text stringlengths 0 100k |
|---|
India is currently caught amid global volatility, says Manishi Raychaudhuri of BNP Paribas. At the same time, quarterly results have disappointed and economic revival is not translating into corporate earnings, he says. However, he expects to see a 20 percent upside in the market by December 2016 and sees Sensex at 29000. Talking about the global market scenario, he says economists were initially of the view that the US Federal Reserve will raise rates thrice in 2016, but now they feel that it may not raise rates even once in 2016 and 2017. He also feels the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan (BoJ) will stick to their monetary expansion plans. The Fed may join them too, he adds. Below is the verbatim transcript of Manishi Raychaudhuri's interview with Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18. Sonia: It has not been a great start to the year at all, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have sold more than Rs 20,000 crore in cash in the month of February alone, what is the sense you are getting about the mood before the Budget and how investors should approach it? A: First of all, this FII selling that you referred to, it is not an India specific phenomenon. We have seen withdrawals from the entire gamut of emerging market and Asia ex-Japan funds. If you look at the last six-seven months, we have seen almost about USD 8-9 billion been taken out of these funds on a monthly basis. This is possibly the most long drawn out episode of such outflows. As a consequence of this, India has been some kind of a collateral damage sufferer. It has got caught in the ruckus that has resulted from these emerging market outflows. Now, there are of course certain India specific issues as well. In particular, if you look at the earnings estimates, they have not been great. We have seen over the last one month, three months and six months, the consensus earnings per share (EPS) numbers for any indices that you can think of, Sensex or MSCI India, they have come down anywhere between about 5-10 percent. We have also seen quarterly results disappointing quarter-after-quarter. Almost last three-four quarters, we have seen single digit growth or in some cases no growth at all. Currently this small revival in economic growth, that we are seeing, is clearly not translating into corporate earnings and I think that is the biggest worry on the part of emerging market investors. As a consequence, we have seen the emerging market investors' weight on India has also declined slightly. They still stay overweight. They have about 2-2.5 percent higher weight than the benchmark but that excess weight used to be anywhere in the range of 4-5 percent if you go back about six months to a year. So, it has not been a good chart. Though, there could be some inflexion points going forward particularly pertaining to consumption recovery in the rural areas. Also, some degree of investment recovery more for the government sponsored projects but all of these are as of now relegated to the second half of the fiscal year 2017. Sonia: Just a follow up to that point you made just about global collateral damage and how it is impacting India. You have a December 2016 Sesex target of 29,000, which is much above where we are currently at. What gives you the confidence that the market will move up despite the global volatility? A: If you look at the market currently, the Sensex is at about 23,300. So 29,000 essentially means close to about 20 percent upside from here. We are predicating that on the basis of somewhere around 11-12 percent earnings growth and maybe some small rerating. Having said this, I must also point out that when we came up with that target around late December last year, the market was at a slightly higher level and the concerns about earnings were not possibly so acute at that point of time particularly, the earnings trajectory in the banking and financial space. So, while these tend to be moving targets, I would still see possibly about mid-teens kind of market appreciation as far as India is concerned this year. Latha: What is the BNP Paribas view on the global jitters itself, does it look like after six weeks of rocky markets we are coming to some kind of stability or we are still going to experience this seismic shocks? A: There are a few encouraging data points when it comes to BNP Paribas expectations. For example, if I go back about three weeks, our US economists were talking about three rate hikes by the Fed in 2016. However, on February 11, we cut down that expectation quite drastically and now we are saying that in 2016 or 2017, we are not expecting the Fed to hike rates. So, this global turmoil and the concomitant concern about growth slowdown has clearly had its impact on global central banks. Primarily as of today, we are seeing the ECB and the Bank of Japan clearly indicating that they are likely to stick to the monetary policy expansion path. We believe the Fed would also join the club at some point of time. So that is positive and you have seen the concomitant effect on the DXY, the dollar. The dollar has depreciated over past couple of weeks in anticipation of this new found dovishness on the part of the Fed. So, I think this massive outflows that we are seeing from the emerging markets in the medium-term, we could see some kind of an ebb in those outflows and obviously that would turn out to be positive for the emerging markets. Sonia: I noticed in your India strategy and your basket of stocks, you have a lot of consumption oriented stocks names like Godrej Consumers, some of these two-wheeler markers like Hero Motocorp etc, what if in the Budget this time, the government decides to postpone a bit of the Seventh Pay Commission spends in order to meet or get close to that fiscal deficit target. Then do you think that the pace of growth in the consumption pace could perhaps slowdown? A: Right now, we are in a situation where the pace of consumption is not too rapid to start with. While urban consumption seems okay, rural consumption is still quite weak and the government in the Budget will have to focus on some alternative avenues of rural employment generation through rural infrastructure creation, more investment in irrigation and so on and so forth. If we don’t have a third bad monsoon -- and historically we have never had three deficient monsoons in succession -- then we would possibly have some degree of recovery in rural consumption in the second half of the fiscal year. So, I am talking about the October-December quarter and beyond. That could obviously be positive for the two-wheelers charts. You are right in pointing out that the government may postpone part of the Seventh Pay Commission payout though we think that even if it gets kind of spread out between two years, it would have some positive impact on consumer discretionary spend if we drop on the experience that we had from the Sixth Pay Commission payout. Of course that was much larger in magnitude. We must remember that and there was also an area of component in the Sixth Pay Commission. However, all-in-all the low base -- that rural consumption has created for itself -- one can only hope for it to go up maybe not right away but possibly in the second half of the year. Latha: What you see as trigger? Do you see the trigger for that inflexion point you spoke about as monsoon or the government doing something because government cannot spend much, so what is that inflexion point predicated upon? A: Let me point out two-three different things. The first thing for a market revival, we need a revival in the earnings environment. The big question is where is that going to come from. So, now think of the different segments of the economy. First, one needs a revival in investments. Private investments are not coming through because capacity utilisation is quite low and there is inadequate demand in the economy right now. So, investment recovery would have to be predicated on government investment and fortunately, we are seeing some movement on that side. We are seeing significant degree of acceleration in road ways implementation, we are seeing new investments coming up in railways, possibly also in port and inland waterways. Now, we must also remember that these large investments have a multiplier effect. So if we have two large factories, which are engaged in railway coach manufacturing, some bit of the component orders would obviously come down to the domestic private sector as well. But, for a larger chunk of private sector investment to come back, it is going to take a long time. As far as consumption recovery is concerned, I made the point that some part of the Pay Commission expenses coming back into consumption and hopefully a better monsoon in the season this year is likely to accelerate rural consumption from the low base that we have marked out for ourselves. So, if one looks at these two factors then one would come to the conclusion that the second half of the fiscal 2017 could turnout to be significantly better than the first half and we must not forget that over last six-seven quarters, we have had single digit earnings growth maybe in the range of 2-7 percent for India while the nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth is still in the range of about 8-10 percent. So, there is a big disconnect that we have seen and from this low base, it is quite possible that earnings would catch up at some point of time. |
Great deeds in Ireland: Richard Stanihursts De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis is the first full translation of the controversial Latin history of Ireland by the famous Dublin intellectual, Richard Stanihurst - ISBN 978-190900-572-3 €49, £39, Hardback, 234 x 156mm, 544pp, in Latin & English. He wrote it after fleeing Elizabethan London for the Netherlands.De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis was published in 1584 by Christopher Plantin, the greatest printer of the age. It provided a contemporary account of Ireland’s geography and people and what the author considered to be the greatest event in Irish history – the Anglo-Norman conquest. Relying on the work of Giraldus Cambrensis, Stanihurst celebrated the origins of the English colony in Ireland whilst simultaneously allegorizing the dilemma facing his own community from a new wave of Protestant English conquerors. The Anglo-Irishman’s attempt to introduce Ireland to the Europe’s Renaissance elite in a literary tour-de-force went awry after many Gaelic Irish, also exiled on the continent, objected to the book’s satirical portrayal of Ireland’s clergy and its representation of the country’s customs, history and learned classes. The book was burned on the orders of the Inquisition in Portugal, marked ‘prohibido’ in libraries in Spain and provoked a number of angry responses from readers and other writers over the following eighty years. Because of its centrality to debates about Ireland, Stanihurst’s De Rebus was the first book translation undertaken by the Centre for Neo-Latin Studies established at University College Cork for the study of this hitherto neglected corpus of Irish literature. John Barry has been involved in teaching and research in the Classics Department of University College Cork. He has written on various aspects of Irish Latin writing and the classical influence on Irish scholarship and has been a contributor to the New Oxford DNB. Hiram Morgan, teaches at University College Cork. He has written Tyrone’s Rebellion (Woodbridge, 1993) and has edited Political Ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641 (Dublin, 1999), Information, Media and Power through the Ages (Dublin, 2001) and The Battle of Kinsale (Bray, 2004). He was a founder and co-editor of History Ireland, Ireland’s illustrated history magazine. He is a former chairman of the Royal Irish Academy’s Historical Sciences Committee and is current current director of CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts of Ireland www.corkuniversitypress.com |
Major powers will send a message to US president-elect Donald Trump on Sunday that a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians is the only way forward, and warn that his plan to move the US embassy to Jerusalem could derail peace efforts. Some 70 countries, including key European and Arab states as well as the permanent members of the UN Security Council, are due in Paris for a meeting that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected as “futile” and “rigged”. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will be represented. But, just five days before Mr Trump is sworn in, the conference provides a platform for countries to send a strong signal to the future American leader. Mr Trump has pledged to pursue more pro-Israeli policies and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv, where it has been for 68 years, to Jerusalem, all but enshrining the city as Israel’s capital despite international objections. “It would be a unilateral decision that could escalate tensions on the ground,” a senior French diplomat said. “It’s not negligible that 70 countries recall (the need for) a two-state solution when his administration could implement controversial measures that may aggravate things.” France has said the meeting does not intend to impose anything on Israel or the Palestinians and that, ultimately, only direct negotiations between the two can resolve the conflict. “There is no time to waste,” French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told delegates at the opening of the all-day conference. “We are not sheltered from an explosion of violence.” A draft communique seen by Reuters reaffirms existing international resolutions, urges both sides to restate their commitment to the two-state solution and disavow officials who reject it, and asks the protagonists to “refrain from unilateral steps that prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations”. Diplomats said the communique could be toughened up with an allusion to Mr Trump’s plans for Jerusalem and whether to have a follow-up to the French initiative intensely debated. Relations between the United States and Israel have soured during president Barack Obama’s administration, reaching a low point late last month when Washington declined to veto a UN resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements in occupied territory. Mr Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, said the settlement programme threatened Middle East peace, and that the two-state solution was in “serious jeopardy”. Palestinian President Authority Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that he had written to Mr Trump warning that a move to Jerusalem would kill off the peace process and strip the United States of its role as honest broker - and could lead to the Palestinians going back on their recognition of Israel. Home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities, France has tried to breathe new life into the peace process over the past year. It believes that, with the uncertainty surrounding how the next US administration will handle the issue, it is important to push the sides back to talks rather than allowing a fragile status quo to fester. But with elections coming up this year in France and Germany, and Britain appearing to align itself more closely with the Trump administration on the issue, the prospects of the European Union, the largest economic partner for both Israel and the Palestinians, taking a lead on the matter appear unlikely. Arab states have their own concerns about how MR Trump’s relationship with them will turn out, and have taken a cautious line. “All this is premature. We need to give the new US administration time to assess what they want to do,” said a Middle Eastern diplomat based in Paris. Reuters |
METRO VANCOUVER -- A transient man arrested by Dutch police in a rental cabin at a rural holiday park has been charged in the 2012 death of extorted and cyberbullied teen Amanda Todd. RCMP confirmed late Thursday they recommended pornography, extortion and Internet luring charges against a suspect in the Netherlands in connection with Amanda’s suicide, which sparked international discussion online about cyberbullying and online safety. The arrest brought relief to Amanda’s parents, although little is known yet about the suspect, 35-year-old Aydin Coban according to B.C.’s online court records, or how he preyed on vulnerable victims around the world. === VIEW MORE PHOTOS HERE, or if you're using a mobile app, tap the story image and swipe. === “What we understand is that he was a drifter, he moved from cabin to cabin in different vacation parks. His lawyer told us that he went from trailer park to trailer park, that he was very to himself and he has no wife or children,” said Hessel Rippe, editor-in-chief of the website for Omroep Brabant, the Dutch news agency that broke this story Thursday. Prosecutors in the Netherlands confirmed a 35-year-old man was arrested in January and made his first court appearance in an Amsterdam court Wednesday, charged with multiple offences linked to luring young girls to expose themselves online and then blackmailing them later. Prosecutors there have not released Coban’s name yet. In the Dutch legal system - even when a case goes to trial - suspects are usually only identified by their first name and last initial. In October 2012, 15-year-old Todd was found dead in her Port Coquitlam home, five weeks after she posted a heartbreaking video on YouTube detailing how she was harassed online and bullied in real life. Amanda’s mother, Carol Todd, said she has always wished that police would solve the case but she doesn’t think there is only one person involved. “I’ve always hoped there would be something that came out of it,” she said in an interview Thursday. “If this guy is found guilty I hope they don’t stop there ... I think there is more.” RCMP said they told Amanda’s mother and father, Norm Todd, about the Dutch suspect only two hours before Thursday’s news conference to protect the integrity of their investigation. “I’m very proud to say that it was my major crime team that led this investigation,” said Coquitlam RCMP Insp. Paulette Freill. Freill wouldn’t elaborate on whether the suspect was first targeted by Canadian or Dutch investigators, but she said the Canadian charges relate to incidents that occurred between Jan. 1, 2010 and Oct. 10 2012. After Todd’s death, up to 30 officers from the Copquitlam detachment helped in the investigation, Freill said. After Thursday’s conference, B.C.’s Criminal Justice Branch released a statement saying it will ask the federal Department of Justice to request the man be extradited to Canada to face the five charges, but it is unclear how long that may take given the charges he also faces in his native country. The Dutch man is now facing one count each of extortion, Internet luring, criminal harassment, possession of child pornography for the purpose of distribution and possession of child pornography in connection with the suicide death of Amanda Todd. Carol Todd, now a vocal advocate for stricter security controls on sites like Facebook, gave a short statement at the news conference thanking investigators and wishing her daughter’s legacy would contribute to more online predators being caught. “I always knew deep in my heart that what my daughter told me was the truth,” said a teary-eyedTodd. “We respect that while this is a significant development, the judicial process has just started.” “Amanda’s story and the challenges she has faced touched many across the world, “ Todd said. She praised the RCMP’s efforts and said she hopes her daughter’s death will continue to create awareness around how dangerous the Internet can be for young people. “I’m just really glad that we finally have a suspect arrested, hopefully we can get some justice out of it,” Norm Todd said during a brief statement. In a statement released Wednesday, the National Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Netherlands said there could be several dozen victims in multiple countries, including the Netherlands, Greater Britain and the U.S. Dutch police are working with their counterparts in other countries, including the U.K. National Crime Agency. “The suspicions against the man are that he approached underage girls via the Internet and then seduced them into performing sexual acts in front of a webcam. He is suspected of subsequently (pressuring) them to participate in making new material. The investigation has not revealed any indications that the suspect abused his victims physically,” the statement said. Prosecutors allege the suspect may have also defrauded adult men outside the Netherlands. “These men performed sexual acts in front of the webcam on the assumption that they were in Internet contact with an underage boy. The suspect is thought to have blackmailed the men by threatening to hand the images over to the police,” the press release says. The suspect, arrested in the De Rosep park near Tilburg in the south of the country, remains in custody on charges of indecent assault, the production and dissemination of child pornography, fraud, computer intrusion, and the possession of hard drugs. According to Rippe, police seized a computer and a router from the suspect’s home, and are using the contents to identify as many victims as possible, which is expected to take some time. A court in Amsterdam ruled Wednesday the man will remain in custody as police continue their investigation. Details of the arrest were kept quiet until this week’s court appearance, Rippe said, because of the sensitivity of the case. Mathijs Pennings, the reporter with Omroep Brabantwho broke the story, said the suspect’s lawyer told him the man was born in the Netherlands, though his parents are Turkish immigrants. Authorities in the Netherlands were tipped off by an American Internet provider and seized computers when the man was arrested, Pennings said. The suspect’s lawyer, Christian van Dijk, said he doesn’t believe prosecutors have sufficient evidence to convict his client. He said even if there is evidence of unlawful activity on the man’s computer, it may have been hacked. “Prosecutors seem to think they have a big fish here, but if I see the evidence, it’s not much,” he said. “Lots of references to IP addresses and such.” In the video Amanda posted on YouTube before her death, Todd does not speak, but instead holds up to the camera pieces of paper on which she has printed her story, one phrase at a time. She documents a painful tale of being harassed through Facebook and shunned at school, leaving her feeling alone and suicidal. It started in Grade 8, when an embarrassing photo was circulated to her relatives, friends and schoolmates. Todd switched schools, but the extortion - and real-world bullying that it created - continued. “I can never get that photo back,” she writes. Later, she was confronted by a group of teens in front of her new school and beaten up in an attack that was filmed. Despondent, Todd went home and drank bleach. Her harassers posted photos of bleach and commented that they wished she were dead. Near the end of the video, she writes: “Every day I think why am I still here? ... I have nobody. I need someone.” The Todd case has been plagued by false information spread through social media. Shortly after her death, a hacktivist group had identified a Surrey teen as the girl’s tormentor, but RCMP later said the claim was “unfounded.” The Vancouver Sun interviewed the young man, who said he corresponded with Amanda online but was not one of her tormentors. The man identified by the hacktivist group — whose name was spread around social networks and on Vice.com but was not been published by mainstream media — told The Sun that he offered Todd help to uncover the identity of Amanda’s blackmailer. With files from Gillian Shaw, Chad Skelton, Tiffany Crawford and The Canadian Press lculbert@vancouversun.com Follow me: @LoriCulbert mhager@postmedia.com Follow me: @MikePHager === VIEW MORE PHOTOS HERE, or if you're using a mobile app, tap the story image and swipe. === |
Background and recording Edit The Offspring spent much of 1999 on tour promoting the Americana album. They also appeared at the infamous Woodstock 1999, where their performance was broadcast live on pay-per-view television. After some time off, the members reconvened in early 2000 to begin work on new material, nine songs of which were in the demo phase at the time. Frontman Dexter Holland told Rolling Stone in May 2000 that, "we came home last Christmas and we kind of took a month just trying to recoup and we started thinking, 'Well, do we want to get started on another record right away?'. "We're all pretty excited about the way things have gone so I spent a couple of months trying to come up with some new material and then [started] jamming out these demos."[13] The Offspring officially entered the studio to begin recording sessions for Conspiracy of One in June 2000. For the recording of the album, the band tapped Brendan O'Brien as its producer and recorded the album at NRG studios in North Hollywood, California over a two-month period. Reception Edit Track listing Edit All tracks written by Bryan Keith Holland, Kevin John Wasserman, Gregory David Kriesel, Ronald Welty[19]. No. Title Length 1. "Intro" 0:06 2. "Come Out Swinging" 2:47 3. "Original Prankster" 3:42 4. "Want You Bad" 3:23 5. "Million Miles Away" 3:40 6. "Dammit, I Changed Again" 2:49 7. "Living in Chaos" 3:28 8. "Special Delivery" 3:00 9. "One Fine Day" 2:45 10. "All Along" 1:39 11. "Denial, Revisited" 4:33 12. "Vultures" 3:35 13. "Conspiracy of One" 2:17 Total length: 37:44 Bonus tracks Edit Australian and European bonus track No. Title Length 14. "Huck It" 2:38 Total length: 40:22 Japanese bonus tracks No. Title Length 14. "Huck It" 2:38 15. "The Kids Aren't Alright" (Live) 3:03 Total length: 43:25 Vinyl bonus track No. Title Length 14. "80 Times" (T.S.O.L. cover) 2:07 Total length: 39:51 Best Buy bonus tracks No. Title Length 14. "Staring At The Sun" (Live) 2:28 15. "All I Want" (Live) 2:08 Total length: 42:20 Chart performance Edit Personnel Edit |
A Chinese businessman has pleaded guilty to conspiring to hack into the computer systems of U.S. defence contractors, including Boeing, to steal data on military projects, according to court records released Wednesday. Su Bin, 50, admitted to conspiring with two unnamed hackers in China to export U.S. military information to the communist nation between 2008 and 2014, according to a plea agreement reached in federal California court on Tuesday. The U.S. Department of Justice said Su Bin and two other conspirators are alleged to have accessed the computer networks of U.S. defense contractors without authorization and stolen data related to military aircraft and weapons systems. This image shows a page of the flight test plan for the F-35, which the FBI says is possibly the world's most advanced multi-role fighter aircraft, from an internal company document that Su Bin allegedly acquired and edited — adding translation — before passing it back to contacts in China. (U.S. criminal court complaint June 27, 2014) Su was arrested in Richmond in the summer of 2014, and extradited to the U.S. in February. He is a Chinese citizen and permanent resident of Canada. The men targeted fighter jets such as the F-22 and the F-35, as well as Boeing's C-17 military cargo aircraft program, according to court papers. Su's attorney, Robert Anello, declined to discuss the case in detail except to say that Su is "hopeful to move on with his life." Su, described by prosecutors as a China-based businessman in the aviation and aerospace fields, faces up to five years in federal prison at his sentencing July 13. He had faced 30 years before reaching the plea agreement with prosecutors. As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors say Su would email the hackers in China explaining what people, companies and technology to target. Once data was stolen, prosecutors say Su would translate it from English to Chinese, and email the value of the information to those who benefited from its theft. U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker said in a statement Wednesday that cybercrime is one of the most serious national security threats. Su's "guilty plea and conviction demonstrate that these criminals can be held accountable no matter where they are located in the world and that we are deeply committed to protecting our sensitive data in order to keep our nation safe." Cybersecurity has become an increasingly sore point in U.S.-China relations. A report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission last year found that China's increasing use of cyber espionage has already cost U.S. companies tens of billions of dollars in lost sales and expenses in repairing the damage from hacking. In many cases, the report says stolen trade secrets have been turned over to Chinese government-owned companies. "The United States is ill-prepared to defend itself from cyber espionage when its adversary is determined, centrally co-ordinated,and technically sophisticated, as is the CCP and China's government," according to the report, referring to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. |
Editor’s Note: Secret ‘250% Calendar’ Exposed — Free Video Editor’s Note: Secret ‘250% Calendar’ Exposed — Free Video In addition to banning banks from handling Bitcoin (BTC) transactions in November, China banned financial institutions like third party payment providers in December.The Chinese government also announced that it does not recognize BTC as a currency but does recognize it as a virtual commodity. As a result, Chinese citizens can still trade BTC at their own risk but cannot use BTC as an alternative to the renminbi to buy goods and services.What was the motivation behind this move?To understand why the Chinese government is not crazy about the Bitcoin, one has to understand two facts about China: it has a goal to dominate the world economy and centralization is the organizing principle of the Chinese Communist party.A tool used in China’s efforts to dominate the world economy is controlling their currency. It is no secret that instead of letting their currency freely trade in a competitive market, they are artificially keeping the renminbi weak to make their exports cheaper and therefore more competitive.The Chinese government needed to clamp down on BTC before it gained enough momentum to threaten the government’s monopoly on currency. After all, if BTC became a medium of exchange for economic transactions, the Chinese renminbi would lose market share and China would lose the power and influence to manipulate their people and their destiny.Centralization is the very nature of a Communist government like China. For those in power, there is no current conceivable need to decentralize something as important as their control over currency and cede it to BTC, which they cannot control.The sudden increase in interest by Chinese citizens in BTC (BTC software downloads in China outnumbered the U.S. by 2-to-1) and how retailers and restaurants quickly learned how to accept BTC transactions must have alarmed Beijing.There are also immediate and practical reasons for the Chinese government coming down on BTC. Because BTCs trade globally and there is some anonymity with owner names, it could be a method for Chinese citizens to transfer their wealth out of China without the usual foreign exchange controls.It also offers opportunities for criminals to launder money in a less regulated environment. The Chinese government loathes any currency leaking out of their control, whether earned legally or not.Note that China still allows BTC to be traded like a commodity such as gold, which means in a highly regulated environment. This allows China to study BTC and decide on its own schedule whether to allow its use or develop its own version if it is in their best interest to do so.When banks were banned by China from accepting BTC, the price plummeted from $1,200 to $600 before stabilizing at $800. When other financial institutions were banned, BTC traded as low as $422 before recovering in a few weeks to around $800 again.Speculators swung from elation from an encouraging U.S. Senate hearing to being panicked from back-to-back bad news that one of the largest markets in the world was being closed off to BTC.Looking beyond the volatility and these early setbacks in clearly what is a long-term game, the bigger and more important picture is being missed. China is afraid of BTC because of its real potential to disrupt its plan for economic supremacy. Bitcoin by its very nature is decentralized. It is subject to the free market and the trust between two people doing a transaction, not by the fiat of a government mandating its own will and purposes.Consequently, China’s ban actually validates cryptocurrencies and their transformational possibilities. |
More than 43,000 people have signed a petition against proposed U.S. legislation that would require tech companies to break into their users' encrypted data when ordered to by a judge. The proposal, from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, would require smartphone OS developers and other tech vendors to assist law enforcement agencies by breaking their own security measures. CREDO Action, a progressive activist group, launched a petition opposing the Compliance with Court Orders Act on Tuesday, and more than 43,000 people had signed it by early Thursday afternoon. The draft legislation would "undermine Americans’ privacy, make encryption illegal and force companies to weaken the security of their products and services," CREDO Action's website says. "We need to make sure this dangerous legislation doesn’t gain any traction in Congress." + MORE ON THIS BILL: Proposed encryption legislation: What you need to know + Burr, a North Carolina Republican, and Feinstein, a California Democrat, officially released the proposal Wednesday after it was leaked last week. The two senior members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have worked on the proposal as the FBI and Apple have sparred in court over the company's refusal to help unlock a terrorism suspect's iPhone. Several digital rights groups also have criticized the proposal. The draft bill "instructs every tech vendor in America to use either backdoored encryption or no encryption at all, even though practically every security expert in the country would tell you that means laying down our arms in the constant fight to secure our data against thieves, hackers, and spies," wrote Kevin Bankston, director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, in a blog post. Several former intelligence officials have called for the U.S. government to support strong encryption, Bankston noted. "The fact that this lose-lose proposal is coming from the leaders of our Senate’s intelligence committee ... would be embarrassing if it weren’t so frightening," he added. The draft proposal is meant to start a "meaningful" discussion about the role of encryption and law enforcement access to criminal suspects' devices, Burr said in a statement. "I have long believed that data is too insecure, and feel strongly that consumers have a right to seek solutions that protect their information – which involves strong encryption," Burr added. "I do not believe, however, that those solutions should be above the law." |
U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) takes questions at a news conference in Washington, U.S. May 12, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/Files As President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress lurched between repealing Obamacare or rewriting the U.S. tax code as their top priority, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday dampened White House hopes for a quick vote on healthcare legislation. With this back-and-forth, there were questions over how Trump will manage to get major legislation accomplished this year, causing uncertainty in financial markets of the direction Republicans will steer government. Republican lawmakers said the new push on healthcare would maintain Obamacare’s essential health benefits clause listing services and care that insurers must cover. But in a move to attract hard-line conservatives, states could apply for a waiver if they could show it would improve coverage and reduce costs. In remarks to reporters after a closed meeting with fellow House Republicans, Ryan said the renewed healthcare effort, following last month’s failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, was simply in the “conceptual stage right now.” He refused to give a time line for having a bill on the House floor, and Congress is set to begin a two-week recess at the end of this week. “We don’t have a bill text or an agreement yet, but this is the kind of conversations we want,” Ryan said. A mix of hard-line conservatives and more moderate Republicans sank last month’s drive to pass the Obamacare repeal and replacement. That prompted an angry Trump to say that he was moving on to tax reform. But a source familiar with internal House Republican deliberations said that healthcare, and not tax reform, now tops the House agenda and that the healthcare effort was being driven by the White House. Meanwhile, some House Freedom Caucus members, representing the most conservative Republicans who control Congress, were already criticizing the revamped healthcare outline. Ryan’s cautionary remarks came a day after White House officials and conservatives held meetings to discuss reviving the failed healthcare bill following Trump’s first major legislative setback 12 days ago. Lawmakers said on Monday that the White House would like to see a revised bill come up for a vote as early as week’s end, before the House breaks for its spring recess, and that the text of the new proposal could be ready some time on Tuesday. However, Ryan said he would not put “some kind of artificial deadline” on a revamped plan. “We want to make sure that when we go, we have the votes to pass this bill,” he said. A Republican senator playing a major role in the attempt to revive the healthcare bill said on Tuesday that the Trump administration and Republican l lawmakers were still at an “impasse” in talks. “I think they still think they can pound a square peg into a round hole,” Senator Rand Paul told MSNBC. (Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) |
To many, the name Biwin is definitely not synonymous with many SSD drives that they might consider in their future purchase, but that may change soon enough. Biwin has been in the flash storage business for 16 years and, as surprising as it may seem, has already established very strong strategic partnerships with many names you would know, to include Samsung, Toshiba, Micron and Intel. Biwin is now considering opening up business in North America, and, quite probably the USA. For now though, lets take a look at only a few of their SSD product family starting with the Biwin Pro which is ‘SandForce Driven’ and available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB. This is a SATA 2 SSD which would have read and write transfer speeds in the upper 270MB/s mark. From there we move up to the Biwin Elite SATA 3 SSD, again SandForce driven, and capable of transfer speeds in excess of 500MB/s and most likely over 80,000 IOPS. This SSD is available in capacities of 60, 120, 240 and 480GB. They also had the 480 results on display for this SSD and I am going to suggest they should check their setup. There is definitely a SF-2281 processor pushing that speed but, as we can see below, there seems to be a small hiccup in the low 4k random writes. Last but not least, I thought I might include their industrial mSATA SSD as it is driven by the JMicron JM605 controller. This little baby weighs less than 9 grams and is a third the size of a business card. The transfer speeds are typical of many industrial/enterprise SSDs as their are a number of further data safeguards built into the SSD that mandate the lower speeds. UPDATE: We received contact from Joe James, VP of Biwin Worldwide Marketing, shortly after this article was posted, who has informed us that Biwin America is up and running and they are in business for all interested. Obviously, they are making a great first step as we have an Elite on route for review! |
An 8th-grade Wisconsin student received an "A" from his social studies teacher for answers to a politically charged classroom assignment that suggested Republicans are destroying the "pathway to citizenship" for immigrants. Teacher Gracie Davis gave her students a handout that included an editorial cartoon titled "The Pathway to Citizenship" from the Chattanooga Times Free Press showing two brick layers paving a walkway -- one with dark skin wearing a Democrat donkey logo, the other man, white, wearing a Republican elephant logo. While the implied immigrant is securing his bricks to the ground, the white Republican is removing the bricks and tossing them over his shoulder. Davis instructed her students to use the cartoon to answer these questions: Who are the men in the picture (What is their job? Look at what they are doing for a hint. What are they building? What do the symbols on their shirts represent? What is action being done by each man? What might this mean to us about immigration and citizenship? The student was able to answer the questions to Davis's satisfaction. His answers to the last two were, "The Democrat is building, the Republican is destroying" and "Democrats want immigrants to come in and Republicans don't." The student brought home the assignment to show his father who checked to see if perhaps the opposing view was offered. He discovered, "[T]here's nothing, just one side of paper." Because his son was awarded five out of five points, the father said, "[A]pparently those answers that he gave were the ones she was looking for," and added, "Wow, it definitely looks like she wanted a certain answer." The father confronted Davis over the assignment who revealed that she only wanted to expose her students to a different viewpoint. But when the man said it doesn't sound like she's offering the other view, Davis told him, "Well, the semester's not over." The school district's communications director, Jim Strick, weighed in on the matter ensuring that it wasn't intended to influence the children's political views: It was basically a skill-building unit for reading and understanding a political cartoon. It was basically the simplest cartoon that [Davis] could find for an eighth-grade level as far as understanding the concept of a political cartoon. This makes for the second questionable classroom assignment reported in a Wisconsin school in as many weeks. Another assignment given to Wisconsin high school students asked them to rate the beliefs of each represented party -- communist, liberal/Democrat, moderate, conservative/Republican, and fascist -- across the political spectrum. One student posted a picture of their corrected paper online (see below). The first question, "We should not help the poor, it’s a waste of money," was corrected for the student from "fascist" to be a "conservative/Republican" belief. Another question, "Don’t ever forget that you have the right to read anything you want," was corrected by the teacher to show that to be a belief exclusive to the "liberal/Democrat" viewpoint. Source: IJReview, EAGnews.org |
by Yes, I am trying to lose some extra pounds I put while my parents were visiting me here in Seattle. Actually it’s been kind of hard … I’ve been trying for more than a month and nothing happened – maybe it is my thirties :P. Now I am reducing the carbs, let’s see if it’s gonna work. I took this Breadless Breakfast Panini Recipe idea from the Dukan Diet (referred by a friend who lost lots of pounds doing this program). It is pretty good and a great option for those who love eating bread in the breakfast, but want to avoid it for a while. It is rich in protein, completely fat-free and also contains oat bran, which is super healthy. Oat bran is exceptionally high in fibers, effective at lowering cholesterol and in has weight loss properties – oat bran blocks the absorption of calories from the intestine. Great, isn’t it? But there is more …. it is super easy to prepare! In 5 minutes you prepare what I call the “bread-not-bread” and the panini itself. Breadless Panini Recipe – Ingredients For the “bread-not-bread” 2 tbsp Oat Bran 2 egg whites 1 tbsp fat-free plain greek yogurt 1 tbsp fat-free dry milk 1/4 Tsp Baking Powder For the filling Fat-free ham slices (to taste) Fat-free cottage cheese (to taste) Breadless Panini Recipe – How to prepare In a mug beat the egg whites with a fork. Add yogurt, dry milk and oat bran and mix until truly combined. Add the baking powder and whisk gently. Pour the mixture in a squared dish (about 10″) and cook it in the microwave for 3min30sec. Don’t worry, it’s gonna rise while it cooks, and then it is gonna fall a little bit. When ready, cut it lengthwise and fill it with the ingredients you want. I had it in my breakfast, so I added only fat-free cottage cheese and fat-free ham. Put it in a sandwich grill and grill it until golden brown. Ta-dah! It is ready :D I think it is also a good dinner option when you are not in a cooking mood. You can add chicken or beef, mozzarella…. vegetables, etc. and prepare an amazing bread-not-bread panini! |
A last-ditch effort to keep the courts from drawing state Senate districts collapsed Thursday, as senators voted down a plan proposed by the House and a special session called to draw the lines crashed to an end. On a 23-16 vote, the Senate killed the House version of the map (SJR 2-C) and any hope that the Legislature would decide the lines. Nine Republicans bucked their party's leadership and joined all 14 Democrats in opposing the plan. The redistricting issue will go to Leon County Circuit Judge George Reynolds, who likely will consider maps from the Legislature and voting-rights organizations that sued to overturn the current districts, with Reynolds ultimately recommending a plan to the Florida Supreme Court. The implosion of the session marked another embarrassment for legislative Republicans, who have seen three sessions fail in 2015. The regular session ended in an acrimonious budget battle between the House and Senate that had to be resolved in a special session, and another meeting called to draw new lines for congressional districts also ended without an agreement. This time, instead of blaming each other, GOP leaders blamed a pair of voter-approved constitutional amendments that ban political gerrymandering in legislative and congressional redistricting. Lawmakers argued that the "Fair Districts" amendments had become an almost unworkable maze of sometimes contradictory standards that ignored the need to draw together communities with common interests. "Having been living intimately in this world, I have concluded that the amendments to our Constitution pulled the soul out of map drawing, pulled the soul out of districts," said Senate Reapportionment Chairman Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton. In brief remarks to his colleagues at the close of the session, House Speaker Steve Crisafulli also suggested that the authors of the amendments had used a noble goal to create gridlock. "This has certainly been a difficult time, and I truly believe there are those who have set out to do everything they can to produce chaos and confusion and truly make this impossible to succeed and make us have a hard time succeeding in this effort," Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said. The defeat came just hours after Galvano and House Redistricting Chairman Jose Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, agreed to ask lawmakers to approve the House version of the map instead of a compromise plan. The Senate districts are being redrawn following a legal settlement between the Legislature and a collection of voting-rights groups and voters who argued the current map, approved by lawmakers in 2012, violates the Fair Districts amendments. The Legislature reached the settlement with opponents of the map after the Florida Supreme Court struck down the boundaries for the state's congressional delegation in July. In a statement, an attorney for the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida blasted lawmakers who blamed the amendments for the messy end of the session. "The Legislature has fought the Fair Districts Amendments from the moment they were introduced," said the lawyer, David King. "By blaming the amendments, rather than themselves, they are simply perpetuating their opposition to the will of the people and engaging in the very conduct that Florida voters clearly wanted to eliminate from our state." On the Senate floor, opponents hammered away at what they called shortcomings of the proposed plan, from the fact that it used a power line for the boundary of one district to the alleged mistreatment of a strawberry patch. "I can't even go home and explain to my community how this happened and why this happened and who drew the maps," said Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice. South Florida Republicans railed against proposed changes to three districts in Miami-Dade County that are intended to give Hispanic voters an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. Those districts had emerged as the main obstacle to a final deal. Lawmakers of Cuban descent argued that the House map, offered by Oliva, weakened one of the districts to the point that Hispanics might not be able to dictate the outcome. Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, brushed aside the arguments of Oliva and others who said the map didn't hurt Hispanic voting strength in the district. "Let me tell you, the truth is: They don't know Dade County," Garcia said. Critics of the House version of the map also took issue with how lines were drawn for a Jacksonville seat intended to elect an African-American to the Senate. The black voting age population was reduced by 1.4 percentage points to 41.3 percentage. Proponents said the district would still perform as intended but Sen. Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville, and others said it diminished black voting power. Allies of Senate leaders, though, pleaded with members to pass a map that even they admitted was flawed. Supporters of the plan said a united front would give the Legislature a chance at winning court approval for the map. After the outcome of the last redistricting session, the courts appear poised to use a plan drawn by the voting-rights organizations. "This isn't perfect. I don't know that it's very good," said former Senate President Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who oversaw the drawing of the 2012 map. "But I do know this, that if we vote no, we put this whole process into the hands of those who will not do it better." As the plan collapsed in the Senate, House members were left with little more to do than wait and then, once the vote was cast, pack it in and prepare to go home. Speaking to reporters after the session, Oliva tried to point out at least one success for the House. "I think we were able to convince the person that most knows about redistricting on the Senate side that this was a good map, and that was Chair Galvano," he said. The process for settling on a final map will likely resemble the process for picking a congressional plan. In that case, a Leon County judge was presented with a total of seven maps from lawmakers and those who had challenged the map in court. The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday on a recommendation from that judge. |
Recent articles by Wayne Price What is Primitive Accumulation? Marxs and Kropotkins ViewpointsA... A Green New Deal vs. Revolutionary Ecosocialism An Anarchist View of State Formation-- Review of Peter Gelderloos, Wo... Recent Articles about International Imperialism / War Trumps Betrayal Of Ypg Paris Commune Falls Again? by David Van Deusen Μπακούνιν γι ... by agitprop anarquista Venezuela E Outra Tentativa De Invasão Do Império. Brasil: Milicos Na ... by FAU Obama's Imperial War - An Anarchist Response international | imperialism / war | feature Friday December 11, 2009 18:59 Friday December 11, 2009 18:59 by Wayne Price - personal opinion by Wayne Price - personal opinion drwdprice at aol dot com The expansion of the US attack on Afghanistan and Pakistan is not due to the personal qualities of Obama but to the social system he serves: the national state and the capitalist economy. The nature of the situation guarantees that the system will act irrationally. Anarchists should participate in building a broad movement against the war, while raising our political program. In discussing President Obamas expansion of the US attack on Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is important not to focus on Obama as a personality but on the social system to which he is commited, specifically to the war-waging capitalist national state. War is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne declared during World War I. It is what the national state is for, what it does, and why it still exists, despite the real trends toward international unity and worldwide coordination. In an age of nuclear bombs, the human race will not be safe until we abolish these states (especially the big, imperial, ones such as those of North America, Western Europe, and Japan) and replace them with a federation of self-managing associations of working people. [Nederlands] In discussing President Obamas expansion of the US attack on Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is important not to focus on Obama as a personality but on the social system to which he is commited, specifically to the war-waging capitalist national state. War is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne declared during World War I. It is what the national state is for, what it does, and why it still exists, despite the real trends toward international unity and worldwide coordination. In an age of nuclear bombs, the human race will not be safe until we abolish these states (especially the big, imperial, ones such as those of North America, Western Europe, and Japan) and replace them with a federation of self-managing associations of working people. Obama's Imperial War An Anarchist Response The expansion of the US attack on Afghanistan and Pakistan is not due to the personal qualities of Obama but to the social system he serves: the national state and the capitalist economy. The nature of the situation guarantees that the system will act irrationally. Anarchists should participate in building a broad movement against the war, while raising our political program. The expansion of the US attack on Afghanistan and Pakistan is not due to the personal qualities of Obama but to the social system he serves: the national state and the capitalist economy. The nature of the situation guarantees that the system will act irrationally. Anarchists should participate in building a broad movement against the war, while raising our political program. In discussing President Obamas expansion of the US attack on Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is important not to focus on Obama as a personality but on the social system to which he is commited, specifically to the war-waging capitalist national state. War is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne declared during World War I. It is what the national state is for, what it does, and why it still exists, despite the real trends toward international unity and worldwide coordination. In an age of nuclear bombs, the human race will not be safe until we abolish these states (especially the big, imperial, ones such as those of North America, Western Europe, and Japan) and replace them with a federation of self-managing associations of working people. After 3 months of consulations and deliberation, President Obama has announced that he is going to do what he had promised to do during his campaign for presidentnamely to expand the US attack on Afghanistan and Pakistan. This may not have been inevitable (since he broke many of his campaign promises already, such as ending overseas prisons, openness in government, ending dont ask, dont tell, a health care plan which covers everyone, an economic plan for working people, etc.). But it was probable. As has been pointed out, his stated reasons for the war do not make much sense: in order to get out of Afghanistan, the US will send more troops into Afghanistan. The US needs to fight Al Queda, even though there are now only about 100 Queda militants left in Afghanistan; the Queda base is mostly in Pakistan (which Obama slurred over by speaking of the border) but the US will not be sending troops there (just secret attacks by drone missiles and CIA operatives). More generally, the US supposedly has to strengthen the resolve of the government of Pakistan by sending more troops to Afghanistan. The US hopes to win over the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan by sending more non-Muslim, only-English-speaking, troops, which is sure to antagonize the people of the region. In 18 months, the US forces are supposed to transform the Karzai regime from one of the most corrupt, incompetent, and illegitimate states on earth, to a stable government (never mind a democracy). The effects of the mistaken US policies of 8 years can be reversed in 18 months (on the assumption that US forces will really start to withdraw in 18 months; promises are cheap; the US is still in Iraq). All of this is simply unbelievable and it is hard to think that an intelligent man such as Obama believes any of it. Why then, really, is the US sending more troops into the region? Closer to Obamas thinking are the expressions in his December 1, West Point, address, when he announced his program, where he spoke about the US as a global power with an economy which competes on the world market. Thus he remarked that competition within the global economy has grown more fierce .Our prosperity will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the past. Implicit in these statements is an awareness that the US is no longer the economic power it was in the past. While still having the largest national economy, the US is now a de-industrializing debtor nation, losing out in world competition to Europe and Asia. This has been made worse by the global Great Recession, which has exposed the decay of the whole international capitalist system. The US ruling class, its layer of rich people, is not happy about this. So they turn to the one asset they still have, which is the mighty military force of the US statemore powerful than any potential combination of opponent states. By throwing its weight around, the US hopes to re-achieve world dominance, or at least to slow its decline in world power. Obama reminded his listeners that the US has long been the dominant world power. Our country has borne a special burden in global affairs .More than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for six decades This is modified by the hypocritical words,But unlike the great powers of old, we have not sough world domination. He can say this because the US has not ruled through open ownership of colonies (leaving aside Puerto Rico and a few other places) but by economically dominating the world market, so that all must buy and sell on the US terms (neocolonialism). But whenever necessary, this has been backed up by military force, as shown in two imperialist world wars and a large number of invasions of smaller, weaker, nations. Therefore it cannot accept being kicked in the teeth by small groups of terrorists living in caves, nor let petty dictatorships thumb their noses at the US. Nor can they afford to let regions which dominate the world petroleum supply fall into chaos, or at least outside of US rule, given the centrality of oil for the capitalist industrial economy. This includes both the Middle East and Northwest Asia (which may have important oil pipelines go through it). Irrational behavior will result from being in situations which cannot be rationally dealt with. The US ruling class must try to dominate the world, economically and therefore politically and militarily, due to world competition. But it cannot dominate the world and is losing out in international competition. It must try to control the oppressed nations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but it cannot control them. The result is a contradictory and irrational foreign policy. This was apparent under the stupid George W. Bush, with his ideologically fanatic advisors. It is still obvious under the intelligent and reasonable Barack Obama. The result is likely to be disasterous (as it was in the Vietnam war, also waged by moderate Democratsin fact most US wars have been waged by Democrats, starting with World War I). In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, many people have been killed or wounded or their lives disruptedmostly the nationally-oppressed people but also many US soldiers. Now very many more will be killed. Not to speak of the wealth which will be destroyed, both in the attacked countries and in the US (Obama says the war will cost $1 trillion). And in the background is the threat of nuclear warnot only does the US have nuclear weapons but so does Pakistan and its long-time opponent and neighbor India. Also, in the same region, the US is threatening to attack Iran, for supposedly working toward nuclear weapons, and there are similar threats by the US ally Israel, which does have nuclear weapons. Will nuclear bombs be used in the near future? I doubt it; but time marches on and sooner or later they will be used. (The Bush administration made an effort to make smaller bunker-blasting nuclear bombs, which could be used in small wars such as in Iraq. These would have erased the gap between nuclear and conventional weapons. I do not know where this stands at the moment.) Liberals have called on the US to lead a world-wide crusade to abolish all nuclear weapons. Obama has given lip service to this idea, but nothing will come of it because the US state cannot give up any of its power to threaten the rest of the world. We revolutionary anarchists must oppose these wars will all our might. While the system cannot stop making wars, it can be forced to end particular wars. This can be done by raising the price which the state must pay for that war. If the capitalist politicians feel that young people are becoming radicalized and militant, that labor is becoming restless, that soldiers are potentially mutinous, and that the local peoples will not stop resisting--then they will finally decide to end the war (as in Vietnam). We should participate in broader peace movement, joining it in its mass marches and demonstrations. Often we radicals get tired of demonstrations, seeing how little they accomplish; but we should not forget how exciting they can be for newer layers of antiwar activists. However this does not mean that we cover up our program. In particular we must oppose the leaders of this movement (liberals, social democrats, and Marxist-Leninists) for their capitulation to the Democratic Party. For years now, they have held back the movement by focusing on electing and supporting liberal Democrats. We need to point to those who have the real power to end the war: the soldiers and other military forces and the working class. There has been increasing discontent among rank-and=file military and their families about the war. We should have a positive attitude toward this, as opposed to a moralistic superiority toward ordinary soldiers, who are usually victims of the poverty draft.. Similarly, there has been much discontent with the wars among working people and their families. We can at least support the idea of strikes against the war, war production, and the transportation of war material. We should oppose any use of the war as an excuse for union-busting or wage-lowering. The force most directly opposing US imperialism in these regions are the people. We should make clear our solidarity with the nationally oppressed people (who are mostly workers, peasants, and small businesspeople). We should defend their right to resist US aggression. We should not be neutral between the mightiest imperial power and the oppressed people of Afghanistan. But this does not require any support or endorsement for any particular organization or leadership. We are certainly not for the Taliban, which is viciously misogynist, anti-labor, and statist. We do not want them to get their state again. However, that is a matter for the Afghan people to decide, not for the US state nor for Western anarchists. We should be willing to work with anyone who will oppose the wars, while openly expressing our own program: the end of the state, of international capitalism (imperialism), and of all forms of oppression. Digg this del.icio.us Furl Reddit Technorati Facebook Twitter << Back To Newswire English Italiano Deutsch This page can be viewed in |
A CHILD bride allegedly married off at 12 was told sharia law “overrides” Australian law, court documents revealed. In a case that has brought awareness of secret child brides in Australia, the girl’s father and the 26-year-old man she “wed” were charged in February over numerous child sex offences. Documents that formed part of a successful apprehended violence order application by police at the time against the girl’s “husband” state that the young girl “believed or had been informed that sharia law overrides the Australian law”. “She stated that together with the accused they had been trying to get him registered as her legal guardian with Centrelink in order to obtain any welfare benefits they could,” the court documents state. The police allege in the AVO document that the 26-year-old man, who was charged with 25 counts of sexual intercourse with a child, admitted to officers on the day he was arrested that he had had sex with the girl daily since the religious ceremony in the living room of the girl’s Hunter Valley home on January 12. “When questioned on this he showed no remorse and was confident that in doing this he had committed no crime,” the police documents state. His matter is still before the courts and he is being held at Villawood Detention Centre after his student visa was revoked. The child and the Lebanese university student met at a mosque through the girl’s 62-year-old father who is a Muslim convert, police alleged. The girl’s father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is charged with procuring a child for sex and accessory before the fact to sexual intercourse with a child. Dressed in a traditional Islamic tunic, the father-of-seven fronted Burwood Local Court yesterday where he was committed to stand trial in the Sydney District Court. His lawyer Mario Licha said outside court the father would be defending the charges. The alleged child bride, who is now 13, and her eight-year-old sister remain in the care of the Department of Community Services. |
The Republican National Committee is no longer part of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore’s (R) joint fundraising committee. New documents filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission show the RNC is no longer listed alongside other groups involved in the joint fundraiser. The two parties now listed on the documents include Moore's campaign committee and the fundraising vehicle for the Alabama Republican Party. ADVERTISEMENT The initial FEC filing, dated Oct. 24, included both the RNC and National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). The new filing does not include either of those groups. Under the old joint fundraising committee, a single donor could have given up to $521,200 per year when it included both the RNC and NRSC. Now that the two national party committees have pulled out, a donor can only give a maximum of $12,700 to the committee — $2,700 to Moore's campaign committee during the election and $10,000 to the state party committee. The NRSC announced last week it would no longer fundraise for Moore. In the past week, five women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct. On Monday, Beverly Young Nelson alleged that Moore, who was serving as the Etowah County district attorney, sexually assaulted her in a diner parking lot in 1977, when she was a 16-year-old high school student. Nelson’s allegations follow a Washington Post report in which four woman accused Moore of sexual misconduct, including one woman who alleged Moore engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with her when was 14 and he was 32. Moore has repeatedly denied the allegations, calling them “completely false.” Prominent Republicans have called on Moore to step aside from the Alabama Senate race to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsFormer Trump refugee director did not notify superiors about family separation warnings Court rejects challenge to Mueller's appointment Trump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report MORE’ former seat. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Ky.) called for Moore to drop out of the race on Monday, and Sen, Cory Gardner Cory Scott GardnerBorder rebuke looms for Trump Jon Stewart, 9/11 responders call on Congress to fund victim compensation program The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump MORE (R-Colo.), who serves as the chairman of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, said the Senate should expel Moore if he wins the election. |
ES Football Newsletter Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account Arsenal have been fined €5,000 (£4,300) by Uefa after a pitch invader ran onto the Emirates Stadium pitch during the recent 5-1 loss to Bayern Munich. The German club have also been punished - to the tune of €3,000 (£2,600) - after fans threw objects onto the pitch. The pitch invader was quickly apprehended by security, after initially escaping their clutches, after the away fans threw toilet roll onto the field of play ahead of kick-off. Bayern fans were protesting against ticket prices for the two-legged Champions League last-16 tie, which Carlo Ancelotti's side won via a 10-2 aggregate scoreline. A statement from Uefa read: "Match: UEFA Champions League round of 16 match between Arsenal FC and FC Bayern München (1-5), played on 7 March in London, England "Decision: The CEDB has decided to fine Arsenal FC €5,000 and FC Bayern München €3,000 "The charges against Arsenal FC were related to the field invasions by supporters - Art. 16 (2) of the UEFA Disciplinary Regulations (DR) "The charges against FC Bayern München were related to the throwing of objects – Art. 16 (2) DR" |
The Hillary Clinton Campaign threw an off the record party and only liberal media were invited, recently leaked emails revealed. A source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0 provided The Intercept with emails revealing “friendly and highly useful relationships” between the Clinton campaign and the U.S. media. Those emails showed that the Clinton campaign held a private, “off-the-record” dinner with “influential reporters, anchors and editors” on April 10, just two days before Clinton officially announced her presidential bid. The cocktail party took place at Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson’s home. According to the memo sent out by deputy press secretary Jesse Ferguson, the goals of the dinner included giving “reporters their first thoughts from team HRC in advance of the announcement,” “setting expectations for the announcement and launch period,” and “framing the HRC message and framing the race.” A total of 38 guests RSVP’d yes, including journalists from all three broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, and more. ABC’s Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos (who previously worked in the Clinton administration), NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, CBS’s Vicki Gordon, Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin, CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, Daily Beast’s Jackie Kucinich, Huffington Post’s Whitney Snyder, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, and Politico’s Mike Allen all RSVP’d to the dinner. Twelve journalists declined including Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, NBC’s Chuck Todd, New York Times’ Carolyn Ryan, CNN’s Erin Burnett and Jake Tapper, and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. (Spelling errors are in original email.) Here is the full list of RSVPs: CNN’s Jake Tapper also declined the event, and in a later email posted on WikiLeaks sent June 23, Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta asked, “Why is Jake Tapper such a dick?” On Oct. 7, Tapper responded to that leaked email and Podesta’s question on Twitter saying, “It’s a question that has confounded millions of people for hundreds of years…” tagging all three of the names mentioned in the email thread (Podesta, Campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri and Campaign Deputy Communications Director Kristina Schake). No wonder only 6 percent of Americans trust the media. |
Do we want to revitalize downtowns, or do we want to severely restrict people from buying wine with dinner? Thanks to our still-Puritanical liquor license laws here in Massachusetts, opening a new restaurant is a major financial risk. First, today’s good news: A restaurant is moving into a formerly run-down building on a prime piece of street-level property in downtown New Bedford, reports Auditi Guha: A cozy Italian restaurant downtown is gearing up for a big move — into the entire first floor of the renovated historic Standard-Times building downtown. The Licensing Board granted Portobello a full liquor license at Monday night’s hearing, pending other permits. Cafe Balena owners Pietro and Mairy Chessa said they hope to open a seven-day restaurant and offer a piano brunch on Sundays in the 3,200-square-foot space by February. Now the shocking news: The price the restaurant owners are being asked to pay for the privilege of selling beer & wine to their customers – not to any government to fund police or schools, but to a private liquor license holder: According to the licensing petition, the new business, via Columbus Group LLC, the developer of the old Standard-Times building, will buy a full liquor license for $65,000. These business owners are putting their money on the line to help revitalize a city with an unemployment rate perennially stuck in double digits, and before they even open their doors, they’re out $65,000 just for the right to sell beer, wine & liquor. Another downtown New Bedford restaurant shut its doors and laid off its employees just two weeks ago, citing in part the absurdly high cost of a liquor license. And that’s a bargain compared to Boston! “Based on online listings by license brokers and restaurant groups, a full alcohol license currently goes for no less than $250,000 in Boston,” reports Jessica Mendoza. Who DOES the system work well for? “It works well for lawyers and brokers who’ve mastered the process, and for the elected officials to whom they contribute,” editorialized the Boston Globe. “Former state senator Dianne Wilkerson — whose district included Roxbury, a neighborhood long starved for economic development — took bribes in exchange for trying to steer a license to a local businessman.” Communities should continue to have a say in where bars & restaurants are allowed to open, and be able to shut down troublemakers. But why should there be an additional, steep financial hurdle to clear – one where the funds don’t even go to taxpayers? Especially in a place like downtown New Bedford, why aren’t we doing everything we can to lure new businesses to serve new customers, hire new employees, and fill tax coffers? Boston At-Large City Councillor Ayanna Pressley has been pushing to loosen restrictions on liquor licenses. If you care about revitalizing downtowns, it’s an effort you should get behind. |
There will be even more stories told than usual at Fred Biletnikoff’s annual golf tournament this year, in part because of a roll call of those who remain with the silver in black but only in spirit. In a little over three months in 2015, the Raider family lost former defensive coordinator Charlie Sumner on April 3, wide receiver Art Powell on April 6, fullback Marv Hubbard on May 4 and quarterback Ken Stabler on July 8. In a conference call to help promote the 12th Annual Fred Biletnikoff Hall of Fame Invitational May 2 at Ruby Hill Golf Club in Pleasanton, the host let out a laugh when asked if the day would include stories about four names etched in Raider lore. “There always are,” Biletnikoff said Tuesday. “It really affects you emotionally when you find out they’ve passed away, it shocks you because you never think it could happen. We all had a great run of friendship together, winning, having laughs and just having a good time. “Don’t worry. All those names will come up when we all get together, and believe me, we’ll have a lot of laughs. That’s the Raider way.” While the tournament stresses good times, its cause couldn’t be more dear to Biletnikoff’s heart. Along with an annual crab feed, it is the primary fund raiser for the Biletnikoff Foundation dedicated to supporting at-risk youth. The crown jewel of the foundation, and the vision of Biletnikoff and his wife Angela, is Tracey’s Place of Hope, a home in Loomis, Ca., scheduled to open in late April or early May which will house 14 to 18 girls and young women in crisis with mental health and/or substance abuse problems. Tracey Biletnikoff was strangled by her boyfriend, currently serving prison sentence for first degree murder, at a drug rehabilitation center in February of 1999. The foundation was created to commemorate Tracey’s life and make education programs to those who are dealing with substance abuse and gender violence. “It means the world to Angela and I that a lot of the same people who play in this tournament every year are the same people who were among the first to call us after Tracey’s passing,” Biletnikoff said. Among those expected to participate include Tim Brown, George Atkinson, Willie Gault, Tom Flores, Mervyn Fernandez, James Lofton, Cliff Branch, Daryle Lamonica, Vida Blue, Richard Dent, Charlie Joiner, Mike Haynes, Eric Wright, Dwight Hicks, Kellen Winslow and Raiders coach Jack Del Rio. Others attending include Jim Otto, Clem Daniels and Lincoln Kennedy. Biletnikoff is enthused about the current direction of the Raiders franchise, and not just because their leading receivers were winners of the award that bears his name as the top college receivers in the country. “I really feel that Jack and his coaching staff and (general manager) Reggie McKenzie have brought something back to the Raiders that has been missing for a number of years,” Biletnikoff said. “You go to the facility, people are excited, they’re talking about the team, they’re talking about the players. You sense an accountability there among the players for what they do on and off the field.” Biletnikoff said he saw some promise in a 7-9 season a year ago that other than Week 1 against Cincinnati, didn’t include the blowout losses which the Raiders sustained in the last decade. “Listen, finally last year I didn’t leave a home game early all season,” Biletnikoff said. “You felt like anything could happen, and they were in all the games.” — Spots remain open for foursomes and individual players. For more information call (925) 556-2525 or visit the foundation’s web site at http://www.biletnikoff.org for an on-line registration site. |
They Can't Stop Us Justin Trudeau, Rachel Notley, every left wing activist in Canada -- they’ve been trying to stop us at The Rebel for more than two years. And I was never worried until now. Because they’ve finally figured out how to do it. And we need your help if we’re going to survive. On August 1, an ominous blog post from YouTube changed everything. YouTube is how we get our message out. We have more than 850,000 YouTube subscribers. We’re one of the biggest YouTube news channels in the world — by far the biggest in Canada. They called it “an update to fight terror content online”. It does start out talking about terrorism, but then it moves to what YouTube calls “controversial” ideas. That could mean anything. That does mean us. Because we talk about the controversies of the day. Here’s what YouTube says they’re going to start doing to YouTube channels like us: Tougher standards: We’ll soon be applying tougher treatment to videos that aren’t illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of our policies on hate speech and violent extremism. If we find that these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state. So they’re not just banning terrorist videos. They’re banning things that aren’t illegal, they are just controversial, or potentially controversial according to some complainer online. Well, all of our content is “potentially” controversial, especially to thin-skinned whiners on the left — like Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley, to name a couple. And the very day that YouTube released their new policy about “controversial” people, they shut down the account of our friend, Prof. Jordan Peterson. No notice, nothing. Just blocked. They eventually put it back up. But how long will it be until they take it down for good? Google has disabled my main account. No explanation given. Cannot access my YouTube channel. — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) August 1, 2017 We don’t know if YouTube decided to attack Jordan Peterson themselves, or if someone asked them to do so. Like when Justin Trudeau’s office asked that Google delete search results linking to websites made when Harper was in office. And that’s what worries us. There is no transparency in these decisions. YouTube just blocked Jordan Peterson one day, and didn’t tell him anything. And he’ll never know what happened. Do you think we have a few years left on YouTube before we’re banned? A few months? Maybe a few days? It’s only a matter of time. So what then? Our Plan So, we’re going to build an "app" — that’s short for an application. What used to be called software. We’re going to build an app that we own — not owned by YouTube. An app that you can use to watch us on your smart phone — we’ll have both an Apple iPhone and an Android version. And it will work for your laptop, or even on your TV set, through Roku or Apple TV. We’ve actually been working on this app for months. We think it will be ready in September. It will be a free app. You can download it for free. You can watch all our short videos for free. Just like always. But we’ll own the app. So no-one can have that power over us. No-one can have that power over you. The app will have everything in it — not just all our videos that are right now on YouTube, all 6,500 of them. But it will have our TV shows too — the paywall stuff, like the daily Ezra Levant Show. And we’re launching more shows after Labour Day, so the timing is perfect. The app will have other things in it too — all the social media right in it, feeds like Twitter, Facebook, etc. But also special notifications from us to you — again, something that can never be blocked by an outside company. No third party company will get in your way of watching our stuff. The app will continue to work with YouTube, until the moment YouTube does a Professor Peterson on us, and kills our account there. But guess what — that very moment, we push a button, and we go 100% self-sufficient, with our own video player. That no-one can take away from us or from you. The app will do that. We’re going to stay on YouTube as long as we can — we like them, even though they hate our guts. But when they finally come for us, we’ll have another place to go. Where Trudeau’s lobbyist friends can't touch us or you. But we don’t have the budget to do this on our own. We’re not the CBC, that gets $1.5 billion a year from Justin Trudeau, and acts like it. We’re 100% independent. We can’t afford this. But at the same time, we can’t afford not to do this. That’s why we need your help. How You Can Help Here's how it breaks down: Developing the app is going to cost us a lot of money. $120,000, for it to have the functions I mentioned above — notifications, social media, and play our video content. Integrating the app with our video hosting and with payment systems — that’s another $19,000. $90,000 to build a proprietary video player, that runs the videos in the app. That serves up all the gigabytes worth of videos, on demand, quickly, in high def, to replace what YouTube gives us now free. To move our 6,500 videos over from YouTube to the app is about $13,000 — or about two dollars a video. To upgrade our existing TV apps for Roku and Apple TV is $20,000. And $40,000 to upgrade our computer software and servers at our headquarters, to make all of this work. Together, that’s $302,000. I know that’s a lot. It’s the biggest expense we’ve ever had in our history. That’s what it costs to make your own conservative alternative to YouTube — and to make it better, too, so you can take it on the go, in a beautiful, easy-to-use app on your phone, that seamlessly works at home on your TV and laptop. Everything in one place — no more signing in and then signing in again. That’s a lot of money. But we need to do this, don't you think? Can you please help? We need to finish the app — and we need it the sooner the better. I have no idea if Google plans to come for us like they came for Professor Peterson — and we won’t know until the moment it happens, they’re sneaky that way. Can you please help -- with $5, $50 or even $500? Perks for Donors $100 Donors who give at least $100 will get their names permanently displayed on a special thank you website. Donors who give at least $100 will get their names permanently displayed on a special thank you website. $250 Donors who give at least $250 will have their names displayed in a special thank you video as well as being on the thank you website. Donors who give at least $250 will have their names displayed in a special thank you video as well as being on the thank you website. $1,000 Those who donate $1,000 or more we’ll have their names engraved in brass on a beautiful plaque that is hung in Rebel HQ. Those who donate $1,000 or more we’ll have their names engraved in brass on a beautiful plaque that is hung in Rebel HQ. $10,000 For the very special people who donate $10,000 or more, Ezra will meet them for lunch in Toronto or any major city in North America. And they will also get their names on a plaque. For the very special people who donate $10,000 or more, Ezra will meet them for lunch in Toronto or any major city in North America. And they will also get their names on a plaque. $50,000 If some amazing guardian angel wants to donate $50,000, then we will literally name our entire world headquarters for them, for one year. Ezra will end every show by saying "we’re signing off from the John Smith world headquarters of The Rebel", or whatever name you like! (Subject to editorial discretion.) Support Us By Mail You can contribute by cheque to support our crowd funder too. Please make it payable to "TheRebel" and add "They Can't Stop Us" to the memo section, and send it to: The Rebel PO Box 61056 Eglinton/Dufferin RO Toronto, ON M6E 5B2 Donate & Contribute You can help us reach each of our goals by clicking the red buttons below to donate. |
Muscle glycogen availability can limit endurance exercise performance. We previously demonstrated 5 days of creatine (Cr) and carbohydrate (CHO) ingestion augmented post-exercise muscle glycogen storage compared to CHO feeding alone in healthy volunteers. Here, we aimed to characterise the time-course of this Cr-induced response under more stringent and controlled experimental conditions and identify potential mechanisms underpinning this phenomenon. Fourteen healthy, male volunteers cycled to exhaustion at 70 % VO2peak. Muscle biopsies were obtained at rest immediately post-exercise and after 1, 3 and 6 days of recovery, during which Cr or placebo supplements (20 g day(-1)) were ingested along with a prescribed high CHO diet (37.5 kcal kg body mass(-1) day(-1), >80 % calories CHO). Oral-glucose tolerance tests (oral-GTT) were performed pre-exercise and after 1, 3 and 6 days of Cr and placebo supplementation. Exercise depleted muscle glycogen content to the same extent in both treatment groups. Creatine supplementation increased muscle total-Cr, free-Cr and phosphocreatine (PCr) content above placebo following 1, 3 and 6 days of supplementation (all P < 0.05). Creatine supplementation also increased muscle glycogen content noticeably above placebo after 1 day of supplementation (P < 0.05), which was sustained thereafter. This study confirmed dietary Cr augments post-exercise muscle glycogen super-compensation, and demonstrates this occurred during the initial 24 h of post-exercise recovery (when muscle total-Cr had increased by <10 %). This marked response ensued without apparent treatment differences in muscle insulin sensitivity (oral-GTT, muscle GLUT4 mRNA), osmotic stress (muscle c-fos and HSP72 mRNA) or muscle cell volume (muscle water content) responses, such that another mechanism must be causative. |
Doug Marrone was officially introduced as head coach of the Buffalo Bills today. Per multiple reports, he's already requested permission to interview a defensive coordinator candidate. FootballScoop.com reports (later confirmed by ESPN's Rich Cimini) that the Bills have requested permission to interview New York Jets defensive coordinator Mike Pettine, whose contract is set to expire in short order. Pettine, 46, has spent the past four seasons as the Jets' defensive coordinator, where he has worked under venerable defensive mind Rex Ryan. Prior to that, Pettine spent seven years as a defensive assistant with the Baltimore Ravens, working himself up from low man on the totem pole to the outside linebackers coach before he followed Ryan to New York. All told, Pettine has worked closely with Ryan all 11 seasons he's been at the NFL level. Typically, NFL teams can block lateral moves - but because Pettine's contract is set to expire, making him a coaching free agent, that option is essentially off the table. Ryan's defense - and by extension, Pettine's - is popularly known as an exotic and extremely aggressive attack that works out of a 3-4 base. This past season, however, the Jets committed to playing more four-man lines because of the rising popularity of the passing game and the spread offense, particularly in the AFC East. In four years on the job, the Jets have finished in the Top 8 defensively every season, including three Top 5 finishes a No. 1 overall finish in 2009. Who Marrone brings in to call the shots defensively is of critical importance. Pettine might be the first name on the list. |
■ Mr. Trump said that the document “was released by maybe the intelligence agencies, who knows, which would be a tremendous blot on their record.” ■ Turning to the work that he said he had been doing during the transition, Mr. Trump said he expected to announce “big news” in the next few weeks about companies that would build factories in the Midwest. ■ Mr. Trump said he was looking forward to his inauguration. “It’s going to be a beautiful event,” he said. “We have great talent, tremendous talent.” And, he added, “massive crowds” as well. ■ Mr. Trump made some news: He said he had asked David J. Shulkin, a current under secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs, to lead the agency. Mr. Trump said his team had interviewed “at least 100 people” in the search for a secretary. Get the Morning Briefing by Email What you need to know to start your day, delivered to your inbox Monday through Friday. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Recaptcha requires verification I'm not a robot reCAPTCHA Privacy - Terms Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. You are already subscribed to this email. View all New York Times newsletters. See Sample Manage Email Preferences Not you? Privacy Policy ■ Mr. Trump said that after his briefing last Friday with American intelligence officials, he indeed thought Russia was behind the effort to hack his opponents. “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,” Mr. Trump said. ■ He went on to cast blame on the Democratic National Committee for the hacking. He praised the Republican National Committee for having better defenses and commended Reince Priebus, his incoming chief of staff, who was the committee chairman. Advertisement Continue reading the main story ■ Mr. Trump reiterated his description of the report printed by BuzzFeed as “fake news,” saying he did not think President Vladimir V. Putin had compromising information about him or the Republican Party. “I’ll be honest, if he did have something, he would have released it,” he said. ■ Mr. Trump said he was untroubled by the intelligence reports that said Russia preferred him over Hillary Clinton and that Mr. Putin ordered the hacking during the election to benefit him. “If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what folks: That is called an asset, not a liability,” he said. He added that a strong relationship could allow the two nations to work together on difficult international issues. ■ Mr. Trump swatted away allegations included in the uncorroborated opposition research reports about the intelligence the Russians supposedly have on him. He said he instructs aides any time he goes abroad to ensure that there are no cameras spying on him. He also added, apparently referring to a detail in the report about supposed sex videos with prostitutes, “I’m also very much of a germophobe, believe me.” ■ He denied that he has any business dealings in Russia: “I tweeted out that I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals in Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia. As a real estate developer, I have very, very little debt.” ■ Turning to his businesses, Mr. Trump said he had been offered $2 billion worth of deals in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, “over the weekend” but had turned them down. ■ Asked about his tax returns, Mr. Trump said he was still not releasing them “because they are under audit.” He said that the American people did not care about the documents anyway. “The only ones who cares about my tax returns are the reporters,” Mr. Trump said. ■ He said he would not divest from his vast business holdings as he takes office. Instead, the president-elect will turn over the operations and control of those holdings to a trust controlled by his eldest sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. ■ Sheri Dillon, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, took the stage to describe the arrangement in greater detail. “President-elect Trump wants there to be no doubts in the mind of the American people that he is separating himself from his business interests,” she said, adding that Mr. Trump’s sons will make all decisions for the company “without any involvement whatsoever” from Mr. Trump. She said Mr. Trump would resign from all positions he holds with the Trump Organization, as would his daughter Ivanka. Advertisement Continue reading the main story ■ Ms. Dillon said that no new foreign deals will be allowed during the presidency and new domestic deals would be subject to strict restrictions. “He will only know of a deal if he reads about it in the paper or sees it on TV,” Ms. Dillon said, referring to Mr. Trump. She also said an ethics adviser would be appointed to the management team of the Trump Organization. ■ Ms. Dillon argued that selling Mr. Trump’s business would prove more difficult and create more ethical quandaries than the plan that the Trump Organization had chosen. A totally blind trust, she said, would likewise be impossible under the circumstances. And, she added, “President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built.” ■ Ms. Dillon laid out what amounts to the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits government officials from taking payments or gifts from a foreign government. “No one would have thought when the Constitution was written, that paying your hotel bill was an emolument,” she said. To avoid any appearances of violations, Ms. Dillon said Mr. Trump had pledged to donate to the United States government all profits made by his hotels from payments by foreign governments. ■ Asked to address criticism that his cabinet choices have presented an abundance of conflicts of interest, Mr. Trump merely praised his appointments. “I think we have one of the great cabinets ever put together,” he said. ■ Mr. Trump expressed glee at being asked about his plans for the Affordable Care Act. “Finally, Obamacare, I thought it was never going to be asked!” He said that he had considered letting the law implode on its own and letting Democrats take the political hit he said would follow. But he said he had decided on a more forthright strategy: repeal and replace “almost simultaneously.” Mr. Trump was short on details, but clearer in his intention to try to keep Democrats responsible. “We don’t want to own it politically,” he said. ■ Mr. Trump said Carrier’s decision to keep jobs in Indiana sent a clear signal to other companies thinking of moving production overseas. “The word is now out,” he said, reiterating a call for a “major border tax on these companies that are leaving.” ■ About that wall: “I don’t feel like waiting a year, a year and a half, I want to start building,” he said. He reiterated that Mexico would reimburse the cost, but he added cryptically that it probably wouldn’t be in the form of “a payment.” ■ Turning to the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump said he expects to announce a nominee to fill the court’s vacant seat two weeks or so after he takes office. ■ Mr. Trump returned to the topic of Russia. “I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies let any information that turned out to be so false and fake to get out,” he said. Explaining his Twitter post comparing the United States to Nazi Germany, he said of the leaks: “That’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do.” Mr. Trump added that BuzzFeed is “a failing pile of garbage” that would suffer the consequences for publishing the uncorroborated report. Advertisement Continue reading the main story ■ Mr. Trump was asked how he would reform the news media he criticizes frequently. “I don’t recommend reforms,” he said. “I recommend people that have some moral compass.” He added: “I will tell you, some of the media outlets that I deal with are fake news, more so than anybody.” |
Which Physicians Use Complementary or Alternative Treatments? In a Medscape commentary,[22] Paul Offit, MD, Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, pointed out that since its founding in 1992, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) "has received about $1.6 billion of federal money to study a variety of things...[T]he disappointing part of these studies is that they are not based on any biological principle. In fact, they seem to hark back to a much more distant time, before we really understood the pathophysiologic basis of diseases and were able to direct treatments towards them." Despite such limited evidence, 38% of adults in the United States are using some form of alternative medicine, according to NCCAM.[23] This finding matches the Medscape survey responses, in which, regardless of generation, about the same percentage of physicians (37% of those 45 and under and 38% of those 46 and over) admitted taking CAM treatments for medical conditions. There were gender differences: 48% of female physicians and 32% of male physicians say they have used CAM therapies. |
A massive leak from Panama City-based law firm Mossack Fonseca has exposed the tax dealings of scores of world leaders and celebrities RODRIGO ARANGUA/AFP/Getty Images The front-end computer systems of Mossack Fonseca are outdated and riddled with security flaws, analysis has revealed. The law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers hack has shown an "astonishing" disregard for security, according to one expert. Amongst other lapses, Mossack Fonseca has failed to update its Outlook Web Access login since 2009 and not updated its client login portal since 2013. Advertisement Mossack Fonseca's client portal is also vulnerable to the DROWN attack, a security exploit that targets servers supporting the obsolete and insecure SSL v2 protocol. The portal, which runs on the Drupal open source CMS, was last updated in August 2013, according to the site's changelog. On its main website Mossack Fonseca claims its Client Information Portal provides a "secure online account" allowing customers to access "corporate information anywhere and everywhere". The version of Drupal used by the portal has at least 25 vulnerabilities, including a high-risk SQL injection vulnerability that allows anyone to remotely execute arbitrary commands. Areas of the portal's backend can also be accessed by guessing the URL structure, a security researcher noted. Read next The White House just got scammed. Here’s how to avoid phishing scams The White House just got scammed. Here’s how to avoid phishing scams The company's client portal, which it boasts gives customers access to "corporate information anywhere and everywhere", runs on an outdated open source CMS with at least 25 vulnerabilities Mossack Fonseca's webmail system, which runs on Microsoft's Outlook Web Access, was last updated in 2009, while its main site runs a version of WordPress that is three months out of date. A further vulnerability makes it possible to easily access files uploaded to the backend of Mossack Fonseca's site simply by guessing the URL. "It shows the way they configured the server and the way they configured the website is not within the best security practices," an anonymous source told WIRED. They continued to say that the method could be used by other people to access the data. "We're talking about a misconfigured server that enables directory listings." Advertisement They seem to have been caught in a time warp. If I were a client of theirs I'd be very concerned that they were communicating using such outdated technology Alan Woodward, Surrey University Professor Alan Woodward, a computer security expert from Surrey University told WIRED that Mossack Fonseca's front end seemed "horribly" out of date. "I can't understand this," Woodward continued. "Take something like Outlook Web Access – if you keep your Exchange Server up to date this just comes along naturally. They seem to have been caught in a time warp. If I were a client of theirs I'd be very concerned that they were communicating using such outdated technology." Mossack Fonseca's emails were also not encrypted, according to privacy expert Christopher Soghoian who noted the company did not use the TLS security protocol. "Given the business they're in, I find it quite surprising that they haven't thought about securing their emails better," Angela Sasse, professor of human-centred technology at University College London, told WIRED. Read next Russia blamed for 'sustained' hack against UK parliament Russia blamed for 'sustained' hack against UK parliament Mossack Fonseca's Outlook Web Access has seemingly not been updated since 2009 Advertisement "I would regard TLS encryption as okay for a not very high risk organisation, if it is done properly and looked after. The awareness of the risk and how easily these services can be attacked seems to not have been there." Precisely what vulnerability the attacker used is not known and Mossack Fonseca has said it is carrying out "an in-depth investigation with experts", while also taking "additional measures" to strengthen its systems. In a leaked email to customers Mossack Fonseca confirmed an "unauthorised breach" of its email servers. Company partner Ramon Fonseca has since said the leak was not "an inside job" and that the company had been hacked by servers based abroad. The company did not respond to requests for comment. This points at an insider with enough access privileges to get to see all the data, but not enough privileges to be able to copy it all quickly to one disc Eerke Boiten, University of Kent It also remains unclear who carried out the attacks. University of Kent senior computing lecturer Eerke Boiten told WIRED that the leak may in fact be the work of an insider. "We do know that it was a lot of data, and that it came out gradually," he said. "This points at an insider with enough access privileges to get to see all the data, but not enough privileges to be able to copy it all quickly to one disc." Read next Trending: 4 email editors to deal with inbox overload Trending: 4 email editors to deal with inbox overload Woodward disagreed, saying the vulnerabilities in Mossack Fonseca's systems made it "vulnerable to external scanning and exploitation". The attacker may even have been a nation state, he continued. "If I were a betting man I would place a two way bet between an external hacker who got lucky by probing, was shocked by what they saw and leaked it, and a nation state fed up with tax avoidance." Mossack Fonseca has said it is carrying out "an in-depth investigation with experts", while also taking "additional measures" to strengthen its systems RODRIGO ARANGUA/AFP/Getty Images What little is known about the source of the leak comes from details published by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. Communicating via encrypted chat in late 2014, the source warned his or her life was "in danger" but that they had data from law firm Mossack Fonseca that they wanted to share. When asked how much data they had, the source replied "more than you have ever seen," according to the newspaper. It took almost a year for all the data to arrive, with the source sending it in dribs and drabs. Dating back to the 1970s, the 11.5 million documents – the biggest leak in history – total 2.6 terabytes. I knew one law firm who, as part of their so-called governance, walked around the building in the summer to make sure papers hadn't blown out (the window) Dr Daniel Dresner, Manchester University Advertisement The Panama Papers detail 214,488 offshore entities related to public officials held by Mossack Fonseca. The leak includes emails, contracts, scanned documents and transcripts. Broken down by file type, the leak comprises 4.8 million emails, three million database files, 2.1 million PDFs, 1.1 million images, 320,166 text files and 2,242 files in other formats. All the files came organised in folders for the individual shell firms they related to. A full list of companies and people linked to the offshore entities will be published in May 2016. Dr Daniel Dresner, a lecturer in cyber security at Manchester University's school of computer science, told WIRED that Mossack Fonseca's seemingly lax security protocols were not unusual amongst law firms. "There's always a feeling in the legal fraternity that whatever happens they'll be able to get off the wrap because they're clever legal people," he said. "People are now starting to realise that legal companies are a great target. When you think about the size of stuff that they're negotiating, who they're negotiating for and the number of different parties involved, the motivation is there for people who want a bit of insider information." Dresner added that the poor data protection practices of some law firms offline had clearly been duplicated online. "Look at the back seat of the car of the average partner's BMW and I think you'd be quite shocked. These guys still take large bundles of papers around tied up with ribbons," he said. "I knew one law firm who, as part of their so-called governance, walked around the building in the summer to make sure papers hadn't blown out [the window]." "There are plenty of vectors," Dresner said when presented with a list of potential holes in Mossack Fonseca's systems. "But they've put a great big invitation out there with an RSVP on it." |
Years ago, when I was busy running away from the small town I grew up in, I met a man in the city who told me “It’s not easy being green”. I am reminded of this because this morning I woke up with a heavy kind of sadness. And I started to think about the enormous challenge I had set myself with the Kickstarter. LaQuisha’s Odyssey breaks all the rules of popular culture. It’s unashamedly gay, the leading lady isn’t traditionally beautiful, and it’s smart. We’re not targeting the lowest common market denominator here. And as I looked out into the back garden while sipping my coffee, girding my loins for another day of marketing, tweeting and media-releasing I sighed deeply. Because in my heart of hearts the story of LaQuisha’s Odyssey is a thing I want to create so badly, so very badly. Because I am tired of a media diet that recently has been just so ‘gendered’. I mean men are Men and women are Women. I’m a little bit nostalgic for the CK androgyny of the 1990s and the glam-rock of the 1970s. And I hope, and pray (to a non-denominational deity), that I can find enough people who share this vision. Of a popular culture not sanitized by network censors. Or treading on eggshells around the companies buying advertising. And that maybe some young people will play this game are realise that these is so so so much more to life than we see on television and online. This post is not a broken-arsed missive, or a cynical manipulation, to garner sympathy. It’s a very real share from the heart of the man behind LaQuisha. And… I am enormously grateful, to the point of tears, for all of the love and support that has flooded in from all over the planet. Now, I must get back to the campaign. With all love and respect Conrad Johnston PS, I have to do this bit: sharing is caring. Click the links below to share on Facebook or Twitter Facebook: http://on.fb.me/19AROHI Twitter: http://bit.ly/18j8rvQ |
ROSENBERG - The NFL quarterback drawing fire for not standing for the Star-Spangled Banner is, in one way, in a league with the thousands of people descending on Rosenberg for a regional convention that wraps up Sunday. Jehovah's Witnesses have long refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or participate in other patriotic ceremonies. They also don't celebrate birthdays, get blood transfusions, vote or join the military because of their religious beliefs. Jehovah's Witnesses count 8.2 million members worldwide and may be among the world's faster-growing religions. "I tell people if you read this, it is like winning the lottery," said a woman who shared a copy of The Watchtower, the group's perennial publication that began in the late 1800s, outside a Whataburger near the Fort Bend County hall, one of the largest gathering points for the religion in Texas. They have stood at the forefront of multiple successful Supreme Court fights, fortifying the type of free speech rights that enable San Francisco 49ers Colin Kaepernick to take a knee at the start of football games in protest of what he sees as racial oppression. Jehovah's Witnesses know they may seem unusual to some outsiders as they canvas neighborhoods, preaching the benefits of a life dedicated to their lord and warning of a coming doomsday to those they encounter. A few blocks from the Rosenberg restaurant, the immaculate 130,000-square-foot Assembly Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, was already filled with more than 2,000 members. Among the youngest attendees here was an 11-week-old girl named Madeley, from The Woodlands, who was cradled in her mother's arms. Among the oldest was Dr. Kenneth Riggle, who turns 101 this year. Another was Jon Beck, 61, a church elder and fifth- generation Jehovah's Witness, who was delivered into this world as newborn by Riggle at a long-gone Montrose clinic. "He is one of those doctors where you have to listen because he must be doing something right," Beck said admiringly of the centenarian. Beck, a spokesman for the gathering in Rosenberg, said that all of the religion's teachings were drawn from the Bible. "We do respect the flag and others' right to salute it, but like Jesus Christ, our beliefs follow his example of remaining neutral politically and nationally," he said. The Rosenberg hall, which was built by more than 13,000 volunteers two decades ago, might seem off-kilter for some Christians. There is no priest or pastor leading a service, nor is there a cross or crucifix front and center. Members took notes and followed along with various speakers on their tablets and old-school Bibles. One participant told of the double-edged sword of the Internet and how it could be used for good and bad. There also were cautions against being alone with a member of the opposite sex to whom you are not married and advice for how to deal with a spouse who does not believe in the church. The church clearly defines what members should and should not do and offers speakers who tell of their own ordeals, decisions and consequences. One young woman told her story of deciding not to attend a university, as she agreed with church cautions that it could cause temptation. An older woman recalled how she faced the challenge but later found strength in following a church policy of no longer communicating with members - in this case her own daughters - who decide to no longer be Jehovah's Witnesses. "It would have been easier to lose them in death," she said, adding that her daughters later again embraced the church. Philip Jenkins, a history professor at Baylor University's Program on Historical Studies of Religion, said Jehovah's Witnesses have a distinctive way of interpreting the Bible and practicing their religion. "They are very cut off from the world; they work with each other and believe pretty much that the rest of the world is in the hands of the devil," said Jenkins, noting their reputation as a group seems to differ from how they are one-on-one. "In theory, you can deal with them as these rock-hard cult folks, but when you actually deal with them on the streets, they are very funny, regular, ordinary people." Around town, Rosenberg residents repeatedly gave good marks to the conventiongoers, part of a series of conventions that have gone on here throughout the summer and serves as an economic engine for a rural pocket in the fast-growing county. "I can tell they are very generous people," said James Cross, as he worked the register at the Whataburger. He noted that the restaurant already had taken in at least 60 donations, mostly from churchgoers, at part of a campaign to support the Houston Food Bank. "It is more of an atmosphere, a positive attitude," he said. "It can be contagious, even for the people working here." Marina Sebesta at a nearby Comfort Inn described them as considerate, "definitely kind" and respectful of others. "It is never an issue where they are trying to shove religion down your throat," she said. |
Scott Fulton said it was fascinating to read a 20-year-old letter from his 14-year-old self. (Courtesy Scott Fulton) A retired Saskatchewan teacher is fulfilling a promise he made to his students 20 years ago — sending letters written by teenagers to their current selves. In 1994, as part of an English assignment, Fort Qu'Appelle's Bruce Farrer had his Grade 9 students at Bert Fox Community High School write letters to their future selves. Promise kept He hung on to the letters for two decades, tracked down where they lived, and then, as he said he would, he mailed the letters out. I was trying to think of some assignment that would be special. - retired teacher Bruce Farrer And it wasn't just for that one year. In fact, he had dreamed up the idea when he was just starting his teaching career in 1961. "I was trying to think of some assignment that would be special," Farrer told Morning Edition host Sheila Coles. "It just sort of came up." By the time he retired in 2002, five large boxes had been filled with letters. Farrer said it's been a lot of work tracking down the writers, but he made a promise. Former student became teacher himself Among those who took a trip down memory lane when they opened their mailboxes last week was Scott Fulton, who is now a teacher himself and taught for a while at his old high school. He said he remembered the assignment, but not what he wrote. "It kind of faded from my memory," Fulton said. "To receive it again was pretty special." He read part of the two-decades-old letter on the Morning Edition. 'Are you married?' "So, anyway, are you married?" his 14-year-old self asked. "To who? I've always wondered if I would get married to somebody I already know now or somebody I'll meet later on in my life ... Did you got to university? Which one?" Fulton said there's no wife and kids yet and he decided to pursue a career in education, rather than sports medicine, as his teenage self planned. The assignment Farrer said he had the kids write 10-page letters with questions and speculations about what they'd be like as adults. He considered having them keep the letters, but figured they'd likely lose them so he held onto them himself.. Then he mailed them out on the date the students chose — typically 10, 20 or 25 years later. The students had to provide their home addresses, plus those of several relatives considered likely to remain at the same place for a while. Farrer says some of the students might have been a little embarrassed after all those years to read the letters, but he has also had a phone call or two from those who were delighted. Farrer said it has been a lot of work, but he's happy to do it in the knowledge his former students will be pleased to remember who they were as teenagers. 'Amazed and inspired' It's the most memorable thing he did as a teacher, Farrer said. For his part, Fulton said he hopes he can live up to the older man's example. "I was just feeling honoured and grateful," Fulton said about getting his letter. "Amazed and inspired at the work of Mr. Farrer." |
Anyone that knows Tyler, The Creator is familiar with his Twitter account, which is a mix of complete absurdity, extreme profanity, up-typing, and enthusiasm for art of all kinds. His latest stream of consciousness letter, posted to the Odd Future tumblr earlier today, contains every one of those things. The un-edited rant covers the success of the second annual Odd Future carnival, which brought in 10,000 fans last week, and also scored a very special guest appearance from Kanye West. You can read the letter in its entirety below. Its Been A Week Since The Carnival, Which I Have Now Realized Was The Greatest Day Of My Life. Seeing Everyone I Care About There Was Crazy. No, Thats Not Even The Part That Got Me Excited. Seeing What Some Stupid Little ideas Can Turn Into Is What Shocks Me. The Little Stupid Cats And Graphics I Made On Photo Shop Out Of Boredom On Flags And Murals; Seeing That Donut I Drew When I Was 15 On Stages And Everyones Bag; 10 Thousand People Came To A Place Called ‘Camp Flog Gnaw’, Wow. I Remember When I Came Up With That Name Summer 2011. I Never Been To Camp And In My Head, I Created A Place That I Figured Would Never Exist, But That Changed. Just Fliping The First Letters Of Wolf Gang Turned Into Its Own Separate Thing. Seeing All Different Races From Skinny To Fat To Everything All In One Place With Something In Common Was Mind Blowing. The Zipper Is My Favorite Ride In The World. Not That You Care, But That Fact That I Figured Out How To Get That Thing And Ride It For As Many Times As I Want Without Waiting In Line IS Fucking Amazing. I Have An Amazing Team With Me. No Matter How Crazy And Offensive Or Weird My Ideas Were, They Put Their Trust In Me And Allowed Me To Move Forward.Like Dude, We Threw A Fucking Carnival In The Middle Of Los Angeles With 10k Plus People. We Didnt Have Any Crazy Sponsors And I Didnt Have To Suck Up to Anyone Or Any Of That Shit, WE Did It. And The Skatepark? Did You See That Skatepark? I Was Up Till 2 Am Painting That Bitch! Growing Up In Hawthorne At The Dirty ( skatepark) And Seeing My Old Friends From There Getting Clips Was Prolly The Craziest Shit Ive Seen. How Far Ive Came With Every Little Idea that I Believed In No Matter Who Did Or Didnt. Walking Around Seeing Kids In EXACT Things That I Wear Is Mind Blowing. Something That I Just Naturally Like And Put On, Its Some Kid Out There That Studies Every Article Of Clothing That Was Put On And Emulates That. Thats Crazy To Me. I Used To Do That With P, So Know That Someone IS Looking At Me The Way I Look At Him Is Really Amazing To Me. I Didnt Think I Would Change So Many Lives. Someone Retweeted An Old Tweet Of Mine From Feb 2012 Yesterday And It Read ’ I Had A Dream That Kanye Invited Me To Perform LATE With Him. I Wish’. Kanye Came To The Carnival And I Performed Late With Him. My Favorite Song By Kanye, AN Album Cut He NEVER Does, Was Performed Not Only With But During My Set And My Carnival! No Matter if You Hate Me Think Im Stupid Untalented Annoying Or Whatever, I FUCKING WIN AND YOU CAN SUCK MY WHOLE SHIT. We Did This, OF Did This, Coming From Actually Jack Shit And Turned That Jack Shit In Something. I’m Just Blabbing Now. I Just Want Who Ever Reading This To Know That Anything Is Possible, No Matter How Crazy It May Seem, Anything IS Possible You Just Have To Figure It Out. Get Your Self Esteem Up And Like Yourself, Then Like Your Ideas. We Live In A World Where People Dont Even Like Their Own Ideas, That Why You Have People Copying One Thing Thats Working So Much, Then Everything Gets Over Saturated With The Same Shit, And That Goes With Fashion, Music And All That. If People Actually Loved Themselves And Believed In Themselves More You Know How Many More Crazy Things Would Be Created? There Is No Fucking Limit To Anything! ( Except Elevators). Its A World Of People Who Dont Give A Fuck About The Mall Or The Radio Or None Of That Shit, Who Dont Care About Race Or If Someone Is Gay Or What Not. Thats What I Was Trying To Say On That Arsenio Interview. I Prolly Came Of As An Idiot Tho. Im Really Passionate About Everything I Do. From Music To Clothing To Videos. I Love Make Videos So Much. I Just Want Some Millionaire To Throw Me Money To Be Creative And Get Shots. I Remember Kids In School Always Thought I Was Weird, Not Just Cause How I Dressed Or The Music I Liked Or That Fact I Was Just Different Overall( in comparison to them), But Because I Was So Open With Future Goals. I Would Always Say The Grammies Im Gonna Get, And The Number 1 Movie Im Going To Write And Direct, And Just Random Shit Im Gonna Do. Now Those Same Dude Who Shut Me Down Are Paying Shitty College Debt Doing Something They Hate, Because They Didnt Go Full Throttle On Their Own Dreams And Quickly Shitted On Mines. And Im Not Knocking Anyone In College, Please Get Your Education, Im Just Saying, Do What You Love And Be Happy, Dont Live For Anyone Else. I Dont Like The Color Black. I Dont Know What That Has To Do With Anything But I Like Colors, Bright Colors, Like Flowers. It Brings A Great Energy. Ok Im Just Talking Again. Its Prolly A lot Of Typos In This But Im Just Going Off Of What Ever Is Coming To My Head. This Photo Of Na-Kel Smith Skating In Front Of The GOLF Mural At The Skatepark Means So Much To Me. The World Is Yours Little Nigga, And I Mean That. They Are Them, We Are Us, Fuck Them All! OFWGKTA |
Rebels in eastern Libya have said they will not negotiate unless Col Muammar Gaddafi quits and goes into exile. The National Libyan Council in the city of Benghazi also called for foreign intervention to stop government air strikes on the rebels. The International Criminal Court said it would investigate Col Gaddafi and his sons for crimes against humanity. There have been calls in Col Gaddafi's stronghold, Tripoli, for protests against his rule after Friday prayers. In Benghazi, the opposition National Libyan Council said there was no room for talks, following reports that Col Gaddafi had ordered an intelligence chief to negotiate with the rebels. 'Stalemate' The council is led by former Libyan Interior Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who defected last month. Muammar Gaddafi has lost legitimacy to lead and he must leave Barack Obama, US President "If there is any negotiation it will be on one single thing - how Gaddafi is going to leave the country or step down so we can save lives. There is nothing else to negotiate," Ahmed Jabreel, a spokesman for Mr Abdel-Jalil, told Reuters news agency. The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Benghazi says it appears that neither side has the capacity to move large amounts of manpower or firepower over vast expanses of desert. He says that raises the grim prospect of a military stalemate and a political vacuum after the revolt that began in the east of the country in mid-February. Meaningful talks would be difficult, says our correspondent, because Col Gaddafi's only aim is to remain in power and the rebels' goal is to end his 41 years of rule. Terror in Tripoli At the defiant ruler's stronghold in the capital Tripoli, some residents have called for demonstrations on Friday after weekly Muslim prayers. Protests last weekend after Friday prayers in several districts of the city were fired on by Gaddafi supporters, witnesses of the shootings have said. At the scene This is the front line in a strange, desultory war. A checkpoint has been set up in the desert seven miles (11km) beyond the little town of Agayla and manned by no more than a couple of dozen lightly armed rebel soldiers. But there's no doubt that the drivers who are coming through are scared of the wide open roads here. Beyond us, a good 50 miles to the west, lies the much bigger town of Ras Lanouf, with a port, an airfield and an oil refinery. This is where Col Gaddafi's troops were driven back to after the battle at Brega. If the rebels were a trained army - but they aren't - they would probably want to press their advantage and attack Ras Lanouf. The line of command is very vague and when we were in Brega earlier this morning, the colonel there was mostly concerned with rescuing two prisoners, supposedly mercenaries, from being lynched by his own men. Col Gaddafi's security forces have reportedly carried out a wave of arrests, killings and disappearances in the city in recent days in order to quell the opposition. Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama repeatedly called on Col Gaddafi to quit during a White House news conference on Thursday. "Going forward, we will continue to send a clear message: the violence must stop," he said. "Muammar Gaddafi has lost legitimacy to lead and he must leave." Some 200,000 migrant workers have now fled Libya, into Egypt, Tunisia and Niger, says the International Organization for Migration. The rebels, a mixture of citizen militias and army defectors, have been securing the key port of Brega, home to the country's second largest oil facility. The government launched a new air strike on Thursday at Brega, but missed its oil refinery target and no casualties were reported. 'More mercenaries' Amid reports that Col Gaddafi has recruited up to 300 more mercenaries from Mali, opposition forces in Brega have been braced for any fresh ground attacks. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Luis Moreno-Ocampo: "We cannot confirm the bombing of civilians by planes" Gaddafi loyalists have withdrawn west to another oil port, Ras Lanouf, following their defeat in a battle on Wednesday. The rebels, who are armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, have held funerals for some of the 14 fighters killed in that clash. The major western rebel-held cities of Zawiya and Misrata have also repelled attacks by Gaddafi loyalists. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said Col Gaddafi and his inner circle were under its spotlight. The court has identified at least nine incidents that could constitute crimes against humanity, including the alleged killing of 257 people in Benghazi last month. "During the coming weeks, the office will investigate who are the most responsible for the most serious incidents, for the most serious crimes committed in Libya," he said. Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told the BBC the case was "close to a joke", built purely on media reports. |
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva speaks during the inauguration of a university in Buenos Aires May 16, 2013. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil’s popular former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was pronounced healthy by a team of doctors at Sao Paulo’s Sírio-Libanês hospital after routine exams on Saturday. The doctors said Lula had asked them to give a news conference after the exams to respond to rumors the former president had suffered a cancer recurrence. Lula was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2011 and said he was cured of the disease in March of 2012. His political protégé, President Dilma Rousseff, was elected in 2010 and is expected to run for re-election next year. Lula has backed her candidacy but some speculate he could still step in at the last moment and run on the Worker’s Party ticket. Rousseff’s approval rate rose by 6 percentage points to 36 percent, recovering slightly from a term low in late June after the largest street protests in decades hit Brazil, according to a poll by Datafolha published on Saturday. |
Photos via Andrew Ranville One of the greatest places to be inspired for art is smack in the middle of nature, with no other evidence of human habitation. Rob Gorski found a listing for the 91-acre island on Craigslist last year and bought the untamed island (not something you get to do every day!). He and artist Andrew Ranville want to keep the island in its natural state, but still allow for artists to spend time on the island getting inspired and working on projects. So, they've launched a very unusual project. This is just about the only evidence of human habitation the island will have -- a cabin for artists in residence. The island is Rabbit Island, and sits 3 miles off the beach of Lake Superior. It has remained untouched, except for a fishing family that lived there in the late 1800s. But, it will be home to artists hoping to soak in the unscarred beauty of the forested shores. The team states, "Ecological concerns are a growing influence within the consciousness of society and the creative practices of many people. Visual artists, writers, designers, architects, farmers and creative researches of all types are doing some amazing things and we want develop an amazing space for those practices to flourish and be challenged. This artist residency presents some really unique constraints: It is off-the-grid, it is nature in its purist form, it's an experiment, a laboratory. It is isolated from all centralized forms of transportation, energy production, food industry, and, the world of art. Rabbit Island represents a chance to creatively explore ideas related to the absence of civilization in a well-preserved microcosm. This is why we want to establish an artist residency on Rabbit Island." It sounds like heaven on Earth. The duo needs your help, however. They need $12,500 in funds to get everything ready, and have just 9 days to raise just about $6,500. When you donate, you can receive as a thank you anything from a cotton tote bag to a trip to the island. You can check out their Kickstarter campaign to learn more. Follow Jaymi on Twitter for more stories like this More on Artist Spaces Recycled Studios for Artists Pop Up in US Northeast Sin City Hotel Sponsors Sustainable Artist Seaworthy Art Exhibit Allows New Yorkers To Channel Their Inner Pirate |
AP Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just sent out a 3,187-word memo to employees about his vision for the future of the company. Nadella is planning for a complete shake-up of how Microsoft operates: Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture ... Organizations will change. Mergers and acquisitions will occur. Job responsibilities will evolve. New partnerships will be formed. Tired traditions will be questioned. Our priorities will be adjusted. New skills will be built. New ideas will be heard. New hires will be made. Processes will be simplified. And if you want to thrive at Microsoft and make a world impact, you and your team must add numerous more changes to this list that you will be enthusiastic about driving. Microsoft's fiscal year just started, so Nadella is using it as a launching point to refocus the company: "We'll use the month of July to have a dialogue about this bold ambition and our core focus." In the simplest terms, this is Nadella's vision for Microsoft, "We help people get stuff done." In less simple terms, Nadella says: "At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more." Other highlights: Here's the full memo: From: Satya Nadella To: All Employees Date: July 10, 2014 at 6:00 a.m. PT Subject: Starting FY15 - Bold Ambition & Our Core Team, As we start FY15, I want to thank you for all of your contributions this past year. I'm proud of what we collectively achieved even as we drove significant changes in our business and organization. It's energizing to feel the momentum and enthusiasm building. The day I took on my new role I said that our industry does not respect tradition - it only respects innovation. I also said that in order to accelerate our innovation, we must rediscover our soul - our unique core. We must all understand and embrace what only Microsoft can contribute to the world and how we can once again change the world. I consider the job before us to be bolder and more ambitious than anything we have ever done. We'll use the month of July to have a dialogue about this bold ambition and our core focus. Today I want to synthesize the strategic direction and massive opportunity I've been discussing for the past few months and the fundamental cultural changes required to deliver on it. On July 22, we'll announce our earnings results for the past quarter and I'll say more then on what we are doing in FY15 to focus on our core. Over the course of July, the Senior Leadership Team and I will share more on the engineering and organization changes we believe are needed. Then, at MGX and //oneweek, we'll come together to build on all of this, learn from each other and put our ideas into action. Our Worldview We live in a mobile-first and cloud-first world. Computing is ubiquitous and experiences span devices and exhibit ambient intelligence. Billions of sensors, screens and devices - in conference rooms, living rooms, cities, cars, phones, PCs - are forming a vast network and streams of data that simply disappear into the background of our lives. This computing power will digitize nearly everything around us and will derive insights from all of the data being generated by interactions among people and between people and machines. We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention. In this new world, there will soon be more than 3 billion people with Internet-connected devices - from a farmer in a remote part of the world with a smartphone, to a professional power user with multiple devices powered by cloud service-based apps spanning work and life. The combination of many devices and cloud services used for generating and consuming data creates a unique opportunity for us. Our customers and society expect us to maximize the value of technology while also preserving the values that are timeless. We will create more natural human-computing interfaces that empower all individuals. We will develop and deploy secure platforms and infrastructure that enable all industries. And we will strike the right balance between using data to create intelligent, personal experiences, while maintaining security and privacy. By doing all of this, we will have the broadest impact. Our passion is to enable people to thrive in this mobile-first and cloud-first world. Our Core Microsoft was founded on the belief that technology creates opportunities for people and organizations to express and achieve their dreams by putting a PC on every desk and in every home. More recently, we have described ourselves as a "devices and services" company. While the devices and services description was helpful in starting our transformation, we now need to hone in on our unique strategy. At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more. We think about productivity for people, teams and the business processes of entire organizations as one interconnected digital substrate. We also think about interconnected platforms for individuals, IT and developers. This comprehensive view enables us to solve the more complex, nuanced and real-world day-to-day challenges in an increasingly digital world. It also opens the door to massive growth opportunity - technology spend as a total percentage of GDP will grow with the digitization of nearly everything in life and work. We have a rich heritage and a unique capability around building productivity experiences and platforms. We help people get stuff done. Stuff like term papers, recipes and budgets. Stuff like chatting with friends and family across the world. Stuff like painting, writing poetry and expressing ideas. Stuff like running a Formula 1 racing team or keeping an entire city running. Stuff like building a game with a spark of your imagination and remixing it with the world. And stuff like helping build a vaccine for HIV, and giving a voice to the voiceless. This is an incredible foundation from which to grow. Microsoft has a unique ability to harmonize the world's devices, apps, docs, data and social networks in digital work and life experiences so that people are at the center and are empowered to do more and achieve more with what is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity - time! Productivity for us goes well beyond documents, spreadsheets and slides. We will reinvent productivity for people who are swimming in a growing sea of devices, apps, data and social networks. We will build the solutions that address the productivity needs of groups and entire organizations as well as individuals by putting them at the center of their computing experiences. We will shift the meaning of productivity beyond solely producing something to include empowering people with new insights. We will build tools to be more predictive, personal and helpful. We will enable organizations to move from automated business processes to intelligent business processes. Every experience Microsoft builds will understand the rich context of an individual at work and in life to help them organize and accomplish things with ease. Productive people and organizations are the primary drivers of individual fulfilment and economic growth and we need to do everything to make the experiences and platforms that enable this ubiquitous. We will think of every user as a potential "dual user" - people who will use technology for their work or school and also deeply use it in their personal digital life. They strive to get stuff done with technology, demanding new cloud-powered applications, extensively using time and calendar management, advanced expression, collaboration, meeting, search and research services, all with better security and privacy control. Microsoft will push into all corners of the globe to empower every individual as a dual user - starting with the soon to be 3 billion people with Internet-connected devices. And we will do so with a platform mindset. Developers and partners will thrive by creatively extending Microsoft experiences for every individual and business on the planet. Across Microsoft, we will obsess over reinventing productivity and platforms. We will relentlessly focus on and build great digital work and life experiences with specific focus on dual use. Our cloud OS infrastructure, device OS and first-party hardware will all build around this core focus and enable broad ecosystems. Microsoft will light up digital work and life experiences in the most personal, intelligent, open and empowering ways. Digital Work and Life Experiences: We will deliver digital work and life experiences that are reinvented for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. First and foremost, these experiences will shine for productivity. As a result, people will meet and collaborate more easily and effectively. They will express ideas in new ways. They will experience the magic of ambient intelligence with Delve and Cortana. They will ask questions naturally and have them answered with insight from Power Q&A. They will conquer language barriers and change the world with Skype translator. Apps will be designed as dual use with the intelligence to partition data between work and life and with the respect for each person's privacy choices. All of these apps will be explicitly engineered so anybody can find, try and then buy them in friction-free ways. They will be built for other ecosystems so as people move from device to device, so will their content and the richness of their services - it's one way we keep people, not devices, at the center. This transformation is well underway as we moved Office from the desktop to a service with Office 365 and our solutions from individual productivity to group productivity tools - both to the delight of our customers. We'll push forward and evolve the world-class productivity, collaboration and business process tools people know and love today, including Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Bing and Dynamics. Increasingly, all of these experiences will become more connected to each other, more contextual and more personal. For example, today the Cortana app on my Windows Phone merges data from highway sensors and my own calendar and simply reminds me to leave work to make it to my daughter's recital on time. In the future, it will be even more intelligent as a personal assistant who takes notes, books meetings and understands if my question about the weather is to determine my clothes for the day or is intended to start a complex task like booking a family vacation. Microsoft experiences will be unique as they will reason over information from work and life and keep a user in control of their privacy. Cloud OS: Our cloud OS represents the largest opportunity given we are working from a position of strength. With Azure, we are one of very few cloud vendors that runs at hyper-scale. The combination of Azure and Windows Server makes us the only company with a public, private and hybrid cloud platform that can power modern business. We will transform the return on IT investment by enabling enterprises to combine their existing datacenters and our public cloud into one cohesive infrastructure backplane. We will enable our customers to use our Cloud OS to accelerate their businesses and power all of their data and application needs. Beyond back-end cloud infrastructure, our cloud will also enable richer employee experiences. For example, with our new Enterprise Mobility Suite, we now enable IT organizations to manage and secure the Windows, iOS and Android devices that their employees use, while keeping their companies secure. We are also making it easy for organizations to securely adopt SaaS applications (both our own and third-party apps) and seamlessly integrate them with their existing security and management infrastructure. We will continue to innovate with higher level services like identity and directory services, rich data storage and analytics services, machine learning services,media services, web and mobile backend services, developer productivity services, and many more. Our cloud OS will also run all of Microsoft's digital work and life experiences, and we will continue to grow our datacenter footprint globally. Every Microsoft digital work and life experience will also provide third-party extensibility and enable a rich developer ecosystem around our cloud OS. This will enable customers and partners to further customize and extend our solutions, achieving even more value. Device OS and Hardware: Our Windows device OS and first-party hardware will set the bar for productivity experiences. Windows will deliver the most rich and consistent user experience for digital work and life scenarios on screens of all sizes - from phones, tablets and laptops to TVs and giant 82 inch PPI boards. We will invest so that Windows is the most secure, manageable and capable OS for the needs of a modern workforce and IT. Windows will create a broad developer opportunity by enabling Universal Windows Applications to run across all device targets. Windows will evolve to include new input/output methods like speech, pen and gesture and ultimately power more personal computing experiences. Our first-party devices will light up digital work and life. Surface Pro 3 is a great example - it is the world's best productivity tablet. In addition, we will build first-party hardware to stimulate more demand for the entire Windows ecosystem. That means at times we'll develop new categories like we did with Surface. It also means we will responsibly make the market for Windows Phone, which is our goal with the Nokia devices and services acquisition. Our first-party devices will light up digital work and life. I also want to share some additional thoughts on Xbox and its importance to Microsoft. As a large company, I think it's critical to define the core, but it's important to make smart choices on other businesses in which we can have fundamental impact and success. The single biggest digital life category, measured in both time and money spent, in a mobile-first world is gaming. We are fortunate to have Xbox in our family to go after this opportunity with unique and bold innovation. Microsoft will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox. Xbox is one of the most-revered consumer brands, with a growing online community and service, and a raving fan base. We also benefit from many technologies flowing from our gaming efforts into our productivity efforts - core graphics and NUI in Windows, speech recognition in Skype, camera technology in Kinect for Windows, Azure cloud enhancements for GPU simulation and many more. Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft. While today many people define mobile by devices, Microsoft defines it by experiences. We're really in the infant stages of the mobile-first world. In the next few years we will see many more new categories evolve and experiences emerge that span a variety of devices of all screen sizes. Microsoft will be on the forefront of this innovation with a particular focus on dual users and their needs across work and life. Microsoft will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox. Our Culture Our ambitions are bold and so must be our desire to change and evolve our culture. I truly believe that we spend far too much time at work for it not to drive personal meaning and satisfaction. Together we have the opportunity to create technology that impacts the planet. Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture to deliver on this core strategy. Organizations will change. Mergers and acquisitions will occur. Job responsibilities will evolve. New partnerships will be formed. Tired traditions will be questioned. Our priorities will be adjusted. New skills will be built. New ideas will be heard. New hires will be made. Processes will be simplified. And if you want to thrive at Microsoft and make a world impact, you and your team must add numerous more changes to this list that you will be enthusiastic about driving. I am committed to making Microsoft the best place for smart, curious, ambitious people to do their best work. First, we will obsess over our customers. Obsessing over our customers is everybody's job. I'm looking to the engineering teams to build the experiences our customers love. I'm looking to the sales and marketing organizations to showcase our unique value propositions and drive customer usage first and foremost. In order to deliver the experiences our customers need for the mobile-first and cloud-first world, we will modernize our engineering processes to be customer-obsessed, data-driven, speed-oriented and quality-focused. We will be more effective in predicting and understanding what our customers need and more nimble in adjusting to information we get from the market. We will streamline the engineering process and reduce the amount of time and energy it takes to get things done. You can expect to have fewer processes but more focused and measurable outcomes. You will see fewer people get involved in decisions and more emphasis on accountability. Further, you will see investments in two new or combined functions: Data and Applied Science and Software Engineering. Each engineering group will have Data and Applied Science resources that will focus on measurable outcomes for our products and predictive analysis of market trends, which will allow us to innovate more effectively. Software Engineering will evolve so that information can travel more quickly, with fewer breakpoints between the envisioning of a product or service and a quality delivery to customers. In making these changes we are getting closer to the customer and pushing more accountability throughout the organization. Second, we know the changes above will bring on the need for new training, learning and experimentation. Over the next six months you will see new investments in our workforce, such as enhanced training and development and more opportunities to test new ideas and incubate new projects. I have also heard from many of you that changing jobs is challenging. We will change the process and mindset so you can more seamlessly move around the company to roles where you can have the most impact and personal growth. All of this, too, comes with accountability and the need to deliver great work for customers, but it is clear that investing in future learning and growth has great benefit for everyone. I am committed to making Microsoft the best place for smart, curious, ambitious people to do their best work. Finally, every team across Microsoft must find ways to simplify and move faster, more efficiently. We will increase the fluidity of information and ideas by taking actions to flatten the organization and develop leaner business processes. Culture change means we will do things differently. Often people think that means everyone other than them. In reality, it means all of us taking a new approach and working together to make Microsoft better. To this end, I've asked each member of the Senior Leadership Team to evaluate opportunities to advance their innovation processes and simplify their operations and how they work. We will share more on this throughout July. A few months ago on a call with investors I quoted Nietzsche and said that we must have "courage in the face of reality." Even more important, we must have courage in the face of opportunity. We have clarity in purpose to empower every individual and organization to do more and achieve more. We have the right capabilities to reinvent productivity and platforms for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. Now, we must build the right culture to take advantage of our huge opportunity. And culture change starts with one individual at a time. Rainer Maria Rilke's words say it best: "The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens." We must each have the courage to transform as individuals. We must ask ourselves, what idea can I bring to life? What insight can I illuminate? What individual life could I change? What customer can I delight? What new skill could I learn? What team could I help build? What orthodoxy should I question? With the courage to transform individually, we will collectively transform this company and seize the great opportunity ahead. |
Recently, the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine circulated a video meant to make its instructors aware of “student mistreatment.” With a minor-chord piano medley providing the soundtrack, viewers were asked to avoid putting students on the spot with questions, to minimize “cold and clinical” interactions, and to cultivate “safe” learning environments for the young residents. It seems a little like something created by The Onion, but the video was sincere, and its message will be familiar to a lot of employers dealing with people in their 20s. For many who remember what business was like pre-Internet, millennials seem an appallingly sensitive lot, having been protected from the vagaries of the world by helicopter parents, trigger warnings and—to especially cynical critics—sheer narcissism. “Aren’t young people coddled?” is now as safe an icebreaker as, “Did you see last night’s Seinfeld?” would have been 20 years ago. It’s a stereotypical view and, of course, an incomplete one. But there’s no doubt younger workers are changing the interpersonal dynamics of the modern workplace, much as they’ve already done in high schools and universities. And I have news for you, my fellow judgmental old people: That’s a good thing. For decades—centuries—the archetype of the successful business person has been the sneering blowhard, unafraid to bark orders and excoriate the work of underlings. He (let’s be honest, it’s traditionally a he) leads with a charming mix of ego, hair-trigger temper and intimidation. The fictional Gordon Gekko is the poster boy, but real-world examples abound: Rupert Murdoch, Anna Wintour, Larry Ellison, Kevin O’Leary, Donald Trump. Steve Jobs, brilliant as he was, was an often vicious and tyrannical boss. The influence of such titans has created the expectation that to be successful in business, one must be able to be, for lack of a better term, mean. Or, at least, one must be prepared to act that way. For decades, otherwise mild-mannered and amiable individuals have had to train themselves to behave differently at work: to be harder, colder, less polite. (You can actually take courses on this kind of thing.) In some workplaces, making a colleague cry is considered a sadistic rite of passage. In the culture of commerce, behaviour that would be inexcusable in pretty much any other context is not only tolerated, but rewarded. To what end? What real benefits are conferred on a business when its leaders are nasty? Abusive behaviour sure doesn’t spur productivity: A 2006 Florida State University study of 700 employees in a variety of different roles found that those with abusive bosses were five times more likely to purposefully slow down or make errors than their peers, and nearly six times more likely to call in sick when they actually felt fine. Nor does it do much for employee morale: As Stanford organizational behaviour professor Robert Sutton wrote in his 2007 bestseller, The No Asshole Rule, brutish managers “infuriate, demean and damage their peers, superiors, underlings and, at times, clients and customers, too.” The most progressive bosses today—the ones whose behaviour will be tomorrow’s status quo—are demanding without being discouraging, honest without being rude and confident without being cocky. There has been plenty of important research on each of these management qualities, such as Mark Murphy’s book Hundred Percenters on motivating employees to greatness; or ex-Googler Kim Scott’s “radical candour” approach to providing feedback; or the work of Brené Brown, whose landmark 2010 TED talk is called “The Power of Vulnerability.” Caring about people’s feelings doesn’t make managers airy-fairy pushovers; rather, such leaders recognize their job is to help people excel. And they produce exceptional results not in spite of their compassion and kindness, but because of it. Yes, it can be irritating to hear our younger colleagues complain of hurt feelings. But millennials aren’t wrong to expect a kinder, gentler work environment. The rest of us are wrong for clinging to the useless and outdated notion that to thrive in business, you have to be an asshole. MORE ABOUT MILLENNIALS & WORKPLACE CULTURE: |
Jarryd Hayne 'no chance' of NRL return after San Francisco 49ers NFL sacking Updated There is no way Jarryd Hayne's NFL setback will propel him back to the NRL, says his Australian agent Wayne Beavis. One of the savviest agents in the NRL, Beavis was instrumental behind the scenes in helping Hayne's transition to American football. But the former rugby league superstar's conversion to the NFL was put on hold on Sunday when he was cut from San Francisco 49ers' roster. However Beavis said that does not mean Hayne will be back in Australia anytime soon. "There's no chance of him coming back, none at all," Beavis said. "He is 100 per cent committed to what he is doing over there." Hayne has been linked to a return to the NRL with Sydney Roosters if his career in the NFL does not work out. The Roosters are searching for a new full-back for 2016 after Roger Tuivasa-Sheck's defection to the Warriors. However last month following Hayne's inclusion on the 49ers roster, Roosters supremo Nick Politis said his dream of seeing the former Parramatta number one in a Tricolours jersey was over. There's no chance of him coming back, none at all. He is 100 per cent committed to what he is doing over there. Wayne Beavis on Jarryd Hayne Instead Blake Ferguson is favoured to take over the full-back position at Bondi. Roosters great and former long-term custodian Anthony Minichiello, who is on the club's coaching staff and mentored Tuivasa-Sheck in his move from wing to the back, suggested earlier this week that former Warriors under-20s flyer Omar Slaimankhel was a chance of winning the full-back jersey. Latrell Mitchell has been compared favourably with Greg Inglis and the 18-year-old is seen as a possible long-term full-back for the Roosters, but that is unlikely to happen next season. As for Hayne, he will look instead to keep his NFL dream alive and he has been linked to a potential move to the Detroit Lions or Seattle Seahawks. The former New South Wales and Australian representative is remaining upbeat despite being unwanted by the 49ers. "Blessed for another test," Hayne wrote on Twitter. AAP Topics: american-football, sport, nrl, rugby-league, united-states, sydney-2000, nsw, australia First posted |
June? Backup your Nexus 6 (go to “settings” >> “backup & reset” >> select an account to back-up by clicking on “backup” and selecting the account you want to backup) Remove your SIM card Reset your Nexus 6 (go to “settings” >> “backup & reset” >> “factory reset data”) Restore your Nexus 6 during set-up but DO NOT insert your SIM card This past weekend, we shared the word that it looked like the AT&T branded Nexus 6 was getting the Android 5.1 Lollipop update. However, a lot of people (including our own AT&T device) did not seem to be getting much by way of any notification that the update was making progress.Looking at AT&T’s support page for the Nexus 6 shows that the current OS build is still Android 5.0.1, released back in January.As it happens, it appears it was a bit of a fluke that the update was received, okay not a fluke, let us call it, “an alternate route.” For all the awesomeness of the Nexus 6 and Android Lollipop, there are a few annoying bugs in the hardware and software’s behavior. So what gives? Well it appears that Google and Motorola are not in as much control over system updates as we would hope. The Android 5.1 update for the AT&T Nexus 6 is apparently slated for an official rollout in June.If you are not the type of person that likes to mess with bootloaders and sideloading, there is a remedy, and we got it to work on our own AT&T branded Nexus 6 for good measure. Follow these steps to grab the Android 5.1 update:That last step is the key. Connect your device to your Wi-Fi network, and allow it to restore sans-SIM card. You will then see the prompt to update your Nexus 6 to Android 5.1 Lollipop. Once the update is complete, reinsert your SIM card and enjoy all the enhancements of Google’s latest version of Android . This process gives you the benefit of an OTA update without having to erase everything and start from scratch thanks to Google’s great back-up features.While we discuss that, the looming issue is how Google and the carriers manage what is fragmentation at the very top of the Nexus food-chain. Branded Nexus devices, and perhaps even non-branded Nexus devices, may be at the whim of the carriers when it comes to system updates. What used to be a timely update window measured in weeks, may now be a process that spans months. Google's own Nexus support page denotes, "Based on your carrier, it may take longer than two weeks after release to get an update."Did this update method work for you? Are you using a Google Play purchased Nexus 6 on AT&T and have you received the update yet?source: Android Guys |
Must Watch: Fan Made Rendezvous with Rama Movie Trailer! Now this should give you chills. Vancouver Film School student Philip Mahoney and visual artist Aaron Ross teamed up to create this trailer (via Cinema Blend) for an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi novel Rendezvous with Rama. This is exciting to see because a Rendezvous with Rama movie has been in the works for a while, at one point with David Fincher and Morgan Freeman attached. Then we reported a few years ago that the project was dead, despite claims from producers otherwise. Now we have this amazing fan made trailer to hold us over, and give us a glimpse at what a Rendezvous with Rama movie might look like. Watch Philip Mahoney's fan made trailer for Rendezvous with Rama: If you couldn't pick this up from the trailer, Rendezvous with Rama is about a mysterious thirty-mile-long hollow cylindrical alien spaceship called Rama that one day drifts into our solar system. A 20-man crew is sent on a spaceship called Endeavor to investigate this "thing from outer space to find out what it is [and] what its intentions are." What is it? Who built it? And what is it doing in our corner of the galaxy? This is obviously just a trailer created out of computer visuals, but it's an absolutely mesmerizing look at how great a movie based on the book could be. I hope one day we see someone make a Rendezvous with Rama film, at least before something like this suddenly happens in the real life. What did you think of the trailer? 1 Mart on May 3, 2010 2 shadow on May 3, 2010 3 Ricardo on May 3, 2010 4 Nick Sears on May 3, 2010 5 Atomic Popcorn on May 3, 2010 6 Cineprog on May 3, 2010 7 shane on May 3, 2010 8 Angry Chief on May 3, 2010 9 Tester on May 3, 2010 10 Robb on May 3, 2010 11 Trademark on May 3, 2010 12 Emma on May 3, 2010 13 colin on May 3, 2010 14 zubzwank on May 3, 2010 15 jeffrey on May 3, 2010 16 Sam-Graeme on May 3, 2010 17 vladikoff on May 4, 2010 18 vladikoff on May 4, 2010 19 Phil Mahoney on May 4, 2010 20 AgentMcQueen on May 5, 2010 21 Phil Mahoney on May 5, 2010 22 Aaron Ross on May 6, 2010 23 peter T'Sas on May 6, 2010 24 Setebos on May 7, 2010 25 Sakyo on May 9, 2010 26 Jstn on Jul 28, 2010 27 philcommon on Oct 3, 2010 28 Dharmawarrior32 on Jan 5, 2011 29 Superkikim on Feb 23, 2011 30 Superkikim on Feb 23, 2011 31 Stuart Bulman on Feb 20, 2012 32 Charles Ivie on Mar 5, 2012 Sorry, no commenting is allowed at this time. |
(Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Despite President Donald Trump's asserted focus on job growth and the business environment, his administration is damaging the fundamentals undergirding U.S. economic growth. A slowdown seems likely because Trump's fractious months in office have already degraded the nation's business and investment environment. Contrary to Trump's belief, controversy-generating reality television strategies do not generate good governance and growth. While the president promised Guam's governor that tourism would go up "tenfold" because of media attention from his Twitter tirades about North Korea, the numbers tell a different tale. The war of words cost Guam's tourism industry $9.5 million last month. It appears vacationers would prefer to avoid possibly atomic attractions. Sustained economic growth and investment require stability, predictability, public integrity and a strong commitment to the rule of law. These fundamentals matter when investors examine opportunities. They must consider political risk – the odds that a changing political climate introduces new risks without additional returns. Without predictability and reliable law, investors and business leaders may hesitate to risk capital here. Many investment decisions require parties to trust that a "so-called judge," as Trump has said, will apply settled law in predictable ways. Stable immigration laws also enable businesses to recruit and compete for global talent. Shocks create dangers and force investors and businesses to slow down to assess risk. As dangers escalate, investment shifts overseas to more predictable jurisdictions. Consider the investments imperilled by the Trump administration's announcement that it would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program. The decision threatens to waste America's investment in educating hundreds of thousands of Dreamers. It also hurts American citizens doing business with them. Will deported Dreamers repay car loans, student loans, and credit cards if displaced to foreign nations? Their employers' investments in training may also be squandered. The decision may even drive up insurance premiums for Americans that do not interact directly with Dreamers by removing their insurance premiums from the pool. Significant damage has already been done. Recall the Trump administration's prior showdown with the judicial branch over its controversial ban on travel from Muslim-majority nations. That tempest, with the president still tweeting about wanting a broader travel ban, may still affect international investments in the United States. Trump's first, hastily-written executive order surprised businesses and workers and generated significant costs. Fortunately, federal courts diminished the disruption and allowed business to resume. While it may be too costly for transnational businesses to suddenly withdraw from the United States, these moves may tip the strategic balance toward investing elsewhere when considering new long-term projects. This uncertainty creates costs. Consider the costs generated by demonizing the Muslim community alone. Muslim individuals, institutions, and governments control approximately $11.5 trillion in wealth. They continually consider whether to buy or sell American assets. To put it in terms that this administration might understand – these investors may now balk at buying luxury real estate that they might not be able to visit. The roiling uncertainty reverberates through the economy. Trump's immigration malice may even cause food prices to climb. Increased immigration raids and deportations may thrill Trump's base, but they hurt the business environment. Many farmers already feel the pain. California crops now rot in the fields without the labor supply to bring the food to market. As produce withers on the vine, prices increases may soon hit grocery stores nationwide. To be sure, the administration's remaining supporters gesture limply toward stock market returns. But the stock market is not the only measure of the economy. If the market's history teaches us anything, it is that markets go up and down. A market correction may wait just over the horizon. Trump has promised to blame the judiciary if we experience another terrorist attack; who will he scapegoat when stock markets fall, the real estate market slows, or inflation takes off? Trump's public tantrums and reckless governance style set fire to the foundations needed for sustained national economic growth. If the Trump administration continues to stoke fear, it may soon do exponential damage to the fundamental legal and cultural infrastructure that made America a great place to invest and do business. Benjamin P. Edwards , Opinion Contributor Benjamin P. Edwards is associate professor of law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the U... Read moreBenjamin P. Edwards is associate professor of law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The views expressed are those of the author individually. Follow him on Twitter: @BenPEdwards. |
As news of Curtis Lofton taking a visit one place, David Hawthorve another, Stephen Tulloch wanting X amount of money... The Eagles remained conspicuously quiet and the fanbase became increasingly restless. Why were the Eagles interested in any of these guys? They know they have a huge hole at LB right? They probably don't know! They never know! They don't care about LB!! Yet as we raged, Howie Roseman says the focus was always on acquiring DeMeco Ryans and not in the free agent LB market. "We have conversations with every team in the league during this time period. We were pretty persistent with Rick Smith and the Texans, and engaging in conversations with DeMeco," Roseman said. "We thought he would be a perfect fit for us and a great opportunity for us to acquire the type of player that we were looking for. While that was going, the free agent market was going on at the same time, but our focus was getting him to Philadelphia and making him an Eagle. We feel fortunate that it came to fruition." In the end, all that matters is that they filled the hole. They recognized that it was a problem and they did something about it. Now on the injury front, Roseman was asked whether after watching the film that he agreed with Ryan's assertion that by the end of last season he was back to 100%? |
Police Groups to Trump: Here’s How You Can ‘Send in the Feds,’ and Actually Make a Dent in Urban Crime Law enforcement leaders recommend more money for the ATF, stricter gun laws, and sharper focus on the "alarming recent trend of increasing homicides and shootings" in major U.S. cities. A day after President Donald Trump threatened to “send in the feds” if Chicago can’t get a grip on its gun violence problem, a new report coauthored by two leading police groups reveals what many in the law enforcement community already know: that the majority of cities already receive federal assistance to combat violent crime, and that federal government resources and personnel are broadly welcomed at the local level. The report, published by the Police Foundation, a nonprofit founded by law enforcement officials, and the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents police chiefs and sheriffs of the 68 largest law enforcement agencies in the nation, also includes a series of recommendations that puts it at odds with the gun lobby and its allies in Congress and the White House. The police groups call for an expansion of background checks to cover all gun purchases, a ban on high-capacity magazines, the repeal of a National Rifle Association-backed amendment that severely restricts the federal government’s ability to share data about guns used in crimes, and increased levels of federal funding for gun violence research. Stay Informed Subscribe to receive The Trace’s newsletters on important gun news and analysis. Email address The Canon Sent every Saturday. Our guide to the week's most revealing, must-read reporting on gun issues. The Daily Bulletin Sent weekday mornings. Get up to speed with The Trace’s latest articles and other important news of the day. Leave this field empty if you're human: The report also urges Congress to pass a federal gun-trafficking law that includes penalties for straw purchasing; an increase in the budget for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; and making investigation tools, like ballistic imaging, more widely available to local law enforcement. The report is described by its authors as an examination of “opportunities for the new Administration to lead the nation in reducing the alarming recent trend of increasing homicides and shootings in many major U.S. cities and counties.” The recommendations are a result of a months-long examination by the Police Foundation and Major Cities Chiefs Association, which included an analysis of violent crime data and federal budgets, along with interviews with dozens of current and former law enforcement leaders. “The federal government must re-prioritize violent crime and public safety as primary concerns, focusing attention on local, public safety crises,” the report says. The report includes the results of a survey completed by police officials in major American cities and counties. More than three-quarters of respondents said that a federal task force that focuses exclusively on violent crime, or gun crime, is already active in their jurisdiction. Every respondent said they viewed federal help combating violent crime as valuable — though there were different ideas about what kind of assistance was most worthwhile. Nearly all the police chiefs who responded to the survey characterized federal assistance with ballistic imaging and tracing crime guns as “very useful.” The only survey response that a significant number of law enforcement executives deemed “not useful” was federal law enforcement’s short-term staffing through surges in crime. As with many of his Twitter declarations, it is not clear what Trump meant when he warned of federal government intervention in Chicago, though one interpretation could be a surge of federal agents. It is also unclear whether other cities that have serious violent crime problems would also get such assistance: or even if “assistance” is an apt word for what the president might have in mind. While Chicago is grappling with an increase in killings — there were 764 last year, more than in New York and Los Angeles combined — the homicide rate in many other cities, including St. Louis and New Orleans, is substantially higher. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Trump’s version of federal assistance could “span a bunch of things.” In written remarks prepared as part of his confirmation proceeding, Senator Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for Attorney General, indicated that a priority would be increasing federal gun prosecutions and cracking down on gun trafficking. The report’s authors say U.S. Attorneys should work with local police to reduce violent crime, but cautioned against strategies focused only on increasing the volume of prosecutions. “The notions of criminal justice reform and offender accountability are not mutually exclusive and should be adopted as one concept,” the report reads. “Allied criminal justice professionals must hold dangerous and repeat offenders accountable but not through a return to mass incarceration.” The report also advocates the introduction of a federal firearms-trafficking statute “immediately.” The police chiefs surveyed said that access to illegal firearms is one of the top drivers of gun violence in their jurisdictions, along with gang violence and drug-related disputes. “Gun trafficking, illegal gun markets, theft, and illegal diversion are critical issues that have not been sufficiently addressed in the criminal justice system,” the report reads. The FBI and ATF were named by police leaders as the federal agencies which provide “unique capabilities” that police find most beneficial. Specifically, the chiefs said they value the FBI’s assistance in long-term crime investigations, and the ATF’s stewardship of gun-tracing services and the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, a ballistic matching program that can identify guns used in multiple crimes. The report calls for the expansion of the ballistics program to all 50 states. The report’s authors assert that it is not only the case that federal initiatives are underfunded, but that entire agencies require more federal money. In recent years, the non-defense budgets for the FBI and ATF have remained relatively level, even as the agency responsible for enforcing immigration law has seen its funding more than double. The report concludes that violent crime must become a national priority. “To effectively reverse the trends we are seeing today, it is imperative that the new Administration and new Congress provide effective and reasoned leadership on this issue and avoid partisan positions that have allowed gun violence to continue to take innocent lives,” it reads. |
Utah and Arizona State are fighting to achieve dramatically different goals when they clash on Thursday night. For the No. 15 Utes, a victory over the Sun Devils means another step forward to claiming the Pac-12 South title. Utah (7-2, 4-2 Pac-12) hasn't won in Tempe since a 31-28 victory in 1976. The Utes snapped an 11-game losing streak to Arizona State a season ago, winning 34-18 behind 297 yards on 26-of-36 passing from Travis Wilson and 118 rushing yards from Devontae Booker. For the Sun Devils, a win over Utah means reaching six wins for a seventh consecutive season. Arizona State (5-4, 2-4 Pac-12) is suddenly in danger of missing out on a bowl game for the first time since 2010 after losing three straight games to Colorado, Washington State and Oregon. Arizona State leads the all-time series 20-7. Utah is just 3-14 against the Sun Devils in Tempe. Utah at Arizona State Kickoff: Thursday, Nov. 10 at 9:30 p.m. ET TV Channel: FS1 Spread: Utah -5.5 Three Things to Watch 1. Will Utah make big plays in the passing game? It's no secret that pass defense is a major weakness for Arizona State. The Sun Devils allow 397.6 yards through the air per game, which ranks last among all 128 FBS teams. Even worse, Arizona State has allowed 12 scoring plays covering 50 or more yards this season. Utah is well equipped to cash in on these shortcomings. Utes quarterback Troy Williams leads the Pac-12 with 10 completions of 40 yards or longer this season. Williams is fourth in the league in passing yards per game (209.8), fifth in total passing yards (1,888) and third in passing yards per completion (13.30). He has put together five 200-yard passing games so far – including three in Pac-12 play: Southern Utah (272), USC (270), California (266), San Jose State (257) and Arizona (245). Williams hasn't needed to do much with how strong Utah's running game has been in recent weeks. Against the Sun Devils, however, he could be poised for one of his best games of the season. 2. Injured starters returning for Arizona State Injuries are a major culprit for pushing Arizona State into a three-game losing streak. Ten starters have been injured during the course of the season. Now the Sun Devils finally have some good news on the injury front. Several starters should be able to play this week. Quarterback Manny Wilkins, running back Demario Richard and defensive backs Kareem Orr and Armand Perry are expected to play against Utah. Linebacker Salamo Fiso, wide receiver Tim White, and guards Sam Jones and Stephon McCray all remain questionable heading into Thursday. Getting Wilkins back at full strength will offer the biggest boost. He struggled in October with ankle and shoulder problems. When Wilkins is healthy, Arizona State's offense is tough to stop. In his first four games, before injuries started piling up, the Sun Devils averaged 48.8 points per game. Teams have struggled with Wilkins' mobility and his passing abilities when he is at full strength. 3. Joe Williams closing in on 1,000 rushing yards Since returning from his four-game retirement, Williams has shredded one defense after another. In three games since his return, Williams has racked up 683 yards and six touchdowns on the ground. The senior is averaging 227.7 yards per game against Pac-12 teams this season. Williams has totaled 758 rushing yards in five games, ranking fourth among Pac-12 running backs. He needs just 242 yards to reach 1,000 yards – a plateau that's not out of reach even within a single game. If he had played in enough games to qualify, Williams would rank third in the nation and first in the Pac-12 in rushing yards per game (151.6). No team from outside the state of Utah has held Williams under 100 rushing yards since he took over the starting job following Devontae Booker's injury late last season. Arizona State may offer the stiffest test he has faced this season. The Sun Devils are allowing just 116.0 rushing yards per game – leading the Pac-12 in that category. Final Analysis Facing a team with as good of a rushing defense as Arizona State possesses would normally pose a major challenge for a run-oriented team like Utah. This year, the Utes have a strong enough passing offense to overcome it. The Sun Devils are not capable of stopping big pass plays and that could be a fatal flaw in their quest to get bowl eligible. Utah is a stronger defensive team overall and the Utes are good enough offensively to exploit Arizona State's weaknesses. Prediction: Utah 34, Arizona State 29 — Written by John Coon, who is part of the Athlon Contributor Network. Coon has more than a decade of experience covering sports for different publications and outlets, including The Associated Press, Salt Lake Tribune, ESPN, Deseret News, MaxPreps, Yahoo! Sports and many others. Follow him on Twitter @johncoonsports. |
Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. Content can be viewed at actual source page: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2chqH6WVac GUESTS: Jason Forge, is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who's now a partner in the San Diego law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd. Brian Adams, is Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University, and author of the book "Campaign Finance in Local Elections: Buying the Grassroots." A retired San Diego police detective accused of conspiring to funnel $500,000 in illegal foreign money into local and federal political campaigns changed his plea to guilty Tuesday on two counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States and filing a false tax return. Document Ernesto Encinas Plea Agreement Download document Special Feature Dirty Money All of the background information on campaign contributions illegally funneled from a wealthy Mexican businessman to local candidates. Encinas admitted to U.S. Magistrate Judge William Gallo that he and his co-conspirators made illegal campaign contributions on behalf of wealthy Mexican businessman Jose Susumo Azano Matsura. It is illegal for non-U.S. citizens to contribute to political campaigns. Encinas also admitted as part of his plea that he and others, including Azano, Ravneet Singh, a Washington-based campaign services CEO, and Marco Polo Cortes, a San Diego lobbyist, falsified records to impede a federal investigation. The federal complaints against Encinas, Singh and Cortes were unsealed in January and accused the men of moving at least $500,000 of Azano's billions to San Diego mayoral and congressional races in 2012 and 2013. Azano, whose family owns two homes in Coronado, was arrested by FBI agents in February. Azano, Singh and Cortes have pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors said the men targeted four candidates, though they did not name the politicians. KPBS has identified them as District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, a Republican; Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego); and former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner and ex-Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, both Democrats. An inewsource review of public documents shows the campaigns of Dumanis, Vargas and Filner received donations from at least one of the three men involved. In addition to the campaign financing violations, Encinas admitted he made false statements to the Internal Revenue Service in 2011 and 2012 when filing returns for his private security business, Coastline Protection and Investigations Inc. Encinas told the court that Azano paid him $10,000 in cash "off the books." The former police officer also failed to report about $147,300 in cash payments in 2011 and about $74,900 in cash payments in 2012. This led to a tax loss of $69,394, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, which Encinas has agreed to repay. To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader. |
WASHINGTON ― U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue faced heated questioning Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s new proposal to slash food stamps. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) asked Perdue at a hearing why he’d said last week that he didn’t favor cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is overseen by Perdue’s agency, given that the Trump budget cuts the program. Contrary to the budget, Perdue simply said that SNAP would be fully funded in the next fiscal year and that any changes would be up to Congress. “The legislative proposal going forward is obviously something you and all of your members in Congress will deal with and have your stamp on that,” Perdue said. He also said he stood by his comment last week that SNAP isn’t broken and doesn’t need fixing. It’s true that presidential budgets are basically just suggestions, and that it will be up to Congress to set spending levels, but it’s hard to reconcile Perdue’s sunny outlook on SNAP with the Trump administration’s push to cut the program by $193 billion over 10 years, or more than 25 percent of the program’s projected cost in that time. One possible explanation for Perdue’s comment Wednesday is that he wants to pretend that Trump’s budget simply does not exist. A USDA spokesperson said the policy changes recommended in the budget would be considered by Congress when it next reauthorizes SNAP next year ― as in, not right now. “Last week I was encouraged, this week I’m confused,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) told HuffPost after Perdue’s testimony. “We have no way of predicting with certainty what’s going to happen day to day.” More than 42 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, making it one of the biggest safety net programs in the U.S. Benefits average about $125 per month and can be used only for food products in grocery stores. The biggest way the Trump budget cuts federal SNAP spending is by gradually requiring states to cover 25 percent of the cost of benefits, which are currently funded completely by the federal government. The budget would also let states reduce benefit levels, which they would probably want to do if the program starts draining their budgets. A quarter of the cost of food stamps in Texas, for instance, is roughly equivalent to what the state pays 64,000 public school teachers, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Another way the Trump administration has proposed reducing nutrition spending would be to restrict benefits to able-bodied adults who don’t have jobs or dependents, such as children or elderly parents. Federal law already limits benefits to able-bodied adults, allowing only three months of assistance. States are allowed to waive the limit in areas with high unemployment, but the Trump budget would raise the threshold so that fewer counties could qualify for the waiver. Additionally, the Trump administration thinks retailers who accept SNAP benefits at their stores should be required to pay the USDA a modest fee for participating in the program. “My hope is that this budget document is dead on arrival,” DeLauro said. Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images President Donald Trump speaks as Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue looks on during a roundtable with farmers at the White House on April 25 in Washington. Other members of the appropriations committee’s agriculture subcommittee did not share DeLauro’s criticisms of the proposed SNAP cuts. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) described the program’s current spending levels as excessive given the nation’s declining unemployment rate. “I’m glad the administration is returning sanity to this program,” Harris said Wednesday. But anti-hunger advocates were quick to point out that both SNAP spending and caseloads have actually been trending downward in recent years, though spending on the program remains higher than pre-recession numbers. That’s because many low-income working families continue to struggle to put food on the table and still meet the program’s requirements for support, according to Christine Melendez Ashley, deputy director of government relations at Bread for the World. She believes families like these, who are increasingly represented among overall SNAP participants, could be devastated by the proposed cuts to the program. “Though the recession is over, many families are facing underemployment or might not be making as much money as they were before the recession,” Melendez Ashley told HuffPost. “Taking food out of the mouths of vulnerable families, children and seniors is not the way to balance the budget.” The Trump administration is painting a different picture in how it’s described the proposed changes. In response to questions about the program during the White House’s Tuesday press briefing, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney described the cuts as “compassionate” to the taxpayers who are footing the program’s bills. Craig Gundersen, an agriculture professor at the University of Illinois who has been studying SNAP for 20 years, said it was misleading for Mulvaney to characterize SNAP participants and taxpayers as mutually exclusive groups given that the average length of time a SNAP participant is on the program is about 10 months. “These people have paid taxes at various points in their lives and then when they are in need, they can go to SNAP and receive benefits from it,” Gundersen told HuffPost. The program, he added, is working as it was designed — to alleviate hunger, which remains a pressing concern for many Americans. A new report released this month by Feeding America, another anti-hunger organization, claimed that 42 million Americans remain “food insecure,” meaning that their eating patterns are disrupted or their food intake is reduced. Research has found a link between SNAP participation and reduced food insecurity. “Not all government programs are successful, but SNAP is one that is extraordinarily successful,” Gundersen said. “I’m not sure why SNAP is being targeted.” Other USDA programs are also bearing the brunt of a nearly 21-percent blow to the department’s overall budget outlined in the president’s spending proposal. The budget blueprint also outlines significant cuts to crop insurance, rural development, agricultural research and international food aid programs, among other funding reductions. The cuts have proven unpopular with even conservative-leaning ag groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, whose president Zippy Duvall said in a statement that the proposal “fails agriculture and rural America.” |
Russia knows genocide well, Turkey fires back Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin speak during the latter's visit to Ankara, Dec. 1, 2014. AA Photo Turkey said on April 24 that it rejected and condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin calling the 1915 mass killings of Ottoman Armenians a "genocide.""Taking into account the mass atrocities and exiles in Caucasus, in the Central Asia and Eastern Europe committed by Russia for a century; collective punishment methods such as Holodomor as well as inhumane practices especially against Turkish and Muslim people in Russia’s own history, we consider that Russia is best-suited to know what exactly “genocide” and its legal dimension are," a foreign ministry statement said.Turkey also condemned Duma's April 24 resolution that described the 1915 events as "genocide.""The only thing that Russia can do in this issue is to leave its biased attitude aside and encourage Armenia and the Armenians to respond positively to the calls of Turkey for peace and friendship," the statement added.Turkey denies that the killings, at a time when Turkish troops were fighting Russian forces during World War I, constituted genocide. It has said there was no organized campaign to wipe out Armenians and no evidence of any such orders from Ottoman authorities.Turkey’s ambassador to the Vatican was summoned to Ankara for consultations on April 12, hours after Pope Francis called the 1915 incidents involving Armenians “genocide.”Austria was subjected to a similar reaction by Ankara, as Turkey recalled its ambassador in Vienna on April 22 after parties represented in the Austrian parliament signed a declaration recognizing the massacre of Armenians a century ago as “genocide.”However, Turkey initially avoided any harsh reaction toward Putin and French President François Hollande, after they described the killings as “genocide" during the commemoration ceremony in Yerevan.Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız told journalists during a reception in Ankara on April 23 that he was surprised by Putin’s remarks, but the statement “will not affect the ongoing negotiations for joint projects” with Russia, including natural gas trade.Just hours before the ceremony marking the centennial anniversary, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the required initiatives would be taken concerning Russia.“Today [April 23], we spoke with our Foreign Minister [Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu] about Russia. The required initiatives will be taken,” Davutoğlu told reporters late on April 23, when asked to comment on a statement delivered by Putin earlier on April 23 in which the Russian president referred to the killings as “genocide.”“Russia’s and France’s presence in Yerevan casts shadow over the impartiality of the Minsk Group as well. Necessary diplomatic initiatives are being taken about them too,” Davutoğlu added, without elaboration, referring to the presence of both Putin and Hollande at the ceremony in Yerevan.“What matters is a clear explanation of our stance to the world,” the prime minister said.Along with the United States, France and Russia are co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group, which has been working since 1992 to mediate the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. |
David Murphy Bloomsbury Publishing , Aug 20, 2011 - History - 64 pages 0 Reviews Thomas Edward Lawrence, more popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, is remembered today more for his immortalization on stage and screen rather than for his dramatic exploits in the Middle East during the First World War. This book shines a light on his military achievements, his major campaigns and the impact that his influence had on shaping the war in the Middle East. Lawrence quickly rose to prominence following the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1916. His skills in Arab languages helped him co-ordinate Navy support in an effort to regain captured coastal ports, whilst gathering widespread local support and building up the Arab Northern Army. He pioneered new tactics, which would shape British strategy four decades later, recognising the importance of aircraft, mobile artillery and armour in desert warfare. In two short years the obscure staff officer had attained the rank of full colonel and helped to shape the outcome of the war in the Middle East. Preview this book » |
THE latest batch of anti-virus software will break your computer even more thoroughly than previous versions, experts have warned. Computer users have been told to look out for the software, which commonly appears in large shiny boxes sold at high street electronic retailers. IT analyst Tom Logan said: “Anti-virus software works by being generally fucking annoying. “Typically it slows down the user’s computer to the extent that the enraged individual is left with no choice but to smash his hard drive really hard against the wall in a bout of Hulk-like rage. “Another common anti-virus trick is to demand large sums of money on an annual basis, simply so that it can continue ruining your life.” The technology industry has reported a slew of new, patience-resistant anti-virus software including Mcafee Fuckshield and Semantec Box of Toss 2012. Tom Logan said: “This new breed of software knows no boundaries when it comes to messing with the consumer’s head. “The installation process itself takes around 19 days. When this inevitably goes wrong, the user discovers that the support helpline number is not on the box, but can only be found engraved under the wing of a rare Patagonian hawk. “Thus begins a demented quest for closure that ends with the consumer naked in a forest, eating his own arm.” Anti-virus software, which mostly affects PCs, was first developed in 1983 by shadowy, round-shouldered social misfits with a grudge against humanity. |
When The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday on a paper penned by the European Union’s foreign-service unit looking at ways of improving ties with Russia, the immediate reaction was that Brussels was looking for justifications to start scaling back sanctions. The paper certainly leaned in that direction. It addressed the conditions under which some of the core economic sanctions could be dropped and looked at reviving various channels of dialogue with Moscow on trade, foreign policy and other issues. There was no explicit mention of tightening sanctions if conditions in eastern Ukraine deteriorated, which has been a standard EU warning in ministerial statements over the last year. In fact, the paper – as our initial story made clear – was never a definitive guide of what would come next but a discussion paper to frame a ministerial debate on Monday. It was meant to start to gather thinking about the shape of ties with Russia over time. |
Canadian law professor Richard McLaren said Russia operated a state-sponsored doping programme from 2011 to 2015. Olympic Games on the BBC Venue: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Dates: 5-21 August Time in Rio: BST -4 Coverage: Watch on BBC One, BBC Four, Red Button and up to 24 HD video streams on mobile, desktop and connected TVs, plus follow on Radio 5 live and via live text commentary. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is "disappointed" its recommendation to ban Russia from next month's Olympic Games in Rio has been rejected. Following the country's doping scandal, the International Olympic Committee has left it up to individual sports' federations to ban Russian competitors. Wada "stands by" its recommendation last month of a full Russia team ban. And Wada chief Olivier Niggli said the IOC's decision will "inevitably" mean "lesser protection for clean athletes". Wada president Sir Craig Reedie said investigators had "exposed, beyond a reasonable doubt, a state-run doping program in Russia that seriously undermines the principles of clean sport embodied within the World Anti-Doping Code". There was also concern expressed for Yuliya Stepanova, the Russian runner whose evidence helped expose her nation's doping scandal, but will now not be allowed to compete in Rio under a neutral flag. "Wada has been very vocal in supporting Yuliya's desire to compete as an independent athlete," added Niggli. "Ms Stepanova was instrumental in courageously exposing the single biggest doping scandal of all time. Wada is very concerned by the message that this sends whistleblowers for the future." Media playback is not supported on this device IOC member Adam Pengilly 'embarrassed' by organisation's decision not to ban Russia Russia decision 'a confusing mess' Olympic organisers have been accused of a lack of leadership and creating a "confusing mess" over the Russia decision. The United States Anti-Doping Association (Usada) said the IOC had delivered a "significant blow to the rights of clean athletes". "Many, including clean athletes and whistleblowers, have demonstrated courage and strength in confronting a culture of state-supported doping and corruption within Russia," said Usada chief Travis Tygart. "Disappointingly, however, in response to the most important moment for clean athletes and the integrity of the Olympic Games, the IOC has refused to take decisive leadership." Four-time Olympic gold medal-winning rower Matthew Pinsent was among those to criticise the IOC's stance The IOC also ruled that any Russian athlete who has served a doping ban will not be eligible for the Games. That means it will not allow whistleblower Stepanova to compete as a neutral athlete in Rio. Tygart added: "The decision to refuse her entry into the Games is incomprehensible and will undoubtedly deter whistleblowers in the future from coming forward." Reaction to IOC Russia decision Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko: "We are very grateful to the International Olympic Committee for the fact that in choosing between collective responsibility and the rights of individual athletes, it took the decision that every athlete whose reputation today is untarnished, who is clean, without doping, has the right to compete in the Olympics." UK Sports Minister Tracey Crouch: "While this is solely a decision for the International Olympic Committee, the scale of the evidence in the McLaren report arguably pointed to the need for stronger sanctions rather than leaving it to the international federations at this late stage." British IOC member Adam Pengilly: "I believe that the Russian federation has mocked the Olympic movement and I worry about the future of clean sport, I worry about the future for clean athletes, the Olympic movement and the Olympic Games. "Some have suggested the IOC has passed the buck and I'd have to agree. There's been an abdication of responsibility here." World marathon record holder and four-time Olympian Paula Radcliffe: "While I applaud no athlete going to the Games who has previously served a doping suspension, this cannot fairly be only Russian athletes. "A truly strong message for clean sport would have been to ban all those who have been caught cheating." How the athletes see it Six-time Olympic track cycling champion Chris Hoy tweeted: "What sort of message does this send out? Surely IOC's job is to make crucial decisions rather than passing the buck." Heptathlete and Olympic bronze medallist Kelly Sotherton is not impressed Five-time Olympic distance runner Jo Pavey tweeted: "Such a disappointing decision by the IOC. Does not send out a strong message that doping will not be tolerated." Double Olympic rowing gold medallist James Cracknell tweeted: "Bottled it - IOC passing the buck to individual federations (sports) on whether to allow Russian athletes to compete in Rio 2016. Bad day. Russian track & field appeal fails so their ban remains." Olympic 400m bronze medallist Katharine Merry tweeted: "IOC are useless... like I said last week.. what EXACTLY would a country have to do to get a blanket ban? #cantshakemyheadhardenough." Double Olympic gold medallist rower Andrew Hodge tweeted: "Decision based on promises from Russia, & leaving to the IFs is a poor move from a position on strength. Sad day." American long-distance runner Kara Goucher tweeted: "So if you're Russian and served a drug ban you aren't allowed, but the US can send previously banned athletes. What?" Media playback is not supported on this device Top British athletes on need for a clean Olympics Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox. |
Abstract The detrimental effect of neuronal cell death due to oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction has been implicated in age-related cognitive decline and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. The Indian herb Bacopa monnieri is a dietary antioxidant, with animal and in vitro studies indicating several modes of action that may protect the brain against oxidative damage. In parallel, several studies using the CDRI08 extract have shown that extracts of Bacopa monnieri improve cognitive function in humans. The biological mechanisms of this cognitive enhancement are unknown. In this review we discuss the animal studies and in vivo evidence for Bacopa monnieri as a potential therapeutic antioxidant to reduce oxidative stress and improve cognitive function. We suggest that future studies incorporate neuroimaging particularly magnetic resonance spectroscopy into their randomized controlled trials to better understand whether changes in antioxidant status in vivo cause improvements in cognitive function. 1. Introduction The world's population is aging rapidly [1]. One consequence of an aging population is an increased prevalence of chronic, age-related illnesses and disorders involving oxidative stress and low level chronic inflammation [2]. Increasing age is a major risk factor for dementia, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), and other prevalent neurodegenerative disorders [3]. The causes of brain aging and dementia are complex and incompletely understood. Oxidative stress is one mechanism that detrimentally contributes to the aging process and is inextricably linked to neurodegenerative disorders [4]. Interventions that manipulate the oxidative stress mechanisms may decrease oxidative damage, slow the rate of aging, and lessen the risk of neurodegenerative disorders, increasing the lifespan of older adults. Research has begun to focus on developing effective health and lifestyle interventions so that older adults are able to remain both physically and cognitively healthy into older age, reducing the social and economic burden associated with an aging population [5]. The Indian herb, Bacopa monnieri (EBm) may serve as a dietary antioxidant, with several modes of action to protect the brain against oxidative damage and age-related cognitive decline. Several studies using the standardized CDRI08 extract have shown that EBm improves cognitive function particularly in the elderly [6–8]. Animal and in vitro studies using the standardized extract CDRI08 have revealed promising results to elucidate EBm's antioxidant properties (e.g., [9–12]). The aim of this review is to examine the evidence for EBm as a potential therapeutic antioxidant to reduce oxidative stress in the aging brain and as a mechanism by which it may improve cognition. We also discuss magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) as a technique to elucidate the antioxidant mechanisms of action of EBm in human research in vivo. 2. The Aging Brain Deterioration in memory performance is a signature of advancing age. Almost 50% of adults aged 64 years and over tend to report difficulties with their memory [13]. In addition to memory, executive function, processing speed, attention, and spatial ability have also been shown to deteriorate with age [14–19]. While most cognitive functions decline with age, cognitive aging does not occur uniformly at the same rate and to the same extent for all people [20]. There may be several reasons for this including differences in lifestyle factors, particularly dietary intake. Aging is a predominant risk factor for dementia, including AD [3]. An imbalance between the production and clearance of abnormal proteins called β-amyloid [21], the formation of neurofibrillary tangles, and neuroinflammation are hallmarks of advanced brain aging and dementia [22]. Neuroimaging studies have reliably identified that with increasing age, ventricular enlargement, white matter hyperintensities, reduction in gross brain volume, reductions in frontal and temporoparietal volume, and higher levels of cortical atrophy occur in the brain [23]. The shrinkage of cortical volume is believed to impact cognitive functioning negatively, reducing a person's cognitive ability [24]. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have revealed that age-related memory changes may be due to altered activation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). For example, compared to their younger counterparts, older adults recruit a broader area of the PFC due to bilateral activation of this region [25]. Cabeza [26] conceptualized this phenomenon as a reduction in hemispheric asymmetry, a compensatory response to a loss in neural efficiency. Other researchers explain older adult's broad brain activation during working memory tasks with the compensation-related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis (CRUNCH) [27]. This hypothesis suggests that the compensatory response of the brain's bilateral over activation occurs due to older adults recruiting maximal neuronal resources earlier than younger adults when completing the same tasks, thereby leaving no neuronal resources left for a higher load of difficulty, resulting in poorer performance. Since these two theories, researchers believe the compensatory response is in fact a protective scaffolding effect to support or prop up underlying adverse factors associated with brain ageing like brain shrinkage, reduction in dopamine receptors, neural inefficiency, noise, or both (scaffolding theory of aging and cognition (STAC)) [28]. To enable researchers to predict cognitive status and change over time, a revised STAC model (STAC-r) incorporates aging and life experience factors like exercise and cognitive training that influence structure and function of the aging brain which in turn may enhance or deplete neural resources [29]. More recently, neuroimaging studies have investigated the correlation between brain neurometabolite levels, as an indication of underlying molecular or cellular changes that may be related to aging. The technique of MRS is a noninvasive method of obtaining biochemical information about body tissue [30]. MRS has been used to study age-related degenerative diseases like cognitive impairment and AD [31, 32] and neuropsychiatric disorders like depression [33] and schizophrenia [34]. MRS can be utilized for early detection of disease and for monitoring medical therapies or treatments [35]. Changes in metabolites are purported to reflect changes in different brain indices such as neuronal viability/function (N-acetyl-aspartate; NAA), cellular turnover (Choline; Cho), metabolic activity (glutamate, glutamine; GLX), inflammation in the brain (myo-inositol; Myo), and oxidative stress (glutathione; GSH) [36]. MRS studies have investigated the correlation between changing brain neurometabolite levels and cognitive performance in healthy aging populations [37, 38]. A study by Ross and colleagues [39] identified significant correlations between the integrity of frontal white matter NAA metabolite and cognitive function represented by processing speed, visual memory, and attention tasks with a healthy elderly cohort. A large study conducted by Ferguson and colleagues [40] investigated the relationships between NAA, Cho, and Cr and cognitive function in a group of healthy elderly men. Positive correlations were found between NAA/Cr and Cho/Cr ratios with test measures of logical and verbal memory. The authors postulated that high levels of Cr are the best predictor of poor cognitive performance. An increase in the Cr signal has been reliably identified in healthy elderly brains compared with their younger counterparts [41–43]. These studies support the premise that MRS is a valid technique to measure subclinical changes in cognition across the lifespan. Alternatively, researchers investigating MRS metabolite markers in clinical cohorts with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have reliably found NAA to be lower and Myo to be higher when compared to cognitively healthy older adults (e.g. [31, 41]). However, inconsistent Cho levels have been identified with some studies reporting an increase in Cho of people with AD [44] while others have not [45]. Collectively, these physiological, pathophysiological, and structural changes that occur with increasing age highlight the complex nature of the aging brain. Understanding the mechanisms and role of oxidative stress in the aging process is currently considered to be important to elucidate the key to longevity. An emerging theory in the literature postulates that the balance between oxidation/reduction reactions (redox state) within cells is important for healthy aging [46]. If there is a disruption to the mechanisms of redox state (impaired signalling and regulation), then age-associated functional losses will occur [46]. Oxidative stress, antioxidants, and the aging brain will be discussed below. 3. Oxidative Stress, Antioxidants, and the Aging Brain 3.1. Oxidative Stress Mechanisms Although oxygen is needed for survival, the brain is sensitive to oxygen metabolic activity that produces ROS [47]. Approximately 95%–98% of ROS such as hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ), hydroxyl free radical (∙OH), superoxide anion (O 2 −∙), and peroxynitrite (ONO 2 −) are formed in mitochondria as by-products of cellular respiration [48]. Studies of mitochondria isolated from the brain indicate that 2–5% of the total oxygen consumed produces ROS [49]. An imbalance between prooxidant and antioxidant reactions occurs when the equilibrium between the beneficial and harmful effects (redox homeostasis) is interrupted ([50]; refer to ). This imbalance produces a steady accumulation of oxidative damage in macromolecules that increase with aging, causing a progressive loss in cellular function and efficiency of processes [51]. Free radicals in the brain are responsible for significant harmful effects to cellular function and damage to DNA, proteins, membrane lipids, and components of mitochondria [47, 52]. The brain is particularly sensitive to free radical damage due to its high metabolic rate, concentration of unsaturated fatty acids, cytotoxic actions of glutamate and reduced antioxidant systems with a lower activity of glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and catalase (CAT) compared to other organs [9, 53]. Open in a separate window Aging decreases the ability of the brain to scavenge free radicals, thus decreasing available antioxidants, particularly the most abundant endogenous antioxidant GSH [47, 50]. There is a delicate balance between the positive and negative effects of free radicals. In a normal physiological state, fluctuation in ROS production is balanced with ROS scavenging capacity [54]. Oxidative stress occurs when ROS production exceeds that of ROS scavenging capacity. Oxidative stress is a significant feature of aging, most likely due to a combination of reduced ROS scavenging capacity, impaired redox state, and increased ROS production [55]. This imbalance in the cellular redox mechanisms may contribute to the slow onset and progressive nature of neurodegenerative diseases, as well as age-related cognitive decline [46, 56]. Severe, extensive, or more prolonged oxidative damage is highly toxic and these toxic effects contribute significantly to the aging process [57, 58]. 3.2. Antioxidant Mechanisms The human body has an innate defence mechanism consisting of endogenous antioxidants to negate the detrimental effects of oxidants [59]. Antioxidants have the ability to reduce oxidative stress in the body by scavenging ROS to either inhibit or repair damage. Antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD), CAT, GPx, and glutathione reductase (GR) present the first line of defence against free radical damage under conditions of oxidative stress [60, 61]. Nonenzymatic antioxidants, glutathione (GSH), vitamin C (ascorbic acid), and vitamin E (α-tocopherol) are all phenolic compounds that offer protection by altering oxidants to either nonradical end products or transporting radicals to areas where their effects will be less damaging [56]. Vitamins A, C, and E, selenium, and coenzyme Q10 effect important antioxidant actions to protect neural tissue from “attack” by free radicals [62]. Eating a varied diet can provide a mixture of oxidants and antioxidants. Fruits and vegetables rich in vitamins A, C, and E provide a healthy defence against the formation of free radicals. Such fruits and vegetables also increase the number of cell receptors available for antioxidant enzyme action [47]. Dietary polyphenols with antioxidant properties have protective effects against many degenerative diseases including diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases aiding in the prevention of oxidative stress [63, 64]. The GSH redox cycle lowers H 2 O 2 levels, thus lowering the formation of damaging hydroxyl radicals ([65]; refer to ). GSH is a tripeptide (L-γ-glutamyl-L-cysteinylglycine) found everywhere within the cells of the body. It is involved in many physiological functions. GSH is responsible for detoxifying ROS into nontoxic substances (water and oxygen) [66] and is critical for the maintenance of normal function and neuronal survival [67]. It is involved in the synthesis of proteins and DNA, enzyme activity, metabolism, transport, and cell protection [66]. GSH is oxidised to glutathione disulphide (GSSG) resulting in intracellular redox imbalance which is reflected in a decreased GSH to GSSG ratio, often referred to as oxidative stress [68]. GSH levels in tissue decrease with age [69]. Impaired GSH metabolism has been implicated in the pathogenesis of clinical mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder [70] as well as neurodegenerative disorders including AD [31] and Parkinson's disease [71]. It is not surprising then that oxidative stress generated by ROS is consistently linked to these conditions. Open in a separate window A study conducted by Berger and colleagues [72] used MRS to investigate in vivo GSH levels before and after the administration of an omega-3 fatty acid (ethyl eicosapentaenoic acid; E-EPA) within patients who had experienced their first episode of psychosis. Supplementation with E-EPA was reported to increase GSH concentration by 38% in the temporal lobe of these patients. More importantly, the increase in GSH correlated with improvement in negative symptoms. This promising result provides support for further research to be conducted to elucidate the effect of other supplements on cerebral GSH levels in normal and clinical populations. GSH levels, quantified using MRS, have been used to investigate oxidative stress in different brain regions (frontal cortex, parietal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum) of healthy adults and in the bilateral frontal cortices of patients with mild cognitive impairment and AD [32]. In healthy females compared to healthy males, mean GSH levels were higher (left frontal cortex, P = 0.006; right posterior cortex, P = 0.01) and that GSH distribution was different between the hemispheres for females and males. GSH levels were significantly depleted in the right frontal cortex of female AD patients compared to healthy female participants (P = 0.003), whereas, for males, the left frontal cortex was significantly depleted (P = 0.05) when comparing healthy males to AD patients. GSH was lower in mild cognitive impaired patients compared to healthy participants, but the difference was not statistically significant. GSH is therefore an important biomarker of redox state which can be monitored to investigate disease progression or normal age-related changes [32]. Despite the compelling research linking brain metabolite alterations to changes in cognitive function with age and changes in GSH levels in clinical populations, to date, no studies have incorporated the use of MRS as a technique to measure metabolite changes in response to EBm. Clinical trials have not investigated the antioxidant defence system, particularly targeting the ubiquitous antioxidant, GSH, in response to EBm using MRS. Finally, clinical trials have not examined the cognitive correlates of MRS after the chronic administration of EBm. Altering the inefficiency of the antioxidant system by boosting the redox potential with thiols, particularly the ubiquitous antioxidant, GSH, may be a way to reduce age-associated decline in functional abilities. As discussed below, the administration of EBm may improve the antioxidant redox state, thus leading to improved functional outcomes such as enhanced cognitive performance. 4. What Is Bacopa monnieri? Bacopa monnieri (Linn), commonly referred to as “Brahmi,” from the plant family Scrophulariaceae is a creeping herb found in India and neighbouring tropical countries that grows in wet marshland up to 1500 m in altitude [73]. It has been traditionally used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat conditions such as fever, inflammation, pain, asthma, epilepsy, and memory decline [10]. It has been used in a standardized form in clinical research since 1996 [74]. Steroidal saponins and Bacosides A and B are the active chemical constituents responsible for improving both learning and memory [75, 76]. Other constituents include bacopasaponins D, E and F as well as alkaloids, flavonoids, and phytosterols [77, 78]. Some of the chemical constituents of EBm are lipophilic [79, 80]. This means that they can combine with or dissolve in lipids giving them the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. Bacosides are believed to repair damaged neurons by enhancing kinase activity and neuronal synthesis linked with the restoration of synaptic activity, culminating in the improvement of nerve impulse transmission [81]. Antidepressant and anxiolytic effects have been reported in animal studies [82, 83] although conflicting findings have been reported in human trials [6, 7, 84, 85]. However it is the memory enhancing effects of EBm that have generated the most attention [86]. Various mechanisms may be involved in the neuroprotective and memory enhancing effects of EBm, such as the binding and detoxification of metal ions [87], free radical scavenging [88], or increasing antioxidant activity [9]. Animal models have shown that EBm can exert vasorelaxant [89], adaptogenic [90], anti-inflammatory [91], metal ion chelating [92], and cholinergic modulatory effects [93]. Neuroprotective effects have been identified in animal models of epilepsy [94] and amnesia [95] as well as reducing ischemia-induced memory deficits in rats [96]. EBm also appears to inhibit numerous β-amyloid oxidative stress pathways involved in AD pathology [92] and antioxidant properties related to GSH redox state [97]. The role of oxidative stress and alterations in the antioxidant GSH redox state in response to EBm will be expanded upon below. 5. Antioxidant/Oxidative Stress Mechanisms of Bacopa The antioxidant properties of EBm are widely recognised and have been discussed in various reviews [10, 98, 99]. Several histological (in vitro) and animal studies have established that EBm bacosides or extract improve the system's defences against oxidative stress by decreasing the formation of free radical accumulation in the brain. In an early study investigating the antioxidant activity of EBm, lipid peroxidation in the prefrontal cortex, striatum, and hippocampus of rats was inhibited. Bhattacharya and colleagues [9] found a dose related increase in enzyme activity responsible for scavenging reactive oxygen species, namely, SOD, CAT, and GPx in these brain regions of rats after 14 and 21 days of chronic administration of EBm. Interestingly, the same study compared the antioxidant effects of the drug deprenyl, which also improved antioxidant enzyme activity, but only in the prefrontal cortex and striatum of the rats and not the hippocampus. They suggested that this increase in the free radical scavenging activity of bacosides may be responsible for facilitating the cognitive action of EBm. Similarly, in a different study, the modulation of antioxidant activity in diabetic rats was again through a significant increase in SOD, CAT, GPx, and GSH levels showing a significant reversal of redox imbalance and peroxidative damage to enhance the defence system against ROS [11]. Other studies also support a free radical scavenging mechanism in response to EBm [75] by reducing the formation of free radicals [92, 100]. In addition, a more recent study found that a EBm ethanolic extract was able to adjust the level of endogenous oxidative markers in various brain regions of prepubertal mice [101]. Furthermore, an in vitro study by Russo and colleagues [88] investigated H 2 O 2 induced cytotoxicity and DNA damage in human nonimmortalized fibroblast cells in response to an ethanol extract of EBm. They also investigated the free radical scavenging capacity and the effect on DNA cleavage induced by H 2 O 2 . EBm was able to inhibit superoxide anion formation in a dose dependent manner, indicative of free radical scavenging ability and a protective effect was observed against H 2 O 2 cytotoxicity and DNA damage. A more recent in vivo and in vitro study conducted by Shinomol and colleagues [102] used 3-nitropropionic acid (NPA), a fungal toxin that causes neurotoxicity in both animals and humans, in comparison with the effects of an ethanolic extract of EBm in the mitochondria of the striatum of rats and dopaminergic (N27) cells. As predicted, the NPA caused oxidative stress in the mitochondria of the striatum, while pretreatment with EBm prevented NPA oxidative reactions and reduction of reduced GSH and thiol levels. In experimental models of ischemia, diabetes and aluminium and cigarette induced toxicity, pretreatment with EBm (40 mg/kg/day to 250 mg/kg/day) and Bacoside A (10 mg/kg/day) has been identified to prevent lipid peroxidation and play a role in antioxidant activities by modulating the effects of enzymes (Hsp 70, cytochrome P450, and SOD in the rat brain) known to be involved in the production and scavenging of ROS, resulting in antistress activity in rats [103–105]. Again, these studies support the premise that EBm has the ability to restore antioxidant defence mechanisms and protect against the adverse effects of peroxidative damage. EBm has also been shown to either exert antioxidant effects through metal chelation at the initiation level of the free radical chain reaction by chelating ferrous ions, or be attributed to the detoxification of free radicals at the propagation level [87, 92]. In another study in rats, the effect of EBm detoxified ROS ONO 2 − in astrocytes [106]. Cumulatively, animal and in vitro studies provide support for antioxidant mechanisms of EBm. Animal and in vitro studies have identified that GSH is particularly useful to examine antioxidant capacity and changes in oxidative stress. Taking into account the findings of the studies described above, EBm may increase the cellular inefficiency of the antioxidant system by boosting the redox potential with GSH (e.g., [9, 11]). In turn, the administration of EBm as a therapeutic intervention may be a way to reduce age-associated decline in functional abilities. The therapeutic properties of plants like EBm have generated much scientific investigation due to their compelling antioxidant properties, little to no side effects, and economic sustainability [107]. 6. Clinical and Research Implications Oxidative stress plays a role in aging and neurodegenerative disorders. Based on the animal in vitro and in vivo studies discussed in this review, EBm can be utilized as a therapeutic strategy against oxidative damage and cognitive decline in the elderly. Supplementation with EBm is likely to support the antioxidant defence pathways altering the redox status, which are vital components for normal functioning, while improving cognitive ability. Given that with age it is believed that the antioxidant system is compromised and GSH levels are reduced, EBm has the potential as a therapeutic antioxidant to reduce oxidative stress and improve cognitive performance. 7. Future Directions While the central role of oxidative stress in age-related cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases has driven studies to examine the potential antioxidant benefits of EBm, studies have not incorporated in vivo brain imaging techniques to systematically study brain aging and central oxidative stress. MRS may be a useful technique to understand the antioxidant mechanisms, particularly studying GSH ROS detoxification, in vivo, as a result of EBm supplementation. Applying neuroimaging research techniques is important to be able to understand the in vivo effects underpinning the cognitive changes due to EBm. Future studies should consider the application of brain imaging modalities, particularly MRS, to be able to extend results beyond the explanation of mood, general health, and cognitive behavioural outcomes in response to dietary supplementation in human randomized clinical trials. 8. Conclusion Further exploration into the complex mechanisms of action of EBm in nutritional aging studies may reveal promising insights into antioxidant metabolic changes, supporting dietary nutritional supplementation for therapeutic means. This review has described how EBm has the potential as a therapeutic antioxidant to reduce oxidative stress, a mechanism that may be responsible for improving cognitive performance and offer neuroprotection. Employing the neuroimaging technique of MRS to investigate GSH antioxidant levels may be useful to elucidate the mechanisms of action underlying the cognitive enhancing effects of EBm. Such research may also assist in our understanding of how to improve cognition in the elderly. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Professor Kevin Croft for his comments on the final draft in preparation for this paper. They would also like to thank Dr. Doug Mitchell for funding contributing to neuroimaging research on Bacopa monnieri (CDRI08). The authors conduct studies on Bacopa monnieri (CDRI08) that are funded by SOHO Flordis International (SFI). Tamara Simpson is funded by an Australian Postgraduate Research Award to conduct this research. Professor Stough's work on Bacopa monnieri (CDR108) is funded by a large grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) DP1093825. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.