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Denver made it two wins from two as they ground San Francisco into submission on the back of a totally dominant scrum that contributed to virtually every score. The final tally was 35-18, but it could have been more had windy conditions affected Will Magie’s kicking accuracy and the bounce of the ball just eluding Denver chasers on a couple occasions. It was the home team who got on the board first through a Volney Rouse penalty goal. Magie evened it up after a few minutes but it was Rouse who inspired the first try as he followed up a half break by Alec Gletzer and put Sam Finau into the clear for a fine score. Denver looked shell-shocked when San Francisco took the ensuing kickoff and worked quick ball for Jack O’Hara to race down the sidelines. Despite a suspect final pass, the try was awarded and San Francisco were off to the races. Unfortunately that was as good as it got for the home side, as the Denver scrum dug their heels in and took one against the head. Pedrie Wannenburg picked left and the skipper had no trouble fending two defenders to come up with the score. A second Magie penalty brought them closer and then it was déjà vu when another San Francisco scrum ended up at Wannenburg’s feet, only this time Logan Collins was on hand to take the offload and the honours just shy of halftime. Ata Malifa was the next recipient, this time on a Denver put-in. A quick pass from Niku Kruger found the center on the front foot and he stepped through the two tacklers to score. Zach Fenoglio got in on the act soon after, switching to the back row when Wannenburg came off and taking a quick tap to dive over from another dominant scrum. Collins landed a double just five minutes later, breaking off the back to find no opposition and dive over the line. A yellow card was brandished on Finau for a shoulder charge late in the game, but it only seemed to fire up his team as they piled into a less motivated Denver defense. San Francisco finally got their rewards on full-time as David Tameilau went over from close range. Denver’s road trip continues on Sunday when they travel to play a dangerous San Diego team at Torero Stadium on Sunday. San Francisco will make the long trip east to Ohio with both sides looking to find their first win of the new season. SAN FRANCISCO 18 Tries – S. Finau (23), J. O’Hara (25), D. Tameilau (80) Pens – V. Rouse (4) Yellow cards – S. Finau (75) DENVER 35 Tries – P. Wannenburg (29), L. Collins 2 (38, 58), A. Malifa (42), Z. Fenoglio (53) Cons – W. Magie 2 (39, 54) Pens – W. Magie 2 (14, 34) SAN FRANCISCO 1 Maka Tameilau (Codi Jones HT) 2 Jacob Finau (Tom Coolican HT) 3 Patrick Latu (capt.) 4 Siupeli Sakalia 5 Siaosi Mahoni 6 Sam Finau 7 Alec Gletzer (Isaac Helu 45) 8 David Tameilau 9 Devereaux Ferris (Michael Reid 57) 10 Orene Ai’i 11 Jack O’Hara (Michael Haley) 12 Martini Talapusi (Charles Mateo) 13 Nick Blevins 14 Volney Rouse 15 Jake Anderson Not used: Junior Helu DENVER 1 Luke White (Jake Turnbull 59) 2 Zach Fenoglio (Gannon Moore 74) 3 Ben Tarr (Soane Leger 68) 4 Christian Wiessing 5 Casey Rock 6 Logan Collins 7 Peter Dahl 8 Pedrie Wanneburg (capt.) (Nick Wallace 50) 9 Niku Kruger (Mose Timoteo 66) 10 Will Magie 11 Michael Al-Jiboori (Timana Tahu 59) 12 Ata Malifa 13 Chad London (Mike Garrity HT) 14 Dustin Croy (Bobby Impson) 15 Maximo de Achaval Referee: Leah Berard Assistants: Derek Summer & George O’Neil |
President Trump has made technology a key battleground in U.S. relations with China. He launched an investigation into alleged Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property earlier this year. But some experts say a bigger concern is Beijing's huge bets on the technologies of the future. The Chinese government is throwing its weight behind sectors like artificial intelligence, electric cars and computer chips, pumping in money to create tech champions with global clout. Related: China wants to build a $150 billion AI industry Western companies have already raised concerns about the plans, warning they may give Chinese companies an unfair edge at home and abroad. Some analysts have called for the U.S. to ramp up spending on technology research in order to keep pace. As Trump prepares to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, here's a look at some of the key areas where China is giving the U.S. a run for its money. Artificial intelligence Russian President Vladimir Putin recently predicted that whoever becomes the leader in artificial intelligence "will become the ruler of the world." China wants to be that leader. It laid out its plan this summer to become an artificial intelligence superpower by 2030. Related: Elon Musk says AI may cause World War III The country's AI industry has "government support that most other countries don't really have," said John Choi, an analyst who covers Chinese internet companies for Daiwa Capital Markets. "The level of funding is not even comparable to most other nations." The Chinese government's 2030 plan aims to build a domestic AI industry worth nearly $150 billion. "China leads in the area for the simple reason -- it's a government push," said Chwee Kan Chua, global research lead for artificial intelligence with research firm IDC. China is pouring resources into intelligent video. The sector is developing "smart" cameras that can detect unusual patterns and flag them to officials or law enforcement. It shows how China's ruling Communist Party can brush aside privacy issues in order to gather tons of footage to fuel AI research. In the name of public safety, the Chinese government "will have cameras everywhere in every single corner that can track movements, objects and people so it can build huge database analytics to train artificial intelligence," Chua said. Market Sectors: See latest news & which stock market segments are performing best The push isn't just coming from the public sector. Like their U.S. rivals, Chinese tech giants Alibaba (BABA), Baidu (BIDU) and Tencent (TCEHY) are investing heavily in AI and setting up research centers in the U.S. Related: These three countries are winning the global robot race Electric cars There's a reason why Tesla (TSLA) is eager to have a manufacturing plant in China. The country has the world's largest market for electric vehicles, thanks to years of generous tax credits and government subsidies. China's efforts are yielding results for its homegrown industry. Domestic companies are among the leading makers of electric vehicles in the world, and Chinese consumers are increasingly interested in buying them. Related: China wants to ban gas and diesel cars Beijing is doubling down on the industry. The country's "Made in China 2025" plan calls for domestically produced hybrid vehicles and electric cars to account for at least 70% of total sales by 2025. Major global automakers like Volkswagen (VLKAF) and Ford (F) have recently announced plans to develop electric cars in China with local partners, bringing their technological know-how into the country. The government is also building a nationwide network of public charging stations. The number of outlets stood at 150,000 at the end of last year and authorities aim to add another 100,000 this year, according to state media. In the U.S., meanwhile, the tax reform bill wending its way through Congress would kill a federal tax credit of as much as $7,500 for Americans who buy an electric car. Computer chips China is far and away the biggest buyer of semiconductors, the computer chips used in everything from iPhones to automobiles. It consumed nearly 60% of the $354 billion global semiconductor market in 2015, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. But the U.S. has the largest semiconductor industry, with U.S.-based companies accounting for about half of the global market, according to research from the Semiconductor Industry Association. If Beijing has its way, that will soon change. Related: Trump stops China-backed takeover of U.S. chip maker The Chinese government has set out ambitious targets, pledging billions of dollars to help develop a globally competitive semiconductor industry. After it twice tried to invest in U.S. semiconductor companies -- and was twice blocked -- state-backed company Tsinghua Unigroup secured $22 billion from Chinese government investors to help it build China's first advanced memory chip factories. The U.S. Department of Commerce has flagged China's ambitions as "a real long-term threat to not only U.S. firms but the entire global semiconductor ecosystem." |
jhilliar join:2013-09-19 1 edit 2 recommendations jhilliar Member [Speed] PSA: Slow WiFi on Comcast? May be Comcasts Fault This is the fix I made and used on an e2000 and e3000 running shibby 112: put this in init scripts section: insmod xt_DSCP.ko and this in wan up scripts: iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -i vlan2 -j DSCP set-dscp 0 these may need to be modified slightly depending on configuration. This corrects the bad DSCP header information as soon as a packet hits the WAN interface on a router. DSCP as received from Comcast's network is 0x08 this is the lowest priority possible which WMM interpertes as being unimportant to transmit quickly. The scripts listed changes the DSCP on all packets to 0x00 which essentially means unclassified which WMM handles properly. This is how virtually every other ISP uses DSCP and is why the issues is specific to Comcast. I have confirmed this issue on connections in both Chicago and Boulder, CO and it is likely to be present on Comcast's entire network. Cisco appears to have at some point released new WMM drivers for stock firmware that largely resolve the issue on current stock firmware, otherwise implementing my temp fix as a GUI option would probably be a good idea for the affected routers. The ability to assign DSCP to all traffic on chosen interfaces also might be a good thing to add anyways. Edited to, hopefully, fix the script as requested by jhilliar . Sunny There is a critical bug in Comcast's network configuration that is likely crippling thousands of routers and pretty much only Comcast has this issue. It is an edge case interaction caused by bad DSCP information coming from Comcast and poor condition handling by the WMM driver on certain linksys/cisco eseries routers and possibly others as well. This issue can appear on both stock and modded routers. Comcast's network is misconfigured and has been for years and has likely caused many people to needlessly replace fully functional routers, IPv6 speeds always worked for me because DSCP was configured correctly for that but it is incorrect for IPv4. Since the only packets with this bad information are the ones that are being downloaded upload is not affected nearly as badly. This can affect any router that uses QoS or WMM(every wireless N router has WMM)This is the fix I made and used on an e2000 and e3000 running shibby 112:put this in init scripts section:insmod xt_DSCP.koand this in wan up scripts:iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -i vlan2 -j DSCP set-dscp 0these may need to be modified slightly depending on configuration.This corrects the bad DSCP header information as soon as a packet hits the WAN interface on a router.DSCP as received from Comcast's network is 0x08 this is the lowest priority possible which WMM interpertes as being unimportant to transmit quickly.The scripts listed changes the DSCP on all packets to 0x00 which essentially means unclassified which WMM handles properly. This is how virtually every other ISP uses DSCP and is why the issues is specific to Comcast.I have confirmed this issue on connections in both Chicago and Boulder, CO and it is likely to be present on Comcast's entire network.Cisco appears to have at some point released new WMM drivers for stock firmware that largely resolve the issue on current stock firmware, otherwise implementing my temp fix as a GUI option would probably be a good idea for the affected routers. The ability to assign DSCP to all traffic on chosen interfaces also might be a good thing to add anyways. Xyc Premium Member join:2006-06-08 Sewell, NJ 1 recommendation Xyc Premium Member Calling it a "critical bug" on Comcast's end is probably a bit harsh. Nothing should be acting on DSCP markings unless specifically configured to, since their meaning is specific to a given network (or for links between networks by prior agreement). If you're going to act on DSCP, you should clear the markings where the packets enter the network and set them to what your QoS policy dictates (and what your command does). jhilliar join:2013-09-19 jhilliar Member I don't think that's true, nearly every router will act on it since the WMM protocol on the wireless will almost always use DSCP at least somewhat. It depends somewhat on how aggressively the router responds though. My script clears the markings since I can't stop my WiFi from acting on DSCP. Johkal Cool Cat MVM join:2002-11-13 Pennsyltucky 1 recommendation Johkal to jhilliar MVM to jhilliar At least put it in Quotes. Look what I found: » www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/vi ··· p=773658 At least put it in Quotes. plat2on1 join:2002-08-21 Hopewell Junction, NY plat2on1 Member said by Johkal: Look what I found: »www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/vi ··· p=773658 At least put it in Quotes. pretty sure its the same guy? seen him make posts on multiple forums Johkal Cool Cat MVM join:2002-11-13 Pennsyltucky Johkal MVM Or a copy-cat killer. tshirt Premium Member join:2004-07-11 Snohomish, WA tshirt to jhilliar Premium Member to jhilliar So if you are using said router with NON STOCK firmware, there may be a bug, that can't be controlled via the router config console for the NON-STOCK firmware? It's good to give other aheads up warning about the problem in the NON-STOCK firmware, but your title implies ComCast is at fault. many users just choose to disable WMM or if using stock firmware avoid the problem all togther plat2on1 join:2002-08-21 Hopewell Junction, NY plat2on1 Member said by tshirt: So if you are using said router with NON STOCK firmware, there may be a bug, that can't be controlled via the router config console for the NON-STOCK firmware? It's good to give other aheads up warning about the problem in the NON-STOCK firmware, but your title implies ComCast is at fault. many users just choose to disable WMM or if using stock firmware avoid the problem all togther disabling WMM is not advised for 802.11n. tshirt Premium Member join:2004-07-11 Snohomish, WA tshirt Premium Member Guess it depends what you are doing and your wireless environment for me it's need is borderline at best on a DIR-655 out in the country with few or no overlapping networks. currently I have it off and I'm not seeing any problems from that AND eliminated one streaming glitch. jhilliar join:2013-09-19 1 edit jhilliar to plat2on1 Member to plat2on1 said by plat2on1: said by Johkal: Look what I found: »www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/vi ··· p=773658 At least put it in Quotes. pretty sure its the same guy? seen him make posts on multiple forums said by tshirt: So if you are using said router with NON STOCK firmware, there may be a bug, that can't be controlled via the router config console for the NON-STOCK firmware? It's good to give other aheads up warning about the problem in the NON-STOCK firmware, but your title implies ComCast is at fault. many users just choose to disable WMM or if using stock firmware avoid the problem all togther said by plat2on1: disabling WMM is not advised for 802.11n. said by tshirt: Guess it depends what you are doing and your wireless environment for me it's need is borderline at best on a DIR-655 out in the country with few or no overlapping networks. currently I have it off and I'm not seeing any problems from that AND eliminated one streaming glitch. Yeah, that's also one of my posts. I posted to Comcast's forum about this and their techs more or less confirmed the issue and that it should not have been happening....then disappeared without a trace, just trying to made sure this info is out there.Has nothing to do with stock/non-stock, its all in the WiFi drivers, which are the same(unless fixed by manufacturer). Yeah disabling WMM works, except you can't disable WMM on wireless N devices and still have wireless N(it reverts to G).....so, not a reasonable workaround whatsoever. It really is Comcast's fault however certain routers handle the problem better than others. Even on routers where the issue isn't noticeable on speedtests it can cause issues when doing local transfers as the internet priority would be below anything else since WMM reads DSCP.More like not even possible.Have a package of more than 25 megabits and you pretty much have to use N. Live in a area with high-network congestion, have to use 5GHZ which also is not compatible with G. Since WMM is a mandatory spec the only real workaround is what I posted. NetDog Premium Member join:2002-03-04 Parker, CO NetDog Premium Member said by jhilliar: I posted to Comcast's forum about this and their techs more or less confirmed the issue and that it should not have been happening....then disappeared without a trace, just trying to made sure this info is out there. Didn't disappear.. Still looking at it.. I am wanting on the same router your using to reproduce the issue. I have seen people have issues with QoS, most of them disable QoS on their router and the problem goes away. I can't comment on something I can't reproduce or haven't seen myself.. jhilliar join:2013-09-19 jhilliar Member said by NetDog: said by jhilliar: I posted to Comcast's forum about this and their techs more or less confirmed the issue and that it should not have been happening....then disappeared without a trace, just trying to made sure this info is out there. Didn't disappear.. Still looking at it.. I am wanting on the same router your using to reproduce the issue. I have seen people have issues with QoS, most of them disable QoS on their router and the problem goes away. I can't comment on something I can't reproduce or haven't seen myself.. Sorry, hadn't seen the reply on the Comcast Forum until just today, guess email notifications weren't setup or something. I'm mainly talking about the DSCP value in the ipv4 header itself, have you confirmed that Comcast is sending out all ipv4 DSCP with the non-default value? I think these are somewhat separate issues since there are a ton of different situations in my opinion where this could cause issues. I can readily reproduce the issues on at least 2 router models(cisco e2000 and e3000) with shibby 112 which have no problems on any other ISP, and due to my research I can pretty much guarantee you will also see the problem on the wrt610nv2 and likely the v1 as well as well as a fairly large number of earlier ones if reports are correct. Some of these may have had firmware updates to modify WMM's response to DSCP(original stock firmware will definetely show this issue), however I think it is important to have Comcast's network send out the proper default DSCP header value so that these situations are not encountered. Other routers that present this issues may be more obscure and may not receive updates. Even with the updated drivers these routers would still prioritize non-internet traffic over internet traffic, which is generally the complete opposite of what you would want. WMM's QoS just doesn't have granular control in general which leaves many of these with no proper fixes other than install in CFW and running my script. willmo join:2013-06-03 Seattle, WA 3 edits willmo to jhilliar Member to jhilliar Fascinating. I can't get WAN-side captures immediately, but it does appear that on my WLAN, IPv4 packets from the Internet have DSCP 8 and 802.11e priority 1 = "background" = bad. I'm using a Netgear WNDR3700v1 with a trunk/bleeding-edge build of OpenWRT from last month (r37767). I assume this has something to do with CDV...Comcast obviously needs to prioritize its VoIP traffic over HSI traffic on its HFC network and presumably they use DSCP to do that. Perhaps VoIP gateways (eMTAs or whatever they're called) then typically rewrite the DSCP when routing to the LAN. But I'd think HSI traffic could use "best effort" QoS rather than "background" and VoIP would still win. And it would be nice if, for HSI customers with separate router and modem, the modem would emit DSCP = 0. Maybe the CMTS+modem can't do that though. I understand the argument that this is a bug in the router, but if it's true that the stock firmware on several popular routers doesn't rewrite the DSCP and then honors it on the wireless side, I feel Comcast should try hard to accommodate them anyway. Anyway, I know very little about QoS, so I'll have to do more learning/investigation/testing tomorrow. EG The wings of love Premium Member join:2006-11-18 Union, NJ 302.8 12.3 EG to jhilliar Premium Member to jhilliar said by jhilliar: More like not even possible. FWIW, to my experience, on some devices it is indeed possible to disable it but it's not advised. jhilliar join:2013-09-19 jhilliar Member said by EG: said by jhilliar: More like not even possible. FWIW, to my experience, on some devices it is indeed possible to disable it but it's not advised. Possible to disable maybe...takes out wireless N with it. EG The wings of love Premium Member join:2006-11-18 Union, NJ EG Premium Member said by jhilliar: Possible to disable maybe...takes out wireless N with it. Yep. tshirt Premium Member join:2004-07-11 Snohomish, WA 1 edit tshirt to jhilliar Premium Member to jhilliar said by jhilliar: said by plat2on1: disabling WMM is not advised for 802.11n. More like not even possible. said by tshirt: Guess it depends what you are doing and your wireless environment for me it's need is borderline at best on a DIR-655 out in the country with few or no overlapping networks. currently I have it off and I'm not seeing any problems from that AND eliminated one streaming glitch. Have a package of more than 25 megabits and you pretty much have to use N. Live in a area with high-network congestion, have to use 5GHZ which also is not compatible with G. Since WMM is a mandatory spec the only real workaround is what I posted. »www.smallnetbuilder.com/ ··· ?start=1 Something did change however to a sony tv with built in g now functions better even when 2 ndevices are streaming, and doesn't seem to be capping our wireless beyond the actual bandwidth in use. I guess you are right about WMM, found this early test of WMM for my router a DIR-655 that basically says that unchecking the WMM box doesn't stop WMM from functioning if N is streaming, at least in the earlier version (sent inquires to D-link). It also mentions the cisco problem.Something did change however to a sony tv with built in g now functions better even when 2 ndevices are streaming, and doesn't seem to be capping our wireless beyond the actual bandwidth in use. happyanon62 @charter.com happyanon62 to EG Anon to EG I have a cisco / linksys e3200 with ddwrt and had encountered the issue several months ago, although for me setting my wifi to wireless g was fine as I don't need the extra speed. However I was well aware of the issue and have read numerous forums where people had relatively new N routers which worked great on fios etc and then went to comcast with the same equipment, only to witness crawling download on wireless. Meanwhile Ethernet would be fine. I responded to a guy in a post several weeks ago who I think had this problem. »Slow download speeds with router Anyways good luck, hope this gets resolved! I absolutely can vouch for what "jhilliar" is saying and am so glad someone has the time / skill to make a fix to prove its Comcast's network.I have a cisco / linksys e3200 with ddwrt and had encountered the issue several months ago, although for me setting my wifi to wireless g was fine as I don't need the extra speed. However I was well aware of the issue and have read numerous forums where people had relatively new N routers which worked great on fios etc and then went to comcast with the same equipment, only to witness crawling download on wireless. Meanwhile Ethernet would be fine.I responded to a guy in a post several weeks ago who I think had this problem.Anyways good luck, hope this gets resolved! Cheese Premium Member join:2003-10-26 Naples, FL 2 recommendations Cheese to jhilliar Premium Member to jhilliar I have an N router and never have experienced these issues. tshirt Premium Member join:2004-07-11 Snohomish, WA tshirt Premium Member said by Cheese: I have an N router and never have experienced these issues. I believe it's more that "some brands, models" of routers are more susceptible to this fault Cheese Premium Member join:2003-10-26 Naples, FL Cheese Premium Member Good point Johkal Cool Cat MVM join:2002-11-13 Pennsyltucky Johkal to tshirt MVM to tshirt Any idea what brands/models? tshirt Premium Member join:2004-07-11 Snohomish, WA tshirt to Johkal Premium Member to Johkal Cisco Linksys are known to have had the problem. unsure if there are more or if they found a solution, and updated since then. Which is I think the OP's point, these users bought fairly high end (depending on when they were purchased) routers from name brand companies, and now find a significant bug, stimulated by a normal (for comcast) setting. I'd first be pissed at cisco (who seems to be dropping the ball too frequently recently) and then work on INFORMING ComCast and users rather than accusing them publicly first. jhilliar join:2013-09-19 jhilliar Member said by tshirt: Cisco Linksys are known to have had the problem. unsure if there are more or if they found a solution, and updated since then. Which is I think the OP's point, these users bought fairly high end (depending on when they were purchased) routers from name brand companies, and now find a significant bug, stimulated by a normal (for comcast) setting. I'd first be pissed at cisco (who seems to be dropping the ball too frequently recently) and then work on INFORMING ComCast and users rather than accusing them publicly first. Cisco has released updates that largely fix the issue on some routers, however this setting on Comcast is simply wrong and can still cause issues(more minor) even on fixed devices, as far as I can tell not a single other ISP has done this before. It simply makes no sense that they have this classification in place going to customer networks that they don't control, I bet they are using it for their own internal network management but there is no reason they couldn't use the default one instead and simply set everything to use that value instead, otherwise they could strip the header at the network edge. Someone screwed up and Comcast just takes forever to get anything fixed that is anywhere reasonably complicated. Their ipv6 is correct even, no idea why Comcast didn't test these configuration options better though. Xyc Premium Member join:2006-06-08 Sewell, NJ Xyc Premium Member You keep blaming Comcast for what looks to me like a Cisco bug. If you want to do QoS, you clear those bits at your edge as they come in and set them for whatever works in your QoS plan. It you don't want to bother clearing them, you ignore those bits. DSCP values only have local meaning within a network run by the same person or people. Cisco didn't clear the bits but still acted on them. Comcast could clear the bits potentially to help people who haven't upgraded, but they aren't required to by any means. jhilliar join:2013-09-19 jhilliar Member said by Xyc: You keep blaming Comcast for what looks to me like a Cisco bug. If you want to do QoS, you clear those bits at your edge as they come in and set them for whatever works in your QoS plan. It you don't want to bother clearing them, you ignore those bits. DSCP values only have local meaning within a network run by the same person or people. Cisco didn't clear the bits but still acted on them. Comcast could clear the bits potentially to help people who haven't upgraded, but they aren't required to by any means. The problem is that you can't ignore the bits, the only solution is to clear them at the gateway which is fairly technical, the WMM protocol(wireless QoS) is a mandatory spec on wireless N networks. Cheese Premium Member join:2003-10-26 Naples, FL 1 recommendation Cheese Premium Member » My WMM is off, I am not sure what is mandatory about it? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi ··· tensions - I see nothing here to indicate it's "mandatory" one bit... happyanon62 @amanah.com happyanon62 Anon Do you still have WPA2 working now that u disabled it? I remember it also takes something important out with it... |
Modi also slammed the Congress for what he called the country's "durdasha" (mismanagement) and urged women's wing to prevent Congress from coming to power in the poll- bound state. Assembly elections are due in December this year. Addressing a gathering of Gujarat Mahila Morcha in Gandhinagar, Modi took up the issue of a circular of the Gujarat Congress banning a regional TV channel TV 9 from covering its events and accused it of being "intolerant" to criticism. State Congress leaders said the channel is being kept out of its press conferences and other events and also there will be no media interaction by the party with the network. A communication in this regard has been sent to all district units of the party, they said. "Journalists on Twitter who spoke against Congress, were blocked. Here they banned a TV channel. Their crime is that they exposed cracks in the 'ghar nu ghar' (own your home) scheme of the Congress. Yet this party talks about democracy," he said. He also referred to the Emergency in 1975 during which important fundamental rights of people were suspended. "Remember the days of Indira Gandhi, when she attacked democracy. There was widespread fear of the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), which was repealed in 1977. People were jailed, but they voted her out," Modi said. The strongman urged the women members to focus at the booth level for the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state. "Elections are won at the booth level. If women decide and bring at least 300 votes per booth for BJP, we will emerge victorious," he said. "Congress is campaigning for 'change of direction, change of situation' in Gujarat. But due to bad direction of the Congress, our country is in a bad situation at present. You will not let that atmosphere of 'durdasha' enter our soil," he added. |
US Proposals For Secret TPP 'Son Of ACTA' Treaty Leaked; Chock Full Of Awful Ideas from the exporting-protectionism dept It would require that countries participating ban parallel import for any copyright holder who wants it. That is, if a copyright holder says no, countries would have to block your ability to purchase legal and authorized products in one country and import them into another. This is the so-called "grey market" which should be perfectly legal, but which many companies would like to block so they can price things much higher in some countries. and products in one country and import them into another. This is the so-called "grey market" which should be perfectly legal, but which many companies would like to block so they can price things much higher in some countries. It would require criminal enforcement for certain cases of circumventing DRM even when there's no copyright infringement , going beyond existing treaties even when there's no copyright infringement. There are some exceptions, but rather than allow countries to determine their own exceptions, it defines the exceptions and actually says countries cannot go beyond those. for certain cases of circumventing DRM , going beyond existing treaties even when there's no copyright infringement. There are some exceptions, but rather than allow countries to determine their own exceptions, it defines the exceptions and actually says countries cannot go beyond those. It would impose liability on ISPs for dealing with infringing works that goes well beyond the DMCA. Yes, Hollywood may finally be able to force ISPs to act as their personal business model cops -- something they've been unable to do in the US. Along those lines, there would be "legal incentives" for ISPs to go above and beyond that in helping copyright holders. Forget privacy. ISPs would be required to identify users on request, going well beyond existing law. Expand what is considered patentable, going in the opposite direction of what's needed. Most troubling, it would allow patents on inventions even if the inventions do "not result in the enhancement of the known efficacy of that product." This seems to go against the very purpose of patent law, but the USTR has already shown it couldn't care much less than actually obeying the Constitutional underpinnings of patents or copyright law. Continues the troubling and problematic idea that patents must be assumed valid, even if they were only briefly reviewed. A requirement to forbid third party opposition of patent applications. This is particularly ridiculous. Allowing third parties to oppose patent applications (as is allowed with trademarks) would certainly help prevent some really bad patent applications from getting through. How can the USTR justify not allowing such a basic concept of letting third parties point out bad patents before they're approved. Especially when you combine this with the "presumption of validity" in patents once granted, it looks like the USTR is trying to increase the rubber stamping of patent approvals. Declassify on: Four years from entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement enters into force, four years from the close of the negotiations. * This document must be protected from unauthorized disclosure, but may be mailed or transmitted over unclassified e-mail or fax, discussed over unsecured phone lines, and stored on unclassified computer systems. It must be stored in a locked or secured building, room, or container. We've mentioned a couple of times that now that ACTA is "complete" , if not yet approved, USTR negotiators have moved on to what many are calling the son of ACTA in the form of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The USTR has shown what it's learned from the ACTA negotiations: which is that it can absolutely get away with unprecedented levels of secrecy. It has no problem sharing details with industry representatives, but the public and consumers who will be most impacted by the intellectual property rules found in TPP are kept completely away. However, as with ACTA, there are leaks. KEI has been able to get a leaked version of the current proposal from the USTR , and as we'd been hearing, it really is another industry wish-list of stricter anti-consumer intellectual property rules, that go well beyond current US law. This is the entertainment industry and the pharma industry trying to bypass the actual law-making process and using "friends" within the USTR to get such rules in place via secretive, non-democratic, treaty making processes. It's really a sickening display of crony capitalism and regulatory capture at work. Anyone working in the USTR should be ashamed of this document.The early reports on TPP was that the USTR wouldconsider ratcheting up intellectual property laws to more draconian states. It would not even consider the idea of decreasing the already too strict levels of intellectual property laws. It also would not bother with increasing consumer protections or important exceptions to stronger intellectual property law -- even if it's been shown that those exceptions have a much greater impact on the economy than the IP laws themselves.Some key points:It's basically a checklist of how to make both copyright and patent law even more anti-innovation. It's pretty much a travesty. No wonder the USTR didn't want this to get out. It's a joke, and they must have known that anyone who actually understands what this really means would laugh at this. That must be why the document is declared classified until four yearsthe TPP is agreed upon.Oh yeah, as for things like consumer protections or safeguards for competition? KEI correctly summarizes that they are "weak, meak or missing." That's because this document isn't about enabling competition, innovation or consumer benefit. It's about helping out a few legacy companies who don't want to compete, and who have plenty of job openings ready for the folks involved in these negotiations down the road.If you find this to be a disgusting display of regulatory capture, done in secret, for the benefit of a few companies, against the basic principles of the free market and consumer rights, you should speak up. The EFF has put together details of which elected officials should be contacted to pressure the USTR to open up these proceedings and to hear from the public on their proposal. They've also set up a form to let you contact your elected official, though I recommend you write your own version of any letter, rather than sticking with the boilerplate. None of my elected representatives are on the target list, but if yours are, please contact them. Filed Under: copyright, patents, secrecy, tpp, ustr |
This Jharkhand politician’s austerity and simplicity will dwarf many a present-day politician, including the reigning champions of honesty and clean politics – the Aam Admi Party (AAP) leaders. Considered a misfit in today’s political environment, Arun Kumar Roy or AK Roy as the former MP and legislator is popularly known, is a pauper whose only prized possession, a HMT watch, was robbed on Wednesday. The watch was the only gift he ever accepted in his political career spanning six decades. After dacoits attacked his house in Noondih village under Dhanbad’s Sudamdih police station area on Wednesday night, the former MP and legislator turned virtually bankrupt. “The robbers also took away my savings of Rs 2,600,” Roy told HT with a grin. AK Roy former Dhanabd MP. BIJAY/HT photoBut this staunch Marxist Coordination Committee (MCC) leader doesn’t regret his present condition. "They were perhaps more needy," he said about the dacoits and did not go to the police to lodge a complaint. The local police albeit went to him the next day after learning about the incident. A bachelor with no dependents, Roy lives in the house of a party worker in the village and is fed by party cadre. The robbers also looted the belongings of the landlord, S Gorai, a staunch follower of Roy. AK Roy former Dhanabd MP (in middle) flanked by his supporters. BIJAY/HT photo Roy was a three-time MP from Jharkhand’s Dhanbad Lok Sabha constituency and represented Sindri assembly seat in the (united) Bihar assembly for an equal number of times before that. At a time when corruption has become a national issue, Roy has set high standards of honesty and simplicity. He has even forgone his pension as an ex-parliamentarian and donated it to the President’s relief fund. First Published: Jan 10, 2014 19:16 IST |
Located 400km from the famous vacation island of Fiji, is a series of 83 islands known as the nation of Vanuatu. Declaring their independence in 1980, this island-comprised country known today as the “Republic of Vanuatu”, has made some rapid and significant advancements in several sectors; one, in particular, is sports. Only eight years after it had gained the status of an autonomous country, Vanuatu became a member of the esteemed football associations FIFA and OFC. While the Vanuatu national football team had never qualified for the World Cup events, it is known to be quite successful in events held by the Oceania Football Confederation. Take note, that football isn’t the only thing Vanuatu is known for. VFF and FIFA's special youth progam Vanuatu was one of six countries that were chosen globally by FIFA, for a program that has a mission to identify, recognize, and develop football players at a young age. As part of that two-year programme for players aged 15-17, consideration is given to continuing school or vocational education. As the sport is considered to be the most popular one on the island, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the relatively small nation of Vanuatu had become very dedicated to creating its football federation. Currently, there are 9 teams which are part of the VFF and are competing on a regular basis to be chosen as Vanuatu’s national team – along with the right to participate in events on a much larger scale. Those can be FIFA or OFC events. Online Gambling in the Republic of Vanuatu Although a relatively small nation, the government of Vanuatu recognizes the need for progress. In 1999, Vanuatu took the necessary procedures to approve online gambling. This meant that online casinos, many of which are found at www.fineonlinecasinos.com, became accessible on the territory of the country. In 2003, the government modified its Interactive Gaming Legislation, to start issuing licenses to sportsbooks and betting exchanges. This came as good news, to people who wanted to place a bet on their favorite Vanuatu football Federation team. It is a very well-known fact, that even mid-profile casino brands offer sportsbook services as well. Football markets are known to be the most popular ones in the world, which in turn drives further interest in online casinos that offer bookie action. Tourism Landscape is Vital to the Development of the Gambling Sector Although often hailed as some of the “least visited island destinations” in the Oceania archipelago, Vanuatu continues to teem with a rich variety of people from around the world. Although the three official languages in the country are Bislama, French, and English, more than 100 others are spoken on the islands by residing inhabitants. This diverse social structure indeed demands a large variety of entertainment, which would explain the rapid development of land-based gambling establishments, as well as the licensing of online casinos. Seeming as the Vanuatu islands are part of Oceania, the majority of land-based and online casinos adhere to Australian game rules; the same can be said about any sportsbook that takes football bets. Those rules may or may not affect aspects such as bet limits, number of players, game mechanics, etc. While many casino brands may be accessed on the islands, there are also some native online establishments. Payment Methods Variety Whether you would like to place a sports bet on any team from the Vanuatu Football Federation or you would like to get your Blackjack game started right away, you will need to fund your online casino account first. In the majority of the online casino services offered in Vanuatu, you will be able to utilize credit/debit cards, direct bank transfers, e-wallets, and even pre-paid cards. The country is quite big on regulating any institutions that operate with significant finances, which is a sign of some safety. In Conclusion – Online Casinos and Football go Hand in Hand It is quite safe to say that besides efficiently developing a nationally loved sport in record times, another of Vanuatu’s strong points, is its gambling industry. Even tourists tend to use their mobile devices to log into numerous online casinos – most of which are licensed from Australia. Given the fact that the country has very “forgiving” policies in terms of revenue taxation, it won’t come as a surprise that in the future, additional online casinos from Vanuatu will appear! |
Twitter’s ‘While You Were Away’ Recap Feature Is Rolling Out To Many Users Back in November, Twitter announced plans to implement a number of new initiatives to boost user engagement, and one of those features — a ‘While you were away’ recap of tweets you may have missed — appears to be rolling out to significant numbers of users. It is not live for all at this point, but the fact that it is rolling out to large numbers of Twitter’s userbase suggests that a full rollout is coming soon. We contacted Twitter for comment but — unsurprisingly, given that it is New Year’s Eve — did not receive a response at the time of writing. [Update: Twitter declined to comment.] ‘While you were away’ works much like Facebook’s Timeline and is the first major non-chronological feature to hit Twitter. Back in November, the company said it would look at the ‘best’ tweets from your network since you last opened Twitter, and put them at the top of your timeline so you don’t miss them. “Every time you open the Twitter app, you’ll see something great,” it said of the new feature, which was announced at the same time as ‘instant timeline’, which is expected to arrive on the service in early 2015. CNBC’s Eli Langer noticed ‘While you were away’ appear in his version of Twitter’s mobile app on New Year’s Eve, and a search indicates that it rolled out to a significant number of others over the past few days. Some guinea pigs actually got the feature as early as the first week of December. OMG, it appears Twitter is testing a Facebook-like algorithm for the Home stream called "While you were away…" pic.twitter.com/CpQQMLp0VO — Eli Langer (@EliLanger) December 31, 2014 As for the reaction, it’s a mixed bag. Some users don’t like it or find it confusing: "While you were away"? Come on Twitter…ain't nobody got anything that important to say pic.twitter.com/a8zkDUJEDY — Len Dickau (@wakaflockaLEN) December 4, 2014 Twitter got a while you were away section now?.. Uh I guess. — Meisha. (@itsTRUU) December 30, 2014 That twitter 'while you were away' thing just means I tweet people three days in delay!?! What is it's purpose!?!?? — and_ (@and_armstrong) December 30, 2014 https://twitter.com/tylerdv0rak/status/547756457132044288 While others are impressed: This "while you were away" option on Twitter is next level. — LWSDX (@HardHeadLew) December 4, 2014 Love the 'While You Were Away' feature at Twitter. Achieves its purpose without affecting real time news feed! — Samir Selman (@selman) December 30, 2014 I like Twitter's new "While you were away" addition. — Zach Baru (@zbaru) December 25, 2014 The algorithm that Twitter uses to source your ‘best’ tweets from your friends is crucial to its success. As someone who doesn’t use Twitter every minute of every day, I’d appreciate a recap but only if it is able to surface content that is relevant and interesting to me. There are already some services that exist solely to do that, while Twitter has email alerts for the purpose too. Nuzzel, for example, taps into your Facebook and Twitter network to surface news stories and other items that are popular with people you know. I’m skeptical that Twitter’s feature can be as effective, particularly since it only serves up a single tweet and that takes up precious real-estate at the top of your feed. Nonetheless, the addition looks like it will be more useful for users than many of Twitter’s recent features — which include sponsored accounts appearing in following lists, tweets from people you don’t follow in your timeline, and a test that meddled with the retweet button. Twitter changed its Head Of Product in October, so we shall see whether that personnel shift means less tinkering and more useful features for users in 2015. |
OTTAWA — The Ottawa REDBLACKS made a key special teams move on Tuesday, announcing a contract extension for veteran national kicker Chris Milo through 2017. The 29-year old Milo was signed by the REDBLACKS on July 31, which proved to be a key signing for the Eastern Division Champions. The Montreal native was 32-for-36 on field goals (88.9 per cent), good for fourth in CFL with his longest kick coming from 48 yards. Milo posted the league’s third-best extra point conversation rate going 34-for-39 (87.7 per cent) and tallied 131 points – the fourth most in the CFL. “Chris was a great asset for us in the second half last season,” REDBLACKS General Manager Marcel Desjardins. “He brought stability to the position and leadership to the team and we’re glad that he will continue to be a REDBLACK through 2017.” Milo enters his sixth CFL season in 2016 and has made two trips to the Grey Cup in the past three seasons. On Oct. 29, 2011, Milo tied the record for the longest punt ever kicked in professional football when he punted the football 108 yards. Prior to playing in the CFL, Milo captured a pair of Vanier Cup championships in four years with the Rouge et Or in Laval. The REDBLACKS also announced the signing of international linebacker John Kanongata’a, who is no stranger to the team. The Bellevue, Wash. native was part of training camp last season and certainly made an impression. The 23-year-old linebacker played four years at the University of Montana where he was among one of the top tackle and sack leaders in Grizzlies history. “John was in training camp in 2015 and really impressed prior to being injured,” said Desjardins. “We feel he adds athleticism and versatility to our defence and we look forward to seeing him again this season.” |
SIGAINT In August 2016, AlphaBay and Oasis announced that they would integrate Monero. Since then, the demand of Monero has drastically increased. Recently, a darknet email service provider “SIGAINT” added a Tor relay for Monero transactions. SIGAINT is one of the most popular email service providers on the darknet. Monero Not even the least bits of information can surface anywhere on Monero. There is one obvious reason for this – Monero transactions weren’t meant to be public. That is an advanced degree of privacy and confidentiality. Other darknet markets have decided to adopt the XMR as a mode of payment because information about Monero transactions is untraceable to its entirety. So far, we cannot easily tell the popularity of Monero even many darknet marketplaces are accepting this cryptocurrency as a method of payment, and it’s difficult to estimate the number and value of transactions on the darknet. It is not surprising because this alternative cryptocurrency was designed with the highest degree of privacy. How possibly does SIGAINT guarantees privacy in that level? SIGAINT has an enhanced server model that is designed with user privacy in mind. It handles two tiers of email service provision. SIGAINT subsequently runs two servers that operate as proxies. The servers, however, do not have any user data. The proxies use Tor to tunnel mail to their secret data warehouse from the Clearnet and vice versa. It is worthwhile to note that the proxies can also expand and therefore they can be replaced. SIGAINT also ensures that data does not leak whatsoever because there are no central points of failure on the servers or any virtual servers. Apparently, there has not been a privacy-centric email service provider like SIGAINT before. Information is stored in secret locations Information on SIGAINT is stored in undisclosed locations which are highly protected by the Tor network. It doesn’t matter whether it is in the free tier ad or the paid tier ad. The free tier is ad-supported, but it doesn’t disclose any information. The paid ad tier, on the other hand, accepts cryptocurrency. Interestingly, one needs to pay $30 for a lifetime membership. Your privacy is much protected, and thus it is worth to incur the cost. SIGAINT accepts both Bitcoin and Litecoins, and the addition of Monero. One advantage of the SIGAINT’s system is that that it can work with different email clients. That means that the users can get access to their emails using various clients. They can access the Bitmessage gateway and their emails through any client as well. |
After years of heating up, the EU’s values crisis is close to boiling point. Defiance of core EU principles by the governments in Warsaw and Budapest is turning into a political crisis. The European Commission has taken legal action against both governments for violating specific EU laws and is threatening to go further on Poland. The European Parliament supports this course and is preparing further action against Hungary. But the Hungarian and Polish governments will feel the heat only if political leaders of the EU’s other member states get actively involved. The EU’s role in protecting values in its members’ domestic affairs has evolved significantly over the last two decades. Initially, European integration was primarily about economic cooperation. The creation of a community of law was fundamental to provide a high degree of certainty and stability to citizens and businesses, and it remains the EU’s great comparative advantage over rising powers and other investment destinations. The union’s legal framework proved remarkably resilient during recent crises over the euro and migration. But now its foundations are under attack from the inside. National political leaders must join the EU institutions in doing more to defend the union’s core values. A High Threshold for Action Stefan Lehne Lehne is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, where his research focuses on the post–Lisbon Treaty development of the European Union’s foreign policy, with a specific focus on relations between the EU and member states. @StefanLehne Until the end of the Cold War, respect for the rule of law, democracy, and fundamental rights was taken for granted, and members were expected to keep their own houses in order. EU values were first mentioned in the 1992 Treaty on European Union, and the relevant commitments were strengthened in subsequent revisions. The most detailed elaboration is Article 2 of the current treaty, which defines EU values as “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities . . . in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.” However, while EU countries prominently featured these values in their external policies and made them conditions for would-be future members, governments remained reluctant to give the union a role in supervising their own practices. The legal framework on values is minimalist in comparison with the elaborate body of law on economic integration. The EU’s treaties even commit the union to “respect the national identities of the member states, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and institutional, inclusive of regional and local self-government.” The prospect of taking in post-Communist countries prompted the introduction of a safeguard in 1999 to prevent reversion to authoritarian rule in unconsolidated democracies. It later became Article 7 of the current treaty, with three stages: Under paragraph 1, four-fifths of the EU’s members can determine in the Council of Ministers that there is a “clear risk of a serious breach by a Member State of the values referred to in Article 2,” based on a reasoned proposal by one-third of the member states, the parliament, or the commission. Under paragraph 2, the European Council (the heads of state and government), after hearing from the offending state, can decide by unanimity among all other members that there is a “serious and persistent breach” of values. Paragraph 3 then allows the Council of Ministers to suspend certain of that country’s rights, including its government’s voting rights. The threshold for activating Article 7(2) was set very high to make sure that it could apply only to extreme cases, such as a military coup. Despite disrespect of values in several countries over the years, the EU’s governments have so far failed to take concerted action for four major reasons. The Sovereignty Reflex National governments’ desire to protect themselves from outside interference remains a major constraint on the supranational oversight of values. Supporters of the original federalist vision of European integration, such as the Benelux countries, were more open, whereas the more sovereigntist France, Denmark, and the UK insisted on keeping the EU out of national governance. When new members from Central and Eastern Europe joined in 2004 and 2007, they were not keen on surrendering their recently regained sovereignty to the EU and saw themselves as potential targets of Article 7. As a result, when the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights gained legal force under the Lisbon Treaty, it was hedged with restrictions on judicial mechanisms to enforce its provisions. Notably, the European Court of Justice is allowed to rule on violations of the charter only if they happen in the context of implementing EU law. The sovereignty reflex grew stronger after 2008, when the financial and migration crises weakened the EU’s appeal as a pole of stability and prosperity and revealed the downsides of interdependence. Although they agreed to more EU powers to save the euro, national governments reasserted their sovereignty on other matters. The Club’s Premium on Cooperation The daily work of the EU relies on its members trusting each other, with national ministers and officials negotiating in dozens of working groups and committees. Despite countries’ diversity in terms of population size and economic power, officials treat each other with respect in a culture of equality and collegiality. This sense of common purpose is essential for a community of twenty-eight countries to work efficiently, find compromises, and move forward on complex policies. It is a vital characteristic of the EU that makes the union much more effective than other multilateral forums. But it creates a strong preference for reaching decisions by consensus, working on an issue until everyone agrees, and only rarely pushing it to a formal vote. To preserve the collegiality that allows for day-to-day progress, members prefer to overlook problematic behavior by individual governments, hoping that awkward partners will self-correct and come back to the social rules that allow the EU to work. Accusations of violations of fundamental values and threats of isolation and sanctions would disrupt the culture of cooperation. Only under extreme circumstances would governments be willing to move into open confrontation. Within the club, there are subgroups whose members are averse to criticizing one of their own. Some are regional, such as the Visegrád foursome of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia; the Nordic members; and the Benelux group. Others are based on shared interests, for example net recipients of EU funds, or Mediterranean agricultural producers. One of the most significant groups is the party families to which members of the European Parliament, European commissioners, and national governments adhere. The center-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest and most powerful of the party families, is particularly prone to overlook bad behavior rather than punish or cast out misbehaving national parties. The Glasshouse Syndrome Heads of government are even more reluctant to criticize one of their peers, because they worry about setting a precedent that could one day be used against them. No EU country has a perfect record in respect of values and principles. National leaders and EU institutions for too long turned a blind eye to problems like former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s dominant position in the Italian media and Greece’s massive institutional shortcomings. The same mind-set among leaders makes it hard for the EU to tackle corruption in its members. Migration and terrorism have made governments even more keen to maximize their margin of maneuver rather than enhance EU-level supervision; this is especially true for those members that are considering introducing restrictive measures in the future. Governments know that a significantly stronger role for the EU institutions on values could expose a lot of them to criticism. Moreover, the need for unanimity to activate Article 7 sanctions means that two members can deadlock the mechanism by protecting each other. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared in July that he would “always bear solidarity with the Poles” against what he called an “inquisition,” making it impossible to achieve unanimity. His Polish counterpart would certainly return the favor if the commission threatened sanctions against Hungary. Reverse Deterrence Article 7 is often called the nuclear option, because everyone is afraid of using it. Its potential to backfire deters potential users more than it disciplines potential targets. If activation fails because it doesn’t receive enough support, the target government could interpret the outcome as an acquittal that legitimates its actions. If Article 7 does go ahead, it can trigger an escalation that fuels nationalist sentiment against the EU. Public opinion might rally around the government, as happened in Austria in 2000 when the formation of the Schüssel-Haider coalition triggered bilateral diplomatic sanctions by the other members. Claims of unfair outside interference in national sovereignty can even reinforce authoritarian tendencies by delegitimizing domestic criticism. A government that is committing a serious and persistent breach of EU values is unlikely to subject itself meekly to the censure of its peers and return to the path of virtue, particularly if the survival of the ruling elite is at stake. Moreover, that elite can damage the EU by turning to outside powers such as Russia or Turkey or disrupt EU business by refusing to cooperate across the board. If a government is thoroughly antagonized and spirals away from the EU’s values base, it can cause great damage to the union’s policies and interests. And there is no mechanism to force a member out of the EU. As a result of these four inhibitions to action, EU governments have a strong default response. At first, they try to ignore offensive behavior. Then, they outsource monitoring and criticism to the commission, the parliament, and the Council of Europe—the continent-wide body that is supposed to uphold human rights, democracy, and rule of law and to which all EU member states belong. If that doesn’t work, they try to sit out the term of the problematic government in the hope that the party will be voted out by its own electorate. But on Poland and Hungary, all these procrastination strategies will run out of road in 2017. Dismantling the Rule of Law in Hungary and Poland For too long, other EU governments have viewed the behavior of Hungary’s Fidesz and Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) governments as unpleasant domestic illiberalism. But what started as infractions of democratic practice after Fidesz returned to power in 2010 and PiS took office in 2015 have turned into capture of many independent state institutions, which undermines implementation of EU law as well. The commission and parliament have now taken strong positions, but most member states have sat on the fence for too long. The commission concluded in 2016 that the PiS government’s attempts to gain control of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal were a systemic threat to the rule of law. It launched a dialogue under the Rule of Law Framework, a new mechanism introduced in 2014 as a precursor to Article 7. After that dialogue yielded no results and Warsaw tried to push through new laws to control the other courts, the commission stated that it was coming very close to triggering Article 7. Together, the government’s proposed measures “would abolish any remaining judicial independence. . . [because] judges will serve at the pleasure of the political leaders and be dependent upon them from their appointment to their pension,” according to European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans. The European Parliament had already expressed concern about the “danger to democracy, human rights and the rule of law” in Poland. Meanwhile, the commission also decided to take the Hungarian government to court over laws that would restrict the operations of universities and NGOs that receive foreign funding. The commission has already taken legal steps against Hungary for its harsh treatment of asylum seekers and its refusal (along with the Czech Republic and Poland) to take in refugees relocated from Italy and Greece under a plan adopted by the Council of Ministers, in which Hungary was outvoted. The latest measures on higher education, NGOs, and asylum seekers follow others since 2010 that have put the government in control of the constitutional court and much of the Hungarian media. For many years, Fidesz enjoyed the most powerful source of protection in the EU system: its membership of the EPP. This large group of center-right parties for years shielded Orbán from EU criticism, whereas PiS enjoyed less protection from the much smaller and less disciplined group of European Conservatives and Reformists. The EPP has not expelled Fidesz, but many of the group’s parliamentarians lost patience and voted for a European Parliament resolution in May proposing to launch Article 7 because of the “serious deterioration of the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights.” Neither in Budapest nor in Warsaw does the government show any sign of changing course, PiS because of its ideological agenda and Fidesz because of the forthcoming parliamentary election. Although Polish President Andrzej Duda vetoed two of the offending laws and promised to make his own proposals, the Polish government has confirmed its intention to push through its judicial reforms one way or another. In past years, Orbán has backed down under EU pressure and brought measures to control the media and public institutions into line with the letter of EU law, if not its spirit. But this time, he is making denigration of the EU and its institutions part of his reelection campaign for 2018. Rising Stakes for the Whole EU There is both a functional and a normative case for defending values at the EU level. Deep integration—especially with a single market and area of freedom, security, and justice—requires intensive daily cooperation among governments and societies at every level. On the functional side, they need a common basis of principles such as legal certainty, prohibition of arbitrariness, independent and impartial courts, and equality before the law. The normative case is that countries, like individuals, can trust each other only if they share values of democracy and rights, because these define acceptable behavior between stakeholders. If that trust disappears, cooperation stops and integration unravels. The values listed in Article 2 are intrinsically linked, because violating rights usually involves violating the rule of law. The EU’s functioning deteriorates when the rule of law doesn’t work properly in all of the union’s members. The EU’s single market and its justice and home affairs cooperation depend on well-functioning independent court systems in all countries. The body of EU law relies on decentralized implementation and enforcement. Deep integration requires deep trust. EU members recognize the decisions of each other’s courts and rely on each other’s regulatory institutions to implement product and environmental standards. If Poland’s justice minister can control every level of the court system, as PiS’s proposed laws would allow, judgments could be politicized, but judges in other countries would be bound to abide by them under the EU’s principle of mutual recognition. This would create mistrust that undermines judicial cooperation—and damage the business environment in Europe, as the single market would no longer be a level playing field. Already, German companies complain to their government about discrimination in the Hungarian courts; now they worry that they won’t get a fair hearing in the event of a dispute in Poland either. Political influence over the courts would disrupt judicial and police cooperation too, as many judicial councils in other countries have stated. Such meddling would make other members reluctant to send their citizens for trial in that country under the common arrest warrant, as they are supposed to do automatically. It would also imperil the Schengen area of passport-free travel, which has no border controls, so EU members rely on each other’s police and customs authorities to enforce the law fairly. Deterioration in the rule of law can make governments less disciplined about implementation of EU law. And if a government doesn’t take its own constitution seriously, it is unlikely to apply EU law rigorously. In Hungary and Poland, the problem is not just about damage to the rule of law, but also about open defiance of legally binding decisions. Both governments are refusing to take in any asylum-seekers from Greece or Italy under the relocation scheme adopted in 2015. The PiS government has also ignored a ruling by the EU Court of Justice that it should stop logging in Poland’s ancient Białowieża forest. The risk of contagion is high: if you see your neighbor getting away with not obeying the law, your motivation diminishes to comply yourself. The EU loses cohesion when its members don’t trust their peers to implement and enforce what they have agreed collectively. The EU faced a similar problem when Italy and Greece failed to fulfil their obligation to register refugees under the Dublin asylum system, for example. Moreover, the EU is losing external clout. Across its neighborhood and in the Balkans, the EU promotes improving the functioning and independence of the judiciary and reducing corruption through better rule of law. It is much harder to convince politicians in Europe’s East and South to stop influencing the courts if the union’s own members are doing the same thing. Time for Governments to Take a Stand The European Commission has done well at setting out why the measures taken or proposed by the Polish and Hungarian governments contravene EU laws and values, and followed a consistent legal approach. Now the legal moves need political backup from the Council of Ministers when it returns to the issue in September. Governments should intensify their bilateral diplomacy at two levels. In private, they need to leave no doubt as to their support for the commission’s actions. Membership of the EPP still matters to Orbán and has long shielded his actions from censure, so members of this party group bear a special responsibility. In public, European leaders should issue unequivocal statements. They should not let U.S. President Donald Trump have the last word in Warsaw, following his July 6 speech that praised Poland for “treasuring” the rule of law. The most recent statements by German Chancellor Merkel and French President Macron were encouraging. Justice and interior ministers need to speak out, especially when the Hungarian and Polish governments make misleading comparisons to claim that their proposed legislation is similar to practices in other countries. Member states’ embassies should more actively raise rule-of-law concerns bilaterally. If PiS and Fidesz do not back down, the European Commission and European Parliament will have to decide whether to go through with their threats to launch Article 7(1) by putting forward reasoned proposals on Poland and Hungary respectively. The attitudes of the other members’ governments will be decisive. If the commission puts forward a reasoned proposal and fails to gain the sufficient majority in the council, the EU as a whole will lose face and probably any hope of using Article 7 in the future. But if the commission holds off only because it is not confident of gaining the member states’ backing, PiS could also claim victory. However, if Article 7(1) is successfully launched, meaning that the EU institutions agree that there is a clear risk of a serious breach, that would send a powerful political signal—even if mutual protection between Warsaw and Budapest makes it impossible to gain unanimity in the European Council to activate any sanctions. All EU-level action must be well framed and communicated to avoid fueling nationalism and a sense of East-West divide. The Polish and Hungarian governments claim that they are being unfairly targeted by the western EU establishment and compare the debate on the rule of law to other issues on which East and West are divided, such as the union’s post-Brexit budget and potential “variable geometry” through different kinds of membership. But it is different in kind as well as scale. EU actors must therefore explain why they have to protect core EU standards, and make it clear that steps will be taken against any government that undermines EU law. Strong statements from other Central European governments would be particularly helpful. The EU can also counter claims of double standards by getting tougher on bad behavior by member states across the board, particularly on corruption and misuse of public funds. The next year will see new initiatives for EU institutional and policy reform as well as negotiations on future EU financing, which will open opportunities to introduce new instruments to protect the rule of law. There are plenty of options to consider. Most pertinent to the cases of Hungary and Poland are greater possibilities for judicial review by the European Court of Justice, to capture the cumulative effect of a series of infringements that creates a systemic challenge. Money matters too. Germany and other countries are considering whether to propose new conditions that would tie access to EU funds to a country’s performance on governance and the rule of law. This would be complicated to introduce, legally and politically, but it would have a powerful deterrent effect. In the meantime, more rigorous enforcement of existing rules on misuse of funds would strengthen popular support for EU action against abuse of power and corruption in all member states. The EU has to become more active in countering false claims. Two-thirds of Hungarians have a favorable view of the EU, as do three-quarters of Poles. To try to reduce this level of support, the Hungarian government in 2017 funded a huge campaign of anti-EU slogans and false claims about the EU’s role in deciding energy prices, taxes, and migration, among other things. To counter this propaganda, EU actors need to communicate the facts about the union’s laws and policies, as the commission did for the first time this year in a rebuttal fact sheet. This kind of engagement helps Hungarian and Polish civil society to hold their countries’ governments to account and uphold their constitutions, and shows that criticism of governments does not mean rejection of the people. Conclusion The EU institutions are running against the global trend by defending liberal values at a time of rising illiberalism and nationalism. They have no choice, because the EU’s legal and normative framework, which is essential to its deep economic and political integration, is under major threat. If the EU allows two members to get away with reneging on core values, the contagion effect will be huge, both in the union and its region. More governments will be tempted to override constitutional checks and balances, intimidate journalists and close down critical voices in universities and NGOs. The EU’s role is not to get involved in political fights in its member states. Members should remain free to decide on their own constitutional arrangements through national democratic processes. But the EU’s institutions have to defend common standards on the core obligations that allow members to trust each other to stick to commitments, and they must ensure citizens and businesses can operate across borders without discrimination. The rule of law is fundamental to this trust. The priority now is a sustained, targeted, and coordinated campaign by national leaders at two levels. The first is for EU heads of state and government to convince Budapest and Warsaw to change course. The Hungarian and Polish leaders have to hear tough words from national capitals expressing full support for the Brussels institutions. Both governments need to know that if they do not backtrack, there will be a high price to pay. At the same time, the EU’s institutions and the other twenty-six governments have to communicate publicly why values are essential to the functioning of policies that benefit European citizens. The ultimate hope for remedy lies with the tens of thousands of Hungarians and Poles who have been protesting against the attempts to capture their states. They need to hear other Europeans’ support for safeguarding democracy and the rule of law in their countries, because it matters for everyone. Heather Grabbe is the director of the Open Society European Policy Institute. |
In need of a change of pace after nearly a decade and a half of touring with his band Midlake, Eric Pulido had an idea. He’d bring together disparate yet complimentary musical voices he’d encountered throughout his career to create a collaborative project unlike any other. After four years of work, the fruits of his labor will finally be revealed in the form of Volume 1, the debut album from his new indie rock supergroup BNQT. BNQT is made up of the songwriting and vocal talents of five artists: Pulido himself along with Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, Travis’ Fran Healy, and Jason Lytle of Grandaddy. Each musician contributed two songs to the project’s debut, often sending material via the Internet to Midlake’s studio in Denton, Texas. There, Midlake’s McKenzie Smith, Joey McClellan and Jesse Chandler provided the instrumentation for the tracks that would become Volume 1. Due out April 28th via Dualtone, the 10-track effort has been previewed with the Pulido-led “Restart”, Bridwell’s “Unlikely Force”, and the only song to feature all five vocalists, “Real Love”. Now, the band is sharing the rest of the album with an advance stream exclusively at Consequence of Sound. Take a listen below. To celebrate the release of his pet project, Pulido answered a few of our questions via email. In the short Q&A, he touched on how the recordings physically came together and their plans to perform the album, as well as teasing what’s in the works for Volume 2. Read on to find out more. We’ve read that the idea for BNQT came to you while touring behind Antiphon, but I’m curious as to what exactly sparked the concept. What was it that made you say, “Hey, ya know what would be cool…?” Besides the fact that it’s just a cool idea, of course. I was already planning a transition of sorts after touring Antiphon. We had been going full on with Midlake for 15 years – Write, Record, Tour, Repeat – with little time in between for other projects, so I made a conscious effort to pursue this with some of the guys and put the Midlake ship in the dock. I’ve always loved collaborations, multiple voices, and musical experiments … BNQT fit the mold! I’m sure you had a Rolodex of possible contacts you could’ve gone to for the project, so why did you choose the four guys you did? Was there anyone you pitched it on who turned you down for one reason or another? John Grant [of The Czars] was the only person to whom I reached out who wasn’t available this go round (he’s confirmed for Volume 2). I’m a fan first, and I’m a true fan of the contributors musically and personally. When I asked the guys about joining the party, it was an astounding ‘YES!’ and then I was all of a sudden really humbled, excited, and a bit scared of how we were going to pull this thing off now. I thought all of the guys came from a musical world that could mix well together, but you never know until you start throwing things against the wall. Luckily, it stuck! Each vocalist wrote two songs, but how did each one come together exactly? Did, say, Jason Lytle send over some lyrics and a guitar part and then you and the Midlake members expanded on it? I’m curious about what the actual process was. Two of the guys (Fran and Jason) came to Denton to record, and the other two (Ben and Alex) did their tunes remotely. In all cases, the guys had a demo with guitar or piano and vocal and we collectively developed and produced the tune how we thought best. With the guys that were in town to record, we could have real time feedback and with the guys that were away, we re-recorded their tune with me doing my best vocal impersonation for them to give feedback on the vibe we created. Both processes proved to work well with all the tunes and the guys were great to work with. What about “Real Love”? It’s the only track to feature all five vocalists; who wrote it and what was the recording like? I wrote the tune and always wanted it to be a group song to which everyone contributed vocals. After we recorded the tune, I sent it around to all the guys via email and asked if they heard parts they wanted to sing. Whether it was taking a verse, chorus, background, etc, I wanted them to contribute where they felt comfortable. All the additions really gave the song a lift and the collaborative spirit was captured in that tune. It was a real treat to have everyone sing on a song of mine for sure. What’s great about BNQT is that it’s not only such an awesome concept, but it came out incredibly well — this is a fabulous record. The sort of problem with that is now fans are going to be clamoring to see it live, and see it with everyone involved. That has to be a tricky thing to pull off and I’m wondering if there are plans to try and attempt it. Is there any sort of tour in the works for Volume 1? Thank you, it really means a lot to hear you dig it. You can often times lose objectivity when recording (or after) so its nice to hear feedback … usually! 😉 We were able to play a fun show with two of the guys (Fran and Jason) at SXSW, and we’re working on more dates with the guys later this year. It is indeed logistically difficult, but everyone is excited about getting together and playing some shows. You’re also not being terribly subtle calling the album Volume 1 — clearly there are plans for more from BNQT. Are you planning on bringing in other vocalists or musicians for Volume 2? Have you maybe already started talking to anyone about what comes next? Yes! More info soon :-). Who would be on your dream wish list for Volume 2, if time and distance were no obstacle? Richard Manuel, Harry Nilsson, George Harrison, Buddy Holly. Volume 1 Album Art: Volume 1 Tracklist: 01. Restart 02. Unlikely Force 03. 100 Million Miles 04. Mind Of A Man 05. Hey Banana 06. Real Love 07. Failing at Feeling 08. L.A. On My Mind 09. Tara 10. Fighting The World |
South Korea has warned that the North could be planning a fourth nuclear test to ramp up tensions ahead of President Barack Obama’s forthcoming visit to Seoul. “Our military is currently detecting a lot of activity in and around the Punggye-ri nuclear test site,” said Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the defence ministry. “North Korea is at a stage where it can conduct a surprise nuclear test at any time depending on the decision of leader Kim Jong-un,” he said. The military is aware the movement at the site could be a bluff, he added. South Korean President Park Geun Hye sought China’s help Wednesday in dissuading North Korea from any nuclear test, after signs of preparations at the North’s test site. She discussed the activity at the Punggye-ri site with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the phone and asked him to try to persuade Kim Jong-un’s regime not to conduct a test, her office said in a statement today on its website. Convincing North Korea to renounce its nuclear program is a centerpiece of U.S. policy in Asia, and Obama will discuss the issue this week when he meets separately with Park and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, which is within range of the North’s ballistic missiles. On Monday, Pyongyang criticized Obama’s trip as a “dangerous” move. Satellite imagery from recent weeks indicates increased activity in the main support area of the test site, 38 North said on its website. In its analysis, 38 North said that in addition to the materials seen outside two tunnel entrances in the south of the site, over the past six weeks, there’s been an uptick in activities at a support area at Punggye-ri that was used for managing operations for the last test. An April 19 image also shows a large trailer truck travelling down the road away from the test site. The level of activity “falls short” of what has been observed immediately before previous tests, according to 38 North, which is run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. A test during Obama’s visit to Seoul “may be possible but appears unlikely based on the limited commercial satellite imagery available and observations of past North Korean nuclear tests,” 38 North said. “Recent operations at Punggye-ri have not reached the high level of intensity in terms of vehicle, personnel and equipment movement that occurred in the weeks prior to past detonations.” Obama is visiting Seoul as part of an Asia tour, and it has been speculated that the North may stage a provocation to coincide with the trip. In a briefing ahead of Obama’s departure Tuesday, the White House senior director for Asian affairs, Evan Medeiros, told reporters: “Right now we are going into an environment where there’s a growing number of threats and risks of provocation.” He said North Korea’s threat to conduct a nuclear test showed it wasn’t interested in credible negotiations. South Korean intelligence officials have concluded that North Korea is capable of conducting another test at any time, the Yonhap News agency reported today, citing a Defense Ministry official it did not identify. Obama’s visit to South Korea coincides with an April 25 holiday in the North to celebrate the founding of its army, a day generally marked by military parades showing off the regime’s latest weapons. North Korea fired 87 missiles during February and March to partly coincide with joint U.S. and South Korea military drills, which the country denounced as a dress rehearsal for an invasion. North Korea, which has been targeted for international sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, insists that developing atomic weapons is the only way to deter a U.S.-led incursion. China, North Korea’s only major ally, has tried to revive international talks aimed at convincing the country to abandon its nuclear program in return for aid. Another test explosion would deepen international concern about the North’s development of weapons of mass destruction, and doubtless anger and embarrass China. Washington and its allies would push to tighten U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang. The regime conducted its last nuclear test in February 2013, three weeks after the United Nations increased sanctions against it following the launch of a long-range rocket and satellite the previous December. The nuclear device had an estimated yield of 6 to 7 kilotons, bigger than previous tests in 2006 and 2009. Meanwhile, new photographs of Kim Jong-un as a boy emerged during a concert for the North Korean air force. Pictures showing the 31-year-old North Korean leader as a chubby toddler, saluting while in uniform, were shown on KCTV, the country’s state broadcaster. Until now, only a handful of pictures of Kim Jong-un as a boy have been seen, one showing him with his mother, Ko Yong-hui, and one a seeming passport picture, in which he has a bowl haircut. Only one photograph is known to exist from his days as a student, which shows him on what appears to be a school trip with fellow pupils at the International School of Berne in Switzerland. His identity was kept secret from students and teachers. The new pictures were projected on to a screen behind an orchestra playing a televised concert for the air force. With files from The Associated Press |
Let's face it: not everyone uses Nuance's Dragon Dictate software to power a ridiculously automated dorm room, the less creative among us have had to get by using it to take notes or write term papers. No matter what you do with it, however, you might appreciate that the latest Mac version of the app lets you use your mouth instead of your fingers to write emails and navigate your inbox -- so long as you're using Firefox or Safari to access Gmail. You can tell Mac's word processor, Pages, what to do too. Beyond that, Dictate will also transcribe single-speaker recordings either from a smartphone or digital voice recorder now (including .mp3 and .wav files), and, what's more, it apparently boasts improved voice recognition accuracy. The suite is $200 directly from the developer should you want to give your hands a rest, or perhaps you just really like hearing the sound of your own voice. |
Poor man’s DIY little printer I wanted the Berg Little Printer ever since they announced it, which I think was about a year ago. I loved the idea of having something tangible, and yet ephemeral, like little pieces of paper, printed on demand. I loved that it brought some finiteness to a digital realm that otherwise seemed infinite. And then reality hit. They announced a price of £199, which at today’s conversion rate works out to approximately $320. Love it as I may, that was too much for a printer. For comparison, the cool new Nexus 7 was only $199. And thus was born my weekend DIY project to build me my own little printer. These were the ingredients: Total money spent: $60. Because I was doing this on my MacBook and I had trouble finding the Python USB libs, I had to fork and hack the Python escpos code to output to files instead of sending directly to USB. This also let me decouple the fetch/format stage from the actual printing. On MacOS X, install it as a generic printer, and then print to it using lpr. The scripts will output files in the ESC-POS format, which you can send directly to the printer: lpr -P posprinter -l nytpic.prn Now this is certainly not as polished and convenient as what Berg is offering, but at less than one-fifth of the price, I humbly contend that it gets you much more than one-fifth of the way there. |
REI, the Seattle-based outdoor recreation and sporting goods giant, announced today that it is going to close for Black Friday (you read that right) and pay its 12,000 employees to go out and play. REI is also encouraging other companies to join them in what they describe as a stand against the commercial madness that's characterized the day after Thanksgiving for at least a decade and a half. Of course I, as a customer experience consultant, would almost never advise a client to close up shop on one of the busiest days of the shopping year. Yet in this case, for reasons I'll discuss below, it looks like REI is on-trend with this brave and expensive move. (Color its move highly expensive: REI says it will be closing each of their 143 stores on this high-volume sales day and, as they put it, "paying our employees to head outside.”) REI is one of the most powerful forces in outdoor retailing, with over $2 billion in sales in 2014. But it’s also a member-owned cooperative (REI's more than 5 million members pay a one-time fee and contribute some 80% of its sales). As such, according to President and CEO Jerry Stritzke, this new move aligns with REI's mission that "being outside makes our lives better.” CEO Stritzke: "For 76 years, our co-op has been dedicated to one thing and one thing only: a life outdoors. We believe that being outside makes our lives better. And Black Friday is the perfect time to remind ourselves of this essential truth. We’re a different kind of company—and while the rest of the world is fighting it out in the aisles, we’ll be spending our day a little differently. We’re choosing to opt outside, and want you to come with us." So what are the implications of this wildly counterintuitive move? Well, they may not be as commercially suicidal as they look at first glance. What REI is doing here is well aligned with some important trends among customers today (trends, by the way, that I explore at length in Your Customer Is The Star: How To Make Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else Love Your Business, my recent book for Forbes Signature Series). Including, in particular, the following two: • Customers’ desire for authenticity: An authentic brand voice is important to customers today: A legitimate backstory, and your company name meaning something and standing for something. In the arena of outdoor retailing, the most visible master of this has been Patagonia, in part because of its incomparable founder, Yvon Chouinard, the epitome of a warts-and-all brand spokesman. Taking a stand such as REI is doing on Black Friday is a bold step toward making REI visibly authentic as well. • Customers' search for attached meaning: Customers today strive to align their purchases with their values (at least where they can afford to do so). They are fans of “attached meaning”: getting something more (a social good) along with their purchase, in addition to the good or service received. After year after year of horror stories on worker mistreatment in Amazon.com’s warehouses (mistreatment that apparently continues without abatement), a feel-good story about how one company is treating at least its retail workers is going to attach a better meaning to a purchase from REI than to one made elsewhere. On the other hand On the other hand, customers want, and expect, convenience. The trends are moving strongly toward longer sales and support hours and wider "omnichannel" availability, rather than the opposite. And one of my customer experience rules with almost universal applicability is that inconveniencing your customers for the sake of your own internal, corporate rituals is a bad move to make. However, REI is betting that for many customers, the real inconvenience of Black Friday is feeling obligated to join the shopping frenzy of, as their CEO puts it, “fighting it out in the aisle.” And, as REI's marketing materials make clear, if you really insist on shopping with them on Black Friday, the REI website (staffed by a skeleton crew for the day), will still be open. Also on Forbes: Micah Solomon is a customer experience consultant, customer service speaker and bestselling business author, most recently of High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service |
On the Catalan National Day, September 11, Spanish politics suffered a huge shock: up to 2 million people ― more than a quarter of the population of Catalonia ― marched through the streets of Barcelona shouting one word, “independencia”. It was a moment when countless Catalans (those from the four provinces that make up Catalonia in Spain's north-east) discovered that others felt the way they did ― it is time to drop Spain for a state of our own. This was a different Catalan National Day, which remembers the 1714 fall of a besieged Barcelona during the War of the Spanish Succession. Besides the usual morning ceremonies, a march behind the banner “Catalonia, A New European State” had been organised by two new nationalist networks, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI). Huge show of force Signs it would be huge were clear early on. About 1200 coaches were booked to bring people in from the regions; special trains had to be limited on one line because the system had run out of carriages. Catalan politicians opposed to independence ― such as Josep Duran Lleida, leader of the conservative Catalan nationalist Convergence and Union (CiU) in the Spanish parliament ― decided at the last moment that they had to be seen at a protest they disagreed with. Nine cabinet members of the Catalan CiU government would be attending “in a personal capacity”. Key Catalan state institutions were directed to boost the event. Here was a protest that notorious police minister Felip Puig, responsible for violent repression against protesters, would help to build. It also got live coverage on Catalan state TV’s Channel 3. The CiU government’s motive was to use the march as a show of support for its proposed “fiscal pact” with the central Spanish government of the Popular Party’s (PP) Mariano Rajoy. Supported by all Catalan parliamentary parties with the exception of the Socialist Party of Catalonia and the Popular Party of Catalonia, the fiscal pact would create powers to levy taxes and decide what proportion should be forwarded to the central Spanish government. This would enable Catalonia to reverse a situation where, according to official calculations, Catalonia loses €16 billion a year to “Madrid” and the 16 other autonomous communities (states) that make up the Spanish state. Largest march Attendance on the day exceeded all expectations and planning capacity. This was the largest march in Catalan history. It was bigger than the 1977 march for autonomy, the vast 2003 protests against the Iraq War and the million-plus 2010 protest against the ruling of the Spanish Constitutional Court that sections of the 2006 Catalan Statute of Autonomy were unconstitutional. Central Barcelona froze solid as a march supposed to take two-and-a-half hours to reach its destination outside parliament house lasted more than five hours. Mobile phone networks collapsed completely. All Catalonia came to town ― from remote Pyrenean villages to the towns along the river Ebro. Families with accents odd to Barcelona ears marched behind their placards: “Sant Pere de Riudebitlles says independence now!”; “Llambilles says: Premier Mas, lead or leave!” Delegations arrived from other parts of the historic Catalan Lands ― Valencia, the Balearic Islands, the eastern strip of Aragon and the Roussillon area of southernmost France. Delegations from the Basque Country waved their red, white and green national flags in solidarity. Social sectors and institutions rushed to identify with the cause. Barcelona Football Club announced that the strip of its B team would now be the yellow and red stripes of the official Catalan flag. There were “Police for Independence”, “Pensioners for Independence”, and “Teachers for Independence”. The Barcelona Stock Exchange building, prime candidate for attack at any protest, was draped in a huge protective estelada (the Catalan independentist flag). The main union confederations, the Workers Commissions and the General Union of Labour, demanded “fewer cuts and more self-government”. The banner of an anarchist collective read “Catalans, your main enemy is at home” ― referring to Catalonia’s political and economic establishment. However, hardly any other slogan had a chance against the incessant chant of “in-de-pen-den-cia”. The only competitor was “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Spaniard!” ― especially popular among the hundreds of thousands of young people present. The feeling against the Spanish state was reflected in placards in other languages, including Spanish: “Spain, your robbery is genocide”, “Your hatred is our goodbye”, “Farewell, Spain”, “Catalonia is not Spain” and “Yes we Cat!”. The outright predominance of the independence flag floating above the march reinforced the message. But what sort of independence? While the blue-triangled estelada won the battle of the flags, the yellow-and-red estelada ― designed in the 1960s by the Socialist Party of National Liberation (PSAN) and variously interpreted as the flag of the entire Catalan Lands or as the symbol of an independent socialist Catalonia ― came in a clear second. Then there was the singing ―of “The Reapers”, the national anthem, and of classics of the protest movement against the Franco dictatorship. With half the demonstration still to reach its destination in Ciutadella Park, the final act of the day began. In 20 different languages, non-Catalan residents expressed their support for the nation’s right to self-determination. The most moving moment came when one speaker read (in Spanish translation) the “Ode to Spain” of Catalan poet Joan Maragall. This powerful denunciation of the slaughter of Catalan sailors in the 1898 Spanish-Cuban war ends with the cry: “Spain, farewell!” The act concluded with a mass showing of green cards for independence. When one Catalan hero, former Barcelona footballer Pep Guardiola, showed his green card by video link from New York, the park went berserk. At the same time, other marches under the slogan “Neither Fiscal Pact Nor Social Pact” were organised in five major centres by various anti-capitalist pro-independence groups. They drew between 25,000 and 30,000 people. Independence sentiment rises The huge protest happened because the past three years of social aggression and violation of Catalan national rights have convinced doubters there is no alternative to independence. Key moments were: · The Spanish Constitutional Court supporting important aspects of the PP appeal against the 2006 Statute of Autonomy, even though it was passed by the Spanish and Catalan parliaments and ratified by referendum in Catalonia. · Both PP and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) refusing to agree to any serious reworking of the financing system for the autonomous communities. When the post-2008 economic crisis arrived, Catalonia, a centre of the real estate bubble, was among the hardest-hit. · The return of the PP to government nationally increasing the war on Catalan culture and language. Also the PP government of the Balearic Islands reintroducing Castilian (Spanish) as a language of school instruction on an equal footing with Catalan, the PP government in Aragon redefining the Catalan spoken in that community’s eastern strip as “Eastern Aragonese”, and a court case to have Castilian made an equal language of instruction with Catalan in Catalonia itself. · Rising social struggle in Catalonia since 2009 feeding the rise of left nationalist forces, which have secured a greater vote. · Rising organisation of pro-independence sentiment from September 2009, when the council of Arenys de Munt asked citizens to vote yes or no on independence, and 96% said yes. By December, 169 of Catalonia’s 947 municipalities had organised similar consultations with the same result. The march has forced all political forces in Spain and Catalonia to a rapid reboot. After meeting ANC leaders, Catalan Premier Artur Mas told Spanish commercial radio that, even with a fiscal pact, Catalonia would still walk the pathway to independence if its people so desired. At the next session of the Catalan parliament, Mas will be under pressure to organise a referendum on independence for Catalonia (illegal under the Spanish constitution). President of the PP in Catalonia, Alicia Sanchez-Camacho, a loyal ally of Mas on austerity and social policy, wrote in the September 12 La Razon: “Without doubt a large number of people took part in yesterday’s demonstration, but it is equally certain that a much larger number of Catalans did not and do not share the separatist goal … “We do not want the radicalisation of these last days to lead us to social, economic and institutional breakdown.” Federalism rejected For the PSOE and its Catalonian affiliate (the Socialist Party of Catalonia ― PSC), it is time to reassert federalism against the centralising tendencies of the national PP government. The problem is that after 30 years, the federalist alternative has lost nearly all attraction in Catalunya, especially among young people. At the same time, large parts of the PSC base, especially older migrants from other parts of Spain, remain hostile to Catalan nationalism. They make up much of the 25% of Catalan citizens who say they would definitely vote against independence. After September 11, the Catalan affiliate of the United Left, the United and Alternative Left (EuiA), said: “The days of betting on an obsolete institutional framework into which Catalonia doesn’t fit are long past. “EuiA puts its money on the development of a plurinational federalism where the right to decide is recognised ... one in which the Spanish state meets the challenge of understanding and listening to the national sentiment of the peoples that make it up.” But maybe the outraged national sentiment of Catalonia today makes even this progressive position obsolete. [Dick Nichols is the European correspondent of Green Left Weekly, based in Barcelona. Read more of Dick Nichols' articles here. A longer version of this article will be published soon at Green Left's sister site, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.] |
The Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet isn’t officially scheduled to go on sale until Friday, November 18th. But a handful of Barnes & Noble stores appear to have the tablet in stock already. Several people have posted messages on Twitter indicating that the $249 tablet is already on sale. I called my local store and was told that it wouldn’t be available to the general public until Friday — but that some customers that had placed pre-orders were already able to come in and pick up the NOOK Tablet. Update: At least one Liliputing reader has already spotted a NOOK Tablet in a store. Your results may vary, but if you’ve been itching to get your hands on the tablet, you might not have to wait until Friday. The news comes on the same day that customers are starting to receive Amazon Kindle Fire tablets. Amazon had originally planned to ship the tablet on November 16th, but the date was moved up and the first orders went out yesterday. The NOOK Tablet features a 1 GHz TI OMAP4 dual core processor, a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. It has twice the memory and storage of the Amazon Kindle Fire, and unlike Amazon’s $200 tablet, the NOOK Tablet has a built-in mic and microSD card slot. Neither tablet has a camera. You can read more about how the two tablets compare and find out what other Liliputing readers think in our tablet showdown. thanks Nate! |
Loading ... Loading ... As this fake news agenda is continually and vehemently pushed by the vast majority of both Democrat and Republican news outlets, and sold as the protection of the fragile minds of Americans who are apparently unable to decipher what is and is not real, the people’s First Amendment rights are surreptitiously being eroded. All this is taking place under the guise of protection, so the people fail to recognize exactly what is taking place. This is the classic misdirection tactic: Problem, Reaction, Solution. They create a problem(fake news/Russia); they wait for the people to react(largely due to the onslaught of supporting fake news by mainstream outlets); they then provide a “solution,” which in this case is the complete dissolving of what remains of every American’s First Amendment right by telling the people what to watch, what to believe, and now, quite literally, what is truth and what isn’t; sound familiar? This has been the end goal since the beginning. With every passing day, and the growing awareness of the average American, more and more people are beginning to lean towards alternative and independent media for their news, and rightly so. This election has shown more clearly than ever that mainstream media is not only bias, but completely bought-out. One will never hear mainstream outlets say this, but it has been proven time and again, and long before the horrendous circus act that was the 2016 selection process. It was just that this past election was so clearly fraudulent, that more Americans than ever before have begun to see the manipulation taking place right in front of their eyes, yet would not allow themselves to see until now. Regardless of the clear opposition to this path by a large faction of Americans, this blatant censorship agenda is charging full steam ahead. Many alternative sites have already begun to feel the unjust restriction of this new Ministry of Truth, such as The Daily Sheeple, which, regardless of one’s opinion of the site, has a Constitutional right to voice its opinions. To take this one step further, they recently published a video, that The Last American Vagabond covered, which discussed the new bill that recently passed the House which allows the government to microchip all those with mental disabilities. This video was a completely factual reporting of bill H.R. 4919 and what actual members of Congress had to say about it. Representative Louie Gohmert warned the Congress that this would be used to eventually track every American. Yet, this site’s coverage of such a warning is being actively censored. In addition to this and other clear examples of YouTube and Facebook censoring content (even before this new “fake news” witch-hunt), The Daily Sheeple was also the victim of a malevolent hacking attempt, which temporarily took down the site by adding malicious code designed to cause fatal errors. As the hacking attempt cannot be directly tied to this same Orwellian censorship agenda, it is however oddly timed with the release of the very video YouTube and Facebook were directly censoring. The only real agenda underway, within this incredibly ambiguous and unconstitutional attack on free speech, is to silence the growing voice of the alternative media; and not because it is actively propagating fake news, but solely due to the active spreading of dissenting ideas that differ from the establishment narrative, even those squarely rooted in fact. Will you stand by and allow the US Government to tell you what you can watch, listen to, or believe? Will you wait for the next idea they tell you is wrong, untrue, or also Russia Propaganda(as everything seems to be today)? All without any proof to back up their claims? It is certainly easier and much safer to sit back and not get involved. It will assure that you will not be in harms way … today … but what about tomorrow? What if the next idea that becomes “fake news” is something you cannot shy away from? What if it something that you deeply believe in and know to be true? Will you once again resign to let the government dictate your passions and beliefs? Or will you choose to take a stand? Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World. |
The pettiness is the giveaway. Later this month, Gordon Brown is hosting a dinner to mark the unveiling of a new portrait of Margaret Thatcher. Naturally, No 10 asked the Iron Lady for the names of guests she wanted to attend. No less naturally, it was suggested by her office that the present Conservative leader should be invited. But when Downing Street heard that David Cameron was on the list, there was, I gather, a preposterous attempt to strike him off. Did the Prime Minister seriously think he could exclude Mr Cameron from the dinner? And on what possible grounds? No 10 backed down grumpily, and the Tory leader will indeed be attending. But the damage – to Mr Brown's dignity, principally – is already done. As Rome burns, the PM is fiddling with guest lists – and much else besides. When Mr Brown discovered that Owen Paterson, the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, was being given a briefing by MI5, No 10 tried to limit the length of the meeting. This combination of petulance and micromanagement is meant to signal power, but - of course - signals precisely the opposite. As authority drains from the Prime Minister, he is reduced to tiny acts of churlishness unworthy of the office he holds. On Thursday, Mr Brown made his third appearance as PM before the Commons Liaison Committee, the grand panel of select committee chairmen. The transcript, which can be read at www.parliament.uk, provides vivid case notes on the Prime Minister's state of mind, his growing testiness and his delusional insistence that repeatedly blaming other people, institutions and global forces for this recession will eventually persuade the voters of his own innocence. The tell-tale signs were the occasionally captious moments and frissons of fury that peppered his familiar speak-your-weight answers. When Sir George Young asked him to rule out going cap in hand to the IMF, the PM growled that we were "reaching an absurdity when people make these comments or statements…just simply ridiculous." When he warned Sir George that he should "be careful about making those statements as well", he might as well have said: we know where you live, mate… you should keep away from the edge of the platform, accidents can happen. As you would expect, Mr Brown was cross-examined at the hearing about the resignation on Wednesday of his adviser, Sir James Crosby, as deputy chairman of the Financial Services Authority. Sir James's hasty departure followed allegations that, when chief executive of HBOS, he had fired the bank's head of regulatory risk, Paul Moore, for raising heretical concerns about its rapid growth and reckless lending strategy. The gist of the MPs' questions to Mr Brown was that this was not exactly a PR triumph and dramatised all too clearly the impression of disreputable cosiness and neglect stretching right to the very top. As John McFall, Labour and Cooperative chair of the Treasury select committee, put it diplomatically: "Prime Minister, there is a long hard road to go to bring the public round on this issue." I'll say. The gist of Gordon's answers was that none of this was much to do with him, guv. He laboriously described the operations of the tripartite committee of Treasury, FSA and Bank of England like a plumber blaming the malfunctioning of a boiler he installed only a week ago on the manufacturers, or the scarcity of spare parts, or the alignment of the stars. "You may wish to ask questions about what happened within the FSA," the PM said, "but I have to say to you that on the basis of the information I have got the FSA went through all the allegations that were being made, they examined all the details of what happened and they reached a conclusion." In other words: ask them, not me. The Prime Minister is the polar opposite to Harry Truman: there ought to be a sign on his desk that reads "The buck starts here." Part of Brown's political genius has always been his capacity to avoid taking blame – which is why the Blairites used to describe him furiously as Macavity. As Prime Minister, it is no longer open to him simply to disappear like the Mystery Cat: so he resorts to the tactic of Snitch-in-Chief, blaming anyone or anything rather than himself. Was it necessary or wise, asked Keith Vaz, to publish the number of non-UK nationals in the workforce? "This is a decision that the independent Office of National Statistics has made," replied the Prime Minister. "This is not a decision that the Government has made to publish this information." I suppose when you are busy saving the world there isn't much time left to run the country. Evasion, buck-passing, obfuscation: it won't do any more. The desire for a reckoning is simply too strong. On Tuesday, the Commons Treasury Select Committee grilled four bankers on their role in the collapse of the financial sector. The most visibly chastened of the quartet was Andy Hornby, the former chief executive of HBOS, whose face was pale and lower lip trembling. I recall meeting Mr Hornby at a dinner hosted by Mr Brown at No 11 before the financial heavens fell. He was so confident and ambitious that he practically squeaked when he moved. Indeed, he reminded me at the time of the Wall Street tycoon played by Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places. "Lucky you," says one of his friends. "It's not luck," Aykroyd replies. But at least Mr Hornby has got his moment in the public stocks out of the way. The PM will do all in his power to postpone his own moment – not least because, apparently, he does not think that he should be in the dock in the first place. At Thursday's Liaison Committee hearing, Tony Wright asked him whether the time had come to acknowledge the need for a true calling to account. "This is a big catastrophe," said Dr Wright. "Do we not deserve an inquiry?" And off Mr Brown went, as he always does, about "global issues… external imbalances… It started, as you know, in America …contagion across the system… the whole global picture… a global financial crisis that started as a global banking crisis." Yes, yes, we get the idea, Gordon. But how ironic that a Prime Minister who has had so much to say about "Britishness", national identity and (foolhardily) "British jobs for British workers" should try, no less brazenly, to deny that there is a specifically British dimension to the story of this economic disaster and to present himself, and us, as the victim of forces quite beyond his control. Much good it will do him. The public was never going to acquit Gordon as readily as he does himself. They are already looking beyond his premiership to what might come next and whether the Tories are up to the task. The Tories, for their part, are privately wondering which of his prospective successors they should fear most: as it happens, Alan Johnson, interviewed in the current issue of The Spectator, is the figure who bothers the Cameroons most, although the Tory leader believes Harriet Harman is the Cabinet member running most aggressively for the job. An era has ended but the PM does not know it. And while the rest of us look ahead to the post-Brown world, the increasingly isolated Prime Minister sits in No 10 and broods angrily over whom to invite to dinner. Matthew d'Ancona is Editor of 'The Spectator' |
There’s an inspirational story out this week about the cool stuff billionaires spend their money on. Internet billionaire Yuri Milner is teaming up with astro-genius Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg to invest $100 million to design a fleet of postage-stamp-sized space probes and launch them in the direction of Alpha Centauri. That star system is the closest to us at 4.37 light years. That’s 26 trillion miles. Now considering all the advances in electronics we’ve seen in the past 20 years I have no doubt that these supernerds will devise the perfect space probe to communicate with our Centaurian neighbors and beam back pictures. They figure they can fit computers, cameras and a power source into a 1-gram package, or five to a teaspoon. Building the probes doesn’t seem to be the hard part here. The hard part is this: how do you fuel them in such a way that you can get them to Alpha Centauri in a reasonable amount of time. NASA launched the Voyager space probes in the 1970s. In their 40-year journey the two Voyagers have zoomed past Pluto and are now 12 billion miles from the Sun. If they could maintain that pace the Voyagers might reach Alpha Centauri in about 2,500 years. That's too long. So Milner, 54, and Hawking, 74, propose a faster mission. It starts with blasting 1,000 or so mini-probes into space onboard a rocket. Once out in space this mother-ship would launch the probes, which would emerge like butterflies from a chrysalis to unfurl diaphanous foil wings. From Earth, a phalanx of powerful lasers would fire at the probes, whose wings would catch the laser power as if it were a breeze. In minutes the laser gust would accelerate the probes to a fifth of light speed — 134 million miles per hour. Now about those lasers. In order to get the probes moving as fast as possible, the lasers need to hit them with one big tsunami of energy. A weaker beam won’t do because it doesn’t take long for the probes to get out of laser range. So the laser array would need to tap 100 gigawatts of power, but only for two minutes. That’s a huge amount of power, equivalent to 10% of total U.S. electric power demand in the middle of the day. New York’s summer peak electricity demand was 33 gw in 2013. Laser technology isn’t there yet. Last year Japanese scientists fired the world’s most powerful laser — a pulse of 2 quadrillion watts. But only for one trillionth of a second. Lockheed Martin reportedly has a 30 kw laser that can disable a vehicle from a mile away, and the U.S. Navy is working towards 100 kw. Milner and Hawking’s Breakthrough Starshot would presumably need an array of 1 million such lasers. Or 100 million smaller ones, assembled in the Atacama Desert, where the atmosphere is thinner. That’s the vision of astrophysicist Philip Lubin, of UC Santa Barbara, who developed the idea that Milner and crew are pursuing. Lubin won a NASA award for the idea last year. (Nerd out and read Lubin’s paper here.) How even to power this “light beamer,” as they call it? By my amateur calculations, the amount of power needed in those two minutes is the energy equivalent of 3 gigawatt-hours (100 GW x 1/30 hr = 3.3 GWH), or about 2,800 tons of TNT. That's somewhere in between a Space Shuttle launch, which uses about 750 tons of TNT equivalent, and a small nuclear explosion (the Nagasaki “Fat Man” bomb was 20,000 tons). You’d need the battery capacity of 40,000 Tesla vehicles to hold that much juice, and even then you’d face the challenge of discharging all the batteries in just 2 minutes. Last week my Forbes colleague Alex Knapp interviewed Milner about the project and asked whether it might make more sense for him to try to build his laser cannon in space. Forget for a second that having a superpowered space laser would turn Milner into the best real-life James Bond villain ever, it just wouldn’t make financial sense. Building it in space would be about “fifty times more expensive.” It will be fun to watch this group try to figure all these challenges out. Milner and Zuckerberg (a board member) say they’re willing to invest $100 million in the venture. It will take more like $20 billion to see it through to fruition. If money were no object, they could likely have the system ready to launch in about 20 years. Then it will take another 20 years for the probes to get to Alpha Centauri, plus another 5 years on the backend for the pics of waving aliens to travel back to earth (at light speed, naturally). Milner and Hawking think that the right propulsion system could get the probes there in just 20 years. Add in 20 years of prep work before launch, and another 5 years on the backend for pics from the probes to travel back to earth (at light speed, naturally), and we could know what’s out there by 2060. Mark your calendar. |
TRIPOLI, LIBYA—Libyan lawmakers have authorized a caretaker government as the search continues for a prime minister-elect to replace Mustafa Abushagur. Abdurrahim el-Keib, interim Prime Minister until last month, was asked to run the government as a temporary measure, according to a letter read Monday at a televised session of the General National Congress, the country’s first freely elected parliament in more than 40 years. It came a day after the 200-member legislature ousted Abushagur, thrusting the nation into deeper uncertainty a year after Moammar Gadhafi’s removal. El-Keib’s government has been asked to prepare next year’s budget and to hold a national security council meeting, according to the letter read out by the first deputy chairman of the congress Guma Etaiga. The premier-elect’s rejection and protests by demonstrators who say their regions are unrepresented in the government, reflect Libya’s fragile political situation since last year’s bloody uprising. The interim government has pushed to restore order and revive the economy, efforts stymied by factionalism as militias refused to disarm and regional interests dominate. Congress will debate how to select a replacement for Abushagur. “We are discussing the procedures, and how to go about approving a new prime minister,” Hassan El Amin, an independent lawmaker from the coastal city of Misrata, said in a telephone interview. |
Stephen Harper and his Conservatives won't admit that Canada is in a recession and will leave Canadians in a "gathering storm," Engage Canada claims in a new ad. (via Engage Canada/YouTube) The left-leaning group, which describes itself as a non-partisan project "focused on making the Conservatives unelectable," says Harper's Tories "refuse to admit" the country is sliding into a recession, despite economists "all over the world" saying so. Engage Canada did not respond to questions from The Huffington Post Canada about the ad buy or the group's spending. The group, which has "a mix of funding sources," was kickstarted by former NDP and Liberal strategists, according to The Canadian Press. There's no consensus on whether Canada is in a recession. Some analysts and economists have said the country is likely in a recession. But others, including BMO chief economist Doug Porter, have said that's not the case. "A recession is a sustained, broad-based decline in economic activity. Canada simply does not meet that test," Porter wrote in a note earlier this month. The ad, released Wednesday, is the group's third video. The first two focused on income equality and healthcare funding. The group also released a radio ad, which seems to feature the same narrator. In this clip, however, she is revealed to have voted for the Tories in the past. "Harper and the Conservatives could help, but they're protecting the wealthy and big corporations with even more tax giveaways, paid for by sneaking through a huge cut to healthcare," says the narrator. "I can't believe I voted for them. I've had enough of Harper. It's time for a change." Converting past Tory voters is one of the group's objectives, according to its website, though it says it supports no specific party. "We are trying to dissuade previous conservative voters from voting again for a government that is not there for them," it states. "We are in no way endorsing any other party." The upcoming election will be held on Oct. 19. ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Photo gallery Notable MPs Who Aren't Running Again See Gallery Engage Canada Ad Says Harper's Tories 'Refuse To Admit' Country Is In Recession 1 / 17 Notable MPs Who Aren't Running Again 1 / 17 |
The picture above is a forest, frozen over and covered in ice and snow. The photograph was taken in February of 2013, and, at best, it was -12.5 °C (9.5 °F) outside. We know that because the picture above is from a place called Oymyakon, one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth. The average temperature in February is -42 °C (-44 °F) and that -12.5 °C temperature is the warmest reported February temperature on record. And that’s not even Oymyakon’s coldest month. That honor goes to January, which is a few degrees colder, on average. Oymyakon, as that red flag on the map above shows, is in the middle of nowhere, Russia. At 63°27′ north latitude, it’s only about a hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. During the winter months, there are often days with only three or four hours of sunlight, and from October to April, temperatures rarely hit above freezing. At one point in 1924, per various reports, the temperature cratered to -71.2 °C (-96.16 °F). And yet, Oymyakon has consistently been home to a small population of about 500 people. The people who live there used to be nomadic — or, at least, their recent ancestors were. At some point during the existence of the Soviet Union, the communist rulers decided to set up the town formally, hoping to modernize the culture of Siberian nomads by making them settle down in a permanent location that doubled as a trading post. It seemed to have worked: even though (or maybe because) the village is a two day trip from the nearest city, Yakutsk, the people of Oymyakon, by and large, have remained there. How do people deal with the harsh climate? First, there’s “Russian tea,” as the Weather Channel jokes — that, of course, is vodka. But there are more serious concerns than can be cured by the false sense of alcohol-induced warmth. The Weather Channel continues: The frozen ground makes it difficult for working indoor plumbing, so most toilets are outhouses. The bitter cold also makes it difficult to dig graves. The ground has to be warmed with a bonfire before a funeral. Locals use heated garages for their cars. Cars left outside need to be kept running, otherwise they will not restart. Planes cannot fly into the area in the winter. And of course the risk of frostbite is great after only a few minutes in the cold. And that’s only the start of it. Because you can’t grow crops in frozen ground, the people of Oymyakon generally live on an eclectic menu of meat; per Wired, “reindeer meat, raw flesh shaved from frozen fish, and ice cubes of horse blood with macaroni are a few local delicacies.” Similarly, the harsh climate means that growing up there means you don’t miss school because of the snow. Atlas Obscura notes that “children of Oymyakon are stuck in class unless the temperature falls below –52C.” Then again, being in class is probably better than being outside. If you’d like more pictures of Oymyakon, the Weather Channel link above has a good selection. Bonus fact : It should go without saying that Oymyakon doesn’t have good cell phone reception — being hundreds of miles from a city will usually do that. But even if it did, your phone wouldn’t work there. Few, if any, electronics would — it’s simply too cold. But you don’t need to travel to areas of extreme temperatures to experience this yourself, especially if you have an iPhone 5S — you may just need to go outside on a cold day. That phone “can withstand temperatures between -4° and 113° Fahrenheit” per CNN, and that’s when it’s turned off. (That’s -20 °C to 45.5 °C.) Turn it on, and it will begin to struggle at 0 °C/32 °F. The reason? As Motherboard explains, “the cold slows the conversion of the battery’s stored chemical energy into electrical energy—a battery operating at 0 degrees Fahrenheit delivers only 50 percent capacity of what it would deliver when operating at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Next thing you know your phone is dead, all because the cold put a stranglehold on your battery.” From the Archives : Why Cat Owners in Siberia Really Need to Pay Their Taxes: Really. |
April 25, 2014 Violent Storms, Tornadoes to Jar Texas to Nebraska By By Kristina Pydynowski, senior meteorologist April 25, 2014, 12:04:52 AM EDT Despite a quiet start to the day, severe weather will ramp up across the Plains Wednesday evening. The stage is being set for violent thunderstorms to fire over the central and southern High Plains Wednesday evening, from Nebraska to west-central Texas. Many of the storms are forecast to ignite between Route 83 and I-35. Cities in the path of the severe weather and the potential for a tornado include North Platte, McCook and Grand Island, Neb.; Dodge City and Russell, Kan.; Gage and Clinton, Okla.; and Childress, Abilene San Angelo and Del Rio, Texas, late in the day. During the first part of Wednesday night the cities of Lincoln, Neb., Wichita, Kan., Wichita Falls, Texas, and Oklahoma City will be at risk for violent storms, including the possibility of an isolated tornado. In addition to the tornado risk Wednesday evening, some areas may be hit with very large hail and damaging wind gusts. While the risk of tornadoes will diminish later at night, lives could be put at risk during the first part of the night as the tornado risk carries over from the late afternoon and early evening hours. All told through Wednesday night approximately 10 million people can be impacted by severe weather over the Central states. The worst of the severe weather, at this point, is expected to remain to the north and west of Omaha, Neb., Dallas, Des Moines, Iowa, and Kansas City, Mo. However, these cities may still become the target of a gusty, drenching thunderstorm late Wednesday night. "Wednesday will be a busy day dealing with a myriad of severe weather of all kinds, including large hail, high wind gusts as well as tornadoes," stated AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions Storm Warning Meteorologist Eddie Walker. People will need to keep up-to-date on the track and speed of the storms as they approach their location from the west through Wednesday night. RELATED: AccuWeather.com Severe Weather Center The Difference Between Tornado Watches, Warnings Which Outdoor Activities Top the Charts for Lightning Perils? The danger of severe thunderstorms may not end with Wednesday night. "It seems like at least portions of the eastern Plains into the Mississippi Valley will see severe threats on Thursday," Walker continued. The area at risk for strong to locally severe thunderstorms on Thursday is forecast to extend from Arkansas to southeastern and central Missouri, southern Illinois, western Tennessee and western Kentucky. Storms within this swath will bring the risk of blinding downpours, flash flooding and locally strong wind gusts. Portions of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin may also be hit with a period of windswept, blinding downpours. AccuWeather.com will cover the storms live late Wednesday into Thursday. During this upcoming weekend, there is the potential for a more widespread and dangerous severe weather outbreak centered on Texas and the southern Plains. The weekend tornado threat will extend into the overnight hours Saturday to Sunday. More information on this severe weather threat will be released later Wednesday on AccuWeather.com This year's severe weather season has gotten off to an extremely slow start compared to average, which the AccuWeather.com Long Range team anticipated. The below graphic from NOAA's Storm Prediction Center (SPC) shows that the preliminary tornado count so far this year is running well below the minimum value on the inflation adjusted annual tornado trend chart. As the graphic declares, the preliminary count for 2014 has been multiplied by 0.85 to remove erroneous extra reports. Greg Carbin, Warning Coordination Meteorologist from the SPC, told AccuWeather.com that the bars on the graphic are only estimates and do not represent any year in particular. "[The graphic] is an attempt to define the ranges in the running annual total of U.S. tornadoes by removing the positive upward trend in reports of weak tornadoes over the past couple of decades when compared to the longer-term record," Carbin stated. The SPC also reported that Saturday was the 153rd day without an EF-3 or stronger tornado touching down in the United States. That is the fourth-longest such stretch in the last 60 years. Listed third on the list is the 188 days from 1997, while 2004 ranks first with 249 days. Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski contributed content to this story. Report a Typo |
Roberto Firmino has explained the role Philippe Coutinho played in his move to Anfield this summer and revealed his excitement at the prospect of making his Reds debut. After taking part in his first training session at Melwood since signing for the club, the Brazilian sat down with Liverpoolfc.com to talk about his move from Hoffenheim and his Barclays Premier League targets. Read on for the full transcript or, if you are an LFCTV GO subscriber, you can watch the video below. Welcome to Liverpool Football Club, Roberto. Why Liverpool then, what persuaded you to sign for the club? As a football fan, I've been watching the Premier League for a while now. Liverpool was my choice because of its history and its team, and also because Coutinho told me some great things about the club. I hope I can bring joy to the people playing for this club. Sign up for LFCTV GO to enter our draw to win Roberto Firmino's signed unveiling shirt here>> Watch the video here » How much do you know about Liverpool and its history, honours and fans? Although I obviously don't know as much as the people from the city and the fans, I do know some stuff about Liverpool. I've been watching some games and also I remember that famous Champions League final, when Liverpool were trailing 3-0 and came back to win the trophy on penalties. I feel very fond of Liverpool. How did it feel when you first learned that Liverpool wanted to sign you? It's always welcome knowing that a club is interested in you. I discussed it with my agent and decided to opt for Liverpool, so here I am today. For Liverpool fans who don't know much about you and your career, what sort of player are you? How do you like to play? I'm a player who works hard and who's constantly looking to support my teammates on the pitch. I'm a player with an attitude and who knows how to play a tactical role with the team. You will soon have the opportunity to see me play. How does it feel to wear one of the world's most famous football shirts? It's a unique opportunity. I could say Liverpool is the first big club I will play for. It's a massive chance for me to show what I can do. How will it feel to play in red again? (Roberto played for Clube de Regatas Brasil as a youngster) It will be a special feeling. I've matured since then and I think the red colour represents the passion. I want to show the fans this passion alongside my teammates. How much are you looking forward to joining up with your teammates and being involved in the final weeks of pre-season? I've received a warm welcome from the teammates who are here and I trust I will have the same from those who are on tour at the moment. I hope I can join up with them soon and get on well with everyone so we can do our best together on the pitch. Are you confident you'll be able to adapt to English football? I am, without a doubt. German football, where I've played for nearly five years, is very similar – maybe just a little less tough than English football. I'm confident I'll be just fine here. Have you heard about the famous Kop? How much are you looking forward to playing in front of them? Yes. I can't wait to step out onto the pitch with my right foot and give my best to the team and my teammates. I'm looking forward to having goosebumps when I hear the fans singing those chants before the game. How much of an influence was Philippe Coutinho on you signing for this club? He was very helpful although it was ultimately my decision. I wanted to know more about how it works here and he had some very good things to tell me. He's a great character and I hope we can nurture our friendship at Liverpool. Philippe and you recently played together for Brazil at the Copa America. What was that like and how much are you looking forward to playing alongside Coutinho at Liverpool? As I've just said, Philippe is a great person and has a big heart. He showed me his personal qualities during our time together at the Selecao. I'm expecting us to be two fighters on the pitch battling together for the best for Liverpool, hoping that it will bring us the victories. Have you had the chance to see and know the city of Liverpool? What are your first impressions of the city and the people? I've noticed the city is bigger than Hoffenheim – where I used to live – so I think it'll be a better experience for me. It's a different world really. I hope I can settle in and start to play as quickly as possible. Have you watched many Liverpool games on the television? As I said, I remember well that Champions League final from a while ago. I've been watching English football and particularly Liverpool recently as I knew the club were interested in signing me. You come to a young Liverpool team. What can this squad achieve together, what can you bring to this team and how much are you looking forward to this new challenge in your career? Although it's a young team, there's a lot of experience and quality in it. Each and every one of the players must do their best to have the chance to play and win games as a consequence. Philippe has mentioned on several occasions that he has had a great welcome from the Liverpool fans since his arrival in 2013. How important is it for you to have the same reception from the supporters? It's very important and makes a huge difference to the players as the fans are our 12th player. They're always behind their team and that gives us a boost to run on the pitch and help each other. |
Carolyn Lukensmeyer of the National Institute for Civil Discourse leads the Idaho Civility Summit at BSU on Tuesday (Betsy Z. Russell) The Idaho Civility Summit wrapped up on a positive note today, with participants including elected officials, civic leaders and members of the press backing several moves to enhance civil discourse in the state, from education and training in the schools to apossible civility pledge to formation of more City Clubs around the state. “The incivility that is rampant in our national media and political environment is seeping into Idaho, and these Idaho leaders have expressed they want to do something about it,” said Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona. “I think Idaho is in a position to model for other states both short-term and long-term actions that can be taken to ensure civility and effective public decision-making.” The center led civility training for the entire Idaho Legislature this year, the first time it’s worked with an entire state legislature at once; it’s now preparing to do the same thing in Arkansas, with Idaho Rep. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, among the presenters. Sen. Chuck Winder, R-Boise, the Senate assistant majority leader, was among those participating in the Civility Summit, which ran from Sunday afternoon through noon today. He said he came away “encouraged and energized.” “The more we can do to kind of tone down the negative rhetoric and let people have a voice, the more likely we are to get people together and focused on common solutions,” Winder said, “so it becomes a win-win, instead of just a win for one side or the other.” Like many at the summit, Winder said he’s concerned that incivility drives many away from the public arena, when more, not fewer, voices are needed for all in the state to be represented. The summit, which drew attendees from Idaho Falls, Twin Falls and the Treasure Valley, was sponsored by the City Club of Boise and Boise State University, and was held on the BSU campus. The City Club of Boise is in the midst of a year-long “civility project” this year that includes an array of activities; there’s more on that online here. Next up in the project: U.S. Sen. Jim Risch will discuss civility at a City Club luncheon forum on Aug. 8. As a member of the press, I was among the participants at the Idaho Civility Summit, and though I went into it with mixed feelings, I found it truly constructive. Among the action items that emerged was a move already under way to establish a City Club in Twin Falls, a community that’s seen been riven by strident dissent over its longstanding refugee resettlement program. Another idea that was discussed and that I found particularly appealing was a possible partnership between the press and Idaho universities for a major poll on those who don't vote or participate in Idaho, and why they don't; I've never seen good data on this, and I think it'd be really interesting. The City Club of Boise was established in 1995, and has as its slogan, “Nothing happens until people start talking.” I’ve been a regular speaker at its annual “Pundits Forum” before the legislative session each year for many years; the club has more than 600 members. Lt. Gov. Brad Little has long been among the members and supporters of the City Club. “They have great speakers, they’ve got a good board,” Little said, adding with a grin, “Obviously, the candidate forums are fun to go to – if you’re not in the bullseye.” Idaho Falls started its own City Club a decade ago and it’s been going strong ever since. Little said, “These are forums that are a necessary part of particularly an evolving state like Idaho. You hear things and you see discussions that aren’t available in letters to the editor back and forth.” Lukensmeyer closed the summit today with a slide showing a quote from Senate President Pro-Tem Brent Hill, who was the summit's keynote speaker on Sunday evening. "In a political world where shrill voices and personal attacks get lots of attention," Hill said, "we need to be reminded that mutual respect and civility are not only the most effective ways to govern, but also the most beneficial ways to interact with our fellow human beings." |
Image copyright Getty Images Three researchers have been eating worms for 105 days, while living in a sealed laboratory in Beijing, to test whether astronauts could use them as their main source of protein. The volunteers fattened up the worms on plants grown inside the Moon Palace One biosphere at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the South China Morning Post reports. They had various preparations for eating the worms - using a bean sauce and other seasonings to make the dish as appealing as possible. The idea of feeding protein-rich mealworms to astronauts was apparently raised as early as 2009, but scientists at western space agencies worried they would be unappetising and lower astronaut morale. But researcher Hu Dawei says that throughout the current experiment the volunteers seemed "healthy and happy" on their worm diet. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization has said edible insects could make a "promising alternative" to traditional protein sources. "It did take them some time to adapt," Hu adds. "None of them had ever tried them as food before. Worms may look disgusting at first glance, but they are actually the cleanest and healthiest food source." But one restaurant owner is more sceptical, saying: "Worms on the menu might put off some people who dreamed of being an astronaut." The experiment's results may be reviewed by China's space authorities in the planning of future manned missions. China put its first man into space in 2003, and has plans to launch a space station by 2023. Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter. |
Ski Vermont! The Fabled Stake, High Atop Mount Mansfield Mount Mansfield Snow Depths Summit Snow Depth at "The Stake" high atop Mount Mansfield, Vermont Green region represents multi year average (1954-55 through present) The SkiVt-L "Snow Year" begins September 1 each year. Right now, we are in the 2018-2019 season. Will this be a record year? Decide for yourself! We have many years of data for every snow year stretching all the way back to the winter of 1954-55. Check our additional historical data for graphs of these past years, as well as the all-time highs and lows, where does the data come from, and How does it get updated? A SkiVt-L production, brought to you through the courtesy of Enterprise Technology Services, University of Vermont. Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001,2019. All rights reserved. |
US President Barack Obama (R) and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (L) participate in the second presidential debate, the only held in a townhall format, at the David Mack Center at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 16, 2012, moderated by CNN's Candy Crowley. AFP PHOTO / Stan HONDA (Photo credit should read STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images) Have businesses been made to comply with more laws under President Barack Obama's presidency? If you ask Mitt Romney, the answer is yes, but that may not be the whole story. During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Romney criticized Obama’s approach to economic growth by deriding regulations created under the president. “Regulations have quadrupled,” Romney said. “The rate of regulations quadrupled under this president.” As it turns out, Obama has signed fewer regulations in the first three years of his presidency than George W. Bush did during the same period. Obama made the claim in a speech in Cleveland in June that was verified by FactCheck.org at the time. In addition, Obama has watered down proposed regulations at a higher rate than Bush. Obama changed 76 percent of agency rules submitted to the White House, compared with 54 percent changed under his predecessor, according to Bloomberg. But while Obama may have signed fewer regulations and watered down more rules than his predecessor, the president’s rules have been costly. He’s approved way more “major” regulations -- or rules that may cost more than $100 million to implement -- than Bush, according to FactCheck.org. Obama’s regulations have cost $46 billion, or five times the cost of Bush’s regulations, according to a March study from the conservative Heritage Foundation. |
One of our favorite Disney Afternoon tv shows in the ’90s was DuckTales. And one of the most memorable (and adored) parts of the show was it’s amazing theme song. Scrooge McDuck and Huey, Dewey, and Louie travel to outer space, under the sea, and to the pyramids. They’re chased by a mummy, hit in the face with pastry, and, course, surrounded by gold coins in a literal money bin. So, naturally, we thought we’d try to recreate all of this awesome with real ducks. We like a challenge. And cute farm animals. It might not look exactly like the real thing (real ducks do not like wearing hats), we’re still pretty proud of the result. So sit back, enjoy, and try not to smile.* We dare you: *The song will be stuck in your head for the next 48 hours. Sorry we’re not sorry. Posted 4 years Ago |
TAMPA, Fla. – It should have been the perfect moment to celebrate a near-perfect career. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the franchise's only Super Bowl victory, brought the 2002 players on the field at halftime of their game against Philadelphia on Dec. 9. There was just one exception: Ronde Barber, who hasn't missed a start since that Super Bowl season, remained in the locker room with the 2012 Bucs. He's still playing. So the team put a huge photo of Barber on the big screen. And the response in the stadium was immediate: "BOOOOOO!!!!" Scroll to continue with content Ad See, the visiting Eagles fans were quite numerous and vocal. Plus, they're still upset about a certain pick-six in the NFC Championship Game that ended their season a decade ago. So when they saw the villain's face, the folks in green let Barber have it. How appropriate. In an age where rookies are the most ballyhooed players in the NFL, a 37-year-old free safety who has a Super Bowl ring and an incredible ironman streak with one team is booed in his own stadium. "I've been underappreciated my whole life," Barber said days after the game, shrugging it off. There are some who appreciate what Barber's accomplished in his 16-year career, or at least marvel at his longevity. As he trotted back onto the field after halftime, Barber, the second-oldest non-kicker/quarterback in the league behind only Donald Driver, ran into old teammate Keyshawn Johnson. "How the [expletive] are you still playing?" Johnson yelled to him. Moments later, off the field, Johnson was asked about Barber and said, "He's [expletive] old!" [Tony Dungy playbook: Will Adrian Peterson make NFL history?] Story continues Johnson and the 2002 team returned to the press box to watch the rest of the game, and Barber proceeded to lead the Buccaneers on the field in tackles. He did so, by the way, at a new position. Barber played cornerback his entire career until switching to free safety this season. While Ray Lewis, London Fletcher and Charles Woodson are seen as Ol' Man Defense in this league, Barber is the only player in NFL history with at least 40 interceptions (43) and 25 sacks (27). He's also older than those other guys. Barber's interception return 10 years ago in Philly was arguably the most significant play in Buccaneer history, as it vaulted Tampa Bay to the Super Bowl over a team they couldn't seem to beat. Yet Barber wasn't even selected to the Pro Bowl that year. For the most part, Ronde is largely overlooked in the league and around the country. He was even left off an NFL.com list of the top players over the age of 35 – including the group of honorable mentions at the bottom. Even in football-frenzied-Florida, Barber is largely taken for granted even though he's been a constant in a state that is still getting to know many of its pro sports teams. Put it this way: Barber's career as a Buc is older than the entire Tampa Bay Rays franchise. "That's the toughest guy I've ever been around," says former teammate Barrett Ruud, now with the Texans. "Never misses a practice or a game. Every extra point attempt, he's laying out for it." Derrick Brooks, now showing a tinge of gray, found himself a little stunned watching his old teammate on the field last week. "You get spoiled," he says. "You never lose respect for him, but I don't know if he gets the appreciation he deserves. He plays inside and out, at the line of scrimmage and deep, and his turnovers for touchdowns, I remember every one. The interception in Philly was the play of our franchise." Asked what Barber means to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, former coach Jon Gruden says, "Ronde Barber is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers." And the crazy thing is, Barber is actually more valuable to the franchise now, at age 37, than he was when he helped them win the Super Bowl. Tiki's a factor in this story because Tiki is always a factor in any story about Ronde. "I played with a more popular twin all these years," Ronde says. "He was a running back in New York, all-time everything. I'm a cornerback in a smaller market." This isn't bitterness. It's just fact. "If anybody appreciates me, it's him," Ronde says of his twin. It's just that Tiki has always been, well, more dramatic. Tiki gets the New York Post headlines, the Deadspin mentions and the TV time. This isn't new. Consider a passage from a feature on the twins in a magazine at the University of Virginia, where the Barbers played: The brothers spent their first days in separate incubators. Ronde slept peacefully. Tiki 'was screaming his head off,' the boys' mother, Geraldine, recalls. 'It was like he was yelling, 'Let me out of here. I don't want to be held down.' For this, she named her youngest Atiim Kiambu, which means Fiery-Tempered King. "Ronde," Geraldine says, "was more like, 'Okay, I'm going to take advantage of this moment to rest.' " And so it's been ever since. Ronde knew how to "rest" his entire life. He's a master at efficiency and economy, with zero wasted motion. He is the only player on the Bucs who has installed shelves in his locker. "I can be anal," he says, laughing. "I like neatness." That's the genius of Ronde, though. While he describes his brother as "big picture," Ronde is known in the Bucs locker room for one phrase: "See a little, see a lot." He is always telling fellow defenders to focus on one tiny part of the action, maybe the way a guard pulls or a tight end gets off the line, and use that to understand the entire offensive scheme. Tiki has always attacked the great big world out there, but Ronde has survived all these years in the league by focusing on the microscopic. "You're going to know where Tiki's coming from," says Geraldine, reached by phone on Saturday. "Ronde's going to plot and plan and when you figure out what he's up to, he's having a cup of tea and watching you figure it out. You expect him to be in one spot on the field and he's in another. He's always strategizing." Part of that strategy has been to stay in the best shape possible. "When you play that position," says former Bucs wide receiver Joe Jurevicius, "you usually slow down. I'm shocked." [Related: Perfectionist Peyton Manning puts Broncos in reach of another Super Bowl] Cornerback is, obviously, a physical position. Barber has to slow down or stop a man bigger than him on pretty much every play, because how many offensive players are there in the league who are 5'9" or shorter? (Doug Martin doesn't count because he plays for the Bucs.) This isn't Tony Gonzalez, a giant who bounced off smaller men for many years. This is the equivalent of a kicker playing in the secondary for 200-plus straight games. "I think of all the players that have gone in the training room to get an ankle or an elbow taped, I just think, 'Ronde would have practiced; Ronde wouldn't have been in there with that,' " Gruden says. "Ronde set a physical toughness tone for our team." That toughness dates far back – back to when he began in the league. His "anal" personality didn't just emerge when he woke up at 32 and realized he might be nearing the end of his money-making days. "When I was there, he was one of the few guys that had a routine," says former Bucs quarterback Shaun King. "He'd go home on the computer and pull up 35 ways to keep your body healthy. He'd go into the cold tub, get massages. Brian Kelly and Ronde would tell me, 'We're going to do Pilates.' I was like, 'Get the hell out.' " No one would have blamed Barber if he retired after last season. The team lost 10 in a row to end 2011 and brought in a taskmaster of a coach in Greg Schiano. The new guy would run the Bucs like a college team, right down to circuit drills in training camp with stations devoted to learning how to tackle properly. If there was one player in the league who didn't need a blistering boot camp in the Florida heat, it was Ronde Barber. But he stayed. This wasn't Brett Favre hanging on for the glory – there isn't much glory in Tampa for Ronde anymore – and it wasn't an old pro who had no post-football plan. Barber can do pretty much whatever he wants. He has plenty of money, as well. No, it was none of the usual reasons. It was because Barber happens to like the "job" part of his job. "It was the toughest camp I've been through, by far," he says. "But I was all about that. I'm not averse to hard work. In fact, I appreciate it." The ironic part is that Tom Coughlin's draconian ways played a part in Tiki's departure from the NFL. Coughlin was oppressive and demanding, and Tiki called him out after a playoff loss to Carolina for uninspired play calling. The two had a nasty falling out that spilled into Tiki's retirement years. Schiano's something of a Coughlin clone, and yet Ronde calls himself "a happy and willing soldier" in the new coach's plan. In fact, when many in the league bristled at Schiano calling for his defense to bust up the Giants' victory formation in Week 2, Barber found himself wondering why the team hadn't done that many times before. Followers of the Bucs saw that play and debated whether Ronde would buy into the Schiano system. But asked about that episode, Barber says, "It's a football play. It is what it is. You have a chance to win, so why not take it? It's not in the etiquette of the game. Well, I don't give a damn about that." Schiano, meanwhile, reveres Barber. The former Rutgers coach, with his glare and his lantern jaw, doesn't seem like someone who would care for input. Yet he glows when asked about Barber. "He's been huge," Schiano says. "I run a lot of things through him." The coach-on-the-field line is a cliché, and Ronde jokes he doesn't have the patience to be an assistant. But in a real sense, he already is. Asked how important it was to recruit Barber, Schiano bluntly admits: "Otherwise, it doesn't work." The two of them seem to be kindred spirits. The loss to the Eagles a week ago is an instructive look at Barber's value, albeit in an odd way. The Eagles tore down the field at the end of the fourth quarter, needing a touchdown to win. Philadelphia moved the ball to the Bucs' 1-yard-line with two seconds to go and had one play left. Barber saw the next play a mile away, figuring Eagles quarterback Nick Foles would roll out and tuck a pass toward one side of the end zone. "You spend so much time preparing, you feel what's happening," Barber says. "I was thinking, 'This is what's getting ready to happen.' " And yet because he's a safety, he couldn't simply bolt across the field and stop it. All he could do was yell. "I have a job to do," he says. "I'm not that much of a vigilante." And besides, the Bucs ran that very play twice on the Friday before the game. The team was ready for it. Of course, the Eagles ran that very play, and it worked. The Bucs blew it. They are now a seven-loss team and probably done for the season. Barber was clearly incensed, and you could all but see smoke was rising from his helmet. "In the immediacy of the situation," he says, "it's almost impossible to deal with." And still he was the first to line up for the extra point and the first to run off the field after the game ended. That's Ronde. The 2002 Bucs would never have let that happen. Barber is training his teammates to rise to a level only he knows. And if they get there, he won't be around to see it. If he stays another year – something he might do – the Bucs are maybe a playoff team but certainly not a Super Bowl contender yet. The young Bucs he's training, the likes of Mark Barron and Ahmad Black, are talented but raw. "I'm trying to challenge the guys," Barber says, "to own what they're doing." [Related: Giants WR Victor Cruz honors Sandy Hook victim Jack Pinto on Sunday] E.J. Biggers is trying. "You don't want to let him down," says the third-year corner. "A loss like that eats at you. You want to do anything you can to help him win." Leonard Johnson is trying. "He's a mentor, a father figure, a close friend, a brother. He'll give you anything you may need. He's helped me learn how to be more professional and take my game to another level. He even draws pictures on the sideline, like the coaches." Black is trying. "He's getting me to trust my instincts," says the second-year defensive back. "Not to second guess. He says, 'If you want to be a legend, play like a legend.' I'm trying to play like a legend.'" That legend would be Barber. "When he was in the Super Bowl," Black says, "I was in the seventh grade." It seems at first like a bridge too far, with a 37-year-old dragging a young team back to relevance. After losses like the one to Philly and Sunday's 41-0 obliteration by New Orleans, it is a bridge too far. Yet in another way it's a perfect situation for Barber. He seems to thrive on the grind much more than the glory. He embraces it. Warren Sapp's favorite Ronde moment is when the cameras found him after his interception in Philly, and he said, "Pro Bowl my a--, baby! I'm going to San Diego, damn it!" "From the very beginning, they were premature" Geraldine says of her twins. "There were some very critical hours after birth. Even back then it was tell 'em you don't think they can do it, and then get out of the way. At every step, somebody has told them they could not go further. They were saying Ronde was a wasted pick. He was too short, he was too small, he didn't fit in the NFL." He still doesn't fit in the NFL. He's still too slow and too short. His team is too young and too inexperienced. His coach is too demanding and too rigid. He was booed in his own stadium on the 10th anniversary of his Super Bowl win. All these things must make Ronde Barber very, very happy. Related NFL video from Yahoo! Sports: Other popular content on the Yahoo! network: • Catholic Seven officially part with Big East leaving wake of uncertainty • R.A. Dickey deal on hold, in hands of leveraged pitcher • Trip to Philly has nostalgic Kobe Bryant pondering future • Y Finance: Fifteen worst gifts for women |
John Hartigan laments how bloggers are not sent to jail like in China or Burma Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Wednesday, July 1, 2009 A stinging attack by John Hartigan, the CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, labels bloggers and alternative media outlets as “political extremists”. Hartigan implies that bloggers should be jailed as they are in oppressive police states like China and Burma. In a speech to the National Press Club, Hartigan savagely dismissed blogs as, “Something of such little intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.” “Bloggers don’t go to jail for their work. They simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters….It could be said the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insights,” barked Hartigan. “In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting. It really is time this myth was blown apart.” “Blogs, and a large number of comment sites, specialise in political extremism and personal vilification. Radical sweeping statements without evidence are common.” Hartigan doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that the mainstream media is always found wanting because they habitually lie about news events and spin stories to suit the demands of their corporate owners. This is the very reason why blogs and alternative media outlets have become so popular and have eaten into the mainstream media’s audience share, because people are sick of being treated like idiots, sick of being lied to, and are desperately in search of the truth. Indeed, Hartigan’s boss Rupert Murdoch confessed to the fact that his media empire tried to shape public opinion to support the war in Iraq In other words, Murdoch’s many prominent news outlets wantonly put out propaganda supporting the manufactured case for invasion. Murdoch admitted to this while lamenting the corporate media’s “loss of power” to alternative media and Internet blogs, seemingly unaware of the fact that the two are directly connected. When the people know that the corporate media is deliberately lying to them about Niger yellowcake and weapons of mass destruction, they are going to seek alternative avenues of information. The fact that the corporate media habitually lies is a manifestly provable reality, not a “myth” as Hartigan ludicrously claims. In addition, while mainstream media routinely uses anonymous sources and little more than bluster and hot air to back up their stories, blogs provide links to almost every claim they make so readers can research the source evidence for themselves. This is the opposite from Hartigan’s claim that blogs make “radical sweeping statements without evidence.” Indeed, this phrase perfectly characterizes tactics employed by the mass media on a daily basis. (ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW) The corporate media monopoly has terminal cancer and they are losing their power to blogs and alternative media, which is why people like Hartigan are so angry and also why the establishment is aggressively moving to phase out the old Internet altogether and replace it with “Internet 2,” a highly regulated and controlled electronic Berlin wall, where alternative voices will be silenced and giant corporate propaganda organs will dominate once again. As blogger Darryl Mason writes today, “John Hartigan is full of shit. Bloggers have gone to jail for their work, and to protect their sources, in North Korea, Iran, Egypt, the list of countries persecuting bloggers grows longer by the week. And the CEO of Australia’s biggest news corporation doesn’t know this?” The jailing of bloggers for speaking too much truth is obviously not the kind of news that John Hartigan, a Rupert Murdoch CEO, is interested in. How could he not know about those jailing and prosecutions. Remember those words. “Political extremism”. You will hear that call more and more as the major news corporations scale up their war against independent media, and bloggers. The source of the establishment’s move to claim that bloggers and alternative media outlets are “extremists” or at worst “terrorists,” as we first reported in September 2006, was a White House strategy document that the government had been following since 9/11. In a September 5, 2006 speech President George W. Bush referred to the document as “an unclassified version of the strategy we’ve been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001,” that takes into account, “the changing nature of this enemy.” The strategy paper on how to ‘win the war on terror’ cites “conspiracies” as one of the wellsprings of terrorism and threatens to “address” and “diminish” the problems they are causing the government in fulfilling their agenda. This notion then reappeared in a March 2009 Homeland Security document entitled “Domestic Extremism Lexicon,” in which the “alternative media” is listed alongside other radical extremist groups with the implication that people who disagree with the mass media’s version of events are potential domestic terrorists. According to World Net Daily, the DHS document was almost immediately rescinded, but the groups listed alongside Neo-Nazis, Aryan prison gangs and black power extremists again prove that the federal government is targeting American citizens who are merely knowledgeable about their rights and up on current issues as potential domestic terrorists to be treated as a “threat” to law enforcement. This article was posted: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 at 5:20 am Print this page. Infowars.com Videos: Comment on this article |
This delicious sweet sauce recipe can serve as the cornerstone of any dish. A lot has happened to Roy Choi over the last eight years since his humble Kogi BBQ lonchera first hit the streets of Los Angeles. For a chef who has been known to make waves — from popularizing a fervent food-truck movement in the city’s culinary landscape, to starting a revolution in food and social justice — he hasn’t forgotten his roots and bold sauces that have paved the path to where he is today. Choi says sauces are the cornerstone of what he does, referencing Kogi’s salsa roja and verde that accompany his Korean-inspired street food, like gochujang-slathered pork tacos. “Every chef has their own thing, like some chefs don’t like to over-sauce their stuff because they like precision,” he says. “Me? I like dumping a gallon of sauce on things because I love slurping it up.” He recalls how a lot of early complaints about Kogi was how there was too much sauce on the tacos and you couldn’t taste the meat. “But that was exactly how I wanted it,” Choi says. Even before Choi attended culinary school or began working in fine dining kitchens, he would eat at restaurants and flood his plates with every single condiment available; at a Chinese joint, you’d most likely find his dish with pools of chili garlic, soy sauce and hoisin. “I used to drink Tabasco and Tapatio,” he says. “I’d take shots of it, literally.” Choi says sauces are the cornerstone of what he does. | Photo: Courtesy of Kogi BBQ Sauces to Choi was more than just something that complemented his food, it was a new way for him to express himself. Right before opening Kogi, he had just lost his job, and launching the food truck signified a moment in his life where everything was changing. “It gave me the freedom to kind of just pull everything together — even places you weren’t thinking of — [like] all my life experiences, all the nerdy things that I loved growing up with, all the weird, idiosyncratic things that I loved, all the nuances, all the weird stuff, all these things, these feelings,” Choi says. “I was able to cull all that together and just make the sauce. It was a very non-cerebral sauce. It was just more of an expression, kind of like a painting; it was more of an expression of that moment and everything that led to that moment. Coincidentally, it tasted like Los Angeles.” It also tasted like freedom, he says. Looking back to those early days, Choi and his partners were just trying to get by, without really thinking much about where they were headed. “The first month and a half was just searching for people to eat our food,” he says. “Then it hit, and then there were thousands of people in line in the street and it was just trying to keep up and waking up in the morning and prepping and going back out. That was so fun — it was so pure and simple at that time.” "Then it hit, and then there were thousands of people in line in the street." | Photo: Courtesy of Kogi BBQ But then something clicked in Choi. Before Kogi, he had always considered himself a salaryman, someone who’d go to work, collect a paycheck and wait for two weeks of vacation. Opening a business wasn’t in his wheelhouse at the time, but then, “my eyes [became] open to the opportunities,” he says. “Once that did happen, it opens a whole new sonar within you and you start to attract different things and you start to connect to different things.” Choi says he never really had money, investors or capital, up until he co-launched LocoL with San Francisco chef Daniel Patterson. All of Choi’s projects have mostly been the result of organic collaborations. Now his restaurant empire has expanded to Chego!, POT and Commissary at The Line Hotel, A-Frame, and a brick-and-mortar Kogi BBQ. Choi sees his future aligning with a similar ethos behind LocoL, his restaurant chain that aims to bring healthful fast food to underserved communities like Watts. He wants to create a nonprofit, possibly named the “Papi Chulo Foundation” — a reference to his nickname — so he can raise funds to build better futures for children and neighborhoods, and use it as a vehicle to speak up for minorities and immigrants. He wouldn’t mind having his own TV show, either. “I guess where I see the next 10 years, I’m ready to rep the underground while move to the big stage while still be underground but have all the platforms — from financial to media to food to restaurants to whatever — to be able to affect change in a lot of people,” Choi says. “So, look out Wolfgang, look out Emeril, look out Mario, look out whatever man, I’m coming at you!” Roy Choi. | Photo: Courtesy of Travis Jensen Top photo: Courtesy of Kogi BBQ |
Pakistan has named its 17-member squad for the Second T-20 Blind World Cup commencing in India from January 30. A Pakistan Blind Cricket Council (PBCC) announcement on Tuesday said that Mohammad Jamil would lead the Pakistan team while Anees Javed would be his deputy. Habibullah would be the manager while Abdul Razzak would be the Coach and Tahir Mahmood Butt would accompany as a trainer. The opening ceremony of the T-20 Blind Cricket World Cup will take place in New Delhi while the final will be played on February 12. Besides host India, the teams from Australia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, England, Nepal, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies would take part in the event. Pakistan team will play its first match against New Zealand in Delhi on January 30. The Chairman of PBCC, Syed Sultan Shah, approved the Pakistan squad, the statement added. |
Washington (CNN) Vice President Joe Biden has been the source of many social media moments. Internet users dubbed finger-guns his trademark salute, he's had more than one on camera Freudian slip, and his Senate swearing-ins are always must-see. He's a meme-able veep for the Twitter generation. Tuesday was no different. After delivering the oath of office to new Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, the vice president waved Carter's wife Stephanie over to his side of the podium. While Carter was speaking in front of them, Biden put his hands on Mrs. Carter's shoulders, leaned over and whispered something in her ear. The moment was captured in a photo and Twitter users, as usual, noticed. ISIS? Ashton Carter can't even fight off Joe Biden... pic.twitter.com/zpcVWYJU4E — Brad Thor (@BradThor) February 17, 2015 GIF: Biden gets handsy with Mrs. Carter -> pic.twitter.com/cmQqClCzrU — Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) February 17, 2015 But is social media being hard on Uncle Joe? Similar tweets appeared when Biden whispered to Senator Chris Coons' daughter Maggie during the Senate's ceremonial swearing-in in January. Coons later said Biden was simply whispering words of encouragement to Maggie, who was visibly uncomfortable during most of the photo op. Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden reacts to a question during the 2012 vice presidential debate with Republican Rep. Paul Ryan at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Click through the images to see Biden being Biden. Hide Caption 1 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Biden gets ready to pay for an ice cream cone after a campaign rally for Sen. Jeff Merkley in Portland, Oregon, on October 8. Hide Caption 2 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally at Lorain High School in Ohio in October 2012. Hide Caption 3 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden talks to customers, including a woman who pulled up her chair in front of where he was sitting, during a campaign stop at Cruisers Diner in Seaman, Ohio, in September 2012. Hide Caption 4 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden, with wife Jill, reacts to the crowd as they walk down Pennsylvania Avenue during the 2013 inaugural parade. Hide Caption 5 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden listens as President Barack Obama speaks to members of the media in the Cabinet Room of the White House in August 2013. Hide Caption 6 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden laughs while speaking at the UAW National Community Action Program Conference in Washington in February 2014. Hide Caption 7 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden watches the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia in December 2012. Hide Caption 8 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden removes his sunglasses as he arrives for a campaign event with President Obama in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in September 2012. Hide Caption 9 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – Joe Biden smiles on the steps of the State House in Concord, New Hampshire, in September 2012. Hide Caption 10 of 11 Photos: The many faces of Joe Biden The many faces of Joe Biden – After attending a private fundraising event in Florida, Joe Biden made an unscheduled stop at Allen's drugstore and S&S Diner in Miami in February 2014, where he held an impromptu discussion on Obamacare with a group of women. Hide Caption 11 of 11 Sure, touching and whispering to people in public can appear to be a uniquely awkward experience, not only for those involved, but for those watching it unfold, particularly if they're is watching for no longer than the few seconds of a Vine or GIF. In this case, Biden said at the ceremony today he has known Ash Carter for years and, when you watch the full video, it doesn't appear entirely obvious that he makes Stephanie Carter uncomfortable. In fact, she nods her head in agreement after Biden talks to her. If you watch for more than a Vine's-length, the ceremony goes on normally after the whisper seen 'round the web. Read More |
Paul Greengrass and his star have upped the tech and chucked in references to Snowden, but it’s basic Bourne that remains most persuasive Here it is: Matt Damon’s fourth and not necessarily final outing as the CIA’s amnesiac super-assassin gone rogue, Jason Bourne. That’s after The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and not counting franchise spinoff The Bourne Legacy (2012) in which Bourne himself did not actually appear. This latest iteration reunites Damon with director Paul Greengrass who as ever shows his mastery of muscular, deafening, frenetically edited action sequences - the visual equivalent of a drum-roll. Greengrass, who has co-written the film with his editor Christopher Rouse, whisks us to cities all over the world and the drama here culminates in an eye-poppingly spectacular finale in Las Vegas, whose skyline is dominated by the Trump hotel. Bourne combines a hi-tech awareness of how he is being tracked by his former employers with a low-tech readiness to beat the living daylights out of assailants who get in his face – improvising with what’s available. He snaps off a table-leg to give someone what for, and even wrenches out the handle from a one-armed bandit in Vegas casino to disable the control panel in an elevator. Matt Damon has grown into the role: in some ways I’d rather see him as this bulked-up tough guy than the smirking and preposterous “botanist” he played in The Martian. Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass: ‘We'll never say never again’ Read more As so often in the past, Jason is about to blow the cover on the “secret super-killer” operation of which he forms a part - the everyday uncontested business of super-killing is never the point. And as ever, the creepy and duplicitous agency chiefs are unsure whether to bring him in or rub him out. This new movie, being simply called Jason Bourne, perhaps indicates a kind of human summation, a drawing the line under the series – I remember Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa hinting at something similar. Bourne is laying low, off-grid, apparently making a living on the bare knuckle fight circuit somewhere in southern and central Europe – kicking the ass of various tattooed Serbs for cash. Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) his longtime associate and quasi-romantic interest now makes a reappearance to get him to break cover and become her ally in a new Snowden-style whistleblowing – she is going to upload to the web all the files concerning “Treadstone” (his personal operation) and many other murky projects. This catches the hooded eye of the careworn, cynical CIA director Robert Dewey, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who calls into play a brutal “asset” or assassin, played by the reliably hatchet-faced Vincent Cassel – the non-American casting subliminally signalling his basic inferiority to the apparent traitor Bourne. Meanwhile, Dewey has a brilliant and feline new subordinate, Heather Lee, played by Alicia Vikander, who argues that Bourne has to be persuaded to turn himself in, not whacked. Heather happens to be a college contemporary of Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed) who is the Zuckerberg-style genius running a social media platform called Deep Dream, which may or may not be assisting the US intelligence services with wholesale data-mining and privacy-breaching. And at the centre of all this, Bourne is coming closer to uncovering a terrible personal truth about the death of his father in the late 90s: an agency man that Jason has always believed had a quiet desk job far from the front line. Since the Bourne franchise was introduced at the beginning of the last decade, re-inventing Robert Ludlum’s 80s hero in the middle of the war on terror, he has been an ambiguous figure ideologically. A robust patriot and man of action who is also dissident and rebellious. Bourne started off by making James Bond look a bit square – the same initials were tweaking the Brit spy’s nose – but Bourne was himself then made to seem macho and outmoded by Claire Danes’s complex, cerebral performance in TV’s Homeland, while 007 himself appeared to be re-invigorated with new infusions of style and wit. Riz Ahmed: ‘You don’t need to tell me we live in scary times. I’m Muslim’ Read more The Snowden/social media plotline of this film does a bit to make Bourne more relevant. But the ingredients are basically the same. Each souped-up action scene and punch-up has an extra level of digital sophistication: the participants are often wearing earpieces and it is all being watched over by a mission-control team at Langley, Virginia – like the guys at Houston monitoring the progress of an Apollo moon mission. They have, to use the jargon, “eyes on” what is happening, using pictures from drones, or cameras on their operatives, or hacked feed from local CCTV. Is that pure fantasy? The famous photo of President Obama and his team witnessing the killing of Osama Bin Laden makes these scenes more credible – but in Bourne they are more fancifully imagined in semi-darkness, lit by a glitzy array of screens, with people urgently shouting to each other, as if in a gallery directing a live TV show. Basically, Bourne comes alive when in a tensely professional, platonic relationship with a woman – and that is Vikander’s Heather. There are the makings of a spark there. But it comes very late on. Matt Damon’s testosterone goes on for ever. Perhaps it really is time for Jason to hang up his Glock and give someone else a chance. Surely Alicia Vikander deserves a go at being an action heroine? • This article was amended on 26 July. The original called Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerman. This has been corrected. |
After the upward price momentum was tempered towards the close on Friday, Bitcoin's ( ) price pushed higher, reaching a high of $386.60. The current price stands at $381.40, up $4.54 or 1.20%. The price action tested the first daily resistance level at $386.49, but this was rejected. The price now currently lies above the daily Fibonacci support at $380.98. If the price breaks this level, its next support will be found at $363.15. A city center supermarket store, Spa, in Arnhem, the Netherlands, started to embrace Bitcoin payments, along with over 40 other merchants in the city. This marks the first franchised supermarket in the Netherlands to accept Bitcoin, which could certainly tip the scales in Bitcoin’s favour among supermarket retailers in the country. The Arnhem Bitcoin City project was started in May and the goal of this project is to enable all consumers to pay their everyday expenses in Bitcoin. Spar have said they may roll this service out to other franchises if it proves to be a success, but for now, their intentions are just to wait and see. The price action at the hourly time frame on the BitStamp exchange is shown below. The outlook overall is bullish, as the price had moved above the Ichimoku cloud and the base line, both indicating bullish momentum. Additionally, the lagging line has pierced the cloud to the upside, which signals the start of an upward trend. Finally, the cloud projected ahead has turned green, after the green span moved above the red span. Going forward, the green and red spans on the cloud should act as support if the upward move fails to last. Furthermore, using the relative strength index, it is expected that prices will push higher, since the relative index is below 70, indicating that the market is not overbought yet. When the overbought zone is reached, the price should then move towards the cloud. As of now,the relative strength index lies at 61.2, indicating an upward trend, since this number is larger than 50. BTC/USD Daily However, at the 4-hour time frame, there is no strong confirmation of an upward trend as of yet. The price has moved above the cloud and the relative strength index is at 58.3, but the lagging line has not yet moved above the cloud. The base line is above the conversion line, indicating bearish momentum, but this is a weak signal since the price is above the cloud. The upper part of the cloud, which indicates support, should be found around the $375 level and then at the $368.58 level in the coming days. |
PARIS — What propels Islamist terrorism and attacks against France is more than an academic debate: The answer shapes policy toward blunting the threat. So it is no inconsequential matter in a culture under attack, and one that so cherishes its intellectual debates, that France’s two leading scholars of radical Islam — former friends — have turned bitter rivals over their differing views. “Madman,” “thug,” “illiterate,” “paranoid,” “ass,” “not a thinker” — these are just some of the choicer insults the two men have hurled at each other in a peculiarly personal quarrel with far larger stakes that has reverberated through the French news media and society for months. The two distinguished academics, Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel, have long lists of books to their name, and years of field work in the Middle East, Central Asia and the troubled French suburbs. They are both eagerly consulted by the French news media and government officials. |
The shortening of telomeres in cells was thought to be an important biomarker for lifespan and aging. The edible dormouse (Glis glis), a small hibernating rodent, now turns everything upside down. In contrast to humans and other animals, telomere length in the edible dormouse significantly increases in the second half of its life, as researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna found out just recently. The study was published in Scientific Reports. "As far as I know, no previous study has reported such an effect of age on telomere lengthening," says Franz Hoelzl, one of the authors. Apparently, this unique pattern is due to the peculiar life history of this species. They can reach maximum lifespan of 13 years, which is a Methuselah-like age for a small rodent. "This extreme lifespan is almost certainly related to their ability to rejuvenate telomeres," says Hoelzl. Telomeres are the endcaps of chromosomes, which prevent, together with proteins, the degradation of coding DNA sequences. Telomeres in small animals shorten fast, but in edible dormice they even grow In normal somatic cells, telomeres are shortened with every cell division. Besides, oxidative stress has a strong effect on telomere erosion. However, the rate of telomere shortening differs between species. For instance, it has been shown before that telomeres in fast-aging, short-lived wild animals erode more rapidly than in slow-aging, long-lived species. Earlier this year, the author Franz Hoelzl and his colleagues from Vetmeduni Vienna showed that edible dormice has the capability to re-elongated its telomeres, given that food availability is high. This finding raised the question about the long-term balance between telomere attrition and repair. The relative telomere length (RTL) gave evidence To find an answer, the team started a long-tem study on changes in telomere length. In the Vienna Woods in Austria they regularly checked 130 nest-boxes that are occupied by free-living dormice. The researchers collected the rodent's buccal mucosa for three years. Thus, they could extract the DNA and determine the relative telomere length for each dormouse individually using qPCR. With this method scientists can define the amount of target DNA compared to a reference gene of the same sample. Elongation does not only occur, it even increases in older edible dormice "We found out that the telomeres were shortened in young animals but length significantly increased once the dormice were six years old or older. To top it all, the rate of telomere elongation also increased with increasing age of the dormice," says Franz Hoelzl. Among the variables tested, only age significantly affected RTL in a non-linear pattern with telomere length decreasing in younger and increasing in older dormice. Hoelz says, "Telomere length was not affected by time of the year, sex, body mass or reproductive activity at the time of sampling." Nevertheless, the analysis of long term reproduction-data of the same population shows that the probability to reproduce also increases with age. This finding could indicate that telomere elongation is actually part of the preparation for upcoming reproductive events, as gestation and lactation could increase oxidative stress and the animals may attempt to protect their genome. |
Turkish PM Erdoğan to Putin: Take us to Shanghai ST PETERSBURG Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) meets Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan in Strelna near St. Petersburg November 22, 2013. AA Photo Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has again opened up the debate on Turkey’s membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), this time demanding a seat from Russian President Vladimir Putin to save Ankara from “the troubles” of the EU accession process.Responding to a question over Ukraine’s recent decision to halt a trade pact with the European Union, Putin said the issue had no political dimension and that they would learn from Turkey’s EU experiences.“We will ask Turkey what we can do. Turkey has great experience in EU talks,” Putin said at a joint conference with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in St. Petersburg. Erdoğan replied: “You are right. Fifty years of experience is not easy. Allow us into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and save us from this trouble.”Ukraine abruptly abandoned a historic new alliance with the EU on Nov. 21, halting plans for an imminent trade pact with the bloc and saying it would instead revive talks with Russia.The prime minister said he had conveyed Turkey’s membership request to Putin before. “We care about this.”Turkey became the first NATO member state to become a “dialogue partner” with the regional body – which is colloquially known as the Shanghai Five – in April. Turkey said the cooperation would strengthen Turkey’s ties with the organization, primarily in the domains of economy and transportation.The SCO’s members include Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.The issue of SCO membership had come to the political agenda of Turkey earlier this year after Erdoğan said Turkey might opt to join the SCO. Erdoğan raised the issue in January at a time when hopes regarding the EU process were diminishing due to the adamant opposition of a number of members states toward Turkey’s membership.“I said to Russian President Vladimir Putin, ‘You tease us, saying, ‘What [is Turkey] doing in the EU?’ Now I tease you: Include us in the Shanghai Five, and we will forget about the EU,’” Erdoğan said at the time. The prime minister’s remarks fueled debates on whether Turkey was moving away from its policy target of EU membership. President Abdullah Gül also reiterated that the SCO and the EU were not alternatives to each other at the time.Accompanied by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Energy Minister Taner Yıldız, Erdoğan met Putin and co-chaired the fourth session of the High-Level Russian-Turkish Cooperation Council, where the two sides signed several agreements.Meanwhile, Putin said Western states must persuade the Syrian opposition to attend talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government which he said should take place as soon as possible.“Russia took on the responsibility of convincing the Syrian leadership. We did our part. It is up to our partners, who must convince the opposition to do the same,” Putin said at the press conference.Erdoğan said delays to the peace conference were simply buying time for al-Assad. “The civilian population has been killed with planes, helicopters, tanks and shells. In Syria, the regime bears the primary responsibility for this. On the opposite side, extremist groups also bear responsibility. But they have only short- and long-range weapons. But the regime does not differentiate,” Erdoğan said. |
Zoffix Znet really hit the ground running this week! After announcing his IO plan, publishing his progress report for the month of March and waiting for the end of the comment period, he published the IO Upgrade Information, and after some late insights, IO Upgrade Information, Part 2, which contain an up-to-date account how things are progressing. And there’s of course the list of IO issues he’s working on. If you’re interested in these developments, please check these out. And contact Zoffix with any feedback, the sooner the better! Improving the Robustness of Unicode Support Samantha McVey put up a grant proposal covering the following deliverables: Programmatic determination of Unicode names. Implement Unicode collation algorithm. Properly support grapheme breaking in Unicode 9.0 and beyond. Improvements on Unicode database generation. Documentation of deficits in the support. Check it out and give her your opinion! Camelia in the Wild A new section in the Perl 6 weekly where spottings of Camelia in the wild can be reported. This week’s spotting was at a concert of ARW in Brussels. Try out Perl 6 online If you would like to try out some Perl 6 code without wanting to install Rakudo, you can now also go to https://tio.run/nexus/perl6! Just type in your code, click the play button and see the result! Too bad it currently runs the 2017.01 release, which is now over 2 months old! Still, if you just want to test some code, that is pretty recent and beats many packages provided by some distributions. NativeCall Introduction Naoum Hankache‘s excellent Perl 6 Introduction now has a chapter introducing the NativeCall interface (explaining how you can easily call code from external libraries from your Perl 6 source code). For now that chapter is available in English only, but I have no doubt the other languages (Bulgarian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish) will follow soon! Coverage reports The Rakudo Perl 6 core has up-to-date coverage reports again. And now we also have coverage reports for Moar, thanks to Samantha McVey. So if you’re looking to add some tests to get better coverage, that’s where you can find which parts of the system are not tested yet! Other Core Developments Jan-Olof Hendig fixed a problem with the total number of tests run using the harness6 (aka the Perl 6 version of prove ) while doing a spectest or stresstest . Which brings us one step closer to running spectest using Perl 6 by default (instead of Perl 5). fixed a problem with the total number of tests run using the (aka the Perl 6 version of ) while doing a or . Which brings us one step closer to running spectest using Perl 6 by default (instead of Perl 5). Fernando Correa fixed a problem with multi-dimensional hash slices (such as %h{"foo","bar"; "baz"} . fixed a problem with multi-dimensional hash slices (such as . Daniel Green and Timo Paulssen fixed a problem with unsigned native int s that at some VM level, were not marked as unsigned. and fixed a problem with unsigned native s that at some VM level, were not marked as unsigned. Samantha McVey improved the speed m:i/ / regex matching between 1.8x and 3.3x (depending on not finding a match / finding a match at the beginning). improved the speed regex matching between 1.8x and 3.3x (depending on not finding a match / finding a match at the beginning). Jonathan Worthington improved error reporting on Parameter binding, allowing for a slightly better error message that includes the non-matching value and, where the constraint is a named subset type, that type name. improved error reporting on binding, allowing for a slightly better error message that includes the non-matching value and, where the constraint is a named subset type, that type name. Apart from all of the work on IO , Zoffix also fixed a problem with matching in loops and $/ that affected ~~ as well as .subst , .subst-mutate , Grammar.parse and Grammar.parsefile . , also fixed a problem with matching in loops and that affected as well as , , and . Elizabeth Mattijsen made a lot of set operators, as well as coercions to Set(Hash) , Bag(Hash) or Mix(Hash) from 30% to 25x faster, mostly by avoiding (where possible) potentially expensive calls to .WHICH . She also made sure that set() , bag() and mix() (aka the empty immutable Set , Bag and Mix ) only exist in memory once. Finally, she also improved TAI / epoch conversions, e.g. making now about 20% faster. made a lot of set operators, as well as coercions to , or from 30% to 25x faster, mostly by avoiding (where possible) potentially expensive calls to . She also made sure that , and (aka the empty immutable , and ) only exist in memory once. Finally, she also improved / conversions, e.g. making about 20% faster. And as usual many other smaller fixes and improvements. Blog Posts Meanwhile on Twitter Meanwhile on StackOverflow Meanwhile on FaceBook Paul Bennett mentioned STOKE, an interesting approach to optimisation: The ACM has a paper on a new compiler optimization called STOKE. It calls itself “stochastic”, but they seem to mean something other than “random” … more like “capable of working outside the explicit order of operations as given”. It beats gcc -O3 by a significant margin. Ecosystem Additions Sparrowdo::Cpanm::GitHub by Alexey Melezhik . . Platform by Jarkko Haapalainen. Winding Down Wow, what a busy week again. Please check in again next week for more Perl 6 news! Advertisements |
Johannesburg - Farmworkers on commercial farms could own half of the farms according to a new proposal government was considering, Rapport said on Sunday. The proposal meant expropriating half of every commercial farm in South Africa and handing it over to farmworkers, according to the report. The newspaper was in possession of a document named "Final Policy Proposals for Strengthening the Relative Rights of People Working the Land", which was discussed with agricultural organisations on Monday. The historic owners would retain half of their farms and the state would pay for the 50% taken for the workers, Rapport said. The money would not be paid to the farmowners but into a trust aimed at investing and developing the farm for all shareholders of the farm. Unworkable Farmworkers get shares in the farm based on the number of years of service and on the basis of their contribution in the development of the farm, according to the report. The document was met with mixed reactions with Congress of SA Trade Union welcoming it while AgriSA said drafts of the policy proposals had already been opposed by them and other organisations in the sector. AgriSA deputy president Theo de Jager said it was unworkable and probably unconstitutional. "They could possibly lead to disinvestment in the sector and also threaten food security," he was quoted as saying. |
Located on new artificail petal shaped island in Hainan, China. Hainan Ocean Flower Resort is an amazing masterpiece of futuristic architecture that was designed by LAVA Architects to create a new 7 star "water drop" hotel is based on the simple, natural geometry of a water drop. Project's description: Water + Architecture – rocks formations created by water erosion, sea caverns, ripples – is the design inspiration. It’s located on a new man-made petal shaped island, linked by a bridge to the island of Hainan. It will house a mix of commercial, retail, leisure [from opera to ice skating] and convention facilities, offices and luxury residential, in cascading building forms. The island is zoned by seasons: ‘winter wonderland’, ‘amber autumn’. Liquefied geometry links the hotel form to the surrounding water, integrating spaces above and below the water line including an elevated green space. The smooth flowing semi symmetrical geometry of natural ripples informs the hotel marina that seamlessly connects to the hotel base to create an exclusive water experience on each side of the hotel tower. A central glass atrium brings natural light and air into the hotel areas. Sustainable features include a bio filtration system, solar energy, wind generation and water collection. Construction of the island has started and the hotel is due for completion in 2020. > Futuristic architecture of Bay Super City in Shenzhen > Floating City by AT Design Office > Asian Cairns: futuristic architecture by Vincent Callebaut Architectures view more futuristic architecture |
Today, the President announced 42 additional grants of clemency to men and women serving years in prison under outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws. The individuals receiving a presidential commutation today have more than repaid their debt to society and earned this second chance. To date, the President has commuted the sentences of 348 individuals -- more than the previous seven Presidents combined. He remains committed to using his clemency power throughout the remainder of the Administration to give more deserving individuals that same second chance. As the President has said, part of this effort includes lifting up the stories of the men and women who have been granted clemency and are now making the most of their second chances. Watch the stories of Norman Brown, Ramona Brant, and Phillip Emmert, three clemency recipients who served unduly harsh sentences for drug crimes. You can read more about their stories here. Despite these important efforts, only legislation can bring about lasting change to the federal system. There remain thousands of men and women in federal prison serving sentences longer than necessary, often due to overly harsh mandatory minimum sentences. That is one reason it is critical that both the House and the Senate continue to cooperate on a bipartisan basis to get a criminal justice reform bill to the President's desk. President Obama: A Nation of Second Chances On May 5, 2016, President Obama announced 58 new grants of clemency and wrote about how reinvigorating our commutations process is part of a larger effort to reform our criminal justice system: "Earlier this spring, I met with a group of individuals whose sentences were commuted either by President Bush, President Clinton, or myself. They were all at different stages of a new chapter in their lives, but each of their stories was extraordinary. "Take Phillip Emmert. When he was 27, Phillip made a mistake. He was arrested and convicted for distributing methamphetamines and received a 27-year sentence. So, by the time he was released, he’d have spent half his life behind bars. "Unfortunately, while in prison, his wife was paralyzed in an accident. So while he was in prison, Phil learned everything he could about fixing heating and air conditioning systems — so he could support his wife when he got out. And after his sentence was commuted by President Bush, he was able to do just that. Today, he’s gainfully employed. He’s a caregiver for his wife, an active father, and a leader in his community. "Like so many nonviolent offenders serving unduly harsh sentences, Phillip is not a hardened criminal. He’s taken responsibility for his mistakes. And he’s worked hard to earn a second chance. "Today, I commuted the sentences of an additional 58 individuals just as deserving as Phillip — individuals who can look to him as inspiration for what is possible in their lives." Continue reading the President's post on Medium. President Obama Has Now Commuted the Sentences of 248 Individuals On March 30, 2016, the President announced 61 new grants of commutation to individuals serving years in prison under outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws. More than one-third of them were serving life sentences. To date, the President has now commuted the sentences of 248 individuals – more than the previous six Presidents combined. And, in total, he has commuted 92 life sentences. Underscoring his commitment not just to clemency, but to helping those who earn their freedom make the most of their second chance, the President will meet today with commutation recipients from both his Administration and the previous administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. During the meeting, the commutation recipients will discuss their firsthand experiences with the reentry process and ways that the process can be strengthened to give every individual the resources he or she needs to transition from prison and lead a fulfilling, productive life. President Barack Obama hugs Kemba Smith during a greet with formerly incarcerated individuals who have received commutations, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, March 30, 2016. Following that meeting the President took the group to lunch at a local restaurant. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) President Barack Obama meets for lunch with formerly incarcerated individuals who have received commutations, at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., March 30, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Watch President Obama drop by a meeting with past clemency recipients. Building on this conversation, tomorrow the White House will host a briefing titled Life After Clemency with advocates, academics, and Administration officials to discuss and share ideas on the President’s clemency initiative and ways to improve paths to reentry. In addition to officials from the White House and the Department of Justice, experts, academics, and commutation recipients will share their expertise and insights on returning to society after years behind bars. To watch the briefing live, tune in tomorrow, Thursday, March 31, at 2:00 PM EDT at obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/live. Throughout the remainder of his time in office, the President is committed to continuing to issue more grants of clemency as well as to strengthening rehabilitation programs. As he wrote in a letter to the 61 individuals receiving clemency today: “The power to grant pardons and commutations… embodies the basic belief in our democracy that people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives that led to a conviction under our laws.” And, he cautioned those receiving clemency that what they do with this unexpected opportunity reflects not only on each individual person, but also on all those still behind bars who are seeking that same shot at a new life. Despite the progress we have made, it is important to remember that clemency is nearly always a tool of last resort that can help specific individuals, but does nothing to make our criminal justice system on the whole more fair and just. Clemency of individual cases alone cannot fix decades of overly punitive sentencing policies. So while we continue to work to resolve as many clemency applications as possible – and make no mistake, we are working hard at this – only broader criminal justice reform can truly bring justice to the many thousands of people behind bars serving unduly harsh and outdated sentences. Fortunately, we are at a unique moment in history where such reform is possible. For the first time in a quarter century, Americans across the board acknowledge that the criminal justice system is broken and needs to change. This is no longer a partisan issue: Republicans and Democrats agree that many sentencing laws are outdated and unnecessarily harsh. We are continuing to work in bipartisan fashion to secure those much-needed, long-overdue reforms in Congress so that thousands more deserving individuals may benefit from the second-chance that these individuals earned today. Neil Eggleston is White House Counsel to the President |
Crew SC earned a second consecutive point, drawing 1-1 with FC Dallas in Frisco, Texas Saturday night. Let’s break down the Black & Gold's second straight road match by the numbers… 7 The Black & Gold snapped the Hoops’ seven-match win streak at home and scored the first goal by an opponent at Toyota Stadium this season. But second-half sub Tesho Akindele scored for the home team in the 77th minute to even the score at one, tapping in a loose rebound. 9 Crew SC came out hot and got on the board early as its No. 9 Justin Meram scored in the 9th minute. Running through the hosts’ defense onto a corner kick by Federico Higuaín, he buried a powerful header to beat Dallas goalkeeper Chris Seitz near post. We can’t get enough of this goal celebration for the middy’s first goal this season… 3 Meram put away Crew SC’s third goal of the season, assisted by Pipa—his 33rd career helper. Meram led his team with three shots on goal (four total), Kei Kamara followed suit with three shots (two on goal) and Ethan Finlay tallied the only other strike for the Black & Gold on the night, as they attempted four per half. Steve Clark fought off several Dallas attackers making three saves. 78 Columbus impressed again with passing accuracy at 78%. Through four matches, they now boast an average of 81.53%, above the MLS average. A reliable contributor was in the lineup for the first 78 minutes of play Saturday as Mohammed Saeid started for the Black & Gold. His precision was present, leading Crew SC’s starters with 91.07% passing accuracy. |
"In the days of the Kings most of the High Elves that still lingered in Middle-earth dwelt with Círdan or in the seawards lands of Lindon. If any now remain they are few." –J.R.R. Tolkien, Appendix A One of the greatest things about The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is the way it reinvents itself with each new cycle and each new scenario. The structural flexibility of the game's quest and encounter decks permit a seemingly endless array of heroic quests, perilous dungeon crawls, epic battles, and sinister mysteries. From the shadows of Mirkwood, the game has delved into the heart of Khazad-dûm, traveled through the forests of Ithilien, and ventured into the tainted realms of Angmar. Each new adventure has heralded new challenges and afforded new experiences. And each new Nightmare Deck has taken one of those experiences and rarified it into something just a little darker, a little deadlier, and a little bit more focused—filled with terrifying surprises certain to trip the unwary travelers who fall back to their tried-and-true strategies. Now three more of these Nightmare Decks are available via FFG's in-house factory. Combined in a single package of 62 cards, The Grey Havens Nightmare Decks hit like a sudden squall, dramatically changing the course of the nautical adventures The Grey Havens expansion first allowed you to enjoy aboard the Dream-chaser and west of the shores of Middle-earth. For a more detailed look at how these Nightmare Decks modify the expansion's three scenarios, we turn to developer Matt Newman. Voyage Across Belegaer The first scenario in The Grey Havens, Voyage Across Belegaer was originally designed as a tutorial to introduce the new rules for sailing, ships, and boarding that the expansion introduced. These new mechanics changed up the ways that players quest and the ways they perceive enemies in the staging area, so it seemed natural to offer players a chance to experience these new mechanics for the first time in a scenario that was basically "what you see is what you get." That said, the scenario had one more aspect of interest in its quest deck, which contained many different Stage 2 quests, and players needed to sail through them one by one, although they could skip one each time they completed a stage while staying on-course. For the Voyage Across Belegaer Nightmare Deck, I had two primary goals, and they ensured the scenario would no longer—by any means—be considered an introductory tutorial. My first goal was to ensure confrontation between the players and the Corsairs, since the original version made it possible—desirable, even—to try to stay under the radar and avoid enemies. The second was to make Sailing tests more difficult. The gloves are off in Nightmare Mode, after all! To that end, two new Stage 2 quests are included in this version of the scenario, Corsair Confrontation (Voyage Across Belegaer Nightmare Deck, 2) and Lost at Sea (Voyage Across Belegaer Nightmare Deck, 3), and each requires the players to deal with Corsairs or Sailing tests. There are also new enemies, new ship enemies, and new locations that replace some of the easier cards from the original version. These cards test the players’ ability to manage their ships, their heading, their progress, and their threat simultaneously. Finally, there is a new treachery with a deadly effect that triggers not when it is revealed from the encounter deck, but when it is discarded during a Sailing test, dealing damage to every character committed to the test. In the end, this scenario has been transformed from an introductory tutorial into a grueling and deadly voyage across the ocean that you will be hard-pressed to survive! The Fate of Númenor When we designed the Nightmare version of The Fate of Númenor, we knew we wanted to work with its double-sided locations, and we ultimately decided the best way was to create a whole new set of them, creating some new ones and reprinting some of the originals. The result is that you'll recognize some familiar locations, but you'll also stumble into such terrifying new locations as Desecrated Grounds (The Fate of Númenor, 7). Another change in this scenario comes from the Nightmare Setup card (The Fate of Númenor, 1), which guarantees that players at Stage 2 cannot stumble into the Shrine to Morgoth too early. In Nightmare Mode, you must explore more of the uncharted locations in the staging area before you can find the Shrine. Finally, many of the new enemy and treachery cards in the Nightmare version of this quest enhance its manipulation of the bottom of your deck, and these cards tend to become more powerful the lower the cost of the cards in your deck. While this theme was explored in the original scenario, it really reaches critical mass in Nightmare mode, with cards like Corrupted Flora (The Fate of Númenor, 11), which removes characters from the quest and deals damage. My personal favorite is Guardian of the Golden King (The Fate of Númenor, 9), a powerful opponent who can remove attacking characters from combat. When you play this deadly new version of The Fate of Númenor, you’ll definitely want to stick close to Calphon’s (The Grey Havens, 28) side. Raid on the Grey Havens The climactic scenario from The Grey Havens, Raid on the Grey Havens had players on the defensive, protecting the ships in the Grey Havens from attack by deadly Corsairs. One of the things I loved about this quest was the Aflame version of the Dream-chaser that felt really tragic and personal to me. I wanted each of the players to feel this personal connection to the quest, so the first thing I did in the Nightmare version of this quest was add a new Aflame version of the rest of the Dream-chaser’s fleet—the Nárelenya (Raid on the Grey Havens, 6), the Dawn Star (Raid on the Grey Havens, 7), and the Silver Wing (Raid on the Grey Havens, 8). Each of these has a Forced effect that mirrors the ship’s original ability, dealing damage to the ship if triggered. These new locations also advance one of this Nightmare Deck's greatest goals—to burn more ships to the ground! The more Ship locations you have in play—and the more you have damage dealt to them—the more likely you are to lose from The Havens Burn (The Grey Havens, 38), which amplifies the quest's tension and excitement. The other major goal we pursued with this version of the quest is to make the battle with Captain Sahír (The Grey Havens, 76) and Na’asiyah (The Grey Havens, 78) deadlier and more thrilling. The new version of Stage 2, Sahír’s Advance (Raid on the Grey Havens, 2), works toward this goal. First, it does away with the ability to remove damage from locations by questing successfully, which means Aflame locations and The Havens Burn remain a huge threat during Stage 2. Second, Na’asiyah actually supports her captain during this stage, adding her resources to his throughout the battle. Finally, both Na’asiyah and Sahír must be defeated in order for the players to win. No longer can players effectively ignore Na’asiyah and go straight for Sahír; they must contend with both of them fighting in unison! These new threats, along with those posed by its new Raider enemies, Aflame locations, and treachery cards, should make the scenario a harrowing experience even for experienced The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game players! Face the Raging Seas Continuing in the greatest traditions of The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, The Grey Havens Nightmare Decks build upon the game's versatile framework—and the thrilling adventures from The Grey Havens expansion—to offer you bold, colorful, and thematic new experiences in the world of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. Are you ready to face these deadly new challenges? Pick up your copy of The Grey Havens Nightmare Decks today! |
A Depressed Press Series Part 8 of 12 of A.I. Movie Festival Not all explorations of A.I. need to be long, bladder-testing epics (I’m looking at you, misters Spielberg and Kubrick). Sometimes all you need is a few minutes. The following five shorts are all less than 10 minutes long, yet each deftly explores major themes of artificial intelligence and would give any feature film a run for its money. “Abe” by Rob McLellan Abe is the deliciously disturbing story of an A.I. turned psychotic by its one, overriding need: to be loved. It explores the emergent, unintended consequences of A.I. in the darkest way imaginable. Although likely a victim of MGM’s financial implosion, the short had been optioned by the studio for a feature film. “AMP” by Triton Films Switching gears, so to speak, AMP is a combination short/demo/trailer for a buddy action flick starring a wise-cracking protagonist and his loyal brute of a robot pal. Think Turner and Hooch with less slobber and a hot mechanic. “Kara” by David Cage and Quantic Dream This one always chokes me up. Kara brings us behind the scenes of an android construction facility where a hapless quality tester has to deal with something unexpected. Produced as a technical demo for the PlayStation 3 by cinematic game pioneer David Cage. “R’ha” by Kaleb Lechowski Another short currently in the pipeline to become a feature film, R’ha drops us in the middle of a war between an alien race and the A.I. army that has turned against them. “Changing Batteries” by MMU, Malaysia Finally we have the heart wrencher, Changing Batteries, where a dedicated service robot is faced with a situation he can’t understand. Call your parents, people! The cat’s in the cradle! It’s in the cradle! |
'House Of Cards' In 4K Will Eat Broadband Caps Like Popcorn Shrimp from the pricing-innovation dept "Streaming in 1080p on Netflix takes up 4.7GB/hour. So a regular one-hour episode of something debiting less than 5GB from your allotment is no big deal. However, with 4K, you've got quadruple the pixel count, so you're burning through 18.8GB/hour. Even if you're streaming with the new h.265 codec—which cuts the bit rate by about half, but still hasn't found its way into many consumer products—you're still looking at 7GB/hour. But you're not watching just one episode, are you? Of course not! You're binging on House of Cards, watching the whole series if not in one weekend then certainly in one month. That's 639 minutes of top-quality TV, which in 4K tallies up to 75GB if you're using the latest and greatest codec, and nearly 200GB if not. That means, best case scenario, a quarter of your cap—a third, if you're a U-Verse customer with a 250GB cap—spent on one television show. Throw in a normal month's internet usage, and you're toast." After years of pretending that broadband usage caps were necessary because of network congestion, the cable industry not all that long ago admitted that congestion had nothing to do with it . While the industry still pretends that usage caps on broadband networks are about their expression of "creativity" and "pricing innovation," most people realize caps were always designed to milk yet more money out of an already profitable network (and make no mistake, unlimited, flat-rate pricingprofitable), while allowing gatekeepers to simultaneously cash in on and inhibit Internet video. Carriers are relentlessly trying to expand usage caps under the banner of "fairness," and they're aided by an uncompetitive broadband market.Despite claims that imposing caps is about altruism or even helping grandmothers , most consumers understand that ISPs want them to pay more money for the same product at a time when network hardware and bandwidth costs are falling. Generally, ISPs that do impose caps insist that these caps will be flexible as modern usage evolves. That claim is about to get tested more seriously as next-generation game console downloads and 4K video slowly come to market.Netflix CEO Reed Hastings not that long ago stated the company's planned 4K streams will need at least 15 Mbps but optimally 50 Mbps. Streaming a 1080p 3D movie from Netflix at the moment eats around 4 to 5 GB per hour, a total that could jump to closer to 20 to 30 GB per hour with 4K video. Similarly, Sony is cooking up a 4K video download service that could involve downloads as high as 100 GB per title. It's a subject getting revisited with everybody binge-watching "House of Cards." Tacking 4K video on to existing bandwidth consumption begins to get very bandwidth intensive when you're talking about entire series at 4K resolution (how much modern compression codecs like Google's VP9 or H.265 will help are very rough estimates):Gizmodo doesn't note that many people's bandwidth caps are even lower. CenturyLink, Suddenlink and AT&T lay claim to tens of millions of DSL users (which the companies don't intend to upgrade anytime soon) who face 150 GB monthly capsa significant flat monthly fee --sometimes the cost of a mandatory copper voice line and all the additional, annoying fees that entails. Those slower, 3-10 Mbps connections in reality cost very little to provision and provide, but there's the rub: these customers are being aggressively beaten about the head and neck on price because of limited nationwide competition. Innovation and creative pricing, indeed.ISPs have long defended low bandwidth caps by claiming that the majority of today's users wouldn't be impacted by them, knowing full well that the majority of tomorrow's users would. That day is coming quicker than you'd think, and it's worth watching whether ISPs are flexible on allotments, or if they keep existing allotments firmly in place to intentionally clothesline Internet video customers -- especially those looking to cut the cord. Filed Under: 4k, broadband, house of cards, reed hastings Companies: netflix |
In only a few days on the job, new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci is already doing what others have been unable to do. He is weeding out the people responsible for leaking key White House intel to the press. Scaramucci had made the claim that this was his top priority and it appears that he was telling the truth. Former assistant press secretary, Michael Short, fired on Tuesday. Michael Short, the (now-former) assistant press secretary, was the first casualty of the promise of Scaramucci. Politico reported (and confirmed via Anthony Scaramucci himself) early Tuesday morning that Short was going to be fired later that day. When questioned about the report, Short gave no inclination that he already knew of the news, but then resigned Tuesday afternoon before being fired. Scaramucci was very direct with his disdain that Short would learn of his pending termination from the media before he even received the news officially. Please consider donating by clicking the button below and donate to the cause! Anthony Scaramucci to reporters at the White House on Tuesday: “This is the problem with the leaking. This is actually a terrible thing. Let’s say I’m firing Michael Short today. The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.” Tuesday’s firing to be the first of many by the new White House Communications Director. From Politico: “I’m going to fire everybody, that’s how I’m going to do it,” Scaramucci said to reporters outside of the White House on Tuesday. “You’re either going to stop leaking or you’re going to be fired.” It’s refreshing to see someone keeping their word in regards to stopping the leaks. The slow drip of information and it’s subsequent spinning and distortion by the liberal media has been the one sticking point to the Trump administration thus far. Not only has it been detrimental to President Trump pushing through his agenda due to not being able to control the narrative, but it has given unfounded fuel to the fire of those that are ‘out for blood’ in the Russian investigation. A couple soundbites or anonymous quotes completely out of the scope of context are not only insignificant, but they are destructive when trying to find the real truth in a story or investigation. My hope is that Anthony Scaramucci completely cleans house. We need to get this course corrected. |
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