exist for the spying agency. John Forster, CSEC chief, similarly declined to answer to the allegations, only to reassure us that his agency does not target “Canadians at home or abroad… nor do we target anyone in Canada.” Defence Minister Rob Nicholson has essentially said the same thing. That’s good to know, but it offers nothing to those wondering why Canada is spying on a friendly nation, or if our spy agencies are colluding with Canadian energy firms. It is nothing more than misdirection. The government is hoping that unproven allegations of industrial espionage and concerns over Canada’s respect for Brazil’s national sovereignty will blow over with time, and unlike previous revelations originating from Snowden’s collection of embarrassing facts, Canadians have nothing to fear as far as their privacy is concerned. While it is true that the spy agency has a dedicated independent watchdog, the CSEC Commissioner, it is unclear how the office’s mandate is relevant to the current allegations. The commissioner is tasked with monitoring CSEC activities to ensure that they comply with ministerial direction, and Canadian law. Outgoing commissioner Robert Décary concluded his annual report [PDF] by stating, “I can say with pride and confidence that CSEC is truly being watched.” Décary was largely satisfied with CSEC’s adherence to Canadian law; but the report, tabled back in June before the recent controversy, dealt mainly with the privacy of Canadian citizens and said nothing of cooperation with the private sector. Nor did Décary’s report give CSEC an unequivocal pass, and did indicate that in certain circumstances, the spy agency’s records were incomplete, and he could not determine if it acted illegally or not. He also expressed deep disappointment “at the lack of action by the government, which is no longer in a minority situation, to address the ambiguities identified by my predecessor and myself.” Prior to Décary’s time in the office, Charles Gonthier raised concern over mass surveillance methods removing the separation between foreign and domestic surveillance, the latter of which CSEC is prohibited by law from engaging in. The Federal Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, meanwhile, has called for greater oversight by parliament over all agencies with a security mandate and offered to assist the CSEC commissioner when the NSA leaks first came to light. Décary’s executive director pointed out that Stoddart’s staff lacks the security clearance to be involved. One man who did have the clearance to formulate an informed opinion, however, was former CSEC chief John Adams. He too has called for greater transparency and parliamentary oversight. CSEC is also junior partner in the 5 Eyes community of intelligence agencies with its counterparts in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Their cooperation involves sharing intelligence, technology, operational assistance, and though they have pledged to not spy on each other, it remains an open question of whether or not they spy for each other, collecting data on one another’s citizens to circumvent privacy laws. CSEC is forbidden by law to subcontract the invasion of privacy of Canadian citizens, but other government agencies may not be so constrained. The CSEC commissioner’s report on the nature of cooperation amongst the 5 Eyes is not due until 2014. There should be no question that a spy agency needs its secrets. Government surveillance has an important role in a world where national security is shifting away from countering the existential threats posed by nuclear powers, and toward the international police work of combatting religious and ideologically motivated mass murderers who demonstrate almost as little regard for their own lives as they do for their victims. That CSEC is gathering intelligence with no clear bearing on national security or the War on Terrorism should be a cause for concern, however. The most recent leak challenges the standard defence of government surveillance which seeks to frame the conversation as a trade-off between privacy and security. That some may wish to sacrifice some of the former for the sake of the latter is, right or wrong, an understandable position to take. While one is statistically unlikely to be the victim of a terrorist attack, scenes of carnage set against backdrops composed of the familiar props of western civilization – a busy street, a bus, a skyscraper – can elicit strong emotional reactions. Though access to resources may rightly be considered a matter of national interest, it is questionable that an informed electorate would consent to authorizing a government agency to operate with inadequate accountability, which may or may not be spying on citizens (though it certainly has that capability), all in the name of security, while working to ensure that domestic mining companies prospered abroad. Of course, we do not know if our communications are being monitored, and we do not know that CSEC has been actively assisting Canadian corporations with intelligence for any purpose beyond a legitimate concern for security. We don’t know much of anything really, other than the fact that the latest revelations paint an ugly picture; and while the secrets of a spy organization must, by necessity, be closed off from public scrutiny, recent developments drive home the fact that Canada needs an effective mechanism to ensure that our intelligence organizations are operating according to the laws and values of the nation. ____ Anthony Matijas lives and writes in Toronto. Follow him on twitter at @A_Matijas. For more, follow us on Twitter at @torontostandard and subscribe to our Newsletter. |
What Fernando Torres said to the player who knocked him out will make you love him even more Reassuring news coming out of Atletico Madrid this morning. After initial fears that Fernando Torres had suffered serious damage following a clash with Deportivo midfielder Alex Bergantinos, scans have revealed the 32-year-old forward has escaped traumatic injury. Read more about the incident here. Bergantinos sportingly went to visit Torres in hospital after the match at the Estadio Riazor had ended. And what Torres said to the opponent that left him unconscious and in need of an ambulance will melt your heart… “He is very well and happy. They have told him how he is and he has understood perfectly,” Bergantinos said. “He told me to be calm and that these things happen. “He told me that something like this happened years ago. “He was calm and even smiling. He remembers an occasion he had and other things, but he does not remember anything about our collision.” Pure class from El Nino. CLAIM YOUR FREE £10 BET WITH SUN BETS There have been occasions in the past when players have been crippled by guilt after inadvertently injuring a fellow professional. So for Torres to reassure Bergantinos that he did nothing wrong proves that the World Cup-winning Spaniard is not only a respectable role model but a top bloke as well. Here’s hoping he returns to action before long. READ MORE: |
Vegan Chai Waffles – without eggs or dairy – but 100% flavorful. With cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, and all the typical chai spices! When the whole kitchen smells like Christmas – it’s either Christmas or Chai Waffles are in the making. I definitely prefer the latter. For me, Christmas means work (buying presents, planning to visit relatives, baking cookies), while Chai Waffles mean enjoying one of my favorite sweet breakfasts. That’s not a hard choice. Oh and you know what goes great with Chai Waffles? Chai :D Is there are a thing like chai overkill? I don’t think so. This is the perfect breakfast for weekends or if you need a sweet breakfast treat on cold fall or winter days. Chai Spices For these vegan Chai Waffles, I’ve made my own chai spice mix consisting of cinnamon ginger nutmeg cardamom cloves fennel vanilla bean powder You can either use ground spices or grind them into a fine powder in a mortar. Vegan Chai Waffles These vegan Chai Waffles topped with maple syrup taste and smell just like Christmas. These are made without eggs or dairy - but 100% flavorful. With cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, and all the typical chai spices! 5 from 3 votes Print Pin Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 20 minutes Total Time: 35 minutes Servings: 3 waffles Calories: 176 kcal Author: Bianca / Elephantastic Vegan Ingredients Ingredients for the Waffles 3/4 cup all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar 1 pinch salt 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder 1/4 teaspoon ginger powder 1 pinch nutmeg powder 1/8 teaspoon cardamom powder 1/8 teaspoon clove powder 1/8 teaspoon fennel powder 1/8 teaspoon vanilla bean powder 1 teaspoon coconut oil liquid 1/2 cup plant-based milk e.g. unsweetened rice coconut milk nonstick cooking spray for the waffle iron maple syrup for drizzling on top Instructions Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and spices in a mixing bowl. Add the coconut oil and rice milk and whisk until combined. It should be a thick, sticky batter. Heat the waffle iron and spray it generously with the oil, so that the waffles don’t stick to the iron later and add about 1/3 of the waffle batter for each waffle. Depending on the waffle iron, you might end up with more or less waffles. Let it cook in the iron until slightly brown on the edges. Repeat until all the batter is used. Drizzle the vegan Chai Waffles with maple syrup before serving and enjoy! Estimated Nutrition Info Serving: 1 waffle | Calories: 176 kcal | Carbohydrates: 35 g | Protein: 3 g | Fat: 2 g | Saturated Fat: 1 g | Sodium: 31 mg | Potassium: 183 mg | Sugar: 7 g | Calcium: 7.4 % | Iron: 8.7 % Tried this recipe? Mention @elephantasticvegan or tag #elephantasticvegan Rate the recipe! A recipe rating helps other users to figure out if they should try a recipe. Please leave a good rating, if you like the recipe! Did you make these vegan Chai Waffles? Tag @elephantasticvegan on instagram and use the hashtag #elephantasticvegan to make sure I’ll see them :) Looking for more Sweet Vegan Breakfast Ideas? Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that I have recommended. While clicking these links won't cost you any extra money, they will help me keep this site up and running! |
Brendan Rodgers insists that Luis Suarez has not let Liverpool down by leaving for Barcelona and stresses that the Reds can continue to move forward without the striker. Brendan Rodgers is adamant that Liverpool can continue to progress despite the loss of Luis Suarez, whom he has described as a "good man and a good friend". The Reds have agreed to sell their 31-goal top scorer from last season, who is serving a four-month ban from football for biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup, to Barcelona for £75m. The Uruguayan's switch to Catalonia is yet to be officially confirmed, but Rodgers is clearly planning for life after Suarez and is confident that they can be successful without him. "Luis hasn't let me or the club down at all - he gave everything for Liverpool," he told reporters. "Of course there have been issues, but they're in the past. He was a brilliant player for us and for me, and I will always see him as a good man and a good friend. "It's a shame he's not here but Liverpool, as a club, is bigger than any individual and we will move forward without him. "It's really exciting going into this season. We've qualified for the Champions League and brought in some good players. Hopefully we'll progress." Rodgers has already recruited Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert, Emre Can and Lazar Markovic to help fill the void left by Suarez, and Queens Park Rangers striker Loic Remy could soon join them at Anfield. |
Skirted jigs come in just about any color combination under the sun. Most manufacturers offer upwards of 20 different skirt colors, from tame to wild. This can be frustrating for beginners or anglers on a budget; as with all the options out there how does one decide which to use, and when? The truth is – there are only 4 jig color patterns that you need to have. Set yourself up with a couple jigs in each of the following colors, and you’ll be all set 99 percent of the time, anywhere bass swim, under any water conditions. Here they are, and when to use each jig color: Contrast/Black & Blue From south to north, as long as you’ve got at least a little stain to the water – a black and blue jig will get bit. Black and blue offers the ultimate in contrast, which gives bass a target any time the water’s got some stain. Use a black and blue jig in dirty water, during low light conditions, and anytime around vegetation. Bluegill/Green Pumpkin Bass eat tons of bluegill, and a green pumpkin jig is a deadly bluegill imitator. Use a green pumpkin jig any time the bass are feeding on bluegills, regardless of water color. Try adding a little chartreuse dye to the tip of whatever trailer you thread on – as bluegills have iridescent tails. Crawfish/Brown Most crawfish are some derivation of green or brown, so make sure you have a supply of brown jigs. Dragging a brown jig around rocks, shells, and wood is a great way to get bit, particularly in clear water. Baitfish/White A white or baitfish colored jig skirt is a deadly tool when you suspect the bass in your lake are feeding on shad or other baitfish. The obvious application for white is on a swim jig, but don’t be afraid to flip and pitch a white jig either. Bait fish live in laydowns as well, and a white jig does a great job imitating a baitfish flashing through a snag. |
Harvey Araton reports in the Times Monday that Mikhail Prokhorov and Dmitry Razumov have promised him that they will be "more involved" in the management of the franchise "throughout the transition." In a long piece on how Prokhorov's absentee ownership has hurt what should be an "ascendant" franchise, Araton quotes an email exchange he had with the commissioner. In an email, Silver wrote that Prokhorov "and his partner, Dmitry Razumov, have told me that they intend to be more involved in the management of the franchise throughout the transition and moving forward." Araton also quotes Silver as suggesting great distances or hands-off style aren't necessarily a negative. "Many successful franchises have owners who step back and largely delegate the day-to-day management of their teams; others are obviously more hands-on — and which is which isn’t necessarily dictated by the physical location of the owner." The email exchange also suggests that Nets management informed the league of the firing of Lionel Hollins and "reassignment" of Billy King. It also may suggest that Silver, knowing the value of a New York team owned by an international player, may have had growing concerns about the Nets' downward spiral. |
Ayman al-Sanabani beamed as he entered his family’s home on his wedding day. He was greeting his new bride, Gamila, who was in a bedroom surrounded by friends. Ayman sat beside her for several minutes, receiving warm words of congratulations. It would be the young couple’s first and only encounter as husband and wife. The terrifying power of a bomb is how it can alter life so dramatically, so completely, so instantaneously. How it can crush concrete, rip apart flesh and snuff out life. The moments before the pilot pulls the trigger and sends the missile screeching down choreograph the final dance with fate: another step forward into a room, a turn around a corner, a walk outside to get some air — trivial actions that determine everything afterward. This power is a fact of life in Yemen now. It is brought forth by a coalition of Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States. The airstrikes have been relentless since March, a period now of eight months. They are supposed to be targeting a local rebel group, but appear largely indiscriminate, regularly hitting civilian targets. Thousands of people have been killed. Human rights groups say some of these strikes amount to war crimes. Twenty-six new graves outside the now-ruined home of the al-Sanabani family. All together 43 people died when an airstrike tore through a wedding party on Oct. 7. Credit: Sharif Abdel Kouddous/GlobalPost The al-Sanabani home sits on the crest of a small hill overlooking this village some 90 miles south of the capital, where low-slung houses are clustered near plots of yellowed farmland that are dotted by small trees. In the near horizon, reddish-brown mountains loom over the landscape. On any given day, it’s a beautiful place. It was Oct. 7. Ayman and two of his brothers were all getting married in a joint ceremony. Hundreds of relatives and neighbors had come to take part. Their three-story house was brightly decorated. Colored lights draped down from the roof toward two large tents, which were erected to accommodate the vast numbers of guests. Children scampered outside, shooting fireworks into the night sky. Fighter jets roared overhead but the guests paid little attention to the menacing sounds. Sanaban had never been targeted before. It was considered a safe place. Shortly before 9:30 pm, the three grooms — 22-year-old Abdel Rahman, 24-year-old Ayman, and 25-year-old Moayad — greeted their brides, who had just arrived in a large convoy from a nearby village. Ayman left the bedroom where his new wife was sitting with her friends. He was climbing up to the second floor landing with his older brother when the missile struck. It was a direct hit, demolishing half the house in an instant. Gas tanks ignited, sending fire blazing through the rest of it. The air quickly filled with black smoke, dust and screams. The women trapped indoors jumped out of windows to escape. Ayman was blown across the hallway and hurled down the stairwell. He pulled himself up amid the chaos and tried to help others evacuate. He would eventually find out, one by one, that his 18-year-old wife, Gamila; his younger brother, Abdel Rahman; his younger sister, Iman; his father, Mohamed; and his mother, Faiza, were all killed. They were among his 16 family members who died that night, including aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces. Ayman al-Sanabani stands outside the wreckage of his family's home. Credit: Sharif Abdel Kouddous/GlobalPost Among those injured was 15-year-old Abdullah al-Sanabani, a child prodigy who in 2012 won an international competition and a free visit to NASA headquarters for inventing a solar-powered remote controlled car that could flip over and become a boat. He was evacuated for treatment and now lies in a hospital in Boston in critical condition. In addition to undergoing numerous skin grafts, his right arm was amputated above the elbow and the two toes on his left foot were removed. Immediately after the strike, survivors fled the scene out of fear that a second missile would follow, a tactic known coldly as a "double tap." After 30 minutes of quiet, they went back to start digging out the bodies. With no electricity, they used flashlights and headlamps to work in the darkness. It took until 6 am the next day to pull all the corpses from the rubble. It took even longer to collect the shredded body parts, which they put into plastic bags. A piece of someone's hand was only discovered three days later. Many of the bodies were either too charred or disfigured for family members to identify, known only by what they were wearing, a distinctive ring or watch. Others were identified through a grim process of elimination, by calculating who was missing. "What can I say? My life has been made into nothing," Ayman says a month later, standing in the wreckage of his family home. His large green eyes appear permanently bloodshot. He speaks softly, with a mid-distance stare that never seems to focus on anything. Relatives and neighbors — some of them on crutches, others bandaged — whisper that he is not all there anymore, his mind still trying to fathom an unfathomable loss. "If I had burned like them it would have been better," he says. Down the hill from the wreckage is an open plot of land with 26 fresh graves lined in neat rows. The white and gold headstones label the dead as martyrs. "Why did a wedding become a target?” asks Alaa Ali al-Sanabani, a relative of the victims who was at the house the night of the attack. "We are asking for an independent investigation from an international body." Saudi Arabia has denied responsibility. "We did not have any operations there at that time," Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, the spokesperson for the coalition, told GlobalPost, adding somewhat impossibly that the strike instead came from the local rebel group the Saudis are fighting. There is little rebel presence in Sanaban — no military posts visible in the village, no traces of any ground clashes. Meanwhile, multiple survivors interviewed separately said they heard fighter jets overhead minutes before the attack. Aside from US drones operating sporadically in some parts of the country, the Saudi coalition is the only air power flying above Yemen. "The Saudis act with impunity, so it doesn't matter," said Hisham al-Omeisy, a political analyst based in Sanaa. "It's not a big deal that they hit a wedding. Since the beginning of the war they have denied pretty much everything." The Background Houthi gunmen brandish their weapons on March 26 in Sanaa. Credit: Getty Images Saudi Arabia launched its war in Yemen on March 26 to drive back a rebel group known as the Houthis. The Houthis arose in the late 1980s as a religious and cultural revivalist movement of Zaidism, a heterodox Shiite sect found almost exclusively in northern Yemen. The Houthis became more politically active in 2003, vocally opposing President Ali Abdullah Saleh for his backing of the US invasion of Iraq. Saleh was an ally of the United States and Saudi Arabia. He was also an authoritarian ruler known for extravagant corruption. A UN study estimated the leader amassed up to $60 billion during his 33 years in power. Saleh managed to navigate his way through Yemen’s complex web of tribal, regional and geopolitical divides. It was a feat so delicate and dangerous he famously described it as "dancing on the heads of snakes." The Yemeni leader successfully positioned himself as an ally of the United States in the ongoing “war on terror” by allowing US forces to operate inside Yemen, and their Predator drones to target al-Qaeda militants based in the country. Saleh used his Special Operations Forces, trained and equipped by the United States, in his own battles with the northern Houthis, against whom he fought six brutal wars between 2004 and 2010. Members of the Yemeni-American community protest the visit to the US of embattled outgoing Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on February 2, 2012 in New York. Credit: Getty Images His vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, assumed office as interim president in a transition brokered by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia. It was backed by the United States. Sidelined in the agreement, the Houthis positioned themselves as an opposition group, gaining support beyond their northern base for their criticisms of the transition, which was flawed and riddled with corruption. Saleh loyalists, incredibly, began forming alliances of convenience with the Houthis. Last year the well-armed Houthis swept down from the north and took over large parts of the country, including Sanaa. In January 2015, they effectively ousted Hadi and his cabinet members, who fled to Saudi Arabia on March 25. The next day, Saudi Arabia put together a coalition and began its military campaign with support from the United States. The Saudis and the Americans hoped to restore the friendly Yemeni government they knew. Saudi Arabia also hoped to counter what it perceives as a growing regional threat posed by Iran. Saudi Arabia believes Iran is backing the Houthis, although the level of that support is disputed. More than 5,700 people, including at least 2,577 civilians — 637 of them children — have been killed in the eight months Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen,according to the United Nations. The UN expects the actual toll to be even higher because many of the dead or injured never reach medical facilities and so go unrecorded. The Houthis and their allies have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of civilians, often by indiscriminate shelling and the planting of landmines. But the UN says the majority of civilian deaths have come from the coalition's aerial bombing campaign, which has been relentless. A joint report by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the UK-based charity Action on Armed Violence in September concluded that 60 percent of civilian deaths and injuries were caused by airstrikes. Meanwhile, a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that "almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths had allegedly been caused by coalition airstrikes, which were also responsible for almost two-thirds of damaged or destroyed civilian public buildings," the OHCHR spokesman, Rupert Colville, said in a news briefing in September. Al-Asiri, the coalition spokesman, dismissed the UN's claims. "I think this is not a very accurate report that they are publishing," he said. "If we want to discuss this statement let's first make sure that there are civilian casualties caused by airstrikes. Where is the evidence for that?" In Yemen the evidence is everywhere. The Capital An airstrike destroyed the home of Hafzallah al-Ayani, a vegetable merchant, in the UNESCO world heritage site of the Old City of Sanaa. An estimated 130 houses surrounding the area were damaged. The entire al-Anyi family was killed as they sat down to dinner. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost In Sanaa's historic old city, which has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years, an airstrike smashed into the house of Hafzallah al-Ayani at about 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 19, burying him, his wife and their eight children beneath the rubble of their home. They were sitting together having dinner, the children aged between 4 years old and 17. Three neighbors sitting outside the house next door were also killed. The father of one of those victims, Mohamed Assaba, has kept three foot-long missile fragments as evidence. They are incredibly dense and heavy, with the terrifying jagged edges of bomb shrapnel. All of the surrounding ancient buildings in the al-Felahi neighborhood have been badly damaged, and many of the residents have been forced to leave. The ancient quarter of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost He describes what happened Sept. 19: An initial airstrike in the distance prompted him to step outside his front door to search the sky for clues. It was then that he heard the warplane overhead, followed by the deafening screech of a missile. He says he didn't hear the blast, only that he was thrown to the ground. When he stood up the air was filled with dust and smoke. It took him and other residents until 8:30 a.m. the following morning to dig out the bodies. Two of the children still had food in their mouths. "One of the first steps to solve a problem is to recognize there is a problem," said Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemen analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center. "If the Saudis don't see that there have been hundreds and thousands of Yemenis killed in the last few months by airstrikes I think the problem is much, much worse than everyone thinks." Traveling through Yemen's northern Houthi-controlled cities and towns offers a panorama of the vicious aerial assault. Homes, schools, mosques, retail stores, restaurants, marketplaces, government offices, gas stations, power plants, telecommunications facilities, factories, bridges, roads, and UNESCO World Heritage sites have all been hit. Some of the airstrikes display a high degree of precision. On the road north toward Saada, all four bridges — none of them spanning more than 20 yards in length — were struck directly in the center, causing them to buckle and rendering them impassable. The lack of any visible missile craters nearby indicates they were hit with pinpoint accuracy in a single strike. Asiri, the coalition spokesman, brushed off criticism that the coalition has targeted civilian infrastructure. "Please don't be too naive, we are in a war," he said. "We are talking about military operations, we are not talking about a soccer game." Haydan A hospital guard sweeps away debris from an airstrike. The roof of the hospital had been painted with the logo of Doctors Without Borders so that jets conducting airstrikes would know this facility was being run by the international aid organization. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost But even in war there are rules. Medical facilities, for example, are afforded a special protected status under international humanitarian law, and are supposed to be off-limits from attacks of any kind. On the night of Oct. 26, doctors at the only hospital in Haydan had just finished another arduous day of work. Haydan is a village in the north, less than 20 miles east of the Saudi Arabian border. A man had been brought in that day with severe wounds to his head, shoulder and abdomen. Akram Ghoutheya, an assistant doctor who had been at the hospital for three years, worked frantically for one and a half hours with other members of the medical team to stabilize the patient before sending him to a better-equipped hospital in Saada City, the provincial capital, about 40 miles away. Huddled in Yemen's northern highlands, Haydan is stunningly picturesque. The mountainous terrain is decorated with terraced farming and is lush with verdant qat trees. Stone houses on hilltops overlook the valley below. The natural beauty, however, is now marred by the bombardments. On the main market street, no building has been left untouched. The airstrikes have damaged every single store. Rooftops have collapsed, facades have been ripped off. Rubble lines the unpaved roads. The town's school, electrical plant and water infrastructure were all bombed. Most of the residents have fled, leaving the streets desolate. Those who remain stay indoors after sunset. They say not a day goes by without one or two air raids. On some days, dozens of missiles rain down. Located on the edge of town, residents considered the hospital Haydan's only safe zone. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) supported the hospital and regularly shared its GPS coordinates with the Saudi-led coalition. The roof of the facility was clearly identified with the MSF logo. The entryway to the Doctors Without Borders hospital in the northern district of Haydan, Sadaa. The town of Haydan had been repeatedly bombed the week leading up to the attack on the hospital. Nothing remains of the clinic but fragments of rubble and glass. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost It was around 10:30 p.m. when Akram finally sat down for dinner with about a dozen other staff members in the hospital's living quarters, located in the back of the building. Minutes later, a missile smashed into the emergency room, not more than 20 yards away. Akram was hit on the head by flying glass and debris but was only lightly injured. Terrified, he helped evacuate the only two patients at the hospital — a father and his infant son — and fled out the back, taking cover in a plot of qat trees as the rest of the staff scattered in all directions. Five minutes later a second strike hit. Several more followed. In total, between three and six missiles targeted the hospital, completely demolishing the emergency room, outpatient and inpatient departments, the lab and the maternity ward. "It felt like Armegeddon. People were screaming like never before because they felt that now nowhere was safe," Akram says. "This was the one place of sanctuary." Most of the facility now lies in ruins, reduced to chunks of rubble and twisted rebar. A pack of stray dogs has made it home. They pick their way through the shredded concrete, avoiding the flocks of crows that perch on bent metal gurneys. "It was a shock to see Haydan targeted," says Mike Seawright, the MSF emergency coordinator in Saada. "It's not just MSF, when the health care structure is treated as part of the conflict, this is against international law. The premise of a hospital is sacrosanct." The Saudis have offered contradictory accounts of what happened. Immediately after the attack, coalition spokesman Asiri denied that the coalition was conducting airstrikes in the vicinity of the hospital at the time. Hours later, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the UN told VICE News that the hospital was hit by mistake because MSF had provided incorrect coordinates. The next day the ambassador reversed his account and denied the coalition was operating near the hospital. When asked by GlobalPost, Asiri would not comment, saying only that the incident was still being investigated. International rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have said the attack may amount to a war crime. While no one was killed in the bombing, the destruction of the hospital will no doubt have fatal consequences. As the only functioning medical facility for miles, it was a lifeline for the surrounding towns and villages and provided medical care for about 200,000 people. At times, the hospital would receive as many as 50 cases or more a day, according to doctors who worked there. The closest medical facility is now the Gomhouri hospital in Saada City, which is about 40 miles eastward on a road that winds slowly through the mountains. "The effect of the hospital bombing will be huge on everyone in the area," said Walid Abkar, a doctor who works at the hospital and was inside at the time of the attack. "People will die in large numbers, from wounds and from illness, especially children." Aside from war injuries, the hospital received patients suffering from a variety of ailments, including malnutrition, dehydration, malaria and pneumonia. "We don't know what to do now," Walid said. "We have nothing here, if we build another [hospital] they will just bomb it again. You need a safe space for treatment." The MSF hospital in Haydan is just one of dozens of similar facilities that have been hit. Nearly 70 health institutions have been damaged or destroyed during the conflict, according to the UN. "The world has no safe places anymore," Akram said. "No world body can stop this. Not the [UN] Security Council, nothing. Saudi Arabia has bought them all." US Complicity Yemeni men protest outside the UN office in Sanaa on Nov. 2, 2015. Credit: Getty Images It’s easy to see why Akram would think that. In September, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein released a report that detailed the heavy civilian toll in Yemen. He recommended establishing an independent international inquiry into human rights abuses and violations of international law in the conflict. The Netherlands responded with a draft resolution that would have mandated a UN mission to document violations by all sides over the previous year. But in the face of stiff resistance from Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners, and little support from Western governments — including the United States — the Dutch withdrew the proposal. Instead, the UN Human Rights Council passed by consensus a new resolution drafted by Saudi Arabia that made no reference to any independent international inquiry. The text only calls for the UN to provide "technical assistance" for a national commission of inquiry set up by the Yemeni government of President Hadi, which is backed by Saudi Arabia and a party to the war. “By failing to set up a serious UN inquiry on war-torn Yemen, the Human Rights Council squandered an important chance to deter further abuses,” Philippe Dam, the deputy director at Human Rights Watch in Geneva, said in a statement. “The US, UK, and France appear to have capitulated to Saudi Arabia with little or no fight, astoundingly allowing the very country responsible for serious violations in Yemen to write the resolution and protect itself from scrutiny." The United States has backed the Saudi-led coalition with arms sales as well as direct military support and coordination, raising questions about the level of American complicity in the airstrikes. Since the escalation of the conflict in March, the United States has provided the coalition with vital intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and logistics information, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees all military operations in the Middle East. Eight days after the bombing campaign began, the US began providing crucial aerial refueling to Saudi Arabia and its partners. As of Nov. 20, US tankers had flown 489 refueling sorties to top off the tanks of coalition warplanes 2,554 times, according to numbers provided to GlobalPost by the Defense Department. Smoke billows after an air-strike by Saudi-led coalition on May 11, 2015 in Sanaa. Credit: Getty Images The US military is also advising the coalition through what is known as the "Joint Combined Planning Cell," which was authorized by US President Barack Obama, according to Capt. P. Bryant Davis, a CENTCOM media operations officer. The joint cell is based in Riyadh, where US military personnel regularly meet with senior Saudi military leadership. In addition to logistical support and intelligence sharing, the joint cell provides "targeting assistance" to the Saudi coalition, though CENTCOM stressed that the "selection and final vetting of targets" is done by coalition members, not the United States. "There's actually a small number of US military personnel sitting in Riyadh in a military capacity helping to coordinate airstrikes. That's a game changer," says Belkis Wille, the Yemen researcher for Human Rights Watch. "It goes beyond the US just being a supporter of the coalition … they are actually a part of this armed conflict." When asked what steps the US military takes to prevent civilian casualties in Yemen, CENTCOM said the joint cell recommends that the Saudi military "investigate all incidents of civilian casualties allegedly caused by airstrikes and has asked that the coalition reveal the results of these investigations publicly." Since the beginning of the war, Human Rights Watch has documented more than two dozen airstrikes that the group said “appeared to be in violation of the laws of war." The rights group said it has not been able to ascertain that Saudi Arabia or other coalition members are investigating a single airstrike. Officials at CENTCOM declined to answer whether the US military in any way reviews the toll on civilians afflicted by coalition airstrikes. Meanwhile, the US continues to send billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies. Yemenis clear the rubble of houses in the old city of Sanaa, a UNESCO-listed heritage site, on June 15, 2015, after an airstrike. Credit: Getty Images In November, the State Department approved a $1.29 billion deal to replenish Saudi Arabia's air force arsenal, depleted by its bombing campaign in Yemen. The sale includes thousands of air-to-ground munitions such as laser-guided bombs, bunker buster bombs and "general purpose" bombs with guidance systems. Saudi Arabia has been one of the US arms industry's most avid customers. Between October 2010 and October 2014, the US signed off on more than $90 billion in weapons deals with the Saudi government, according to the Congressional Research Service. US arms manufacturers have also sold billions of dollars’ worth of material to the other Gulf states that are participating in the bombing of Yemen, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the latest acquisition will "enable Saudi Arabia to meet regional threats and safeguard the world's largest oil reserves." Congress has 30 days to block the sale. In October, Democratic members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee managed to delay a separate planned transfer of weapons, including thousands of precision-guided munitions, to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, thirteen members of Congress sent a letter to Obama urging greater efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Yemen, "in order to protect innocent lives and reduce the potential for backlash against US interests." State Department officials told GlobalPost that when deciding whether or not to approve weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, it weighs both political and economic interests, as well as human rights considerations. “We have to take all these factors into account and clearly human rights is definitely a concern … we have asked the Saudi government to investigate all credible reports [of civilian casualties]." Human rights advocates, however, say the United States should be conducting its own reviews. "If an airstrike takes place, and there's reason to believe that it was a US bomb that killed dozens of civilians, the US actually has an obligation to investigate that specific strike and we have so far not seen any announcement that the US is carrying out that type of investigative function in any airstrike," said HRW’s Wille. Cluster Bombs Hasna Al-Hanash, 3, and her Father. Hasna was injured alongside her grandmother when unexploded cluster munitions fell all around them. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost The US and other countries have also sold internationally banned cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners. And those cluster bombs are being used in Yemen. Neither the United States, nor Saudi Arabia — nor any other member of the coalition bombing Yemen — is party to the 2008 international treaty banning cluster munitions. The treaty has been signed by more than 100 governments because of the devastating effects cluster bombs can have on civilian communities. The village of al-Mifaa is essentially a group of mud brick houses nestled in farmland some 10 miles northwest of Saada City. It was there that Hasna Gomaa sat by her 3 year-old granddaughter, watching her play on a swing made of rubber piping and cloth. It was 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 27. She heard a soft boom overhead, though it wasn't nearly loud enough to be a missile strike. She paid it little mind. What she didn't know was that dozens of cluster bombs were raining down toward her and her grandchild. Cluster bombs contain dozens of submunitions that are released in mid-air and scatter indiscriminately over a wide area. The bomblets fell all around Gomaa and her granddaughter. One hit the tree branches above them while several others exploded next to them. Three-year-old Hasna, named after her grandmother, was thrown off the swing as shrapnel flew into her leg. The elder Hasna was also hit, with shrapnel slicing through her right thigh and left ankle. One of the tubes used to carry sub-munitions in cluster bombs, found in Saada. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost They were both bleeding profusely. The girl’s father, Mohamed Ahsan, rushed outside and carried his daughter and mother into a nearby hole the family had dug to escape airstrikes. They wrapped little Hasna's leg in a scarf to try to stem the bleeding. The family stayed crouched in the makeshift bomb shelter for several harrowing minutes, unsure if another attack would come. When Hasna fell unconscious they climbed out to rush her to a nearby hospital. Three days later, Mohamed is holding little Hasna outside their house. Her left leg is wrapped in thick bandages and she cries out in pain when he shifts her in his arms. Her grandmother and namesake limps beside them. "If I had died it would have been OK, but not her," she says. Abdel Aziz al-Nahari was not as fortunate. The same cluster bombs sent shrapnel into his chest and abdomen and he began to bleed internally. He now lies on a cot in Saada's Gomhouri hospital. The right side of his body is bandaged from armpit to thigh. He is too frail to talk. A tube protrudes from his chest, draining blood. He has undergone three operations and needs additional surgery to remove the shrapnel still stuck inside him. Faisal al-Hanash saw the bombs exploding in the sky. He says metal pipes filled with bomblets that came out of two separate rockets were spinning as they fell through the air, spreading their deadly cargo over at least a square mile. He holds up one of the meter-long pipes as proof. "This is an illegal weapon, why are they using it on us?" he asks. The cluster bombs landed all over the farmland where the family grows cucumbers, tomatoes and pomegranates. Many ripped holes through the thin plastic sheets that cover crops before exploding on the ground, destroying some of the plants. Damage from shrapnel like this is evident in several parts of the village. A cluster munition believed to be made in Brazil lies half buried in a cucumber field in Sadaa, Yemen. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost Residents of the village of al-Haneya, which is close to al-Mifaa, say dozens of cluster bombs landed on their farmland days before on Oct. 21. They had no choice but to try to remove them if they wanted to farm their crops. Nineteen year-old Ahmed Gomaa was trying to push an unexploded bomblet away using a long stick when it exploded. He was hit with shrapnel in the forearm and leg and now walks with a crutch. "I was afraid but I had to do it to be able to work," he says, lying down in his family house. "People continued trying to remove them even after I was injured." His father, Abdullah Gomaa, sits beside him. "I am afraid to walk in the fields now," his father says. "This is a crime, we can't farm our land because of this." While human rights groups and the UN have repeatedly warned of atrocities in Yemen, the conflict shows no signs of relenting. The exiled president has lost credibility across the political spectrum and Saudi Arabia’s stated goal of returning his government to rule is unrealistic at best. The coalition has forced the Houthis to retreat from some southern areas, including the port city of Aden. But fierce ground fighting is ongoing in cities like Taiz and elsewhere. Neither the Houthis nor the Saudis appear capable of securing a clear military victory over the whole country. In the mean time, groups like al-Qaeda and the nascent Islamic State are taking advantage of the power vacuum. Al-Qaeda now controls Yemen’s fifth-largest city. With no obvious exit strategy, the coalition continues its heavy bombing. Yemenis feel the international community has forsaken them. They say the world’s media has largely ignored them. Aqban Hudeidah, the country's fourth-largest city, and home to 400,000 people, is world-renowned for its fishing industry. But its fishermen are now the targets of airstrikes. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost One of the deadliest attacks by the Saudis in recent weeks received hardly any coverage in the foreign press. It took place not on Yemen's mainland but at sea. The small Red Sea island of Aqban, some 25 miles west of mainland Yemen’s coast, is shaped like a diving whale. Protected from the open sea by a coral reef, its crystal blue waters provide the ideal sanctuary for Yemeni fishermen to anchor and rest when heavy winds come in. This is where Abdo al-Baghawi's boat was headed on the morning of Oct. 22. Al-Baghawi is 52. He has a wiry frame and a bushy beard. He’s been fishing these waters for 30 years. It had been an unremarkable night's work. The crew of a dozen or so men had set out on a zawraq — a traditional, wooden Yemeni boat — just before sunset the day before and fished all night, as is their routine. On the boat with Abdo was his cousin's son, Ali, whose hazel eyes and boyish looks made him appear far younger than his 39 years. Mohamed Suleiman, a compact 26-year old who lived in a neighboring village, was also with them. Other zawraqs were working not far away. Most of the men aboard were from a cluster of villages near Beit Faqih, about 40 miles southwest of the port city of Hudeidah. They had all fished alongside each other for many years. After daybreak they hauled in their nets and set course for the island, where they would sleep through the morning and afternoon before fishing again the following night. They reached Aqban at about 10 a.m. There were at least seven other zawraqs and a couple dozen smaller wooden skiffs accompanying them. The small flotilla dropped anchor in the calm waters a few hundred meters from shore. Abdo lay down to rest with the others. The fishermen were fast asleep when the first missile struck, violently yanking them out of their dreams and into a living nightmare. The first airstrike hit the boat adjacent to Abdo's at about 11:30 a.m., shattering the hull into small fragments of broken wood. "Like a deck of cards being thrown in the air," is how Mohamed later described it. Jolted awake, Abdo looked around in horror and confusion. There was nothing left of the boat next to him but the fishing net. Seventeen of the 20 men on board had been killed. He heard two men screaming but he couldn't see any bodies in the water. Mohamed Suleiman lies convalescing in a hut in his home village near Beit al-Faqih in Hudeidah province. His spine was partially broken when coalition warplanes targeted the fishing boat he was sleeping in on Oct. 22. At least 42 were killed in the attack. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost He didn't know whether to jump in the sea or try to sail away. Amid the panic, a crewman shouted, "the next strike will be for us." They all said the shehada — the Muslim affirmation of faith that is recited when one expects to die. Moments later the second missile slammed into them. Abdo found himself under water. He didn't know what was happening. His foot had been fractured but the pain didn't register. He said another prayer and surfaced. The bow was all that remained of the zawraq. He swam toward the wreckage trying to find other survivors, screaming names but no one answered. Eight of the thirteen men on board were dead. He decided to swim for Aqban. Then he saw Ali and a few others not far away also struggling to make it to the beach. With two boats destroyed, the fishermen on the remaining vessels were scrambling off of theirs, diving into the water in a panic before the next strike. Mohamed was also blown into the water by the force of the blast. Something was wrong with his back and he couldn't move properly. Struggling to stay afloat he grabbed onto a piece of wood and looked around. There were corpses floating next to him. One man was decapitated. Another man had his arm torn off. His spine partially broken, Mohamed clung helplessly to the floating debris until a skiff finally picked him up and took him to shore. The men all collapsed on the beach. The pain from their injuries now made itself known. Some were burned and screaming in agony. Many of them couldn't walk and were crawling on the sand. Ali, whose right knee was broken and left thigh split open, passed out. The air assault did not stop. For the next hour and a half, missiles rained down every 10 minutes, destroying the remaining boats and pounding the island itself. After about five strikes, Abdo said he saw an Apache helicopter swoop in and strafe the shallow waters 30 meters from shore, killing at least one of his colleagues, Mohamed Abdullah Hadi. At about 1 p.m. the assault finally ended. Other fishing boats eventually arrived to evacuate those left alive. At least 42 fishermen died in the attack. The Ministry of Justice in Houthi-controlled Hudeidah listed their names in a report. The report, obtained by GlobalPost, documented the casualties from four of the boats. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed the toll. Many of the bodies were only found days later, floating off the islands. Photographs of their corpses show them grotesquely bloated and disfigured. Survivors say many bodies are still missing. They believe the toll is well over 100. Tamim al-Shami, the Houthi spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Sanaa, said 140 fishermen were killed, but those figures could not be independently confirmed. The International Committee of the Red Cross says the likelihood of those presumed missing being found are "very slim." Ali al-Baghawi worked as a fisherman for 21 years. He was injured in an aerial attack at sea that killed dozens of his friends and colleagues. Though fishing was his livelihood he now says he will never return to the water. Credit: Rawan Shaif/GlobalPost "Only God knows why they attacked us," Ali says. "Can't they see us with all this surveillance technology?" His arm is scarred by shrapnel and his right leg is wrapped from thigh to ankle, the bone held together by clamps attached to a protruding metal rod. A fisherman for 21 years, he now says he feels nauseous when he thinks of the sea and will never go back. Saudi Arabia claimed the seven boats were smuggling weapons and military equipment. It released aerial footage showing the boats in the water and one of them being destroyed in a massive airstrike. "We are sure 100 percent that they were smuggling weapons from the big ships to small boats," Asiri, the coalition’s spokesman, told GlobalPost. Survivors interviewed separately say they never saw any weapons on Aqban and that there were no boats among them other than fishing vessels. They say the small skiffs routinely accompany zarwaqs when going out to fish. In Hudeiah's harbor, scores of skiffs can be seen anchored near the larger boats. "I never felt scared in Aqban, it was always safe," Mohamed says. He lies convalescing on a mattress in a small hut in his home village. His back is wrapped in a brace and he is unable to move. "I never saw any weapons, it was just us fishermen." Two days before the attack, an Apache helicopter had passed overhead as the fishermen were out at sea, but Abdo thought nothing of it. Coalition warships had been patrolling the waters for months and they had never had any trouble before. "I wasn't scared," Abdo says. "I didn't think they would hunt us the way we hunt the fish." Additional reporting for this story was provided by Amal al-Yarisi. |
Email Share +1 361 Shares A new House Republican has signed on as a co-sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act as LGBT advocates continue to push for a vote in the Republican-controlled chamber, the Washington Blade has learned. Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn in Congress, elected to co-sponsor the bill Monday, according to sources familiar with the legislation. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who’s gay and lead sponsor of ENDA, commended Grimm for supporting the bill, which would bar employers from discriminating against or firing workers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. “I am happy to welcome Rep. Grimm as the 200th cosponsor of the bipartisan Employment Non-Discrimination Act,” Polis said. “This is common sense legislation that is supported by a majority of Americans and was passed overwhelmingly by the United States Senate. I look forward to working with Rep. Grimm and all of the co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle to pass this bill and protect all Americans from discrimination in the work place.” Grimm’s office didn’t immediately respond to the Blade’s request for comment on his decision to sign on as an ENDA supporter. Counting Polis, Grimm’s support brings the total number of sponsors in the House to 201. A total of 218 votes is necessary to pass legislation in the chamber. Grimm is the sixth Republican co-sponsor of ENDA. The other five are Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Charles Dent (R-Pa.), Jon Runyan (R-N.J.) and Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.). Elected during the Republican wave in 2010, Grimm is generally looked upon as having an unfavorable record on LGBT issues. The Human Rights Campaign gave him a rating of “0” in its latest congressional scorecard. A former FBI agent who served in the 1990s Persian Gulf War as a Marine, Grimm is an opponent of same-sex marriage. He expressed his opposition in 2011 when the New York Legislature was preparing to legalize gay nuptials. “I believe, by definition, that marriage is between a man and a woman, just as President Clinton did in 1996 when he signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, defining it as such,” Grimm said. Still, beyond his decision to back ENDA, he’s a co-sponsor of the Safe Schools Improvement Act, legislation that would require schools to develop to policies against bullying, including the discrimination and harassment of LGBT students. Christian Berle, legislative director for Freedom to Work, said Grimm’s co-sponsorship of ENDA reflects growing Republican support for the legislation. “We applaud Congressman Grimm for joining the growing number of Republicans supporting LGBT workplace protections, Freedom to Work along with Log Cabin Republicans have been lobbying broadly within the House GOP Conference and we hope to build momentum with more ENDA supporters in the weeks and months to come,” Berle said. But Grimm signs on as a co-sponsor to ENDA as he’s facing additional challenges and is being investigated for possible corruption. The House Ethics Committee is deferring an investigation into Grimm for possible campaign finance violations to the Justice Department, which is conducting a criminal probe. The New York Daily News reported earlier this month Grimm may have used “donor swapping” to skirt fundraising limits. Grimm made headlines this week after he threatened a reporter who was about to ask him about the corruption probe. The incident was caught on video in which Grimm told a NY1 reporter that he would throw him from a balcony and break him in half. The Senate last year passed ENDA on a bipartisan basis by a 64-34 vote. Supporters have said the legislation already has the votes to pass the House, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has continually said he opposes the legislation when asked if he’ll bring it up for a vote. Polis has previously said the best way to encourage Boehner to bring ENDA to a vote is adding additional Republican co-sponsors to the bill. Boehner’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Grimm’s sponsorship changes things in terms of a possible House vote. |
Last year, I reported that our then-recent usability studies had found good results from sites using mega menus for navigation. Such menus have now spread far beyond the sites we tested. In fact, mega menus are now so popular that I decided to stop covering them in our seminar on Emerging Patterns for Web Design — they aren't emerging any more, they've arrived. (In-depth analysis of mega menus has now moved to our seminar on Web Page Design.) Mainly, it's a good thing when research highlights that something works and it's then widely adopted. If only site managers would act equally fast to remove bad design elements after the many columns I've published about usability problems :-( However, in the rush to implement mega drop-downs, some sites have gone down the wrong path. Let's look at a few recent problematic designs. Use Mega-Features for Meaningful Choices Mega menus offer at least two huge benefits: they let you structure choices into panels or sub-areas and into panels or sub-areas and illustrate choices. Neither is done well in this menu from the main U.S. government portal www.USA.gov: Are there 2 or 3 categories in this menu? Although vertical separators clearly divide 3 areas, the bulleted items seem to form a single list that flows through the first 2 areas. The site missed a great opportunity here; designers could have easily structured this long list of options into subcategories, each with its own subhead. The third area seems to be its own separate category, as indicated by the Audiences subhead. But instead of actually listing the audiences, there's a generic image with no communicative value, followed by a single menu item with the same name as the subhead. What an abuse of the mega menu concept. As always in user interface design, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Megas can benefit from illustrations, but only when they illustrate actual options and make them easier to scan. We already know that users ignore content-free pictures on web pages. Menus should be edited judiciously — and pruned even more ruthlessly than full pages. Menus must focus on enabling users' choices and on guiding them as rapidly as possible to their desired destination. In the example above, the designers should use the space to show choices, not fluff. And the 2-D layout should explain and structure these choices, freeing users from having to read through a long list. Alphabetize for Scannability: Columns, Not Rows Following is a mega-dropdown from Hulu.com — a subscription site for professionally produced video. Has any particular rule been applied to govern placement of the menu items? The organizing principle (if any) is difficult to discover at a quick glance, which is all that web users are likely to grant it. People don't have time to study your design to determine why you put certain things in certain places. And sadly, if they can't quickly discern a structure, they're likely to assume randomness, since they've seen so many other sites with horrible IA. (Every site with poor usability poisons the well for everyone who's trying to do business on the internet.) If you do look carefully at the Hulu.com example, you'll see that the menu items are sorted alphabetically. Let's leave aside the point that A–Z might not be that great a way to present the universe of filmed entertainment genres. The options must be sorted in some fashion, and my point here is simply how the site presents its A–Z sequence. In the screenshot, the sequence of options runs horizontally. This is wrong, because people tend to scan vertically. In other words, when users first look at the menu, they're likely to read: All, Classics, Health, Reality, Action, Comedy, Home, Science. Or, if they start by looking in the middle of the mega menu, they'll perhaps see Drama, Horror, Sports, Arts, Family, Music. Whatever way they look at the menu, they're not likely to discover that it's sorted alphabetically, as long as their eyes follow columns rather than rows as they roam around the area. Now, if you're writing a table, it's natural to tab horizontally because that's the way you write: along horizontal lines. That's also the way people read narrative text. But a menu is not narrative text. It's scanned, not read. And scanning tends to proceed down a list in a vertical manner. (That's also why left-justifying navigation menus makes them easier to scan.) Mega Drop-Downs Are a Design Canvas In the bigger scheme of things, the usability problems mentioned here aren't too serious. They'll reduce site use by a few percent, but they won't destroy anyone's business metrics. But still: why degrade the user experience at all, when the correct design is as easy to implement as the flawed one? As I stated last year, mega drop-downs can enhance the usability of website navigation. But, as these new examples show, megas can have usability problems of their own. Of course they can. Any user interface design technique has pitfalls and must be used correctly for the best effect. An old design style with every detail polished will always beat a hypothetically better style with poorly designed details. That's why we keep doing user research to discover all the intricacies. |
Epidemic Ignored: When Oklahoma closed its psychiatric hospitals, it turned patients into inmates Sunday, November 13, 2016 | By Jaclyn Cosgrove Staff Writer | jcosgrove@oklahoman.com Larryn Rayburn, 34, died by suicide Sept. 29, 2015, in the Pontotoc County jail. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She was a paramedic. [image provided] Sunday, November 13, 2016 | By Jaclyn Cosgrove Staff Writer | jcosgrove@oklahoman.com Veda Carter thought she could protect her son as long as a jail cell was available. For more than 10 years, she tried to find Corey Carter quality, consistent treatment. Corey had schizophrenia and, sometimes, he struggled with paranoia. The Corey whom Veda knew and loved would start to change. That's when Veda knew she and Corey needed to make the 100-mile drive from Valliant, a small town in southeast Oklahoma, to McAlester. There, Veda would beg the staff at Carl Albert Community Mental Health Center to give her son an inpatient crisis bed. Repeatedly, she was told that, because Corey wasn't a danger to himself or others, he didn't meet the criteria to be admitted against his will for treatment. So Veda developed a Plan B, a plan she still feels guilty about today. She would call police and tell them that Corey was trying to hurt her or another family member. When Corey drove her car, she would tell police that he had stolen it. And the police would come, knowing Corey's mental health history, and take him to jail. “He would go in the jail because that was the only way ... we could get him some help, because a lot of times, they would say, ‘Well, he's not trying to harm anybody, he's not a danger to himself or anything like that,'” Veda, 58, said. “It's sad to say, at times, we would have to come up with one of the things that would fit the criteria, like, ‘He's being mean,' ‘He hit his sister,' just to get them to get him some help.” But this plan to help Corey failed, too. Corey died in the McCurtain County jail last February. His death is a tragic symptom of a broken mental health system that hasn't ever fully served the people who need it. Years ago, when Oklahoma closed its large psychiatric hospitals, the state inadvertently turned patients into inmates. For decades, Oklahoma has spent among the least in the nation on its mental health system. Meanwhile, Oklahoma has one of the highest rates of adults with serious mental illnesses. Only one of three Oklahomans who need treatment receives it. Oklahoma has, instead, chosen to spend its dollars on the least effective, costliest form of “treatment” — the criminal justice system. The cost of a year of state-funded mental health treatment: $2,000. The cost of a year in prison for someone with serious mental illness: $23,000. At last count, 60 percent in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections' population — 17,000 people — have either symptoms or a history of mental illness. It's the equivalent of jailing 20 percent of Edmond. State Health Commissioner Terry Cline said the state of Oklahoma has prioritized funding its criminal justice system over mental health and addiction services. “What does it mean when jail is better than being at home?” Cline said. “That is a real symptom, to me, of a broken system where people don't have access to those services in the community.” Why jail is easier to get into than treatment Often, the journey of Oklahomans with mental illnesses and substance use disorders into the criminal justice system starts in the county jail. Every county in Oklahoma has at least one jail, overseen by either a sheriff or jail administrator. Additionally, 13 cities have jails, usually operated by the local police department. Each year, these 90 jails operate as holding facilities for thousands of Oklahomans. Most of them don't have any strategies in place to intervene in the lives of people they see repeatedly for crimes committed as a direct response to untreated mental illness and addiction. Oklahoma is missing out on a substantial opportunity to divert thousands of people away from the criminal justice system and into the treatment system, health leaders say. “I've heard people say, ‘Well, if we're more successful at diverting people out of jails, we're only going to tax the treatment system more than it's already taxed,' and I'm saying ‘Bring it on,'” said Mike Brose, CEO of Mental Health Association Oklahoma. “That becomes our leverage to convince our elected officials that treatment in the community needs to be appropriately funded.” A months-long investigation by The Oklahoman, including the examination of hundreds of pages of jail inspection reports, found that mentally ill inmates are dying at an alarming rate, leaving their families and the taxpayers with the burden. In the first of a four-part series, The Oklahoman examines how four Oklahomans died in jails across the state. Their families share a common experience: not giving up on the people they loved. Collectively, they've driven hundreds of miles across the state in search of care, and they've faced many of the same barriers. And despite their best efforts, they all got the same phone call. The 77 county jails sprinkled throughout Oklahoma are providing medical and mental health care in 77 different ways, if they're providing care at all. Some jails train staff to some degree about mental illness. Others provide nothing, which can lead to the mistreatment of people with mental illnesses who often are viewed in the eyes of an untrained officer as an inmate who won't follow instructions. “We celebrated the closings of these large hospitals — we were proud of it, and it was the right thing to do,” said Brose, of Mental Health Association Oklahoma. “But what we've done is basically replaced it with a system that's worse. Now it's incarceration, and there are not mental health professionals treating people and caring for them. It's correctional officers, being asked to do something they're not properly trained to do.” Until the mid-1960s, Oklahomans with mental illnesses were primarily housed at Central State Hospital in Norman; Western State Hospital in Fort Supply; and Eastern State Hospital in Vinita. On an average day in 1960, nearly 6,400 Oklahomans were housed, sometimes for years, in these three facilities. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 started a move away from these institutions, but Oklahoma was slow to act. Eastern State Hospital finally closed in the early 2000s. Half of Western State Hospital was converted into a prison. The Legislature never appropriated enough money to fund community mental health centers, creating the fractured, overburdened system of today, advocates say. Oklahoma has 820 state-funded beds to address the needs of adults with mental illnesses and substance use disorders. That's compared with 90 jails and 41 temporary holding facilities with more than 15,000 beds. This is why a jail cell was always available for Corey Carter. Shortly before Corey died in the McCurtain County jail, Veda stood inside the office of a mental health facility in McAlester, begging them to take her 40-year-old son. After more than a decade of trying to find Corey quality, consistent treatment for his mental illness, Veda resorted to saying her son was dangerous and threatening to harm his family — and in some cases, Corey's family would say he had already hurt them. This caused Corey to rack up criminal charges, but his family believed he was safer in jail than on the streets, especially when they were told Corey didn't meet criteria to be admitted to a state-run mental health facility. Families of loved ones with serious mental illnesses say meeting “criteria” is a struggle, especially when their loved one isn't able or willing to receive care. In Oklahoma, the laws are specific: If an adult isn't a danger to himself or others, he cannot be held against his will. Often, that's how it's decided who will get treatment, because turning away those who are dangerous has potentially lethal consequences. These laws exist to protect the civil rights of people with mental illnesses. Whether a person with mental illnesses should be forced to receive treatment remains a debate among mental health professionals and advocates. “We should be trying to figure out how we get what families and individuals really need so we can intervene in a crisis — and not turning our backs and saying, ‘They don't meet criteria' or ‘We don't want to violate anybody's civil rights,'” Brose said. Some states have updated their laws. Instead of focusing on dangerousness, they use a standard they call “need for treatment,” said John Snook, executive director of Treatment Advocacy Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit. Doctors aren't consistent in their ability to evaluate dangerousness, Snook said. Research has shown they're correct about half the time about whether a person will hurt themselves or others. But they're good at evaluating a person's capacity, or ability to make their own medical decisions, Snook said. Under Oklahoma's current law, some people will never qualify for care because they won't be considered dangerous, and they're not doing well enough to understand they need care, he said. They fall apart but aren't able to ask for help. “That's how you have families doing things like lying about being assaulted,” Snook said. “It's a terrible situation because they feel like there's nothing they can do.” ‘Nobody responds' Corey grew up in Wright City, a small town of about 800 people in southeast Oklahoma. He was the oldest of three children. Throughout elementary and high school, Corey made good grades, didn't get in trouble and loved basketball. During his senior year at Wright City, Corey scored 850 points. His team, the Wright City Lumberjax, finished 30-3 and went to the Class A State Finals. Tony Robinson, who coached basketball at Southeastern Oklahoma State University for 20 years, worked hard to recruit Corey to play for the school. As a freshman, Corey came in with raw, underdeveloped talent. But over the next four years, Robinson saw Corey work to become one of the best players he ever coached. When Corey came to Southeastern, he could bench press 140 pounds. By the time he left, he was benching 340. “He just kept working and made himself into an all-around player,” Robinson said. “There wasn't anything he couldn't do.” It's still hard for Corey's teammate and college roommate Anthony Bruner to talk about losing Corey. When Anthony moved to Durant to play ball, Coach Robinson introduced him to Corey. Corey then introduced Anthony to his entire family, who took him in as one of their own. Corey helped Anthony, who grew up in Norman, feel like a part of the community. “I honestly still can't believe it,” Bruner said, of Corey's death. “I really don't think about it. I shut it out. It just seems too fresh, like it happened yesterday. I try not to think about it. It was so weird to go back there, and my boy is not there.” The years Corey played basketball at Southeastern were some of his best — he scored 520 points his senior year, the 1996-97 season, helping the team reach the second round of a national tournament. It's still listed as one of the highest single season records at Southeastern. But the years following were some of Corey's hardest. As Corey got older, the symptoms of serious and persistent mental illness started to show. At first, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood and energy, sometimes causing people to stay up for days without sleep. Later in life, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental illness that can affect the way a person thinks and behaves, sometimes causing them to hear voices, hallucinate or believe they're someone they're not. Corey's family remembers the mania, the days he would go without sleep or food. Corey received medicine at Carl Albert Community Mental Health Center. Sometimes he would ask them to change the amount he was taking. When they lessened the dosage, Corey soon would be sick again, his mother said. The last time Veda took her son to McAlester to be evaluated at a state-funded treatment center, Corey had been awake for almost five days. Sitting in the supervisor's office, Corey repeatedly said things suggesting he was not in touch with reality. He told them he needed to get his hard hat to go to work. Veda pointed out to the mental health worker that Corey didn't have a job, much less one in construction. At one point, Corey said, “Your mama is dead,” without directing the statement to anyone in the room. Veda told the mental health worker: “He is very smart. He's going to try to maintain as much as he can.” The supervisor asked to speak to Corey alone. Veda felt hopeful that the supervisor, once one-on-one with her son, would see that Corey wasn't himself. But soon, the supervisor came out and told Veda, “He's not homicidal. He's not suicidal. He doesn't seem to be a threat to others.” “Are you going to wait until someone kills him? Or he kills somebody? Hurts somebody?” Veda asked. “Basically, yes,” she said the supervisor responded. Veda left McAlester with her son and drove the 100 miles back home to Valliant. She left Corey at home and headed to work at a local drug treatment facility. That afternoon, Veda got a call that Corey had been arrested. She felt somewhat relieved, knowing he was safe somewhere. But soon, she got another phone call: Corey had been taken from the jail to the hospital. Jail staff at the McCurtain County jail in Idabel alleged that he became combative, according to state jail inspection reports. In a lawsuit filed against the jail, Veda's attorneys allege in court records that the jail staff choked, beat and repeatedly used a Taser on Corey, injuries that caused his death. They settled out of court in late October. McCurtain County jail officials' attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. At the time Corey entered the McCurtain County jail, he had been there repeatedly, and his mental health diagnosis was known to staff, court records show. Jail staff noted at intake that Corey was showing signs of “psychiatric problems.” According to court records, at 8:14 p.m. Feb. 12, 2015, jail staff called the local paramedic service and told them Corey had a shallow pulse after having a Taser used on him. Five minutes later, they called and said he didn't have a pulse. An ambulance was sent to the jail. When paramedics arrived, they found Corey unresponsive, not breathing and without a pulse. Once at the hospital, doctors found Corey had suffered brain damage from a lack of oxygen to his brain. He was pronounced dead at 8 p.m. Feb. 13, 2015. Four days later, the McCurtain County jail reported the incident to the state Department of Health: “Officers got into an altercation with Combative Inmate Corey and administered Taser to subdue the subject. After the altercation, inmate was unresponsive and Officers had to perform CPR on the subject. Inmate was taking by EMS to McCurtain Memorial Hospital.” The report, filed by the jail to the agency that performs jail inspections, did not include that Corey died or the extent that force was used. Shortly after Corey was processed through the jail, three jail officers put him in a restraint chair, a use of force tool that tethers a person to a chair at points across their wrists, ankles and chest, according to court records. They took Corey, still in the restraint chair, from the booking area to an isolation cell. Jail staff later told OSBI agents that Corey refused to change out of his street clothing. Corey was left strapped to the chair in the isolation room for two hours. No one checked on him, court records show. Three jail deputies came and let Corey out of the chair for less than two minutes. They placed him back in the restraint chair for an hour and a half. After almost four hours in the chair, Corey was released. Video from the isolation room shows him struggling to stand, trying to stretch. Records show that, at this point, Corey is taken into a change-out room nearby, off camera. Three other deputies are nearby. Three deputies inside the room begin to beat Corey, at one point holding his arms, court records show. They strip him naked, and then another deputy lunges into the room, using a Taser on Corey at least three times, including twice in the chest. Three more officers come into the room off camera, and the seven men continue to beat Corey. “At some point, other arrestees can hear Carter repeatedly pleading over and over again for someone to help him,” a court record noted. “Nobody responds.” Inside the change-out room, Corey's body goes limp, records show. The officers take his naked body and put him back into the restraint chair, wrapping his limp arms and legs inside. No one leaves the room to find a medical professional at the jail to check on him. Instead, they wheel him back into the isolation room and stand around him for 11 minutes. At one point, one officer starts smiling and making punching gestures “as if he was re-enacting the physical assault on Carter inside the change-out room,” the court record reads. Veda's attorneys note that the jail staff used physical force and a weapon on Corey despite knowing that his mental illness could affect his ability to follow or understand their commands. The jailers weren't properly trained in how to communicate with inmates with mental illnesses — nor were they trained in how and when to use force, the attorneys allege. “Given the nature of operating a jail facility, i.e., knowledge that staff are authorized and expected to use force, and that a fair number of arrestees exhibit mental health concerns, the need for more or different training on these particulars is so obvious MCJT's failure to provide adequate training on these topics predictably led to the excessive, inappropriate, or unsafe use of force on Carter sufficient to result in a constitutional violation,” the court record notes. The attorneys also argue in court records that the jail deputies' choice to conceal the extent of force they used to paramedics and the state Health Department jail inspectors suggests they knew what they did was excessive. Corey is buried a mile from his high school in the Joe Slater Memorial Cemetery in Wright City. Kayla Bowers, executive director at Oklahoma Disability Law Center, said there's a significant need for better training on mental health for Oklahoma jail staffs. Police officers go through an academy and receive extensive training. The same is not true for jail staffs, where training is often “word of mouth” through work, she said. “All that training dead ends when you hit the jailhouse,” Bowers said. “The sheriff's offices are the ones who take care and maintain the hotels we call jails. They're like hotel managers — and if they're not getting the training on how to run this hotel, you're going to be in trouble.” Hundreds of people filled the Wright City School Auditorium for Corey's funeral, his mother said, including his former teammates and coaches. Veda said she wants people to understand that her son was more than his illness. “He had a purpose for being here,” Veda said. “He had dreams. I just hoped one day, he could get the right treatment, get on the right medication and that he could lead a normal life and enjoy his kids.” A few weeks after Corey's death, his daughter won in the 400-meter run at the Class 6A state track meet. She graduated high school a few months later. “He would have been so proud to see his daughter graduate,” Veda said. Deputies as doctors not a safe setup For two years, Debra Porter, of Salina, Kan., and her family could not find their brother. And then, a few days before Easter last year, they got a call — 51-year-old Benjamin Ferguson had been arrested following an assault on a fellow patient at a mental health facility. He was in the Cherokee County jail in Oklahoma. His family was thankful he was alive. Known as “Benny” to his family, Benjamin was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 19. When he was on his medicine and receiving care, Benjamin was a kind, funny and thoughtful person. He was an attentive father. His niece Kellie Savage, 25, remembered how Benjamin taught her how to fish when she was 8, and then when she was older, how to drive. She sometimes drove him to his doctor's appointments. “On his good days, it would be, ‘This is awesome, Kellie — let's go grab some tea,'” Savage said. “But then there were the days when it was like, ‘Should I really be driving with you in the vehicle with me?'” During his bouts of paranoia, Benjamin got to a point where he believed someone was trying to kill him. Sometimes, it was the mafia. Sometimes, it was his family. He started to believe that he was his father. They shared the same name, and they looked alike. When his dad died, Benjamin's delusions worsened. He saw a truck parked at a construction site that looked like his dad's truck. The keys were inside. Benjamin got in and drove off. This prompted one of many arrests. Benjamin was repeatedly jailed and hospitalized in Oklahoma and Kansas. The longest he received care, his sister said, was when he stabbed himself in the leg. He was finally considered a danger to himself. That time, Benjamin stayed in a psychiatric hospital for several weeks. Other than that, his stays at hospitals were short, and his treatment was inconsistent. Porter and her family called police because, like Veda, they believed it was their only option. “At least we knew he was in a safe environment,” said Porter, 48, Benjamin's youngest sister, from her home in Salina. “He was getting a roof over his head and food in his belly when he was in jail. That was the only good thing about him going to jail. He was not on the streets. … At least we knew he was safe. At least we knew where he was. Well, we thought he was safe, obviously.” The joy that Debra and her family felt when they found out that Benjamin was still alive quickly faded. The day after Easter, their mother received a call. Benjamin was dead, a Cherokee County jail staff member told her. He had suffered what looked like a heart attack. When the Cherokee County jail reported Benjamin's death to the state Health Department, they wrote “Setting (sic) on toilet, collapsed and found later.” When Oklahoma state jail inspector Alan Coffee arrived in Tahlequah four days later to investigate Benjamin's death, he found a scene that warranted more than seven words. Coffee watched the jail's surveillance video that showed Benjamin sitting naked on the toilet in the back of the cell. When Benjamin was booked into the jail, he told them that he had a history of mental illness and had attempted suicide. Inside the cell, he talked to himself while making hand gestures, catching things that weren't there and shooting them with his fingers. The following is a timeline of the events leading up to his death April 5, 2015, obtained by an Open Records request by The Oklahoman. 9:42 p.m.: Benjamin fell to his knees, his head resting on his mat, which he had pulled in front of the toilet. 9:43 p.m.: Benjamin fell over on his left side, his body shaking. He shook for 40 seconds and then started breathing slowly, sporadically. 9:56 p.m.: Benjamin took his last breath. 3:30 a.m.: The cell door opened for the first time. A detention officer saw Benjamin dead, naked, alone on the concrete floor, and left. 3:31 a.m.: The same officer came back in the cell and stood over Benjamin's body. He did not touch him. Instead, he walked out and closed the door. 4:43 a.m.: Someone entered the cell and touched Benjamin Ferguson. They then left. A few jail staff came into the cell and took pictures. 6:08 a.m.: The medical examiner arrived and took Benjamin's body to Tulsa. Although the Cherokee County jail staff is trained in CPR and on how to operate a defibrillator, no one used their medical training to attempt to save Benjamin's life. Cherokee County jail administrator T.J. Girdner said that after Benjamin's death, the jail launched an internal investigation on three of its staff members. One person resigned. The jail did not request that the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations look into Benjamin's death, which would have resulted in an independent and confidential report sent to the jail and the Cherokee County district attorney. Girdner said he couldn't comment on the specifics around Benjamin's death, only that it was against their jail protocol for no one to respond. Girdner said he has seen a significant increase in inmates with mental illness and substance use disorders coming into the jail — and no substantial investment from the state in how to treat them or keep them out of jail. If people come into the jail with a diagnosis and their medicine, the jail can often get them their medicine, he said. But if they aren't able to tell the jail staff about their mental illness, or if they refuse treatment, it's difficult to find them the care they need, he said. “All the families want you to treat them — they need to be treated, and I agree with that, but where does the funding come from?” Girdner said. “It's hard to have every detention officer expected to be trained to be a psychiatrist or whatever. These guys back here carry many, many different hats. They're all counselors. They're expected to be doctors, police officers — and just the counseling side of it, what they go through every day, being cussed at, spit on, feces thrown on them, it's not a job for everybody.” Meanwhile, Benjamin's sister Teresa Farris, 49, of Newport News, Virginia, said she is left to wonder what would have happened if her brother had received emergency medical care. After Benjamin was arrested, his counselor from the treatment facility where he was living came to see him at the jail. The counselor told Benjamin that he would get Benjamin out of jail and drive him to a new treatment facility that had agreed to take him. But Benjamin told the counselor that he wasn't ready to trust him, and he wanted to think about it. “It was that weekend that Ben had the heart attack and died,” Teresa said. “He could have been in a facility when he had the heart attack and maybe not a jail if he had just agreed to go that Friday.” Recognizing a medical emergency Even though jail staffs are usually trained to provide basic first aid, most officers aren't medically trained beyond that. In Benjamin's case, no emergency medical care was provided by the people trained to deliver it. In the case of Sherry Elliott, the staff at the Grady County jail didn't seem to understand that Sherry was slowly dying in front of them. Sherry, 42, died of a drug overdose at that facility in Chickasha. She was arrested outside of her home in Chickasha on Sunday, July 5, 2015, on a charge of public intoxication. A Chickasha police officer responded to a domestic disturbance call to find that Sherry Elliott and her girlfriend had a verbal fight. As the officer spoke with Sherry in an alley outside of her home, he noticed the smell of alcohol on her breath, according to the police report. “Sherry's speech was slurred, slow, and thick,” the officer wrote in his report. “Sherry was unstable on her feet. Sherry's reactions were slow and delayed. Sherry's eyes were glassy. Sherry's eye lids (sic) were droopy. Sherry told me that she had consumed two beers along with her regular prescribed medications.” Sherry's sister, Chrystal Elliott, 50, of Houston, said Sherry had been taking a lot of prescription painkillers, and she was worried that Sherry was addicted to them. Sherry was getting a lot of pills from her doctor, especially considering she was only about 5'1” and weighed 102 pounds, her sister said. Once in the jail, Sherry had trouble staying awake. When she was awake, she acted bizarrely. The jail staff watched on the cell camera as Sherry lay on the floor, eating paint chips. Instead of taking Sherry to the hospital, the jail staff gave her a sandwich. Chrystal has wondered for months why no one, neither the police officer who arrested her nor the jail staff, took her sister to the hospital. “I can see her stumbling around in there, but picking at the wall or chips of paint, I don't get it,” she said. “I don't understand why they didn't realize — ‘This ain't normal.'” Throughout the night, Sherry snored loudly, inspection records show. This could have been a sign that she was overdosing. The symptoms of an opioid overdose include: pinpoint pupils, unconsciousness and respiratory depression, according to the World Health Organization. In cases where a person dies from overdose, their breathing slows, and they don't have enough oxygen in their blood to support their vital organs. As their oxygen levels fall, their brain struggles to function. Typically, they become unresponsive, their blood pressure drops and their heart rate slows. They can die within minutes. “But often, before death there is a longer period of unresponsiveness lasting up to several hours,” the World Health Organization notes. “This period is sometimes associated with loud snoring, leading to the term ‘unrousable snorers.'” At 10:40 p.m., five hours after Sherry was booked into jail, an officer noticed Sherry hadn't moved in a while. When officers entered her cell, her skin was cold. She didn't have a pulse. The nurse working at the jail came into Sherry's cell and could not find any vital signs. An ambulance was called, arriving 15 minutes after Sherry was found unresponsive in her cell. Rather than go to the hospital, Sherry's body left the jail when the medical examiner arrived to pick it up. The medical examiner ruled Sherry died from a drug overdose, brought on by two prescription painkillers, tramadol and oxycodone. One month before Sherry's death, the jail administrator told a state Health Department jail inspector that he had implemented a “policy procedure for jailers to follow when an emergency is warranted for an inmate” and provided the agency with a copy of the policy. “The administrator said he had a meeting in April 2015 with all Sergeants and Jail Staff stressing the importance of calling for medical assistance when an inmate is down on the floor,” the jail inspector noted in her report. “Jail staff was required to sign a form stating they read and understood the Policy and will comply with the Policy.” The jail administrator's actions were in response to a different inmate who had died after she hanged herself in the Grady County jail on August 4, 2014. They performed CPR but never called 911, and the jail officer who found her stood outside the cell because “he did not know what to do,” according to inspection records. The state Health Department cited the jail after the 2014 incident. After the jail administrator implemented the new policy — that jail staff should seek medical help when inmates need it — the health department closed its investigation, noting “no further action required.” That was June 16, 2015. Sherry Elliott died 19 days later. Sherry and her girlfriend had just moved to Oklahoma to start their lives over. They had struggled to find work where they lived in Texas and hoped Chickasha, where Sherry had grown up for part of her life, might have more opportunities. Sherry left behind five children, ranging in age from 7 to 19. Her youngest children were at the house when Sherry was arrested. “That's the last thing they remember — is (their) mom getting handcuffed and taking her to jail, and then the police coming to the house and knocking on the door and announcing (her death) with the kids standing right there,” Chrystal Elliott said. Inmates get medicines — sometimes Health leaders, attorneys and mental health advocates agree that the level of medical and mental health care delivered in jails varies widely. For example, some jails tell families that if they bring their loved one's medicine to the jail, the jail will administer it. Other jails have a policy against this, citing liability issues and a risk that illegal drugs could be smuggled into the facility. Medicine to treat mental illness can be costly for jails to provide, so sometimes sheriffs and jail administrators make the argument that they will provide a generic or similar medicine. But advocates argue that sometimes, people with mental illnesses don't get any medicine. “It is not consistent across all jails and our state that people have access to psychiatric medicines,” said Commissioner Terri White, of the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. “In some jails, there is no access. In some jails, there is infrequent access, and in some jails, it's either done well or there's a good partnership between the mental health center and the jail, so it depends on the jail, and unfortunately, it also often depends on the person who's in jail, and whether or not they were already engaged in the mental health system, so the community mental health center can even make the offer to bring medication for them.” Under Oklahoma state jail standards, jails are required to provide medical and mental health services, but the standards are vaguely written and hard to uphold in court when challenged. There is an effort underway to revise the standards, but that will likely take several more months. Some jails pay medical companies to provide nurses, physicians and mental health professionals who treat inmates. Others hire nurses and work with local physicians to provide care. And some take inmates to urgent care facilities and emergency rooms as needed. Leaders say examples like these suggest that every county jail in Oklahoma is operating under a different protocol than the next to deliver medical and mental health care. As alleged in Larryn Rayburn's case, county jails are inconsistent about giving inmates with mental illnesses their medicine, leaving them untreated in their cells, advocates say. The family of Rayburn argues that they provided the medicine — and then the jail staff failed to administer it. Larryn's mother, Terryl Ann Rayburn, brought her daughter's medicines to the jail, the family notes in a tort claim filed against Pontotoc County commissioners. Without her medicine, Larryn, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, began to suffer from the symptoms of the disorder. Larryn was in jail after a few back-to-back arrests in 2014, including two arrests on charges of driving under the influence of drugs and one for possession of meth. On Sept. 29, 2015, Larryn died by suicide, alone in a cell at the Pontotoc County jail. “All employees, agents, and servants of the Pontotoc County Jail owed Ms. Rayburn a duty to provide reasonable and adequate medical care and attention and to use reasonable care in the administration of her prescription medications,” the tort claim reads. Larryn graduated from Ada High School in 1999. She was certified as an EMT and paramedic. She had worked with the youth department at the First Baptist Church in Ada. Her family declined to comment, citing their pending legal action. Almost a year after her daughter's death, Terryl Ann wrote on Facebook that she was in the emergency room. “Came out here with a splitting headache from crying so hard and so long today,” she wrote. “I just got a shot. ... already feel a little bit better ... at least my head does — my heart still hurts.” She noted that, “In 8 days it will be one year since a gaping hole was made in our family.” The Pontotoc County Sheriff's Office did not respond to requests for comment. ‘We can't do this anymore' Other states have implemented solutions to divert people with mental illnesses out of county jails and into treatment. For example, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, specialized three-person teams, made up of a medical professional, a mental health practitioner and a police officer, respond to calls where officers believe a person is suffering from untreated mental illness. Their goal is to take the person to treatment, not jail. Oklahoma's efforts, however, have been minimal, at best. Only 16 of 77 counties have mental health courts, diversion programs that provide people with treatment and require them to regularly report their progress to a judge overseeing that docket. Without this option in every county, many Oklahomans go to prison instead of finding recovery in their own communities. Public misperception, mental health advocates say, is that “inmates” are violent criminals. But often, these inmates' only victims were themselves, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol to try to quieten the uncontrolled symptoms of their brain disorders. It's unsurprising that in Oklahoma, where the waiting line to state-funded residential drug treatment is more than 800 people long, the top offense in prison is drug possession. “It really is still the myth that we get (people with mental illnesses) because they're violent,” said Janna Morgan, chief mental health officer at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. “We do get some of those, but the majority of people with mental illness are not violent, including those that come to prison.” No agency has a good count of how many inmates in Oklahoma county and city jails have mental illnesses or substance use disorders. No one argues the number is small, but the estimates range. For example, at Oklahoma County jail, at least 400 people in custody have a mental illness. At Tulsa County jail, they estimate between 500 and 600 inmates are taking psychotropic medications. And at the third largest jail in Oklahoma, Cleveland County Undersheriff Rhett Burnett estimates out of about 450 inmates, about 100 have a mental illness on any given day. “I think law enforcement, at some point, needs to stand up and say ‘People of Oklahoma, we're not only a county jail — we're a mental health facility now, we're a homeless shelter now,'” Burnett said. “At some point, law enforcement, particularly county jails, has to say, ‘We're all of these things, Oklahoma,' and at some point, we're going to have to say, ‘We can't do this anymore.'” |
After the news came out that 2NE1's CL will be making her solo debut in the United States soon, there was a lot of attention on the other members of the group as fans and netizens wondered about their response. One instance particularly drawing attention is Minzy's Instagram on which she posted a picture of text that read, "Things change, people change, places change, friends change, careers change, economies change...but God never changes," which some people speculated was addressing the possibility of change regarding the group, 2NE1. In addition, her ID used to be @minzy21mz, but she has now removed the "21" from the name, so that it's only @_minzy_mz. As this overlaps with the time CL's venture into the American market was announced, people are wondering if this is likewise a statement on 2NE1's future. |
Winter Driving Tips Severe weather can be both frightening and dangerous for travelers. Winter storms, bad weather and sloppy road conditions are a factor in nearly half a million crashes and more than 2,000 road deaths every winter, according to research by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Drivers should know the safety rules for dealing with winter road emergencies. AAA urges drivers to be cautious while driving in adverse weather. AAA recommends the following tips while driving in snowy and icy conditions: Cold Weather Driving Tips Keep a bundle of cold-weather gear in your car, such as extra food and water, warm clothing, a flashlight, a glass scraper, blankets, medications, and more. Make certain your tires are properly inflated and have plenty of tread. Keep at least half a tank of fuel in your vehicle at all times. Never warm up a vehicle in an enclosed area, such as a garage. Do not use cruise control when driving on any slippery surface, such as on ice and snow. Tips for Driving in the Snow Stay home . Only go out if necessary. Even if you can drive well in bad weather, it’s better to avoid taking unnecessary risks by venturing out. . Only go out if necessary. Even if you can drive well in bad weather, it’s better to avoid taking unnecessary risks by venturing out. Drive slowly . Always adjust your speed down to account for lower traction when driving on snow or ice. . Always adjust your speed down to account for lower traction when driving on snow or ice. Accelerate and decelerate slowly . Apply the gas slowly to regain traction and avoid skids. Don’t try to get moving in a hurry and take time to slow down for a stoplight. Remember: It takes longer to slow down on icy roads. . Apply the gas slowly to regain traction and avoid skids. Don’t try to get moving in a hurry and take time to slow down for a stoplight. Remember: It takes longer to slow down on icy roads. Increase your following distance to five to six seconds. This increased margin of safety will provide the longer distance needed if you have to stop. to five to six seconds. This increased margin of safety will provide the longer distance needed if you have to stop. Know your brakes . Whether you have antilock brakes or not, keep the heel of your foot on the floor and use the ball of your foot to apply firm, steady pressure on the brake pedal. . Whether you have antilock brakes or not, keep the heel of your foot on the floor and use the ball of your foot to apply firm, steady pressure on the brake pedal. Don’t stop if you can avoid it . There’s a big difference in the amount of inertia it takes to start moving from a full stop versus how much it takes to get moving while still rolling. If you can slow down enough to keep rolling until a traffic light changes, do it. . There’s a big difference in the amount of inertia it takes to start moving from a full stop versus how much it takes to get moving while still rolling. If you can slow down enough to keep rolling until a traffic light changes, do it. Don’t power up hills . Applying extra gas on snow-covered roads will just make your wheels spin. Try to get a little inertia going before you reach the hill and let that inertia carry you to the top. As you reach the crest of the hill, reduce your speed and proceed downhill slowly. . Applying extra gas on snow-covered roads will just make your wheels spin. Try to get a little inertia going before you reach the hill and let that inertia carry you to the top. As you reach the crest of the hill, reduce your speed and proceed downhill slowly. Don’t stop going up a hill. There’s nothing worse than trying to get moving up a hill on an icy road. Get some inertia going on a flat roadway before you take on the hill. Tips for Long-Distance Winter Trips |
Scott Kelly: US astronaut 'grows' five centimetres after 340 days in space Posted US astronaut Scott Kelly has reportedly returned to Earth five centimetres taller after spending 340 days in space. Mr Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergei Volkov touched down in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. Part of the American's mission was to participate in an experiment testing the impact of space on the human body, using his identical twin brother, Mark, as a baseline. NASA spokesman Jeff Williams said Mr Kelly, 52, had grown by about five centimetres, according to CNN. "Astronauts get taller in space as the spine elongates," Mr Williams said. "But they return to pre-flight height after a short time back on Earth." Mr Kelly travelled 230 million kilometres during his mission, chronicling his journey with regular updates and spectacular pictures on social media. While back on Earth, Mr Kelly has continued to post about facets of his daily life. "There's no place like home!" he wrote, on a video post of him jumping into his swimming pool. He also posted a picture of a flower that was given to him on landing, and a snap of his first salad on Earth since returning home. NASA said Mr Kelly and Mr Kornienko conducted nearly 400 investigations during their mission on the International Space Station, including research that the agency will use in its plans for a mission to Mars. Topics: science-and-technology, space-exploration, united-states |
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said the Cabinet will decide what course to follow on the abortion issue tomorrow and would proceed to act on the issue in the New Year. Mr Kenny also said that there will not be a free vote on the issue. He said he did not want to force through any measure, but he did not want it to drag on interminably either. TDs debated the issue in the Dáil today. Minister of State Kathleen Lynch said she believed the Government would opt for a mixture of both legislation and regulation on abortion. Ms Lynch said when the Government does make its decision, it will not meet the expectation of the vast majority of Irish people. She said all the Government can do is legislate and regulate in such a restrictive manner that there will be a future case that will demand our attention. Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Frances Fitzgerald said the Government is going to do what no government has done before, by bringing clarity on the matter. Ms Fitzgerald said the illusion that there is no abortion in Ireland needs to be stopped. She said this existed because its close neighbour is providing the service to 4,000 Irish women every year. Fine Gael TD Eoghan Murphy said the Government had to act on the issue and said it was not enough to say that someone had a right to travel. Mr Murphy said that while he was against abortion, he was in favour of a free vote on the issue. Labour TD Michael Conaghan said that he favours the availability of abortion in limited circumstances, but said he thinks "killing babies is wrong". He said that this was about women's health and that when the mother's life is at risk, the choice must be on the side of the mother's life. Meanwhile, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health Anand Grover has said abortion should be an option for women where their health is affected and not only where the life of the mother is at risk. Speaking to RTÉ News, Mr Grover said he is concerned about the health of women around the world, but in particular the health of women in Ireland following the death of Savita Halappanavar. Ms Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks' pregnant, died at University Hospital Galway following a miscarriage. The rapporteur, who is currently in Ireland, said that what happened to her "would never happen in India". Elsewhere, in a statement this evening the Pro Life Campaign has warned the Government that if legislation for the X Case is introduced that it will lead to abortions "on demand". Dr Ruth Cullen said: "Claims that legislation for the X Case is a compromise between pro-choice and pro-life sides is nothing more than a political ploy to make any legislation appear restrictive. "The reality is, however, that any legislation for the X Case would blur the distinction between life saving medical interventions in pregnancy and induced abortion, the sole aim of which is to intentionally end the life of the baby." Separately, the Life Institute has slammed the UN Rapporteur's comments as "wholly offensive and inaccurate". Spokeswoman for Life Institute Niamh Uí Bhriain said that Mr Anand should withdraw his remarks. She said the comments were a "grave insult to Ireland, to her people, and to the excellent maternal health care specialist who have made Ireland one of the safest places in the world for a mother to have a baby". She added that if the Minister for Health James Reilly "had any respect for our doctors he would demand that Mr Anand apologise for the his wholly offensive and inaccurate remarks". |
‘Something has changed!” That phrase dominated conversation, including the media, in much of France a day after the worst carnage the country has experienced in peacetime. Some labeled the attack in the heart of Paris, in which Islamist terrorists assassinated 12 people including five prominent journalists, as “our 9/11.” At first glance, it did seem something had changed. Hours after the attack on Wednesday and throughout the next day, France saw hundreds of marches and gatherings, including some in small towns and villages, to show solidarity with the victims of the attack and voice support for press freedom and democratic rights. Posters and buttons with the slogan “Je Suis Charlie” (“I Am Charlie”) showing support for the satiric weekly Charlie Hebdo, sold like hot cakes and adorned shop windows, walls and clothes. President Francois Hollande called a national day of mourning, with a minute of silence observed nationwide by church bells chiming across the land. This was the fifth time in the history of the Fifth Republic that France observed a day of national mourning; the last, on Sept. 14, 2001, marked the 9/11 attacks on the United States. There were other symbolic gestures. Christian and Jewish leaders visited the main mosque in Paris to pray with its imam. Scores of associations issued messages of sympathy for the victims and their families. On closer examination, however, there was little sign that a genuine debate on the roots of the tragedy might start anytime soon. Whenever the discussion edged close to the core of the issue, the usual suspects of multiculturalism and political correctness intervened to put it on a different trajectory. It seemed almost mandatory to assert that the attack, carried out by a three-man commando of French-born jihadists of Algerian origin, had nothing to do with Islam. The obvious question went unasked: If so, then why did the president and prime minister — indeed the whole political elite — keep reassuring the “Muslim community?” The self-styled spokesmen for Islam, including a string of imams in a variety of folkloric garbs, played the same comedy by insisting that the three jihadists represented only themselves and that Islam is a religion of love and peace. On the “love and peace” note, it’s remarkable that none of the “community leaders” and “spokesmen” was prepared to label the three murderers as jihadists or even terrorists, let alone “enemies of mankind.” Instead, echoing President Obama, they all described the killing squad as “violent extremists.” Even Hassan Chalghoumi, a Tunisian-born cleric regarded as France’s “most moderate imam,” would go no further than describing the killers as “misguided individuals.” Some “Muslim spokesmen” tried to spin a web of confusion by using words and phrases many French adore — “alternative narratives,” “ historic concepts,” “discourse.” They recalled France’s 100-year colonial presence in Algeria, though the Charlie Hebdo attackers had never been to Algeria and made it clear they were seeking revenge for the Prophet. In a Europe 1 Radio interview, Tariq Ramadan, a former adviser on Islam to the government, even insisted that the attack should remind the French that all lives are of equal value, including those lost by Muslims in Syria and Iraq. In other words, if France takes part in the fight against ISIS, it must expect attacks on its citizens. Non-Muslim talking heads, meanwhile, warned against racism and Islamophobia, praised religious tolerance and dwelt on the merits of multiculturalism and alterite (otherness) for all communities. Leftist commentators tried to inject a dose of class warfare into the debate by harping on the poverty in heavily Muslim neighborhoods. All of this demonstrates the confusion that grips France with regard to Muslims, now almost 10 percent of its population. First, there is no “Muslim community.” French Muslims are divided into numerous different sects and “ways,” with little or no organic contact among them. In the Rochechouart neighborhood of Paris, you find mosques within a few hundred yards of each other that attract believers on the basis only of nationality; Algerians shun the Moroccan mosque, and vice versa. In fact, France allows rival Muslim sects, people who would kill one another in any Muslim country, the rare opportunity of peaceful coexistence. Nor is Islam a race. Walk in a Paris street and you’ll likely run into Muslims from all races. Islam cannot be regarded as an ethnicity, either, as more than 50 countries across the globe have Muslim majorities. And at least a fifth of France’s Muslim citizens are long-established Frenchies who converted to Islam. Nor is Islam a “class,” let alone an underclass or neoproletariat, as leftist star Jean-Luc Melanchon claims. There are many super-rich individuals and families among French Muslims. And, for a while, it was fashionable for the French glitterati to convert to Islam (the mystical Sufi version, of course) to thumb their noses at the “materialist civilization” of the West. This, in fact, is partly the subject of Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel “Submission,” which was on the cover of Charlie Hebdo’s issue the day its editorial office was attacked. The “hero” of “Submission” is a university teacher who ends up converting to Islam after the election of an Obama-like character as France’s new president in 2022. The multiculturalist position on Islam is equally open to question — because Islam is not a culture. Ask an Algerian if his culture has anything in common with a fellow Muslim from Nigeria, and you’ll be laughed out of the room. Neither a community, nor a race, nor yet a culture, an ethnicity or social class, Islam can and must be regarded as what it claims to be: a religion. Yet, as such, it should behave as a religion. That is to say: develop a theology, some sense of transcendence and a moral structure to advocate and defend a set of beliefs. However, this is precisely what modern Islam is not, perhaps does not want to be. Unable to perform as a religion, modern Islam (in most of its varieties) acts like a political movement. It is obsessed with jihad and martyrdom, Kashmir, Palestine, world conquest, hijab, beards, uniforms and other paraphernalia of totalitarianism. In many mosques, including some in France, God is given no more than a cameo role, as jihadists, suicide bombers, hostage-takers and ISIS-style throat-cutters get top billing. On Thursday, Iran’s minister of Islamic guidance, Ali Jannati implicitly justified the murder of Charlie Hebdo staff: “Press freedom can’t justify insulting religion,” he said. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham went further: “Freedom of expression should not include disparaging what is sacred.” Meanwhile, the British group “Love Muhammad” announced plans to expand its operation to the rest of Europe to “unite Sunni and Shia in a common love of Our Beloved Messenger.” The real problem is that Islam, refusing to do the job of a religion and acting as a political movement is simultaneously demanding the deference that was once, in pre-democratic times, due to religious beliefs. If France, indeed Europe, has a problem with Islam, it is partly because Islam has a problem with itself. |
Never mentioned Israel to Russians over intelligence leak, says US President Donald Trump Jerusalem : US President Donald Trump told Israeli reporters in Jerusalem that he "never mentioned Israel", in an apparent reference to the intelligence leak during a meeting with Russian officials. The remark was made at the end of a live statement to the press at the beginning of his close meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. According to US media reports, Trump revealed highly classified intelligence information about the Islamic State in Syria to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak during a White House meeting last week. The information was given to the US by an Israeli source and the leak endangered the life of a spy who was placed inside the IS by Israel, according to the reports. On Monday, Trump briefly remarked on these accusations after he and Netanyahu gave their statements to the press, saying he "never mentioned the word Israel". Trump landed in Israel on Monday for meetings with Israeli leaders before he will travel to Bethlehem to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. |
When on Friday we penned "And This Is Where The LTRO Money Went" we said that the final nail in the "Carry Trade" theory was that instead of using the LTRO "Bazooka" cash to collect meaningless pennies in front of a steamroller, Europe's banks turned around and deposited it right back with the ECB after the bank's deposit facility soared to a 2011 record €347 billion, €82 billion more than the day before. Today, any residual doubt of where the LTRO cash proceeds went is eliminated, as the ECB has just confirmed that what goes out of one pocket comes back in the other, as the ECB's deposit facility has just exploded to not a 2011 record, but an all time record high €412 billion, a €65 billion increase overnight, and €167 billion higher in the past two days alone, which effectively accounts for practically all of the LTRO's free €210 billion. And to those who foolishly claim this is a seasonal year end cash parking, we present the full history of the ECB's facility usage since it exploded on the scene in 2008. P;ease go ahead and show us when in 2008, 2009 and 2010 there was a spike in year end facility usage. We have all day. But wait: there's more! In another independent confirmation that all hell is about to break loose, we just saw the 1 Year Bund drop sub zero again. As a reminder, the last time it was there was in the last days of November, just before the global central bank cartel had to come in and provide a global liquidity bailout for Europe's banks. So: back to square minus one ladies and gentlemen of an insolvent Europe? But the biggest slap in the face of Sarkozy is that instead of banks pocketing the "guaranteed" 2-3% in carry trade between the 1% LTRO rate and the soveriegn bond yield, banks are losing 75 basis point on this inverse carry trade, where they take LTRO cash and deposit it with the ECB where it yields... 0.25%! ECB Facility Usage (source): And 1 Year bund yield: |
Transcript for 'Jihadi John' Now the Most Wanted Man In the World Now for the global manhunt for the most-wanted man in the world. That brutal Isis executioner. We're now learning his face and name, and bit by bit how he grew from a british schoolboy to a merciless killer. ABC ease's chief investigative correspondent with the details. Reporter: New details tonight offer clues about the path from british school boy to jihad for Mohammed emwazi. At the age of 11, teachers already saw a violent streak. And he told them of his love of graphic video games, including duke nuke'em, time to kill. Ten years later, as a London college student sporting an American baseball cap, emwazi earned a degree in computer programming. And now, authorities and analysts say they believe emwazi is using those computer programming and gaming skills as part of the Isis video propaganda team. We'll begin to slaughter your people on your streets. Reporter: Not only casting himself as the front man in the gruesome beheadings, but also working behind the scenes with a group of young men with british accents and laptops, as seen in this recruitment video featuring yet another Britain recruit. Now, this is where most of the media work happens, on this little desk here. Reporter: Former hostages describe emwazi as one of four especially sadistic british captors who they nicknamed the beatles, John, George, Paul and Ringo, who especially targeted the Americans in their custody. We were together all the time even when they brutalized us. Reporter: And for all of emwazi's notoriety as Jihadi John, the former hostages say the one they called George was the true leader of the group. All four have been high on the U.S. Air strike target list even before the name of Jihadi John became public. British authorities had kept emwazi's name secret in hopes he might give away his location by trying to contact family or friends back here in London. But as of tonight, he is believed to be still alive in Syria, part of an Isis group that continues to hold at least 15 to 20 other hostages. Tom? ABC's Brian Ross in London. Brian, thank you. We now know who he is but where is he is now the biggest question. ABC's chief global affairs correspondent, Martha Raddatz, spent the day at the Syrian border where Jihadi John is supposedly hiding. Martha, the big question tonight, why can't we catch him? Reporter: Tom, the reason it's been so hard to try and find Jihadi John, is that he doesn't use cell phones. He doesn't use satellite phones, no tracking devices. Even though he taunts the west in the videos and is so bold, he's very good at hiding. An even bigger reason, we have no intelligence assets on the ground in Syria. We have lots in the skies, drones, reconnaissance, and surveillance aircraft. They can only do so much. We need somebody or something on the ground. Yet officials I speak to are confident eventually they'll find him. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate. |
“The dishonest media is not reporting that any money spent, for the sake if [sic] speed, on building the Great Wall, will be paid back by Mexico,” Trump tweeted. | Getty Trump slams media on border wall: Mexico will pay us back From the very beginning of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised that he would build a wall along America’s southern border with Mexico and that the Mexican government, not U.S. taxpayers would pay for it. Friday morning, Trump said Americans may have to foot the bill, only for expediency’s sake, and wait for Mexico to reimburse its northern neighbor. Story Continued Below “The dishonest media is not reporting that any money spent, for the sake if [sic] speed, on building the Great Wall, will be paid back by Mexico,” Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning. The president-elect appeared to be responding to reports out Thursday that his team and Republican lawmakers have considered relying on a 2006 law signed by then-President George W. Bush that provided for the construction of 700 miles-worth of a “physical barrier” along the southern border. That barrier was never constructed, but the law did not include a sunset provision, allowing Republicans to seek funding for a program already on the books. The GOP could tie money for Trump’s wall into a must-pass spending bill that would put Democrats in the position of having to shut down the government if they choose to oppose it. The shift, from forcing Mexico to pay to sending the Mexican government a bill once the wall is built, alters one of Trump’s most powerful campaign trail talking points. His promise to build a wall and force Mexico to pay for it elicited huge cheers at his supersized rallies, where attendees chanted “build the wall” as he smiled on stage. The Manhattan billionaire began his candidacy by highlighting immigration, promising to take a hardline stand at his kick-off event in Trump Tower and throughout the primary, before softening somewhat on the issue in the general election. It is not the first time that Trump has offered such an explanation. He said in a speech in late October in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, that his promised border wall would be funded by legislation but urged his supporters not to worry because such a law would be passed, “with the full understanding that the country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such a wall, okay?” |
Despite public outrage in Afghanistan over a spate of civilian deaths at the hands of American and NATO forces, two new reports on the war show the Taliban is responsible for a huge percentage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, the United Nations released a report showing 2,777 Afghan civilians were killed in the conflict there in 2010, 15 percent higher than the previous year. Seventy-five percent of those deaths, the report says, were attributable to the Taliban. On Thursday, Science magazine released a report based on data supplied by American-led allied forces that show far fewer Afghan civilian causalities – 2,537 in 2009 and 2010 combined -- and attributed 80 percent of deaths to the Taliban. But both civilian casualty counts showed that while Afghanistan has become more deadly for civilians in the last year, it hasn’t been the result of coalition forces. While civilian deaths were up 19 percent from 2009 according to the military numbers and 15 percent according to the U.N. study, “there are signs that ISAF has become a safer fighting force, treading more lightly on local populations,” said the magazine article. “Although the overall death toll in Afghanistan has risen, the increase was not wrought by soldiers.” According to the military’s statistics, more than 90 percent of last year’s spike in civilian deaths was the fault of insurgents. At the same time, U.N. data show a 26 percent drop in the number of civilians killed by soldiers, Science magazine reported. But the United Nations did find a much higher civilian death rate, which military officials said was attributable to the U.N. reporting civilian deaths in all 34 provinces as opposed to the military, which only counts deaths in areas where it can make firsthand observations about its actions. Officials also note that survivors and family members often claim those killed were innocent civilians while the military maintains they were insurgents. Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, told Fox News in an exclusive interview this week that despite the mishaps, the U.S. has done an impressive job reducing unintentional deaths. "The fact is that our troopers and our Afghan partners have reduced ... in 2010 ... civilian casualties during the course of our operations by some 20 or 21 percent," Petraeus said. "That is a very significant accomplishment given that our combined forces expanded by 100,000 during that period and, of course, went on the offensive in a very big way." As the number of military-related civilian deaths drop, Afghan citizens are starting to take a more critical eye to the Taliban’s actions. Three weeks ago, a team of Taliban fighters and suicide bombers robbed a bank in Jalalabad, killing more than 40 Afghans in the process. When the bank's security tape hit the airwaves, Afghans were shaken by images of the brutal attack. In one portion of the video a Taliban fighter is seen shooting two innocent men at point-blank range with a Kalashnikov rifle, a fatal mistake for its cause, said the governor of Wardak province, Halim Fidai. "They are gradually losing the support of the people," Fidai told Fox News. "I can tell you that 95 percent of the people never want Taliban-type government to return at all, that's very clear." But even as the Taliban deliberately targets innocents, U.S. forces are still facing resentment among the Afghan population for civilian casualties. Just days after the bank shooting, the U.S. acknowledged killing nine Afghan boys in a botched effort to hit insurgents. In the days following, President Hamid Karzai rejected an apology from Gen. David Petraeus. On Monday, Defense Secretary Bill Gates made a surprise visit to the region and apologized again during a televised press briefing from Kabul. But just a day after Gates departed, one of Karzai’s own relatives was mistakenly shot by allied troops searching for insurgents. |
This article is over 1 year old The Honduran environmental activist’s killing a year ago bears the hallmarks of a ‘well-planned operation designed by military intelligence’ says legal source Leaked court documents raise concerns that the murder of the Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres was an extrajudicial killing planned by military intelligence specialists linked to the country’s US–trained special forces, a Guardian investigation can reveal. Cáceres was shot dead a year ago while supposedly under state protection after receiving death threats over her opposition to a hydroelectric dam. 'Time was running out': Honduran activist's last days marked by threats Read more The murder of Cáceres, winner of the prestigious Goldman environmental prize in 2015, prompted international outcry and calls for the US to revoke military aid to Honduras, a key ally in its war on drugs. Eight men have been arrested in connection with the murder, including one serving and two retired military officers. Officials have denied state involvement in the activist’s murder, and downplayed the arrest of the serving officer Maj Mariano Díaz, who was hurriedly discharged from the army. But the detainees’ military records and court documents seen by the Guardian reveal that: Díaz, a decorated special forces veteran, was appointed chief of army intelligence in 2015, and at the time of the murder was on track for promotion to lieutenant colonel. Another suspect, Lt Douglas Giovanny Bustillo joined the military on the same day as Díaz; they served together and prosecutors say they remained in contact after Bustillo retired in 2008. Díaz and Bustillo both received military training in the US. A third suspect, Sgt Henry Javier Hernández, was a former special forces sniper, who had worked under the direct command of Díaz. Prosecutors believe he may also have worked as an informant for military intelligence after leaving the army in 2013. Court documents also include the records of mobile phone messages which prosecutors believe contain coded references to the murder. Bustillo and Hernández visited the town of La Esperanza, where Cáceres lived, several times in the weeks before her death, according to phone records and Hernández’s testimony. A legal source close to the investigation told the Guardian: “The murder of Berta Cáceres has all the characteristics of a well-planned operation designed by military intelligence, where it is absolutely normal to contract civilians as assassins. “It’s inconceivable that someone with her high profile, whose campaign had made her a problem for the state, could be murdered without at least implicit authorisation of military high command.” The Honduran defence ministry ignored repeated requests from the Guardian for comment, but the head of the armed forces recently denied that military deaths squads were operating in the country. Honduras elites blamed for violence against environmental activists Read more Five civilians with no known military record have also been arrested. They include Sergio Rodríguez, a manager for the internationally funded Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam which Cáceres had opposed. The project is being led by Desarrollos Energéticos SA, (Desa), which has extensive military and government links. The company’s president, Roberto David Castillo Mejía, is a former military intelligence officer, and its secretary, Roberto Pacheco Reyes, is a former justice minister. Desa employed former lieutenant Bustillo as head of security between 2013 and 2015. Cáceres had reported 33 death threats linked to her campaign against the dam, including several from Desa employees. Desa denies any involvement in the murder. Cáceres was killed at about 11.30pm on 2 March, when at least four assassins entered the gated community to which she had recently moved on the outskirts of La Esperanza. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Berta Cáceres speaks to people near the Gualcarque river in 2015 where residents were fighting a dam project. Photograph: Tim Russo/AP A checkpoint at the entrance to the town – normally manned by police officers or soldiers – was left unattended on the night she was killed, witnesses have told the Guardian. Initially, investigators suggested the murderer was a former lover or disgruntled co-worker. But amid mounting international condemnation, Díaz, Bustillo and two others were arrested in May 2016. Hernández, who was eventually arrested in Mexico, is the only suspect to have given detailed testimony in court. He has admitted his involvement, but says he acted under duress. All eight have been charged with murder and attempted murder. The other seven suspects have either denied involvement or not given testimony in court. Prosecutors say that phone records submitted to court show extensive communication between the three military men, including a text message which was a coded discussion of payment for a contract killing. American experts have been involved in the investigation from the start, according to the US embassy in Tegucigalpa. Senator Ben Cardin, ranking member of the Senate foreign relations committee, said US support should not be unconditional: “It is essential that we not only strengthen our commitment to improving the rule of law in Honduras, but we must also demand greater accountability for human rights violations and attacks against civil society.” Last year, the Guardian reported that a former Honduran soldier said he had seen Cáceres’s name on a hitlist that was passed to US-trained units. Berta Cáceres's name was on Honduran military hitlist, says former soldier Read more 1Sgt Rodrigo Cruz said that two elite units were given lists featuring the names and photographs of activists – and ordered to eliminate each target. Cruz’s unit commander deserted rather than comply with the order. The rest of the unit were then sent on leave. In a follow-up interview with the Guardian, Cruz said the hitlist was given by the Honduran military joint chiefs of staff to the commander of the Xatruch multi-agency taskforce, to which his unit belonged. Cruz – who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym for fear of retribution – deserted after Cáceres’s murder and remains in hiding. The whereabouts of his former colleagues is unknown. Following the Guardian’s report, James Nealon, the US ambassador to Honduras, pledged to investigate the allegations, and in an interview last week, said that no stone had been left unturned. “I’ve spoken to everyone I can think of to speak to, as have members of my team, and no one can produce such a hitlist,” said Nealon. But the embassy did not speak to the Xatruch commander, Nealon said. Activists, including those with information about the alleged hitlist, have told the Guardian they have not been interviewed by US or Honduran officials. Lauren Carasik, clinical professor of law at Western New England University, said America’s unwavering support for Honduras suggests it tolerates impunity for intellectual authors of high-profile targeted killings. “Washington cannot, in good conscience, continue to ignore mounting evidence that the Honduran military was complicit in the extrajudicial assassination of Cáceres.” Extrajudicial killings by the security forces and widespread impunity are among the most serious human rights violations in Honduras, according to the US state department. Nevertheless, the US is the main provider of military and police support to Honduras, and last year approved $18m of aid. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Gualcarque river, sacred to local indigenous communities and the site of the controversial Agua Zarca dam. Photograph: Giles Clarke/Global Witness In recent years, US support has focused on Honduras’s special forces units, originally created as a counterinsurgency force during the 1980s “dirty war”. The elite units ostensibly target terrorism, organised crime and gangs, but campaigners say the Honduran intelligence apparatus is used to target troublesome community leaders. Violence against social activists has surged since a military backed coup d’état ousted populist president Manuel Zelaya in 2009. Since then at least 124 land and environmental campaigners have been killed. A recent investigation by corruption watchdog Global Witness described extensive involvement of political, business and military elites in environmentally destructive mega projects which have flourished since the coup. Honduras and the dirty war fuelled by the west's drive for clean energy Read more One of the most troubled parts of the country has been northern Bajo Aguán region, where a land conflict between palm oil companies and peasant farmers has claimed more than 130 lives over the past six years. The Bajo Aguán is also home to the 15th battalion – one of two special forces units in the Honduran army – and the special forces training centre. Two of the suspects, Díaz and Hernández, served in the 15th battalion together; Cruz’s elite unit was also stationed in the Bajo Aguán. Ambassador Nealon said that there was no record of Díaz, Hernández or Bustillo attending any US training courses in Honduras. “Our training programmes for police or for military are not designed to instruct people in how to commit human rights violations or to create an atmosphere in which they believe that they are empowered to commit human rights violations, in fact, just the opposite,” said Nealon. Honduran military records show that Díaz attended several counterinsurgency courses at special forces bases in Tegucigalpa and in the Bajo Aguán. He also attended cadet leadership courses at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1997, and a counter-terrorism course at the Inter American air force academy in 2005. The court documents also reveal that at the time of his arrest, Díaz, 44, was under investigation for drug trafficking and kidnapping, while also studying for promotion. Military records show that in 1997, Bustillo attended logistics and artillery courses at the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia, which trained hundreds of Latin American officers who later committed human rights abuses. |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Inside Russia's new space port "Oh please, darling, fly!" A technician standing behind me was really nervous during the launch countdown at Vostochny, a new space centre in Russia's Far East. It was the second launch attempt - a day after the previous one had been aborted at the last minute. I noticed that some of the technician's colleagues also had pale faces and had crossed their fingers. It emerged later that a cable malfunction had led to the postponement of Wednesday's launch. This time there was relief for Russia's federal space agency, Roscosmos, as the Soyuz rocket, carrying three satellites, blasted off and the booster stage separated. President Vladimir Putin had travelled 5,500km (3,500 miles) to watch the launch and was in a black mood after Wednesday's cancellation, berating Vostochny's managers for the financial scandals that have blighted this prestige project. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Russia wants to show international partners that it is still a superpower in space Image copyright Reuters Image caption President Putin watched the unmanned rocket lift off successfully on Thursday As the rocket soared away from Earth the tension evaporated - the crowd around me was laughing, hugging, drinking champagne. Only the essential launchpad structures have been finished at Vostochny, which is still a big building site. The original plan was to have it all ready by December 2015. When we inspected the launchpad later it appeared to be in good shape. A huge metal covering for the service cabin had plunged onto a concrete chute for the rocket exhaust gases. But a specialist insisted that the damage was not serious. Image caption A giant tower holds the rocket in place before launch Image caption The fierce blast during lift-off sent this metal covering crashing to the ground from the tower Hours earlier President Putin had warned of consequences for the management failures at Vostochny. "If their guilt is proven, they will have to change their warm beds at home for plank-beds in prison," Mr Putin said, commenting on the arrest of four senior people involved in the project. Only hours after Vostochny's first launch one of those managers received a three-year jail sentence for massive embezzlement. Strategic move Vostochny is a pet project for Mr Putin. Russia's ambition is to develop it as the main civilian space centre, eventually replacing Baikonur, the Soviet-era cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Baikonur has potential political risks, being outside Russia. So Vostochny has political and propaganda significance: it must prove that, despite international sanctions and a struggling economy, Russia can still complete a new cosmodrome and run it efficiently. Image caption New railway lines had to be built at the vast site Image caption Inside the launchpad: President Putin is closely monitoring the project The next day I asked Roscosmos head Igor Komarov how he had felt before the second, successful, launch attempt. "How do you think I felt?" he answered, grim-faced. The authorities were so nervous that they banned all live broadcasting before the launch and for the 10 minutes after lift-off. But Roscosmos officials have spoken optimistically about Vostochny becoming a centre for international space co-operation in future. The Plesetsk cosmodrome, in Russia's Arctic north, will remain the centre for military space launches. Away from the launchpad, much of the infrastructure at Vostochny remains unfinished. The engineers are in no hurry now; the next launch will not take place until next year. |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Falklands Islands Defence Force soldiers are a constant presence on the islands Documents released by the American whistle-blower Edward Snowden claim that Britain spied for several years on the Argentine government. According to reports in the Argentine media, Britain was concerned that Argentina could launch another attempt to reclaim the Falkland Islands. The two nations fought a war over the islands in 1982. Last month the British government announced it was upgrading its military presence on the islands. The official documents released by Mr Snowden are said to allege that British agents were actively spying on Argentina between 2006 and 2011. The former CIA worker, who now lives in Russia, has previously leaked sensitive information about US surveillance programmes. The BBC's South America correspondent Wyre Davies says there has not been any formal response yet from either the British or Argentine government to the allegations, which have been published by a number of Argentine news agencies. The claims are that Britain began a large scale operation which may have involved implanting computer viruses, circulating false propaganda and collecting intelligence with the aim of diminishing or discrediting the Argentine government, our correspondent added. The news comes around the 33rd anniversary of the start of the war, which saw more than 900 servicemen killed. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said last month that Britain will spend £280m over the next 10 years on renewing and beefing up its defences of the Falkland Islands, to take into account "any future and possible threats" to the islands. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The lives of 255 British servicemen and about 655 Argentines were lost during the fighting Britain's 'paradox' Meanwhile, Argentine foreign ministry officials say they will prosecute oil companies operating near the Falkland Islands, which are known as Las Malvinas in South America. The officials said companies active there were operating illegally in Argentine territory. Earlier this week, three British oil exploration companies announced new oil and gas finds north of the islands. And Argentine President Cristina Fernandez said Britain should spend more helping its own poor than on defending the Falkland Islands. Delivering a speech to honour her country's war dead in the conflict, she said: "What a paradox when there are more than one million Britons eating at the food banks they have had to open in one of the most powerful countries in the world. "Don't worry. Don't spend another pound sterling on defending the Malvinas. "Spend your money feeding the English, on providing jobs for your young people and a better quality of life for the British, because we are not a threat to anyone." She has also ordered the declassification of all her country's secret documents on the war. Guide to the islands: The Falkland Islands are an isolated and sparsely populated British overseas territory in the south-west Atlantic Ocean They remain the subject of a sovereignty dispute between Britain and Argentina, who waged a brief but bitter war over the territory in 1982 Argentine forces landed on the Falklands on 2 April 1982 to stake a territorial claim, but by 14 June they had been ejected by a British military task force The fighting cost the lives of 655 Argentine and 255 British servicemen Argentina says it has a right to the islands, which it calls the Malvinas, because it inherited them from the Spanish crown in the early 1800s It has also based its claim on the islands' proximity to the South American mainland |
Todd Heisler/The New York Times A Minnesota legislator who ridiculed the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman has apologized for his intemperate remarks, but is standing by his criticism of the author for receiving a speaking fee from the state that the lawmaker deems excessive, Minnesota Public Radio reported. Matt Dean, the Republican leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives, initiated the war of words with Mr. Gaiman, the best-selling author of “The Graveyard Book” and “Coraline,” amid a hearing this week over a bill that would reduce state financing for public radio and other cultural organizations. Opening himself up to the full retaliation of the supernatural world, Mr. Dean singled out Mr. Gaiman for having received a $45,000 payment last year for a four-hour speaking engagement. Mr. Dean said Mr. Gaiman, “who I hate,” was a “pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota,” The Star Tribune reported. Embracing Mr. Dean’s description of him, a self-deprecating Mr. Gaiman responded in a post on his personal blog, titled “The Opinions of a Pencil-Necked Weasel-Thief…,” writing that it was “kind of nice to make someone’s hate list.” Mr. Gaiman added that while he liked being compared to pencils (“You can draw or write things with pencils”), he did not appreciate being called a thief. Surmising that Mr. Dean made the accusation because either he “thinks I gave the talk wearing a stripy sweater to an audience of people who were there at gunpoint and afterwards took their wallets,” or “he’s against the principles of the Free Market, and feels that governments should regulate how much people are paid to talk in public,” Mr. Gaiman said that he had donated the speaking fee (which he said was $33, 600) to charity groups “long ago.” Mr. Dean told Minnesota Public Radio that he apologized to Mr. Gaiman at the behest of his mother. “She was very angry this morning and always taught me not to be a name caller,” Mr. Dean said. “And I shouldn’t have done it, and I apologize.” |
Kirkuk is an ethnically-mixed province. SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdish provincial representatives in Kirkuk say they will start marathon negotiations with political groups and community leaders about the anticipated referendum on the future of the oil-rich city. Muhammad Kamal, a Kurdish party official in the ethnically diverse province said they hoped Kirkuk would actively take part in the public vote and decide to integrate with the Kurdistan Region. The Kurdish authorities have announced that the referendum on independence for the Kurdistan Region will most likely be held in November or before the end of this year. Kurdish President Masoud Barzani has said that the referendum will include almost all the so-called disputed territories, which include Khanaqin in the south, Shingal in the west and Kirkuk, along with many other areas. But while the referendum in the Kurdistan Region will be about breaking away from Iraq, the vote in the disputed territories will also be about whether or not they want to stay with Kurdistan. “We hope the people of Kirkuk decide to stay with the Kurdistan region and break away from Iraq and this is why we start negotiating with other groups,” Kamal told Rudaw. Just slightly over 50 percent of the population in Kirkuk consists of Kurds, while Turkmen, Arabs and other groups make up the rest of the population, in a city which over the past century has been at the heart of virtually all negotiations between Baghdad and Erbil. Faridun Abdulqadir, a top Kurdish negotiator who took part in several Kurdish-Iraqi meetings in 1983 with the then Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, says that the deadlock always emerged when talks centered on the future of Kirkuk. “Saddam used to say that if Kurds had Kirkuk, they would break away from Iraq, which is why he never accepted Kurdish demands regarding the city,” Abdulqadir told Rudaw. But with the political and financial crises deepening in the country, and while Kurds have virtually been administering Kirkuk since early 2014, it seems unlikely for Baghdad to effectively block a reintegration of Kirkuk with the Kurdistan Region. Kirkuk governor Najmaldin Karim said recently that the province was “ready to decide whether it wants to be an autonomous region or be integrated with the Kurdistan Region.” The powerful Turkmen groups in the city, however, say that they would not oppose a ‘yes’ vote if Kirkuk decided to integrate with Kurdistan, but they have concerns about what they see as the deepening political rifts in the region. “If integrating with the Kurdistan Region serves the best interest of Kirkuk, then of course we will not oppose it,” said Tahsin Muhammad Ali, a member of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF). “But Kurdistan itself is in economic crisis and there are tensions among the political parties there, so perhaps we should look for a judicial solution for Kirkuk,” he added. |
Jennifer Bowman is married to her best friend, David. They have six children who entertain, challege, and inspire them daily. A history teacher turned stay-at-home mom, she enjoys community service in her spare time. I have known many gay and transgender persons. They have been both family members and friends. Knowing and loving these people has taught me how lonely their world can be and how un-Christlike the “devoted” often act. I would like to share my story about the first gay person I ever knew and how he changed my life. The story is a painful and heartbreaking. I have removed names to protect the identity of the family members involved. This is MY story not theirs; until I have their permission, I would feel uncomfortable using their names in a public way. When I was a young child in the 1980s, a great uncle (who was a bishop at the time) came out. He admitted that while he tried to live the gospel by marrying and having a large family and by carrying out his priesthood responsibilities, he could no longer deny who he was nor could he deny his secret partner of the past 12 years. He was excommunicated. He and his wife of many years divorced. Their children (all adults and in their late teens) decided to reject their father. Our family stopped speaking to my uncle and he was cast out. My uncle and his partner moved to San Francisco to find refuge. I always remembered his genuine kindness and charity and was perplexed how someone so good as my uncle could be “evil.” My uncle believed the gospel and diligently labored on its behalf. I knew that his being gay was not his choice. He didn’t want to be gay. There was sufficient proof that he had pretended not to be. My uncle did not come to my great grandfather’s LDS funeral, as Grandpa’s dying wish was that his gay son would not desecrate his funeral or the chapel it was held in. When my great grandmother passed away, my uncle was invited to attend the LDS funeral. Everyone acted as though letting this son mourn his mother was generous. My uncle attended the funeral without his partner. I was 19 at the time and remember thinking how difficult it must be to mourn the death of your mother, without your partner, in a room full of family and religious people that reject you. It broke my heart…and still does. My’s uncle’s ex-wife and children would not speak to him or look at him. None of the family gave him more than a brief, awkward hello. The ward he grew up in would not acknowledge him. I was amazed at how he greeted each person with compassion and no sense of animosity. It was abhorrent to my soul to watch each and every person turn away. Christ would not shun my uncle and neither would I. I sat by him at the services, stood with him at the grave dedication, and ate with him at the ward provided lunch. After the funeral, my uncle hugged me goodbye. To my knowledge, after my grandparents’ estate was settled, he never spoke to anyone in the family ever again. He changed his contact information and I do not know what has become of him. I often think of him and wonder how we as a church and family were so hateful toward someone who never showed anything besides charity to his fellow man. My uncle was my first wake up call that our LGBT brothers and sisters were being abandoned and mistreated. I have lost my uncle. My memories of him and remembrances of cherished stories fuel my desire to rebuild the burned bridges. With Christlike love and acceptance, LGBT individuals can be and should be part of our communities, our families, and if they so choose, our congregations. While I never give up hope that I will find my uncle, the trail has certainly dried up. I know that I will see him on the other side of the veil and it will be a happier day than the last time I saw him. |
Details about how to obtain benefits from a settlement over alleged defective handgun designs by Taurus International will launch on a website in August, according to a July 31 announcement by the plaintiff’s attorneys. A federal judge gave preliminary approval to a class action settlement that could cost the company up to $30 million. The agreement would allow owners of certain Taurus handguns to either repair the alleged defect in the pistol or exchange the gun for cash. If owners select the first option, the package includes an enhanced warranty that allows any owner to submit a claim at any time and Taurus will flip the bill; or if the pistol cannot be repaired, it will be replaced; and along with the warranty, Taurus will provide an online safety training course for operating and handling the pistol. The payout would provide a less certain option. The price per pistol varies depending on how many people submit claims. Taurus may pay a maximum of $200 per gun or as little as $30, but the total overall payout is capped at $30 million. In exchange for their claim, participants agree that they will not sue Taurus over the alleged defect and Taurus does not have to admit to a defective design. However, if owners exclude themselves from submitting a claim, they could file suit on their own. The website to submit claims will launch at an unspecified time in August and the final approval hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 20. According to court documents, nine Taurus pistol designs have an alleged defect that allows the gun to fire while the safety is engaged. The initial claim involves a law enforcement officer in Iowa dropped his gun from its holster as he tried to apprehend a suspect in July 2013. The gun, which had the safety engaged, hit the ground and discharged a round. While no one was hurt in that claim, several owners of Taurus firearms have suffered injuries following discharges after accidental drops, according to court documents. The Sao Paulo Military Police in Brazil recalled all 98,000 Taurus 24/7 pistols issued to their personnel after discovering the pistols could be discharged without the trigger being pulled. Taurus pistols subject to these defects include the PT-111 Millennium; PT-132 Millennium; PT-138 Millennium; PT-140 Millennium; PT-145 Millennium; PT-745 Millennium; PT-609; PT-640; and PT-24/7. |
TOKYO -- A Recruit Holdings subsidiary is developing Japan's first full-fledged platform allowing international students to register as temp workers, as the business seeks to tap growing demand for strong language skills from retailers and other employers. Recruit Staffing aims to register 1,500 students by the fiscal year-end in March, in partnership with housing rental guarantor Global Trust Networks. Global Trust works with five universities, including Kyoto University, and serves about 20,000 students. It will ask students after securing their housing whether they want to work in Japan, encouraging those who do to register on Recruit Staffing's website. International students legally may work up to 28 hours a week if they gain proper approval. Many already work as part-timers, but temp positions generally pay more per hour and provide greater opportunities to use their language skills. Japanese electronics shops and other retailers face a shortage of staff who speak foreign languages amid the surge in inbound tourism. And many students look to work during the holidays to avoid conflicts with their classes, which means they could fill in for other temp workers who might need to spend time with their family during those days. The service also would spare employers from vetting the students' identities themselves, since Global Trust underwent the process when it signed on as their guarantor. Recruit Staffing has begun placing about 40 international students on a trial basis in Tokyo, and the company plans eventually to expand the operation to Osaka. It will make monthly visits to the workplaces and provide support to the students, as well as track their hours to ensure they fall within the legal limit. (Nikkei) |
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